A Man Without a Country

I attended Northwest High School in Indianapolis, Indiana, also known as Naptown, the biggest small town in the world. A couple of decades earlier, as it happens, Kurt Vonnegut went to Shortridge High School in Indianapolis.

Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse Five and numerous other works, once promised not to write another book. Fortunately, he went back on his word and wrote A Man Without a Country, a splendid little volume (143 pages) filled with more wisdom than most books manage at twice the length.

A Man Without a Country isn’t about any one subject. But if it was, that subject would be the qualities of men from what Vonnegut calls the freshwater states, gathered around the Great Lakes as a defense against the coastal conceits of New York and California. Self-taught men like Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln, and a locomotive fireman from Terre Haute, Indiana, named Eugene Victor Debs.

And then there was Powers Hapgood, also from Indianapolis. Hapgood graduated from Harvard and became a coal miner, urging the men to organize. He was testifying in court on a labor dispute one day when the judge asked him:

“Mr. Hapgood, here you are, you’re a graduate of Harvard. Why would anyone with your advantages choose to live as you have?” Hapgood answered the judge: “Why, because of the Sermon on the Mount, sir.”

On Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville, Vonnegut has this to say:

Want a taste of that great book? He says, and he said it 169 years ago, that in no country other than ours has love of money taken a stronger hold on the affections of men. Okay?

According to Vonnegut, Christianity and socialism “prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.”

About Stalin’s shuttered churches, and those in China today: Such suppression of religion was supposedly justified by Karl Marx’s statement that “religion is the opium of the people.” Marx said that back in 1844, when opium and opium derivatives were the only effective painkillers anyone could take. Marx himself had taken them. He was grateful for the temporary relief they had given him. He was simply noticing, and surely not condemning, the fact that religion could also be comforting to those in economic or social distress. It was a casual truism, not a dictum.

When Marx wrote those words, by the way, we hadn’t even freed our slaves yet. Who do you imagine was more pleasing in the eyes of a merciful God back then, Karl Marx or the United States of America?

Vonnegut fought in World War II against that shining example of Christianity, Adolph Hitler. Vonnegut was captured, imprisoned near Dresden, and somehow survived the fire-bombing which killed 135,000 people. Indeed, he was forced to help bury the dead.

Looking at life today, he sees that we are hated and feared around the globe. We dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of race or religion, but because of their social class. He sees a society run by well-heeled C-students who don’t know history and can only guess what science is about. He sees the O’Reilly Factor and The New York Times declaiming on the weapons of mass destruction we were certain to uncover in Iraq. “So I am a man without a country,” he writes, “except for the librarians and a Chicago paper called In These Times.”

I, too, am a man without a country, except for librarians and progressives and freshwater men like Lincoln and Debs and Kurt Vonnegut.

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A Short Course in Evil

Senator John McCain was a younger man once, and he fought in Vietnam. He was captured and tortured; he experienced pain. In the course of debate last year over his bill prohibiting torture, McCain said that if he was faced with being physically or psychologically tortured, he would rather be beaten.

Sleep deprivation can make a victim susceptible to confusion and manipulation. (Alleged assassin James Ray was coerced with sleep deprivation, and it didn’t produce a single mark on his body.) Physical torture may prompt a victim to speak, but it may also stimulate resistance and an urge for revenge. He might lie just to make you stop. Drugs may scramble the brain and render communication meaningless. If you really want to break a man to pieces, you must attack his mind and soul. Psychological torture leaves wounds that don’t heal.

What follows is a summary of the work of Professor Alfred McCoy, the author of A Question of Torture: C.I.A. Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror. He was interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, 2/17/2006.

ALFRED McCOY: Well, if you look at the most famous of photographs from Abu Ghraib, of the Iraqi standing on the box, arms extended with a hood over his head and the fake electrical wires from his arms, okay? In that photograph you can see the entire 50-year history of C.I.A. torture. It's very simple. He's hooded for sensory disorientation, and his arms are extended for self-inflicted pain. And those are the two very simple fundamental C.I.A. techniques, developed at enormous cost.

…Dr. Donald O. Hebb of McGill University, a brilliant psychologist, had a contract from the Canadian Defense Research Board, which was a partner with the C.I.A. in this research, and he found that he could induce a state of psychosis in an individual within 48 hours. It didn't take electroshock, truth serum, beating or pain. All he did was have student volunteers sit in a cubicle with goggles, gloves and headphones — earmuffs — so that they were cut off from their senses, and within 48 hours, denied sensory stimulation, they would suffer, first hallucinations, then ultimately breakdown.

…And if you look at many of those photographs, what do they show? They show people with bags over their heads. If you look at the photographs of the Guantanamo detainees even today, they look exactly like those student volunteers in Dr. Hebb’s original cubicle.

Now, then the second major breakthrough that the C.I.A. had came here in New York City at Cornell University Medical Center, where two eminent neurologists under contract from the C.I.A. studied Soviet K.G.B. torture techniques; and they found that the most effective K.G.B. technique was self-inflicted pain. You simply make somebody stand for a day or two. And as they stand — okay, you’re not beating them, they have no resentment — you tell them, “You’re doing this to yourself. Cooperate with us, and you can sit down.” And so, as they stand, what happens is the fluids flow down to the legs, the legs swell, lesions form, they erupt, they separate, hallucinations start, the kidneys shut down.

…[S]everal of those photos you just showed, one of them with a man with a bag on his head, his arms are straight in front of him, people are standing with their arms extended, that’s self-inflicted pain. And the combination of those two techniques — sensory disorientation and self-inflicted pain — is the basis of the C.I.A.’s technique.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote about the many forms of physical torture employed in the Soviet prison system; but the purpose of such cruelty usually had little to do with acquiring real information, since the victims were going to be convicted no matter what they said. Torture was employed to make the victims implicate others and sign confessions — or to amuse the interrogators.

Torture twists the perpetrator as well as the victim. Specialist Charles Graner is now in prison because of his actions at abu Ghraib. But before the torture scandal erupted, when he was confronted by a colleague, Graner explained, “The Christian in me says it’s wrong, but the corrections officer [in me] says, ‘I love to make a grown man piss on himself.’”

Torture techniques were refined at Guantanamo with the addition of psychologists who would participate in interrogations and identify the fears and phobias of individual prisoners. Something very like that was described by George Orwell in his great, dystopian novel 1984. The protagonist, Winston Smith, had a fear of rats. He was finally broken when his head was confined in a small cage and his tormentor was about to release a rat into the cage.

When most people imagine torture, they envision fingernails ripped out, electrodes attached to genitals, or good old-fashioned beatings. They don’t really know how fine the line is between sanity and madness; they can’t conceive of prisoners so bent and crushed that they will inflict more pain on themselves than their captors will. But that happened at abu Ghraib. A newly disclosed video shows a victim confined in a canvas bag chained to a wall. His head alone is free as he rocks back and forth, smashing his forehead against the wall.

McCOY: Look, at the start of the war on terror, the Bush administration ordered torture. President Bush said right on September 11, 2001, when he addressed the nation, “I don't care what the international lawyers say. We’re going to kick some ass.” Those were his words, and then it was up to his legal advisors in the White House and the Justice Department to translate his otherwise unlawful orders into legal directives…

They dithered with the definition of “severe” pain, deciding that severe meant “just short of death.” They insisted that torture was bound up with the intent of the perpetrator. If the torturer is seeking information, then he is not committing torture. They inserted a provision in the McCain anti-torture legislation permitting a long-discredited line of defense — if the torturer believes he is following a lawful order, he is not culpable. He’s just following orders.

Finally, in an amendment to the McCain bill, the administration declared that for the purposes of the act, Guantanamo is not part of the United States.

And that, dear reader, is how evil becomes law in a “democracy.” McCain’s bill to prohibit torture became a law to protect torturers. George Bush, Junior can declare anyone a suspect. The suspect can be held indefinitely without charges at a military facility outside the country. We can do anything we want to him. The suspect can be tried by a secret, military court and summarily executed.

You say that doesn’t sound right? Why do you hate America so much?

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Strange Notions from Disturbed Individuals

After two invasions, we are occupying Iraq. The current administration has taken the position that in time of war, certain presidential decisions are unreviewable by Congress or the courts. Two new judges sit on the Supreme Court. The drive to privatize Social Security has stalled temporarily, but its proponents understand that individual battles do not a war make.

General Dwight David Eisenhower, the Allied Commander in the Atlantic Theater in World War II, certainly knew that. He was later elected President, and he probably still knew that.

On the left side of the accompanying photo, Arthur Eisenhower is holding Roy. On the right side, Edgar is standing behind Dwight. In later years, Dwight corresponded with Edgar; and they discussed many issues. Below are excerpts from a letter to Edgar dated November 8, 1954. For some reason, it sounds disturbingly familiar today. What is the system of checks and balances in government? What are the powers and responsibilities of government in a democracy?

Dear Ed,

I think that such answer as I can give to your letter of November first will be arranged in reverse order — at least I shall comment first on your final paragraph.

You keep harping on the Constitution; I should like to point out that the meaning of the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is. Consequently no powers are exercised by the Federal government except where such exercise is approved by the Supreme Court (lawyers) of the land…

Now it is true that I believe this country is following a dangerous trend when it permits too great a degree of centralization of governmental functions. I oppose this — in some instances the fight is a rather desperate one. But to attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything — even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

…A year ago last January we were in imminent danger of losing Iran, and sixty percent of the known oil reserves of the world. You may have forgotten this. Lots of people have. But there has been no greater threat that has in recent years overhung the free world.

…You also talk about "bad political advice" I am getting. I always assumed that lawyers attempted accuracy in their statements. How do you know that I am getting any political advice?…[W]hy don’t you just assume I am stupid, trying to wreck the nation, and leave our Constitution in tatters?

That’s quite a letter, isn’t it? Dwight still held quaint beliefs that the people play some role in a democracy and the Supreme Court decides the constitutionality of laws. What was he thinking? Recent events have convincingly demonstrated that if you simply keep controversial activities out of the legal system entirely, courts cannot review them!

Besides, Republicans don’t believe in Eisenhower anymore. His Farewell Address to the nation warned of the growing military-industrial complex; in early drafts of the speech, he called it the military-industrial-Congressional complex — a formulation which more directly pointed at federal corruption. But right-wing historian Paul Johnson, the author of Modern Times, declared the complex “largely mythic.” And even if it wasn’t mythic, it evidently didn’t prevail since, as President Ronald Reagan explained:

You have to remember, we don’t have the military industrial complex that we once had, when President Eisenhower spoke about it. (1/5/1983)

Which leads me to Theodor Seuss Geisel. In the 1920s and 30s, he produced advertising artwork for Ford, General Electric, N.B.C., and other companies. Then he began drawing editorial cartoons — hundreds of them. In World War II, he worked on propaganda for the Army, which found animated movies to be an effective means of indoctrinating enlisted men.

Yes, Dr. Seuss wrote childrens’s books — Horton Hears a Who (an allegory about occupied Japan) and Yertle the Turtle (about Hitler). He also penned The Cat in the Hat (freedom and responsibility) and The Lorax (protecting the environment). Geisel was a complex man. Along with buck-toothed images of slanty-eyed Japs squinting through thick glasses, he created cartoons against racism and anti-Semitism. And in 1942, he drew this:

Reactionaries in Congress swinging a wrecking ball at the social structure of America? Ridiculous, isn’t it?

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Uigher Update

Last August, I wrote about the plight of two Chinese Muslims, Abu Bakker Qassim and A'del Abdu Al-Hakim. ("Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Justice," 8/27/2005):

In 2001, they fled China and set out for Turkey in hopes of finding work. Then came 9/11. They were in Pakistan when the U.S. attacked Afghanistan. We had a bounty on “terrorists” — $5000 a head. Someone in Pakistan saw $10,000 of easy money, tipped off the U.S.; and we bought them in January of 2002.

In early 2005, without the benefit of counsel, they stood trial in a military court and were found innocent. Nevertheless, they remain captives.

The U.S. will not send them to China, where they would face discrimination at best and quite possibly incarceration. But we won’t set them free, either. We won’t let them live in the civilian community at Guantanamo, and we won’t let them live in the United States. The reason is clear enough. Out of prison, they will be free to talk about what happened in prison, and that we will not permit.

After I wrote about Qassim and Al-Hakim, I learned that there are at least five Uighers at Guantanamo; and it appeared that all of them are completely innocent. By other accounts, there are between 15 to 22 Chinese Muslims jailed at Guantanamo.

On February 16, 2006, the A.B.C. evening news belatedly aired a report about the Uighers at Guantanamo. The story confirmed that five are being held and that when two of them “had a chance to defend themselves,” they were acquited. A.B.C. did not mention that their “chance to defend themselves” was a secret trial or that their lawyer, Sabin Willet, only learned about it after it was over.

To its credit, the network noted U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson’s opinion that the Uighers’s indefinite confinement is unlawful, as well as his finding that he does not have the power to release them. Unfortunately, A.B.C. did not include Willet’s assessment. “It's a bizarre conclusion,” he said, “to have a judge say the executive branch is acting illegally, but he can't do anything about it.”

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George Will Not

Hopelessly conservative pundit George Will wrote an editorial for the Washington Post titled “No Checks, Many Imbalances.” (2/16/2006, p. A27) In it, he pondered future Congressional authorizations of presidential military powers. If the Bush administration prevails with its doctrine of presidential powers, why would any future President bother to consult Congress? According to the neo-con view of the executive branch of government:

…whenever the nation is at war, the other two branches of government have a radically diminished pertinence to governance, and the president determines what that pertinence shall be.

George Will also questioned the position that the President is the only agent for the nation in foreign affairs:

That non sequitur is refuted by the Constitution’s plain language, which empowers Congress to ratify treaties, declare war, fund and regulate military forces, and make laws "necessary and proper" for the execution of all presidential powers. Those powers do not include deciding that a law — FISA, for example — is somehow exempted from the presidential duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” (Emphasis in the original)

And then, Will threw his argument away. Rather than have Congress assert its Constitutional powers, rather than have Congress perform its constitutional responsibility to declare war, rather than have the executive faithfully execute the laws of the land, Congress should revise the laws to accommodate George Bush, Junior:

with language that does not stigmatize what he has been doing, but that implicitly refutes the doctrine that the authorization is superfluous.

Implicitly refutes? Why not explicitly? And what does he mean when he speaks of “language that does not stigmatize” prior felonies? George Will will not get it; he refuses to get it. The checks and balances of our system can only be defended through application, not abdication.

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Spreading Democracy

Kenneth Starr is accused of sending fake letters on behalf of a client, Michael Morales, to governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Morales is scheduled to be executed for the rape and murder of a teen-age girl 25 years ago. The letters, ostensibly from five jurors in the case, requested clemency for Morales. According to a spokesman for the California Attorney General, the jurors all denied writing the letters or talking to the defense investigator who supposedly secured their signatures. Kenneth Starr, the prosecutor in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, is the dean of the Pepperdine School of Law.


Tony Blair has promised an investigation of British soldiers who were caught on video beating four Iraqi youths. (Three are shown in the sequence above. The fourth was brought in moments later, and several more soldiers joined in the fun.) It is impossible to determine with any precision the ages of the victims; but they are clearly much shorter than their captors, suggesting that they are fairly young. One soldier wearing a helmet butted heads with a victim; another soldier apparently kneed the boy in the face. Four or five soldiers set upon him in earnest. All the boys were beaten with clubs. One of them was kicked in the groin while he was held face down on the ground by two men who were punching him.

The video apparently was made by a corporal who was cheering the soldiers on. “Oh, yes! Oh, yes! You’re gonna get it! Yes, naughty little boys! (Laughter)” The boys can be heard crying, “No, no, please.” The cameraman mocks them, saying “Oh, please, don’t hurt me.”

The video is available at crooksandliars.com for February 12, 2006. It is not a beautiful thing to see.

In a related story, 60 new photos have been released documenting the abuse of prisoners at abu Ghraib. Although similar to pictures already available, the new photos reveal graphic images of sexual humiliation and torture along with new incidents of murder. The pictures are available through World News Australia, but they have not yet been shown by American media outlets. Link Link



The final lesson in democracy comes from Palm Beach, Florida. In recent county elections, right-wing media mouth Ann Coulter voted in the wrong precinct — and not by accident. In fact, she gave a false address when she registered to vote in 2005 and signed the registration form certifying that the information she provided was true.

It is a felony to vote knowingly in the wrong precinct. Falsifying a voter registration form can result in a fine of up to $5000 and a maximum jail sentence of five years.

It’s going to be hard for her to blame this on President Clinton, but I’m confident she’ll find a way.

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Who Teaches Hate?

I collect or write far more pieces than I disseminate. Here are two items from the archives.

• Proponents of neo-con policy in the middle east often talk about schools in the region where children are taught jihad and hatred of foreigners. That was certainly the case in Afghanistan, where schoolchildren studied militant Islamic teachings in texts illustrated with pictures of tanks, guns, and bullets.

The United States knew about those books because the United States produced those books. To stir resistance to Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the U.S. covertly supplied textbooks filled with violent images. The Washington Post published the details four years ago.

The Washington Post account reminded me of coloring books in the early 1970s. The F.B.I. was cracking down on the Black Panthers, and one complaint against the Panthers concerned coloring books which contained violent images of blacks killing policemen — evidence of the Panthers’s contempt for law and order.

In fact, the coloring book idea came from Panther Mark Teemer and was rejected by the Panther leadership. However, the F.B.I. acquired the book and was quite interested. The Bureau added drawings, changed some captions, and mailed copies of the “Black Panther Coloring Book” all around the country to discredit the Panthers.


• Obviously, the U.S. had a good reason to invade Iraq twice. Saddam Hussein was a beast who gassed his own people at Halabja in 1988. Who could doubt it?

Well, the Defense Intelligence Agency doubted it. Stephen C. Pelletiere was a C.I.A. political analyst on Iraq during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War. (“A War Crime or an Act of War?”, The New York Times, 1/31/2003) According to Pelletiere, the D.I.A. concluded that Iranians gassed the Kurds at Halabja in the course of a battle to capture the Darbandikhan dam. Pelletiere noted that:

Before the Persian Gulf war, Iraq had built an impressive system of dams and river control projects, the largest being the Darbandikhan dam in the Kurdish area. And it was this dam the Iranians were aiming to take control of when they seized Halabja. In the 1990’s there was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change.

Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades — not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water. Even if America didn't occupy the country, once Mr. Hussein’s Baath Party is driven from power, many lucrative opportunities would open up for American companies.

Professor Pelletiere spoke at Saint Bonaventure University on January 29, 2003. Video excerpts from that lecture are available at The Information Clearing House — Part One and Part Two. His discussion of Halabja is in part two.

You can also read Amy Goodman’s interview with John Stauber (co-author of Weapons of Mass Deception) and Stephen Pelletiere.

Stephen Pelletiere is obviously misguided. Why, only yesterday, I received a coloring book in the mail from Iran which clearly shows Iraqi forces gassing Kurds. I used purple for the gas to heighten the dramatic effect.

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The Enabling Acts

The country was torn by political divisions; a dramatic attack on the capitol itself just six days before the elections raised tensions and fears. The President received emergency powers to protect the nation, including the power to suspend civil liberties and habeas corpus; but the government required additional tools for the fight. A new law granted temporary legislative powers to the executive branch. Able to rule by decree, Chancellor Adolf Hitler finally had the authority necessary to save the homeland.

On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building, the seat of German government, was destroyed by arson. The fire was portrayed as the beginning of a communist revolution. With the fate of the nation at stake, the Enabling Act “to remedy the distress of the people” came to a vote. The Act was a model of concision, less that 250 words long (in English) and complete with a “sunset” provision. Hitler spoke in favor of the measure, promising to use the powers of his position only for vital issues and emphasizing the Christian nature of the German culture. The Act passed by a vote of 441 to 84. Only the Social Democrats voted against it, and they wouldn’t be around much longer anyway.

Of course, no one could have foreseen that the ongoing threats facing Germany would compel two formal extensions of the Act. By then, Hitler’s opponents had been eliminated; and the legislature was a vestigial organ of government. Thus, it was with uncanny prescience that Joseph Goebbels wrote after passage of the Enabling Act:

“The authority of the Führer has now been wholly established. Votes are no longer taken. The Führer decides. All this is going much faster than we had dared to hope.”

In a 1934 speech, Rudolph Hess explained his support for Hitler by declaring that the Führer was “the instrument of the will of a higher power.”

While it is comforting to know that Hitler took power legally and expeditiously, that’s not what I wanted to write about. I had in mind an entirely unrelated topic, a 2001 memo on presidential powers written by then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo.

After analyzing the text of the Constitution and the history of relevant cases, Yoo concluded that:

the President has the plenary constitutional power to take such military actions as he deems necessary and appropriate to respond to the terrorist attacks upon the United States on September 11, 2001…

Military actions need not be limited to those individuals, groups, or states that participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon…

Furthermore, neither the War Powers Resolution nor the Joint Resolution:

can place any limits on the President’s determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response. These decisions, under our Constitution, are for the President alone to make. (Emphasis added.)

In a footnote, Yoo observed that in exercising his military powers:

the President’s decisions are for him alone and are unreviewable.

There it is in a nutshell. This argument, in one form or another, underpins the neo-conservative view of the unitary executive. With no limits on the President’s determinations of the threat or methods of response, and no review possible by Congress or the courts, what can he not do? Jail people indefinitely? Have them tortured? Order searches without warrants? Can he force people into slavery?

And if the war drags on as promised, what will the next Presidents do? On February 2, Donald Rumsfeld delivered a speech before the National Press Club titled “The Long War” in which he explained that the so-called war on terror could last decades. If there are no limits on presidential powers in time of war, and the war goes on indefinitely, isn’t the President effectively a dictator?

Alas, it seems I have digressed again. I actually intended to write about a psychology paper by Florette Cohen and Daniel M. Ogilvie of Rutgers University; Sheldon Solomon of Skidmore College; Jeff Greenberg of the University of Arizona; and Tom Pyszczynski of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

The paper is titled “American Roulette: The Effect of Reminders of Death on Support for George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential Election.” Commenting on the impact of the bin Laden video which appeared shortly before the 2004 elections, the authors noted that:

From a terror management perspective, the United States’ electorate was exposed to a wide-ranging multidimensional mortality salience induction.

In other words, the voters were reminded that they could be killed. Dick Cheney reiterated the message, implying that his re-election was a critical factor in preventing future terrorist attacks. The authors wrote that:

Allegiance to charismatic leaders may be one particularly effective mode of terror management. In Escape from Freedom, Eric Fromm (1941) proposed that loyalty to charismatic leaders results from a defensive need to feel a part of a larger whole, and surrendering one’s freedom to a larger-than-life leader can serve as a source of self-worth and meaning in life. Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death, 1973) posited that when mainstream worldviews are not serving people’s need for psychological security, concerns about mortality impel people to devote their psychological resources to following charismatic leaders who bolster their self-worth by making them feel that they are valued participants in a great mission to heroically triumph over evil.

Well, that’s exactly what left-wing academics would say, isn’t it? And in any case, another video from Osama bin Laden has been released, promising more attacks. Elections are coming. That should be uppermost in my mind; but for some reason, I’ve been thinking about the Constitution Restoration Act. It would forbid federal court review of certain cases decided by an element of government’s acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law.

The idea of criminalizing judicial review is brilliant; and I have no doubt Bush, Jr. would sign the Act if it passed. But it still requires legislators willing to vote for it — courageous men who will dismantle the antiquated system of checks and balances created by our paranoid founders. And we need judges prepared to uphold the Act, at least initially, or submit to it as the case may be — judges with a strong view of broad executive authority. That’s why I sat down to write about neo-con notions of a permanent Republican majority. It’s probably possible with electronic voting machines, but why would they wish such a thing?

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Coretta

News accounts have paid tribute to Coretta King and her husband, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. On matters of great importance, however, modern American media have an irritating way of saying very little at great length. You can digest the details in the newspapers and on tv; but the photos were cropped long ago and the most important passages were deleted.

The first U.S. military intelligence files on the King family were opened in 1917. Spy operations were initiated against black social organizations and especially against black churches, which were viewed as prime sources of information about the black community. Three generations of the King family produced ministers who served the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. It was inevitable that they would fall under scrutiny.

In 1917, the government was concerned that the Huns would turn our colored people against us in World War I — a notion that reeks of white guilt and the suppressed recognition that the black community harbored legitimate grievances. Domestic spying continued in World War II because the Japanese might have roused our negroes. And during the Vietnam War, of course, we faced the danger of communists stirring up our blacks. When you ponder the issue of warrantless domestic surveillance today, remember that there are black Muslims; and they are very high on the list of those who must be watched.

The military intelligence file on Martin Luther King, Jr. was opened in 1947, when he was eighteen. He was considered a curiousity rather than a threat until 1957, when he attended the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. He was watched ever more closely after that. When Dr. King was in New York, he was monitored by 108th Military Intelligence Group, in Los Angeles by the 115th, in Washington by the 116th, in Europe by the 66th, and so on. When he visited Memphis in March and April of 1968, his hotel room was bugged by the 902nd M.I.G. Civil rights organizations in Memphis were infiltrated by the 111th M.I.G. In April of 1968, there were at least three military operations underway in and around Memphis, Tennessee.

On April 4th, 1968 — one year to the day after his first major speech against the war in Vietnam — a joint operation involving the Memphis police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the United States Army killed Dr. King.


A “lone assassin” named James Ray was duly convicted and the cover-up went into high gear. In a memo dated March 11, 1969, F.B.I. Assistant Director Cartha DeLoach wrote:

… I would like to suggest that the Director allow us to choose a friendly, capable author, or the Reader’s Digest, and proceed with a book based on this case.

A carefully written factual book would do much to preserve the true history of this case. While it will not dispel or put down future rumors, it would certainly help to have a book of this nature on college and high school library shelves so that the future would be protected.*

The F.B.I. launched a smear campaign to defame Dr. King and marginalize critics of the investigation, starting with Coretta. DeLoach suggested a friendly media contact should be told that Coretta King and Ralph Abernathy were “plotting” to garner media attention and “keep the money coming in to Mrs. King” by claiming a conspiracy was behind the assassination.

For a quarter of a century, details of the killing steadily emerged, only to be downplayed or ignored. Then, in December of 1993, on Prime Time with Sam Donaldson, Loyd Jowers confessed his role in the murder of Dr. King.

Jowers was a former policeman turned restauranteur. He once owned Jim’s Grill, on South Main Street in Memphis. The back door of Jim’s Grill opened onto a vacant lot overlooking the Lorraine Motel where King was shot. Jowers said he was paid $100,000 for his help by Memphis businessman Frank Camille Liberto. Jowers alleged the involvment of James Barger, his former partner on the force, and officer Earl Clark, a long-time friend of Jowers. Jowers also alleged the participation of Marrell McCullough, from the 111th M.I.G., working as an undercover Memphis policeman. You’ve already seen a picture of McCullough and you didn’t even know it. He’s on Andrew Young’s left in the photo above.

Although Jowers had confessed to a capital offense for which there is no statute of limitations, he was not questioned by Memphis authorities or the F.B.I. Why generate a record? Jowers was old and ill. All they had to do was wait.

But there was still Coretta King.

The King family declared that James Ray was innocent, and Coretta King asked President Clinton for a new, open inquiry into the death of her husband — a Truth Commission, modeled on the reconciliation process adopted in South Africa to heal the wounds of apartheid. Instead, the Justice Department conducted a narrow inquiry that answered no questions and attacked critics. “Shut up,” the Department explained. In some quarters, Coretta King was characterized as a pathetic figure who had fallen under the spell of conspiracy theorists. On the 30th anniversary of the assassination, The New York Times claimed falsely that Ray had admitted firing the shot which killed King. The paper bemoaned the doubtful “fact” that:

A certain awkwardness attends this year’s commemoration. The King family, which remained in Atlanta for services there, has embraced Mr. Ray’s claim of innocence and his contention that he was, at most, an unwitting tool of a conspiracy that authorities have either failed to uncover or refused to unmask… (Steve Barnes, “Young and Old, of Varied Colors, Honor Dr. King,” The New York Times, 4/5/1998)

Who would find the King family’s position awkward?

The King family filed a civil suit against Jowers, seeking $100 in damages. On December 8, 1999, Jowers was found guilty. The New York Times reported the verdict on December 9, on page A23, next to the weather and the national classified ads. The story concluded with a broad slap at the King family, the judge, the attorneys, and the jury by quoting author Gerald Posner**:

It distresses me greatly that the legal system was used in such a callous and farcical manner in Memphis. If the King family wanted a rubber stamp of their own view of the facts, they got it.

On December 10, the Times ran a second article with more psycho-babble from Posner. People “want to embrace the sweeping conspiracy theory” because “it matches the stature of the man and somehow gives even more meaning and power to his death.”

James Ray died in prison on April 23, 1998. Loyd Jowers died on May 20, 2000.

Coretta King died on January 31, 2006. Sadly, it is a measure of her importance that in the years to come, she will be intermittently and respectfully ridiculed when the subject of her husband’s murder arises.


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* The Bureau selected Gerold Frank, who wrote An American Death — the King assassination equivalent of the Warren Report on the murder of John Kennedy.
** Posner wrote Killing the Dream — the King assassination equivalent of the House Select Committee’s 1979 report on the murder of John Kennedy.