Recorded August 1, 2004
REALAUDIO

Devel­op­ing a line of inquiry pre­sented in past pro­grams, this broad­cast exam­ines the Bush administration’s poli­cies in the war on ter­ror. Specif­i­cally, this pro­gram high­lights the pos­si­bil­ity that the Bush forces are delib­er­ately try­ing to lose the war, as a device for elim­i­nat­ing Amer­i­can democ­racy. It is Mr. Emory’s view that this admin­is­tra­tion is the point ele­ment for the Under­ground Reich’s attempts at destroy­ing the United States from within, while Islam­o­fas­cist ele­ments attack it from with­out. Begin­ning with a col­umn by Paul Krug­man, the pro­gram exam­ines George W. Bush as the Al Qaeda can­di­date. While pub­licly pro­claim­ing its efforts against Al Qaeda, this admin­is­tra­tion has actu­ally drawn funds away from the pro­tec­tion of domes­tic secu­rity tar­gets. As attested to by a for­mer CIA offi­cer in charge of the hunt for bin Laden, this administration’s Iraq mis­ad­ven­ture was the best thing that bin Laden could have desired. By invad­ing Iraq, the US: drew essen­tial forces away from Afghanistan (allow­ing bin Laden and Mul­lah Omar to escape and jeop­ar­diz­ing attempts at bring­ing that coun­try under con­trol); con­vinced much of the world’s Mus­lim com­mu­nity that the US was wag­ing a war against Islam (as bin Laden has claimed); has con­vinced much of the Mus­lim world that a defen­sive Jihad against the US is war­ranted by cir­cum­stances; trans­formed Al Qaeda from an orga­ni­za­tion into an ide­ol­ogy; reduced America’s cred­i­bil­ity with its allies. The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of the Bush administration’s anti-democratic view­point and a com­par­i­son with the French elite’s sub­ver­sion of French democ­racy in the run-up to World War II.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Gen­eral Tommy Franks’ pre­dic­tion that a ter­ror­ist inci­dent involv­ing WMD’s will result in the elim­i­na­tion of Amer­i­can democ­racy; Bush ally Paul Weyrich’s views on the impor­tance of elim­i­nat­ing exist­ing Amer­i­can demo­c­ra­tic insti­tu­tions; the view of Ger­ald Ford’s per­sonal sec­re­tary that we were on the wrong side in World War II.

1. Intro­duc­ing the major focal point of the broad­cast, the dis­cus­sion begins with a col­umn by Paul Krug­man, in which he exam­ines the Bush administration’s pur­suit of Al Qaeda. As Krug­man notes (and as we will exam­ine at length later in the pro­gram), Bush’s poli­cies in “The War on Ter­ror” have made things immea­sur­ably worse, not bet­ter. It is Mr. Emory’s belief that the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion is a tool of the Under­ground Reich, and that the goal of its poli­cies is the destruc­tion and/or sub­ju­ga­tion of the United States. This sub­ject will be dis­cussed at greater length later in the pro­gram. “In the orig­i­nal ver­sion of ‘The Manchurian Can­di­date,’ Sen­a­tor John Iselin, whom Chi­nese agents are plot­ting to put in the White House, is a right-wing dem­a­gogue mod­eled on Sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy. As Roger Ebert wrote, the plan is to ‘use anti­com­mu­nist hys­te­ria as a cover for a com­mu­nist takeover.’ The movie doesn’t say what Iselin would have done if the plot had suc­ceeded. Pre­sum­ably, how­ever, he wouldn’t have openly turned trai­tor. Instead, he would have used his posi­tion to under­mine national secu­rity, while pos­ing as America’s staunchest defender against com­mu­nist evil.”
(“The Ara­bian Can­di­date” by Paul Krug­man; The New York Times; 7/20/2004.)

2. “So let’s imag­ine an update—not the remake with Den­zel Wash­ing­ton, which I haven’t seen, but my own ver­sion. This time the ene­mies would be Islamic fanat­ics, who install as their pup­pet pres­i­dent a dem­a­gogue who poses as the nation’s defender against ter­ror­ist evil­do­ers. The Ara­bian can­di­date wouldn’t openly help ter­ror­ists. Instead, he would serve their cause while pre­tend­ing to be their enemy. After an attack, he would strike back at the ter­ror­ist base, a nec­es­sary action to pre­serve his image of tough­ness, but botch the follow-up, allow­ing the ter­ror­ist lead­ers to escape. Once the public’s atten­tion shifted, he would sys­tem­at­i­cally squan­der the mil­i­tary vic­tory: com­mit­ting too few sol­diers, reneg­ing on promises of eco­nomic aid. Soon, war­lords would once again rule most of the coun­try, the heroin trade would be boom­ing, and ter­ror­ist allies would make a come­back.” (Idem.)

3. “Mean­while, he would lead Amer­ica into a war against a coun­try that posed no immi­nent threat. He would insin­u­ate, with­out say­ing any­thing lit­er­ally false, that it was some­how respon­si­ble for the ter­ror­ist attack. This unnec­es­sary war would alien­ate our allies and tie down a large part of our mil­i­tary. At the same time, the Ara­bian can­di­date would neglect the pur­suit of those who attacked us, and do noth­ing about regimes that really shel­ter anti-American ter­ror­ists and really are build­ing nuclear weapons. Again, he would take care to squan­der a mil­i­tary vic­tory. The Ara­bian can­di­date and his co-conspirators would block all plan­ning for the war’s after­math; they would arrange for our army to allow loot­ers to destroy much of the country’s infra­struc­ture. Then they would dis­band the defeated regime’s army, turn­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of trained sol­diers into dis­grun­tled poten­tial insur­gents.” (Idem.)

4. “After this it would be easy to sab­o­tage the occu­pied country’s recon­struc­tion, sim­ply by fail­ing to spend aid funds or rein in crony­ism and cor­rup­tion. Power out­ages, over­flow­ing sewage and unem­ploy­ment would swell the ranks of our ene­mies. Who knows? The Ara­bian can­di­date might even be able to deprive Amer­ica of the moral high ground, no mean trick when our ene­mies are mass mur­der­ers, by cre­at­ing a cli­mate in which U.S. guards tor­ture, humil­i­ate and starve pris­on­ers, most of them inno­cent or guilty of only petty crimes.” (Idem.)

5. “At home, the Ara­bian can­di­date would leave the nation vul­ner­a­ble, doing almost noth­ing to secure ports, chem­i­cal plants and other poten­tial tar­gets. He would stonewall inves­ti­ga­tions into why the ini­tial ter­ror­ist attack suc­ceeded. And by repeat­edly issu­ing vague ter­ror warn­ings obvi­ously timed to drown out unfa­vor­able polit­i­cal news, his offi­cials would ensure pub­lic indif­fer­ence if and when a real threat is announced. Last but not least, by bla­tantly exploit­ing the ter­ror­ist thret for per­sonal polit­i­cal gain, he would under­mine the nation’s unity in the face of its ene­mies, sow­ing sus­pi­cion about the government’s motives.” (Idem.)

6. “O.K., end of con­ceit. Pres­i­dent Bush isn’t actu­ally an Al Qaeda mole, with Dick Cheney his con­troller. Mr. Bush’s ‘war on ter­ror’ has, how­ever, played with eerie per­fec­tion into Osama bin Laden’s hands—while Mr. Bush’s sup­port­ers, impressed by his tough talk, see him as America’s cham­pion against the evil­do­ers. Last week, Repub­li­can offi­cials in Ken­tucky applauded bumper stick­ers dis­trib­uted at G.O.P. offices that read, ‘Kerry is bin Laden’s man/Bush is mine.’ Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials haven’t gone that far, but when Tom Ridge offered a specifics-free warn­ing about a ter­ror­ist attack timed to ‘dis­rupt our demo­c­ra­tic process,’ many peo­ple thought he was imply­ing that Al Qaeda wants George Bush to lose. In real­ity, all infi­dels prob­a­bly look alike to the ter­ror­ists, but if they do have a pref­er­ence, noth­ing Mr. Bush’s record would make them unhappy at the prospect of four more years.” (Idem.)

7. Krugman’s view­point was echoed in a col­umn about a recent book by a CIA bin Laden expert. In that book, “Anony­mous” main­tains that our poli­cies in Iraq have played into the hands of al Qaeda. It is his view that we are los­ing the war against rad­i­cal Islam. “A new book by the senior Cen­tral Intel­li­gence offi­cer who headed a spe­cial off

ice to track Osama bin Laden and his fol­low­ers warns that the United States is los­ing the war against rad­i­cal Islam and that the inva­sion of Iraq has only played into the enemy’s hands. In the book, Impe­r­ial Hubris, the author is iden­ti­fied only as ‘Anony­mous,’ but for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cials iden­ti­fied him as a 22-year vet­eran of the C.I.A. who is still serv­ing in a senior coun­tert­er­ror­ism post at the agency and headed the bin Laden sta­tion from 1996 to 1999.”
(“Book by C.I.A. Offi­cer Says U.S. Is Los­ing Fight Against Ter­ror” by Dou­glas Jehl; The New York Times; 6/23/2004.)

8. “The 309-page book, obtained by The New York Times, pro­vides an unusual glimpse into a school of thought inside the C.I.A., and includes harsh crit­i­cism of both the Clin­ton and Bush admin­is­tra­tions. ‘U.S. lead­ers refuse to accept the obvi­ous,’ the offi­cer writes. ‘We are fight­ing a world­wide Islamic insurgency—not crim­i­nal­ity or terrorism—and our pol­icy and pro­ce­dures have failed to make more than a mod­est dent in enemy forces.’” (Idem.)

9. “The author says the threat is rooted in oppo­si­tion not to Amer­i­can val­ues, but to poli­cies and actions, par­tic­u­larly in the Islamic world. It is rare for a C.I.A. offi­cer to pub­lish a book while still serv­ing at the agency and highly unusual for the book to focus on such a polit­i­cally explo­sive topic. Under C.I.A. rules, the book had to be cleared by the agency before it could be pub­lished. It was approved for release on con­di­tion that the author and his inter­nal agency not be iden­ti­fied.” (Idem.)

10. “The book iden­ti­fies ‘Anony­mous’ only as ‘a senior U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cial with nearly two decades of expe­ri­ence in national secu­rity issues related to Afghanistan and South Asia.’ It iden­ti­fies a pre­vi­ous book, Through Our Ene­mies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Rad­i­cal Islam, and the Future of Amer­ica, as being writ­ten by the same author. For­mer intel­li­gence offi­cials iden­ti­fied the offi­cer to The Times and noted that he was an overt employee of the C.I.A., but an intel­li­gence offi­cial asked that his full name not be pub­lished because it could make him a tar­get of Al Qaeda. . . .” (Idem.)

11. “ . . . In the book, the author denounced the Amer­i­can inva­sion of Iraq as ‘an avari­cious, pre­med­i­tated unpro­voked war against a foe who posed no imme­di­ate threat,’ and said it would fuel the anti-American sen­ti­ments on which Mr. bin Laden and his fol­low­ers draw. ‘There is noth­ing that bin Laden could have hoped for more than the Amer­i­can inva­sion and occu­pa­tion of Iraq,’ he writes. In warn­ing that the United States is los­ing the war on ter­ror­ism, Anony­mous writes: ‘In the period since 11 Sep­tem­ber, the United States has dealt lethal blows to Al Qaeda’s lead­er­ship and—if offi­cial claims are true—have cap­tured three thou­sand Al Qaeda foot sol­diers.’ At the same time, he ads, ‘we have waged two failed half-wars and, in doing so, left Afghanistan and Iraq seething with anti-U.S. sen­ti­ment, fer­tile grounds for the expan­sion of Al Qaeda and kin­dred groups.’. . . ” (Idem.)

12. “ . . . The author expresses ‘a press­ing cer­tainty that Al Qaeda will attack the con­ti­nen­tal United States again, that its next strike will be more dam­ag­ing than that of 11 Sep­tem­ber 2001, and could include use of weapons of mass destruc­tion. After the next attack,’ he adds, ‘mis­led Amer­i­cans and their elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives will rightly demand that heads of intelligence-community lead­ers; that heads did not roll after 11 Sep­tem­ber is per­haps our most griev­ous post-attack error.’” (Idem.)

13. A recent arti­cle in the San Jose Mer­cury News cor­rob­o­rates what Krug­man and “Anony­mous” have had to say about Afghanistan—the administration’s poli­cies there are los­ing the war in that coun­try. “A vio­lent resur­gence of Tal­iban and al-Qaeda fight­ers in Afghanistan is putting U.S. sol­diers and inter­na­tional aid work­ers at increas­ing risk, espe­cially in the south­ern part of the coun­try, the back yard and birth­place of the Tal­iban. U.S. mil­i­tary patrols are fre­quently com­ing under attack. High­way con­struc­tion workers—foreigners and Afghans—have had their throats slit merely for tam­per­ing with Tal­iban flags placed along road­sides.”
(“Tal­iban, Al-Qaida Gain Strength” by Mark McDon­ald [Knight Rid­der]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 7/30/2004; p. 12A.)

14. “Nearly three years after the U.S. mil­i­tary top­pled the Tal­iban gov­ern­ment in Afghanistan, it’s increas­ingly obvi­ous that the mil­i­tary effort has failed to fully defeat the enemy, which has regrouped and now threat­ens efforts to cre­ate a sta­ble gov­ern­ment there. Elec­tion work­ers are being abducted, shot and beheaded. Voter-registration sites are being bombed, even when they’re located at mosques. . . .” (Idem.)

15. Much of the rest of the pro­gram is devoted to pre­sent­ing a Mother Jones arti­cle detail­ing just how bad the sit­u­a­tion is. Analy­sis of the effect of the Iraq war on the over­all war effort con­cludes that the Iraqi adven­ture seri­ously jeop­ar­dized the US posi­tion. Past pro­grams have pre­sented Mr. Emory’s view that the Iraq war was an Under­ground Reich trap—designed to immerse the United States into a pro­tracted, polit­i­cally and eco­nom­i­cally drain­ing war against Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions of “the Earth Island.” (See dis­cus­sion of this in the descrip­tion for FTR#391.) Again, note what the Ara­bian Can­di­date has done: “ . . . In more than a dozen inter­views, experts both within and out­side the U.S. gov­ern­ment laid out a stark analy­sis of how the war has ham­pered the cam­paign against Al Qaeda. Not only, they point out, did the war divert resources and atten­tion away from Afghanistan, seri­ously dam­ag­ing the prospects of cap­tur­ing al Qaeda lead­ers, but it has also opened a new front for ter­ror­ists in Iraq and cre­ated a new jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for attack­ing West­ern­ers around the world. Per­haps most impor­tant, it has dra­mat­i­cally speeded up the process by which Al Qaeda the orga­ni­za­tion has mor­phed into a broad-based ide­o­log­i­cal movement—a shift, in effect, from bin Laden to bin Ladenism. ‘If Osama believed in Christ­mas, this is what he’d want under his Christ­mas tree,’ one senior intel­li­gence offi­cial told me. Another coun­tert­er­ror­ism offi­cial sug­gests that Iraq might begin to resem­ble ‘Afghanistan 1996,’ a ref­er­ence to the year that bin Laden seized on Afghanistan, a chaotic failed state, as his new base of oper­a­tions. . . .”
(“Back­draft” by Peter Bergen; Mother Jones; July/August 2004; p. 41.)

16. Far from weak­en­ing Al Qaeda, the Iraqi adven­ture has strength­ened it. By out­rag­ing the aver­age Mus­lim man or woman in the street, the Iraqi adven­ture has played into Bin Laden’s hands by con­vinc­ing much of the Mus­lim world that the US is pur­su­ing a war against Islam. Such a war would nec­es­sar­ily man­date defen­sive Jihad on the part of the world’s Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion. “ . . . The dam­age to U.S. inter­ests is hard to over­es­ti­mate. Rohan Gunaratna, a Sri Lankan aca­d­e­mic who is regarded as one of the world’s lead­ing author­i­ties on Al Qaeda, points out that ‘sad­ness and anger about Iraq, even among mod­er­ate Mus­lims, is being har­nessed and exploited by ter­ror­ist and extrem­ist groups world­wide to grow in strength, size, and influ­ence.’ Sim­i­larly, Vin­cent
Can­nis­traro, a for­mer chief of coun­tert­er­ror­ism at the CIA under pres­i­dents Rea­gan and George H.W. Bush, says the Iraq war ‘accel­er­ated ter­ror­ism’ by ‘metas­ta­siz­ing’ Al Qaeda. Today, Al Qaeda is more than the nar­rowly defined group that attacked the United States on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001; it is a grow­ing global move­ment that has been ener­gized by the war in Iraq.” (Ibid.; p. 42.)

17. Although world opin­ion was very sym­pa­thetic to the US after 9/11, the Iraqi mis­ad­ven­ture has changed that: “This turn of events is a dra­matic shift from the mood in the months fol­low­ing the 9/11 attacks. When the United States went to war against the Tal­iban, it was under­stood by many in the global com­mu­nity, includ­ing many Arabs and Mus­lims, as a just war. The war in Iraq not only drained that reser­voir of good­will; it also dragged the United States into what many see as a con­flict with the Mus­lim world, or ummah, in gen­eral. Samer She­hata, a pro­fes­sor of Arab pol­i­tics at George­town Uni­ver­sity, says the Iraq war has con­vinced ‘many Mus­lims around the world, per­haps a major­ity, that the war on ter­ror­ism is in fact a war against Islam.’ Jason Burke, author of the author­i­ta­tive 2003 book Al-Qaeda: Cast­ing a Shadow of Ter­ror, adds that the Iraq war ‘appears to be clear evi­dence to many that the per­cep­tion of the mil­i­tants is in fact accu­rate and that the ummah is engaged in a war of self-defense. This has the­o­log­i­cal implications—jihad is com­pul­sory for all Mus­lims if the ummah is under attack.’” (Idem.)

18. “This is not an arcane mat­ter of Islamic jurispru­dence, but a key rea­son why Amer­i­cans are now dying in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers in Iraq and an impor­tant fac­tor behind the rise of a revi­tal­ized Al Qaeda move­ment. The Koran has two sets of jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for holy war; one con­cerns a ‘defen­sive’ jihad, when a Mus­lim land is under attack by non-Muslims, while the other coun­te­nances offen­sive attacks on infi­dels. Gen­er­ally, Mus­lims con­sider the defen­sive jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for jihad to be the more legit­i­mate. It was, for instance, a defen­sive jihad that cler­ics invoked against the Soviet occu­pa­tion of Afghanistan dur­ing the 1980’s.” (Idem.)

19. “To the extent that Sunni Muslims—the vast major­ity of Muslims—have a Vat­i­can, it is Al Azhar Uni­ver­sity in Cairo, the pre-eminent cen­ter of Mus­lim thought. Before the Iraq war, Al Zahar released a fatwa, a rul­ing on Islamic law, to the effect that if ‘cru­sader’ forces attacked Iraq, it was an oblig­a­tion for every Mus­lim to fight back. The cler­ics of Al Azhar were not alone in this view. The promi­nent Lebanese Shi­ite scholar Sheikh Fad­lul­lah also called on Mus­lims to fight Amer­i­can forces in Iraq. In con­trast, after 9/11, Sheikh Fad­lul­lah had issued a fatwa con­demn­ing the attacks, as did the chief cleric of Al Azhar. Through­out the Mus­lim world, lead­ing cler­ics who con­demned what hap­pened on 9/11 have given their bless­ing to fight­ing against the occu­pa­tion of Iraq—and as demon­strated by the attacks in Madrid in March, jihadists are pre­pared to take that fight to the invaders’ home turf.” (Idem.)

20. “Harry ‘Skip Bran­don, a for­mer senior coun­tert­er­ror­ism offi­cial at the FBI, says the Iraq war ‘serves as a real ral­ly­ing point, not only for the region, but also in Asia. We’ve seen very solid exam­ples of them using the Iraq war for recruit­ing. I have seen it per­son­ally in Malaysia. The Iraq war is a pub­lic rela­tions bonanza for Al Qaeda and a pub­lic rela­tions dis­as­ter for us the longer it goes on.’ Egypt­ian pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak’s pre­dic­tion that the occu­pa­tion of Iraq would cre­ate ‘a hun­dred bin Ladens’ is begin­ning to look pre­scient. We may soon find our­selves fac­ing some­thing akin to a global intifada.” (Idem.)

21. In addi­tion to the ideological/public rela­tions dis­as­ter stem­ming from the Iraqi inva­sion, the mis­sion diverted essen­tial resources away from the war against Al Qaeda, enabling much of its lead­er­ship to escape and reform. Al Qaeda as an insti­tu­tion has been re-constituted. “Per­haps the most emblem­atic fail­ure of the war on ter­ror­ism has been the con­tin­ued abil­ity of Al Qaeda’s top lead­ers, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, to set the agenda for a string of ter­ror­ist attacks around the world. A bin Laden call for attacks against West­ern eco­nomic inter­ests Octo­ber 2002 was fol­lowed by bomb­ings of a French oil tanker and a Bali disco cater­ing to West­ern tourists. In Sep­tem­ber 2003, Zawahiri denounced Pak­istani pres­i­dent Per­vez Mushar­raf for sup­port­ing the U.S. cam­paign against Al Qaeda; Mushar­raf nar­rowly sur­vived two assas­si­na­tion attempts over the months that fol­lowed. And after bin Laden called for retal­i­a­tion against coun­tries that were part of the coali­tion in Iraq in late 2003, ter­ror­ists attacked an Ital­ian police bar­racks in Iraq, a British con­sulate in Turkey, and com­muter trains in Madrid. Accord­ing to a May report by the London-based Inter­na­tional Insti­tute for Strate­gic Stud­ies, Al Qaeda is now ‘fully recon­sti­tuted,’ with a ‘new and effec­tive modus operandi,’ a pres­ence in as many as 90 coun­tries, and ‘over 18,000 poten­tial ter­ror­ists still at large.’” (Ibid.; pp. 42–43.)

22. “Yet despite Al Qaeda’s undi­min­ished global influ­ence, the United States has pulled vital resources away from the hunt for bin Laden and Zawahiri. Soon after the fall of the Tal­iban, sub­stan­tial num­bers of Ara­bic speak­ers at the CIA and the National Secu­rity Agency were directed to focus on Iraq rather than the hunt for Al Qaeda. ‘By Jan­u­ary 2002, seri­ous plan­ning began for the inva­sion of Iraq,’ notes Can­nis­traro, the for­mer CIA coun­tert­er­ror­ism chief, ‘and that meant draw­ing down Ara­bic lan­guage resources from CIA and elec­tronic intel­li­gence gath­er­ing.’ In addi­tion, says Richard Clarke, who headed coun­tert­er­ror­ism efforts under both pres­i­dents Clin­ton and George W. Bush, unmanned Preda­tor spy planes were deployed away from Afghanistan to Iraq in March 2003, and satel­lites sur­vey­ing the Afghan-Pakistani bor­der were diverted to the Gulf region.” (Ibid.; p. 43.)

23. “Spe­cial Oper­a­tions sol­diers with crit­i­cal skills—including Ara­bic lan­guage training—were per­haps the U.S. military’s key asset in the effort to cap­ture Al Qaeda lead­ers. But accord­ing to Larry John­son, who used to work on coun­tert­er­ror­ism issues at the CIA and State Depart­ment and who now advises the U.S. mil­i­tary on ter­ror­ism, those forces were pulled out of Afghanistan in the spring of 2002 to look for Scud mis­siles in west­ern Iraq. It was only fol­low­ing the cap­ture of Sad­dam Hus­sein, last Decem­ber, that those troops were directed back to search­ing for Al Qaeda, leav­ing the pur­suit of Al Qaeda’s lead­ers sig­nif­i­cantly impaired for a year and a half.” (Idem.)

24. “Today, the hunt for Al Qaeda and Tal­iban in Afghanistan is largely a wait­ing game. Last sum­mer, when I went out with a pla­toon from the 82nd Air­borne on a mis­sion into the bad­lands along the Afghan bor­der to look for Al Qaeda and other ‘anti-coalition’ forces, I found that the three-day mis­sion did lit­tle more than chase shad­ows. Sergeant Joe Frost, a demo­li­tions expert in his mid-30’s, summed it up by not­ing that U.S. troops often found them­selves attacked after sun­down but could rarely find their assailants: ‘They’re like shoot and run. We’ve seen one Al Qaeda per­son in the last six months.’ And therein lies the crux of the prob­lem: The United States did not effec­tively crush Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan dur­ing the war and its after­math, which meant that those forces in Afghanistan dur­ing the war and its after­math, which meant that those forces were able to slip away into the bor­der region, where they can hide and orga­nize attacks both inside Afghanistan and around the world.” (Idem.)

25. “Today, only 20,000 U.S. troops are sta­tioned in Afghanistan, a coun­try the size of Texas and nearly 50 per­cent larger than Iraq, where 140,000 U.S. troops haven’t been enough to cre­ate sta­bil­ity. Kathy Gan­non, who has cov­ered Afghanistan for the past 16 years for the Asso­ci­ated Press, says that
the secu­rity sit­u­a­tion is ‘as bad as it’s ever been’—and that includes the years dur­ing and before the Tal­iban reign. The power of regional war­lords has surged, chal­leng­ing Hamid Karzai’s cen­tral gov­ern­ment and cre­at­ing space for the Tal­iban to qui­etly emerge from the shad­ows. Tal­iban leader Mul­lah Omar and mil­i­tary com­man­der Jalalud­din Haqqani both remain at large, as does Gul­bud­din Hak­mat­yar, a Pash­tun war­lord whose forces are reg­u­larly engag­ing U.S. sol­diers. Mean­while, Afthanistan has become the world’s largest source of opium, the raw mate­r­ial for heroin. The coun­try is now one of the world’s lead­ing narco-states, and money from the $2.3 bil­lion drug trade is report­edly mak­ing its way into Al Qaeda’s cof­fers. Accord­ing to Bar­nett Rubin, a senior fel­low at New York Uni­ver­sity and an author­ity on the region, Afghanistan is ‘obvi­ously in dan­ger of revert­ing to a failed state.’” (Ibid.; pp. 43–44.)

26. Gaug­ing the ide­o­log­i­cal gains Al Qaeda has reaped from the Iraq war, the pro­gram presents some very dis­turb­ing num­bers: “But the administration’s focus on the war in Iraq has not only caused it to short­change the hunt for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan—it has also under­mined the war on ter­ror­ism around the world. A poll taken by the Pew Global Atti­tudes Project in March 2004 found that bin Laden is viewed favor­ably by large parts of the pop­u­la­tion in Pak­istan (65 per­cent), Jor­dan (55 per­cent), and Morocco (45 per­cent), all coun­tries that are key allies in the war on ter­ror­ism. These results echo those of a Pew sur­vey taken shortly after the inva­sion of Iraq in which Indone­sians, Jor­da­ni­ans, Turks, and Moroc­cans all expressed more ‘con­fi­dence’ in bin Laden than in Pres­i­dent Bush. Dur­ing the buildup to the war, the polling com­pany Zogby Inter­na­tional found that favor­able views of the United States had declined from 34 to 10 per­cent in Jor­dan, 38 to 9 per­cent in Morocco, and 12 to 3 per­cent in Saudi Ara­bia. Of course, admi­ra­tion for bin Laden and dis­like for the United States do not nec­es­sar­ily trans­late into a desire to attack West­ern­ers. But the war against bin Laden is in large part a war of ideas—and on that front, the war in Iraq has dam­aged the United States’ cause and broad­ened the pool of Al Qaeda recruits.” (Ibid.; p. 44.)

27. “Nowhere is this shift more vis­i­ble than on the Internet—a sig­nif­i­cant fact in itself, since Inter­net chat­ter reflects the opin­ions of a rel­a­tively edu­cated, elite seg­ment of the Mus­lim world. To the extent that Al Qaeda—‘the base’ in Arabic—has a new base, it is, to a sur­pris­ing degree, on the web. Accord­ing to a U.S. gov­ern­ment con­trac­tor who spe­cial­izes in ana­lyz­ing jihadist chat rooms and web­sites, web traf­fic was ‘tremen­dously ener­gized’ in the period before the Iraq war. ‘When it was clear that the war was about to occur, there was more par­tic­i­pa­tion, more rhetoric, more anger,’ the con­trac­tor says. ‘The war in Afghanistan pro­voked some anger, but not as much as the Iraq war.’ And while such chat­ter often amounts to mere vent­ing, online dis­cus­sions can also gen­er­ate a road map for ter­ror­ist acts. Vet­eran Mid­dle East reporter Paul Eedle, who closely mon­i­tors Ara­bic lan­guage web­sites, points to a doc­u­ment posted on an Al Qaeda site in Decem­ber 2003 ‘reflect­ing the think­ing of senior Al Qaeda lead­ers’ that dis­cussed how to best break up the coali­tion in Iraq. The doc­u­ment noted that coun­tries like the United King­dom were unlikely to with­draw from Iraq, while Spain was the weak­est link in the coali­tion. Three months later, 191 Spaniards lost their lives in a bomb­ing timed to coin­cide with Spain’s elec­tion, and Spain sub­se­quently with­drew its troops from Iraq.” (Idem.)

28. “Another shift in Inter­net traf­fic came this spring, when vis­its to web­sites with infor­ma­tion about Iraq—such as Al Jazeera’s home page—skyrocketed dur­ing the stand­off in Fal­lu­jah and the prison abuse scan­dal. ‘Iraq has become trans­formed beyond a cause that ener­gized the jihadists,’ Eedle says. ‘It has caused out­rage at every middle-class din­ner table in the Mid­dle East.’” (Idem.)

29. “Sad­dam Hussein’s Iraq—despite the administration’s argu­ments to the contrary—was hardly a haven for Al Qaeda. But now, Iraq has become what some experts call a ‘super­mag­net’ for jihadists. ‘We’ve cre­ated the World Series of ter­ror­ism,’ a senior gov­ern­ment coun­tert­er­ror­ism offi­cial told me.” (Idem.)

30. The story high­lights a com­par­i­son between present-day Iraq and Peshawar (Pak­istan) dur­ing the muhahideen war against the Soviet Union: “Judith Yaphe, who was the CIA’s senior ana­lyst on Iraq dur­ing the first Gulf War, says Iraq is ‘open to ter­ror­ism in a way that it was not before. The lack of cen­tral author­ity makes it more amenable to ter­ror­ists,’ Iraq is con­ve­nient for Arab mil­i­tants, who can blend into its soci­ety in a way they did not in Bosnia, Chech­nya, or Afghanistan. Dr. Saad al-Fagih, a lead­ing Saudi dis­si­dent, says that hun­dreds of Saudis have gone to fight in Iraq; one source of his, he says, com­pares Iraq to ‘Peshawar dur­ing the 1980’s,’ a ref­er­ence to the Pak­istani city that attracted Mus­lims from around the world seek­ing to fight the Sovi­ets in Afghanistan.” (Idem.)

31. “Given that large num­bers of U.S. forces are likely to be in Iraq for years, it is clear that the coun­try will remain an impor­tant the­ater of oper­a­tions for Al Qaeda and its affil­i­ates. The irony of this devel­op­ment hardly needs to be stated. A key rea­son the Bush admin­is­tra­tion was able to sell the Iraq war to the Amer­i­can peo­ple was the widely held belief that Al Qaeda and Sad­dam Hussein’s regime had entered into an unholy alliance and were jointly respon­si­ble for the attacks on the World Trade Cen­ter and Pentagon—something 2 out of 3 Amer­i­cans believed, accord­ing to a Pew poll released in Octo­ber 2002. To date, the largest crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion in his­tory has turned up no evi­dence of Iraq’s involve­ment in 9/11; nor have the occu­pa­tion of Iraq and the efforts of the entire U.S. intel­li­gence appa­ra­tus uncov­ered any such link. Yet Al Qaeda-like groups, both home­grown and for­eign, have now become well estab­lished in Iraq. ‘Prior to 2003 and our inva­sion, Iraq rarely fig­ured on the inter­na­tional ter­ror­ism charts,’ notes Larry John­son, the mil­i­tary adviser. ‘Now Iraq had had the third-largest num­ber of ter­ror­ist fatal­i­ties after Israel and India.’. . .” (Idem.)

32. “ . . . Over the past year, more than 100 peo­ple have died in attacks against West­ern and Jew­ish tar­gets in Turkey and Morocco; car bombs in Saudi Ara­bia have killed scores more; a sui­cide attacker in August 2003 bombed a Mar­riott hotel in Indone­sia, killing 12, and the train bombs in Madrid left 191 peo­ple dead. And these num­bers do not take into account the thou­sands of peo­ple who have been killed in the past year in insur­gen­cies in places such as Kash­mir, Chech­nya, Uzbek­istan, Thai­land, the Philip­pines, and Indonesia—all con­flicts in which the broader Al Qaeda move­ment plays a sig­nif­i­cant role.” (Ibid.; p. 45.)

33. Doc­u­ment­ing Al Qaeda’s meta­mor­pho­sis from an orga­ni­za­tion into an ide­ol­ogy, the pro­gram notes the sig­nif­i­cance of this devel­op­ment for the future: “Which brings us to an impor­tant ques­tion: What is Al Qaeda? The net­work is per­haps best under­stood as a set of con­cen­tric rings, grow­ing more ill defined as they spread out­ward. At the core is Al Qaeda the orga­ni­za­tion, which bin Laden and a dozen or so close asso­ciates formed in 1989, and which even­tu­ally expanded to 200 to 300 core mem­bers who have sworn an oath of alle­giance to bin Laden, their emir, or prince. It was Al Qaeda the orga­ni­za­tion that attacked the United States on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001.” (Idem.)

34. “The sec­ond con­cen­tric ring con­sists of per­haps sev­eral thou­sand men who have trained in Al Qaeda’s Afghan camps in bomb mak­ing, assas­si­na­tion, and the man­u­fac­ture of poi­sons. Beyond that ring are as many as 120,000 who received some kind of basic mil­i­tary train­ing in Afghanistan over the past decade. An

unde­ter­mined num­ber of those fight­ers are now sharp­en­ing their skills as insur­gents from Kash­mir to Alge­ria.” (Idem.)

35. An ide­ol­o­gized Al Qaeda will be much dead­lier and more dif­fi­cult to com­bat than the orga­ni­za­tion has been so far. “The Madrid attacks in March are emblem­atic of what is emerg­ing as the fourth and per­haps most ambiguous—and poten­tially most dangerous—ring in the Al Qaeda galaxy. The attacks were car­ried out by a group of Moroc­cans with few links to Al Qaeda the orga­ni­za­tion. Some of the con­spir­a­tors did try to estab­lish direct con­tact with the inner core of Al Qaeda, but that effort seems to have been unsuc­cess­ful, and they car­ried out the attacks under their own steam. These attacks may well rep­re­sent the future of ‘Al Qaeda’ oper­a­tions, most of which will be exe­cuted by local jihadists who have lit­tle or no direct con­nec­tion to bin Laden’s group. This is a wor­ri­some devel­op­ment, because it sug­gests that Al Qaeda has suc­cess­fully trans­formed itself from an orga­ni­za­tion into a mass move­ment with a nearly unlim­ited pool of poten­tial oper­a­tives. [Empha­sis added.] . . .” (Idem.)

36. “ . . . What we have done in Iraq is what bin Laden could not have hoped for in his wildest dreams: We invaded an oil-rich Mus­lim nation in the heart of the Mid­dle East, the very type of impe­r­ial adven­ture that bin Laden has long pre­dicted was the United States’ long-term goal in the region. We deposed the sec­u­lar social­ist Sad­dam, whom bin Laden has long despised, ignited Sunni and Shia fun­da­men­tal­ist fer­vor in Iraq, and have now pro­voked a ‘defen­sive’ jihad that has gal­va­nized jihad-minded Mus­lims around the world. It’s hard to imag­ine a set of poli­cies bet­ter designed to sab­o­tage the war on ter­ror­ism.” (Idem.)

37. Review­ing infor­ma­tion from FTR#404, the pro­gram high­lights dis­turb­ing indi­ca­tions of Sad­dam Hussein’s pos­si­ble recruit­ment of Al Qaeda as a “backup unit” in the event of an Amer­i­can inva­sion. Is this part of the Under­ground Reich’s con­spir­acy against the United States? Have we walked into a trap? “It appears, how­ever, that this ver­sion is only the pub­licly admis­si­ble one, the one that can pass polit­i­cal muster. Accord­ing to the same sources, there was another sce­nario more in keep­ing with the cal­cu­lat­ing men­tal­ity of Sad­dam Hus­sein and his secret ser­vices. In 1998, after declin­ing all offers that had to them through offi­cial diplo­matic chan­nels, those ser­vices are reported to have estab­lished a secret oper­a­tional ‘con­nec­tion’ with bin Laden in Manila and in Kash­mir. It was indeed dif­fi­cult for Iraq to ignore an Arab like Osama bin Laden who ‘so effec­tively humil­i­ated the Amer­i­cans.’ Colonel Khairal­lah al Takir­iti, brother of the head of Mukkhabarat, the intel­li­gence ser­vices, is reported to have been named case offi­cer for the con­nec­tion. The arrest of two Mor­roc­can asso­ciates of bin Laden in Rabat on Novem­ber 11, 1998, made it pos­si­ble to estab­lish to estab­lish the link with cer­tainty. Accord­ing to West­ern sources, the Iraqi ser­vices have sought to secure the assis­tance of bin Laden’s net­works, in case Iraq were again to be attacked by the United States, in order to carry out attacks against Amer­i­can tar­gets in Arab coun­tries.”
(In the Name of Osama Bin Laden; by Roland Jacquard; Copy­right 2002 [SC]; Duke Uni­ver­sity Press; ISBN 0–8223-2991–3; pp. 112–113.)

38. “Accord­ing to Arab sources, in antic­i­pa­tion of a fore­see­able rever­sal of alliances in Kabul, bin Laden had been in dis­creet con­tact since Sep­tem­ber 2000 with asso­ciates of Oudai Hus­sein, another of Saddam’s sons; the ground for agree­ment was the anti-Israeli and anti-American bat­tle. Bin Laden and the Iraqis are said to have exchanged infor­ma­tion about chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons, despite the oppo­si­tion of some of the Bagh­dad lead­er­ship, includ­ing Tarik Aziz.” (Ibid.; p. 113.)

39. Restat­ing a point made in FTR#’s 372, 412, 441, the pro­gram recounts the behav­ior of the French power elite in the run-up to World War II. In order to elim­i­nate democ­racy in France, the power elite con­spired with the nation’s Ger­man ene­mies in order to insure France’s mil­i­tary defeat in World War II. Such a defeat was seen as essen­tial to elim­i­nat­ing demo­c­ra­tic gov­ern­ment. It is Mr. Emory’s view that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and those asso­ci­ated with it are behav­ing in an anal­o­gous fash­ion. The dam­age done to Amer­i­can democ­racy by a future ter­ror­ist attack involv­ing WMD’s may well have the effect of doing to the US what a Ger­man vic­tory in WWII did for France. “The activ­ity of the Fifth Col­umn will not be con­sid­ered by his­to­ri­ans a spe­cial phe­nom­e­non of French pub­lic life, but as an inte­gral part of Fas­cism. The Fifth Col­umn has appeared wher­ever Fas­cism has tried to gain a foothold. It was at work in Spain, Aus­tria, and Czecho­slo­va­kia before it turned up in France, and there are Fifth Columns in the United States, India, and Latin Amer­ica. By the Fifth Col­umn I do not mean only spies and licensed trai­tors. The Fifth Col­umn includes all who, by accept­ing fas­cist doc­trines or meth­ods, become the con­scious or uncon­scious accom­plices of a for­eign power. Trea­son and com­plic­ity have their degrees and nuances. The Gen­eral Staff of the Fifth col­umn con­sists prin­ci­pally of ambi­tious men who try to seize power by destroy­ing or par­a­lyz­ing the demo­c­ra­tic sys­tem. The body of the Fifth Col­umn is com­posed of peo­ple who think they are sav­ing their coun­try from the ‘com­mu­nist men­ace’ or from ‘British impe­ri­al­ism,’ and who do not even know in whose favor their actions are oper­at­ing. Through hate of the Poplar Front, good French­men, or men who con­sid­ered them­selves such, served Hitler gra­tu­itously by doing work to which they would never have con­sented, had they had been offered pay­ment. Why? Because they detested the Repub­lic and democ­racy more than they loved France. They accepted the idea of the defeat as a nec­es­sary evil which per­mit­ted them to rid France of the demo­c­ra­tic sys­tem and to keep in power, in the neigh­bor­ing coun­tries, the Fas­cist dic­ta­tors whom they con­sid­ered solely capa­ble of main­tain­ing order in Europe. They after­wards became uncon­scious col­lab­o­ra­tors of these dic­ta­tors. They thought they were doing their duty in let­ting Hitler free France from the ‘Judeo-Masonic’ influ­ence, and Europe from the Com­mu­nist peril. These peo­ple who had never read Marx, con­sid­ered the ‘Marx­ist dan­ger’ more imme­di­ate than the Hit­ler­ian. They pre­ferred the risks of an entente with a vic­to­ri­ous Hitler to the risks of a demo­c­ra­tic vic­tory that would cause the col­lapse of the Fas­cist dic­ta­tors in Europe. Con­sid­er­ing Hitler in Ger­many, Mus­solini in Italy, and Franco in Spain as knights of an anti-Bolshevist cru­sade, they became pre­cur­sors and later par­ti­sans of ‘col­lab­o­ra­tion with Hitler’s New Order.’”
(Tri­umph of Trea­son; by Pierre Cot; Copy­right 1944 [HC]; Ziff-Davis; pp. 62–63.)

40. “Enough evi­dence has been pub­lished already to prove that France was stabbed in the back by those who saw in Hitler the new St. George who would slay the Com­mu­nist dragon. When Pierre Lazareff, for­mer editor-in-chief of Paris Soir (the French news­pa­per with the widest cir­cu­la­tion), reports roy­al­ists as say­ing: ‘We need the defeat to wipe out the Repub­lic;’ when Elie Bois, for­mer edi­tor of the Petit Parisien (the most influ­en­tial polit­i­cal news­pa­per), reports great indus­tri­al­ists ad admit­ting to him, dur­ing the win­ter of 1939–1940, that a plot had been orga­nized to replace the demo­c­ra­tic regime by a ‘gov­ern­ment of author­ity’ and that this plot pre­sup­posed a Nazi vic­tory; when Ana­tole de Monzie writes, in a book passed by the cen­sor of the Vichy gov­ern­ment, that mar­shal Petain said in Fe

bru­ary, 1940: ‘They will appeal to me in the third week in May’; when Genevieve Tabouis tells of the work accom­plished in the Parisian salons by the Fifth Column’s ‘brigade mondaine’; when Henri de Ker­il­lis, for­mer offi­cer and nation­al­ist deputy, exposes the inroads of the Fifth Col­umn in the con­ser­v­a­tive and mil­i­tary cir­cles which he knew; when Henry Tor­res reveals to us what was going on in the offices of the offi­cial pro­pa­ganda . . . we have every rea­son to accept their affir­ma­tions, which tally so per­fectly with the events.” (Ibid.; p. 63.)

41. Should Al Qaeda suc­ceed in its goal of attack­ing the US with WMD’s it is alto­gether pos­si­ble that such an event will end Amer­i­can democ­racy. For­mer Gen­eral Tommy Franks noted this in an inter­view that he gave in late 2003. “Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruc­tion that inflicts large casu­al­ties, the Con­sti­tu­tion will likely be dis­carded in favor of a mil­i­tary form of gov­ern­ment. Franks, who suc­cess­fully led the U.S. mil­i­tary oper­a­tion to lib­er­ate Iraq, expressed his wor­ries in an exten­sive inter­view he gave to the men’s lifestyle mag­a­zine Cigar Affi­cionado. In the magazine’s Decem­ber edi­tion, the for­mer com­man­der of the military’s Cen­tral Com­mand warned that if ter­ror­ists suc­ceeded in using a weapon of mass destruc­tion (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have cat­a­strophic con­se­quences for our cher­ished repub­li­can form of gov­ern­ment.”
(“Gen. Franks Doubts Con­sti­tu­tion Will Sur­vive WMD Attack” by John O. Edwards; NewsMax.com; 12/21/2003; p. 1.)

42. “Dis­cussing the hypo­thet­i­cal dan­gers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that ‘the worst thing that could hap­pen’ is if ter­ror­ists acquire and then use a bio­log­i­cal, chem­i­cal or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casu­al­ties. If that hap­pens, Franks said, ‘ . . . the West­ern world, the free world, loses what it cher­ishes most, and that is free­dom and lib­erty we’ve seen for a cou­ple of hun­dred years in this grand exper­i­ment that we call democ­racy.’” (Idem.)

43. “Franks then offered ‘in a prac­ti­cal sense’ what he thinks would hap­pen in the after­math of such an attack. ‘It means the poten­tial of a weapon of mass destruc­tion and a ter­ror­ist, mas­sive, casualty-producing event some­where in the West­ern world—it may be in the United States of America—that causes our pop­u­la­tion to ques­tion our own Con­sti­tu­tion and to begin to mil­i­ta­rize our coun­try in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fab­ric of our Con­sti­tu­tion. Two steps, very, very impor­tant.’” (Idem.)

44. Influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive Paul Weyrich and his polit­i­cal allies have noted their con­tempt for exist­ing Amer­i­can polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions. The pos­si­bil­ity that Weyrich (along with Karl Rove and Grover Norquist—architects of the Islamist/GOP alliance) would wel­come an event such as that fore­cast by Gen­eral Franks is not one to be too read­ily dis­missed. “On Jan­u­ary 28, 2002, The Amer­i­can Prospect, Inc. pub­lished ‘Fair-Weather Friend; Going Down as it Came Up; School Sprays; They’re Back!’ a brief excerpt reads: ‘Two years ago, ur-conservative Paul Weyrich stunned the reli­gious right by call­ing for a retreat from tem­po­ral con­cerns. ‘Con­ser­v­a­tives have learned to suc­ceed in pol­i­tics,’ he wrote in an open let­ter that’s still avail­able on the Web site www.freecongress.org. ‘But that did not result in the adop­tion of our agenda. The rea­son, I think, is that pol­i­tics itself has failed. And pol­i­tics has failed because of the col­lapse of the cul­ture.’ The right no longer had a ‘moral major­ity,’ he wrote. The solu­tion? ‘To look at ways to sep­a­rate our­selves from the insti­tu­tions that have been cap­tured by the ide­ol­ogy of Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness, or by other ene­mies of our tra­di­tional cul­ture.’ In essence, he said, the reli­gious right should espouse cul­tural and polit­i­cal separatism—by set­ting up its own schools, tele­vi­sion net­works, and even courts of law. The rest of the coun­try breathed a sigh of relief. No more silly Dis­ney boy­cotts by south­ern Bap­tists. No more flaky school-board mem­bers, push­ing cre­ation­ism. No more Paul Weyrich!” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

45. Weyrich’s ally Heubeck has noted the impor­tance for reac­tionar­ies of destroy­ing US polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions: “ ‘The whew, alas, was pre­ma­ture. It turns out that what Weyrich and his folks really had in mind was less sep­a­ratism than guerilla warfare—a ‘New Tra­di­tion­al­ist’ move­ment that, accord­ing to its man­i­festo, writ­ten by Weyrich pro­tégé Eric Heubeck and bear­ing the grandiose title ‘The Inte­gra­tion of The­ory and Prac­tice: A pro­gram for the New Tra­di­tion­al­ist Move­ment,’ would seek ‘to advance a true tra­di­tion­al­ist counter-culture based on virtue, excel­lence, and self-discipline.’ The New Traditionalists—who sound a lot like the Old Traditionalists—will ‘reject the mate­ri­al­ism, hedo­nism, con­sumerism, ego­ism, and the cult of self-actualization which per­me­ate mod­ern life.’ Heubeck elab­o­rates: ‘We will not try to reform exist­ing insti­tu­tions. We only intend to weaken them, and even­tu­ally destroy them. [Empha­sis added.] We will endeavor to knock our oppo­nents off-balance and unset­tle them at every oppor­tu­nity. . .’” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

46. “ . . . The Bush admin­is­tra­tion is appar­ently quite cozy with Weyrich. This quote from a Time mag­a­zine arti­cle is apro­pos, Time mag­a­zine wrote this: ‘Each Wednes­day, Rove dis­patches a top admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial to attend the reg­u­lar conservative-coalition lunches held at Paul Weyrich’s Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion. When activists call his office with a prob­lem, Rove doesn’t pass them off to an aide. He often responds him­self. When Weyrich heard a few weeks that Bush’s bud­get slashed fund­ing for a favorite project called the Police Corps, which gives schol­ar­ships and train­ing to police cadets, he com­plained to the White House. To Weyrich’s sur­prise, Rove called back, ‘We’ve taken care of it,’ Rove said. ‘the prob­lem is solved.’” (Idem.)

47. The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at the pro-fascist views of Mil­dred Leonard, Ger­ald Ford’s per­sonal sec­re­tary when the lat­ter was House Minor­ity Leader. Atti­tudes such as those iden­ti­fied by Pierre Cot in France in the 1930’s and 1940’s are not alien to the United States. “In Jan­u­ary 1968, Haden Kirk­patrick, pub­lisher of racing’s bible, Thor­ough­bred Record, and his wife gave a small din­ner party at the Pavil­lon Restau­rant in New York. Dur­ing din­ner, we all started dis­cussing the state of national and inter­na­tional affairs. Haden turned to me and said: ‘The trou­ble is and always has been Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt. He got us in the Sec­ond World War on the wrong side.’ I was speech­less.”
(The Wash­ing­ton Pay-Off; by Robert N. Winter-Berger; Copy­right 1972 by Robert N. Winter-Berger; Lyle Stu­art, Inc. [HC]; ISBN 73–185421; p. 297.)

48. “Sev­eral days later, back in Wash­ing­ton, I recounted this story to Mil­dred Leonard, for many years Jerry Ford’s pri­vate sec­re­tary. [This refers to for­mer House Minor­ity Leader, Vice-President and Pres­i­dent Ger­ald Ford.] Before I could add my per­sonal reac­tion to Haden’s remark, Mil­dred looked up at me and said: ‘You know, he’s right, Mr. Winter-Berger.’ I was even more amazed, hear­ing this in the Capi­tol of the United States from the sec­re­tary of the House Minor­ity Leader.” (Idem.)