Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

In 1789, the Founding Fathers came up with a system of checks and balances to keep kingly powers out of the hands of American presidents. But in the 1970s and '80s, a faction of Republican loyalists, outraged by the fall of the imperial presidency after Watergate and the Vietnam War, abandoned conservatives' traditional suspicion of concentrated government power. These men hatched a plot that would allow the White House to return to, or even surpass, the virtually unchecked powers that Richard Nixon had briefly tried to wield. Congress would be defanged, and the commander-in-chief would be able to assert a unilateral dominance both at home and abroad.Today, this plot is coming to fruition. As Takeover reveals, the Bush-Cheney administration has succeeded in seizing vast powers for the presidency by throwing off many of the restraints placed upon it by Congress, the courts, and the Constitution. This timely book unveils the secret machinations behind the headlines, explaining the links between warrantless wiretapping and the President Bush's Supreme Court nominees, between the torture debate and the secrecy surrounding Vice President Cheney's energy task force, and between the faith-based initiative and the holding of US citizens without trial as enemy combatants. It tells, for the first time, the full story of a hidden agenda three decades in the making, laying out how a group of true believers set out to establish monarchical executive powers that, in the words of one conservative critic, will lie around like a loaded weapon ready to be picked up by any future president.Brilliantly reported and deftly told, Takeover is a searing investigation into how the constitutionalbalance of our democracy is in danger of being permanently altered. For anyone who cares about America's past, present, and future, it is essential reading.

Review:

"'Savage, who won a Pulitzer for his Boston Globe articles about the signing statements George W. Bush used to negate legislation limiting presidential authority, gives that issue a key part in this account of the Bush administration's efforts to increase executive power. Covering constitutional issues as well as the political backgrounds of former White House attorneys like Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo, this detailed report traces their concerted effort, from the moment Bush took office in 2001, to '[leave] the presidency in better shape than he [Bush] found it.' The authorization to use force against Iraq is only the tip of the iceberg. Bush has already gone so far as to declare himself able to negate treaties with other nations at will, Savage reports. He also demonstrates how many of the administration's most controversial acts have their roots in Dick Cheney's experiences in the Nixon and Ford administrations. This incisive analysis of congressional and judicial efforts to check the administration's power grabs adds up to a searing indictment. (Sept. 5)' Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Synopsis:

Savage investigates how the Bush-Cheney administration has seized vast, unprecedented powers for the presidency. He argues that such imperialism stands to permanently alter the constitutional balance of American democracy. Eight-page b&w photo insert.

Synopsis:

From Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Charlie Savage - an investigation into how the Bush-Cheney administration has seized vast powers for the presidency to permanently alter the constitutional balance of American democracy. In 1789, the Founders devised a system of checks and balances to keep kingly powers out of the hands of presidents. But in the 1970s and 80s, a faction of Republicans, outraged by the weakening of the presidency after Watergate and Vietnam, abandoned the traditional conservative suspicion of concentrated government power. These men hatched a plot that would allow the White House to wield enormous powers, operating behind a veil of secrecy and unchecked by Congress or the courts. Today's administration is bringing this project to fruition. TAKEOVER reveals the machinations behind the headlines and lays bare a hidden agenda three decades in the making, one that links warrantless wiretapping and Bush's judicial nominees, torture and Cheney's energy task force, the faith-based initiative and the imprisonment of citizens without trial. It tells the story of how a group of true believers, led by Cheney, set out to establish near-monarchical executive powers that, in the words of one conservative critic, will lie around like a loaded weapon for any future president.

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The Pearl Harbor Deception

Robert Stinnett | Independent Institute | December 7, 2003

Two questions about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor have ignited a controversy that has burned for 60 years: Did U.S. naval cryptographers crack the Japanese naval codes before the attack? Did Japanese warships and their commanding admirals break radio silence at sea before the attack?

If the answer to both is "no," then Pearl Harbor was indeed a surprise attack described by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a "Day of Infamy." The integrity of the U.S. government regarding Pearl Harbor remains solid.

But if the answer is "yes," then hundreds of books, articles, movies, and TV documentaries based on the "no" answer – and the integrity of the federal government – go down the drain. If the Japanese naval codes were intercepted, decoded, and translated into English by U.S. naval cryptographers prior to Pearl Harbor, then the Japanese naval attacks on American Pacific military bases were known in advance among the highest levels of the American government.

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JAPAN MAY STRIKE OVER WEEKEND!

Ralph Epperson | Ralph Epperson's Latest Conspiracy Catalog


On December 7, 1941, the Japanese navy and air force attacked the United States army, navy and air force units at PEARL HARBOR, HAWAII in what was called “A SURPRISE ATTACK.”

The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt called the attack “A DAY OF INFAMY,” and asked Congress for a Declaration of War.

It was granted, and America was in WORLD WAR TWO.

Many at the time questioned how “A SURPRISE ATTACK” could happen, and whether President Roosevelt should have known about it in advance and warned our forces in Hawaii.

NINE CONGRESSIONAL investigations were conducted, during and after the war, and each examined the question: DID PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT KNOW ABOUT THE ATTACK BEFORE IT HAPPENED, AND IF SO, WHY DID HE DO NOTHING TO PREPARE OUR FORCES.

And NINE CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATIONS all concluded that ROOSEVELT DID NOT KNOW IN ADVANCE!

A few years ago, I saw a photo copy of the HILO, HAWAII TRIBUNE HERALD newspaper of November 30, 1941, the Sunday before the attack. I called the HILO, HAWAII library and they photocopied the top half of their front page and sent it to me.

The HEADLINE of this newspaper reads:

JAPAN MAY STRIKE OVER WEEKEND

meaning the following weekend, Saturday, December 6th and Sunday, December 7th, 1941.

ASK YOURSELF THIS QUESTION:

How could this NEWSPAPER KNOW IN ADVANCE, but PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT DID NOT KNOW?

One could reasonably conclude that PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT’S INTELLIGENCE SOURCES were better than the NEWSPAPERS!

In other words, NINE CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATIONS WERE WRONG: President ROOSEVELT had to have known ……… even a Hawaii newspaper knew!!!

An Answer to Popular Mechanics and the Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory

By virtue of his previous four books on the subject, David Ray Griffin is widely recognized as one of the leading spokespersons of the 9/11 truth movement, which rejects the official conspiracy theory about 9/11. Although this movement was long ignored by the US government and the mainstream media, recent polls have shown that (as Time magazine has acknowledged) the rejection of the official theory has become “a mainstream political phenomenon.” It is not surprising, therefore, that the government and the corporately controlled media have shifted tactics. No longer ignoring the 9/11 truth movement, they have released a flurry of stories and reports aimed at debunking it.

In the present book, David Ray Griffin shows that these attempts can themselves be easily debunked. Besides demonstrating the pitiful failure of Debunking 9/11 Myths (published by Popular Mechanics and endorsed by Senator John McCain), Griffin riddles recent reports and stories put out by the US Department of State, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Time magazine. He also responds to criticisms of these efforts by left-leaning and Christian publications—which one might have expected to be supportive.

Throughout these critiques, Griffin shows that the charge that is regularly leveled against critics of the official theory—that they employ irrational and unscientific methods to defend conclusions based on faith—actually applies more fully to those who defend the official theory.

This book, by debunking the most prevalent attempts to refute the evidence cited by the 9/11 truth movement, shows that this movement’s central claim—that 9/11 was an inside job—remains the only explanation that fits the facts.

David Ray Griffin is professor of philosophy of religion and theology, emeritus, at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, where he remains a co-director of the Center for Process Studies. His 30 books include The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (2004), The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (2005), and 9/11 and American Empire (2006, with Peter Dale Scott).

The Destruction of the World Trade Center: Why the Official Account Cannot Be True

David Ray Griffin

Authorized Version (with references & notes)

In The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (2004), I summarized dozens of facts and reports that cast doubt on the official story about 9/11. Then in The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (2005a), I discussed the way these various facts and reports were treated by the 9/11 Commission, namely, by distorting or simply omitting them. I have also taken this big-picture approach, with its cumulative argument, in my previous essays and lectures on 9/11 (Griffin, 2005b and 2005d).[1] This approach, which shows every aspect of the official story to be problematic, provides the most effective challenge to the official story.

But this way of presenting the evidence has one great limitation, especially when used in lectures and essays: It means that the treatment of every particular issue must be quite brief, hence superficial. People can thereby be led to suspect that a more thorough treatment of any particular issue might show the official story to be plausible after all.

In the present essay, I focus on one question: why the Twin Towers and building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed.

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Video: David Ray Griffin - 911 Commission Report: Ommissions and Distortions

Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?

Twenty months after the 2004 presidential election, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? is the first sustained investigation of what really happened on the first Tuesday of November 2004. Scrutinizing the widest spectrum of facts and theories that have emerged to explain the discrepancy between the exit poll results and the official count, authors Steve Freeman and Joel Bleifuss tell the story of our electoral democracy at this moment in its history without fear or favor. The story they have to tell is a damning one—one that has profound implications for the 2006 and 2008 elections, indeed for the future of American democracy...

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Book Excerpt: ‘Caspian Rain’

Gina Nahai

“Caspian Rain” Excerpt 1:

ALL SUMMER LONG, Chamedooni watches our house. He hovers around our front door with his suitcase full of promises, stands at the corner bus stop like a sentry at his station. He lets the buses come and go without climbing into any of them because he’s too busy keeping an eye out for the boy with the bicycle. At night, he hides behind the shutters in his darkened bedroom and watches me.

People say that in his youth, Chamedooni was a “person of substance.” He comes from a family of crypto Jews in Mashad—a city in northeastern Iran where, in the mid-nineteenth century, the entire Jewish community was forced to convert to Islam. After that, the Jews practiced their religion in secret, aware that if discovered, they would be put to death. To keep from assimilating, they promised their children to one another at birth and married them off at very young ages, so that generations later, even after they had been liberated from their oath of conversion, Mashadi Jews were surrounded by an aura of remoteness and mystery that set them apart from Jews in other parts of Iran.

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Anatomy of Deceit

Book Description

What happens when Washington, D.C. pundits and journalists run in the same social circles as the powerful people they cover? When the President and his administration trade press access for loyalty? You get a complicit, uncritical press greasing the skids to a brutal war, conspiring to out a CIA agent, and muddying the waters of a grand jury investigation. In the fearful aftermath of 9/11, much of America’s pride — its free press — became an unquestioning propaganda arm.

Marcy Wheeler’s Anatomy of Deceit documents how the media promoted the Bush administration’s justification for war — that Iraq was on the verge of acquiring weapons of mass destruction — even though much of it was debunked. And it provides a play-by-play account of how Vice President Dick Cheney’s office first used the media to target a critic, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, and then to avoid criminal charges in the CIA leak case.

While the media was beating the drums of war and cozying up to the administration, citizen journalists were digging for the truth. Wheeler's compelling account tells the story, as it needs to be told — from outside the Beltway's cocktail circuit.

About the Author

Marcy Wheeler blogs under the name "emptywheel" at the political blog The Next Hurrah. Her PhD and academic background — relating to citizen journalism at times of heavy propaganda — brings a unique perspective to her blogging and the CIA leak case. Several of her posts have scooped the mainstream media's coverage of the Plame Affair, including her coverage of Scooter Libby's NIE leaks. She is a self-employed business consultant based in Ann Arbor, MI.

Russo Film Exposes Criminal Banking Syndicate That Rules America

In 1913 America was a free country. Then a band of powerful bankers achieved their fathers’ and great grandfathers’ goal. America has never been the same. Soon the world will not be the same.

Aaron Russo expertly exposes the traitorous Federal Reserve Act and the fact that there is no law that stipulates American citizens have to pay income taxes. The ratification of the 16th amendment, also known as the “Tax amendment”, represents a fundamental undermining of Constitutional law in America. It is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated against the American people by the elite private banking institutions that have usurped government as an arm of their overall control mechanism. Aaron Russo’s From Freedom to Fascism

EU: History of Deceit

Christopher Booker London Telegraph Monday October 22, 2007

Lisbon crowns a history of deceit

It was apt that Gordon Brown's agreement to the EU treaty should have coincided with the announcement that MPs are to get an additional two weeks' holiday a year because there is so little for them to do.

The Lisbon Treaty, after all, is another giant step towards a new form of government, empowered to decide most of the laws that govern our lives, making our Westminster MPs even more redundant than they are now.

It was equally appropriate that Mr Brown and his puppet foreign minister, David Miliband, should have agreed this treaty on the basis of the most shameless political lie one can recall: that the new treaty is completely different from the rejected EU constitution – with which it is 96 per cent identical.

ENDGAME- ALEX JONES - Blueprint for Global Enslavement

For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME.

Endgame Rips The Lid Off Elite's Final Masterplan

New documentary delves into the darkest recesses of the global elite

Alex Jones' brand new documentary Endgame charts the history of the elite blueprint for social domination and control, outlining the ultimate plans that those who consider themselves the anointed have for our planet.

The first section of the film documents the rise of the banking cartels, who since 1800 have funded both sides of almost every war. Endgame charts the usurpation of the British economy by the Rothchild family who went on to bankroll all factions during the first world war providing armaments companies through banks in France, Austria, Germany and England.

Endgame then documents the fallout of the great war and the attempts to form a controlling League of Nations, which was ultimately blocked by Congress. Such frustration on the part of the elite led to the rise of two factions, fascists and Fabian socialists. Endgame documents how bankers again funded both sides during WW2 which ultimately led to the creation of the UN and the beginning of the movement to implement three power blocs via incremental globalism.



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Plame: Disclosure of classified status amounted to 'treason'

Jason Rhyne | Raw Story | Published: Friday October 26, 2007

Disclosure of her covert identity for political purposes was nothing short of "treason," outed former CIA agent Valerie Plame told Hardball host Chris Matthews Thursday on MSNBC.

Plame, whose classified status as an undercover agent was exposed in 2003, said she couldn't possibly have known that a New York Times column disputing White House rationale for war -- penned by her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson -- would prompt what she views as a vicious attempt by the White House to ruin her career.

"When your husband filed that story," Matthews said, "he must have known, didn't he, that he was gonna light a match that was going to lead all the way to you?"

Plame responded that her outing was not only unexpected, it was also treasonous.

"You cannot possibly be suggesting that with Joe's credentials, my airtight cover, that we actually anticipated that senior government officials would commit treason by blowing my covert identity," she said.

Matthews asked Plame how, if she believed the Bush administration had covered up a "false case for war," that she didn't also anticipate that the White House would strike back at her personally.

"Call me naive," she said, "but that wasn't on our list of options...we didn't actually consider they would betray our country's national security to get at me."

Milton Viorst on ‘The Israel Lobby’

By Milton Viorst Truthdig Posted on Oct 4, 2007

Longtime journalist and Middle East expert Milton Viorst examines John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt’s controversial new book about the Israel lobby and its influence on American foreign policy.

About 30 or so years ago, when I first began to write of my concern that Israel was embarked on a course that would lead only to recurring wars, or perhaps worse, I received a letter from Abraham H. Foxman, then as now the voice of the Anti-Defamation League, admonishing me as a Jew not to wash our people’s dirty linen in public. I still have it in my files. His point, of course, was not whether the washing should be public or private; he did not offer an alternative laundry. His objective was—and remains—to squelch anyone who is critical of Israel’s policies.

In the ensuing years, Foxman and a legion of like-minded leaders, most but not all of them Jewish, have been remarkably successful in suppressing an open and frank debate on Israel’s course. In view of Israel’s impact on America’s place in the world, it is astonishing how little discussion its role has generated. As a practical matter, the subject has been taboo. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, professors of political science at the University of Chicago and Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, respectively, have challenged this taboo in their new book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.” Foxman, in an effort to discredit them, has written a rejoinder in his book “The Deadliest Lies: The Jewish Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control.”

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Gore Vidal: Inventing a Nation

From Yale University Press

Gore Vidal, one of the master stylists of American literature and one of the most acute observers of American life and history, turns his immense literary and historiographic talent to a portrait of the formidable trio of George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.

In Inventing a Nation, Vidal transports the reader into the minds, the living rooms (and bedrooms), the convention halls, and the salons of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and others. We come to know these men, through Vidal’s splendid and percipient prose, in ways we have not up to now—their opinions of each other, their worries about money, their concerns about creating a viable democracy. Vidal brings them to life at the key moments of decision in the birthing of our nation. He also illuminates the force and weight of the documents they wrote, the speeches they delivered, and the institutions of government by which we still live. More than two centuries later, America is still largely governed by the ideas championed by this triumvirate.

Gore Vidal, novelist, essayist, and playwright, is one of America’s great men of letters. Among his many books are United States: Essays 1951-1991 (winner of the National Book Award), Burr: A Novel, Lincoln, and the recent Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.



Book Excerpt

On September 5, 1774, forty-five of the weightiest colonial men formed the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia. The weightiest of the lot was the Boston lawyer John Adams, known as the best-read man in Boston. Short, fat, given to bouts of vanity that alternated with its first cousin self-pity, he was thirty-nine years old when he joined the Massachusetts delegation to the Congress. He was married to Abigail Smith, a marriage somewhat similar to that of his father, John the farmer, to Susanna Boylston. Each Adams had seemed instinctively to be obeying an old law of new societies, by marrying above his social station: farmer John to a Boylston, while Abigail’s mother was a storied Quincy.

The one who moves up is known as a hypergamist and, not too surprisingly, such marriages tend to be happier than classic love matches between like-stationed couples. Certainly, Abigail and John were the most interesting couple among the founders of the embryo nation, and their letters to each other are still a joy to read; nor were they alone in their marital adventurousness; even the protocolossus, Washington, had condescended to marry a grand fortune.

If Adams was the loftiest of the scholars at the Continental Congress of 1775, Thomas Jefferson was the most intricate character, gifted as writer, architect, farmer—and, in a corrupt moment, he allowed his cook to give birth to that unique dessert later known as Baked Alaska. Like Adams, he had tried his hand at constitution making in the spring of 1776. He sent A Summary View of the Rights of British America to Patrick Henry, the orator and professional Virginia politician, but got no answer. Henry reputedly had a problem with laudanum, the drug of the day. Jefferson was not pleased with this rebuff: "Whether Mr. Henry disapproved the ground taken," he later wrote, "or was too lazy to read it (for he was the laziest man in reading I ever knew) I never learned but he communicated it to nobody."

From April 1775 to July 1776 the undeclared war between England and its American colonies smoldered; flared up; appeared to sputter out... It was hardly, ever, a mass rebellion. For one thing, sixteen percent of the Americans were Tories: that is, loyalists to the crown. They were also among the wealthiest and best-educated of the colonists. Over the next eight years, as rebellion became war, many of them fled to Canada or even "back" to England, giving the radical lawyers who had taken charge of the Revolution a lucrative practice settling scores, not to mention estates.

Excerpt from Chapter 2 of Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Copyright 2003 Gore Vidal.