Unmasking Obama and the Unmaking of America
a Review by Hugh Murray of
UNMASKING OBAMA: THE FIGHT TO TELL THE TRUE STORY OF A FAILED PRESIDENCY
(New York, Nashville:Post Hill Press, 2020) by Jack Cashill
Cashill's Unmasking – concerning scandals of the Obama Administration – is published at an awkward age, for on one level it appears as stale news, yet it is not quite old enough to be “history.” Still, there is a need for a book like this. Cashill quotes the old adage that newspaper articles are the first draft of history. What is different today is that now major newspapers, like the New York Times and the Washington Post; the major television networks, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, are all quite liberal and some have strong connections to the Democratic Party. The dissidents: Fox News, talk radio, and smaller outlets may be ignored when “official histories” are written. This is especially true in that most official histories are written by academics, and universities are now notorious for their purges of conservatives to create an atmosphere of stultifying political correctness. Worse, the ever more left-wing partisanship of social media, evidenced by their open censorship meant to sway the 2020 Presidential election – in which they smothered the New York Post expose of the corruption of Hunter Biden and his father Joe in dealings in China. The Bidens apparently profited from these dealings by several million dollars from firms connected to the Chinese People's Liberation Army. The story broke shortly before the official election day of November 3, 2020, but the main social media refused to allow it on its sites, so most Americans who did not intentionally seek out conservative media were likely unaware of Joe Biden's dirty deals.
Because in today's world of left-wing, biased media, the first draft of history may become “the” official version. Cashill's unmasking of the Obama Administration, will, hopefully, make it harder for historians of the future to white-wash Obama's misdeeds.
As a starting point, Cashill begins with several quotations concerning scandals during Obama's term in office. “I am proud...that we will... leave this administration without significant scandal.”(p. 5) Obama declared this as his term neared an end, 14 November 2016. In 2018 Obama told an audience directly, “I didn't have scandals.”(5) Cashill adds that Obama's assessment was seconded by Jonathan Alter in Bloomberg, David Remnick, editor of New Yorker, and an Obama biographer, as well as David Brooks, New York Times columnist and PBS Newshour “Republican.”
Cashill's book reminds us of little known facts meant to shatter that image. And he succeeds. Relying not only on the major media, Cashill acknowledges the real contributions to history, to the exposures of Obama, by the unofficial journalists, those who write the American samizdats, or those who, reporting the truth for major media, like Sharyl Attkisson at CBS, had her files ransacked, and work erased, and then her stories on CBS reduced until she was forced to leave. In was probably no coincidence that David Rhodes, then News Director at CBS, was brother to Ben Rhodes, a major campaign advisor to Pres. Obama, when Attkisson was dumped and had to rebuild her journalistic career in the far less lucrative world of the independent researcher, or samizdat writer.
The case of Lara Logan was similar. She was sexually assaulted while covering the Arab Spring celebrations in Cairo, and worked on “60 Minutes.” But when her “controversial” story on Benghazi conflicted with the Clinton-Obama account, she apologized and slowly faded from view. Cashill does not mention Obama in connection to her case, and Obama's Administration may not have directly intervened. Still, she too was dumped by CBS. And it was not merely CBS. Obama's FBI listened to phone calls of James Rosen at Fox, with the federal agency even going after the reporter's father. This abuse of and by the FBI, turning it into a political police was not new in America, for Democratic Pres. Franklin Roosevelt often used federal agencies to make his political opponents squirm and suffer in the 1930s. Obama was simply carrying on the totalitarian state traditions of FDR. Obama updated those policies, but the update was on a smaller scale. The reason: in the 1930s most newspapers were Republican, but under Obama, most of the media were with him.
After two years of Obama's leadership there was a political rebellion in the Republican ranks, which resulted in the creation of a loose-knit Tea Party movement. The IRS allowed tax exempt status to many “non-partisan” organizations, like the NAACP, which invariably promoted the Democrats Such partisanship could even be blatant: in 1948 Democratic Pres. Harry Truman addressed the NAACP, but that year W. E. B. Du Bois refused to endorse Truman for re-election and supported another candidate instead. Du Bois was quickly fired by the organization he helped found. Obama's IRS now went after the Tea Party petitioners with a vengeance, trying not only to destroy newly created “non-partisan” conservative organizations, but to harass their sponsors, their private businesses and make their lives a living hell of constant IRS inspections and persecutions.(10-15)
One aspect of this government treatment is unmentioned by Cashill – it was not merely to satisfy Obama that this occurred. Some right-wing spokesmen alleged that moderate Republican leaders like soon-to-be Speaker John Boehner and Sen. Leader Mitch McConnell were also opposed to the conservative Tea Party and were pleased when the Obama IRS violated its rules, misused it powers, and persecuted those trying to do legally what others had done for years. In the end, after treating many taxpayers cruelly because of their politics, Lois Lerner, the then leading figure in this campaign against the Tea Parties, was allowed to retire from the IRS with a substantial bonus. Cashill notes that over 90% of the IRS bureaucrats who contributed to campaigns, gave to the Democrats. When a reporter asked Pres. Obama about the IRS persecutions of Tea Partiers, the President replied that he had only just then heard of it from the media. Clearly, not an Obama scandal! So he said.
I am not going to recount Cashill's discussion of all the Obama scandals. One short paragraph gives a hint of the book's contents when Cashill writes that journalists unwilling to ask Obama about the anomaly of his social security number, “were not about to ask him where he was on the night the Benghazi consulate was ransacked, what he knew about the IRS war on the Tea Party, or how he came to authorize 'Fast and Furious,' let alone what role he played in protecting Hillary Clinton from prosecution or in spying on Donald Trump's campaign.”(21) Cashill discusses many more scandals including Solyndra(134), dropping charges against New Black Panther Party thugs in Philadelphia (66-68), the persecution of George Zimmerman,(85-98), and others. Cashill also rates the attempt to frame Trump by Obama's various agencies as ”the crime of the century.”(191) Not only does Cashill discuss many scandals of the Obama Administration, but he includes footnotes that will lead the interested reader to fuller revelations. Sadly, he does not include an index. Having read this book, there is little doubt that the Obama Administration was scandal ridden.
THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY? So much has happened since Obama's Presidency, I suggest that Cashill may have overlooked one major Obama scandal entirely. And this omission may be related to Cashill's most serious accusation against Obama.
On 29 and 30 May 2020 a large Black Lives Matter (hereafter, BLM) and AntiFa group protested in Lafayette Square across the street from the White House. They returned several hours later as a mob, became ever more belligerent, pushing against barricades, confronting officers, then throwing frozen water bottles at them. Stones and bricks, and using bats, sticks and other weapons, the mob pressed on. Because the projectiles were getting closer to the White House itself, because several police were injured, and a few suffered broken bones, the officers began to wonder if the mob might invade the White House. On the color scale, officers rated this a red alert, the highest. Secret Service leaders made the decision to escort Pres. Trump and his family from the living quarters of the White House to a secret underground bunker. They considered the situation that serious. To borrow the terminology of the January 6, 2021 Democrats, the Trump White House had been under siege by BLM/Antifa “insurrectionists.” About 60 officers were injured by the mobs, most not seriously, but 11 had to be taken to hospital on the night and early morning hours of 29-30 May 2020.
Saturday night the 30th of May, there were more protests in the area, this time expanding into commercial areas. Many stores were looted and burned, as were autos and there was general mayhem. This may have been a response to a tweet earlier in the week by Pres. Trump: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” But, unfortunately, there were no police to shoot the looters on Trump's watch; the rioters got away their crimes.
The following afternoon, Trump responded by having Lafayette Square and the surrounding area cleared of the “peaceful protestors” (and of the weapons they left behind). Once the enlarged security zone was safe, Trump then left the White House accompanied by Attorney General Barr and several military leaders; they walked through the now peaceful park. They crossed the street to St. John's Episcopal Church (also known as “the church of the Presidents” because every president has attended at least one service there since it was built in 1816), which the rioters the previous night had sought to torch beginning in its parish house. Trump stopped, posed for media's cameras in from of the church rectory as he lifted his arm and held up a Bible.
The major media criticized the President for violating the civil rights of the “protestors” by clearing Lafayette Park, for cowardly hunkering down in his bunker, for misusing the Bible, and just for being Trump. Even the pastor of the church that the mob had sought to burn now criticized Trump. Perhaps, she thought that was a way to win the hearts of the hate-Trump arsonists.
` However, the insurrectionists of spring 2020 had a more flagrant reply – to Trump's clearing of the mob from the park - they replied with power, political power. The anti-Trump Democratic Mayor of Washington, DC, Muriel Bowser, announced that a major street leading to the White House, 16th Street, would henceforth be know as Black Lives Matter, and those words would be painted in huge letters upon the street. And where that road came to touch the White House lawn, that space would be known as BLM Plaza! The mayor renamed an area beside the White House, which had been besieged the night before, in honor of the insurrectionists! BLM was a racist, Marxist organization. Though Mayor Bowser said she did not endorse the organization, she chose to name a prominent part of the city in honor of that organization. She seemed to care not when the mobs defaced the Lincoln Memorial and the Memorial to Americans who fought in WWII. In effect, the mayor of the US Capitol city, was declaring her sympathies with revolution.
At this moment, Pres. Trump should have sent in troops, deposed Mayor Bowser and the elected government of DC. The District is a special area created by the US Constitutions and for most of its history had no elected government. Not until 1974 was DC's first elected mayor, inaugurated, and its second electedd, Mayor Marion Barry in time was seen on video snorting coke. That did not dissuade voters, who re-elected Barry. Washington. DC was a one-party town, often voting Democratic by over 90%. Sometimes that mattered little, as when in the 1972 election for President, Dem. George McGovern carried DC and Massachusetts. Republican Richard Nixon, however, carried all the other 49 states. Sometimes it did matter. When newly elected Pres. Ronald Reagan was shot and nearly killed in March 1981, the jury to try the assassin, John Hinckley, Jr., came from the DC., so the attempted murderer of a president who also shot several others, causing brain damage to Reagan's Press Secretary, would be tried in a city that voted against Reagan by over 90%. Despite all this damage done, Hinckley was not executed, but merely sent to a mental hospital. By 2005, he was allowed to visit his parents' home, and in 2016, released. Had someone nearly killed the newly elected president Obama, do you think the attempted assassin would have merely been sent to a mental ward by a DC jury? Mayor Bowser had done little to stop riots, implicitly encouraged them, and allowed some of our most sacred monuments to be jeopardized. She should have been deposed, removed from office. The local government showed no interest in protecting private property, the White House, or even some of the nation's most treasured monuments.
It was time for Trump to ACT! He didn't. Why? And later in 2020 when Trump held the GOP National Convention on the White House lawn, delegates could overhear the Democratic mobs in the background shouting, insulting, threatening. The video of Sen. Rand Paul and his wife as they departed the conclave, revealed they were physically threatened by the Democratic mobsters, even with police beside them trying to protect them.
Trump may have thought that this helped him with voters for it exposed the mob threats of violence. No, it showed that the US under Trump's watch, refused to crack down on insurrectionary violence in numerous Democratic led cities, from Seattle and Portland, to St. Louis, and Kenosha, to Minneapolis and Madison to New York and DC. Why did Trump do nothing? Oh, he made speeches denouncing violence, but he DID nothing.
I suspect that Trump, being a reasonable man, wanted to do and sought to do a crackdown on Bowser and other insurgents. I suggest that Trump did propose action to his advisors about a crackdown, but those advisors vetoed any such action. I recently found information to confirm my suspicions. Trump and Vice President Pence did want to invoke the insurrection act and bring in the military to quell the riots. The Dept. of Justice, with its left-over left wing bureaucracy would certainly advise against restoring law and order in DC and other Democratic-run cities. Atty Gen. Barr was opposed. Both Trump's Sec. of Defense Mark Esper and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley were also opposed. -- “ Invocation of the Insurrection Act to deploy active-duty military forces was discussed and favored by Vice President Mike Pence but opposed by Attorney General Bill Barr and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. The act was last invoked in 1992 at California's request in response to the Rodney King riots. It has also been used during the Civil rights movement to enforce school integration and desegregation. . . .At a Pentagon press conference on June 3, Defense Secretary Mark Esper declared his opposition to using active-duty military to quell domestic unrest: "The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. . .” . . . In the days after the photo op, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley—who had accompanied Trump under the belief that he intended to review troops outside Lafayette Square—expressed anger to Trump over what had occurred. On June 1, Milley and Trump had a "heated discussion in the Oval Office over whether to send active-duty troops into the streets"—a demand by Trump that Milley strongly opposed. Milley publicly said he opposed invocation of the Insurrection Act . . .” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_photo_op_at_St._John%27s_Church, there are many stories re the protests during those days, some stress, the burnings, others the officers clearing the park of protestors still peaceful in late afternoon. Wiki is usually left-leaning, but its descriptions cover several days.)
But the role of the military is what is important for any discussion of Obama Administration scandals. I would suggest there was a silent coup under Obama – not only in the top echelon of the CIA (John Brennan), the FBI (James Comey, Peter Strzok, Louis Freeh, and other hate-Trumpers), and the Director of National Intelligence (James Clapper), but also in the military, so that it was now led by left-leaning big brass. Both Esper and Milley were opposed to invoking the insurrection act in June 2020, yet it had been invoked during the Rodney King riots and civil rights protests. Getting the President's family to the White House bunker did not occur on those previous occasions. This was worse! Yet the military brass did not want to support Trump in a crack down. The creeping political correctness, the seeping leftism had now tarnished the military brass. And this corrupt leftism was visible in other ways. The Health Departments in many cities and states were urging lock downs, wearing masks, and social distancing (staying 6 feet away from other people). Yet, many of these same government health authorities, while urging lockdowns because of the Wuhan virus, also declared it was ok to participated in protests concerning the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020, These health officials proved themselves more politicians than health advocates, more ideologues than scientists. More and more commissars seemed to inhabit governmental bureaucracies.
In October 2020 Trump ordered the US forces to get out of Syria, where we had been involved in a long-running rebellion against the Soviet-backed government of Bashar al-Assad. Apparently, one of our allies in this anti-Assad coalition was the Islamic extremist ISIS. Seemingly, forging together revolutionary coalitions, like politics generally, can make strange bedfellows. The point is, the US military informed Trump that we had withdrawn the American troops from Syria. This was a lie – we had not withdrawn! (warontherocks.com 2020/10) If this report be true, if the military does not obey the elected Commander in Chief, who does it obey? Is it still the American military, or is it a military under some American war-lords, in defiance of the Constitution?
Also in 2020, along with its indoctrinations in schools, universities, and corporations, the media revealed that the anti-white, racist, Critical Race Theory was being taught inside the military! Clearly, this could not have happened without the support of higher ranking officers. When CRT became an open issue toward the end of his term, Trump banned it. But it had already been in place! The left-wing infiltration of the leadership of the US military – obvious after the appointments by the new President Biden in 2021 of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III, and one of Speaker Pelosi's favorite military men, Lt. General Russel Honore, - these left-wing leaders had already had long, successful careers in the military. Perhaps, if the FBI had not tricked Gen. Flynn at the onset of the Trump Administration, perhaps Trump could have received informed background about the military, and welcomed better advice on what to do. But the Deep State had tricked Flynn and had allowed DoJ Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein to appoint Robert Mueller with vast powers and purse to pursue the Russian hoax smear and keep the Trump Administration on the defensive for years. So I contend that one of the most important, but overlooked aspects of the Obama Administration was the installation of left wingers into power in the most important agencies of the US Government.
Americans generally ignore the political side of the military. There have been various influences on the US military from the beginning, and the military has influenced the government. Our first President was General Washington, and many generals followed him in that post. My point here is not to present the long history of the US government and military. I will note some interesting cases of more recent vintage. This year Public Broadcasting telecast a 5-hour Masterpiece Theatre program, “Atlantic Crossing.” It concerns WWII and Norway. Strangely, the most common Norwegian word in the US at that time was never once mentioned in the 5-hour saga – 'Quisling.' The attractive Crown Princess Martha and her family had escaped her German occupied homeland and arrived in Washington, DC. The slow, soap drama concerns, can she use her charms in a years-long flirtation with American President Franklin Roosevelt to benefit Norway? In the process, she has marital problems with her husband Olav, then stationed in England. There are many scenes in the White House, and a minor character, who then resided there, makes a rare appearance on TV, Harry Hopkins.
Hopkins lived in the White House because he was a major advisor to FDR and one of the most influential men in America. Gen. Marshall once said in advising the President, he was to present the American view, and Hopkins the Soviet position. Diana West in her American Betrayal (pp.142, 183-84) asserts that Hopkins may have been the most powerful figure after FDR. She also blames Hopkins for permitting the US to send uranium to the USSR as part of Lend Lease, and believes that under Hopkins' Lend Lease rules, the Soviets had higher priority than the needs of American troops. She gives other examples of his actions to conclude that Hopkins was a traitor. Hopkins also chose the American military officials to be sent to Moscow to oversee US Lend Lease supplies. Before the war Col. Faymonville had been stationed in Moscow and earned the suspicious title “the Red Colonel,” and was ordered back to the States. But Hopkins got him re-assigned to handle Lend Lease in Moscow during the war. West says they were both working for the Soviets. In his MA Thesis, Steven M. Thompson provided a more sympathetic interpretation of Faymonville, “The Bolshevik? The Faymonville Controversy in the 1930s and 1940s.”(Texas State U. - San Marcos, 2012, p. 66 and conclusion.) Surely, Faymonville would not have power while in Moscow to arrange for shipments from the US of uranium to the USSR. Hopkins would have the power to override the prohibition on such shipments established by Manhattan Project (A-bomb) leader, Major Gen. Leslie Groves. Or were both Faymonville and Hopkins merely following FDR's policies?
About the same time in another war theater, America's military envoy to the Republic of China detested Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek, and looked more favorably on the “agrarian reformer” Mao Zedong. After Japan surrendered, Truman sent Gen. Marshall to oversee things in China, and he demanded that Chiang form a coalition government with Mao if the US were to provide any aid. Chiang rejected the coalition with the Communists. The US cut off military aid to Chiang during much of the civil war that ensued following Japan's surrender ending WWII. While the Soviets supplied Mao with captured weapons, Chiang was on his own. The Nationalist cause began to shrink and then sink as red covered more of the map of China. Some in the American government had been so disappointed with Chiang, that we had at least two plots to assassinate the Nationalist leader.( https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/03/assassinating-chiang-kai-shek-china-taiwan-japan-world-war-2/ , or see my amazon 2 star review of Rana Mitter's, Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945) Without American aid, the balance shifted so much so that Mao in a speech in Beijing in 1949 was able to proclaim the establishment of the Peoples' Republic of China..
Herbert Aptheker had been an officer in an artillery unit with Black troops. They fought in Europe, successfully. Before joining the army, Aptheker had earned a Ph. D. from Columbia U. in history, and after the war, he had an office in the Pentagon to write American military history. Also before the war, he had joined the Communist Party, USA, and wrote articles in party publications. On 25 June 1950 North Korea invaded its southern neighbor, and despite earlier US policy statements declaring South Korea to be outside of our defense perimeter, Pres. Truman decided to send American troops to help defend the invaded South. In August 1950, two months following the North's invasion, an article appeared written by Aptheker in which he praised the peoples' democratic accomplishments of North Korea. Though officially the US was not at war with Norht Korea, it was called a police action and the UN approved the intervention of the US and several allies, still American forces were fighting in battles against Nort Korea (and later Chinese “volunteers”). It does not seem too surprising that Aptheker lost his commission with the army, but accomplished in a bureaucratic manner; he failed to fill out some forms. A decade later, he was often referred to in the media as the leading theoretician of the American Communist Party. In the early 1970s as a young research assistant to Aptheker, Anthony Flood asked his boss about attitudes during WWII. Aptheker acknowledged that many in the army knew he was a Communist, but “we were fashionable then.” Communists became much less fashionable after WWII with the Cold War and then the hot war in Korea.
In 1953 Irving Peress received a promotion in rank in the army, and Sen. Joseph McCarthy led an inquiry into who promoted Peress, an army dentist and alleged Communist, serving at at Fort Kilmer, New Jersey. There was some suspicion at this base that secret radar information had been relayed to the Soviets. This became part of the Army-McCarthy hearings that were nationally televised (a rare event when there were only 3 networks). During the Cold War, the American draft system inducted many Americans, inducting a wide spectrum of political, religious, and other views. Though there were forms inquiring about membership in the KKK and the Communist Party, some members of these tiny groups might still be recruited, but if they were open about their views and memberships, it is unlikely they would be promoted. By the 1950s left-wing influence in the military was reduced if not practically erased.
One reason Republican Dwight Eisenhower won the election of 1952: he pledged to end the war in Korea. Once President, Eisenhower kept his word and worked for the end of fighting. It was not easy, for officially we were there as part of the UN force, part of a police action.; it took some time, and a peace treaty was never signed – but a cease fire armistice was agreed to on 27 July 1953 (Ike was inaugurated in January). This armistice has continued for about 70 years. The Cold War against communist expansion continued on other fronts with the US usually supporting conservative regimes against radical rebels. The New Year's 1959 rebel victory brought Fidel Castro to power in nearby Cuba, and soon many Cubans were fleeing their island to come to the US. Under Ike, a plan to use some of the anti-Castro exiles in an invasion of Cuba was prepared. (The US had already essentially overthrown the leftist government in Guatemala in 1954 with little trouble or outcry. Cuba, he concluded, should be just as easy.)
The new plan to oust Castro was prepared by the CIA for spring 1961, and the planners assumed the man in charge would be Richard Nixon, for they believed that the Vice President would defeat his Democratic opponent in the November 1960 election. However, when Nixon lost, the CIA planners took their plan to the new president, John Kennedy inaugurated 20 January 1961. JFK approved it, as the CIA explained it to him.
I was listening to the radio that spring day, not some rock and roll station, but WWL, a 50,000 watt, clear-channel station, owned by Loyola U. of the South, a Jesuit institution, and an affiliate to the CBS network. Breaking news reports burst on the airwaves about the uprising then occurring in Cuba. Some had heard that Raul Castro, brother of Fidel, had been killed by the freedom fighters. Some anti-Castro exiles may have landed on the island to aid the uprising. The people of Cuba had risen against Castro's Communist regime. Fighting on-going. I do not recall all the details of the 17 April 1961 broadcast, but the station and network I trusted most – was reporting nothing but propaganda and lies. This was probably to prepare us for the next step in the CIA's plans.
There was a battle going on – in the Bay of Pigs and in Washington. The CIA created invasion force of Cuban exiles had landed in the Bay if Pigs area, where the terrain made it difficult to make quick headway. But it was also difficult for Castro's forces to clear them out. According to some, the reason that area was chosen was to land anti-Castro troops, hold a short time, then fly in from Florida some anti-Castro politicians who would announce Castro defeated and in retreat, declare that they are the new, legitimate government, and request American military aid in restoring law, order, and anti-Communism on the island. The Castro Communist threat to the hemisphere would be over.
However, the entire plan depended upon American help in the early stages. The President may not have been informed that this was a crucial part of the plan. The CIA now demanded immediate air support to help its exile army in the Bay of Pigs. Pres. Kennedy and Defense Sec. McNamara both said NO. The CIA, Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay and other military leaders said YES. Kennedy made the final decision – no air support. Without such aid, the Castro forces killed or captured the invasion force of exiles. Kennedy made deals for the return of the prisoners, and Castro claimed a major victory. Kennedy believed he had been deceived by the CIA concerning this invasion, only a few months after his inauguration. He vowed to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces. Meanwhile, anti-Castro Cubans and many right-wing Americans felt betrayed by a weak, “pro-communist” Kennedy.
In October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, some of the same fissures in the American government reappeared. While Pres. Kennedy and Sec. McNamara approved the “quarantine” (blockade) against Castro's Cuba, Air Force Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Curtis LeMay was less enthusiastic. Quarantine or not, Le May wanted to invade and destroy the missile sites on Cuba.
In September 1960 with six others, I was arrested in the first lunch counter sit-in in New Orleans. A new organization in the city, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) had trained some of us who wanted to act directly against legal segregation, while other, older organizations were opposed. After we made page-1 news, I moved from my parents' home, thinking it would be easier on them, but they continued to receive nasty phone calls and threats in the middle of the night. My dad borrowed a pistol and bullets to protect the home. I moved in with another civil rights worker, and we received no such calls as we could not afford a phone. My uncle Jim, to restore honor to the family, sent $20 to George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party. That was a nice sum in 1960, the equivalent of $180 today. My uncle and I certainly did not agree on current events, but families somehow manage to be civil with each other. Whatever his sympathies during WWII, he did his job on ships sending goods and weapons to the Allies, on countless Atlantic crossings, sometimes on newly minted cement ships. One German torpedo and those would have sunk like a ton of cement. Jim was a seaman, an engineer on a ship, but sometimes took off to stay with his wife and work in the city driving a taxi. He would visit my parents and we would talk. His opening to me was, “How are the burr heads doing?” This always caught me off guard, but we talked generally. At one point he brought up the recent event with Jackie Kennedy; she had lost a baby. Jim said, “You know what happened? They killed it because it was Black.” And he laughed. I did not share his sense of humor. As time went on, he would say, “That Bobby! They're going to get that Bobby.” Attorney General Robert Kennedy was involved in various desegregation disputes, and I assumed that was what he was referring to.
In 1963 a US Marine, who had defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, returned to his native New Orleans. He tried to establish a pro-Castro chapter of the national Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and he was interviewed for an hour on WDSU's public service program one summer afternoon. His appeal for peace with Castro was undermined when suddenly another guest appeared on the program, an anti-Castro activist who then informed the radio audience that Oswald had defected to the USSR and was thus a Communist and no good American should listen to him.
Few at that moment were aware that the pro-Castro FPCC leaflets were printed in the offices of Guy Banister. Banister, former FBI leader in Chicago, former acting Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Dept, was now a detective who paid young people to spy on possible left-wing activities in NO. Banister believed that integration was part of the Communist effort to divide and destroy America, and wanted information on suspected integration efforts. He also had dealings with pilot David Ferrie, who had been in charge of a NO chapter of the Civil Air Patrol unit when Oswald was a teen and a member. Ferrie, active with the anti-Castro Cubans, had allegedly flown to Cuba on anti-Castro missions. He also worked for local Mafia boss, Carlos Marcello. Marcello was vehemently anti-Kennedy because of Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy's attempts to destroy the Mafia. In the early 1960s RFK had Marcello arrested and deported, illegally, to Central America to be released into a jungle where he nearly died. Some say Ferrie flew him back into the US.
The so-called Communist Oswald was connected to strongly anti-communist, anti-Kennedy people in New Orleans. Therefore, I should not be surprised if the dispute over the father of Sen. Ted Cruz, Rafael Cruz, who came to the US as an anti-Castro refugee, that he would be seen handing out pro-Castro leaflets along with Oswald. But if the leafleteer in the video distributing FPCC flyers with Oswald is Rafael Cruz, there is no contradiction for they were both anti-Communists and anti Castro. A history professor. Matthew Kurtz claims he saw anti-Castro and anti-Communist Guy Banister AND Lee Oswald together giving right-wing presentations at LSUNO (now, the Univ. of New Orleans) on two occasions there in the summer of 1963. North of NO, across Lake Pontchartrain, there was a training camp developed, apparently for another CIA invasion of Cuba. In the fall of 1963, the FBI raided this camp, trying to prevent another Bay of Pigs. According to various accounts, including a Newsmax series, Oswald was part of this anti-Castro, preparation for a new invasion of Cuba. When this training camp was raided and shut down by the Feds, by the Kennedys, one can assume resentment grew more intense.
I have never been to Dallas, but I distrust the New York Times, Dan Rather, the Warren Report, and the whole list of supporters of the official line on the murder of JFK. Decades later, when Oliver Stone was preparing to open his epic film on the topic, “J. F. K.”, the NYT, the voice of the establishment, printed and promoted Tom Wicker's assault on the movie. I have no proof of details, but am convinced that the “Deep State” killed John Kennedy in Dallas in November 1963. While still president in 1960, Ike asserted that the new leader of independent Congo, Patrice Lumumba, should be eliminated. The CIA had two plots to do so, but in the end simply supplied his murderers with the weapons to do so when they killed Lumumba, 17 July 1961. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrice_Lumumba scroll down to American involvement) I certainly do not mean that the US is alone in employing assassins, but I think it foolish to believe that we are exempt from such doings.
It may have been around Christmas of 1963 when Uncle Jim came by to see my folks. At some point, he said to me, “What did I tell you? What did I tell you, huh?” I had no idea what he was talking about. “Didn't I tell you they were going to get him?” Then it hit me – Dallas! I gasped. This time, rather than ignore him, I replied, “You said they were after Bobby.” “Well, they got the other one instead.” Finally I asked, “Who is this 'they' you keep talking about?” “The mob out in the parish.” Carlos Marcello was the NO mob leader and he owned places in the adjoining up-river county, Jefferson Parish. This was a month or so after Dallas, and no one was talking about any Marcello involvement in the Kennedy assassination. I simply rolled my eyes and left the room. Jim had little formal education. The training he got for shipping was on the job. My dad finished 3rd grade, but would fudge and tell people he finished the 5th. I had an MA from Tulane University when far fewer attended university. Uncle Jim seemed like my 'crazy' uncle. When he made his remark about the Mafia, I had no idea that the American intelligence groups had worked with the American Mafia to ease the American invasion of Mussolini's Sicily during WWII. Nor was I aware of more recent cooperation between the Mafia and the FBI and CIA in plots to assassinate Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. Now that I am old, I regret not taking Uncle Jim seriously, listening carefully to his stories. I do not mean that I should have adoped his politics, but still, I might have learned a lot. Unfortunately, arrogance can lead to the worst kind of ignorance, the kind when you think you know it all, when you know nothing of the reality.
Not since the days of JFK had relations between a president and the Deep State been so fractured as during the presidency of Donald Trump. At the Helsinki conference of July 2018, Trump said he believed Putin rather then US Intel agencies concerning alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election. Indeed, at the outset of his Presidency, Democratic Sen. Minority Leader Charles Schumer made a ominous remark: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. “So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he's [Trump's] being really dumb to do this.”(Mallory Shelbourne, The Hill, 1/3/17)
President Trump announced he would release all the files on the John Kennedy assassination in October 2017, but he failed to do so. He released some, but not all. I assume the still hidden files are not meant to protect Fidel. I suspect Trump was pressured by the Deep State to protect ITS interests. A sad day when Trump backed down on this attempt to be transparent nearly 60 years after the assassination in Dallas. I guess it is still too sensitive, - but too sensitive to whom? And the Deep State is no friend of Trump's.
In March 1968 President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek re-election. His Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, a liberal from Minnesota, received Administration support for the Democratic nomination. Because of the unpopular war in Vietnam, two challengers joined the race for that nomination, another liberal from Minnesota, Sen. Eugene McCarthy, and now Sen. Robert Kennedy of New York. Both were critical of the war. The three competitors vied in those states which held popular primaries, but no one was knocked out of the race. The final primary was California, and there Kennedy won a victory over McCarthy. At a hotel to celebrate with his supporters, Kennedy decided to visit the crowded hotel kitchen where shots were suddenly fired and Bobby was killed by a young man. Another man heard the shooter say why he did it. The observer told a tv camera in disbelief, the shooter said, “He did it for his country!” The Kennedy fan, could not comprehend the words of the assassin as he looked at the TV news camera. What the fan failed to understand is that the young man was born a Palestinian. At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Mayor Daley's police fought protestors, and Humphrey received the nomination.
Richard Nixon, who had lost a narrow (some say stolen) election to John Kennedy in 1960, and a more crushing defeat for the Governorship of California in 1962, still seemed like the safest, moderate choice for the GOP following Goldwater's big loss to LBJ in 1964. But there was a 3rd choice on the ballot in many states. Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, nominally a Democrat, had formed the American Independent Party. When Wallace was inaugurated governor in 1963 he declared he was for “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” As his vice-presidential running mate, he chose retired Gen. Curtis LeMay. LeMay was born in Ohio, and was known as a hero in WWII and he had been Air Force Chief of Staff until 1965. Yet he agreed to run with Wallace. However, while Wallace had asserted, that once in office, if we do not win the war in Vietnam in 90 days, then he pledged to withdraw immediately. LeMay seemed to have other views, mainly using nuclear weapons to win, bombing them back to the stone age if necessary. Many Americans were surprised by LeMay joining the Wallace ticket. My point is military men do have political views, and LeMay certainly did. Nixon won a rather close race, but Wallace received 13% of the popular vote, and more electoral votes than any third party candidate since 1912. The American military has had liberals, conservatives, Communists, and those who agree with LeMay.
However, by the time of the Trump presidency, many, if not most, of the Deep State had swung Left. We know now of FBI leaders determined to prevent Trump's elections in 2016, and/or spike his administration if somehow he should win. We know now of how the FBI tricked Gen. Flynn into committing the “crime” of lying to the FBI to neutralize him at the onset of Trump's Administration. (And the loss of Flynn's informed advice, I view as a major factor in Trump's failure).
Basically, Cashill is right. The Obama Administration committed the crime of the century when they met: Obama, Biden, Susan Rice, and others to subvert and obstruct Trump in every way, create the Russian collusion hoax, and a few years later, work with elite billionaires to buy, steal, and subvert our election process. If their “fortification” of our democracy, if their revised election “regulations” and laws are not repealed, we will likely hereafter nevere have a fair election again. Furthermore, many of these revisions were not changes in the laws of the states, but regulations imposed, often in defiance of the state laws. If these “laws” and regulations are not overturned, we will become a 1-party dictatorship, the end of free speech, the end of equal rights and equal opportunity, and some form of socialist tyranny.
It is noteworthy that the Deep State did not physically assassinate Trump. It sought to smear him as few have been smeared, and the big tech corporations, like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, could even hide the revelations of the Biden family's corruption in Ukraine and in China simply by deleting the New York Post story from social media several days before the official election. Worse, Zuckerber of FaceBook has been revealed to have spent huge sums in Wisconsin (and probably other states with large city Democratic Party machines) to make cozy deals with election officials to allow Democratic Party “non-partisan” front groups to take over the handling of absentee ballots, placing of drop boxes, daily count of absentee return ballots, and the right to cure such ballots. Just as George Soros invested millions to elect “get-out-of-jail-free” District Attorneys and Atty. Generals, now all of Big Tech, big corporations, the Deep State, big media, were all on board to defeat Trump, by hook or by crook, “to fortify democracy.” (Molly Ball, “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election”,Time Magazine, 4 Feb. 2021)
Perhaps, this time the Deep State was so confidant it could control the election of 2020, and prevent the re-election of Trump, that they saw no need for an assassination – this time. So they did not assassinate Trump. Instead, in 2020 they assassinated the American election process. If this billionaire-dominated new election system continues, in alliance with the Democrats, the academedia complex, the new purged military and intel comlex, then the plot begun in Obama's last days in office will have succeeded in crushing the freest, most innovative, wealthiest, fairest major nation ever to exist. Their plot would be more than the crime of the century, it will be the crime of all times.
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