Recorded July 11, 2004
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Exam­in­ing a num­ber of unsa­vory pos­si­bil­i­ties relat­ing to the upcom­ing elec­tion, the pro­gram begins by tak­ing a look at the untimely death of Athan Gibbs, a critic of elec­tronic vot­ing who devel­oped a viable alter­na­tive to the unver­i­fi­able tech­nolo­gies being advanced by allies of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. A major topic of spec­u­la­tion vis a vis the elec­tion con­cerns the the­ory that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion might try to pro­duce Osama bin Laden before the elec­tion. In that regard, the broad­cast sets forth pres­sure by the admin­is­tra­tion on Pak­istan to pro­duce the cap­ture of a major Al Qaeda fig­ure before election—around the time of the Demo­c­ra­tic con­ven­tion if pos­si­ble. Next, the pro­gram sets forth a num­ber of arti­cles indi­cat­ing that Ralph Nader may very well be work­ing as a con­scious stalking-horse for the Republicans—his dis­claimers to the con­trary notwith­stand­ing. Next the pro­gram exam­ines the frac­tious Al Sharp­ton, whose abortive can­di­dacy for pres­i­dent was man­aged by Roger Stone—who led the Florida GOP mob that forced the halt of the Miami-Dade vote recount in 2000. The pro­gram con­cludes on an emphat­i­cally spec­u­la­tive note—discussion of the pos­si­bil­ity that an earth­quake in Cal­i­for­nia might dras­ti­cally affect the elec­toral process. The pro­gram reviews the fact that man-made earth­quakes are a reality—the US and the for­mer Soviet Union had a treaty on such mat­ters on the books by the mid-1970’s. (For more infor­ma­tion on this sub­ject, see FTR#69.)

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Ralph Nader’s pro­fes­sional asso­ci­a­tion with Rupert Murdoch—who is pub­lish­ing and flog­ging Nader’s lat­est book; GOP financ­ing of Nader’s cam­paign; Nader’s his­tory of treach­ery toward for­mer pro­fes­sional asso­ciates; Al Sharpton’s his­tory of work­ing for the Repub­li­cans and against the Democ­rats; two recent fore­casts of pos­si­ble earth­quakes in Cal­i­for­nia for later this year; Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent sack­ing of the Demo­c­rat who was in charge of the Cal­i­for­nia National Guard (who was replaced by a Repub­li­can); review of the influ­ence of Machiavelli’s The Prince on the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion; Machiavelli’s advice about the need to destroy a pop­u­la­tion that is seek­ing to regain its demo­c­ra­tic heritage.

1. In FTR#466, we exam­ined the sub­ject of com­put­er­ized vot­ing and the poten­tial pit­falls that the tech­nol­ogy holds for democ­racy. This broad­cast begins by high­light­ing the death of Athan Gibbs, a critic of com­puter vot­ing machines that do not pro­vide a paper trail. Gibbs, who had devel­oped a tech­nol­ogy that assured a viable account­ing of votes, was killed in a car/truck col­li­sion in Texas. “The sub­ject line on yesterday’s e-mail read: ‘Another mys­te­ri­ous acci­dent solves a Bush prob­lem. Athan Gibbs dead, Diebold lives.’ The attached news story briefly described the untimely Fri­day, March 12th death of per­haps America’s most influ­en­tial advo­cate of a ver­i­fied vot­ing paper trail in the era of touch screen com­puter vot­ing. Gibbs, an accoun­tant for more than 30 years and the inven­tor of the Tru Vote sys­tem, died when his vehi­cle col­lided with an 18-wheeled truck which rolled his Chevy Blazer sev­eral times and forced it over the high­way retain­ing wall where it came to rest on its roof. . . .“
(“Mys­te­ri­ous Death Ben­e­fits Bush” by Bob Fitrakis; Coastal Post; 4/2004; p. 1.)

2. ” . . . Gibbs’ death bears height­ened scrutiny because of the way he lived his life after the 2000 Florida elec­tion deba­cle. I inter­viewed Athan Gibbs in Jan­u­ary of this year. ‘I’ve been an accoun­tant, an audi­tor, for more than thirty years. Elec­tronic vot­ing machines that don’t sup­ply a paper trail go against every prin­ci­ple of account­ing and audit­ing that’s being taught in Amer­i­can busi­ness schools,’ he insisted. ‘These machines are set up to pro­vide paper trails. No busi­ness in Amer­ica would buy a machine that didn’t pro­vide a paper trail to audit and ver­ify its trans­ac­tion. Now, they want the peo­ple to pur­chase machines that you can’t audit? It’s absurd.’” (Idem.)

3. “Gibbs was in Colum­bus, Ohio proudly dis­play­ing his Tru­Vote machine that offered a ‘VVPAT, that’s a voter ver­i­fied paper audit trail’ he noted. Gibbs also sug­gested that I look into the ‘peo­ple behind the other machines.’ He offered that ‘Diebold and ES&S are real inter­est­ing and all Repub­li­cans. If you’re an inves­tiga­tive reporter go ahead and inves­ti­gate. You’ll find some inter­est­ing mate­r­ial.’” (Idem.)

4. “Gibbs’ Tru­Vote machine is a mar­vel. After vot­ers touch the screen, a paper bal­lot prints out under plex­i­glass and once the voter com­pares it to his actual vote and approves it, the bal­lot drops into a lock­box and is issued a num­bered receipt. The voter’s receipt allows the track­ing of his par­tic­u­lar vote to make sure that it was trans­ferred from the polling place to the elec­tion tab­u­la­tion cen­ter.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

5. “My encounter with Gibbs led to a cover story in the Colum­bus Free Press March-April issue, enti­tled, ‘Diebold, elec­tronic vot­ing and the vast right-wing con­spir­acy.’ The the­sis I advanced in the Free Press arti­cle is that some of the same right-wing indi­vid­u­als who backed the CIA’s covert actions and over­throw­ing of demo­c­ra­tic elec­tions in the Third World in the 1980’s are now involved in pri­va­tized touch screen vot­ing. Addi­tion­ally I co-wrote an arti­cle with Har­vey Wasser­man that was posted at MotherJones.com on March 5, 2004. Both arti­cles out­lined ties between far right ele­ments of the Repub­li­can Party and Diebold and ES&S, which count the major­ity of the nation’s elec­tronic votes.” (Idem.)

6. “As I wrote in the Free Press arti­cle, ‘Pro­po­nents of a paper trail were embold­ened when Athan Gibbs, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Tru­Vote Inter­na­tional, demon­strated a vot­ing machine at a vendor’s fair in Colum­bus that pro­vides two sep­a­rate vot­ing receipts.’ In an inter­view on WVKO radio, Gibbs calmly and method­i­cally explained the dan­gers of ‘block box’ touch screen vot­ing. ‘It absolutely makes no sense to buy elec­tronic vot­ing machines that can’t pro­duce a paper trail. Inevitably, com­put­ers mess up. How are you going to have a recount, or cor­rect mal­func­tions with­out a paper trail?’” (Idem.)

7. “Now, the man ask­ing the obvi­ous ques­tion, and demon­strat­ing an obvi­ous tan­gi­ble solu­tion is dead in another tragic acci­dent, a week after both arti­cles were in cir­cu­la­tion. When I called Tru­Vote Inter­na­tional to Ver­ify Gibbs’ death, I reached Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer Adrenne [sic] Bran­don who assured me ‘We’re going on in his mem­ory. We’re going to make this hap­pen.’ Every Amer­i­can con­cerned with democ­racy should pledge to make this hap­pen. To beat back the rush for state gov­ern­ments to pur­chase pri­va­tized, par­ti­san and unre­li­able elec­tronic vot­ing machines with­out ver­i­fied paper trails. Gibbs’ last words to me were ‘How do you explain what hap­pened to Sen­a­tor Max Cle­land in Geor­gia. How do you explain that? The Mary­land study and the Johns Hop­kins sci­en­tists have warned us against ‘blind faith vot­ing.’ These sys­tems can be hacked into. They found patches in Geor­gia and the peo­ple ser­vic­ing the machine had entered the machines dur­ing the vot­ing process. How can we the peo­ple accept this? No more blind faith vot­ing.’” (Idem.)

8. A major topic of spec­u­la­tion vis a vis the elec­tion con­cerns the the­ory that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion might try to pro­duce Osama bin Laden before the elec­tion. In that regard, the broad­cast sets forth pres­sure by the admin­is­tra­tion on Pak­istan to pro­duce the cap­ture of a major Al Qaeda fig­ure before election—around the time of the Demo­c­ra­tic con­ven­tion if pos­si­ble. ” . . . This spring, the admin­is­tra­tion sig­nif­i­cantly increased its pres­sure on Pak­istan to kill or cap­ture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban’s Mul­lah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are believed to be hid­ing in the law­less tribal areas of Pak­istan. A suc­ces­sion of high-level Amer­i­can officials—from out­go­ing CIA Direc­tor George Tenet to Sec­re­tary of State Colin Pow­ell to Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State Christina Rocca to State Depart­ment coun­tert­er­ror­ism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South Asia official—have vis­ited Pak­istan in recent months to urge Gen­eral Per­vez Musharraf’s gov­ern­ment to do more in the war on ter­ror­ism. In April, Zal­may Khalilzad, the Amer­i­can ambas­sador to Afghanistan, pub­licly chided the Pak­ista­nis for pro­vid­ing a ‘sanc­tu­ary’ for Al Qaeda and Tal­iban forces cross­ing the Afghan bor­der. ‘The prob­lem has not been solved and needs to be solved, the sooner the bet­ter,’ he said.“
(“Pak­istan for Bush: July Sur­prise?” by John B. Judis, Spencer Ack­er­man & Mas­soud Ansari; The New Repub­lic (Online); 7/19/2004; p. 1.)

9. “This pub­lic pres­sure would be appro­pri­ate, even laud­able, had it not been accom­pa­nied by an unseemly pri­vate insis­tence that the Pak­ista­nis deliver these high-value tar­gets (HVTs) before Amer­i­cans go to the polls in Novem­ber. The Bush admin­is­tra­tion denies it has geared the war on ter­ror­ism to the elec­toral cal­en­dar. ‘Our atti­tude and actions have been the same since Sep­tem­ber 11 in terms of get­ting high-value tar­gets off the street, and that doesn’t change because of an elec­tion,’ says National Secu­rity Coun­cil spokesman Sean McCor­mack. But the New Repub­lic has learned that Pak­istani secu­rity offi­cials have been told they must pro­duce HVTs by the elec­tion. Accord­ing to one source in Pakistan’s pow­er­ful Inter-Services Intel­li­gence (ISI), ‘The Pak­istani gov­ern­ment is really des­per­ate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his asso­ciates after the lat­est pres­sures from the U.S. admin­is­tra­tion to deliver before the [upcom­ing] U.S. elec­tions.’ Intro­duc­ing tar­get dates for Al Qaeda cap­tures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani coun­tert­er­ror­ism relations—according to a recently departed intel­li­gence offi­cial, ‘no timetable[s]’ were dis­cussed in 2002 or 2003—but the Novem­ber elec­tion is appar­ently bring­ing a new dead­line pres­sure to the hunt. Another offi­cial, this one from the Pak­istani Inte­rior Min­istry, which is respon­si­ble for inter­nal secu­rity, explains, ‘The Mushar­raf gov­ern­ment has a his­tory of res­cu­ing the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. They now want Mushar­raf to bail them out when they are fac­ing hard times in the com­ing elec­tions.’ (These sources insisted on remain­ing anony­mous. Under Pakistan’s Offi­cial Secrets Act, an offi­cial leak­ing infor­ma­tion to the press can be impris­oned for up to ten years.)” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

10. “A third source, an offi­cial who works under ISI’s direc­tor, Lieu­tenant Gen­eral Ehsan ul-Haq, informed TNR that the Pak­ista­nis ‘have been told at every level that appre­hen­sion or killing of HVTs before [the] elec­tion is [an] absolute must.’ What’s more, this source claims that Bush administration’s offi­cials have told their Pak­istani coun­ter­parts they have a date in mind for announc­ing this achieve­ment: ‘The last ten days of July dead­line has been given repeat­edly by vis­i­tors to Islam­abad and dur­ing [ul-Haq’s] meet­ings in Wash­ing­ton.’ Says McCor­mack: ‘I’m aware of no such com­ment.’ But accord­ing to this ISI offi­cial, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that ‘it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July’—the first three days of the Demo­c­ra­tic National Con­ven­tion in Boston. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

11. ” . . . Pak­istani per­cep­tions of U.S. pol­i­tics rein­force these wor­ries. ‘In Pak­istan, there has been a folk belief that, when­ever there’s a Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion in office, rela­tions with Pak­istan have been very good,’ says Khalid Hasan, a U.S. cor­re­spon­dent for the Lahore-based Daily Times. By con­trast, there’s also a ‘folk belief that the Democ­rats are always pro-India.’ Recent his­tory has val­i­dated those beliefs. The Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion inher­ited close ties to Pak­istan, forged a decade ear­lier in col­lab­o­ra­tion against the Soviet inva­sion of Afghanistan. But, by the time Clin­ton left office, the United States had tilted toward India, and Pak­istan was under U.S. sanc­tions for its nuclear activ­i­ties. All this has given Mushar­raf rea­son not just to respond to pres­sure from Bush, but to feel invested in him—and to worry that Kerry, who called the Khan affair a ‘dis­as­ter,’ and who has pro­posed tough new curbs on nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion, would adopt an icier line. Bush’s strat­egy could work. In large part because of the increased U.S. pres­sure, Mushar­raf has, over the last sev­eral months, sig­nif­i­cantly increased mil­i­tary activ­ity in the tribal areas—regions that enjoy con­sid­er­able auton­omy from Islam­abad and where, until Mushar­raf sided with the United States in the war on ter­ror­ism, Pak­istani sol­diers had never set foot in the nation’s 50-year his­tory. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 3–4)

12. Much of the pro­gram deals with Ralph Nader’s 2004 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, which many see as an attempt at deliv­er­ing the pres­i­dency to George Bush. (For infor­ma­tion about Nader’s 2000 cam­paign, see FTR#264.) In his 2004 bid, Nader has been claim­ing that his can­di­dacy will take more votes from Bush than from Kerry. A recent Salon.com arti­cle skew­ers that claim: “Inde­pen­dent pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ralph Nader—still not on the bal­lot in a sin­gle slate—has received a recent wind­fall of con­tri­bu­tions from deep-pocketed Repub­li­cans with a his­tory of big con­tri­bu­tions to the party, an analy­sis of fed­eral records show. Nearly one in 10 of Nader’s major donors—those writ­ing checks of $1,000 or more—have given in recent months to the Bush-Cheney cam­paign, the lat­est doc­u­ments show. GOP fund-raisers also have ‘bun­dled’ contributions—gathering hefty dona­tions for max­i­mum effect to help Nader, who has crit­i­cized the prac­tice in the past. The dona­tions from wealthy Republicans—combined with increas­ingly vocal Demo­c­ra­tic charges that they rep­re­sent a stealth GOP effort to wound Demo­c­rat John Kerry-prompted Nader’s vice pres­i­den­tial run­ning mate, Green Party mem­ber Peter Camejo, to sug­gest the con­sumer advo­cate reject the money that doesn’t come from loyal Nader vot­ers. . . .“
(“GOP Donors Fund­ing Nader” by Carla Mar­in­ucci; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 7/9/2004; p. A1.)

13. Nader’s selec­tion of a promi­nent Green Party per­son­al­ity as a running-mate belies Nader’s stated objec­tive of tak­ing votes away from Bush. “Ralph Nader’s lat­est pres­i­den­tial cam­paign does not have an offi­cial slo­gan. It does, how­ever, have a kind of offi­cial ratio­nal­iza­tion. ‘I think I’m going to take more votes away from Repub­li­cans than from Democ­rats,’ Nader says, almost every time he speaks. Democ­rats doubt this the­ory. And Nader admits no Repub­li­cans have asked him to leave the race or expressed fear he will siphon votes from Bush. ‘I don’t think they’re in with the trend,’ Nader
explained.“
(“Nader’s Repub­li­can Pipe Dream” by Peter Dizikes; Salon.com; 6/10/2004; p. 1.)

14. “But Nader insists his Repub­li­can back­ers are real. To find out more, I spent a good chunk of time over the last few weeks talk­ing to Nader sup­port­ers in New Eng­land. I attended Nader mee­tups, Nader vol­un­teer meet­ings, Nader cam­paign events and Nader press con­fer­ences. I spoke with Nader sup­port­ers who are still in high school, and Nader sup­port­ers with gray hair. I talked to peo­ple who have admired Nader since the 1960’s, and oth­ers who first heard of him last year. I found Nader sup­port­ers who have voted for him mul­ti­ple times, Nader sup­port­ers who have never voted, and Nader sup­port­ers who voted for Al Gore in 2000.” (Idem.)

15. “What I did not find, how­ever, was a sin­gle sup­porter of Ralph Nader who voted for George W. Bush in 2000, or who had been plan­ning to sup­port Bush this year before Nader entered the race. After a while, I felt like a stymied nat­u­ral­ist stalk­ing a rare species. Sure, Naderus Repub­li­canus must exist some­where, but it is an unusual crea­ture, capa­ble of elud­ing human obser­va­tion for long stretches of time. . . .” (Idem.)

16. Yet another Salon.com arti­cle high­lights Nader’s pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ship with Rupert Mur­doch. Mur­doch is both pub­lish­ing and flog­ging Nader’s newest book, rais­ing the pos­si­bil­ity that the right-wing Mur­doch, whose media empire is an emphatic backer of George Bush, may be delib­er­ately pro­mot­ing Nader’s elec­toral for­tunes. ” . . . Another good ques­tion [for­mer Demo­c­ra­tic con­tender Howard] Dean might ask Nader, critic of corporate-controlled Wash­ing­ton and foe of ram­pant media con­sol­i­da­tion, is why Nader’s new book, which arrived in stores this week and kicks off his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, is being pub­lished by Rupert Mur­doch. Chair­man of the expan­sive con­glom­er­ate News Corp., the con­ser­v­a­tive Mur­doch has been a chief advo­cate for more than two decades of exten­sive media dereg­u­la­tion. And his Harper­Collins is not only pub­lish­ing Nader’s The Good Fight: Declare Your Inde­pen­dence and close the Democ­racy Gap’ but pro­vid­ing the can­di­date with expen­sive pub­lic rela­tions pro­mo­tion and media book­ings. ‘Is this a coin­ci­dence, or a back­handed way of help­ing Nader out?’ asks Chel­lie Pin­gree, pres­i­dent of Com­mon Cause. . . .“
(“Strange Alliance” by Eric Boehlert; Salon.com; 7/9/2004; pp. 1–2.)

17. ” . . . But Murdoch’s pub­li­ca­tion of Nader’s book fits in with an emerg­ing pat­tern of polit­i­cal activ­i­ties. Recent news reports indi­cate Repub­li­can groups nation­wide are actively aid­ing Nader’s effort to secure space on elec­tion bal­lots in the hope that he will hurt John Kerry’s chances . . . Against that back­drop, Nader’s alliance with the pub­lish­ing arm of Mur­doch, who has been a lav­ish sup­porter of Repub­li­can can­di­dates and uses his media outlets—including Fox News, the New York Post and the Weekly Standard—to advance Repub­li­can causes and his own busi­ness inter­ests, raises ques­tions about the media mogul’s inten­tions. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

18. Next, the pro­gram exam­ines charges by for­mer asso­ciates of Nader’s that he repaid their loy­alty and friend­ship with treach­ery. Accord­ing to the fam­ily of for­mer Nader aide Ted Jacobs, Nader pro­vided dis­in­for­ma­tion about Jacobs to the FBI—thereby per­ma­nently dam­ag­ing Jacobs’ career. ” . . . While Nader con­tin­ues to cam­paign against cor­po­rate abuse, his own record, accord­ing to many of those who have worked closely with him, is char­ac­ter­ized by arro­gance, under­handed attacks on friends and asso­ciates, secrecy, para­noia and mean-spiritedness—even at the expense of his own causes. If he were a cor­po­rate CEO, sub­ject to the laws gov­ern­ing pub­licly held and fed­er­ally reg­u­lated firms, there can be lit­tle doubt he would have been removed long ago by his company’s board of direc­tors. . . .“
(“The Dark Side of Ralph Nader” by Lisa Cham­ber­lain; Salon.com; 7/1/2004; p. 2.)

19. ” . . . Ted Jacobs met Nader when they were both fresh­men at Prince­ton and then attended Har­vard Law School together. Later, as an attor­ney in pri­vate prac­tice, Ted pro­vided per­sonal and pro­fes­sional legal assis­tance to his old col­lege friend after he was cat­a­pulted to national promi­nence over the issue of auto­mo­bile safety with the pub­li­ca­tion of ‘Unsafe at Any Speed.’ Ted became, in effect, Nader’s chief of staff And from 1970 to 1975, Ted was exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Cen­ter of Respon­sive Law, the first orga­ni­za­tion Nader founded.” (Idem.)

20. “The two men’s ugly and painful falling out—in which Nader trashed Jacobs to the FBI when Jacobs was up for a fed­eral job and Jacobs retal­i­ated with an explo­sive affi­davit alleg­ing finan­cial and legal impro­pri­eties by Nader—was the first of many destruc­tive breaches between Nader and one­time allies. The story hasn’t been told before, but the Jacobs fam­ily recently made pri­vate papers avail­able to Salon that doc­u­ment the sad split. ‘My dad kept every­thing,’ said Jacobs. ‘He had boxes of papers in our base­ment. They pretty much sat there until Nader announced that he was going to run again, and I decided to go through them.’ Nick was shocked by his dis­cov­ery of this dark chap­ter in his father’s oth­er­wise enemy-free life.” (Idem.)

21. “In var­i­ous arti­cles from the early 1970’s, Ted Jacobs was described as ‘Nader’s clos­est friend and advi­sor’ and the per­son who stood ‘between Nader and the world, absorb­ing the fury of the attacked, offer­ing solace to the ignored, always speak­ing the absolute truth within the lim­its of what he believes Nader would wish him to reveal.’ But, accord­ing to the pri­vate papers shared with Salon, he informed Nader some­time in 1974 that he planned to leave the Cen­ter for the Study of Respon­sive Law but would first fin­ish sev­eral projects.” (Idem.)

22. “On March 8, 1975, Jacobs arrived at the office to find the con­tents of two large file cab­i­nets miss­ing (includ­ing his per­sonal diaries and doc­u­ments relat­ing to ‘finan­cial mat­ters’) and his desk draw­ers ran­sacked. Nader arrived at the office a short while later to tell him he had ordered the files removed. In a state of near shock, Jacobs ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion and demanded to know what was going on. Accord­ing to con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous notes writ­ten by Jacobs, Nader said he had con­fis­cated the files because a year ear­lier, Jacobs had signed checks for mag­a­zine sub­scrip­tions with­out Nader’s per­mis­sion. Nader also accused Jacobs of writ­ing a check to him­self for about $75 for expenses. Dis­mayed and shaken, Jacobs searched for a new job.” (Idem.)

23. “He was being seri­ously con­sid­ered for a posi­tion as a staff mem­ber on the Sen­ate Select Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, which required a rou­tine back­ground check con­ducted by the FBI (which col­lects raw data on indi­vid­u­als but does not seek to con­firm it). While wait­ing to hear about the job, Jacobs was told that ques­tions had been raised about his char­ac­ter, hon­esty and trust­wor­thi­ness. He sub­se­quently learned that the source of the innu­en­does was Nader. Accord­ing to Jacobs’ son Nick, to find out why he was denied a secu­rity clear­ance, Jacobs asked for and received a list of the peo­ple the FBI had inter­viewed and what they had said. He told the agency the accu­sa­tions were untrue.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

24. “Nick says he has repeat­edly asked the FBI for access to his father’s FBI file, but although the agency has said the file is OK to release, he has so far not received it. On Aug. 7, 1975, Jacobs wrote
his for­mer friend a let­ter express­ing his dis­tress: ‘I thought that we had set­tled after our long talk in April . . . If I mis­un­der­stood you that day, it was surely the most costly mis­un­der­stand­ing in the 24 years I’ve known you. I was pre­pared to let you go your way in the hope that you would let me go mine and I was feel­ing very kindly dis­posed to you. That was until I learned of your state­ment to the FBI. The impact of that state­ment was as if I had been kicked in the stom­ach . . . We must have some sort of res­o­lu­tion to undo the dam­age done by your state­ments. As the record now stands, it will be an imped­i­ment for the rest of my life.’” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

25. ” . . . Accord­ing to a state­ment Jacobs wrote after he was dis­missed, Nader told the FBI that Jacobs was fired for skim­ming money from the Cen­ter for the Study of Respon­sive Law and other irreg­u­lar­i­ties. In the affi­davit that Jacobs drafted in the hope of clear­ing his name with the FBI, he wrote: ‘I was the only per­son Mr. Nader trusted with his exten­sive and com­pli­cated finan­cial deal­ings . . . I reg­u­larly signed his name to leases, cor­re­spon­dence, con­tracts, tax returns, reports to gov­ern­ment agen­cies and bank and stock bro­ker­age accounts. Mr. Nader was aware of the fact that I reg­u­larly signed his name to these doc­u­ments and would often specif­i­cally request we do so because he did not want his real sig­na­ture widely known. . . . The fact is that I did sign the checks which were in accord with reg­u­lar prac­tice of pay­ment of legit­i­mate office expenses.’” (Idem.)

26. Jacobs responded with an affi­davit alleg­ing highly ques­tion­able activ­i­ties on Nader’s part. “In the affi­davit, Jacobs indi­cated that the rea­son he decided to leave Nader’s employ was his grow­ing con­cern about the way Nader han­dled his per­sonal and pro­fes­sional finances. Jacobs out­lined in some detail what he char­ac­ter­ized as ques­tion­able prac­tices regard­ing taxes, book­keep­ing, invest­ments and stock trans­ac­tions. He wrote, ‘Although Mr. Nader was earn­ing approx­i­mately $500,000 per year in per­sonal income, he paid lit­tle or no taxes since he deducted var­i­ous expenses of his oper­a­tions as ‘busi­ness expenses’ or he made con­tri­bu­tions to ‘char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions’ con­trolled by him.’ Jacobs con­tin­ued, ‘He also engaged in what I viewed to be ques­tion­able end of year tax jug­gling, often pre-dating or post-dating checks to get a deduc­tion in a par­tic­u­lar year. He would often pad travel expenses and double-bill for travel expenses when he had two engage­ments in a par­tic­u­lar out-of-town city.’” (Idem.)

27. “The for­mer asso­ciate also charged that Nader’s non­profit enter­prises were run with very lit­tle over­sight by their boards: ‘No inde­pen­dent out­side audits were made of any of the Nader orga­ni­za­tions until var­i­ous states required Pub­lic Cit­i­zen state­ments.’ Jacobs also wrote in the affi­davit that Nader was ‘inor­di­nately harsh in his deal­ings with his employ­ees and oth­ers. Although he had amassed a reserve of over $2 mil­lion in var­i­ous foun­da­tions, orga­ni­za­tions and in his per­sonal bro­ker­age account, he paid extremely low wages and often refused to pay employ­ees and oth­ers for work done.’” (Idem.)

28. ” . . . But the dam­age was done. The highly qual­i­fied Jacobs didn’t get the job with the Sen­ate Select Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, or any other posi­tion that required a secu­rity clear­ance. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

29. Another for­mer ally to suf­fer seri­ous polit­i­cal dam­age at Nader’s hands is for­mer Demo­c­ra­tic Con­gress­man Toby Mof­fett [D-Conn.] ” . . . Like Nader, [for­mer Demo­c­ra­tic Con­gress­man Toby] Mof­fett grew up in Con­necti­cut. Their fathers, both Lebanese immi­grants, were good friends. When Mof­fett fin­ished grad­u­ate school, his father urged him to get in touch with Nader, who was already a national icon. To Moffett’s sur­prise, not only did Nader take his call, but he asked him to return to Con­necti­cut and start an orga­ni­za­tion that would later become the model for Cit­i­zen Action groups around the coun­try. ‘I saw a lot Ralph because he would come back to visit his par­ents [in Con­necti­cut]. I would and stay and eat with the fam­ily. To me, he was a gigan­tic hero.’” (Ibid.; p. 5.)

30. “After work­ing closely with the old fam­ily friend, Mof­fett ran for Con­gress from Con­necti­cut in 1974 and won. ‘Three months after I was elected, [Nader] attacked me,’ says Mof­fett. ‘So our rela­tion­ship began to sour pretty quickly.’ Accord­ing to Mof­fett, Nader launched the first of numer­ous attacks against him over an air­craft noise reduc­tion bill. While the bill stip­u­lated that noise reduc­tion mea­sures would be funded mostly by the air­lines, they were also to be sub­si­dized by a tax on air­plane travelers—not the gen­eral public—which Nader dis­missed as a cor­po­rate hand­out. Mof­fett, along with nearly every envi­ron­men­tal group, sup­ported the bill. ‘It was an impor­tant piece of leg­is­la­tion that was sup­ported by a coali­tion of pro­gres­sive mem­bers of Con­gress, and it passed. Of course, now the Bush admin­is­tra­tion is tear­ing it apart.’” (Idem.)

31. “Nader con­tin­ued to crit­i­cize Mof­fett dur­ing his four terms in Con­gress, which was dis­turb­ing enough, but as with Al Gore, Nader would even­tu­ally play a cru­cial part in end­ing Moffett’s career in elec­tive office. After a fourth term in the House, Mof­fett ran for the Sen­ate against Low­ell Weicker, a Repub­li­can, in 1982. ‘My oppo­nent was run­ning these ads attack­ing me; the [National Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion] was ham­mer­ing me from the right,’ says Mof­fett. ‘And then Ralph Nader came up [to Con­necti­cut] and endorsed him. I lost by a very slim mar­gin. My fam­ily and I, and my sup­port­ers, we just had this blind rage and fury about it. So what he did in 2000 was no shock to me. And what he’s doing now is no shock. It’s always been about him and his ego.’” (Idem.)

32. The pro­gram under­scores Nader’s duplic­ity dur­ing the 2000 cam­paign. ” . . . In 2000, again with the Green Party, he ran a full-fledged cam­paign, rais­ing and spend­ing money to get on the bal­lot in all 50 states. He drew huge crowds at places like Madi­son Square Gar­den in New York and Key Arena in Seat­tle. While he assured Democ­rats that he wouldn’t cam­paign late in the elec­tion sea­son in key bat­tle­ground states, he reneged on that promise, zero­ing in on Florida, Ore­gon and New Hamp­shire in the last few weeks before the elec­tion. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 7.)

33. Con­tin­u­ing an exam­i­na­tion of wolves in sheep’s cloth­ing, the broad­cast exam­ines strange bed­fel­lows Roger Stone and Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial con­tender Al Sharp­ton. “Roger Stone, the long­time Repub­li­can dirty-tricks oper­a­tive who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount and helped make George W. Bush pres­i­dent in 2000, is financ­ing, staffing, and orches­trat­ing the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of Rev­erend Al Sharp­ton.“
(“Sleep­ing with the GOP” by Wayne Bar­rett; The Vil­lage Voice; 2/5/2004; p. 1.)

34. “Though Stone and Sharp­ton have tried to reduce their alliance to a curios­ity, sug­gest­ing that all they do is talk occa­sion­ally, a Voice inves­ti­ga­tion has doc­u­mented an extra­or­di­nary array of con­nec­tions. Stone played a piv­otal role in putting together Sharpton’s pend­ing appli­ca­tion for fed­eral match­ing funds, get­ting dol­lars in crit­i­cal states from fam­ily mem­bers and polit­i­cal allies at odds with every­thing Sharp­ton rep­re­sents. He’s also helped stack the cam­paign with a half-dozen incon­gru­ous top aides who’ve worked for him in prior cam­paigns. He’s even boasted about engi­neer­ing six-figure loans to Sharpton’s National Action Net­work (NAN) and allow­ing Sharp­ton to use his credit card to cover thou­sands in NAN costs—neither of which he could legally do for the cam­paign. In a wide-ranging Voice inter­view Sun­day, Stone con­firmed his matching-fund and staffing roles, but refused to com­ment on the NAN sub­si­dies. . . .” (Idem.)

35. ” . . . Recruited in 2000 by his friend James Baker, the for­mer sec­re­tary of state, to spear­head the GOP street forces in Miami, Stone is appar­ently con­fi­dent that he can use the Democrat-bashing preacher to dam­age the party’s even­tual nom­i­nee, just as Sharp­ton him­self bragged he did in the New York may­oral cam­paign of 2001. In his 2002 book, Al on Amer­ica, Sharp­ton wrote that he felt the city’s Demo­c­ra­tic Party ‘had to be taught a les­son’ in 2001—insisting that Mark Green, who defeated the Sharpton-backed Fer­nando Fer­rer in a bit­ter runoff, had dis­re­spected him and minori­ties. Adding that the party ‘still has to be taught one nation­ally,’ he warned: ‘A lot of 2004 will be about what hap­pened in New York in 2001. It’s about dig­nity.’ In 2001, Sharp­ton engaged in a behind-the-scenes dia­logue with cam­paign aides to Repub­li­can Mike Bloomberg while pub­licly dis­parag­ing Green. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

36. ” . . . While Bush forces like the Club for Growth were buy­ing ads in Iowa assail­ing then front-runner Howard Dean, Sharp­ton took cen­ter stage at a debate con­fronting Dean about the absence of blacks in his Ver­mont cab­i­net. Stone told the Times that he ‘helped set the tone and direc­tion’ of the Dean attacks, while Charles Hal­lo­ran, the Sharp­ton cam­paign man­ager installed by Stone, sup­plied the research. While other Demo­c­ra­tic oppo­nents were also attack­ing Dean, none did it on the advice of a con­sul­tant who’s worked in every GOP pres­i­den­tial cam­paign since his involve­ment in the Water­gate scan­dals of 1972, includ­ing all of the Bush fam­ily cam­paigns. Asked if he’d every been involved in a Demo­c­ra­tic cam­paign before, Stone cited his 1981 sup­port of Ed Koch, though he was quoted at the time as say­ing he only did it because Koch was also given the Repub­li­can bal­lot line.” (Idem.)

37. “Just as Stone has a his­tory of polit­i­cal skull­dug­gery, Sharp­ton has a little-noticed his­tory of Repub­li­can machi­na­tions incon­sis­tent with his fiery rhetoric. He endorsed Al D’Amato in 1986, appeared with George Pataki two days before his 1994 race against Mario Cuomo, invited Ralph Nader to his head­quar­ters on the eve of the 2000 vote, befriended Bill Pow­ers when he was the state GOP chair, and debuted as a preacher in the church of a black min­is­ter who was also a Brook­lyn Repub­li­can dis­trict leader. The cur­rent co-chair of his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign gave as much to Bush-Cheney as he did to Sharp­ton, and many of the black busi­ness­men sup­port­ing this cam­paign or NAN have strong GOP ties. His con­duit in the Bloomberg cam­paign, Harold Doley III, was the son of the first black with a seat on Wall Street. A major NAN backer over the years, Doley Jr. was appointed to posi­tions in five Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tions, includ­ing Bush’s.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

38. “Stone, whose Miami mob even jos­tled a vis­it­ing Sharp­ton dur­ing the recount, said recently in The Amer­i­can Spec­ta­tor that if Sharp­ton were to run ‘as an inde­pen­dent’ in the 2006 Hillary Clin­ton race, she would be ‘sunk,’ implic­itly sug­gest­ing that this oper­a­tion may be a pre­cur­sor to another Stone-Sharpton mis­sion. In his book Too Close to Call, New Yorker colum­nist Jef­frey Toobin exposed Baker’s tap­ping of Stone, as well as Stone and his Cuban wife Nydia’s role in fir­ing up Cuban pro­test­ers, with Stone call­ing the shots the day of the shut­down over a walkie-talkie in a build­ing across the street from the can­vass­ing board head­quar­ters. The Stone mob was chant­ing Sharpton’s slo­gan ‘No Jus­tice, No Peace’ when the board stopped the count, which was uni­ver­sally seen as the turn­ing point in the bat­tle that made Bush pres­i­dent.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

39. “The Wash­ing­ton Post recently reported that the Bush cam­paign was plan­ning a spe­cial adver­tis­ing cam­paign tar­get­ing black vot­ers, seek­ing as much as a quar­ter of the vote, and any Sharpton-connected out­rage against the party could either lower black turnout in sev­eral key close states, or move votes to Bush. Both were widely reported as the con­se­quences of Sharpton’s anti-Green rhetoric in 2001, a result Sharp­ton cel­e­brated both in his book and at a Bronx vic­tory party on elec­tion night. . . .” (Idem.)

40. Sharp­ton is alleged to have worked as a con­fi­den­tial infor­mant for the FBI. ” . . . Stone was the reg­is­tered agent in Amer­ica for Argentina’s intel­li­gence agency, suck­ing up spy nov­els; Sharp­ton was a con­fi­den­tial infor­mant for the FBI, wiring up on black lead­ers for the feds. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 6.)

41. Con­clud­ing with an emphat­i­cally spec­u­la­tive item, the pro­gram exam­ines recent fore­casts of earth­quake activ­ity for Cal­i­for­nia later this year. This infor­ma­tion is pre­sented in the con­text of a num­ber of past broad­casts in which it has been estab­lished that tech­nol­ogy exists for the delib­er­ate trig­ger­ing of earth­quakes, where suf­fi­cient slip­page exists on a fault sys­tem to pro­duce such an event. The pos­si­bil­ity that a major quake occur­ring shortly before the elec­tion might have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the out­come should be care­fully con­sid­ered. Such a dis­as­ter could lead to the delay or can­cel­la­tion of the elec­tion in Cal­i­for­nia and would have far-reaching con­se­quences for the U.S. as well. If the quake were severe, it could lead to an impo­si­tion of mar­tial law in the U.S., due to the far-reaching eco­nomic and eco­log­i­cal con­se­quences atten­dant upon such an event. A major Cal­i­for­nia quake would also hand polit­i­cal cen­ter stage to the Ter­mi­na­tor and George W. They could be pack­aged as the sav­iors of Cal­i­for­nia. The grate­ful cit­i­zens’ [delayed] votes would go to Bush, even though Schwarzeneg­ger will be the one who gar­ners most of the action. Such an event could well be used to posi­tion Schwarzeneg­ger for a run for national office. “Sci­en­tists have found strik­ing evi­dence of a three-year cycle of earth­quakes on the San Andreas Fault, a devel­op­ment that might lead to the first prac­ti­cal short-term earth­quake fore­cast­ing in cen­tral Cal­i­for­nia. The new research, which one expert called a tour de force of geo­science, sug­gests that the next peak of the cycle is likely to come late this year. . . .“
(“San Andreas Quakes Show Cycli­cal Pat­tern: UC-Berkeley Study Finds Fault Slip­ping in Peri­odic Bursts” by Keay David­son: San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 1/9/2004; p. 1.)

42. Yet another pre­dic­tion of a quake for Cal­i­for­nia for later this year. “A US geo­physi­cist has set the sci­en­tific world ablaze by claim­ing to have cracked a holy grail: accu­rate earth­quake pre­dic­tion, and warn­ing that a big one will soon hit south­ern Cal­i­for­nia. A Russian-born Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at Los Ange­les pro­fes­sor Vladimir Keilis-Borok says he can fore­see major quakes by track­ing minor tem­blors and his­tor­i­cal pat­terns in seis­mic hotspots that could indi­cate more vio­lent shak­ing is on the way. And he has made a chill­ing pre­dic­tion that a quake mea­sur­ing at least 6.4 mag­ni­tude on the Richter scale will hit a 31,200-square-kilometer (12,000-square-mile) area of south­ern Cal­i­for­nia by Sep­tem­ber 5. . . .“
(“Expert Warns Cal­i­for­nia to Brace for Big Quake by Sep­tem­ber” (AFP); Yahoo.com; 4/15/2004; pp. 1–2.)

43. The pro­gram notes that Schwarzeneg­ger recently replaced the head of the Cal­i­for­nia National Guard with a Repub­li­can. This may, or may not be of sig­nif­i­cance. Cer­tainly, the National Guard will be cen­trally involved in any major dis­as­ter response in Cal­i­for­nia. Whether or not this is coin­ci­den­tal or of any sig­nif­i­cance at all remains to be seen. Schwarzeneg­ger also recently replaced the head of the Cal­i­for­nia High­way Patrol—another insti­tu­tion that would be piv­otally involved in a major emer­gency response by the state’s infra­struc­ture. “Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger abruptly removed Maj. Gen. Paul Mon­roe as com­man­der of the Cal­i­for­nia National Guard on Tues­day and replaced him with Maj. Gen. Thomas Eres, who has served as direc­tor of the guard’s office of home­land secu­rity. . . . His [Monroe’s] replace­ment, Eres, 59, takes over imme­di­ately. Eres rose through the ranks dur­ing 35 years of ser­vice in the National Guard. In civil­ian life, he is senior part­ner in the Sacra­mento law firm of Nos­saman, Gun­th­ner, Knox & Elliott. He is a Repub­li­can. Mon­roe is a Demo­c­rat. . . .“
(“Schwarzeneg­ger Removes National Guard Com­man­der” by Carl Nolte; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 3/4/2004; p. A19.)

44. In his intro­duc­tion to the por­tion of the pro­gram deal­ing with Cal­i­for­nia quake pre­dic­tions, Mr. Emory notes that this infor­ma­tion falls in a gray area that hov­ers between “real­ity” and “para­noia.” In that same vein, a [hope­fully] humor­ous com­ment by Florida Gov­er­nor Jeb Bush may well be noth­ing more than the taste­less joke it appears to be. Let’s hope so, any­way. ” . . . Gov. Jeb Bush joked dur­ing a Florida Cab­i­net meet­ing Wednes­day that the peo­ple of San Fran­cisco may be endan­gered and, ‘That’s prob­a­bly good news for the coun­try.’ The sub­ject was envi­ron­men­tal land and Bush was look­ing at a map show­ing loca­tions with a lot of dif­fer­ent wildlife. ‘It looks like the peo­ple of San Fran­cisco are an endan­gered species, which may not be a bad thing. That’s prob­a­bly good news for the coun­try.’ Peo­ple in the room broke into laugh­ter. ‘Did I just say that out loud?’ the gov­er­nor asked.’”
(“Jeb Bush Says Peo­ple of San Fran­cisco Are Endan­gered Species” by Jim Spark­man; Chron­Watch; 11/17/2003; p. 1.)

45. Among the fac­tors man­dat­ing dis­cus­sion of these trou­ble­some and (to some) far-fetched rumi­na­tions con­cern­ing pos­si­ble seis­mic sub­ver­sion of the elec­toral and demo­c­ra­tic processes is the overtly Machi­avel­lian nature of this admin­is­tra­tion. One of the strat­a­gems that Machi­avelli coun­seled in The Prince was the delib­er­ate use of anni­hi­la­tion to inter­dict a population’s renascent demo­c­ra­tic instincts. “Indeed, there is no surer way of keep­ing pos­ses­sion than by dev­as­ta­tion. Who­ever becomes the mas­ter of a city accus­tomed to free­dom, and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed him­self; because, when there is a rebel­lion, such a city jus­ti­fies itself by call­ing on the name of lib­erty and its ancient insti­tu­tions, never for­got­ten despite the pass­ing of time and the ben­e­fits received from the new ruler. What­ever the conqueror’s actions or fore­sight, if the inhab­i­tants are not dis­persed and scat­tered, they will for­get nei­ther that name nor those insti­tu­tions; and at first oppor­tu­nity they will at once have recourse to them, as did Pisa after hav­ing been kept in servi­tude for a hun­dred years by the Flo­ren­tines. . . .But in republics there is more life, more hatred, a greater desire for revenge; the mem­ory of their ancient lib­erty does not and can­not let them rest; in their case the surest way is to wipe them out. . . .“
(The Prince; Nic­colo Machi­avelli; Pen­guin Clas­sics [trans­lated by George Bull]; ISBN 0–14-044107–7; pp. 48–49.)

46. This par­tic­u­lar bit of Machi­avel­lian wis­dom should be viewed against the back­ground of Machiavelli’s influ­ence on the think­ing of the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion. This descrip­tion reviews infor­ma­tion from FTR#‘s 445, 466. “The polit­i­cal thinker Nic­colo Machi­avelli (1469–1527), long a believer in the famous Flo­ren­tine Repub­lic of the Renais­sance, began to lose faith in his later years as the tides of impe­r­ial power and ambition—French, Ger­man, and Spanish—swept across the Ital­ian penin­sula, wash­ing away the old repub­li­can pol­i­tics of city-states like Flo­rence and Siena too small to sur­vive on their own. Unlike Machiavelli’s less-well-known books, which embraced repub­li­can pol­i­tics and insti­tu­tions, his most famous vol­ume, The Prince, was ded­i­cated to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the duke of Urbino. It encap­su­lated the tech­niques, from amoral­ity and fraud to reli­gion, by which the ascen­dant princely rulers might gov­ern most suc­cess­fully.“
(Amer­i­can Dynasty: Aris­toc­racy, For­tune, and the Pol­i­tics of Deceit in the House of Bush; by Kevin Philips; Viking [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Kevin Phillips; ISBN 0–670-03264–6; p. 320.)

47. “As the 2004 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion took shape, another such Machi­avel­lian moment was at hand. U.S. pres­i­dent George W. Bush, while hardly a Medici, was a dynast whose fam­ily her­itage included secrecy and cal­cu­lated decep­tion. Harken­ing to the increas­ingly impe­r­ial self-perception of the United States, the president’s the­o­rists and tac­ti­cians boasted of tak­ing the advice of Machi­avelli and the Chi­nese strate­gist Sun Tzu. The late Lee Atwa­ter, chief polit­i­cal adviser to the elder Bush, and Karl Rove, strate­gist for the younger Bush, friends and col­lab­o­ra­tors, were both devo­tees of Machi­avelli and The Prince, hardly a coin­ci­dence.” (Ibid.; pp. 320–321.)

48. “The pos­si­bil­ity that the United States could edge toward its own Machi­avel­lian moment in an early-twenty-first cen­tury milieu of ter­ror­ism, neo-imperialism, and dynas­ti­za­tion is not far-fetched. As we have seen, Rove, the Bush dynasty’s own polit­i­cal plot­ter, has been an avid reader of Machi­avelli. While the analy­sis in The Dis­courses upholds repub­li­can­ism, the advice Machi­avelli gives in The Prince was ded­i­cated to the Medicis and designed to work in the new princely, aris­to­cratic, and neo-imperial milieu of sixteenth-century Italy.” (Ibid.; p. 330.)

49. “Chap­ter 4, in its dis­cus­sion of Bush domes­tic pol­icy and ‘com­pas­sion­ate con­ser­v­a­tive’ rhetoric, has already referred to Machiavelli’s advice that the Prince should lie but must ‘be able to dis­guise this char­ac­ter well, and to be a great feigner and dis­sem­bler.’ More­over, ‘to see and hear him, he [the Prince] should seem to be all mercy, faith, integrity, human­ity and reli­gion. And noth­ing is more nec­es­sary than to seem to have this last qual­ity . . . Every­body sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are.’” (Idem.)

50. “Other advice dwells on the mer­its of fraud, hypocrisy, faith­less­ness, and related prac­tices, and twentieth-century aca­d­e­mi­cians have noted Machiavelli’s appeal to lead­ers like Hitler, Stalin, and Mus­solini. Doubt­less there are also hun­dreds of copies of The Prince at the CIA. Which makes it reveal­ing, and arguably ill advised, that the two polit­i­cal advis­ers to the two Bush pres­i­dents should claim it as a bible of sorts.” (Idem.)

51. “Even in reli­gion, Machiavelli’s advice to empha­size it is rel­e­vant to the early-twenty-first cen­tury United States. His career in Flo­rence over­lapped that of Friar Giro­lamo Savonarola, the Reli­gious despot who ruled the gasp­ing repub­lic from 1494 to 1498 with a pol­i­tics of fight­ing sin and immoral­ity. Doubt­less the youth­ful Machi­avelli absorbed how close Savonarola came to achiev­ing a theoc­racy even in repub­li­can Flo­rence. Not a few Amer­i­cans see a lit­tle bit of Savonarola in George W. Bush.” (Idem.)

52. “The advent of a Machiavelli-inclined dynasty in what may be a Machi­avel­lian moment for the Amer­i­can Repub­lic is not a happy coin­ci­dence, but one that demands atten­tion. Luck­ily, the arrival of a U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion every fourth year typ­i­cally brings with it an uncom­mon inten­sity of national debate, so per­haps atten­tion will be paid.” (Ibid.; pp. 330–331.)

53. “Since the events and upheavals of 2000–2001, the United States has had an abun­dance of unfold­ing trans­for­ma­tions to discuss—in eco­nom­ics, national secu­rity, and even reli­gion. Of these, many can be con­sid­ered and man­aged sep­a­rately. But one is per­va­sive enough to make its impact felt almost every­where: the extent to which national gov­er­nance has, at least tem­porar­ily, moved away from the proven tra­di­tion of a leader cho­sen demo­c­ra­t­i­cally, by a major­ity of plu­ral­ity of the elec­torate, to the suc­ces­sion of a dynas­tic heir whose unfor­tu­nate inher­i­tance is priv­i­leged, covert and glob­ally embroil­ing.” (Ibid.; p. 331.)