A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article titled Bob Woodward: PermaGov Hitman regarding Woodward’s new book, “Obama’s War” and Woodward’s long and obvious history as a sort of literary hitman for certain segments of the PermaGov intelligence apparatus.
In it I theorized that the book was somehow connected with the beginnings of a Hillary Clinton primary challenge to Obama in 2011/2012 but I hedged my bet a little by saying “…unless perhaps a deal has already been made for her to be Obama’s Cheney next time around.”
In today’s headlines?
Yup.
Obama-Clinton Ticket in 2012? Woodward Says It’s “On the Table”
That’s a CBS News headline….you know, the CBS News that was originally allied with the CIA through its right-wing owner William Paley?
There we have it.
Read on for more.
Woodward’s (apparently ex-) boy Carl Bernstein wrote as far back as 1977:
CBS was unquestionably the CIA’s most valuable broadcasting asset. CBS president William Paley and Allen Dulles enjoyed an easy working and social relationship. Over the years, the network provided cover for CIA employees, including at least one well-known foreign correspondent and several stringers; it supplied outtakes of newsfilm to the CIA; established a formal channel of communication between the Washington bureau chief and the Agency; gave the Agency access to the CBS newsfilm library; and allowed reports by CBS correspondents to the Washington and New York newsrooms to be routinely monitored by the CIA. Once a year during the 1950s and early 1960s, CBS correspondents joined the CIA hierarchy for private dinners and briefings.
At the headquarters of CBS News in New York, Paley’s cooperation with the CIA is taken for granted by many news executives and reporters, despite the denials. Paley, 76, was not interviewed by Salant’s investigators. “It wouldn’t do any good,” said one CBS executive. “It is the single subject about which his memory has failed.”
Does the Mafia give up their interest in and/or ownership of buildings, businesses, nightclubs and politicians/cops/judges etc.? No. Bet on it. They just fade further into the background. I speak here from my own up close and personal knowledge and also from the knowledge of people who educated me in the ways of the streets who were on those streets as early as the 1920s.
Is the CIA the most powerful “Mafia” in the world?
Yes, I think that it is. One of them, for sure. And it functions in much the same way as do all gangster conspiracies only in a more complex set of dimensions. Go out drinking with any street gangster who trusts you enough to talk semi-frankly…and again, I have been there, done that in at least three cultures (NYC Italian, NYC street dealers and Japanese yakuza)…and in the end he will tell you some version of “I did it to protect my people”. He’ll believe it, too, and he may not be very far off. They almost all…all except the sociopath nutcases, who I avoid like the plague that they are… see “their people” as being under attack from forces hostile to their well-being, and they all believe that going around the law…said law being in one way or another not particularly interested in taking care of business for whichever segment of society to which they feel allied…is the only way to get some work done. Make a little money on the side? Get involved in some dirty business(es) in the process? Oh well. “I saw my opportunities and I took `em” as the 19th century NYC ward heeler George Washington Plunkitt so honestly stated about his own gangsterish career among the Irish in the book Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics.
Bet on that as well.
That CBS headline?
It is joined by…as of 11:15 AM EDT, 10/6/10…552 other headlines according to Google news.
So…what are we to make of this, including of course the de rigueur denials from “White House sources”, etc. Again…you know…like sports team owners’ kisses of death when they say “There is absolutely no chance of our firing Coach Mxyzptlk.”
The Dems know that they are sunk in the upcoming election. The only thing of which they are not sure is exactly how deeply they will be sunk.
Onward to 2012.
Best bet? Hillary Clinton as Obama’s VP candidate attack dog/white middle class and white older people magnet /Latino fave/female answer to Sarah Palin/voice of experience in international affairs and DC political infighting.
Watch.
In point of fact, Woodward also throws the following piece of bait into the water.
Hillary Clinton could run in her own right in 2016 and be younger than Ronald Reagan when he was elected president.
Hmmmmm….
It’s on folks.
It is on.
Will it happen?
Only time will tell.
As my sainted grandmother always used to say, “There’s many a slip `twixt the cup and the lip.”
Yup.
Thanks, Nan.
You were always right.
Wait, watch and listen. 2012 is already beginning.
Yup.
Watch.
Later…
AG