He [King George III] has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
… For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
THE VIEW OF THE CONSTITUTION as an “evolving document” caused Americans to fall prey to a legal system in which they possessed neither a right nor a power to oppose the demands of an oppressive government ruled by a money cartel. They can be summoned to appear before a grand jury at a federal court hundreds of miles from their homes, held for days in rooms without furniture, including chairs, and subjected to hours of questioning without legal representation by prosecuting attorneys. If they refuse to answer questions or offer “unsuitable” answers, they can be hauled off to jail for an indefinite stay. No judges are present to question or curb the questioning by the prosecuting attorneys, and no measures are in play to protect innocent individuals who are summoned to testify. Court stenographers transcribe the proceedings, but their records remain sealed to reporters and concerned citizens.1
These developments occur in sharp contradiction to the purpose of grand juries, which had been set forth in Branzburg v. Hayes (1971) as follows: “The Grand Jury has the dual function of determining if there is probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed and of protecting citizens against unfounded criminal prosecutions.”2 This purpose was tossed to the wind in 1976, when the Supreme Court ruled in Imbler v. Pachtman that prosecutors cannot face civil lawsuit for prosecutorial abuses, not even the knowing or reckless presentation of false testimony.3
The ability of grand juries to act in complete secrecy and without supervision by reporters or objective observers was unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court in the Douglas Oil Company v. Petrol Stops Northeast (1979). The rationale behind the decision was that “if pre-indictment proceedings were made public, many prospective witnesses would be hesitant to come forward voluntarily.”4
The grand jury system has become so despotic that it was decried by Circuit Court Judges Evans, Posner, and Easterbrook who in their decision regarding U.S. v. Ross wrote: “Realistically, federal grand juries today provide little protection for criminal suspects whom a U.S. Attorney wishes to indict. Nevertheless, that is not a realism to which judges are permitted to yield.”5
The grand jury rooms were not like regular courtrooms. They were set up like small amphitheaters. The members of the grand jury peered down at the table and chair where the witnesses were seated. Off to one side was the stenographer’s table. If a witness was perplexed or petrified, he could request permission to leave the room in order to confer with his lawyer in the hallway. Such an act was almost always unwise since it gave the jury the perception that the witness had something to hide. The prosecutors ran the show from start to finish, and the jury inevitably abided by their wishes. As Sol Wachtler, chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals, once quipped: “A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich if that’s what the prosecutor wanted.”6
Most Americans assume that border-related policies only impact people living in border towns, like El Paso or San Diego. The reality is that interior enforcement operations by Border Patrol agents encroach deep into and across the United States, affecting the majority of Americans. In 1953, the U.S. Department of Justice established a 100-mile border zone in which American citizens no longer possess their rights under the 4th Amendment. Within this zone, federal agents have the right to conduct property searches without warrants and conduct dragnets by which motorists can be stopped, searched, and interrogated even when there is no “probable cause” of wrongdoing.7
Roughly, two-thirds of the United States’ population lives within the 100-mile zone—that is, within 100 miles of a U.S. land or coastal border. That’s about 200 million people. Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont reside entirely or almost entirely within this zone, which means the cities in which Americans no longer retain their Constitutional rights, include New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, and San Jose.8
Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution maintains that Congress alone has the power to declare war. Opposition to executive wars were voiced by many Framers, including John Jay, who wrote in the Federalist: “It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting any thing by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for purposes and objects merely personal, such as a thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans.”9
At the Constitutional Convention, Pierce Butler argued “for vesting the power in the president, who will have all the requisite qualities, and will not make war but when the nation will support it.” Butler’s motion did not receive so much as a second.10 James Wilson, in praise of reserving for Congress the right to declare war, said, “This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large: this declaration must be made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives: from this circumstance we may draw a certain conclusion that nothing but our interest can draw us into war.”11
On April 2, 1798, James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson: “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.”12
Throughout the colonial period, Congress retained authority to both declare and make war (i.e., initiate war). This was clearly expressed in court rulings. In United States v. Smith (1806), a circuit court rejected the idea that a president or his assistants could unilaterally authorize military adventures against foreign governments. The court put the matter bluntly: “Does [the President] possess the power of making war? That power is exclusively vested in Congress.” If a nation invaded the United States, the president would have an obligation to resist with force. But there was a “manifest distinction” between going to war with a nation at peace and responding to an actual invasion. The court ruled: “In the former case, it is the exclusive province of Congress to change a state of peace into a state of war.”13
This position was upheld throughout the 19th century. In a letter to his law partner in 1848, Abraham Lincoln wrote:
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, “I see no probability of the British invading us” but he will say to you “be silent; I see it, if you don’t.”
The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.14
With the United Nations in place, President Harry Truman threw this stipulation to the wind and decided that under the new global government an Act of Congress was no longer necessary for deploying American troops to armed combat in foreign lands. When questioned about his unconstitutional action at a news conference, Truman said: “We are not at war.” Asked whether it would be more correct to call the conflict “a police action under the United Nations,” he replied: “That is exactly what it amounts to.”15
In the wake of Truman’s unprecedented action, Congress acquiesced its authority, inaugurating a new age of endless war. The Constitutional Forum addresses the monumental importance of Truman’s decision as follows:
Truman denied that he need congressional authorization before deploying the troops in Europe, and his decision triggered the so-called “great debate” on the constitutionality of his action. Several senators, among them Paul Douglas and Thomas Connelly, argued that the president has the power under the Constitution to move troops overseas, both in pursuance of treaty obligations and by virtue of his constitutional powers as commander in chief of the armed forces. In contrast, Taft and John Bricker criticized the president’s action as grossly unconstitutional. The outcome of the debate was a substantial victory for the president. The Senate adopted a weak resolution expressing its “approval” of the president’s action, but declaring it to be “the sense of the Senate” that in the future the president ought to obtain the approval of Congress prior to the assignment of troops abroad, “in the interests of sound constitutional processes and of national unity.” The acquiescence of Congress in the fact of Truman’s usurpation of power inaugurated a new theme in matters of war and peace.16
On August 12, 1950, the U.S. Air Force dropped 626 tons of bombs on North Korea; two weeks later the daily tonnage increased to 800 tons. The carpet bombings resulted in the destruction of 78 cities and thousands of villages. By the time an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, a third of the population of North Korea—more than three million people—had been wiped out.17 The official U.S. casualty list showed that 36,914 American soldiers had died in the conflict, and 7,800 remained unaccounted for.18 The struggle resulted neither in territorial gain or loss. The objective of the war had been containment, not liberation or victory. The terms of the armistice called for the creation of a demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. Each side was to be 2,200 yards from the center. The DMZ was to be patrolled by both sides at all times.19 America’s wars were to be waged with limited rules of engagement and indefinite outcomes to advance the purpose of the global bankers, who had brought the United Nations into being.
On August 4, 1964, all nationally televised programs were interrupted for this urgent message from U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson:
My fellow Americans: As President and Commander in Chief, it is my duty to the American people to report that renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action in reply.
The initial attack on the destroyer Maddox, on August 2nd, was repeated today by a number of hostile vessels attacking two U.S. destroyers with torpedoes. The destroyers and supporting aircraft acted at once on the orders I gave after the initial act of aggression. We believe at least two of the attacking boats were sunk. There were no U.S. losses.
The performance of commanders and crews in this engagement is in the highest tradition of the United States Navy. But repeated acts of violence against the Armed Forces of the United States must be met not only with alert defense, but with positive reply. That reply is being given as I speak to you tonight. Air action is now in execution against gunboats and certain supporting facilities in North Viet-Nam which have been used in these hostile operations.
In the larger sense this new act of aggression, aimed directly at our own forces, again brings home to all of us in the United States the importance of the struggle for peace and security in southeast Asia. Aggression by terror against the peaceful villagers of South Viet-Nam has now been joined by open aggression on the high seas against the United States of America.
The determination of all Americans to carry out our full commitment to the people and to the government of South Viet-Nam will be redoubled by this outrage.20
The next morning, Johnson appeared before Congress to gain the approval for direct military involvement in the Vietnam Civil War. The resolution was passed by a vote of 416 to 0 in the House and 88 to 2 in the Senate. The resolution read: “Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” How any congressman could approve the resolution without realizing that it was a declaration of war remains one of the great mysteries of the 20th century. After the vote, Johnson said to his undersecretary of state: “Hell, those stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish.”21
The country was now involved in another unconstitutional war that would lead to over 50,000 deaths and millions of Vietnamese casualties. The official story of the cause remained the same throughout the course of the war. North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an “unprovoked attack” against a U.S. destroyer on “routine patrol” in the Tonkin Gulf on August 2nd, and, two days later, North Vietnamese PT boats launched a torpedo attack on two U.S. destroyers in another act of unwarranted aggression. But there was a problem. It was all a hoax. The sailors really were shooting at flying fish. The second attack never happened. In a 2005 New York Times article, Scott Shane wrote: “President Lyndon B. Johnson cited the supposed attack to persuade Congress to authorize broad military action in Vietnam, but most historians have concluded in recent years that there was no second attack. The N.S.A. historian, Robert J. Hanyok, found a pattern of translation mistakes that went uncorrected, altered intercept times and selective citation of intelligence that persuaded him that mid level agency officers had deliberately skewed the evidence.”22
President Lyndon B. Johnson appeared before Congress to gain the approval for direct military involvement in the Vietnam War. The resolution was passed by a vote of 416 to 0 in the House and 88 to 2 in the Senate.
What’s more, the first attack was not unprovoked, as the president intimated. The destroyer Maddox was not engaged in routine patrol. It was rather engaged in maneuvers to coordinate attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese navy and the Laotian air force.23
By April 1965, Johnson had deployed 75,000 combat troops to Vietnam; that number rose to half a million by the end of 1967. The U.S. dropped three times as many bombs on the tiny country of Vietnam as it did in all of World War II. The bombs included chemical weapons of mass destruction, including napalm and white phosphorous that burned all skin from the bone.24
The overall policy of the Vietnam War, as developed by George Keenan, Dean Acheson, and other CFR officials, was “containment,” the attempt to confine the Communist countries to their existing borders.25 It was the same policy that failed in Korea. Containment implied limited warfare. Victory was not an objection but rather a liability. James E. King, in a piece published by Foreign Affairs in 1957, explained this new concept of limited warfare as follows:
By April 1965, Johnson had deployed 75,000 combat troops to Vietnam; that number rose to half a million by the end of 1967.
We must be prepared to fight limited actions ourselves. Otherwise we shall have made no advance beyond ‘massive retaliation,’ which tied our hands in conflicts involving less than our survival. And we must be prepared to lose limited actions. No limitation could survive our disposition to elevate every conflict in which our interests are affected to the level of total conflict with survival at stake. Armed conflict can be limited only if aimed at limited objectives and fought with limited means. If we or our enemy relax the limits on either objectives or means, survival will be at stake, whether the issue is worth it or not.26
It was a concept that was easily sold to President Johnson, who had appointed a CFR member to virtually every strategic position in his administration.27
Of course, the U.S. Defense Department, the Pentagon, and the Johnson Administration were well aware that over 85 percent of the war materiel for the Viet Cong came from factories within the Soviet Union. But as soon as Congress approved the resolution for direct American involvement in the Vietnam War, David Rockefeller met with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow to draft a trade agreement that would extend most-favored nation status within the Soviet Communist bloc. The treaty was approved by President Johnson and went into effect on October 13, 1966. Regarding this development, the New York Times published the following report:
The United States put into effect today one of President Johnson’s proposals for stimulating East-West trade by removing restrictions on the export of more than four hundred commodities to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe… Among the categories from which items have been selected for export relaxation are vegetables, cereals, fodder, hides, crude and manufactured rubber, pulp and waste paper, textile and textile fibers, crude fertilizers, metal ores and scrap, petroleum gas and derivatives, chemical compounds and products, dyes, medicines, fireworks, detergents, plastic materials, metal products and machinery, and scientific and professional instruments.28
Virtually all of the “non-strategic” items on the list could be used as instruments of war. A machine gun, for example, was deemed strategic and not part of the agreement, but the tools and parts to manufacture machine guns and the chemicals necessary to propel the machine gun bullets were considered “non-strategic.”29
The Rockefellers became the principal benefactors of this bloody arrangement. They set up with the House of Rothschild the International Basic Economy Corporation to build rubber goods plants and aluminum-producing factories for the Vietnam People’s Air Force, which was bombing American forces.30
But more was at stake in Southeast Asia than the ideology of containment, and the immediate opportunity to reap financial benefits from the conflict. The region produced the poppy crops that were becoming one of the world’s most valuable commodities. Without the flow of heroin from the Golden Triangle of Burma, Laos, and Thailand, the funding for the CIA’s covert operations, which opened new markets for the money cartel, would come to an abrupt halt. And many of these operations, as noted in chapter 19, were undertaken at the behest and for the benefit of the Rockefellers.
By 1958, the opium trade in Southeast Asia became so brisk that a second drug supply line was established by the CIA. This route ran from dirt airstrips within the Annamite Mountains of Laos to Saigon’s international airport for transshipment to Europe and the United States.31 Saigon had become a city of strategic importance to the heroin industry.
The heroin business was booming. By 1971, there were more than 500,000 heroin addicts in the U.S., producing a cash flow of $12 billion. Three million, fifty-four thousand Americans admitted on a government survey to using heroin at least once. Down at the morgue, where people don’t lie, the numbers told a different story: 41 percent of the drug-related deaths were now linked to heroin.32
Southeast Asia remained the main source of opium. From Laos alone, over a ton a month arrived in Saigon on C-47 military transport planes that had been provided by the CIA to the Royal Lao Army.33 So much opium was flowing into Saigon that 30 percent of the U.S. servicemen in Vietnam became heroin addicts.34 Some of this same heroin was smuggled into the United States in body bags containing dead soldiers. When DEA agent Michael Levine attempted to bust this operation, he was warned off by his superiors since such action could result in the exposure of the supply line from Long Tieng.35
New money laundries for the heroin trade were required, and the House of Rockefeller was more than willing to offer its service.
1 Martin Armstrong, “Mueller’s Tyrannical Indictment = The Very Reason We Had a Revolution,” Armstrong Economics, February 19, 2018, https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/rule-of-law/muellers-questionable-indictment/, accessed March 7, 2019.
2 “Branzburg v. Hayes,” Legal Information Institute, June 29, 1972, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/408/665, accessed March 7, 2019.
3 “Imbler v. Pachtman,” Justia Supreme Court Center, March 2, 1976, https://www.oyez.org/cases/1975/74-5435, accessed March 7, 2019.
4 “Douglas Oil Co. v. Petrol Stops Northeast,” Justia, Supreme Court, April 18, 1979, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/441/211/, accessed March 7, 2019.
5 “U.S. v. Ross,” No. 04-2124, Leagle, June 20, 2005, https://www.leagle.com/decision/20051183412f3d77111103, accessed March 7, 2019.
6 Sol Wachtler, quoted in Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1987), p. 603.
7 Chris Rickerd, “Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP’S) 100-Mile Rule,” American Civil Liberties Union, n. d., https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-factsheet-customs-and-border-protections-100-mile-zone?redirect=immigrants-rights/aclu-fact-sheet-customs-and-border-protections-100-mile-zone, accessed March 7, 2019.
8 Ibid.
9 John Jay, Federalist no. 4, Yale Law School, Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed04.asp, accessed March 7, 2019.
10 Pierce Butler, quoted in Thomas Woods, “The Constitution Is Clear on Presidential War Power,” Tenth Amendment Center, December 30, 2009, https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/12/30/the-constitution-is-clear-on-presidential-war-powers/, accessed March 7, 2019.
11 James Wilson, quoted in ibid.
12 James Madison, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, April 2, 1798, The Framers’ Constitution, University of Chicago, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_11s8.html, accessed March 7, 2019.
13 “United States v. Smith,” Circuit Court, District of New York, July 15, 1806, Law Resources, https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F.Cas/0027.f.cas/0027.f.cas.1192.pdf, accessed March 7, 2019.
14 Abraham Lincoln, quoted in Conor Friedersdorf, “Abraham Lincoln’s Warning about the Presidents and War,” Atlantic, July 13, 2012, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/07/abraham-lincolns-warning-about-presidents-and-war/259767/, accessed March 7, 2019.
15 Harry Truman quoted in Louis Fisher, “Unconstitutional Wars from Truman Forward,” Humanitas 30, 2017, http://www.nhinet.org/fisher30-1.pdf, accessed March 7, 2019.
16 “The Constitution: The Continuing War Powers Controversy,” New American Nation, n.d., https://www.americanforeignrelations.com/A-D/The-Constitution-The-continuing-war-powers-controversy.html, accessed March 7, 2019.
17 Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of War: America’s ‘Long War’ against Humanity (Montreal, Quebec: Global Research Publishers, 2015), pp. 26–30.
18 CNN Library, “Korean War Fast Facts,” CNN News, April 30, 2018, http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/28/world/asia/korean-war-fast-facts/, accessed March 7, 2019.
19 Ibid.
20 Lyndon B. Johnson, “Gulf of Tonkin Address,” August 4, 1964, https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/speeches/rhetoric/lbjgulf.htm, accessed March 7, 2019.
21 Scott Shane, “Vietnam Study, Casting Doubts, Remains Secret,” New York Times, October 31, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/31/politics/vietnam-study-castingdoubts-remains-secret.html?_r=0, accessed March 7, 2019.
22 Ibid.
23 Lt. Commander Pat Peterson, “The Truth about Tonkin,” Naval History magazine, February 2008, https://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2008-02/truth-about-tonkin, accessed March 7, 2019.
24 Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Concise Untold History of the United States (New York: Gallery Books, 2014), p. 198.
25 Michael O’Malley, “The Vietnam War and the Tragedy of Containment,” History 122, George Mason University, n. d., https://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/vietnam/lecture.html, accessed March 7, 2019.
26 James E, King, “Nuclear Plenty and Limited War,” Foreign Affairs, January 1957.
27 Allen, The Rockefeller File, p. 110.
28 New York Times, quoted in ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., p. 111.
31 Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2003), p. 153.
32 Robert Young Pelton, The World’s Most Dangerous Places (New York: Harper Resource, 2003), p. 158.
33 Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press (New York: Verso, 1998), p. 246.
34 Ibid., p. 249.
35 Ibid.