David Cranmer Underdown Profile picture

Sep 25, 2021, 20 tweets

Opinion | Why the Fear of Trump May Be Overblown

Writing this week in the Washington Post, neoconservative scholar Robert Kagan assembled a persuasive case that Trump’s continuing campaign of lies and subterfuge could well succeed in breaking our politico.com/news/magazine/…

He served in the State Department from 1984 to 1988 as a member of the policy planning staff, as principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and as deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs.

Kagan is married to the American diplomat

Victoria Nuland. She served as a nonresident fellow in the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution and senior counselor at the Albright Stonebridge Group. On January 5, 2021, it was reported that President-elect Joe Biden would nominate Nuland to serve as Under

Secretary of State for Political Affairs under Secretary-designate Antony Blinken. From 2009 to 2013, Blinken served as deputy assistant to the president and national security advisor to the vice president. During his tenure in the Obama administration, he helped craft U.S.

policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran. After leaving government service, Blinken moved into the private sector, co-founding WestExec Advisors, a consulting firm. Blinken attended the Dalton School in New York City until 1971. He then moved to Paris with

his mother Judith and Samuel Pisar, whom she married following her divorce from Donald. Pisar was the lawyer and confidant of British publisher Robert Maxwell.

The Nuclear Threat Initiative was founded in 2001 by former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn and philanthropist Ted Turner. It serves as the Secretariat for the "Nuclear Security Project", in cooperation with the Hoover Institution at Stanford. Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz,

former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and Nunn (the “four horsemen of the nuclear apocalypse”) guide the project—an effort to encourage global action to reduce urgent nuclear dangers and build support for reducing reliance on

nuclear weapons, ultimately ending them as a threat to the world. NTI advisor Warren Buffett provided $50 million to jump-start the reserve, which will be owned and managed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and located in Kazakhstan.

NTI also created the Connecting

Organizations for Disease Surveillance (CORDS), which in 2013 launched as an independent NGO that links international disease surveillance networks, supported by the World Health Organization, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

In 1953, U.S.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed the creation of an international body to both regulate and promote the peaceful use of atomic power (nuclear power), in his Atoms for Peace address to the UN General Assembly. In 1961, Carlucci was the second secretary at the United States

Embassy in the Congo. During that time, Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of independent Congo, was executed in January 1961 during the Congo Crisis.
According to subsequently released U.S. government documents, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the CIA to

eliminate Lumumba. Minutes of an August 1960 National Security Council meeting confirm that Eisenhower told CIA chief Allen Dulles to "eliminate" the Congolese leader.

After World War II, the IG Farben Building served as the headquarters for the Supreme Allied Command and from 1949 to 1952 the High Commissioner for Germany (HICOG). Notably Dwight D. Eisenhower had his office in the building. It became the principal location for implementing the

Marshall Plan, which supported the post-war reconstruction of Europe. The 1948 Frankfurt Documents, which led to the creation of a West German state allied with the western powers, were signed in the building. The IG Farben Building served as the headquarters for the US Army's V

Corps and the Northern Area Command (NACOM) until 1995. It was also the headquarters of the CIA in Germany. The IG Farben Building was developed on land known as the Grüneburggelände. In 1837, the property belonged to the Rothschild family.

A major priority of CORDS was to destroy the VC's political and support infrastructure which extended into most villages of the country. The Phoenix Program was CORDS' most controversial activity.

In the early 1960s, Shackley's work included being station chief in Miami, during the period of the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as the Cuban Project (also known as Operation Mongoose), which he directed. He was also said to be the director of the "Phoenix Program" during the

Vietnam War, as well as the CIA station chief in Laos between 1966–1968, and Saigon station chief from 1968 through February 1972. In 1976, he was appointed Associate Deputy Director for Operations, second in charge of CIA covert operations. From May 1972, Shackley ran the CIA's

"Western Hemisphere Division". When Shackley took over the division, one mission for him was "regime change" in Chile (United States intervention in Chile / Project FUBELT).

Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.

A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.

Keep scrolling