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Pruss­ian mil­i­tary the­o­reti­cian Karl Von Clause­witz observed that “war is the con­tin­u­a­tion of pol­i­tics by other means.” By the same token, pol­i­tics could be seen as “the con­tin­u­a­tion of war by other means.” This lec­ture ana­lyzes the elec­tion of the year 2000 as con­sti­tut­ing a coup d’etat and high­lights a num­ber of dif­fer­ent aspects of the polit­i­cal land­scape in 1999 and 2000. The dis­cus­sion details what was, in effect, a military-style oper­a­tion. In that con­text, a num­ber of vio­lent actions (some of them lethal) were con­ducted in com­bi­na­tion with a strate­gic pro­gram of polit­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare. These ele­ments can be under­stood in the con­text of a mil­i­tary par­a­digm and, together, they doomed the Gore campaign.

The talk begins with brief dis­cus­sion of the desta­bi­liza­tion of Pres­i­dent Clinton’s admin­is­tra­tion. This desta­bi­liza­tion frac­tured the ranks of the Demo­c­ra­tic Party and made it extremely dif­fi­cult for Gore to polit­i­cally exploit the eco­nomic suc­cess of the Clin­ton years.

The sub­stan­tive part of the lec­ture begins with the prob­a­ble mur­der of JFK, Jr. and the effect his death may have had on the cam­paign. The avail­able evi­dence sug­gests the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­ity that the crash that took his life was not an acci­dent. Con­trary to news reports at the time, the weather was clear and the vis­i­bil­ity was from between two and five miles. Kennedy was about four min­utes from the air­port, was within visual con­tact radius of the island and had radioed the air­port to get per­mis­sion to land. He did not broad­cast a “May­day” dis­tress call. Eye­wit­nesses reported Kennedy’s plane approach­ing the air­port at an alti­tude of less than 100 feet. (This con­trasts markedly with the “radar track” which was leaked to the media, show­ing Kennedy’s plane begin­ning its “grave­yard spi­ral” at an alti­tude of 1800 ft. It is extra­or­di­nar­ily unlikely that Kennedy would have been at that alti­tude when com­ing in for a land­ing. Con­trary to press reports at the time of Kennedy’s death, he was an excel­lent pilot with over 300 hours of fly­ing time. Some reports erro­neously said he had as lit­tle as 35 hours.) Eye­wit­nesses reported see­ing a “flash” or explo­sion over the water when Kennedy’s plane dis­ap­peared. Most impor­tantly, numer­ous media polit­i­cal pun­dits reported that Kennedy was going to be offered either the Pres­i­den­tial or (as is most likely) Vice-Presidential nom­i­na­tion, in an attempt to assure vic­tory for the Democ­rats in the 2000 elec­tion! His death elim­i­nated that possibility.

Mr. Emory also noted that, at the time of the death of JFK, Jr., his father’s assas­si­na­tion was once again on the front burner. Boris Yeltsin pub­licly gave Pres­i­dent Clin­ton the KGB files on Oswald (which demon­strated that they felt Oswald was prob­a­bly an Amer­i­can agent.) (Tabloids reported, per­haps incor­rectly, that JFK, Jr. was inter­ested in inves­ti­gat­ing his father’s murder.)

The lec­ture high­lights the phony “oil short­age” of the late 1970’s against the back­ground of the allegedly real “oil short­age” of the year 2000. (The Secret War Against the Jews; pp. 333–335.) (For an in-depth inter­view with John Lof­tus about this book, see FTR-29.) In The Secret War Against the Jews, the authors draw on vet­eran Amer­i­can and British intel­li­gence offi­cers in order to doc­u­ment col­lu­sion among ele­ments of George Bush’s CIA, the petro­leum indus­try and the gov­ern­ment of Saudi Ara­bia. Together, these ele­ments fab­ri­cated an alleged Soviet petro­leum short­fall, as well as a phony “decline” in Saudi oil pro­duc­tion. Career oil indus­try pro­fes­sional George Bush gave Jimmy Carter a CIA report that falsely fore­cast a world-wide oil short­age. (Idem.) The report also rumi­nated about the pos­si­bil­ity that the Sovi­ets might invade the Mid­dle East in order to aug­ment allegedly fail­ing domes­tic pro­duc­tion. The goal of the report was to influ­ence Jimmy Carter to increase oil pro­duc­tion and sell weapons to Saudi Ara­bia in order to “defend against the Soviet men­ace”. (Idem.) Carter and Energy Sec­re­tary James Schlesinger instead responded with a pro­gram of con­ser­va­tion. This enraged the petro­leum inter­ests, which then responded with the phony “gas short­age” of 1979. This gas short­age helped to pro­pel Jimmy Carter from office. (Schlesinger had resigned his post ear­lier in Carter’s administration.)

For­mer CIA direc­tor Bush became Vice-President under Rea­gan and (accord­ing to some sources) became “power behind the throne.” Even­tu­ally, it became evi­dent that the CIA report was false, and that the Mid­dle East was swim­ming in oil. Nonethe­less, the CIA/Saudi/petroleum indus­try fraud was suc­cess­ful in con­ning con­sumers into accept­ing dra­mat­i­cally higher gaso­line prices. Those ris­ing prices desta­bi­lized the Carter admin­is­tra­tion, and per­suaded Con­gress and the Pres­i­dent to autho­rize a Saudi mil­i­tary buildup. That Saudi build-up tipped the mil­i­tary bal­ance of power in favor of the Arabs. Most impor­tantly, the phony oil short­age set the stage for an unprece­dented mil­i­tary build-up dur­ing the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tions. That mil­i­tary build-up tripled the U.S. national debt in eight years.

The talk high­lights the man­ner in which the Reagan-Bush cam­paign con­spired with the Mus­lim fun­da­men­tal­ist forces in Iran in order to assure Carter’s defeat–the “Octo­ber Sur­prise” of 1980. Mr. Emory spec­u­lates that the rise in petro­leum prices in the year 2000 was delib­er­ately con­trived to drive up oil prices, aggra­vate vot­ers, weaken the econ­omy and pave the way for the acces­sion of George W. Bush.

In this very close Pres­i­den­tial race, the small per­cent­age of the vote gar­nered by Green Party can­di­date Ralph Nader did, as some crit­ics had warned, prove to have deci­sive impact. Mr. Emory presents the Nader can­di­dacy as con­sti­tut­ing, in effect, one part of a “pin­cers move­ment.” (This is a mil­i­tary strat­egy, in which an attack­ing force simul­ta­ne­ously strikes at both of the enemy’s flanks.) The Nader can­di­dacy pinned down the Gore cam­paign by attack­ing it from the ide­o­log­i­cal left, as Bush was attack­ing the Vice Pres­i­dent from the ide­o­log­i­cal right. By lim­it­ing Gore’s pop­ulist appeal and attack­ing his envi­ron­men­tal record, Nader denied vital strate­gic ground to the Gore cam­paign. (More than any other main­stream politi­cian, Gore was iden­ti­fied with envi­ron­men­tal causes.) A vote for Nader was indeed a vote for Bush, par­tic­u­larly in Florida. (Nader got more than 90,000 votes in Florida.) Note that the “Green Move­ment” (although pro­gres­sive for the most part) has sur­pris­ing his­tor­i­cal links with fas­cism.

In addi­tion to ana­lyz­ing the Nader cam­paign from a strate­gic per­spec­tive, Mr. Emory detailed some aspects of Nader’s finan­cial and pro­fes­sional his­tory that have escaped pop­u­lar atten­tion. In par­tic­u­lar, the dis­cus­sion high­lights the hyp­o­crit­i­cal invest­ment pol­icy that Ralph Nader has exe­cuted. (“How Nader Prof­its While He Preaches” by Jeff McMa­hon; bushwatch.net/nader.htm; 10/27/2000.) Nader owns up to $250,000 worth of shares of Fidelity Mag­el­lan Fund, a firm that is heav­ily invested in many of the cor­po­ra­tions that Nader has been most vocal in crit­i­ciz­ing. (Idem.) Among those firms that Fidelity invests in are Hal­libur­ton Oil, headed by Dick Cheney until shortly after his nom­i­na­tion as Bush’s run­ning mate. Fidelity also invests in Occi­den­tal Petro­leum, a firm that has been crit­i­cized by environmentalists.

Al Gore’s mother’s trust owns a sig­nif­i­cant block of Occi­den­tal stock. Gore’s pop­ulist cre­den­tials have been impugned by Nader Vice-Presidential can­di­date Winona La Duke because of that stock. (Idem.) The lec­ture under­scores dis­turb­ing aspects of Nader’s anti-labor activ­i­ties, and his avoid­ance of social issues. Multi-millionaire Nader has fiercely resisted attempts at union­iza­tion by the under­paid employ­ees of his orga­ni­za­tions. (“1.75 Cheers for Ralph” by Doug Hen­wood; Left Busi­ness Observer; 10/1996 [#74].) Mr. Emory sets forth Nader’s refusal to per­mit pub­li­ca­tion of CIA/corporate col­lu­sion in his Multi­na­tional Mon­i­tor (Idem.)

Another effec­tive ele­ment of polit­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare that worked against Gore was the Wen Ho Lee case. A Tai­wanese Amer­i­can cit­i­zen who had been employed as a nuclear sci­en­tist at the Los Alamos National Lab­o­ra­tory, Lee was falsely charged with espi­onage in 1999, trig­ger­ing a Republican-led con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tion. That inves­ti­ga­tion hinted that Lee’s alleged espi­onage on behalf of the People’s Repub­lic of China was linked to “Chi­nese” cam­paign dona­tions to the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion. The case gar­nered much jour­nal­is­tic atten­tion, and cast a pall of sus­pi­cion on Asian Amer­i­cans employed in sen­si­tive national security-related jobs. Most impor­tantly, it fig­ured in the crit­i­cism that the Repub­li­cans directed toward the Democ­rats dur­ing the 2000 cam­paign. Al Gore’s appear­ance at the much-ballyhooed Bud­dhist Tem­ple fundraiser was uti­lized by the Repub­li­cans to race bait the Gore cam­paign by asso­ci­at­ing it with “the yel­low peril.”

In this lec­ture, Mr. Emory sets forth the details of one of the arms deals that Oliver North’s Iran-Contra oper­a­tives arranged — a mis­sile sale from the People’s Repub­lic of China to the Con­tras. The American-supplied Con­tra gueril­las were look­ing for weapons with which to effec­tively com­bat the San­din­istas’ Soviet-supplied attack heli­copters. North arranged for a ship­ment of SA-7 surface-to-air mis­siles to be sent to the Con­tras. The doc­u­mented shar­ing of nuclear weapons infor­ma­tion with the PRC dur­ing the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion was char­ac­ter­is­tic of the type of quid pro quo arrange­ment that Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tor Lawrence Walsh found to be com­mon­place dur­ing the course of the Iran-Contra oper­a­tions. Like other nations that sup­plied weapons to the Con­tras for the Rea­gan Admin­is­tra­tion, the Chi­nese expected favors in return for their efforts. Since the alleged theft of nuclear secrets took place dur­ing the Rea­gan and Bush years, they can­not be blamed on Clin­ton. The “theft” may well have been an out­growth of the SA-7 deal.

Nonethe­less, the Repub­li­cans have attempted to pin the blame on the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion, cam­paign­ing on the false­hood that the Democ­rats com­pro­mised Amer­i­can nuclear secu­rity in exchange for cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions. Among the most vocal of those pin­ning the blame for the Lee affair on the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion was Judge James Parker, a Rea­gan appointee. (The New York Times; 9/14/2000; p. A1.) The pro­gram high­lights the fact that Lee and his wife had coop­er­ated with the CIA in con­nec­tion with his Chi­nese con­tacts. (San Jose Mer­cury News; 8/11/2000; p. 10A.) Mr. Emory also notes that Energy Sec­re­tary Bill Richard­son was sav­aged by Judge Parker and the Repub­li­cans, and spec­u­lates about the pos­si­ble use of the Lee/PRC con­tacts as a cam­paign dirty trick. (The New York Times; 9/14/2000; p. A1.) Richard­son at one time was con­sid­ered a pos­si­ble Vice Pres­i­den­tial run­ning mate for Al Gore. In addi­tion, the Lee case helped to dis­credit the Depart­ment of Energy and made it dif­fi­cult for that Depart­ment to fol­low Clinton’s direc­tive to help hold down the price of oil. This added to the effec­tive­ness of what Mr. Emory believes was a replay of the oil price gam­bit of 1979–80.

The dis­cus­sion then turns to the death of Mis­sourri Gov­er­nor Mel Car­na­han. The New York Times noted that the Democ­rats had a slim chance to retain con­trol of the Sen­ate. (“Democ­rats Have Out­side Chance to Wrest Sen­ate” by David E. Rosen­baum; New York Times; 10/16/2000; p.1.) One of the races that offered the pos­si­bil­ity of a Demo­c­ra­tic vic­tory was the cru­cial race for the Sen­ate seat held by John Ashcroft (R-Missouri.) (Idem.)

The day after that obser­va­tion was printed, Ashcroft’s Demo­c­ra­tic oppo­nent, Gov­er­nor Mel Car­na­han, was killed in the crash of a pri­vate plane. (“Gov­er­nor, 2 Oth­ers Fly­ing in Bad Weather” by Jim Salter; San Fran­cisco Exam­iner; 10/17/2000; ppA-1, A-12.) An inves­ti­ga­tor noted that the wreck­age was found in ” very small pieces spread over a large area,” more char­ac­ter­is­tic of a bomb explo­sion than the acci­den­tal crash of an air­craft. (Idem.) The crash came too late for the Democ­rats to nom­i­nate an alter­na­tive can­di­date. (Idem.) The lec­ture under­scores con­tra­dic­tions in the offi­cial account of the tragedy. The plane was ini­tially reported to have crashed in very bad weather and (pos­si­bly) to have been struck by light­ning. (Idem.) Sub­se­quent accounts indi­cate that the weather was not par­tic­u­larly bad for fly­ing and that the pilot had reported gyro­scope trou­ble. (“Doomed Plane Appar­ently Had Instru­ment Trou­ble” by John W. Foun­tain; New York Times; 10/18/2000; p. A20.)

Analy­sis of Carnahan’s death sug­gested that his demise would lessen the Democ­rats’ chances of win­ning con­trol of the Sen­ate and reduce Gore’s chances of win­ning Mis­souri, a cru­cial swing state. (“Equa­tion Changed by a Fatal Crash” by James Dao; New York Times; 10/18/2000; pp. A1, A20.) The state Demo­c­ra­tic infra­struc­ture also was pes­simistic about the out­come for the Sen­ate race. (“Gov­er­nor Mourned as Pub­lic Ser­vant” by Stephanie Simon; San Jose Mer­cury News; 10/18/2000; p. 15A.) One should not fail to note the super­fi­cial sim­i­lar­ity to the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. Although Ashcroft’s widow took his seat when he was posthu­mously elected, Bush car­ried Mis­sourri (a key swing state.) The role of Carnahan’s death in this cam­paign should not be dis­counted. Note, also, that John Ashcroft became Attor­ney Gen­eral in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and presided over the imple­men­ta­tion of many of the dra­con­ian, uncon­sti­tu­tional legal revi­sions insti­tuted by Dubya.

As dis­cussed above, the “oil short­age” of 1979–80 com­bined with the humil­i­a­tion of the United States at the hands of Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ists in Iran to assure Jimmy Carter’s elec­tion defeat. An “oil short­age” and “Mid­dle East­ern ter­ror­ism” were front and cen­ter dur­ing the 2000 cam­paign, as well. Ten­sions in the Mid­dle East were height­ened by the bomb attack on the destroyer U.S.S. Cole. Al Qaeda and the com­bat­ants of Osama bin Laden were behind the attack. (“U.S. Says Yemen Attack­ers Used Inside Infor­ma­tion” by David A. Vise and Ver­non Loeb; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 10/13/2000; p. A6.) The lec­ture reviews infor­ma­tion about the prob­a­ble role of the Bin Laden fam­ily in sup­ply­ing a por­tion of the invest­ment cap­i­tal that was used to estab­lish George W. Bush’s first oil com­pany. The pos­si­bil­ity that petroleum-related ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence and what Mr. Emory calls “the Under­ground Reich” may have been behind the attack on the Cole should not be too read­ily cast aside.

The attack was used by the Bush cam­paign to attack the Democ­rats. Once again, Mr. Emory under­scored the sig­nif­i­cance of the increase in oil prices for the econ­omy, the stock mar­ket and the Gore cam­paign. Oil price increases have his­tor­i­cally led to reces­sions and a falling Dow Jones Indus­trial aver­age and, dur­ing Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion years, this has led to the incum­bent being voted out of office. (“Can Al Gore Sur­vive Ris­ing Oil Prices and Falling Stocks?” by Floyd Nor­ris; New York Times; 9/22/2000; p. C1.) Once again, the fact that Dubya’s father was the head of the CIA and the pres­ence in the polit­i­cal process of ele­ments inti­mately involved with the Agency’s covert oper­a­tions estab­lish­ment is not to be overlooked.

Much of the lec­ture sets forth infor­ma­tion about the role in the 2000 elec­toral coup played by the CIA-linked, anti-Castro Cuban milieu in Florida. (This infor­ma­tion sup­ple­ments dis­cus­sion pre­sented in FTR-259.) The angry crowd that men­aced (and con­se­quently affected) the Miami-Dade elec­tion offi­cials was sum­moned by Radio Mambi, closely con­nected to the Anti-Castro Cuban com­mu­nity in Miami. (“Miami’s Cuban Amer­i­cans May Get the Last Word” by Peter Dale Scott; Pacific News Ser­vice; http://pacificnews.org; 12/4/2000.) The polit­i­cal milieu that gen­er­ated the furor over Elian Gon­za­lez is iden­ti­cal to that involved with intim­i­dat­ing the Miami elec­tion offi­cials, and has his­tor­i­cal links to the Bush fac­tion of the CIA. (Idem.)

High­light­ing these con­nec­tions in more detail, the dis­cus­sion high­lights the role of the Cuban Amer­i­can National Foun­da­tion (CANF) and its founder Jorge Mas Canosa in set­ting up Radio Mambi. (“Miami-Dade Reversal÷A Cuban ter­ror­ist Pay­back to Bush Fam­ily?” by Peter Dale Scott; Pacific News Ser­vice; http://pacificnews.org; 12/7/2000.) Mr. Emory relates informed spec­u­la­tion that the CIA (under William Casey) pre­cip­i­tated the found­ing of CANF in 1981. (Idem.) Two of Mas Canosa’s pro­teges in CANF were the broth­ers Guillermo and Igna­cio Novo, both impli­cated in the assas­si­na­tion of for­mer Chilean Ambas­sador Orlando Lete­lier. (Idem.) (For more on the con­nec­tions between the milieu of the Lete­lier assas­si­na­tion and the Florida elec­toral shenani­gans, see the afore­men­tioned FTR-259. For more on the Repub­li­can mob in Miami, see also FTR-265.) The elder George Bush was closely con­nected to this milieu, and deflected inquiries into the Lete­lier assas­si­na­tion that led in the direc­tion of the CIA sup­ported coup in Chile. (Idem.)

The broad­cast also details the con­nec­tions of this milieu to Cuban-Americans involved in the Con­tra sup­port effort in the 1980’s. (Idem.) This, too, was detailed in FTR-259. Next, the dis­cus­sion illu­mi­nates the role of a Cuban-American splin­ter group (Vig­ilia Mam­bisa) in the agi­ta­tion that forced the halt­ing of the recount. (Unpub­lished update by Pro­fes­sor Scott to “Miami’s Cuban Amer­i­cans May Get the Last Word” by Peter Dale Scott; Pacific News Ser­vice; http://pacificnews.org; 12/4/2000; made avail­able to Mr. Emory by a kind listener.)

The talk also sets forth links between Florida Gov­er­nor Jeb Bush, the CANF milieu, the Con­tra sup­port effort, and the fail­ure of the Broward Fed­eral Sav­ings & Loan Asso­ci­a­tion. (Unpub­lished update by Pro­fes­sor Scott to “Miami-Dade Reversal÷A Cuban ter­ror­ist Pay­back to Bush Fam­ily?” by Peter Dale Scott; Pacific News Ser­vice; http://pacificnews.org; 12/7/2000.)

An “ex” CIA offi­cer (Charles Kane) allegedly par­tic­i­pated in a scheme to deliver some of the fraud­u­lent absen­tee bal­lots that helped tip Florida to Bush. (“Absen­tee Bal­lot Fraud in 5 Florida Coun­ties” by David E. Scheim; Asso­ci­ated Press; 12/7/2000; at http://www.campaignwatch.org.) The lec­ture high­lighted the delib­er­ate and fraud­u­lent exclu­sion of African Amer­i­can vot­ers in Florida was dis­cussed. Many of them were labeled as “felons” and con­se­quently pre­vented from voting.

In addi­tion, it turns out that the head of the polit­i­cal desk at Fox News (who led the media stam­pede to reas­sign Florida from Gore to Bush) was Jeb and “W’s” cousin John Ellis. (“One More elec­tion Embar­rass­ment for the Press: Bush Cousin” by Tom Rosen­stiel; The Los Ange­les Times; 11/15/2000; p. B9.) Ellis was in close tele­phone con­tact with Jeb and “W” on elec­tion night, appar­ently feed­ing them polit­i­cal intel­li­gence on the elec­tion. (“News Exec­u­tive Called Races, and Bush” by Bill Carter; The New York Times; 11/14/2000; p. A17.) Ellis’ call led the media charge to reverse the call of Florida as being won by Gore. This was crit­i­cal to Bush’s suc­cess, because it cre­ated the impres­sion that Gore was a “sore loser” and facil­i­tated the capit­u­la­tion of the Democ­rats. The lec­ture also points out that Theodore Olson, the new Solic­i­tor Gen­eral, was one of the lead attor­neys for the Bush cam­paign in Florida. (The Solic­i­tor Gen­eral is often referred to as “the tenth Supreme Court Justice.”)

Olson was heav­ily involved in the cam­paign to dis­credit Bill Clin­ton, as well. The ascent of Olson and Ashcroft to two of the most impor­tant posi­tions in the Depart­ment of Jus­tice could be said to com­plete the elec­toral coup of the year 2000. The lec­ture con­cludes with analy­sis of the “energy cri­sis” in Cal­i­for­nia as a delib­er­ately struc­tured desta­bi­liza­tion of the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­tic elec­toral base. Cal­i­for­nia went heav­ily for Gore in 2000 and Gray Davis has been dis­cussed as a pos­si­ble oppo­nent for Bush in 2004. The Cal­i­for­nia “energy cri­sis” may well be set­ting the stage for “the elec­toral coup of the year 2004.” (Recorded on 2/24/2001.)