The USA in the Time of Jimmy Carter
1977-1981
By Mike Donovan
(Based on a True Story)
Jimmy Carter's Top Foreign Policy Advisor
“ I will never lie to you” – Annapolis Naval Academy -Peanut farmer - The Iran Hostage Crisis -VP Walter Mondale of Minnesota – The born again Christian Sunday School teacher as president – USS Pomfret - First President from the deep South since Zachary Taylor. – Baptist – Sumter County – Billy Beer –Nobel Peace Prize for Camp David Accords – The first USA president born in a hospital - Not a lawyer! - Swears that he saw a UFO – Decent basketball player – Loved classical music - “Thank You Chevy!”
JEC Defeated President Ford in a spirited of 76 close race. The final was 297 to 241. Third party candidate Eugene McCarthy won no electoral votes as the flag-bearer of the Independent Party.
“Why Not the Best?”
Well …
Jimmy Carter turned millions of liberals into conservatives by letting the United States get pushed around all over the world. The number one issue was of course the Iran Hostage Crisis. When the words Hostage Crisis” makes capital first letters in the history books, you know it was bad. The IHC overshadowed all of Carter's efforts with the bad economy and his positive role in reducing tensions in the Middle East. The 444 days of “America Held Hostage” also negated any great points he supposedly scored for returning integrity to the office.
Popular vote 1976----------------------------------Carter D) 40,276,000
Ford R) 38,532,000
McCarthy I) 756,000
Bake MacBride L) 173,000
January 1977, he’s here! The plain man from Plains – The Jacksonian ‘regular guy’ who wears flannel shirts around the White House, disdains limos and walks down Pennsylvania Ave on inauguration day daring the assassins to do their worst because he knows how safe he is by his popularity. I was 21 when he took office. I did not like either candidate and chose not to vote. The choice was not special. It was two powerful conservative bores, one pretending to be a liberal when it was convenient the other pretending to be a conservative when it was convenient. It was the battle of the equivocating bores.
Carter’s cabinet;
Secretary of State------------Cyrus Vance—1977-1980
Edmund Muskie-1980-1981
Secretary of Defense--------Harold Brown—1977-1981
Sec. of Treasury---W. Michael Blumenthal—1977-1979
G. William Miller-----------1978-1981
Att. General--------Griffin B. Bell--------------1977-1979
Benjamin R. Civiletti------1979-1981
National Security Advisor, --------- Zbiginieu Brezhinski
BIO;
James Earl Carter Junior, who later ran for president as “Jimmy” was born on October 1, 1924 in Plains Georgia, a town of less than 700 people.
Carter claimed at times to have grown up in genuine all-American poverty in the Deep South. True there was no indoor plumbing or electricity at the Carter homestead. But a look at his boyhood house shows a big comfortable building, at least average for local 1924 standards. Carter came of age during the Great Depression and in a highly segregated society. By all accounts, including his own, Jimmy and his family were, on the bell curve of the time and place, the courageous liberals of the neighborhood when it came to racial attitudes. They were heroic in their treatment of blacks in a racist atmosphere, much like several other President family backgrounds, including Reagan.
In high school Carter was a joiner and a competitive young man, making the wrestling team and playing for the basketball squad. He played for the Plains High School Buffaloes, a losing team that had to play all its games on the road after a fire destroyed the gym. Carter was known as a fair shooter and a real scrapper, but he was always very small and that hurt him on the court. Some accounts of his life declare him to have been a star basketball player in high school, but I disagree with that from what I've read.
But the basketball stuff is very relevant. He took average ability and made himself a quality player by being physically tenacious. Jimmy Carter was never a pacifist like he sometimes claimed to be and his admirers claimed too. That supposedly explained his determination not to use US military force. I say that your personal attributes carry over into your political, and Carter was a feisty competitor. The high school background proves it. I don't buy the Christlike image of him after office just because he helps build a house in a poor neighborhood with a hammer and nails. He still takes vicious shots at Republicans every time he can get a microphone to listen to him. He does not walk with the conciliatory spirit of Jesus in him at all times like his sycophant young admirers like to think he does. Christ was never on the Jerusaelem wrestling team.
Carter attended Georgia Southwestern College in 1941-42, before moving on to the Georgia Institute of Technology in 42-43. Carter continued to study his way through the war at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis from 1943 to 47. He was on the Navy track team and played lightweight division football. He then continued his studies at Union College in 1952-3.
Carter enrolled in the nuclear submarine program and served under the famous Captain Hyman Rickover who famously said, “The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.” Jimmy was a nuclear engineer in the early nuclear submarine program. In 1976 Carter asked Rickover to endorse him for President, but Hy and Mighty Man refused on the grounds that no matter who he endorsed, he would make enemies that would try to hurt his nuclear program.
1953 was the year of decision for Carter. His new bride was the former Rosalyn Smith, Jimmy’s ‘better half.’ His father had died and left him the family peanut farm. Dad Carter also left to his wife, Jimmy’s mother, his seat in the Georgia State Legislature! But Jimmy’s mother did not want to get involved in politics as a candidate, so the seat went to another relative.
Carter made the big decision to retire from the armed forces and get into the family peanut business. His family needed him and he came through, working hard to make the farm a moderate success. “Working for peanuts, is all very fine,” he like to joke.
Soon he was a deacon and Sunday school teacher at Plains Baptist Church and captain of the church softball team. The Carters began acquiring land in Sumter and other neighboring counties.
From church it was on to the Georgia State Senate and then in 1966 a failed attempt at the governorship that stung deep. Carter regrouped and came back to win the Georgia state house in 1970, before running what may have been the greatest long-shot campaign in American history.
EVENTS;
CAMPAIGN OF 1976
HAMILTON JORDAN AND THE PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT
BROKEN LANCE
DEALEY PLAZA CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS 1978
FALL OF THE SHAH OF IRAN
IRAN HOSTAGE CRISIS
PROBLEMATIC INFLATION
CAMP DAVID ACCORDS
SOVIET INVASION OF AFGHANISTAN
THE DISASTER IN THE IRANIAN DESERT
RESIGNATION OF UN AMBASSADOR YOUNG
RESIGNATION OF SECRETARY OF STATE VANCE
PANAMA CANAL “RETURNED”
CHINA INVADES VIETNAM
SALT II TREATY
NICARAGUAN REVOLUTION
THREE MILE ISLAND NUCLEAR ACCIDENT
CAMPAIGN OF 1976
The Carter campaign of 1976 was the greatest campaign for President in American history. That's an opinion, but I lived through it and I study them all. I'm probably not going out on a limb here either. I'm sure that historians have said so. There may be campaigns that are technically just as brilliant or well executed, but I have to lean towards this conclusion because of the national sensation that it was. I realize that all Presidential Campaigns are the focus of the media for 15 months every four years, but this one was special. It really lit the country on fire. He wasn't just a candidate, he was a rock star. He was the man of the people, coming out of nowhere to make the cover of each and every major magazine with headlines like “Jimmy Who?” - are answering the question they posed and making the frenzy for Carter that much greater. It was Beatlemania revisited. Carter was for the young, the left, the long-hairs, not the Republican squares. At last, one of us was running for President, and he's really actually got a chance to win!
Personally, I didn't buy it. I was still a hippie lefty, but the hair was above the shoulders now, and that was symbolic. The fall of South Vietnam and Cambodia to the Communists and Khmer Rouge in 1975 had shocked me towards the center. In 76 I didn't buy him as representing the left, and I didn't feel completely loyal to it anymore anyway. So while I wasn't caught up in any Carter posters on my wall, I was quite taken with the whole thing as a dazzling national event. I was fully aware that I was living through a great event in history, and time has justified that assessment.
The Carter campaign is a political classic. He started early at full force, as early and was as hard-working as any candidate for president ever. Through sheer effort, his campaign team took an unknown and created a candidate with fantastic national momentum. Before either convention met in 1976, Carter was common gossip amongst the people on a daily basis.
Carter won the presidency in 1976 by running against Nixon, even though he was technically running against Ford. Gerald Ford was Nixon’s VP and had pardoned the guy. The nation was anxious to get Nixon out of their system.
By 76 the liberal left trend was totally mainstream. It had not been that way in 1972. The kids all had long hair and peace buttons in 72 but the majority of adults had not yet caught the fever. By 1976 however everyone was hip, even most adults. Senators and hockey players had long hair. Germaine Greer was a mainstream author and in her huge bestseller The Female Eunuch she asserted that a woman was not liberated until she drank her menstrual blood. People read and nodded along. The place was nuts! This was the state of the US electorate in 1976. Radical was normal and conservative was a circus freak. The doorway was wide open for any viable Democratic candidate. Ford fell through the doorway and then Chevy Chase held it open for Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter might never have become president if not for the campaign finance reform law which first came into play in 76. By this law, designed to prevent big machine politicians from simply outspending their opponents to win, the federal government would provide each candidate with 21 million dollars. The candidates in turn would be allowed to match that figure but not exceed it, thus creating in theory a balanced and fair playing field.
On the Republican side, California Governor Ronald Reagan challenged Gerald Ford. The Reagan challenge damaged the Republican chances in 76 and cost the party the election. At least thats what the Friends of Gerald (FOGs) thought at the time and into their old age. It's fitting that one of Reagan's speechwriters did the same to George HW Bush in 1992.
It is generally considered bad manners to challenge the incumbent of one's own party but that is a stigma of custom, not an official ban on such activities. Eugene McCarthy challenged LBJ in late 67. But this tradition of non-challenge has become more pronounced over the last two decades. No same-party persons seriously challenged Reagan in 84, Clinton in 96 or W Bush in 2004. I doubt if any serious Dem will challenge Obama in 2012, meaning that Nancy Pelosi might.
Ford was unhappy with Reagan for challenging. But who could blame Ron Reagan for trying? He probably would have beat Carter if he had managed to get past Ford in the primaries. Ford was an un-elected President and more importantly, Reagan believed that Ford had not properly represented the conservative values that the Republican Party were supposed to stand for. Ford acquiesced in our ignominious withdrawal from Vietnam and seemed to look kindly on the idea of amnesty for Vietnam draft dodgers. Reagan would have battled to save our South Vietnamese allies from being over-run, and would have given draft dodgers a size nine shoe up the lower back.
The Ford-Carter debates were a super-snooze. Carter did poorly in the first debate, so much so that he admitted his poor performance in relaxed talks with the press the very next day, a bold move. JC gained his sea legs for the second debate and in the third, Ford tripped and fell and banged his head and we lost. He didn't fall physically, but he fell down with the famous Poland gaffe.
Ford made the most famous blunder in debating history. Ford ruined his chance for re-election with an untenable statement that
“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, nor will there be under a Ford Administration.”
The Soviet Army occupied Eastern Europe 1945 and had never left.
Republicans all over the world were spitting up their drinks watching that one, while Dems clapped their hands with glee. Ham Jordan (according to Salinger) pounded a tabled and screamed “yiii-haaaa!” Rosylyn broke out a wry smile.
The only thing good that came out of the Poland gaffe was that it gave a little spark of life to the most boring three deabtes in human history. The Ford-Carter debates were such a dull affair that comedians made jokes about them for some weeks and months after they were over. I know I did. I also chose not to vote in my first year of eligibility. I just didn’t like either one of them and didn’t know any other way to express that frustration than to deliberately not vote. I didn’t fail to vote out of irresponsible apathy. It was out of a tremendously negative feeling for both men. To this day I still feel it was the worst choice I was ever presented with for Prez, and not a great way to start a lifetime of voting.
In the Ford vs. Carter polls, Carter had such a huge lead from so early on in the campaign that the contest largely came down to Jimmy Carter, yes or no. Ford was almost a nonentity in his own campaign. Within a week of Election Day people began to reconsider Ford in his own right and for one day a key poll showed the two candidates almost at a tie. But the polls on election eve showed Carter’s lead safe again.
The Ford campaign claimed (and living members of it still believe)
that in 76 they simply ran out of time. Given another week or two they would have, “beaten that peanut farmer.”
SPACE CADET SAYS HE SAW A UFO
Carter gave an interview to the National Enquirer during the campaign in which he confirmed that he once saw a UFO. Carter says he saw it in 1969 when he was running for governor. The date of the sighting was January 6, 1969. I saw one that night too, but I was on cilocyben mushrooms. I had an excuse.
Carter recalls that he was giving speech at the Lions Club in Leary, Georgia when he and a group of about 12 people noticed some strange object in the sky over some trees. The thing was white then blue then red and then it seemed to fade into the distance.
He told reporters during the campaign that based on his experience, if he were elected, he would certainly open up to the public any previously classified information about UFO's. It was time that the truth be known.
One UFO debunker is absolutely certain that the object Carter saw was the planet Venus. It was a clear night and Venus was low in the sky at that time.
Venus looks like Venus and Jimmy would have to be pretty dumb to mistake Venus for a UFO. The anti-UFO crowd thinks for some reason that Venus is capable of looking like 2 or 3 thousand different things, moves across the sky as rapid speeds, and has landing gear and flashing red and blue lights. I never got that from Venus. I've never seen a UFO but my good friend Fred was abducted by a UFO (I am completely serious and he was on national TV!)
Carter filed an official report with a center for UFO studies in 1973, four years after the sighting and after he had won the state house.
A reporter tracked down everyone who was with Carter that night at the Lion's club and published his article. In it the reporter insists that no one else who was there that night has any recollection of seeing a UFO, nor of Carter or anyone else claiming to see one.
We can surely be leery Leary UFO story.
My personal friend was spotlighted on a major TV show originally aired on TBS, as an authentic case of UFO abduction. It's been syndicated out and I've seen in repeated on other networks. Imagine, my friend gets abducted and get 20 minutes of face time on national television. Life is whacked. Fred Wilson has told me everything that happened to him. I don't know what the hell to believe, but the show included venerable names of UFO research. Fred, in fact, was hypnotized and debriefed by none other than the number one UFO authority of this era, Dr. Ray Fowler.
There are enough photos and film of UFO's around by now to make the debunkers seem far more foolish than the sighters.
INAUGURAL
The world made a great to do about the fact that Jimmy Carter surprised even his own security detail by getting out of the limo and walking down Pennsylvania Ave and waving to everybody. Wow! What a man of the people! He's not like those other no-good bums who were president before him.
Big deal.
The man could have got himself shot and killed in the name of pompous humility, the worst form of ego. Every vid-byte history program shows that as some big event in American History, which it was not, except the media making it a self-fulfilled analysis.
Then the Carter staff occupies the White House and starts hanging around the Oval Office with flannel shirts, longish hair, and cowboy boots. Carter is going over arms reduction papers in muscle shirts out of a Tennessee Williams play, and Hamilton Jordan is smoking pot on the White House roof with Willie Nelson, while little Amy is scribbling stick figures on the Resolute Desk with yellow crayon. It was all fun for a while, but then Johnny Carson and Art Buchwald began ridiculing the folksy White House and that all changed. The memo's went out. By the second year, everyone was wearing their suits and ties again when conducting government business.
It's worth noting that in the second half of his term, when things went wrong regularly, all that flannel shirt man of the people, home-town question and answer session with regular folk, 'I'm no Washington insider, I'm just one of you' - all that disappeared in the last two years of the Carter Presidency. That proves that it was all just a tactic to win high office. Once it had outlived its usefulness the regular-guy motif was replaced by a man of Washington in a grey suit and tie with no time on his schedule to meet with the diner crowd for question and answer sessions over eggs and toast. But he came in in riding that show biz horse in January 77.
BEGINNINGS WITH THE SOVIETS
Carter failed in his four years with the Soviets because of his human rights campaign. He would tell you today that it was the one area of his record with the Soviets that he is most proud. His defenders today cite his remarkable record of getting tough with the Soviet Union on human rights. The forget to mention that it was a disastrous conceited policy that made the Cold War worse.
Carter came to the White House as representing the progressive wing of America. He was the human rights guy, the answer to a President Nixon who didn't give a damn about human rights issues. Nixon was a racist, just like his Establishment Party and Carter had black friends all his life, and his party was cool.
Since Jimmy was Mr. Liberal at home on human rights, why not project this leadership into his foreign policy stance with the Soviet Union? Forget about realpolitik nonsense. Machiavelli was dead and Kissinger was being shown the door. The new guy would take US-USSR issues out of the arena of concrete practical goals, and turn them into part of his national euphoria game of we are all holy and good people, and our opponents are all bad people. Carter took the same hostile love that the Democrats had been hurling at the Republicans since the day Nixon took office in 69, and began firing it at the Russians, who were a bit taken aback by become a 5 million square mile practice dummy for lefty arrows. Nothing is more hostile than saying that my side stands for love and yours for hate. That is the most unloving thing any person can ever say. It was Carter's first mistake with the Soviets. What works to get you elected in America doesn't work on Brezhnev's Russia.
Carter's cabinet was a walking oxymoron with liberal Vance as Secretary of State and hawk Zbig Ego Brzezinski as his chief National Security advisor. Carter had originally decided on Brzezinski as Secretary of State but reconsidered after enough people reminded Carter of Zbig's uncontrollable desire (addictive need might be more like it) for constant publicity. How could Carter conduct any clever behind the scenes diplomacy with life and death nuclear arms issues with this Zbozo grabbing headlines every day just so he could see his picture in the paper? He couldn't. Zbig's big ego cost him his chance to get it really rewarded.
Brezhnev and the rest of the Kremlin leadership was a bit thrown off by Carter's election. They knew that the Dems were more liberal towards the Soviets than the Republicans in a general military way, but they had problems with Carter too. First of all he was such an unknown that the USSR had no pre-game strategy to go with. They liked the idea that he was the first US President that was an expert on nuclear technology (a fact highly over-rated at the time and by history – just because he once swabbed the deck on a nuke sub doesn't mean he knew how to build one.) They liked the idea that he claimed that the US would no longer use force as its first line of action on foreign affairs. But they didn't like the way Carter warned them even before Inauguration day, that he was “very concerned about human rights,” meaning of course, human rights violations in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
In essence the Republican hawks were always getting tough militarily and letting the human rights issues be the underlying but unspoken ideological friction laying behind it, while Carter was going to make human rights differences the open sore of potential conflict, with American military power lurking unspoken behind it. Having Carter and Vance leading the liberal press in denouncing Soviet human rights violations wasn't exactly the peace pipe the Brezhnev team was looking forward to under new American leadership. This wasn't that great of a trade up from Nixon, who after all was never a W Bush style vulcan-hawk on US military force anyway.
So while the US left celebrated the peacemaker Sunday School Deacon in the White House, the Soviets saw the first meetings with Carter team people as a rude awakening, that this was not conciliatory pacifism, but finger-pointing pacifism that was taking over in Washington. We are so mellow and good and holy and compassionate that if you don't shape up and get your act together in the name of all that his holy and good like us we will condemn you and withhold our aid and maybe even refuse to make arms reduction treaties. The Carter years saw a lot of progressive proposals on ending Cold War tensions, but they always were conditional upon the Soviets admitting that they were very bad people on human rights violations. It was not a clever way to do business with these people, who believed in saving face much like the Japanese in WWII or any normal person. Carter's olive branches were always thorny with pontificating condemnation of the Soviets not letting some pianist leave the country to play for the King of Togo.
When in 1989-1991 the great liberalization was sweeping over Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, GHW Bush and his team went out of their way not to point any fingers or gloat over any of it and what it all meant about past Soviet behavior. He wanted to give them room to make these changes and save face at the same time. This lesson was lost on Carter for every week of his Administration. If you want the local trouble-maker gang to change its ways, don't start the discussion be reminding them of a laundry list of ways they should be ashamed of themselves. Give them the dignity of appearing to be voluntarily making these positive changes, and at some later point they may reflect and apologize and admit their wrongs. The finger-pointing demands for changes in human rights issues put the Soviets in a position where if they made the changes they would feel humiliated.
Carter was holier-than-thou in dealing with the Soviets, but had a forked-tongue speechmaking proclivity for announcing that he would lead the way for a new era of peace between the superpowers. One cancelled out the other. In the “human rights” campaign, he let his words speak louder than his actions, never a good idea.
The Russians didn't greet the new Carter way of handling US-USSR relations as a breath of fresh air, unless you mean “fresh” the way its used in slang to describe an arrogant kid. This moral superiority complex was just as insulting to the Soviets as the US military industrial complex of his predecessors. According to Ambassador Dobrynin, who left us with a nice 75 page chapter on the Carter years, the state of relations between the super-powers plummeted in Jimmy's term, and they reached an absolute hostile nadir in the last year of his term. So much for Jimmy Carter the Peacemaker. He can visit all the earthquake disaster sites he wants, stepping out of a limo as an Christ-like old man. But while in power he did nothing to halt the Cold War. He made it worse. That was always my own view, and now Dobrynin's book confirms it from their end too.
And, contrary to Christ Carter mythology, Carter in his four years was no anti-militarist. He built up the US military industrial complex big time. Most of the huge new missile systems, and naval build ups that were completed under hawk Reagan were initiated by alleged dove Carter. The Soviets certainly knew it. But American history has forgotten it. We get this historical image of good-guy peace-maker Carter being replaced by bad-guy war-hawk Reagan in January 1981, and its not accurate.
Reagan came in like a hawk and left like a dove. Carter came in like a dove and went out like a hawk. The record of a presidential administration is like a stand-up comedy performance; its all about how you finish. Carter finished in a storm of rotten tomatoes being hurled at the stage as the nation screamed, “Next!” or “Hey what time does the entertainment come on?” Reagan opened to nervous mixed grumbling and left to a standing O (after the hecklers had been removed.)
Carter did better in the Middle East than in the USSR-US field.
CAMP DAVID – 1977 - EGYPT AND ISRAEL FIND PEACE
Jimmy Carter put extra effort into trying to solve the volatile problems of the Middle East. The basic match-up there was in this corner Israel, with the direct support of the United States, versus all the other Arab states plus Iran, with the indirect support of the USSR.
The direct military-political fronts against Israel were the Syrian and the Egyptian. The military situation was a tense stalemate on both sides, but the political fronts were not similar. Syria had strong support from the USSR and felt no particular desire to court the economic, political or military support of the United States. Syria didn't want US aid, and did not ant US diplomatic interference in the region, not even for peace. Syria was a weak nation dependent on the Soviets for its military and political clout and its enmity with the USA was almost as clear-cut as its enmity with Israel.
Egypt, on the other hand, was a strong nation with a legitimate position of geo-strategic strength in the world, with or without alliances. Egypt was one of the few Arab states that could make its own deal. It did not have to tow the Arab political line nor the Soviet. Egypt had booted the Russians out of Egypt in the early 70’s and did not mind the idea of a rapprochement with the United States. Egypt was also a multi-cultural nation compared to some of the other Arab states, so while peace with Israel along with friendship with the USA might well be a tough sell for president Sadat, it was not an impossible one.
Anwar e-l-Sadat, and Prime Minister Menachim Begin of Israel met with Jimmy Carter for 12 days in 1978 at the presidential retreat in Maryland known as Camp David. The agreement between Egypt and Israel that emerged from this conference has proved permanent and is something the Carter Administration is properly forever proud of. There has been no war or near war on the Egyptian-Israeli front since Carter’s time.
Unfortunately Camp David 78 did not solve the Syrian front or the Palestinian problem. The Palestinian issue continues to plague the peace of the world to this day. But to eliminate the Egyptian flank for Israeli security, to have Egypt officially recognize the state of Israel (the first Arab nation to do so), and to set a precedent for peaceful solutions in Middle East disputes; all these things give greatness to Camp David. It is the star that saved Carter from going down in history as one of the ‘bad presidents.’ CD won the NP for JC.
TENERIFE - 3-27-77
There are plane crashes and there are plane crashes. Tenarife was the mother of all plane crashes.
Tenerife is in the Canary Islands. On March 27 1977 two Jumbo 747 jet airliners collided there killing 563 people. To this day it is the worst airplane disaster in history. I know that isn't part of Jimmy Carter's story or American History but it was certainly the main topic of the news here for a few days and changed the way every nation dealt with airplane safety issues. Tenerife upped the ante on the worst that could happen.
The accident happened when one plane was landing and another was taxying back to the terminal after landing. There was a thick fog, it was a dark March 6:06 p.m. and one jet landed on the back of the other and all hell broke loose.
SON OF SAM CAPTURED – BERKOWITZ NYC CRIME SPREE
The most sensational crime spree of 1977 came to an end when NYC police captured David Berzerkowitz, the notorious “Son-of-Sam” killer who claimed that his dog Sam told him to do it. My cat Lopez, tells me to call my mom more often, so I understand the idea of talking pets, but why would Sam want anyone to go out and shoot couples in the head making-out on lovers lane, David's target of choice.
The dog story was probably fake, just to try and get off by reason of insanity. Berzerkowitz is doing life in a NY prison.
A comic author recently wrote a book where he wrote “fan letters” to all the famous murderers in prison. He waited patiently and got responses from most of them and published these letters in a little smart alec book. I read the book.
I would like to state for the record that the only decent and almost touching and sincerely repentant response came from Berkowitz. Most of the other letters made you hate these bums even more, but Son of Sam was the best of the worst. The others appreciated the support, while San wrote back that, “You must not admire me. I was in the hands of evil and I am so sorry and will never get out and can only beg every day for God's forgiveness.”
ELVIS DIES – AUGUST 1977
In August 1977 Elvis Presley died. I think that “entertainment news” is an oxymoron, so I'm not going to say much about it. It was the lead story for two weeks. When are the Elvis impersonators going to go away? Its been 33 years now and there are still thousands of them out there.
Over the decades there have been many rumors that Elvis didn't really die. He staged his own death to get away from all the publicity. “Elvis sightings” are a regular news piece every few months where someone swears they saw him buying a pack of smokes in a country store somewhere. Gee. isn't it a coincidence that there are 3,000 people making a full-time living pretending to be Elvis and then some folks claim they saw Elvis and that he's still alive? Besides, no one in show biz is that averse to publicity, no matter what they claim.
Jimmy Carter had met Elvis Presley three months earlier. Elvis just had to have a meeting with Carter about something very important. Presley had met with Nixon and he was big enough to get his meeting with Carter.
Presley was wasted. “His eyes looked like road maps,” said Carter later. Elvis had arranged the meeting to ask Carter to give a Presidential pardon to a pal of Elvis who was in a heap of trouble. Carter said he would have to look at the case in objective fairness, but then realized that the friend of the King hadn't even gone to trial yet. Carter tried to explain to Elvis that he couldn't pardon him if he wanted because he hadn't even been tried yet, but Elvis was too stoned on meds to even get that point. The meeting was short and Carter was all shook up at how bad Elvis looked.
BROKEN LANCE – SEPTEMBER 23 1977
Chubby big-nosed dark-haired Burt Lance was one of the closest friends of Jimmy Carter. His resignation under a cloud from the office of the Budget was the first chink in the armor of the Carter tank.
Lance was a charter member of the “Georgia Mafia” that moved into Washington like the Beverly Hillbillies in January of 1977. Lance had met Carter when Carter was a state senator and the two of them just hit it off and rose in politics together. When Carter ran for President, Burt Lance ran for the Georgia governor seat Carter had just vacated. Lance lost but had made a decent showing and went back into the banking and investment business.
Carter offered Lance the post of Director of the Budget. Lance took it gladly.
Then stories got out about improprieties Lance may have committed in his positions of power at two Georgia banks. Lance insisted thathe had done nothing illegal. Carter came out in an August 1977 press conference and said he was standing by his friend. The two of them were so close that White House aides said they were often seen praying together!
Carter had promised that he would clean up the White House and that no one guilty of improprieties or even suspected of them would be allowed to work with his Administration.
That second part was tough. It was his “read my lips” promise that was no fun to try and honor when the time came to honor it.
The person who broke these stories about the Bert Lance shady banking transactions was columnist William Safire of the NewYork Times. Safire used to work for Richard Nixon and it may be that Safire was just trying to get back at the Democrats for they way they hounded Nixon out of office through Watergate dirt. Now it was their turn to get a taste of their own medicine and Safire poured it on Lance with several
accusatory columns, especially the big one called, “Broken Lance.” Safire began to refer to the issue as “Lancegate.” This was the first time the gate suffix was used as a referent. It is still used today! When Monica Lewinsky nearly brought down President Clinton, it was referred to quite often as “Monicagate.”
Through it all Lance kept insisting that he had done nothing illegal. Now Safire and a host of other columnists were saying that there were so many accusations of improper behavior as a banker, that even if all of them brought no criminal charges, they would still show a record of poor judgement and a definite sleaze factor. Given Carter's pledge during the campaign so much as suspected of impropriety would not be allowed to serve on his team, the columnist were openly calling for Bert Lance to step down as OMB chief.
Ham Jordan had reminded the President of his campaign pledge that anyone even suspected of impropriety would not be allowed to serve in his administration, (although you could make a case that Ham Jordan should have resigned when the accusations of weird behavior came his way, but that is another story. ) “No Spiros allowed!” he had once shouted to a cheering audience in Wheeling. Now he had to pay the fiddler.
Carter called Lance into his a office and started into a speech about what a great guy and great friend Lance was, and all he had done for the new Administration. Bert of course knew that meant he was getting buttered up to be tossed into the fired.
On September 23, 1977 Bertram Q. Lance, the Director of the OMB resigned at the request of President and friend Jimmy Carter. He said that he did not want to cause any major distractions for the President in his mission to make a better America, but the bottom line was that he had been told to step down.
Bert Lance finally stood trial in 1981 on 12 counts of banking irregularity felonies. He was not convicted of any of them.
Now jump ahead to 2001 and a book by a Bill Clinton advisor named Lanny Davis. The book is called Gotchya, and is an indictment of the new mentality of overreacting to personal scandals that is ruining America. The foundation of the book of course, is the unfair witch-hunt of his pal Bill Clinton, but Lanny does a commendable job of trying to make the book bi-paritsan. He includes some ways in which “Gotchya” politics damaged GHW Bush and Ronald reagan unfairly. The book is partisan, but he makes an attempt to be otherwise, which is more than nay of the other Bill Clinton sycophants can say about their books (Stephanopoulos and Sid Blumenthal to name three.)
Davis says that the whole insanity (and seeing Tiger Woods make a humiliating speech to the nation for cheating on his wife in 2010 makes me agree that the whole thing has gotten out of control) began with the Bert Lance case.
According to the Lanny Davis view, Lance had done nothing wrong and was merely the victim of lies, falsehoods, aspersions, rumor-mongering and innuendos. Safire of the New York times was simply a bitter sneaky Republican, still loyal to Nixon and still seething from the ignominious ending of 1974. He was planting and growing this crop of stories about Lance out of partisan hate. Lance was supposedly chomping at the bit for a fair trial by jury so he could prove that he was absolutely innocent, and shame his accusers in the process.
Well it turned out that's exactly the way it went down. Lance was acquitted on all counts and what do you have to say for yourself now, you “No good Republican bastards,” to use my mother-in-law's favorite expression.
I read the Bert Lance story on 15 different on-line source sites and they all say the same thing. It turns out that Lance was completely innocent and was “cleared of all charges,” or, “acquitted of all charges,” or “proven innocent on all counts.”
I beg to disagree. Lanny Davis is Bert Lance's biggest defender, but he was also honest enough (unlike all the other books and internet sources I consulted) to tell the complete truth about the trial. Lance was acquitted on nine counts. The other three charges ended in a deadlock. The juror's couldn't reach a verdict.
I hardly call that acquitted on all charges. I certainly don't call that proven completely innocent. I call that proven quite possibly guilty on three felony charges. By that standard, and given Carter's campaign pledge, it was more than right for Lance to step down. He was not the victim of gotchya politics. That is erroneous. He was doing some shady things as head of two Georgia banks and should not have stayed on as OMB chief.
Just the fact that the feds and the state of Georgia saw enough evidence to successfully bring 12 counts of felony offenses against Lance was proof of some sort of improper behavior. Even if the charges aren't proven they fact that there was enough evidence to convince the DA's to go forward with a trial says a lot about Bert Lance. Add to that the three charges that ended in a deadlock and you have a man well short of “proven innocent.” What was proven was that a rich and powerful man with connections in high places was able to beat three indictments by the skin of his teeth. If you father had done the same things we'd probably be visiting him in prison every Christmas.
What bothers me most about this story is how much I liked Lanny Davis's book and all it stands for. It pains me to seem like I'm trying to chop him or his book down. Its a fine book and a real contribution to humanity. I just think he may not realize his bias in presenting the case of Bert Lance. I don't think any of the convicted scoundrels in the Reagan or Nixon White House ever got the same sort of break from history that it seems to be giving Bert Lance.
The most important thing about the whole Lance affair is that it was the beginning of the decline in approval ratings for Jimmy Carter. The honeymoon period had lasted 9 months. Now the negative baby was born and would grow into a monster by the end of 1980. Carter's approval ratings dropped ten points as he tried to defend Lance but then threw him under the bus.
Speaking of over-used slang expressions, it was Bert Lance who first used the term “If it ain't broke, don't fix it,” in responding to a routine question on budget appropriations in March of 77. That was coined from him and is part of our popularly illiterate culture today.
The Lance story hasn't come down to modern culture as a famous event but it was very important at the time. It made the cover of Time, and Saturday Night Live opened a show with a skit about Lance in which Dan Ackroyd played Carter and John Belishi played Lance.
1977 IN RETROSPECT
In the first two years of Carter's Presidency he got lucky. Not a lot of major things went wrong. These two years are defined by collected news events. Tenarife, Son of Sam, Freddie Prinze, Elvis, a night club fire in Kentucky - When murders and disaster are defining the year, it is a sign of good times. The years 1979 and 1980 were defined by and large by large and wide problems; the Iran Hostage Crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and revival of the Energy Crisis in capital letters. By late 1979, murderers, plane crashes, and celebrity deaths got bumped back to page two for two years.
Black-jack players have told me, “You know, people don't believe this, but you can go an entire two years with good luck, and then another two years with bad luck. Its not always mixed results.” I think that is true of Carter's Presidency. In spite of some economic strains, the first two years he was making 21's and was in the right office at the right time. The second two years he got whacked with some hands that no one could have played into a win, not even his successor.
I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO SEE THE PYRAMIDS
The 1976 Carter Campaign Manager was Hamilton Jordan, who went on to become White House Chief of Staff. Many pundits credited Jordan for the brilliant win of 76, but Jordan genuinely cringed whenever anyone tried to give him such credit. That's because Ham, who died at 63 in 2008, was one of the few genuinely modest political figures ever to walk the halls of Washington. He also liked to work 15 hour days, a trait he shared with the President. Like Jay Leno, Jordan never, ever wanted a vacation.
Turning down invitations to 2,700 social events will get you more work time but in a person of position can it can also lead to accusations of snobbery.
In March of 1978 Ham Jordan still had not gone to a single Washington banquet or party. So he finally gave in and attended an event thrown by the network TV star Barbara Walters. The guests of honor would be the Egyptian Ambassador and his wife. Ham thought it might help Carter improve Middle East relations if he went along.
Jordan found himself sitting in between famous humor columnist Art Buchwald, and Henry Kissinger. Across from Ham were the Egyptian Ambassador and his attractive wife.
The Washington Post ran an account of the dinner a few days later in which it criticized the behavior of Hamilton. They wrote that Jordan had shamelessly stared at the “ample chest” of the Egyptian Ambassador's wife and said,
“You know. I'm glad I made it here tonight. I have always wanted to see the Pyramids.”
The story got picked up by every newswire and became a racy scandal in the newspapers for three days. Hamilton Jordan was in double-trouble, caught in the middle of a pyramid scheme.
The problem is, the story of his behavior was probably a dirty lie. Jordan spit up his coffee when he read the story in the paper after wondering why Marmaduke is never funny. Hamilton went public as fast as he could find his coat and denied the story. HJ eventually obtained sworn affidavits from everyone at the table that nothing like that was ever said.
Could it be true? There's always a chance that he did say it at some other corner of the party later in the evening, and I don't know what kind of low faeroe at the Post would invent such a story. And the Post is no Republican cat's paw, so that's out. So who knows? Maybe he actually said it, meaning it sincerely at face value about the actual Pyramids to make small talk with an Egyptian couple, and barely if at all glanced at her chest. Maybe it was the reporter who had the dirty mind and picked up a false reading from three tables away.
I just don't believe a person with that much power would make a mistake like that, even if he had a few drinks, (although there was the true story of Sukharno, the leader of Indonesia who visited Washington for an important political conference with JFK which got nothing done because all Sukharno wanted to talk about was the hot bods on the American movie star leading ladies like Gina Lollabrigida and Marylyn Monroe.)
Jordan also says that the stories that he walked around the White House in blue jeans is a total lie. He writes in 1981 that he hasn't owned a pair of blue jeans in 15 years.
There were also rumors of an impending charge against Ham Jordan for cocaine possession. But it was never proven that he ever had any coke on him in his life. The charge had something to do with someone else naming names wildly and throwing his in. Nothing ever came of it, but rumors of his cocaine use caused him problems. Some religious leaders asked Carter to not have Ham there when they had their visit to the Oval Office, “because of you know what.”
FROST/NIXON
This is the story of a major new even of 1977 and a film event of 2008. For two years ex-Prez Richard Nixon had been keeping a very low profile at his home in San Clemente California. In 1977 he made his re-appearance before America in a series of no-holds barred interviews with British presenter David Frost. They were shown in five installments in 1977 and the viewer ratings set new standards. It was the Super-Bowl TV event for politics of its time. I watched them all. We all did. They didn't blow me away. It didn't blow the country away. Nixon held his own, kept his cool, stuck to his old positions and managed to dodge a few bullets skillfully. A couple of shots got through the lead vest and made Nixon look bad, but it wasn't as if the interviews chopped him down to size and won a big game for the left, but that is the newest American myth, thanks to Ron Howard.
Opie made a big Hollywood blockbuster about it, called Frost/Nixon based on a damned play. For every reader who has seen the actual interviews there are 7 who have seen the play and 700 who have seen the movie. No man has ever been more poorly represented in film than President Nixon is here (with the possible exception of Lenny Bruce and the anti-funny picture painted by Dustin Hoffman.) Frank Langella brings nothing to the table for Nixon, no strengths at all, no qualities at all. Langella's Nixon was just a bad evil grumpy sluggish, humorless, foolish, despicable dishonest, grim, incompetent, talentless, socially inept bump on a log. And those were his good qualities. The real Nixon had a warm smile, an easy charm, and a totally enviable mature confidence in his countenance. The Langella Nixon wouldn't even pass the grocer's test; Meaning that if Nixon were your grocer you couldn't possible like him even a little. That's just not true. Nixon was introverted in some ways but was a successful politician and you have to have some charm to get far in politics. Nixon couldn't have finished third in one town election if he had the social unskills of the Frank Langella character. Style is substance and the movie makes Nixon look like a one-dimensional inept bad guy out of a hero vs villain comic book. The film stuck to the facts occasionally but that doesn't justify the sins of style. The left hates Nixon and all those characters in the film are likable and cool. Nixon and his aides are all dorky and unlikable. Where's the bucket?
Frost was never lefty enough to win a cool guy image in a revisionist movie, so he plays a mercenary scum who meets his moral mentors on the left. He then sees the light and roasts Nixon on behalf of the lefties who made him realize he was chosen by history to be the person to finally bring this guy down. I'm going to need a bigger bucket.
Frost/Nixon is just a pathetic revival of the cultural war, the Hollywood left winning a battle that was already fought to a draw 35 years ago, and now being replayed on a Play Station game with the left coming out the total victor. Nice going. I get it. And I watched this movie with an open mind while I was studying Nixon in books. I wanted it to be good. Heck, I had recently seen 13 Days with Kevin Kostner and had expected to dislike it. I thought it was fabulous. Now comes a movie I was hoping to like. I wanted to vomit during every scene. It wreaks of partisan revisionism from the Hollywood left in every scene. It was a two-hour hatchet job on a dead man who can't defend himself the next day in an interview. Howard is coward. Pick on someone your own size, some living conservative talk show host in is early sixties. You've got the canvas and the paint and the doors are locked. You can tell it any way you want. It doesn't make it the truth.
And by the way, David Frost was a talk show host, not a game show host. I watched Frost a hundred times and I know him in the way a person does through a TV which is not insignificant. That jerky actor portrayed Frost almost as unfairly as Langella portrayed Nixon. He turned Frost into a greedy selfish immoral geeky game show host. But enter the ultra-heroic hippie in a cool suit James Reston Jr.. He pleaded with Frost to use this chance to get the bad guy. Frost wake up and changed his ways. At first Frost was just a low-life who wanted to make money on a big interview. Reston Jr. goes into moving caring angry speeches about how Nixon was the worst man of all time and Frost was in a position to make him pay for his crimes. A passionate red in the face and lovable Reston blames Nixon for “Losing 21,000 Americans in Vietnam and a million Asians, man!” We are supposed to love what Reston is saying and I just want to kick his teeth in and then wait for him outside his dentist and kick them in again.
Reston concretely blames Richard Nixon for every civilian who died in Southeast Asia during his presidency. Then he has the leftist revisionary audacity to blame Nixon for “Creating the Khmer Rouge.”
For your lefty-lizard information, Mr. Howard, Nixon and the United States armed forces were trying to protect Asian civilians from evil and murder. They weren't instigating it. The Khmer Rouge did not spring to life as a reaction to American atrocities in Vietnam. It was just the opposite. America was trying to stop the Khmer Rouge and the Viet Cong from taking over Southeast Asia and doing exactly what they ended up doing. And then you say that Nixon caused the Killing Fields!
This should be just an extremist aberration that only a few radical leftists take seriously. But its so mainstream a belief that I am in constant disbelief. I recently saw a CNN Christiane Amanpour documentary on Cambodia in which she casually in passing denounces the United States for “supporting a corrupt government in Cambodia, leading to the rise of the Khmer Rouge.”
Exactly which government in Cambodia was the USA supposed to support? If only she had been there in 1970 to install with one wave of her black-haired magic wand a new Cambodian government suitable for dealings with the USA. Then we could have supported a wonderful government and that would have been okay. The Khmer Rouge would have then never come into existence, because it was only in reaction to our mistakes in supporting a corrupt government in Cambodia that these mass murderers rose to power and took over. It's quite a stretch to think that our support of Sinahouk in 1970 created the Khmer Rouge but I read that tragically often from smug lefties who don't do their homework (as if there's any other kind.)
Cambodia had already been invaded by the Vietnamese Communists in 1969, long before the Khmer Rouge took over; and the Communists were determined to win in Southeast Asia long before LBJ sent 15,000 Marines to Da Nang in 1965. So how does it figure that US support of a corrupt government in Cambodia led to the rise of the Cambo Reds? (which is literally what 'Khmer Rouge' means, for what that's worth. American conservatives who called Communists “Reds” were paranoid reactionary fools to be laughed at, yet the Reds called themselves Reds.)
The Frost/Nixon movie attacks Nixon for “wiping out entire villages of Cambodian people” with B-52's, in effect calling him a maniacal mass murderer, insensitive beyond all comprehension.
What they fail to mention (aside from the obvious forgotten fact that it was a war measure to protect Americans GI's from combat deaths due to VC incursions into South Vietnam from safe havens in Cambodia) is that by the time the B-52's bombed Eastern Cambodia in 1970, there were no native Cambodians in Eastern Cambodia. All of the natives had been driven westward by the invading North Vietnamese Communists. Sinahouk, the leader of Cambodia even said that there was “not so much a a single water buffalo of native Cambodian blood in Eastern Cambodia.” And that was not only before the US bombing, Sinahouk said it to Nixon as a hint that he wanted the areas bombed! But don't tell the lefties that Cambo asked us to do it. That would spoil their pity party. Nixon couldn't have violated international law in practice when he bombed Cambodia, because Cambodia was neutral in fact but not in practice. The protestors only cared about the technical neutrality of Cambodia, not the fact that GI deaths were up 300% as a result of the VC incursions into South Vietnam from Cambodian “neutral” sanctuaries.
After the B-52 raids the state of Cambodia did not protest that any Cambodian civilians had been killed in the air raids at all! On top of all that, the North Vietnamese government didn't protest the raids on Cambodia either, to the actual surprise of Nixon and Kissinger. And the reason the North Vietnamese did not protest the B-52 bombing of eastern Cambodia was because to do that would be to admit to the world that they had taken over the eastern area of Cambodia.
So the Cambodians and North Vietnamese both did not protest the air raids on Cambodia, but the lefty youth mobs in the USA did. Their hearts bled for civilians who did not exist, and little at all for the Americans who were being protected by these raids (and yes, they did reduce the high USGI KIA rates of the previous weeks.) And here we have this left-tinted movie admonishing Nixon, “you wiped out hundreds of Cambodian villages.”
Frost/Nixon was nominated for five Academy Awards. It didn't win any except an honorary one for best unfair hatchet job by dye-job hippies rewriting the seventies from Century City. Frost/Nixon did win a Golden Globus Award for Best Blame America First Film of 2008.
'Based on a true story' means rewriting a phrase with slick skill so that it changes the meaning and the quality of the person. We all know that one word that is or isn't in a sentence makes the difference between an argument with your friend and a warm chuckle. F/N plays with Nixon's exact words and with his mannerisms. Nixon had a nice smile. Langella forced a telegraphed ugly and fake one in a fleeting moment now and then. And David Frost, FYI, didn't have a dorky “Hi! I'm a big phony!” Wink Martindale smile. What the hell was that?
Nixon had weaknesses and strengths. Langella was all weakness, all the time. That wasn't the Nixon I remembered. Langella was more fair to his subject when he played Dracula, back in 1978. As a mater of fact, he turned Nixon into Dracula. Instead of Frost/Nixon they should have titled the movie Eubanks/Dracula, the story of the game plastic game show host interviewing the personification of evil.
One thing that Ron Howard, Frank Langella and all their types have in common is that they never buckle down and read the books by Nixon and Kissinger explaining their side of the Vietnam War and how they tried to wage it. They just condemn and pontificate without giving their dead straw men a fair hearing.
TOMMY LEE NOSENKO ABSOLVED OF ALL CHARGES BY CIA
Most of you read spy novels and go to spy vs spy action movies. If you'd give your gift of time to fictional versions of it, it might be worth it to delve a little into the most important spy vs spy drama in the history of the world, the case of two Soviet defectors each claiming that the other was a false defector. It has a lot of implications for the international relations in the last two years of this chapter, and indeed for the next two decades and beyond.
In 1978 the new CIA Director was Admiral Stan Tall Turner. The two spies were Anatoly Golitsyn and Yuri Nosenko. Turner went before a Congressional committee and declared that Yuri was a genuine defector, which meant that Golitsyn was the false defector. I happen to believe that Golitsyn was the real defector, and Nosenko that false defector, but beginning in 1978 that opinion has allegedly been proven wrong.
The case is very important for at least three large reasons. For one, Golitsyn claimed that the KGB trained Oswald in Russia and logically concluded that he may have been brainwashed into killing the President, just like in The Manchurian Candidate. The next reason is the most important. Golitsyn claimed that the Soviet Union and Communist China were conducting a great disinformation campaign to divide and weaken the west. That disinformation campaign was founded on the mission to convince the west that the Communist bloc was totally as odds with each other and the Russia and China were actually enemies. If Golitsyn was right on that, it has implications off the planet. The third reason is that the whole affair shook up the CIA for the longest time.
The fact of the matter is that there are some very intelligent people who take my side and resigned from the CIA because nothing could convince them that Golitsyn was not the real deal. There are some authors and political pundits who agree that Golitsyn was legit.
But the official conclusions are otherwise and locked down with passing years.
You can rent a movie for an introductory course. It's called Yuri Nosenko KGB, starring Tommie Lee Jones. Its perfect casting. The most overrated leading man of all time playing the most overrated defector of all time. There are a few documentaries you can dig up too. One of them I recommend as saying I am completely wrong on this is called The Spy Hunter by PBS. All of them take the new orthodox position that Golitsyn was a false defector, and Nosenko was the real defector.
The more people write books about it, the more people write articles about it, the more the orthodox opinion is now considered the infallible truth; that Golitsyn was a false defector, and Nosenko was the real defector. So I don't hold out any high hope that you will ever come around to agree with me that the orthodox version is wrong, that Golitsyn is real and Nosenko is fake. But I say it unequivocally. Golitsyn was the real deal and Admiral Turner and the Hollywood folks who made the Tommy Lee movie are wrong too.
Remember this. If you had a left or liberal bias, if you thought that those who fear the Commies are paranoids and generally not on the side of truth and right, you would therefore have a selfish and partisan reason for wanting to believe that Nosenko is real and Golitsyn is fake. So this orthodox version that Nosenko was innocent is a lefty version as far as I am concerned. Nosenko was absolved and declared a great guy under the liberal Carter Administration. Turner and Carter and Congress rehabilitating the name of Nosenko was a chance to strike back at the right who had treated him so badly. And the only thing more unreasoned than an anti-Communist is an anti- anti-Communist. There are Communist witch-hunts, and there are anti-Communist witch hunts. Golitsyn fell from credibility at the bad end of an anti-Communist witch hunt. He was one, and he had to go.
Golitsyn was the first defector. He had worked at a medium level in Soviet Intelligence. Golitsyn told the west of many Soviet Spies in the United States and in Britain. They all checked out. He told the CIA that the Communist rift that was all over the news was all a fake staged play for western consumption. Specifically, the Sino-Soviet Split that was all over the news from 1962 on was a hoax.
Then Kennedy gets assassinated and Golitsyn quickly informs the CIA that he knew of Oswald when he was with the KGB, and that the KGB had worked quite closely with Oswald. Golitsyn did not claim to know that Oswald was trained to kill the President of the United States, but he did mention that the KGB was primarily interested in the fact that Oswald had worked on U-2 spy planes from 1959-1961 while stationed in Japan as a US Marine. The U-2 was spying on Russia and friends with impunity, flying higher and faster than the Russians cold catch up to. It was while working with Oswald's traitorous intelligence that the Russians finally shot down a U-2 over Sverdlovsk. The event was a giant international incident and led to a severe spike in Cold War tensions, to put it mildly. Oswald's tips might have helped bring that U-2 down.
No sooner does Golitsyn tell of the KGB working closely with Oswald, than a new Soviet defector abandons the loving arms of the KGB and seeks asylum in the US. This man was Yuri Nosenko.
For some strange reason, this man's passion in life was convincing the US Intelligence agencies that another defector from a few years ago was lying. Nosenko wanted the United States to know that Golitsyn was not even an honest defector, that Tony G was simply us to mischief in telling all these stories about a Sino-Soviet Split disinformation campaign. He wanted the Americans to know that he was personally intimate with the Oswald file, in fact had seen it just before he left Russia. Nosenko said that the KGB had never worked with Oswalds, had never taken much interest in him, and certainly wouldn't send a man with such an unstable mind on a mission to kill President Kennedy.
Now we get to a Mr. James Jesus Angleton. JJ was a big shot in the counter-intelligence department of the CIA and he had taken the first defector under his wing and believed in him. Angleton and Golitsyn were a virtual CIA team. When Golitisyn talked, Angleton listened.
Angleton found Yuri Nosenko to be suspect. JJ suspected the transparent timing of his defection. Do people really defect just to discredit a previous defector? It didn't seem normal to Angleton.
Angleton interrogated Nosenko mercilessly, trying to get him to confess that he was a false defector. There were discrepancies in Nosenko's story, but he had provided some true clues of KGB penetrations of US intelligence branches.
Angleton and the CIA put Nosenko in solitary confinement in a Maryland jail for more than two years. Nosenko never budged.
In the left wing mania of the 1970's the CIA's mistreatment of Nosenko became far more important than whether he was a false defector of or not. Everyone was out to get the CIA in the 1970's except the CIA. To weigh in on this case could only mean one thing to any leftist. If the CIA mistreated Nosenko, then Nosenko is therefore the real defector. Whoever the CIA treated well, he is the false defector. So with the national pastime of hating the CIA, with all the anti-CIA books making the best-seller list, what chance did Golitsyn ever have of being taken serious anymore. Nosenko was made into a martyr because he was bullied by the CIA.
Angleton was a bizarre guy, and what he did to Nosenko was wrong. That doesn't mean that Nosenko was not a false defector. But that's the way that syllogism has been worked out by history. Angleton was a paranoid thug right-wing nut on the hated CIA. If this bum picked Golitsyn as the real defector, then Golitsyn is the false defector. To this day any time the CIA is portrayed in a movie, everyone in it is a male macho neanderthal murderous two-faced, treasonous, immoral McCarthyist base-brain. Since Jesus Angleton fit the description, and mistreated Nosenko beyond question, therefore Angleton is wrong on both Golitsyn and Nosenko. Having done absolutely nothing wrong except risk his neck to better the world, Golitsyn comes down as one of the bad guys in Cold War history when he should be a hero.
So in 1978 all this came out solely because of the big Congressional investigation into the JFK assassination and Oswald's time in Russia. The Congress concluded that Nosenko had been mistreated, this must never happen again, and oh, by the way, Angleton was wrong. Nosenko is the real defector. And let's hear no more talk about Soviet complicity in Dealey Plaza because Nosenko, who we just verified, has already cleared that one up.
I think we should judge the two defectors by their work, and not by the way they were treated. Two murder suspects are arrested. Whichever one get beaten up by the cops, set him free, we know he's innocent. What a system that is. Angelton might have been a space-cadet, but he was a very successful man in the field of counter-intelligence and he abused Nosenko because he thought that he was lying and that the fate of the globe was riding on it. To ames Jesus, one man's rights at that time wasn't as important as the fate of the world. This same controversy is going on today about the fate of those accused of terrorist plots against the United States. When does national security supersede the suspect's rights to be treated with civility?
This story of Angleton, Golitsyn, Nosenko, Stan Turner, and Tommie Lee Jones is as important a story as any ever. Put away the crime novels and read the real deal.
Tommie Lee Jones plays a part making a mass audience in America sympathetic to Nosenko as the clear cut real defector which he has never proven he was. When the movies tell you so, its ingrained deep down and there's no turning back – Dustin Hoffman played a very unfunny Lenny Bruce and now millions of people admire Lenny Bruce as a crusader, but always say “He wasn't very funny, though.” But he was! Hoffman brainwashed America with his false portrait. Tommie Lee Jones brainwashed America with his false portrait of Nosenko.
Look at the differences between the two defectors. Golitsyn defected to the west to warn anyone who would listen that the KGB had restructured itself and now was long past simple intelligence gathering and was being used in a strategic offense capacity. This was gthe new modern thinking KGB, its new super-weapon the production and dissemination of disinformation. The KGB staged events for western consumption and spread lies for the same audience. The heart of the KGB story was that the Communist world all hated each other and several Communist states were even close to going to war with each other. It had all started with Yugoslavia with Tito and now it was a movement that the Communist leaders did not know how to stop.
The KGB knew that people want to believe what they already want to believe. Golitsyn in vain tried to convince America that the Communist splits was a staged play making fools out of Ike, Kennedy and whoever comes next.
If Golitsyn were a false defector, what would be his motive for spreading this mantra all around Washington to anyone who would listen? What possible benefit would it be to the USSR to have a KGB defector pleading with high officials that the Sino-Soviet split was fake, and that the KGB was now going to step up the stories of Communist disunity, and don't you believe it when you hear it? What possible gain could be had in the Kremlin from that? The best they could do was have Golitsyn laughed off as a crackpot. If the CIA believed him how cold that could do anything but hurt the Soviet Union. It certainly wouldn't lead to a reduction in new US weapons research. Believing Nosenko would.
And what did Nosenko have to offer when he defected. 1 – Some names of spies to be arrested who had infiltrated into US Government agencies. -2 – The info that the KGB had nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination and ignored Oswald when he lived in Russia and 3 That other guy, Golitsyn. That guy that defected two years ago and has a friend at the CIA, he is a fake defector.
That's what Yuri had. Here's some spies, arrest them – We are completely innocent on Oswald, and Golitsyn is a liar.
You've seen the mafia informer movies where an undercover FBI agent actually commits a violent crime to prove his bona fides and become accepted by the bad guys. You should know too that in wartime, when a code has been broken, some people have to die when they could be saved because to save them would reveal that the code has been broken. So you get the principle. The Soviets threw a few small time spies under the bus to set up Nosenko's bona fides. Then Nosenko gave the anti-CIA USA what they wanted to hear; That Golitsyn was the false defector, so forget his crazy theories about “disinformation” and all that silliness, and that the KGB didn't help kill Kennedy. Everyone wants peace, so when one set of facts points peace and the other set of facts points Cold War trouble, pick peace and throw the rest of it out like a comic who bombs and then lands on his back in the alley, as the door slams shut then opens again as his props are hurled upon him with a classic, “And stay out!.” That's how America treated the Golitsyn thesis during the Carter era. I don't mind America choosing one over the other, but to make the other one just an unspeakable paranoid delusional thesis for Cold War McCarthyists who have to be insane is dangerously wrong. If Noskeno was finally chosen as the real defector, surely the score wasn't 100-0. Leave Golitsyn with some points would you? No one ever proved that Nosenko was the real defector and no one ever proved that Golitsyn was the false defector. In fact, the criticism you always hear of Golitsyn was that he was “paranoid” like his boss who bought it. They said his disinformation theories were crazy, insane, counterproductive, and that he was just a small time agent with a big ego suffering from 'delusions of grandeur.'
That's how the portrait of Golitsyn has evolved. He started out being discredited as “the false defector” by Nosenko in 1964. Then, as Nosenko sat for years in prison the 70's rolled around, the CIA became America's bad guys and Nosenko was declared the true defector.
In the meantime Golitsyn was neither condemned not rehabilitated. The fact that the world decided that Nosenko was not the false defector was supposed to mean that therefore, Golitsyn was, and could not be trusted. Golitsyn, it would follow, belonged in a US military prison as a spy to be exchanged for a captured Soviet spy.
But a few years after after Nosenko was cleared by the tidal wave of left, a strange change evolved in the way the world explained away Golitsyn. The Roosky was no longer being accused of being a false defector, but rather as being paranoid. The world decided that his theories about the Soviet Union and China staging a great disinformation campaign to trick the west into abandoning its military build-up were just the rantings of some nut. Name calling doesn't answer an argument.
In any case by even calling Golitsyn paranoid, his detractors are granting him the benefit of the doubt that he is not a false defector. If he believes his thesis then he's not a double-agent. And if Golitsyn is not a false defector, he is therefore not THE false defector. And if Golitsyn is not THE false defector, Nosenko is! By calling Golitsyn paranoid you are saying that Tommie Lee Jones, the hero of the movie Yuri Nosenko KGB, was actually playing the bad guy, and the story is so chilling that even the movie star doesn't realize the role he's playing as pawn in chessboard of deceptions.
None of the books or documentaries about Nosenko vs. Golitsyn have ever explained how Golitsyn's exposure of the Sino-Soviet split as false would have been of any use to the Soviet Union. If Golitsyn was a false-defector, he had the stupidest mission ever assigned to a false-defector.
Golitsyn finally got his story told in 1984 in a powerful book called New Lies For Old. Anatoly sticks to his theories about how the Communists greatest weapons are not ICBM's but its grand disinformation campaign that began in 1959 and is ongoing. NLFO is not about his personal spy wars, before, during or after his duel with Yuri N.
Anatoly's book was written in 1984 and in it Golitsyn predicts the rise of a new liberal leader in Russia who will grant independence to the satellite states of the Soviet Union, and the Berlin Wall would be torn down, plus a lot of statues, but that again, just like in the 1960's the whole idea was to get the west to disarm itself and provide money to Russia. It would be shrewd changes from above disguised as spontaneous revolutions from below. Golitsyn even said it would probably happen near the end of the present decade. Its too bad we can't give Toly any credit where it is due for his amazing predictions that came true. That would be paranoid.
Stan Turner set the CIA on its back in a flaming wreck when he came out and declared to Congress in 1978 that America should be ashamed of itself for the way it treated the true defector. More than 70 CIA officers either quit or were forced out because they protested that Golitsyn was right and Nosenko was the bad guy. It really shook up the Agency. Yet every writer or film-maker that tackles the subject dismisses anyone who believed in Golitsyn as a fool. Would these filmmakers be able to hold their own if they had to debate it one on one with the 70 men who resigned from the CIA? You scoff at 70 men who would throw their careers away over this issue because it really was that important, a matter of life and death maybe on a mass scale.
Those who dismiss Golitsyn want to say as little about it as possible, while those lucky few who take him seriously want to seriously talk.
Here's a passage on the G vs N case by Carter's DCI, Stansfield Turner,
“In Nosenko's favor, if he were a genuine defector, was that his knowledge of Soviet intelligence operations would have been more current than Golitsyn's, making him more valuable to us. Clearly there was cause for Golitsyn to want to discredit Nosenko.”
The DCI thinks that Golitsyn is jealous of Nosenko for getting all the attention, and that's why he is going to say that Nosenko is a false defector. Ya gots ta be kiddin' me.
That presumes that Golitsyn is either a)- not sincere in his ideology, or b) - as immature as a three year old. If Golitsyn is acting like an infant and that's why he needs to accuse Nosenko of being a fake, this concedes that Golitsyn is a sincere defector. So now neither of them is apparently a false defector but both are saying the other one is. I expect better theories out of the United States Director of Central Intelligence.
JONESTOWN 11 18 1978
Jim Morris is a stand-up comedian and has appeared on all the major news networks as an impressionist. He made a living in the 1980's playing and imprsonating President Reagan.
In November of 1978 we were two very young comedians only beginning to get paid for what we do. We hung out together and had a lot of laughs together, especially because we both liked “sick” humor.
In November of 78 he came into the club laughing hysterically about the Jonestown story. I didn't know what he was talking about because then, as now, I study history every day and current events not enough. Todays newspapers pileup unread while I dig into the history books. I'm often out of touch with the latest hot story. Jim called me every few days fighting back laughter and asking me if I had read about Jonestown yet. I was getting annoyed and kept telling him “no.” There was a stack of Boston Globes on the floor beside my study desk and, yes, several days worth of headlines had to do with this Jonestown cult. Finally, just to get Jim off my back, near the end of the month I picked up the first day's headline paper and began reading. Two hours later he answered the phone.
“Hello?”
“Oh .......My ...... God.”
He roared with laughter, “You finally read it!”
I ended up with an obsession for this story. I bought and read at least ten Jonestown books and made jokes about the “punch line” in my act. Crowds always laughed. As tragic as the story was, there were so many bizarre and almost impossible to believe twists.
909 Americans living in a jungle camp in remotest Guyana had killed themselves by drinking poisoned grape Kool-aid on the orders of their cult leader Jim Jones. A United States Congressman from California was at Jonestown investigating allegations of abuse there and he was murdered. That event triggered the mass suicide.
As the years passed I grew a little more sensitive as I studied this insane cult and laughed a bit less, but still I'd be reading yet another Jonestown book with concerned furrows of disbelief and fascination for hours and then all of a sudden I'd burst out into uncontrolled laughter just before falling asleep. I just couldn't help it.
There were hundreds of stand-up comedians doing Jonestown bits for the next several years. Morris and I weren't the only sick puppies out there. Deal of the Century, a comedy starring Chevy Chase was made in the mid 1980's and it opens with the lead character lamenting where he was and thinking, “I would rather have been in Jonestown.” That's the opening joke in the movie. No tragedy in history ever invited such public jokes. Today, in 2010 political pundits still insert slang that so and so “drank the kool-aid” meaning gave up on something and packed it in. It has become slang for political deliberate political suicide. Jonestown will never die.
I rented a PBS documentary on Jonestown just last month, 32 years after the event. Even college students generally know of it today. Jonestown wasn't some passing crime story like Claus Von Bulow or some ephemeral political scandal like Wilber Mills. Jonestown was so spectacular that it has become truly historical and timeless like Custers' Last Stand of the crash of the Hindenburg. The Guyana massacre-by-suicide was the crime of the century. It makes the OJ Simpson case look like a routine story. Two major motion pictures have ben made about Jonestown and can be found in the “Cult” films section.
What happened? Why did 909 Americans in the steaming jungles of Guyana commit mass suicide on the orders of a demented religious leader? Nothing like it has ever happened in modern times. It is one of the most unique and interesting events in the history of the planet.
The Jonestown story has a lot of significance on a lot of subjects of importance. It is s study in crowd psychology, personal psychology, politics, religion, crime, sex, drugs, and suicide. I might have to go deeper on this one in a separate book.
DÉTENTE
Under Carter and Vance, US-Soviet relations were defined as in a state of détente. But conservatives saw this thaw in relations as a chance for the Soviets to consolidate their gains. Communism was gaining in Africa and Asia and to a lesser extent in Latin America while democracy was not on the march anywhere.
The left saw the best hope for peace in a freeze on the arms race. Was this really the time to play musical chairs and stop the music with the Russian equal or ahead in the Cold War?
SALT II
The United States and the USSR negotiated the Strategic Arms Limitation treaty known as Salt II, but neither side ratified it. The two countries however generally adhered to the Salty provisions voluntarily. Salt II was hardly a dead letter in practice.
The goal of SALT II was to reduce the nuclear arsenal of both countries to a maximum of 2,400 strategic nuclear delivery vehicles. A delivery vehicle could be a missile or a bomber plane. Some of the ICBM’s would be MIRVed, that is they would have several independently targeted warheads on the same missile.
Each warhead under consideration here is several dozen times more powerful than the A-bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The nuclear arsenals of both countries under Carter-Brezhnev were in the neighborhood of 20,000 strategic nuclear warheads each. SALT II was an attempt to limit the ability of each country to deploy its existing weapons through a reduction in delivery systems, but SALT II did not reduce nuclear warheads. It was a limitation treaty. No nuclear warheads would be destroyed.
Brezhnev and Carter put their Hancock and Lenin on the SALT II Treaty on June 18, 1978 in Vienna. Carter sent the treaty to the Senate for its consideration on June 22. There was a good chance it would pass. But when the Russians invaded and occupied Afghanistan in December of 1979, Carter turned right like an eagle-hawk. His asking the Senate to delay consideration of SALT II until further notice in January of 1980. Rejection of Salt II was one of his better protestant answers to the Soviets Central Asia threat. The Senate didn't have to be persuaded.
SALT II has never been ratified and Reagan in May of 1986 declared it no longer valid in light of repeated Soviet violations of its (voluntary) provisions.
ANGRY RABBIT ATTACKS PRESIDENT CARTER
Before we get to all the heavy events of 1979-1980 here is the #1 'lighter side' story of the four years of Carter. On April 20 1979 country folky Jimmy was fishing near Plains in a little rowboat on a marshy pond. A White House photographer was snapping shots of our regular guy hero fishing “alone” like any good ol boy would on his day off.
Suddenly there was a bandit off the starboard stern. An angry swimming rabbit was snarling, baring its furious teeth and was trying to climb into the boat and bite the President! Carter didn't even know what it was at first, but he did know that it had its heart set on attacking him. Deacon Jimmy grabbed an oar and beat the rabbit on the top of the head until it finally desisted and swam away.
The incident would have died fast, but Carter made the mistake of casually telling it to Jody Powell who made the mistake of casually mentioning it to a Washington Post reporter, who at first thought little about it. Then it occurred to him in the middle of the night it hit him that this was great and he called his editor at 3 a.m. who pulled a 'stop the presses!' out of an old black and white movie. The next morning the headlines of the Washington Post read in thick banner headlines,
PRESIDENT CARTER ATTACKED BY RABBIT
At first people thought the story was some kind of a hoax, because rabbits can't swim and do not go after adults in boats even if they could. But the story was true. It was a big nasty “swamp rabbit” that had little relations to soft cuddly Dutch lops on the poster for chocolates. The press eventually got their hands on the photos of Carter fending off this dangerous animal with the oar. It was slapstick comedy. There were rabbit jokes for months. Johnny Carson's writer's said, “Thank you God!”
The way the animal attacked was unusual even for a swamp rabbit. It might have been rabid, or maybe even a rabbit was tired of the way America was getting pushed around all over the world. My guess it that the boat was close to a place where the little ones were being raised and the rabbit was showing its parental instincts. A wild turkey attacked me on a busy Brookline street two years ago, and I was too full of admiration to even be mad at the lovely creature. It had just threatened a moving car, trying to bite its wheels before it went after me. I just figured it had kids nearby and was being a brave animal out of duty, not stupidity.
The Carter attacked by rabbit incident has been lumped with other twisted presidential moments. Its been on the same off the wall incidents lists as GHW Bush vomiting on the Prime Minister of Japan, LBJ lifting the dog by its ears, George W almost choking on a pretzel, and the Iraqi man throwing two shoes at W Bush during a Baghdad press conference. I resent the inclusion of the last episode on such lists. A foreign reporter hurling an object at our President is not a matter for any “lighter side” list. Only the fact that the press loved to ridicule Bush made this a lighter side moment at all. If someone tried that on Obama it would be the most serious international incident imaginable. But with W Bush it was a funny moment.
THE MIDDLE EAST ON THE EVE OF THE HOSTAGE CRISIS
Let's look at the Middle East playing board on November 3, 1979, just before the nation's foreign policy got hog-tied for two years by a group of college students from Iran.
The biggest and most obvious change was the exit of United States influence from Iran in January of 1979. This changed the entire picture. Iran was the lynchpin of American foreign policy in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia was willing to work with us cautiously, and played the other end of the “twin pillar' strategy. But Iran had been our only friend in the Arab oil region. Israel was our only other friend in the Middle East, but it had no oil. Israel's contribution was to take our political support and money, and make our relations with all the other Arab countries extremely difficult. The USA always supported Israel because we are a moral nation, not just a nation of laws. The United States has always had more to lose than to gain from its friendship with Israel. That makes the friendship a true one.
When the Islamic revolution tossed our friend the Shah out of Iran and installed a government that loved God and showed it by hanging women from the back of tow trucks for cheating on their husbands, the United States found itself dangerously friendless in the vital Persian Gulf.
It was more important than ever now maintain and improve good relations with the Saudi Kingdom.
Saudi Arabia was divided on how it should handle the United States. There were two obvious problems. First, the Americans were infidels who let their wives go the public beach in red bikinis, and in many other ways violated the rules of Mohammed. This was serious. It took a surrender to expedience to make any kind of deal with these loud and un-pious people. Secondly, the United States was friends with Israel and this made the Arabs impossible to talk to. Everything always came back to Israel. Negotiations over anything was always made more difficult by their use of our friendship with Israel as a reason to stop any deal. The Arabs were always ready to end deals or negotiations over our friendship with Israel, and intimidated businessmen and politicians alike with this threat for decades.
But on the other hand, it was fun having money and oil. And to make the best use of money and oil it was important to join the world markets of banks, stock markets, and commodity trading. The Arabs were not going to make a lot of money in investments if they did not maintain polite relationships with the western money center nations. They couldn't stiff-arm the governments of London, Bonn, and Washington, on political problems and then expect to have an easy time of it in business relationships with the same countries, both government and private. The Arabs hated Israeli settlers, but they got along well enough with rich Dutch Jewish bakers when they had to to make big bucks.
The Saudis also had a healthy fear of Soviet dominance in the Middle East. They looked with favor on a shadowy American military umbrella, and that was certainly a reward that the United States was willing to offer in exchange for positive oil relations. Remember, the Soviets were still two rulers away from the Gorbachov revolution. This was still the Russia of Brezhnev and gulags. The USSR had a close, and dependent Middle Eastern ally of some power in Iraq. The Saudis had a healthy fear of Iraq as a Soviet military extension, like North Korea on 1950. The Soviet Union now maintained locked and loaded naval fleets in the Indian Ocean. and was sponsoring a Communist upheaval in South Yemen in the Saudi Southern region. Saudi Arabia was supporting North Yemen in this Bedouin civil war. NY was a buffer state between SY and SA. But if South Yemen won, then Saudi Arabia would be directly confronted with a hostile Communist state. In a world that perceived the United States in decline and the Soviet Union on the rise, a conservative sheikdom like Saudi Arabia felt that the Soviet threat was genuine. Declining Sam was still powerful militarily, and the Saudis welcomed his protection.
On the other hand the Saudis dared not get too close to American military protection because they didn't want to provoke the Russians either. If the Saudis were seen in Moscow as joining a Middle Eastern NATO, the Russian might strike preemptively before the ring of American military bases could be built around the Gulf. The Rooskies would probably not risk a World War by using their own forces, but could do it with a good pal like Iraq. The cat's paw Iraq could swallow up the smaller gulf states in three weeks before the Saudis with their mere western political support had time to know what happened. The Saudis might be added to the menu in short order after the new Moscow-friendly Middle Eastern oil bloc had been solidified.
The risk of political instability in the region was so menacing that western companies had to purchase prohibitively high political insurance policies on their transactions. Saudi Arabia was vulnerable to an Iranian style Islamic revolution from below. Fear of it was as influential as the threat itself. It was another reason not to hate Sam. Saudi Arabia wanted the shadow of the threat of American military support in case it had troubles with its internal as well as its external enemies.
The Camp David accords won Jimmy Carter the Nobel Prize, but “the Prize” is also a phrase ascribed often to Middle east oil. He didn't win “The Prize” when he won the prize. He made getting the prize more difficult. The Saudis had their hands full trying to sell their relationship with America to the religious anti-Semitic Saudi people in the best of times. Now with Camp David they were really up against it with criticism at home. The anti-western factions in Saudi Arabia gained major strength in the aftermath of the Camp David agreements. The same was true in all the Arab countries, especially in Egypt which signed them.
Saudi Arabia was quietly cutting the United States breaks in the oil situation in exchange for US military protection. But the Saudis had to keep the publicity low on this deal in order to maintain its image in the Arab world.
Camp David was the big story in almost every Middle Eastern country and was the operative headline up until the Iranian hostage crisis. Iraq saw Camp David as an opportunity to take over as the leader of the Arab world that it had long aspired to be. With Egypt a traitor the the Arab cause, Iraq could emerge as the revolutionary vanguard a pan-Arab power.
Iraq tried to mend its fence with Syria, partly because Syria shared a border with Israel and no one seemed to want Israel destroyed more than Iraq did. If these two countries could combine their military resources and place them right on the border with Israel, then this could represent a real threat that could be translated into political power. But an Iraq-Syria alliance was a tenuous concept even as a dream.
Iraq's relations with its smaller neighbors in the Persian Gulf had long been strained at best, but the Iranian evolution of 1979 offered a new hope for improvement there as well. Countries like Bahrain and Kuwait had long been afraid of Iraq but now they were far more afraid of Iran. Kuwait actually saw the Iranian revolution as some security from the threats of Iraq to take over Kuwait, something it almost did in 1961.
Overlapping all these rivalries, individual, political, religious, and Cold-War, was the ancient rivalry between Persian and Arab. Iran was a Middle eastern oil power but it was Persian. It wasn't part of anyone's dream of a pan-Arab empire. It wasn't difficult for the Arab states of the Gulf to fall in with an untrustworthy friend like Iraq if it stood up to the Persian revolutionaries of Iran. It was clear, long before Iraq attacked Iran in 1981, that if Iraq went to war with Iran, the former foes of Iraq, would back it against the Persians. Jew-vs Arab wasn't the only racial issue in the region. Arab vs Persian was another dynamic.
The United States shared the same line of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend thinking,' with some variants of course. The USA was no great friend of Iraq. Iraq was a Soviet client state. But having lost Iran to the January revolution, the USA suddenly looked more favorably to Iraq as the last best hope for blocking the advance of the fundamentalist shiite revolution Iran seemed determined to export like a virus in the region. Having the lost the Shah, and with the Saudis militarily feeble, the United States was stuck with trying to court a Soviet influenced totalitarian state as the only hope to block Iranian radical Islam. We had to both pick and balance our poisons.
The original idea had been Middle Eastern security for the US through the twin pillars of Saudi Arabia and Iran. Iran had some money and a lot of fighting power. The Saudis had a lot of money and no fighting power. Left with only the one pillar with no fighting power, the US had little choice but to waltz with yet another dictator, at least it it wasn't its oil supply and influence in the Persian Gulf secured.
It must be noted that the left in the United States in these years had a lot of wrath about our relations with Iran and the Saudis but very little over our morally poor but expedient efforts to gain influence in Iraq. You rarely heard a pep of anger over Iraq. Then, after the events of the next 12 years the left screamed a lot about our evil friendship with Iraq in the years prior to the 1990 invasion. But hindsight is cowardly and sleazy. The Republicans took all the blame for the US-Iraq rapprochement, but the reorientation of US Middle Eastern foreign policy in the direction of courting Iraq was initiated under the direction of a Democratic administration. Vance, Brown, Brezhinski and Carter started it and Reagan picked up where Jimmy left off. You would think from the critics of later years that the US had embraced Sadaam Hussein's regime precisely because it was evil and corrupt and tortured and killed people on a mass scale.
As Carter and Brown (and later Reagan) saw it, the Iranians did the exact same evil things the Iraqis did, but but Iraq didn't want to overthrow the established governments of the region and replace them with Islamic fundamentalist regimes that would cut off all our oil, potentially make deals with the Soviets at the height of the Cold War, and continue on towards the horn of Africa and east Asia with yet more revolution.
Northeast Africa is essentially a part of the Middle East and played its role too. The Sudan was moderate at this time and chose not to condemn the Camp David Accords. The President of Sudan didn't praise David either but that wasn't enough. The Sudan got most of its oil from Iraq, so Iraq proceeded to cut off Sudan's oil supply as punishment for not hating peace.
Libya was another powder keg. Libya was hostile to the United States, hostile to Egypt, and friendly to the Soviet Union. And it had a lot of oil, the best quality oil in the entire region in fact. Another monkey wrench for the US foreign policy machine.
Ethiopia and Somalia were riddled with factions and fighting. There were Cuban troops, Soviet advisors, and long ill-marked indefensible borders etched in sand.
Iraq wanted to be the new Egypt. But Iraq did not have the location, manpower, military power, or economic power that Egypt had. Sadaam Hussein and the Baath Party had way too much baggage for the job. Iraq had enmities with Iran, Syria, Kuwait, the Kurds, Israel, the United States, and, within its own country, the Shiites. The only real friend the Iraqis had was the Soviet Union and this created more problems than it solved in the region. Everyone was afraid of Soviet encroachments in the Middle East except the Iraqis, who had nothing to fear since they were already Soviet clients. The idea that Iraq would be embraced by the Arab world as their new leader in the fallout from Camp David was a typical stupid Sadaam Hussien miscalculation.
Iraq could never supplant Egypt as number one culturally in the Arab world any more than it could politically or militarily. In fact in trying to make itself the center of attention by adopting extreme anti-Israel positions, Iraq only put itself that much further from a position of leadership. Here was Iraq, one of the only places in the Arab world where western ways were welcomed and women could walk the streets with their neckline showing, and this nation suddenly decided that it was going to replace Egypt as the leader of a new pan-Arab dream.
So it was against this backdrop of multiple complex tripwires that the United States tried to walk through the Middle eastern minefields in order to secure its oil, and to prevent a Soviet or Iranian hegemony in a new Middle East. And this was the way it was before the hostage crisis. After the events of November 4 1979, the whole picture became even more impossible for the US in the ME.
The damage done to the US foreign policy, particularly to its oil dealings, in the Middle East as a direct result of the reactions to gthe Camp David Accords is no criticism of Jimmy Carter. The President was doing the right thing in the name of right and in the name of peace and he deserved the prize for Dave. The way he handled the Iranian Hostage Crisis is another story entirely.
IRAN HOSTAGE CRISIS 11/1979 to 1/1981
On November 4 of 1979 some militant Islamaniac students at Teheran ruined the Carter Presidency by the seizing of the American Embassy in Teheran. That was our property under international law. They took 52 Americans hostage and paraded them blindfolded through the streets of Teheran amidst taunting and jeering by the Islamic folks in Teheran. The government of Iran was (conveniently) in such an uncertain and revolutionary condition that it could claim to not have been responsible. The static Iranian government could even say that it was powerless to obtain the release of the hostages.
The crisis dragged on and on. No one dreamed it would last as long as it did. Public support in the first few weeks for the President was not only solid, it jumped to considerably higher than normal. This was as much a show of anger against Iran as it was support for Carter. By the third month support for Carter and his do-nothing ways was failing as surely as he was. By the time the hostage crisis ended, he was handing over the White House keys to Ronald Reagan.
These students had Uncle Sam by the ankle. People were furious. I was furious. Even the liberal media wanted something done! Holy Mackerel!
Carter’s position was delicate and the situation complex.
It all centered somehow around a man with terminal cancer. The Shah of Iran was never so important in world affairs as he was during the last year of his life when he was dying of cancer, a rare feat.
THE SICK SHAH
The Shah of Iran had fled to the United States after his overthrow. After the Arab students took the US embassy, the presence of the Shah in the USA became a liability for Carter. He could not hope to establish diplomatic relations with a new government in Iran while he was harboring their most wanted fugitive. The ill Shah was making it almost impossible for America to negotiate for the release of the Embassy hostages. There was an outpouring of hostility towards America from the American left, and from the Arab world in general. In December of 1979 the Shah volunteered to leave the United States in order to help his old ally. He was the wounded trooper telling the rest of the men to “go on without me.”
Within the Carter cabinet and in the press there was much debate about how to handle the Shah. The liberals wanted Carter to disown him and stand for a more progressive position in the modern world for American diplomacy. Disowning the Shah would be a powerful message of conciliation towards the angry Arab world. About 170 countries told the United States not to drop him off in their crib. Only Egypt was willing to take him, but Carter did not want to cause any trouble for Egypt in the Middle East, where the peace with Israel was so delicate and had been personally worked on so assiduously.
Others, like Brezhinski, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and former candidate for President Ronald Reagan felt that abandoning the Shah because of a change in world political opinion would be cowardly and transparently expedient betrayal of the a past commitment. Former President Nixon was all in favor of protecting the Shah. What kind of messages would we be sending to prospective friends among world leaders if we looked the other way as soon as things went bad for them? How could we convince other nations in the future to take a chance and switch sphere of influence and come over to ours?
Panama was willing to take in the Shah at one point.
The Shah's doctors warned him that his spleen had to be removed or else he would probably die.
The United States was willing to allow the Shah to stay here for his medical treatment, but he wanted to help get the hostages released and was willing to take his chances with Panama hospitals (especially the one in the American Zone.)
Panama would pay a price for its cooperation with the United States. Iran was planning on selling large quantities of oil to Panama at below market price. It was expected that the Panamanians would get closer to Iran and OPEC and further away from the US orbit as a result. But when Iran learned that Panama was going to welcome the Shah it cancelled the sweetheart oil deal. Iraq announced that it would not build the refineries they were going to build for Panama as a throw-in. Panama lost an estimated $100 million in revenue when it told the Shah he was welcome to go there for cancer treatment.
WHO WERE THESE STUDENTS?
These Iranian students spent 444 days holding hostages. What happened to their grades, and who were they?
The resumption is that they were all hard-line Islamic militants. Well, yes and no. At first there was a mix of Islamics and Marxists, getting along well enough but not really connecting. That's why no one on the democratic or religious sides came out and assumed leadership of the the kidnapping mob of pious pirates. The mob was actually at first demonstrating as much against their own government as against the United States, so it was hard for anyone in power in Iran to want to lead this group. That explains the mystery a little of the hijackers having no one in Iran taking the responsibility for them. The Iran President and the Ayatollah both waited months before they began to look to lead the mob. The mob gradually grew more religious and more conservative. When it clearly became properly fundamentalist, the Ayatollah strolled in and became its master. Before that he was holding his cards see which way the wind blows like Ben Franklin.
THE DINER TEST
The Iran hostage crisis, unlike the later Iran-Contra scandal under Reagan, passed the diner test. People cared. They talked about it in the diners and at the bus stops and at the kitchen tables of America and on both the national and local news for each and every one of the 444 days it lasted. There was only one hostage called The Hostage Crisis. THC deeply affected everybody.
Iran really got away with pushing us around. They took over a government building in downtown Washington D.C. that just happened to be located in Iran. They held our employees hostage for more than a year. And the walked away smiling in the ned. No one was punished. This is why a part of me takes some satisfaction in our current virtual occupation of three Middle Eastern countries. Let Iran try something like that against the USA today with our military forces positioned next it it along the long Iraqi Eastern border.
1979 has a lot to do with all the political decisions being made by America in the Middle East today. The elders calling the shots now at the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq in Washington were middle-aged men when they say through 444 days of rank humiliation at the hands of Iran back in 79. As even the Obama administration gives warnings to Iran about nuclear proliferation and harboring terrorism, it is reacting in part to the events of 1979-81. Young people in particular need to study this monumental historical event in order to understand today’s events in the region with any clarity. 98% of the college crowd calls America the bully in the Middle East. But they didn't experience the humiliation decades. We got plenty of sand kicked in our face before we snapped.
Carter’s weak and failed handling of this crisis created millions of new conservatives who were previously moderate liberals. I forgive Jimmy Carter for his failure in the Iran Hostage crisis. He did the best he could, and he was a talented person. But I have a right to resent the entire travesty. Carter’s pacifism was a hindrance to the dignity and political status of the United States. How could anyone have lived through the presidencies of Carter and Reagan and not see a lopsided difference in favor if Reagan? The whole affair was the insult that made a conservative out of me. 444 days? That’s not an event, that’s an era. Those 52 could have emerged with science degrees if only they’d had the books and weren’t blindfolded so much.
If an Embassy is accredited as an Embassy, it means that soil, that building is part of that foreign nation. The embassy of the United States is our land. November 4 was as if Iranian students had taken two blocks of an American town. Carter should have taken the seizure and occupation of our embassy as a declaration of hostilities against the US. He could have, and should have, ordered the full mobilization of US armed forces worldwide. He should have called up the reserves and announced in public that an expeditionary force was being assembled to march through the Iranian desert and take back those hostages currently being held against their will on US soil. He could have warned Iran that if it resists the expeditionary force, he, Carter would go to the Congress and seek a Declaration of War against Iran. He should have announced that if any of the hostages were harmed, the Iranian state, whatever form it may be, would be held accountable and that the only way out was for Iranian leaders to release the hostages immediately.
It might have worked. The threat alone would almost surely have worked, and we might never have had to have the choppers crash in a bungled mission. Iranian pols would have had to know that they were facing the full loss of national sovereignty if they didn’t cough up the hostages. Iran would have been invaded and occupied and placed in the blue column of American sphere of influence until further notice.
The monkey wrench in the whole affair was the nearby shadow of the ‘Lesser Satan,’ the USSR (That one always rankles. We were the Great Satan and the USSR was the Lesser Satan? Give me a break!)
Iran didn’t want to go into the red column, any more than the blue, but the Great Satan Sam was a bigger fear than Lesser Satan Ivan. Iran hedged its bets and exploited US fear of Russia throughout the Hostage Crisis without committing itself to a Soviet defense pact. Russia’s atheism precluded this latter contingency, so God in essence pitched in diplomatically and prevented a dangerous rapprochement between the USSR and Iran at a critical moment in history. But Carter and his advisors eschewed military intervention primarily because of a fear of provoking a dangerous Soviet reaction which could lead to a nuclear exchange and that could not be chanced. It had more to do with his pacifism than his pacifism. I'll bet you 3-1 money that he wasn't so much concerned that some of our hostages might get killed, he was afraid millions might get killed. I think he feared it as a man of God, not as a liberal coward. But I think that's what it was all about. What would the USA do if the Russians had a hostage crisis in Mexico City and then invaded Mexico? Would that not create a potential stage for a sequence of events that leads to a military clash between super-powers, and we all know that any military exchange between nuke powers has that special risk factor.
Iran may have hoped that the USSR would intervene if the US tried to invade it. But Teheran couldn’t be sure that firstly, the USSR would intervene, and secondly, if they did, the Iranians couldn't be sure that the Russians would be good enough to leave. The Russians had a nasty habit of liberating oppressed nations and then oppressing them. In any case, Teheran didn’t want a World War III any more than any one else did, even if it was flattering to know it would be fought over them.
Furthermore, if the Soviets did somehow save Iran from US intervention it would create a gratitude problem for Teheran. The mob does you a big favor. Now you owe them a favor. Its not a good spot to be in. Iran would then be almost obliged to slip snugly into the Soviet sphere of influence, something that would be bad for the United States, bad for Iran, and good for the USSR.
There were reasons why we can sympathize with Carter’s position. The Soviet Union was the extensive northern border of Iran. North Iran was geographically a potential Yalu river style trip-wire for Soviet intervention. If not for this volatile large border with Iran, Carter might have done his Charles Bronson impression. James Earl also had to worry about many American citizens scattered in Iran outside the embassy. There were far more than 52 American in Iran at the time and their safety was a concern to be reckoned with.
MILITARIST PACIFIST CARTER
Carter still brags about how he didn’t overreact with a military solution to solve the Hostage Crisis. During the 1984 Democratic Presidential debate, Carter’s VP Walter Mondale waxed proud about how because they didn’t do anything ‘wild or crazy’ those hostages were now home safe with their loved ones. Yes but at the expense of long-term US status in the world, and after a wild rescue mission failed catastrophically.
The lives of those 52 people were more important than larger national considerations. It’s a good thing Mondale or Carter did not command US Army divisions in World War II. No bold moves would have been risked because it might have cost 52 lives if it failed.
During this same Dem debate, after Mondale finished polishing an apple to himself for peace and love at a time of hate, candidate Gary Hart intervened to set the record straight. He reminded everyone that if his memory served him correctly, the Carter administration had tried a military solution. He recalled to Mondale that it failed because the military under Carter was not properly prepared for such a rescue mission (April 25 1980) and suggested that rather than gloat over being peaceniks, they should admit that they tried and failed with a military solution.
On the last page of his memoirs, Keeping Faith, Carter tells how on his last day as president, politician Max Cleland, who had lost three limbs in Vietnam came into the Oval Office with a plaque of a quote from Thomas Jefferson,
'I have the consolation to reflect that during the period of my Administration not a drop of the blood if a single citizen was shed by the sword of war.”
To which Carter adds,
“This is something I shall always cherish.”
Yes, way too much (And a few Indians might dispute the Thom Jefferson claim.) If Carter wasn't willing to use United States military forces when necessary because of religious convictions, then he had no business even thinking about running for president in 1976.
This is the real world and it’s full of bullies and genocidal tyrants. This isn’t Sunday school, Deacon, where theories weigh 500 pounds and th real world ten. This is the same earth that gave us Nazi Germany, the Rape of Nanking, and the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Keep pacifism where it belongs, in the fake world of the Quakers. And besides, we did shed some American blood in the failed rescue mission and that was most definitely a military operation. Those copters were headed for Teheran with a lot of loaded weapons. Those 8 men shed more than a single drop of blood on Jimbo's watch.
Carter to his credit, was true to his campaign pledge in 1976 when he asserted that
“Fairness, not force, will the be the guideline for our foreign policy.”
James was openly telling all of our enemies that the most powerful military state on earth will not use force under any circumstances. So feel free to run wild all over the world. Blow up our airliners and take our embassies. We won’t do a thing. You know why? Because fairness, not force was to be the guideline of America's foreign policy. And it was. And the most important thing to remember is that the underline is accurate. The fairness part wasn’t important. The important thing was the part where he says “not force.” It’s clearly the main point of the sentence. You can even see Carter flashing his eyebrows on the phrase “not force” as he always did when he tried to emphasize something.
Carter was sucking up to the voters who were Vietnam drained, plus he was sincerely religious. 1976 America from deep in the center to everything left was psychotically against “resorting” to military force for any reason. Jimmy may not have realized that in playing up to war weary American voters, he was giving the green light to the USSR, Communist China, and terrorists and America-haters all over the world to “go for it.” It reminds me of the story I saw on the news that the Fall River Police Department is running low on money so they have decided to “overlook minor crimes.” I mentioned this my act and added, “All I can say is, I'm spending my afternoons from now on in Fall River from now on. Commit any minor crime I want. You can call the cops, they won't do nothin!” Carter was doing a fall River on America's role in the world. We won't use force in our foreign policy, that's my pledge, so go ahead, grab an embassy like Mike's going to grab a pack of cupcakes at a convenience store in Fall River. The Carter cops won't do nothin!
CHINA CARD 1979
Russian-American relations continued to deteriorate throughout the Carter years until by 1979, the brains trust of Brezhinski Carter, and Brown had decided that it was time to drive a wedge between the Russians and their Chinese allies.
It is commonly believed that in 1972 Nixon opened formal diplomatic relations between the US and China. The fact is that Nixon opened informal relations with China in 1972. It was not until 1979 under Jimmy Carter that the US and China opened formal diplomatic mutual relations. They became official with the establishment of fully accredited Ambassadors in fully accredited embassies. (George Bush is often cited as having once been “ambassador” to China, but when he was there he did not have the formal title of ambassador. GHW retained the title of “Ambassador” based on his former service as UN Ambassador to the United Nations, so his role as “Ambassador to China” can be misleading. Bush was in China when Saigon fell to the Communists and he reported mass jubilation in the streets of Beijing. Yet we are supposed to believe that these two nations Vietnam and China, hated each other.)
The US saw a number of issues dividing China and Russia, not the least of which was strong Soviet ties with the new nation of Vietnam, which the Chinese considered to be within their own sphere of influence.
The Vietnamese Army with Soviet support invaded and took over Cambodia on December 15 1978. By mid January 1979 Vietnam owned Cambodia. The Red Khmers were out.
On January 29-31 1979 Mr. Deng of China visited Washington for formal talks, with an eye to establishing official diplomatic ties between Peking and D.C..
18 days after Deng left DC, the Chinese invaded Vietnam. The war lasted a few weeks. Western analysts saw it as a punitive war. China wasn’t trying to actually occupy Vietnam, but just wanted to chastise it for establishing too many close ties with the USSR, an enemy of China. China allegedly suffered heavy losses and withdrew.
I believe that the invasion was part of a disinformation campaign designed to show the west how disunited was the Communist bloc.
I read day by day microfilm of several major US newspapers of Chinese invasion and a few things don’t add up. There were never any detailed military photos of actions in North Vietnam. Never Battle details were always and I mean always nonexistent. Casualties were never reported nor did any western military experts weigh in on the war and its details or meanings.
What is more illogical is that before the invasion the papers were filled with little columned stories about how Vietnam was launching harassment raids into mainland China. This supposedly made the China invasion more credible. But it is these reports that are not credible to me. When in all of human history has a small state launched harassment military attacks into the territory of a neighboring superpower? And why would they? Prior to 1979 it never happened on this planet and therefore it probably didn’t really happen in 1979 on the border between Vietnam and China. Has anyone ever written a short history of that invasion focusing on its military facts? No one has. I want to know why. Several Chinese divisions did march through Vietnam, but did they engage in real hard-core military combat? Prove it. I see nothing indicating any real battle stories anywhere and I like war books and magazines. Where are the military eggheads analyzing that war? They don't exist because the war didn't.
There was much debate in the Washington summer of 1979 over how to handle the Chinese situation. Cy Vance the Secretary of State was a man of peace who did not trust the Chinese and wanted a cautious but simple Sino-US economic relationship at face value. Zbig Brezhinski was a man of war who trusted the Chinese and wanted a grand strategic relationship with China that would upset the Soviets to no end and play a key part in winning the Cold War. Vance lost because Brezhinski bullied him and the reason he was bullied by Brezhinski is because that was Brezhinski’s nature. The reason Vance allowed himself to be bullied by Brezhinski was because that was Vance’s nature. Most of Carter’s advisors were doves but Zbig was the one hawk in the cabinet and he threw his weight like the experienced zbully he was.
At the end of August 1979 Vice-President Mondale went to Peking to broaden the new relationship (I went there in 2004 to tell jokes at the American Compound.) That fall of 79, ties between the two giants became stronger in many fields. Some ‘secret’ diplomacy was initiated about this time to try and play a game of divide and conquer with our old nemesis the Soviet Union.
Defense Secretary Harold Brown visited China in January of 1980. The hostage crisis and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan was overshadowing everything. In May of 1980 the Vice Premier and Defense Secretary of China visited Washington DC. The Defense Secretaries mutual visits indicate how far Vance had lost the argument with the thug Brezhinski, who believed that these visits would greatly alarm the Soviets. Zbig, like Henry the K, always naively thought they could divide the Communist world into discombobulation, just by making semi-alliances with one of them to the consternation of the other. But in they end they were all of the same Communist bloc, laughing at Kissinger and Brzezinski behind their backs. See the books New Lies For Old, and pick out the chapters on the fake Sino-Soviet “Split.” If you think this is a crackpot theory, remember it isn't my crackpot theory. It is a theory that shook up the CIA and forced the resignations of many career officers who also believed this.
And please go to your local library and read the two months of war when China invaded Vietnam with Mike's hypothesis in mind that the war was staged between the two countries to dis-inform the west about Communist unity. China sent a few divisions marching around North China and a lot of munitions were set off for effect. But thousands of soldiers did not die in the fighting and there was not a single great battle that has attracted a single military historian of any country, including the two involved. Just read the day by day news blurbs and see it it doesn't pass the test that the Sino-Vietnam War of December 1979 was a hoax.
If you were China you wanted to punish Vietnam, why would you choose a land invasion? A land invasion in a true war would only give the little guy a chance to harass units straggling in the rear and flanks and inflict many casualties on the invader at minimal cost. If the Vietnamese had beaten the United States through guerilla war, don't you think they could have done some damage to the Chinese Army with the same tactics that had won then a win against the United States?
If you were China and wanted to punish Vietnam you would do it in a way that involved no loss to you, and would demonstrate your intimidating power that much more because you did it at no loss to you.
You would do it by air and by sea.
China had a navy and air force that made the Vietnam ones look like playground toys. China could have punished V by air and by sea and not lost a single soldier and the message would have been sent loud and clear. It makes no sense that they would invade by land against a notorious jungle fighting revolutionary brother like Nam, and ignore the air and sea arm entirely.
CENTRAL AMERICA
PANAMA
As he promised to do during the 1976 campaign, Carter gave back the Canal back to Panama. Critics would charge during the next campaign that “He gave away the Panama Canal!”
Was the Canal given away in foolish leftist spirit? Or was giving it back the least we could do after stealing it in Teddy Roosevelt’s time? That was the Democratic view, and the opinion of historians like Talbott, Choamsky, Zinn, Alaskey, Nee, and Hillsman.
Among the most vocal critics of Carter’s Panama Canal policy was Ronald Reagan. He was railed against the return of the Canal in the campaign of 1976 and fairly was rough on Carter after Carter did as he promised he would do.
One famous celebrity came to Carter’s defense after he studied up on the Panama details and concluded that Carter was right, even if he hadn’t voted for the guy. This famous person wrote a letter supporting Carter’s Panama policy to every Senator. Then he sent off an especially angry one to fellow movie actor Ronald Reagan. It was “The Duke,” John Wayne who supported Carter and wrote the letters. He called Reagan a “tenderfoot” in paragraph three.
In 1978 the Senate passed the act returning the canal to Panama. The vote was 68-32. The transfer of power would be gradual and the full control of the Panama Canal would not be surrendered until 1999.
The United States would still have the right to intervene in defense of the canal if any hostile power tried to take control of it. This would preferably be with the approval and cooperation of the Panamanian government but did not have to be. The US would never allow an unfriendly power (let alone a hostile one) to take control of the Panama Canal. We would no longer own it nor the profits from it after 99, and jobs held by Americans would be turned over to Panamanians. But the Canal would still be within the Monroe Doctrine US protected sphere of influence.
I have never had a strong opinion on the Canal question not because I was not interested, but because both sides of the argument made sense in their own ways and it was just a tough call. I strongly believe that I can't strongly favor either side of the debate. I feel the same way about the 2010 debate over whether we should close Guantanamo. I suppose if I had to make a call I would say we should have kept the PC. It was too PC to give back the PC. Clinton signed the Canal over to Panama in 1999. Right or wrong, the day Carter got Panama done was a fireworks and party hats day for the Blame America First crowd.
CENTRAL AMERICA
Costa Rica was the only real democracy in Central America at the beginning of the Carter years but near the end of Carter’s term it looked like another one was going democratic.
In July of 1979 a major change took place on the political chessboard of Central America. Nicaragua had been ruled by a ruthless right-wing dictator named Samoza for many years. On the 17th of July a coalition of Catholics, Socialist, and Marxists (the FSLN) overthrew Samoza and proclaimed a new republic in Nic (as some headline editors referred to that nation throughout the 80’s).
The new leader of Nicaragua was Daniel Ortega who understood the concerns of the NATO democracies and emphasized to the world that soon there would be free democratic elections in his country. Carter responded positively to the Nicaraguan revolution and sent $75 million in aid immediately to the new government. Over the next 18 months another $105 million was donated from Sam to Dan. Nicaragua was not a large country. Person for person this amount represented the largest amount of US aid to any government in the world.
But all was not well in Managua. Ortega’s free elections did not materialize. The Marxist-Leninist wing of the coalition began to oppress and suppress the other wings (what a surprise) and the ML’s began to openly admit more and more often their Communist tendencies. Freedom of the press and human rights suffered more and more in Nicaragua as the weeks and months went on.
Near the end of his term Carter did an about face and shut off US aid to Nicaragua. He had heard and seen enough. The goings on in Nicaragua were too far to the left even for Jimmy Carter. That should tell you all you need to know about how Ronald Reagan would handle the problem there when it was his turn. For starters, Reagan on April 4, 1981 affirmed the Carter policy of shutting off aid to the Sandino group.
AFGHANISTAN - PRELUDE TO INVASION
The trouble started in April of 1978. Daoud was the President of Afghanistan and his was a relatively non-aligned government. Afghanistan was not left enough to please the USSR and not right enough to please the USA. As it stood, Afghanistan in March of 1978 was a buffer zone between the empires, not dissimilar to where it stood in 1900 when it stood between the Tsarist and the British empire.
In April of 1978 a leftist coup ended the regime and the life of Daoud. Taraki was the new boss. T was pro-Moscow but not a stooge of the USSR either. Moscow displayed fake surprise when Taraki soon rolled up the three top jobs of Prime Minister, President and General Secretary of the Afghan Communist Party. The USA quickly joined the rest of the globe in recognizing the new regime in Kabul. The US asked for and received assurances from Kabul that its foreign policy would remain one of non-alignment. Carter chose not to cut off aid to Afghanistan.
In December of 78 Moscow signed a treaty of close friendship and cooperation with the Taraki government.
Carter sent the Undersecretary of State Tommie Newsome in early 1979 to Kabul to feel out the direction of the Taraki government wind. Newsome returned with a pessimistic report. He told JC that Taraki was more pro-Moscow that the USA had originally believed.
But the secular and pro-Moscow Taraki tilt was a double edged scythe. Fundamentalist Muslim bands of rebels began to coagulate around the cities of Afghanistan. The Taraki regime was evolving into a colonial empire imposing on its own people. It was like the British in old China or the USA in Vietnam. The government held the cities and the armed voice of the people held the countryside. Soviet support offended radical Muslims and Taraki was besieged by rebels.
ASSASSINATION OF AMBASSADOR DUBS 2 14 79
Spike Dubs was a 56 year old veteran of US Marine jungle battles of WWII in the Pacific. But on February 14 1979 he went up against an enemy he could not defeat.
Dubs, the US Ambassador to Afghanistan was on his way to work at the US Embassy in Kabul when his bullet-proof limo was stopped at a busy downtown intersection by Afghani traffic cops. It was 8:45 a.m. The traffic cops asked Dubs to roll down his window to ask him a question. When he did he was faced with the muzzles of guns and was forced out of the car. The traffic cops were fake. They were kidnappers. The lucky limo driver was told to speed on to the US Embassy to tell the United States government that their ambassador was now a hostage of radical Islamic terrorists who were demanding the release of three Shiite Moslems being held in a Kabul jail.
The kidnappers were anti-Soviet. They were mad that the Afghan-Soviet government had arrested their people. They were right wing Islamic fundamentalists.
The terrorists brought Dubs to room 117 of the Kabul Hotel. The US Embassy relayed the situation to Washington where Cy Vance and company tried to get a hold of the Taraki government to tell them not to do anything drastic. The safety of Dubs was primary. No American at Washington or Kabul could get a hold of Taraki that day. He was gone fishing or something.
By one p.m. Afghani police and military units were stationed all around the Kabul Hotel. Soviet military advisors were identified by several sources as also present. The Afghanis stormed the hotel and shot their way into room 117. Dubs was found dead on the floor with a bullet through his eye, another through his chest and a third through his left wrist.
The four terrorists were also killed.
The Carter administration responded to the murder of Dubs by protesting formally to the Soviet government. The United States announced that it was not going to replace Dubs with another ambassador, and that US aid to Afghanistan would be reduced by about 95% (to completely cut off aid would cause the proper political repercussions.) From this point on the United States secretly armed the right-wing Islamic fundamentalists to make life difficult for the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. This was the beginning of “Charlie Wilson's War.”
The news of this event was overshadowed in the American press by the threats of war between China and Vietnam at Lan Song. This war between the Communists was the big story and the assassination of our ambassador to Afghanistan was buried at the bottom of page two.
That is the story at face value. Now lets take a second look at the slaying of Dubs.
Why would right-wing Shiite Islamic fundamentalist terrorists kidnap the American Ambassador in order to get the Soviet-controlled Afghani government to release prisoners being held in an Afghani jail? Neither Dubs nor Jimmy Carter could have even remotely forced the Kabul government to release these prisoners. Time magazine a week later explained the anomaly this by euphemistically remarking that it was “perverse.” It was much worse than perverse. (Incidentally, another book about the Afghanistan conflict referred to the kidnappers of Dubs as “left-wing Islamic terrorists.” Either way, it defies all logic to kidnap an American to protest Soviet oppression of one’s land.)
Why would the Carter Administration respond to the attack by arming the very groups that were allegedly responsible for it? Talk about your “rewarding terrorism.”
Since when is a hostage situation resolved by slaying everyone involved within four hours of the initial kidnapping, and without any remote attempt at negotiation, nor any attempt to even hear out any specific demands?
Why would the Taraki government be unavailable in such a crisis, when its own government was being presented with the demand for the release of the Islamic prisoners?
If the kidnappers were anti-Soviet as they professed to be, why attack the American ambassador who was representing the most anti-Soviet government in the world, indeed the nation that was headstrong leading the Cold War against the USSR at this very hour on all corners of the globe?
It seems possible that the USSR murdered Ambassador Dubs in order to get the US out of Afghanistan, so that the road could be cleared for the later invasion (of December) which was well into the planning stages in February. The political danger of invading a nation with American diplomatic representation was far greater than the political danger of invading a nation without American diplomatic representation.
Jimmy Carter should have doubled up American representation in Kabul as a response to the Assassination of Dubs. Instead, the Deacon did the usual retreat, while as usual disguising it as getting tough. I’ll show you what’s what for attacking our rightful representative in Kabul. I’ll remove our Ambassador entirely from now on! That’s like standing up to the inner city gangs by moving out to the suburbs. You showed them who’s boss.
The Soviets denied that they had anything to do with the decision to storm the Hotel rather than negotiate, but there are too many eyewitness accounts of Soviet personnel directing the entire operation for any sane person to buy this.
If the Vietnam-China war was an orchestrated show business play for western consumption then isn’t is quite possible that the huge press explosion over Lan Son that February 14 was deliberate so as to minimize the reaction in the US to the pre-planned slaying of the American Ambassador in Kabul? (On March 28 1991 a fire destroyed the American Embassy in Moscow. That same day a million people demonstrated in Moscow against Gorbachov, while 50,000 police looked on. The demonstrators had been warned not to show up and then were passively allowed to do anything they want. All of the network news programs led off with eight minutes on the Moscow demonstration and ten seconds in the middle of the broadcast on the fire at the US Embassy, the first one in almost 20 years. You call that a coincidence? Yes, a Lam-Song Dubs coincidence.)
How did the Taraki government somehow not notice that fake terrorist cops were controlling a primary downtown intersection? Answer; Those kidnappers were no more fundamentalist Islamic terrorists than I am. They were Communist stooges carrying out a pre-planned murder of the US Ambassador. And the four bodies that were shown to the press as being the four slayed terrorists; were they the real deal? Or were they political prisoners killed and displayed for the press and public while the real “terrorists” got safely out of the building at the last moment before the signal was given to kill Dubs. There was reliable a report of a single gunshot from inside room 117 ten minutes before the hotel was stormed. The terrorists might have been rewarded rather than punished.
Dubs, it should be noted, was charge d’affairs in Moscow from 1973 to 1974 and spoke fluent Russian. He was an expert on Soviet activities and was only brought to Kabul after the pro-Moscow Taraki government took over. The Soviets wanted him out and they wanted him dead.
In the post-Cold War thaw of the 1990’s the New Russia released some classified information that more or less admitted to some participation by Soviet advisors in the storming of the Hotel Kabul, but they of course did not admit to orchestrating a genuine assassination. They still maintained that the idea was perhaps to take Dubs and one or two of the kidnappers alive. But a few cynics believe that Dubs was supposed to die in the storming of the hostage scene and that was the point of storming the scene. It was about as much of a rescue mission as the attack on Bonnie and Clyde.
The released Soviet archives also reveal that one of the prisoners held in the Kabul prison, the alleged object of the kidnapping of Dubs, was shot by Soviet officials so that he wouldn’t talk.
AFGHANISTAN BETWEEN DUBS AND CHRISTMAS 2 –12 1979
Resistance to the Khalq party of Taraki was becoming severe and the Soviets were alarmed by its fundamental Islamic nature. The USSR was worried about how the Islamic fundamentalist movement on its borders might infect the Islamic populations within its own republics.
American freedom of political action was hampered by the focus on the Iran hostage crisis, combined with Cold War confrontations with the Soviets elsewhere such as Southern Africa and Cuba. The US was also toying with playing the “China card” against the Soviets, and on top of all that the situation in Vietnam influenced a spirit of cautious inaction.
By the summer of 1979 the Soviets were growing unhappy with Mr. T. They pushed Taraki out of the Prime Ministers office in July, while allowing him to retain some power. The new PM was Hafiz Amin.
In August a Russian military mission was sent to Kabul, the Pavlovski group to get a closer look at the situation on the ground and to put in some Soviet troops to help out. On October 16, 1979 a firefight erupted at the Palace. Taraki met the fate of Dubs. Moscow’s boy Amin was now in charge. Within the next three weeks Moscow decided that it wasn’t happy with Amin either.
By this time the analysts in Washington were certain that the Soviet Union was going to pour a lot more military assistance forces into Afghanistan to stabilize its political influence there. But few if any US experts predicted an outright military invasion. But on December 20, Soviet helicopters began deployments all over Afghanistan and on the 25th Rudolph the Red Star reindeer pulled his sleigh into Kabul in the form of a full scale invasion. Afghanistan was now under complete Soviet occupation, not mere control or influence.
Merry Christmas.
It was a great shock to Carter and all the peaceniks who thought that the United States was the cause of all the bad things that were happening on the planet. There was no leftist rationalization available for this one. For the first time since World War II the Russians had invaded a country that had never been a part of the Communist bloc, and had never been liberated from Nazis by the Red Army.
Carter, Brown, Vance and Brezhinski had to act. But they were tied down in Iran and were planning a possible military intervention there. They could hardly plan to intervene in both Afghanistan and Iran at the same time. There was a risk of nuclear war if the US responded directly in Afghanistan and there were 4,000 US citizens there too.
The Russian invasion put cold water on US plans against the Iran. The US wanted the world community to condemn the Russian invasion and to focus on it. If the Americans now intervened in Iran it would look like ‘both sides do the same thing.’ Condemning Russian military aggression in Afghanistan tied one political hand behind our back in Iran.
Afghanistan had been within the Soviet sphere of influence for some years. This was like paying protection to the Mafia. The USSR took care of Afghanistan with economic aid and Afghanistan agreed that what little foreign policy it had would be conducted favorably as regarded Russian interests. But Afghanistan made the mistake of thinking it could change its mind and leave the Soviet sphere of influence.
Jimmy Carter already had his hands full with the Iranian Hostage Crisis. His only answer to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan was to have the USA boycott the 1980 summer Olympics being held in Moscow.
In fairness, the invasion did turn Carter from dove to hawk in the big picture. Every man has his limits, and Afghanistan coming so close after after Teheran pushed Carter to his. He was like Gary Cooper playing the Amish man who got bullied once too often and started taking boxing lessons. From now on, Carter would give support to increased military spending and modern strategic weapons like the MX Missile and the B-1 bomber. If Carter had won re-election, he would have faced the world in his second administration with a much stronger military capability. But he lost so it was Reagan who inherited and enhanced the Carter post-Afghanistan military build up.
As for the Soviet Union, it was riding the tiger in Afghanistan. The occupation of Afghanistan would cost the Russian people 50,000 casualties before the Soviets withdrew in Gorbachov's time. It was the Russian Vietnam.
The Russians later boycotted the 1984 Olympic games in Los Angeles in retaliation for Carter’s withdrawal from 80. I could care less about the Olympics anyway so that didn't bother me a bit. I don't care who wins those medals. My country doesn't need medals to feel super.
I am looking at a clip of Carter at a press conference on January 20, 1980, answering a question about the Olympics. The words if you put them in print are not particularly harsh, but to see the anger he is deliberately trying to convey in his face and voice is to see the real diplomatic note. He is angry for his country and he is very stressed out. He is earning his pay. This was the cross a president has to beat - that World War III terror is the flip side of the ultimate ego trip, the presidency of the United States. Jimmy’s toothy smile of the 1976 campaign is a light year in the past as he speaks in a controlled rage,
“I can’t say at this moment what [sic] other nations will not go
… to the summer Olympics in Moscow. Ours will not go.”
Many athletes and their families were critical of Carter for turning the Olympics into a political tool and costing many individuals their one chance in life for glory and achievement. They want Wheaties endorsements for their kids and Carter is ruining everything with his stupid diplomatic gestures.
The Soviet invasion did not involve a classic across the border assault by several infantry divisions. Rather it was an airlift invasion centered on Kabul. The front began near the center of Afghanistan, at the airport of the capitol city, and expanded from there.
The Soviet’s soon overwhelmed the militarily weak country with an occupation force that started with 30,000 troops and eventually reached a peak of 100,000.
The Afghanistan resistance, the Mujahadeen were never out of the fight as terrorists and saboteurs. The USA and many other countries began to support them with weapons and in time the Russians were put on the defensive.
In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, Carter felt strongly that the Soviet military occupation changed the geo-strategic positions of the two Cold War superpowers in Asia to a degree that threatened the overall security of the USA. In addition it was an affront to his competitive nature. They had made a big move on his watch, an ‘in-your-face’ invasion of an independent nation that had never been part of the Russian or Soviet empires. Unlike Cuba, Korea and Vietnam, this Russian thrust was made with Russian troops. Carter, Brown, Vance and Brzezinski all shared the anger felt by Carter and the need to make the Soviets pay. All agreed that the Russian military position in Afghanistan was a direct threat to Pakistan and Iran and had ominous overtones for the historic Russian quest for access to the warm water ports of the Persian Gulf.
The result was a bellicose warning to the Soviet Union in Carter's State of the Union Message to Congress in January of 1980. It was the turning point of his Presidency. He became for one speech an honorary Republican, but don’t tell him that because he hates them. Had he taken this attitude much earlier, he would not have been defeated for re-election.
Here he is explaining to the Congress world that he had reached his limits and was no longer going to lose sleep over the fact that the world might come to an end on his watch,
“Any attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."
Carter dramatically stressed the phrase "military force" and Congress erupted into an exceptionally dramatic and long roaring loud standing-ovation. If a Reagan had made such a statement it would have been a snore, but coming from the pacifist, the deacon, the born-again, it was a big exiting moment in American history.
The press dubbed this new stance the "Carter Doctrine." Some said that James Earl was bluffing because the USA was not physically capable of stopping a Russian invasion of Iran. But he was clearly not bluffing. He was openly playing with nuclear matches and giving Leonid fair warning. His 1982 Oval Office memoir has this chilling passage on the matter,
"The fact was that mine was a carefully considered statement,
which would have been backed by concerted action, not necessarily
confined to any small invaded area or to tactics or terrain of the
Soviets choosing. We simply could not afford to let them extend
their domination to adjacent areas around the Persian Gulf."
This was Kennedy's Cuban missile Crisis brinkmanship speech but spelled out a little less bluntly. Not only was Carter declaring the Persian Gulf off limits to unfriendly powers, he was extending the forbidden zone to the Persian Gulf "region." This 1980 Carter Doctrine should be religiously remembered when considering the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the decisions made by George H. W. Bush to reverse it. Carter had set the standard policy for all presidents.
Some of the same Congressmen who gave Carter a standing ovation for this declared policy in January of 1980, were condemning George H.W. Bush for enforcing the policy in January of 1990.
Cyrus Vance is clear in his memoir about the perceived Soviet menace to the Persian Gulf, a threat it is hard for Americans to imagine today in the post Cold War era,
“Afghanistan and the continuing disorder in
Iran were threatening the Persian Gulf security
System. There was a danger of a vacuum into
which Soviet power would spread toward the
Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf.”
So it was normal in 1979 by all important accounts to consider the Persian Gulf an area where a primary US objective was to keep the Soviets out.
This perception of the Gulf region held true throughout the Reagan years. During all this time, Iraq was a close ally of the Soviet Union. The United States tried to court Iraq during these years for two easily understandable reasons. One; The clear enemy was Iran and Iranian fundamentalism. Iraq was our accidental ally on both counts and that is why we supported Iraq during its war with Iran. The liberals who grew hoarse screaming about American hypocrisy and evil in first supporting Iraq and then condemning it after it invaded Kuwait always overlook these strategic factors, and they never made a peep of protest during the 80’s when we were supporting Iraq. Their wrath only came with 20-20 hindsight after Iraq invaded Kuwait and the US was forced to do an about face in its relations with Iraq.
The other reason we were nice to the bad guy is that we were trying to wine and dine Iraq out of the Soviet Orbit. Iraq was not Communist, and was not fundamentalist Islamic either. There was a perceived hope that the alliance between Iraq and the USSR might be temporary and subject to fair competition. So the Carter, Reagan, and early Bush 1 years saw the United Stales looking the other way on Iraqi humanitarian offenses and in the 80’s allowed us with troubled conscience to support Iraq in its war with Iran.
Iraq was not merely close to the Persian Gulf, it was a Persian Gulf state. If the Soviet Union became too dominant in Iraq it could invade the Gulf using Iraq as its cat’s paw with limited political responsibility.
Is it possible that this is exactly what happened in 1990?
How could Iraq, a long known close ally of the Soviet Union, a nation with 20,000 Soviet military advisors inside its armed forces, invade Kuwait in 1990 and leave no suspicion in the west that it was doing the dirty work of the USSR in its historic quest for control or at least shared control of the oil resources of the Gulf?
Simple answer; the disinformation campaign of Perestroika and Glasnost. The west was so dazzled by the political changes within the USSR that it became bind to the ambition of the USSR outside the USSR. Nothing had changed in the close ties between Iraq and the USSR but when Iraq invaded Kuwait no one said a word about possible Soviet complicity. If the same invasion had been launched in 1987 the Reagan team would have screamed about Soviet involvement.
Afghanistan was far removed over mountainous territory from the Persian Gulf but when the Russians took it over there was a clear and direct response by the United States about the threat to the Persian Gulf. But when Iraq, ally of the Soviet Union actually took over the Persian Gulf, no one put two and two together and pointed to the historic national security issues dating back to the very recent Carter years when he warned the Soviets to stay out of the Persian Gulf or else.
This entire thesis is based on a belief that the entire Perestroika and Glasnost mania of 1989-1991 was essentially a great disinformation campaign designed to lure the west into a state of vulnerable relaxed security defense and loan generosity. The oil of the Persian Gulf was a prize worth the effort of such a disinformation campaign. If Iraq could take over in the Gulf, and no one pointed any fingers at Moscow, they could have pulled off one of the great coups of all time. All those decades of threats and warnings from the United States to stay out and our closest client takes it over for us and we don't get blamed a bit because of the media hysteria over Glasnost and Perestroika. Then they consolidate a new oil axis of Baghdad, Moscow, Kuwait City and command the world's economy. Relations between Moscow and Baghdad were anything but strained on the eve of the invasion of Kuwait in the summer of 1990.
Carter faced a rebellion in the Administration over Afghanistan. Vice President Walter Mondale was adamantly opposed to Carter’s countermeasures and felt that the bigger picture of improved Soviet-American relations was more important than our wounded pride over the invasion. Mondale would be the Democratic nominee for president in 1984 and here we see him upset with Jimmy Carter for acting too tough on foreign policy! It is fortunate for our position in the world that Mondale got the clobbering he deserved in the 84 election. Can you imagine if Mondale had won in 84, been re-elected in 88 and had been at the helm in 1990 when Sadaam invaded Kuwait? He would have done nothing. Sanctions would have been too harsh for this man, let alone throwing the Iraqis out of Kuwait as Bush Sr. did.
While Carter was personally a dove, and his secretary of state Cy Vance was a reasoned and brilliant dove, it cannot be said that he did not try to maintain a balance with the presence of Zbigniew Brzezinski as intimate National Security Advisor.
After the humiliations of Tehran and Afghanistan Carter became a different man. In the 9th inning he came around and became a Teddy Roosevelt on military spending. Carter began the Reagan build-up. It was at the end of his term that the military began its great turnaround that was completed under Reagan, and in this sense, the winning of the Cold War at the end of the 80’s was a bi-partisan effort. It’s just too bad that it took Jim about three years and two months to learn his lesson. Then later, out of office, he forgot his own last year in office and began to preach against the wasteful military spending of the Republican Administration. At the Democratic Convention he shared his booth with left wing fanatic Michael Moore, as though Moore was in Carter’s corner or vice-verse when Carter was approving billions of dollars in military buildup in 1980.
OPERATION EAGLE TRAP - APRIL 24 1980
From within the first week after the hostages were taken in November 1979, the US military was making contingency plans for a rescue operation. The one they finally agreed upon and sent to the civilian leadership was straight out of an action Hollywood blockbuster movie. If it had worked it would have no doubt been made into a fabulous film starring all the big guy box office draws. But it failed and no movie was made. If they had made one it would have only made money in Middle East Theatres. The film would be too painful for Americans to watch.
My March of 1980 the Carter team was getting serious about military action, at long last. Carter even admitted at one of the high level NSC meetings that he has waited too long to take decisive action and all that was going to change now. By March 1980 Carter had come to the conclusion that all these behind the scenes cloak and dagger negotiations were not sincere, not productive, and only had the effect of taking a US humiliating situation and adding insult to injury by leading him around on a hopeless chase for a diplomatic solution. Defense Secretary Harold Brown compared the Iranian peace offers to a special discounted product at the supermarket on sale one day only, but it was stacked too high on the shelves for anyone to reach it. They were treating Carter “like an old lady who couldn't reach the top shelf but inducing her to jump, just for laughs,” said Brown.
The question now, to be hashed out between Carter, Zbig, Vance, Powell, Turner at CIA and the military chiefs was which military option to choose and use. There weren't any good options. Like Kennedy said to the cabinet during the Cuban Missile Crisis, “Gentlemen, today we are all going to earn our pay.”
Vance alone was against any use of military force at all. He felt that the negotiations were making progress and that any military option had more negative than positive results in store for America. He ended up being in the right, as things turned out, but if the rescue mission had succeeded he would have looked like a complete milquetoast donkey. At the time everyone was annoyed with Vance. Carter snapped at him in the middle of some big meetings to the the effect of, “Exactly what century do you figure we will see these negotiations come through Cy? Maybe 2525? I'd like to get this done in our lifetimes if you don't mind.” Vance just blinked and stuck to his anti-guns. The whole brains trust was annoyed at Vance for his consistent opposition to the use of military force of any kind. It was a profiles in courage moment for CV.
The simple military option was all an-out attack on Iran. Everyone agreed that this was not wise for variable reasons. For one thing the Russian invasion of Afghanistan of X-mas 79 had changed the picture. The Soviets were dangerously close to Persia and the Persian Gulf now. Carter and Co feared Soviet military intervention, Soviet political intervention, and most of all feared that an attack on Iran would drive Iran into the arms of Soviet protection. That was the worst case scenario. As of now, Iran was still calling the Soviet Union the “Lesser Satan.” America didn't want to do anything to cancel out the Iranian fear and hatred of the Soviet Union. The USA was trying to gather international condemnation for Soviet military aggression, and this was not the time to undertake the same against Iran or anyone else.
The next option was a punitive military strategy. This meant seizing some of shore Iranian oil fields and hitting some land refineries with air strikes. Few civilians would die in such missions, and the warning shot across the bow would have been delivered. This was ultimately rejected for the same reason as the first option. The Carter team feared it would drive the Iranians to the Soviets for protection.
The third option was a dramatic James Bond blockbuster rescue mission full of helicopters, double agents, landings under fire, shoot-out filled rescues and withdrawal in the nick of time as gunfire from the ground riddled the fleeing rescue choppers.
The fourth option was a combo of two and three. The exiting rescue mission would be initiated at the same time punitive air strikes were deployed. That was if the rescue mission failed, the punitive air strikes would save face, and the Carter Administration could pretend that the punitive strikes were the main point, and that the rescue mission was a bonus try that no one was really counting on.
The last idea was debated for some time but finally rejected for the same old reason - Fear of driving the Iranians voluntarily into a rising new Soviet sphere of influence in South Asia.
On April 11 Carter finally gave the go-ahead for Operation Eagle Claw, the doomed rescue mission to save the hostages and the Carter Presidency. By most accounts, domestic political considerations never influenced decision making in this time of crisis – I say the rescue mission was potentially going to save the Carter Presidency as a factual statement, not as an accusation that this was any motive for the actions taken. On the other hand Pierre Salinger says that domestic considerations were very much part of the decision making process, not so much to insure re-election, but to get things done in domestic politics. As long as Carter was tied down in the Iran quagmire, he could gather no support for anything innovative on the domestic agenda.
There was one other major problem for the mission besides all the '7 Voyages of Sinbad' obstacles to its success. That problem was the leaky White House. No matter how much everyone was sworn to secrecy at a given meeting, every important White House decision seemed to find its way into the press before dawn. If anything about the timing or operations of the mission leaked out, the safety and success of the mission would be compromised fatally.
This was solved by Carter holding a top secret expanded NSC meeting in which he announced that he was not going to go ahead with the planned rescue mission. Instead of the inner circle of four of five, he invited 25 of the top officials in the National Security apparatus and told them how important it was that none of this leaked out to the press. Carter knew that there were traitors he could count on to pass this along to some rich famous publishing mogul. It worked. The newspaper were soon writing stories about no plan in the works for hostage rescue.
The disinformation plot was Brzezinski's idea, but Carter agreed to it. This is an edifying example of the disinfo technique that was perfected and practiced by the Soviets. It goes to show how easy and logically it can be done. If a free democracy like the USA would do such a thing, why wouldn't the Soviets? Yet any time anyone tries to plead that the Russians are engaged in clever disinformation games, the accuser is dismissed with the one-word catch-all epithet, “paranoid.”
It was important that the rescue mission take place sooner rather than later because it involved a clandestine night-time operation in the desert that required long dark hours. By the summer it would be too late for the daring plan to have any chance. The Claw was on the maybe board for most of March, but when Bani-Sadr made a fool of Carter on April Fool's Day 1980 with a fake offer of mediation that turned out ot be nothing at all, Carter snapped and did his Popeye impression,
“That alls I can stands! I can't stands no more!
Jimmy broke out the spinach and authorized the rescue mission. What Carter really said was,
“Enough!”
He walked into a room where Vance and Harold Saunders were discussing the Hostage Crisis and slammed down his brief case and said “Enough!” I like the Popeye version better for what that moment meant.
One other part of Brzezinksi's plan which Carter rejected was counter-hostages. The commandos rescuing our hostages would grab a few Iranians as leverage in case we didn't get all 52 of ours back. Vance argued against this, saying that two wrongs don't make a right and this would only inflame the revolutionaries more.
Carter gave the go signal and the special operations went into motion. The plan was based largely on some assets in place the USA had in Teheran who would come out of the woodwork and take part in the carefully co-ordinated rescue mission.
The operation, if it had worked would have gone something like this,
C-130 cargo and fueling planes land in the middle of the night at a secret location in the isolated Iranian desert about 30 miles southwest of Tehran. Eight helicopters make a long flight to the same spot from US Carriers in the Indian Ocean. The helos land, drink up a fresh tank from the C-130's and are on their way to Teheran while the C-130's fly back to Saudi Arabia.
The choppers appear over Teheran at dawn and just then several small trucks with armed sleeper agent platoons riding them hit the US Embassy firing at the same time that the Choppers are dropping US soldiers into the embassy. In the meantime the same type of combined operation of choppers and local allies captures the largest soccer stadium in Teheran (Anti-Yankee Stadium.) The Hostages, allies and US Commandos all shoot their way to the stadium where all of them get on the eight choppers who have just enough fuel to make a one way flight, and we do mean flight, out of Iran. It all would go down in less than 90 minutes, and with the element of surprise, the US Intelligence people thought it had a better than 50% chance of success, as long as the US kept the element of surprise.
The more I think about it in smug hindsight, the more I think it would never have worked. Eagle Claw if it had reached the streets of Teheran would have been a Black Hawk Down disaster times ten, plus a fantastic political backlash. All eight choppers would have been shot to bits by the Islamaiacs of Teheran.
The rescue plan would work great at the movies. Brzezhinski outlines the plan. Vance says, “It's a million to one shot. It will never work.” Then Brzezinski snaps back with the music-stopping moment and says to the marshmello, “You got a better idea?”
Vance is humiliated, everyone gives Brzezinski an approving nod, then Carter says, “Ok boys, lets get going!” and the music gets crazy. In real life this still means its a million to one shot that it will work, and Vance is right. But in the movies its now a million to one that it won't work. Black Hawk Down was the real movie you get when you start to make decisions based of fantasy scenarios from fiction movies.
Get into your Google Earth flight simulators and fly around Teheran, then come back here.
Pretty big huh? Bigger than you thought, eh? Teheran is like New York City in the Persian desert. Teheran is humungous. What chance was this blockbuster action movie going to to have in the real world? The US was trying to be like Israel at the raid at Entebbe. But Entebbe was a medium sized airport near a small city. Eagle Claw was an oversized Entebbe raid in a place that looks like Entebbe the way Mic Jagger looks like Idi Amin.
The United States felt it had no options. EC was just the least bad of the bad ones. I think it had a 25% chance of succeeding, not 60. And even at 60, that was quite a risk for US foreign policy and the lives of the US Servicemen. The NIA estimated before the mission that “The Claw” had an equal chance of failing completely (0 hostages retrieved, plus US military casualties) and of succeeding completely (all hostages retrieved, 0 casualties.) That's quite a risk. That's betting all your Vegas gambling money on one play at the roulette wheel red or black. Nothing I'd ever do (not as long as the Hilton has a futures window.)
DESERT ONE
The entire mission blew up when technical malfunctions at the “Desert One” rendezvous reached decisive proportions. Two of the helicopters were having problems. The pilots saw that the check engine light was flashing and they were smoking (the engines not the pilots.) Commander Charlie Beckwith had the authority to scrap the mission based on his own judgement. He didn't have to radio back to the White House to get Carter's OK. Beckwith decided he didn't want to continue with only six choppers. After the mission had already been aborted, there was a terrible crash between a chopper and a C-130 and this was how 8 US Servicemen died in the Iranian desert on April 24, 1980, a date that will live in infamy.
DEAD BODIES CAN BE SET FREE, NO PROBLEM
At first the Iranians were going to bury the 8 dead servicemen (three Marines, five Naval Air Force) in a large Islamic grave. The United States of course, demanded that they be surrendered for proper burial.
There was some debate in the upper echelons of Teheran about using the bodies as a new leverage for new demands and more humiliation of America. But wiser counsels prevailed on the Imam and the Ayatollah to let the Americans have their bodies back.
The Iranians went through some trouble and expense to care for the bodies of men who were intent on shooting up Teheran, putting them on a plane to neutral Switzerland where the US could retrieve them. At the same time they were holding all those innocent people hostage. Eight dead American people can fly overseas first class for free, but 52 or 53 (depending on the source) live American people can't leave the room for a year or so.
Speaking of one-number discrepancies, the Iranians returned nine dead bodies to the United States, but only nine Americans were killed. The ninth man had to be an Iranian looter who was in the wrong place in the wrong time when Iranian jets bombed the already abandoned and destroyed US aircraft later on, like dogs barking with the windows rolled up. The Iranians denied that the ninth body was an Iranian so he was buried with the other 8 Americans in a US grave.
FORCE, NOT FAIRNESS
One thing that Vance was probably wrong about. Cy had predicted the outbreak of an Islam vs the West holy war if we tried anything militarily. He had said that the reaction to any use of military force would be more terrorism, and more hostage taking at our other embassies in the Middle East. In fact the Iranians reacted very little.
A US diplomat approached an Iranian contact. He was going to play psychology with the Iranians and approach them on their level. He had a long note that was a suggestion of how the Iranians could handle the current situation wisely and still maintain the dignity of their religion.
The note suggested to the Iranians that they make public statements about now being satisfied that the charred remains of U.S. men and equipment proves that Allah is great and is not on the side of the United States. They should say it was time to find a peaceful settlement now that the world has been shown whose side Allah is really one.
The Iranian responded by saying,
“You have to be kidding me. I can't go back to the Imam with this. Everyone over there is furious.”
I think the 8 dead at Tabas served their country, and helped solve the Iran Hostage Crisis. It did show the Iranian royalty that Carter was not above the use of military force and it may have given them pause that their own home could be destroyed by an F-15 before they knew what was happening.
Its obviously bad how long it took after The Claw to free them. But without Eagle Claw, maybe it could have lasted 744 days instead of 444. Eagle Claw was a failure, but it was an attention-getter too.
PLENTY MORE WHERE THOSE 52 CAME FROM
This was another theory of Vance that may have been wrong. I think both sides make a good case for themselves.
Vance said that one of the main reasons he objected to the mission was something he called “Plenty more where those came from.”
Cy pleaded with the NIA and Carter and Brzezinski that even if the mission were a resounding success, the Iranians would respond by seizing other Americans for new hostages. They could kidnap reporters, businessmen, and perhaps a few Americans who had married and made Iran their home. The whole thing would be back to square one.
But Gary Sick says that Vance is wrong. The Iranian terrorists in their own mind at least, were idealist religious zealots. They saw it as morally right to seize the people working for the US government at the American Embassy. They were shredding documents as as fast as they could while the students were beating down the doors. They had plenty to hide and plenty to be accountable for. These religious students would not turn their violence on innocent Americans, only the ones they saw as guilty. No such “plenty more where those came from,” would happen as far as Sick was concerned, writing in 1985. We'll never know which way that would have gone.
What do you think?
AFTERMATH
The disaster at Desert One was a depressing few days for me in 1980. I know there were a hundred million other Americans that felt the same way. It was up there with the Shuttle Disaster of 1986. After all the waiting for exactly something dramatic like this, after all the hope that Carter might try something like this, we finally get what we wanted and its an exploding cigar. It was a national humiliation on top of months of national humiliation.
Hindsight quarterbacks have dug out memos written to the FBI before the event, saying all the reasons why the mission would fail. But I think Carter had all the available intelligence before he decided it was worth a try. If Carter was deluding himself out of desperation into thinking that a viable plot for Mission Impossible was perfectly feasible in real life, then no more so than the big brains trust all around him. Only Vance really said it was nuts. In hindsight, Cy Vance looks like the all-wise. He alone insisted all along that it could never work, and that it shouldn't tried be on moral and political grounds too.
Vance was so angry about the mission that he resigned before it was tried. He didn't want to compromise the mission by resigning beforehand, but Vance told Carter on April 23 that he was resigning effective upon the conclusion of the mission, whichever way it went. That's how much the United States Secretary of State was upset that his country would even try such a mission. And everyone in the Cabinet was getting tired of his stupid moral objections to everything. What a killjoy!
THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS MY FRIEND -9.25.80
The clear enemy for the United States was Iran as Carter campaigned for re-election for President. On September 25, 1980 Iraq under the one man rule of Sadaam Hussein invaded Iran. After an advance deep into the western part of Iran, the invasion stalled. Iran held on and even counter-attacked. There was never any doubt that the United States preferred the Iraqis to the Iranians in this conflict. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
This war would last until 1988 and would result in a total of almost one million dead when you count both sides in combat. This is not to mention the civilian casualties.
What were the objectives for this Pearl Harbor invasion of Iran? It was largely a wag-the-camel war to keep the demands of war on the table. The nation had to support his dictatorship if there was a war on. It was a total wag the dog movie plot. Iraq also wanted to control the Shat al Araab, the waterway leading from the Tigris Euphrates rivers as they empty into the Persian Gulf. If Iraq had won this prize and kept it, the invasion of Kuwait 1990 probably would never have occurred, which would have meant that the 2003 invasion of Iraq probably would never have occurred either. It's to the individual imagination to guess how different the course of the last 25 years or so would have been in the Gulf Region if Sadaam had managed to hang on to the Shat al-Araab in the 1980's War with Iran.
From the time the US opposed Iraq in 1990-91, the left has been violently critical of how we were the ones who built up and supported Sadaam in the first place and now these hypocrite Republicans were asking us to get behind their leadership in attacking him? Comics, singers, journalists and citizens and leftish Congresspersons never let us hear then end of the evil United States building up this Frankenstein with our strong help encouragement and support.
Even if these charges were true, and they are partly true, there was no outcry against our supporting Iraq over Iran throughout this war. Even the average hippie in a Vermont ice cream store was rooting for Iraq, or at the very least was not outraged because the US was sending some technological information help and giving some political support to Sadaam and his nation. It seemed like the logical thing to do at the time and the Carter administration started it. The Carter team leaned towards Iraq in this one right away. Why not? Reagan and Bush get all the heat for our having supported Sadaam, but Carter made the call at crunch time and Carter chose Sadaam.
The other factor of course was the Cold War. It was still on and it was melting towards hot with the tensions mounting up from trouble spots all over the world. Iraq was along standing ally of the USSR and the US wanted to try to decouple the Iraq-USSR train and court it into the US sphere of Middle East influence. The United States supported Iraq throughout the 1980's for logical reasons. Iran wanted to export fundamental Islamic religion with terrorism. Iran was holding our hostages. Iraq was a long term ally of the USSR. The Russians had been trying to gain access to the Persian Gulf for a hundred years as a prime goal of its foreign policy. The United States could not afford to see Iran become a total enemy and at the same time allow Iraq to fall completely within the Soviet coalition. That would leave the entire Persian Gulf a serious zone of hostility where Kuwait was our only friend and even they didn't like us and had no military force worth mentioning.
Courting Iraq under the circumstances was the only foreign policy choice for Carter, Reagan and Bush until August 1, 1990.
FREE AT 444 DAYS LAST
Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher finally negotiated a deal for the release of the hostages with the intermediary help of Algeria. The 52 were freed on January 20, 1981 and were not technically free until Reagan had been President for about 20 minutes. It was a final humiliation in a long humiliating year and three months. The release came on Reagan’s watch but the deal was negotiated by the Carter diplomatic team with Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher at the top. Warren was later Secretary of State under Bill Clinton.
ALGIERS AGREEMENT
By the Algiers Agreement the USA in exchange for the release of the hostages promised to never interfere in the internal affairs of Iran ever again.
The Algiers Agreement was like the settlement of the Cuban Missile Crisis when Castro agreed to remove the missiles from the island in exchange for a US promise to never interfere with internal Cuban affairs ever again.
Are all bets off however if Iran is proven to be interfering in our internal affairs, such as helping to train terrorists to blow up the Holland Tunnel? Just asking. Obama knows the answer. He's a baseball player. The left is furious with him because he's handling the war in Iraq like a moderate, and the War in Afghanistan like a Reagan hawk. The left is so mad at him they are nicknamed his “frenemies.”
The Algiers Agreement didn't force the Iranians to make the same pledge not to interfere in American internal affairs.
THE BRZEZINSKI FACTOR
While Carter was personally a farmer-dove, and his Secretary of State Cy Vance was a bow-tie egghead dove, it cannot be said that he did not try to maintain a balance with the presence of Zbigniew Brzezinski as intimate National Security Advisor. Zbig was the Henry Kissinger/Harry Hopkins of the Carter Administration.
Brezhinski's political memoir, Power and Principle was my companion for a month and I can tell you without reservation that the man has a revolting ego. In his sniping criticisms of Vance I take Zbigs side on the issues but there is always an jerky tint to his account. Worst of all he tries boastful modesty over small matters, a doubly sneaky trick.
He and Vance were always fighting for Carter’s ear. I was so busy disliking ZB personally that I found little consolation in agreeing with him on foreign policy issues most of the time. He suffers from the illness that comes with knowing you are good and as a result getting too drunk with thinking you’re always right and that there are no other points of view.
Zbigniew was one of those cold warriors that discussed nuclear war scenarios and strategies with awful calm and then played nuclear chess with real pieces. Zbig was a scary person and he always wanted to get tough (wanted Carter to get tough) with the Soviets.
Z was an Eastern European refugee who had a grudge against his former oppressors. Like Kissinger he had a thick European accent but it was to the East of Henry. Zbig's presence on Carter’s team is the best answer to those who accuse Carter on being weak on national defense.
CONCLUSION
Carter would like to be remembered as a man of peace who helped settle the hatreds in the Middle East. Instead he is remembered by millions of Americans as a man who let us get pushed around by a small pack of Muslim militants in the Iran Hostage crisis of 1979-1981. Without Jimmy Carter there is no Ronald Reagan. Ron was a reaction against Jimmy Carter. They always did call Reagan a “reactionary.” There is some literal truth to that. If Al Gore had been president in 1979, he would have been re-elected in 1980. Gore is hawkish compared to the pacifist Carter.
Carter learned his lesson after the Russians invaded Afghanistan. He turned hawk at the 11th hour, reinvigorating the defense budget with new weapons programs he would have rejected in the first year of his presidency. The Reagan defense build-up began with Carter.
Carter’s presidency was a failure but his campaign for was an impressive and highly historic effort. He practically re-invented the way campaigns are run. Politicians today, especially unknowns, look to his 76 campaign as a brilliant model of sharp politicking and strategizing. It is a tribute to the American way that a long shot Southern governor could run a campaign so well that he won the nomination and the presidency against great odds, defeating an incumbent.
THE BIRTH OF THE COMEDIAN LEFT MOVEMENT
The Inaugural Ball had the usual musicians and Hollywood Actors. Carter invited SNL comedian Chevy Chase to perform a couple of sketches. And why not? Chase had played a key role in electing Carter. Chase and his Saturday Night Left crew had raked Ford over the coals since the fall of 1975, turning the President literally into a national laughing stock and lifting Carter's stock.
Gone were the days of Will Rogers, Lenny Bruce and Bob Hope, when comics making political jokes were supposed to at least make an attempt at being even-handed. That tradition died the day SNL went on the air and has never been revived in my lifetime. 94% of all political comedy is directed squarely at the squares of the Republican party. 2% is some obscure conservative comic trying in vain to give it right back. And the remaining 4% is harmless kid-glove jokes gently poking fun at a Dem for some obvious scandal going on. In this last 4% we find the jokes I would describe as “praising with faint damnation.” These token jokes are sometimes deliberately written just to show off that we don't just make fun of Republicans, proving that you do.
Chevy Chase openly admitted in an interview that he was consciously trying to bump Gerald Ford out of office,
“I didn't want him in the White House because he hadn't been elected. I wanted Carter in.” - Chevy Chase
As if a liberal Democrat who had inherited the office of President would not have had the full support of Chase and SNL for re-election. Chase wanted Carter in because Carter was a Democrat and a liberal and, most of all, wasn't a Republican.
Saturday Night Live has been promoting the fortunes of the Democratic Party and trying to hurt the fortunes of the Republican Party since 1975 and that tradition is stronger than ever today. It is a powerful political organization, that gets more done for the Democrats that a thousand events at local levels where much more work is put into political action with far smaller results.
The goofy SNL crew are today making the most loving gentle jokes about Obama, that is if they ever touch the subject at all. Often the Obama skits are attacking his critics, making buffoons out of some famous Republican Senator, or a hated right wing talk-show host. In the meantime, W. Bush has been out of office two years as of this writing and he is still the target of more SNL vicious jokes than the sitting Prez. And it all started in 1976. Biased lefty comedy is the spirit of 76. That's when the comedy revolution broke out. Chase played the fife while Lorne Michaels carried the flag, and a little boy named Dana Carvey looked up them in awe and played the drums and they all marched off to war. “Republicans man the parapets! The comedians are coming! The comedian are coming!” Its serious business and that comedy army of Patriots has changed the American political playing board. People are afraid to run for office. Politicians have actually resigned amidst scandal and then said in interviews,
“I thought I could survive the charges and the penalties for this offense. But I knew I couldn't survive Leno and Letterman, so I decided to step down.”
I've read that same interview on two different occasions with two different politicians in two different states. That's how rough and partisan and powerful the comedians have become.
People are afraid to sit in the front tables at comedy clubs because comedians have become verbal bullies to the front tables as part of the craft. The average American comedian used to be the class clown. Now its the class bully. The poison goes from the small comedy club all the ay up to the top. The TVLA left is being a vicious taunting teaser from high-school, and never a disclaimer. There's never an “I'm just jokin' around. I don't hate you, I'm just bustin your chops a little.” No. It's more like, “Here's the hate jokes. And by the way, we really mean it. - p.s., Die in your sleep.”
99% of these polemicist comedians are puppet-baggers who never took the responsibility of crossing over officially into the field. They fire political cannonballs from the safety of a comedy skit. They don't have to defend their positions on a serious panel with conservative experts. At least Al Franken did that when he ran and won for Minnesota Senator. He's the one percent.
The puppetbaggers rise to the top doing hack bits about everything but politics, get famous on a TV show, then use their fame to suddenly make a vicious partisan impact on the political picture in elections of real importance. They never became political players from the ground up. Not a days worth of dues. No hard studies, no tests, no intern years learning the ropes at ground level. No, they stepped off the elevator on the 87th floor and walked over into politics and started pontificating. It isn't fair fighting, and it isn't fair to the 10,000 people with phd's in political science who never get beyond one or two obscure books published, while Bozos who dropped out of college are leading the youth of America to the voting booth by mocking the right without any right to be in such a position of political leadership. I wouldn't object so much if there was an attempt by the puppetbaggers to either be even-handed (dream on) or at least add a little self-effacing modesty to their work, even if its just in an interview with the press. Just a little disclaimer once in a while like, “I'm no expert, I'm just an actor, but I happen to not like George Bush and to tell you the truth, I've always disliked the Republican Party.” That would change a lot. It admits the lack of expertise, and the bias. But you will never hear anything like that. Blowhards like Alec Baldwin and Jeanine Garofalo want you to think they are that much of an expert on politics. Its part of their ego trip, part of their competitive nature that got them that far in show business in the first place. They aren't satisfied with being rich movie stars. Like most addictions, fame has no limits and has to reach for better drugs to get high one. What can be more satisfying to the ego than people thinking you are a caring and dedicated political activist in the name of humanity? And not only that that you are a real brainiac too, a real political professor.
If only one of them would ever admit that the poor are poor because the rich are rich and they get 8 million a movie so they are part of the problem, not the solution. If only one would admit they they only know what they get from the headlines. If only one would admit that they are biased, so take what they say accordingly, then I could live with it. Reading a responsible lefty like Howard Zinn, and then listening to a rant from Sean Penn or Barbara Streisand is like going from college to kindergarten. Being able to sing or act or tell jokes doesn't make you one bit more a leader in political thinking than they guy with powdered sugar on his beard next to me in Moe's Diner.
Well these movie stars kind can jive their way through a political radio program they control, but they can't shine the shoes of any Harvard political professor. If only they would come out and say it just once I could perhaps listen to their rants without a barf-bag handy (Perhaps.)
They're repelling even when I'm on the same page with them on a particular issue. In fact, maybe even more so, because I know they are articulating the position in such a conventional-wisdom and inarticulate manner.
AFTER OFFICE
Everyone but the most conservative seem to feel today that Carter is not only the most effective and admirable ex-president living today, he is possible the greatest ex-president ever, even if we acknowledge that his presidency was flawed. JC is considered a saint of sorts, looking out for peace and love and sewing harmony both in the USA and abroad in ways he only dreamed about as president.
The real Jimmy Carter the Ex is a bitter and brass-knuckles tough partisan Democrat and his foreign policy initiatives are more often than not an attempt to undermine established Republican foreign policy. Caata (as he is known in Boston) is still suffering from his defeat in 1980 and is using holy pilgrimages to snipe back at Reagan and his Republican successors. There is a Steve Hayward book by the title this sentence starts with and it’s a very good book. But I held most of the opinions of the author before I saw the book so while I give him credit for doing the research and writing a necessary book that you must read, I cannot credit him with having influenced my thinking. I already couldn’t stand ex-President Jimmy Carter, the most overrated ex-president and a man who took the claws completely out of the American eagle when he was its master.
He barely tried to disrupt Clinton's work by comparison with his peace initiatives undermining of Bush.
I just suffered through one of a hundred extant documentary on Saint Carter the Ex. This one was called Citizen Carter. That one was made around 1990. There is a lame documentary out now called “The Man From Plains.” It follows Carter around as he promotes his newest book. There he is giving radio interviews with sycophant hosts, signing books for sycophant civilians, and answering questions from sycophant college liberal students. They don't treat you so mean when you're an old man and a great ex-president. It's fun to handle the public now. He gets treated like a Beatle at Shea Stadium in 64. Back in 1980 he was hiding from the mud-storm inside the parapets of the Rose Garden.
The Man From Plains does include some of his recent critics, and lets them have their say, but Carter gets the last word of course.
The new Carter book (he's written about 24 now, including one of peace poetry) is about the issue of Palestine versus Israel in the Middle East. Carter always sides with the Palestinians on everything. Israel should withdraw from all of the occupied territories, period, he opines like a broken old vinyl LP. Israel won those controversial lands in a series of wars in which the enemies of Israel were the aggressors and were trying to wipe Israel off the map. The enemies of Israel were motivated by rank racism, first and foremost. The ostensible political disputes were merely a cover for mass hysteria anti-semitism. If the enemies of Israel had allowed Israel to live in peace, there would never be any so-called “occupied territories.” The spoils of war are especially difficult to negate when the victor was the victim, not the aggressor in the first place.
I think Jimmy Carter is the worst president of all time.
One caller to a radio station had the nerve to suggest that Carter had not shown much military leadership during the Iran Hostage Crisis, a crisis so long and unsolved that it merits capitol letters. As the polite caller asked the question, the female radio host shook her head at Carter in supportive disgusted disbelief that this knave could even ask such a pathetic, unfair and partisan question. It was a fair and honest question.
He responded by saying (this is very close paraphrasing) with his standard rap. He's probably had to answer this question 444 times by now.
“I could easily have unleashed the powerful military might of the United States against Iran. In fact, I could have destroyed Iran. But I did not. First of all, if I had attacked Iran, all of the hostages would have been assassinated. 20,000 Iranians would have been killed because a few militants had taken over our embassy. I did not use force, and I am proud to say that all of the hostages were returned safely.”
Sigh. Why should the phrase, “a few militants” mean that the violation of United States sovereignty was not large? What does it matter that he uses the term “a few.” I seem to recall a few thousand. At least “a few” hundred. He makes it sound like 20 students took over our embassy and paraded our hostages through the streets of Teheran. So? Only a few Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor. Only a few cannon fired on Fort Sumter. Only a few militants assassinated Archduke Ferdinand.
Second of all, who suggested that you nuke the entire country of Iran as the military option to best employ? You take an outrageous illogical extreme reaction and make that represent the position of anyone who suggested a military response.
Besides, James, you did chose a military option. It just happened to fail! If those helicopters hadn't crashed in the desert there were have been a bloody shootout in Teheran. 20,000 Iranians wouldn't have died, but certainly many would have, perhaps two or three hundred, mister pacifist. All of the hostages probably wouldn't have been assassinated, but its highly likely that some of them would have.
That's like a guy who gets harassed by the punks who live next door. Then he sets up a bomb to blow up their house. It fails to detonate so then he spends the rest of his life explaining how nobly he had turned the other cheek and gave peace and love a chance in the face of the threats.
The the definite threat of military force, expressed with careful moderate enunciation, leaving room for Iran to save face, was the correct option and he avoided it. The hostages were freed because Iran knew that Reagan was about to take over and he would use the military option that Carter would not.
He should have sought a Congressional Declaration of War against Iran. If he got it, the United States could still equivocate and give Iran a chance to reconsider. Just because you get a declaration of war doesn't mean you have to start the war. If Congress refused, it still would have got the message across to Iran and they would have to know that Carter could ask again a month from now and might get it the next time. And Carter would have his place of strength in history just for trying.
The offered Declaration could be null and void the moment Iran merely agrees to release the hostages as soon a arrangements can be made. They wouldn't even have to release them to make the declaration of war immediately inoperative.
The United States could have seized several Iranian off-shore islands and oil fields and perhaps a port refinery town in an isolated area. You want the oil back, release those hostages. It would be counter-hostage taking for hostage trading.
The bottom line will always be: If only those helicopters hadn't malfunctioned in the Iranian desert. What I wouldn't give to have seen that one work. Even if meant that Carter would have had the victory he needed for re-election, it still would have been worth it to me. Let history go wherever. That one hurt me personally and I felt bad for my President and my country. It was the Shuttle Disaster of the Carter Presidency. It made everyone very sad.
SOURCES
All Fall Down, America's Tragic Encounter With Iran – c) 1985 – As good a place as any to start. Coincidentally the first one on the list alphabetically. Sick is a partisan member of the Carter foreign relations team. (Sic.)
America Held Hostage, The Secret Negotiations, by Pierre Salinger, c)1981 – This is a really fine book by an intimate of both John Kennedy and Jimmy Carter. Pierre went on to become an ABC news reporter for all of the 1980's and well into the 90's and I never once got the feeling that he let any liberal bias into his reporting. Either he had none, or he controlled it like a pro. Some people thought of Salinger as a bit eccentric. The book certainly isn't.
The Clinton Wars, by Sid Blumenthal, c) 2003 – Blumenthal feels that the Clinton administration was a direct link to FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society. Carter is not by his reckoning part of the Democratic continuity. When looking at the Democrat record as compared to the Republican, Blumenthal thinks he can write up a few pages of ponderous essay forcing facts into the box of his theory and presto! Carter didn’t count! His hook on which to hang this grand thesis is that Carter condemned big government and most progressive FDR/LBJ Democrats knew that big government was essential to building the Great Society. The young rising meritocracy lefties voted for Carter of course but they are not responsible for the record of his years because they liked big government and were stuck with a leader that condemned it.
Nice try.
Crisis, The Last Year of the Carter Presidency - by Hamilton Jordan –c) 1982 -
This was the hippie in the White House. He allegedly smoked reef on the White House roof with Hollywood celebrities in the middle of hot summer nights. Crisis is a remarkably well written and enlightening account of the Iran Hostage Crisis from beginning to end.
Jordan has a streak of humility that runs through his work that is very sincere and very rare in a person of such high accomplishment. Its really admirable. This is the last guy in town that will pass the buck, or take credit for something he didn't do.
The Decline of US Power (and what we can do about it) – by the staff at Business Week magazine – c) 1980 – This book is an antidote to presentism. Look at how a major business magazine perceived the problems of energy and the mess in the Middle East from the vantage point of 1980, not after other events changed the playing field. The BW team of authors are headed by the highly reputable Bruce Nessbaum.
A Government as Good as its People – by Jimmy Carter – c)1976 –
The campaign propaganda book, most of it as dull and rhetorical as most political speeches. He gets simple and bold in this famous paragraph,
“I will never tell a lie to you. I will never make a misleading statement. I will never avoid a controversial issue.”
Hard Choices by Cyrus Vance is one of the finest books of all time. Although his foreign policy solutions were not always as forceful as I would have liked, Vance always works hard at his job and later just as hard as a writer of his State memoirs. I wish I could have agreed with Vance more than Brzezinski on the issues. I spent a lot of time with this book.
Jimmy Who? by Leslie Wheeler, c) 1976 – Campaign portrait by the granddaughter of a famous senator Wheeler of Montana. This book, especially the paperback, was all over the newsstands in 1976.
Keeping Faith, by Jimmy Carter, c)1982 – 596 pg – Very fine book – Solid history of his time by the man with the best vantage point. Every American History student should be required to read it. Plenty of bias for many arguments but he represents his positions as well as if he had hired a lawyer to write them. Some blowhards in politics make their case look worse when you read their memoirs. Most of his after-office books are relatively boring compared to this. This makes the short list of the best political books.
Marathon, the Pursuit of the Presidency, by Jules Witcover – c) 1977 656 Marathon pages. Witcover's final analysis is that Carter just was a good politician who got real lucky and was in the right place at the right time, but he had no more ability than the rest of the field in 1976.
Awesome book!
October Surprise, by Gary Sick – c) 1991- Gary's story of the rotten deal that rotten Reagan made with the Ayatollah behind good guy Carter's back was first produced by PBS Frontline. I'm only one fourth done with it, but I have finish it. This is serious stuff and I don't want to believe it.
Out of Many – By Sitkoff, Wolcott, Niles, Lashua, Hazelhurst, Olivieri and Kephart – Big thick ten pound general history for college freshmen (or high school seniors.) Very PC and they are kind to Carter.
Power and Principle, by Zbignieu Brezhinski – I read this book slowly from cover to cover and I have my own name for it. Love of Power and Lack of Principles. Brezhinski is a man I agree with on political principles, but not personal ones.
The President Who Failed, by Clark L. Mollenhoff a member of the Des Moines Register’s Washington bureau.
Clark says he voted for Carter in 76 but was disillusioned by 1979. It’s a total hatchet job. The book was published just before the Iranian hostage crisis. The President Who Failed tries to make the case that Carter’s administration had as many corrupt officials as the Nixon administration. It attacks the names of Civiletti, Bell, Young, Lance, and Jordan.
This book closes with an astute look at Carter’s performance and the next election,
“His eagerness to accommodate all sides on all issues
resulted in his pleasing no one and being regarded as
a weak and wishy-washy president. The greatest
tragedy of all was that President Carter’s performance
created an unreasoned national craving for a strong
and forceful leader – any strong leader. Carter’s
weakness set the political stage for a bold, strong
leader who might be too bold, too strong, too ruthless
and too authoritarian to tolerate opposition and more
skillful in the exercise of the authoritarian tools of
secrecy and political retribution that Jimmy Carter
and Richard Nixon used quite clumsily.”
The Real Jimmy Carter, How Our Worst Ex-President Undermines American Foreign Policy, Coddles Dictators, and Created the Party of Clinton and Kerry, by Steven F. Hayward, c) 2004 – A wonderful book. Bravo! Don’t talk to me about Carter until you have at least browsed this slam-dunk right-on it’s about time someone told it like it is book.
People sometimes try to tell me that. 'Even if you didn't like Carter as President, you have to admit, he has been a great ex-president.'
I don't have to admit anything. I don't like the guy. I'm with Washington reporter Jack Anderson and a quote by him to Larry King on CNN. King was going over some current event controversy with Anderson and King mention that former President Carter had weighed in and said something or other, and Anderson without a trace of rancor in his voice said,
“Well Larry I have to confess from the outset that I don't have too much respect for Jimmy Carter. He really botched his Presidency, and would tend to do the opposite of almost anything that he would propose.”
Larry King could only grunt a little nervous laugh.
That's quite a statement, and I don't think Jack Anderson made it because he was hateful and partisan. He was just calling them like he sees them. So Jack is my back-up if because I feel exactly as he does.
Running for President, by Martin Schram, c)1977 – Great political reporter account of the ever-interesting 1976 campaign. I found the old paperback for a quarter, the first edition which only brings it up to just past his exiting nomination for President at the Democratic Convention, one of the most exiting events in American political history. A few years later I found a second edition that brought it up to Carter winning the White House. Fun read.
Secrecy and Diplomacy, by Stansfield Turner – c) 1985 – This is an annoying book. I would expect a more thorough and frank, or at least edifying book coming from Jimmy Carter's head of the CIA. Admiral Turner writes a 285 vague speech about what America needs to do. It feels like a political campaign press conference where the candidate is just focusing on not saying too much and not making any mistakes.
How helpful was Turner during the Iran Hostage Crisis? Brzezinski
says in his own book that,
“I was really appalled by how inept and vague Stan Turner's comments on the Iran crisis were.”
I feel the same about some of this book. So far. I've only read the first 50 pages.
Turmoil and Triumph, c) 1989 - by George Shultz memoir for some thoughts on the Carter record towards Nicaragua.
Why Not the Best?, c)1976, by Jimmy Carter – Because its you.
On Line - Jimmy Carter Library
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