| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Politix |
| The Ted Kennedy--Lyndon LaRouche Connection |
| 2004-05-18 |
| by Michael Rubin, National Review Online. EFL; go read it all. . . . On March 5, 2004, Senator Edward Kennedy, [the hefty, gin-soaked Massachusetts Democrat who once drove off a bridge,] speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations, took the president to task for allegedly exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq: "The evidence so far leads to only one conclusion. What happened was not merely a failure of intelligence, but the result of manipulation and distortion of the intelligence and selective use of unreliable intelligence to justify a decision to go to war," Kennedy said. . . . To support his attack on the president, Kennedy cites Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski . . . . Kennedy describes Kwiatkowski as a "recently retired Air Force intelligence officer who served in the Pentagon during the buildup to the war." Kwiatkowski did serve in the Pentagon prior to the war, as did I, as did approximately 23,000 others. But, Kwiatkowski was not involved in Iraq policy. Her reminiscences fall more into the realm of fiction than fact. I worked in the Office of Special Plans (OSP), charged with some aspects of the Iraq portfolio. My job was that of any desk officer: Writing talking points for my superiors, analyzing reports, burying myself in details, and drafting replies to frequent letters from Congressmen John ["Dingbat"] Dingell and Dennis ["Moonbat"] Kucinich. I was a participant or a fly-on-the-wall at many postwar planning meetings and accompanying video teleconferences. One person I never met was Kwiatkowski. This should not be a surprising. Kwiatkowski was an Africa specialist who was the point woman for issues relating to Morocco. Just as I never attended meetings relating to Western Sahara, Kwiatkowski was not involved in Iraq policy sessions. Rather than an inside scoop, Kwiatkowski provided an ideological screed. By her own admission, she started writing Internet columns while still a Pentagon desk officer. But, she did not know many of the people about whom she wrote. The Office of Special Plans consisted of a small number of active duty military officers, reservists, and civilians; both Democrats and Republicans. Kwiatkowski got ranks and services wrong. In rank-conscience corridors of the Pentagon and among military officers, such things do not happen. Upon her retirement, Kwiatkowski took her story to Jeff Steinberg, editor of the Executive Intelligence Review, the journal of Lyndon LaRouche’s movement. Pat Lang, former chief Middle East analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, circulated Kwiatkowski’s deposition to Steinberg in a September 16, 2003, e-mail in which he carbon-copied, rather than blind carbon-copied his distribution list. Among the recipients were prominent journalists and producers, scions of the alternative press, and a smattering of current and former intelligence analysts who often serve as sources in news analyses and articles. Many journalists and pundits ignored the deposition, tainted as it was by innuendo and falsehood. LaRouche, after all, has both peddled the theory that Queen Elizabeth II is a drug dealer and that former Vice President Walter Mondale was a Soviet agent. . . . Personally, I’d love to hear LaRouche’s theory on "what really happened at Chappaquiddick." But no matter . . . . The Steinberg memorandum of the Kwiatkowski conversation is a study in conspiracy and innuendo. Based on Kwiatkowski’s recollection that she bumped into a Fletcher School classmate of Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Bill Luti on the platform of the Pentagon Metro station, Steinberg speculates that there may be a wider Israeli conspiracy. After all, according to Steinberg, the Fletcher School was the "roost" of Uri Raanan, a former Israeli diplomat. Jonathan Pollard, convicted of espionage, had attended the Fletcher School. Steinberg neglected to mention that Raanan taught at Tufts for two decades, is a renowned scholar of Russian politics, and currently directs Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy at Boston University. Steinberg also omits that Pollard failed to matriculate from Tufts. According to Steinberg, Kwiatkowski told him that the Office of Special Plans was a "propaganda" unit. "Each week, OSP produced an updated Power Point talking points [presentation] on why the US must go to war in Iraq," the Kwiatkowski-Steinberg memorandum relates. Kwiatkowski should know better. The Office of Special Plans did produce Power Point slides, but not for the purpose Kwiatkowski insists. Talking points are a standard way to provide information throughout the military. This is well-known to Air Force officers, who joke they log more Power Point time than flight hours. . . . In her expose to the LaRouche organization, the substance of which was later published in ["Pitchfork Pat" Buchanan’s] The American Conservative magazine, Kwiatkowski alleged that there was a purge of desk officers within International Security Affairs. Not true. Kwiatkowski may have been upset that some colleagues received promotions when she did not. . . . New desk officers rotated in, many of whom had far better language ability and on-the-ground experience than Kwiatkowski. Kwiatkowski prides herself on her expose of a "neoconservative coup." She explained this to the Executive Intelligence Review editor. But, many of the people she alleged to be part of the Office of Special Plans, either worked in other Pentagon departments, or had long since retired from government. The errors are not surprising. In the 18 months I served in Special Plans, she did not visit the office (which would also explain subsequent errors in relating the location of the office). Progressing from the ridiculous to the sublime, the Kwiatkowski-Steinberg memorandum suggests that one staff member pretended to care for his wheelchair-bound wife in order to travel on undercover secret missions. Unfortunately, Kennedy staff members took the LaRouche organization at its word, and dragged the career government employee in for questioning on this allegation. In her conversation with Steinberg, Kwiatkowski chided colleagues for alleged violations of standard Pentagon procedure, and yet ironically got wrong such basics as the escort ratio between Pentagon employees and visitors. Kwiatkowski has dishonored the U.S. military by using her Pentagon position to grandstand and legitimize fringe ideology. Like LaRouche, she rails against imaginary conspiracies and questions the loyalty of government employees who happen to be Jewish. While writing under the moniker "Deep Throat Returns," Kwiatkowski wrote, "The neocons must be squirming. Strategic placement of chickenhawks should have leveraged the full might and political resources of the United States to build greater Zion, resolve the Middle East, and award energy development contracts to all true believers." That Kwiatkowski would refer to her direct supervisor, Bill Luti, as a "chickenhawk" is ridiculous. Luti had a 26-year military career, including during the first Gulf War. Likewise, former National Security Council member General Wayne Downing — and everyone who served under his command in places like Panama — may take issue with Kwiatkowski’s allegations. But to Kwiatkowski, facts do not matter. In subsequent essays, she alleged her colleagues were fighting for a "greater Zion" rather than for U.S. national security. Kwiatkowski’s extremism undermined her competence. Her enthusiasm for conspiracies was matched by a lack of focus on national security. In a January 15, 2003, e-mail to a colleague, Kwiatkowski wrote that neither Osama bin Laden nor al Qaeda, let alone nuclear North Korea, posed "a serious threat" to the U.S. national security. "On the other hand, you gotta watch out for them Canadians!" she continued. "They’re sneaky, y’know. According to my friend Lyndon, they put fluoride in the black helicopters to drop on baby seals in Idaho so that . . . ." There is a place for debate in policy — and, within the Pentagon, debates are frequent and fierce. But, living in denial about the threat al Qaeda posed after the Pentagon itself was hit in a terrorist attack did not inspire confidence. In normal times, Kwiatkowski might not have passed journalists’ credibility threshold. Don’t be too sure of that. But, with Internet information laundering and Lang’s gatekeeping, she met a small number of ambitious journalists hungry for a scoop. They did not source their material to LaRouche and, at times, did not source their material to Kwiatkowski, but nonetheless betrayed their source by repeating her errors. . . . In April 2003, the LaRouche organization published a pamphlet entitled "Children of Satan." The pamphlet contained a Steinberg essay alleging that students of the late University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss had formed a secret "cabal" to drag the United States into war by falsifying evidence. The following month, I returned from a meeting at the National Security Council to Special Plans’ suite of offices on the first floor of the Pentagon (Kwiatkowski falsely wrote that we worked in the basement). Several colleagues were pouring over a fax. Public Affairs had just brought it over, saying that a New Yorker fact checker had inquiries and that Seymour Hersh was planning an expose of our office. We answered his questions immediately. Many of his statements were factually wrong and repeated Kwiatkowski’s mistakes verbatim. But, when the article was posted on the Internet on May 5, 2003, Hersh had not incorporated any corrections; his article is rife with errors. But, with the Pentagon leadership’s decision to concentrate on work rather than on public relations, falsehoods transformed into conventional wisdom. Take Hersh’s opening sentence: "They call themselves, self-mockingly, the Cabal." We had never called ourselves that, although we were aware that Lang (whom Hersh cites openly), Defense Intelligence Agency official Bruce Hardcastle, and some Central Intelligence Agency officials used the term to describe Jewish colleagues. Before Hersh, it was The Washington Report for Middle Eastern Affairs which popularized the term "cabal" to describe certain Pentagon officials. The Washington Report is not a mainstream publication. Rather, it is a fringe magazine which has put in print theories such as that the Mossad was behind John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Emphasis added. Someone posted a couple of Washington Report links here at the ’Burg yesterday; I think, not realizing who they are. Robert Dreyfuss, contributing editor to The Nation, repeated many Kwiatkowski conspiracies as fact, in a series of article for The Nation, The American Prospect, and Mother Jones. . . . The Triple Crown of left-wing moonbattery! Wonder if the Mother Jones people realized Many Democrats and Republicans, whether opponents or proponents of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, have engaged the executive branch on substantive issues of policy; they ask pertinent questions and professionally exercise oversight. It is a shame that some do not. Senator Edward Kennedy, eager to score points in an election year, cast his lot with a disgruntled conspiracy theorist. In doing so, he undermined tens of thousands of hardworking servicemen, not only at the Pentagon, but also in conflict zones across the world. Kennedy has failed as a leader. Before senators speak, they should make sure their sourcing does not rely on Lyndon LaRouche’s magazine. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #1 Wonder if the Mother Jones people realized in their marijuana-induced stupor they were aligning themselves with Lyndon LaRouche and Pat Buchanan? IMHO, they are just flip sides of the same coin. |
| Posted by: B 2004-05-18 3:10:03 PM |