November 1963: Days of Murder
Exclusive: Two violent events in November 1963 plunged the United States more
deeply into the disastrous Vietnam War, first the assassination of South
Vietnamese President Diem and three weeks later the murder of President Kennedy,
recalls Beverly Deepe Keever.
By Beverly Deepe Keever
It was in the early morning hours of Nov. 23 in Saigon when four urgent cables
from Newsweek were delivered to my apartment by the Vietnamese messenger. The
cables were in jumbled order and made no sense to me. My editors in New York,
where it was still afternoon on the fateful day of Nov. 22, 1963, wanted
reaction from leaders and commoners to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination
and an appraisal of newly sworn in President Lyndon Johnson.
I was stunned by this horrific news about another assassination coming just
three weeks after the murder of Vietnam’s President Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic
who was overthrown after losing the support of America’s first Catholic
president.
Slipping into daytime clothes, I raced down the concrete hallway, my bare feet
barely touching the clammy surface, to the apartment-office of John Sharkey, who
worked for the National Broadcasting Co. With his ear cocked to his radio, John
confirmed that Kennedy was shot and pronounced dead.
To answer my New York editors, I filed lots of reaction because both Kennedy and
Johnson had been so significant for Vietnam: Kennedy for increasing U.S. support
for the South Vietnamese government in its fight against communism and Johnson
as vice president for paying a state visit there and meeting Diem in May 1961.
But not a line of my copy was printed by my Newsweek editors.
Nor, 50 years later, is there any inkling in today’s extensive news coverage of
the half-century anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination that his murder may have
had some connection , a kind of unscripted payback, for his supporting the Nov.
1 overthrow of Diem, who was hours later murdered inside an M-113 armored car
with his hands tied behind his back alongside his brother Nhu.
Yet, 50 years ago in Saigon, the two killings were immediately linked in the
minds of many Vietnamese, with Kennedy’s assassination evoking a flashback to
the still-fresh murders of Diem and Nhu. A Vietnamese maid explained to me in
fractured French and English, “Mr. Diem bang; Mr. Nhu bang; President Kennedy
bang, beaucoup beaucoup morte; beaucoup trouble de Saigon” a prophetic insight
given the horrendous bloodshed that would follow Johnson’s subsequent escalation
of the Vietnam War.
Similarly, a Vietnamese telephone operator told me in jumbled English, “The
United States same as Vietnam, much trouble.”
Pointing to imaginary holes in
her head, she added, “Now Kennedy is same as Diem.”
These Vietnamese views merging the two assassinations were echoed by Kennedy’s
successor. The day after Kennedy’s funeral and before moving into the White
House, according to historian Ellen J. Hammer, Johnson walked down the hallway
of his house and, pointing to the wall where a portrait of Ngo Dinh Diem hung,
remarked: “We had a hand in killing him. Now it’s happening here.”
The next year, according to historians Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and Robert
Dallek, Johnson is reported to have said, “What happened to Kennedy may have
been divine retribution.”
Nor was Johnson the sole official then to connect the assassinations in Saigon
and Dallas. The Senate’s leading expert on Asia, Sen. Mike Mansfield, is quoted
by historian Seth Jacobs as saying in mid-1965 when nearly 200,000 U.S. troops
were in Vietnam: “We are paying for our sins in getting rid of President Diem.”
Silencing ‘Swinging Saigon’
Most of Saigon received the news of Kennedy’s assassination through the early
morning broadcast from the radio station for American G.I.s called AFRS (Armed
Forces Radio Service). Immediately after the 6:30 morning news of Kennedy’s
death, the radio station announced: “It’s another happy day in swinging Saigon,”
I cabled New York.
Twist and rock-n-roll music blared forth. A furor ensued and Vietnamese stopped
American officers on the street asking, “Why are you celebrating the death of
Kennedy?” An officer chewed out the disc-playing non-commissioned officer.
Throughout the rest of the day, only light classical music was played. Troops in
the field received a special edition from the American military command carrying
a full front-page, black-bordered photograph of Kennedy with details of his
death.
At the Joint General Staff headquarters for the South Vietnamese military junta
that Kennedy had supported and encouraged to topple Diem, the generals heard the
radio broadcast, could not believe it, and so checked the wire stories.
The assassination story made morning editions of only one Vietnamese-language
newspaper and it immediately sold out. Otherwise the story got no play because
the Kennedy assassination reminded Vietnamese of the assassination of Diem and
Nhu, a gruesome event that put the new government in an unfavorable light.
Kennedy was popular with the Vietnamese in part because he was such a young
world leader in an area of the world that traditionally teaches respect for
elders and the old order. A perky Vietnamese secretary in pink ao dai stopped me
and asked in mixed-up English: “Did you cry when you heard about your president?
I could not wake up. … I loved him; I had seen his picture many times.”
LBJ Visits Diem in 1961
The situation in Vietnam had changed momentously in the 29 months since
President Kennedy had dispatched Vice President Johnson to Southeast Asia in May
1961, I wrote in my dispatch to Newsweek.
During that visit, Johnson and his wife gave a reception for Saigon government
leaders and diplomats on the lawn of the crème-colored Gia Long Palace, then
the Blair House of Vietnam. Mrs. Johnson viewed Vietnamese antiques at the
National Museum with Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu. (On Nov. 1, 1963, the palace was
shelled and mortared during the overthrow of Diem, and Madame Ngo was barred
from Vietnam after the coup.)
At a 1961 speech to the National Assembly, in the gleaming, one-time
colonialists’ opera house, Johnson pledged Kennedy’s immediate assistance for
training and equipping paramilitary forces, increasing regular military forces,
solving problems of additional burdens of defense, and more aid for education,
rural and industrial development. Continuing his address to Vietnamese
legislators, Johnson repeated one paragraph of Kennedy’s Inaugural Address: “we
shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship to assure the survival
and success of liberty.”
Johnson met Diem in Saigon and Dalat and, in Texas-size support, puffed up
Diem’s prestige by likening him to George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Woodrow
Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. At a farewell banquet, Johnson hailed Diem as the
“Winston Churchill of Southeast Asia.”
Kennedy had sent Johnson to Southeast Asia in 1961 to quiet fears of leaders
there that the U.S. would decrease its support to them as it had just done in
Laos by failing to back up the pro-American faction under Phoumi Nosavan when he
was losing to the Soviet-supported pro-Communist/neutralist faction.
According to the Pentagon Papers, Kennedy had been told that fears of losing
U.S. support had descended on South Vietnamese officials who said, “When our
turn comes, will we be treated the same as Laos?” Six months after Johnson’s
trip, U.S. helicopters, fighters and aircraft rolled in to bolster the morale in
Saigon. However, by 1963, Kennedy had grown discouraged at the direction of the
war, contemplated a U.S. withdrawal and distressed over Diem’s crackdown on
Buddhist dissent sanctioned Diem’s ouster, albeit without apparently expecting
the violent end.
On Nov. 1, 1963, Diem’s corpse may have provided the answer, in blood, to the
South Vietnamese fears that they were losing control of their fate. Then, three
weeks later, Kennedy too was drenched in blood.
Thus, as invoked in Vietnam from the “Feast of the Dead” Catholic communion, the
two countries — and the two Catholic presidents — experienced Day of Wrath! O
day of mourning.
Beverly Deepe Keever was a Saigon-based correspondent who covered the Vietnam
War for a number of news organizations. She has published a memoir, Death Zones
& Darling Spies.
Where New JFK Evidence Points
Exclusive: Media specials are on tap for the 50th anniversary of John F.
Kennedy’s murder, but none will explore the troubling new evidence that has been
declassified in recent years
and that undercuts the Official Story of the Lone
Gunman, writes Jim DiEugenio.
By Jim DiEugenio
In late 1991, film director Oliver Stone released JFK, his film about the
investigation of the murder of President John F. Kennedy by New Orleans District
Attorney Jim Garrison. To say the film was controversial does not begin to
describe the furor which surrounded its reception. Six months before the film
was in theaters, stories began to appear in large newspapers criticizing a film
no one had seen yet.
When the film was finally shown, there was an interesting dichotomy. Whereas
most of the film critics liked it, editorials and news stories about the movie
attacked it. One critic actually lost her job over a positive review of the
film.
But the film did two things relevant to the state of the evidence in the matter
of President Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963. At the end of his film,
Stone had shown a title card saying that the files of the House Select Committee
on Assassinations (HSCA) had been classified until the year 2029.
Embarrassed and faced with public outrage Congress held hearings. Many people
testified including Stone, and the last chief counsel of the HSCA, Robert
Blakey. As a result, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was created,
tasked with finding and releasing all documents held by public and private
entities in America concerning the murder of President Kennedy. Eventually, two
million pages of classified files were open to the public.
The second thing the film did was arouse the curiosity of many people who were
not aware of the evidentiary problems that had haunted the Kennedy case for
nearly 30 years. Stone’s film was the first time in over a decade that millions
of Americans had been exposed to things like the Zapruder film, Oswald’s odd
relationships with the FBI and CIA, his associations with right-wingers in
Dallas and New Orleans, the investigative failings of the Warren Commission, the
problems with the autopsy of President Kennedy, and much, much more.
These new people who were drawn into the case had fresh perspectives to offer
and new insights. Between the newly declassified documents and this new
generation of writers, the information base about both Kennedy and his murder
grew exponentially in a relatively short time.
But this week’s 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination will be
marked almost entirely by television specials that will be silent about this new
and plentiful information, which alters the calculus of the Kennedy case. That
is because, despite the uproar created by Stone’s film, the defenders of the
Warren Commission’s narrative circled the wagons and protected the
Establishment’s preferred solution to the assassination that Lee Harvey Oswald
acted alone.
Why Oswald?
There always was an attractiveness to the Oswald-did-it storyline. It is the
simplest explanation, a lone gunman acting out of some personal grievance,
ideological fixation or psychological imbalance. No need to explore evidence of
a larger conspiracy. No need to integrate Kennedy’s murder into the historic
developments that his presidency represented.
Thus, many influential people from officials involved in the original
investigation defending their judgments to a later generation of authors
burnishing their reputations for probity have fought fiercely to defend the
Oswald-acted-alone narrative. They have done so despite nagging evidentiary
problems, such as the “magic bullet theory,” which attributed the multiple
wounds to Kennedy’s neck and Texas Gov. John Connally’s chest, wrist and thigh
to a single bullet found almost unscathed on a gurney at Parkland Hospital, and
those troubling images from the Zapruder film showing Kennedy’s head being
knocked backward by the fatal shot, although Oswald was behind him at the Texas
Bookstore Depository.
Most importantly, Gerald Posner’s book, Case Closed, which was published before
the ARRB was even set up, was used to close the door on further inquiry by
pronouncing Oswald guilty again. Yet, Posner’s book did not include any of the
intriguing documents the ARRB declassified. Neither did it include the results
of the ARRB special investigation into the medical evidence launched by chief
counsel Jeremy Gunn.
After Posner’s book, there seemed to be something of an informal agreement by
the gatekeepers in the media. There would be no programs dedicated to airing the
discoveries of the ARRB, despite the fact that the ARRB had unprecedented powers
to declassify documents and compel testimony. Because of these combination of
factors, the American public was given little exposure to the ARRB material and
the revolutionary work of new authors on the Kennedy case, the most infamous
American homicide of the Twentieth Century.
Besides the Oswald-acted-alone solution, there have been other proposed
narratives that accept the idea of conspiracy but don’t directly challenge the
institutions of the state. These scenarios acknowledge the likelihood of other
conspirators but point the finger at the Mafia or Fidel Castro or some other
enemies of America.
But much of the new evidence tends to bolster the narrative advanced by Garrison
and by Stone’s movie: that the assassination must have involved elements of the
U.S. intelligence community working with right-wing operatives who considered
Kennedy soft on communism and that a cover-up was put in place by key government
figures to prevent an unraveling of these powerful institutions and the erosion
of public trust in the authorities.
Who Was Oswald?
Let us begin with the figure of Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald had been portrayed by
the Warren Commission as a lonely, communist sociopath. Although there was never
any clear motive put forth by the Warren Commission as to why the alleged
assassin killed JFK, it was intimated that it was the net result of the
frustrations in his life caused by financial problems, ideological intent, and
marital troubles. This is still what most current defenders of the Commission
say today.
But one of the most surprising things that the ARRB disclosed was the volume of
files on Oswald held by both the CIA and FBI after both agencies had long denied
that they had much paper on Oswald. But it was not just the volume of documents,
but it was the unexpected direction they pointed.
One of the most curious aspects of Oswald’s strange and contradictory life was
his military service. One of the things that shocked New Orleans DA Jim Garrison
was the fact that, while in the Marines, Oswald took a Russian test. As Garrison
writes in his book, the Commission tried to explain this away by stating that he
got more questions wrong than right.
But it’s obvious that Oswald stuck with learning Russian because when a friend
of his arranged a meeting with Rosaleen Quinn, she commented afterwards that
Oswald spoke excellent Russian. And Quinn had been privately tutored in advance
of a State Department exam. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition,
p. 131)
After acquiring fluency in Russian, Oswald then applied for a hardship discharge
in order to leave the service early. Even though he had just a few months left
to serve, his request was granted and in only 10 days. The HSCA interviewed a
person on the board who granted the discharge. Colonel B. J. Kozak testified
that it normally took from three to six months to secure such a release. (HSCA
interview of Kozak of Aug. 2, 1978)
After Oswald returned from Russia receiving surprisingly little trouble despite
his defection he became friendly with the White Russian community in the
Dallas/Fort Worth area. He then went to New Orleans in the summer of 1963.
Numerous witnesses had testified to seeing him with former FBI agent Guy
Banister or at Banister’s office at 544 Camp Street.
But in the files declassified by the ARRB there is even more evidence in this
regard. In the declassified files of the Church Committee, there is testimony by
two federal immigration agents that they were following David Ferrie in 1963
because of his association with Cubans in the country illegally. Wendell Roache
and Ron Smith of the Immigration and Naturalization Service stated that they
traced Ferrie to Banister’s office at 544 Camp Street, and Oswald was there.
(DiEugenio, p. 113)
Further, at least one of the pro-Castro flyers that Oswald was passing out that
summer was stamped with the 544 Camp Street address. According to Banister’s
secretary Delphine Roberts, Banister was aware that Oswald had committed this
faux pas, and he was upset about it. The rightwing zealot complained that, “How
is it going to look for him to have the same address as me!” (HSCA interview
with Roberts, July 6, 1978)
The natural question arises: What would an alleged communist like Oswald be
doing using the conservative Banister’s office as an address, and also working
out of that office? In that regard, one of the most compelling revelations to
emerge from the ARRB is that both the FBI and the CIA were running counterintelligence operations against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) in 1963.
This included using electronic surveillance, penetration agents, and agents
provocateur against the New York-based organization.
CIA Mystery
In one of the CIA’s declassified files on this subject, it was discovered that
the men running this counter-intelligence effort at CIA were David Phillips and
Jim McCord. (Newman, pgs. 236-41) Phillips’s name in this regard is especially
fascinating because of his reported meeting with Oswald in August of 1963 at the
Southland Center in Dallas by the militant Cuban exile Antonio Veciana.
At that time, according to the Warren Commission, Oswald was about a month away
from leaving for Mexico. In addition to not telling the reader about Phillips,
McCord and the CIA counter-intelligence program against the FPCC, the Warren
Report also did not reveal a memorandum sent from the CIA to the FBI on Sept.
16, 1963, saying the CIA was “giving some consideration to countering the
activities” of the FPCC “in foreign countries. CIA is also giving some thought
to planting deceptive information which might embarrass the Committee in areas
where it does have some support.”
Oswald had just embarrassed the FPCC by his tactics in New Orleans. First, by
getting into a fight with an anti-Castro activist, being arrested, jailed, and
then pleading guilty in court. He then took part in a debate where he was
exposed as a former Soviet defector. As author Jim Douglass asks: Did this memo
refer to Oswald now going to Mexico? (Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 179)
One of the notable achievements of the ARRB was the fact that it declassified
the HSCA’s Mexico City Report, which clearly suggests that there was an imposter
masquerading as Oswald at both the Cuban consulate and Russian embassy, the
places where Oswald was supposed to have visited while he was supposed to be
there.
The report states that the CIA could produce no pictures of Oswald either
entering or leaving either place, although the Agency had multiple cameras
facing each doorway. Further, there is a table in the report which shows that
the surveillance tapes the Agency says it had of Oswald in both places could not
be of Oswald because the man the CIA had on the tapes spoke broken Russian and
fluent Spanish. (Lopez Report, p. 130) However, witnesses said Oswald spoke
fluent Russian and broken Spanish.
When one of the tapes of Oswald was sent to Dallas after Kennedy’s assassination
and listened to by the FBI agents interviewing Oswald, the agents said the voice
was not Oswald’s. When FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was alerted to this, he
relayed the information to President Johnson. (FBI Memorandum from Hoover to
James Rowley, Nov. 23, 1963)
The FBI Mystery
There are two more declassified connections by the FBI to this important
episode. First, a FLASH warning that the FBI had put on Oswald’s file, after his
defection to the Soviet Union, was taken off while Oswald was in Mexico.
Further, it was removed at about the time the Bureau got information that Oswald
was allegedly meeting a KGB agent named Valery Kostikov.
This is important, because as both authors John Newman and Jim Douglass note, if
the FLASH notice had been in place, it is probable that Oswald would have been
placed on the Security Index. That list would have been turned over to the
Secret Service, and Oswald would likely have been picked up or surveilled for
Kennedy’s upcoming trip to Dallas.
Secondly, in a declassified memo discovered by Newman, Hoover had scribbled a
handwritten note in the marginalia of a memo. In speaking of cooperation between
the CIA and the FBI, the Director wrote that he was doubtful about such
endeavors because he could not forget “the false story re Oswald’s trip to
Mexico” as an example of their double-dealing. Within six weeks of Kennedy’s
murder, Hoover thought that the CIA was, at the very least, not being
forthcoming about Oswald’s activities in Mexico City.
Hoover was not alone in this suspicion about a CIA connection to Oswald. At a
talk at the Cyril Wecht Symposium in Pittsburgh last month, Dan Hardway, an HSCA
investigator who specialized on exploring a possible relationship between Oswald
and the CIA, said the House panel prepared two indictments for perjury based on
the obstruction of the Mexico City investigation. One was for Phillips; the
other was for Anne Goodpasture, who controlled the tape and photo production in
Mexico City.
Hardway has revealed that when he and another HSCA investigator were getting
very close to exposing the skullduggery in Mexico City and who was responsible
for it, the CIA moved a man name George Johannides into position as a liaison
man over them.
As journalist Jefferson Morley has revealed, the CIA lied to Robert Blakey about
the appointment of Johannides. The Agency told Blakely that his new liaison had
no connection to the Kennedy case, when, in 1963, Johannides was the Chief of
the Psychological Warfare Branch at JM/WAVE, the CIA’s huge Miami station. One
of his specific functions was to monitor and supply the anti-Castro Cuban exile
group, Cuban Student Directorate, or DRE, which was in contact with Oswald that
summer. Carlos Bringuier, the man who got into a physical altercation with
Oswald on a city street in New Orleans, was a member of the local branch of the
DRE.
Angleton’s Connection
A similar maneuver occurred during the Warren Commission investigation, when the
original CIA liaison to the Warren Commission, John Whitten, was replaced by
James Angleton, the CIA’s counter-intelligence chief whose office handled (or
mishandled) the original reporting about Oswald’s defection to the Soviet Union.
When reports came in about Oswald entering the American embassy in Moscow and
asking to renounce his citizenship, the information went to the various
intelligence repositories in Washington. The FBI issued a FLASH warning to be
placed on Oswald if he tried to reenter the country under a false name. After
all, the possibility existed that the KGB could have turned him into a spy.
However, at the CIA, the information about Oswald was not acted on immediately
or with the normal protocol. A routine 201 form, which catalogues anyone of
interest to the Agency, was not filled out on Oswald at that time. Nor did the
information go to the Soviet Russia division. Instead, the Oswald notice was
funneled to James Angleton’s super-secret, CI/SIG unit, a protective agency that
was supposed to be on guard against penetration agents but has been connected to
some of the CIA’s most convoluted deep-cover operations, sometimes called “the
wilderness of mirrors.” (John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, p. 27)
Besides Angleton’s influence over what CIA files would be made available to the
Warren Commission, one of its seven members was former CIA Director Allen
Dulles, whom President Kennedy had replaced as director after the Bay of Pigs
fiasco in 1961.
So, it is clear today that the idea the CIA had no intelligence interest in
Oswald in the months leading up to Kennedy’s murder has been disproven. In fact,
Newman uncovered a CIA memo in the Soviet Russia division which reads, “It was
partly out of curiosity to learn if Oswald’s wife would actually accompany him
to our country, partly out of interest in Oswald’s own experiences in the USSR,
that we showed operational intelligence interest in the Harvey [Oswald] Story.”
The Autopsy Mystery
Another one of the myths circulated by the Warren Commission was that they did
not have the actual autopsy exhibits because the Kennedy family would not allow
them to access the material. This was a pretense exposed by the declassification
of the Commission’s Jan. 21, 1964 executive session hearing. In that transcript,
Commissioner John McCloy asked Chief Counsel Lee Rankin if they had the raw
materials of the autopsy, and Rankin replied that they did.
In a transcript from the next session on Jan. 27, Rankin talked about actually
seeing an autopsy picture and wondering how the bullet could exit Kennedy’s
throat from an entrance point that low in the back. Rankin’s puzzlement about
the back wound segues neatly into one piece of information that the ARRB did
manage to get into the mainstream U.S. media, namely that Commissioner Gerald
Ford changed the draft of the Warren Report to move the location of this back
wound that so puzzled Rankin up into Kennedy’s neck.
This all too revealing alteration was exposed when Rankin’s son donated an
earlier draft of the Warren Report to the ARRB. As Commission historian Gerald
McKnight notes in his book Breach of Trust, this revision brought the back wound
into “line with the Commission’s no-conspiracy conclusion, repositioning it to
make it consistent with what came to be called, the single-bullet theory.”
(McKnight, pgs. 171-172)
With the knowledge today that the Commission secretly did have the autopsy
photos, this act seems even worse. Because, later on, when the photos were
finally revealed to the public, it is clear that the wound was in the back, and
not in Kennedy’s neck. Ford appears to have done this simply to make the
Commission’s official verdict more palatable to the public, because if the shot
was fired from over 60 feet up, from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book
Depository, how could the bullet hit Kennedy in the back and exit at a higher
point if it only went through soft tissue?
We now know that this questionable proposition was not even credible inside the
Commission itself. The Commission was presented with evidence of three shells
being recovered from the so-called sniper’s nest on the sixth floor of the Texas
School Book Depository. So, to make Oswald the lone assassin, only three bullets
had to be responsible for all the wounds to all the victims in Dealey Plaza.
The Commission said bystander James Tague, standing on Commerce Street, was hit
by a missed shot, and one shot fatally wounded Kennedy by striking him in the
head. Which left one shot to do the rest of the damage. And it was quite a lot
of damage: seven wounds and two smashed bones in Kennedy and Governor Connally
who was sitting in the limousine in front of the President. Those seven wounds
with one shot represent the trajectory of what has come to be known as the Magic
Bullet.
Rolling Russell
When the Warren Commission verdict was formally announced in the fall of 1964,
one of the reasons it appeared authoritative was that it was presented as being
unanimous. Seven storied public figures had agreed on each and every aspect of
the case against Oswald. Today we know that this was not true.
The best evidence demonstrating its falsity is the Commission’s treatment of
Sen. Richard Russell, D-Georgia. For a master’s thesis produced under McKnight’s
guidance in 2002, Dani E. Biancolli went through the Russell archive at the
University of Georgia.
Almost from the beginning, Russell had problems with the way the Commission was
doing business. For instance, Russell was puzzled that the FBI report did not
allow for the single-bullet theory. It stated that two separate shots hit
Kennedy and one hit Connally. If that is not confusing enough, when the CIA
analyzed the Zapruder film, they decided there were two assassins. (McKnight, p.
6)
Russell was not satisfied by the hastily assembled FBI report. He also objected
to the fact that Hoover was leaking its findings to the press, making it
difficult for the Commission to maintain its independence in the face of public
perceptions. Being an experienced trial lawyer, he also began to notice that the
Commission was not notifying him when important witnesses would be testifying,
e.g. Oswald’s brother, Robert. (Biancolli, p. 46)
Russell also noted that the CIA was giving certain members of the Commission
more information than others. Troubled by the overall proceedings, Russell wrote
a memo to himself which began with the phrase, “Something strange is happening.”
He then noted that the Commission was only going to consider Oswald as the
assassin. To lawyer Russell, this was “an untenable position.” (ibid, p. 47)
Russell was so disturbed by the way the Commission was progressing that he
actually composed a letter of resignation to President Lyndon Johnson.
Russell took the step of drafting an official dissent to the Warren Report. And
he wanted the report to contain his reservations about the Magic Bullet. (ibid,
p. 63) Aware of this, the more active members of the Commission Gerald Ford,
Allen Dulles, John McCloy and chief counsel Lee Rankin tricked Russell. They had
discontinued their dealings with their stenography service prior to the final
meeting where Russell was to present his dissent. But they did have a secretary
in the room to create the pretense that a full transcript was being recorded.
(ibid, p. 65) No such thing occurred.
Russell was so effective in his presentation at this meeting that he was joined
in the effort by Sen. John Sherman Cooper, R-Kentucky, and to a lesser extent by
Rep. Hale Boggs, D-Louisiana. But Russell’s eloquent dissent was not recorded in
the transcript. In fact, there really is no transcript of this Sept. 18, 1964
meeting. (ibid, pgs. 63-64) With no transcript available, none of Russell’s
objections made it into the Warren Report. Thus, the false veneer of a unanimous
Commission was maintained.
Further showing how compromised the Warren Commission was, it is clear today
that the Commission demanded little respect from the intelligence agencies
supplying it with information. For instance, as ARRB employee Doug Horne
discovered, Commission counsel Arlen Specter requested the Secret Service
produce any tapes of the Nov. 22 press conference by the doctors at Parkland
Hospital. Even though they had a recording, the Secret Service failed to turn it
over to the Commission. Perhaps because during the interview, Dr. Malcolm Perry
said three times that the wound to Kennedy’s throat was one of entrance. If that
were true, Oswald could not have caused it.
The CIA also sent the Commission very limited information about Oswald’s alleged
trip to Mexico City. For instance, the CIA did not send any information to the
Commission about any of the phone taps they had at the Cuban or Russian
embassies. And there is no evidence that the Commission ever knew who did the
translation for the intercepts of incoming phone calls.
Further, the Commission never interviewed Silvia Duran, the receptionist at the
Cuban consulate, the person who had the most contact with Oswald. Because of
these failings, the information in the Warren Report about Oswald in Mexico
City, which many people today see as crucial, is so skimpy as to be almost
useless.
Hesitant Investigators
As the Russell incident indicates, it’s clear today that the Warren Commission
was a reluctant investigative body from the start. This began with the technique
President Johnson used to get Earl Warren to serve as chairman, something Warren
did not want to do. LBJ told Warren that because of Oswald’s visits to the
Russian and Cuban consulates, there was a danger of nuclear confrontation with
the Soviet Union and Cuba and the possible deaths of 40 million Americans in a
matter of minutes.
Johnson later said Warren teared up at this suggestion, and Warren mentioned
Johnson’s warning at his first staff meeting. The danger of a freewheeling
investigation clearly had an impact on many of the investigators who came to see
their job as tamping down suspicions of a larger conspiracy, rather than
following the facts wherever they might lead. When Wesley Liebeler met with
witness Sylvia Odio in Dallas, he told her that they had orders from Warren that
if they came across any evidence of conspiracy they were to shove it under the
rug. (Odio interview with Church Committee, Jan. 16, 1976)
What makes this so regrettable today is that there is no audio or photographic
evidence that Oswald was at either the Russian or Cuban offices in Mexico City.
The descriptions of a short, blonde man suggest an imposter. Hoover also felt
that the CIA had given him a cover story. This declassified evidence in the
Lopez Report leaves the question: Was the specter of a nuclear war used as a
pretext to stop any real investigation?
Another crucial piece of evidence that was revived by the ARRB was this: There
appears to have been an unsuccessful attempt to kill Kennedy in Chicago just
three weeks before the successful one in Dallas. In November 1975, journalist
Edwin Black wrote a long and detailed essay on this aborted plot for the Chicago
Independent, a paper with a small and local circulation. Soon, this milestone
essay was more or less forgotten, but the HSCA secured a copy of it.
Because of its recirculation, other writers have done more work on the subject.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the Chicago attempt is that the outline of
the plot is eerily similar to what happened in Dallas, down to the apparent fall
guy. Three men who appeared to be Cubans were going to kill Kennedy in a rifle
ambush as he exited off a freeway ramp in front of a tall building.
The man who was supposed to be accused of the crime was Thomas Vallee. Like
Oswald, Valle was a former Marine who was stationed at a U-2 base in Japan.
Vallee supposedly was resentful toward Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs
disaster. Curiously, the codename of the FBI informant who tipped off the Secret
Service was “Lee.” The existence of a prior assassination plot with parallels to
Kennedy’s killing in Dallas would seem to be relevant if one were exploring a
wider conspiracy, but there was not one word about this episode in the Warren
Report.
Medical Evidence
Some of the most startling new evidence in the JFK case from the declassified
files relates to the ARRB’s medical investigation and from new doctors who have
entered the JFK field. For instance, Dr. Gary Aguilar has collated the
interviews done by HSCA investigators Andy Purdy and Mark Flanagan about the
wounds to President Kennedy as seen by the witnesses at Bethesda Medical Center,
the hospital where Kennedy’s autopsy was done after his body was returned to
Washington.
The HSCA report said there was a discrepancy between what the medical staffers
at Parkland Hospital in Dallas saw and what the staffers at Bethesda saw.
Witnesses at the former, where Kennedy was rushed after the shooting, said they
saw a large, avulsive hole in the rear of Kennedy’s skull. This would strongly
indicate a shot from the front. Yet the HSCA Report said that the witnesses at
Bethesda did not see this wound.
It turns out this was false. When Aguilar went through all the declassified
reports from the Bethesda witnesses, they agreed that there was a large avulsive
hole in the rear of Kennedy’s skull. Aguilar has a table of over 40 witnesses in
two locations who are now on the record as saying they saw this wound. The odds
of that many trained medical personnel being wrong are, needless to say, very
high. Yet, it remains unclear who at the HSCA was responsible for the deception.
As contradictory to the single-gunman theory as the ARRB-revealed medical
evidence seems to be, the present state of the ballistics evidence is probably
moreso. Broadly speaking, this consists of the ammunition, the rifle, and the
crime scene.
Let us begin with new revelations about the so-called Magic Bullet. When Gary
Aguilar was going through the declassified FBI files pertaining to the
identification of that exhibit formally called CE 399 he was puzzled by the lack
of actual FBI field reports in the file, so-called “302” reports on witness
interviews.
What initially spurred his interest in this matter was the 1967 interview that
author Josiah Thompson conducted with O. P. Wright, the security director at
Parkland Hospital. When Thompson showed Wright a photo of CE 399, he denied that
it was the bullet he gave to the Secret Service. CE 399 is a round-nosed,
military jacketed, copper-coated bullet. Wright said he turned over a leadcolored, sharp-nosed, hunting round. (Thompson, Six Seconds in Dallas, p. 175)
Yet, in the declassified file, Aguilar could find no 302 where anything like
Wright’s definitive response to Thompson was recorded. Or a 302 in which Wright
said that CE 399 resembled the bullet he found the day of the assassination.
Yet, the FBI was supposed to have shown CE 399 to Wright to confirm the
identification of the Magic Bullet as what was turned over at Parkland Hospital.
But there was only a summary memorandum confirming that ID.
Though the ARRB told Aguilar that they had exhausted that particular FBI file,
there was a clue for further inquiry. In the summary memo, the FBI agent who
supposedly showed the exhibit to Wright was identified as Bardwell Odum. In
November 2001, Aguilar and Thompson visited the retired agent who told his
interviewers that he never took any bullet around to show to any Parkland
witnesses and since he knew Wright well, he would have recalled the interview.
Further, if that event had happened, Odum would have had to file a 302. Aguilar
had studied the report file in sequential order and none were missing,
indicating that Odum never filed a 302 presumably because he never showed the
bullet to Wright.
The FBI’s Fiddling
But why would the FBI have fiddled with the evidence relating to the chain of
custody for the Magic Bullet? One obvious answer would be that FBI Director
Hoover understood how important it was to remove any doubts that Oswald was the
lone gunman.
After the declassification process was complete, researcher John Hunt petitioned
the National Archives to examine the FBI’s own data in order to determine if CE
399 actually arrived at FBI headquarters when the Bureau said it did and if it
was carried there by agent Elmer Lee Todd as Hoover said it was. As basic to an
investigation as trail of evidence is, this was not done by either the Warren
Commission or the HSCA.
In a handwritten receipt, Todd noted he got the bullet at the White House from
James Rowley of the Secret Service at 8:50 p.m. Hunt then reviewed the work of
Robert Frazier who was the technician who booked and analyzed firearms evidence
on the JFK case that day. In Frazier’s chronicle, entitled appropriately enough,
“History of Evidence,” Frazier wrote that he received the bullet from Todd at
7:30 p.m. In another document entitled “Laboratory Work Sheet,” Frazier wrote
this again and described the exhibit as “Bullet from Stretcher.”
The obvious problem was: How could Todd have given CE 399 to Frazier at the FBI
lab before he got it from Rowley at the White House? Assuming the
contemporaneous documentary record is correct, either the FBI switched the
bullet or there was more than one bullet. Either alternative would vitiate the
Commission’s conclusion about Oswald as the lone gunman.
In Thompson’s book he writes that both Todd and Frazier marked the bullet with
their initials; this was based on a two-page FBI document inside a Justice
Department Report. The FBI needed Todd’s initials on the bullet because the
initials of the man who gave the bullet to Rowley, Secret Service agent Richard
Johnsen, are not on CE 399. And neither are Rowley’s. Todd’s initials had to be
there to give the chain of possession any validity at all.
Hunt discovered that Todd’s initials are not on CE 399, which would mean that
the forensic value of the Magic Bullet was worthless. (Hunt’s articles can be
read here http://www.jfklancer.com/hunt/mystery.html, and here
http://www.jfklancer.com/hunt/phantom.htm).
Miscarriage of Justice
This essay could be twice as long as it is. And it could touch on many other
different fields: the efforts of the FBI and CIA to electronically monitor Jim
Garrison’s office; the FBI concealment of Guy Banister’s address of 544 Camp
Street from the Warren Commission; the witnesses who saw Oswald, Clay Shaw and
David Ferrie in the hamlets of Clinton and Jackson; the testimony of Victoria
Adams that Oswald was not running down the Depository stairs from the sixth
floor after the shooting; the work by Josiah Thompson and Dave Wimp which
demonstrates there is no forward movement by Kennedy at frames 312-313 of the
Zapruder film, which shows Kennedy going only one way, back and to the left.
These revelations, based largely on the documentary record released by the ARRB,
have revolutionized what the evidence tells us about Kennedy’s assassination.
Based on these documents and other discoveries, the Warren Commission is
revealed as a miscarriage of justice and its report a distortion of history,
perhaps justified in the minds of some participants as needed to protect the
country from the repercussions of a no-holds-barred investigation.
While President Johnson may have raised the specter of a nuclear conflagration
in 1963, the later motives for the continuing cover-up and the intensity of the
attacks on anyone who has questioned the official version can best be explained
by the institutional self-interests of the government agencies that would be
implicated in the cover-up or the actual crime.
Along with fierce resistance from the CIA and the FBI, there was the closeminded response to the new evidence from the gatekeepers of the major U.S. news
media. Ridiculing authors and investigators who challenged the Warren
Commission’s findings became something of a litmus test for measuring a
journalist’s fitness to get a good-paying job in the mainstream press.
But this arrogant behavior by these powerful governmental and media institutions
their contempt for an intellectually unconstrained evaluation of the JFK
evidence has proved costly in terms of public trust. Polls reveal that the
decline in America’s faith in government began in 1964, the year the Warren
Report was issued. As the ARRB’s former counsel Jeremy Gunn said in a speech at
Stanford, with what the ARRB discovered, he would much rather be defending
Oswald than prosecuting him.
Despite this new evidence, there are many programs being broadcast this month
about both President Kennedy and his murder, e.g. Bill O’Reilly’s Killing
Kennedy. Not a single one will present anywhere near a representative selection
of the new evidentiary discoveries made by the ARRB. Yet, this information is
crucial to understanding where the United States finds itself today, a country
awash in excessive secrecy and growing public distrust.
Another one of the declassified files the records of the Sec/Def meeting of May
1963 revealed that Oliver Stone was correct in another facet of his movie.
President Kennedy was planning to withdraw from Vietnam, a decision that if not
reversed by President Johnson might have dramatically changed the course of U.S.
history.
In the face of this continuing denial of a full accounting of Kennedy’s
assassination on the 50th anniversary, the public should ask two simple
questions: What really happened to President Kennedy in Dealey Plaza? And why
the unending resistance from the news media to present the new evidence to the
American people?
Jim DiEugenio is a researcher and writer on the assassination of President John
F. Kennedy and other mysteries of that era. His most recent book is Reclaiming
Parkland.
Overcoming Political Immobility
The American Republic is facing a crisis of political immobility caused by Tea
Party extremism overcoming the traditions of compromise that date back to the
Founding. History has troubling lessons for such moments, but there are signs of
hope, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
By Paul R. Pillar
Last month, Dov Zakheim, in the course of discussing the baleful influence of
the Tea Party phenomenon on U.S. national security, likened some of what we are
seeing to the French Fourth Republic, which lasted only a dozen years following
World War II.
The comparison is apt, and not only with regard to the effect an image of
unreliability, which in the case of the Fourth Republic stemmed largely from
short-lived, revolving-door governments, has on foreign relations. We also have
been seeing in Washington much of what the French called immobilisme: a simple
inability to get things done.
With a historical precedent such as that, we naturally should think of what
lessons the precedent might hold for how we could get out of our own similar
problems. What brought the Fourth Republic to an end and opened the way to the
longer-lived and relatively more stable Fifth Republic was not just impatience
and disgust with the immobilisme but a full-blown crisis involving the
insurrection in Algeria, which had begun in 1954. Portions of the French army
began revolting, with the high command that was fighting the war in Algeria
making common cause with French settler interests and threatening to move on
Paris.
Also crucial to what would follow was political leadership and one leader in
particular: Charles de Gaulle, the French Cincinnatus and leader of the Free
French in World War II. The rebellious generals of 1958 insisted that de Gaulle
come back from Colombey-les-Deux-Églises and rescue the nation once again. De
Gaulle did so, becoming the last premier of the Fourth Republic before becoming
the first president under the new constitution of the Fifth.
The outsize prestige and stature of de Gaulle were needed even beyond that
moment, as the Algerian insurgency wore on. Contrary to the expectations of some
of those who had called for his return, de Gaulle concluded that Algerian
independence had to be accepted and initiated peace talks. A quartet of French
generals who, along with pieds noir French settlers, could not stomach that
concept attempted a putsch in Algiers in 1961.
De Gaulle stared down that move but then had to contend with a terrorist
campaign by the Secret Army Organization, led by Raoul Salan, a former commander
of French forces in Indochina and an escaped perpetrator of the putsch. For an
American comparison, imagine if a former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq or
Afghanistan had first attempted a coup and then formed a terrorist group that
started setting off bombs in American cities. In short, really bad stuff.
We do not want to go through anything like what the French went through. If this
is the cure for immobilisme, it would be fair to say the cure is even worse than
the disease.
The right response to that gloomy conclusion is to look for even partial cures,
including ones in our own experience. They exist, particularly in the reform of
election laws. This kind of procedural and legal engineering can do much to
overcome even the less salubrious aspects of contemporary American political
culture.
For an exemplar and for lessons we can look not to France of the 1950s but to
California of the past few years. Two pieces of electoral reform have been
especially beneficial. First, California is one of the few states that have
taken legislative and congressional redistricting out of the hands of state
legislatures and given the task to nonpartisan commissions.
Second, California is one of three states (Louisiana and Washington are the
others) to adopt the open primary system, in which the top two vote-getters
regardless of party face each other in a second round election if no one gets a
majority in the first. These two changes have greatly increased the need for
politicians, if they are to be elected, to appeal to a broader spectrum of
opinion rather than to a narrow party base.
The results in California have been dramatic. In short order it has gone from a
model of fiscal and political dysfunction at the state level to a place in which
much productive across-the-aisle work gets done. There is no doubt that making
the same electoral changes across the country would make an enormous difference
in how the U.S. Congress operates. How Congress operates now, with the
frequently invoked threat of a Tea Party primary challenge exemplifying why it
operates that way, richly earns it its nine percent approval rating from the
American public.
Part of what made electoral reform possible in California is that it is easier
there than in most other states for citizens’ movements to put initiatives on a
statewide ballot. That practice has its own problems, including overly long
ballots and the constraining effects of the notorious Proposition 13. But it is
not nearly as bad as coups and insurrections as a way of overcoming immobilisme.
Leadership has been important, in California as well as in France. A Republican
governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, provided important muscle in pushing for
reform. The current Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, has used his veto power to
help contain some impulses from within his own party that did not have broad
support. Neither Schwarzenegger nor Brown is a de Gaulle, but they help give us
hope for what leadership can do in greatly improving the way this republic works
without, as the French did, tearing up a constitution and starting from scratch.
Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be
one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown
University for security studies. (This article first appeared as a blog post at
The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)
Peace Options on Iran
For decades, the default ideology of Official Washington’s foreign policy has
been “tough-guy-ism,” wielding sticks and mocking those who offer carrots, a
pattern that could start a disastrous war with Iran, say Tom H. Hastings and
Erin E. Niemela.
By Tom H. Hastings and Erin E. Niemela
Tough talk by the U.S. and Iran — sometimes about nukes — has taken many turns
over the past three decades, but there has been some relaxing of the tensions
recently.
Iran signed a good-faith agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) to allow inspectors broad access to its nuclear facilities. Signaling
change, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani halted expansion of Iran’s uranium
enrichment capacity since his election three months ago, according to U.N.
inspection reports.
Yet, what has always been available are conflict management methods unexamined
by our decision-makers. In developing potential options for adversarial nations,
the U.S. government has the Joint Chiefs and security studies hawks on speed
dial. Thus, the U.S. stumbles into war after war, informed of the full range of
options from A to B. Attack or do nothing. Demonstrate a resolve to kill or show
cowardice. It’s a wonder we haven’t nuked Canada.
Sometimes as we saw in the 1990s with killer sanctions on Iraq certain sanctions
are hardest on the most vulnerable, innocent children and other civilians. To a
large measure, this is the case vis-Ã -vis Iran. Peace scholars have been
pushing for alternative options with Iran, backed by hard data and decades of
conflict management experience, since the inception of the conflict. These
alternatives have remained largely unnoticed amid the cyclical escalation/deescalation of war drumming from both sides of the aisle.
In the spirit of sharing what we’ve learned in our obscure field of Peace and
Conflict Studies, let’s think about some possible measures right now vis-Ã -vis
Iran:
–Guarantee no-first-use of U.S. military force against Iran
As long as Iranian people and their government fear preëmptive military attack
by the U.S. there will be strong motivation for development of nuclear weapons,
and it will be easier for Iranian leaders to justify sacrifices, including
resolve to endure crippling sanctions.
–Cease military aid to Israel
Even Israeli moderates remain belligerent toward Iran, reserving and openly
referencing preëmptive military attack as an option. This keeps Iranian
moderates on the defensive, emboldens hardliners, and continually prompts the
average Iranian to hate Israel and its sponsor, the U.S. Stopping U.S military
aid to Israel brings the region many steps closer to peace, helps take the
target off the U.S., and prompts Israel to honestly negotiate its relationships
constructively.
–Apologize
Now that declassified documents and an acknowledgment by President Barack Obama
have formally recognized the CIA’s role in the 1953 overthrow of Prime Minister
Mohammad Mosaddegh, a formal apology should be made for this outrageous
transgression. A simple apology without qualification, equivocation,
justification or even explanation is best.
–Put some U.S. nukes on the table
Make the demand that Iran cease its nuclear ambitions linked to an offer to
dismantle (for example) 200 U.S. nuclear weapons, with each party subject to
IAEA inspections. Treat Iran like a real country, not a minor player of which we
can make demands we won’t ourselves honor.
–Open embassies
The two countries should each invite the other to open an embassy with the
guarantee of the safety of the personnel that is backed by enormous collateral.
The 2011 Obama initiative to maintain an online embassy is a good gesture and
not enough; it is time for reciprocity and advancements.
–Reframing U.S.-Iran relations as peaceful scientific collaboration
Iranian domestic legitimacy rests partially on the option of developing nuclear
capabilities. Iran’s nuclear policy acts as a rallying point for internal
cohesion. Reframe Iran-U.S. relations to one of peaceful scientific and health
research collaboration, taking care to emphasize Iranian past and present
contributions and collaborations with the U.S.
Give President Rouhani a fresh rallying point, highlighting Persian history and
collective identity in its peaceful pursuits of science, engineering,
technology, medicine and mathematics, and reduce reliance on Iranian nuclear
policy for domestic legitimacy. Continuing negotiations would include these
peaceful collaborations as additional bargaining points.
–Banking channels and medical supplies
Offer to provide third country banks a waiver against sanctions for facilitating
transactions involved in medicines and medical supplies, and/or designate
certain U.S. and Iranian financial institutions as open channels for
humanitarian transactions. In exchange, Iran must allow consistent international
monitoring of its medical enrichment facilities.
Most of these action items would be nonstarters, right? President Obama would
never initiate any of them because, after all, the minority of Congress would
howl and call him a treasonous coward. Congressional hawks would light up, hair
on fire, bullhorns set on sonic warp kill. Peace-loving people would fear the
dripping scorn.
If we continue to see the pusillanimity more afraid of knee-jerks in Congress
than of allowing Iran to either get nukes or get attacked, we will watch as
helpless as Junebugs on our backs while we drift into an ever-uglier world with
more nuclear weapons in more hands, or into a stupendously reckless war of grand
bloodbath proportions with Iran, war that is completely avoidable.
You do not need to conduct a multivariate regression analysis to know that
successful negotiation requires both carrots and sticks. Hardliners are stuck on
sticks, both violent and economic, and even low and no-cost carrots drive them
“round the bend.” Fine. Let them go. Constructive conflict management is the new
realpolitik.
Tom H. Hastings is PeaceVoice Director and teaches in the Conflict Resolution
program at Portland State University.
Erin E. Niemela is PeaceVoice
Research Director and a Master’s Candidate of the
Conflict Resolution program at Portland State University.
How France Sank the Iran-Nuke Deal
Why the deal on Iran’s nuclear program collapsed was clarified by Russian
Foreign Minister Lavrov who described a last-minute change demanded by France
(on Israel’s behalf) that went beyond what Iran had accepted, reports Gareth
Porter for Inter Press Service.
By Gareth Porter
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov revealed a crucial detail Thursday about
last week’s nuclear talks with Iran in Geneva that explains much more clearly
than previous reports why the meeting broke up without agreement.
Lavrov said the United States circulated a draft that had been amended in
response to French demands to other members of the six-power P5+1 for approval
“literally at the last moment, when we were about to leave Geneva.”
Lavrov’s revelation, which has thus far been ignored by major news outlets, came
in a news conference in Cairo Thursday that was largely devoted to Egypt and
Syria. Lavrov provided the first real details about the circumstances under
which Iran left Geneva without agreeing to the draft presented by the P5+1.
The full quote from Lavrov’s press conference is available thanks to the report
from Voice of Russia correspondent Ksenya Melnikova. Lavrov noted that unlike
previous meetings involving the P5+1 and Iran, “This time, the P5+1 group did
not formulate any joint document.”
Instead, he said, “There was an American-proposed draft, which eventually
received Iran’s consent.” Lavrov thus confirmed the fact that the United States
and Iran had reached informal agreement on a negotiating text.
He further confirmed that Russia had been consulted, along with the four other
powers in the negotiations with Iran (China, France, Germany and the UK), about
that draft earlier in the talks – apparently Thursday night, from other
published information.
“We vigorously supported this draft,” Lavrov said. “If this document had been
supported by all [members of the P5+1], it would have already been adopted. We
would probably already be in the initial stages of implementing the agreements
that were offered by it.”
Then Lavrov revealed for the first time that the U.S. delegation had made
changes in the negotiating text that had already been worked out with Iran at
the insistence of France without having consulted Russia. “But amendments to
[the negotiating draft] suddenly surfaced,” Lavrov said. “We did not see them.
And the amended version was circulated literally at the last moment, when we
were about to leave Geneva.”
Lavrov implies that the Russian delegation, forced to make a quick up or down
decision on the amended draft, did not realize the degree to which it was likely
to cause the talks to fail. “At first sight, the Russian delegation did not
notice any significant problems in the proposed amendments,” Lavrov said.
He made it clear, however, that he now considers the U.S. maneuver in getting
the six powers on board a draft that had been amended with tougher language even
if softened by U.S. drafters, without any prior consultation with Iran to have
been a diplomatic blunder. “[N]aturally, the language of these ideas should be
acceptable for all the participants in this process both the P5+1 group and
Iran,” Lavrov said.
The crucial details provided by Lavrov on the timing of the amended draft shed
new light on Secretary of State John Kerry’s claim in a press conference in Abu
Dhabi on Monday of unity among the six powers on the that draft. “We were
unified on Saturday when we presented a proposal to the Iranians.” Kerry said,
adding that “everybody agreed it was a fair proposal.”
Kerry gave no indication of when on Saturday that proposal had been approved by
the other five powers, nor did he acknowledge explicitly that it was a draft
that departed from the earlier draft agreed upon with Iran. Lavrov’s remarks
make it clear that the other members of the group had little or no time to study
or discuss the changes before deciding whether to go along with it.
Although the nature of the changes in the amended draft remain a secret, Iranian
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has charged that they were quite farreaching and that they affected far more of the draft agreement that had been
worked out between the United States and Iran than had been acknowledged by any
of the participants.
In tweets on Tuesday, Zarif, responding to Kerry’s remarks in Abu Dhabi, wrote,
“Mr. Secretary, was it Iran that gutted over half of US draft Thursday night?”
Zarif’s comments indicated that changes of wording had nullified the previous
understanding that had been reached between the United States and Iran on
multiple issues.
The two issues that French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius had raised in Geneva
concerned what Iran would be required to do regarding the Arak heavy-water
reactor and its stockpile of 20 percent-enriched uranium. The agreement that had
been worked out with Iran before Saturday had required that Iran not “activate”
the Arak reactor, but did not require an immediate end to all work on the
reactor, according a detailed summary leaked to CNN by two senior Obama
administration officials Thursday night, Nov. 7.
A shift from “activate” to another verb suggesting Iran would be required to
suspend all work on Arak which Fabius was demanding Saturday on behalf of Israel
would have nullified the previous U.S.-Iran compromise. Even more sensitive
politically was the understanding reached Thursday night on the disposition of
the Iranian stockpile of 20 percent-enriched uranium. That was the main
proliferation concern of the Obama administration, because that stockpile could
in theory be enriched to weapons grade.
But the summary leaked to CNN indicated that the agreed text had required Iran
to “render unusable most of its existing stockpile,” which left open the option
of Iran’s continuing to convert the stockpile into “fuel assemblies” for the
Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) or for a similar reactor in the future.
According to the latest IAEA report made public Thursday, Iran has enriched 420
kg of uranium to the 20 percent level, a little more than half which has been
converted to such assemblies. The agreement reached before Saturday evidently
anticipated Iran converting most of the remaining 197 kg to fuel assemblies over
the course of the interim agreement.
That would reduced the stockpile to less than 100 kg and would reduce the
stockpile to roughly one-fifth of the 250 kg of 20 percent-enriched uranium that
Israel has suggested would be sufficient to convert to weapons grade uranium
necessary for a single nuclear weapon. But if the text was altered to change
“render unusable” to language requiring the export of most or all of the
stockpile, as appears to have been the objective of the Fabius intervention,
that would have nullified the key compromise that made agreement possible.
Zarif’s tweet, combined with remarks by President Hassan Rouhani to the national
assembly Sunday warning that Iran’s rights to enrichment are “red lines” that
could not be crossed, suggests further that the language of the original draft
agreement dealing with the “end game” of the negotiating process was also
changed on Saturday.
Kerry himself alluded to the issue in his remarks in Abu Dhabi, using the
curious formulation that no nation has an “existing right to enrich.” One of the
language changes in the agreement evidently related to that issue, and it was
aimed at satisfying a demand of Israeli origin at the expense of Iran’s support
for the draft.
Now the Obama administration will face a decision whether to press Iran to go
along with those changes or to go back to the original compromise when political
directors of the six powers and Iran reconvene Nov. 20. That choice will provide
the key indicator of how strongly committed Obama is to reaching an agreement
with Iran.
Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S.
national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism
for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
The Saudi-Israeli Tag Team
Exclusive: As the Obama administration scrambles to salvage a deal with Iran on
its nuclear program, the new Saudi-Israeli alliance shows off its muscles in
bending politicians and policies to its will, Robert Parry reports.
By Robert Parry
What makes the potential of the Saudi-Israeli alliance so intimidating is that
Saudi Arabia and its oil-rich Arab friends have the petrodollars that can turn
the heads of some leaders and even countries, while Israel can snap the whip on
other politicians, especially in the U.S. Congress, through its skillful
lobbying and propaganda.
We are now getting a look at exactly how this international money-and-politics
game plays out as Saudi Arabia and Israel maneuver to defeat an interim
agreement with Iran on freezing much of its nuclear program in exchange for some
modest relief on economic sanctions.
Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf neighbors lavished contracts and other
financial favors on the economically hard-pressed French and lo and behold,
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius showed up at the last minute in Geneva
and blew up the nuclear deal. (Last summer, the French were in lock-step with
the Saudis in their eagerness to see the U.S. military start bombing Syria, an
Iranian ally.)
Granted, Fabius’s sabotage was aided by the inept diplomacy of Secretary of
State John Kerry, who failed to thwart the French ploy, but the most important
point in understanding the motivation behind France’s sudden activism is the old
one: Follow the money.
In July, Saudi Arabia’s ally, United Arab Emirates, signed a $913 million deal
with France to buy two high-resolution Helios military satellites. In October,
French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian celebrated the signing of a $1.5
billion deal with Saudi Arabia to overhaul six of its navy ships.
Other lucrative arms deals are reportedly in the works between France and Saudi
Arabia (and its Sunni allies). Saudi Arabia also has deployed its money to
bolster France’s sagging agricultural and food sectors, including a Saudi firm
buying a major stake in Groupe Doux, Europe’s largest poultry firm based in
Brittany.
So, while the Saudis are showing again that money talks, the Israelis are doing
their part by activating their impressive lobbying and propaganda networks
inside the United States. Lawmakers in thrall to the Israelis amplified Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s talking points during a contentious Capitol Hill
meeting with Secretary Kerry, his lead negotiator Wendy Sherman, and Vice
President Joe Biden.
Afterwards, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, volunteered that he was “dubious”
about President Barack Obama’s efforts to reach a diplomatic agreement with
Iran, while some senators vowed to press ahead with plans to impose even more
draconian economic sanctions on Iran, a move that Obama has warned could put the
Middle East on course for another war.
Nevertheless, Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Illinois, one of Israel’s most in-its-pocket
lawmakers, denounced the administration’s defense of its negotiating efforts as
“fairly anti-Israel” and bragged about how he had just gotten briefed by the
Israeli government, receiving information that he considered superior to what he
was hearing from the U.S. government.
“I was supposed to disbelieve everything the Israelis had just told me, and I
think the Israelis probably have a pretty good intelligence service,” Kirk said,
while promising to do all he could to block a U.S. diplomatic rapprochement with
Iran.
Buffeted by such complaints from Capitol Hill, Secretary Kerry went on MSNBC’s
“Morning Joe” and stressed how warm his relationship is with “Bibi” Netanyahu.
“I’ve had several conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu this week,” Kerry
said. “In fact, literally just before coming here, I hung up the phone with
Prime Minister Netanyahu. And we’re having a very friendly and civil
conversation about this.
“Bibi, the Prime Minister Netanyahu believes that you can increase the
sanctions, put the pressure on even further, and that somehow that’s going to
force them [the Iranians] to do what they haven’t been willing to do at any time
previously. We just don’t agree with that as a but I don’t want to go into the I
mean, what’s important here is we stand with Israel firmly 100 percent.”
Internal Strains
Although the Saudi-Israeli alliance is again demonstrating its extraordinary
potential to bend the policies and politicians of more powerful nations, the
odd-couple alliance of the two longtime enemies is also susceptible to its own
strains. For instance, I’m told that Israel was counting on some under-the-table
deliveries of Saudi money, too, and that the Saudis have held back some of that
financial assistance.
Netanyahu also faces resistance from some rank-and-file Jewish activists who are
uncomfortable with even a subterranean alliance with the Saudi monarchy, which
embraces the ultraconservative Wahhabi brand of Sunni Islam. In the past, Saudi
Arabia has fielded and funded some of most radical Islamic militants including
al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
It’s a hard sell especially to North American Jews who suspect that some Saudi
royals have their fingerprints on Islamic terrorism, including possibly the 9/11
attacks on New York and Washington. I’m told there was a visceral reaction from
some Jewish activists to recent comments made by Israeli Ambassador to the
United States Michael Oren regarding Israel’s support for a possible jihadist
victory in Syria.
In mid-September, Oren publicly embraced the Saudi strategy in Syria, announcing
that Israel would prefer to see the Saudi-backed jihadist “bad guys” prevail in
Syria over the continuation of the Iran-backed government of President Bashar
al-Assad.
“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran,
to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,”
Oren told the Jerusalem Post in an interview. “We always wanted Bashar Assad to
go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys
who were backed by Iran.” He said this was the case even if the “bad guys” were
affiliated with al-Qaeda.
The “arc” from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon is also called the “Shiite
crescent,” representing a rival brand of Islam to the Sunnis, who are led by
Saudi Arabia in what is seen as both a religious and geopolitical struggle for
dominance in the Middle East.
The Saudis are determined to shatter the “Shiite crescent” and thus weaken the
leadership of Shiite-ruled Iran. That both Israel and Saudi Arabia see their
principal regional threat as Iran is at the center of their collaboration.
Yet, one source familiar with the status of the U.S.-Iran negotiations said on
Friday that the strains within the Saudi-Israeli alliance may open the door for
Obama to complete the interim agreement between the so-called “P-5-plus-1” the
five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany and
Iran.
However, in the daunting challenges that Obama has faced in wrapping up that
deal, the world is getting a look at what the future might hold if the SaudiIsraeli tandem keeps rolling forward.
[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Israeli-Saudi Alliance Slips
into View.”]
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book,
America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon
and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s
trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives
for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on
this offer, click here.
Consortiumnews Turns 18, a Milestone
From Editor Robert Parry: If Web sites could vote, Consortiumnews.com, which is
turning 18 years old, would now be eligible. It was launched in mid-November
1995 as the first investigative news Web site on the Internet. You can help it
continue.
Frankly, I don’t have a record of the exact day that it first appeared on the
World Wide Web, which was then a relatively newfangled creation and far less
sophisticated than what we know today. But the date for the launch was on or
about Nov. 15.
The reason we started this new journalism outlet on this new medium was to find
a way around the neglect that the mainstream U.S. news media was already showing
serious investigative reporting. At the time, the mainstream U.S. media was
obsessing over frivolous matters, such as people’s sex lives and politically
ginned-up “scandals.”
We felt that there had to be another way to get important journalism to the
American people and to the world. So from the start, we concentrated on both
historical investigations of real importance and topical issues that truly
mattered.
Over the past 18 years, we have done much to both rewrite the national American
narrative correcting errors and filling in blanks while staying on top of
current events that could be a matter of war or peace, life or death.
Our first series of articles were based on government documents that I uncovered
relating to the so-called October Surprise controversy, allegations that Ronald
Reagan came to power in 1980 after sabotaging President Jimmy Carter’s
negotiations with Iran over 52 American hostages.
Ironically, some of our most recent articles deal with current efforts by
powerful interests to undermine President Barack Obama’s negotiations with Iran
over its nuclear program. What is clear is that without a truthful account of
the past and without honest reporting about the present, confrontations with
Iran could lead to more suffering in the future.
So, it is important that Consortiumnews.com continues what it has been doing
over the past 18 years and, if possible, expand its reporting and its reach.
That is where you come in. We could not have survived 18 years without the
support of our readers.
If you can, please help celebrate our birthday with a donation to our tax-exempt
non-profit. We offer four different ways to help keep Consortiumnews.com going:
First, you can donate by credit card online at the Web site or by mailing a
check to Consortium for Independent Journalism (CIJ); 2200 Wilson Blvd., Suite
102-231; Arlington VA 22201. (For readers wanting to use PayPal, you can address
contributions to our account, which is named after our e-mail address:
“consortnew @ aol.com”).
Second, we can now accept donations of stock or other equities, which I’m told
can offer a tax advantage to donors if the stock has appreciated in value since
it was purchased. (We are recognized by the IRS as a 501-c-3 non-profit, meaning
that contributions may be tax-deductible.)
If this stock-donation option appeals to you, I suggest you discuss it with your
broker and then contact me at [email protected] for specific instructions on
how to transfer the stock. Or you can write to us at Consortium for Independent
Journalism (CIJ); 2200 Wilson Blvd., Ste. 102-231; Arlington VA 22201.
Third, you can buy one of my last four books through the Consortiumnews’ Web
site or my latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, through Amazon.com, either
in paper or the e-book version. A portion of each sale will go toward our goal.
Fourth, for only $34, you can get the trilogy that traces the history of the two
Bush presidencies and their impact on the world. The three books Secrecy &
Privilege, Neck Deep (co-authored with Sam and Nat Parry) and America’s Stolen
Narrative would normally cost more than $70.
To get the books for less than half price and help us meet our budget needs just
go to the Web site’s “Donate” button and make a $34 “donation” using Visa,
Mastercard or Discover. We will read a “donation” of that amount as an order for
the trilogy.
If your mailing address is the same as your credit card billing address, we will
ship the books to that address. If your mailing address is different, just send
us an e-mail at [email protected] and we will make the adjustment. For U.S.
orders, we will pay for the shipping. (For non-U.S. orders, add $20 to defray
the extra cost.)
You can also take advantage of this special offer by mailing a check for $34 to
The Media Consortium; 2200 Wilson Blvd.; Suite 102-231; Arlington VA 22201. Or
you can use our Paypal account, “consortnew @ aol.com.” Just make sure you
include your mailing address in the message.
Again, thanks for your support and for making 18 years of honest journalism
possible.
Robert Parry is a longtime investigative reporter who broke many of the IranContra stories for the Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. He founded
Consortiumnews.com in 1995 to create an outlet for well-reported journalism that
was being squeezed out of an increasingly trivialized U.S. news media.
In Case You Missed…
Some of our special stories in October focused on the Republican government
shutdown, the bravery of Edward Snowden, the grim history of American slavery,
and the rise of the Israeli-Saudi alliance.
“Why Right’s Lemmings Don Suicide Vest” by Robert Parry, Oct. 1, 2013.
“NYTimes Again
Ignores Israeli Nukes” by Robert Parry, Oct. 2, 2013.
“Brazil’s Challenge to US Dominance” by Andres Cala, Oct. 2, 2013.
“America’s Government by Extortion” by Robert Parry, Oct. 3, 2013.
“The White Man’s Last Tantrum?” by Robert Parry, Oct. 4, 2013.
“Comparing Obama to Kissinger” by Melvin A. Goodman, Oct. 5, 2013.
“Israel’s Lost Clout” by Lawrence Davidson, Oct. 6, 2013.
“Feinstein’s Phony Excuse for NSA Spying” by Coleen Rowley, Oct. 7, 2013.
“The Koch Brothers’ ‘Samson Option’” by Robert Parry, Oct. 8, 2013.
“Making the Economy Scream” by Robert Parry, Oct. 9, 2013.
“Snowden Accepts Whistleblower Award” by Ray McGovern, Oct. 10, 2013.
“Israeli-Saudi Alliance Slips into View” by Robert Parry, Oct. 12, 2013.
“Edward Snowden’s Brave Integrity” by Ray McGovern, Oct. 15, 2013.
“How US Pressure Bends UN Agencies” by Robert Parry, Oct. 16, 2013.
“The Abject Failure of Reaganomics” by Robert Parry, Oct. 17, 2013.
“Jesus’s Idea of God’s Kingdom on Earth” by Rev. Howard Bess, Oct. 18, 2013.
“A Fascist Revival Stirs in Spain” by Andres Cala, Oct. 19, 2013.
“Dick Cheney’s Heartless Hypocrisy” by Robert Parry, Oct. 25, 2013.
“Treating Anti-Syria Charges as Flat-Fact” by Robert Parry, Oct. 25, 2013.
“Dangerous History of Regime Change” by Beverly Deepe Keever, Oct. 25, 2013.
“The Tea Party’s Confederate Roots” by Beverly Bandler, Oct. 25, 2013.
“A Threat to Nuke Tehran” by Robert Parry, Oct. 26, 2013.
“Neocons Push Israeli-Saudi Alliance” by Robert Parry, Oct. 29, 2013.
“Tea Party and ’12 Years a Slave’” by Robert Parry, Oct. 30, 2013.
“Republicans, Unhinged” by Beverly Bandler, Oct. 31, 2013.
To produce and publish these stories and many more costs money. And except for
some book sales, we depend on the generous support of our readers.
So, please consider a tax-deductible donation either by credit card online or by
mailing a check. (For readers wanting to use PayPal, you can address
contributions to our account, which is named “[email protected]”).
Taking Israel’s Side on Iran
Israel’s Capitol Hill lobbying clout is whipping into line members of Congress,
like Sen. Mark Kirk, who are taking the Israeli-Saudi side in the Iraniannuclear dispute over the diplomatic position of their own government, notes exCIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
By Paul R. Pillar
The role that foreign views play in policy debate in Washington and especially
on Capitol Hill has taken some strange forms lately, and none stranger than with
the hot topic of the Iranian nuclear program. What an irony to hear American
neocons saying “Merci!” and “Vive La France!” after the French foreign minister
suddenly added demands to, and thus spiked or at least delayed, a tentative
preliminary agreement with the Iranians that was on the verge of being inked.
Was it really that long ago that the same neocons were deriding France as one of
the countries of old Europe that could not see the wisdom of launching that most
ambitious, and most disastrous, of all neocon projects: the Iraq War? Remember
eating freedom fries with your burgers? Remember how the war-makers in the Bush
administration told France and other major allies and every other member of the
United Nations that did not support the war to shove it, and then hooked the
poodle Blair up to his leash and went to war anyway?
One might be tempted to chalk up the different handling of France ten years ago
and today to a change in French views. Governments themselves change, after all.
But it was the rightist government of Jacques Chirac that was in power when the
neocons started their war in Iraq. Today the French president is a socialist.
Not the direction of turnaround one would expect.
No, this history had nothing to do with anyone’s wisdom or substantive views.
Both a decade ago and today, the neocons have just been using France as a
convenient prop and support for debating points, or ignoring it to the extent it
was not otherwise convenient. This gets to the first couple of rules about
showing appropriate respect for opinions from abroad.
One is not to use people as props. Another is to be consistent in one’s own
thought, policies, and behavior, as if foreign opinion really were having a
constructive impact on one’s own thinking. The neocons here are showing
consistency in one respect; people who never met a U.S. war they didn’t like
were responsible for starting one war ten years ago, and are now pushing
policies toward another Middle Eastern state that increase the chance of another
war. But of course there is not any consistency in the attitude toward European
allies.
Showing a decent respect to the opinions of mankind, including mankind overseas,
does not mean bowing to the views of any particular slice of mankind. The
writers of the Declaration of Independence who used that phrase about respect to
opinions were explaining, after all, why they were spelling out their reasons
for committing a revolutionary act. They were not submitting to any foreigner’s
view as to whether to commit that act.
The interests of one’s own nation need to come first. A modern clarion statement
of that principle, with regard to the same issue about Iran and nuclear matters,
comes from Tom Friedman, who reminds us: “We, America, are not just hired
lawyers negotiating a deal for Israel and the Sunni Gulf Arabs, which they alone
get the final say on. We, America, have our own interests in not only seeing
Iran’s nuclear weapons capability curtailed, but in ending the 34-year-old IranU.S. cold war, which has harmed our interests and those of our Israeli and Arab
friends.”
That should be obvious. It should go without saying. But a major chunk of the
American body politic is acting today directly contrary to that principle. They
use some states as props; they act as lawyers for other states.
Note that the Declaration of Independence refers to the opinions of mankind, not
the rhetoric or agendas of foreign governments. Here, too, a principle of
showing appropriate respect for opinion is being violated. Even those American
politicians who show no shame or compunction about acting as lawyers for a
foreign state, Israel, make the further mistake of equating the interests of
that state with the rhetoric and agenda of that state’s current government.
On the matter of Iran and its nuclear program, as on some other important
issues, the pronouncements of Benjamin Netanyahu definitely should not be
equated with the interests of Israel. Knowledgeable and patriotic Israelis have
a very different view about what approach on this matter would be good for
Israel. Looking beyond Netanyahu’s short-sighted strategy of unending conflict
and hostility, an improvement in U.S.-Iranian relations would be very much in
Israel’s long-term interests, in addition certainly to the interests of the
United States.
Senator Mark Kirk, R-Illinois, has been exhibiting all of these patterns in
perhaps the most extreme form of any member of Congress, to the point of being a
caricature of such things. He was in exceptional form following a supposedly
classified briefing on Wednesday for senators from Secretary of State Kerry,
Vice President Biden, and Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, who has been
the lead negotiator on Iran.
Kirk compared the Obama administration to Neville Chamberlain and, while Kirk is
doing everything he can to overturn a diplomatic process designed to prevent
both a war and an Iranian nuclear weapon, he said “Today is the day I witnessed
the future of nuclear war in the Middle East.”
The briefing was “fairly anti-Israeli,” Kirk said. “I was supposed to disbelieve
everything the Israelis had just told me, and I think the Israelis probably have
a pretty good intelligence service.” So a United States senator was calling the
U.S. Secretary of State and the Vice President liars because of what a foreign
government had told him.
Kirk wasn’t finished. He berated “Wendy” because her “record on North Korea is a
total failure and embarrassment to her service.” Such a blast ignores the
history of U.S. handling of the North Korean issue, in which the administration
that came after the one in which Sherman earlier served effectively abandoned a
negotiated agreement and returned to diplomacy only after the North Koreans had
tested a couple of nuclear devices.
But as long as previous records on other issues are being dug up, and what
certain foreign governments are saying is being invoked, Kirk would be advised
to review the record of his favorite foreign prime minister regarding the Iraq
War, for which Netanyahu was a vocal cheerleader, spewing assertions that turned
out to be badly mistaken and misguided.
The approach followed by Kirk, and others in less fulsome and extreme form, is
not only failing to show decent respect in the spirit of the Founders; it is an
approach that deserves no respect itself. To the extent it comes to determine
policy it endangers respect for the United States.
Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be
one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown
University for security studies. (This article first appeared as a blog post at
The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)
Fixing Intel Around the Syria Policy
Exclusive: Senior U.S. intelligence analysts disagreed with the Obama
administration’s certainty that the Syrian government was behind the Aug. 21
chemical weapons attack, but that dissent was suppressed amid the rush to a near
war, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
After the Aug. 21 chemical weapons incident in Syria, a number of senior U.S.
intelligence analysts disagreed with the Obama administration’s rush to judgment
blaming the Syrian government, but their dissent on this question of war or
peace was concealed from the American people.
The administration kept the dissent secret by circumventing the normal
intelligence process and issuing on Aug. 30 something called a “Government
Assessment,” posted at the White House press office’s Web site and fingering the
Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad as the guilty party.
Normally, such an important issue — a possible U.S. military engagement — would
be the focus of a National Intelligence Estimate, but that would also cite the
disagreements expressed within the intelligence community. By avoiding an NIE,
the Obama administration was able to keep the lid on how much dissent there
was over the Assad-did-it conclusion.
Once the “Government Assessment” was issued, Secretary of State John Kerry was
put forward to present the case for launching a military strike against Syria,
an attack that was only averted because President Barack Obama abruptly decided
to ask congressional approval and then reached a diplomatic agreement, with the
help of the Russian government, in which the Syrian government agreed to dispose
of its chemical weapons arsenal (while still denying that it was responsible for
the Aug. 21 attack).
Although war was averted, the Obama administration’s deception of the American
public by pretending that there was a government-wide consensus regarding Syrian
government guilt when there wasn’t was reminiscent of the lies and distortions
used by President George W. Bush to trick the nation into war with Iraq over
bogus WMD claims in 2003.
The behavior of the rest of Official Washington and the mainstream U.S. news
media also shows that little has changed from a decade ago. Obvious indications
of a deception were ignored and the few voices who raised the alarm were treated
with the same mocking contempt that greeted skeptics of Bush’s case for invading
Iraq.
Writers for Consortiumnews.com were among the few in the American media who
noted the glaring flaws in the Obama administration’s case, including its
refusal to release any of its supposed proof to support its conclusions and the
curious absence of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper from the
public presentation of the administration’s casus belli.
The reason for keeping the DNI on the sidelines was that he otherwise might have
been asked if there was a consensus in the intelligence community supporting the
administration’s certitude that Assad’s regime was responsible. At that point,
Clapper would have had to acknowledge the disagreement from rank-and-file
analysts (or face the likelihood that they would speak out).
Inspectors’ Doubts
Similarly, it appears that on-the-ground inspectors for the United Nations had
their own doubts about the Syrian government’s responsibility, especially since
Assad’s regime had allowed a UN team into Damascus on Aug. 18 to investigate
what the regime claimed was evidence of rebels using chemical weapons.
It never made sense to some of these inspectors that Assad just three days later
would launch a chemical weapons attack on the outskirts of Damascus just a few
miles from the hotel where the UN inspectors were staying. Assad would have
known that the Aug. 21 incident would mean serious trouble for his government,
very possibly drawing the U.S. military into the Syrian civil war on the side of
the rebels.
The UN inspectors also failed to find Sarin or other chemical agents at one of
the two sites that they subsequently examined near Damascus, and they inserted a
qualification in their report about apparent tampering at the one area where
Sarin was found.
However, instead of noting the many holes in the U.S. “Government Assessment”
and the UN report, the mainstream U.S. news media simply joined the rush to
judgment, hyping dubious claims from both U.S. government officials and nongovernmental organizations favoring U.S. military intervention in Syria.
The New York Times and other major news outlets that swallowed Bush’s false
claims about Iraq WMD a decade ago also began reporting Obama’s dubious
assertions about Syria as flat fact, not as issues in serious dispute. As I
wrote on Oct. 25, one typically credulous Times story accepted “as indisputable
fact that the Syrian government was behind the Aug. 21 attack on a suburb of
Damascus despite significant doubts among independent analysts, UN inspectors
and, I’m told, U.S. intelligence analysts.”
New details of the rebellion among the intelligence analysts have just been
reported by former CIA officer Philip Giraldi for the American Conservative
magazine. According to Giraldi’s account, a “mass resignation of a significant
number of analysts” was threatened if the Obama administration issued an NIE
without acknowledging their dissent.
A “hurriedly updated” NIE had reflected the Syrian government’s suspected use of
chemical weapons against rebels and civilians, “while conceding that there was
no conclusive proof,” Giraldi wrote, adding:
“There was considerable dissent from even that equivocation, including by many
analysts who felt that the evidence for a Syrian government role was subject to
interpretation and possibly even fabricated. Some believed the complete absence
of U.S. satellite intelligence on the extensive preparations that the government
would have needed to make in order to mix its binary chemical system and deliver
it on target was particularly disturbing.
“These concerns were reinforced by subsequent UN reports suggesting that the
rebels might have access to their own chemical weapons. The White House,
meanwhile, considered the somewhat ambiguous conclusion of the NIE to be
unsatisfactory, resulting in considerable pushback against the senior analysts
who had authored the report.”
Demands from Above
When Obama’s National Security Council demanded more corroborative evidence to
establish Syrian government guilt, “Israel obligingly provided what was reported
to be interceptions of telephone conversations implicating the Syrian army in
the attack, but it was widely believed that the information might have been
fabricated by Tel Aviv, meaning that bad intelligence was being used to confirm
other suspect information, a phenomenon known to analysts as ‘circular
reporting,’” Giraldi wrote.
“Other intelligence cited in passing by the White House on the trajectories and
telemetry of rockets that may have been used in the attack was also somewhat
conjectural and involved weapons that were not, in fact, in the Syrian arsenal,
suggesting that they were actually fired by the rebels.
“Also, traces of Sarin were not found in most of the areas being investigated,
nor on one of the two rockets identified. Whether the victims of the attack
suffered symptoms of Sarin was also disputed, and no autopsies were performed to
confirm the presence of the chemical.
“With all evidence considered, the intelligence community found itself with
numerous skeptics in the ranks, leading to sharp exchanges with the Director of
Central Intelligence John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper. A number of analysts threatened to resign as a group if their strong
dissent was not noted in any report released to the public, forcing both Brennan
and Clapper to back down.”
The Obama administration’s “solution” to this analyst revolt was to circumvent
the normal intelligence process and issue a white paper that would be called a
“Government Assessment,” declaring the Syrian government’s guilt as indisputable
fact and leaving out the doubts of the intelligence community.
While this subterfuge may have satisfied the institutional concerns of the
intelligence community which didn’t want another Iraq-War-style violation of its
procedural protocols on how NIEs are handled it still left the American people
vulnerable to a government deception on a question of war or peace.
Yes, there was no scene comparable to the positioning of CIA Director George
Tenet behind Secretary of State Colin Powell as he delivered his deceptive Iraq
War speech to the UN Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003. Both Clapper and Brennan
were absent from the administration’s testimony to Congress, leaving Secretary
Kerry to do most of the talking with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint
Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey bracketing Kerry as mostly silent wing
men.
And, yes, one could argue that the Obama administration’s hyping of its case
against the Assad regime had a happy ending, the Syrian government’s agreement
to eliminate its entire CW arsenal. Indeed, most of the grousing about the
Syrian outcome has come from neocons who wanted to ride the rush to judgment all
the way to another regime-changing war.
Dogs Not Barking
But Americans should be alarmed that a decade after they were deceived into a
disastrous war in Iraq based on bogus intelligence and the complete breakdown of
Official Washington’s checks and balances a very similar process could unfold
that brought the country to the brink of another war.
Besides the disturbing fact that the Obama administration refused to release any
actual evidence to support its case for war, there was the gullibility (or
complicity) of leading news outlets in failing to show even a modicum of
skepticism.
The New York Times and other major news organizations failed to note the dogs
not barking. Why, for instance, was there no NIE? Why were the U.S. government’s
top intelligence officials absent from public presentations of what amounted to
an intelligence issue? It shouldn’t have required a Sherlock Holmes to sniff out
the silenced intelligence analysts.
When a government leader refuses to reveal any of his supposed proof for a claim
and conceals the professionals who don’t agree with his claim, any reasonably
savvy person should draw the conclusion that the government leader doesn’t
really have a case.
Though some Americans may cite the work of a few Web sites, like our own
Consortiumnews.com, as having challenged the misguided conventional wisdom on
Syria as we also did on Iraq, they should not draw too much comfort from this.
After all, our readership is tiny when compared to the many sources of
misinformation being disseminated to the broad American public.
The dangerous reality is that the United States remains vulnerable to the kinds
of stampedes in judgment that can end up crushing people around the world.
[Here is some of our earlier reporting on the Syrian crisis: “A Dodgy Dossier on
Syrian War”; “Murky Clues From UN’s Syria Report”; “Obama Still Withholds Syria
Evidence”; “How US Pressure Bends UN Agencies.”]
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book,
America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon
and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s
trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives
for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on
this offer, click here.