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Announcing TBR Ebooks!

Starting with a new publication concerning the background behind the 9/11 attacks, TBR News will be presenting a series of interesting, informative and definitive works for our readers. Future titles will include the complete Voice of the White House with much more added material that was considered too controversial to post, the heavily-censored Armenian Holocaust of 1916, the Bush-Lay private correspondence, the Assassination of JFK,Pearl Harbor intrigues and rare documents, Malaparte’s inside study of the making of revolution, sensational selected articles from the German Rudolf historical revision files, unpublished before Rudolf’s arrest and forced deportation to Germany, World War II studies of holocaust history, taken from secret German files and much more. Please see the title page for more information.

The Editors

Descending Into Darkness: The Harring Report

A well-researched study into the background of the 9/11 attack: Who knew what and when did they know it. Russian and German intelligence material, not published before show that the U.S. had ample warning...and did nothing about it.

THE VOICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE

The full collection of the twice-weekly commentary of what is really going on inside the corrupt Bush White House. The spectrum includes the Gannon scandal, the planned invasion of Iran, many stories of stupidity and corruption coupled with biting sarcasm. Interesting to note that many, if not most, of the predictions have come true.

REGICIDE The Official Assassination of John F. Kennedy

A landmark book that sold very well in hardback, this work contains actual intelligence documents concerning the inside U.S. plans to kill Kennedy; the reasons, the methods and the results.

The Final Reckoning: An Analysis of Demographics in Holocaust Literature

By Harold Kreig, Lt.Col, AUS ret.

This is the first rational, heavily documented work on the subject of the Holocaust. Colonel Krieg has taken thousands of documents, including the official SS concentration camp records from 1935 through 1945 and official U.S. government postwar analysis of the system and the casualties and causes of death and produced a book that is highly informative and readable.  Heavily footnoted and annotated, ‘The Final Reckoning’ is logical and compelling and is an historical work that should be read through by any student of the period and subject.

Coup D’Etat: The Technique Of Revolution

By Curzio Malaparte

First published in Italy by Curzio Malaparte in 1928, this is a seminal work on historical seizures of power from Napoleon through Hitler.

Gestapo-Chief: The CIA & Heinrich Müller by Gregory Douglas

                In 1948, the former head of Hitelr’s Gestapo was interviewed by senior officials of the CIA in Switzerland where Müller had been in hiding since the end of the Second World War. His interview, for Colonel James Critchfield of the CIA’s Gehlen Organization, runs to nearly a thousand pages and for years was hidden in the CIA’s files.

                This is a translation of a part of the interview, which was initially conducted in German and then translated into English for CIA use.

                It is a fascinating series of historical episodes covering both the Axis and Allied sides with comments on Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, Henry Wallace, Winston Churchill, the 20^th of July bomb plot against Hitler, Bishop von Galen’s heroic, and successful, attacks on the Nazis and their euthanasia program, the concentration camps, the Duke of Windsor, the Roger Casement diaries and many more fascinating and insightful views of a man who ran the most effective counter-intelligence agency in modern times. 

                There is also extensive information on the attempts on the part of the CIA to silence or discredit the fact that the Gestapo Chief worked for the United States and eventually came to live in Washington, D.C. as part of the notorious “Operation Paperclip.”

                Fascinating inside views of many top Nazis and CIA officials. 

The CIA COvenant: Nazis in Washington

by Gregory Douglas

* From the end of World War II, the American CIA imported thousands of Nazis into the United States to work for them, many on the list of wanted war criminals

*One of the most important of these was Heinrich Mueller, once head of Hitler's Gestapo. Mueller was recruited by Colonel James Critchfield who ran the CIA's "Gehnel Organization' in Munich.

* Mueller kept journals and this book is a translation of three years (1948-1951) of notes and observations made of top CIA officials, President Truman, top U.S. government officials, plans for murder, thefts, kidnappings, wholesale thefts of public money and a terrifying pattern of uncontrolled ambition, unchecked by any person or agency.

* Also included are CIA and other agency's activities that have never been revealed.

*Mueller's deals in stolen Nazi art for the CIA are covered in detail.

*Also to be found are the steps the frightened CIA have taken to prevent the publication, sales or distribution of this work.

An Essay on the Principle of Population

by Thomas Malthus

The 1798 classic study of how supplies of food do not keep up with an expanding population

Malthus' theory is that population growth is geometric while the food supply increase is arithmetic.

A very literate and current study that clearly highlights present and current population problems

With the world's population higher than ever before, this is a work of great and current interest

CONSPIRACIES for Fun and Profit

Contents
The Evil Catholics Murdered Abraham Lincoln
TWA Flight 800: The Gathering of the Nuts
The Real Truth About the Kennedy Assassination!
The Great 9-11 Plot
Who is Sorcha Faal?
The Bush Indictments
Faked Conspiracy photos
The Sinking of the MV Estonia
The German Guy and the Destruction of Houston
The Great Contrail Conspiracy
Planet X
Remote Viewing unveiled

Notice!

Our new security system prevents email messages coming through the AOL server from being delivered to our address. This is because of the probability of unwelcome and problematical attachments to messages from this source, coupled with the fact that AOL’s voluntary cooperation with various American, and foreign, law enforcement groups makes contact with them in any form a risky business.  Correspondents wishing to contact TBR News are suggested to use another server. Ed.

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people, On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
- H.L. Mencken

“That we are to stand by the president, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
-Theodore Roosevelt

“Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited. The discrediting is not an automatic result of the blunders and abuses of those in power, but the deliberate work of men of words with a grievance.”
-Eric Hoffer The True Believer

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

America’s Enemies!

There are four entities who represent the most dangerous enemies to American liberties since George III.

They are:

1.                    The Neocons or Likudists who owe their personal allegiance to another country and now completely control our foreign policy. They lied and deceived us into the Iraq war and are demanding that more and more American soldiers die to preserve their own country and ideals.

2.                    The Christian Evangelical right who is trying to force the United States into becoming a theocracy under their rule. They know in their hearts that they alone can restructure a secular humanist America into their idea of Heaven on Earth.

3.                    An element of American society that call themselves Patriots and are obsessively militaristic and great admirers of the corporate or fascistic state. Many of these have been very minor members of the American military and as a counterbalance to their reserve or rear area tours of duty, are rabidly in favor of draconian military action, the bloodier the better. Usually these drumbeaters are too old, or too fat, to fight and have no sons of draft age.

4.                    George W. Bush, who is the worst president in the history of the United States and directly responsible for the huge death tolls in Iraq, is determined to rule the United States until God puts a stop to him and is even more determined to force the American people into becoming obedient, Christian and self-sacrificing lemmings who worship at his shrine and march in step.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., April 22, 2007: “This report covers three subjects: The plan to take over and completely control the U.S. internet; and the Russian responses to publication of plots against Putin.

The current power structure of the United States exercises almost complete control over both the print and television media. They do not, however, control the flow of information, some it potentially disastrous, on the internet. An uncontrolled internet has exposed many lies and plots against the public safety and so, the current administration reasons, it must come under strict governmental control.

Therefore, there is now pending a joint attempt by the Department of Justice, FBI, and DEA to bring all access to the Internet within the scope of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). The current CALEA legislation gives law enforcement agencies access to communications traffic under specific legal conditions and constraints.

The vehicle for this control, which is slated to be under the Department of Defense, is the so-called Internet2. This is to be a regional internet program and at present, it is controlled by the FBI but in the event this is officially expanded to take over internet control on a national level, it will then be controlled by the DoD.

At the present time, a number of very prominent and well-used internet and telecommunication services, such as Google, SBC, AOL and others, report directly to government agencies on the activities of their subscribers and users. For example, Google automatically notes any searches for subjects the government deems “inappropriate” such as interest in any group or philosophy in the Muslim world, any interest in technical subjects such as bombs or pathogens or any and all persons expressing anger with the government or any of its agencies or personnel.

Telecommunication companies fall all over each other to send daily reports on telephone, fax and other communications send or received by such  of their patrons whose names have been supplied to the companies. These can be as harmless as anti-draft groups, Democrat activists, anyone expressing anti-Semitic views and so on.  (Editor’s note: We are posting below this a long and technical article on the subject from another source)

The political situation in Russia is reaching a boiling point with the public utterances of Boris Berezovsky, a former oligarch and once top man in the Russian oil industry.

When it turned out he and others planned to sell theior controlling shares to American and English oil companies, in essence, Putin kicked them out of Russia. Most of them fled in terror to Mother Israel, taking billions of dollars of loot with them.

Most are living very quietly but Berezovsky has a huge ego and a bigger mouth and he, and other less verbose ex-oligarchs, are openly plotting to stir up civil dissent inside Russia with the avowed intention of either getting the hated Putin assassinated or deposed.

They have the full support of Israel and the United States in these plans because if Putin falls, all the oil and gas will be removed from state control and given back the oligarchs and the long delayed sale to Western oil interrests will go forward.

Couple this with Dick Cheney’s pathological hatred of Putin (as an evil “Communist” which he is not) and both Cheney and Bush’s fanatical support of any project Israel puts forward, this is seen in many agencies as instigating an anti-Semitic wave spreacing throughout Russia.

For this reason, the US press is now attacking Putin as a dictator but because of his loud noises, Berezovsky has had to leave England ahead of a deportation order and flee back to the safety of Israel (that country will never extradite a Jew to a foreign country, not even the recent new arrival who murdered someone and tried to burn the remains in his backyard barbecue pit)

The average Russian is very anti-Semitic, remembering their terribile and prolonged suffering under Stalin’s secret police, (40 millions were put to death during Stalin reign of terror) who were almost entirely Jewish in composition.

The growing stridency of the Jewish oligarchy against Putin is resulting in a ressurgence of anti-Semitism in Russia and one of my very best sources in the State Department tells me that it appears from their intelligence branch that such very rich personages in Russia as Oleg Deripaska of the aluminum giant RUSAL, and Roman Abrahamovich, a former partner and co-religionist ofwho has been associated with Deripaska, and who is heavily involved in  SIBNEFT with Berezovsky, are slated for the axe (read deportation to Israel or a bullet in the back of the neck) and their holdings immediately siezed by the state and amagalmated into a massive state-owned resource trust.

Abramovich, who now lives in England where he is the richest Jew in the country, is a strong supporter of Jewish causes in Russia and Israeli and has funded several projects in the Abramovich neighborhood in Jerusalem, and  Tel Aviv. He is known to be the biggest donor to the Jewish organization Chabad-Lubavitch.

When word of this putsch reached American sources, they at once informed the Israelis and together, a joint campaign was launched against Putin and his people, both in the intelligence communities and the American media.

Cheney is not a sane man but it is one thing to plot against a weak Iraq and quite another to pick a quarrel with a Russia that has a large aresenal of atomic weapons and a formidable military force. Bush is not actually a main party to this Get-Putin movement because he is now absolutely obsessed with protecting the vile Rove and the worthless Rodriguez, and getting one up on Congress over the failed war in Iraq but his blind support of Israel will drag him along the path of increasing, and appalingly stupid, confrontation with a country the U.S. could well have become an ally of after the fall of the Soviet Union.

It’s too bad some genuine American patriots engineered the removel of former insect exermnator cum Born-Agan- Jesus -Freak,  Tom Delay. Just think of what he could do to our useless and criminally stupid leaders with a long afternon and six tanks trucks of cyanide spray. Then we would have our very own Sacred Holocaust to bleat about for the next ten decades and use as a national fundraiser for condos for Congressmen in Florida, with nubile Kushner-trained  houseboys for Republicans like Foley.”

Federally Funded Researchers Plan to Close down the Internet

Need further funding from Congress for “clean slate” and Internet 2

April 18, 2007

by Steve Watson

Global Research

Researchers funded by the federal government want to shut down the internet and start over, citing the fact that at the moment there are loopholes in the system whereby users cannot be tracked and traced all the time.

Time magazine has reported that several foundations and universities including Rutgers, Stanford, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are pursuing individual projects, along with the Defense Department, in order to wipe out the current internet and replace it with a new network which will satisfy big business and government:

One challenge in any reconstruction, though, will be balancing the interests of various constituencies. The first time around, researchers were able to toil away in their labs quietly. Industry is playing a bigger role this time, and law enforcement is bound to make its needs for wiretapping known.

There's no evidence they are meddling yet, but once any research looks promising, "a number of people (will) want to be in the drawing room," said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor affiliated with Oxford and Harvard universities. "They'll be wearing coats and  ties and spilling out of the venue."

The projects echo moves we have previously reported on to clamp down on internet neutrality and even to designate a new form of the internet known as Internet 2.

This would be a faster, more streamlined elite equivalent of the internet available to users who were willing to pay more for a much improved service. providers may only allow streaming audio and video on your websites if you were eligible for Internet 2.

Of course, Internet 2 would be greatly regulated and only "appropriate content" would be accepted by an FCC or government bureau. Everything else would be relegated to the "slow lane" internet, the junkyard as it were. Our techie rulers are all too keen to make us believe that the internet as we know it is ";already dead".

Google is just one of the major companies preparing for internet 2 by setting up hundreds of "server farms" through which eventually all our personal data - emails, documents, photographs, music, movies - will pass and reside.

However, experts state that the "clean slate" projects currently being undertaken go even further beyond projects like Internet2 and National LambdaRail, both of which focus primarily on next-generation needs for speed.

In tandem with broad data retention legislation currently being introduced worldwide, such "clean slate" projects may represent a considerable threat to the freedom of the internet as we know it. EU directives and US proposals for data retention may mean that any normal website or blog would have to fall into line with such new rules and suddenly total web regulation would become a reality.

In recent months, a chorus of propaganda intended to demonize the Internet and further lead it down a path of strict control has spewed forth from numerous establishment organs:

·                     In a display of bi-partisanship, there have recently been calls for all out mandatory ISP snooping on all US citizens by both Democrats and Republicans alike.

·                     Republican Senator John McCain recently tabled a proposal to introduce legislation that would fine blogs up to $300,000 for offensive statements, photos and videos posted by visitors on comment boards. It is well known that McCain has a distaste for his blogosphere critics, causing a definite conflict of interest where any proposal to restrict blogs on his part is concerned.

·                     During an appearance with his wife Barbara on Fox News last November, George Bush senior slammed Internet bloggers for creating an "adversarial and ugly climate."

·                     The White House's own recently de-classified strategy for "winning the war on terror" targets Internet conspiracy theories as a recruiting ground for terrorists and threatens to "diminish" their influence.

·                     The Pentagon recently announced its effort to infiltrate the Internet and propagandize for the war on terror.

·                     In a speech last October, Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff identified the web as a "terror training camp," through which "disaffected people living in the United States" are developing "radical ideologies and potentially violent skills." His solution is "intelligence fusion centers," staffed by Homeland Security personnel which will go into operation next year.

·                     The U.S. Government wants to force bloggers and online grassroots activists to register and regularly report their activities to Congress. Criminal charges including a possible jail term of up to one year could be the punishment for non-compliance.

·                     A landmark legal case on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America and other global trade organizations seeks to criminalize all Internet file sharing of any kind as copyright infringement, effectively shutting down the world wide web - and their argument is supported by the U.S. government.

·                     A landmark legal ruling in Sydney goes further than ever before in setting the trap door for the destruction of the Internet as we know it and the end of alternative news websites and blogs by creating the precedent that simply linking to other websites is breach of copyright and piracy.

·                     The European Union, led by former Stalinist and potential future British Prime Minister John Reid, has also vowed to shut down "terrorists" who use the Internet to spread propaganda.

·                     The EU data retention bill, passed last year after much controversy and with implementation tabled for late 2007, obliges telephone operators and internet service providers to store information on who called who and who emailed who for at least six months. Under this law, investigators in any EU country, and most bizarrely even in the US, can access EU citizens' data on phone calls, sms', emails and instant messaging services.

·                     The EU also recently proposed legislation that would prevent users from uploading any form of video without a license.

·                     The US government is also funding research into social networking sites and how to gather and store personal data published on them, according to the New Scientist magazine. "At the same time, US lawmakers are attempting to force the social networking sites themselves to control the amount and kind of information that people, particularly children, can put on the sites."

We are being led to believe that a vast army of maniac pedophiles or terrorists are on the loose and we must do away with all forms of privacy in order to stop them. This is akin to saying that blanket cctv prevents crime. As if to say "if we film everyone all the time, even innocent people, then no one will ever commit any crimes."

Increasingly we are seeing this in every aspect of our lives. Recording, tracking and retaining our data in the name of keeping us all safe. Everyone is now treated as guilty until proven innocent.

Make no mistake, the internet, one of the greatest outposts of free speech ever created is under constant attack by powerful people who cannot operate within a society where information flows freely and unhindered. Both American and European moves mimic stories we hear every week out of State Controlled Communist China, where the internet is strictly regulated and virtually exists as its own entity away from the rest of the web.

The Internet is freedom's best friend and the bane of control freaks. Its eradication is one of the short term goals of those that seek to centralize power and subjugate their populations under a surveillance panopticon prison, whether that be in Communist China, Neoconservative America or the Neofascist EU

Internet2 or UCAID (University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development) is a non-profit consortium which develops and deploys advanced network applications and technologies, for education and high-speed data transfer purposes. It is led by 208 universities  and partners with 60 companies in areas from the networking (Cisco Systems), publishing (Prous Science) and technology industries such as Comcast, Intel and Sun Microsystems. "Internet2" is a registered trademark

Why were Internet2 and the Abilene network created? These technologies and their organizational counterparts were not only created to make a faster alternative to the internet. More and more applications for Internet2 technology become apparent all the time. Many fields have been able to use the Abilene network to foster creativity, research, and development in a way that was not previously possible. Students who belong to poor quality libraries now find themselves downloading not only text but sound recordings, animations, videos, and other resources. Another application is the robust video conferencing now available to Internet2 participants. Neurosurgeons can now video conference with other experts in the field during an operation in a high resolution format with no apparent time lag. The applications of this type of network are endless, and will lead the way into the future of internet use

Comment: The Electronic Communications Privacy Act established a complex set of protocols for law enforcement access to records of or concerning electronic communications, including e-mail, web traffic, and other forms of Internet communication.  While those protocols are too complex to describe here in full, in general they provide greater protections for, and require more formal process to access, real-time communications than stored communications, unretrieved communications than retrieved ones, and contents than subscriber or transaction ("envelope") records.  A very basic "summary" of those protocols (from the 267-page Department of Justice Manual on Searching and Seizing Computers and Obtaining Electronic Evidence in Criminal Investigations) is attached at the end of this document.

Law enforcement has grown accustomed to having a technically simple wiretap capability, which is an "accidental" feature of the PSTN's design. Having the ability to tap access circuits in DSLAMs and cable head-ends is a fairly natural extension, but having a general-purpose capability to tap VoIP could have disastrous effects. VoIP's decoupling of identity and address from physical access, makes it impossible to support CALEA without destroying some of the most valuable features of the technology (mobility, resiliency, low latency media path routing, end-device call control, etc.).

In the past there has been a similar threat on the encryption front (with the effort to require key escrow). The leaked "PATRIOT II" act already moves in the direction of criminalizing encrypted communications. The problem with this trend, of course, is that while it makes it easier to snoop on  disapproved elements, it also makes it easier for those seeking more government control to observe putative enemies  Brian Harring

The Russian Response

Russian Police Raid U.S. Funded NGO

April 20, 2007

MosNews

Russian police raided a U.S. funded non-governmental organization, seizing documents and equipment in a search, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

Police spent 11 hours at the offices of the Educated Media Foundation the legal successor of Internews Russia. Officers confiscated financial records and computer servers, said the head of its analytical center, Anna Kachkayeva.

Foundation President Manana Aslamazian said police told her the search was linked to a criminal case launched against her after she failed to declare cash she brought into the country in January.

That time she brought into Russia euro notes worth more than $10,000 without declaring it at customs. She said it was money she had borrowed for personal reasons and that she had not declared it because it had not occurred to her at the time that it would amount to more than $10,000.

Aslamazian said that her “personal mistake” had nothing to do with the organization and would not affect it if the authorities act fairly. She said the foundation operates legally and has nothing to hide.

Aslamazian said, however, that she suspected the raid was part of “the overall campaign of caution and suspicion toward non-governmental organizations that receive money from abroad.”

Top Russian officials have accused foreign countries, including the United States and Britain, of using NGOs to spy on and weaken Russia. President Vladimir Putin, who has warned against foreign-financed groups interfering in domestic politics, signed a law early last year tightening requirements on NGOs.

The government and loyal lawmakers reacted angrily last week to a U.S. State Department report that described U.S. financial aid to NGOs and independent media, including efforts to help promote free and fair elections. The lower parliament house called it “rude interference” in Russian politics.

The U.S. Agency for International Development says it spent about $38 million last year on projects to strengthen democracy in Russia, including nearly $5 million to support media freedom and freedom of information. It listed Internews Russia as a principal partner in that program.

Aslamazian said the Educated Media Foundation still commonly known here as Internews Russia had received about $1 million from USAID last year. Other sources of grants included a European group and income from paid programs it offers media outlets, she said.

The foundation had been paralyzed by the search and confiscation of documents and equipment. “I cannot close the organization, but on the other hand, we cannot work,” Aslamazian said.

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2007/04/20/educatedmedia.

The Voice of the Controller Speaks!

Cheney: Iraq pullout would hurt Israel! (A good idea, for once)

Global Jewish News

JTA

A U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq would be damaging to Israel, Dick Cheney said.

"We must consider, as well, just what a precipitous withdrawal would mean to our other efforts in the war on terror, to our interests in the broader Middle East, and to Israel," the U.S. vice president said over the weekend to a Republican Jewish Coalition leadership gathering in Latana, Fla.

"Commentators enjoy pointing out mistakes through 20/20 hindsight. But the biggest mistake of all can be seen in advance: A sudden withdrawal of our coalition would dissipate much of the effort that has gone into fighting the global war on terror, and result in chaos and mounting danger. And for the sake of our own security, we will not stand by and let it happen," Cheney said. He has a similar message earlier this month to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual policy forum.

http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/100844.html

The Green Zone Follies

Baghdad, 21 Apr 07: “Six days ago, I was in an armed convoy driving through the McCain-safe streets of Baghdad when a non-existent rocket, made right here and not in Tehran,  blasted into a truck carrying fifteen GIs. We had to stop, could not turn around because there were vehicles behind us, frantically trying to flee in all directions, and so I saw what were the shredded remains of all fifteen soldiers littering the street and smoldering. Not the sort of thing to look at, or smell, after breakfast or before lunch. There was not a word of this in our media at home and the official casualty lists, posted on the net didn’t mention any of them. There are fifteen that never got reported.  Fellow in the next building from me does the casualty reports for transmitting back to the States and he says they publish the names of one in ten. This has been a very bad month with over 300 known dead! That doesn’t cover those with faces missing or legs up on a local roof, feeding the birds. This place has become a living hell, what with occasional snipers shooting our men inside the “really safe” Green Zone, setting off bombs in the “heavily guarded” Iraqi government compound and blowing up the hand puppet legislators at lunch, mortar rounds from the “defeated insurgents’”  slamming down at all times of the day and night, and so on. This crazy Bush  ‘surge ‘is not working because we have had to withdraw all our troops from outlying provinces and they have been replaced with local religious crazies who shoot anything that moves. The insurgents have virtually destroyed the power grids so Baghdad gets electric power a few hours a day (at the very best); the water supply has been “interfered with” so the locals get shit-infested water from the river but we, who are Bringing Bush Democracy to the benighted heathens have our own generators and our own water, carefully filtered of shit and body parts, so we can cheerfully, and proudly, show the world how better the locals are off with our brand of vicious tyranny as opposed to Saddam’s. They ought to bring Bush and Cheney over here, strip them buck naked and use them as decoys and then we’d see a rapid withdrawal for certaion! And hear loud cheers as the GIs would be struggling with the locals to pick up presidential and vice presidential body parts as souvenirs.”

News from the Lunatic Fringe

Birth of the Christian Soldier: How Evangelicals Infiltrated the American Military

April 21, 2007

by Michael L. Weinstein and David Seay, Thomas Dunne Books.

It took decades for evangelicals to infiltrate the military, but eventually fundamentalist theology adapted as its entry points the culture of authority, duty, and sacrifice in the armed forces

http://www.alternet.org/rights/50696/?page=1

The following is an excerpt from With God On Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military by Michael L. Weinstein and Davin Seay (Thomas Dunne, 2007).

Despite the church-state scandals that have plagued the US military in recent years, religious practice in the armed forces is hardly a new phenomenon. In the 1846 Mexican War, Roman Catholics were incorporated into the hitherto all-Protestant chaplaincy for the first time, as much to blunt implications of a sectarian war with Catholic Mexico as for any effort to address the actual religious demographics of the fighting force.

In 1862, President Lincoln, at the request of the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, struck the word Christian from all regulations relating to the chaplaincy appointments, and during World War II, Greek Orthodox chaplains were allowed to minister to their flock in uniform for the first time. The Buddhist Churches of America were registered as an official endorsing agency for the first time in 1987, and six years later the Army saw its first Muslim chaplain.

These earnest attempts at pluralism were often contrasted with unsanctioned attempts to bring sanctity to the armed forces, from the revivalist fervor that swept both Union and Confederate camps during the Civil War, to various hectoring attempts to stiffen the moral fiber of troops during and immediately after World War II. GIs were returning from combat, according to a 1946 report from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, "physical, mental, moral and social wrecks, having been infected with venereal disease" and "coddled by a complacent service attitude which encourages promiscuity."

The situation was subsequently exacerbated at the dawn of the Cold War when, in 1945, President Truman proposed a one-year program of universal military training for all males over eighteen, a move vigorously resisted by evangelical churches. "We began to wonder what might happen to our youth removed from home and church influences," fretted the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), "and subjected to the temptations for which military training camps are notorious."

The proliferating paranoia of the Red Scare, however, radically altered such attitudes by the early fifties, when the world, according to literature distributed by the Nazarene Service Men's Commission, was neatly divided between "the Communist dictatorships and the Christian democracies." The Nazarenes concluded, "The stricken nations are looking to the free world ... we are our 'brother's keeper.'"

Aside from being a bulwark against godless communism, the military was perceived as a target-rich environment for missionary outreach. In 1959, the NAE asserted, "Fifty percent of all who pass through the military service have no religious background or church connection." The implication was clear. "This is the ripe harvest field in which our chaplains are working."

They weren't the only ones intent on reaping the souls of unsuspecting soldiers. Early in the decade, mainline Protestant denominations aggressively promoted annual "preaching missions" on U.S. military bases, and in 1952, the year the campaign was initiated, nearly a hundred weeklong events were launched around the theme "Christ Is the Answer."

Competition between liberal Protestantism and fundamentalist evangelicals for influence within the military was fierce, focused primarily on inserting as many chaplains as possible into all available postings. A battle quickly shaped up between the rival commissioning arms of various denominations, with the evangelicals fighting on two fronts against both mainline Protestants and Catholics. "Evangelicals must not fail the proportionately large number of men in the armed forces who are anxious that the New Testament gospel be preached," warned the NAE. "... Real evangelistic work must be carried on by our chaplains."

Evangelicals were also at the forefront of what author Anne C. Loveland in her pioneering study, American Evangelicals and the U.S. Military, 1942-1993, calls "an unprecedented religious and moral welfare program" instituted by the Truman administration, largely in response to a widespread outcry against drunkenness and immorality among Korean War conscripts. Dubbed Character Guidance, the program was in force throughout the fifties, and while ostensibly nonsectarian, the curriculum reveals a rigorous religious agenda, bristling with exhortations that "service to the nation is most effective only when religion becomes part of individual life," and that in the "covenant nation" of America, "public institutions and official thinking reflect a faith in the existence and importance of divine providence," with God as "the final source of authority."

The most effective wedge for the insertion of evangelicals into every rung of military life was the NAE and its influential chaplain-endorsing agency, the Commission on Chaplains, which worked tirelessly as a liaison for a wide array of fundamentalist denominations, from the Assemblies of God to the Southern Baptist Convention to the full index of offshoot and splinter congregations. Notwithstanding the military's policy of allotting chaplaincies on a quota system designed to roughly reflect the religious affiliations of society as a whole, by the late '60s evangelical denominations were regularly exceeding their allotments.

The phenomenon mirrored, in part, the explosive growth of fundamentalist Christianity in America and, in part, the assiduous efforts of the NAE and its Commission on Chaplains to fill posts left empty by the Catholics, Jews, Orthodox, and others who were regularly failing to meet their allocations. In what Loveland terms a "quota juggling act," the NAE and others aggressively lobbied to fill chaplaincies left vacant by other denominations, resulting in a marked shift in the selection process weighted more and more to religious demographics within the military itself, where evangelical numbers continued to swell. This consolidation of power would result, by the late eighties, in the NAE Chaplains Commission's acting as the endorsing agent not only for established denominations but for hundreds of nonaligned individual churches.

By the mid sixties nearly all the forty evangelical denominations listed by the Armed Forces Chaplains Board had met or exceeded their assigned postings. This influx of evangelizing chaplains would have an extraordinary effect on the spiritual tenor of the armed forces, especially in the wake of such mandatory programs as Character Guidance, which had imbued chaplains with hitherto unimagined authority. Loveland cites a glowing article in a 1952 issue of Chaplain, the official publication of the Navy Chaplaincy, that focuses on religious instruction at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, where recruits regularly attended lectures designed to "reinforce the moral and spiritual strength of Navy men during the most impressionable period of their Naval career."

The "thorough, dynamic program of evangelism," concluded the story, presented "a vital religion that may never have been available to them in civilian life." "Faith," another article in Chaplain asserted, "is an integral part of being a good solider," and it was to that end that chaplains were provided extensive contact and increased influence at every level of the military hierarchy.

Career considerations were another contributing factor to the flood of evangelicals into the chaplaincy. "Pastors are taking a new look at their military counterparts," wrote one observer, "and a significant number are leaving their civilian pastorate for service as a chaplain." The subsequent rush by pastors into the armed forces was hardly surprising, considering the steady paycheck, generous benefits, and comfortable pensions provided by the government.

But it wasn't only individuals who were taking a "new look" at the military mission field. Evangelical church support organizations began to bring their considerable proselytizing prowess to bear on the armed services, spearheaded by such entrenched outreaches as the Colorado Springs-based Navigators, the Officer's Christian Fellowship, the Overseas Christian Servicemen's Centers, the Christian Military Fellowship, Campus Crusade for Christ, and the Full Gospel Businessmen.

As the most established among them, the Navigators had, by the mid eighties, a staff of over seventy dedicated solely to missionary work within the military, operating active chapters in and around far-flung bases from Turkey to West Germany to Spain. In the literature of their Military Ministry branch, the Navigators singled out the Air Force Academy for special attention with an ominous-sounding (if syntactically muddled) goal to "impact eternity by multiplying disciples through spiritual generations."

It was inevitable, considering the concerted effort by evangelicals to penetrate every echelon of the service, from the lowliest barracks to the loftiest policy-making aerie, that there would eventually emerge a cadre of Christian officers emboldened to openly profess their faith and use the full influence of their rank to bolster the cause.

Among them were such high-profile figures as Army general William Harrison, dubbed the Two Star Evangelist by the press in recognition of his status as one of the nation's first bona fide born-again celebrities. While he worked at the Pentagon in the early 1950s, Harrison's exhortations could regularly be heard on the Word of Life radio program, sponsored by the Officer's Christian Union, an organization he would later head. Steadfastly promoting an end-time doctrine, Harrison, while still in uniform, declared, "The second advent of Christ will include great wars with terrible suffering," a leading indicator that "the course of civilization is toward self-destruction." It was, to say the least, a peculiar conviction from a man sworn to uphold the peace and preserve civilization.

Another front-and-center fundamentalist was John C. Broger, whose more than two decades at the helm of Armed Forces Information and education (AFIE) from 1961 to 1984 provided him, according to Anne Loveland, "a central role in the ideological indoctrination of armed forces personnel." A former radio evangelist, Broger was hired by the Defense Department at the height of the Cold War to provide what his mentor, Admiral Arthur Radford, called "Spiritual stiffening" of the troops in their battle against atheistic communism. Broger's view of that battle was quickly made clear: it was a fight that could not be won on the basis of "military manpower and production potential" alone.

What was needed was "godly precepts and principles," and "strength and inspiration in godly righteousness." To that end he created the Militant Liberty program, consisting of what some observers at the time dismissed as "pseudo-scientific jargon and high-sounding clichés." It was nevertheless relentlessly promoted by the Defense Department, with Broger delivering briefings on its provocative precepts to war colleges and service schools around the country. The eventual refusal of the Pentagon to fully implement Militant Liberty hardly slowed the peripatetic evangelist's military career track: he was subsequently appointed director of AFIE, from which perch he delivered such pronouncements as "If the government is to be ordained of God, then spiritual and moral concepts must under-gird and relate to all political, economic, educational and cultural areas of national life."

Yet of all the emergent Christian cold warriors in the years before and during the Vietnam War, none wielded more influence and authority than Army general Harold Johnson. A survivor of the Bataan Death March and a Korean War combat veteran, Johnson was appointed Army chief of staff in 1964, four years after he had declared in an interview for the American Tract Society that "Christianity is the very foundation of military leadership." The four-star general would regularly deliver addresses with titles such as "Turn to God," proclaiming, "There is a special need for the soldier to understand the strength and purpose that can be provided by a deep and abiding faith in our Father through His son, Jesus." Only Christ, according to Johnson, could provide "the inner strength that is essential to meet the wide variety of conditions encountered in the environment of the warrior."

Johnson, in fact, considered the "environment of the warrior" to be his unique purview, as witnessed by his efforts to protect and preserve the explicitly Christian content of the Character Guidance program, in place since the end of World War II. In 1962, the American Civil Liberties Union had first lodged a complaint about the "religious indoctrination" inherent in the curriculum and succeeded in removing some of its more egregious First Amendment violations, such as the "One Nation Under God" lesson plan, with its stated objective of "leading the individual to a recognition of the importance of the spiritual element in his training."

Six years later, under Johnson's watch, Character Guidance once again came under attack from the ACLU, and the Army chief of staff took personal charge of the Pentagon's response. According to historian Anne Loveland, Johnson "saw nothing wrong with using the Bible in support of the program," and, more significantly, took a staunch stand in opposition to many mainline denominations, united in their criticism of the program's coercive character. Suffice it to say, Johnson at the same time aligned himself resolutely with the evangelical political forces, still smarting from recent Supreme Court decisions banning school prayer and for whom the attack on Character Guidance was another attempt to excise God from every social sphere.

The cumulative effect of men like Harrison, Broger, and Johnson on the prevailing military mind-set was ultimately to move evangelicals from the fringes of America's fighting forces squarely into the councils of power. Yet, for all their personal charisma and crusading zeal, it was implacable historical forces that best served to consolidate fundamentalist influence within the armed services. "It was Vietnam," remarks Anne Loveland, "which really turned the tide.

As the war progressed, more and more mainline denominations spoke out against it and, in fact, became centers of organized resistance. That never really happened with evangelicals." Perhaps largely due to their stark view of human events as a titanic struggle between the forces of good and evil, evangelicals often subscribed to official rationales of the war as a necessary stand against the domino-tipping strategies of a godless opponent.

Fundamentalist John Rice, editor of the fire-breathing Sword of the Lord, neatly summed up the bellicose attitude when he wrote that, in Vietnam, America was "carrying out the command of God." The sentiment was echoed by preacher Carl McIntire, who thundered, "It is the message of the infallible Bible that gives men the right to participate in such conflicts, and to do it with the realization that God is for them, that God will help them, and that if they believe in the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and die in the field of battle, they will be received into the highest heaven."

As the war continued to grind away at American conscience and consensus and the military increasingly became the object of the swelling antiwar movement's fury, a siege mentality took hold. In the us-against-them polarization that was splitting the nation, the armed services looked within itself to single out and promote those who would wholeheartedly support the savagely decisive conflict, and none were more vociferously vocal in their allegiance than the evangelicals, who had spent much of the last two decades securing positions within the ranks. "Should a follower of Jesus participate at all in the messy military business of killing people?" asked evangelical author Randolph Klassen. "Would Jesus? Would Christ carry a draft card? I am convinced He would. Does He want me to carry one? Of this I have no doubt."

But there was more at play than simple knee-jerk jingoism or even evangelical opportunism. Setting aside for a moment the fatalistic complexities of premillennial theology — in which Christ's return is delayed until man's cup of iniquity is filled to overflowing, and the death and destruction of war becomes a precursor to paradise — the interface of the military's historical identity and fundamentalist Christian rhetoric reaches much deeper.

The Bible, of course, is rife with martial imagery, from the scorched-earth conquest of Canaan, to David's stalwart stand against Goliath, to Paul's familiar Ephesians metaphors for the well-equipped Christian: "the breastplate of righteousness," "the shield of faith," "the helmet of salvation," and "the sword of the Spirit."

Together they comprised "the whole armor of God," in which believers would sally forth to do battle against "the rulers of darkness of this world and against spiritual wickedness in high places." The Church Militant has been one of Christianity's most resonant and effective self-conceptions, from the time of the Crusades to the military orders of the Salvation Army, and of course, the Christian Soldier in the durable old hymn, forever marching as to war, the cross of Jesus going before, their royal master leading against the foe. With the possible exception of athletic similes, it is the serried imagery of combat that is most often evoked from the pulpit, and while the warrior archetype may not answer to the often diffuse and inchoate longings that bring seekers to the foot of the cross, it seems especially well suited to the evangelical aesthetic of conquest and conversion.

Given this potent affinity, it's hardly surprising that fundamentalists found a familiar context for their exalted concepts of authority, duty, and sacrifice within the military and all but inevitable that the methods of war would be deployed in the Great Commission: to reach the whole world for Jesus in preparation for his promised return.

It is a convergence that would, in turn, reach its apotheosis in You the Warrior Leader, a gung ho handbook for "applying military strategy in victorious spiritual leadership," published at the same time Weinstein was beginning to gird himself for a different kind of battle. Written by former Green Beret and current Southern Baptist Convention president Bobby Welch, You the Warrior Leader is as unequivocal a statement of evangelical militarism as could be imagined, an unabashed tactical manual on storming the barricades of unbelief with rousing rhetoric that evokes a kind of holy bloodlust for the trophies of triumphalism.

"Fix bayonets" commands the first chapter, broken into subheads variously titled "Scratching, Biting, Ear-Ripping-Off War Fighting," "Jesus the Warrior Leader," and "Making Hell Gun-Shy." In "The Quick and the Dead," a section dealing with battle-hardened evangelism, Welch seamlessly melds the urgency of conversion with a military leader's motivational role: "The Warrior Leader knows he must not only exemplify personal evangelism, he must never stop trying to get every Christian man, woman, boy, and girl to perform evangelism. Leaders must not allow those whom they lead to become disoriented and thereby fail to rescue family and friends from the devil and hell."

In the chapter "Attack! Attack! Attack!" Welch asks, "Remember the Warrior Leader's Mission-Vision?" as he hammers home with steely-eyed determination his grand strategy for winning souls: "To develop victorious spiritual-war fighters who form a force-multiplying army that accomplishes the Great Commission."

Comment: Frederick the Great’s dictum that every  man should  seek Heaven in his own way has been replaced by the beliefs of so-called Christian fanatics that proclaims that what is good for me has to be good for you. We are not speaking here of Catholics but of the manic Evangelicals whose credo is almost entirely based on invented mythology, none of which can be found anywhere in the Christian Bible. The fictive Battle of Armageddon, the Rapture, the Final Days and so on are all nineteenth century fictions and have absolutely no connection with any Biblical writings. Loudly proclaiming themselves to be the only moral force in American society, the Evangelical or Pentecostal movement has been studded with all manner of erratic, illegal and perverse behavior on the part of their spiritual leaders. Charles Parham, often called the father of the current cultists, was once jailed for sexually abusing young boys and we have noted the fall, and occasional rise, of such luminaries as Jimmy Swaggert who was caught in a cheap trailer park doing the mattress polka with a fourteen year old black prostitute or Jim Baaker who liked to suck on men’s toes while being beaten with a belt. And recently, we learn that Ted Haggard, one of America’s most prominent Evangelicals ,likes to suck other male appendages, and the rest of us are supposed to respect such moral lepers? It is difficult to ignore these air-headed pests because they shriek at you daily (twice on Sundays) on television, demand their lunatic views be made laws and in general make it very tempting to send the whole lot of them off to lunch with Jesus in the smoke of a great and cleaning national barbecue. Brian Harring