Peter Dale Scott and His Contribution to Understanding American Politics and the Human Condition

By Judyth Vary Baker

Anti-conspiracy writers have long sneered at the many critics who have stepped forth exhibiting concern over the findings of the Warren Commission and other U.S. government-sponsored investigations regarding tragic assassinations and the resultant decline of American civilization into the twenty-first century due to war, corruption, lies to the public, and sheer, unregulated greed. A common complaint of Official Version defenders had been that their critics lacked the mental moxie needed to qualify as such. But astride both centuries stands the Colossus of American political analysis – Peter Dale Scott – spanning the gap between socio-political myth and reality, guiding the safe passage of truth to port in these troubling times.

From his own website:

Biography

Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is a poet, writer, and researcher. He was born in Montreal in 1929, the only son of the poet F.R. Scott and the painter Marian Scott. He is married to Ronna Kabatznick; and he has three children,Cassie, Mika, and John Scott, by a previous marriage to Maylie Marshall.

His prose books include The War Conspiracy (1972), The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond (in collaboration, 1976), Crime and Cover-Up: The CIA, the Mafia, and the Dallas-Watergate Connection (1977), The Iran-Contra Connection (in collaboration, 1987),Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (in collaboration, 1991, 1998), Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993, 1996), Deep Politics Two (1994, 1995, 2006), Drugs Oil and War (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, March 2003), The Road to 9/11 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), and The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War (Ipswich, MA: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2008).

His chief poetry books are the three volumes of his trilogy Seculum: Coming to Jakarta: A Poem About Terror (1989), Listening to the Candle: A Poem on Impulse (1992), and Minding the Darkness: A Poem for the Year 2000. In addition he has published Crossing Borders: Selected Shorter Poems (1994), published in

Canada as Murmur of the Stars. In November 2002 he was awarded the Lannan Poetry Award. A new book of poems, Mosaic Orpheus, will appear in Spring 2009 from McGill-Queen's University Press.

An anti-war speaker during the Vietnam and Gulf Wars, he was a co-founder of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at UC Berkeley, and of the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA).

His poetry has dealt with both his experience and his research, the latter of which has centered on U.S. covert operations, their impact on democracy at home and abroad, and their relations to the John F. Kennedy assassination and the global drug traffic. The poet-critic Robert Hass has written (Agni, 31/32, p. 335) that "Coming to Jakarta is the most important political poem to appear in the English language in a very long time."

…This website is dedicated to helping to promote an informed public opinion that is both local and international. I particularly want to thank those who have sent me supportive or informative emails from 37 countries: Great Britain, Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Turkey, Israel, South Africa, Pakistan, Singapore, China, Japan, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Canada (plus 3 more from visitors in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nepal). Special thanks to the visiting professor in Singapore, who said that he was forwarding this URL to his friends in China. I wish also to thank friends who have forwarded useful material, such as the important Irish Times story on bin Laden, the US, and oil, that first reached me via Indonesia from Qatar.

I do believe that international public opinion, when it becomes powerful enough, will become the most effective restraint to the excesses and follies of particular governments.

From Spartacus, we can obtain the following quotations from Scott’s writings, showing both his depth of logic and the consistency of his thought:

(1) Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993) 

At the first meeting of the newly constituted Warren Commission, Allen Dulles handed out copies of a book to help define the ideological parameters he proposed for the Commission's forthcoming work. American assassinations were different from European ones, he told the Commission. European assassinations were the work of conspiracies, whereas American assassins acted alone. Someone was alert enough to remind Dulles of the Lincoln assassination, when Lincoln and two members of his cabinet were shot simultaneously in different parts of Washington. But Dulles was not stopped for a second: years of dissembling in the name of "intelligence" were not to fail him in this challenge. He simply retorted that the killers in the Lincoln case were so completely under the control of one man (John Wilkes Booth), that the three killings were virtually the work of one man.

Dulles's logic here (or, as I prefer to call it, his paralogy) was not idiosyncratic, it was institutional. As we have seen, J. Edgar Hoover had already, by November 25, committed his own reputation and the Bureau to the conclusion that Oswald had done it, and acted alone. Chief Justice Warren knew this, yet said at the same meeting, "We can start with the premise that we can rely upon the reports of the various agencies that have been engaged in the investigation." John J. McCloy spoke for the extra-governmental establishment when he added that it was of paramount importance to "show the world that America is not a banana republic, where a government can be changed by conspiracy."

(2) Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993) 

FBI documents released in 1979 show other instances in which key information was either altered before

it reached the Warren Commission, or else withheld altogether. For example, judging from Warren Commission records, the FBI covered up Jack Ruby's connections to organized crime. The Commission did not receive an important interview with Luis Kutner, a Chicago lawyer who had just told the press (correctly) about Ruby's connections to Chicago mobsters Lennie Patrick and Dave Yaras. All the FBI transmitted was a meaningless follow-up interview in which Kutner merely said he had no additional information.

Apparently the FBI also failed to transmit a teletype revealing that Yaras, a national hit man for the Chicago syndicate who had grown up with Ruby, and who had been telephoned by one of Ruby's Teamster contacts on the eve of the assassination, was about to attend a "hoodlum meeting" of top East and West Coast syndicate representatives, including some from the "family" of the former Havana crime lord Santos Trafficante.

 

(3) Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993) 

Such an explanation is less plausible for the FBI's interference with leads that appeared to be guiding its agents to the actual assassins of the President - a case, seemingly, of obstruction of justice, or worse. How else should one assess the response of FBI headquarters to a report from Miami that Joseph Adams Milteer, a white racist with Klan connections, had in early November 1963 correctly warned that a plot to kill the President "from an office building with a high-powered rifle" was already "in the working"? These words are taken from a tape-recording of a discussion between Milteer and his friend, Miami police informant Bill Somersett. Miami police provided copies of this tape to both the Secret Service and the FBI on November 10, 1963, two weeks before the assassination, and this led to the cancellation of a planned motorcade for the President in Miami on November 18.20

Although an extremist, Milteer was no loner. Southern racists were well organized in 1963, in response to federal orders for desegregation; and Milteer was an organizer for two racist parties, the National States Rights party and the Constitution party. In addition he had attended an April 1963 meeting in New Orleans of the Congress of Freedom, Inc.,which had been monitored by an informant for the Miami police. A Miami detective's report of the Congress included the statement that "there was indicated the overthrow of the present government of the United States," including "the setting up of a criminal activity to assassinate particular persons." The report added that "membership within the Congress of Freedom, Inc., contain high ranking members of the armed forces that secretly belong to the organization."

In other words, the deep politics of racist intrigue had become intermingled, in the Congress as elsewhere, with the resentment within the armed forces against their civilian commander. Perhaps the most important example in 1963 was that of General Edwin Walker, whom Oswald was accused of stalking and shooting at. Forced to retire in 1962 for disseminating right-wing propaganda in the armed forces, Walker was subsequently arrested at the "Ole Miss" anti-desegregation riots. Nor was the FBI itself exempt from racist intrigue: Milteer, on tape, reported detailed plans for the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., whom Hoover's FBI, by the end of 1963, had also targeted for (in their words) "neutralizing ... as an effective Negro leader."

Four days after the assassination Somerset! reported that Milteer had been "jubilant" about it: "Everything ran true to form. I guess you thought I was kidding you when I said he would be killed from a window with a high-powered rifle." Milteer also was adamant that he had not been "guessing" in his original prediction. In both of the relevant FBI reports from Miami, Somersett was described as "a source who had furnished reliable information in the past."

 

(4) Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993) 

To sum up, it would appear that Bobby Kennedy, consciously or not, had targeted a number of figures, such as Sam Giancana, James Plumeri, and perhaps even Jimmy Hoffa, who were simultaneously intelligence assets. Well-placed informants and/or their government handlers have furthermore implicated members of this intelligence-mob connection in the coalition of forces that retaliated by killing the President. The House Committee Report, steadfastly refusing to look at Ruby's very pronounced connection to this intelligence-mob milieu, provided instead a distorted governmental account of "La Cosa Nostra," from which the intelligence connections had been systematically expunged. But if Blakey was responsible in repeating the opinion that those who killed Kennedy killed Giancana as well, it becomes even more important to know who was the "CIA guy," who (according to FBN and DEA informant Charles Crimaldi) used someone from the underworld to kill Giancana.

After so many years, some of the mob members of this milieu are now notorious - notably John Rosselli, Santos Trafficante, Carlos Marcello, and Sam Giancana. Others - Barney Baker, Dave Yaras, Irwin Weiner - have been known for years to researchers.

(4) Peter Dale Scott, The Nation (20th March, 2006) 

In the June 1994 Reviews in American History, you published an essay by Max Holland concerning my book, Deep Politics, which he had already attacked in the Wilsonian Quarterly. His article opens with a reference to "fantastic conspiracies through innuendo, presumption, and pseudo-scholarship" (p. 191); it closes with his own innuendo about "palpable, cunningly manufactured falsehoods" (p. 209). 

Surely it is gross intellectual cowardice to allege or imply falsehoods without supporting this accusation. One might have thought that in a 19-page attack on my "opaque prose" and "fevered imagination" (p. 191), there would be at least a paragraph dealing with what I had actually written. I can actually find only one dependent clause on the penultimate page, referring to "the fantasy that Kennedy was on the verge of pulling out from South Vietnam" (p. 208). Even this is not very close to what I actually wrote: "that in late 1963 Kennedy had authorized an initial withdrawal of... troops... to be substantially completed by the end of 1965" (Deep Politics, p. 24). I went on to note how "time after time... critics, from Leslie Gelb in the Times to Alexander Cockburn in the Nation, have replaced this verifiable issue of fact by an unverifiable one: whether or not JFK would have pulled the United States out of Vietnam" (pp. 25-26). Holland, a long-time Nation editor, has, you will note, once again resorted to this simple trick of devious substitution. 

Why do we find in an academic journal the turgid rant and wildly mixed metaphors ("unfathomable crossroads," p. 193) of the Nation? Holland demonstrates at the outset that he has done no basic research on Oswald, whom he believes to be the only person important in the case. He writes that "Prior to that Friday [November 22, 1963], no one called him Lee Harvey Oswald" (p. 193). In fact he had been called Lee Harvey Oswald in newspaper accounts of his 1959 defection to the USSR (and 1962 return) in the New York Times, Washington Post, New York Herald Tribune, Washington Star, Fort Worth Press, etc. to name only some of those press accounts filed under "Lee Harvey Oswald" by the FBI, ONI, Texas Department of Public Safety, etc. (It is true that the CIA chose for its own reasons of state to label one of its three files on Oswald "Lee Henry Oswald," but Holland would be very foolish to adduce this as proof that to the CIA Oswald was unimportant.) The very first State Department cable from Moscow (1304 of 10/31/59) referred to "Lee Harvey Oswald," and this cable was also filed by other federal government agencies, as well as reproduced in the Warren Commission volumes (18 WH 105). Holland's theorizing about the ignored Oswald's supposed "desire to prove his central importance" (p. 199) is based on, and misled by, perverse secondary sources -- notably Gerald Posner's Case Closed. 

Holland also has it wrong when he says that "the FBI and CIA had lied by omission (my italics) to the [Warren] Commission" (p. 204). Officials of both agencies had lied in much more constructive ways, to the Commission as well as to each other. The CIA for example supplied a radically falsified version of "Lee Henry Oswald's" 201 file, which Richard Helms then certified to be accurate and complete. The FBI falsely denied a pre-assassination contact with Oswald, and compounded possible perjury about this (5

WH 13) with criminal destruction of relevant evidence. (I refer you on this last point to Posner's Case Closed, pp. 214-16.) 

In my view, these undisputed falsifications of the record after the assassination (which I did not even bother to mention in my book) are much less significant than the misleading games played with the Oswald files of the CIA and FBI (with innuendos of a possible KGB plot) just before the assassination. I gave prominent place to these in my book, and Holland, predictably, ignores them. The newly released documents prove the pre-assassination deceptions to be far worse than I described them. Given these facts, it is surprising that an academic journal supposedly committed to inquiry, shortly after tens of thousands of important new documents have been deposited in the National Archives, would publish Holland's fatuous excuse for not bothering to look at them (they "ultimately will only prove one thing: the Warren Commission got it right" -- p. 208). 

There is only one quotation in Holland's essay about Oswald from an actual Oswald contact: a Dallas assistant district attorney (Bill Alexander), who complained that Oswald was so smug "I was going to beat the shit out of him" (p. 201). This quotation is much more revealing than it sounds. It is taken from Gerald Posner's Case Closed (p. 345), the latest rehash of the Warren Report for true believers. Alexander is not just a proven liar (as are so many of Posner's preferred sources), he is, only three pages later in Posner's book, a self-admitted liar! 

Posner is a lawyer, and we are quite used to seeing lawyers turn to known liars for facts they cannot obtain elsewhere. But why is a self-admitted liar quoted as a source in a supposedly reputable academic journal? 

In the first chapter of my book I noted how the Kennedy assassination, and related topics such as Kennedy's late 1963 authorization of troop withdrawal, had become for many disreputable and indiscussible topics (pp. 12-16). Even so, I was disappointed to see those who have published me attacked vigorously for doing so by a major historical journal. I continue to believe that it is the job of the academy to open minds, not to close them. 

These quotations allow us a glimpse of the man behind the prose.

In his typical style –finding subtly attractive ways to destroy the work of solid researchers and the testimonies of every possible witness in the Kennedy assassination who might even hint at Oswald’s innocence, John McAdams brings forth a ‘critic’ to counter the massive impact that the concept of Deep Politics has had to change American thought about the nature of the Cabal that assassinated Kennedy.

Scott’s Deep Politics concept established exactly what New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison had desperately attempted –but failed--to give to the American people via the trial of Clay Shaw. Garrison knew that the webwork involving the Kennedy assassination and its immediate cover-up activities was complex.it seemed that ‘everyone’ was involved. In a sense, we now that was true. “Everyone’of importance in the case was compromised or involved in such a way that cooperation among them all was necessary, lest ‘anyone’ (except for Oswald) might be blamed. Oswald had the misfortune to be associated with a number of agencies. Any agency admitting such a relationship with Oswald couldlead to embarrassing and possibly deadly revelations.

The concept of “Deep Politics” demonstrates to the intelligent, unbiased reader exactly how a wide webwork and network of associated insiders were impelled to cooperate, or perish. Scott’s work defined the nature of the beast, leaving it to others to connect the dots.

That, predictably, was not enough for the pedantic and predictably biased John Mcadams, who managed to dredge up someone with a sufficiently-developed vocabulary to be able to complain (with a tinge of pseudo-intellectualism) of Scott’s refusal to hang himself out to dry in the desert of our discontent: Scott, it was declared, blamed ‘everybody’ for the assassination, not allowing himself to be pinned down:

The “critic” wrote—

“Scott's Deep Politics and the Death of JFK is a fully-researched document citing deep connections concerning Vietnam, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, and the plot and cover-up of President Kennedy's assassination. Scott's failure occurs as throughout the entire book, and even in his conclusion (titled "Who Killed JFK?"), he cannot simply label even one large and all-inclusive unit, like the government, as being responsible for JFK's death.”

Note the false criterion: Scott was required to label ‘one large and all-inclusive unit…as being responsible…”

“He continually swings back and forth, all in the name of deep political analysis, and seems to draw not one conclusion but several contradictory ones. Repeatedly at the end of the book, he also calls attention to the JFK assassination's connections to the murders of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy as well as to McCarthyism, Watergate, and Contragate. Simply summarized, everything in the political sphere, as well as in the national and international spheres, has been connected to the Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963, in some way. The reader leaves Scott's Deep Politics with much more confusion than he began with and no idea of how to live in a world or an America which is so completely based on corruption and suspicion. My answer: Scott's analysis is not worth giving that much credit to.”

==oops! I’ve emphasized the diction problem and the ‘to’ to provide a glimpse into this lady’s ability to write truly good English, let alone apply good logic, though Mark Twain, I’m sure (who liked prepositions at the end of sentences) would disagree with my noting ‘to’ as something I should take umbrage to.

Who is this lady?

Finding Ms. Weber’s CV has proven difficult (I have posted Dr. Scott’s at the end of this article – he has made it freely available for inspection by all). McAdams chose an apparent unknown to criticize Scott’s magnificent book. It might have been one of his students, steeped in the contrivances of the Official Version, doing her patriotic duty to God, and country, hoping for an “A” grade from her professor. Or not.

Fortunately for us, Scott’s Wikipedia biography has apparently not been invaded by vandals or by McAdams, who, in my own Wikipedia biography, inserted a section named “Killers and the Women Who Love Them” which, however, was only about “Me & Lee.” Protests to have such offensive material removed from my biography ultimately resulted in the biography, which had been online almost six years and did have some accurate information in it, erased from Wikipedia by persons associated with the Wikipedia conspiracy theory damage-control editor “Gamaliel” (such as “Shutterbun” who posts at McAdams’ newsgroup), first under the claim that I did not exist, and, when we proved that indeed I existed, and had a documentary, international art clients, and a book out there, that I was, nevertheless, a fraud. Now I’m listed under “conspiracy theories” where the reader is directed to John McAdams’ screed about me. May such a fate never happen to a man of the caliber of Peter Dale Scott.

The material from Wikipedia (just below) seems to be more accurate than that posted about me under

“Killers and the Women Who Love them,” so I assume McAdams has not yet inserted his manly acumen

into this biography:

“Scott has researched and written several investigative books about the role of the "deep state"

(as opposed to the "public state"). However, Scott rejects the label of "conspiracy theory" and has

used the phrase "deep politics" to describe his heavily-footnoted political writing. The investigative

bent has spilled over into his works of poetry, some of which must contain marginal notes to

explain to readers which documents or real-world news events are being referred to. His most

recent book, The Road to 9/11 from the University of California Press, deals with historical and

geopolitical context of the events of 9/11, and describes "how U.S. foreign policy since the 1960s

has led to partial or total cover-ups of past domestic criminal acts, including, perhaps, the

catastrophe of 9/11."

An interesting aspect of Scott's work that combines both his investigating interests and his poetry

is illustrated by The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11.”

If I have succeeded in holding your attention thus far, you have passed the test.

You are intelligent enough – and care enough --to read, appreciate and enjoy the

important poem below—“The Tao of 9/11” – a masterpiece written by Peter Dale

Scott. “The Tao of 9/11” reveals the thought of a good and great man to the

terrors besetting us in today’s uncertain, hard and ruthless world, contrasted with

what I consider a dwindling hope for peace:

The Tao of 9/11

At the First Emperor’s Tombthe Chinese People’s Republicshows you a preliminary moviein which this monument of empire

is seen through the eyes of peasantswho rose up in rebellionand smashed the terra cotta statueswe have come so far to see.

I tried asking whether the governmentis more in favor of the tombor of its being smashed? The guide answeredBoth! We think the tao of history

contains both the bright yang of orderand the dark yin of revolt.So I said, Does that mean that in the present phase of history

the yin is the Falun Gong?A short silence. ThenYou must understand that in Chinathere are some things we do not think about.

I know why I’m remembering this.There are things we don’t think about in Americathings I don’t want to think about myselflike this flood of emails from Russians

whom I have never metabout Far West Ltd.a meta-group almost unknownand yet so powerful

it is said to manipulate statesfor the ends of the drug trafficspreading violence in an organized routefrom Afghanistan and Kosovo to New York     Scott ‘05

a group which brought its partners —a Venezuelan close to FARC              Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forcesan Israeli advising Thaçi                                              chief KLA commanderand a Turk close to al-Qaeda

to meet in the villa of Khashoggionce the richest man in the world       Kessler 12whom the Senate BCCI Report listedamong the principal agents of the U.S.   Kerry-Brown Report 299

and arms seller to the Medellin Cartel                                            DIA Reportwith Voloshin (Berezovsky’s manunder Yeltsin in the Kremlin)and one of the Chechen Basaevs

who then blew up Moscow buildingsas described by John Dunlop   Dunlopshortly after the U.S. and the KLA                             Kosovo Liberation Armytook over Kosovo                                                                               Scott ‘05

Dunlop is reputableWhy did he present the meetingas a mere plan for a Russian 9/11at the behest of Yeltsin’s Kremlin    Dunlop

ignoring the role at the villaof men like Sosnaliev and Tsveibafrom Abkhazia which now has become a key heroin transiting point?     Sida/Cornell Caspian ‘02

Why did he suppress what his sourcesaid about Surikov and Fritz Ermarththe Turk and the CIAthe Israeli and the KLA?

Was it because just like myselfhe did not want to thinkabout who was involved in openingthe new Kosovo drug route

after the mad dash of Russian troopsone month before the meeting                                                    June 11, 1999to seize the Pristina airport in Kosovo                                 Judah 279, 284-85without (it is said) the knowledge of Yeltsin                    Shevtsova 285, fn. 11

just as Al McCoy and myselfboth promptly forgot about the vetwho refused to talk to usafter they firebombed his Jag           McCoy xii, Scott ‘89 147-48, Scott ‘04 38-40

not wanting to face what it meansthat you can sell drugs in a DEA stingand still be released when you tell themyou are a CIA informant.                                               Scott ‘92, 129; Levine 35-36

Two kinds of businesses:those which flourish from peaceand the strengthening of lawand those which require the opposite

zones of incessant chaoslike Chechnya Colombia Afghanistanwhere drugs can be grown or traffickedunder the watch of PMCs.                                        private military companies

The CIA knew what it was doingwhen in 2001they brought back “Mr. Ten Percent”                         Haji Mohammed Zamanat the top of the heroin trade 

from Dijon to Jalalabad                                                                    Smucker 9and arranged for the releaseof Haji Ayub Afridi from prison Raman(the same men who in the ‘80s

had organized the heroin trail to the Soviet troops i.e. to the clique who became Far Westwith the blessings of the CIA) Raman

thus restoring the Afghanopium economyafter two years of prohibitionunder the Taliban.                                                             Scott ‘03 33, 43-44

and pushing America and Russiastill further down the pathof increasing superwealth

and declining average income

(my starting salary in ‘61                                                                   $7250.00could buy a third of a good Berkeley housea starting salary todaypaying perhaps a twentieth)

increasing income disparitiesthe sign our state is decliningthe homeless we no longer supportand have grown used to not thinking about

as we step across themtowards our ATMswhat Sallust and Arnold discernedin Rome and Victorian London

privatim opulentiapublice egestas                                                                           Sallust, Arnolduntil the republic is subornedby these forces we cannot see

for which the intellectual priceis a shrinkage of our culturetowards the trivialitiesof narcotic distractions undecipherable poets

and expansion of empirewith help from al Qaedauntil now there are American troopsfrom Kyrgyzstan to Kosovo.

Starting in 1998Surikov, the Venezuelan, and the Turkhad their own company Far West             http://www.pravda.info/news/2695.htmlconnected with the secured transport 

of commercial shipments from Afghanistan           Filin ‘05and with representatives in the Emirates, Afghanistan, Colombia, Kosovo            http://www.pravda.info/news/2695.htmlas well as contracts with Halliburton     Yasenev, Lysenko

(Far West’s leader Vladimir Filin

the suspected chief narcobaron      Kaledin ‘03confirmed that “a well-known American corporationis a co-founder of our agency” Filin ‘05

and after I quoted thisit was reported that Filin clearedthe Pristina dash in advancewith Thaçi and Haradinaj       Surikov 2006

described by the London Observer as a drug-trafficker and the key US intelligence asset in Kosovo     Observer, 9/10/00who is now on trial at the Hague                                   London Times, 3/8/05

while Filin and Far Westworked on the Georgian project,financed by KBR Halliburton, apparently with the approval of CIA) Yasenev

and with Diligence Middle East a PMC(with success in securing contractsfrom Neil Bush, the President’s brother) Financial Times, 12/11/03headed by Joe Allbaugh                                        Financial Times, 12/11/03;                                                                                             Asia Times, 5/20/04who in 2000 organizedboth the Bush-Cheney campaignand the “19th floor riot” thatstopped the recount in Miami-Dade County Floridagate

and then was made head of FEMAthe agency that with Cheney and Rumsfeld                   Mann 139; Bamford 72had developed “Reagan’s Secret Coup Plans”in the 1980s “Reagan’s Secret Coup Plans”,                                                                                    Progressive Review, June 2004the plans for COG                                                       Continuity of Government

the plans for an anti-constitutional takeover in a time of crisis        Progressive Review, June 1998. Cf. New York Times, 11/18/91which were implemented on 9/11                            9/11 Report 38; Bamford 66

with Cheney’s two orders — the firstone still unexplainedten minutes before Flight 77is supposed to have hit the Pentagon                                         Griffin 219-23

and then a shoot-down orderbefore the President’s plane took off                                                   Clarke 8when the only hijacked plane remainingwas Flight 93.                                                                                Scott ‘07 ch. 13

Both after Bush had entrustedCheney, FEMA, and Allbaughto set up a terrorism task forceto deal with terrorist attacks              Houston Chronicle, 5/9/01; Ruppert, 412-18

which is said to have changed the rulesmaking it far more complicatedto deal with hijacked planes                                9/11 Report, 17; cf. fn. 101, 458just weeks before 9/11                                                              Ruppert, 412-18

and required FEMA to holdexercises           www.fema.gov/pdf/library/appi.pdf.planned for September 12 in New Yorkso that one day beforeWTC-7 collapsed                                                             World Trade Center 7

without being hit by al-Qaeda                                                     Griffin 25-32FEMA had already moved outinto a larger temporary headquartersfrom which the New York clean-up was directed.

It is too much. I think of Petrovblown up in his car in Cape Town

after taping his quarrel with Surikovat the Hotel Bristol in Vienna                                                        Petrov ‘04

and I think of Indira Singhwho lost her job at J.P. Morganafter she notified the FBIabout Ptech the hi-tech Islamist firm

with contracts at FAAthe White House the Secret Serviceand links to the local Al Kifah                                           al Qaeda support groupfollowed by a Treasury raid

on Ptech and then the immediate             Boston Globe, 12/7/02; WBZ4, 12/9/02firing of Paul O’Neill.                                                      Secretary of the TreasurySingh spoke publicly about Ptech                                          NPR Radio, 12/8/02adding as an aside

when I ran into the drugs I was told that if I mentionedthe money to the drugs around 9/11 that would be the end of me.                                           Indira Singh testimony

So much to wonder aboutso much to be grateful for!the enormity of the suppressedshould not let us forget the obvious

like Havel’s gratitude to Congressfor the liberation of eastern Europewhich Noam found silly and repugnant             Chomsky, Cockburn ‘95 149-51not having lived there himself

Like the times in a bad marriagegood times flash back with painso in the midst of preemptive warI remember loving this country

that even the CIAhelped Milosz start life anewback when defectors were stillbeing kidnapped in the

streets.                                                                    Illg 17

But as for 9/11 and drugsthe 9/11 Report denied the connection                                   9/11 Report 171ignoring the drug money for Ramzi Youseffrom an I.S.I. agent in the Philippines

for a plot covered upaccording to an Embassy security officialby high-ranking officersof the CIA and Secret Service                              Alexander Cockburn, Ressa 33

or the speech by Bonner of Customs on the Jafar organization out of Detroit                     Bonner; cf. Farah 171-72(shipping hash and heroin to the United States for almost half a century)                                          Goddard and Coleman 24

Khalid Jafar’s bag (said NBC)was placed on Pan Am 103without passing through inspectionas part of a DEA undercover operation                                  Guardian 11/1/90

I remember the defeat and fearin the face of Allan Francovichthe last time he contacted  mevia a cut-out   a mutual friend

one year before Allan dropped deadwhile going through U.S. Customs                                    Independent 4/28/97whose film on Pan Am 103 and Jafarcould be shown in Britain but not this country                                Ganser 49

though he has since been posthumously vindicatedby a police chief’s signed statementthat key evidence in the Lockerbie trialwas planted by the CIA;                                                             Scotsman 8/28/05

and what happened to Danny Casolaro                Goddard and Coleman 352-55on the trail of the so-called

Octopus                           Beaty and Gwynne 224-25until he was “suicided” in West Virginia                             Buffalo News 8/27.93with my name and number in his notebook.

Forgive me if I do not want to thinkof how they destroyed L(the Republican businessmanwhose mistake was to tell the FBI

about the Nicaraguan drug lordwho picked up the dinner tabat the fundraiser in San FranciscoL had arranged for the Contras,

after which L got a death threatover the phone while waitingin Senator Kerry’s outer officefor a secret rendez-vous).

And should I now be trusting Vthis Russian whose reports on Far Westare corroborated only by Filin’s admissionthat he himself went to Kosovo?                                                        Surikov 2006

It is hard to know whom to trustas I learned back East at a Center         International Centerresearching for Senator Kerry’s investigation                    for Development Policyinto Contra support operations and drugs.

I think of the secret memo in two copiesI had my secretary a student volunteerhand-deliver from the Centerto Brian Barger and Bob Parry                                  cf. Terrell 297-324, Parry 15

who phoned back furious(Don’t write these things down in Washington!)and somehow Secord’s lawyer got it     Richard Secordto file as a Court Exhibit in the Christic case

and what about Jack Terrell at the Centera man intimate with the mercenary “community” Nation 8/15/87who knew about the military coup in Fiji                                    Nation 8/15/87

that night before anyone in the press.

Jack was shown to have told the truthabout the Contra cocaine operationdisguised by imports of frozen fish       Kerry Report, 438, Scott and Marshall 131in the memo prepared for Senator Kerry

which was stolen for the Reagan Justice Department Scott and Marshall 151after which Oliver Northcalled Terrell a “Terrorist Threat”               Terrell 463, Scott and Marshall 142-43and our Center was put under FBI surveillance. Scott and Marshall 148ss,                                                                                  cf. Kerry Report 163, Terrell 384So later when Jack said he wantedto bring his wife to the United StatesI (knowing his childhood storyof how when fourteen he had stolen a car

and on the instruction of his fatherwas sentenced to 18 years in an adult prison) Scott and Marshall 127gave him the money he neededfor return airfare to Manila

after which a call came from the Center:Why did you finance Terrell’s schemeto destroy Manglapus (who had been expected Philippine Foreign Secretaryto succeed Cory in the Philippines)?         Aquino, cf. Time 10/28/91, Terrell 424-32

In this way my naïve good willimplicated me in the defeatof the one candidate committed to removingthe U.S. military bases.

Still later Jack invited meto think he might have been the “Carson”who tricked Bill Pepper with the liediscrediting his book on Martin Luther King Pepper 368, 426-30

so that we still do not know for certainwho was behind King’s murderany more than about the Kennedys’or who Jack was really working for

though he claimed that he was told by phoneto penetrate North’s Contra support effortby Donald Fortier and the NSC.                      National Security Council, Terrell 38Oh Jack! Though I knew enough

never completely to trust youI still thought of you as my friend                                                cf. Terrell 455-60and that like me you were fighting drug traffickersnot just that upstart Oliver North.

The American dilemma: to heal this worldwe must become intimate with itbut the search for political truthwill lead one deeper and deeper into falsehood

so we all end up like the good Germansnot thinking about who caused the Reichstag Fireor the hundreds of people we do not knowtaken off to secret camps or distant countries.

It is a dilemma: part of meneeds to agree with the leftthat we have to wake up Americathat knowledge will make us free

the idea being that truthunites us in thinking togethereven though these truths of darknesshave been known to destroy

those who have published them                        Gary Webb, Independent 10/8/05and I myself can share with no oneexcept those who like myselfhave become distanced from the crowd

so that I hate to go ontransmitting the testimonyof witnesses like Steve Carrwho predicted correctly they would be murdered         Scott and Marshall 155                                                                                                                       Scott ‘05and it is a struggle to keep in mindthat by seeking the truthfrom the hidden sphere of lifein its hidden openness

Havel 57, Schell 197

I have not in fact been alone:there have always been strangerssome in scattered parts of this landor in countries unvisited

others though the great chainof the centurieswho without ever meetingit is possible to trust

in the truth of yinthat is always gentlelike water flowingto the lowest places                 Tao Te Ching viii

the Tao where the soft and gentle overcome the hard and strong Tao Te Ching xxxvibecause truth being that which iscan never be destroyed                                                      Gandhi 2:389, Schell 206

and reminds us that Americathe land of nonviolence violencesnake handlers peace workers baseball moviessweat lodges genealogists and stock car races

is undefinablefrom the jazz of Ledbellyand concerts of the Grateful Deadto the Wiffenpoof song

from Whitman’s hopes for the unwrittento the New Yorker poetswith a toad in their lawn moweror snake in their burning brush pile

the land which Reiko aged eighteenrefused to leavewhen her parents returnedto tradition-bound Japan.

Uncertain as alwayswhether this republic is past savingor whether some of us still treadthe perilous path of the future

part of me just meditateson the new and more flourishing wildlifethat is improving Point Reyesten years after the Mount Vision fire.                San Francisco Chronicle 10/2/05

From the glories of the Tang DynastyI recall only one date: the yearthe usurper An Lushandrove both Wang Wei and Du Fu

far from the corrupt courtinto the mountainswhere for the first time they were freeto write the only poems we remember.

Bibl iography

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Jerzy Illg, “An Invisible Rope: Czesław Miłosz in the Literary Underground in Poland,” Periphery, Vol. 4/5, 1999, http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~zbigniew/Periphery/No4/illg.html.

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Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1989.

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Peter Dale Scott

Peter Dale Scott  His website is http://www.peterdalescott.org/

PETER DALE SCOTT: CURRICULUM VITAE

Born Montreal, January 11, 1929. Married (1) Mary Elizabeth Marshall, June 16, 1956 (divorced, 1993): three children (Catherine Dale, Thomas, John Daniel). Married (2) Ronna Kabatznick, July 14, 1993. A Canadian citizen.

Education and Teaching:

B.A. (McGill University, Montreal), 1949. First Class Honors in Philosophy, Second Class Honors in Political Science.Studied six months at Institut d'Etudes Politiques, Paris; and two years at University College, Oxford (1950-1952).Ph.D. in Political Science (McGill), 1955. Dissertation on The Social and Political Ideas of T.S. Eliot.

1952-1953. Teacher at Sedbergh School, Montebello, Quebec.1955-1956. Lecturer, Department of Political Science, McGill University.1961-1966. Speech Department, University of California, Berkeley: Lecturer (1961); Acting Assistant Professor (1962); Assistant Professor (1963).1966-1994. English Department, University of California, Berkeley: Assistant Professor (1966); Associate Professor (1968); Professor (1980). Retired 1994.

Professional Service

Foreign Service Officer, Canadian Department of External Affairs, 1957-1961: Twelfth and Thirteenth Sessions, United Nations General Assembly, 1957, 1958; Canadian Embassy in Warsaw, Poland (1959-1961); United Nations Conference on Statelessness (Geneva, 1959); United Nations Conference on Diplomatic Intercourse and Immunities (Vienna, 1961)Senior Fellow, International Center for Development Policy, Washington, D.C., June-November 1987.

Fellowships

Canadian Social Sciences Research Council, 1956-57. Guggenheim Fellow, 1969-1970.

Honors and Awards

International Center for Development Policy, Freedom Award, 1987.Finalist, Canadian Governor-General's Award for Poetry, 1988.Reed Foundation Poetry Chapbook, Dia Art Foundation, 1989.Writer in Residence, University of Toronto, Fall 1992.Honorable Mention, Mencken Awards, Best Book, 1992.Sylvia Meagher Award, Coalition on Political Assassinations, 1996.JFK Pioneer Award, JFKLancer, 1997.Resident, Bellagio Study Center, Aug.-Sept. 1997.Lannan Poetry Award, 2002 (with Alan Dugan).Lannan Writing Residency, Marfa, TX, March-April 2004 Honoree at Symposium and Seminars, Open Center, New York City, March 13-20, 2010.

Two journal issues devoted to his poetry: Chicago Review, Fall 1998; Agni, 31/32 (1990).