JSOC UNDER CARTER

in the 80's while JSOC was forming as a coordinating command in the wake of the 1979 hostage rescue debacle in Iran. Like all these coordinating elements that recieve truckloads of money, it grew into a kind of bureaucratic empire

U.S. strategy in Eurasia and drug production in Afghanistan

In an interview released to French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur [1], Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, revealed that the CIA had secretly operated in Afghanistan to undermine the regime in Kabul since July 1979, that is to say, five months before the Soviet invasion. Indeed, it was on July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive to provide secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. That very day the Polish-born U.S. strategist wrote a note to President Carter in which he explained that this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention. And this is precisely what happened the following month of December. In the same interview, Brzezinski recalls that, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, he wrote another note to President Carter in which he expressed his opinion that at that point the USA had the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.

In Brezinski’s opinion, this intervention was unsustainable for Moscow and in time would have led to the collapse of the Soviet Empire. In fact, the drawn out Soviet war in support of the communist regime in Kabul further contributed to the weakening of the Soviet Union, already engaged in a severe internal crisis, encompassing both political- bureaucratic and socio-economic aspects. As we now well know, the Soviet withdrawal from the Afghan theatre left behind an exhausted country, whose political situation, economy and geo-strategic assets were extremely weak. Indeed, after less than 10 years from the Teheran revolution, the entire region had been completely destabilized exclusively to the advantage of the western system. The parallel and unrestrained decline of the Soviet Union, accelerated by the Afghan adventure, and, afterwards in the nineties, by the dismemberment of the Yugoslav Federation (a sort of buffer state between the Western and Soviet blocks) changed the balance of power to favour U.S. expansionism in the Eurasian region.

BUSH CIA TIMELINE

Bush anxious to be absent 1975 "Year of Intelligence," intense scrutiny of illegal activities. On December 22, 1974, New York Times published a series by Seymour M. Hirsh, leaked CIA documents assembled by Director Schlesinger to expose self-exposure by the CIA to set the agenda for the Ford-appointed Rockefeller Commission which was set up January 4, 1975. members included John T. Connor, C. Douglas Dillon, Erwin N. Griswold, Lane Kirkland, Lyman Lemnitzer, Ronald Reagan, and Edgar F. Shannon, Jr.

Rockefeller proposals would reflect the transition from cold war towards the totalitarian tendencies of the 1980's. At the same time Congressional committees were empanelled during 1975, less controlled.

Church Committee. Frank Church investigation of covert operations assassinating foreign leaders, had been re-targeted to domestic with the obvious case being Kennedy. Church thought CIA's covert branch feeds on itself, with schemes for to win them promotions.

at the beginning of Bush's tenure at the CIA, committees were on the offensive. By the time Bush departed Langley, the table were turned. Congress was the focus, Koreagate and Abscam

Halloween massacre, summer of 1975. Don Rumsfeld to Ford on July 10, 1975. choices for CIA Director. Henry Kissinger, who suggested C. Douglas Dillon, Howard Baker, Galvin, and Robert Roosa. Cheney proposed Robert Bork, followed by Bush and Lee Iacocca. Rockefeller was also for C. Douglas Dillon, followed by Howard Baker, Conner, and James R. Schlesinger. Rumsfeld himself listed Bork, Dillon, Iacoca, Stanley Resor, and Walter Wriston, but not Bush.

Bush was not leading. Bush's storm of criticism. In November, 1976, Bush was kept in Beijing, preparing the Ford-Mao meetings of early December.

Former CIA officer Tom Braden, Bush looked bad. Roland Evans and Robert Novak, grave morale deflator. Washington Post, against. George Will, wrong kind of guy

Church recieved a letter by Ford on October 31, 1975, demanding assassination plots kept secret. Church's opinion these two developments were stonewalling. Church press statement, "I am astonished that Ford wants to suppress

November 3, Church asked by Daniel Schorr asked about the firing of Colby and replacement by Bush. Church said concealment is order of the day. "Hiding evil is totalitarian.

following day, Leslie Gelb's NYT, Bush

BUSH CHINA TIMELINE

From February 21-28, 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon traveled to Beijing, Hangzhou and Shanghai.. Almost as soon as the American president arrived in the Chinese capital he was summoned for a meeting with Chairman Mao

August 9, 1974, Ford assumed the presidency. After Ford's accession to the presidency, Bush was under serious consideration for being nominated as Vice President. Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona declined to be considered and endorsed Bush, who, along with his supporters, reportedly mounted an internal campaign to get a nomination.[citation needed] Ford eventually narrowed his list to Nelson Rockefeller and Bush. However, White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld reportedly preferred Rockefeller over Bush.[22] Rockefeller was finally named and confirmed.

September 26, 1974 to December 7, 1975. Gerald Ford, Nixon's successor, appointed Bush to be Chief of the US Liaison Office in the People's Republic of China, The Liaison Office did not have the official status of an embassy and Bush did not formally hold the position of "ambassador", though he unofficially acted as one. The time that he spent in China — 14 months — was seen as largely beneficial for US-Chinese relations.[12]

In 1975 and 1976, the Church Committee published fourteen reports on the formation of U.S. intelligence agencies, their operations, and the alleged abuses of law and of power that they had committed, together with recommendations for reform, some of which were put in place.

Among the matters investigated were attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, the Diem brothers of Vietnam, Gen. René Schneider of Chile and President John F. Kennedy's plan to use the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba.

January 30, 1976 to January 20, 1977. President Gerald Ford appointed former House member from Texas George Bush to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Bush was sworn in on January 30, 1976. In 1976, Ford brought Bush back to Washington to become Director of Central Intelligence. He served in this role for 357 days, from January 30, 1976 to January 20, 1977.[23] The CIA had been rocked by a series of revelations, including those based on investigations by the Church Committee regarding illegal and unauthorized activities by the CIA, and Bush was credited with helping to restore the agency's morale.[24] In his capacity as DCI, Bush gave national security briefings to Jimmy Carter both as a Presidential candidate and as President-elect, and discussed the possibility of remaining in that position in a Carter administration[25] but it was not to be.

September 9, 1976. Mao's death

1977, Deng repudiated the Cultural Revolution and, in 1977, launched the "Beijing Spring", which allowed open criticism, effectively allowed Chinese capitalists to join the Communist Party. Deng gradually consolidated control over the CCP. Hua was replaced by Zhao Ziyang as premier in 1980, by Hu Yaobang as party chief in 1981. Deng remained the most influential of the CCP cadre, although after 1987 his only official

Under Deng's direction, relations with the West improved remarkably, first Chinese leader to visit the United States in 1979

*PHOTO INFO: After bilateral talks Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping leads President Ford and Chief U.S. Liaison Officer George H.W. Bush through the Great Hall of the People. ID #A7620-15A.
Date 2 December 1975

CARTER LIST, CONT.

Carter, who came to office in early 1977, not long after Indonesia invaded and annexed the tiny island nation of East Timor, increased military aid to the Indonesian dictatorship by 80%, Most of the 200,000 East Timorese deaths during the Carter. military aid to the Moroccan, forces invaded its southern neighbor. fought Congress to restore military aid to Turkey, Cyprus in 1974. All three in violation UN Security Council

Carter, vetoed consecutive UN Security Council against South Africa. Carter took American corporate interests

people of Zaire rebelled against Mobutu Sese Seko. Carter ordered the U.S. air force to fly in Moroccan troops to save the regime

sent military aid to mujahadeen to fight the leftist government with full knowledge that it could prompt a Soviet invasion

opposed Palestinian statehood, refused to meet Palestinian leaders. dramatically increased military aid to Begin. Israel violated annex to Camp David Accord resuming settlements on West Bank. Carter refused to enforce the treaty. dramatically increased military aid to Egyptian regime of Anwar Sadat.

Carter ordered evidence of joint South African-Israeli nuclear test be covered up

In May 1980, pro-democracy protestors seized South Korean city of Kwangju. U.S.- backed dictatorship of Chun Doo Hwan, Carter ordered the release of South Korean troops under U.S. command at the request of the dictator to re-take thecity massacring thousands. dictator Syngman Rhee similar reques, Eisenhower refused



ignored pleas from Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero to not send arms to the junta who were massacring many hundreds of peasant leaders, trade unionists, priests, human rights workers and other dissidents. continued even after Romero was assassinated with the shooting under orders from top Salvadoran general.

Carters last acts, approve a record arms transfers just weeks after troops under orders raped and murdered four American churchwomen

enacted Presidential Directive 59, switch to a counterforce strategy shift in nuclear policy from deterrence to one of a first-strike

supported Shah of Iran to the end. dictator ordered forces to fire onto thousands of unarmed demonstrators. dismissed anger at the 1953 U.S.-led overthrow constitutional government, was "ancient history,"

strong supporter of Fernando Marcos, Pakistani General Zia al Huq, Saudi King Faud. blocked human rights legislation initiated by Tom Harkin. increased U.S. military spending, militarized the Indian Ocean, withdrew the SALT II Treaty from the Senate before they even took a vote

CARTER AND DEREGULATION

Deregulation 101......

Now some of you youngin's were'nt trucking back in 1980, so lets give you a history lesson on how the Democratic President Jimmy Carter screwed labor and caused the low wages and most of the safety problems we now face today on the road.....His buddy President Clinton signed the 2nd half of our doom when he signed NAFTA!

Lesson 1: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=44689

But...after all was said and done....this was the BIG reason they wanted to deregulate trucking....which brought down the cost of labor and....the real reason they wanted it in the first place.........""

"Deregulation has also made it easier for nonunion workers to get jobs in the trucking industry. This new competition has sharply eroded the strength of the drivers' union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Before deregulation ICC-regulated truckers paid unionized workers about 50 percent more than comparable workers in other industries. Although unionized drivers still are paid a premium, by 1985 unionized workers were only 28 percent of the trucking work force, down from around 60 percent in the late seventies."

CARTER DOCTRINE

which stated that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf region.

The region which is now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan is of great strategic importance: It contains more than two-thirds of the world's exportable oil. The Soviet effort to dominate Afghanistan has brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Straits of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world's oil must flow. The Soviet Union is now attempting to consolidate a strategic position, therefore, that poses a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil.

This situation demands careful thought, steady nerves, and resolute action, not only for this year but for many years to come. It demands collective efforts to meet this new threat to security in the Persian Gulf and in Southwest Asia. It demands the participation of all those who rely on oil from the Middle East and who are concerned with global peace and stability. And it demands consultation and close cooperation with countries in the area which might be threatened.

CARTER PROVOKES SOVIET INVASION

According to this 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the CIA's intervention in Afghanistan preceded the 1979 Soviet invasion. This decision of the Carter Administration in 1979 to intervene and destabilise Afghanistan is the root cause of Afghanistan's destruction as a nation.

M.C.
The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,
President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser

Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998
Posted at globalresearch.ca 15 October 2001

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

NEOLIBERAL HISTORY

Corporate America began to wage what turned out to be a one-sided war against working people in the mid- to late-1970s,
The presumed failure of Keynesian economics
Maybe there had been too many restrictions placed on the market,
If these complex arguments could be tied to simple clichés,
the government
the unions
"welfare queens"
President Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Volcker, under the guise of fighting inflation, immediately began to snuff the life out of working class communities by forcing interest rates up to nearly 20 percent.
What Carter began, Reagan completed, firing the air traffic controllers and putting the nail in labor's coffin.
right-wing think tanks
Heritage or the American Enterprise Institute or the Cato Institute.
ideological centers churn out
find their way into our newspapers
A gigantic network
a television network (Fox) bombard us with right-wing propaganda.

the shibboleths of neoliberalism--such as the needs for privatization of public entities, the free reign of markets, the obviousness of the success of welfare reform, the evils of raising the minimum wage--
lack of an ideological alternative
due to the abject failure of organized labor to provide one.
In other words, until there is a radical ideology to replace right-wing thinking, the latter is unlikely to lose its drawing power.
"In 2006, the financial sector employed about 6 percent of the workers, but 'produced' 40 percent of the profits of all domestic firms."
"Making money without actually making something turned out to be the largest growth sector of the U.S. economy from the early 1980s to the present crisis."
manufacturing and other parts of the "real" economy have become less lucrative, the trading of paper assets has become Wall Street's new profit-center,
What impact has the "financialization" of the economy had on ordinary working people?

First, it was the neoliberal "revolution" begun in the 1970s that did immense harm to working people.
Real wages (the purchasing power of our paychecks) began to stagnate in the 1970s and are not much higher today than then.
Relatively high-wage public employment began to endure a long period of privatization,
The move toward "free trade" did workers here no good, as manufacturing began to flee our shores for low-wage havens abroad. None of these things had to do with financialization per se.
Second
incomes began to flow upward, those with a great deal more money began to look for ways to put this money to work.
The corporations that they owned also had higher profits, and they did the same.
robust financial sector
in the past, it was not the tail that wagged the dog as far as our system of production and distribution was concerned. Neoliberalism brought with it a deregulation of international movements of money and goods and services.

we see neoliberalism as a political response to capital's quest for restored profits beginning in the mid-1970s
boom ended and the slow growth (stagnation) common to mature capitalist economies reasserted itself.
These, in turn, required a certain amount of financial innovation, to reduce
the risks of fluctuations in currency exchange rates and sharp changes in political conditions that could threaten investments.
finance began to take on a life of its own.
And while neoliberalism and direct corporate actions inside workplaces did reduce costs and raise profits, they did not create nearly enough capital spending opportunities (investment) to absorb the growing individual savings and business profits.
Leveraged buyouts, stock market speculations, real estate "investments"--all took off from the 1980s on, absorbing money that could not find enough opportunities in the real economy of production.

Leveraged buyouts inevitably resulted in the hollowing out of what were often perfectly viable businesses. Companies were saddled with debt, assets were stripped and sold, and workers were furloughed by the tens of thousands.
The inflation of asset values gave rise to the notion
to increase the share price of their businesses
Businesses came to be thought of as mere collections of assets rather than entities that produced things. Asset inflation gave rise to asset speculation and the development of ever more complex financial instruments, all leading sooner or later to financial bubbles and the inevitable bursting of the bubbles.
the bursting of financial bubbles has had tremendously negative impacts on working people: shuttered workplaces and unemployment to name but the primary ones.

Carter List

For what it's worth, and contrarily to what is often said, the Carter administration started cutbacks in social programs, the deregulation of business (esp. the airlines and telecommunications industries), and military budget hikes during the late 70's. Carter also appointed Volcker at the Federal reserve where he intentionnally provoked the recession that caused the highest unemployment since the great depression (up to >10% in 82). In fact, a great many Carter political appointments were, like Volcker, on the trilateral commission which was the first planning committee by multinational corporations.



Jimmy Carter got the ball rolling. One of the first tenants of neoliberalism is deregulation. He first deregulated the airline industry. That may have been a good thing, but my point is he set it in motion which made Reagan's deregulation easier because he could point to Carter.

The president did have success with his own program to deregulate the airline, trucking, and railroad industries,

The deregulation movement started when Carter signed the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. Later, as it spread from energy to trucking to telecommunications to financial services, the rallying cry was the same: Less regulation, more growth.

But the implosion in financial services — until recently seen as the shining example of U.S-style free market capitalism — is the definitive sign that deregulation has lost its allure. In areas ranging from food safety to airlines to trade, increased government supervision is becoming acceptable to business as well as to voters.

Take oil deregulation,
First, he announced gradual decontrol of oil prices and the phasing out of the
government allocation system
Full decontrol was scheduled to take place in the spring of 1981,
Reagan upon taking office lifted controls almost immediately, thus
receiving credit for what was mostly the action of his predecessor
It was the Carter Administration that also pushed the antitrust suit against AT&T,
The Carter Administration also gave greater power to the Federal Reserve System through the Depository Institutions and Monetary Control Act (DIDMCA) of 1980 which otherwise was a necessary first step in ending the harmful New Deal restrictions placed upon financial institutions.
However, Carter actually made it easier for Reagan to take the actions he did.

“The break came in 1979 when they deregulated natural gas. Our last national stand was for the Consumer Protection Agency
We lost it because Carter
did not lift a finger compared to what he did to deregulate natural gas
Tony Coelho taught the Democrats, starting in 1979 when he was head of the House Campaign Finance Committee, to start raising big-time money from corporate interests

Carter also appointed Volcker. Neoliberalism has to run on a monetarist economic policy. This shifted the policy from creating jobs to containing inflation.

He also provoked the Soviets into invading Afghanistan. Zbiegnew has bragged that this was the intent and the result.

Carter also enunciated the Carter Doctrine. This was the first step toward the Bush Doctrine.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn1018.html

Recall when Carter said America would not stand idly by while Nicaragua tried to set forth on a different path after the Sandinistas threw out Anastasio Somoza? Carter told them they had to retain the National Guard, which had been Somoza's elite band of US-trained psychopathic killers. The Sandinistas said no. So Carter ordered the CIA to bring up the officers and torturers running the Argentine death squads to train a force of Nicaraguan exiles in Honduras scheduled for terror missions across the border. They called them the contras.

---

El Salvador? In October 1979, a coup by reformist officers overthrew the repressive Romero dictatorship and pledged reforms, including land reform. But within weeks, it became clear that the reformers among the new rulers had been outmaneuvered, so they resigned en masse as the real leaders stepped up frightful repression in the countryside, killing close to 1,000 people a month. Some 10,000 were killed in 1980, most of them peasants and workers.

The Carter Administration sent millions in aid and riot equipment to the Salvadoran military, dispatched US trainers and trained Salvadoran officers in Panama. The Administration cast the conflict as one between the "extremes" of left and right, with the junta trying to steer a "moderate" course. In fact, 90 percent of the killings were carried out by the army or paramilitary death squads acting under army or government supervision. The Carter Administration continued to push this line throughout 1980, not suspending aid until the killing of four Maryknoll nuns in December. It's all coming back to you? Yes, it was the Carter Administration that restored the Khmer Rouge to military health after the Vietnamese kicked them out of power in Cambodia.
Carter presided over the dispatch of arms to Indonesia, fresh from its invasion of East Timor,
sponsoring genocide in Asia.
he started the covert CIA operation in Afghanistan, rallying the mujahedeen to fight the Soviets.
Soon the CIA would bring the Saudis, and Saudi cash, to Afghanistan, not least among them Osama bin Laden.
As Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, who's just finished a history of the first years of the Nicaraguan revolution,
"'Benign' Carter was the source of so many bad things, including the rise of the Christian right (his endless public pronouncements of his faith and his sister's leadership in the actual Christian right gave the movement a new legitimacy), the erosion of the UN, the destruction of the New International Economic (and Information) Order, etc. And no one seems to recall that he led a campaign to free Lieutenant Calley [of My Lai infamy] when Carter was governor of Georgia."
That whole initiative for readjustment of the economic relationship of North and South came to nought. We headed into the Reagan 1980s, when the deregulatory philosophy embraced by Carter came to full flower,

At home, too, the post-Nixon/Ford years were times of hope. Carter presided over their demolition. Neoliberalism won the day on his watch.

The Afghan mess, now about to get messier, was set up in the late 1970s, when the Carter administration supervised the overthrow of Afghanistan’s one shining moment of hope, the left reformist governments that took power in 1978. That’s when Osama was ushered onto the stage of history, as one of the CIA’s men. Israel, the Palestinians? Rewind the decades back to Truman and beyond.

by Peter Dale Scott

---

Those of us convinced that a war machine prevails in Washington were not surprised. The situation was similar to the disappointment experienced with Jimmy Carter: Carter was elected in 1976 with a promise to cut the defense budget. Instead, he initiated both an expansion of the defense budget and also an expansion of U.S. influence into the Indian Ocean

---

As I wrote in The Road to 9/11, after Carter’s election

---

It appeared on the surface that with the blessing of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission, the traditional U.S. search for unilateral domination would be abandoned. But…the 1970s were a period in which a major "intellectual counterrevolution" was mustered, to mobilize conservative opinion with the aid of vast amounts of money…. By the time SALT II was signed in 1979, Carter had consented to significant new weapons programs and arms budget increases (reversing his campaign pledge)

I noted further that the complex strategy for reversing Carter’s promises was revived for a new mobilization in the 1990s during the Clinton presidency, in which a commission headed by Donald Rumsfeld was prominent ----

-----------------------------------------------------------

In 1979, in one of the more absurd episodes of the Cold War, a minor upsurge in fighting along the former border led to a major US military mobilization in response to what the Jimmy Carter administration called a Soviet-sponsored act of international aggression. In March of that year, South Yemeni forces, in support of some North Yemeni guerrillas, shelled some North Yemeni government positions.

In response, Carter ordered the aircraft carrier Constellation and a flotilla of warships to the Arabian Sea as a show of force. Bypassing approval of the US Congress, the administration rushed nearly $499 million worth of modern weaponry to North Yemen, including 64 M-60 tanks, 70 armored personnel carriers, and 12 F-5E aircraft. Included were an estimated 400 American advisers and 80 Taiwanese pilots for the sophisticated warplanes that no Yemeni knew how to fly.

This gross overreaction to a local conflict led to widespread international criticism. Indeed, the Soviets were apparently unaware of the border clashes and the fighting died down within a couple of weeks. Development groups were particularly critical of this US attempt to send such expensive high-tech weaponry to a country with some of the highest rates of infant mortality, chronic disease and illiteracy in the world.