Leslie Griffith

Cheney’s Toys

Published on The Huffington Post, Salon.com, USAToday.com,SFgate,com,Alternet.com--April 6th, 2009

How many times did former vice president Dick Cheney whisper undermining, surreptitious words into the ears of Israeli and high-ranking Pentagon officials? Every day? Once a week? Several seditious rumors a month?

Those who listened are simply Cheney’s Toys. Sadly, Dick does not understand his play date is done and his tinker toys need putting away. In the words of Shakespeare, “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.”

This week Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported some sobering news. Now that the clock has run out on Bush/Cheney, the former vice president has, according to Hersh, not only called Israeli officials and told them “not to trust Mr. Obama because he was pro-Palestinian and not ready for the major leagues,” but Hersh went on to report that Cheney/Bush “Stay behinds,” loyal senior officials in the Pentagon, National Security Agency and even inside the White House, are still reporting back to Cheney. Those of us who regard Hersh as one of the greatest journalists of our generation tend to believe him.

Sleep deprived and soaked in worry after stomaching that gaseous news, a startling look at an often-ignored declassified military document leads one to consider how back-room whispers can stir up funnel clouds capable of causing long-term hurricanes.

Past is prologue. Shakespeare wrote it and it is carved in stone on the National Archives Building. Many secrets are buried in the piles of paper held in that building, but one document gives a clue to just how far those who proclaim love of country, but seem to prefer love of power, will go to destabilize it in the name of a poisonous “patriotic” ideology. Although seemingly unrelated to JFK’s murder, a plan for attacking Cuba called Operation Northwoods was declassified by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board in 1997. It remained clouded in obscurity until James Bamford wrote about it his book on the National Security Agency titled “Body of Secrets” back in 2001. Even so, it has remained unknown to most, another victim of the mainstream media’s memory hole.

Written in May of 1962, a month after the Bay of Pigs fiasco; five months before the Cuban missile crisis; and a year before President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated; the Northwoods document illustrates in horrifying language that Kennedy, like Obama, had “hold over’s” and “loyalists”  willing to risk millions of American lives to further their own agenda.

Despite a legion of Soviet Missiles pointed toward America, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, guided by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and goaded by Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay, were itching to kill themselves some Communists—even after Kennedy made it clear he did not want a war with Cuba. Scorning the wishes of the President and the restrictions of the US constitution, the Joint Chiefs contrived and plotted a way to stir one up. Duplicitous whispers no doubt echoed through the halls of power then, too. Mr. Cheney cannot keep his telescopic gun scopes from covertly targeting Iran, just as The Joint Chiefs’ fixation on Cuba led them to concoct a chaos-inducing secret plan to undermine their President, as the follow memo proves:

 

 

How far were the Joint Chiefs of 1962 willing to go? 

      

• "It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has shot down a chartered civil airliner enroute (sic) from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Pamama or Venzuela.
• “We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo bay and blame Cuba.”
• “We could develop a communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even Washington.”

For the complete Joint chiefs/Cassius collage see: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf

We all remember how plotting and conniving against a democratically-elected president ended in November of 1963. And we have heard the comparisons between the young, vibrant JFK and this new President. May the parallels end there. Past cannot be Prologue.

“Forever and Forever farewell Cassius.”

Will the spies come out of the closet?

Published in The Huffington Post, 2/14/08

The president must be happier than a pig in slop tonight. Since he and I are both originally from Texas, I assume I can use that colloquialism. Yesterday the Senate voted to broaden the governments spy powers and legally protect the communications companies that help the Bush administration's warrantless spying. There is no doubt the American public is walking zombie-like deeper into post 9/11 disaster. Giving up rights is always easy, getting them back never is. With all the lies this administration has told the American people, how in the world can we give up our basic right to privacy?

There is no warrant needed, no judge involved, just hundreds of warehouses manned by people hired by the United States government to monitor every e-mail and every phone call they want to. AT&T, MCI, Sprint, Cingular, Verizon and South Bell are apparently all involved. Sprint was fighting MCI over the government contract to run the hundreds of surveillance warehouses across the country. No doubt the bills are piling up, and it 'aint chump change American taxpayers will have to pay.

The bill allows the government to eavesdrop on large bundles of "foreign-based" communications. With just about every service call I make outsourced to other countries, I like every other American, have foreign communications at least once a week. Will that make us all targets? If Americans had not been victims of political prevarications before, perhaps I could believe the administration. In the words of our president, "Fool me once shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."

Imagine the political ammo the Bush administration must also be collecting? Which Democrats are calling "phone sex from fat girls" or setting up a meeting in the boy's room to make hay while the sun shines. The voices of outspoken critics of the administration keep disappearing. Do we really believe the Bush administration will have access to information that could possibly destroy its homeland enemies and not use it? (Without congressional approval, of course.) If character is reflected in how one behaves behind closed doors, then the mind reels considering this administration's propensity for playing dirty. Have we forgotten Valerie Plame already?

If the House goes along with the Senate and agrees to augment the government's already out of control surveillance powers, AT&T, Verizon and other communication companies won't have to be worried about lawsuits resulting from eavesdropping without warrants. These new broadened spy powers will give legal protection to those communication companies acting illegally in the name of "patriotism" -- a word every tyrant throughout history has used to explain away culpability.

As far as anyone knows, Qwest is the only company with the good sense to say no. Let's hear it for them! A corporation in Qwest of good judgment. I'll bet the Bush administration makes sure Qwest suffers for its constitutional cognition.

Meantime, as a reporter there's another issue that particularly worries me. I know of at least one mega-media-corporation that is a mass-communication giant as well. So, let me see if this equation is as problematic as it seems -- a mass communication company putting out news while spying for the government at the same time. Holy Toledo -- we are certainly not in Kansas anymore, but the government certainly is. Osama must be smiling at his dialysis machine about now.

I was reporting in Moscow during the cold war and remember looking up over the bathtub to see a camera lens pointing down at me. The KGB followed our crew where ever we went. It was un-nerving being watched and followed in a country where no one trusted anybody. When I arrived back in America I kissed the ground, and called my family. A phone call that most likely would be monitored today.