In retrospect, Hitler’s worst strategic debacle that ultimately cost the Nazi Germany World War II was invading Russia before crushing the British peril following the precipitous rout of the French military at the beginning of the war in June 1940. The only reason the megalomaniac Fuhrer didn’t initially commit enough military resources into crossing the English Channel and dismantling the Anglo-American Empire once and for all was that ruling elites of the two nations were tied together by blood relations.
Kaiser Wilhelm, the last deposed emperor of the House of Hohenzollern that ruled Germany until the end of the First World War, was the eldest grandchild of British Queen Victoria. Wilhelm's first cousins included King George V of the United Kingdom and many princesses who, along with Wilhelm's sister Sophia, became European consorts. Similarly, the German political and social elites of the Second and Third Reich regarded the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy of the United Kingdoms as kinsmen not to be invaded.
In the Second World War, the Nazi air force did mount Luftwaffe attacks on a limited scale targeting Britain’s industrial infrastructure, but the tiny island boasting imperial legacy was simply not a match for the Third Reich’s military strength without the assistance of its transatlantic ally, the United States. Thankfully, British islands were spared the pulverizing force of the Nazi Blitzkrieg experienced by France and rest of continental Europe.
According to a 1978 essay by German historian Andreas Hillgruber, the Russia invasion plans drawn up by the German military elite were colored by hubris stemming from the rapid defeat of France at the hands of the invincible Wehrmacht and by traditional German stereotypes of Russia as a primitive, backward Asiatic country, having Turco-Mongol ancestry, a fallacious superiority complex predicated on the Nazi social Darwinism and the cherished myth of the German and Anglo-Saxon racial superiority.
Had Hitler been familiar with European history and been aware of the Napoleonic army’s harrowing fate in its botched military campaign in Russia in 1812, he would never have committed the blunder of invading Russia to create so-called Lebensraum or “living space” for the German race.
Russia defeated the military forces of Napoleon and Hitler through “strategic depth” of its vast territorial possessions spanning almost the entire northern landmass of Eurasian region, by letting Napoleonic and Nazi military forces advance into Russian territory, extending their supply lines, burdening logistics and mounting ferocious guerrilla warfare campaign that decimated the morale and military capabilities of the most invincible armies of the respective eras.
Russian fatalities during the Second World War ranged from 20 to 27 million, according to various estimates, including over 8 million military fatalities. In comparison, the United States lost 400,000 soldiers during the war. Clearly, Russia paid the most sacrifices and defeated Nazism while the United States misappropriated the credit for salvaging the world from the menace of fascism in the imagination of the subjects of the Anglo-American Empire.
In truth, Nazi and fascist are meaningless and subjective slurs crafted as astute propaganda stratagems to vilify adversaries, while almost all imperial and militarist powers use more or less similar oppressive tactics to subdue and subjugate vanquished nations. After all, it wasn’t Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy or so-called totalitarian states of Russia, China and North Korea that hold the unique distinction of being the only military power that detonated atomic bombs and obliterated populated cities of a vanquished adversary.
Before the end of the Second World War, when Japan was about to fall in the hands of geographically adjacent Soviet Union, the Truman administration authorized the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to subjugate Japan and send a clear message to the leaders of the former Soviet Union, which had not developed its nuclear program at the time, to desist from encroaching upon Japan in the east and West Germany in Europe.
The United States military publicly confessed to over 30 Broken Arrows, serious nuclear accidents, including accidentally dropping atom bombs on populated areas in the US and Europe that thankfully didn’t explode, though the real number of such nuclear accidents is calculated to be in thousands, particularly at the height of the Cold War during the sixties when such apocalyptic “accidents” were everyday occurrence. Thus, the United States came close to making the planet uninhabitable for the rest of humanity due to its unfettered nuclear arms race and global domination agenda.
After the Soviet Union developed its nuclear program, the transatlantic military alliance NATO was conceived in 1949 during the Cold War to offset the military advantage of the former Soviet Union which was geographically adjacent to Europe. According to Article 5 of the treaty, an attack on any member state would be deemed an attack on all, hence enshrining the collective defense clause.
Historically, the NATO military alliance, at least ostensibly, was conceived as a defensive alliance in order to offset conventional warfare superiority of the former Soviet Union. The US forged collective defense pact with the Western European nations after the Soviet Union reached the threshold to build its first atomic bomb in 1949 and achieved nuclear parity with the US.
In the heyday of the Cold War in the sixties when 400,000 US forces were deployed in Europe that were still outnumbered by Soviet troops, the Soviet leadership made repeated requests for signing a “no first use” nuclear treaty precluding the likelihood of pre-emptive nuclear strike, but the United States balked at the proposal due to conventional warfare superiority of the USSR in Europe.
Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev even unilaterally pledged against the first use of nuclear weapons in 1982, though Russia has since dropped the pledge in 1993 following the break-up of the Soviet Union and consequent tilting of balance of power in favor of the United States. During the Cold War, however, particularly in the 1960s, Soviet Union had a clear military advantage over United States and the formidable Red Army could’ve overrun entire continent of Europe if it hadn’t been for NATO’s collective defense umbrella.
In this backdrop at the height of the Cold War when the domestic American politics was infested with McCarthyite paranoia and communists were persecuted all over the country, John F. Kennedy was elected president in November 1960 whose naïve ideals mirrored “What's so funny ‘bout peace, love and understanding” of John Lennon and the antiwar hippy ilk.
Deep state tried to put up with Kennedy’s liberal idealism for a while but the schism between pacifist administration and security establishment reached a tipping point following the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 leading to the assassination of JFK in November 1963.
Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of John F. Kennedy, was picked up as a scapegoat because he had visited Russia and Cuba before the hit-job in order to put the blame for the high-profile political assassination on communists.
Not surprisingly, Oswald was silenced by Jack Ruby before he could open his mouth and prove innocence in the courts of law. The cold-blooded murder of a pacifist and non-interventionist American president was obviously perpetrated by a professional sniper on the payroll of the deep state.
Notably, Kennedy was killed in November 1963, and months later, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorized Lyndon B. Johnson to directly engage in the Vietnam conflict in August 1964 on the basis of a false flag naval engagement.
Clearly, security establishment was the only beneficiary of the assassination of Kennedy. Most likely, the deep state turned on Kennedy after the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis and Kennedy’s pacifist rhetoric and conciliatory approach toward Washington’s arch-rival, the former Soviet Union, in the backdrop of the Cold War.
Besides the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, another reason the Kennedy administration fell from the grace of the deep state was the botched Bay of Pigs invasion by CIA operatives and Cuban exiles in April 1961 to topple the government of Fidel Castro that JFK approved but later severely castigated CIA for the fiasco and sacked CIA director Allen Dulles and several associates. The security establishment wanted Kennedy to immediately order the invasion of Cuba following the foiled plot but he vacillated and let a golden opportunity to dismantle a major security threat in the US backyard slip by.
Similarly, JFK’s brother Robert F. Kennedy was a leading Democratic candidate for the presidential office when he was shot dead by a Palestinian Christian Sirhan Sirhan in June 1968. Being a pacifist himself, Bobby Kennedy opposed the US involvement in the Vietnam War and wrote a book on the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 in which he credited his brother JFK for showing restraint and amicably resolving the crisis.
As the former attorney general of JFK, Bobby Kennedy evidently had good leads on the masterminds of the JFK assassination, and wanted to avenge his brother’s shocking murder by exposing the assassins after being elected president. This was the reason he too was silenced before he could be elected president.
Though serving a life sentence at a California penitentiary, Bobby Kennedy’s murderer Sirhan, now an octogenarian, is a suspicious and deranged character, who frequently backtracked on his testimonies during and after the trial, had no recollection of the murder and subsequent events, and his defense team had pleaded for a retrial several times but the request was summarily denied. He was due to be released on parole in August 2021 but California Governor Gavin Newsom has repeatedly decided against setting him free.
JFK and RFK’s third and youngest brother Ted Kennedy also had presidential ambitions. He was elected senator in November 1962. Ted Kennedy was known for his oratorical skills, and his 1968 eulogy for his brother Robert was regarded as his best speech. He ran in 1980 in the Democratic primary campaign for the party's nomination, but lost to the incumbent president, Jimmy Carter.
On June 19, 1964, Ted Kennedy was a passenger in a private Aero Commander 680 airplane that was flying in bad weather from Washington, D.C. to Massachusetts. The plane crashed into an apple orchard in Southampton, Massachusetts, on final approach to the Barnes Municipal Airport in Westfield. The pilot and Edward Moss, one of Kennedy's aides, were killed. Kennedy was pulled from the wreckage, and spent months in hospital recovering from a back injury, a punctured lung, broken ribs and internal bleeding. He suffered chronic back pain for the rest of his life.
Following Republican Richard Nixon's victory in November 1968, Kennedy was assumed to be the front-runner for the 1972 Democratic nomination. In January 1969, Kennedy defeated Louisiana Senator Russell B. Long by a 31–26 margin to become Senate Majority Whip, which further boosted his presidential image. But a mysterious event in July of that year ruined his odds of being elected president.
On the night of July 18, 1969, Kennedy was at Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, hosting a booze party for the Boiler Room Girls, a group of young women who had worked on his brother Robert's presidential campaign. Kennedy left the party with 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne in drunk state.
While driving a car, he attempted to cross the Dike Bridge, which did not have a guardrail. Kennedy then lost control and crashed in a pond. He swam to shore and left the scene in a state of panic while being intoxicated, while his girlfriend, Kopechne, was trapped inside the vehicle and was found dead later. Kennedy did not report the accident until the next morning for which he was given a suspended sentence of two months in jail.
The last scion of illustrious Kennedy family who had presidential ambitions was charismatic son of JFK and veritable crown prince of USA, John F. Kennedy Jr. He was an attorney and publicist who was quite active in politics. Kennedy Jr. addressed the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, introducing his uncle Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.
He participated in his cousin Patrick J. Kennedy's campaign for a seat in the Rhode Island House of Representatives by visiting the district. He also campaigned in Boston for his uncle Ted Kennedy's re-election to the Senate against challenger Mitt Romney in 1994. He could have inherited the presidential throne vacated by his father like a hereditary monarch.
But on fateful day of July 16, 1999, Kennedy Jr. departed from Fairfield, New Jersey, piloting his Piper Saratoga light aircraft with his wife Carolyn and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette as passengers for Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, to attend the wedding of his cousin Rory Kennedy.
Kennedy Jr. had checked in with the control tower at the Martha's Vineyard Airport, but the plane was reported missing after it failed to arrive on schedule. The wreckage of the shattered plane was found strewn over a broad area of seabed 120 feet below the surface. The Coast Guard and Navy divers found Carolyn's and Lauren's bodies near the twisted and broken fuselage while Kennedy's body was still strapped into the pilot's seat.
Similar to Kennedy presidency at the height of Cold War in sixties, Bill Clinton was inaugurated president after the most momentous event in contemporary history: dissolution of Soviet Union, colored revolutions in Eastern Europe and subsequent break-up of Yugoslavia leading to Bosnia and Kosovo wars in nineties. Therefore, deep state antics were fervently deployed since the beginning of Clinton admin to force it to pursue security establishment’s agenda in the realm of defense and national security policy and foreign affairs.
Predictably, Clinton presidency began with a loud bang: 51-day siege of a compound belonging to a militant cult and the Waco massacre in Texas barely months after Mr. Clinton was inaugurated president in January 1993. Entire plot of the siege and subsequent slaughter was artfully choreographed with involvement of security agencies to create media frenzy and vilify Clinton admin for deploying excessive force against members of a religious community.
Waco massacre was the siege by US federal government and Texas state law enforcement officials of a compound belonging to the religious cult known as the Branch Davidians, between February 28 and April 19, 1993. The Branch Davidians, led by David Koresh, were headquartered at Mount Carmel Center ranch in McLennan County, Texas, 13 miles northeast of Waco.
In May 1992, Chief Deputy Daniel Weyenberg of the McLennan County Sheriff's Department called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) to notify it that his office had been contacted by a local UPS representative concerned about a report by a local driver.
The UPS driver said a package had broken open on delivery to the Branch Davidian residence, revealing at least half a dozen grenades. He also noted that the compound had been receiving packages from an arms dealer for months. Paradoxically, as Texas was a backward region in medieval era, hence courier services lacked equipment to scan parcels for illegal firearms and explosives.
On pretext of Branch Davidian members hoarding illegal firearms, specifically prohibited automatic machine guns, ATF began surveillance from a house across the road from the compound several months before the siege. Their cover was poor, as ATF agents pretending to be “college students” were in their thirties. ATF also sent an undercover agent, Robert Rodriguez, whose identity Koresh learned, yet he displayed clemency and spared his life.
The ATF made a dubious claim that Koresh was possibly operating a methamphetamine lab, allowing it to obtain military assets under the war on drugs. Although the ATF's investigation "focused on firearm violations, not on illegal drugs," the ATF requested assistance from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the United States Department of Defense (DOD) "citing a drug connection."
The ATF had planned its raid for March 1, 1993, with the code name "Showtime." The ATF later claimed that the raid was moved up a day, to February 28, 1993, in response to the Waco Tribune-Herald's "The Sinful Messiah" article published on Feb. 27. Three helicopters of the Army National Guard were also deployed during the raid. As ATF agents scaled the walls of the building with ladders, a firefight ensued. During the first shots, Koresh was wounded, shot in the hand and the stomach.
ATF agent Chuck Hustmyre later wrote: "About 45 minutes into the shootout, the volume of gunfire finally started to slacken. We were running out of ammunition. The Davidians, however, had plenty." In all, four ATF agents were killed during the firefight, while another 16 were injured. Five Branch Davidians were also killed in the raid, while Michael Schroeder was shot dead by ATF agents, falsely alleging he fired a pistol at agents as he attempted to re-enter the compound with two Branch Davidian members.
Clearly, the poorly planned and equally ill-executed ATF raid at Branch Davidian headquarters was craftily orchestrated by the artful plotters to provoke and push members of the militant cult against the wall. After the killing of four ATF agents, surrendering to authorities was no longer an option, as armed militants would have been dealt harshly by law enforcement agencies.
“The siege was scary,” Derek Loveluck, a surviving British Branch Davidian member, recalls. “It was weird; you couldn’t move from this place for 51 days. We were all on edge. We thought they might come back and kill us all to get revenge for the death of the ATF agents.”
Consequently, Branch Davidian members had no choice but to resist arrest, leading to a 51-day siege of the compound that was widely publicized on American national media, as television viewers severely castigated militant cult as well as Clinton admin for the fiasco. The gruesome episode had such a profound and lasting impact on collective American consciousness that Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, cited Waco massacre as rationale for mounting the worst domestic terrorism attack on the second anniversary of the slaughter on April 19, 1995.
Shortly after the botched ATF raid on February 28, 1993, FBI took command of the siege of Branch Davidian compound, placing Jeff Jamar, head of the Bureau's San Antonio field office, in charge of the siege as Site Commander. The FBI Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) was headed by HRT Commander Richard Rogers, who had previously been criticized for his actions during the Ruby Ridge incident.
At first, the Davidians had telephone contact with local news media, and Koresh gave phone interviews. The FBI then cut off Davidian communication to the outside world. For the next 51 days, communication with those inside was by telephone by a group of 25 FBI negotiators.
During the siege, 35 Branch Davidian members, mainly children, were released. Two of the three water storage tanks on the roof of the main building had been damaged during the initial ATF raid. Eventually, the FBI cut all power and water to the compound, forcing those inside to survive on rainwater and stockpiled military MRE rations.
On April 9, the Director of the FBI, William Sessions, went to the newly appointed US Attorney General, Janet Reno, with a plan to flush out the Davidians with CS tear gas. For nine days, while the negotiators talked peace, the plan was being shuttled between officials in Washington. On April 18, the Attorney General informed President Clinton that she had approved the plan.
Outside the compound, nine M3 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles carrying M651 CS tear gas grenades and ferret rounds, and five M728 Combat Engineer Vehicles obtained from the US Army began patrolling. The armored vehicles were used to destroy perimeter fencing and outbuildings and crush cars belonging to the Branch Davidians.
The assault took place on April 19, 1993. Because the Branch Davidians were heavily armed, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team's arms included .50 caliber (12.7 mm) rifles and armored Combat Engineering Vehicles (CEV). The CEVs used explosives to punch holes in the walls of buildings of the compound so they could pump in CS tear gas and try to force the Branch Davidians out.
The FBI Hostage Rescue Team delivered 40-millimeter Ferret brand CS gas rounds via M79 grenade launchers. Very early in the morning, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team fired two military M651 CS gas rounds at the Branch Davidian construction site. Around mid-morning, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team began to run low on 40 mm Ferret CS rounds and asked Texas Ranger Captain David Byrnes for CS gas rounds.
After more than six hours, no Branch Davidians had left the building, sheltering instead in an underground concrete block room "the bunker" within the building or using gas masks. At around noon, three fires broke out almost simultaneously in different parts of the building and spread quickly; footage of them was broadcast live by television crews.
Survivors said that they had piled hay-bales in front of the windows to keep out bullets during the siege and that, since their electricity had been cut off, they had been using oil lanterns all over the building. The tanks knocked the lanterns into the hay and their friends died simply because the flames spread like a nightmare through the dry wooden building.
Nine people left the building during the fire. The remaining Branch Davidians, including the children, were either buried alive by rubble, suffocated, or shot. Many were killed by smoke or carbon monoxide inhalation and other causes as fire engulfed the building. Autopsy records indicated that at least 20 Branch Davidians were shot, including Koresh and Steve Schneider, Koresh's deputy. In all, 76 people were slaughtered in cold blood.
The dust from Waco massacre hadn’t settled yet as another storm was brewing in Washington. It appears quite a coincidence that President Clinton sacked FBI director William Sessions on July 19, 1993, only a day before the alleged suicide of longtime Clinton friend and Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster on July 20.
Police discovered Foster dead from a gunshot wound to the head in Fort Marcy Park off the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Virginia outside Washington D.C. on July 20, 1993. Among his other duties, Foster helped prepare the tax returns of the Whitewater Development Corp., the controversial Arkansas real estate venture involving the Clintons.
By itself, Whitewater controversy was a trivial case of financial impropriety that wouldn’t have engendered much media furor. But it was the purported suicide of Vince Foster that provided impetus for Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s investigation into Whitewater scandal that then led to unearthing of Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky’s illicit affairs with Mr. Clinton and subsequent impeachment proceedings against the president for perjury.
The ground for smear campaign against President Clinton was prepared by David Brock after he published “Troopergate” scandal in American Spectator in December 1993, in which several Arkansas State Troopers claimed that they had arranged sexual liaisons for Arkansas governor Bill Clinton during his time in office.
Subsequently, a former Arkansas state employee, Paula Jones, sued President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment in May 1994. Jones claimed she kept quiet about the incident until 1994, when David Brock’s “Troopergate” story in The American Spectator magazine printed an account. Mr. Clinton was asked under oath about Monica Lewinsky in the Jones suit, he denied having ever had sexual relations with her, and was accused of perjury after evidence of sexual contact was exposed.
It is believed that President Clinton began a personal relationship with Lewinsky while she worked as intern at the White House, the details of which she later confided to Linda Tripp, her Defense Department co-worker who secretly recorded their telephone conversations.
In January 1998, Tripp discovered that Lewinsky had sworn an affidavit in the Paula Jones case, denying a relationship with Clinton. She delivered tapes to Ken Starr, the independent counsel who was investigating Clinton on other matters, including the Whitewater controversy and alleged suicide of Vince Foster.
Linda Tripp's action in illegally and secretly recording Monica Lewinsky's confidential phone calls about her relationship with President Bill Clinton caused a media sensation. The 20 hours of recordings became crucial to the Starr investigation.
Tripp became a close confidante of Monica Lewinsky while both were working in the Pentagon's public affairs office. After Lewinsky revealed to Tripp that she had been in a physical relationship with Clinton, Tripp, acting on the advice of the literary agent Lucianne Goldberg, began secretly recording phone conversations with Lewinsky. In January 1998, Tripp gave the tapes to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in exchange for immunity from prosecution for crime of wiretapping.
The catalyst for President Clinton’s impeachment was the Starr Report, a September 1998 report prepared by Ken Starr, Independent Counsel, for the House Judiciary Committee. The Starr Report included details outlining a sexual relationship between Clinton and Lewinsky.
Subsequently, on December 19, 1998, President Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for perjury and obstruction of justice. On February 12, 1999, however, Mr. Clinton was acquitted on both counts by the Senate.
Despite spending eight tumultuous years in presidential
office, Clintons should consider themselves fortunate for being spared the
tragic fate that befell the Kennedy family. Purportedly, world’s most powerful
office clearly isn’t a bed of roses, it’s a bed of thorns, with the
double-edged sword of deep state perpetually hanging over the head of elected
president.
