| How corrupt are the Democrats with the Mormon Mafia/CIA?
WRITTEN BY STEVE DAVIS WITH PATRICK MARTIN SUBMITED BY DOUG WALLACE
For many years I have warned members of the Mormon Church about secret operations the CIA uses through foreign returned LDS missionaries in controlling every day life throughout the world. The only location not under the control of the Mormon Mafia is the US general public. Americans still believe Mormons are a cult. Since the days of Brigham Young and the announced “Utah War” in 1857 after Albert Pike and the Freemasons (including Heber C. Kimball and BYoung) murdered Mormon Apostle Parley P. Pratt near Fort Smith, Arkansas (9/11/1857 Mountain Massacre beginning event) the One World Order group has (money-changers) failed to destroy the US of A. The following special question given to the three leading Democrat candidates in New Hampshire, plus a recent exposed Democrat letter reflect how corrupt politics has become: Steve Davis A warning to the American people: “Thinking the unthinkable” at the Democratic presidential debate One exchange during Saturday’s debate among the Democratic presidential candidates in New Hampshire underscores the turn by the US ruling elite and its major political agencies—the Democratic and Republican parties and the media—to unfettered militarism and away from any genuine commitment to democracy.
ABC News anchorman Charles Gibson asked a question which he called “the central one in my mind on nuclear terrorism.” He continued:
“The next president of the United States may have to deal with a nuclear attack on an American city. I’ve read a lot about this in recent days. The best nuclear experts in the world say there’s a 30 percent chance in the next 10 years. Some estimates are higher. Graham Allison, at Harvard, says it’s over 50 percent. Senator Sam Nunn, in 2005, who knows a lot about this, posed two questions that stick in my mind. And I want to put them to you here. On the day after a nuclear weapon goes off in an American city, what would we wish we had done to prevent it? And what will we actually do on the day after?”
The “probability” estimates cited by Gibson have zero scientific credibility, since they come from “experts” associated with the US military/intelligence apparatus, who have a professional interest in terrorizing the American people with the prospect of nuclear annihilation in order to intimidate opponents of American military aggression around the world. But none of the Democratic candidates challenged Gibson for echoing the scare-mongering tactics of the Bush administration.
Former senator John Edwards embraced Gibson’s premise, saying, “In the short term, we’re faced with very, very serious threats about the possibility of these nuclear weapons getting in the hands of a terrorist group or somebody who wants to attack the United States of America. The first thing is we have to immediately find out who’s responsible and go after them. And that is the responsibility of the president of the United States. Because if someone has attacked us with a nuclear weapon, it means they have nuclear technology, it means they could have gotten another nuclear weapon into the United States that we’re unaware of. We have to find these people immediately and use every tool available to us to stop them.”
Senator Barack Obama regularly denounces the use of the 9/11 attacks by the Bush administration and the Republican presidential candidates to spread fear and win votes, but he likewise accepted the question as legitimate and sought to demonstrate his willingness to use force. Obama faced media criticism last summer when he failed to promise instant retaliation when asked a similar question during a debate.
“I think this is the most significant foreign policy issue that we confront,” he said—an extraordinary statement given the hundreds of thousands of lives destroyed by the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq.
He continued: “We would obviously have to retaliate against anybody who struck American soil, whether it was nuclear or not. It would be a much more profound issue if it were nuclear weapons.”
Gibson then turned to Senator Hillary Clinton, reminding her that it would be a terrorist group, not an identifiable state, responsible for the hypothetical nuclear attack. Clinton first criticized the performance of the Bush administration in such areas as port security, and then argued, “The stateless terrorists will operate from somewhere. I mean, part of our message has to be there is no safe haven. If we can demonstrate that the people responsible for planning the nuclear attack on our country may not themselves be in a government or associated with a state, but have a haven within one, then every state in the world must know we will retaliate against those states.”
Citing the Cold War doctrine of nuclear deterrence, she concluded, “We have to make it clear to those states that would give safe haven to stateless terrorists that would launch a nuclear attack against America that they would also face a very heavy retaliation.”
It is notable that not one of the three leading Democratic candidates made reference to the measures that would be required to deal with the massive human cost of a nuclear attack. In this, they follow the lead of the Bush administration, which, while hyping the threat of terrorism incessantly, has done little or nothing in the way of practical preparation to deal with the possible consequences—as the dismal response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to Hurricane Katrina demonstrated.
There is a more fundamental issue, however, than the efforts of the Democrats to take up the mantle of the “war on terror.” That issue is what the very posing of the question says about the state of American democracy.
Ever since the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration and the main repressive agencies of the federal government—the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI—have been developing plans for the suspension of constitutional rule and the establishment of an executive branch dictatorship.
Nearly six years ago it was revealed that the Bush administration had assigned hundreds of federal officials to ensure “continuity of government” in the event of a terrorist attack on Washington DC. This was to be an openly dictatorial regime, drawn solely from the executive branch. No judges or elected legislators were to be included in the “shadow government,” and top legislators were not even aware of its existence.
In the years since, a definite modus operandi has emerged. Whenever the Bush administration feels under siege politically, the threat of terrorism is used to spread fear and anxiety among the American people, distract them from the deepening social and economic crisis of the capitalist system, and intimidate political opponents of the administration’s program of endless war.
In the spring and summer of 2004, with Bush trailing in opinion polls, there were numerous suggestions originating in the White House and the military-intelligence apparatus that the presidential election might have to be postponed in the event of a new terrorist atrocity. Bush administration officials told the press, referring to such an attack, “It’s going to happen.”
The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice even began investigating the legal basis for suspending or postponing the November vote. Ultimately, the listless campaign of the pro-war Democratic candidate John Kerry provided so weak a challenge to Bush that such measures were unnecessary.
The 2004 election was only one occasion in which such police-state preparations came to light. They have been ongoing throughout the entire course of the Bush administration. They originated well before 9/11, within weeks of Bush’s installation in the White House after the Supreme Court intervention in the 2000 presidential election.
These measures include the establishment of a vast apparatus of domestic spying and eavesdropping, first broached to several domestic telecommunications companies in early 2001; the passage of the Patriot Act; the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security; the creation of the Northern Command, the first-ever Pentagon command controlling all troops in the continental US; the creation of a worldwide network of CIA-run detention camps; and a series of “counter-terror” exercises in which federal civilian and military authorities simulated the imposition of a state of emergency in the United States.
In August 2005, the Washington Post revealed that the US military had developed plans for imposing martial law on cities, regions or the entire country in response to a terrorist attack. The existence of the plans was made known to the Post’s senior military correspondent at the direction of the White House and Pentagon.
The planning envisioned as many as 15 different scenarios in which “the military will have to take charge in some situations, especially when dealing with mass-casualty attacks that could quickly overwhelm civilian resources.” The Post cited military statements that such a declaration of martial law “probably would be temporary.”
The World Socialist Web Site observed at the time (“Pentagon devising scenarios for martial law in US”): “The anti-terrorism scare has a propaganda purpose: to manipulate the American people and induce the public to accept drastic inroads against democratic rights. As the Pentagon planning suggests, the American working class faces the danger of some form of military-police dictatorship in the United States.”
While he made no mention of it in framing his question about nuclear terrorism, Charles Gibson is undoubtedly well aware of these preparations for military rule. So are the presidential candidates who gave answers emphasizing their willingness to use military force—and implicitly sanctioning whatever restrictions would be deemed necessary on democratic rights at home.
The leadership of the Democratic Party has given one demonstration after another over the past decade that it is hostile to any struggle to defend democratic rights—even when, as in the Florida election crisis of 2000, its own access to power and privilege was directly affected. Saturday’s debate in New Hampshire was a further demonstration of this fundamental political fact.
Declassified letter exposes Democratic Party complicity in CIA torture Last week, January 2, 2008, the CIA declassified a February 2003 letter from Democratic Representative Jane Harman of California discussing the planned destruction of videotapes depicting the interrogation and torture of prisoners held by the CIA.
Harman requested that the CIA release the letter in order to show her supposed criticism of the agency’s plans to destroy the evidence. In a statement on the letter, Harman said that it “makes clear my concern about possible destruction of any tapes.” In fact, the letter only underscores the fact that the Democratic Party was aware of and supported the CIA’s secret policy of torture.
Democrats knew of plans to destroy evidence of interrogations, but made no serious attempt to stop it or inform the American people. Indeed, Harman’s “concern” was in effect an indication to the CIA that the Democrats would not challenge a decision to destroy the tapes and would not expose the agency if it did so.
The videotapes, involving hundreds of hours of interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, were secretly destroyed in November 2005. Their destruction was only publicly disclosed last month, though several Democrats had been made aware of the action at least a year ago.
Perhaps the most significant section of the three-paragraph letter is that dealing with the CIA’s interrogation policy, not the plans for destroying the tapes. Harman made clear that she supported the program of “enhanced interrogation,” which included the use of the notorious torture technique of waterboarding. The letter amounted to a green light for the continuation of the program, which was kept secret from the American people for several more years.
In the letter, addressed to CIA General Counsel Scott Muller, Harman discusses a briefing given to a few leading Democratic and Republican congressmen the week before. She says that the briefing “brought home to me the difficult challenges faced by the Central Intelligence Agency in the current threat environment. I realize we are at a time when the balance between security and liberty must be constantly evaluated and recalibrated in order to protect our nation and its people from catastrophic terrorist attack...”
Harman reported that at the hearing, Muller “assured us that the [redacted] approved by the Attorney General have been subject to an extensive review by lawyers at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Justice and the National Security Council and found to be within the law.”
Harman, who is a graduate of Harvard Law School, indicated no disagreement with these legal findings, even though the methods employed by the CIA are clear violations of anti-torture statutes and international treaties. She merely questioned whether or not what she later calls “enhanced techniques” were consistent with US policy and whether or not they had been “authorized and approved by the President.”
Many of the documents arguing for the legality of torture have never been released to the public. However, one such document was leaked to the public—the infamous August 2002 “torture memo,” prepared by Justice Department lawyers—which argued that the president has the constitutional right to torture as part of his war powers. This memo presumably formed part of the legal rationale presented by the CIA to Harman and others to justify the torture methods.
Harman’s acceptance of the legal rationale for torture was in line with the reaction of the entire Democratic Party to the antidemocratic policies implemented by the White House, using the “war on terror” and the attacks of September 11 as a pretext.
According to a Washington Post article published last month, in 2002 four congressional leaders, including the current speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, another Democrat from California, were “given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators devised to try to make the prisoners talk.”
The meeting with Harman in February 2003 evidently also included a discussion of the CIA’s plans to destroy the tapes. Harman wrote to Muller, “You discussed the fact that there is a videotape of Abu Zubaydah following his capture that will be destroyed after the Inspector General finishes his inquiry. I would urge the Agency to reconsider that plan.”
Harman does not suggest that the tapes should be preserved because they depict illegal activity and therefore constitute evidence of a crime. She also does not oppose the Bush administration’s determination that the destruction of the tapes would be legal. Rather, she suggests, “The videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the future. The fact of destruction would reflect badly on the Agency,” she concludes. In other words, Harman’s concern was largely one of public relations.
The references to an inquiry by the CIA inspector general apparently refers to an examination, carried out by inspector general John Helgerson, into the CIA’s interrogation techniques. The inquiry was completed in the spring of 2004, but there were no public references to it until November 2005. It was reportedly critical of the “enhanced interrogation” techniques.
On November 9, 2005, the New York Times published an article citing officials familiar with the report. According to the Times, the officials “said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.”
The Times exposure of the Inspector General report is another possible motivating factor behind the CIA’s decision to go ahead and destroy the tapes in November 2005. That same month, other reports exposed for the first time the existence of the CIA network of secret prisons. The government was also being pressed in several court cases to turn over all evidence and records of interrogation.
The role of the Democrats in supporting and helping cover up the CIA’s torture program and the subsequent destruction of videotapes ensures that any Congressional investigation will be a whitewash. It appears increasingly likely that Democrats will scale down Congressional inquiries on the grounds that the Justice Department has launched its own criminal investigation.
Last week, Democrats moved quickly to praise an announcement by Attorney General Michael Mukasey that a criminal investigation will begin. Mukasey’s selection of John Durham, a deputy US attorney from Connecticut, has been portrayed in the media and by Democrats as a move to give the investigation greater independence. This is false. Durham’s work will be subordinate to and filtered by the Justice Department, which means the Bush administration. It will have no “independence” from those who are deeply complicit in the crime that is supposedly under investigation.
The attitude of sections of the liberal establishment was expressed in an editorial in the Los Angeles Times on January 4. The Times is the principal newspaper in California—the home state of both Harman and Pelosi.
The editors wrote that Mukasey “has displayed a commendable sensitivity to appearances” by appointing Durham to lead the criminal investigation. The newspaper said that congressmen “shouldn’t complicate his assignment by forcing key figures in the criminal investigation to testify on Capitol Hill—at least for now.”
Meanwhile, the Justice Department investigation will likely be dragged out for an extended period of time and possibly through the end of the Bush administration’s term of office.
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