Posted on 04/07/2004 8:09:30 AM PDT by Fedora
Today I noticed that Condoleezza Rice was being criticized by Leslie Gelb:
Friends, Foes Say Rice Has Spirit, Toughness She'll Need for Sept. 11 Testimony
At the same time, Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, who has known Rice for two decades, says he has seen a stiffening in her philosophical approach over the years.
Gelb's name rang a bell, and upon searching I discovered Gelb was responsible for hiring Richard Clarke to the State Department:
Clarke Known As Abrasive but Efficient
Leslie Gelb, who hired Clarke for his first State Department job in 1979
Now Gelb has also been involved in several major national security leaks, including the Pentagon Papers:
The Pentagon Papers and Their Continuing Significance
Amid his own growing doubts about the war he had encouraged, McNamara quietly left the government in early 1968. Before doing so, however, he ordered a small staff in the Department of Defense to undertake a secret study of U.S. decision-making about Vietnam since the end of the Second World War. The study was directed by Leslie Gelb.
About nine months into the [Pentagon Papers] project, Daniel Ellsberg of the Rand Corporation climbed aboard. Even though Ellsberg behaved erratically throughout and failed to meet deadlines, Gelb and [Paul C.] Warnke agreed to give him "personal access to the entire study."
Powell, 53:
On May 16, while testifying before the United States Senate, Ellsberg, before taking the oath, stated that Warnke, Halperin and Gelb were not involved in his theft of the Papers. No one had asked him that question. . .but later, after Sen. Strom Thurmond insisted that he be put under oath, he did not discuss this matter.
Powell, 90:
On February 14, 1985, Leslie Gelb broke a front-page story in the New York Times titled "U.S. tries to Fight Allied Resistance to Nuclear Arms." In it, Gelb revealed that the United States had drawn up plans to deploy nuclear depth charges in Canada, Iceland, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, the Azores, the Philippines, Spain, and Diego Garcia in time of war. Gelb's source for this classified information? The Institute for Policy Studies. . .These stories struck a raw nerve in the alliance. . .and subsequently led to the demise of the ANZUS alliance.
Powell, 103:
. . .Leslie Gelb, of the New York Times, described the institute [the Institute for Policy Studies] as "one of the premiere centers for foreign policy perspectives."
Further searching reveals that Gelb began his political career working for antiwar Senator Jacob Javits, whom was considered for invitation by event organizers to the VVAW's Dewey Canyon III rally:
Director of Policy Planning and Arms Control for International Security Affairs, Department of Defense (1967-69); Executive Assistant, U.S. Senator Jacob K. Javits (1966-67)
During the 1970s, one of Javits' major concerns was the question of who has the power to make war. He was the first member of Congress to propose legislation reestablishing congressional (rather than presidential) responsibility to commit U.S. armed forces abroad in the absence of a formal declaration of war. This War Powers Resolution passed the Senate in April 1972 and again in July 1973. It became law over President Nixon's veto on November 7, 1973.
This week in history 25 years ago--February 21, 1971: Stalinists push "People's Peace Treaty"
Both the Stalinists and the ex-Trotskyists of the Socialist Workers Party proposed that big business politicians such as Democratic Senator George McGovern and Republican Senator Jacob Javits should be invited to speak at the antiwar demonstration set for April 24 in Washington, DC.
Douglas Brinkley, Tour of Duty : John Kerry and the Vietnam War, 361
Just as the VVAW members were arriving in the capital, New York Senator Jacob Javits held a private dinner at his home where Secretary of State Melvin Laird was the guest of honor. It was a carefully staged event. Javits had eight other Republican members of the House and the Senate also stop by. AFter dinner. . .Pennsylvania Senator Hugh Scott dropped the gauntlet. "You don't see any hawks around here," he told Laird in a non-nonsense fashion. "The hawks are all ex-hawks. There's a feeling that the Senate ought to tell the President to get the hell out of the War."
So Richard Clarke was hired by Leslie Gelb, an individual involved in the Penagon Papers leak, who in turn started his political career working for Jacob Javits, an ally of the VVAW. Interesting, no?
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Can we say CONFLICT OF INTEREST, boys and girls?
YIKES!!!! Bears repeating!! Richard Ben-Veniste is VERY, VERY DIRTY!!! (typical Dem)
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YIKES AGAIN!!! YOU ARE GOOOOD!!
There are So many of these threads with VALUABLE info.
Thanks--I figure if we're going to be accused of being part of a vast right-wing conspiracy we should at least have a conspiracy theory to compete with the Unified Halliburton Theory :)
I have made the same observation. I believe a big reason for the connection is that socialists, mobsters, and lawyers all historically have something in common: labor unions. The history of this can be traced back to the emergence of communist-agitated labor violence in the 19th century. Moving towards the present, a key figure in forging such links was Sidney Hillman, one of FDR's major links with organized labor and organized crime:
John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, Chapter Eight - The Shock Troops of the Third New Deal
There is no doubt that Hillman was one of the first labor leaders to use the goon as part of his enforcement machinery. In 1931 a garment manufacturer in Brooklyn named Guido Fererri got into a bitter quarrel with Hillman's Amalgamated and was threatened by one of its officials. A few days later Fererri was found shot to death on the street. At the time a notorious character named Louis Buckhalter, known as Lepke, was officiating as slugger and goon for a labor union and Lepke was suspected of this crime.
The Last Days of Lepke Buchalter, et al
During the two-day reprieve, the New York newspapers ran wild with speculation as to what Lepke had to reveal. Chief among the rumors was that the mob boss could provide information on Sidney Hillman, the president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Hillman was a member of President Roosevelt’s wartime administration, and his inner circle. With Hillman’s connections to organized labor, Dewey, it was believed, could link him to Lepke and parlay this information into a corruption scandal to hang over the Democrats in the November 1944 elections.").
Thanks for the kind words--it's encouraging that people are taking an interest in it.
Some interesting reading here...The Intelligence Community's Knowledge of the September 11 Hijackers Prior to September 11, 2001
The CIA employee told us that he had, at the time, been assigned to work at the FBI Strategic Information Operations Center to fix problems "in communicating between the CIA and the FBI." His e-mail, however, makes no mention of the CIA's determination that al-Mihdhar held a U.S. multiple-entry visa.
What a failure SIOC was. And who was in charge? Check it out.
And check this out...John O'Neill was an F.B.I. agent with an obsession: the growing threat of Al Qaeda.
Bodine denied his application to reënter the country. She refuses to discuss that decision. "Too much is being made of John O'Neill's being in Yemen or not," she told me. "John O'Neill did not discover Al Qaeda. He did not discover Osama bin Laden. So the idea that John or his people or the F.B.I. were somehow barred from doing their job is insulting to the U.S. government, which was working on Al Qaeda before John ever showed up. This is all my embassy did for ten months. The fact that not every single thing John O'Neill asked for was appropriate or possible does not mean that we did not support the investigation."
Snip...Meanwhile, intelligence had been streaming in concerning a likely Al Qaeda attack. "It all came together in the third week in June," Clarke said. "The C.I.A.'s view was that a major terrorist attack was coming in the next several weeks." On July 5th, Clarke summoned all the domestic security agencies—the Federal Aviation Administration, the Coast Guard, Customs, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the F.B.I.—and told them to increase their security in light of an impending attack.
Snip...When O'Neill told ABC's Isham of his decision to work at the Trade Center, Isham had said jokingly, "At least they're not going to bomb it again." O'Neill had replied, "They'll probably try to finish the job."
Lots of info and names in there. Happy reading.
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