OBAMA IS PURGING THE MILITARY. ATTENTION ACTIVE DUTY MILITARY: Obama is Purging the Military to prevent a coup... which is coming what ever he does! STAND WITH THE CONSTITUTION AGAINST THIS ILLEGAL TYRANNICAL REGIME.

Obama purges U.S. military command

CALLING ALL ACTIVE DUTY MILITARY.... YOU ARE GOING TO BE COMMANDED BY INCOMPETENT OBAMA "YES MEN"... WHO WILL DESERT YOU IN A HEARTBEAT.. BUT ORDER YOU TO SHOOT AT AMERICAN PATRIOTS ...
REMEMBER YOUR OATH.. AND READ WHAT IS BEING DONE TO THE BEST DISCIPLINED, BRAVEST DAMN FIGHT OUTFIT IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND! THE US MILITARY!

OBAMA IS PURGING THE MILITARY. ATTENTION ACTIVE DUTY MILITARY: Obama is Purging the Military to prevent a coup... which is coming what ever he does! STAND WITH THE CONSTITUTION AGAINST THIS ILLEGAL TYRANNICAL REGIME.
Obama purges U.S. military command 

 

Several days ago, FOTM’s lowtechgrannie posted a video of a media rarity — a reporter who doesn’t toe the party line and isn’t afraid to speak the truth. He’s Fox19 Cincinnati news anchor and investigative reporter Ben Swann.
At the end of the video, Swann noted that in the space of less than one month after the 7-hour Islamic terrorist attack of September 22, 2012, on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, four high-level U.S. military flag officers had been removed, for one ostensible reason or another. The four are Generals Petraeus, Allen, and Ham, and Admiral Gaouette. (In the U.S. military, flag officers are general officers in the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard of such senior rank that they are entitled to fly their own flags to mark where the officer exercises command.)
Swann withheld speculating on what this quite unprecedented attrition of senior U.S. military officers means. But this attrition cries out for some effort at explanation, no matter how speculative.

We’ll begin with the facts that we’ve been told.

1. General David Petraeus

Gen. Petraeus and Paula Broadwell

A highly-decorated four-star general who had served over 37 years in the U.S. Army, 60-year-old David Petraeus had been Commander of the International Security Assistance Force; Commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan; 10th Commander, U.S. Central Command; and Commanding General of Multi-National Force – Iraq who oversaw all coalition forces in Iraq.
On September 6, 2011, Obama recruited Petraeus to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. A week before, in anticipation of that appointment, Petraeus had retired from the U.S. Army.
Petraeus lasted 14 months as CIA director. On November 9, 2012, he resigned from the CIA, citing his extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell, a married woman who is the principal author of Petraeus’ biography, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus. Petraeus claims that the affair had begun in late 2011 when he was no longer an active duty military officer, and ended in the summer of 2012. The affair reportedly was discovered in the course of an FBI investigation into harassing emails that Broadwell had been sending to Jill Kelley, a Tampa socialite and a longstanding family friend of the Petraeuses whom Broadwell perceived to be a romantic rival.

2. General John R. Allen

Gen. Allen (l); Jill Kelley (r)

A four-star general of the U.S. Marine Corps, 58-year-old General John Allen had succeeded Petraeus as Commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan on July 18, 2011. He was nominated to be NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, pending confirmation by the United States Senate.
As part of the fallout of the Petraeus-Broadwell affair, correspondence between Allen and Jill Kelley also came to light. The FBI reportedly uncovered 20,000 to 30,000 pages of correspondence — mostly email — between Allen and Kelley from 2010 to 2012.  Reportedly, their correspondence was “flirtatious” and “inappropriate” as Allen and Kelley are both married, but not to each other. (Good grief. How could a 4-star general even have so much free time as to write 20,000 to 30,000 emails in the space of two years to ANYONE?)
On November 13, 2012, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta suspended Allen’s confirmation hearing, pending investigations into the general’s “inappropriate communication” with Kelley. Panetta also requested Congress to speed the confirmation of General Joseph Dunford to take over as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. In effect, not only will Allen not be promoted, he has lost his present command post in Afghanistan.

3. General Carter F. Ham

U.S. Army General Carter Ham

A well-decorated U.S. Army general, 60-year-old Ham became Commander of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) on March 8, 2011.
U.S. AFRICOM is one of nine Unified Combatant Commands of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). As one of six that are regionally focused, AFRICOM is devoted solely to Africa. James S. Robbins of The Washington Times writes that Gen. Ham “is a very well regarded officer who made AFRICOM into a true Combatant Command after the ineffective leadership of his predecessor, General William E. ‘Kip’ Ward.”
On October 18, 2012, in a DoD news briefing, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that Gen. Ham was relieved fired: “Today I am very pleased to announce that President Obama will nominate Army Gen. David Rodriguez to succeed Gen. Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command.”
According to Joint doctrine, “the tour length for combatant commanders and Defense agency directors is three years.” But Gen. Ham had only been in the commander position at AFRICOM for a year and a half and the informal word was that he wasn’t scheduled to rotate out until March 2013.
Pat Dollard of BareNakedIslam claims that the scuttlebutt is that, on September 11, 2012, Gen. Ham had received the same e-mails the White House received — from our people in Benghazi, requesting help/support as the terrorist attack was taking place. Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had the unit ready. Dollard writes:

“General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.”

Gen. Ham’s “second in command” is not named. The Pentagon’s official line is that Ham had retired.

4. Rear Admiral Charles M. Gaouette

Rear Admiral Charles Gaouette

The recipient of various personal decorations and unit awards, including the Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale Award for inspirational leadership in 2003, Rear Admiral Charles Gaouette was promoted to Commander of Carrier Strike Group 3 (aka John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group) in April 2012.
Carrier Strike Group 3 is one of five U.S. Navy carrier strike groups currently assigned to the U.S. Pacific Fleet. U.S. Navy carrier strike groups are employed in a variety of roles that involve gaining and maintaining sea control and projecting power ashore, as well as projecting naval airpower ashore.
The aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis is the strike group’s current flagship, and as of 2012, other units assigned to Carrier Strike Group 3 include Carrier Air Wing Nine; the guided-missile cruisers USS Mobile Bay and USS Antietam; and the ships of Destroyer Squadron 21, the guided-missile destroyers USS Wayne E. Meyer, USS Dewey, USS Kidd, and USS Milius.
Carrier Group Three formed the core of the naval power during the initial phase of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001. “Operation Enduring Freedom” is the official name used by the U.S. government for the War in Afghanistan, together with a number of smaller military actions, under the umbrella of the Global “War on Terror”. On 16 July 2012, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that the scheduled deployment of Carrier Strike Group Ten was advanced by four months, with its anticipated area of operation shifting from the U.S. Seventh Fleet in the Western Pacific to the U.S. Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf and North Arabian Sea. On 27 August 2012, four months ahead of schedule, Carrier Strike Group Three departed for an eight-month deployment to the U.S. Fifth Fleet under the command of Rear Admiral Charles M. Gaouette.
On October 27, 2012, the commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, Vice Admiral John W. Miller, ordered the temporary re-assignment of Rear Admiral Charles M. Gaouette pending the results of an investigation by the Naval Inspector General. Gaouette’s chief of staff, Captain William C. Minter, will lead the strike group until the arrival of Rear Admiral Troy M. (“Mike”) Shoemaker, who will assume command of the strike group.
Tom Lombardo writes for the Navy Times, Oct. 27, 2012, that Adm. Gaouette was relieved, mid-deployment, and is accused of “inappropriate leadership judgment,” according to a Navy official familiar with the case. Gaouette was told to go home — to return to the Carrier Strike Group’s homeport in Bremerton, Washington, until the investigation is complete.

∞

There you have it. Within two months after the Benghazi attack, four senior U.S. military officers were purged:

• Gen. Ham, on October 18.
• Adm. Gaouette, on October 27.
• Gen. Petraeus, on November 9.
• Gen. Allen, on November 13.

Ostensibly, Petraeus’ “retirement” and Allen’s suspended promotion are due to both men’s moral conduct. But surely we are not so naive as to think that Petraeus and Allen are the only U.S. military officers who’ve ever committed adultery or written flirtatious email. As for Ham’s “retirement” and Gaouette’s “temporary re-assignment” (reassignment to what?), there is not even a whisper that either man’s morals or personal conduct is at issue.
So what should we make of all this? Is it all just coincidence or something more sinister?
Ann Barnhardt, in her blog of Nov. 13, 2012, calls it Obama’s “night of the long knives.”
The last step in Hitler’s quest for total, dictatorial power was the purging of the German military of any factions that were in any way autonomous and not 100% loyal to him, specifically the SA (Sturmabteilung or Storm Detachment). The SA was run by Ernst Rohm. On June 30, 1934, the “Night of the Long Knives” was executed when Hitler had Rohm and the rest of the SA leaders killed. Hitler publicly explained that the purge was executed because of sexual perversion in the ranks of the SA who were “plotting” against him.
Barnhardt writes:

And now, the Obama putsch regime is purging them and anyone else they deem to be a threat. It won’t surprise me if Petraeus is indeed court martialed and stripped of his pension, because that is what the rest of the flag officer corps fears more than death. Make an example of Petraeus, and maybe Allen, and that will whip the rest of them into line.

This process of a totalitarian oligarchy constantly purging its own ranks in fits of paranoia and demands for total personal loyalty is as old as the hills. Lenin and Stalin eventually murdered almost every person that entered their inner-circles. Same with Mao. Same with Saddam Hussein. Same with the three Kims in North Korea. Beyond the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler was also having his own people killed continuously.

Just as the Night of the Long Knives in ’34 was just the beginning, so too is this situation in the former American republic just the beginning.

Writing for Veterans Today, Gordon Duff has an even more provocative take on the four military officers:

The decision [to fire Admiral Gaouette] was made based on a conversation with the Secretary of Defense who, at the end of the talk, believed Gaouette was part of a group of military officers who have been under suspicion for planning a “Seven Days in May” type overthrow of the US government if President Obama is re-elected.

This is not conjecture, dozens of key officers face firing, hundreds are under investigation, all with direct ties to extremist elements in the Republican Party and the Israeli lobby.

Reports received are sourced at the highest levels of the Pentagon and indicate that the administration has been aware of these plans for months.

Whatever the truth, one thing of which we can be sure is that the firings of three generals and an admiral have something (or everything) to do with the Benghazi attack. It’ll be interesting if the newly-elected 113th U.S. Congress will conduct serious investigations and hearings on Benghazi, although Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) is already on record as being opposed to an independent investigation.

U.S. Air Force

In 2011, 157 U.S. Air Force officers were fired on the eve of their retirement, to avoid paying their pensions.
Joshua Flynn-Brown and Kyndra Miller Rotunda write in The Wall Street Journal of December 28, 2011, that the “relieved” officers included pilots flying dangerous missions. According to Department of Defense Instructions, those within six years of their 20-year retirement (with no disciplinary blemishes on their record) have the option to remain in service. Nevertheless, the Air Force terminated airmen a few years away from retirement en masse, citing budget constraints.
One of the exemplary “relieved” officers is Maj. Kale Mosley (photo to right), an Air Force Academy graduate and a pilot who has flown more than 250 combat missions. He deployed to Libya in the summer of 2011 with 30 hours notice. When he returned, the military immediately sent him to Iraq. Just as he was boarding the plane for Iraq, the Air Force gave him his walking papers, effective Nov. 30. Maj. Mosley, the father of a toddler and a newborn, will not receive a pension or long-term health-care benefits for his family.There was briefly a law that allowed people who left the military short of twenty years to get prorated pension and health care benefits, but it expired in 2001.
( I found a Kale Mosley on LinkedIn, who identifies himself as a Multiengine Transport Instructor Pilot in Wichita, Kansas Area. ~Eowyn)

U.S. Navy

In 2012, 25 U.S. Navy commanders were relieved of duty. Here’s a list of the commanders, from the Stars and Stripes of September 12, 2012. The list is sure to grow because 2012 isn’t over yet.
1. Cmdr. Derick Armstrong, commanding officer of the guided missile destroyer USS The Sullivans, was relieved “as result of an unprofessional command climate that was contrary to good order and discipline.”
2. Cmdr. Martin Arriola, commanding officer of the USS Porter, fired Aug. 30 due to loss of confidence in his ability to command after the vessel collided with a tanker.
3. Capt. Antonio Cardoso, commanding officer of Training Support Center San Diego, fired Sept. 21 for violating the Navy’s policy on hazing.
4. Capt. James CoBell, commanding officer of Oceana Naval Air Station’s Fleet Readiness Center Mid-Atlantic, was fired Sept. 10 pending an investigation into his leadership.
5. Cmdr. Joseph E. Darlak was replaced as the skipper of the USS Vandegrift on Nov. 2, after a rowdy and booze-fueled port visit to Vladivostok, Russia, in the month previous.
6. Cmdr. Franklin Fernandez, commanding officer of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 24, fired Aug. 21 due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command for allegedly driving under the influence.
7. Rear Adm. Charles M. Gaouette was replaced as commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis pending the outcome of an internal investigation into allegations of inappropriate judgment, the Navy announced on Oct. 27.
8. Cmdr. Ray Hartman, commanding officer of the amphibious dock-landing ship Fort McHenry,  dismissed Nov. 19 for allegations of misconduct.
9. Cmdr. Jon Haydel, commanding officer of the amphibious transport dock USS San Diego, fired March 12 amid an investigation into “personal misconduct.”

10. Cmdr. Diego Hernandez, commanding offer of the ballistic-missile submarine USS Wyoming, relieved Feb. 4 after he was convicted in an admiral’s mast of dereliction of duty for mishandling classified materials.
11. Cmdr. Lee Hoey, commanding officer of the Navy Drug Screening Laboratory, San Diego, fired May 1 due to poor command climate.
12. Cmdr. Dennis Klein, commander of the submarine USS Columbia, fired May 1 for inadequate performance in administration and operations.
13. Capt. Marcia “Kim” Lyons, commander of Naval Health Clinic New England, relieved April 6 after problems were identified in an annual command climate survey.
14. Capt. Chuck Litchfield was relieved from command of the USS Essex after it collided with the replenishment oiler Yukon off the Southern California coast on May 16.
15. Capt. Robert Marin, commander of the USS Cowpens, relieved Feb. 10 on suspicion of “inappropriate personal behavior.”
16. Capt. Sean McDonell, commander of Seabee reserve unit Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 14 in Jacksonville, Fla., relieved of duty Nov. 26 for mismanagement and unspecified “major program deficiencies.”
17. Cmdr. Corrine Parker, head of Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 1, fired April 16 after an investigation revealed the possible falsification of administrative records.
18. Capt. Lisa Raimondo, commander of Naval Health Clinic Patuxent River, Md., relieved of command on June 29 due to a  ”a significant lack of leadership and integrity that eroded good order and discipline in the command.”
19. Capt. Jeffrey Riedel, program manager of the Littoral Combat Ship program, was “temporarily reassigned” pending a command investigation into allegations of inappropriate personal behavior.
20. Cmdr. Sara Santoski, commanding officer of the Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 15, fired Sept. 1 due to a loss of confidence in her ability to command following a crash that resulted in the death of two sailors.
21. Cmdr. Sheryl Tannahill, commanding officer of Navy Operational Support Center Nashville, relieved of command Sept. 16 amid allegations of an inappropriate relationship.
22. Cmdr. Michael Ward, commanding officer of the USS Pittsburgh, fired Aug. 10 for personal misconduct.
23. Capt. Michael Wiegand, commanding officer of Southwest Regional Maintenance Center in San Diego, relieved Nov. 8 amid allegations that funds were misused under his watch.
24. Capt. Ted Williams, commanding officer of the Mount Whitney in Italy, was fired Nov. 19 for allegations of misconduct.
25. Cmdr. Jeffrey Wissel, commander of Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron 1, fired Feb. 27 amid allegations of “personal misconduct.”


TO be continued....




ALL THESE FINE MILITARY MEN WILL  COME OVER TO OUR SIDE AND FIGHT IN THE REVOLUTION.

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!

JUNE 1 2013:

THE PURGES CONTINUE:

AT SOME POINT.... MY DEAR BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN ACTIVE DUTY AND RESERVES.... YOU MUST RECOGNIZE THE TRUTH HERE.

Never in the history of the "APOLITICAL" Armed forces have there been so many high ranking and high profile "accidental deaths" "suicides"  "removal from posts" "suspended" "resignations" and "Assassinations" of so many Good Military Men and women.

BREAKING NEWS>>>>>

The Army announced it has suspended the commander of Fort Jackson, S.C., amid misconduct allegations that include adultery and a physical altercation, according to a spokesman for Training and Doctrine Command.

Brig. Gen. Bryan T. Roberts was suspended today of his duties as commander of the Army Training Center and Fort Jackson by Gen. Robert W. Cone, the commander of Training and Doctrine Command, according to a statement from spokesman Harvey Perritt. Cone’s decision was based on preliminary information from an investigation by Army Criminal Investigation Command, which pointed to a breach of good order and discipline, “which was contrary to Army values and could not be condoned.”

Via armytimes.com.

According to the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, the allegations involve adultery and a physical altercation. The Army did not give further details on the claims. ( RIGHT... THIS IS THEIR NEW TACK LIKE WITH PETREUS!!)

While the investigation is ongoing, Brig. Gen. Peggy C. Combs, Commandant of the US Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear School, at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, will serve as the interim commander.

Robert took command at Fort Jackson in April of 2012. He’d previously served in commanding roles at Fort Knox, Kentucky and Fort Hood, Texas. He had also worked at the Pentagon.

Here is a link to all the other Military Men like this Patriot!

SICK SEMPER TYRANNIS PATRIOTS & MILITARY!! ... ANY TIME NOW !!

Hillary Clinton was a Liar Then and she is a bigger LIAR now...and it makes a FREAKING DIFFERENCE TO ME!

Watergate-era Judiciary chief of staff: Hillary Clinton fired for lies, unethical behavior!

By DAN CALABRESE - Bet you didn't know this.
I've decided to reprint a piece of work I did nearly five years ago, because it seems very relevant today given Hillary Clinton's performance in the Benghazi hearings. Back in 2008 when she was running for president, I interviewed two erstwhile staff members of the House Judiciary Committee who were involved with the Watergate investigation when Hillary was a low-level staffer there. I interviewed one Democrat staffer and one Republican staffer, and wrote two pieces based on what they told me about Hillary's conduct at the time.
I published these pieces back in 2008 for North Star Writers Group, the syndicate I ran at the time. This was the most widely read piece we ever had at NSWG, but because NSWG never gained the high-profile status of the major syndicates, this piece still didn't reach as many people as I thought it deserved to. Today, given the much broader reach of CainTV and yet another incidence of Hillary's arrogance in dealing with a congressional committee, I think it deserves another airing. For the purposes of simplicity, I've combined the two pieces into one very long one. If you're interested in understanding the true character of Hillary Clinton, it's worth your time to read it.
As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying.
The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.
Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.
Why?
“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”
How could a 27-year-old House staff member do all that? She couldn’t do it by herself, but Zeifman said she was one of several individuals – including Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum – who engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigatio
Why would they want to do that? Because, according to Zeifman, they feared putting Watergate break-in mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by counsel to the president. Hunt, Zeifman said, had the goods on nefarious activities in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a day at the beach – including Kennedy’s purported complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.
The actions of Hillary and her cohorts went directly against the judgment of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel. Zeifman says that Hillary, along with Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar, was determined to gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon. And in order to pull this off, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.
The brief involved precedent for representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. When Hillary endeavored to write a legal brief arguing there is no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding, Zeifman says, he told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970.
“As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader Gerald) Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer,” Zeifman said.
The Judiciary Committee allowed Douglas to keep counsel, thus establishing the precedent. Zeifman says he told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files. So what did Hillary do?
“Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public,” Zeifman said. Hillary then proceeded to write a legal brief arguing there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding – as if the Douglas case had never occurred.
The brief was so fraudulent and ridiculous, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had submitted it to a judge.
Zeifman says that if Hillary, Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar had succeeded, members of the House Judiciary Committee would have also been denied the right to cross-examine witnesses, and denied the opportunity to even participate in the drafting of articles of impeachment against Nixon.
Of course, Nixon’s resignation rendered the entire issue moot, ending Hillary’s career on the Judiciary Committee staff in a most undistinguished manner. Zeifman says he was urged by top committee members to keep a diary of everything that was happening. He did so, and still has the diary if anyone wants to check the veracity of his story. Certainly, he could not have known in 1974 that diary entries about a young lawyer named Hillary Rodham would be of interest to anyone 34 years later.
But they show that the pattern of lies, deceit, fabrications and unethical behavior was established long ago – long before the Bosnia lie, and indeed, even before cattle futures, Travelgate and Whitewater – for the woman who is still asking us to make her president of the United States.
Franklin Polk, who served at the time as chief Republican counsel on the committee, confirmed many of these details in two interviews he granted me this past Friday, although his analysis of events is not always identical to Zeifman’s. Polk specifically confirmed that Hillary wrote the memo in question, and confirmed that Hillary ignored the Douglas case. (He said he couldn’t confirm or dispel the part about Hillary taking the Douglas files.)
To Polk, Hillary’s memo was dishonest in the sense that she tried to pretend the Douglas precedent didn’t exist. But unlike Zeifman, Polk considered the memo dishonest in a way that was more stupid than sinister.
“Hillary should have mentioned that (the Douglas case), and then tried to argue whether that was a change of policy or not instead of just ignoring it and taking the precedent out of the opinion,” Polk said.
Polk recalled that the attempt to deny counsel to Nixon upset a great many members of the committee, including just about all the Republicans, but many Democrats as well.
“The argument sort of broke like a firestorm on the committee, and I remember Congressman Don Edwards was very upset,” Polk said. “He was the chairman of the subcommittee on constitutional rights. But in truth, the impeachment precedents are not clear. Let’s put it this way. In the old days, from the beginning of the country through the 1800s and early 1900s, there were precedents that the target or accused did not have the right to counsel.”
That’s why Polk believes Hillary’s approach in writing the memorandum was foolish. He says she could have argued that the Douglas case was an isolated example, and that other historical precedents could apply.
But Zeifman says the memo and removal of the Douglas files was only part the effort by Hillary, Doar, Nussbaum and Marshall to pursue their own agenda during the investigation.
After my first column, some readers wrote in claiming Zeifman was motivated by jealousy because he was not appointed as the chief counsel in the investigation, with that title going to Doar instead.
Zeifman’s account is that he supported the appointment of Doar because he, Zeifman, a) did not want the public notoriety that would come with such a high-profile role; and b) didn’t have much prosecutorial experience. When he started to have a problem with Doar and his allies was when Zeifman and others, including House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill and Democratic committee member Jack Brooks of Texas, began to perceive Doar’s group as acting outside the directives and knowledge of the committee and its chairman, Peter Rodino.
(O’Neill died in 1994. Brooks is still living and I tried unsuccessfully to reach him. I’d still like to.)
This culminated in a project to research past presidential abuses of power, which committee members felt was crucial in aiding the decisions they would make in deciding how to handle Nixon’s alleged offenses.
According to Zeifman and other documents, Doar directed Hillary to work with a group of Yale law professors on this project. But the report they generated was never given to the committee. Zeifman believes the reason was that the report was little more than a whitewash of the Kennedy years – a part of the Burke Marshall-led agenda of avoiding revelations during the Watergate investigation that would have embarrassed the Kennedys.
The fact that the report was kept under wraps upset Republican committee member Charles Wiggins of California, who wrote a memo to his colleagues on the committee that read in part:

Within the past few days, some disturbing information has come to my attention. It is requested that the facts concerning the matter be investigated and a report be made to the full committee as it concerns us all.

Early last spring when it became obvious that the committee was considering presidential "abuse of power" as a possible ground of impeachment, I raised the question before the full committee that research should be undertaken so as to furnish a standard against which to test the alleged abusive conduct of Richard Nixon.

As I recall, several other members joined with me in this request. I recall as well repeating this request from time to time during the course of our investigation. The staff, as I recall, was noncommittal, but it is certain that no such staff study was made available to the members at any time for their use.

Wiggins believed the report was purposely hidden from committee members. Chairman Rodino denied this, and said the reason Hillary’s report was not given to committee members was that it contained no value. It’s worth noting, of course, that the staff member who made this judgment was John Doar.
In a four-page reply to Wiggins, Rodino wrote in part:

Hillary Rodham of the impeachment inquiry staff coordinated the work. . . . After the staff received the report it was reviewed by Ms. Rodham, briefly by Mr. Labovitz and Mr. Sack, and by Doar. The staff did not think the manuscript was useful in its present form. . . .

In your letter you suggest that members of the staff may have intentionally suppressed the report during the course of its investigation. That was not the case.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Doar was more concerned that any highlight of the project might prejudice the case against President Nixon. The fact is that the staff did not think the material was usable by the committee in its existing form and had not had time to modify it so it would have practical utility for the members of the committee. I was informed and agreed with the judgment.

Mr. Labovitz, by the way, was John Labovitz, another member of the Democratic staff. I spoke with Labovitz this past Friday as well, and he is no fan of Jerry Zeifman.
“If it’s according to Zeifman, it’s inaccurate from my perspective,” Labovitz said. He bases that statement on a recollection that Zeifman did not actually work on the impeachment inquiry staff, although that is contradicted not only by Zeifman but Polk as well.
Labovitz said he has no knowledge of Hillary having taken any files, and defended her no-right-to-counsel memo on the grounds that, if she was assigned to write a memo arguing a point of view, she was merely following orders.
But as both Zeifman and Polk point out, that doesn’t mean ignoring background of which you are aware, or worse, as Zeifman alleges, confiscating documents that disprove your argument.
All told, Polk recalls the actions of Hillary, Doar and Nussbaum as more amateurish than anything else.
“Of course the Republicans went nuts,” Polk said. “But so did some of the Democrats – some of the most liberal Democrats. It was more like these guys – Doar and company – were trying to manage the members of Congress, and it was like, ‘Who’s in charge here?’ If you want to convict a president, you want to give him all the rights possible. If you’re going to give him a trial, for him to say, ‘My rights were denied,’ – it was a stupid effort by people who were just politically tone deaf. So this was a big deal to people in the proceedings on the committee, no question about it. And Jerry Zeifman went nuts, and rightfully so. But my reaction wasn’t so much that it was underhanded as it was just stupid.”
Polk recalls Zeifman sharing with him at the time that he believed Hillary’s primary role was to report back to Burke Marshall any time the investigation was taking a turn that was not to the liking of the Kennedys.
“Jerry used to give the chapter and verse as to how Hillary was the mole into the committee works as to how things were going,” Polk said. “And she’d be feeding information back to Burke Marshall, who, at least according to Jerry, was talking to the Kennedys. And when something was off track in the view of the Kennedys, Burke Marshall would call John Doar or something, and there would be a reconsideration of what they were talking about. Jerry used to tell me that this was Hillary’s primary function.”
Zeifman says he had another staff member get him Hillary’s phone records, which showed that she was calling Burke Marshall at least once a day, and often several times a day.
A final note about all this: I wrote my first column on this subject because, in the aftermath of Hillary being caught in her Bosnia fib, I came in contact with Jerry Zeifman and found his story compelling. Zeifman has been trying to tell his story for many years, and the mainstream media have ignored him. I thought it deserved an airing as a demonstration of how early in her career Hillary began engaging in self-serving, disingenuous conduct.
Disingenuously arguing a position? Vanishing documents? Selling out members of her own party to advance a personal agenda? Classic Hillary. Neither my first column on the subject nor this one were designed to show that Hillary is dishonest. I don’t really think that’s in dispute. Rather, they were designed to show that she has been this way for a very long time – a fact worth considering for anyone contemplating voting for her for president of the United States.
By the way, there’s something else that started a long time ago.
“She would go around saying, ‘I’m dating a person who will some day be president,’” Polk said. “It was like a Babe Ruth call. And because of that comment she made, I watched Bill Clinton’s political efforts as governor of Arkansas, and I never counted him out because she had made that forecast.”
Bill knew what he wanted a long time ago. Clearly, so did Hillary, and her tactics for trying to achieve it were established even in those early days.