Douglas Caddy

Douglas, Thanks for posting this thought-provoking article. --Tommy Tommy, I agree that the article is thought-provoking, which is why I posted it, but still believe its intent is a calculated attempt to discredit President Kennedy on one of the major achievements of his administration.

The central thesis of the article as stated on page 80 of the magazine is that, “Beginning in the late 1980s, however, the opening of previously classified archives and the decision of a number of participants to finally tell the truth revealed that the crisis was indeed resolved by an explicit but concealed deal to remove both the Jupiter [from Turkey] and the Cuban missiles. Kennedy in fact threatened to abrogate if the Soviets disclosed it. He did so for the same reasons that had largely engendered the crisis in the first place—domestic politics and the maintenance of America’s image as the indispensable nation.” The problem I have with the author’s statement is that I was living in New York City at the time of the 1962 crisis and I can still see in my mind’s eye the headline in the New York Times or Washington Post, both of which I read each day, that an agreement had been reached between the U.S. and the Soviet Union to defuse the crisis by the withdrawal of the U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey and the Soviet missiles from Cuba. Thus, there was no public concealment of these basis terms of the deal. So this article, in my opinion, appears to be an effort on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the JFK’s assassination to distort and tarnish the reputation of President Kennedy by depriving him of being credited for solving the nuclear crisis through his courageous leadership by forcing the Soviet Union to back down from placing its missiles 90 miles from the American mainland.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-crisis/309190/1/

January 16, 2013 Who Says You Can Kill Americans, Mr. President? By VICKI DIVOLL The New York Times WASHINGTON PRESIDENT OBAMA has refused to tell Congress or the American people why he believes the Constitution gives, or fails to deny, him the authority to secretly target and kill American citizens who he suspects are involved in terrorist activities overseas. So far he has killed three that we know of. Presidents had never before, to our knowledge, targeted specific Americans for military strikes. There are no court decisions that tell us if he is acting lawfully. Mr. Obama tells us not to worry, though, because his lawyers say it is fine, because experts guide the decisions and because his advisers have set up a careful process to help him decide whom he should kill. He must think we should be relieved. The three Americans known to have been killed, in two drone strikes in Yemen in the fall of 2011, are Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was born in New Mexico; Samir Khan, a naturalized American citizen who had lived in New York and North Carolina, and was killed alongside Mr. Awlaki; and, in a strike two weeks later, Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was born in Colorado. Most of us think these people were probably terrorists anyway. So the president’s reassurances have been enough to keep criticism at an acceptable level for the White House. Democrats in Congress and in the press have only gingerly questioned the claims by a Democratic president that he is right about the law and careful when he orders drone attacks on our citizens. And Republicans, who favor aggressive national security powers for the executive branch, look forward to the day when one of their own can wield them again. But a few of our representatives have spoken up — sort of. Several months ago, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, began limply requesting the Department of Justice memorandums that justify the targeted killing program. At a committee hearing, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., reminded of the request, demurred and shared a rueful chuckle with the senator. Mr. Leahy did not want to be rude, it seems — though some of us remember him being harder on former President George W. Bush’s attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, in 2005. So, even though Congress has the absolute power under the Constitution to receive these documents, the Democratic-controlled Senate has not fought this president to get them. If the senators did, and the president held fast to his refusal, they could go to court and demand them, and I believe they would win. Perhaps even better, they could skip getting the legal memos and go right to the meat of the matter — using oversight and perhaps legislating to control the president’s killing powers. That isn’t happening either. Thank goodness we have another branch of government to step into the fray. It is the job of the federal courts to interpret the Constitution and laws, and thus to define the boundaries of the powers of the branches of government, including their own. In reining in the branches, the courts have been toughest on themselves, however. A long line of Supreme Court cases require that judges wait for cases to come to them. They can take cases only from plaintiffs who have a personal stake in the outcome; they cannot decide political questions; they cannot rule on an issue not squarely before them. Because of these and other limitations, no case has made it far enough in federal court for a judge to rule on the merits of the basic constitutional questions at stake here. A pending case filed in July by the families of the three dead Americans does raise Fourth and Fifth Amendment challenges to the president’s killings of their relatives. We will see if the judge agrees to consider the constitutional questions or dismisses the case, citing limitations on his own power. In another case, decided two weeks ago, a federal judge in Manhattan, Colleen McMahon, ruled, grudgingly, that the American Civil Liberties Union and two New York Times reporters could not get access, under the Freedom of Information Act, to classified legal memorandums that were relied on to justify the targeted killing program. In her opinion, she expressed serious reservations about the president’s interpretation of the constitutional questions. But the merits of the program were not before her, just access to the Justice Department memos, so her opinion was, in effect, nothing but an interesting read. So at the moment, the legislature and the courts are flummoxed by, or don’t care about, how or whether to take on this aggressive program. But Mr. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, should know, of all people, what needs to be done. He was highly critical when Mr. Bush applied new constitutional theories to justify warrantless wiretapping and “enhanced interrogation.” In his 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama demanded transparency, and after taking office, he released legal memos that the Bush administration had kept secret. Once the self-serving constitutional analysis that the Bush team had used was revealed, legal scholars from across the spectrum studied and denounced it. While Mr. Obama has criticized his predecessor, he has also worried about his successors. Last fall, when the election’s outcome was still in doubt, Mr. Obama talked about drone strikes in general and said Congress and the courts should in some manner “rein in” presidents by putting a “legal architecture in place.” His comments seemed to reflect concern that future presidents should perhaps not wield alone such awesome and unchecked power over life and death — of anyone, not just Americans. Oddly, under current law, Congress and the courts are involved when presidents eavesdrop on Americans, detain them or harshly interrogate them — but not when they kill them. It is not just the most recent president, this one and the next whom we need to worry about when it comes to improper exercise of power. It is every president. Mr. Obama should declassify and release, to Congress, the press and the public, documents that set forth the detailed constitutional and statutory analysis he relies on for targeting and killing American citizens. Perhaps Mr. Obama still believes that, in a democracy, the people have a right to know the legal theories upon which the president executes his great powers. Certainly, we can hope so. After all, his interpretation might be wrong. Vicki Divoll is a former general counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and former deputy legal adviser to the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center.

To read transcript of the interview with Douglass, click on the link: http://lewrockwell.com/orig13/douglass2.1.1.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2013/jan/16/armstrong-oprah-confessional-interview-guide

Senator Asks to View Files on Killings of Americans By SCOTT SHANE The New York Times January 14, 2013 WASHINGTON — A Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee demanded Monday that he and other committee members be allowed to review secret Justice Department legal opinions justifying the killing of American citizens in counterterrorism operations. In a letter to John O. Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser and his nominee for C.I.A. director, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said he had asked repeatedly but unsuccessfully to see the legal opinions, though he added that he had been given “some relevant information on the topic.” The administration has fought in court to keep such legal opinions secret, including one justifying the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric and Al Qaeda propagandist who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. A federal judge in Manhattan ruled on Jan. 2 against the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times, which sought the opinions under the Freedom of Information Act and plan to appeal the ruling. Mr. Wyden called the administration’s current stance “unacceptable.” He wrote that only by reviewing the exact language of the legal opinions could he know “whether the president’s power to deliberately kill American citizens is subject to appropriate limitations.” The White House declined to comment. Administration officials, including Mr. Brennan, have given a series of public speeches discussing the legal basis for drone strikes, even as they have declined to release the actual legal opinions. Mr. Wyden did not threaten to block Mr. Brennan’s confirmation, which is expected to get Senate approval. The Intelligence Committee has set a confirmation hearing for Feb. 7. In his letter, Mr. Wyden told Mr. Brennan that he also wanted to discuss the committee’s still-classified 6,000-page report on the C.I.A.’s use of coercive interrogations under President George W. Bush. He said that the report revealed that “the C.I.A. repeatedly provided inaccurate information about its interrogation program to the White House, the Justice Department and Congress,” and that he wanted Mr. Brennan’s views on how to correct what he called past inaccurate statements about the interrogation program. Mr. Wyden also requested several other documents he said he has sought without success, including a list of countries in which the intelligence agencies have carried out lethal operations. While only Mr. Wyden signed the letter, the Democratic chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, has previously called on the administration to make public the legal opinion justifying the Awlaki strike and said that she, too, intends to question Mr. Brennan about the report on C.I.A. interrogations.

Stephen Hunter’s new novel: The Third Bullet Who fired the bullet that killed JFK? http://pages.simonandschuster.com/stephenhunter?mcd=z_121218_CLP_TheThirdBullet_Drudge http://videos.simonandschuster.com/video/1651014081001 http://videos.simonandschuster.com/video/1651263829001

Now that Robert Jr., and Rory have publicly said that their father didn't believe the official version and subscribed to a conspiracy, don't their widely reported statements (highlighted tonight on ABC national news) make it more difficult and a potential source of embarassment for the City of Dallas not to recognize the legitimate role that should be played by prominent assassination conspiracy believers in marking the 50th anniversary of JFK's murder later this year?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261263/JFK-assassination-Robert-Kennedy-speaks-death-uncle.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261263/JFK-assassination-Robert-Kennedy-speaks-death-uncle.html

James W. Douglass talks with Lew Rockwell about the JFK murder and its consequences. http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwell-show/2013/01/11/339-the-us-is-an-assassination-state/

Posted at 11:41 AM ET, 01/10/2013 Jan 10, 2013 04:41 PM EST TheWashingtonPost Richard Nixon turns 100: Friends gather for Centennial Gala By The Reliable Source http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/reliable-source/post/richard-nixon-turns-100-friends-gather-for-centennial-gala/2013/01/10/516e563c-5b41-11e2-88d0-c4cf65c3ad15_blog.html?hpid=z2 Presidential legacies can be complicated. But for Richard Nixon, it often boils down to one word: Watergate. That word was uttered just once at Wednesday’s centennial birthday gala for the 37th president. [photo]Edward Nixon, brother of former U.S. president Richard Nixon, salutes the color guard at the Richard Nixon Centennial Birthday Gala produced by the Richard Nixon Foundation at the Mayflower Hotel on Wednesday. (Jahi Chikwendiu - WASHINGTON POST) “Phone calls started coming in to me, and I’m sure other folks from the offspring of the old jackal pack asking ‘What are your thoughts on Watergate?’” said former adviser Pat Buchanan. “My great regret is that the old man is not here tonight so I can tell him my thoughts on his old tormentors. In the words of Nick Carraway to the Great Gatsby: ‘They were a rotten crowd, sir. You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.’ Nixon, now more than ever!” Thirty-nine years after the scandal that ended his presidency, Nixon’s family, staffers, and friends gathered for what would have been his 100th birthday at the Mayflower Hotel — site of his inaugural balls in 1969 and 1973. The night was a curious mix of family reunion (with birdhouse-size replicas of his Yorba Linda birthplace as decor), defiant pep rally and time capsule (old campaign posters and old campaign staffers). “There’s a wax museum in there,” teased one former staffer walking into the party. [photo]Former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger, C, talks with, from left, Brent Scowcroft, L, Military Assistant to President Richard Nixon and Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs in the Nixon and Ford administrations, Don Kendall, 2nd from L, former CEO of Pepsi Cola and old friend of Nixon, and Hubert Perry, R, a high school classmate of Nixon. (Jahi Chikwendiu - WASHINGTON POST) Some of the 400 guests are household names: Buchanan, Henry Kissinger, Tricia Nixon Cox, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Brent Scowcroft, Elizabeth Dole, Fred Thompson, Haley Barbour. But most were the behind-the-scenes folks who knew and worked with Nixon during his five years in the White House. The dinner, hosted by the Nixon Foundation, is part of a year-long attempt to shift the focus of Nixon’s presidency from Watergate to his domestic and foreign policies. “In turbulent times,” Tricia told the crowd, “peace in the world and justice at home were the twin pillars of my father’s initiatives.” Above the stage, the motto for the centennial: “Patriot. President. Peacemaker.” Ben Stein clearly got the talking points, rising from his seat to praise his former boss for ending the war in Vietnam: “I will never turn my back on Richard Nixon, the peacemaker!” Kissinger, of course, highlighted the administration’s successes overseas, especially its efforts to open relations with China and nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union. Others cited Nixon’s push for school desegregation and his successful campaign to win over Southern Democrats. “He will always be associated with Watergate,” Barbour told us. “But I think as we go along, there are a lot of things for which he’ll be recognized for doing the right way.” Starting right here. “No one could ask for more than the kind of enduring friendship and enduring loyalty that this group represents,” said Fred Malek, who’s heading a $25 million campaign to refurbish and modernize Nixon’s presidential library in Yorba Linda. “We all knew in our hearts that we worked for a great president who had great accomplishments.” There were a few inside jokes and lighthearted moments: A feeble effort by the crowd to sing “Happy Birthday” was interrupted by a video of Nixon leading the song at a White House celebration. And the centennial cake? A huge edible version of — what else? — the Yorba Linda homestead. The night ended on a poignant note. “Sometimes I’m asked what it was like for my family to defend my father during the embattled moments in the White House,” said his younger daughter, Julie. “And my response is simple: He was the best fatheyor in the world. He loved his country. And he made us proud. Happy birthday, R.N.” By The Reliable Source | 11:41 AM ET, 01/10/2013

http://lewrockwell.com/orig13/janney4.1.1.html

Hacking: corrupt Yard officer found guilty of trying to sell information to NotW A senior Scotland Yard counter-terrorism officer has been convicted of misconduct after she offered to sell information about the phone-hacking investigation to the News of the Worl By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter The Telegraph 2:45PM GMT 10 Jan 2013 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/9793372/Hacking-corrupt-Yard-officer-found-guilty-of-trying-to-sell-information-to-NotW.html Detective Chief Inspector April Casburn, 53, tried to undermine the inquiry “at the point of its launch” by phoning the newspaper whose former journalists were under suspicion. She claimed that she had made the call because she felt the public should be told that counter-terrorism officers were being seconded to the hacking inquiry instead of “saving lives”. But a jury at Southwark Crown Court unanimously decided today that Casburn, a mother of three, was motivated by greed. She was found guilty of misconduct in public office. Casburn, who has a three-year-old adopted child, will be sentenced at a later date. Mr Justice Fulford told her she faces a custodial sentence. The maximum term is life imprisonment. He said: "The defendant must understand that given the jury's verdict I must have in mind an immediate custodial sentence." He wishes to hear from the social worker of her child, adopted in 2011, before sentencing. Speaking afterwards, Detective Chief Inspector Gordon Briggs, who is overall charge of Operations Weeting, Elveden and Tuleta, said: "It is a great disappointment that a detective chief inspector in counter-terrorism command should have abused her position in this way. There is no place for corrupt officers or staff in the Metropolitan Police Service. We hope this prosecution demonstrates that. "Leaking or in this case trying to sell confidential information to journalists for personal gain will not be tolerated. "There may be occasions where putting certain information into the public domain - so-called whistle-blowing - can be justified; this was not one of them. "In this case, DCI Casburn proactively approached the News of the World, the very newspaper being investigated, to make money. She betrayed the service, and let down her colleagues, the hardworking, honest police officers, who make up the vast majority of the Met. "Fortunately, this type of behaviour is rare but we hope today's verdict shows the public can have confidence that the MPS holds itself to account." During her trial the jury had been told that Casburn called the News of the World on Sep 11, 2010, and told a reporter that Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World and the then director of communications at Downing Street, was one of four people under investigation. A memo about the conversation which the reporter emailed to his boss said the officer wanted to “sell us inside info” about the hacking investigation. She had been told the previous day that officers from counter-terrorism command would be seconded to a new phone-hacking inquiry launched as a result of an article in the New York Times which alleged that hacking was more widespread than the one reporter and one private detective jailed in 2007. Prosecutor Mark Bryant-Heron had earlier told Southwark Crown Court that DCI Casburn was in charge of the National Terrorist Financial Investigation Unit within the Yard’s SO15 counter-terrorism command at the time of the alleged offence. At 7.51am on September 11, 2010, she rang the News of the World newsdesk and spoke to a reporter called Tim Wood. Mr Bryant-Heron said Mr Wood “offered to sell information to the News of the World” about Operation Varek, a review of a 2006 investigation into phone-hacking which had been launched by Assistant Commissioner John Yates as a result of allegations made in an article in the New York Times. "The defendant provided information relating to the allocation of resources for Operation Varek,” said Mr Bryant-Heron. “She identified a number of suspects and gave the names of two of the people under investigation. “She spoke of the difficulty of proving the crimes alleged, and she sought to undermine a high-profile and highly-sensitive investigation at the point of its launch...she sought for reasons of her own to undermine an investigation by giving information to the very newspaper that was concerned in the investigation.”

http://educationforu...showtopic=19849 http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=19852

Richard Nixon at 100: The Man Who Matters Posted: 01/09/2013 11:43 am By Professor Stanley Kutler The HuffingtonPost http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stanley-kutler/richard-nixon-at-100_b_2427119.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=1289282,b=facebook Richard Nixon endures as the commanding figure of American political life since the end of World War II. His style, achievements, and failures persist nearly two decades after his death. He is the most impressive political figure of the past 60 years. His influence has extended beyond his times -- but influence can cut in several ways. Forty years since the dramatic end of Nixon's presidency, his doings have consequences and remain with us in both admiration or approbation. We have loyalists and admirers determined to burnish his life and career, and we have those who dismiss him -- "enemies," as Nixon characterized them -- simply as an opportunist, with little substance. Both can readily compile a history to make their point, but we cannot deny the fact that then and now, Nixon matters. Nixon's life and career were marked by ongoing fights and battles (to use his signature metaphors) for his political successes and his historical reputation. He obsessed over his history, yet his history is problematic for it may not have been one he desired, nor was it always pretty. Nixon swept across the political landscape from his first campaign in 1946 against a prominent New Deal congressman, where he honed the style of red-baiting to his 1950 senatorial campaign where he refined it to an art form, and where he gained an enduring epitaph -- "Tricky Dick"; to his selection as Dwight Eisenhower's running mate in 1952 and the controversy over his political funds, which he deftly turned to his advantage in the "Checkers" speech that inaugurated a new age of political television; to his years as Vice President where he stirred conflict and controversy galore; to the campaign of 1960, with its televised debates, and then the excruciating agony of his narrow defeat that year; to his presidency which provided spectacular additions and exercises of power, giving new impetus to the rise of the "Imperial Presidency"; to the riveting scandal of Watergate, resulting in an unprecedented presidential resignation; and finally, to his winter years, with the Forever Campaigner engaged in a relentless battle for vindication. Leaders leave legacies, and so we measure and define our presidents. Think of the broad array of Nixon's accomplishments and influences, and consider their unintended consequences. President Dwight Eisenhower, elected following two decades of Democratic governance, made it clear to his own party that it was foolish to attempt any overturn of the prevailing consensus. Nixon agreed and led his party to activist, interventionist programs in a variety of areas, including environmental legislation and programs, expanded government regulation of the economy, Title X, the primary federal family planning program, included money for breast screening, H.I.V., and other sexually transmitted diseases, and Title IX prohibited sex discrimination in federally financed education programs has benefited nearly 3.5 million female athletes, more than 10 times the number in 1971. Nixon's influence, however direct or indirect, survives with these programs. Yet the irony is that almost all of them are vehemently denounced today by Republican candidates, especially on the national level. When the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade with the support from his own nominees, Nixon reacted with typical ambivalence, questioning the decision, yet he believed abortion might be necessary following rape -- or as he privately said, if you have "a black and a white [person]." The president's admirers usually begin their list of Nixon's accomplishments in foreign-policy, such as détente with the Soviet Union. Nixon held his ground against his own right-wing allies in the Republican Party, people with whom he tirelessly had denounced Communism. But the centerpiece of his achievements must be his audacious opening to China, the same "Red China" he had so consistently scorned. The recognition of China was justified to Nixon's right-wing allies as playing the "China Card" to counter the influence of the Soviet Union. Now we have the ironic outcome of China as our primary economic and military competitor, while Russian influence has waned. The realignment of American electoral politics certainly is one of Nixon's most enduring achievements. His presidency witnessed the formalization of the old Republican-Dixiecrat -- read segregationists -- conservative congressional alliance that originated in the late 1930s. The civil rights revolution of the 1960s reversed the historic Democratic hold on the "Solid South," with Democrats becoming Republicans, and creating a new "Solid South" with Republicans expanding their power in Congress. Nixon's "Southern Strategy" in his 1968 election run carefully pursued southern votes, quietly promising an easing of desegregation policies. The notorious segregationists, Sen. J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, served as Nixon's liaison to other southern politicians, and he had figured most prominently in fracturing the national Democratic Party over the race issue. Actually Nixon's administration compiled quite an admirable record on race relations -- and one that did not left Nixon ambivalent. Nixon politicized the role of the Supreme Court in his 1968 campaign as no presidential candidate before him. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 did not use the Court as an electoral issue as Nixon did, even though reactionary, black-robed judges offered the most serious obstacle to his New Deal reforms. Nixon consistently assailed the Warren Court for its alleged softness on criminal rights and promised a restoration of "law and order," obvious code language for reversing the civil rights achievements. He advocated "strict construction," a term widely misused and misunderstood but now part of current debates over the qualifications of a Supreme Court nominee. Six years earlier, when the Court struck down the New York Regents' compulsory prayer, Nixon readily denounced the Court for its" strict construction" of the establishment clause. Shortly after his 1968 victory, Nixon appointed Warren Earl Burger as Chief Justice, a jurist noted for public criticism of his fellow appellate judges and Warren Court decisions. He then nominated two deeply flawed Southern judges, obvious payoffs to Thurmond, yet the Senate decisively rejected both. Nixon filled one seat with Assistant Attorney General William Rehnquist, whom he did not know -- "Renchburg," he called him -- but he cheered when he learned more of Rehnquist's conservative political ideology. Rehnquist's other important qualification for Nixon was his relative youthfulness, and Nixon correctly forecast a "Nixon influence," one that ultimately has prevailed on the Court for 30 or more years. When Nixon finally met Rehnquist (in those days after the nomination had been made), he used the occasion for a typical Nixonian "pep talk." "I will give you one last bit of advice, because you're going to be independent, naturally," the president said. "And that is don't let the fact that you're under heat change any of your views. ... So just be as mean and rough as they said you are." Perhaps another accurate prediction. "Thanks, Mr. President," and obviously pleased Rehnquist replied as the conversation ended. Rehnquist began his Supreme Court tenure dissenting in a wide variety of cases, including the brand-new issue of abortion. He argued that the 14th amendment was designed to deal with slavery, and he narrowly restricted its application in current issues. His views on criminal procedure, the establishment clause, and the commerce clause and federalism consistently rejected precedents of earlier years. When he became Chief Justice in 1986, Rehnquist clearly had emerged as the intellectual and ideological leader of the Court. Subsequent appointments were largely in his own image, such as his successor, John Roberts, Rehnquist's ideological companion and former clerk. Nixon's forecast has proven all too true. And then we have Watergate, Nixon's "spot that will not out," and one that must be confronted in consideration of his legacy. Nixon early on realized the dangers posed by his men who conceived and approved the break-in of Democratic headquarters in June 1972. On the night of his reelection in November 1972 Nixon felt a "foreboding" that dampened his enthusiasm. Watergate, he wrote in his diary, was the only "sour note" of the moment. "Stupidity," he wrote, on the part of people involved; yet he knew his own liabilities resulting from his direction and participation in the cover-up. As Watergate unraveled, Nixon's role came into stark relief; the opening of some 30 hours of Oval Office tapes revealed how Nixon launched the cover-up on the day following the break-in when he and his Chief of Staff concocted the idea of using the CIA to divert the FBI's entry into the case. Several months of Senate hearings, investigations by the US Attorneys and their successor Special Prosecutors, and a probing, hard-line judge compiled an array of evidence implicating the President. The House Judiciary Committee conducted an impeachment inquiry that resulted in several charges that Nixon had engaged in "abuses of power" and a criminal obstruction of justice. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court the day before had ruled that Nixon had no claim to "executive privilege" to withhold tapes that might offer evidence of his criminal involvement. After the new tapes were released, Nixon chose to resign, rather than face impeachment. The man who liked to claim many firsts, was the first to give meaning to an otherwise obscure constitutional clause. Nixon's unprecedented departure has had ongoing significance. Watergate spawned the politics of payback and scandal which have marked the past 40 years. Certainly it has burdened every President confronted with questions involving the suffix "gate," "gotcha" journalism, "what did the president know and when did he know it," and other Watergate clichés. But singularly for Nixon, we remember his disgrace without honor. In one of his periodic attempts of "return," Nixon said that "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." What in the world could he have been thinking? Nixon poured his energies into the final campaign -- his battle for history. Alexander Butterfield, the man who revealed the existence of the White House taping system which, of course, was Nixon's undoing, described the President as a man always conscious of his history. "[T]he president is very history oriented and history conscious about the role he is going to play," Butterfield testified to the Senate Watergate Committee in July 1973, and added that Nixon "is not at all subtle about it, or about admitting it." History very much mattered to Nixon. No different from other leaders who realized that when their power faded, they only had their history, which they desperately tried to control. Nixon installed the White House taping system, again in a vain belief that he would have the authoritative version of his presidency. Ironically, those tapes sealed his downfall, and they continue to diminish the man and his achievements. Nixon offered the paradox of an intelligent yet curiously flawed man who left a divided legacy, often resulting from his self-destructive actions. His lament over Watergate -- "I gave them a sword. And they stuck it in," he told David Frost. "And they twisted it with relish. And, I guess, if I'd been in their position I'd have done the same thing" -- however self-pitying underlines the fundamental truth that he was his own worst enemy. He was a man of great power, who left a stamp on his time and beyond, yet petty enough to accomplish his own destruction. Speaking at his East Room "farewell" just prior to resigning Nixon offered the most prescient judgment of himself: "Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them -- and then you destroy yourself." Stanley Kutler is the author of The Wars of Watergate and other writings, and collaborated with Harry Shearer for the forthcoming television series, "Nixon's the One." This Blogger's Books Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes by Stanley Kutler

Each year the U.S. gets closer to economic collapse, civil unrest and a police state. So I don't share your optimism that truth will triumph. As for the 2016 election, I don't think the Bush crime family has any more to fear than the Clinton crime family. Hillary will get elected if she's healthy. I agree with you, Ron. Most Americans are punch drunk with their personal problems stemming from the financial collapse of 2008. Their attitude is that the JFK assassination, Watergate and 9/11 are past history and, like Pearl Harbor, will remain shrouded forever as to what really occurred. So they say, let's move on. The U.S. is heading for a Great Default, akin to national bankruptcy, in which many current expenditures by the U.S. government will be abruptly terminated. This will impact society in drastic ways with personal survival being the foremost concern. There is an open question whether the Great Default will occur during Obama's last term in office or soon thereafter under the next administration. Take a look at what the real national debt is: "The U.S. fiscal gap, calculated ...using the Congressional Budget Office’s realistic long-term budget forecast -- the Alternative Fiscal Scenario -- is now $222 trillion. Last year, it was $211 trillion. The $11 trillion difference -- this year’s true federal deficit -- is 10 times larger than the official deficit and roughly as large as the entire stock of official debt in public hands." http://www.bloomberg...1-trillion.html

latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oswald-apartment-20130108,0,841774.story Dallas razing apartments where Kennedy assassin Oswald lived Dallas is demolishing an apartment complex that was once home to Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of President Kennedy By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times 6:49 PM PST, January 7, 2013 This week, Dallas city officials began razing an apartment complex once home to President Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. The site does not have any official historic designation, according to the owner and city documents. But the decision has still caused a stir in a city where sites related to the assassination have proved a major draw, including Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy was shot, and the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald lay in wait. Dealey Plaza is now a national historic district and the book depository houses the Sixth Floor Museum, which sees 325,000 visitors a year. Apartment building owner Jane Bryant said she was shocked when a reporter notified her that the city was taking action Monday. She said she had been trying to salvage valuable pine and white oak from the building, as well as fixtures from the apartment where Oswald stayed, and thought she still had two weeks before the city intervened. "The city of Dallas told me if I was making progress on the building, they would stop it," she said of the demolition, choking up. "They agreed to give me more time." Bryant said that she was trying to contact her lawyer Monday to file a restraining order to halt the demolition, and that police on site refused to let her into the building. "I've been out there all day battling with them, trying to salvage historic items. It is historical — it's in the Warren Commission," she said, referring to the report produced by the federal commission that investigated Kennedy's slaying. She has already removed and sold some items from the apartment where Oswald lived, including the bathtub and toilet. She worried Monday that scavengers might make off with what's left. The building is full of 1925 yellow heart pine and white oak, she said. "People are going to be in there tonight stealing," she said. The decision to demolish the apartment comes at an odd moment. Dallas is gearing up to officially mark the assassination for the first time on Nov. 22, the 50th anniversary. Oswald shared Apartment 2 at 600 Elsbeth St. with his wife, Marina, from November 1962 to March 1963. It was one of three places Oswald lived in the Dallas neighborhood of Oak Cliff. He and his family moved from Elsbeth Street to an apartment at 214 W. Neely St. in March 1963. By November of that year, Oswald was renting a room at 1026 N. Beckley Ave., but on the night of Nov. 21, he slept at the home of his wife's friend, Ruth Paine, in nearby Irving, storing his rifle in the garage. "It's hard for people to let go of what they think of as meaningful scenes. We don't want to lose anything that might be evidence," said Debra Conway, president of JFK Lancer, a group that sponsors a conference on the assassination in Dallas each November. "People hate to lose any of the landmarks in this case, but we have to live with it." During the most recent conference, attendees took a tour of Oswald's former residences. They drove by the apartment on Elsbeth, which was "falling down" and "clearly unsafe," Conway said. Though the building has historic value, she said, it's less significant than Oswald's other former homes, such as the rooming house where he had been staying at the time of the assassination or the apartment on Neely Street where Marina Oswald took the notorious "backyard photos" of her husband posing with a rifle. The city of Irving, a Dallas suburb, is turning Paine's former 1950s tract home into a museum. The city recently completed a $30,000 restoration of the home and plans to open it for tours this summer, according to Casey Tate, Irving's capital improvement program director. Unlike those buildings, Conway said, the apartments on Elsbeth "have no real story about it. You hate to lose it, but it's not at the same level as these other places." The 88-year-old two-story brick apartment complex has fallen on hard times since Oswald lived there. Its walls are crumbling, windows are patched with plywood, and it is surrounded by a chain-link fence. Bryant, who lives in Dallas and teaches business at a community college, bought the building six years ago planning to move in and run an apparel business on the first floor. Two years ago, a judge ordered the building demolished. The city had sued in March 2008 to have the roughly 8,700-square-foot structure repaired or taken down. Bryant initially fought the demolition but eventually agreed to have it done. After she failed to meet city deadlines, Dallas officials announced plans to raze the building starting Monday. molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Trial Begins for Scotland Yard Officer in Phone-Hacking Scandal By JOHN F. BURNS The New York Times January 7, 2013 LONDON — In the first of a number of high-profile trials expected this year in cases of alleged criminal wrongdoing at Britain’s freewheeling newspapers, a high-ranking Scotland Yard officer went on trial on Monday, charged with seeking to sell confidential police information to a tabloid that Rupert Murdoch ordered shut 18 months ago as the phone-hacking scandal erupted around his British newspaper empire. The case against the officer, Detective Chief Inspector April Casburn, 53, stemmed from a telephone call in September 2010 in which, prosecutors say, she gave a reporter for The News of the World details of a newly reopened investigation into accusations of voice mail hacking by the tabloid. At the time of the call, Ms. Casburn was a senior officer in Scotland Yard’s top-secret counterterrorism unit, code-named SO15. With at least six separate inquiries into different aspects of the scandal, and a total of 180 police officers and officials assigned to the work, the overall police operation has been described by senior police officials as the most extensive — and expensive — criminal investigation in Scotland Yard’s history. Altogether, more than 90 people have been arrested, though fewer than a dozen have been charged. Prosecutors have said that charges against others are likely to follow. Investigations that have turned up evidence of police wrongdoing, in the form of alleged payments and other benefits given by the tabloids to serving officers in return for confidential information, have been a factor in a battery of high-level resignations. Police commanders say progress in the investigations, and successful prosecutions, will be an important test for Scotland Yard, formally known as the Metropolitan Police Service, whose reputation has been badly battered by the scandal. In addition to corrupt payments to police and other public officials, the charges laid out so far by prosecutors include conspiracy to intercept cellphone messages, the touchstone of the investigations, involving hundreds of celebrities, politicians, sports stars and crime victims; and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by destroying or hiding evidence, including e-mails and other documents. Others facing trial this year include Andy Coulson, a News of the World editor who went on to become Prime Minister David Cameron’s communications director at 10 Downing Street; Rebekah Brooks, a former editor of two Murdoch tabloids, The News of the World and The Sun, who resigned as the chief executive of News International, the Murdoch newspaper subsidiary in Britain, as the scandal unfolded in 2011; and Charlie Brooks, Ms. Brooks’s husband, who is a prominent racehorse trainer and Eton College contemporary — and friend — of Mr. Cameron. The focus of the trial that began Monday was a nine-minute phone call that the defendant, Ms. Casburn, made to The News of the World when she was responsible for a Scotland Yard unit that tracked terrorist financing, an assignment she won partly because of her background in investment finance in the City of London. The prosecution says the call was prompted by a renewed investigation into the paper’s involvement in phone hacking that had begun the previous day. The court was told that the new inquiry, by John Yates, one of Scotland Yard’s top officers, had been ordered because of a magazine article detailing phone hacking by The News of the World that The New York Times had published 10 days earlier. The prosecutor, Mark Bryant-Heron, said Ms. Casburn had told one of the tabloid’s reporters that Mr. Yates, then in charge of the Scotland Yard counterterrorism effort, was “looking at six people” as a result of the article. The two she named, the prosecutor said, were Mr. Coulson, the paper’s former editor, and Sean Hoare, a former reporter who was named in the Times article as confirming that phone hacking was rife at the paper when he worked there. Mr. Hoare died in 2011. According to the prosecution’s account, Ms. Casburn explained her motive for the call by telling the reporter, Tim Wood, that she objected to the diversion of Scotland Yard’s counterterrorism resources to the phone-hacking inquiry and to the political pressure being brought to bear on Mr. Yates by John Prescott, a former deputy prime minister whose cellphone had been hacked. The court was told that the tabloid did not publish an article on the basis of Ms. Casburn’s call and that no payment was made to her. In an e-mail to his editors cited in court, Mr. Wood said Ms. Casburn had asked to be paid, but the court was told that she had denied this in police interviews. On the stand, Mr. Wood seemed uncertain. While his “recollection” was “not great,” he said, Ms. Casburn “must have said she wanted to be paid” for him to have suggested that she had. -------------------------------------------------------- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2259079/Hacking-police-saw-inquiry-jolly-excited-meeting-Sienna-Miller-Met-detective-claims.html

Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal formula for News Corp renaissance Never mind that the Journal has yet to yield him profit, Murdoch is convinced his transformation of the newspaper is a success By By Michael Wolff guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 January 2013 11.28 EST Rupert Murdoch did not transform the Wall Street Journal in the way many of his most passionate critics feared. But he did transform it – radically so – in ways that contain clues about his current thinking about newspapers and how he will lead the new, newspaper-focused company, which will soon come to stand alone from the entertainment side of his holdings. When he bid for the Wall Street Journal in 2007, many Journal loyalists, along with his journalistic enemies, believed that, under Murdoch, the paper would necessarily cater to his views as well as become crasser in tone and style. Four years later, there is more puzzlement than outrage about what he and his deputy, Journal editor Robert Thomson, who will hold the CEO title in the new company, have done to the Journal. Murdoch and Thomson took one of the most distinctive, stylized and "branded" voices in journalism – its look and feel recognizable at 30 paces – and flattened it. Adding signature Murdoch elements has not been the strategy: his political accents have been few, his tabloid flare absent. Instead, the strategy has been to cleanse it of identifying marks. The Wall Street Journal, which was a shrinking business when Murdoch bought it, with its profit margins whittled to almost nothing, is now a highly-proficient, well-executed information product – no more, no less. And oh, yes: with significant new investment, it loses more money than it ever did. Curiously, or eccentrically, Murdoch also shifted the paper's coverage from all business – it was to business, as the New Testament is to Christianity – to much less business and much more general politics and international coverage. Why? Why would you throw out the most important aspect of what you so expensively acquired? And what does this say about the new properties – the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, the Financial Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, among them (that is, every newspaper that might possibly be for sale) – that are on his wishlist? Murdoch has several hardcore beliefs about the newspaper business: 1) It's not the business that has failed, or become obsolete. The problem is with newspapers themselves: they started to speak more to elites, or worse, to only other journalists, rather than to the people who read, or who ought to be reading, them. 2) Newspapers are mass media and need to define their audience in the broadest possible way: in Australia, it's the middle market; in Britain, in the 1970s, it was the lower market; with the Wall Street Journal, it's the broad upper market and not just the business market. The larger your universe, the better. 3) Snobbishness is the enemy: only the media itself likes a smarty pants. (The Daily, Murdoch's tablet-only newspaper, which closed last month, was another exercise in flat affect; Murdoch kept telling everyone he didn't want the Daily to be for the "digerati" – a new Murdoch bad word.) 4) Squeezing profits out of papers is more about smart manufacturing than it is about smart journalism. 5) And in order to truly force people to pay for newspapers online, you would have to own them all. Now, almost everything here runs against the currents of modern publishing, which emphasizes carefully targeted audiences – as well as, of course, the elimination of manufacturing with the advent of digital distribution and, despite the occasional paywall, the relentless march of free. And yet, Murdoch believes he is a modernizer – a modernizer, albeit, who made his mark on newspapers in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, when he took fussy titles like the News of the World, the Sun, and the New York Post, and cast aside their old audiences for new demographic opportunities, and installed new presses to improve the product. That isn't much different from what he's done with the Journal, seeking to be a one-stop national newspaper and making a big investment in production and manufacturing. Another instructive point about the Journal: Murdoch likes to run his business with a Murdoch editor – someone preternaturally responsive to what he wants. Murdoch has been bending editors to his will since 1953, but in Robert Thomson, he may have found his most acquiescent newsroom mate. Thus, Thomson is now the new company's CEO. Arguably, his main duty is to channel the old man. It is difficult to quite express the satisfaction Murdoch feels about the Wall Street Journal. For him, it's a fully realized vision. Long-time Journal staffers, in almost every conversation, continue to mourn the paper's lost meaning and culture, and to loathe Murdoch and Thomson for it. But Murdoch has done what he set out to do: wiped it clean of its superiority and swank. When he talks about the New York Times, he talks about cleansing it this way, too: it's his ultimate dream. One of the aspects of the Journal that he is said to be most pleased about is the Journal's local section, with its almost folksy, middle-market, booster feel. (The section often bears a similarity to the classic 1978 National Lampoon parody of the Sunday edition of the Dacron, Ohio Republican-Democrat.) Murdoch, as it happens, has never had a successful paper in the US. The New York Post, together with the papers he has previously owned in Boston, Chicago and Texas, have all been financial disappointments (if not catastrophes); the Wall Street Journal itself remains a long way from profitability. But he has now constituted a company of which a chief premise is that it will buy newspapers in the US. This is a strategy that is, in part, born out of Murdoch's belief that newspapers, after a decade of nay-saying, are now vastly undervalued. And by having a network of papers and applying his talents for efficiencies, he believes he can realize big savings. But it also comes from a remarkable stubbornness and righteousness. Murdoch has a near-messianic confidence that he knows what a newspaper reader wants and therefore what a newspaper should be. Newspapers ought to be an efficient vehicle to speak to many. When you start to weave in elements and features that speak to few, you go wrong: arcane stories, detailed investigations, excessive aesthetic considerations, long reads … they put off more than they attract. To any quibbles, or attempts to argue for nuance, he points to the Journal – literally, holds it up with two hands – as his answer. This is his perfect paper: straightforward, unaffected, clean, giving you everything you need. The past, even 60 years of it, is mere prologue – and Murdoch can hardly wait to begin.

Ex-FBI Agent Don Adams: Lee Harvey Oswald Was a Patsy http://lewrockwell.com/orig13/adams-d1.1.1.html

Rupert Murdoch's make-or-break venture: the new News Corp As the octogenarian mogul marshals his ailing newspaper group, he faces the sternest test of his business acumen to date By Michael Wolff guardian.co.uk, Monday 31 December 2012 16.01 EST In my world, one of the great sports of the New Year is going to be watching Rupert Murdoch de-hitch his newspapers from his entertainment companies. Seldom, in a business context, has a man of such stature and accomplishment and at so advanced an age been asked not just to reinvent himself, but to prove himself all over again. He may retain the CEO title for his entertainment company, but nobody doubts that his heart and time will be invested with his papers. Murdoch's stand-alone newspaper company is his naked being. In a sense, it undoes one of his guiding business principles: building profitable businesses to cover the ever-faltering fortunes of his newspapers, the business he most loves. (There is a further justification in holding newspapers: they gave him the clout to help build the other businesses that make the big money.) But his world now devolves more and more to the newspapers alone, at just the point in time when newspapers alone are the most vulnerable they might ever be. There are three key indicators that will give an indication of what kind of island Murdoch has pushed himself off on – or been banished to. They will show up in the filings, anticipated early this year, necessary to make his newspapers an independent company: First, the actual business results of the papers, being, individually, so much smaller than other business units, have long been wrapped in a goodly amount of smoke – but now that clears. Some of the great money pits of the media industry ought to be open soon for all to see. The New York Post, for instance, has likely not made money in more than 40 years – and most observers guess it is losing well north of $60m a year. The Wall Street Journal, and its radical remake into a general interest newspaper, has, without much information as to its actual performance, generally been judged a success. How will that change – and how will regard for the new company's just appointed CEO, Robert Thomson, who has been running the Journal, change – if the Journal's losses are shown to be vast? Second, because the new company is so exposed, it will depend on a dowry from its rich parent: so how much? Of the substantial cash on hand in the current company, how much does the newspaper company get? This will likely be in the form of a division of cash assets; a continuing credit line from the larger company to the weaker one; and other financial engineering backstops and links. It is in this way that Murdoch will try most to dilute the effects of separation of the two companies and the isolation of his papers. Third, while this has so far been billed as a spin-off of the newspaper assets from the larger mothership, what we need to see are the nature of the mechanics of the split: that is, who is really splitting from whom. A possible tip-off, which came unheralded last month, was that the theoretically new company will continue with the name News Corp, and the theoretical mothership company will be the Fox Group. In part, this is probably sentiment: Rupert holding on to this true patrimony. But it may be too that the spin-off is happening in reverse, Fox Group being jettisoned from News Corp. The advantage here is that the myriad legal liabilities, in the UK, and potentially mounting exposure to the US justice department connected with the hacking and bribery scandals in the Britain, would be left with the newspapers that caused the problems. In a wave of the hand, the Murdoch family's wealth might now be safely secured in the Fox Group, and the newspapers left to pay the piper. But this is not mere sophistry and corporate trickery. This is, in all its implications and drama and ambition, a last stand. Whatever Murdoch has been, or ever wanted, or, arguably, deserved to get, is now in play. And by all reports of where Murdoch has been going, and who he has been talking to, he means to try to make this work – that is, to triumph over the hand he's been dealt. Already, he has implemented draconian cuts in his Australian newspaper operation. The Australian papers are (save for the Australian itself) still substantially profitable, so he needs their cash flow to buoy the markets he cares more deeply about. He seems about to make a bet that the US newspaper market has hit bottom; that, at the very least, the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune are good deals to be had. Indeed, that's his other, unheralded skill – a savant-like brilliance when it comes to manufacturing and distribution efficiencies in the newspaper business – with which he believes he can grow margins very quickly. And he seems genuinely focused on trying to figure out what the newspaper business will be post-deluge, the new "newsonomics", in my friend Ken Doctor's word. (Ken, a leading thinker about the fate of newspapers, had not told me Murdoch has consulted him, but I'm sure he has: he's consulting everybody.) Murdoch's two most immediate problems remain the New York Post and the Times in London – with the Wall Street Journal's likely losses also keeping him up at night. At the Journal, at least, there is an argument about the franchises it can build and the world of data in can exploit. And the Times has some wiggle-room if it becomes part of a seven-day operation lead by the Sunday Times. And, if need be, it can be sold to any number of eager buyers. There are no such arguments or wiggle-room or buyers for the New York Post. Its immediate fate will be a good indication of whether this new News Corp is a death spiral, or, if Mr-Don't-Look-Back is actually ready to be as ruthless and unsentimental as he has so often been – though never with the Post. Still, Murdoch may be as Murdoch as he has ever been, but that does not make him more than a newspaper man from the 1950s and 1960s trying to retail his skills in a new world. (The Daily, the recently closed digital experiment that he personally oversaw, was just that: a tone-deaf, middle-market paper on a tablet.) Indeed, Murdoch has over the past four years demonstrated his best newspaper skills and tricks, devoting a disproportionate, if not extraordinary, amount of his business time to overhauling the Wall Street Journal. Next week, I'll look at how well that's worked for him.

As a footnote to my posting above I wish to add that former FBI Associate Director Edward Miller told me in 1985 that J. Edgar Hoover had dispatched him immediately upon news of the death of Marilyn Monroe to retrieve Monroe's telephone records from the telephone company's cental office in Santa Monica. He said that the records of long distance telephone calls were written in long hand on rectangular cards by the telephone operators, which was the custom in those days.

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