Howard Epstein

HOWARD EPSTEIN – COVER-UPS AND SECRET CLAUSES

By Howard Epstein

Posted on September 5, 2016

HOWARD EPSTEIN: COVER-UPS AND SECRET CLAUSES

HOWARD EPSTEIN: COVER-UPS AND SECRET CLAUSES. HIDDEN BY SHAME IN A LOATHSOME GAME

You know how cover-ups are always ultimately revealed? Well, the ones that we know about at any rate. It is the same with secret clauses. They also always become exposed to the harsh light of day – once we learn about them. That leaves all the other cover-ups and secret clauses that the pernicious manage to keep hidden from public gaze, shrouded from view to do their ugly work. Why, you may ask, do I imply that such work is always ugly? Are there not philanthropists, you say, who bestow happiness with their beneficence and choose modesty over fanfare, giving both generously and anonymously? Of course, there are such laudable benefactors; but what we are looking at here are matters of which the actors are so ashamed that they hide their true intentions, either by providing an untrue cover story, or by broadcasting the agreeable parts of an agreement and supressing the less savoury aspects.

To examine this further, let us consider the more egregious examples. We shall first deal with the cover-ups.

Much of what we call English has been imported from elsewhere. “Pyjamas”, “avatar” and “pundit” are a random selection of English words imported from India; and, much as the British rub along uncomfortably with the French, some 45% of the English language is French in origin. In fact, English is a ready repository of words from all over the world, no doubt a reflection of the time when one third of the world’s land surface – the Empire – was British, and further large swathes (eg Argentina) of the planet Earth was influenced by them.

In modern times, we see a child giving back copiously to its parent, with a vast lexicon of vocabulary being imported on an almost daily basis from America, greatly enriching English and facilitating the use of technology and its applications, amongst many other areas of activity – like, say, politics. Perhaps the most notorious of these freely-provided imports is the suffix “-gate”. Whence did it come?

In the deliciously and highly appropriately-named Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington DC, stands the Watergate Complex. Why is its location in Foggy Bottom ironic? Because it was there that the politics of the USA hit a new low in 1972 in a set of circumstances that were later to be shrouded, like a foggy day in Olde London Town, by a cover up – and then by a cover-up of the cover-up.

The bottom feeders were a group of burglars sent by CREEP, a suitable acronym, some consider, for the Committee for the ReElection of President Nixon. (You remember, the creepy one from whom you were urged not buy a second-hand car.) Not willing to take their chances with a free election, some in the White House, decided that bugs planted in the head office of the opposition Democratic Party at the Watergate could only smooth Nixon’s passage to a second term. Their lives were ruined by, in succession: an alert security guard; the FBI; the Washington Post; and the impeachment process – all of which led to Nixon’s resignation in the second term that he and his team had craved.

What was the crime over which Nixon resigned? Not the break-in but the cover-up of the fact that members of the White House staff had instigated the break-in – and gone to jail for it – and then the cover-up of the cover-up, which Nixon himself had ordered.

The whole scandal became known simply as “Watergate” and because it was a scandal “-gate” became an appendage to innumerable subsequent scandals (rather than cover-ups). Perhaps the most notorious of them was “Monicagate”, in which a subsequent president (Clinton), in the midst of a sexual harassment action, started in on a shapely intern (Monica Lewinsky) less than half his age, to whom he stood in a position not of relative, but absolute, power. The impeachment process followed, with Clinton evading justice only by semantics (it depends on what the meaning of “is” is), political voting and the skin of his teeth.

So much for cover-ups. They are designed to pervert the course of justice and they carry the rancour of corruption in 100% of the cases uncovered – and 0% of all the others. The real harm (eg the Watergate break-in) is already in the public domain and steps can be taken to deal with it.

Secret clauses, on the other hand, are calculated to cause great harm and are often not revealed until after it is too late. Give a warm welcome to two couples in crime – Molotov and von Ribbentrop; Obama and Rouhani – whose agreements contained secret clauses calculated to destroy whole, free and democratic countries, Poland and others in the first case and Israel in the second. The former case has long been notorious; the latter has been revealed only recently.

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, or in full the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which wrong-footed communists all over the world who did not know what to make of the fatherland of communism doing business with the Vaterland, was signed between partners in crimes against humanity on August 23, 1939 – less than two weeks before, as it was to turn out, the outbreak of WWII.

The Nazi-Soviet, Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed by the eponymous foreign ministers, made its appearance as a simple mutual non-aggression deal. There was, however, a secret protocol, the secret clauses of the pact that carved up, like slices of flesh severed from the body of a living organism, the innocents of the region: Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and Romania, into German and Soviet “spheres of influence”. Thus was anticipated the “territorial and political rearrangements” of those countries

by the war that Hitler launched from the west on September 1, 1939, and the USSR initiated from the east 16 days later, against Poland. Countless millions died in the world conflagration that endured for the following six years, probably in excess of 100 million innocents (see Coda), together with a rich Yiddish culture amongst others wantonly destroyed.

Now we need to consider the other fateful pairing: Obama and Rouhani – the Nobel Peace prize-winner US President and the “moderate” President of Iran. Their treaty, The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) for the delaying of Iran’s nuclear breakout by ten years (some hope – some hopes!) was acclaimed, in the West mostly by Obama himself, as a triumph of diplomacy that would rein in Iranian nuclear aggression until after the anticipated presidencies of his political doppelgänger, Hillary Clinton. Even that which was visible gave so little comfort to the proximate and approximate neighbors of Iran, the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, that they have amazed themselves by swallowing seventy years of antipathy to the Jewish State and started to squeeze under Israel’s nuclear umbrella.

The JCPOA was paraded before a grateful world – and a sceptical Israel – by Obama and his co-luminaries – as an achievement in terms of securing future peace. The Israeli Prime Minister, the only person to have addressed the US Congress three times, was painted as a war-monger. As it turns out, Netanyahu’s skepticism is closer to the truth that Obama’s self-aggrandizing claims.

In a typically comprehensive and incisive, not to say surgical, analysis in last Friday’s Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick exposed much of Obama’s mendacity. It is always hard to argue with Glick because she cites authority for her claims; so when she writes that Obama has been caught in a lie, she will demonstrate it beyond argument. For example:-

Obama claimed that the administration agreed to the settlement [of an longstanding US-Iranian lawsuit] at the urging of the Justice Department. He said his administration was able to settle the dispute only due to the nuclear deal which placed US officials in direct contact with their Iranian counterparts for the first time in decades.

Within a day, Obama’s claims were exposed as lies. It turns out that Justice Department lawyers opposed the cash payout to Iran.

She resumed:-

Obama’s assertion that Iran’s breakout time to a nuclear arsenal has been slowed as a result of his deal is similarly a stretch of the imagination. The Iranians have suspended much of their prior centrifuge spinning. But that is only because they are now directing their efforts to developing and deploying more advanced centrifuges that will be able to enrich uranium to bomb grade material far more rapidly than the centrifuges they were required to retire.

Experts have already placed Iran’s post-deal nuclear breakout time at a mere six months. And Iran can leave the agreement – which it never actually signed or officially agreed to – anytime it wants.

and so she continues … continues, that is, to show the deceitfulness of Obama, in commanding style over two full columns.

I have only one advantage over Ms Glick. She went to press on Thursday evening. On Friday, the world learned of the truth, and the untruthfulness, of the US-Iranian (Molotov-von Ribbentrop lookalike) deal: its secret clauses.

Writing late (for us) on Thursday last, Jonathan Landay of Reuters revealed:-

The United States and its negotiating partners agreed “in secret” to allow Iran to evade some restrictions in last year’s landmark nuclear agreement in order to meet the deadline for it to start getting relief from economic sanctions, according to a think tank report published on Thursday.

The report, which was released by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, is based on information provided by several officials of governments involved in the negotiations. The group’s president David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and co-author of the report, declined to identify the officials, and Reuters could not independently verify the report’s assertions.

“The exemptions or loopholes are happening in secret, and it appears that they favor Iran,” Albright said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-exemptions-exclusive-idUSKCN1173LA

In fact, this was merely confirmatory of information that has been “out there” for some time. On July 28, 2015, Marc A. Thiessen writing in The Washington Post disclosed:-

President Obama promised that his nuclear deal with Iran would not be “based on trust” but rather “unprecedented verification.”

Now it turns out Obama’s verification regime is based on trust after all — trust in two secret side agreements negotiated exclusively between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that apparently no one (including the Obama administration) has seen.

Worse, Obama didn’t even reveal the existence of these secret side deals to Congress when he transmitted the nuclear accord to Capitol Hill.

Is this an impeachable offence? With the count-down to the end of the Obama presidency now numbered in days (actually less than 140 of them), no-one is going to initiate an impeachment process that typically takes the best part of a year; but misleading Congress (and the rest of the world) is not a badge of honor and may be expected to feature in Obama’s legacy.

A more worrying aspect to that legacy is the fear, not to say expectation that, even if Hillary Clinton is Trumped on November 8 next (for Trump is a natural isolationist, so far as he can be reliably read on any subject), after Obama will come “Obamaism” a term coined by MK, Michael Oren.

Michael B. Oren is no intellectual slouch. The American-born Israeli historian, author, politician, former ambassador to the United States, is currently a Kulanu party Member of the Knesset and the Deputy Minister for Diplomacy in the Prime Minister’s Office.

The Jerusalem Post, and several other sources similarly, reported in the past few days:-

According to Channel 10 Oren said in a talk to the Harvard Alumni Club in Israel … that “Obama may be going home, but ‘Obamaism’ will remain a permanent part of American policy.”

…..

The isolationist policies of US President Barack Obama are likely to continue after he leaves office in January, Deputy Minister Michael Oren (Kulanu) reportedly said this week.

…..

“This is an America that is not prepared to intervene in Syria, this is an America that doesn’t want to be the world’s policeman, and prefers to focus on its own internal issues,” he reportedly added. “It suffers from many divides, and is paralyzed by political polarization.” He called on Israel to internalize this reality, which is not likely to change in the near future, and learn to be more independent. “This is a reality in which we are going to have to learn to stand on our own two feet.”

Hillel, in Ethics of the Fathers, 1:14 asked, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” Well, apparently, we should no longer expect the answer to contain the words Uncle Sam. This should not be a surprise. If, as has been the case, the great Christian Democrat parties of Europe, and successive Popes, have been prepared to stand by silently whilst innumerable Christians have, at the hands of their Arab/Muslim neighbors, been persecuted and driven either into early graves or out of the Middle East, then why should we expect a knight in shining armor, or Uncle Sam, to come riding to our rescue. (To appreciate the full shocking extent of the persecution of Christians merely Google: Raymond Ibrahim and find your way to his archives.)

Hillel continued: But if I am only for myself, who am I? Here, Israel may take pride in its having been recognised as a safe haven for Christians. Two years ago, Greek Orthodox priest Father Gabriel Nadaf, leader of the Armenian Christian minority in Israel addressed the Israel-baiting UNHRC thus:-

“Across the Middle East, in the last ten years, 100,000 Christians have been murdered each year. That means that every five minutes a Christian is killed because of his faith,” reported Nadaf. “Those who can escape persecution at the hands of Muslim extremists have fled. …Those who remain, exist as second if not third class citizens to their Muslim rulers.”

Nadaf continued “in the Middle East today, there is one country where Christianity is not only not persecuted, but affectionately granted freedom of expression, freedom of worship and security. …It is Israel, the Jewish State. Israel is the only place where Christians in the Middle East are safe.”

Hillel concluded: If not now, when?” Oren called on Israel to internalize the reality of Obamaism which, he said, is not likely to change in the near future and, urging Israel to learn to be more independent, warned: “This is a reality in which we are going to have to learn to stand on our own two feet.”

Fortunately, Israel has never before been better placed to rise to that challenge. All that is now required is the political will to do so. Given Oren’s proximity to the Prime Minister, we may assume that either he speaks for the PM or he is publicly urging on him what has to be done.

Coda:

To get a flavor of the numbers of those whose premature deaths were facilitated by Molotov and von Ribbentrop, one need read only “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin” by Timothy Snyder, and that, by Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn’s estimates, the Soviets alone were responsible for the deaths of 60 million Russians.

How many might die in a war instigated by the Obama-emboldened Iran against the not-exactly-impotent Israel is a question that might properly be tacked onto the Obama legacy.

As usual, I have above borrowed from my recently-published book (see below) for my allusions to America and its disappointing leaders. Here is another reference, relevant to Watergate:-

Nixon was completely obsessed with JFK, instructing chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, in July 1971 to organize a covert raid on Washington think-tank, the Brookings Institution, to uncover information it might have about the slain President. Nixon said:-

“I want a son-of-a-bitch. I want someone just as tough as I am [to carry out the raid] …. I want it done. I want the Brookings Institution cleaned out and have it cleaned out in a way that has somebody else take the blame.”

My emphasis – and a clue here, perhaps, to the fundamental truth about Watergate. If Nixon’s real crime was not the mere cover-up but the actual instigation of the Watergate break-in, it would not, given this context, seem surprising.