News Intelligence Analysis
From BuzzFlash
Part 1 of a 3-Part Series
Tired of Being Lied To?
Modern History You Can't Afford to Ignore
by Maureen Farrell
"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned
an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging
no responsibility to the people." ~ Theodore Roosevelt
"The only thing new in the world is the history you
don't know." ~ Harry S. Truman
A couple years ago, historian Chalmers
Johnson predicted that thanks to the "entrenched interests"
of the military-industrial complex, the United States can look
forward to a future of perpetual war, increased propaganda, fewer
Constitutional rights, and a bloated executive branch. America,
he warned, "will cease to resemble the country outlined
in the Constitution of 1787" unless there is a "revolutionary
rehabilitation of American democracy."
The founding fathers were particularly sensitive to liberty's
fleeting nature and power's corruptive tendencies. Thomas Jefferson
said that "even under the best forms [of government] those
entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted
it into tyranny," while James Madison warned that "If
tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise
of fighting a foreign enemy." And at the close of the Constitutional
Convention, when someone asked Ben Franklin what type of government
the framers had drafted, he presciently replied, "A republic,
if you can keep it."
But America's wisest leaders did not merely warn against the
death of the republic, but about how and why its democratic principles
would gradually wither away. "Our country is now taking
so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction,
to wit: by consolidation [of power] first, and then corruption,
its necessary consequence," Jefferson wrote in 1821. "We
are free today substantially, but the day will come when our
Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility
because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few,"
Madison said in the New York Post.
Similar warnings were sounded by modern presidents. Franklin
D Roosevelt said he didn't "want to see a
single war millionaire created in the United States as a
result of [World War II]," and Dwight D. Eisenhower warned
that the military/industrial complex had the potential to "endanger
our liberties or democratic processes."
By late 2005, when Andy Rooney played a segment of Eisenhower's
speech on CBS' 60 Minutes, the implications were evident: "We
must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists
and will persist," Eisenhower said in 1961. "Well,
Ike was right. That's just what's happened," Rooney
remarked.
Since our genocidal beginnings, there has always been a dark
side to American history. Between slavery's
shameful legacy, Abraham Lincoln's suspension
of habeas corpus, and FDR's internment
of Japanese Americans, democracy has not always been Priority
One to its chosen guardians. But even so, something has shifted
since Harry Truman declared war profiteering a form of treason.
"What has become of the American people that they permit
the despicable practices of tyrants to be practiced in their
name?" former Reagan administration official Paul Craig
Roberts recently asked. "The Bush
administration is in violation of the US Constitution, the
rule of law, the Geneva Convention, the Nuremberg Standard, and
basic humanity. It is a gang of criminals," he wrote.
Former President Jimmy Carter also voiced concern. "Everywhere
you go, people ask, "What
has happened to the United States of America?" he said,
referring to international reaction to America's evolving stance
on human rights, the environment and the separation of church
and state.
The most striking criticism has come from Bush administration
exiles, however. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of
staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, recently offered a
scathing critique, confirming reports that a "cabal"
led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld had "hijacked
foreign policy" and that this cabal's "insular
and secret workings" led to "decision-making one would
associate more
with a dictatorship than a democracy."
With government insiders now sounding such alarms, concerns
cannot be attributed to the New World Order fringe. It's clear
that something is amiss -- something that's eroding our character,
our reputation and our values. How did this come about? Just
how far have we strayed from our democratic ideals? Consider
the following:
Part I -- 1937 - 1990
1937: A small company named Brown & Root
(which will later become a division of Halliburton) calls upon
Lyndon Johnson to procure $10 million in federal funding for
the Mansfield Damn project. The freshman congressman eventually
delivers the necessary authorization and funding for the project,
which becomes the cornerstone of Brown and Root's financial empire.
In turn, Herman Brown finances Johnson's political rise. "It
was a
totally corrupt relationship and it benefited both of them
enormously. Brown & Root got rich, and Johnson got power
and riches," LBJ biographer Ronnie Dugger later notes, adding
that Johnson "wouldn't have been in the running without
Brown & Root's money and airplanes."
In 2000, the Bush/Cheney
campaign uses Halliburton's planes during the Florida recount,
triggering a federal investigation. ''The Bush administration
literally flew into power on Enron's and Halliburton's private
jets," a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee
charges.
1942: The New York Tribune features
a front page story entitled "Hitler's
Angel has $3 million in US bank," referring to Nazi
industrialist Fritz Thyssen and his ties to Union Banking Corporation.
Later that year, Union Bank official Prescott Bush, George W.
Bush's grandfather, is charged with "Running
Nazi front groups in the United States." Bush is elected
to the U.S. Senate ten years later.
1944: Former Vice President Henry A. Wallace
writes an Op-ed , discussing war
profiteers who are "ruthless" in their "use
of deceit or violence" to gain money and power -- pointing
to those who "hope to have profitable connections with German
chemical firms after the war ends." Newly discovered government
documents prove that Prescott
Bush's ties to the Nazis continued until as late as 1951,
and that he and his cohorts "routinely attempted to conceal
their activities from government investigators."
1945: World War II ends. Between 1945 and
1955, more than 700 Nazi scientists are smuggled into the U.S.
In addition to providing the government with valuable science,
"Operation
Paperclip" eventually spawns more notorious programs
like Operation ARTICHOKE (extreme interrogation and torture)
and MK-ULTRA
(mind control).
Eight years later, Dr. Frank Olson, an Army biochemist expert
who runs the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, (and
has ties to Operation Paperclip) falls
from a New York City hotel window. "The search for the
circumstances surrounding the mysterious death of Dr. Frank Olson
begins in 1945, with the liberation
of the concentration camp at Dachau, Germany," a German
documentary later reports. In 1975, after the Rockefeller Commission
unearths revelations about the CIA's
role in Dr. Olson's death, his family is paid $750,000 restitution,
though the government continues to hide the true nature of his
work. Donald
Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are later implicated in the cover-up.
1947: The Central Intelligence Agency is
created. Forty years later, Bill Moyers traces the advent of
secretive
and often grossly unethical practices to the National Security
Act of 1947 -- exposing the government's "apparatus of secret
power" and threats to the U.S. Constitution.
In the 1980s, Congressman Dick Cheney and former Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld abscond annually to a remote location,
partaking in "one
of the most highly classified programs" of the era.
At times the program disregards Constitutional protocol for presidential
succession during a national crisis, instead using "a secret
procedure for putting in place a new 'President' and his staff,"
while diminishing the role of the Speaker of the House and Congress.
Following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, Vice President Dick
Cheney
routinely disappears to an undisclosed location and President
George W. Bush initiates
a shadow government in underground bunkers without informing
Congress.
1950:
- The US government establishes the first
program to develop human mind control techniques, conducting
149 separate experiments using electroshock, hypnosis and drugs
on unsuspecting inmates, mental patients, minorities and others.
- Government researchers conduct secret
germ tests on U.S. citizens, releasing live bacteria over
San Francisco. The Army later says it conducted open air tests
of biological agents 239 times between 1949 and 1969.
- Congress approves the Security Act of 1950, which contains
an emergency
civilian detention plan that remains in effect for more than
20 years. During the early 1980s, Oliver North helps draft secret
wartime contingency plans which provide for "the imposition
of martial law, internment camps, and the turning over of government
to the president and FEMA," and more than twenty years later,
the Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Bush administration
might employ these Reagan-era security initiatives, installing
"internment
camps and martial law in the United States." Following
the Sept. 11 terror attacks, reports of civilian
detention camps and plans to "herd
people into sports stadiums," are punctuated by John
Dean's question: "Could
terrorism result in a constitutional dictator?" By late
2005, after President Bush proposes a greater
role for the military during natural disasters and the imposition
of marshal
law should there be an avian flu outbreak, former Reagan
cabinet member Paul Craig Roberts asserts that "The
Police State Is Closer Than You Think."
1951: Madison's Capital Times editor
John Patrick Hunter takes to the streets with a petition, (which
is actually the Declaration of Independence, along with portions
of the Bill of Rights) and tries to get people to sign it. Only
one in 112 does. The rest find it too
subversive. More than fifty years later, Harper's
editor Lewis H Lapham explains that America is "blessed
with a
bourgeoisie that will welcome fascism as gladly as it welcomes
the rain in April and the sun in June."
1953: After Iran's Prime Minister Mossadegh
nationalizes Iran's oil industry. Britain pushes the U.S. to
mount
a coup. The CIA, led by Teddy Roosevelt's grandson Kermit
Roosevelt (and with the help of Norman
Schwarzkopf's father) overthrows
Mossadegh during Operation AJAX. "The crushing of Iran's
first democratic government ushered in more than two decades
of dictatorship under the shah, who relied
heavily on US aid and arms," the Guardian later
notes.
In 1957, the CIA creates SAVAK, the Shah of Iran's secret
police force, which routinely relies on torture -- using the
same interrogation techniques the CIA
imported from the Nazis. Nearly half a century later, the
world learns of the CIA's network
of detainment facilities and American-sanctioned torture.
1954
1961
- President Eisenhower delivers his farewell address, warning
of the military/industrial complex and the potential for a "disastrous
rise of misplaced power." Former GOP strategist Kevin Phillips
later chronicles how Bush dynasty founders George H. Walker and
Samuel Prescott Bush were "present at the emergence of what
became the U.S. military-industrial complex, in which the Bush family
has been enmeshed ever since."
- The Bay of Pigs invasion, the covert
paramilitary operation meant to overthrow Fidel Castro's
government ends in disaster. Journalist Joseph McBride later
suggests that George H. W. Bush's Zapata Offshore Oil Company
was a front
for this and other CIA operations. Code-named Operation
Zapata, the Bay of Pigs is planned and orchestrated by several
alumni of Yale's Skull and Bones secret society -- which boasts
three generations
of Bushes as members. (Even though a Nov. 1963 memo states
that "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency"
is briefed by
J. Edgar Hoover on "the post-assassination reaction
of Cuban exiles in Miami" following the Kennedy assassination,
the CIA denies Bush's involvement with the agency until he becomes
its head in 1976).
1962
- Operation
Northwoods, the Pentagon's plan to kill innocent Americans
and blame Fidel Castro as a pretext for war against Cuba is presented
to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. "We could blow up
a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba. . . Casualty lists
in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation,"
the document reads. All Joint Chiefs of Staff sign off on the
plan, but it's nixed by the civilian leadership. "The whole
point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the public
will," author James Bamford tells ABC News in May, 2001,
"and here this is the complete reverse, the military
trying to trick the American people into a war that they
want but that nobody else wants."
- Brown & Root, which will later become Kellogg, Brown
and Root (KBR), is acquired
by Halliburton.
1963
- The CIA, in collusion with the Baath party, conducts its
first "regime
change" in Baghdad. Saddam Hussein is reportedly involved
in this coup to overthrow Iraq's leader Abdel Karim Kassem.
- John F. Kennedy and Robert McNamara discuss withdrawing 1,000
troops from Vietnam and ending
U.S. involvement by 1965; Kennedy arranges to meet with Cuban
officials to discuss normalizing
relations between the United States and Cuba; The U.S. backs a
coup against South Vietnam's leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, who is
murdered on Nov. 2.
- John F. Kennedy
is assassinated. Nearly four decades later, scientists prove,
with 96.3 percent certainty, that there was a second
gunman on the grassy knoll. Journalists eventually chronicle
ways the government used the media to manipulate and dupe the
public -- with the New York Times shilling for the Warren
Commission and Life buying the Zapruder film hours after
the assassination -- and locking it away until 1975 with the
publisher's expressed desire to "withhold
it from public viewing." In 2004, prominent authors
demand that 'the CIA
come clean on JFK assassination.'
- Lyndon Johnson takes office and Republicans in Congress soon
wonder if Brown & Root's new government contacts aren't connected
to its political contributions to the new president. The company
eventually becomes part of a consortium which wins a $380
million contract to build bases, hospitals and airports for
the U.S. Navy in South Vietnam. During America's War on Terror,
the Halliburton subsidiary has similar
luck in Afghanistan and Iraq.
1964: After the American destroyer the USS
Maddox is reportedly attacked in the Gulf
Of Tonkin, the Senate approves the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,
giving President Johnson the authority to escalate U.S. involvement
in Vietnam. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaks the Pentagon Papers
to the press, proving that the pretext for this escalation was
based upon distortions. Before the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom,
Ellsberg asks government officials who know that the Bush administration
is deceiving the public to come
clean and reiterates his plea in 2004: "Do what I wish
I had done in 1964: go
to the press, to Congress, and document your claims,"
he writes.
Senator Robert Byrd, in opposition to the resolution authorizing
President Bush to use force against Iraq, compares the current
crisis to the one lawmakers faced in 1964. "This
is the Tonkin Gulf resolution all over again," he says
in Oct. 2002. "Let us not give this president or any president
unchecked power. Remember the Constitution."
1965: The government
secretly releases Bacillus globigii at the National Airport
and Greyhound bus terminal in Washington, DC.; One year later,
military researchers break bacteria-filled light bulbs onto tracks
in subway stations in New York City.
1967
- The General Accounting Office faults "Vietnam Builders"
Brown & Root for accounting lapses; protesters target Brown
& Root as a symbol of the "military-industrial complex."
Decades later, historians cite parallels between Halliburton's
hefty Iraq contracts and Vietnam-era controversies, including
"allegations of overcharging, sweetheart contracts from
the White House and war
profiteering." In 2004, former Army Corps of Engineers
contract officer Bunnatine
Greenhouse charges that the Pentagon
is improperly awarding no-bid contracts to Vice President
Dick Cheney's former company, which is already under investigation
for overcharging
the government.
- President Johnson gives speech after speech, saying that
America's security and freedom depend on a U.S. victory in Vietnam.
Comparing the Vietnamese struggle to the one faced by post-colonial
Americans and assuring American mothers that their sons are dying
for a noble cause, Johnson also promises, "We shall stay
the course." LBJ's words are later echoed
in President George W. Bush's defense of the war in Iraq.
- President Johnson establishes the National Advisory Commission
on Civil Disorders, assisted by an Army task force, planning
to use
military force to squelch civil disturbances. On May 4, 1970,
four students are killed at Kent State University when the Ohio
National Guard fires at unarmed protesters.
1968: Martin
Luther King and Bobby
Kennedy are assassinated. The Democratic National convention
in Chicago is marked
by riots.
1970: After a coup brings CIA-backed Lon
Nol to power in Cambodia, the formerly neutral country is dragged
into the war in Vietnam. Support
for the Khmer Rouge, which was marginal before Nixon widens
the war, grows, and the Khmer Rouge takes power in 1975, leading
to Cambodia's infamous killing
fields. "Few Americans realize that close to two million
people died. . . and that the United
States helped bring about the crisis that lead to the Khmer
Rouge takeover," CBS later reports. Thirty-five years later,
in an article entitled, "Cambodia All Over Again?"
Conn Hallinan suggests that the U.S. is setting the stage to
extend the war with
Iraq into Syria -- a country we are already "unofficially
at war with."
1971
- The "Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI"
releases secret files on the FBI's domestic counterintelligence
program, COINTELPRO,
to the press, revealing that ordinary citizens had been FBI targets,
as had Albert
Einstein, Dr.
Benjamin Spock, Martin
Luther King, John
Lennon and Elvis
Presley. Though Senator Frank Church later vows that "never
again will an agency of the government be permitted to conduct
a secret war against those citizens it considers a threat to
the established order," in 2002, the New York Times
reports that the FBI has "nearly
unbridled power to poke into the affairs of anyone in the
United States, even when there is no evidence of illegal activity."
A year later, FBI
Intelligence Bulletin no. 89 is sent to police departments,
revealing that the federal government is advocating that local
authorities spy on U.S. citizens. When the Atlanta Police Department
acknowledges that it routinely places antiwar protesters under
surveillance, Georgia Rep. Nan Orrock tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"This harkens
back to some very dark times in our nation's history."
- Sen. Sam Ervin's Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights uncovers
a military intelligence surveillance system used against thousands
of American citizens, and stumbles upon Operation
Garden Plot, the United States Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2.
The plan gives federal forces power to "put down" "disruptive
elements" and calls for "deadly force to be used against
any extremist or dissident perpetrating any and all forms of
civil disorder." In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in
2005, soldiers are instructed to "shoot
to kill" looters in New Orleans.
1972
- The
Tuskegee experiment, in which black men were purposely infected
with syphilis without their knowledge (and then left untreated
to study the results), finally comes to an end. "The United
States Government did something that was wrong, deeply, profoundly,
morally wrong," President Bill Clinton later says. "It
was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for
all our citizens."
- A break-in at the Watergate Hotel marks the beginning of
a drama that will last for more than two years, culminating in
Richard
Nixon's resignation. In his book, The Ends of Power,
former Nixon Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman charges that the CIA
scrubbed its involvement in both Watergate and John F. Kennedy's
murder and that the Nixon tapes hold hidden clues. Nixon's references
to the "Bay
of Pigs," he says, actually refer to the JFK
assassination, while references to "the Cubans"
pertain to the Watergate burglars. While such assertions are
impossible to prove, in one tape, President Nixon calls the Warren
Commission's report, "the
greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated."
1973: Congress passes the War
Powers Act, which is soon ignored
by presidents of both parties. "We've turned the war
powers of the United States over to, well we are never really
sure who, or what they're doing, or what it costs, or who is
paying for it," Bill Moyers laments in 1987. "The one
thing that we are sure of is that this largely secret global
war carried on with less and less accountability to democratic
institutions, has become a way of life. And now we are faced
with a question brand new in our history. Can
we have the permanent warfare state and democracy too?"
Sept. 11: A U.S.-led
coup topples Chile's democratically-elected leader, Salvador
Allende, and installs military
dictator Augusto Pinochet. "Like Caesar peering into
the colonies from distant Rome, Nixon said the choice of government
by the Chileans was unacceptable to the president of the United
States," Sen. Church later says. "The attitude in the
White House seemed to be, "If in the wake of Vietnam I can
no longer send in the Marines, then I will send in the CIA."
1974: Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney urge
President Ford to veto
the Freedom of Information Act, which they believe will weaken
the executive branch. Congress overrides Ford's veto.
1975
- A Harper's Magazine article entitled "Seizing
Arab Oil" becomes the first in a series of articles
about the U.S. government's dream of eventually taking control
of Middle East oil. Nearly thirty years later, Mother Jones
reminds readers that the same strategists who worked in the Ford
administration are now "firmly
in control of the White House." In April, 2001, months
before the Sept. 11 attacks, James Baker III submits a report
to Vice President Dick Cheney, recommending that the U.S. consider
a "military" option in dealing with Iraq. The report
states that 'the United States remains a prisoner of its energy
dilemma', with one of the 'consequences' being a 'need
for military intervention'.
- Journalists investigate Operation
Cable Splicer, a subplan of Operation Garden Plot, designed
to control civilian populations and take over state and local
governments. Nine years later, the Rex-84
"readiness exercise" program is conducted by 34 federal
departments and agencies. Reportedly established to control illegal
aliens crossing the Mexican/U.S. border, the exercise tests military
readiness to round up and detain citizens in case of massive
civil unrest. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, (and after mercenaries
are brought in to patrol the streets of New Orleans) President
Bush says, "It is now clear that a challenge on this scale
requires greater
federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces."
"This is how repressive governments operate -- mixing inefficiency
with authoritarian tendencies," Josh Marshall responds.
"You don't repair disorganized or incompetent government
by granting it more power. You fix it by making it more organized
and more competent."
- Sen. Frank Church's Committee
to Study Government Operations sheds light on media manipulation,
government-sanctioned civil rights abuses and the CIA's Mafia
connections. The committee also learns of the CIA's "Executive
Action," unit and the "Health Alteration Committee,"
dealing with assassinations.
- A small group of conservatives, who call themselves the "cabal"
advocate a more hawkish foreign policy. Among them is Richard
Perle, who finds an ally
in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Robert Novak is
an invaluable conduit between administration insiders and U.S.
citizens.
1976: President Gerald Ford issues an executive
order banning assassinations by U.S. agencies. After a failed
2002 coup to overthrow Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is linked
to the Bush administration, TV evangelist Pat Robertson suggests
that the U.S. should murder
Chavez. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war,"
Robertson says, adding, "I don't think any oil shipments
will stop." In Oct. 2005, Chavez says the U.S.
is planning to invade Venezuela.
1977: In a Rolling Stone article,
Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein estimates that "400
American journalists
[have] been tied to the CIA at one point or another,"
-- with the New York Times being one of the CIA's prime
collaborators. (The Times counters, saying that the
number is closer
to 800).
In 2002, disinformation printed on the front page of the New
York Times is repeated by Bush administration officials
on Sunday
morning talk shows, helping to market
the impending war in Iraq. Judith Miller, co-author of the
piece, later becomes a story unto herself, when her "mysterious
security clearance," and ties
to Plamegate, and John
Bolton raise eyebrows. A colleague depicts Miller as an "advocate,"
whose work is "little
more than dictation from government sources. . .filled with
unproven assertions and factual inaccuracies."
While the government reportedly
ends its disinformation program following the publication
of Bernstein's article, in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror
attacks, news that one of the terrorist's passports is miraculously
found amongst the rubble
at ground zero is reported and repeated,
with some "lucky
finds" bringing to mind former CIA director William
Colby's boast that "the Central Intelligence Agency owns
everyone of any major significance in the major media."
In 2005, the General Accounting Office finds that the Bush
administration violated the law by engaging in "covert
propaganda" within the U.S. As former Vice President
Henry Wallace once wrote: "With a fascist the problem is
never how best to present the truth to the public but how best
to use the
news to deceive the public."
1977-1984: The U.S. government backs "nationalist"
forces in El Salvador, leading to the deaths
of tens of thousands, including American nuns who are raped,
mutilated and murdered by El Salvador's death squads. In 2005,
Newsweek reports that the Pentagon is considering a
plan to resurrect "a
still-secret strategy" from this era to use against
insurgents in Iraq.
1979
Osama bin Laden leaves Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet's
in Afghanistan. He eventually receives funding
and training through the CIA.
On Jan. 16, the Shah of Iran, who's been in power since the
U.S.-led coup in 1953, flees
Iran after months of violent protests against him. The exiled
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns on Feb. 1, and takes
over Iran within days. In November, Islamic revolutionaries
take more than 60
American hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
1980: Dismissing televised speculation on
a Ronald Reagan/Gerald Ford co-presidency, Ronald Reagan makes
a late-night dash to the Republican National Convention to announce
that George. H.W. Bush will be his running mate. Though Bush
denies meeting Iranian officials in Paris to delay the release
of America's remaining 52 hostages during President Jimmy Carter's
term, the Iran hostage situation is resolved
the day Reagan is sworn in.
1981: Mark Hinkley attempts to assassinate
President Ronald Reagan, 69 days after the new president is sworn
in. In a bizarre footnote, UPI, the Houston Post, the
Associated Press, and NBC's John Chancellor report that Hinkley's
brother Scott was to dine with Vice President George H. W. Bush's
son Neil the night of the shooting.
1983
- The U.S. invades Grenada. "The reason we gave for the
intervention [in Grenada] -- American medical students there--was
phony but the reaction of the American people was absolutely
and overwhelmingly favorable," Irving Kristol later explains.
"They
had no idea what was going on, but they backed the president.
They always will."
- Special envoy Donald
Rumsfeld meets with Saddam Hussein. In 1984, the U.S. formerly
restores relations with Iraq, after secretly supporting Saddam
Hussein with military aid and intelligence for years.
1984: In a televised speech, Ronald Reagan
asks Americans to support freedom fighters in Nicaragua. Two
years later, the administration admits it illegally
sold weapons to Iran to fund Nicaraguan Contras.
1987
- The Federal Communications Commission eliminates
the Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters to present
balanced coverage of controversial issues. As Operation Iraqi
Freedom looms, balance often gives way to conformity. Radio
stations sponsor Dixie Chick CD demolitions, the Bush-connected
Clear Channel holds pro-war rallies and disc jockeys who openly
question Bush's rationale for war suffer
repercussions.
- The Miami Herald reports that former deputy director
John Brinkerhoff modeled FEMA's martial law program after a proposal
to squelch
black militant uprisings by placing "at least 21 million
American Negroes" into "assembly centers or relocation
camps."
- The Iran/contra hearings take place. Ronald
Reagan and George H.W. Bush emerge virtually unscathed. Following
George H. W. Bush's 1992 pardons of Iran/contra felons, Independent
counsel Lawrence Walsh says that Bush's actions prove that "powerful
people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high
office - deliberately abusing the public trust - without consequence."
Several Iran/contra figures are later awarded top
jobs in George W. Bush's administration.
- Coalition on Revival head Jay Grimstead begins planning for
a "long-range
social and political takeover" of American politics.
Five years later, author Frederick Clarkson writes, "Never
in the wildest dreams of the far right, nor for that matter,
the rest of the GOP, did anyone think such
people could get this far." When George W. Bush takes
office in 2001, the Washington Post reports that, "For
the first time since religious conservatives became a modern
political movement, the president of the United States has become
the movement's de facto leader." In the spring of 2004,
the Guardian reports that "US Christian fundamentalists
are driving Bush's Middle East policy" and the Village
Voice asserts that "Bush White House checked
with rapture Christians before latest Israel move."
1988: The Reagan era comes to a close. When
George W. Bush's administration later compares itself to the
Reagan administration, Ronald Reagan, Jr. objects. "Yes,
some of the current policies are an extension of the '80s,"
he says. "But the overall thrust of this administration
is not my father's -- these
people are overly reaching, overly aggressive, overly secretive,
and just plain corrupt. I don't trust these people."
1989: The US
invades Panama, overthrowing its dictator, General Manuel
Noriega, a former CIA asset.
1990: Saddam
Hussein invades Kuwait.
End of Part I of a 3-Part Series. Click
here for Part II.
Click here for
Part III
Maureen Farrell is a writer and media consultant who specializes
in helping other writers get television and radio exposure.
© Copyright 2004, Maureen Farrell
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