James Forman Jr. Quotes

He was referring to the charge that Richard A. Clark, Chief of Counterterrorism, had politicized the 9-11 investigations. In reality, while the hearings had been apolitical, after he testified, there were massive attacks on him by the Republicans and then massive defenses by the Democrats and the hearings had indeed been politicized. It is noteworthy however that the Commission itself remained bi-partisan in its procedures and votes.

An American ambassador and 3 staff had been killed in a terrorist attack on our Consulate in Bengasi, Libya. The CIA and the rest of the American intelligence had initially analyzed the event and gave a report to the Administration “explaining” the event. American officials who did not see the incorrect intelligence report, hypotheses that it was a planned terrorist attack which it appeared to be from the news reports read by amateurs, However, the United Nations Ambassador was given the incorrect report and was asked by the White House to appear on the News Shows, reveal the contents of the report and state that this was a preliminary analysis and subject to change upon further data and analysis. She did that, but many journalists and politicians thought that her version did not comport with the facts. Soon it was discovered that the initial Intelligence report was all wrong and not even close to the truth and the people who guessed from the press reports had gotten it right. Graham and other members of Congress were very angry. So Graham made a public announcement stating the U. N. Ambassador was unfit for a senior job as she either lied to the country of was too naïve to see the truth which so many others had seen. There were dozens of people who might have either made a mistake or were otherwise responsible for the erroneous report which in hindsight appeared very flawed. At the top of the list was the CIA Director who had been America’s best heroic and victorious general who had recently taken the post and was very popular. So Graham and some of his fellow members of Congress called for the head of the one person involved and at a high level who had NOTHING to do with preparing and approving the wrong and misleading intelligence report and did not cast blame on any of the people who made the error or approved it. The quotation is typical of members if Congress who, insist on having the public stage before they know most of the facts, have little idea of how to manage anything, pick the easiest target to attack without worrying top much about the real culprits if any, and the lack of courage enough to blame a very powerful figure who if he did not personally err, the problem occurred on his watch. See {625924} for a view of the courage of Congressmen. Graham was actually a much better than average Senator, at the time but Congress had a 90% disapproval rating with the citizens.

U-Tube (Google) was faced with a very difficult decision when a Coptic Christian Islamaphobe produced and posted “Innocence of Muslims” a hateful video intended to inflame and insult Muslims. Despite the terrible content, U-Tube determined that the film did not violate their free speech standards and would not be censored. However, there were violent riots and demonstrations in reaction in a number of Muslim nations. People were being killed. So U-Tube decided to block the video in Egypt, Libya, Indonesia, and India (not a majority Muslim nation but had over 200 million Muslims). Galperin and others however made this important moral point. In essence to avoid unreasonable, and immoral violence, we censor materials and allow the perpetrators of violence to also force Americans to abandon the value of freedom of speech and freedom to read. There is a RIGHT to insult someone or their religion or their God. There is a right for all to, if they wish, view a video regardless of how hateful it is. There is NO moral responsibility for violence for ever publishing ANYTHING. The insulted person who resorts to violence is morally responsible and NO ONE ELSE. However some argue that, from a more fundamentalist point of view, the Muslim Holy Book REQUIRES blasphemers to be put to death. But, and often forgotten, the Jewish and Christian Old Testament requires the SAME death penalty for Blasphemy. So modernists insist that to follow holy books literally can often be immoral, and proper morality requires the ignoring of the “word of God”. It is a difficult question and while one can argue for or against the U-Tube Google decision, but taking either side of this question is reasonable and we all do the best we can with a ethically terribly difficult problem.

Marshall was Army Chief of Staff at the time. Actually it was the OSS—the precursor to the CIA—that accepted the job of the assassination of Werner Heisenberg, the best physicist left in Germany after so many had escaped from the dictatorship. However, the agent who was to do the assassination made the judgment from actually talking with him and reading all his scientific papers that he was not working on an atomic bomb and really didn’t know of a lot of the critical research that was ongoing. He let the scientist live, and later investigations showed that the agent, Moe Berg, was absolutely right. Neither Heisenberg nor any other German scientists were working on atomic energy. The Germans had put all their scientific eggs in the rocket and jet plane basket.

Many like Black were concerned that prosecutors had the power to decide who would be charged, with what crimes, what penalties to ask for, and even able to start or end investigations of private citizens and politicians. By overcharging they are able, if they choose, to intimidate many people into pleading guilty, even for crimes that the never committed, in order to avoid taking a chance and possible have a very long jail sentence. Thus they were the most powerful people in the legal system, and had more power and less accountability, checks and balances of any public figures except perhaps for Federal Judges.