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FTR #752 (This show is 30-minutes in length)
Introduction: Excerpted from The Guns of November, Part I, this broadcast reviews the circumstances surrounding the U‑2 incident in May of 1960. On the cusp of a summit conference between then President Dwight D. Eisenhower and then Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev, a U‑2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers came down in the heart of the former Soviet Union. The incident caused the cancellation of the summit conference, which was to be a prelude to detente between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.
This program is a prelude to a lengthy discussion of “The Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook”–Edward Snowden. Just before President Obama’s meeting with Mr. Xi, head of state of China, Snowden decamps to Hong Kong (in China) and leaks information about the hacking of Chinese computers. This caused enormous embarrassment to President Obama, and neutralized any attempt he might have been able to make to reduce Chinese hacking of American computers, as well as other points of dispute between the two nations.
Next, Snowden’s leaker of choice–“Citizen Greenwald”–published articles in The Guardian disclosing extensive NSA spying on Germany, which the NSA views as “a third class partner.” These articles were published just before President Obama was to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. Again, it caused enormous damage to Obama and harmed U.S. relationships with Germany and other European nations. (Note that Greenwald, as an attorney, was a fellow traveler of some of the most heinous and murderous neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups).
Hitting the trifecta, Eddie the Friendly Spook [Snowden] then decamps to Moscow in Russia (like China, Russia is not renowned as a bastion of free speech or internet freedom.) This occurred just before Obama’s meeting of the G20 in Moscow and in the run-up to a scheduled summit conference with Putin. That summit conference was canceled.
Snowden’s trip to Moscow, like his journey to Hong Kong/China could only have been intended to harm President Obama’s administration and the United States.
Program Highlights Include: President Eisenhower’s order to suspend all U‑2 overflights of the Soviet Union (Powers’ flight was dispatched against Presidential orders); the fact that Francis Gary Powers had poison and a needle with which to take his own life, in order to prevent capture (which he did not do); the fact that Powers had extensive personal identification pinpointing him as a U.S. intelligence agent, operating under civilian cover (in direct contravention of standard “sanitization” procedures); the fact that the U‑2 flew at an altitude which no Soviet or American interceptor aircraft or surface-to-air missile could reach; the U‑2’s use of a special hydrogen technology to permit its engine to operate at that altitude; the probability that hydrogen starvation forced down Powers’ plane; the relatively undamaged state of the U‑2 aircraft, calling into question the assertion that a surface-to-air missile could have been responsible for the downing of Powers’ plane; Powers’ assertion that Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible for the downing of his U‑2 plane (this presumably centered on Oswald’s access to radar frequencies, which had nothing to do with the downing of the plane!)
Discussion
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