Month: December 2021

Christmas Back When

In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.  This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.  And everyone went to their own town to register.

So, Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the line of David.  He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.  While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her first born, a son.  She wrapped him in cloth and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.  An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.  But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid.  I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.  Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.  This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloth and lying in a manger.”

–Luke 2:1-12

Our understanding of tradition in Judea in the year 3 B.C., the time of the reign of Caesar Augustus, is that shepherds put their flocks of sheep out to pasture in the early spring (March-April) and returned them to their pens in the late fall (November-December).  If the shepherds were in the fields when an angel of the Lord visited them, it would have been between March and December.  It would not be a precise date if one were looking for the actual date of Christ’s birth.  But there was a star — a very bright star, and more than a few people living back then took note of it.

Modern scientists tell us it’s probably true.  Having studied this phenomenon, some modern scientists believe that the story of the Christmas Star actually happened and is explained by the phenomenon called planetary conjunction.  Such events occur when two planets seem to pass close to each other in the night sky.  Relying on modern technology, interested scientists were able to “rewind” the movement of the planets to where they were (or should have been) in the year 3 B.C.  Scientists believe there were several conjunctions and that, back then, astrologers would have noticed them, recorded them, and tried to make some sense of them.

In the year 7 B.C., Jupiter, and Saturn had three conjunctions.  The planets, of course, occupy different orbits in the solar system and proceed around the sun at different speeds.  With rudimentary telescopes, they occasionally appear to pass one another in the night sky.  Their perceived nearness also gives the impression that they’ve stopped moving.

Four years passed.  In the summer of 3 B.C. Jupiter and Venus met in a conjunctive event that would have looked much like the Christmas Star.  On the morning of 12 August, 3 B.C. Jupiter and Venus would have occupied a position in space merely 1/10th of a degree apart in the dawn sky.  Visually, scientists tell us that it would have appeared to be one-fifth the diameter of the full moon in Bethlehem.  We don’t know how long (days or months) such a vision would have lasted.

In any case, in the absence of written records, we can deduce that the event likely took place between June and September.  But why do we celebrate Christ’s birth in December?  The key here is how we choose to describe the occasion.  We do not think that 25 December is the birthdate of Jesus of Nazareth; it is, instead, the date we celebrate His birth according to the Gregorian Calendar.  To understand why Church officials decided on December, we have to look to the ancient Greco-Roman period because the celebration didn’t begin until the second century A.D.

The Roman Christian historian/scholar Sextus Julius Africanus decided that Jesus was conceived in the womb of Mary on 25 March.  If Jesus were born precisely nine months later, then His birthdate would have been 25 December.  No one today thinks that Sextus put much effort into his estimate, but it does provide one possible explanation.  I do admit that I’m puzzled about how Sextus knew the date of Jesus’ conception.

In the third century Roman Empire, which had yet to adopt Christianity, Romans still celebrated their “re-birth” of the Unconquered Sun on 25 December.  This celebration marked the winter solstice and a popular Roman festival called Saturnalia (during which time Romans feasted and exchanged gifts).  It was also the birthday of the Indo-European deity Mithra, the god of light and loyalty.  This was a widespread belief among Roman soldiers.

The Roman Catholic Church formally began celebrating Christmas on 25 December 336 A.D. during the reign of Emperor Constantine.  By then, Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.  In those days, Church leaders frequently selected celebratory dates to coincide with traditional (pagan) festivities — because people were used to those observances.  Church leaders in Rome and Constantinople disagreed over the date, but they hardly agreed on anything.  Still, the Christmas celebration did not become a significant Church event until the 9th century.

Not every Christian group celebrated Christmas.  In the mid-1600s, English Puritans tried to suppress both religious and secular observances of Christmas.  John Knox condemned all Church festivals, most likely because he stood in opposition to the Roman Church and also because in some celebrations, people engaged in what the Puritans called “pagan dancing.”

It wasn’t until the 1800s that Christmas celebrations began to look similar to our modern versions of them.  There were feasts, of course.  Mince pies took some time to mature, so homemakers began their preparations earlier.  People decorated their homes in red and green, symbolic of the life of Jesus and red for the bloodshed at his crucifixion.  People began exchanging Christmas greetings (cards) in the 1840s, and we Americans copied the Christmas Tree idea from Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, who installed a tree at Windsor Castle in 1841.  This was a long-held German tradition.

Christmas Eve was a Church night.  Afterward, children would return home and hang stockings so that Father Christmas would leave them treats — if they’d been good.  The celebration occurred more often among people in the rural south than in the industrial north, probably due to the Yankee’s Puritan roots; the northerners preferred Thanksgiving to Christmas.  The first three US states to declare Christmas an official holiday were Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas.

Following the Civil War, Christmas became more popular because of children’s books about Christmas trees and gifts from St. Nicholas (who became Santa Claus).  Women’s magazines and Sunday School classes encouraged the celebration, as well.  Arguably, no one did more to perpetuate Christmas than authors Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, and cartoonist Thomas Nast.

We inherited Santa from the Dutch, whose word for St. Nicholas was Sinterklaas.  In 1809, Washington Irving published in A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (attributing it to Diedrich Knickerbocker).  Diedrich was one of Washington’s early hoaxes, a man he claimed was a “missing” Dutch historian.  In his book, he introduced his readers to Sinterklaas, who owned a wagon that could fly over the tops of trees as he brought yearly presents to good children.

Sinterklaas transitioned to Santa Claus in William Gilley’s 1821 poem, changing Santa’s wagon to a sled, pulled by a single reindeer.  In 1823, Clement Clarke Moore gave us A Visit from St. Nicholas.  We know the poem today as “The Night Before Christmas.”  Moore added seven additional reindeer to Santa’s retinue and gave them each a unique name.  One of those was Rudolph.  Of the gift-giving, Moore moved it from 5 December (St. Nicholas Day) to 25 December.

Charles Dickens, of course, told us the story of Ebenezer Scrooge in 1843; it transitioned to America in the following year.  But if we wanted to know what Santa Claus looked like, we would have had to wait until 1863, when Thomas Nast drew Santa’s image for a Christmas season edition of Harper’s Weekly.  Santa was pictured in his sleigh arriving at a Union Army camp distributing gifts to soldiers.  Nast’s work was so popular that he continued his drawings for several decades.  From Nast, we learned that Santa Claus lived at the North Pole where he kept his workshop, manned by elves.

So, then, who was St. Nicholas?  He was Nicholas of Bari (also St. Nicholas of Myra), who we believe lived from 270-343 A.D., an early Christian bishop of Greek descent from the port city of Myra (Asia Minor) (modern-day Turkey).  The Church attributes many miracles to St. Nicholas, and for that reason, he is sometimes known as the “Wonderworker.”  He is the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, prostitutes, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, and unmarried people.  He is said to have started “secret gift-giving.”  We’ve adopted him as the model for our Santa Claus.  [Below image attributed to Mark Spears].

In the mid-1800s, Santa Claus was a kindly man who gifted valuable things to children, veterans, first responders — such as a new pair of socks.  Modern Santa brings out the worst of us, beginning with the spoiled-rotten child who sulks because they didn’t get the $1,200 iPhone or a pair of Michael Jordon shoes by Gucci that cost well over $3,000.00.

Well — maybe what we’ve turned into, as a people, has less to do with Santa Clause and more to do with social evolution.  We’ve made the transition from people who were grateful for a pair of socks to extraordinarily self-centered, materialistic, shallow creatures.  We care far less about others than we do ourselves.  Our appreciation of gifts received seems to depend more on their retail price than the heartfelt love of the gift giver.  Since around 1945, the end of World War II, this shallowness has only worsened in America.  Today, the Christmas season begins in July and August, when merchants start putting up their displays of Chinese-made goods.  We’ve spiraled into what we are.  Where will we be when, in the future, no “gift” is good enough for the spoiled child?

There may be some hope for us, though … but, if there is, it will probably come from a bright star in the sky that may lead us to the humble beginnings of the Son of God, whom we know as Jesus of Nazareth, who gave us the greatest gift of all: we get to choose for ourselves the kind of people we become.

Merry Christmas, Everyone

By Presidential Decree — Part II

America in 1940

Following the Meiji Restoration in Japan and a devastating economic recession, people began migrating from the Japanese Islands because they needed jobs.  Between 1869 and 1924, some 200,000 Japanese arrived in the Hawaiian Islands.  An additional 180,000 migrated to the US mainland and the majority of those settled on the West Coast.  Many of these people started small businesses and farms.  Most arrived on the mainland before 1908.  In that year, the United States banned the immigration of unskilled workers.  A loophole in the law allowed the wives of men living in the United States to join their husbands — from this, the practice of women marrying by proxy and immigrating to the US, which resulted in a significant increase in the number of picture brides.

The increase of Japanese living in California resulted in steady resistance by European-Americans living on the West Coast.  It was purely and simply racialism, as evidenced by the Asiatic Exclusion League, California Joint Immigration Committee, and Native Sons of the Golden West — all organized in response to the so-called “yellow peril.”  These groups quite effectively influenced politicians to restrict Japanese immigrants’ property and citizenship rights in a manner similar to anti-Chinese migration.  The Immigration Act of 1924 restricted the Japanese in the same way as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

One effect of the 1924 ban is that it produced unusually well-defined generational groups within the Japanese-American community.  The Issei, for example, were exclusively those who immigrated before the ban, some of whom elected to return to Japan.  Because the United States placed a moratorium on Japanese immigration.  Within Japanese-American communities, they were called Nisei.  They were distinct from the Issei cohort — generally 15-20 years older than their wives.

Nisei were English speakers; Issei were generally not.  Because the 1924 law prohibited Japanese immigrants from becoming naturalized citizens, the Issei became dependent upon their children whenever they rented or purchased property. By 1940, most Nisei had married and started their own families.  Despite these handicaps, Japanese-Americans made significant contributions to California agriculture (and in other Western states), but overt racism forced them into establishing unique communities.  The communities were, in turn, divided into Japanese prefecture groups.  They also created Buddhist women’s associations, set up businesses to provide loans and financial assistance, and started Japanese language schools.

The rise of fascism in Japan in the 1930s prompted the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) to begin monitoring and surveilling Japanese-American communities in Hawaii.  In 1936, under the direction of Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the ONI began compiling “suspect lists” of Japanese-Americans — citizens of the United States whom Roosevelt intended to place in “concentration” camps in the event of war with Imperial Japan.

The FBI began working with ONI in 1939.  FDR commissioned a Detroit businessman named Curtis Munson to coordinate these efforts.  In 1941, Munson informed the President that the so-called Japanese-American problem was “non-existent.”  He reported “an extraordinary” degree of loyalty to the United States within Japanese-American communities.  ONI Director Kenneth Ringle made a similar report to the President in 1942.

Still, six weeks after Japan’s “sneak attack” on Pearl Harbor, Army Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt openly questioned the loyalty of Japanese-Americans and proclaimed, “A Jap’s a Jap.”  The State of California vigorously joined DeWitt in questioning Japanese-American loyalty by claiming that persons of Japanese ancestry were “totally unassimilable.”

FDR’s Executive Order 9066 (signed on 19 February 1942) authorized military commanders to designate military exclusion zones at their discretion.  DeWitt did precisely that on 2 March 1942, ordering all Japanese-Americans living within those zones to depart immediately.  Within a few weeks, however, DeWitt reversed himself.  After that, he prohibited Japanese-Americans from leaving these exclusion zones, imposed curfews, and placed restrictions on their freedom of movement.

Only one civilian official protested this treatment: Colorado governor Ralph Lawrence Carr.[1]  Meanwhile, DeWitt issued more than a hundred exclusion orders over the next five months.  By August 1942, federal officials moved American citizens of Japanese ancestry to far distant/remote locations.[2]

Toward the end of the war, the relocation centers began to close.  Of more than 70,000 Japanese-American internees, only three (3) challenged the constitutionality of Roosevelt’s order.  

America Today

Threats to American Constitutional guarantees and liberties continue today.  If the reader believes these historical examples were severe, some today argue that it’s getting even worse.  Certain political groups, activists, and other morons demand restrictions on freedoms of speech, association, and pamphleteering.  Political militants aside, there is no more significant threat to individual liberty than that imposed by the United States government, which conspires to undermine the rights and privileges of American citizenship.

The government’s intrusion into our private lives, as demonstrated by the so-called Patriot Act, the creation of secret courts, the policy of intercepting, reading, and storing data obtained from electronic media, and the government dictate that we (a free people) remain under arrest in our quarters — threatens our American Republic.  The preceding “case histories” serve as warnings to us about presidents and their henchmen who not only think they have extraordinary power over us — they do.

The Supreme Court may safeguard the Constitution, but it does nothing to safeguard the rights of citizens who became victims of the government’s unconstitutional overreach.  It did nothing to free those who sat in isolated cells while remaining uncharged, unindicted, and untried by a jury of their peers.  The high court did not prevent Woodrow Wilson from targeting Americans for expressing their dissenting opinions, and it did nothing to protect Japanese-Americans from President Roosevelt’s Gestapo.

We know what the federal government is capable of doing.  With this knowledge, every American must view politicians, bureaucrats, and government policy with deep suspicion.  No government is trustworthy.  After all, the government reintroduced blacks to the slavery of low expectation and government subsidy; in the same way, the government destroyed the American Indians.  It remains up to people who value their liberty to refuse to relinquish their human rights, their rights as citizens.  No one in the government will protect us.  Preserving our freedom is OUR duty.

Sources:

  1. Connell, T.  America’s Japanese Hostages: The US Plan for a Japanese Free Hemisphere.  Praeger-Greenwood, 2002.
  2. McGinty, B.  The Body of John Merryman: Abraham Lincoln and the Suspension of Habeas Corpus.  Harvard University Press, 2011.
  3. Hall, K. L. (Ed.)  The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States.  Oxford University, 1992.
  4. Lewis, W.  Without Fear or Favor: A Biography of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney.  Houghton Mifflin, 1965.
  5. Robinson, G.  By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans.  Harvard University Press, 2009.

Notes:

[1] Carr also lost his bid for reelection because of his stance.

[2] Tule Lake, California, Minidoka, Idaho, Manzanar, California, Topaz, Utah, Jerome, Arkansas, Heart Mountain, Wyoming, Poston, Arizona, Granada, Colorado, and Rohwer, Arkansas.

My thanks to Mr. Koji KANEMOTO for his much-valued assistance and participation in the research, preparation, and editing of this post.

By Presidential Decree — Part I

America in 1860

No one can say that Abraham Lincoln didn’t have a full plate during the American Civil War and filling up that plate began even before he assumed office.  No one should have to endure that kind of stress — tensions that lasted for four long years — but it was Lincoln himself who signed up for that slog-fest.  In 1861, the nation’s capital lay in the center of southeastern slave territories.  Although Maryland didn’t secede from the Union, Southern sympathies were widespread in that state.  Maryland’s possible secession was one of many factors Lincoln had to consider in defining his domestic agenda.

John Merryman (1824-1881) was the father of eleven children, a farmer in Cockeysville, Maryland, and a president of the Board of County Commissioners of Baltimore County.  Before the outbreak of the Civil War, Merryman also served as Third Lieutenant of Baltimore County Troops.  In 1861, he served as First Lieutenant in the Baltimore County Horse Guards.  On Friday, 19 April 1861, anti-war Democrats (calling themselves Copperheads) joined with other Southern sympathizers to oppose certain Massachusetts and Pennsylvania militia members.  They were mobilizing in Baltimore as a defense force for the city of Washington.  Hostilities erupted when the Copperheads attempted to prevent the aforementioned Yankee militia from moving to Washington.

On 20 April, Maryland’s governor Thomas H. Hicks (a pro-slave/anti-secession Democrat) and Baltimore mayor George W. Brown dispatched Maryland State Militia to disable the railroad tracks and bridges leading out of Baltimore.  Hicks later denied issuing any such order.  In any case, one of the low-level Maryland militia leaders was none other than John Merryman.

On 27 April, President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus.  This Latin phrase means, “We command that you must produce the body at court.”  The writ prohibits unlawful detention or imprisonment and compels “government authority” to produce a prisoner to the court so that the accused can appear before a jurist.  It is a mechanism for ensuring the right of an accused to have his day in court.

In suspending the writ, Lincoln’s purpose was to give military authorities power to arrest, detain, and silence dissenters and rebels.  Was Lincoln’s act lawful?  According to experts in Constitutional law — yes.  A president may suspend the Constitution when rebellion or invasion occurs, and public safety requires it.  

On 25 May, Union military forces arrested Mr. Merryman for his role in destroying railroad tracks and bridges and escorted him to a cell at Fort McHenry.  Merryman remained there for several months.  If it were up to President Lincoln, Merryman would stay in that cell to this very day.  Some would argue that the federal government violated Mr. Merryman’s constitutional rights.  Through his lawyer, Merryman petitioned the court for a writ of habeas corpus.  The petition was presented to, of all people, the Chief Justice of the United States, Roger B. Taney — a native of Maryland and the federal circuit court judge for Maryland.

We know from history that Lincoln’s election to the presidency led several states to secede from the Union.  We also know that the first hostile act of the Civil War occurred in Baltimore, which means that the bombardment of Fort Sumter was not the initiating action of the Civil War — so we should stop saying that.

Roger B. Taney was an anti-Lincoln jurist who saw it as his duty to remain seated on the high court rather than resigning his appointment to serve the Confederacy.  As with Governor Hicks (and many others of his day), Taney was a pro-slavery anti-secessionist.  As a jurist, he believed that states had a Constitutional right to secede from the Union.  As a man, he detested Lincoln, believing that he was responsible for destroying the Union.  From his position on the high court, Taney would challenge Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, arguing that only Congress could do that.  And he loathed Lincoln’s interference with civil liberties.

Through non-acquiescence (where one branch of the government refuses to acknowledge the authority of another branch of government), Lincoln ignored Taney’s ruling.  Lincoln nevertheless addressed the issue in a message to Congress in July 1861.  In his letter, Lincoln cited Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution (previously mentioned).

Eventually, Lincoln doubled down on suspending habeas corpus by extending it on a much larger scale, which some would argue violated the rights of citizens throughout the war.  Eventually, Lincoln’s policy softened somewhat in Maryland, but only out of concern that Maryland might also secede from the Union.  After the Merryman arrest, however, Lincoln channeled such actions through Congress.  It was a workable arrangement because, in 1863, Congress passed the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act.

Chief Justice Taney passed away in 1864, aged 87 years.  He served as Chief Justice of the United States for 28 years, 198 days — the second-longest tenure of any chief justice and the oldest ever serving Chief Justice in United States’ history.

Ultimately, John Merryman was turned over to civilian authorities and allowed to post bail.  The government finally dropped its treason charges against Merryman in 1867; he was never brought to trial.  Six years later, in a case unrelated to Merryman’s, the high court ruled that civilians were not subject to military courts even in times of war.  As it turned out, the Merryman case was not the last time the federal government suspended American civil rights.

America in 1916

Americans saw no reason to involve themselves in Europe’s “great war” of 1914.  Few people knew where the Austro-Hungarian Empire was, much less who was in charge of it, so the assassination of the heir to the throne was a non-event.  Nor did many Americans care about the wartime alliances.  The whole affair, in the mind of most Americans, was none of our business.  President Woodrow Wilson, a progressive Democrat, proclaimed United States’ neutrality — a view widely supported by the American people — including many immigrants from the belligerent countries.

Yet, despite Wilson’s claim of neutrality, American capitalists were quick to take advantage of war-related opportunities.  Europeans needed food, materials, and American-made munitions.  Not only were American companies happy to sell these goods to the Europeans, but American banks were also happy to loan money to the Europeans so that they could purchase those goods.  This financial involvement gave the United States a stake in the winner of the Great War.  The trick for the Americans was to find a way to safely send American-made goods to the allied powers — through seas patrolled by German submarines.

When RMS Lusitania was laid down in 1904, the British government decided to subsidize its construction costs, provided that the Cunard Line agreed to allow Lusitania to serve as an Armed Merchant Cruiser (AMC) should Great Britain need her in time of war or other national emergencies.  The British government placed Lusitania on its list of AMCs in 1914, but Lusitania’s exorbitant operating costs caused the government to reverse that decision.  Whether the British ever got around to informing the Germans of this decision is unknown.

For their part, Imperial Germany gave due notice and warning to anyone booking passage on Lusitania: since a state of war existed between Germany and Great Britain, all Allied vessels were targets of the German Imperial Navy.  From Germany’s point of view, knowing full well that Lusitania’s holds contained U. S. manufactured war materials intended to aid the Allied powers, Lusitania became a legitimate target.  After all, Britain’s decision to allow passengers on a de facto AMC vessel wasn’t Germany’s problem — and besides — the United States’ claim of neutrality was laughable.[1]

It was no surprise to anyone in the hierarchy of either government when a German submarine torpedoed Lusitania on 7 May 1915.  Twelve hundred people lost their lives, including 128 Americans.  By this time, anti-German war propaganda was in full swing.  Stories of German military atrocities targeting civilians appeared regularly in the American press, such as the Rape of Belgium, which claimed that the German army was responsible for the death or injury to 46,000 innocents.  Even though President Wilson maintained his non-intervention policy, anti-German passions increased throughout the United States.

Meanwhile, the Mexican Revolution (1910-1921) was in full swing.  Mexican bandits attacked, murdered, and looted American homesteaders living along the US/Mexican border with increasing regularity.  In 1916, Wilson dispatched US troops to the southern border and ordered General “Black Jack” Pershing into Mexico to capture or kill Pancho Villa.  Anticipating conflict on two fronts, President Wilson asked for and gained congressional authority to increase the size of the U. S. Army, National Guard, and U. S. Navy.

American voters reelected Wilson to a second term in November 1916.  By this time, the anti-German passions led some Americans to join the French Army, French Foreign Legion, and French Air Service.

After the German Imperial government announced its intent to resume unrestricted submarine warfare, President Wilson severed diplomatic relations with Germany.  Germany responded by targeting American merchant ships in the North Atlantic.

In January 1917, British codebreakers intercepted an encrypted German telegram addressed to the German Ambassador to Mexico.  The telegram instructed the Ambassador to propose an alliance between Germany and Mexico against the United States.  In essence, should the United States join the allied war effort, Germany suggested a pact with Mexico with military assistance regaining the territory lost to the United States during the Mexican-American War (1848): Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.  History recalls this communique as the Zimmerman Telegram.

British diplomats handed the Zimmerman Telegram to Wilson on 24 February, and Wilson released it to the American press on 1 March.  The effect of publishing this information was, as anticipated, wide-scale public outrage toward both Germany and Mexico (even though Mexico never officially acknowledged the proffered alliance).  The United States declared war on Germany on 4 April 1917.

After declaring war, Wilson focused almost exclusively on his foreign policy agenda — leaving domestic affairs to his “war cabinet.”  The cabinet’s chief concern was the expansion of the military, food distribution, fuel rationing, and consumer conservation.  Within three years, America’s annual budget exploded from around $1 billion in 1916 to nearly $20 billion in 1920.  Congress raised taxes through the War Revenue Act of 1917 and the Revenue Act of 1918, increasing the top tax rate to 77% and expanding the number of citizens subject to personal income taxes.

Wilson’s tax scheme was unsettling from several points of view.  Because tax increases were by themselves insufficient, the federal government began issuing low-interest war bonds.  To encourage investment, Congress made the interest paid on these bonds tax-free.  One consequence of this policy was that it encouraged citizens to borrow money for the purchase of bonds.  This, in turn, produced two additional effects: an increase in inflation and (by 1929) the Stock Market crash.[2]

Not everyone was pleased with Wilson’s decision to enter World War I.  Without realizing their country’s economic involvement with European nations at war, many Americans demanded that the United States maintain its neutrality.  Other groups opposed the military draft (the first of its kind in the world).  Other opposition groups included pacifists, anarchists, socialists, labor union workers, Christians, anti-militarists, the so-called “Old Right,” and women’s peace groups.  Among the socialists were Irish, German, and Russian immigrants whose “loyalty” to the United States Wilson always questioned. While young Americans were fighting and dying for the American way, Wilson, fearing that dissidents would undermine his war effort, signed the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918.[3]  Both acts criminalized disloyal, profane, scurrilous, and abusive language toward the United States government, the military, or any speech or language intended to incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of conscription.  They were among the most egregious of the government’s violations of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  The Supreme Court upheld several convictions based on “limitations of free speech in a time of war.”  See also Schenck v. United States and Note 4.[4]

(Continued next week)

Sources:

  1. Connell, T.  America’s Japanese Hostages: The US Plan for a Japanese Free Hemisphere.  Praeger-Greenwood, 2002.
  2. McGinty, B.  The Body of John Merryman: Abraham Lincoln and the Suspension of Habeas Corpus.  Harvard University Press, 2011.
  3. Hall, K. L. (Ed.)  The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States.  Oxford University, 1992.
  4. Lewis, W.  Without Fear or Favor: A Biography of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney.  Houghton Mifflin, 1965.
  5. Robinson, G. By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Harvard University Press, 2009.

Endnotes:

[1] The sinking of the Lusitania underscored Germany’s success in espionage, and America’s failure in counter-espionage.

[2] Wall Street investors were making large profits from their arrangement with the Allied Powers — even after federal taxes, but they would make a lot more money by investing in post-war reconstruction.  This would become part of the post-war boom that was so profitable, people borrowed money to invest in the stock market.  When the Stock Market crashed in 1929, due to the over-valuation of stocks, people not only lost their investments, they also became indebted with no way to repay their personal loans.  It was a behavior that caused investors to throw themselves off buildings.

[3] Later, partially in reaction against the Bolshevik Revolution and the rising tide of socialism in Europe, a more general anti-immigrant sentiment gripped America.  For example, through the Palmer Raids of the 1920s, the Department of Justice rounded up thousands of foreigners who were alleged communists, anarchists, labor reformers, or otherwise menaces to society. Many were forcibly deported.

[4] The years surrounding America’s involvement in World War I were a watershed for how the United States treated foreigners within its borders during wartime. Immigrants had flooded the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, almost a third of Americans were either first or second-generation immigrants. Those born in Germany and even American-born citizens of German descent fell under suspicion of being disloyal.

My thanks to Mr. Koji KANEMOTO for his much-valued assistance and participation in the research, preparation, and editing of this post.

The Spook

Edward Geary Lansdale

A son of Michigan, Ed Lansdale was born in 1908 and later raised in Los Angeles, California.  He was one of four sons born to Sarah and Henry Lansdale.  After graduating from high school, he worked his way through the University of California (Los Angeles) by writing articles for newspapers and magazines.  He later began work in advertising in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas.

At the start of World War II, Lansdale joined the U. S. Army Air Corps, where he was subsequently classified as an intelligence officer and seconded to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).  Lansdale’s OSS assignment eventually took him to the Philippine Islands, but the timing and duration of this assignment are unknown.  During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, U. S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Wendell Fertig led the primary resistance movement — but it may be true that Lansdale and the OSS played a role in MacArthur’s return to Luzon.  After leaving the Philippines in 1948, the Air Force assigned Lansdale as an instructor at the Strategic Intelligence School, Lowry Air Force Base, Colorado.  While serving in this capacity, the Air Force advanced Lansdale to a temporary lieutenant colonel.

In 1950, the President of the Philippine Islands, Elpidio Quirino, personally requested that Lansdale return to the Joint United States/Philippines Military Assistance Group to assist the Philippines in combatting the Communist Hukbalahap (also, Huks).  Lansdale, an early believer in psychological warfare, adopted a tactic used earlier by the Japanese during the Empire’s occupation of the Philippines.  In Philippine folklore, Aswangs are blood-sucking demons; Lansdale’s ploy spread rumors in the Philippines about these Aswangs.  Lansdale managed the capture of one of the communist soldiers and drained the blood from his body, leaving his remains where it could be found near a popular pathway.  This ploy seemed to convince many of the Hukbalahap to leave their operations area.  To what long-term effect this ploy had on most Huks in the Philippines is unknown. 

During Lansdale’s time in the Philippines, he became close friends with Ramon Magsaysay, then the Philippines’ Secretary of National Defense.  Some historians suggest that Lansdale had a hand in Magsaysay’s bid for the presidency, which he achieved on 30 December 1953.  Lansdale is also credited with developing civic actions programs and policies designed to help rehabilitate Huks prisoners of war.

Before leaving his assignment in the Philippine Islands, Lansdale served as a temporary member of General John W. O’Daniel’s mission to Indochina in 1953.[1]  As an advisor to French Indochinese forces (counter-guerrilla warfare), Lansdale’s mission was to suggest successful strategies against the Viet Minh (Vietnamese communist guerrillas) — but of course, the French had been fighting Indochinese nationalists for several decades in advance of World War II, so it not clear what contributions Lansdale might have made to the French effort.[2]  

It was a strange set of circumstances that after the OSS helped organize and arm Indochinese guerrilla forces (beginning in 1943), that the U. S. military would then (initially) assist the French in fighting these same guerillas — and even stranger still that the United States would take over that effort after France’s defeat at Dien Bien Phu.

After leaving the Philippine Islands, Lansdale’s next assignment was as a permanent advisor to the Military Assistance Group (Indochina) from 1954 to 1957, heading the military mission in Saigon, South Vietnam.  In addition to directing the training for the Vietnamese National Army (VNA), he helped organize the Caodaist militias.  He instituted a propaganda campaign to encourage Vietnamese Catholics (most of whom lived in North Vietnam) to move to South Vietnam.[3]

While in Saigon, Lansdale ingratiated himself with emerging leader Ngo Dinh Diem.  It was not very soon afterward that Lansdale moved into the Vietnamese White House upon Diem’s invitation.  This may have resulted from the fact that Lansdale helped to foil the attempted coup d’état of General Nguyen Van Hinh.

In one “egg on his face” episode, Lansdale began working with and mentoring Pham Xuan An, a reporter for Time Magazine.  Mr. An, as it turned out, was a highly valued North Vietnamese spy who, in addition to reporting on events in Vietnam, regularly provided helpful information to the government in Hanoi — information he obtained directly from Edward Lansdale.  In the good news department, Lansdale also mentored and trained CIA operative, John Deutch.  Mr. Deutch was one of the so-called Whiz Kids associated with Robert S. McNamara.  Deutch later became Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and, as it turned out, no one killed more troops during the Vietnam War than Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

From 1957 to 1963, Edward Lansdale served in Washington, D. C. first, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and a member of the President’s advisory committee on military assistance, and later as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations.

In the early 1960s, Lansdale was primarily involved in covert operations designed to topple the government of Cuba, including proposals to assassinate Fidel Castro.  Known as the Cuban Project (also Operation Mongoose), Lansdale’s plan called for an extensive campaign of terrorist attacks against civilians by CIA hired insurgents and CIA covert operations designed to exploit the insurgents’ successes.  The plan received the approval of President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and went into effect after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion.

Even today, the U. S. government argues against the notion that the Cuban project (and its methodologies) were extralegal.  We know that along with Operation Mongoose was yet another, darker scheme, dubbed Operation Northwoods.  Northwoods called upon the U. S. military to create a series of incidents involving the loss of American and Cuban exile’s lives through the actions of phony Cuban revolutionaries.  The idea was to sufficiently enrage the American public to demand war against Castro’s Cuba.  Involved with Lansdale was William K. Harvey (CIA), Samuel Halpern (CIA), and Lansdale’s assistant, Daniel Ellsberg (of Pentagon Papers fame).  As bad as President Kennedy’s approval, the mastermind for this project was his brother Robert, the Attorney General of the United States.

Major General Lansdale retired from the U. S. Air Force on 1 November 1963.  Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated on 2 November 1963.  President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on 22 November 1963.  According to retired U. S. Air Force Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, a former subordinate of Lansdale, Edward Lansdale’s fingerprints are all over Kennedy’s assassination.[4]

After he retired from the Air Force, Lansdale returned to Vietnam (1965-68), where he worked in the United States Embassy in a position of ministerial rank — except that no one seems to know what Lansdale’s function was at the Embassy.  Some have suggested he may have been the Dirty Little Tricks Officer.[5]

I leave my readers with the question of whether Colonel Prouty or Dr. Ellsberg have any credibility regarding Lansdale’s or the CIA’s involvement with the Kennedy assassination.  However, Eugene Burdick and William Lederer’s book titled The Ugly American (1958) may have modeled Colonel Hillandale’s character on Edward Lansdale.  Prouty’s book is no longer in print, but it is available “Online for education purposes at JAG 07146.co.nr.”  The URL co. nr is a “cloaking/masking” protocol.

From my perspective, there is a great danger in organizations that have limited or no oversight by the government (and people) whom they serve.  It is a disaster just waiting to happen (noting that some will argue it already has).  People with peculiar skills will respond to what their bosses tell them is “in the national interests,” and most carry out these assignments without ever questioning the legality or morality of their missions.   

Sources:

  1. Bamford, J.  Body of Secrets.  Doubleday, 2001.
  2. Boot, M.  The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam.  Norton & Company, 2018.
  3. Currey, C. B.  Edward Lansdale, the Unquiet American.  Houghton Mifflin, 1988.
  4. Elliston, J.  Psy War on Cuba: The Declassified History of US Anti-Castro Propaganda.  Ocean Press, 1999.
  5. McAlister, J.  “The lost revolution: Edward Lansdale and the American Defeat in Vietnam, 1964-1968, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 2003.

Endnotes:

[1] LtGen O’Daniel saw combat service in both world wars and Korea.  Known as an outspoken officer in the same vein as George Patton, Eisenhower nevertheless appointed him to command the Military Assistance Group, Indochina.

[2] Given the sequence of events of World War II, where we find that the entire French army fell to the Germans in only six weeks, the subsequent collaboration with Germany and Japan of the Vichy government, and France’s inglorious return to Indochina in 1946, senior French colonial officials were in no mood to accept the advice of American military officers.  Their only inducement the French had to listen to what American military officers had to say was the monetary and material support offered to them by the U. S. government.

[3] Operation Passage to Freedom changed an important demographic in Vietnam.  Before 1954, most Vietnamese Catholics lived in North Vietnam.  After 1956, Vietnamese Catholics held the popular majority in South Vietnam, 55% of whom were refugees from North Vietnam.  To help facilitate this move, Lansdale air-dropped leaflets into Vietnam showing concentric circles drawn on a map, which suggested that a nuclear strike on North Vietnam may be imminent.

[4] Of course, if that were true, then Lansdale and all his co-conspirators would have to be the best-ever secret keepers in the history of the planet.  In the forward to his second revision of The Secret Team, Prouty claims that the CIA managed to abscond with “at least” 300,000 copies of his book that had been shipped by his publisher to Australia.

[5] Robert S. McNamara got his start as a “dirty trickster” in World War II.  Known as one of the “Whiz Kids,” McNamara moved to the board of Ford Motor Company before being named as JFK’s Secretary of Defense.  His “genius” resulted in significant American and RVN casualties during the Vietnam War.