An Unexpected “Nixonland” Review

November 13, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Book Review, History, National Security, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Nixonland Nitpicks, Richard Nixon, Terrorism, U.S. History, Watergate | 6 Comments 

It has now been about a half-year since Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland was published, and some time back I noticed that no review had appeared in The American Spectator, a magazine avidly read by the 37th President and usually not a place where major books about him go unnoticed.

Well, Perlstein’s book is finally discussed in TAS’s November issue, which you’ll have to buy or browse at a store, for it’s not online. The author of the review is none other than Tom Charles Huston - one of the most important figures in Young Americans For Freedom in the mid-1960s, associate counsel at the Nixon White House during the administration’s first two years, and, of course, author of the 1970 “Huston Plan” which presented a comprehensive proposal for coordination of the FBI, CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, and local law enforcement to combat the threat to the United States posed by violent antiwar and anti-government radicals, such as the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground.

This plan was never implemented primarily because of objections from the aging J. Edgar Hoover, who viewed it as a threat to the FBI’s autonomy, and Huston left government service in 1971 to become an attorney in his native Indianapolis, where he has practiced ever since. During the last 37 years he has been prominent in efforts to preserve the Hoosier State’s historical sites, but has not been heard from concerning the years in which he was an up-and-coming figure on the political stage. Possibly as a result of this silence, he has tended to be among the figures most demonized in the vast anti-Nixon literature, especially after 1973 when his “plan” came to public notice during the Senate Watergate hearings.

But it now appears that Huston is ready to come out of the cold, so to speak. Earlier this year I was surprised to find his name among the list of interviewees in James Rosen’s fine biography of John Mitchell, The Strong Man, and even more surprised when Rosen told me that Huston had spoken at considerable length about his White House years, though little from this talk appeared in the finished volume, which focused on the period after Huston left Washington. And, to judge from the TAS review of Nixonland, Huston has much more to say.

The review vigorously pans Perlstein’s book, to such a degree that it makes Conrad Black’s scathing New York Sun notice almost look like a Harriet Klausner five-star puff from Amazon. After listing such descriptions in the book as Strom Thurmond being called a “dirty-neck” and Robert Kennedy referred to as “Senator Love Beads,” Huston remarks: “This sort of language may be pitch-perfect for a duet with Keith Olbermann on Countdown but is hardly appropriate for an allegedly serious work of history.”

“There is a point at which the frequency of factual errors raises the legitimate question of whether the author is a scholar or transcriber,” the reviewer continues, and then cites a half-dozen examples, including several that even escaped Jack Pitney’s watchful eye. Huston also takes issue with Perlstein’s beloved Orthogonians-vs-Franklins dichotomy, noting that the historian uses the terms as “trap doors through which the author conveniently disposes of men and ideas he is unwilling to confront on their own terms.”

Toward the end of the review Huston takes strong exception to Perlstein’s argument that the Nixon years represented a battle between two equally sized, equally bloody-minded factions for the soul of the Republic:

The decade of the 1960s was the most turbulent in America since that which began with John Brown’s Kansas raids and ended at Appomattox Courthouse. There was a lot of anger, a lot of goofiness, and an indecent amount of violence. It commenced on Lyndon Johnson’s watch, during the high tide of liberalism. Richard Nixon didn’t cause it; he inherited it. The deranged landscape of the 1960s was the product of a liberalism untethered from common sense and good judgment, which elicited a reaction that was often ill considered and ill advised but was hardly homicidal. There were, of course, extremists who resorted to violence and haters who, while less lethal, were nonetheless menacing, but these were outriders, not mainstreamers. The very notion that the mass of Americans were prepared to kill each other over their political and cultural differences is more than nonsense; it is a calumny.

One wonders if Huston, when he speaks of an “ill-considered and ill-advised” reaction to rampant New Leftism, is thinking in retrospect about his “plan” which provided, on the assumption that extraconstitutional measures were needed to combat violent radicals, for the opening of mail, wiretaps, and an increased use of campus informants. (It is a little-remembered fact that some of the Libertarian Party’s founders-to-be were among Huston’s closest associates in the YAF, which would suggest that his 1970 proposals were intended to be a response to a wartime crisis and applicable only for the duration such a threat existed.) It may be that, as his professional career winds down, we’ll be hearing more from him in the future. Which is all for the best, since he was among the genuine intellectuals in the Nixon White House and, as his review makes clear, has read extensively and carefully in American history and can take the long view regarding the era in which he played a brief but significant part.

George Shultz’s Advice to the President-elect

November 12, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Afghanistan, American Politics, Barack Obama, Domestic issues, Economic issues, International Affairs, National Security, Nixon Administration figures, Obama administration, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

In the days since Barack Obama’s election there has been quite a bit of talk about his reaching across party lines to seek the advice of elder statesmen. Today in the Washington Times (in a column by the deputy editor of the paper’s op-ed section, Benjamin Tyree), a man who is as accomplished and admired a statesman as they come, George P. Shultz, Secretary of Labor and Secretary of the Treasury in the Nixon Administration (and Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan), offers his suggestions and perspective on a range of issues.

Mr. Tyree reports that Mr. Shultz believes the President-elect should lose no time in making “an early major address to the American people, spelling out his program and how the current economic bind will be eased. And Mr. Shultz thinks such a speech should also take into account the present state of the trade balance:

“We don’t save enough to finance our investments. The federal budget needs ultimately to be brought back into balance, and then the trade balance will fall back into better shape and we’ll be paying of our own investments.”

From the perspective of his six-plus years at the State Department when he witnessed the futile Soviet effort to subjugate Afghanistan, Mr. Shultz also argues that Obama’s talk of increasing our military commitment in that nation

“raises some big questions. We should think much more carefully about putting more troops in there. We succeeded pretty well initially in 2001. Why? Because we made common cause with various tribes for whom the only common theme is the expulsion of foreigners, to deny al Qaeda the safe haven it previously enjoyed in Afghanistan.”

Where the economy is concerned, Mr. Tyree reports that Mr. Shultz thinks that the “key problem” in the current crisis

is that the “value of assets underlying” the mortgage credit freeze-up “is uncertain and changing, and was leveraged to beat hell. There is a huge mass of uncertain value sitting there, making banks more hesitant to deal with each other[...]“

Directing capital to the banks might help the credit market, but Mr. Shultz suggested it will not mend the damaged mortgage market. There remains the problem of assessing true value in the absence of a reliable and stable market valuation of the properties.

He said there should be a distinction between homebuyers who made down payments and those who did not. The latter, he suggested, might be more appropriately re-established as renters with an option to buy.

Mr. Shultz also recounts an experience from his days as Secretary of Labor, when

[H]e recommended that then-President Nixon stand back from intervening in a Gulf Coast Longshoremen’s strike that former President Johnson had prevented in the name of national security. “The strike will produce a kerfuffle, but not a national emergency, and will create pressures on both parties to settle the dispute. Staying out will help the collective bargaining process to work,” he advised Nixon. The recommended policy of disengagement proved effective. “The president was not hanging his shingle out” as a recourse for all with financial woes.

There is a lot more of interest in Mr. Tyree’s interview, and this reader, at least, came away from reading the column with the feeling that the President-elect would find it much to his benefit to have Mr. Shultz pay a visit to the Oval Office in January - or to Chicago before then.

Common Sense

November 12, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Environmental issues, Military, National Security, Supreme Court | Leave a Comment 

The Supreme Court rules 5-4 to allow the United States Navy to continue the use of Sonar in their training exercises in light of lawsuit from environmental groups fearing for the safety of wildlife. Chief Justice John Roberts cites the plainly indisputable:

We do not discount the importance of plaintiffs’ ecological, scientific and recreational interests in marine mammals. Those interests, however, are plainly outweighed by the Navy’s need to conduct realistic training exercises,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “We see no basis for jeopardizing national security.”

Forewarned But Not Yet Forearmed

November 6, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under National Security, Terrorism | Leave a Comment 

The 9/11 Commission warned that “the greatest danger of another catastrophic attack in the United States will materialize if the world’s most dangerous terrorists acquire the world’s most dangerous weapons.”

So, in 2007, Congress established the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism (WMD) to assess our progress in preventing the proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons.  It’s chaired by former Florida Senator Bob Graham; the vice chair is former Missouri Congressman Jim Talent.

In September the Commission held its first public hearing in New York City and received testimony from Tom Brokaw regarding the history of the anthrax-laced letter that was sent to him at NBC News at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.  

He tells the harrowing story of the two women who handled the letter, and were hurt by its contents, in personal detail and with anchor-like authority — and the impact is chilling.  

The fact is that, despite this deadly early warning, we have failed to institute any more than the most rudimentary procedures and protocols to deal with any future —and possibly far more massive— attacks.  Our communities, our cities, and our institutions are all but naked to our enemies bearing vials and aerosols.

Mr. Brokaw’s riveting testimony is highly recommended viewing.  In addition to the serious questions it is intended to raise (about how little we have learned from this frightening experience regarding the horrors of a chemical or biological attack), it will raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

Mr. Brokaw’s co-panelist was former New York City Deputy Health Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg, who is currently vice president for biological programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.  Their combined testimonies about the dangers of dirty bombs and the fall out from weaponized germs is sobering to say the least.  

Then We Came To The End

November 3, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Democratic Party, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Election 2008, International Affairs, Iran, National Security, Public Opinion, Republican Party | 1 Comment 

The title (itself borrowed from the opening words of Don DeLillo’s Americana) of Joshua Ferris’s much-acclaimed debut novel, set in a Chicago ad agency staggering through the end of the 1990s boom, seems to fit the national mood today.  After eight furious weeks of nonstop TV ads (especially those funded from the seemingly bottomless coffers of Sen. Barack Obama’s organization) and innumerable words and images and charges and countercharges, the 2008 presidential race reaches its conclusion tomorrow when all those who are registered and have not taken advantage of early voting (ie, most of the country) cast their ballots. 

(That is to say, the election will hopefully reach its conclusion tomorrow. A situation in which Sen. Barack Obama receives a majority of the popular vote, by however thin a margin, and Sen. John McCain prevails in the electoral college by a few votes would be a nerve-wracking one indeed.  And if only nerves were shattered, that would be the best-case scenario.)

As Americans get ready to vote, McCain’s campaign is focusing increasingly on Ohio, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, and stressing one final point: that Obama, in an interview some time ago, spoke in terms that seem to indicate that his planned campaign against global warming would entail a scaling-down of coal production, the backbone of the economy in much of western and northeastern Pennsylvania, southwestern Virginia, and parts of eastern Ohio.  If McCain can get these three states, he just might prevail even without Florida and Missouri.  If Obama can hold them and make inroads into the South (as in North Carolina), the White House is his.

McCain’s campaign has also emphasized Obama’s remarks in a 2001 interview on a Chicago public-radio station in which he spoke of the courts as being a less than ideal forum to pursue “redistribution.”  Did he mean that word in a strictly legal sense of Federal court decisions which “redistributed” civil liberties and social equality to minorities and women, or in an economic sense? The overall context of the interview suggests the former, and to judge from the poll data, the argument hasn’t produced much traction in the electorate.  McCain’s introduction of Joe the Plumber into the political discourse helped tighten the margin between him and Obama, but in recent days the GOP candidate has been unable to narrow the margin beyond the five or six points shown in most surveys.

It may be that the most powerful argument the McCain campaign has now concerns Sen. Joe Biden’s closed-door prediction some weeks ago that Obama, like John F. Kennedy, would be tested in the foreign-policy field, in a big way, very early in his presidency.  Kennedy’s response to events such as the Bay of Pigs and the construction of the Berlin Wall was far from decisive, and this led into the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Biden’s implication, seemingly, was that with the assistance of a foreign-policy expert like himself Obama could display strong leadership and make the right decisions.  But there’s a big difference between talking foreign policy in the Senate and actually making it on the executive level.  Would an Obama-appointed team, headed by Biden and (as sometimes mentioned) Bill Richardson as Secretary of State, adequately handle the challenges posed by Iran or North Korea or even Venezuela?

There’s also the question of what might happen with a Democratic President and the sort of Democratic majority that appears possible in both the House and the Senate after Tuesday.  The chances seem good that, with such a combination, this country would see an expansion of government intervention in everyday life - and, before too long, an increase in taxes - of a kind perhaps unprecedented in American history.  And it can hardly be overemphasized that an Obama presidency would result in the most liberal appointments to the Supreme Court in forty years, perhaps starting with Sen. Hillary Clinton. Are the voters ready to accept all these things as the price of change?  Stay tuned. 

Charisma and Promises to Keep

October 31, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, Democratic Party, Economic issues, Election 2008, History, National Security, Presidents, Republican Party, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

I voted early this week - but just the once. We are being told that one of the unique things about the election this year is the fact that about one third of all ballots cast are via various forms of early voting. This is certainly unprecedented. The Commonwealth of Virginia, where I live in Fairfax County, requires someone desiring to vote early to affirm a reason for not being able to do so on Tuesday, November 4th. They range from being responsible for the care of another, to travel. It is a travel issue with us. My wife and I head to Ohio to watch all the fun there this Tuesday.

The trend toward such significant early voting is also uncharted territory for the integrity of elections themselves. It remains to be seen if this development will lead to greater voter confidence in the process, or further confusion, conflict, and potential destabilization. All indications are that early Democratic voters far outnumber Republicans. Part of this is due to a determined effort on the part of the Obama-Biden campaign to get out the early vote.

By definition, early voters are not undecided. We have not only decided, we have expressed that decision through the sanctity of the secret ballot. It follows, therefore, that those still undecided have not yet voted. Therefore, with more than 30 percent of decided voters already finished with the only poll that really matters, the portion of undecided voters may actually be statistically significant.

It also means that both campaigns still have an opportunity to win converts.

I suggest that one important question every voter – especially those yet undecided – should ask is: “Will John McCain or Barack Obama be better at keeping promises made during the campaign?” It has been a year of promises. “Ask not what your country can do for you – demand it!”

We have been promised tax cuts, spending cuts, new programs, war plans, and much more. Every American needs to remember that it is a very rare thing for a politician to keep every promise. Sometime next year, no matter who wins on Tuesday, our new president will have to face the American people with the news that it can’t all be done.

Sorry folks. Forget how we will be doing four years from now. How will the new occupant of the White House be doing in four months? Will Obama stay closer to campaign message or will McCain?

History tells us that voters do not always take unfulfilled promises in stride. George Herbert Walker Bush never recovered from the outcry after he broke his “read my lips” pledge and, in fact, raised taxes. Lyndon Johnson promised not to send American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys. The Vietnam War broke him. They even came up with a name for the breaking of a presidential promise back then – “credibility gap.”

Mr. Johnson might have preferred the more benign: “I uttered a terminological inexactitude.”

The granddaddy of all promise breakers to become president was Franklyn Delano Roosevelt. When he ran against Herbert Hoover in 1932, much of his rhetoric and emphasis had to do with things that never actually happened in his administration. Just a few weeks before his election, he was calling government spending “reckless and extravagant.” He told Americans: “I regard reduction in federal spending as one of the most important issues of this campaign.” He also promised to “reduce the cost of current federal government operations by 25 percent.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

When FDR took office in March of 1933, he raced to the left and stayed there. He sold the people on it because circumstances had gotten worse. He was prepared to ask for broad “executive” powers to lead the nation out of the crisis. And he sacrificed his promises of fiscal responsibility on the altar of populism.

By doing so, he ensured that times would not get better. But he got away with it. The man who became president during our nation’s greatest economic crisis did not at all resemble the man who asked for votes in the prior election. Will the same thing happen if a man who talks about current problems as being the worst since The Great Depression is elected this time around?

Once elected, leaders tend to default to their real selves and comfort zones. There is a certain hubris, a “we won” or “it’s our turn” kind of spirit. It happens to Democrats and Republicans. Remember when George W. Bush spoke out against “nation building” in the 2000 campaign? How about his promise for “compassionate conservatism” and the disappearance of “partisanship” in Washington?

What does this all mean for us right now? Well, again – we must choose a person who can be trusted to keep as many of his promises as possible. We also need someone who, when having to make the tough choices about what promises to keep and the ones to discard during difficult times, will have the courage to resist the clamor from core constituencies.

Does anyone really believe that Barack Obama, when faced with a push-to-shove kind of choice, will opt to do anything that would risk his image as a populist hero of the downtrodden? He will move, with lightening-speed, to the left if given the chance.

He will be the kind of president Huey Long would have been, but instead of the Kingfish’s “Share the Wealth” mantra, it will be “Spread the Wealth.” And he will have another thing going for him that both FDR and Long had.

Barack’s got charisma. It is that magic something that gets people to want to believe on the way to believing. It is fascinating to watch, but whenever it has emerged in chaotic times, it has been ultimately ugly.

A discussion of charisma, as part of the study of sociology, was first introduced by Max Weber early in the 20th century. He identified it as “an extraordinary quality of a person, regardless of whether this quality is actual, alleged or presumed.” He indicated that it implied “a relationship between the great man and the followers.” In a charismatic environment, “whatever the leader says, whatever he asks, is right, even if it is self-contradictory. It is right, because the leader has said it.” The follower develops “a devotion born of distress and enthusiasm.”

He also suggested that charismatic leadership tends to rise up against the backdrop of a chaotic “social milieu.” In other words, bad times, confusing times, chaotic times are fertile moments for this kind of leadership.

During the Great Depression the nation was ripe for demagogues. They always turn up when leading cultural and economic indicators trail down. Huey Long was one such man. In his excellent book, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and The Great Depression, historian Alan Brinkley describes the man from Louisiana as someone “evoking an almost religious adulation from many of the poor and struggling.” He quotes one reporter at the time as saying: “They do not merely vote for him, they worship the ground he walks on. He is part of their religion.”

Of course, it remains to be seen what will happen, but if Barack Obama is elected and the economy has not improved by the time he takes the oath of office, watch for him to move left and stay there. He will keep the promises that tend to enhance his charismatic stature as a champion of the frustrated. He will sacrifice promises he made about tax cuts as irrelevant to the new reality he will inherit.

Mr. Obama’s meteoric rise to the threshold of political power should give Americans pause. A man who would likely not be able to get a security clearance if he tried to get a job with the CIA or FBI, may very well be elected president on Tuesday.

We live in “interesting times,” as Robert Kennedy used to say. But, of course, he was quoting an old Chinese curse.

What Is To Be Done - To Us?

October 16, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Book Review, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Election 2008, History, Islam, Islam and the West, National Security, Religion, Russia, Terrorism, War on Terror | Leave a Comment 

The final debate between John McCain and Barack Obama was primarily about the economy. That was appropriate and understandable. The big winner was Toledo’s new favorite son, Joe the Plumber – who will now be able to charge a lot more for his pipe-wrench artistry. And he will never again have a problem getting a table at Tony Packos.

It would be wise, however, for all Americans to remember something very important that is being overshadowed by the current cultural obsession. We are all concerned about our money. But the stakes right now are higher than mere dollars and cents.

In other words: It’s not just the economy, stupid.

As the long and hard fought presidential election campaign moves into the final frenetic stretch, there is an important court trial underway across the Atlantic - in Scotland. Two men have been charged with plotting terrorist bombings in Glasgow and London last year.

Two Muslim men - Mohammed Asha is from Jordan and Bilal Abdullaf is from Iraq.

Both are medical doctors.

While Americans worry about the possibility of another Great Depression, it is worth asking if we are in danger of being preoccupied with a Great Distraction at a crucial moment in our history.

Of course, our economic woes are quite real – ominous, in fact. And they cannot and should not be ignored. Not watching the store is what got us into this fix in the first place. But one has the sense that this nation is an increasingly soft target for something worse. And if it ever were to turn out that while we focused like a laser beam on the economy, our enemies decided to exploit our myopia, we could be in a bigger mess than we have ever imagined.

I am not trying to be “gloom and doom” here – just saying that it has probably crossed the mind of an adversary or two that this would be a fitting time to unleash something bad.

Bad, as in “where, oh where are you Jack Bauer?”

It is important for all of us to realize – even if it involves interrupting our current morbid fascination with the Dow and all things monetary – that the greatest strategic threat against our nation is not something that has been, or could be, done by people named Freddie or Fannie. Not even close. Our greatest enemy is, and will be long after the current financial mess is cleaned up, Islamism and its agenda to subdue all who persist in the audacity of being non-Muslim infidels.

In the sixth century B.C., Sun Tzu, in Art of War, said:

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will fight without danger in battle. If you know only yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or lose. If you know neither yourself, nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.

He also said: “All warfare is based on deception.”

There is an elephant in the big room under America’s spacious skies. It has to do with the potential for us to eventually see some of the same things happen here that are happening more and more frequently in Europe. I am referring to things like two presumably intelligent, and certainly well educated, doctors in a plot to bomb and kill.

Daniel Pipes is a widely read expert on the threat of radical Islam. He is a director of the Middle East Forum and calculates that, “10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide support militant Islam.” Let’s do the math (a fine young man on my staff, who has a graduate degree in theoretical mathematics would remind me here that this is arithmetic, not math – but you get my drift).

Estimates of the global Muslim population range between 1.3 and 1.6 billion – roughly one in five human beings. This means, if Pipes is right (and it is possible his estimates may be on the conservative side) – that there may be between 130 and 240 million people in the world who, in the name of Islam, hate America. These are the people who had a party on that sad September day seven years ago.

By the way, the total combined population of an earlier axis of evil enemies - Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan in September of 1939 - was approximately 194 million. That’s total – as in every man, woman, and child.

How about the statistics right here in the U.S.? Well again, the estimates are all over the place, but it is generally accepted that between three and five million of our neighbors are Muslim. An article in Newsweek last year used the figure eight million. Applying the Pipes formula to here at home, we come up with the potential for anywhere between 300,000 and 1,200,000 people in this country who may be less-than-enamored of the rest of us. Or worse, some may be longing for the day when the fruited plain becomes a Muslim caliphate.

Here is where it gets complicated. We are a nation of people fierce about liberty. We believe in things like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to assemble, to vote, and hold these things to be precious. We have no desire to become a police state, with neighbor turning on, or turning in, neighbor. We do not want to become hysterical and paranoid.

But there are bad people out there. They have guns and bombs and ugly ideas. And they have no problem “blending in” – even spending a long time cultivating a reassuring cover.

Bear in mind that the guys on trial across the pond right now are doctors.

There is a precedent for this, and it is one Americans should study. A few years ago, Margaret Thatcher, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979-1990, described an often-overlooked previous pattern for what we are now witnessing.

Writing in 2002, she said:

Perhaps the best parallel is with early communism. Islamic extremism today, like bolshevism in the past, is an armed doctrine. It is an aggressive ideology promoted by fanatical, well-armed devotees. And, like communism, it requires an all-embracing long-term strategy to defeat it.

The Iron Lady nailed it. Though the terms Islamo-fascist and Islamo-nazi are used these days with regularity, perhaps Islamo-bolshevik should become part of our vocabulary. Though Islam and communism as ideologies bear little resemblance to each other, beyond a mutual affinity for subduing and controlling others, they do have much in common methodologically.

It is a mistake to think of terror as the only weapon in the Islamist arsenal. It is a very public one, indeed – and horrifying. But behind the ugliness of terrorism lies a persistent and pernicious pattern of deceit and manipulation. The term taqiyya refers to the practice of deliberate deceit in the service of Islamist goals. The ends justify the means, in other words - lying, fraud, stealing, cheating, all things that most religions commonly consider sins, are perfectly appropriate in the pursuit of jihad.

John J. Dziak, Ph.D., a professor at The Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., has written extensively on Russian Intelligence. Last year, his article, Islamism and Stratagem, appeared in The Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies. He drew parallels between the methods used by current day Islamists, and those used ninety-plus years ago by Lenin and company:

The Bolshevik regime was a conspiracy come to power. The Soviet Union in practice was a seventy-one-year old counterintelligence operation raised to the level of a state system.

Organic to such a counterintelligence system is the widespread practice of provocations, diversion, deception, disinformation, ‘maskirovka’ (military focused deception), penetration, and other active measures of a highly aggressive nature.

He also noted that, “from its earliest history Islam has practiced what westerners label stratagem, deception, dissimulation, concealment, etc., in its dealings with not only the Infidel but with other Muslims, as well.” He identified Islamism as, “the twenty-first century heir to the counterintelligence state traditions of the totalitarian systems of the last century.”

During a recent radio interview, Brigitte Gabriel, author of the new book, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, told me, “history reveals very clearly that the apathetic give way to the passionate, and the complacent are subdued by the committed.”

I have written before about the love Islamists have for a spurious document called, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This anti-Semitic tract, though long-ago exposed as a forgery created by the Tsar’s secret police to foster anti-Jewish sentiment in early 20th century Russia, has long been a favorite of demagogues from Adolf Hitler to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The ironic thing is that, though the idea of a vast Jewish conspiracy to control the world has been so clearly proven as false, a group called the Muslim Brotherhood actually did write a plot of their own.

And this document is no forgery.

Brigitte Gabriel devotes an entire chapter to this in her book and it is chilling to read. Discovered in Switzerland just a few weeks after September 11, 2001, “The Project,” as it has come to be known, outlines a century long plan “to dominate the West and establish an Islamic government on earth.”

It is a 14-page “How To” manual about infiltrating a society en route to eventually subjugating it. Among its instructions are such motivational nuggets as:

• Avoiding open alliances with known terrorist organizations and individuals to maintain the appearance of “moderation.”
• Infiltrating and taking over existing Muslim organizations to realign them toward the Muslim Brotherhood’s collective goals.
• Using deception to mask the intended goals of Islamist actions, so long as it doesn’t conflict with Sharia law.
• Involving ideologically committed Muslims in democratically elected institutions on all levels in the West, including government, NGOs, private organizations, and labor unions.
• Instrumentally using existing Western institutions until they can be converted and put into the service of Islam.
• Collecting sufficient funds to indefinitely perpetuate and support jihad around the world.

And so on.

Lenin could not have said it any better in What Is To Be Done.

Welcome to AfriCom

October 3, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, National Security | Leave a Comment 

Due to problems with pirates, terrorists, and arms control, the United States military has opened a new and long over due strategic command center.

First Impressions After The First Debate

September 26, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Economic issues, Election 2008, International Affairs, Iran, Iraq War, Israel and Palestinians, Media, National Security, News media, Republican Party, War on Terror | Leave a Comment 

Overall, I would have to say Sen. John McCain came out ahead.  The decision to devote the first 40 minutes to the economy solved the problem of focus that an all-foreign-policy discussion would have produced, as I commented in my previous post, and it also would normally have been to Sen. Barack Obama’s advantage, given McCain’s missteps last week.  But the Republican candidate handled himself rather well; his only slipup, perhaps, was his offer to commit himself to a spending freeze on everything except defense, veterans affairs, and entitlements, which gave Obama an opening to talk about education and health care.  Neither candidate cared to commit himself to a detailed answer to moderator Jim Lehrer’s repeated query about what large-scale cuts would have to be made because of the proposed bailout.

On foreign affairs, McCain pulled ahead early and maintained his lead.  He spoke with assurance and conviction about his support for the surge, and the difference it made in the war with Iraq.  He also addressed the Pakistan and Russian issues well.  One rather notable feature of this part of the discussion was Obama going out of his way to mention Sen. Joe Biden’s foreign-policy expertise, an indirect swipe at Gov. Sarah Palin.  But the Illinois senator generally played it safe and, as John Taylor pointed out in his liveblogging, was usually on the defensive, as shown by his repeated assurances of his agreement with McCain after the latter had made a point.

The race is far from over; a lot rides on Gov. Palin’s performance next week, and any major gaffes on McCain’s part in the coming debates are sure to be pounced on in the media and blogosphere.  (It seemed evident tonight that ABC and CBS’s commentators were spinning the results of the debate Obama’s way, while at NBC Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw were ready to acknowledge McCain’s strong performance. This forthrightness is one reason NBC is the leader in network news ratings.)  But McCain’s off to a good start.

The First Debate Arrives

September 26, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Election 2008, International Affairs, Iran, Iraq War, Israel and Palestinians, Media, National Security, News media, Public Opinion, Republican Party, Russia, War on Terror | Leave a Comment 

Late this morning, after several days of uncertainty and with less than ten hours until curtain time, Sen. John McCain finally confirmed that he will appear alongside Sen. Barack Obama at the first of the 2008 presidential debates at the University of Mississippi at 9 pm Eastern tonight.

This debate is to focus on foreign policy, despite that fact that the overwhelming concern of the nation over the last two weeks has been the US economy. It sets me to wondering to what extent the candidates can maneuver questions about the state of the world into permitting answers that will touch, if only briefly, on the state of the pocketbook. The easiest way to do this would seem to be in the course of replying to questions about the relations of Europe and the Pacific Rim nations to the United States. Trade, after all, is a major component of our ties to these nations, and an unhealthy situation on Wall Street and in American exports will affect these ties. But if either candidate starts discussing issues more relevant in the domestic area than in the overseas one, it’s unlikely that moderator Jim Lehrer, an old and experienced hand when it comes to debates, will let them tarry long.

So most likely the questions will focus on the major national-security issues: the continuing threat posed by Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs; unrest in Pakistan; Russia’s recent incursion into Georgia; and most of all the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the battle against terrorism. In these areas McCain has considerable strength. When he spoke quickly and forcefully to condemn Russian bullying, his poll numbers improved. And he has consistently addressed the challenges America faces overseas in terms in language that is clear, reasoned, and reassuring to the American voter.

(In this respect his running-mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, could learn something from him, as her appearance on CBS Evening News last night showed. Though what she said about diplomacy, the war and Mideast affairs was not in itself troubling if viewers listened carefully, and thus not likely to pose an embarrassment tonight, her manner of saying it was unorganized and somewhat rambling. It’s clear that she needs to keep prepping for the vice-presidential debate next week.)

This brings me to the one thing that really stood out when I examined the numbers in the ABC/Washington Post poll this week, which showed Obama leading McCain by 52 to 43 percent among likely voters (or 51-43 if Bob Barr and Ralph Nader are factored in). Starting in mid-July, those polled were asked: Who would you trust more to handle a major unexpected crisis, Obama or McCain?

Until last week, McCain consistently outpolled Obama on this question: 51 to 42 on July 13, 52-41 on August 22, 54 to 37 on September 7. On September 22, at the end of the week that shook Wall Street and Main Street (and a few days after McCain reacted to the news of Lehman Brothers’ collapse by saying that the economy was fundamentally sound) he led Obama by only 47 to 46 percent, a statistical tie.

It’s hard to say whether his dramatic actions this week changed the electorate’s view, or led them to think of Obama as being the man they would less like to see handling a crisis. But tonight’s event represents a chance to McCain to put his strongest assets as a candidate to the foreground and to score some solid and sorely needed points against his opponent. It’s traditionally been the case that the first presidential debate reaches the largest audience and plays the largest role in shaping voters’ perceptions of the candidates, and so what America will see tonight can be a turning point in this election. And both McCain and Obama are well aware of that.

The Left’s Second Thoughts On The Rosenbergs

September 21, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Cold War, History, National Security, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

In recent days interest in the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted on Federal espionage charges in the early 1950s and sent to the electric chair, has been revived after Morton Sobell, the last living defendant charged (and convicted) with them, acknowledged to Sam Roberts of the New York Times that he and Julius Rosenberg had in fact spied for the Soviet Union. In the Week In Review section of today’s Times there is a very illuminating article by Roberts discussing how widespread belief in the innocence of the Rosenbergs has affected the whole direction of the American political left since 1953, and how some of the notable figures in that movement are reacting to Sobell’s admission.

Those quoted in the article include E.L. Doctorow, the writer who first made a major impact with his novel The Book Of Daniel, based on the Rosenberg case (and later adapted into a film directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Timothy Hutton); pre-eminent leftist historian Howard Zinn (who says, “I never was going along saying I know they were innocent, and I’m not shocked by the fact they turned out to be spies. To me it didn’t matter if they were guilty or not, the most important thing was they did not get a fair trial”) ; SDS founder Tom Hayden; longtime Nation editor and publisher Victor Navasky; and Leonard J. Lehrman, co-director of the National Committee To Reopen The Rosenberg Case.

Hiss And The Rosenbergs In Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

September 16, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Cold War, History, National Security, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Bob Hoover, the book-review editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (and, thus, belonging to a breed now perhaps more rare than the ivory-billed woodpecker) has written an article for that paper concerning Sam Roberts’ recent New York Times stories about the Rosenberg case, in which he also discusses the lingering echoes through the decades of the saga of Alger Hiss.  Included are several quotes from G. Edward White, author of Alger Hiss’s Looking-Glass Wars. Well worth reading.

“The Mainstay of the Torture Regime in this Country”

September 15, 2008 by Joshua Trevino | Filed Under American Politics, National Security | 1 Comment 

The point at which Andrew Sullivan condemns a group for “violating one of the core moral absolutes of Christianity” is the point at which we pass into parody. We get to that point early in his recent post complaining about a poll revealing, in the release he cites, “that nearly six in 10 white Southern evangelicals believe torture is justified.” Sullivan intones: “Southern evangelicals are therefore the mainstay of the torture regime in this country.” This is, as so much of Sullivan’s analysis is now, an exercise in hysteria. A brief survey of polls on torture since 2004 reveals that the attitudes of Southern evangelicals are not dramatically different from those of Americans at large.

A 2004 Pew Research Center survey on foreign policy attitudes revealed that 64% of Americans at large could conceive of situations — differing only in frequency, from rarely, to sometimes, to often — in which torture is justified. A 2005 Pew Research Center survey, conducted after the Abu Ghraib scandals, revealed that this total dropped by a full one percent, to 63%. Finally, a February 2008 Pew Research Center survey revealed a significant increase in situational support for torture in the American public at large, to 68%.

Referring to the actual survey (PDF) that Sullivan complains of, which he does not appear to do, reveals that the comparable number for white Southern evangelicals is, in fact, 73% — not “nearly six in 10.” This is, at first glance, a decent five percentage points higher than the figure for Americans at large. But a reference to the margins of error in the respective surveys reveals the numbers to be functionally identical. In other words, the white Southern evangelical support for torture is not meaningfully distinct from that of the country at large.

Add in the place of Southern evangelicals in the American social tapestry, and it becomes difficult to argue that they are the “mainstay of the torture regime in this country,” or any other regime of any sort. Approximately 26% of Americans are evangelicals, and though they are concentrated in the South, they are by no means restricted there — decidedly non-Southern states such as Pennsylvania, California, and Illinois claim nearly one in five residents as evangelical Christians.

A decent bit of time and research could be saved by simply declaring a priori that Andrew Sullivan is wrong. This may seem unfair, but it is increasingly justified by his own erratic behavior. On this topic alone, he veers away from reason with alarming consistency: to pick one example, in a prior post, he claimed without evidence that “evangelical Christians are now the greatest supporters of doing to prisoners what was once done to Christ,” thereby revealing a somewhat unfortunate incomprehension, for a self-proclaimed reformer of basic Christian teaching, of the nature of “what was once done to Christ.” That post was provoked by a survey on “world public opinion” (PDF) so methodologically shoddy — and so at odds with the previously-referenced Pew findings — as to be useless except as a propaganda piece.

Yet this is what Sullivan is now: a propagandist. He’s not so much a propagandist for any particular side — it was neo-conservatism yesterday, it’s an imaginary “conservative” Obama today — as he is a propagandist for whatever seizes Andrew Sullivan’s id. It is indeed a pity for a man who once showed such promise — and for the august publication that employs him. Andrew Sullivan, blogger and noise machine, is going strong. Andrew Sullivan, thinker, is done.

Oh Snap! Dr. Krauthammer Calls Out Charlie Gibson

September 12, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, Election 2008, International Affairs, Media, National Security, War on Terror | 1 Comment 

In a column datelined tomorrow but currently available on the Washington Post’s website, Charles Krauthammer deconstructs “Charlie Gibson’s Gaffe”.

The subject is the Bush Doctrine — whatever that means.  Which is precisely Dr. Krauthammer’s point.

What Mr. Gibson clearly (indeed, almost obscenely, so silkily did he pose his short but carefully crafted question) had in mind when he sat down for his interview with Governor Pailn was the ultimate gotcha moment.

He would casually ask her whether she agreed with the Bush Doctrine.  And that would be it.  No need to stand around folks — it’s all over, you can go home now.  Finis.  The end.  That’s all she wrote — so to speak.  

And he, good old Charlie Gibson of ABC News, the man so friendly his first name is a diminutive, would go down in history as having singlehandedly accomplished what every liberal on the planet has been fantasizing about 24/7 since two weeks ago yesterday.  With seven short words he would have exposed Sarah Palin as the jumped-up parvenu everyone knows she really is.

And, at least so far, that is pretty much the way the mainstream media has been playing it.  The New York Times reported: 

At times visibly nervous . . . Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of “anticipatory self-defense.”

But Charles Krauthammer says it’s actually Mr. Gibson who got it wrong.  And Charles Krauthammer has some standing on this subject:

I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush Doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard entitled, ”The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism,” I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush Doctrine.

Deep Throat And The Third Man

September 12, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, History, Media, National Security, News media, Nixon Administration, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Watergate | 1 Comment 

Over at his site Washington Decoded, DC journalist Max Holland has uncovered something truly startling: the identity of a man who seemingly was the very first person, after Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, to learn that W. Mark Felt, assistant FBI director at the time of the Watergate break-in, was the person who provided a preponderance of the information to Woodward that, in the book All The President’s Men, was attributed to a source codenamed “Deep Throat.”

(That may sound like a roundabout way of saying “was the very first person after Woodstein to learn the identity of Deep Throat,” but I have my reasons for putting it in those words. This weekend, when I do a little housecleaning, I’ll see if I can find the detailed notes I made when reading Woodward’s book The Secret Man. In the meantime, TNN readers interested in the DT question could do worse than to read journalist Ed Gray’s examination of the matter in the book, In Nixon’s Web, that he co-authored with his father, former FBI director L. Patrick Gray.)

What Holland found was something that really has been in plain sight for decades: an article published in the Washington Post on June 17, 1973, the first anniversary of the break-in. It was entitled “Bureau Hurt By Watergate,” and was written by Laurence Stern.

Stern, who died of a heart attack (brought on by a bee sting, according to Ben Bradlee) in 1979 at the age of 50, is not a man who looms large in the annals of Watergate. Indeed, he hardly looms large at all except in the memories of veteran Post staffers, most of them retired, and in the research of some historians who specialize in the Cold War.

Stern started work at the Post in 1952 and rose through the ranks until he achieved the post of assistant managing editor not long before his death. In the 1960s and 1970s, he worked the international beat, specializing in national-security and Cold War issues. In that capacity he developed many sources with the CIA, going all the way up to the agency’s director, Richard Helms. (It should be kept in mind that, when Woodward and Bernstein began publishing their articles about Watergate, it was thought by a number of people in the CIA who were keeping tabs on the case that the information in the articles was primarily coming from sources within the FBI.)

Stern’s article focused mainly on the administrative shakeups that had roiled the FBI following articles in the Post and other newspapers about the agency’s handling of the investigation of the break-in and cover-up, rather than on what had been revealed in the articles themselves. But the article contained two paragraphs which, had anyone kept them in mind the following year when the book All The President’s Men stirred interest in Deep Throat, could very well have narrowed down the list of “suspects” from the very start:

One highly placed FBI executive acknowledged that FBI agents may have been instrumental in getting the initial Watergate revelations into public print. Reporters who covered the case acknowledged the role of the agents in opening up the initial peepholes in the cover-up facade some administration officials were trying to erect.

“It wasn’t a matter of getting rancorous leaks dumped in your lap,” said one Watergate reportorial specialist. “You’d have to go to them and say, what about this and what about that? They’d respond, ‘Yes, that’s right.’ I can think of one guy in the bureau without whom we wouldn’t have gotten anywhere.”

According to The Secret Man, prior to the publication of Vanity Fair’s 2005 article in which Felt identified himself as DT, and Woodward and Bernstein’s subsequent confirmation that he was their source, the following people were the only ones who knew DT’s identity: DT himself; Woodward; Bernstein (when Woodward told him in the fall of 1972); Ben Bradlee (when Woodward told him sometime not long after Nixon’s resignation, presumably in 1974 or 1975); attorney Stanley Pottinger (who, when working in the Justice Department, asked Felt in the course of a grand-jury investigation if he was DT, and when the latter, under oath, “turned white” and denied it, allowed him to withdraw the answer); Woodward’s wife Elsa Walsh (probably sometime in the early 1980s); and former Post executive editor Len Downie, who would seem to be the last of this group to know it.

Could Laurence Stern, unknown to Woodward, have been among them?

Holland points out that the “Watergate reportorial specialist” would most likely have been one of Stern’s Post colleagues. So he emailed both Woodward and Bernstein to ask if they recalled speaking to Stern for the article. Woodward’s reply was that the Stern article “does not ring a bell with me;” he also remarked that a dozen other Post journalists were on the Watergate beat at the time.

But Bernstein’s response was just a little different. It did not arrive before Holland put up his post about Stern, but is quoted by Slate’s Timothy Noah in his discussion of Holland’s discovery. Bernstein simply said: “Thanks, Max - interesting….”

What could be in that ellipse that trails off so, well, elliptically?

According to Stern’s son Marcus (who spoke with Noah for the Slate piece), the journalist indeed spent a good deal of time with Woodward and Bernstein during the Watergate coverage - and spoke with Bernstein, as the younger Stern recalled it, more often than with Woodward.

And, even more tantalizingly, Marcus Stern (a distinguished journalist in his own right, who won the Pulitzer Prize and George Polk award in 2006 for uncovering the bribery scandal involving congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham) described to Noah the night he attended the Kennedy Center premiere of the movie All The President’s Men with his father. “Who was Deep Throat, Dad?” Marcus asked, his curiosity naturally stirred by Hal Holbrook’s memorable portrayal. “I think the movie suggested that,” Laurence answered, and then remarked that one particular thing about the movie - his son doesn’t recall just what - seemed to show that the filmmakers knew who DT was. (Although, as Noah points out, none of those involved in the making of the film ever claimed to have that knowledge.)

This all seems to suggest that Stern did know. And if so, who told him? Could the answer lie somewhere in the back pages of a notebook in the Woodward/Bernstein collection at the Ransom Center in Texas?

The Last Shoe Finally Drops

September 11, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Cold War, National Security, Richard Nixon, Russia, U.S. History | 4 Comments 

Not all old men forget.  Morton Sobell, one of the three defendants in the Rosenberg case, is now 91 and living in the Bronx.  And he has just admitted, in an interview with Sam Roberts of The New York Times, that he was, in fact, guilty as charged: a Soviet spy during World War Two.

 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, call it that,” he responded to Mr. Roberts’ direct question whether he was a spy.  “I never thought of it as that in those terms.  What I did was simply defensiv