E.U. Federalism: On SIS Counterterrorism

The FBI was created in 1908, more than a century after the U.S. federal system of dual sovereignty had gone into effect in 1989; before then, the U.S. had been a military alliance and then a confederation of sovereign countries (under the Articles of Confederation). An ahistorical American mindset tends to overlook the international beginnings of that political union, and especially that the federal system designed in the Convention in 1787 incorporated both national and international elements into the federal level. This history bears not only on the American federal system, but also in how it can be accurately compared with the E.U.’s system, which also divided governmental sovereignty between the federal and state levels, and whose federal level also contains national and international elements, institutionally. Unfortunately for the E.U., the destructive technology available in the twenty-first century, as in advanced weaponry for mass destruction, has put pressure on E.U. officials to federalize intelligence-capabilities that could otherwise take over a century, as in the case of the U.S., to be federalized from the state level. Such pressure could exacerbate fears that the E.U. might be headed like a fast train to becoming a central state, consolidated at the expense of even its distinctly federal elements—for the U.S. had arguably consolidated too much, given its empire-scale, since at least the end of World War II.

A German citizen having some association with Lebanon intentionally drove into a crowd of people at a gay Pride festival in Berlin on 26 July, 2026, killing one person and injuring at least 29 others. “Everything we see here points to us dealing with an Islamic terror attack,” the state’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said.[1] The suspect, who would be killed by police after a manhunt, “had previously sought to join the militant Islamic State group,” according to prosecutors.[2] Even though the problem facing Europeans regarding the presence of socially-conservative Muslims in the relatively open society of the E.U. had obviously not been solved, questions also swirled regarding the all-but-absent E.U. intelligence on the culprit. I contend that the state-biased federal system itself—one that the U.S. also had for over a century at the very least— is culpable.

Even though the Schengen Information System (SIS) “enables police, border guards and customs officers . . . to access real-time alerts on wanted criminals, missing persons and individuals linked to terrorism and other serious crimes,” the alerts are state to state, and even include four countries, so culprits can slip through the cracks.[3] “According to the European Commission, counterterrorism remains primarily the responsibility of individual member states,” with the federal level being limited to facilitating “cooperation through intelligence sharing and common security tools.”[4] Even though the Schengen Information System is “the EU’s common security database,” it allows state authorities “to identify and locate terrorist suspects,” a Commission spokesperson said at the time of the attack. The donut hole in the federal system is evident in the absence of federal authorities and with authority and a “EU-wide intelligence register showing how many people are under surveillance for suspected involvement in Islamic extremist networks,” as each state applies “its own legal definitions, surveillance thresholds, and monitoring practices.”[5] This problem should be obvious, and yet the state-centric bias in the Europeans’ approach to federalism at the empire-level (i.e., consisting of kingdom-level polities) had preempted any fruitful attempts to fill in the hole at the federal level such that it’s role would be more than coordinative.

In the parlance of American history, the anti-federalists (i.e., Euroskeptics) had successfully resisted the creation of an FBI-like agency at the federal (i.e., E.U.) level. That the weapons available to the bad guys had become considerably more dangerous than eighteenth-century muskets did not matter to state officials anxious to preserve their turf from what they would view as encroachment by the Commission. It is precisely this institutional and personal (power) conflict-of-interest that keeps the E.U. from moving to a balanced system of federalism. Such a balance requires more from the federal level than merely a coordinative role, especially if the operative network (i.e. the SIS) is not even limited to E.U. states!

To be sure, a glance over to Hong Kong since China regained control of the “special administrative area” could bring fears that a centralized intelligence operation run by the E.U. could result in “no dark corners” (i.e., security cameras covering every public area) in the E.U. and federal agents too numerous to count (even if they could be recognized) in every E.U. city. Furthermore, Edward Snowdon, once a NSA contractor in the U.S. had made public just how invasive the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had been in collecting data often without warrants even on American citizens.  E.U. citizens in turn could legitimately be worried about giving their consent to the Commission being expanded to include a NSA-comparable agency. Even just in using some words here that are likely to be “picked up” by the NSA or FBI, or even the CIA even though I am an American citizen within the U.S., I empathize with the fears of E.U. citizens who may have heard of the Pride attack yet still resisted calls to strengthen the E.U.’s intelligence capabilities at the federal level.

Whereas the overly-consolidating tendency of the U.S. at the expense of its federal system inhibits the member-states from acting as a collective check on excessive power at the federal level, the E.U. states were, at least as of 2026, fully able to act as a check should the Commission be charged with doing more than cooperative work in the intelligence field. Whereas in the U.S., it was tenuously assumed that the separation of powers within the federal level would protect citizens from inappropriate intrusion by federal intelligence agencies, E.U. citizens could count not only on the Parliament and the Councils to check the Commission, but also on the state governments to leverage their direct involvement at the federal level, via the Councils, to check the federal executive branch from over-reaching. In this respect, the E.U.’s federal system is healthier, but that assumes that more power is given to the Commission to be checked! It makes little sense to trumpet the ability of the states to act as a check on the Commission on X if the power to do X is still held by the states.

At a more abstract (i.e., federal theory) level, the coordinative role of a federal level is consistent with a confederal system in which, as in the U.S.’s Articles of Confederation, all governmental sovereignty is held by the states. Having federal institutions (and officials) do more than merely coordinate state activities is consistent with “modern” federalism, meaning federalism with dual sovereignty—at least some autonomy is reserved for the states and some for the Union itself. At the empire-scale (of territory), a political union benefits from diverse laws set by its parts as well as unified laws reflecting the common good of the whole. Dual-sovereignty not only allows for both, but also gives each some governmental autonomy from the reach of the other. As of 2026 at least, reliance on the SIS can thus be viewed as founded on a category mistake—taking the E.U. to be a confederation of still-sovereign states rather than a federal system in which both E.U. and state governmental institutions have some sovereignty. Qualified-majority voting alone is enough for dual-sovereignty to be demonstrated as extant in the E.U.’s federal system; exclusive competencies of the Commission add even more support. In short, matching the federal role with the E.U. as federal rather than merely confederal would enhance the security of E.U. citizens because the E.U. would be doing more than coordinative work as state officials of various states variously decide on thresholds for intelligence, and thus on what can be shared with other states.  

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1. Stephen Sorace, “Berlin Pride Attack Suspect Killed in Police Confrontation: AP,” Foxnews.com, July 26, 2026.
2. Anna Weglarczyk, “Berlin Pride Attack Sparks Fresh Questions over EU Intelligence Sharing,” Euronews.com, 28 July, 2026.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

A U.S. Senator Thrown to the Ground: Security on Steroids

A U.S. Senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed rather than escorted out of the building because he asked a difficult question for the speaker holding a news conference illustrates not only the bias towards using excessive force that having police power lavishes on human nature, but also a proclivity toward excessiveness without any internal mental check that is entwined in virtually any human brain. That the primary arresting FBI employee was the only person in the room wearing a bulletproof vest inside the federal (government) building may also reveal his penchant for exaggeration—or, going too far without realizing it. The prescription in terms of public policy is a strengthening of checks on law-enforcement employees even, if possible, by embedding other municipal (or federal) employees whose sole function it is to evaluate police conduct either by listening in or observing even in real time. A U.S. senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed in a federal building in California rather than escorted out of the building evinces a power-trip more base, violent, and primitive than the typical power-trips that occur on the “floor” of the U.S. Senate. It must have been a shock to U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla on June 12, 2025 to be physically shoved to the ground, especially if the rationale for his removal from the press conference was itself an exaggeration.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was holding a news conference in early June, 2025 as protests against the arrests of illegal aliens were going on outside in downtown Los Angeles in California, when U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla said, “I have questions for the secretary!”[1] Even if the senator was trying to visibly score political points with his constituents by interjecting, which, by the way, would be in the realm of the sort of power-trip that is quite common in politics, the reaction of the Trump Administration may point to a trumped up political reason for the violent way in which the senator was manhandled by Secret Service employees and then the FBI agent. The White House accused Padilla of “disrespectful political theatre” and Noem herself accused the senator of having ‘made a scene.”[2] If these opinions were behind the manhandling of the senator, then “criminalizing politics” steeped to a new low: instant violence against the elected representative for being political. The violence itself is much worse than merely charging someone for being political in a way that offends someone else in power.

For its part, the Secret Service lied that Padilla had “lunged at Secretary Noem,” and furthermore that the agents there “thought he was an attacker.”[3] Reviewing the video of the event shows the willingness of people with guns to lie to protect themselves, which I contend is reason enough for additional checks on law-enforcement employees, whether federal or state. That the senator, the most senior Democrat on the U.S. Senate’s Border Security and Immigration subcommittee, announced repeatedly that he was a U.S. Senator belies the credibility of the claim that he was thought to be an attacker.

California’s Gavin Newsom, head of state, chief executive, and commander-in-chief of California’s National Guard (i.e., army) wrote online a poignant point worthy of our consideration: “If they can handcuff a US Senator for asking a question, imagine what they will do to you.”[4] Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much imagining to consider the actuality of employees of a government in law enforcement presuming that the law is theirs to make in real time—casting a blind eye intentionally on the actual law—and lying and threatening even victims of a crime with arrest should they object. Enforcing existing law does not give a government employee the discretion with which to ignore the law and even come up with one’s own law and yet how easy it is simply to ignore this vital point in the carrying out of one’s “duties.” I have witnessed this mentality enough to know that it is too common to ignore, and thus I contend that more checks are needed on law-enforcement employees on the non-supervisory level locally, at the member-state level, and at the federal level in the United States. The problem is worse “on the ground” than has reached the public air-waves.

Even if Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, was right in opining, “Padilla embarrassed himself and his constituents with this immature, theatre-kid stunt” because “he wanted attention,”[5] treating the senator as if he were an attacker rather than simply escorting him out of the building—or even letting him remain and treat the altercation between him and Noem as political—reveals an emotionally jejune, hyper-“trigger-happy” mentality among the Secret Service and FBI employees in that federal building. Such a mentality among government employees who have been given the legal right to use force is, I submit, dangerous, and thus should be exculpated from the ranks of law enforcement in any jurisdiction, lest the trend eventuate in people being surrounded by security simply for being angry and even raising one’s voice at a political event. Treating such as a threat is itself passive-aggressive, which as we have seen can turn outright aggressive given the human, all too human proclivity to go to far. 

Put more plainly, assuming that lies used to cover-up the underlying mental ailment, Secret Service employees who perceived the senator lunge at Noem and thought Padilla was an attacker should be put on mental-health leave so they can relax and untighten, and be subjected to psychological tests on latent aggression, for their sort of power-trip is much more dangerous than that which goes on in the U.S. Senate—and the White House, for this incident is but a glimpse toward a realization that not enough had been done even in multiple jurisdictions to root out the sordid pathology from the field of law-enforcement. De facto absolute power “on the ground” loves a vacuum of accountability, and is even willing to lie to keep it at bay.

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1. Ali Abbas Ahmadi and Kwasi G. Asiedu, “US Senator Dragged Out of LA News Conference and Handcuffed,” BBC.com, June 13, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

The U.S. Justice Department and Facebook: Secretly Mining Personal Information

Collusion between business and government has hardly been a rarity; the extent of secrecy regarding it , however, may be a surprise. Whereas business-government economic partnerships (as well as university-government partnerships) have typically been made public, the extent to which government uses businesses to get information on citizens has hardly been transparent. In spite of a U.S. federal law enacted in 2015, documents released in September of 2019 “show how far beyond Silicon Valley the practice extends—encompassing scores of banks, credit agencies, cellphone carriers and even universities.”[1] The documents, which cover 750 of the half-million subpoenas issued since 2001, reveal that more than 120 companies and other entities received subpoenas for information on customers, users, or students. F.B.I. could lawfully “scoop up a variety of information, including usernames, locations, IP addresses and records of purchases” without a judge’s approval.[2] A gag order keeps the businesses from divulging even the receipt of a subpoena. So much secrecy accompanying so much power is, I submit, dangerous to a republic. In fact, the subtle effects on citizens in the public square can easily be overlooked even if the negative impact on freedom is serious.

The documents reveal that the credit agencies received a large number of subpoenas, as did financial institutions like Bank of America. Universities including Kansas State University and cellular providers including AT&T and Verizon, as well as tech companies like Google and Facebook also received subpoenas. The public was kept in the dark, due to “several large loopholes” enabling the U.S. Justice Department to refuse even to review “a large swath” of gag orders.[3] Loopholes have been a common practice in legislation impacting business, given the power of large businesses or industries to influence lawmakers via large campaign contributions. I submit that the loopholes enabling secrecy on the subpoenas are even worse for a republic’s viability because of the extent of governmental power that is possible from mining private data on citizens. The potential uses—again in the dark—go well beyond reducing or preventing crime.

Political uses, for example, should not be discounted. Even as Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, was assuring users that they had control over what data is shared, the company’s COO had devised a business model that would substantially raise Facebook’s revenue by secretly allowing third-party “app” companies access to user data. The practice enabled Cambridge Analytic to influence users politically without the users’ knowledge. In the case of the F.B.I. subpoenas, partisans in governmental roles could conceivable gain access to the data through political pressure (e.g., from Congress or the White House).

Moreover, I submit that a government with a lot of information on citizens is totalitarian with respect to information, and such a near-totality can easily breed a totalitarian state in the sense of control over citizens. They in term could be expected to increasingly fear sharing personal data with businesses. In 2018, for instance, I tried out Facebook. After just weeks with an account, I was surprised when the company demanded that I send a photo in which my face is recognizable. I had read that the company had been working on facial recognition technology, and the explicit demand for a recognizable face seemed strange to me. I also knew that Facebook regularly shared user information with third-parties, whether business or governmental in nature. I had nothing to hide, but I did not like feeling invasiveness even in the demand itself. So I experimented by taking a picture on a public sidewalk of a poor person not likely to have an account. Facebook deleted my account without explanation. I would have deleted the account anyway rather than use a fake picture. I wanted to see whether Facebook would use its facial-recognition technology to assess the picture. Either the person whom I photographed had an account or Facebook already had access from an external entity (such as my web-site) of my face. Even just the use of secret software to assess the photo I had submitted struck me as excessive, and I would not have been surprised to discover that Facebook had access to more personal information that what I had shared on my account. Facebook itself could be said to be a private totalitarian state. Given the compromised ethics in the company’s brief history, I felt uncomfortable with Facebook having any of my personal information and, moreover, concluded that such a company with a totalitarian approach to information as a means at the very least of raising revenue is major problem. Sadly, given the susceptibility of the Congress and White House to political influence from large campaign-contributions,  the company’s wealth and thus political pull could keep a law from being enacted that would force Facebook to permanently remove all information pertaining to me at my written request. It would be interesting if any U.S. citizen could have access to any data collected by the F.B.I. from businesses and other external entities unless deemed classified by a judge in the Judiciary. The purpose would obviously not be to help criminals.

With personal data being provided on “social networks,” as well as to other companies, banks, phone companies, and internet providers (including universities), and with the U.S. Government having unlimited access to that information, a person could be expected to feel that he or she has a contracted personal space. Even in one’s home, if a cell phone or computer is on (and even if it is off, I have read), the government may have a way to look in. Not even a personal conversation on a cell phone can any longer be regarded as private. The sphere of a sense of freedom of expression has likely come to be feel very restricted. I suspect that Americans have resisted this encroaching de facto sense of limitation on their personal freedom by being in the illusion that an actual phone call is private and that neither a government agency nor Facebook is keeping tabs on which sites are being visited or what is being said or done on a phone. Yet the diminishment of the sense of freedom, especially when a person is in public but also on private property, is real, which a decrease in the quality of life going along with the masked fear. The People can regard this constriction of freedom as being subject to the Will of the People rather than merely something that can evolve by means of vested interests inside and out of government. In other words, an electorate need not be passive.

Moreover, a government’s totalitarian approach to gaining information on the citizenry is contrary to the notion of a limited government wherein the People are the popular sovereign. A limited government is a key part of a republic, whereas a totalitarian government is vital to a dictatorship wherein the People have no power. Adding to the concern is a private company’s totalitarian approach to information-gathering, especially if such a company has lied to its users about it. Interestingly, the third-party commercial app makers can be considered the company’s clients, whereas the users supplying the data are suppliers. In other words, the users are not the customers. The suppliers are not paid in monetary terms; rather, Facebook pays those bills by allowing the suppliers to use the company’s platform—activity that increases the supply of information!

In supplying something, a supplier transfers a commodity to a buyer; the supplier cannot claim ownership or control of the commodity once it has been supplied. Obviously if the buyer lies to the supplier regarding the contract, the supplier has grounds to take back the commodity supplied. The suppliers did not agree (and thus were not “paid”) to allow Facebook to contract with Cambridge Analytic, a client, to use the commodity to manipulate the suppliers themselves. To be sure, ordinarily a supplier would not expect to have any say as to what a buyer does with the commodity, but Mark Zuckerberg made oral promises that the company’s user-suppliers would continue to have a veto over how Facebook uses the commodity, including with whom the said commodity is shared. Because the CEO lied, it is important for the suppliers to realize that what had begun as a social network for college students became a business model. Unfortunately, the typical user is not even aware that he or she is actually a supplier. 

Government use is of course different; it can legally be done secretly, thus without the knowledge of Facebook’s suppliers. So it becomes a political question of whether the People should allow their government, assuming it is a republic, to have access. Citizens would be wise to remember that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that with great power comes a huge responsibility even if the powerful may tend to shrug off the responsibility as they seize even more power.

See related: Taking the Face Off Facebook: Strategic and Ethical Issues, available at Amazon.

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1. Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, “Secret F.B.I. Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data From Scores of Companies,” The New York Times, September 20, 2019.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

Facebook: Holding User Accounts Hostage

A Facebook “challenge” asking users to post a current photo and one from a decade earlier went viral in early 2019. Even though it is unlikely that the company was behind the “challenge” going viral, that the company had been working on facial recognition technology had users being suspicious on the motive behind the “challenge.”[1] A writer for Wired wrote at the time, “Imagine that you wanted to train a facial recognition algorithm on age-related characteristics and, more specifically, on age progression (e.g., how people are likely to look as they get older). Ideally, you’d want a broad and rigorous dataset with lots of people’s pictures. It would help if you knew they were taken a fixed number of years apart—say, 10 years.”[2] Why would Facebook want to track how a person is likely to look years later? Some users may put up an old picture of themselves or simply not update the existing photo, but why would Facebook want to know what those users are likely to look currently? Perhaps Facebook wanted to be able to identify those users in current pictures uploaded by others. So why did the company deny using the “challenge” for such a legitimate purpose as connecting people socially? Nonetheless, the company insisted that it had no benefit from the “challenge” going viral. This statement seems suspicious, especially given the company’s earlier lapses on user privacy. I contend that an even more toxic subterfuge existed at the time at Facebook—a cloak that held user accounts hostage until a clear facial picture could be supplied.

Perhaps because of the company’s track record since Cambridge Analytica on user privacy, the company’s statement also sought to reassure users by reminding them that they “can choose to turn facial recognition on or off at any time.”[3] While technically true, the company could freeze any user’s account supposedly for security reasons—to protect the user—until a current picture that clearly shows the face is supplied.

In spite of the fact that no legitimate security concerns could be raised a month or so after I created a user account, I discovered one day that Facebook’s computer had blocked my account until such time as I could verify the phone number I had used in setting up the account (when verification on the number was successfully made). I followed through nonetheless the second time, only to find days later that a current picture clearly showing my face was needed “for security reasons.” Until then, I could not use my account to protect my security. That I had not used the account for anything remotely suspicious, not to mention trolling or spam, led me to view the “security” rationale as fake, or at least as excessive. In demanding a face picture from me, the company indicated that the picture will not go on my profile, but this differentiation makes no difference in the company being able to use facial recognition software on me for the company’s internal uses (and even those of external stakeholders like the FBI) from then on. Facebook’s work on facial recognition AI for the previous two years had included such uses as tagging users in other users’ photos even if the photographed user does not know the photographer. Under the subterfuge of a “security need” for a current picture that other users will not see, the picture can still be used in tagging the user without his or her awareness.

I contend, therefore, that Facebook’s demand for a clear face photo is unethical. Besides the company’s horrendous track record on safekeeping user privacy, having users’ accounts held ransom nonetheless can seem presumptuous, like a bad child nonetheless demanding that his parents take him to Disneyland. The unethical verdict is also due to the felt-vulnerability that is natural (even among innocent people!) in handing a face picture to unknown people, even if they have a good reputation in securing privacy. For a company to dismiss the vulnerability and go so far as to demand a clear face picture can be reckoned as a harm (even as passive aggression) that is unjustifiable ethically.  Furthermore, the lying, such as in Facebook’s claim that it had no benefit from the treasure-trove of before-and-after pictures, and the subterfuge that a user can always turn facial-recognition off (even as the company uses it under the lie of a security need to connect a face to an account) are themselves unethical. Anticipating the future revelations on the privacy breaches, I wrote a booklet, Taking the Face off Facebook, on the unethical management at the company. It may therefore be that I’m on a “make problems for” list at Facebook, but other users have complained of having their accounts held hostage too, so I suspect the problem was still with the company’s managers, including its CEO. 

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1. Nicole Martin, “Was the Facebook ’10 Year Challenge’ a Way to Mine Data for Facial Recognition AI?,” Forbes, January 17, 2019.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

Glimpsing behind the Curtain: Vice President Lyndon Johnson and the Kennedy Assassination

Robert Ross interviewed Lyndon Johnson’s mistress, Madeleine Duncan Brown what Ross titled, “The Clint Murchison Meeting in Dallas November 21, 1963.” The interview took place sometime before her death on June 22, 2002. The content is revealing, and she comes across as very credible as it is obvious she still had feelings even then for the late president. She also had a credible motive for opening up to the American people. So in watching the interview, I did not view it as just another conspiracy theory; I paid attention. Sometimes the truth finally emerges in plain sight, rather than through complicated theories as in Oliver Stone’s film, JFK (1991). The most revealing facts to emerge from the interview are that Jack Ruby, who killed Oswald just two days after the assassination, had been at the meeting at Murchison’s mansion on the night before the assassination, and that LBJ told Madeleine while leaving Murchison’s house after the meeting, “After tomorrow, those SOB’s will never embarrass me again.” That the official narrative from the Warren Commission would still carry weight as the default account at least in the first two decades of the next century astounded me. At the very least, all of Madeleine’s knowledge of the players should have caused at least a tremor when the interview was made public. The status quo has that much inertia. Even so, the American public can gleam from Brown’s account just how different the reality of the power-brokers in (and outside of) the U.S. Government can be from what the public knows. Unfortunately, the patina or gloss even of acting can have incredible staying-power even in the face of the facts revealed. Members of the political elite and their companions may want to protect their legacies in old age, or want the freedom of conscience that comes from the impunity that can only come with death. The resulting piecemeal facts must justify themselves, however, whereas the long-standing official version often has the benefits of not only protective power and entrenchment that comes with having been the default for so long, but also a coherent (i.e., contrived) narrative.  

Madeleine had met LBJ in 1948. By her reckoning, she and Lyndon had a “wonderful relationship.” Johnson fathered Madeleine’s son, Steve Brown, who had died of cancer by the time of the interview. In spite of having cancer, Steve had sued to get part of Johnson’s estate. Madeleine was hurt by the way the power structure in Texas had handled Steve by preventing him from appearing in court. “I probably would never have opened my mouth, but the way they handled my son. They can’t take anything from me now. The public needs to know.” Essentially, she says in the interview that the assassination of Kennedy was the result of a domestic plot that been planned since the 1960 Dem Convention.

Joe Kennedy and H. L Hunt met three days before the convention and they cut a deal: Johnson would be the VP. At the time, Hunt told Madeleine, “We may have lost a battle but we’re going to win the war.” On the day of the assassination, he would tell her, “We won the war.” Madeleine concluded the assassination was “a political crime for political power.” H.L. Hunt, the richest man in the world at the time, and others “mapped a plot to get rid of John Kennedy” from just after the convention. The 8-f group included oil men such as Clint Murchison and Hunt, Texas politicians such as John Connally, and even occasionally J. Edgar Hoover.

Meeting the night before the assassination at Clint Murchison’s house on Nov 21, 1963 were Lyndon Johnson, Edgar Hoover, John McCloy, H.L. Hunt (who had had flyers “Wanted for Treason: John F. Kennedy” passed out in downtown Dallas), John Currington, George Brown, Richard Nixon, Amen J. Carter, Jr, Texas Gov. John Connally, Earle Cabell (mayor of Dallas, whose brother Kennedy had fired after the botched Bay of Pigs invasion), W. O. Bankston, Clint Peoples, Bill Dicker (sheriff of Dallas county), Cliff Carter, Malcom Wallace, and, representing the mafia, Carlos Marchellas, Joe Civilla, and Jack Ruby (an old buddy, Madeleine remarks). I submit that the mafia had a motive to kill the president whose brother Robert had turned the U.S. Department of Justice on the mob, including very mobster in Chicago, Sam Giancana, who is said to have put Illinois over the top in voting for Kennedy. It is particularly relevant, therefore, that Ruby, who would later he killed Oswald out of anger for assassinating the president, was at a meeting with such notable insiders on the night before the assassination. Also, the inclusion of the FBI and the sheriff of Dallas County fit with the obvious need to cover-up the crime. That Richard Nixon, who had lost the 1960 election to Kennedy—unfairly according to the man known as “tricky Dick”—would be in a meeting with Johnson supporters should also raise some eyeballs; it would make sense, however, if the Democrats wanted assurances that the other party would not try to uncover the plot. It is therefore significant that Nixon was already in town; he and Johnson had met two days earlier.

At any rate, the social party at the mansion, for which Madeleine had been invited, broke up at 11 p.m. when the Vice President arrived. He and others went into a conference room. Jack Ruby brought a call-girl, Shirley, to the meeting. When Johnson came out of the meeting at its conclusion, he told Madeleine: “After tomorrow, those SOB’s [i.e. sons of bitches] will never embarrass me again.” Johnson was angry. “The Irish mafia, I think,” Madeleine says in the interview when Ross asks her whom Johnson was referring to. However, in her book written five years earlier, Madeleine wrote that Johnson had told her, “After tomorrow, those goddamned Kennedy’s will never embarrass me again.”[1] Because she looks like her mind is going astray at that point in the interview—she would, after all, die soon—I suspect she confused Lyndon’s antipathy at the Irish mob with his loathing of the two Kennedy brothers. 

Even if Johnson didn’t get along with a mobster, his frustrating relationship with the Kennedy brothers in the White House is well documented. Regardless of whomever he was angry at, that Lyndon Johnson knew that something would be very different for him on the next day—the day of the assassination—suggests that he knew of it beforehand. In fact, that he made such a statement with such strident certainty just after the meeting suggests to me that its purpose had been to decide on whether to go ahead with the plan. If indeed Lyndon Johnson had at the very least been aware of the assassination beforehand, the way in which he publicly reacted after it can be seen in a different light—as being acted out rather than authentic. By implication, the American people had no clue as to what was actually going on behind the scenes. The sheer difference ought to be of concern from the standpoint of democracy, because the sheer degree of acting can be used on an ongoing basis to hoodwink the electorate.

People on the periphery of the plotting group were in an interesting predicament, being let into at least some of the inside information and yet not truly part of the group. Hence they could be expected to share at least one of their points of reference with the public and thus feel guilty enough to speak, or finally turn on the insiders by divulging the tidbits of information even in the face of a seemingly overwhelming public narrative. Clint Murchison’s secretary, for instance, committed suicide days after the assassination. Even though Madeleine still had feelings for Johnson (i.e., they had not ended on a bad note), she was convinced that he had been in on the assassination and yet she said nothing of this publicly until she was old, after her sons had died so she had nothing to lose. For one thing, she says in the interview that if Kennedy had not been assassinated when he was, Johnson would have faced “serious political problems when he returned to Washington.” He had been involved in the Billy Sol Estas and the Billy Baker scandals, and Kennedy was already looking for another VP candidate for 1964, according to Kennedy’s secretary, Evelyn Lincoln.[2] At the time of the assassination, a U.S. House committee was planning to indict Johnson. A man, who would later be shot, was going to testify that Johnson had taken kick-backs from agricultural programs. When Lyndon was president, he kept the Vietnam War going on for so long because he was getting kickbacks on military contracts to his business friends.

Johnson’s real mentality, however, went deeper than corruption. According to Madeleine, Malcolm “Mac” Wallace was Johnson’s hit-man. In a letter to the Department of Justice in 1984, Douglas Caddy, the lawyer for Billie Sol Estes, claimed to have evidence that Johnson order hits on eight men, including Kennedy.[3] Johnson “had no qualm about having someone killed,” the still-smitten Madeleine says in the interview. “Whatever it takes to get a job done,” she says of Lyndon’s mentality. She agrees with Ross in his conclusion that Johnson must have thought the end justified the means. Madeleine points out that Johnson even had an innocent woman who had seen Madeleine and Johnson together in a hallway killed. Even just to conceive that a U.S. president had a hit man is difficult; to a public kept largely in the dark, such a thing—and that the American electorate voted for a mafia-like man in 1964—must seem inconceivable, or else fiction, like the series, House of Cards. Hence the vulnerability lodged in American democracy wherein the electorate is left with mere superficial or artificial perceptions of the candidates and office-holders remains largely hidden from view.

All of the above hitherto hidden from view does not even count the stealth role of corporations in influencing Congress, the President, and even the regulatory agencies that regulate the specific corporations or industries. The relationship can indeed be quite cozy in spite of the conflicts of interest that should be obvious. The allowance of “dark money” contributions to political campaigns affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in its Citizens United case is just one indication of how the real relationship between business and government in the U.S. can be deliberately hidden from plain view, and especially this disinfectant effect of sunlight. If sunlight is essential for the popular sovereign (i.e., the People) to hold its government officials accountable, then representative democracy in the U.S. is seriously flawed. To get caught up in debating who shot Kennedy may be just what the political elite wants because not only such myopic investigations tend to be premised on the Warren Commission’s report as the default narrative to be disproven, but also the obsession of one historical event comes at the expense of uncovering the true nature of the current office-holders in government and the real relationship between business and government.

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[1] Madeleine Duncan Brown, Texas in the Morning: The Love Story of Madeleine Brown and President Lyndon Baines Johnson (Conservatory Press, 1997).

[2] James Hepburn, Farewell America: The Plot to Kill JFK (Penmarin Books: 2002).

[3] Ibid.

Washington’s Political Elite and President Trump: Obstruction of Democracy Going after Obstruction of Justice?

The political elite’s view of President’s Trump alleged obstruction of justice in the Flynn investigation may be more complex than what meets the public’s eye. As the existence of former FBI director James Comey’s memo on a talk with President Trump on the Flynn investigation came to light, the Republican elite began to buckle before it enforced party discipline. Yet there is reason to suspect that the elite as a whole supported the president, or would continue to do so, given the cascade of controversies spilling out of the White House. Very subtly, in fact, the Republican elite in Washington doubtless had little respect for the populist element of the president’s political base; that “such people” could have their man in the White House may have been a drag on the Trump presidency even with respect to his own party in Congress. Yet “such people” are American people, and thus part of the popular sovereign, so part of the tension may have been an eruption of what is normally rather subdued—namely, the antipathy between a political elite and the People, even in a democracy. In evaluating a political elite, I submit that a bit of translucent light never hurts, especially when charges of obstruction of justice are in the air.

Under federal (U.S.) statutes, sections 1503, 1505, and 1512 of Title 18 make it a crime if someone “obstructs, influences or impedes any official proceeding,” including FBI investigations.[1] Although the White House put out the following statement on May 16, 2017, “The president has never asked [former FBI director] Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn,” Comey had written a memo following a meeting with President Trump in which Comey quotes the president, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.”[2] A day earlier, the president had accepted Flynn’s resignation following revelations that Flynn had lied to Trump’s transition team regarding contact with the Russian ambassador. So the president knew that Flynn had lied and was under investigation and yet still asked the FBI director to drop it. I submit that the president’s request satisfies the statutory prohibition against influencing an investigation so as to impede it. In fact, given the fact that the FBI director serves at the pleasure of the president—the latter being the chief law-enforcement office in the U.S. Government—the president’s request can be taken as an attempt to pressure the director from a higher position of power (i.e., to obstruct or block an investigation). Even if the president did not intend to do so, the making of the statement was itself obstructing or impeding.

James Comey, as director of the FBI, testifying before Congress before being fired by President Trump in part due to his handling of the Russian investigation. (Source: NYT)

Lest it be countered that assessing what was actually said at the meeting comes down to one man’s word against another’s word, Comey’s memo “was part of a paper trail [that the FBI director] created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation.”[3] That is to say, Comey presumably had other indications of improper efforts. Even without contemporaneous memos of such efforts, an FBI agent’s “contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.”[4] Furthermore, that Comey wrote the memo of his meeting with the president at the time means that the writing of the memo could not have been retaliation for Trump eventually firing him. In short, Comey took the customary measures to ensure that his memo could be regarded as credible.

It is important that the investigation into Flynn was separate from the “broad investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.”[5] So the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel in the FBI for the second investigation should be distinguished from the question of whether the president obstructed justice regarding the Flynn investigation. That is to say, the appointment of Mueller did not tuck the matter of the obstruction away, even if the public is led to believe that the problem had been solved by the appointment of an independent counsel. Put another way, Mueller could find no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government and yet separately the president attempted to obstruct, influence, or impede justice in regard to the Flynn investigation.

Unfortunately, the “official narratives” provided by the news media can “smooth over” even important distinctions. Even just unintentionally, the “sound-bite” approach to news can itself give the false impression that the fact that an independent counsel had finally been appointed just after the Comey’s memo came to light sufficed as sufficient accountability.

Forces less than transparent to the general public at the time, such as from powerful elements of the political elite, were likely playing a formidable, albeit stealth, role. Congressional lawmakers of the president’s political party doubtless had reason to resist Democratic calls for impeachment proceedings. Hence just days after requesting that the FBI turn over records of communications between Comey and the president—even indicating that he was willing to issue a subpoena to obtain Comey’s memo as possible evidence of obstruction of justice!—Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the U.S. House Oversight Committee, suddenly felt the need to resign from Congress at the end of the next month. To be sure, he had earlier announced that he would not seek re-election in 2018, but the fact that he had no immediate career plans after June 30^th suggests that he was pushed out even just for having tweeted, “I have my subpoena pen ready.”[6] How brutal and stealth the elite’s hard hands are on the levers of raw power! I bet an example had to be made, either by the Trump White House or its allies in the Congressional leadership. It is strange that the public was so beguiled this connection did not become transparent. Had it been so, the credibility of the memo as evidence against the president would have appreciated considerably in value, for why else would chairman with a subpoena pen need quickly to be shown the door?

Yet it is possible that some elements of the political elite in Washington, even paradoxically Republican lawmakers, may privately have been wanting to impeach President Trump and remove him from office in favor of VP Pence. “For Republicans reeling at a daily stream of troubling revelations about President Trump, the prospect that Vice President Mike Pence would assume power . . . [was] a remote possibility” at the time.[7] Sen. McConnell, the Republican Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, had just days earlier said out loud (to journalists!) that he was worried that the litany of continuing controversies coming out of the White House—bottom line, Trump’s fitness to handle the job—was becoming a distraction, and thus an obstacle to the Republican policy agenda being enacted into law.

Wall Street and evangelical Christian leaders—representing two major parts of Republican base—would I strongly suspect prefer the stable and authentic Pence to Trump. In fact, those parts and their power brokers in the Washington elite likely have little respect—and plenty of disdain—for the salient populist part of Trump’s political base of unskilled and uneducated angry people, who can be so easily manipulated and used. We are now into the murky undercurrents that can unfortunately run between an entrenched and centralized political elite and the popular sovereign in a representative democracy. The impact at this level is admittedly subtle, even unconscious, rather than direct and predominant, yet important nonetheless.

A political elite naturally has little if any respect for people it views as behaving at the outer fringes of society. It is perhaps a perceptual matter of degrees of civilization, not to mention manners. Even while exclaiming a commitment to democratic principles, political insiders tend to look down on outsiders, especially those who are disgruntled and not socialized into the mores of the polite, rarified society of country clubs and K Street (i.e., the corporate world of lobbyists in Washington, D.C.). If the “masses” have their aim set on knocking the political elite off its perch, this is all the more reason for power-brokers to resist even the elected officials whose elections the populists made possible.

This underlying tension pertains to intra-party dynamics as well. The schism between the DNC insiders and the Bernie Sanders "grass roots" supporters in 2016 is a case in point. So too, the Republican Party's elite likely had scant regard, truth be told, for what must assuredly had been referred to at D.C. dinner parties as the party's "trailer trash" that had voted in droves for Donald Trump—a billionaire miles above, and thus qualitatively unlike, those voters. In fact, President Trump’s rather unpresidential conduct during at least the first several months of his presidency may have been viewed in some Washington-elite, even Republican circles as reflecting back on his populist base's ignorance, gullibility, and lack of good judgement in deciding whom to put in the White House.

Put another way—one considerably more charitable to Trump’s uneducated, angry, and unwealthy populist supporters—the question of President Trump’s “suitability for office” may come down to whether the political elite in Washington could continue to stomach a president whose support comes directly from average Americans. In other words, I wonder whether that elite—especially the portion thereof (in both major parties!) that has business interests as political paymasters—even respects those Americans. They may not have made the best judgment on which candidate is most conducive to (i.e. could survive in) the presidency, but in the American philosophy of representative democracy such people are more than worthy to have their man (or woman) in the White House, for the government is tasked with representing the people rather than a political or financial elite. It cannot help itself from looking down its nose on people living on the other side of the railroad tracks on Main Street. How easy it is for the raw power at an elite’s disposal to follow from even just dislike under the subterfuge of respectable-sounding “Congressional hearings” and even “Impeachment proceedings.” It is the use of such subterranean power by the elite even of Trump’s own party that I suggest we track, for a variety of motives can easily be in play in disturbing obstacles even in the same party. Interestingly, an obstruction of democracy (e.g., distain for the unique element in Trump’s own base) may turn out to fuel efforts—which are themselves fully legitimate!—to go after an obstruction of justice by a president who had never been welcomed by the political (or New York business) elite. To be sure, the predominant elite-mentality is for a party to protect its own—but as an Italian scholar visiting New York once told me, there’s a limit to everything.

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1. Charlie Savage, “What Is Obstruction of Justice? An Often Murky Crime, Explained,” The New York Times, May 16, 2017.

2. Ibid; Michael S. Schmidt, “Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation,” The New York Times, May 18, 2017.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Christina Marcos, “Chaffetz Ready To Issue Subpoena for Comey Memo,” The Hill, May 16, 2017.

7. Julie H. Davis, “Amid Trump Turmoil, Some Begin Eyeing Mike Pence,” The New York Times, May 18, 2017.

Apple’s iPhone and the FBI: Recalibrating the Right-to-Privacy

On February 29, 2016, a federal judge rejected the FBI’s request to unlock the work-issued iPhone 5c of Syed Rizwan Farook, who with his wife killed 14 people at a 2015 holiday gathering of county workers. The FBI and DEA cited the All Writs Act, a law passed in 1789 that authorizes federal courts to “issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.”[1] The U.S. Justice Department was demanding that “Apple create software to bypass security features on the phone.”[2] In other words, Apple was to “write code that overrides the device’s auto-delete security function.”[3] In response, Apple’s lawyers argued that the statute does not give the court the right to “conscript and commandeer” the company into defeating its own encryption, thus making its customers’ “most confidential and personal information vulnerable to hackers, identity thieves, hostile foreign agents and unwarranted government surveillance.”[4] Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO at the time, said the FBI “was asking his company to create a ’back door’ that could be used to unlock other phones, exposing customer data. Agreeing to the FBI's demand would set a dangerous precedent that could lead to other calls for Apple's help to obtain private information, Cook said.”[5] Only weeks later, the FBI abruptly dropped the case because the bureau had found an outside company with technology that could serve as a master key. The FBI could use the “key” to unlock any iPhone. This left customers fearful that their data was now less than private even though Apple had promoted the iPhone product as not having a “back door” In the end, “(t)he iPhone fight exposed a rift between the FBI and Silicon Valley technology companies over encryption, and sparked a debate about the right balance between privacy and national security.”[6] I suspect that although a trade-off, or tension between the right of privacy and the national-security interest of the United States existed at the time, electronic privacy would become harder and harder to protect as a result of the FBI’s tactics.  

No doubt focused entirely on national security, the U.S. government cannot be expected to protect an individual right to privacy when it is in the way. The FBI “sometimes loses sight of what is important to corporations . . .  and privacy is incredibly important," Jack Bennett, a key figure in the FBI’s iPhone hack, said after the fact.[7] Even so, he was unapologetic about the FBI being able to access the phone. “We were trying to get on one phone because we had 14 murdered people."[8] As it turned out, investigators did not find anything of significant value on the phone.[9] Even so, the damage was done as far as privacy is concerned.

Even though Bennett “disputed that the FBI was asking Apple for a tool that could access other iPhones, calling it a ‘one-shot deal,’”[10] the bureau could be expected to extend the one-shot deal the next time phone data might serve a useful purpose in preventing or prosecuting a terrorist-attack or even a lesser crime. "What's comfortable for a private corporation that will still provide an investigator the ability to stop or prevent a terrorist attack, a missing child or a national security incident?" Bennett asked.[11] The list could easily be extended; hence, some legal limitation on the FBI’s access would be necessary lest the bureau resort to clandestine data-swooping on a massive scale not limited to particular crimes and people related to them in some way.

Apple’s iPhone was supposed to be hack-proof; the company promoted the product as not having a “back door.” Even so, this turned out not to be so. It may be, therefore, that there’s no such thing as a completely secure system. Privacy may simply be an illusion marketed by the company and valued by the customers. Customers of any smart phone could feel vulnerable, moreover, as a result of the FBI successfully getting into the iPhone.[12]

Furthermore, a court can put a gag rule on a tech company, such that customers may be oblivious to any personal data being extracted. This only exacerbates the insecurity to be felt by customers regarding the privacy of their information. Microsoft had sued the Justice Department over the gag-order practice in April, 2016, “arguing that law enforcement was relying on these orders too often. Specifically, the software giant said the gag orders violate the Fourth Amendment right of its customers to know if the government searches or seizes their property and also the company’s First Amendment right to speak to its customers.”[13] Yet the gag orders could continue. To be sure, a company’s First Amendment right seems a bit of a stretch here.

Lastly, the FBI could be expected to continue to go wherever private data useful in uncovering a crime exists. For example, Open Whisper Systems, a maker of a widely used encryption app called Signal, received a subpoena in the first half of 2016 “for subscriber information, including web browsing histories, telephone numbers, methods of payment, internet providers, and data stored in the tracking “cookies” of the web browsers associated with two phone numbers that came up in a federal grand jury investigation in Virginia.[14]  Interestingly, “one of Signal’s biggest draws is that it does not collect most of that information.”[15] Civil liberties lawyers argued nevertheless that “the Justice Department request fell well outside the bounds of what is typically covered by a subpoena, including basic subscriber information.”[16] Particularly upsetting, the subpoena arrived with a court order that said Open Whisper Systems was not allowed to tell anyone about the information request for one year. Technology companies contend that court-imposed gag orders are being used too often by law enforcement and that they violate the Bill of Rights. The companies also complain that law enforcement officials are casting a wide net over online communications — often too wide — in their investigations. Justice Department officials, for their part, argue that these gag orders are necessary to protect developing cases and to avoid tipping off potential targets. The officials say that they are simply following leads where they take them.”[17]

In conclusion, even wealthy companies like Apple are no match for the FBI and the courts in protecting customer privacy. Just as companies pursue profits often single-mindedly, the FBI can be expected to attempt to uncover any lead. Furthermore, the electronic means of storing personal information may simply be too susceptible—too easily accessed by a government (and hackers)—for privacy to be at all realistic. Smartphone technology, as well as social media such as Facebook pages, is causing us all to come to terms with a recalibrated acceptance of privacy-risk and even loss. It is asking too much, I submit, for a company to be tasked with defending an increasingly antiquated expectation of privacy. As a result, we might expect people to recalibrate what personal information we are willing to put on a phone (or social-media page). The Apple case can be interpreted as one of the triggers of the societal recalibration, rather than settling the matter.

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1. Jim Stavridis and Dave Weinstein, “Apple vs. FBI Is Not About Privacy vs. Security—It’s About How to Achieve Both,” The World Post, March 8, 2016.

2. The Associated Press, “New FBI Head in San Francisco Was Key Figure in iPhone Hack,” The New York Times, October 5, 2016.

3. Jim Stavridis and Dave Weinstein, “Apple vs. FBI Is Not About Privacy vs. Security—It’s About How to Achieve Both,” The World Post, March 8, 2016.

4. Jim Stavridis and Dave Weinstein, “Apple vs. FBI Is Not About Privacy vs. Security—It’s About How to Achieve Both,” The World Post, March 8, 2016.

5. The Associated Press, “New FBI Head in San Francisco Was Key Figure in iPhone Hack,” The New York Times, October 5, 2016.

6. The Associated Press, “New FBI Head in San Francisco Was Key Figure in iPhone Hack,” The New York Times, October 5, 2016.

7. The Associated Press, “New FBI Head in San Francisco Was Key Figure in iPhone Hack,” The New York Times, October 5, 2016.

8. The Associated Press, “New FBI Head in San Francisco Was Key Figure in iPhone Hack,” The New York Times, October 5, 2016.

9. The Associated Press, “New FBI Head in San Francisco Was Key Figure in iPhone Hack,” The New York Times, October 5, 2016.

10. The Associated Press, “New FBI Head in San Francisco Was Key Figure in iPhone Hack,” The New York Times, October 5, 2016.

11. The Associated Press, “New FBI Head in San Francisco Was Key Figure in iPhone Hack,” The New York Times, October 5, 2016.

12. Arjun Kharpal, “Apple vs FBI: All You Need to Know,” CNBC.com, March 29, 2016.

13. Nicole Perlroth and Katie Benner, “Subpoenas and Gag Orders Show Government Overreach, Tech Companies Argue,” The New York Times, October 4, 2016.

14. Nicole Perlroth and Katie Benner, “Subpoenas and Gag Orders Show Government Overreach, Tech Companies Argue,” The New York Times, October 4, 2016.

15. Nicole Perlroth and Katie Benner, “Subpoenas and Gag Orders Show Government Overreach, Tech Companies Argue,” The New York Times, October 4, 2016.

16. Nicole Perlroth and Katie Benner, “Subpoenas and Gag Orders Show Government Overreach, Tech Companies Argue,” The New York Times, October 4, 2016.

17. Nicole Perlroth and Katie Benner, “Subpoenas and Gag Orders Show Government Overreach, Tech Companies Argue,” The New York Times, October 4, 2016.