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Octafish
Octafish's Journal
Octafish's Journal
January 21, 2016
Ever hear of Elizabeth Warren? How about William K. Black?
http://therealnews.com/t2/?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=15097
January 21, 2016
Duck, Duck Noose by Gary Simmons. The chairs are kindergartner sized.
Hate gets hard-wired in at an early age.
Duck, Duck Noose by Gary Simmons. The chairs are kindergartner sized.
January 20, 2016
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
The New York Times, April 7, 2006
WASHINGTON, April 6 — To her allies, Representative Cynthia McKinney, the fiery Georgia Democrat who apologized on the House floor on Thursday for her scuffle with the Capitol police, is a brilliant and gutsy crusader for the disenfranchised — "a modern-day version of Sojourner Truth," said Representative Marcy Kaptur, Democrat of Ohio, referring to the famed black suffragette.
To her critics, Ms. McKinney is a relentless self-promoter and conspiracy theorist, too extreme to be taken seriously. And some of her colleagues, including fellow Democrats, say that lately she has been a little bit out of control.
"I said, 'You need to come to a nonviolence workshop,' " Representative John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat and 1960's civil rights leader, recalled telling Ms. McKinney in a private conversation on the House floor this week, after the congresswoman declared herself a victim of "racial profiling" by the police.
"I talked to her about lowering the temperature, stopping the press conferences," Mr. Lewis said Wednesday. Ms. McKinney, he said, was noncommittal. "She said, 'I've got to check with my people.' "
SNIP...
It was another twist in the curious saga of a politician who has, virtually overnight, become the talk of the town. In a Capitol populated mostly by white men in conservative suits, Ms. McKinney, 51, brings a voice that is rarely heard — the strong, edgy anger of a black woman who grew up in the South and does not much care whom she offends.
It is no secret here that the Georgia congresswoman gets under people's skin. Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, expressed impatience with Ms. McKinney on Thursday, saying she should "go back to what the people elected her to do." The House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, does not even speak to her.
CONTINUED...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/07/washington/07mckinney.html
Rahm was not nice to Cynthia McKinney.
After Accusing Police of Racism, Congresswoman ApologizesBy SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
The New York Times, April 7, 2006
WASHINGTON, April 6 — To her allies, Representative Cynthia McKinney, the fiery Georgia Democrat who apologized on the House floor on Thursday for her scuffle with the Capitol police, is a brilliant and gutsy crusader for the disenfranchised — "a modern-day version of Sojourner Truth," said Representative Marcy Kaptur, Democrat of Ohio, referring to the famed black suffragette.
To her critics, Ms. McKinney is a relentless self-promoter and conspiracy theorist, too extreme to be taken seriously. And some of her colleagues, including fellow Democrats, say that lately she has been a little bit out of control.
"I said, 'You need to come to a nonviolence workshop,' " Representative John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat and 1960's civil rights leader, recalled telling Ms. McKinney in a private conversation on the House floor this week, after the congresswoman declared herself a victim of "racial profiling" by the police.
"I talked to her about lowering the temperature, stopping the press conferences," Mr. Lewis said Wednesday. Ms. McKinney, he said, was noncommittal. "She said, 'I've got to check with my people.' "
SNIP...
It was another twist in the curious saga of a politician who has, virtually overnight, become the talk of the town. In a Capitol populated mostly by white men in conservative suits, Ms. McKinney, 51, brings a voice that is rarely heard — the strong, edgy anger of a black woman who grew up in the South and does not much care whom she offends.
It is no secret here that the Georgia congresswoman gets under people's skin. Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, expressed impatience with Ms. McKinney on Thursday, saying she should "go back to what the people elected her to do." The House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, does not even speak to her.
CONTINUED...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/07/washington/07mckinney.html
January 19, 2016
Another reason we felt like princes as we entered that auditorium was the FBI's role as the front line of Bobby Kennedy's own twin preoccupations: the fight against the Reds, for which he'd first become famous as an aide to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, and his newly launched campaign against Jimmy Hoffa. Bobby Kennedy, we felt, would look on us as special allies in the struggles he took most seriously. So imagine my surprise when what Bobby -- the hair, the teetch, the rolled-up sleeves -- chose to speak about that day was neither Reds nor the mob but the rights of colored people. In my mind, the NAACP might as well have been on the attorney general's list of subversive organizations, thought I knew as little about it as I did about the Lincoln Brigade.
I remember the shrill pitch of his voice and the open palm of his hand slapping the podium. I remember his direct invitation to come back to Washington after graduation to join a new American crusade. "My fundamental belief," he said once, and I recall his saying something like it that day, "is that all people are created equally. Logically, it follows that integration should take place everywhere."
Fundamental belief? Powerfully faced with his, I had to admit that it was mine too. I remember, as it were, a light going on in my dull head: the flip side of "created equal" is "integraton." It was an era when such lights went on all over the place. Arthur Schlesigner Jr. reports that after Bobby Kennedy and an aide took an early tour of the Justice Department, Kennedy asked, "Did anything occur to you as strange in our visit around the offices?" The aide referred only to how hward everyone seemed to be working. Kennedy repolied, "But did you see any Negroes?"
SOURCE: "An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us," pp. 129-130.
http://bit.ly/1nvAHpu
Hoover was conflicted. How can one control one's equals?
JFK had to order Hoover to integrate the FBI.
James Carroll, the son of an FBI man promoted by JFK to be the first head the Defense Intelligence Agency, provides detail:
Another reason we felt like princes as we entered that auditorium was the FBI's role as the front line of Bobby Kennedy's own twin preoccupations: the fight against the Reds, for which he'd first become famous as an aide to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, and his newly launched campaign against Jimmy Hoffa. Bobby Kennedy, we felt, would look on us as special allies in the struggles he took most seriously. So imagine my surprise when what Bobby -- the hair, the teetch, the rolled-up sleeves -- chose to speak about that day was neither Reds nor the mob but the rights of colored people. In my mind, the NAACP might as well have been on the attorney general's list of subversive organizations, thought I knew as little about it as I did about the Lincoln Brigade.
I remember the shrill pitch of his voice and the open palm of his hand slapping the podium. I remember his direct invitation to come back to Washington after graduation to join a new American crusade. "My fundamental belief," he said once, and I recall his saying something like it that day, "is that all people are created equally. Logically, it follows that integration should take place everywhere."
Fundamental belief? Powerfully faced with his, I had to admit that it was mine too. I remember, as it were, a light going on in my dull head: the flip side of "created equal" is "integraton." It was an era when such lights went on all over the place. Arthur Schlesigner Jr. reports that after Bobby Kennedy and an aide took an early tour of the Justice Department, Kennedy asked, "Did anything occur to you as strange in our visit around the offices?" The aide referred only to how hward everyone seemed to be working. Kennedy repolied, "But did you see any Negroes?"
SOURCE: "An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us," pp. 129-130.
http://bit.ly/1nvAHpu
Hoover was conflicted. How can one control one's equals?
January 19, 2016
FBI's "Suicide Letter" to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Dangers of Unchecked Surveillance
BY DIA KAYYALI
Nov. 14, 2014 Electronic Frontier Foundation
The New York Times has published an unredacted version of the famous “suicide letter” from the FBI to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The letter, recently discovered by historian and professor Beverly Gage, is a disturbing document. But it’s also something that everyone in the United States should read, because it demonstrates exactly what lengths the intelligence community is willing to go to—and what happens when they take the fruits of the surveillance they’ve done and unleash it on a target.
The anonymous letter was the result of the FBI’s comprehensive surveillance and harassment strategy against Dr. King, which included bugging his hotel rooms, photographic surveillance, and physical observation of King’s movements by FBI agents. The agency also attempted to break up his marriage by sending selectively edited “personal moments he shared with friends and women” to his wife.
Portions of the letter had been previously redacted. One of these portions contains a claim that the letter was written by another African-American: “King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all us Negroes.” It goes on to say “We will now have to depend on our older leaders like Wilkins, a man of character and thank God we have others like him. But you are done.” This line is key, because part of the FBI’s strategy was to try to fracture movements and pit leaders against one another.
The entire letter could have been taken from a page of GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group (JTRIG)—though perhaps as an email or series of tweets. The British spying agency GCHQ is one of the NSA’s closest partners. The mission of JTRIG, a unit within GCHQ, is to “destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt enemies by discrediting them.” And there’s little reason to believe the NSA and FBI aren’t using such tactics.
The implications of these types of strategies in the digital age are chilling. Imagine Facebook chats, porn viewing history, emails, and more made public to discredit a leader who threatens the status quo, or used to blackmail a reluctant target into becoming an FBI informant. These are not far-fetched ideas. They are the reality of what happens when the surveillance state is allowed to grow out of control, and the full King letter, as well as current intelligence community practices illustrate that reality richly.
CONTINUED w/links...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/fbis-suicide-letter-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-and-dangers-unchecked-surveillance
To KING from J Edgar
FBI's "Suicide Letter" to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Dangers of Unchecked Surveillance
BY DIA KAYYALI
Nov. 14, 2014 Electronic Frontier Foundation
The New York Times has published an unredacted version of the famous “suicide letter” from the FBI to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The letter, recently discovered by historian and professor Beverly Gage, is a disturbing document. But it’s also something that everyone in the United States should read, because it demonstrates exactly what lengths the intelligence community is willing to go to—and what happens when they take the fruits of the surveillance they’ve done and unleash it on a target.
The anonymous letter was the result of the FBI’s comprehensive surveillance and harassment strategy against Dr. King, which included bugging his hotel rooms, photographic surveillance, and physical observation of King’s movements by FBI agents. The agency also attempted to break up his marriage by sending selectively edited “personal moments he shared with friends and women” to his wife.
Portions of the letter had been previously redacted. One of these portions contains a claim that the letter was written by another African-American: “King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all us Negroes.” It goes on to say “We will now have to depend on our older leaders like Wilkins, a man of character and thank God we have others like him. But you are done.” This line is key, because part of the FBI’s strategy was to try to fracture movements and pit leaders against one another.
The entire letter could have been taken from a page of GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group (JTRIG)—though perhaps as an email or series of tweets. The British spying agency GCHQ is one of the NSA’s closest partners. The mission of JTRIG, a unit within GCHQ, is to “destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt enemies by discrediting them.” And there’s little reason to believe the NSA and FBI aren’t using such tactics.
The implications of these types of strategies in the digital age are chilling. Imagine Facebook chats, porn viewing history, emails, and more made public to discredit a leader who threatens the status quo, or used to blackmail a reluctant target into becoming an FBI informant. These are not far-fetched ideas. They are the reality of what happens when the surveillance state is allowed to grow out of control, and the full King letter, as well as current intelligence community practices illustrate that reality richly.
CONTINUED w/links...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/fbis-suicide-letter-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-and-dangers-unchecked-surveillance
January 18, 2016
They stood with Bernie over Reagan re Central America.
Ever hear of Tip O'Neill and David Bonior?
https://books.google.com/books?id=4CxZURlgyyQC&pg=PA93&lpg=PA93&dq=david+bonior+opposed+reagan+central+america&source=bl&ots=HOfCD2PdHr&sig=qPmXOENaZtoZnYXSA42R0o8Jm1g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-vN7exrLKAhVEPiYKHU9yC8IQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=david%20bonior%20opposed%20reagan%20central%20america&f=falseThey stood with Bernie over Reagan re Central America.
January 18, 2016
Mentally isn't physically. So he remained VP and used the opportunity to get appointed a Super Duper Presidential Helper.
George Bush Takes Charge: The Uses of ‘Counter-Terrorism’
By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58
A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.
During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.
Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.
The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.
SNIP...
Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.
SNIP...
NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985
The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.
[font color="green"]The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.
The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.
Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified.[/font color] The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.
CONTINUED...
CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40.
Sorry if this is redundant. It's not being talked about much by those who should know better, as well as the morons on tee vee.
Poppy set the table in 1981 for what was to come via 'National Security'
Reagan was shot in March 1981 and for all intents and purposes was a walking vegetable afterward.
Through a Glass Darkly
Alexander Cockburn
Lies Of Our Times (p. 12-13)
November 1991
What was surprising to me was Reagan’s condition. He was exhausted to the point of incoherence throughout much ofthe interview and could not remember the substance of any subject that had been discussed apart from Mitterrand’s expression of anticommunism. I had not seen Reagan at such close rangesince the assassination attempt nearly four months earlier, and was shocked at his condition.... Reagan simply was unable to recall the contents of the talks in which he had just participated.... The interview concluded at a signal from Deaver,who did not seem to find the president’s condition unusual.”
Thus ran Lou Cannon’s recollections of an interview with the Commander-in-Chief in 1981, as set forth in his book President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon & Schuster,1991), published earlier this year. But how did Cannon describe Reagan’s condition to the readers of the Washington Post when he wrote up his interview? In the July 23, 1981, Washington Post,Cannon’s story appeared under the headline “Reagan Describes Summit Meeting as ‘Worth Its Weight in Gold.’ ” Cannon’s report gives the impression of a lucid chief executive returning home after a fruitful colloquy with other western leaders at the economic summit held in Ottawa in mid-July. Cannon did mention in the tenth paragraph that “Reagan appeared tired to the point of near-exhaustion,” but this observation was quickly qualified by the opinion of “aides” that the president had been doing a lot of prep for the conference and was also worried about the Middle East.
Cannon shared his brief session with Reagan aboard Air Force One with Hedrick Smith of the New York Times, who similarly gave his readers the impression of a president in touch with things rather than the incoherent old man they had actually encountered. As did Cannon, Smith wove the few quotable remarks from Reagan into a tapestry of attributed presidential dicta passed on — and no doubt confected— by Meese, Deaver,and Speakes. It is clear from Cannon’s account of the conference itself that Reagan was fogged up throughout the actual conference, occasionally interjecting trivial observations or homely jokes into the proceedings and then relapsing into bemused silence. Cannon’s memoir is one more indication of the cover-up that took place in the wake of Hinckley’s assassination bid on March 30, 1981. At the time of the shooting, the press was full of phrases like “bouncing back,” “iron constitution,” and other terms indicating that Reagan had emerged from the ordeal in good shape. In fact Reagan very nearly died on the operating table and was a dotard afterwards. He never fully recovered.
Conclusion: Unless a president is actually dead, the WhiteHouse press corps can be relied upon to present him as both sentient and sapient, no matter how decrepit his physical and mental condition.
SOURCE in PDF form:
http://liesofourtimes.org/public_html/1991/Nov1991%20V2%20N10/Nov1991%20V2%20N10.pdf
Alexander Cockburn
Lies Of Our Times (p. 12-13)
November 1991
What was surprising to me was Reagan’s condition. He was exhausted to the point of incoherence throughout much ofthe interview and could not remember the substance of any subject that had been discussed apart from Mitterrand’s expression of anticommunism. I had not seen Reagan at such close rangesince the assassination attempt nearly four months earlier, and was shocked at his condition.... Reagan simply was unable to recall the contents of the talks in which he had just participated.... The interview concluded at a signal from Deaver,who did not seem to find the president’s condition unusual.”
Thus ran Lou Cannon’s recollections of an interview with the Commander-in-Chief in 1981, as set forth in his book President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon & Schuster,1991), published earlier this year. But how did Cannon describe Reagan’s condition to the readers of the Washington Post when he wrote up his interview? In the July 23, 1981, Washington Post,Cannon’s story appeared under the headline “Reagan Describes Summit Meeting as ‘Worth Its Weight in Gold.’ ” Cannon’s report gives the impression of a lucid chief executive returning home after a fruitful colloquy with other western leaders at the economic summit held in Ottawa in mid-July. Cannon did mention in the tenth paragraph that “Reagan appeared tired to the point of near-exhaustion,” but this observation was quickly qualified by the opinion of “aides” that the president had been doing a lot of prep for the conference and was also worried about the Middle East.
Cannon shared his brief session with Reagan aboard Air Force One with Hedrick Smith of the New York Times, who similarly gave his readers the impression of a president in touch with things rather than the incoherent old man they had actually encountered. As did Cannon, Smith wove the few quotable remarks from Reagan into a tapestry of attributed presidential dicta passed on — and no doubt confected— by Meese, Deaver,and Speakes. It is clear from Cannon’s account of the conference itself that Reagan was fogged up throughout the actual conference, occasionally interjecting trivial observations or homely jokes into the proceedings and then relapsing into bemused silence. Cannon’s memoir is one more indication of the cover-up that took place in the wake of Hinckley’s assassination bid on March 30, 1981. At the time of the shooting, the press was full of phrases like “bouncing back,” “iron constitution,” and other terms indicating that Reagan had emerged from the ordeal in good shape. In fact Reagan very nearly died on the operating table and was a dotard afterwards. He never fully recovered.
Conclusion: Unless a president is actually dead, the WhiteHouse press corps can be relied upon to present him as both sentient and sapient, no matter how decrepit his physical and mental condition.
SOURCE in PDF form:
http://liesofourtimes.org/public_html/1991/Nov1991%20V2%20N10/Nov1991%20V2%20N10.pdf
Mentally isn't physically. So he remained VP and used the opportunity to get appointed a Super Duper Presidential Helper.
George Bush Takes Charge: The Uses of ‘Counter-Terrorism’
By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58
A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.
During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.
Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.
The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.
SNIP...
Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.
SNIP...
NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985
The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.
[font color="green"]The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.
The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.
Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified.[/font color] The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.
CONTINUED...
CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40.
Sorry if this is redundant. It's not being talked about much by those who should know better, as well as the morons on tee vee.
January 17, 2016
Ted Kennedy survived Richard Nixon's Plots
By Don Fulsom
In September 1972, Nixon’s continued political fear, personal loathing, and jealously of Kennedy led him to plant a spy in Kennedy’s Secret Service detail.
The mole Nixon selected for the Kennedy camp was already being groomed. He was a former agent from his Nixon’s vice presidential detail, Robert Newbrand—a man so loyal he once pledged he would do anything—even kill—for Nixon.
The President was most interested in learning about the Sen. Kennedy’s sex life. He wanted, more than anything, stated Haldeman in The Ends of Power, to “catch (Kennedy) in the sack with one of his babes.”
In a recently transcribed tape of a September 8, 1972 talk among the President and aides Bob Haldeman and Alexander Butterfield, Nixon asks whether Secret Service chief James Rowley would appoint Newbrand to head Kennedy’s detail:
Toward the end of this conversation, Nixon exclaims that Newbrand’s spying “(is) going to be fun,” and Haldeman responds: “Newbrand will just love it.”
Nixon also had a surveillance tip for Haldeman for his spy-to-be: “I want you to tell Newbrand if you will that (unclear) because he's a Catholic, sort of play it, he was for Jack Kennedy all the time. Play up to Kennedy, that "I'm a great admirer of Jack Kennedy." He's a member of the Holy Name Society. He wears a St. Christopher (unclear).” Haldeman laughs heartily at the President’s curious advice.
Despite the enthusiasm of Nixon and Haldeman, Newbrand apparently never produced anything of great value. When this particular round of Nixon’s spying on Kennedy was uncovered in 1997, The Washington Post quoted Butterfield as saying periodic reports on Kennedy's activities were delivered to Haldeman, but that Butterfield did not think any potentially damaging information was ever dug up.
SOURCE:
http://surftofind.com/tedkennedy
Why does that matter? The Warren Commission, and the nation's mass media, never heard about the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro until the Church Committee in 1975. You'd think that would be a matter of concern to all Americans, especially considering how then-vice president Nixon was head of the "White House Action Team" that contacted the Mafia for murder.
I remember Nixon OK'd assigning a murderous Secret Service agent to protect Ted Kennedy.
President Tricky Dick Nixon approved hiring a Secret Service man who said he'd 'kill on command' to guard Ted Kennedy. You can hear Nixon and Haldeman discuss it, about 40 minutes into the HBO documentary "Nixon by Nixon." While I had read the part of the transcript available years ago, and wrote about it on DU, almost no one I know has heard anything about it.
Ted Kennedy survived Richard Nixon's Plots
By Don Fulsom
In September 1972, Nixon’s continued political fear, personal loathing, and jealously of Kennedy led him to plant a spy in Kennedy’s Secret Service detail.
The mole Nixon selected for the Kennedy camp was already being groomed. He was a former agent from his Nixon’s vice presidential detail, Robert Newbrand—a man so loyal he once pledged he would do anything—even kill—for Nixon.
The President was most interested in learning about the Sen. Kennedy’s sex life. He wanted, more than anything, stated Haldeman in The Ends of Power, to “catch (Kennedy) in the sack with one of his babes.”
In a recently transcribed tape of a September 8, 1972 talk among the President and aides Bob Haldeman and Alexander Butterfield, Nixon asks whether Secret Service chief James Rowley would appoint Newbrand to head Kennedy’s detail:
Haldeman: He's to assign Newbrand.
President Nixon: Does he understand that he's to do that?
Butterfield: He's effectively already done it. And we have a full force assigned, 40 men.
Haldeman: I told them to put a big detail on him (unclear).
President Nixon: A big detail is correct. One that can cover him around the clock, every place he goes. (Laughter obscures mixed voices.)
President Nixon: Right. No, that's really true. He has got to have the same coverage that we give the others, because we're concerned about security and we will not assume the responsibility unless we're with him all the time.
Haldeman: And Amanda Burden (one of Kennedy’s alleged girlfriends) can't be trusted. (Unclear.) You never know what she might do. (Unclear.)
Haldeman then assures the President that Newbrand “will do anything that I tell him to … He really will. And he has come to me twice and absolutely, sincerely said, "With what you've done for me and what the President's done for me, I just want you to know, if you want someone killed, if you want anything else done, any way, any direction …"
President Nixon: The thing that I (unclear) is this: We just might get lucky and catch this son-of-a-bitch and ruin him for '76.
Haldeman: That's right.
President Nixon: He doesn't know what he's really getting into. We're going to cover him, and we are not going to take "no" for an answer. He can't say "no." The Kennedys are arrogant as hell with these Secret Service. He says, "Fine," and (Newbrand) should pick the detail, too.
Toward the end of this conversation, Nixon exclaims that Newbrand’s spying “(is) going to be fun,” and Haldeman responds: “Newbrand will just love it.”
Nixon also had a surveillance tip for Haldeman for his spy-to-be: “I want you to tell Newbrand if you will that (unclear) because he's a Catholic, sort of play it, he was for Jack Kennedy all the time. Play up to Kennedy, that "I'm a great admirer of Jack Kennedy." He's a member of the Holy Name Society. He wears a St. Christopher (unclear).” Haldeman laughs heartily at the President’s curious advice.
Despite the enthusiasm of Nixon and Haldeman, Newbrand apparently never produced anything of great value. When this particular round of Nixon’s spying on Kennedy was uncovered in 1997, The Washington Post quoted Butterfield as saying periodic reports on Kennedy's activities were delivered to Haldeman, but that Butterfield did not think any potentially damaging information was ever dug up.
SOURCE:
http://surftofind.com/tedkennedy
Why does that matter? The Warren Commission, and the nation's mass media, never heard about the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro until the Church Committee in 1975. You'd think that would be a matter of concern to all Americans, especially considering how then-vice president Nixon was head of the "White House Action Team" that contacted the Mafia for murder.
January 17, 2016
Is that what you think? That's not what I wrote.
Surprised to read your name attached to that, sibelian.
What I did write was that the warmongers who lied America into war are at fault.
Without the wars, the refugees would not be flooding out of the war torn region.
The wars remain because they are so profitable. Remember, Madeleine Albright thinks 500,000 dead Iraqi children were "worth it."
What should the USA do about it? Start acting like a Democracy, where we don't have to bomb people into doing what we want or giving us what we want.
What do you suggest we do?
January 16, 2016
They beat Big Labor in its own backyard. Next up: your state?
—By Andy Kroll
Mother Jones | January/February 2014
EXCERPT...
The pressure came largely from one man present at that fundraiser: Richard "Dick" DeVos Jr. The 58-year-old scion of the Amway Corporation, DeVos had arm-twisted Richardville repeatedly to support right-to-work. After six years of biding their time, DeVos and his allies believed the 2012 lame duck was the time to strike. They had formulated a single, all-encompassing strategy: They had a fusillade of TV, radio, and internet ads in the works. They'd crafted 15 pages of talking points to circulate to Republican lawmakers. They had even reserved the lawn around the state capitol for a month to keep protesters at bay.
A week after Richardville's early morning call to Jackson, it was all over. With a stroke of his pen on December 11, Gov. Rick Snyder—who'd previously said right-to-work was not a priority of his—now made Michigan the 24th state to enact it. The governor marked the occasion by reciting, nearly verbatim, talking points that DeVos and his allies had distributed. "Freedom-to-work," he said, is "pro-worker and pro-Michigan."
THE DEVOSES sit alongside the Kochs, the Bradleys, and the Coorses as founding families of the modern conservative movement. Since 1970, DeVos family members have invested at least $200 million in a host of right-wing causes—think tanks, media outlets, political committees, evangelical outfits, and a string of advocacy groups. They have helped fund nearly every prominent Republican running for national office and underwritten a laundry list of conservative campaigns on issues ranging from charter schools and vouchers to anti-gay-marriage and anti-tax ballot measures. "There's not a Republican president or presidential candidate in the last 50 years who hasn't known the DeVoses," says Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.
Nowhere has the family made its presence felt as it has in Michigan, where it has given more than $44 million to the state party, GOP legislative committees, and Republican candidates since 1997. "It's been a generational commitment," Anuzis notes. "I can't start to even think of who would've filled the void without the DeVoses there."
The family fortune flows from 87-year-old Richard DeVos Sr. The son of poor Dutch immigrants, he cofounded the multilevel-marketing giant Amway with Jay Van Andel, a high school pal, in 1959. Five decades later, the company now sells $11 billion a year worth of cosmetics, vitamin supplements, kitchenware, air fresheners, and other household products. Amway has earned DeVos Sr. at least $6 billion; in 1991, he expanded his empire by buying the NBA's Orlando Magic. The Koch brothers can usually expect Richard and his wife, Helen, to attend their biannual donor meetings. He is a lifelong Christian conservative and crusader for free markets and small government, values he passed down to his four children.
CONTINUED...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/01/devos-michigan-labor-politics-gop
PS: They really do do a lot to the community, like pyramid schemes.
SCAMWAY Dick DeVos has a thumb on the Nerd's remote.
Meet the New Kochs: The DeVos Clan's Plan to Defund the LeftThey beat Big Labor in its own backyard. Next up: your state?
—By Andy Kroll
Mother Jones | January/February 2014
EXCERPT...
The pressure came largely from one man present at that fundraiser: Richard "Dick" DeVos Jr. The 58-year-old scion of the Amway Corporation, DeVos had arm-twisted Richardville repeatedly to support right-to-work. After six years of biding their time, DeVos and his allies believed the 2012 lame duck was the time to strike. They had formulated a single, all-encompassing strategy: They had a fusillade of TV, radio, and internet ads in the works. They'd crafted 15 pages of talking points to circulate to Republican lawmakers. They had even reserved the lawn around the state capitol for a month to keep protesters at bay.
A week after Richardville's early morning call to Jackson, it was all over. With a stroke of his pen on December 11, Gov. Rick Snyder—who'd previously said right-to-work was not a priority of his—now made Michigan the 24th state to enact it. The governor marked the occasion by reciting, nearly verbatim, talking points that DeVos and his allies had distributed. "Freedom-to-work," he said, is "pro-worker and pro-Michigan."
THE DEVOSES sit alongside the Kochs, the Bradleys, and the Coorses as founding families of the modern conservative movement. Since 1970, DeVos family members have invested at least $200 million in a host of right-wing causes—think tanks, media outlets, political committees, evangelical outfits, and a string of advocacy groups. They have helped fund nearly every prominent Republican running for national office and underwritten a laundry list of conservative campaigns on issues ranging from charter schools and vouchers to anti-gay-marriage and anti-tax ballot measures. "There's not a Republican president or presidential candidate in the last 50 years who hasn't known the DeVoses," says Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.
Nowhere has the family made its presence felt as it has in Michigan, where it has given more than $44 million to the state party, GOP legislative committees, and Republican candidates since 1997. "It's been a generational commitment," Anuzis notes. "I can't start to even think of who would've filled the void without the DeVoses there."
The family fortune flows from 87-year-old Richard DeVos Sr. The son of poor Dutch immigrants, he cofounded the multilevel-marketing giant Amway with Jay Van Andel, a high school pal, in 1959. Five decades later, the company now sells $11 billion a year worth of cosmetics, vitamin supplements, kitchenware, air fresheners, and other household products. Amway has earned DeVos Sr. at least $6 billion; in 1991, he expanded his empire by buying the NBA's Orlando Magic. The Koch brothers can usually expect Richard and his wife, Helen, to attend their biannual donor meetings. He is a lifelong Christian conservative and crusader for free markets and small government, values he passed down to his four children.
CONTINUED...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/01/devos-michigan-labor-politics-gop
PS: They really do do a lot to the community, like pyramid schemes.
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