1981: New Age of State Terror

A new administration
Carter, dead in the water, his administration effectively hamstrung by Bush–CIA opposition, is put out of his misery in January when Reagan and Bush are inaugurated into office.
He reached an agreement for the release of the hostages on January 19th 1981. The next day Reagan was sworn in as president and minutes later the hostages were released. This was not seen as far too obvious by anyone in America, it seems, and Ron the Ray Gun scored his first instant major propaganda coup and started his presidency on a high note. The hostages had been held captive for 444 days.
Neocons  occupied the top positions in Reagan’s foreign policy team – Max Kampelman – a former aide to Humphrey appointed to the position of director of arms control – replaced by Kenneth Adleman – another neocon.




Reagan is the new terrorist in chief, but Bush is determined to be the real power behind the throne. Reagan took lots of naps and failed to fully grasp many issues due to his age. After the attempt to assassinate him, he effectively faded from view leaving Bush to run the administration his way. Bush intended to rule and would do whatever was necessary for him to achieve this.

During his time as president Reagan appointed 5 justices to the Supreme Court – who were they?

Early Actions
Protectionism
The new administration immediately introduced measures to save the beleaguered US economy, a shadow of its pre Vietnam self, unable to compete with the booming economy in Japan. True to their commitment to free market economics, the Reaganites introduced protectionist policies, “the greatest swing towards protectionism since the 1930s”. Far from being the world’s champion of multi-lateral free trade the US began to challenge it, according to the Journal of the Council on Foreign Relations in a review of the decade.

Environment
Before losing power, on January 15th, Carter signed an executive order creating a uniform notification system for the export of hazardous or domestically restricted products.
On February 17th Reagan revoked the order saying the controls were “unduly burdensome for US industry and would threaten US jobs". It must have been high on the corporate wish list.

Imperialism
William Casey was made director of the CIA – lost no time in implementing the “Reagan Doctrine” – the rollback of communism.
Reagan in February also lifted Carter’s restrictions that prevented/limited US government financial aid to oppressive Chile, in February.
US aggression intensified after Reagan-Bush’s election. It could be explained by pessimistic forecasts into long term future of planetary resources. “as environmental capital is further depleted by the demands of western consumer society, we face the growing threat of resource wars in which rich countries will enforce their ‘right’ to the resources of the Third World at the low prices they are used to paying.”
Alexander Haig, in 1981 said: “the escalating setbacks to our interests abroad, increasing lawlessness and terrorism, and the so-called wars of national liberation are putting in jeopardy our ability to influence world events…and to assure access to raw materials.” The era of the resource war had arrived.

Attempted Assassination
Reagan was shot on March 30th 1981 by John W. Hinkley Jr., outside the Washington DC Hilton Hotel. Hinkley was the son of one of George Bush’s friends. This bizarre connection was barely mentioned in the media, and Bush took charge long enough to wave away any possibility of an enquiry. 1980
“The day Reagan was shot … foreign affairs minister Alexander Haig … used the chaos to seize power and almost managed to bring the country to nuclear war with the USSR.”





Reagan survived but his grip on day-to-day running of the administration is loosened. The Bush link to the gunman is brushed off and never investigated.
As the gunman was carrying a copy of “Catcher in the Rye” some sort of half-baked lone gunman gone postal kind of story was invented and the perpetrator disappeared into the mental health system forever. Hinckley was obsessed with Jodie Foster and the film ‘Taxidriver’, and it was said that he was emulating Travis Bickle in order to impress Foster.
Bush’s son, Neil, had met John Hinkley’s brother, Scott, that very day. Bush and Hinkley Sr. knew each other from the 1960 oil boom days.
Go to www.who2.com/almostassassinated.html If you want more information including the conspiracy theory linking Bush to the assassination attempt and Hinkley’s previous stalking episodes (Jimmy Carter) in October 1980.
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hinckley/HINCKLEY.HTM is a more conventional telling of the events and subsequent court case.

Before they started making fun of George W. Bush's speech, wiseacres poked fun at Haig for his inventive syntax and frequent "Haigisms." For example, he once said "That's not a lie. It is a terminological inexactitude."... In 1981 President Reagan was injured after a failed assassination attempt and Haig famously blundered on TV, claiming constitutional authority ("I am in control here"), when, in fact, the order of succession places the secretary of state below the vice president, the speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate.

Central America


helpful map of Central America

Once in power the Ray Gun administration almost immediately stepped up the wars in Latin America. Ron’s terrorist wars in Central America left three countries in ruins and littered with tens of thousands of corpses, tortured and mutilated corpses.
Alexander Haig was later quoted as saying “what we are watching is a four-phased operation of which phase one has already been completed – the seizure of Nicaragua. Next is El Salvador, to be followed by Honduras and Guatemala… a hit list if you will for the ultimate take-over of Central America”. Tony Benn’s diaries. See 1980 for more on El Salvador.

Haig has long been rumored to have been "Deep Throat," the inside source for the Washington Post as they exposed the Nixon cover-up of the Watergate break-in... http://www.who2.com/alexanderhaig.html

In his last year in office Carter had presided over 10,000 dead in El Salvador. Reagan managed to increase this to 13,000 during 1981.

In Central America there had been “glimmerings of hope for constructive change. In Guatemala, peasants and workers were organising to challenge one of the most primitive oligarchies on the face of the earth. In El Salvador, church based self help groups, unions, peasant associations and other popular organisations were offering a way for the general population to escape grinding poverty and repression and to begin to take some control of their lives and fate. In Nicaragua the tyranny that had served as the base for US power in the region for decades was overthrown in 1979, leaving the countries in ruins, littered with 40,000 corpses, the treasury robbed, the economy devastated.”
“The Reagan administration and its liberal democrat and media accomplices can take credit for having reduced these hopes to ashes. That is a rare accomplishment, for which history will assign them their proper place, if there is ever an honest accounting.” chomsky, “deterring democracy”, page 73.

Nicaragua
Ray Gun vowed to put pressure on the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, to squeeze them out of power. To do this he (or Bush, more likely as the names involved are the usual suspects drawn from the Bush clan terrorist network) began to build a terrorist army in South America, and to use considerable US resources to train, support and arm this force. Washington Babylon by Cockburns even mentions a US-produced “assassination manual furnished to the contras in the early 80s”. In March Reagan authorised $19m for covert CIA activities against Nicaragua. Haig cut off all aid to Nicaragua in the spring of 1981 after claiming that the ‘moderates’ in the government had been driven off. He accused Nicaragua of serving as a supply base for leftist guerrillas in El Salvador. Carter had been sending aid to Nicargua to strengthen the middle class Sandinistans and to avoid driving Nicaragua to the Soviets.

In December – 1000 civilians killed in orgy of murder rape and burning?
Atlacati Battalion, elite unit created and trained and equipped by US. March 81?


Accusations that Nicaragua was a Soviet client state became a self fulfilling prophesy. Reagan’s policies from this premise were designed to ensure that “Nicaragua will sooner or later become a Soviet client, as the US imposes a strangle-hold on its reconstruction and development, rebuffs efforts to maintain decent relations and supports harassment and intervention.”

For the next three years Casey and his overseer of Central American operations, Duane “Dewey” Claridge ran the contra war. Casey approved Claridge’s plans to mine Nicaraguan harbours and to distribute an assassination manual. The discovery of these “covert” actions led to the Boland amendments whereby congress cut off military aid to the contras.
Nicaragua was accused of being the conduit for weapons going to rebels in El Salvador (kicking off see below). Thatcher also repeated the charge that Nicaragua was supporting ‘attempts to destabilise democratic governments elsewhere in Central America.’ David MacMicheal, former CIA analyst on the issue, and dissenter on this issue, said “the evidence for this arms flow is almost totally lacking. More evidence exists that rebels get US made weapons from corrupt members of the Salvadoran army and similar sources within Honduras as well as Costa Rica and Mexico.”
His superiors seemed fixated on the idea of the “Moscow – Havana – Managua pipeline.” A fairy story. The mass media in America perpetuated this myth, in fact what was really going on was an alarming US military build up in El Salvador.

Contras
The contras were formed mainly out of several thousand former Nicaraguan National Guards, and Central American terrorists and mercenaries, forged into a counter-revolutionary army to attack the Sandinista government, the product of a popular insurrection of 1978-79.
A CIA program to arm and train these ‘contras’ estimated at $10m a year was mounted to halt the alleged flow of arms to guerrillas in El Salvador.
The contras were based in Honduras, a friendly dictatorship where the people knew their place, not to rule but to be downtrodden.
When Reagan came to power in early ’81, a former military attache to Samoza, Bermudez and his legion moved to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, which was fast becoming the centre of contra activities. With the help of Argentine and Israeli military advisors, the contras set up camps along the border and began staging terrorist strikes into Nicaragua.
The CIA convinced the leaders of the disparate contra groups to organise a united front under one command. Though Bermudez had already gained a reputation for corruption, his washignton connections secured his position as military commander of the Nicarguan Democratic Forces (FDN).

The CIA’s role
The CIA’s ‘Freedom Fighters’ Manual’ distributed to the contras includes instruction on economic sabotage, torture, murder and political assassination – written in a comic book style. Later, to fund this illegal war, the arms to Iran arrangements were put in place, to be blown open publicly a few years later, became known as the Iran-contra scandal or Iran-gate. The CIA were selling arms to Iran at high prices using the profits to arm the contras terror campaign in Nicaragua. George Bush’s name was high on list of those involved, yet he managed to escape unscathed. Cubans and Nicaraguans were being trained in terror techniques in illegal guerrilla training camps in Florida.

El Salvador
Reagan’s policies succeeded in raising the number of dead civilians in El Salvador from Carter’s outstanding 10,000 in 1980 to an unbeatable 13,000 in 1981. Well done Ronnie!
Reagan stepped up support for government headed by ‘middle of the road’ Jose Napoleon Duarte – ignoring charges that right wing death squads had killed 40,000 civilians.
The US put El Salvador at the centre of its military policy for Central America. The US blamed USSR for the social revolution not the pressures from land hunger, environmental degradation and poverty. The communist threat was again used to justify propping up a neo-fascist brutal dictator.
USAID to El Salvador– World Bank development strategy for El Salvador  1981/82 forced deeper market interdependence with the US  Amy Wilentz: it “achieves 2 strategic US goals – one, a restructured and dependent agriculture that exports to US markets and is open to US exploitation, and the other, a displaced rural population that not only can be employed in offshore US industries in the towns, but is more susceptible to army control.
More than $3bn of US money was pumped into El Salvador during the 1980s. This consisted of military and ‘economic’ aid. 69% of economic aid was used to fund aggression according to a US congressional report.
US security assistance to El Salvador 1950 – 1979 totalled $16.72m, $5.7m in 1980 alone. US military advisors were stationed there .

Chile
Reagan lifted finance restrictions in February so that aid could be sent to Chile. A new constitution came into effect in March, ODEPLAN announces plans to break up state monopolies. A four week strike in April at El Teniente. Jorg Ross’ business empire collapsed in May sending out shock waves. July – CNS leaders Bustos and Guzman imprisoned. After disputes within government in September, 4 opposition politicians were expelled for trying to create a political force of the centre. In November the government took over 4 banks and 4 finance companies, arresting 3 prominent financiers. Chicago boy Pinera, minister of mining, calls for 10 to 15% devaluation and higher import tariffs – ousted and replaced in December. Pinochet says Chicago model to continue, but General Danus is brought in to ODEPLAN as a gesture to economic nationalists.

Panama
Torrijos – who moderated the fierce Panamanian nationalist bent died in a plane crash in 1981, plunging Panama’s government again into turmoil. Colonel Manuel Noriega, a former chief of secret police and US CIA operative emerge d as the country’s leader, until opponents within the National Guard accused him of drug trafficking.

Middle East
Iran-Iraq War


helpful map of the Middle East

Chomsky – “aid to the military is standard operating procedure for overthrowing a civilian government. The device…used effectively in Indonesia and Chile” was “tried in Iran in the early 1980s, the first stage in what later became (suitably recrafted) the Iran-contra affair.”

Iran Iraq war started on 22nd September 1980, when Iraq sent forces into Iran; it continued for another 8 years. The UK was one of 53 countries, many calling for peace through UN resolutions, yet willing to sell military equipment to Iran and Iraq during the war, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) greater than 80 western warships (45 from US and nearly 40 from Western Europe) were deployed in Gulf. Iran was blamed as main perpetrator of attacks on neutral shipping.

Actually, Iraq initiated the conflict by an invasion of Iraq in 1980, and started attacks on oil tankers and commercial ships. Iraq was the main perpetrator. 70% of attacks from March 84 and March 87 were by Iraqis to disrupt Iran’s oil exports and undermine its economy. Western warships were said to only have ‘retaliated’ against Iran.
Douglas Hurd visited Iraq and GB tried to sell BAe missile system to Saddam.

A million and half people died and both countries were weakened. In 1988 the Iran-Iraq war ended. A Reagan quote that sheds light on USA’s interest in Iran: “Iran’s geography gives it a critical position from which adversaries could interfere with oil flows from the Arab states that border the Persian Gulf. Apart from that geography, Iran’s oil deposits are important to the long-term health of the world economy.”

The US  funded and armed Iraq in the 1980s in war against Iran. It had lost control of Iran in revolution of 1979 US aim, though, was to weaken and destroy both countries. Kissinger: “I hope they kill each other”. The Pentagon provided satellite photos of Iranian targets to Iraq.  The Iran-Contra scandal when it became public, revealed that US were sending anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.

24 US based corporations and the successive Ronald Reagan and George Bush administrations were involved in illegally supplying Saddam Hussein’s Iraq with WMDs and training according to Iraq’s UN report 2002. Some of these were: Dupont, Honeywell, Rockwell, Sperry, Hewlett-Packard, Bechtel, and the US Departments of Defence, Agriculture and energy. Nuclear weapons labs – Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Sandia. Project censored.

Conspiracy Corner 
Or it hadn’t lost control – merely a convenient lie to pretend this. It had allies in Iraqi government – the Muslim revolution was managed as a damage limitation exercise.
A double bluff, then to pretend that they were Iraqi supporters overtly and Iranian supporters covertly while arming both sides to bomb the fuck out of each other and destabilise the middle east ready for US intervention at some point in future.

Israel
Sharon was appointed (in August) the Minister of Defence in the second government of Menachem Begin – a hawkish government with poor understanding of military affairs – which allowed Sharon to become dominant figure in Israel until he was ousted in 1982 (check). He left office under a cloud leaving behind government in severe crisis. See 1982
Two months later Sharon ordered the General staff to prepare a detailed plan for a war in Lebanon.
To free the residents of Israel’s north from shelling by Palestinians based in southern Lebanon.
To eliminate, militarily and politically, the presence of the PLO in Beruit.
To bring establishment of a Lebanese government led by Maronite Christians.
To distance forces of the Syrian army from the Beirut area.

The operational orders for incursion were completed in January 1982. The government did not approve of the plans.

New Cold War
Absurdly, the US claimed Soviets were sponsoring revolution in the Third World, spreading communism to eventually surround and dominate the US. It was nothing to do with indigenous people who were too poor to afford even food, shelter, or the basics of life, wanting to remove their rich masters from power.

Reagan said, “Let us not delude ourselves. The Soviet Union underlies all the unrest that is going on. If they weren’t engaged in this game of dominoes, there wouldn’t be any hot spots in the world.” And everyone would be happy.
And so came Reagan’s “roll back” strategy – including a renewed commitment by the US to direct military intervention. In 1983, Grenada; 1986, Libya; 1983/84, Lebanon; 1980 to 1988 Naval deployment against Iran; 1989 Panama. With the exception of Grenada, the US received diplomatic and military support from allies in Europe (notably GB and France) and elsewhere (especially Israel).

Only 100 missiles would be needed to destroy the USSR – and the despite the US already having far in excess of this number, the nuclear stockpiling continued.
The US expected to have 1,004 land based launch vehicles in place by 1985. Even if 87% were destroyed by USSR attack -  the most that could be expected to be destroyed – well over a hundred would survive and there’d be land and air launched missiles too. What was all this nuclear fire-power for? The MX system was an attempt to have  a system able to survive an actual Soviet strike – expensive. All this talk about launching land-based missiles before a Soviet strike made the world extremely dangerous.
Minuteman III carried three independently targeted warheads – but new MX able to carry 10 – count them – only 200 to be built – that’s 2000 warheads. Missiles became more accurate using inertial guidance systems.
USA stopped wheat sales to the USSR on the 4th January until boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games in July.


Find out more
“The little evidence we have-serious evidence-indicates that the 1981 Israeli bombing of the Osirak reactor probably stimulated and may have initiated the Iraqi nuclear weapons development program. They were engaged in building a nuclear plant, but what it was nobody knew. It was investigated on the ground after the bombing by a well-known nuclear physicist from Harvard-I believe he was head of the Harvard physics department at the time. He published his analysis in the leading scientific journal, Nature. According to him, it was a power plant. He's an expert on this topic. Other Iraqi sources, exiled, have indicated-we can't prove it-that nothing much was going on. They may have been toying with the idea of nuclear weapons, but that the bombing of it did stimulate the nuclear weapons program. You can't prove this, but that's what the evidence looks like. And it's very plausible. That doesn't have to be true. What you described is highly likely. If you come out and say, "Look, we're going to attack you," and countries know that they have no means of conventional defense, you're virtually ordering them to develop weapons of mass destruction and networks of terror. It's transparent. That's exactly why the CIA and everyone else predicted it.” Noam Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian 2003.

Africa
US ally South Africa, during the Reagan years, caused over $60bn of damage and 1.5m deaths from 1980 to 1988 in the neighbouring areas.

Britain
Another US ally – Great Britain – was still reeling under the economic crisis planned by new prime minister Thatcher and her monetarist advisers. Within 18 months of the 1979 election Thatcher sent Cecil Parkinson, minister of trade, to Chile. He said, “there’s a good deal of similarities between economic policies of Chile and those of Great Britain.”
Thatcher introduced cuts in welfare state, privatisation and anti-union legislation. Domestic use of force was however less extreme than in Chile, but more that had been known in Britain for decades. See the miners’ strike 1984 – 85.

Anwar Sadat Assassinated
On October 6, 1981, President Anwar al-Sadat was assassinated during an annual military parade celebrating the "successful" campaigns during the 1973 Egypt-Israeli war. He was saluting the troops when a number of them ran from one of the vehicles in the parade and began firing machine guns and throwing grenades into the reviewing stand. Twenty others, including four American diplomats, were injured. Among those in the reviewing stand but not among the injured were future U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and future Egyptian president Hosni Mubarek.  Mubarek was sitting just to the right of Sadat and miraculously escaped injury.
The assassination was carried out by an Islamic Group – Mubarak succeeded Sadat and was reelected in 1987, 1993. He was to  resumed diplomatic ties with Arab states.
Sadat had come to be one of the world's most admired leaders in the wake of the Camp David accords negotiated with Israel's Menachim Begin under Jimmy Carter's auspices. However, the agreement was not universally popular in his own country and the Arab world in general - particularly among Muslim fundamentalists. In the months leading up to the assassination Sadat had lost much of his support in the West due to a crackdown on the fundamentalists.
The Egyptian government used the assassination to crackdown on those who opposed the government. Among those accused in the plot were 11 university teachers and students. Before it was over Egypt had detained over 2,500 "participants" in what must have been the biggest murder conspiracy of all time.

Aids
In July The Centre for disease control, in USA, report the existence of a disease, now known to be associated with AIDS. It was the first public recognition by an established medical agency of a potentially dangerous health trend.
The first state-wide gay rights bill was achieved this year.

Philippines
Vice Pres. George Bush told Philippine dictator, Marcos, “we love your adherence to democratic principle” which surely is none at all.

In August, Reagan, still recovering from his shooting – signed the Economic Recovery Act, which kicked off the “Reagan Revolution”, $750bn of tax cuts in five years.
www.who2.com/almostassassinated.html

Solidarnosc – Martial law in Poland, USSR stayed out of it – 13th December.
29th December USA put economic sanctions on USSR and Poland.

Abscom probe – Senator Harrison A Williams Jr, Dem-NJ, convicted in NY of charges related to the Absom probe on May 1st.

Richard Nixon Museum in san clemente closed on august 10th.


Notes
Japan
Replaced the USSR as the world’s 2nd largest producer of goods and services in early 1980s

Massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila camps in Beirut by Israel’s Lebanese militia allies – 1982. Sharon was held personally responsible by Israel’s own court of enquiry and is threrfore an unindicted war criminal.

Chinese diplomats refused to give an “unequivocal answer” to queries [from US] about nuclear weapons aid to Pakistan.