Then President Bill Clinton was not going to appoint Attorney General Janet Reno to another 4 year term, Reno responded...
Morris: "You must understand what was Timothy McVeigh's motivation, God knows what's going on in that crazy head of his but there is some speculation, and he himself had said. that it was the reaction of the Waco takeover and Bill Clinton orchestrated that takeover and in fact was so ashamed of what he did in Waco that he not gonna appoint Janet Reno to a second 4 year term and she told him in a meeting right before the inauguration day for his new term, that if you don't appoint me, I'm gonna tell the truth about Waco and that forced Clinton's hand in reappointing her"
Hannity: "I don't remember you telling this story before"
Morris: "No, it's never been said before. I think that President Clinton might want to examine his own connection with the Oklahoma City bombing in terms of Waco, before he starts accusing people in walkers and wheelchairs who are trying to keep their medicare of being provocateurs"
Hannity: "Wait a minute, so what was the truth about Waco that Reno threatened to use against him?
Morris: "I have no idea, but I know that he told me, Clinton told me that I couldn't not appoint Reno because she would have turned on me over Waco".
Bill Clinton’s highly publicized linking of the Tea Party movement to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing
It looks like somebody is going to have to update the Waco Siege page on Wikipedia. Apparently the whitewashed history that former President Bill Clinton would like us to believe regarding the 1993 federal assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, is missing important details regarding his own personal involvement.
In response to Bill Clinton’s highly publicized linking of the Tea Party movement to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing in an op-ed piece for the New York Times, former Clinton adviser Dick Morris disclosed on Monday that it was Clinton himself, and not Attorney General Janet Reno, as Americans have been led to believe for the past 17 years, who called the shots during the 1993 botched invasion that led to the death of seventy-six people.
Speaking on the Hannity program on the Fox News Network, Morris criticized Clinton for his Oklahoma City comments: “Let’s understand what was Timothy McVeigh’s motivation …he himself had said that it was the reaction to the Waco takeover. Bill Clinton orchestrated that takeover.”
Morris went on to say, “Clinton in fact was so ashamed about what he did in Waco that he was not going to appoint Janet Reno to a second four-year term. She told him in a meeting right before the inauguration day … ‘If you don’t appoint me I’m going to tell the truth about Waco.’ And that forced Clinton’s hand … It’s never been said (publicly) before.”
For years, Clinton has been criticized for his leadership of the federal government during the Waco crisis, but he has managed to escape personal responsibility for the tragedy. With Morris’s statements, it appears this may no longer be possible. It would seem that Clinton was far more intimately involved with the government response at Waco than previously reported.
While there may be a link between Clinton and the Oklahoma City bombing, I would hardly blame the actions of a psychopath on any one individual or political party.
However, for Clinton to associate such a horrible act of violence with freedom loving Americans, especially given the fact that he must be fully aware that it was his decisions that led to the Waco catastrophe which in turn inspired Timothy McVeigh, is remarkably shameless.
April 20th, 2010, 22:02
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Re: Dick Morris: Clinton Personally Orchestrated the 1993 Waco, Texas Tragedy
Former President Bill Clinton yesterday criticized conservatives who are “vilifying” government and its workers warning that such rhetoric could lead to a repetition of the horrific attack on the Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 that marred his presidency.
Apart from the absurdity of likening elderly Medicare recipients pushing walkers to the likes of Timothy McVeigh and the right wing militias, Clinton’s comments totally ignore the real history of Oklahoma City.
It was not anti-government rhetoric that inspired McVeigh to do his dastardly deed. According to the killer himself, it was the action of the federal government during the Waco raid that incited him to violence. That the attack on the Federal Office Building took place on the anniversary of the Waco raid underscores the connection.
Bill Clinton was far from blameless in the Waco attack. While he sought to shift the responsibility to Attorney General Janet Reno, acting as if he were merely a by-stander, subsequent histories make it clear that he was smarting from criticism that the failure of the feds to act and their continued toleration of the siege showed him to be too weak to be a good president. He would often complain about the unfairness of this coverage to me as he recounted the events leading up to the Waco raid.
The Obama strategy of vilifying the tea party protesters and trying to link them to the violence of Oklahoma City is cynical and ridiculous. The tea party protesters are, in many cases, decorated war veterans and can, in the main, only be described as patriots. That Obama needs to paint them as violence prone extremists who are fanning flames that could lead to Oklahoma City-style bombings is offensive and vile in the extreme.
Why is Obama waging such unprincipled war on the tea party people? Because, at last, the Republicans have come up with an activist base to counter the ravages of the likes of Acorn and Moveon.org. The GOP is coming up with a ground game and it scares the daylights out of the Democrats.
The Republican Party lost the elections of 2006 and 2008 on the ground. They were out-worked and out-hustled by their Democratic opponents. But Obama’s determined move toward socialism has energized the Republican base and brought them out into the streets. In walkers and wheelchairs, the elderly are protesting the one half trillion dollar cut in Medicare. Veterans are protesting the laxity in the war on terror. And businessmen are remonstrating against the tax and spend plans of the Obama Administration.
In our new book 2010: Take Back America – A Battle Plan, we lay out a plan for individual activism to help win Congress back. It is the energy and the impetus that flows from the tea party activists that makes such a strategy possible. The silent majority is no longer silent. To make them out to be subversive is ridiculous.
The plain fact is that to take back Congress, we will need to win about 40 House seats. That means that 10% of the seats will change hands. What are the other 90% of us to do? In our book, we urge those who live in districts that are not in play to “adopt a Democrat” to oppose and work to dislodge him from power. Send his opponent your checks and email your friends to focus on helping the Republican in the district.
The tea party is the army of reform, not of subversion. They are the defenders of our free market system and they deserve our respect, not the innuendo that Clinton is peddling.
April 20th, 2010, 22:05
vector7
Re: Dick Morris: Clinton Personally Orchestrated the 1993 Waco, Texas Tragedy
According to Linda Tripp it was Hillary and not Bill Clinton who directed the final assault on Waco.
During an interview in early February 2001 the former White House aide alleged that Hillary Clinton pressured the late Vincent Foster to resolve the Waco standoff. As a result more than eighty men, women and children were killed. Appearing on CNN’s “Larry King Live” Tripp suggested that Foster, at Mrs Clinton’s direction, transmitted the order to move on the Branch Davidian’s Waco compound, which culminated in a military style attack on the wooden building.
Her accusations lend weight to charges made previously by Special Forces expert and Waco investigator, Steve Barry. According to the former Special Forces member, Hillary set up a special “crises centre” in the White House to deal with Waco. Serving with her in the centre was Vincent Foster who, according to his widow was subsequently: “fuelled by horror at the carnage at Waco for which the White House had ultimately been responsible.”
Foster himself was found dead, from a gun-shot wound to the head, in a Virginia park three months later. Could he have known too much about Waco?
Journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard maintains that Foster had been “drafting a letter involving Waco” on the very day of his death. Moreover Evans-Pritchard says that Foster kept a Waco file in a locked cabinet that was off limits to everyone, including his secretary.
Prior to Waco, Foster was “dignified, decent, caring, smart” says Linda Tripp; in its aftermath though, she said: “…Vince was falling apart.”
She was with the former White House deputy counsel when the news about Waco broke on television. “A special bulletin came on showing the atrocity at Waco and the children. And his face, his whole body slumped, and his face turned white, and he was absolutely crushed – knowing the part he had played.”
“And he had played the part at Mrs Clinton direction,” said Tripp.
Moreover there was a marked contrast between Foster’s heartfelt emotion at the Waco tragedy and Hillary Clinton’s, Tripp insists: “Her reaction was heartless”.
Her accusations give further weight to allegations first levelled in the 1999 documentary on the deadly confrontation, “Waco: A New Revelation.” The film featured the account of former House Waco investigator T. March Bell. “One of the interesting things that happens in an investigation is that you get anonymous phone calls,” Bell explained in the film. “And we in fact received anonymous phone calls from Justice Department managers and attorneys who believe that pressure was placed on Janet Reno by Webb Hubbel, pressure that came from the first lady of the United States.”
Mrs Clinton grew more and more impatient as the Waco stand-off came to dominate the headlines during the early months of the Clinton administration, said Bell. It was she, according to Bell’s sources, who pressured a reluctant Janet Reno to act.
“Give me a reason not to do this,” Reno is said to have begged aides shortly before orders were issued for the final assault.
Sources include: The SPOTLIGHT Oct 30 1999 and NewsMax.com, Tripp: Hillary Directed Waco. Saturday, Feb. 10, 2001
April 20th, 2010, 22:07
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Re: Dick Morris: Clinton Personally Orchestrated the 1993 Waco, Texas Tragedy
Rush Limbaugh joined other right-wing media in promoting Fox News analyst Dick Morris' dubious claim that in 1997, President Clinton told Morris that Clinton had reappointed then-Attorney General Janet Reno because she threatened to "tell the truth about Waco."....
April 20th, 2010, 22:18
vector7
Re: Dick Morris: Clinton Personally Orchestrated the 1993 Waco, Texas Tragedy
Former President Bill Clinton on Friday said that “legitimate” comparisons can be drawn between today's grass-roots anger and resentment toward the government and the right-wing extremism that bubbled up prior to the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City 15 years ago.
Speaking on the anniversary of one of the most traumatic domestic events of his presidency during an event at the Center for American Progress, Clinton judged the “fever” of anti-government sentiment in the mid-1990s to be similar in some respects to the current political environment.
Making comparisons between the two times is “a legitimate thing to do, but I think it’s important to draw the contrast between what happened then and what’s happening to America,” Clinton said.
Like today, the former president pointed out, many Americans were out of work and trying to figure out “where they fit in.”
“Before the bombing occurred, there was a sort of fever,” Clinton recalled. “The fabric of American life had been unraveling. There was a lot of violence in our cities —– gang violence in particular.”
“The structure of the Cold War — the clear bipolar world — was coming to an end ... there was no bipolar world anymore, just a lot of fist fights around the world,” he continued. “There were more and more people having trouble figuring out where they fit nit ... it is true that we see some of that today.”
The current climate in Washington, Clinton warned, is building the same kind of anger that bubbled up prior to the Oklahoma City attack — though he firmly declared that the energy that built the tea party movement does not have to lead to violence.
“This tea party movement can be a healthy thing if they are making us justify every dollar of taxes we raise and every dollar of money we’ve spent,” he said. “But when you get mad, sometimes you end up producing the exact opposite result of what you say you are for.”
“What we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or that we should hold less passion for the positions we hold, but that our words really do matter. There is this vast echo chamber, and the words fall on the serious and delirious alike,” the former president warned. “Have at it. Go fight. Do whatever you want. You don’t have to be nice. But be careful with what you say and do not advocate violence.”
Clinton said the same kind of "disorientation" that riled Americans during his term is apparent today in "the idea that we ought to bring back Confederate month in Virginia without talking anything about slavery" and "the fact that you ought to be able to pack a six-gun into Starbucks and order a Cowboy Latte."
April 21st, 2010, 13:41
American Patriot
Re: Dick Morris: Clinton Personally Orchestrated the 1993 Waco, Texas Tragedy
Hate to say this, but you CAN pack a six-gun (or any other) into Starbucks....
February 6th, 2012, 06:45
Ryan Ruck
Re: Dick Morris: Clinton Personally Orchestrated the 1993 Waco, Texas Tragedy
I decided to put this here because this looks to be the most thorough Waco thread we've got here.
I'll be honest, I'm not the most studied on all things Waco but, I know the significance of the above. All of the stuff at that blog is very interesting.
February 6th, 2012, 14:10
American Patriot
Re: Dick Morris: Clinton Personally Orchestrated the 1993 Waco, Texas Tragedy
I skimmed through the site.
There has never been any doubt in my mind Waco was ordered by Clinton (or his wife) and I'm actually surprised the Texas Rangers have collected evidence against the FBI.
But - what is one state going to do against the whole Federal Government?
February 6th, 2012, 18:14
vector7
Re: Dick Morris: Clinton Personally Orchestrated the 1993 Waco, Texas Tragedy
The Muslim Brotherhood ties to the Carter, Clinton and Obama Administrations is troubling...
Eric Holder, current attorney general of the United States, managed an FBI operation that provided explosives to Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols just prior to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, according to official documents released during the ongoing investigation into government foreknowledge of the supposed terrorist attack.
According to the documentation provided in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought against the Department of Justice by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue, the Oklahoma City bombing had aspects of being an FBI sting operation that went out of control. Holder had authorized the FBI to provide explosives to Nichols and McVeigh, then lost track of both the explosives and their targets. McVeigh went on to detonate some of the explosives outside the federal building, an act that was designed to help anti-terrorism legislation pass Congress. But an additional case of explosives was unaccounted for.
After the bombing, when the FBI learned the location of the explosives, Holder reportedly sent emails to FBI agents ordering them to recover the explosives before they could be found by some other branch of the government. FBI agents failed to spot the additional, unexploded explosives during an initial search of Nichols’s home and offered to spare him the death penalty if he would help them recover them.
The case of explosives was, however, recovered by another law enforcement agency and was later determined to have the incriminating fingerprints of two FBI agents, as well as fingerprints of McVeigh and Nichols.
Shortly after the bombing, Kenneth Trentadue, a government informant, was murdered in his prison cell. His family has been pursuing legal action against the federal government ever since.
In 2001, in a bid to avoid a full release of documents, the Federal Bureau of Prisons paid a settlement of $1.1 million to several members of Trentadue’s family, but his brother refused to drop the investigation and filed a FOIA lawsuit for the missing documents. That suit has been ongoing in the Salt Lake City federal courthouse.
In 2005, just ahead of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recovered a box of Kinestik explosives from the home of Terry Nichols, the convicted co-conspirator of Tim McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing. An affidavit from Oklahoma City conspirator Nichols about the explosives should have sent out shockwaves when it was filed in November of 2007:
I was asked to . . . disclose the location of the box of explosives . . . that I had taken from Roger Moore’s home in Arkansas. This was the same box of explosives recently discovered at my Herington, Kan. home and seized by the FBI. McVeigh had used this Kinestik as a detonator for his bomb. McVeigh said that when Moore furnished the Kinestiks, Moore had told McVeigh that he knew McVeigh “would put them to good use.” I responded by telling Mr. Selby [Michael Selby, an attorney for the government—Ed.] that I could “give” him Roger Moore. Mr. Selby’s reaction to my offer, however, was not what I had expected. Mr. Selby essentially said “no deal.” Mr. Selby told me that Roger Moore was “untouchable.” Attached to that affidavit was a “302” (FBI witness statement) filed by Selby, who came to Nichols that day in the Florence, Colorado prison in 2005 on an “off the-books mission” authorized by the highest levels of the Department of Justice.
Moore was the Arkansas gun dealer and FBI informant who worked with Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) informant Andreas Strassmeier, the man widely believed to have originally given McVeigh the idea of bombing the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Both were handled by FBI agent Larry Potts, a senior FBI official who had allegedly personally ordered the murder of members of the Randy Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
Moore was being “run” by two FBI agents—known as Ross and Hayes—from the Hot Springs, Arkansas office. But the Elohim City operation was not a two-bit FBI sting; it was authorized by top Justice officials.
At the time of the bombing, our current United States Attorney General, Eric Holder, was managing FBI sting operations as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia —and sitting in line to take over as deputy attorney general, which he did in 1997. One of Holder’s first jobs was to cover up the FBI’s role in the bombing.
“I think they put together this harebrained idea . . . to lure in all these militia groups under the pretense of teaching them how to . . . attack the federal government, and I think they planned to catch them in the act,” stated Jesse Trentadue, a Salt Lake City attorney who has been investigating the OKC bombing through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
But the operation went terribly wrong when the explosives that the FBI authorized Moore to provide to McVeigh ended up being used in the actual bombing. The fingerprints of the two agents running the Elohim City operation were later found on the explosives discovered in 2005 at Nichols’s home.
“The Department of Justice, through the FBI and ATF informants, was involved in the Oklahoma City bombing,” said Trentadue.
After Holder’s appointment as deputy attorney general in 1997, he met directly with members of Congress, including Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and persuaded them not to look into the string of suspicious deaths of those in custody connected with the Oklahoma City investigation. At the time, Holder knew that the FBI had provided the explosives used by McVeigh. He also knew that the FBI had failed to locate the portion of the explosives that had not been used. The fact that Holder knew this in 1997, and that the FBI went searching specifically for the explosives in 1995, proves that the FBI knew that the explosives had been provided and also that an amount of them had not been used.
“When you look at these documents, that this was being monitored, this search for the box of explosives at the highest levels within the Department of Justice, right up to and including the White House I think, I mean, this wasn’t your local FBI office handling this,” said Trentadue. “This was being run right out of the Justice [Department] in Washington, D.C.”
Trentadue’s brother, Kenneth Michael Trentadue, was tortured to death in the Oklahoma City Transfer Center because he resembled a man named Richard Lee Guthrie, a bank robber believed to have assisted Moore, McVeigh and Nichols. Guthrie was murdered in his prison cell the day before he was scheduled to tell federal law enforcement officers of his role in the bombing, which was financed by a string of bank robberies that were conducted with the knowledge, assent and involvement of the FBI and the SPLC of the notorious Morris Dees. And a prison mate of Kenneth Trentadue, convicted serial killer Alden Baker, who gave a deposition stating he saw prison guards torture and murder Trentadue, similarly died just days before he was scheduled to testify.
“[There was] a wide-ranging and cynical scheme, run directly by Mr. Holder, to quash my family’s efforts to have my brother’s murder investigated,” said Trentadue. Court records indicate that scheme included murder of those who “knew too much.”
November 7th, 2016, 19:17
vector7
Re: Dick Morris: Clinton Personally Orchestrated the 1993 Waco, Texas Tragedy
Wesley Nemerovsky aka Wesley Kanne aka Wesley Clark
Biography In the late 1890's, Jacob Nemerovsky, the general's grandfather, fled Russia in fear for his life during one of the episodic pogroms against Jews, the Times also said. According to the family, Nemerovsky found safety in Switzerland where he obtained a false passport under the family name of Kanne, which he used to immigrate to the United States. In the 1890s Jacob Kanne, married Ida Goldman, another Russian Jewish immigrant in Chicago.
Wesley Kanne Clark was born in Chicago, Illinois on December 23, 1944.
After his graduation from West Point and before beginning his studies at Oxford University, Wesley married Gertrude Kingston of Brooklyn, New York.
He is a graduate of the National War College, Command and General Staff College, Armor Officer Advanced and Basic Courses, and Ranger and Airborne schools. General Clark was a White House Fellow in 1975-1976 and served as a Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
The military equipment and personnel used at Waco came from the US Army base at Ft. Hood,Texas, headquarters of III Corps.
General Wesley Clark was involved in the siege and final assault near Waco, Texas that killed, by a combination of toxic gas and fire, at least 82 people including some three dozen women, children and infants. Further, there is substantial circumstantial evidence that, Clark, in addition to acting as a tactical consultant, may, in fact, have been the prime architect and commander of the entire operation.
A former CIA officer told the Dallas Morning News that members of the Army's Delta Force were present at the Waco standoff. Military documents confirmed that three commandos observed the siege on the Branch Davidian compound...
Military Personnel and Equipment - Personnel Active Duty Personnel -
15 Texas National Guard Personnel
13 - Track vehicles Bradley fighting vehicle (OMZ) -
- 9 Combat Engineer Vehicle (M728)
- 5 Tank Retrieval vehicle (M88)
- 1 Abrams Tanks (M1A1) - 2
Clark tanks used in Waco siege
Democrat candidate's role in attack on Branch Davidians questioned
Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark wants to be president and, given that he is a man who has worn many hats during his controversial rise through the ranks, many believe this qualifies him for the top political job. But serious questions abound about his actions as commander of the 1st Cavalry Division of the Army’s III Corps at Fort Hood, Texas, in 1993.
Clark has worn the hat of first-in-his-class graduate of West Point, Rhodes scholar, decorated Vietnam combat veteran, White House fellow, four-star general and even Supreme Commander of NATO – a post from which he was relieved.
There is one hat, though, that despite lingering suspicions and accusations Clark neither has confirmed nor denied wearing – a hat that many Americans might find very disturbing for a military man seeking the top civilian post in the U.S. government without first registering with either political party or being so much as elected dog catcher.
In his recently published book, “Winning Modern Wars,” Clark proclaims that the “American way was not to rely on coercion and hard pressure but on persuasion and shared vision,” which has been taken by Democratic Party doves to explain why the retired general has been an outspoken critic of President George W. Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq. But while Clark may prefer a “kinder, gentler” persuasion in dealing with U.S. enemies abroad, critics are saying his actions at home should be reviewed before deciding whether he is qualified to be trusted with America’s civil liberties.
For example, there is the 1993 siege of David Koresh’s Mount Carmel commune in Waco, Texas, where four law-enforcement officers were killed and nearly 90 civilians – men, women and children – massacred by being shot and/or burned alive. Those seeking an investigation of his part in the Waco outrage say that Clark not only played a hidden role in the military-style assault on the Branch Davidians, but easily could have refused to participate in what was a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act that bars use of the U.S. military for civilian law-enforcement activities.
Although Clark has never publicly discussed his role in the attack on the Branch Davidians and did not respond to Insight’s requests for an interview to discuss his role at Waco, there are indisputable facts that confirm he had knowledge of the grim plans to bring the standoff to an end.
Between August 1992 and April 1994, Clark was commander of the 1st Cavalry Division of the Army’s III Corps at Fort Hood, Texas. According to a report by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the list of military personnel and equipment used at Waco included: 15 active-duty military personnel, 13 Texas National Guard personnel, nine Bradley fighting vehicles, five combat-engineer vehicles, one tank-retrieval vehicle and two M1A1 Abrams tanks. Additionally, Fort Hood reportedly was used for much of the training for the bloody attack on the Davidians and their children.
Based on the fact that military equipment from Fort Hood was used in the siege and that training was provided there, say critics, it is clear the commanding officer of the 1st Cavalry had direct knowledge of the attack and, more likely than not, was involved in the tactical planning.
West Point graduate Joseph Mehrten Jr. tells Insight, “Clark had to have knowledge about the plan because there is no way anyone could have gotten combat vehicles off that base without his OK. The M1A1 Abrams armor is classified ‘Secret,’ and maybe even ‘Top Secret,’ and if it was deployed as muscle for something like Waco there would have been National Firearms Act weapons issues. Each of these M1A1 Abrams vehicles is armed with a 125-millimeter cannon, a 50-caliber machine gun and two 30-caliber machine guns, which are all very heavily controlled items, requiring controls much like a chain of legal custody. It is of critical importance that such vehicles could not have been moved for use at Waco without Clark’s knowledge.”
“This is something that the general staff would know in the daily situation report or manning reports. Clark would have known and, given his obsession for micromanagement, there is probably someone who can place him on the scene. He wouldn’t have been able to resist going in. At the very least there is no way he didn’t have knowledge,” Mehrten continues.
So what if the general was aware that his military equipment was being used against American civilians, and so what if he even participated in the planning? Wasn’t he just following orders from above?
“To follow that order,” explains Mehrten, “is to follow a blatantly illegal order of a kind every West Point officer knows is a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. Clark’s obligation was to say, ‘No, I’m not going to do it.’ Look, Clark went to the same institution I did and at West Point we had extensive instruction in military ethics and issues concerning how one avoids obeying an illegal military order. It is drilled into our heads from the earliest days as cadets that the ‘I-was-just-following-orders’ defense isn’t necessarily a good one.”
He had the juice to say no, concludes Mehrten, “and he could have and should have. But if he had done so he probably wouldn’t have gotten his next star. There is a reason critics say this man was not recommended by the military for that fourth star but got it anyway because of political clout, just as there is a reason that Chief of Staff Hugh Shelton brought him home early from Europe because of ‘character and integrity issues.’ Sure the Bradley vehicle could have been operated by a civilian, but that’s unlikely. This military equipment is very specialized and would be virtually useless in the hands of untrained operators. But just using military equipment against civilians is running way afoul of Posse Comitatus. Legally, if he were involved in it and there were active-duty units where these armored vehicles came from, then it is a clear violation of the act. Clark’s command at the time, 1st Cavalry, is an active-duty federal division and it is my understanding that these vehicles used at Waco were from Fort Hood – his command.”
Tom Fitton, president of the Washington-based Judicial Watch, believes Clark has some questions to answer.
“The question for Clark,” explains Finton, “is a fair one in terms of corruption. Many Americans still are troubled by what occurred at Waco, and we’re very interested in his role. Many people are going to ask what are his views of the force [attorney general] Janet Reno used at Waco and they’ll want to know if he, were he to become president of the United States, would authorize that kind of force again. Specifically, was Gen. Clark comfortable allowing forces and equipment under his command to participate in a police raid or, at best, a hostage situation? People are going to want to know these things.”
Michael McNulty, an investigative journalist and Oscar nominee for his documentary, Waco: The Rules of Engagement, tells Insight that, “From the standpoint of what went on that operation had military fingerprints all over it. The chain of command being what it is, Clark had some responsibility, but to what degree we really don’t know.”
McNulty takes a deep breath and then says, “My military sources tell me that Clark and his second in command got the communication from then-governor of Texas Ann Richards, who wanted help with Waco. At that point Clark or [Gen. Peter J.] Schoomaker should have asked themselves, ‘Religious community? Civilians, they want our tanks?’ and hung up the phone. Clark had to be involved at the tactical level, he had to know what the tactical plan was and he’d have to approve it. No one has ever asked these questions of this man. Clark wasn’t even asked to testify before the congressional committee investigating the circumstances of Waco. For me the real question is one of character and, because of the cover-up that’s gone on with Waco, it could even be a question of criminality. From the get-go, when the assignment came down from III Corps, which is the primary Army unit at Fort Hood and his division, Wesley Clark had the opportunity to say ‘Hey, wait a minute folks, we’re not gonna give tanks and personnel to the FBI to use on civilians!'”
True, explains McNulty, “Clark didn’t do this in a vacuum. Whatever he did he at least is guilty of being a good German – following orders. He was in a position to put his foot down and say no. It was his men, his equipment and his command. Everything that happened at Waco, from the beginning, the U.S. military was involved – including the strategic and tactical planning that went on from Feb. 29 to April 19. Why weren’t the guys making the decisions debriefed and questioned by the committee? I would hope that Clark would answer these questions now, the sooner the better, because it appears that Waco is about to follow him into the political arena full force.”
This is what former President Bill Clinton, according to the New York Times, told a gathering of big campaign donors in Chappaqua in early September.
General Clark now says he will announce his candidacy for President near his home in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Wednesday, September 17. At his side, reports Fox News Channel, will be the co-chair of his campaign, former First Lady of Arkansas and the United States Hillary Clinton, although the Clark campaign now says they may have “misunderstood” the freshman senator from New York..
These “two stars” could become the 2004 Democratic “dream ticket,” if they can agree who should be on top and who on the bottom. Both were born in Illinois and moved to Arkansas, but their star-crossed paths would be very different.
Hillary Clinton began as a “Goldwater Girl” who at first followed her father’s Republican inclinations. The 1960s at Wellesley College and Yale Law School radicalized her. Hillary Rodham became an activist supporter of the Black Panthers, a law intern in the office of the attorneys for the Communist Party USA, and the young bride of an aspiring politician in the one-party Democratic State of Arkansas.
Wesley Clark was taken to Arkansas at age five after the death of his father. He would attend West Point, graduating first in his class in 1966. He then attended Oxford University in England as a Rhodes Scholar, like Bill Clinton. But where Clinton womanized and led anti-war demonstrations in Europe against the United States, Clark studied and earned a Masters Degree.
While America was rocked by anti-war and anti-military demonstrations during the 1960s, Clark served in Vietnam, where he was wounded in combat and earned both Bronze and Silver Stars. His military career bridges 34 years, including service as commander of all U.S. forces in Latin America and NATO Europe, as well as command of the Serbia-Kosovo conflict.
In keeping with the apolitical traditions of our military, Clark, 58, did not decide he was, or register as, a member of the Democratic Party until August 2003.
But analysts calculate that the moment he announces his candidacy, Clark will rank among the top five out of 10 prominent Democrats seeking the Presidency. A Southerner, he will vault past Senators such as Bob Graham of Florida and John Edwards of North Carolina, both of whom will thus see their hopes of being the traditional Southern “ticket-balancers” for northern candidates dashed.
If Clark enters the race, a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll found, he would likely immediately peel off two points from the 15 percent of Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO), two points from the 13 of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, one point from the 12 of Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and three points from the 11 percent support of Senator John Forbes Kerry (D-MA), the one other Democrat running as a decorated Vietnam War veteran. This would deflate more than a quarter of Kerry’s support, dealing what could be a fatal blow to his flagging campaign. Clark would enter the race with nine percent support.
“I’ve got some heavy artillery that can come in. I’ve got good logistics, and I’ve got strategic mobility,” said Clark to Newsweek Magazine, using metaphors sure to appeal to antiwar peacenik Democrats.
In fact he does appear to be supported by much of the Clintons’ political war machine. Among those flocking to his campaign are Clinton veteran gutter fighters Mark Fabiani, Bruce Lindsey, Bill Oldaker, Vanessa Weaver, George Bruno, Skip Rutherford, Peter Knight, Ron Klain and perhaps even former Clinton deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes, among others.
The Clintons’ sock puppet installed by them to head the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe, had already ordered an extra podium for General Clark for the scheduled September 25 New York City debate among Democratic presidential aspirants.
In addition to Hillary as his campaign co-chair, the General’s Draft Clark for President 2004 organization reportedly already has 166 professional coordinators in all 50 states.
The Clinton “orchestration” behind Clark’s campaign is so apparent that commentators are already speculating whether General Clark is running for himself – or as a stalking horse for Hillary and/or as a puppet for Bill. Is all this being arranged to knock down rivals and clear the way for a Clinton-Clark “C-C Rider” ticket in 2004?
The Achilles Heel for Democrats has been their widely-perceived weakness on national defense and national security issues. President Bill Clinton tried to remedy this with strange military interventions, from Haiti to Kosovo. (He likewise tried to remedy the Democrats’ perceived soft-on-crime image with his symbolic “100,000 cops” campaign and support for the death penalty.)
Having a General Wesley Clark on the 2004 ticket to cover Democratic shortcomings could help conceal this weakness. Indeed, hardcore Lefties such as Michael Moore become almost orgasmic when they envision a debate between General Clark and Texas Air National Guard veteran President George W. Bush. “I know,” writes Moore, “who the winner is going to be.”
But those like Moore might be going off half-cocked with such enthusiasm for a host of reasons.
As this column documented almost three weeks ago, General Wesley Clark “is a very peculiar man with facets to his personality, behavior and history that will seem creepy and frightening to people of both the Right and Left. To know him is not to love him.”
While commanding NATO troops in defense of Muslim Kosovo and against Serbian Christians, for example, the hot-headed Clark commanded a subordinate British General to attack Russian troops that had landed without NATO permission at the airport in Kosovo’s capital. (Clark speaks fluent Russian but chose not even to talk with the Russian troops before attacking them.)
The British General Sir Mike Jackson reportedly refused Clark’s risky orders, saying: “I’m not going to start the Third World War for you!”
Others who interviewed Gen. Clark in Kosovo were shocked by his casual talk about how he would launch military strikes against Hungary if it tried to send fuel to the Christian Serbians, or against Russian ships if they entered the war zone.
Gen. Clark in the Balkans also pursued policies that increased civilian casualties, such as deliberate bombing from high altitude and his policy to cut off fuel, food and energy from the civilians of Belgrade in wintertime. Clark also cozied up to at least one man accused of war crimes and ethnic cleansing, Bosnian commander Ratko Mladic.
“How,” investigative reporter Robert Novak quotes one diplomat as saying of Wesley Clark, “could they let a man with such a lack of judgment be (Supreme Allied Commander of Europe)?”
Do antiwar, peace-activist supporters of Howard Dean really want this kind of twitchy-fingered militarist hot-head a heartbeat away from the nuclear button? Would they really want a Commander-in-Chief Wesley Clark?
Clark’s incompetence, disregard for human life, dishonesty and criticism of Clinton policies cost him his command. President Clinton and Defense Secretary William Cohen removed Clark months ahead of schedule.
But this did not alter the special bond between Clark and the Clintons that began in 1993, and that is evident today in their effort to control his presidential campaign.
What the national media are not telling you, of course, is that General Clark’s ascent to military four-stardom was itself a political act orchestrated by the Clintons.
This might have been motivated by gratitude, an emotion the Clintons scarcely ever feel for those of their servants they routinely betray. More likely it was satisfaction to find a high-ranking military man who would serve them with more loyalty than he showed to his oath or to the Constitution or to the military that the Clintons loathe (and that in turn loathes them).
This was, after all, the Clinton era, in which officers in U.S. Marines commando training were given mysterious questionnaires asking if they would obey a command to shoot American citizens who disobeyed a law that required them to disarm. By a similar method, Communist China selected the elite troops who could be trusted to gun down 1989 student protestors at Tiananmen Square.
In 1993 Wesley Clark, after a solid-but-not-stellar military career, was commanding the 1st Cavalry Division at a sweaty 339-square-mile base in Texas called Fort Hood. On a late winter day his office got a call from Democratic Texas Governor Ann Richards (later defeated and replaced by George W. Bush).
The Governor had an urgent matter to discuss. Crazies about 40 miles north of Fort Hood in Waco, Texas, had killed Federal agents, she said. If newly sworn-in President Bill Clinton signed a waiver setting aside the Posse Commitatus Act, which generally prohibits our military from using its arms against American citizens inside our borders, could Fort Hood supply tanks, men, and equipment to deal with the wackos at Waco?
Wesley Clark’s command at Fort Hood “lent” 17 pieces of armor and 15 active service personnel under his command to the Waco Branch Davidian operation. Whether Clark himself helped direct the assault on the Davidian church using this military force at Waco has not been documented, but it certainly came from his command with his approval.
Eighty-two men, women, children and babies – including two babies “fire aborted” as their mothers’ bodies writhed in the flames of that Clinton holocaust – died from the attack using military equipment from Clark’s command.
“Planning for this final assault involved a meeting between Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno and two military officers,” this column reported, “who developed the tactical plan used but who have never been identified. Some evidence and analysis suggests that Wesley Clark was one of these two who devised what happened at Waco.”
“Clark is more Clinton than Eisenhower,” writes Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard. His career advanced via politics, not the battlefield.
After Waco, Clark in April 1994 was promoted to Director of Strategic Plans and Policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, which meant he could see and consult with the Clintons easily. Soon thereafter he was promoted to Commander of all U.S. Latin American Forces, and a year thereafter to the ultimate title of SACEUR, commander of all the NATO forces in Europe, a position Clark would hold until he retired in May 2000.
Even Clark’s vaunted fourth star as a general was unearned, according to Robert Novak. It was twice rejected as undeserved by Pentagon brass, but then was awarded by his patron Bill Clinton after Clark begged the President for it.
“Clark,” wrote Novak, “is the perfect model of a 1990s political four-star general.” The Clintons love him. The troops he has commanded, by contrast, call him the “Ultimate Perfumed Prince.”
But his promotion to a four-star general, and now to a Presidential candidate, must have involved more than Clark’s slavish obedience to the Clintons and their agenda, and more than his background as a fellow Little Rocker Arkansan. The Clintons, as their use of private detectives and secret police attests, like to use people they can blackmail – people over whom they hold some dark secret as a threat.
Perhaps General Wesley Clark was more intimately and directly involved in the deaths at Waco than anybody has reported. Perhaps he has some other secret shame or disgrace. For whatever reason, the Clintons seem confident that they have him under their complete control.
This megalomaniacal, manipulative couple would not be advancing the candidacy of General Wesley Clark unless they were sure that they control him – and that his candidacy will serve their own selfish interests.
Having read this column, please take a moment to re-read my August 25 previous investigation into General Wesley Clark. Can you imagine any decent American, right-wing or left-wing, voting for such a person?
Wesley Clark: General Issues
By: Lowell Ponte Monday, August 25, 2003
General Wesley Clark....An unacceptable candidate to conservatives -- or to liberals who know his shocking past.
PONTEFICATIONS
"THE GUY MUST HAVE A BEDROOM AT CNN,” my wife would joke. It seemed true, because at every hour of the day or night during the Iraq War, retired General Wesley K. Clark could be seen on the Cable News Network as a “military expert” criticizing the Bush Administration.
A quick victory in Iraq “was not going to happen,” he told viewers on March 25, shortly before the quickest blitzkrieg victory of its size in military history occurred. But his words doubtless brought comfort to the fans of a network slanted so far to the Left that the most asked question about its name is whether the “C” in CNN stands for Clinton, Castro or Communist News Network.
Expected to announce this week whether he will seek the Democratic Party’s 2004 Presidential nomination (most likely to position himself for its Vice Presidential slot), Clark disgusted the veteran host of CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Report.”
Dobbs banished Clark from his show because, as Mark Mazzetti and Paul Bedard of U.S. News & World Report reported, “the former NATO boss seemed to push his own political agenda rather than provide the straight military skinny.”
CNN nowadays is owned by AOL-Time-Warner, an entity that has already manufactured at least one President. An obscure Southerner whose wealth and land were handed down from slave-owning ancestors, Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter was boosted to national stature by not one or two but FOUR cover stories in Time Magazine.
By beaming General Clark’s face into America’s psyche 24 hours a day like a never-ending Clark infomercial, this media conglomerate’s CNN arm clearly aimed to make the 58-year-old boy raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, its next liberal puppet in the White House.
With Clark’s announcement days away, CNN has toned down its propaganda effort. (Or perhaps CNN has been reminded that when General Clark commanded NATO forces during the Kosovo conflict, he reportedly targeted the CNN bureau in Belgrade.)
“It’s interesting that a man who is not even a registered Democrat is being drafted by voters of a Democratic Party which already has nine candidates, including five sitting Senators and a former governor,” a Republican Party official told the London Telegraph. “What does that say about the desperation of the Democrats, even at this early stage?”
What it means, General Clark told the Telegraph, is that Democrats “have an enormous hunger for leadership. I think the Draft Clark movement is evidence that this hunger is still out there, despite the number of candidates in the race.” The purportedly-independent “Draft Clark” campaign has already raised $550,000 for its non-candidate.
What this political party – generally perceived as weak on national security issues and patriotism in the midst of our War on Terrorism – desperately needs is a fig leaf to conceal its shortcomings.
The Democratic Party has not seriously courted a General for its ticket since 1952, when World War II Supreme Allied Commander Dwight David Eisenhower chose instead to seek the White House as a Republican. (General Colin Powell was already a Republican and had denied any Oval Office aspirations by the time Democrats hinted that he might be considered for a place on their national ticket.)
But would the inclusion of General Clark be enough to create a winning Democratic ticket in 2004? No, not if the American people learn who and what Wesley Clark really is.
Clark is a very peculiar man with facets to his personality, behavior and history that will seem creepy and frightening to people of both the Right and the Left. To know him is not to love him.
So here’s an introduction to what you need to know about General Wesley K. Clark.
Born December 23, 1944, he spent most of his childhood in Little Rock, raised by his mother Veneta and stepfather Victor Clark. Only during his twenties, he says, did Wesley discover that the father who died suddenly of a heart attack at age 51 when he was five was Jewish – and that his own middle name Kanne was that of his father Benjamin Jacob Kanne.
[Another Democratic Presidential hopeful, Roman Catholic Sen. John Forbes Kerry of Massachusetts, recently told voters that his ancestry was not Irish, as voters had been misled to believe, but was Jewish. Including Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D.-Conn.), Democrats thus could field three ancestrally “Jewish” candidates for President.]
(Wesley’s grandfather’s name had been Jacob Nemerovsky when he fled from Russian pogroms in the 1890s to Switzerland, where he obtained a false passport with the family name Kanne with which he immigrated to the United States.)
General Wesley Clark speaks fluent Russian and could become the first American President to do so. Why he has not boasted of this in campaigning for Leftist Democratic support is a mystery.
His father Benjamin was an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney in Chicago, a Fourth Ward candidate for office, and a local Democratic activist. After his death, Wesley’s mother and her son – like Hillary Clinton – moved from Illinois to Arkansas.
Wesley was raised a Southern Baptist, not a Jew, after that move. But after graduating first in his class from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1966 and studies in England, Wesley commanded a mechanized infantry company in Vietnam, was wounded four times but was awarded one Purple Heart, and won the Silver Star and two Bronze Stars. While in Vietnam he converted to Roman Catholicism.
Like Bill Clinton, Wesley was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. While Clinton spent his time in sexual dalliances (and one alleged rape) and leading anti-American demonstrations in Europe and visiting the Kremlin in the dead of winter by special invitation, Clark was more studious. In August 1968 he emerged with a Master’s Degree in philosophy, politics and economics.
The Rhodes Scholarships had been set up by British imperialist Cecil Rhodes to educate the brightest American youngsters in England, a once-secret codicil in his will made clear, so that they would go home and help bring America back under the political sway of the British Empire.
Wesley Clark’s career in the U.S. military was solid but not stellar. It included a variety of backwater assignments as well as one high point, White House Fellow 1975-76.
But an unexpected bolt from the blue suddenly ignited Clark’s life, turning mediocrity into a skyrocket ride that could yet land him in the Oval Office. He was named Commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, III Corps, at sweltering Fort Hood southwest of Waco, Texas.
On a late winter day in 1993, Texas Governor Ann Richards suddenly called the base, later meeting with Clark’s Number Two to discuss an urgent matter. Crazies at a Waco compound had killed Federal agents. If newly-sworn-in President Bill Clinton signed a waiver setting aside the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits the military from using its arms against American citizens within our borders, could Fort Hood supply tanks and other equipment?
Clinton did. Wesley Clark’s command at Fort Hood “lent” 17 pieces of armor and 15 active service personnel under his command to the Waco Branch Davidian operation. It is absolute fact that the military equipment used by the government at Waco came from Fort Hood and Clark’s command.
The only issue debated by experts is whether Clark was at Waco in person to help direct the assault against the church compound in a scene remarkably similar to the incineration of villagers in a church by the British in Mel Gibson’s movie “The Patriot.”
What happened at Waco was the death, mostly by fire, of at least 82 men, women and children, including two babies who died after being “fire aborted” from the dying bodies of their pregnant mothers.
Planning for this final assault involved a meeting between Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno and two military officers who developed the tactical plan used but who have never been identified.
Some evidence and analysis suggests that Wesley Clark was one of these two who devised what happened at Waco.
As Leftist journalists Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair noted, the ruthless tactics and attitude on display at Waco are strikingly similar to those Clark has used on other battlefields in his career.
Odd, isn’t it, that the Leftist establishment press has told you nothing about the connection between General Wesley Clark and Waco – or what happened to him immediately after the service he rendered the Clintons at Waco?
Immediately after Waco, Wesley Clark’s flat career began an incredible meteoric rise.
In April 1994 he was promoted to Director of Strategic Plans and Policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In June 1996 Clark was named Commander in Chief of the U.S. Southern Command in Panama and put in charge of most U.S. forces in all of Latin America and the Caribbean.
In June 1997 President Clinton appointed him Commander in Chief of the United States European Command and SACEUR, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, in command of the forces of NATO, a position Clark would hold until May 2000.
As SACEUR General Wesley Clark would collect a truckload of honors. He would also prosecute Clinton’s war siding with Muslim Kosovars against Serbian Christians in the Balkans.
This war was largely fought from high altitude aircraft to minimize American casualties, an approach that increased civilian casualties on the ground. Clark soon acquired a reputation as someone who lied about such casualties, lies reported even by Time Magazine.
Democrats who support Howard Dean or Dennis Kucinich for their anti-war stance should know that when Russians landed and took over one provincial airport in the region, General Clark commanded British forces to attack the Russians. British General Sir Mike Jackson reportedly refused, saying: “I’m not going to start the Third World War for you!”
Would peacenik Democrats really want General Wesley Clark, with a reputation for brutal and erratic behavior, one of those behind the events at Waco, to be only a heartbeat away from having his finger on the nuclear button? If he were Vice President, how safe would a liberal President be from attacks by fanatic former combat veterans? Can you take the risk of electing General Clark as your Vice President?
And then there is the underside of the Clark family with its faint whiff of disreputability. His son Wesley Clark, Jr., exaggerated his Hollywood credentials (he apparently worked briefly with Danny DeVito’s production company) to get a lucrative contract from the Bosnian government to make an epic film about the siege of Sarajevo.
Much money was funneled into Wesley, Jr.’s, bank account for that film, but little of quality was produced. The situation apparently never quite crossed the line into clear illegality – like former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s son admitting that he drove the getaway car in a burglary. But the Bosnian government at the very least got badly shortchanged by Clark’s misrepresentation. Like father, like son?
“Known by those who’ve served with him as the ‘Ultimate Perfumed Prince,’” writes veteran military combat soldier and journalist Col. David Hackworth about Gen. Wesley Clark, “he’s far more comfortable in a drawing room discussing political theories than hunkering down in the trenches where bullets fly and soldiers die.”
Clark’s nickname among soldiers under his command reportedly was “the Supreme Being.” And that was when Clark was only a general or even lower-ranking officer. What would he expect us to call him if he became Commander-in-Chief?
If he announces his formal candidacy this week, we should all begin reading Wesley Clark’s 2001 book Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat. America should get ready for many more Wacos, many more lies, and megatons of megalomania – all of this fully endorsed and praised by Bill and Hillary Clinton, the power patrons who made General Wesley Clark what he is today.
Perhaps even CNN soon will start calling itself the Clark News Network.
