Monday, December 17, 2012

Former Treasury Official: I was on a Super-Secret Presidential Committee that had Subpoena Power over the CIA.

Pravda, of all places, has a fascinating interview with Paul Craig Roberts.

Roberts was an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. In the interview, he tells Pravda (my emphasis):

Unlike the present Republican Party, Reagan wanted peace, not war. 
I know this because when I succeeded in establishing the new economic policy that cured stagflation, President Reagan appointed me to a super-secret presidential committee that had subpoena power over the CIA.
Note: It would probably come as a surprise to then-Fed chairman Paul Volcker that Roberts developed the policy that cured stagflation. Nevertheless, Robert's comment about a super-secret committee that had subpoena power over the CIA is fascinating.

There are a number of questions that must be asked in light of this revelation. Why would the president need such subpoena power? As an arm of the executive branch, can't the president just demand any documents? What does Roberts mean by subpoena power? And granted by whom? And who was on the super-secret committee and what was the purpose of the committee?

During the interview Roberts also discussed neoconservatives (my emphasis):
A...The Soviet Union collapsed three years after Reagan left office. It came as a surprise to those of us who had helped Reagan to end the cold war and dispose of the nuclear war threat. 
Myself and many other Reagan supporters opposed the extension of NATO to Russia’s reduced borders. What the world seems to be unaware of is that the Soviet collapse unleashed a new, highly dangerous ideology in the US known as neoconservatism.
Q: You wrote that the insane and criminal government in Washington, no matter Democratic of Republicans, no matter the outcome of the next elections, is the biggest threat to life on Earth ever. How would you describe this threat, what is it made of and who represents it in the US?
A: The threat is the neoconservative ideology, unleashed by the Soviet collapse. It is a form of Marxism in which American “democratic capitalism” instead of the proletariat has won history’s verdict–”the end of history.” Americans are the “indispensable people,” and the US is the “indispensable nation” with the right and responsibility to establish its hegemony over the world. Adolf Hitler called the same thing “Aryan Superiority.” Now Washington asserts the superiority. The neoconservative ideology threatens the world with nuclear war.

9 comments:

  1. I suspect the neocons as former trotskyists, were looking for the defeat and destruction of the Soviet Union then which would lead to the domination of the world by DC (which they would be in charge of, naturally)

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  2. I would also refer readers to this interesting post on Lew Rockwell's site.
    The Visible Government
    How the U.S. Intelligence Community Came Out of the Shadows
    by Tom Engelhardt
    http://lewrockwell.com/engelhardt/engelhardt453.html

    It is more than stunning the growth of covert ops outfits, in terms of buildings constructed, employee additions, in particular since 911. Much of this is make work, it has nothing to do with practicality or reality.

    When the cold war concluded, a new perpetual marketing tool was needed, which 911 ably offered in the form of the never ending 'war on terror.'

    As they say, the rest is history . . .

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  3. If neoconservatism is a form of Marxism, does it at its core wish to see the reorganization of the means of production away from private hands and into public hands? If not, in what way can it be considered a form of Marxism?

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    1. The private hands will have to ask permission of the public hands before doing anything. That describes the USA to a T!

      It is "control for the proletariat" (in newspeak from your leaders) of resources without outright ownership.

      Can you not see the Marxism at the core?

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  4. Does Neoconservatism wish to see the overthrow of the organization of the means of production from private hands into the hands of the people? If yes, where is the evidence for this claim? If not, in what respect can neoconservatism be considered a form of Marxism?

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    1. Imagine you want to open a business, but every aspect is regulated and controlled by the government. That is fascism.

      Now, imagine opening a business in your hometown. How many permits, how many hoops do you jump through, how do you know they won't shut you down for some bullshit?

      That's Fascism. The big boys, that pay off the bureaucracy with parties and gifts- they get by with it. You, the little piece of shit nothing, well, you go to jail because the lines you painted on your parking lot are 1/4 to short, or your handicap ramp is 1/2

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    2. An inch too short.

      Give them 1/1000" they will take a light year!

      Fuck the government.

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  5. Follow Up:

    I don't have PCR's _Supply Side Revolution_ but I have found the important quotes from it. To RW's complaint:

    "Note: It would probably come as a surprise to then-Fed chairman Paul Volcker that Roberts developed the policy that cured stagflation..."

    From _Supply Side Rev_:

    “Secretary Regan, Undersecretary Sprinkel, and I are on the public record in testimony before Congress stating that our monetary assumption and the policy we requested from Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker was a gradual 50 percent reduction in the growth rate of the money supply spread over six years...He [[Dominici]] seemed to think that we had supported the very tight monetary policy during 1981, when Volcker collapsed the growth of the money supply to zero for six months of the year…

    "Instead of evenly spreading the reduction in money growth over a six-year period, the Federal Reserve delivered 75 percent of the reduction in the first year. In November 1981 the Treasury staff reported that the main monetary measure, called M1-B, which consists of currency plus all kinds of checking accounts, had fallen over the previous six months, for only the second time since 1959–60. There was actually less money in the economy in October than there had been the previous April. The growth in M1-B over the year was meagre, roughly equivalent to figures for the recession years of 1970 to 1975. This was ferocious indeed and, with the tax cut delayed, recession inevitable..."

    CW

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  6. Ed: Private hands are the hands of the people. "Public hands" are the hands of the appointed monopoly.

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