Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The Shadow Party: Part I
FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | 10/06/04 | David Horowitz and Richard Poe

Posted on 10/06/2004 2:42:28 AM PDT by kattracks

"My family is more important to me than my party," declared  Senator Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat, as he spoke from the podium of the Republican National Convention on September 1. "There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future and that man's name is George Bush." [1]

 

Many Democrats howled in outrage at Miller's "betrayal" - former President Jimmy Carter in particular. In an angry personal letter to the Georgia

senator, Carter accused Miller of "unprecedented disloyalty" and declared, "You have betrayed our trust. [I]t's quite possible that your rabid speech damaged our party..." [2]

 

But nothing Miller said could possibly have damaged the Democratic Party more than its own leaders had done in making the war in Iraq a partisan issue and embracing the anti-war cause. In his anger, Carter had mistaken the symptom for the disease. Long before Zell Miller's démarche, Ronald Reagan -- a Roosevelt Democrat who re-registered as a Republican in 1962 -- followed a similar course, explaining, "I didn't leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me."[3]

 

The leftward drift of the Democratic Party accelerated through the Vietnam years, spurred by the anti-war candidacies of Bobby Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. When the congressional Democrats pulled the plug on aid to our allies in southeast Asia in the 1970s, a contingent of anti-Communist "Scoop" Jackson Democrats crossed the aisle in protest and became Republicans - an act for which they were labeled "neo-conservatives." Rank-and-file Democrats staged a silent but even more devastating walk-out after four years of Jimmy Carter's "blame America" Administration, casting their ballots by the millions for the Gipper.

 

The Democrats' current presidential aspirant John Kerry has ambitiously modeled his political career after John F. Kennedy’s. Yet their politics bear little resemblance. If Kennedy were alive today, Democrats would condemn his sweeping capital gains tax cuts as a sop to the rich. His militant anti-Communism would evoke charges of right-wing "paranoia."  And the vow he made in his inaugural address to confront tyranny anywhere in the world would win him the label of "neo-conservative" imperialist among today’s Democrats. Instead of calling on Americans to "support any friend" and "oppose any foe" -- as Kennedy did in his famous address - many Democrats are busy sabotaging our war effort in Iraq, with speeches as strident as any that emanated from the New Left during the Vietnam era.

 

The devolution of the Democrats from the Cold War party of Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy to the progressive party of Edward Kennedy and John F. Kerry has long been in progress, and is not quite complete. But the Democrats' final transformation into a party of the left in the European mode may not be far off. Barely noticed by political observers, an activist juggernaut has seized control of the party’s national electoral apparatus, organized, financed and directed by the left.

 

This party within the party has no official name, but some journalists and commentators have begun referring to it as the Shadow Party, a term that we will use as well. It denotes a network of non-profit groups presently raising hundreds of millions of dollars for deployment on the campaign battlefield. This money pays for advertising, get-out-the-vote-drives, opposition research, dirty tricks and virtually every aspect of a modern electoral campaign. But it does so through independent groups with no formal connection to the Democratic Party.

 

 

Follow the Money

 

The Shadow Party emerged from the dense thicket of campaign finance reforms engineered by Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold. Thanks to the soft-money ban enacted by the McCain-Feingold Act of March 27, 2002, the Democratic  Party entered the current election cycle hard pressed to raise enough money legally to undertake  a winning campaign. This created an imperative that found its inevitable loophole (as critics of McCain-Feingold always warned it would). Consequently, the driving force in the political war against George Bush is now a group of billionaires and millionaires operating through the veiled structures of the Shadow Party.

 

Under McCain-Feingold, political parties and candidates can only accept “hard money” contributions – that is, contributions given to a specific political party for a specific political campaign. Such contributions must be reported to the Federal Election Commission, and are limited to a $2,000 maximum per donor for each candidate, or $5,000 per donor if they are paid to a federally registered political action committee (PAC). Historically, Republicans have enjoyed a 3-1 advantage over Democrats in raising hard-money contributions from individual donors. Democrats have relied much more heavily on soft-money contributions from large institutions such as unions.

 

Soft money refers to political contributions, which for one reason or another have been exempted from the limits imposed by the FEC. Before McCain-Feingold outlawed such contributions, soft money donors could give as much money to political parties as they wished. Their contributions often numbered in the millions of dollars. McCain-Feingold deprived the Democrats of their soft money, but the Shadow Party has provided an alternate channel for collecting unlimited contributions. For example, government unions used to lavish multi-million-dollar contributions on the Democratic Party – money which the unions drew from their members, through mandatory dues. The unions still collect their membership dues, but, under McCain-Feingold, they may no longer pass that money along to the Democratic Party, at least not directly. The solution? They give it to the Shadow Party instead.

 

The Shadow Party uses various expedients to evade McCain-Feingold’s limits. First, it works through independent non-profit groups that ostensibly have no connection to the Democratic Party, either structurally or through informal coordination. The Shadow Party contains many types of non-profit groups, but most of its big fundraisers are “527 committees” – named after Section 527 of the IRS code – sometimes called “stealth  PACS” because, unlike ordinary PACS (political action committees), they are not required to register with the Federal Election Commission nor to divulge their finances to the FEC (except in special circumstances).

 

Another expedient used by the Shadow Party is to claim that it is not engaged in electioneering at all. Most Shadow Party groups say they are soliciting funds not to defeat a particular candidate, but to promote “issues” and non-partisan get-out-the-vote drives. Of course their issue promotions have, in most cases, turned out to be savage attacks on the opposing candidates and their get-out-the-vote drives have used sophisticated demographic marketing techniques to target exclusively Democratic constituencies. All of this casts doubt on the Shadow Party’s claim to be aloof from the electoral struggle and therefore exempt from FEC regulation.  However, a pliant Federal Elections Commission has conveniently declined to rule on the Shadow Party’s legality until after the election, when it will no longer matter.

 

Needless to say, McCain-Feingold also bars the Republican Party from raising soft money. However, Republicans never had a problem raising individual contributions for their candidates and never made a habit of raiding union treasuries for “soft money.” Thus Republicans have felt less urgency than Democrats to seek alternative fundraising methods, and they have proved slower in pursuing the 527 escape route from McCain-Feingold. Republicans have built no network of independent, non-profit groups comparable in numbers or scale to the Democrat Shadow Party.

 

No one knows who first coined the term “shadow party.” The term has become popular among journalists, but likely originated among the freelance fundraisers themselves. In the November 5, 2002 Washington Post, writer Thomas B. Edsall wrote of “shadow organizations” springing up on both sides of the political fence to circumvent McCain-Feingold’s  soft money ban.[4] Lorraine Woellert  of Business Week

appears to have been the first journalist to apply the term “shadow party” specifically to the Democrat network of 527 groups, in a September 15, 2003 article titled, “The Evolution of Campaign Finance?”[5] Other journalists followed her example.

 

 

The Soros Factor

 

According to conventional wisdom the Shadow Party began taking form shortly after March 27, 2002 – the date President Bush signed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, popularly known as McCain-Feingold. However, the Shadow Party’s earliest origins predate the Reform Act by many years. The principal mover behind the Shadow Party is Wall Street billionaire and leftwinger George Soros. A New York

hedge fund manager, global investment banker and currency trader, Soros has a personal net worth in the $7 billion range. Under his aegis, the Shadow Party has created a new power base for the left, independent of the mainstream party apparatus – a leverage point from which to tilt the party in an ever-more-radical  direction.

 

Only Soros knows when he first conceived the idea of forming this network. However, clear hints of his intentions began to appear as early as the 2000 election. By that time, Soros had already baffled friend and foe alike with his increasingly strident attacks on capitalism – the very system which had elevated him from a penniless Hungarian refugee to one of the world’s wealthiest men. In his 1998 book The Crisis of Global Capitalism, Soros predicted an imminent collapse of the global financial system. Financiers like himself were largely to blame, he wrote, for they had allowed greed to overwhelm their humanity. “The  (global capitalist) system is deeply flawed,” wrote Soros. “As long as capitalism remains triumphant, the pursuit of money overrides all other social considerations.” [6]

 

Soros offered no coherent solution to the problem. He simply continued his long-established pattern of pouring money into a hodge-podge of fashionable leftwing causes, such as promoting mass immigration into the United States; financing anti-gun lawsuits and lobbyists; demanding voting rights for felons; seeking the abolition of capital punishment; exacerbating  Palestinian unrest; promoting abortion; feminism; population control; gay liberation; euthanasia; radical theories of education; marijuana legalization  and global government.

 

In 2000, Soros stepped up his attack on the status quo – dramatically raising his profile in U.S. electoral politics in the process – by sponsoring the so-called “Shadow Conventions.” Organized by author, columnist, social climber and political gadfly Arianna Huffington, the Shadow Conventions were counter-cultural events that gave a spotlight to critics of the electoral mainstream, most from the far left. In an effort to lure news crews away from the national party conventions, Huffington held her “Shadow Conventions” at the same time and in the same cities as the Republican and Democratic  conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles respectively.

 

The largest single donor to the Shadow Conventions was George Soros, who put up about one third of the cost, according to Time magazine.[7]

Media commentators at the time played the Shadow Conventions for laughs. Yet these events conveyed a serious message; a comprehensive radical agenda which Soros evidently endorsed.

 

 

Third Force

 

The Shadow Conventions promoted the view that neither Democrats nor Republicans served the interests of the American people. Like the New Left of the 1960s and today’s Green Party, both of which dismiss the major parties as instruments of the “corporate ruling class,” Huffington declared that US politics needed a third force to break the deadlock. Among the issues highlighted at the Shadow Conventions were racism, special interest lobbies, marijuana legalization  and the allegedly growing concentration of wealth – a radical hobgoblin since Karl Marx first raised its specter 150 years ago. Most speakers and delegates at the Shadow Convention hewed to a hard-left line, their views resonating with the “Free Mumia” chants that erupted periodically from the crowd and with Jesse Jackson’s incendiary charges that Republicans were racists. Huffington herself was a sometime conservative whose cult-like worship of Newt Gingrich had formerly evoked titters of amusement from media gossips. At the Shadow Conventions, she told reporters: “I have become radicalized.”

 

Not all the speakers were hucksters in the Jackson mold, however. Senator John McCain whose campaign finance crusade had put him at odds with both parties was one of the few mainstream politicians to accept Huffington’s invitation to speak. He made an impassioned plea for campaign finance reform, a crusade which – perhaps not coincidentally – George Soros had been a major force in pushing since 1995.

 

The Shadow Conventions were symbolic affairs. They represented no party and nominated no candidates for office. However, many of Soros’ activities  during the 2000 campaign went beyond symbolism. It was during the 2000 election cycle that Soros first began experimenting with raising money through 527 committees. He assembled a team of wealthy Democrat donors to help him push two of his favorite issues – gun control and marijuana legalization.  Soros collected contributions greatly exceeding  the $5,000 limit allowed to federal PACs, but he evaded those limits by using 527 committees.

 

One of Soros’ committees was an anti-gun group called The Campaign for a Progressive Future, which sought to neutralize the influence of the National Rifle Association (NRA) by targeting political candidates whom the NRA endorsed. Mainstream Democrats had backed off the gun control issue when candidate Al Gore learned that 40 percent of union households owned guns. However, Soros was no mainstream Democrat. He personally seeded The Campaign for a Progressive Future with $500,000.[8]

 

During the 2000 election,  Soros’ Campaign for a Progressive Future funded political ads and direct mail campaigns in support of state initiatives favoring background checks at gun shows. Soros and his associates also funneled money into pro-marijuana initiatives, which appeared on the ballot in various states that year.[9]

Donors to Soros’ stealth PACs during the 2000 election cycle included insurance mogul Peter B. Lewis and InfoSeek founder Steven Kirsch, both of whom would turn up later as major contributors to Soros’ Shadow Party during the 2004 campaign.

 

 

The Southampton Meeting

 

To the extent that the Shadow Party can be said to have an official launch date, July 17, 2003 probably fits the bill.[10] On that day, a team of political strategists, wealthy donors, leftwing labor leaders and other Democrat activists gathered at Soros’ Southampton beach house on Long Island. Aside from Soros, the most noteworthy attendee was Morton H. Halperin. Soros had hired Halperin in February 2002, to head the Washington

office of his tax-exempt Open Society Institute – part of Soros’ global network of Open Society institutes and foundations located in more than 50 countries around the world. Given Halperin’s history, the appointment revealed much about Soros’ political goals.

 

Halperin has a long and controversial track record in the world of Washington intrigue, dating back to the Johnson Administration. Journalists sympathetic to Halperin’s leftwing sentiments give him high marks for blowing the whistle on the Vietnam War, but his activism helped undermine America’s war effort and contributed to the Communist victory.

 

The Johnson Defense Department placed Halperin in charge of compiling a secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, based on classified documents. This secret history later emerged into public view as the so-called “Pentagon Papers.” Halperin and his deputy Leslie Gelb assigned much of the writing to leftwing opponents of the war, such as Daniel Ellsberg who, despite his background as a former Marine and a military analyst for the Rand Corporation, was already evolving into a New Left radical. In his memoir, Secrets, Ellsberg admits to concluding, as early as 1967, that, “we were not fighting on the wrong side; we were the wrong side” in the Vietnam War.

[11] Evidently Ellsberg had come to view Ho Chi Minh’s Communist regime as the wave of the future.

 

With Halperin’s tacit encouragement – and perhaps active collusion – Ellsberg stole the secret history and released  it to The New York Times, which published the documents as “The Pentagon Papers” in June 1971.[12]  This was a violation of the Espionage Act, which forbids the removal of classified documents from government buildings. Not surprisingly, “The Pentagon Papers” echoed Halperin’s long-standing position that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, and ridiculed Presidents Kennedy and Johnson for stubbornly refusing to heed those of their advisors who shared this opinion. It marked a turning point in America’s failed effort to keep Indo-China from falling to the Communists. The government dropped its case against Ellsberg as Nixon’s power collapsed during the Watergate intrigues.

 

Halperin went on to become the director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1984 to 1992 and head of its "National Security Archives." From this position, he waged open war against U.S. intelligence services, through the courts and the press, seeking to strip the government of virtually any power to investigate, monitor or obstruct subversive elements and their activities.[13] It did not take long for Halperin to go the next logical step and argue for abolishing America’s intelligence  services altogether. “Using secret intelligence agencies to defend a constitutional republic is akin to the ancient medical practice of  employing leeches to take blood from feverish patients. The intent is therapeutic, but in the long run the cure is  more deadly than the disease,” Halperin wrote in his 1976 book, The Lawless State: The Crimes of the U.S. Intelligence  Agencies.[14]

 

In a March 21, 1987 article in The Nation, Halperin expanded on this theme and, like Ellsberg, took the position that America was the real villain in the Cold War. He wrote, “Secrecy does not serve national security. Covert operations are incompatible with constitutional  government and should be abolished.”[15] This was a call for unilateral disarming of our intelligence services to match the universal disarmament of our military which has long been a staple of the radical agenda.

 

Evidently, Soros wishes Halperin to continue his war on America’s intelligence services. According to an Open Society Institute press release, one of Halperin’s principal assignments on the Soros team is to battle “post-September 11 policies that threaten the civil liberties of Americans.” [16]

 

 

The Plan 

 

No one has published a full list of the attendees at Soros’ July 17 meeting in Southampton, at which Soros laid out his plan to defeat President Bush.[17] However, a partial list is available in accounts that appeared in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. These include an impressive array of former Clinton

administration officials, among them Halperin. Prior to working for Soros, Halperin had served eight years under Clinton, first as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and finally as Director of Policy Planning for the Clinton State Department.

 

The guests at Soros’ beach house also included Clinton’s former chief of staff John Podesta; Jeremy Rosner, former special advisor to Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright; Robert Boorstin, a former advisor to Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin; and Steven Rosenthal, a leftwing union leader who served the Clinton White House as an advisor on union affairs to Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, and Ellen Malcolm, founder and president of the pro-abortion lobby Emily’s List, also attended the meeting, as did such prominent Democrat donors as auto insurance mogul Peter B. Lewis; founder and CEO of RealNetworks  Rob Glaser; Taco Bell heir Rob McKay; and Benson & Hedges tobacco heirs Lewis and Dorothy Cullman.

 

Months earlier, Soros had hired two political analysts to probe Bush’s defenses. They were Tom Novick, a lobbyist for the Western States Center – a group of radical environmentalists in Oregon – and Democrat media strategist Mark Steitz, president of TSD Communications in Washington DC, whose clients have included the Democratic  National Committee and the Clinton presidential campaigns of 1992 and 1996. Jeanne Cummings of The Wall Street Journal reports that both Novick and Steitz were present at the Southampton meeting, to brief the team in person.

 

Working independently, the two analysts had reached similar conclusions. Both agreed that Bush could be beaten. Voter turnout was the key. The analysts proposed massive get-out-the-vote  drives among likely Democrat voters in seventeen “swing” or “battleground” states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington.

 

“By morning,” reports Cummings, “the outlines of a new organization began to emerge, and Mr. Soros pledged $10 million to get it started.”  The name of that organization was America Coming Together (ACT) – a grassroots activist group designed to coordinate the Shadow Party’s get-out-the-vote drive. ACT would dispatch thousands of activists – some paid, some volunteers – to knock on doors and work phone banks, combining the manpower of leftwing unions, environmentalists, abortion-rights activists and minority race warriors from civil rights organizations.

 

ACT was not exactly new. A group of Democrat activists had been trying for months to get it off the ground. But, until George Soros stepped in, ACT had languished for lack of donors. Laura Blumenfeld of The Washington Post describes the scene at the July 17 meeting at Soros’ beach house: “Standing on the back deck, the evening sun angling into their eyes, Soros took aside Steve Rosenthal, CEO of the liberal activist group America Coming Together (ACT), and Ellen Malcolm, its president. … Soros told them he would give ACT $10 million. …Before  coffee the next morning, his friend Peter Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corp., had pledged $10 million to ACT. Rob Glaser,  founder and CEO of RealNetworks, promised $2 million. Rob McKay, president of the McKay Family Foundation, gave $1 million and benefactors Lewis and Dorothy Cullman committed $500,000. Soros  also promised up to $3 million to Podesta's new think tank, the Center for American Progress,” which would function as the policy brains of the new network.[18]

 

The Shadow Party had been born. Three weeks later, on August 8, The New York Times announced the official roll-out of America Coming Together (ACT), describing it as a political action committee led by Ellen Malcolm and Steven Rosenthal.

 

Soros next summoned California software developer Wes Boyd to meet him in New York on September 17. Boyd was best known among computer users for his “Flying Toasters” screen saver. The political world knew him as founder of the radical Web site MoveOn.org, the Internet force behind Howard Dean’s anti-war presidential campaign. Boyd had launched the Web site during the Clinton

impeachment trial in 1998, offering a petition to censure the President and “move on” to more important matters. Hundreds of thousands of readers responded, and Boyd quickly began milking his growing membership for political contributions. His Web site raised millions for Democrat candidates in three national elections – two mid-terms and one presidential race. When they met in New York, Soros offered Boyd a deal. He and his associate Peter Lewis would donate $1 to MoveOn.org for every $2 Boyd could raise from his members, up to $5 million total from Soros and Lewis combined. Boyd accepted.[19]

 

By November 2003, the Shadow Party was ready to go public. As Cummings notes in the Wall Street Journal, Soros calculated that the best way to launch his network would be to issue a public statement, calling attention to the record-breaking  contributions he had pledged to the Shadow Party. Such an announcement would “stimulate other giving” from Democrat donors still sitting on the fence, Soros thought.[20]

 

He chose The Washington Post to carry his message.  Soros sat down with reporter Laura Blumenfeld and issued his now-famous call for regime  change in the USA. “America  under Bush is a danger to the world,” Soros declared in that November 11, 2003

interview. Toppling Bush, he said, “is the central focus of my life… a matter of life and death. And I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.” Would Soros spend his entire $7-billion fortune to defeat Bush, Blumenfeld asked? “If someone guaranteed it,” Soros replied.

 

                                                            To be continued.

 

 

 

David Horowitz is the author of Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left. 

 

Richard Poe’s latest book is Hillary’s Secret War: The Clinton Conspiracy to Muzzle Internet Journalists (WND Books 2004). 


NOTES



TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: New York; US: Oregon
KEYWORDS: abortion; act; albright; answer; beachhouse; bensonhedges; bigtobacco; boorstin; bush; cap; carlpope; clinton; cullman; dnc; dorothycullman; ellenmalcolm; emilyslist; envirowackoes; glaser; halperin; jeremyrosner; johnpodesta; lewis; madelinealbright; malcolm; marksteitz; mccainfeingold; mckay; mortonhalperin; novick; opensociety; oregon; peterblewis; peterlewis; podesta; pope; realnetworks; reich; richardpoe; robertboorstin; robertreich; robertrubin; robglaser; robmckay; rosenthal; rosner; rubin; shadowgov; shadowparty; sierraclub; soros; southamptonmeeting; steitz; stevenrosenthal; susanrice; tacobell; tobacco; tomnovick; tsdcommunications; union; unions; wsc
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-95 next last
To: dennisw; Grampa Dave
From the thread's initial article:

To the extent that the Shadow Party can be said to have an official launch date, July 17, 2003 probably fits the bill.[10] On that day, a team of political strategists, wealthy donors, leftwing labor leaders and other Democrat activists gathered at Soros’ Southampton beach house on Long Island. Aside from Soros, the most noteworthy attendee was Morton H. Halperin. Soros had hired Halperin in February 2002, to head the Washington office of his tax-exempt Open Society Institute – part of Soros’ global network of Open Society institutes and foundations located in more than 50 countries around the world. Given Halperin’s history, the appointment revealed much about Soros’ political goals.

Now from Fedora's finding:

Mr. Speaker, President Clinton has made a very ill-advised decision to nominate Morton Halperin to be Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy and Peacekeeping. A review of Mr. Halperin's record clearly displays that he is not one of the President's `New Democrats.' Indeed, Mr. Halperin is a typical new leftist, meaning, a far-left type. . .I thank the Speaker for the time and would like to insert a few pages of quotes from Mr. Halperin for the Record. `The Soviet Union apparently never even contemplated the overt use of military force against Western Europe * * *. The Soviet posture toward Western Europe has been, and continues to be, a defensive and deterrent one. . .'. . .Halperin favorably reviewed Philip Agee's book Inside the Company: CIA Diary saying that in it `we learn in devastating detail what is done in the name of the United States.' The review made no mention of the fact that the book contained some thirty pages of names of U.S. covert operatives overseas or that the author acknowledges in his preface the help he received from the Cuban Communist Party. Halperin concluded the review by pronouncing: `The only way to stop all of this is to dissolve the CIA covert career service and to bar the CIA from at least developing any allied nations.' . .In response to government attempts to close down the Washington offices of the PLO: `It is clearly a violation of the rights of free speech and association to bar American citizens from acting as agents seeking to advance the political ideology of any organization, even if that organization is based abroad. Notwithstanding criminal acts in which the PLO may have been involved, a ban on advocacy of all components of the PLO's efforts will not withstand constitutional scrutiny.' (The Nation, October 10, 1987)

41 posted on 10/06/2004 12:04:38 PM PDT by piasa (Attitude Adjustments Offered Here Free of Charge)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: Homo_homini_lupus

Here's some fascinating reading.


42 posted on 10/06/2004 12:04:46 PM PDT by Buggman (Your failure to be informed does not make me a kook.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: piasa

Thanks for the clarification on Pitt: if I've got it correct, he wrote the article on the meeting but wasn't at the meeting himself.


43 posted on 10/06/2004 12:08:00 PM PDT by Fedora
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies]

To: Fedora

yep


44 posted on 10/06/2004 12:50:22 PM PDT by piasa (Attitude Adjustments Offered Here Free of Charge)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies]

To: Fedora; Shermy
From your link:

"In opposition to draft legislation setting heavy criminal penalties for Americans who deliberately identify undercover U.S. intelligence agents: `[Such legislation] will chill public debate on important intelligence issues and is unconstitutional." --- Morton Halperin, UPI, 1981

I wonder how Halperin feels about the "outing" of Valerie Plame?

45 posted on 10/06/2004 12:55:35 PM PDT by piasa (Attitude Adjustments Offered Here Free of Charge)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies]

To: Fedora; Alamo-Girl
From your link:

Halperin's prospective responsibilities would include oversight of drug policy in the Pentagon including the U.S. military's activities in the area of drug surveillance and interdiction operations.

I can see why Clinton and Soros would want Halperin in this job.

Alamo-Girl, do you have any info on Halperin?

46 posted on 10/06/2004 1:01:37 PM PDT by piasa (Attitude Adjustments Offered Here Free of Charge)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: Travis McGee; Squantos; Howlin; MinuteGal; christie; Southack
`All of the genuine security needs of the United States can be met by a simple rule which permits us to intervene [only] when invited to do so by a foreign government * * *. The principle of proportion would require that American intervention be no greater than the intervention by other outside powers in the local conflict. We should not assume that once we intervene we are free to commit whatever destruction is necessary in order to secure our objectives.' ----- Morton Halperin, (The Nation, June 9, 1979, p. 670)

`The United States should explicitly surrender the right to intervene unilaterally in the internal affairs of other countries by overt military means or by covert operations. Such self restraint would bar interventions like those in Grenada and Panama, unless the United States first gained the explicit consent of the international community acting through the Security Council or a regional organization. The United States would, however, retain the right granted under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter to act unilaterally if necessary to meet threats to international peace and security involving aggression across borders (such as those in Kuwait and in Bosnia-Herzegovina.)---- Morton Halperin (`Guaranteeing Democracy, Summer 1993 Foreign Policy, p. 120)

This guy's right up Kerry's Frenchlike derrier.

47 posted on 10/06/2004 1:06:52 PM PDT by piasa (Attitude Adjustments Offered Here Free of Charge)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: kattracks
For his part, Soros wrote a column for the Washington Post claiming that he doesn’t seek any political influence for himself. In fact, Soros has always been very close to the Democratic Party. His top aide is former Clinton State Department and ACLU official Morton Halperin, who gained notoriety for testifying on behalf of Philip Agee, a defector from the CIA during the Cold War who now lives in Cuba.---"DADDY WEEDBUCKS MAKES BID FOR WHITE HOUSE : Loopholes," by Cliff Kinkaid, AIM report, jan 26, 2004
48 posted on 10/06/2004 1:20:16 PM PDT by piasa (Attitude Adjustments Offered Here Free of Charge)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MeekOneGOP

fyi


49 posted on 10/06/2004 1:49:51 PM PDT by piasa (Attitude Adjustments Offered Here Free of Charge)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies]

To: piasa; Shermy

"I wonder how Halperin feels about the "outing" of Valerie Plame?"

I actually heard either Joe Wilson or Ray McGovern (I forget which but I believe it was one of them) try to bring Agee up as a way of attacking Bush. Their argument was to the effect that if Bush was upset about Agee exposing undercover agents, he should be equally upset about Plame's exposure. The point you raise could be seen as the converse of that argument: how can they can complain about Plame if they defend Agee? Of course it could also be argued that there are some significant differences between the Agee and Plame cases, among which would be that we don't know who outed Plame, whereas Agee brazenly did what he did.


50 posted on 10/06/2004 1:51:34 PM PDT by Fedora
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 45 | View Replies]

To: piasa
One aspect of Halperin is his close ties to Anthony Lake:

Security Risk for CIA: Plumbing the depths of Anthony Lake's dubious past

Inasmuch as his appointment as Bill Clinton's National Security Adviser did not require Senate approval, Anthony Lake was spared the bruising confirmation hearings that deep-sixed his fellow New Left comrade, Morton Halperin, in Halperin's 1993 quest to claim an Assistant Secretary of Defense post. Halperin's radical, subversive record proved too odious for what was then an even more liberal Senate than we have today. Which means there's hope for stopping Lake's potentially disastrous appointment.

[SNIP]

Any serious, credible confirmation hearings will have to rise above the farcical focus on jaywalking and littering and demand answers to the real questions at the heart of this nomination, such as:

• What was Anthony Lake's role in the infamous Pentagon Papers heist which so seriously damaged America's security?

• What was, and is, the extent of Lake's involvement with militant Marxist activists of the subversive nexus at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and Fund For Peace (FFP)?

• What was, and is, the full story on Lake's activities with the radical one-worlders and Establishment Marxists at Alger Hiss' old haunt, the Carnegie Endowment?

• What is Lake's relationship with IPS extremist Morton Halperin, and why did they cochair a radical conference panel for the anti-American, pro-Soviet Center for National Security Studies (CNSS)?

• What was Lake's connection to Orlando Letelier, the notorious Chilean agent of the Soviet KGB and Cuban DGI in Washington?

• Why would Lake, who has spent his entire career associating with those who are attacking and undermining America's security, want to head our nation's premier intelligence agency, and why would any U.S. senator who takes his oath of office seriously even contemplate for a moment confirming such a nominee to head the CIA?

[SNIP]

Then there is the matter of Anthony Lake's relationship with the Center for National Security Studies (CNSS), one of many groups which have spun off from the Institute for Policy Studies. On September 13, 1974, Lake and Morton Halperin cochaired a panel on "Covert Operations and Decision Making" at the CNSS' first conference on national security. This confab brought together a full rogues' gallery of the most militant leftists who had been attacking the FBI, CIA, local police, and all internal security measures for years. Halperin went on to lead the CNSS' sustained assault on federal, state, and local police and intelligence organizations tasked with legitimate internal security responsibilities. It is thanks to the success of these subversive efforts that America is now so vulnerable to terrorist attacks and is facing repressive police-state measures to deal with these threats.

Lake's longtime IPS/CNSS comrade Morton Halperin was also thickly involved for many years with infamous CIA traitor Philip Agee. It was Halperin who flew to London to testify in Agee's behalf when he was being deported as a security risk. And it was Halperin who wrote an apologia in the Washington Post defending the actions of Agee and his rabidly pro-communist publication, CounterSpy, after they had contributed to the assassination of Richard Welch by revealing the Athens CIA bureau chief's identity and home address. Working with Agee at his Soviet- and Cuban-backed Organizing Committee for a Fifth Estate were other prominent confreres of Lake's IPS/CNSS fellowship, including Robert Borosage, Nicole Szulc, and Victor Marchetti. Marchetti, another "defector" from the CIA to the Marxist IPS agenda, was also a cochair of an anti-intelligence panel at the same September 1974 CNSS "Covert Operations" conference mentioned above that featured Lake and Halperin. It was this aspect of Halperin's vita which provided the main evidence to scotch his confirmation to the Defense post. Shouldn't these same troubling connections be a major bone of contention in considering the suitability of an aspirant to the highest intelligence post in the land?

51 posted on 10/06/2004 1:58:42 PM PDT by Fedora
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 46 | View Replies]

To: piasa


The Soros Threat

The Capitalist Threat
(1997 article by Soros)

SOROS SNACKING ON SIDE DISHES
(Soros the Adulterer)

FR Search for Keyword Soros

FR Search for Keyword George Soros


52 posted on 10/06/2004 2:01:55 PM PDT by MeekOneGOP (Become a monthly donor on FR. No amount is too small and monthly giving is the way to go !)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 49 | View Replies]

To: Howlin
Don't forget that Al Gore's daughter, Karenna is married to Dr. Drew Schiff who works for George Soros. And George Soros' oldest son, Robert Soros, who is deputy chairman of his father's Quantum Group of investment funds, is married to Drew Schiff's sister Melissa Schiff Soros.

Incest.
53 posted on 10/06/2004 2:14:47 PM PDT by kcvl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: piasa
Thanks for the ping. Interesting (translated: threatening) stuff.

Leni

54 posted on 10/06/2004 3:36:53 PM PDT by MinuteGal
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies]

To: MinuteGal

Bump BUMP

The get out the vote that Soro's is financing could make many Freepers very unhappy November 3.

Imagine Kerry has won and ask yourself. "What more could I have done?"

Once you have the answer; DO IT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


55 posted on 10/06/2004 5:45:50 PM PDT by listenhillary (We are defending the peace by taking the fight to the enemy.GWB)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 54 | View Replies]

To: listenhillary

Months earlier, Soros had hired two political analysts to probe Bush’s defenses. They were Tom Novick, a lobbyist for the Western States Center – a group of radical environmentalists in Oregon – and Democrat media strategist Mark Steitz, president of TSD Communications in Washington DC, whose clients have included the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton presidential campaigns of 1992 and 1996. Jeanne Cummings of The Wall Street Journal reports that both Novick and Steitz were present at the Southampton meeting, to brief the team in person.



Working independently, the two analysts had reached similar conclusions. Both agreed that Bush could be beaten. Voter turnout was the key. The analysts proposed massive get-out-the-vote drives among likely Democrat voters in seventeen “swing” or “battleground” states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington.


56 posted on 10/06/2004 5:47:35 PM PDT by listenhillary (We are defending the peace by taking the fight to the enemy.GWB)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 55 | View Replies]

To: kattracks

BTTT


57 posted on 10/06/2004 5:57:31 PM PDT by Fiddlstix (This Tagline for sale. (Presented by TagLines R US))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Fiddlstix

Must read bump


58 posted on 10/06/2004 6:00:47 PM PDT by listenhillary (We are defending the peace by taking the fight to the enemy.GWB)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 57 | View Replies]

To: MEG33

Soros is a communist. He should be dealt with... like the CIA used to deal with south american communists.


59 posted on 10/06/2004 6:09:36 PM PDT by Rightwing Conspiratr1 (Lock-n-load!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Rightwing Conspiratr1

Bump again


60 posted on 10/06/2004 6:19:41 PM PDT by listenhillary (We are defending the peace by taking the fight to the enemy.GWB)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 59 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-95 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson