NEW LAROUCHE PAC AD:
Impeach Obama Before
He Detonates World War III
by Nancy Spannaus
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April 8—The LaRouche Political Action Committee will take a forceful message to the U.S. Capitol April 9, with a striking wraparound ad in the Washington Times, a paper which hits every Congressional office as well as local citizens. Looming above and through the text, will be the image of Barack Obama embedded in a thermonuclear mushroom cloud—the future which the world faces unless the current President is immediately removed from power over the nuclear button.
The title of the ad is "Unless President Obama Is Removed from Office Now, the World Is Facing the Imminent Threat of Thermonuclear War." It features statements from leading figures, domestic and foreign, warning against the U.S/NATO drive to war.
So far, the Congress has obstinately buried its head in the sand, ignoring the blatant lying and warmongering by an administration which openly organized an illegal coup by Nazi forces in Ukraine, and then proceeded to go on the warpath against Russia, in a series of highly provocative actions that are rapidly leading toward total war. Only 30-some Congressmen have refused to ratify Obama's demands for escalating sanctions against the world's second nuclear power.
But such cowardice can be overcome in a flash, if Congress can be shocked into facing reality. Already, Obama is an object of increasing hatred and fear on Capitol Hill, as well as within the population, and his offenses against the U.S. Constitution are driving more and more Democrats—on whose submission he absolutely depends—into publicly opposing him. Most notable recently has been the case of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's leadership in moving for the declassification of the report on the CIA's torture program under Cheney-Bush, against clear opposition from President Obama. Other areas of clash have been on the NSA's illegal wiretap program, and most importantly, the treasonous refusal of the President to release the 28 classified pages of the Congressional Joint Inquiry on 9/11, which deal with the Saudi funding of that attack on the United States.
Can anyone escape the obvious fact that in all these areas of the Constitutional abuse, Obama is both protecting, and escalating, the crimes of Cheney and Bush? Obama is not a Democrat—he's a traitor to the Constitution and the United States!
The question remains whether Congress will act on this reality, before it's too late.
Feinstein on the Offensive
Senator Feinstein, until recently one of the most reliable defenders of Obama, threw down the gauntlet to the President on March 11, when she blasted the CIA for attempting to sabotage the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's review of the CIA's torture program, and mooted that this sabotage, which may have violated the Constitutional separation of powers, was ordered by the White House. As the administration went ahead with referrals of members of her staff to the Justice Department for possible prosecution—a clear intimidation measure—and Feinstein received no response from her attempt to speak with the President, she went ahead and moved to declassify the torture report.
On April 3, the Intelligence Committee voted 11-3 (with one abstention) to declassify portions of its report—the executive summary, findings, conclusions, and dissenting views—on the CIA's post-9/11 detention, interrogation, and rendition program. Feinstein issued the following statement:
"The Senate Intelligence Committee this afternoon voted to declassify the 480-page executive summary as well as 20 findings and conclusions of the majority's five-year study of the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program, which involved more than 100 detainees.
"The purpose of this review was to uncover the facts behind this secret program, and the results were shocking. The report exposes brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation. It chronicles a stain on our history that must never again be allowed to happen.
"This is not what Americans do.
"The report also points to major problems with CIA's management of this program and its interactions with the White House, other parts of the executive branch and Congress. This is also deeply troubling and shows why oversight of intelligence agencies in a democratic nation is so important.
"The release of this summary and conclusions in the near future shows that this nation admits its errors, as painful as they may be, and seeks to learn from them. It is now abundantly clear that, in an effort to prevent further terrorist attacks after 9/11 and bring those responsible to justice, the CIA made serious mistakes that haunt us to this day. We are acknowledging those mistakes, and we have a continuing responsibility to make sure nothing like this ever occurs again."
The Committee's action puts Obama on the spot, as he is the one who now has the responsibility to decide how much of the declassified report will be released. If he keeps defending Cheney et al., he is further exposed, and in conflict with the Democrats—as well as Republicans like Sen. John McCain, who are also insisting on full disclosure of the torture report.
NSA Showdown?
The effort to suppress the truth about the Bush/Cheney-era torture program intersects a string of other "unitary executive" abuses of the Constitution by this President, including new revelations last week about NSA warrantless wiretapping of American citizens' telephone calls and e-mails.
On March 28, James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, for the first time in writing, admitted that the NSA is using a loophole in the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA) to search for Americans' private communications without a warrant. Clapper's admission directly contradicted testimony he gave to Congress earlier this year—and should result in his immediate firing for lying to Congress.
Obama, of course, has admitted nothing, preferring to try to lull his opposition into silence by vague promises of "reforms" of the NSA surveillance program.
U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), who serve on the Intelligence Committee, and have been outspoken critics of NSA violation of the Constitutional rights of American citizens, under the Fourth Amendment, not to be subjected to warrantless searches, issued the following statement on April 1:
"It is now clear to the public that the list of ongoing intrusive surveillance practices by the NSA includes not only bulk collection of Americans' phone records, but also warrantless searches of the content of Americans' personal communications. This is unacceptable. It raises serious constitutional questions, and poses a real threat to the privacy rights of law-abiding Americans. If a government agency thinks that a particular American is engaged in terrorism or espionage, the Fourth Amendment requires that the government secure a warrant or emergency authorization before monitoring his or her communications. This fact should be beyond dispute.
"Senior officials have sometimes suggested that government agencies do not deliberately read Americans' emails, monitor their online activity or listen to their phone calls without a warrant. However, the facts show that those suggestions were misleading, and that intelligence agencies have indeed conducted warrantless searches for Americans' communications using the 'back-door search' loophole in section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Today's admission by the Director of National Intelligence is further proof that meaningful surveillance reform must include closing the back-door searches loophole and requiring the intelligence community to show probable cause before deliberately searching through data collected under section 702 to find the communications of individual Americans.
"Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act established a legal framework for the government to acquire foreign intelligence by targeting non-U.S. persons who are reasonably believed to be located outside the United States, under a program approved by the FISA Court. Because Section 702 does not involve obtaining individual warrants, it contains language specifically intended to limit the government's ability to use these new authorities to deliberately spy on Americans.
"The revelation that—despite the clear intent of Section 702 to target foreign communications—the government is deliberately searching for the phone calls or emails of specific Americans and circumventing traditional warrant protections should be concerning to all."
Indeed, given the Obama Administration's record of unprecedented prosecution of "whistleblowers" and others it considers to have leaked information it wants to keep secret—likely including Members of Congress—these Democrats are right to be alarmed. Impeachment, their obvious remedy, should be immediate.
The 28 Pages
President Obama is also coming under renewed pressure to declassify the 28-page chapter from the Joint Congressional inquiry into 9/11, which reveals the Saudi funding of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. On at least two occasions, he promised the 9/11 families and survivors that he would declassify and publicly release the 28 pages, but he has broken that promise and refused.
What the President is doing is a treasonous protection racket for enemies of the United States—and puts him in the same league as the treasonous Cheney, who presided over the coverup at the start.
Thanks to the efforts of Reps. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Steven Lynch (D-Mass.), and others, the campaign to force the release of the 28 pages is in high gear. A Congressional initiative (H. Res. 480) demanding Obama declassify the pages currently has only eight sponsors, but, in the wake of a well-attended press conference on Capitol Hill March 12, which included representatives of the families of 9/11 victims, there has been a wave of publicity around the 28 pages, and the Saudi role in the 9/11 attacks.
Two recent developments are worthy of note.
First, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on March 31 that the issue of the 28 pages has taken on new urgency now, because of the ruling by the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in December, reinstating the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in a lawsuit seeking compensation for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. On March 21, the Kingdom filed an appeal petition with the U.S. Supreme Court.
"The 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry report are absolutely critical to the claims brought against Saudi Arabia," said attorney Sean Carter. "Those pages contain details and findings concerning the possible direct involvement of Saudi government officials living in the United States in support of the 9/11 hijackers. The release of that evidence would lay bare the sovereign immunity defenses Saudi Arabia has hid behind for more than a decade."
The Inquirer story also highlighed the fact that President Obama has, on two separate occasions—in February 2009 and May 2011—promised that he would get the suppressed 28 pages released, but has failed to do so.
The second major development, was the ruling issued on March 31 in Federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., by U.S. District Judge William Zloch, denying the Obama Administration's effort to dismiss the FOIA suit brought by the Broward Bulldog, joined by the Miami Herald and other newspapers, which are seeking FBI files on its Florida investigation of the 9/11 attacks, and particularly on the FBI's investigation of a wealthy Saudi family living in Sarasota, who were documented to have been in contact with at least three of the 9/11 hijackers prior to the attacks.
Then on April 4, saying that he is troubled by "inconsistencies" and "non-sensical" legal arguments put forward by the Justice Department, Judge Zloch issued a follow-up order, directing the FBI to conduct a much more thorough search than it had previously done, and then to deliver all pertinent documents—without any redactions—to him in two weeks, by April 18. Judge Zloch gave the FBI precise instructions as to how the search is to be conducted, right down to the text terms to be used, and the databases to be queried, according to the Broward Bulldog. Judge Zloch ordered the FBI to also inform the court of any documented communications between the Bureau and other government agencies concerning the investigation.
In its April 6 story, the Bulldog also reported that former U.S. Senator Bob Graham, who has worked tirelessly for more than a decade to secure release of the 28 pages, praised Judge Zloch's ruling, saying it brings the nation closer to getting to the truth about the 9/11 attacks. "Since 2002 many sources, including the U.S. Senate, have been attempting to get information such as that which is likely to be disclosed under Judge Zloch's order made available," Graham stated to the Bulldog. "This is the closest in 12 years that we've been to achieving that objective."
Attorney Tom Julin, who represents the Bulldog, was quoted as saying that the Judge's order shows that he is going after the coverup, and that he wants to know if it is being ordered by some other agency or person, including the President. Julin told the Bulldog that it appears that Zloch "definitely wants to get to the bottom of this and doesn't like the fact that the FBI put out public statements trying to discredit the Bulldog's reporting.... His order makes it sound like he believes the government may be deliberately covering up."
Julin pointed out that the Judge's order, in addition to ordering a much more thorough search for documents, also requires that both the Justice Department and the FBI "advise the court of any documented communications between defendants and other government agencies concerning the investigation" of the Sarasota Saudis. "He's showing real sensitivity to the likelihood that the FBI is acting under the direction of the Central Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency," said Julin. "If the FBI is simply following orders then he is telling the FBI he wants to know what those orders are, and from who they are coming, whether it's the CIA, the NSA, or the President" (emphasis added).
'Deeper into Impeachment Territory'
"Obama is moving deeper into impeachment territory," said Lyndon LaRouche April 4, in response to a report from a senior U.S. intelligence official, who emphasized that the April 3 vote in the Senate Select Intelligence Committee had created enormous headaches for Obama and the White House team.
Indeed, pressure is building on Obama from both the Democratic and Republican sides. But the critical element, as in the case of Nixon being forced from office, will be the President's own party. Will the Democrats put the welfare, even the very existence, of their nation above their partisan interests, or their fear? How they answer that question will determine whether the United States survives.
