Trump and the US Military

A long time ago, there was a book [and later a movie] called Seven Days in May.  The story takes place during the Cold War.  The issue at hand is the signing of a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union.  The subsequent ratification thereof sets off a firestorm of protest, especially among the President’s political opposition as well as some members of the military.  The uniformed opposition includes several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including its chairman, USAF General James Mattoon Scott.  The director of the Joint Staff, a USMC Colonel named Jiggs Casey, suspects something is amiss.  He discovers the creation of a unit called ECOMCON [Emergency COMmunications CONtrol], which exists to seize television and radio networks. After doing some digging he concluded that the military will stage a coup d’etat near the time of the running of the Preakness [the second race of the horse racing’s triple crown held the first week of May].  He shared his conclusions with the President.  Casey is personally opposed to the treaty, but he puts his sworn oath to defend the Constitution ahead of his personal feelings in order to stop Gen. Scott’s plan.  The President confronted Gen. Scott about the planned coup in the Oval Office.  What followed was an argument about the American system of government, where if a member of the military, especially a general, disagreed with the policies of the government, the best way to change the system is to take off the uniform and ask for mandate at the ballot box. Gen. Scott was unmoved by the President’s arguments and went ahead with his plan.  To make a long story short, Scott’s plot failed.  While the president was engaged in a press conference about the plot, Scott confronted Casey at the end of the story and asked him a question – does he know who Judas was?  Casey answers “Yes, I know who Judas was. He was a man I worked for and admired until he disgraced the four stars on his uniform.”  I believe that in addition to the usual showings of Twelve O’Clock High in the Air Force’s leadership schools, Seven Days in May should also be required viewing in order to reinforce one of the rock-solid underpinnings of the American system – civilian control of the military services.  It’s a good primer about what the military can and can’t do within the confines of the American system.

Which brings us to the present day.  Seven Days in May is a fictitious “case study” about the limits of the military vis-à-vis the President of the United States.  The following scenario reverses the roles – what the President can/cannot do with the military.  And while Seven Days in May is a work of fiction, this scenario is all too real.  Donald Trump is running for president.  He may very well get the Republican nomination and appear on the November ballot.  But what he says about what he would do about terrorists is unsettling.   In December last year he stated he would order the military to waterboard those who threaten the United States and have their families killed.  In a debate last week, he doubled down on that thought.  He said “Can you imagine these people, these animals over in the Middle East, that chop off heads, sitting around talking and seeing that we're having a hard problem with waterboarding?  When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families."  When asked what he would do if the military refused such orders, he said "They won't refuse. They're not going to refuse me. Believe me.”  It’s as if he was saying “they wouldn’t dare oppose me – I’m Donald Trump!”  Actually Mr. Trump, yes they can, and if they take their enlistment/commission oaths seriously, they just might.  Officers swear an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not a President of the United States.  When people enlist in the armed forces, part of their oath of enlistment says they will obey the orders of the president and of the officers appointed above them according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  I emphasize in italics because this is an important point.  

Is there an obligation to disobey unlawful orders?  Such an obligation is not overtly stated in the UCMJ, but it is inferred.  Article 92 makes it a crime to disobey any lawful order.  Obeying an unlawful order can result in criminal prosecution of the one who obeys it. Military courts have long held that military members are accountable for their actions even while following orders -- if the order was illegal. The Eichmann Defense [“I was just following orders”] does not work.  That the Eichmann Defense is a non-starter is not a modern thing – this goes back to the early days of the Republic.  The earliest case of the Eichmann Defense came in 1799, during this country’s quasi-war with France.  Congress passed a law that said it was okay to seize ships sailing to French ports.  John Adams issued orders to the Navy authorizing seizure of ships not only bound to French ports, but also those traveling from such ports.  The Navy seized a Danish vessel called the Flying Fish.  The owners of the ship sued the captain in maritime court and won.  The Supreme Court upheld the decision, stating that officers who obey illegal presidential orders do so at their own peril.  Uniformed personnel can’t pick and choose which orders are lawful and which ones are not, but every year the military services give each and every member a refresher on things that are against the rules.  Our military is great at two things and two things only – breaking things and killing people.  But in executing those two tasks, there are rules.  Yes, even a thing as heinous as warfare has rules.  These rules are called the Laws of Armed Conflict.  

Laws of Armed Conflict.  Every year each person in uniform is required to undergo training on the Laws of Armed Conflict [LOAC].  The Army’s Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School has put together in a single volume [https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/LOAC-Deskbook-2012.pdf] to help JAGs and others learn about LOAC.  Here the text discusses such things as the treatment of prisoners of war, protections for civilians during wartime, the kind of weapons that can be used in wartime, occupation and post-conflict governance, and war crimes.  I direct your attention to the treatment of non-combatants.  This volume states “One must make a distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Non-combatants may not be directly targeted and must have their rights respected.”  What makes a non-combatant?  The Geneva Conventions define non-combatants as “the wounded and sick, shipwrecked, prisoners of war, and civilians.”  The families of terrorists that Donald Trump wants to target fall into the category of non-combatants.  As much as one would like to make sure that dead terrorists don’t become martyrs for the families they leave behind, we have to leave them alone.   

It was on this basis that Gen. Mike Hayden told Bill Mahrer a couple of weeks ago that a President Trump faces the risk of a military that would refuse any orders to attack and perhaps kill the families of terrorists.  He wasn’t advocating a mutiny or coup d’etat, but he did say that if so ordered by a President Trump, the military could say “no.”  If Donald Trump was paying attention in class while he was attending a military boarding school, he would know this.  But I think he doesn’t know nor care about the “niceties” of warfare.  Since the aforementioned debate Trump has had a change of heart about the targeting of civilians.   In my view he would not have had such a change of heart had he not been called out on it.  If he can change his mind one way, what’s to say he wouldn’t change his mind again once he was elected?  You can make up your own mind about whether Donald Trump has the temperament to be president.  Judging by what he says, I don't think he does.

FBI vs. Apple

On December 2, 2015 Syed Farook and his wife Tafsheen Malik killed 14 people and wounded 22 others in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.  Farook and Malik were killed after the attack.  The FBI is investigating the case, and in so doing got Farook’s iPhone.  They got a warrant to search the phone, but the problem is the phone is locked down so securely that the Feds can’t get in to see what’s inside.  Presumably the cyberwarriors at NSA can’t even break into it.  The FBI can’t get the encryption key from Farook because he’s dead.  Apple doesn’t have it either.  That’s one of their selling points for the iPhone, that they as a company take the security and privacy of their customers very seriously.  They also have plausible deniability in that they can’t surrender to the Feds that which they do not have. The FBI’s solution to their problem is to force Apple to create a security backdoor to compromise the phone’s security.

On February 16^th, Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote an open letter to his customers, “A Message to Our Customers.”  He writes that smartphones (including the iPhone) are such an essential part of our lives that to compromise the security of one’s iPhone can ultimately put our own personal safety at risk.  He reaffirms his company’s dedication to protect the personal data of Apple customers.  He also states that Apple has done everything within their power within the law to help the FBI in this case.  He trusts the FBI’s intentions are good.  But he draws the line at creating something that Apple considers “too dangerous to create.”  He disagrees with the government’s assertion that the tool the FBI wants them to create would be used “only once.”  He equates a tool to break iPhone encryption to a “master key” capable of “opening hundreds of millions of locks from restaurants and banks to stores and homes.” Once the information is known, or a way to bypass the code is revealed, the encryption can be defeated by anyone with that knowledge.  Tim Cook doesn’t want to be a party to enabling the government to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge.

I side with Apple on this score, and here’s why.  I have a bit of a libertarian streak – “the government that governs best governs least.”  While the government is essential to provide necessary things,[promote the general welfare, protect the public health, etc], I find it hard to believe that with all the resources at the government’s disposal that it cannot solve this problem on its own.  I opposed Obamacare because I had a problem with the government telling me that I had to buy health insurance.  I can and do buy health insurance without the government compelling me to do so because it is the prudent thing to do.  Where am I going with this?  If I don’t like the government telling me I have to buy something, I also don’t like the government telling a private business that they must build something, especially since this “something” is for government use.  Now, I don’t usually watch Fox News, but when I do I watch the panel discussion in the latter half of Bret Baier’s show.  Noted conservatives George Will and Charles Krauthammer have both gone on record on this program to say they support the FBI’s position.  Both of these guys don’t hesitate to state whenever it suits them that government needs to stay out of people’s business.  But when it comes to compelling a company to build something, how do they square that with their conservative beliefs?  At least Krauthammer had a unique idea – Apple should welcome the free advertising that their product is so secure even the government can’t hack into it. 

While I support Apple in this matter, I do have a problem with one part of Tim Cook’s argument.  In his open letter he states the following:

“The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers — including tens of millions of American citizens — from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals. The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe.”  

The government wants access to single phone, not many.  If Apple doesn’t want this capability to fall into the hands of “sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals,” then be responsible and don’t make it available to them.  Keep the capability as “proprietary” and don’t share it.  If you can’t do that, destroy the capability after it’s used once.  My feeble mind tells me this is possible, but I could be wrong.  But Apple should not be compelled to do something that I believe the government can do on its own.  I find it hard to believe that the collective ten-pound brains at DARPA and NSA can't solve this problem without Apple's help.

While it is true that corporations are not people, it is also true that corporations cannot function without people.  And people are a funny thing.  Tim Cook is right to be wary of people.  People have feelings – they can get pissed off for whatever reason and decide to share trade secrets to get back at their employers.  People have beliefs – one man’s whistleblower is another man’s traitor [think Edward Snowden].  All it takes is one guy with a certain belief system [rightly or wrongly] to think that too much power is concentrated in too few hands, and in so doing might take exception to being party to creating a tool that will enable the government to snoop virtually anywhere.  And having taken that exception, that individual would have no qualms about making such a capability known to the general public.  If that happens, we all lose.

Alexander Litvinenko - Death of a Defector

Almost ten years ago Russia probably assassinated a British citizen in the heart of London.  A retired British High Court judge who conducted the inquiry into Alexander Litvinenko’s November 2006 death concluded that this act was carried out with Vladimir Putin’s approval.

“I am sure that Mr. Lugovoy and Mr. Kovtun placed the Polonium-210 into the teapot at the Pine Bar and did so with the intention of poisoning Mr. Litvinenko.  The further suggestion that has been made by Mr. Lugovoy that he had been the subject of a “set-up” is simply unsustainable by reference to the objective scientific evidence.  There can be no doubt that Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned by Mr. Lugovoy and Mr. Kovtun.  I have concluded that there is a strong probability that when Mr. Lugovoy poisoned Mr. Litvinenko he did so under the direction of the FSB, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation.  I have further concluded that Mr. Kovtun was also acting under FSB direction, possibly indirectly through Mr. Lugovoy but probably in the knowledge that that was the body for which he was acting.  I have further concluded that the FSB operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr. Patrushev, then head of the FSB, and also by President Putin.” - Sir Robert Owen, 21 Jan 16.

At first the British government refused to conduct an inquiry into Litvinenko’s death so as not to upset the Russian government.  Litvinenko’s widow challenged the decision in the High Court, which overturned the British government’s decision.  The British Home Secretary then appointed retired High Court Judge Sir Robert Owen to conduct the inquiry.  On 21 Jan 16, Sir Robert released the report of his inquiry to the public.  What follows is a synopsis of a 329-page document.

Who was Alexander Litvinenko?  Alexander Litvinenko was a former KGB/FSB officer who defected to the United Kingdom in 2000.  At the time of his death, he was preparing to testify in a Spanish investigation into ties between Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and Russian organized crime groups operating throughout Europe.  Before his defection, he worked in the FSB’s Department for the Investigation and Prevention of Organized Crime, known as URPO.  He alleged there was corruption within, that he had been given orders to assault, kidnap, and even murder people who disagreed with that agency [including fugitive billionaire Boris Berezovsky].  He refused to carry out the orders which he said were “illegal,” and once he went public with his accusations he was dismissed from the FSB in December 1998.  Professor Robert Service was until 2014 Professor of Russian History at Oxford University.  He opined to those conducting the inquiry into Litvinenko’s death that there were those inside the FSB, including Vladimir Putin, thought that going public with his accusations of FSB corruption was the first of a series of occasions on which Litvinenko was guilty of breaching the FSB code of loyalty.

Between November 1998 and September 2000 the FSB tried three times to put Litvinenko away.  The first time they charged him with assaulting a suspect, a charge for which Litvinenko was detained in Lefortovo Prison for eight months.  After his acquittal on this charge in November 1999 the FSB charged him a second time, this time with mishandling suspects and stealing goods during an operation at a Moscow market in which he had been involved several years previously.  The new proceedings collapsed before trial when Litvinenko produced evidence that he had not been at the market on the day in question.  When that case fell apart he was charged with planting evidence on a suspect. Litvinenko was not arrested but his passport was confiscated and he was told not to leave Moscow without permission.  Without his passport Litvinenko managed to leave Russia in October 2000.  Litvinenko applied for asylum in the United Kingdom for himself and his family, which the British Home Office granted in May 2001.

Who are the prime suspects?  Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun.  Lugovoy, who is now a deputy of the Russian Duma, was ex-KGB.  He was part of the KGB’s Ninth Directorate, which was the uniformed bodyguard of Communist Party members and their families.  He transferred to the FSB in 1991 and remained there until 1996.  He was the head of private security for ORT, a television station owned by Berezovsky.  The Berezovsky connection is how Litvinenko and Lugovoy met and became friends.  Kovtun had the same KGB background as Lugovoy.  The two had also known each other since childhood.  After Litvinenko defected to the UK he supposedly told Lugovoy that he was working for British MI6 and that he tried to recruit Lugovoy to be a MI6 agent.  Mr. Litvinenko told him that he was working with the Spanish secret services against the Russian mafia operating in Spain, and moreover that Mr. Litvinenko suggested to Mr. Lugovoy that he join him in this work.  After this, Lugovoy informed the FSB.

What is Polonium-210?  Polonium-210 is a naturally occurring radioactive material that emits highly hazardous alpha (positively charged) particles. Although it occurs naturally in the environment, acquiring enough of it to kill would require individuals with expertise and connections.  Those connections would need access to sophisticated lab facilities [like a particle accelerator] as well as a nuclear reactor in order to produce enough to kill someone.  It has to be ingested in order to be deadly, so it could be easily transported in a glass vial.
 

Why Kill Litvinenko?  In 2001, Litvinenko published Blowing Up Russia.  The subject of the book was the apartment bombings that had taken place around Russia in September 1999.  Nearly 300 people were killed in four different explosions that were blamed on Chechen separatists.  But Litvinenko alleged the bombings were the work of the FSB in order to provide justification of the Second Chechen War.  As Vladimir Putin was elevated from FSB Director to Russian Prime Minister just a month before the bombings, he was the one to benefit from the reaction to the bombings and public support for the war.  These factors assisted Putin’s political rise in the following months that culminated in his election as Russian president in March 2000.  This was Vladimir Putin’s “original sin.”

In 2002, Litvinenko wrote a second book, The Gang from the Lubyanka.  The book took the form of transcripts of interviews between Litvinenko and a Russian journalist named Akram Murtazaev.  It is a record of Litvinenko’s own experiences in Russia in the years before he had left, as well as allegations of corruption and other criminality on behalf of the FSB in general and Vladimir Putin in particular.  Litvinenko suggested links between Putin and the Tambov Group [based in Putin’s hometown St. Petersburg].  Litvinenko discovered evidence that the Tambov group was engaged in smuggling heroin from Afghanistan via Uzbekistan and St Petersburg to Western Europe.  Litvinenko was convinced there was cooperation between the Tambrov group and both Vladimir Putin and Nikolai Patrushev, then head of the FSB.

In July 2006, Litvinenko published an article on the Chechenpress website in which he accused Putin of being a pedophile.  To quote his article:

“A few days ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin walked from the Big Kremlin Palace to his Residence. At one of the Kremlin squares, the president stopped to chat with the tourists. Among them was a boy aged 4 or 5.

’What is your name?’ Putin asked.

'Nikita,’ the boy replied.

Putin knee[le]d, lifted the boy’s T-shirt and kissed his stomach.

The world public is shocked. Nobody can understand why the Russian president did such a strange thing as kissing the stomach of an unfamiliar small boy.

The explanation may be found if we look carefully at the so-called ‘blank spots’ in Putin’s biography.

After graduating from the Andropov Institute, which prepares officers for the KGB intelligence service, Putin was not accepted into the foreign intelligence. Instead, he was sent to a junior position in KGB Leningrad Directorate. This was a very unusual twist for a career of an Andropov Institute’s graduate with fluent German. Why did that happen with Putin?

Because, shortly before his graduation, his bosses learned that Putin was a pedophile [sic]. So say some people who knew Putin as a student at the Institute.

The Institute officials feared to report this to their own superiors, which would cause an unpleasant investigation. They decided it was easier just to avoid sending Putin abroad under some pretext. Such a solution is not unusual for the secret services.

Many years later, when Putin became the FSB director and was preparing for the presidency, he began to seek and destroy any compromising materials collected against him by the secret services over earlier years. It was not difficult, provided he himself was the FSB director. Among other things, Putin found videotapes in the FSB Internal Security directorate, which showed him making sex with some underage boys.”

Do you think Vladimir noticed this challenge to his manhood?  But this article begs a question – if Putin wasn’t accepted into foreign intelligence, how did he get posted to East Germany?

The Polonium Trail.
The London Metropilitan Police did their due diligence by employing standard techniques such as interviewing Litvinenko’s friends and associates, investigating the movements of persons of interest, interrogating telephone records and seizing and viewing closed circuit television (CCTV) footage.  Forensic scientists were sent to conduct tests for alpha radiation at a series of locations across London and, subsequently, beyond. The results demonstrated widespread radioactive contamination at locations that had been linked to Lugovoy, Kovtun and Litvinenko in a period of a little over two weeks from mid-October 2006 until the onset of Litvinenko’s fatal illness in early November 2006.

Where was Polonium-210 contamination found?

• On the seats on which Lugovoy and Kovtun sat on their 18 Oct 06 flight to Moscow;
• In a boardroom where a meeting between Litvinenko, Lugovoy, and Kovtun occurred on 16 Oct 06 [Kovtun and Lugovoy made their first poisoning attempt here];
• At the Pescatori Restaurant where Lugovoy and Kovtun the night of 16 Oct 06;
• A hotel bar named Dar Marrakesh, where Lugovoy purchased a shisha pipe the night of 16 Oct 06;
• Rooms 107 and 308 of a Best Western Hotel where Lugovoy and Kovtun stayed 16 Oct 06 [Lugovoy – 107; Kovtun – 308].  Room 107 was more contaminated;
• Rooms 23 and 25 of the Parkes Hotel in Knightsbridge where Lugovoy and Kovtun stayed 17 Oct 06 [Lugovoy – 23; Kovtun – 25];
• A meeting room at the CPL offices on 58 Grosvenor Street where Lugovoy and Kovtun met with a Dr. Shadrin on 17 Oct 06;
• A meeting room at RISC, 1 Cavendish Place where Lugovoy and Kovtun had another business meeting on 17 Oct 06;
• Various places visited by Kovtun in Hamburg, Germany prior to his return to London on 1 Nov 06;
• Seat 23D of British Airways Flight 873 from Moscow to London.  This seat was occupied by Lugovoy on the 31 Oct 06 flight;
• Rooms 441 [Lugovoy] and 382 [Kovtun] of the Millennium Hotel;
• The teapot at the Pine Bar from which Litvinenko drank on 1 Nov 06;
• The table in the Pine Bar where Litvinenko, Lugovoy, and Kovtun met on 1 Nov 06;
• The Emirates Stadium where Lugovoy and a group of people went to a football match.  Contamination was found in a block of seats bought by Lugovoy’s group;
• Seat 16F, Lugovoy’s seat on British Airways Flight 874 – the flight he took back to Moscow on 3 Nov 06

In 2010, Lugovoy sent a gift to Berezovsky.  The gift was a black T-shirt.  The writing on the front of the shirt said “POLONIUM-210 CSKA LONDON, HAMBURG To Be Continued”, while the back said “CSKA Moscow Nuclear Death Is Knocking Your Door”.

Lugovoy claimed he was framed. 

“I was framed. I suspect this was some British intelligence operation involving Litvinenko and possibly Berezovsky that went wrong. I was contaminated by Litvinenko or someone else, not the other way round. I think polonium was planted on us and left in places we visited, to frame us.”

Where did the Polonium-210 come from?
Professor Norman Dombey, Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Sussex provided expert testimony.  He had extensive practical knowledge of polonium-210 production in Russia from his many international contacts.  He explained the polonium-210 production program was done at two former closed cities, both of which were initially connected with the production of nuclear weapons.  The production was in two steps – irradiation of bismuth and recovery of polonium-210 from the irradiated bismuth.  The first step took place in a facility at the Mayak facility [formerly known as Chelyabinsk], the second at the Avangard facility in Sarov [formerly known as Arzamas-16].  Professor Dombey admitted it was possible for the polonium to be produced somewhere else, but Sir Robert concluded the use of polonium as a weapon suggests Russian state involvement.  His reasoning is that ordinary criminals would be expected to use a more straightforward, less sophisticated means of killing Litvinenko.

Aftermath of the Litvinenko murder
The British government requested extradition of Lugovoy and Kovtun, but the Russians refused.  Putin awarded a medal to Lugovoy “for services to the fatherland” after Litvinenko’s murder.  Sir Robert viewed this act as a deliberate sign of public support from Putin.  Putin did the same thing with Ramzan Kadyrov after the assassination of Boris Nemtsov.

How were Vladimir Putin and Nikolai Patrushev involved?

Yuri Shvets, like Litvinenko, was ex-KGB.  He was a contemporary of Vladimir Putin and retired from the KGB in 1990.  From 1985-87, he worked in the Soviet Embassy in the KGB’s First Main Directorate as the KGB equivalent of a CIA station chief.  After he retired, he sought and was granted asylum in the United States.  He wrote a book about his time in the KGB - Washington Station: My Life as a KGB Spy in America. He and Litvinenko met in 2002 and worked together until Litvinenko’s death.  Sir Robert relied on him as an expert witness. 

When asked if an operation to kill Litvinenko could have taken place without Vladimir Putin’s knowledge, Shvets replied:

“I strongly believe that it couldn’t be done without Vladimir Putin’s knowledge, because of one of the key traditions of the KGB. Any general, including Mr Ivanov or any other FSB general, before issuing an order to assassinate Sasha or anybody else in Russia or outside Russia, would think about covering his back just in case. This is a KGB rule number one, cover your back, and covering your back is to get approval from your superior, especially in Russia where they say about developing this structure, straight line structure of leadership, where the boss – there is just one single boss who makes all the important decisions. So I rule out basically the possibility that a decision to assassinate Sasha or anybody else outside of Russia would have been made without approval of the top authority of Russia, which is Vladimir Putin.”

Shvets paints a picture of the KGB/FSB as being a risk-adverse organization.  They practice CYA as much as our own bureaucrats.

Tony’s Thoughts:  Having read the entire document, there are lots of “probable” and statements of “I guess” and “I sure”.  This makes for a good narrative that Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated by the FSB with the full knowledge and support of Vladimir Putin.  But [and there’s always a “but”], there are enough gray areas in this document that could cast doubt.  The preponderance of the evidence would probably be good enough to get a judgment in a civil case, but in a criminal case this reads more like an indictment.  I think the events happened just as they have been laid out in this document.  Good luck proving it in court.

October 1956

It started in February 1956.  The occasion was the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s XXth Congress, the first such party meeting to be held after Joseph Stalin’s death.  On the last day of the congress [February 25^th], Nikita Khrushchev delivered the Secret Speech.  In this six-hour marathon, Khrushchev detailed Stalin’s crimes – a criticism of his dictatorial methods, the terror of the 1930s, the relocation of entire populations, and his incompetence that nearly brought the Soviet Union to ruin in World War II.  He conveniently left out his own role in Stalin’s reign of terror.  He was careful to praise Communism while criticizing Stalin.  But he took the opportunity to club the dead guy and those who supported him as a way to affirm his own grip on power.  No foreigners were allowed to hear the speech, but transcriptions of the speech were subsequently distributed to the Soviet Union’s satellites in Eastern Europe.  Once the speech hit the streets in Poland, the fun and games began.

Poland

Prior to 1956, however, Poland was implementing Soviet-style central planning via its First Six-Year Plan.  Polish United Workers’ Party chief Boleslaw Bierut executed plays from the Stalinist playbook of the Soviets’ first Five Year Plan.  Emphasis was on accelerating development of heavy industry, collectivizing agriculture by force, and a rigid command economy.  Communist Poland became a mirror of the Soviet Union – a police state with rigid ideological regimentation that persecuted the Roman Catholic Church.  The Communists imprisoned Polish Prelate Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski and eight other high Polish Catholics.  Like the Soviet Union, collectivization of Polish agriculture met with strong peasant resistance.  But unlike the Soviets, the Polish Communists didn’t instigate a terror-famine to bring the peasants to heel.

Two weeks after Khrushchev’s speech, Bierut died.  In 1948 Bierut had won a power struggle with Wladyslaw Gomulka.  At that time Stalin thought of Gomulka as a Titoist because Gomulka had disagreed with him about the “Polish way to socialism.”  For Stalin, his way – the Soviet way - was the only way.  Gomulka, like Tito in Yugoslavia, disagreed with the “one size fits all” approach.  This line of thinking got Gomulka stripped of power and thrown in jail.  But Gomulka was a rare thing – he was a Communist who was popular.  Gomulka was a Polish Communist who fought the Nazis in the Polish Underground – Bierut fled to Soviet-occupied Poland after the Nazis attacked in 1939 so he could avoid military service.  He spent four years in the Soviet Union during the war.  He was Stalin’s man.  After Stalin died, he was seen as an enemy of the Polish people, and Bierut was guilty by association.  After Bierut’s death, he was succeeded by Edward Ochab, but a schism between reformers and conservatives in the Polish United Workers’ Party [PZPR] showed itself.

Polish attitudes toward the Soviet Union were shaped by events of World War II.  One event that fed Polish antagonism toward the Soviets was the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.  While the Polish Home Army and the Nazis fought in Warsaw, the Red Army sat on the banks of the Vistula River.  They didn’t lift a finger to help the Polish uprising.  That left the Nazis a free hand to destroy the outmanned and outgunned Polish Home Army.  The Soviets had also perpetrated the Katyń massacre.  As part of the Secret Protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, the Soviet Union occupied the eastern half of Poland.  During the occupation, Stalin’s NKVD executed over 10,000 Polish officers in the Katyń Forest.  Russian officers of Polish descent served in the Polish Army, most notably Marshal of the Soviet Union Konstantin Rokossovsky.  At Moscow’s insistence, Rokossovsky was Poland’s Minister of Defense.   Stalinism was felt in Poland in several ways:  the state security apparatus was large, political dissidents were imprisoned, and there was an iron-fisted rule that was heavily reliant on fear.  And there was the Six-Year Plan…

During the implementation of the Six-Year Plan, the standard of living started falling.  The workers were overworked and underpaid, denied bonuses, and saw their benefits cut. Working conditions deteriorated and there were shortages of food and popular consumer goods.  Farmers who owned medium and large farms found themselves on the verge of bankruptcy – such was the intended effect of collectivization.  The farmers didn’t produce as much, resulting in the food shortages in cities like Poznań.  The proletariat had enough.  Workers from the Joseph Stalin Poznań Metal Works walked off the job on June 28, 1956.  They were joined by workers from other factories in Poznań until their ranks swelled into the thousands.  This evolved into a general strike.  Quietly, they marched toward the city center.  Their intent was to force the PZPR and the city council to negotiate better living and working conditions.  But the character of this huge demonstration turned from economic to political.  The mood was anti-Communist and anti-Soviet.  They shouted slogans:  "We want bread ", "We are hungry", "Away with workforce exploitation!", "We want a free Poland", "Freedom", "Away with Bolshevism", "—we demand free elections under the UN control!", "Away with Russkis", "Away with the Russians!", "Away with communists", "Away with the red bourgeoisie!", "We want God".  They forced their way into the local party headquarters.  Rumors spread that a delegation of workers sent to negotiate with the authorities was detained, and the crowd broke into a local prison to free them.  In the process, they liberated small arms and ammunition.  Some protesters headed to the local office for Public Security.  Then things got really ugly when gunfire was exchanged between the protesters and the police.  More groups of armed protesters seized and disarmed local police stations in Poznań.  The strike spread to Luboń, Swarzędz and Kostrzyn.  Then the authorities called in the army – two armored divisions and two infantry divisions [approximately 10,000 troops and 360 tanks].  It took them two days to restore order.  Casualty totals vary from source to source.  Some say 70 protesters were killed, others say 57 or 58.  Between 600-700 protesters were wounded.  The casualty totals were relatively low, but the party bosses in Warsaw were shaken by the workers’ protest against the self-proclaimed workers’ state.

Word of the events in Poznań spread across the country.  Poles across the country began to voice their dissatisfaction with the state of their lives.  They too wanted higher wages and better working conditions.  They too wanted more food.  The Communist leadership in Poland realized much change was needed to avoid another Poznań.  In August 1956, Wladyslaw Gomulka was rehabilitated and readmitted to the PZPR.  People across the country were hopeful that Gomulka would return to power.  The thinking was if Gomulka was in power, the events in Poznań wouldn’t have happened.  There was hope that the man who was imprisoned for his defiance of Stalin would restore the Polish nation.  But Gomulka was not restored to power just yet.  Those arrested in Poznań were put on trial in late-September 1956.  Unlike in Stalin’s time, these trials were not held in secret.  The treatment of those arrested was discussed openly. People across the country followed the trials closely.  The mood across the country was one of apprehension – Poznań could happen again, only this time on a national scale.

On October 12, Gomulka expressed the need for a more equal relationship between Poland and the Soviet Union.  He wanted Russian troops out of Poland and wanted to end the forced export of goods to the Soviet Union.  Though he wanted Russian troops to be gone, Gomulka wanted to reform the system, not abolish it.  He wanted more independence for Poland, but didn’t want to sever links with Moscow.  Several days later Gomulka met with the PZPR Politburo, and the press announced he would participate in the 8^th Plenum of the PZPR.  On October 19^th Poland received some uninvited guests from Moscow – Khrushchev, Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan and Lazar Kaganovich.  These Soviet leaders wanted to prevent the Plenum from happening, but they failed.  The following day Gomulka was unanimously elected the First Secretary of the PZPR – he was back in charge.  Khrushchev had told Gomulka that he would use Soviet troops to restore order in Poland.  Gomulka invited him to try, but also told him that Russian moves would be met with armed resistance by the Polish army.  Units from the Group of Soviet Forces in western Poland were advancing on Warsaw.  But a funny thing happened – Khrushchev blinked.  Gomulka assured him he wanted to maintain the Communist system in Poland.  Marshal Konev’s troops were ordered back to their barracks and Khrushchev’s delegation went home.

The Red Army didn’t go home, but changes to Poland’s leadership did come.  Rokossovsky was sent packing, as well as 32 Soviet generals and colonels serving in the Polish army.  Conservatives were purged from the Politburo.  Cardinal Wyszynski was released from jail.  Workers in some sectors of the economy were given higher wages.  Compulsory exports to the Soviet Union weren’t eliminated, but they were reduced.  Taxes on farmers were reduced, and collectivization of agriculture was reversed.  There was tangible progress on the social and economic fronts, although it wasn’t to last very long.  The big takeaway from what has been called the Polish October was that the citizenry complained, and instead of a massive nationwide crackdown, those who were in charge listened.  People in Hungary who were chafing under the Soviet yoke followed the events in Poland closely.  They hoped they get a similar deal with the Soviets as the Poles got.  Things didn’t turn out that way.

Hungary

The parallels between what occurred in Poland and what would happen in Hungary shortly thereafter are uncanny.  Like in Poland, the Soviet Red Army liberated Hungary from the Nazis.  And like their compatriots in Poland, Soviet troops in Hungary didn’t go home after World War II ended.  Like Poland, there was an intense drive to collectivize agriculture and industrialize that nearly left the country in ruin.  Hungary had its own version of Boleslaw Bierut – his name was Mátyás Rákosi.  After the Communists solidified their grip on power by 1949, the self-styled ‘Stalin’s best pupil’ had over 300,000 Hungarians purged – they were either exiled, locked up, or killed.  Shortly after Stalin’s death in March 1953, Rákosi was replaced by the kinder, gentler Imre Nagy.  Nagy released political prisoners, there was stuff in stores for people to buy, and life improved.  But after two years, Nagy was too popular for Kremlin tastes.  Rákosi made a comeback.  Repression returned, but the deposed Nagy was still popular.  Nobody liked Rákosi, so after a year he was replaced [again] by a guy who was equally hard-line as Rákosi, Erno Gero.  The face of the Communist party changed, but the policies didn’t.  Hungary’s version of the KGB [the AVO, or AVH depending on which translation you subscribe to] continued to arrest and jail people. 

Here’s where the parallels between Poland and Hungary stop.  In Hungary, dissent against the ruling class came from university students, not the industrial workers as had been the case in Poland.  On October 23, 1956 students who were inspired by what happened in Poland staged a peaceful protest.  They had a list of sixteen demands.  Among those demands:

-          a new government led by Imre Nagy;

-          all leaders of the Stalin-Rákosi era be immediately relieved of their duties;

-          multi-party elections for a new National Assembly;

-          abolishing the compulsory teaching of Russian in schools;

-          removal of Soviet troops from Hungary

When the protest began it numbered about 20,000 people.  Later that evening the number was 200,000.   They tore red stars from buildings, and pulled down a statue of Stalin [leaving only the boots].  They were chanting “Russians go home!”  Police opened fire and killed several people.  Then Gero sent in the Army, but the troops wouldn’t fire on their own people.  Faced with this development, Gero declared martial law and asked for Soviet “assistance.”  The Soviet tanks arrived early the next morning.  The Soviets put Imre Nagy back in charge of the government.  The sight of Soviet tanks killing Hungarians shocked the Communisty party Central Committee, and they replaced Gero with János Kádár, a Nagy ally. Khrushchev thought it best to kill the Hungarians with kindness rather than with tanks.  This didn’t last long.

On October 28, Soviet troops left Hungary.  Political parties that had been banned before now reformed [Smallholders Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Petofi Peasants Party].  People lynched hundreds of AVO.  The citizens of Budapest took over radio stations.  Here’s where things began to go wrong for Hungary.  Nagy promised multi-party elections and a coalition government.  In Poland, Gomulka convinced his Soviet masters that Poland would remain a one-party state.  In Hungary, Nagy was promising to share power with others.  He also declared Hungarian neutrality [like Austria in 1955], promised withdrawal for the Warsaw Pact, and wanted Soviet troops gone.  This was the bridge too far for the Kremlin.  Operation Whirlwind combined air strikes, artillery, and the coordinated tank-infantry action of 17 divisions. Soviet artillery and tank fire was heard in all districts of Budapest.  The Hungarian Army put up sporadic and uncoordinated resistance. On November 4^th, the Soviet tanks [about 1000 of them] came back to Budapest.  At 5:20 a.m. on November 4, Nagy broadcast his final plea to the nation and the world, announcing that Soviet Forces were attacking Budapest and that the Government remained at its post:

‘This is Imre Nagy speaking. Today at daybreak Soviet forces started an attack against our capital, obviously with the intention to overthrow the legal Hungarian democratic government. Our troops are still fighting; the Government is still in its place. I notify the people of our country and the entire world of this fact.’

That was the last anyone heard from Imre Nagy.  The ‘entire world’ that Nagy had appealed to, ignored him.  On the afternoon of the 4^th, Nagy sought refuge in the Yugoslav embassy.  About 4,000 Hungarians were killed, and approximately 200,000 fled to Austria.  After Nagy fled, the Soviets replaced him with János Kádár.  Thousands were executed or imprisoned by Kadar’s regime in reprisal.  Nagy, lured out of the embassy by a promise of safe passage to Belgrade, a promise written by Kádár himself, was arrested and taken to Romania. Later, he was smuggled back into Hungary, charged with treason, tried and was hung on 16 June 1958. He was buried in an unmarked grave within the prison yard where he was held.  Kádár ruled Hungary with an iron fist until May 1988.

U.S. Reaction

How did the United States react to the events in Hungary?  Not well.  The Eisenhower Administration paid lip service to the Hungarian struggle against the Soviets, but as far as any tangible aid was concerned, none was forthcoming.  US actions didn’t match its rhetoric.  During the 1952 presidential campaign, John Foster Dulles and other Republicans denounced the Truman strategy of containment.  Republicans favored a strategy of rollback, the policy of pressuring the Soviets out of Eastern Europe, possibly through military means, and, in effect, liberating the “captive nations” that had previously been “liberated” by the Soviets at the end of the Second World War.  While Dulles’ rhetoric about rollback was meant to satisfy the McCarthys of the Republican party, the Hungarians truly believed it.  Unbeknownst to them, rollback was more a slogan than official policy.  Hungarian émigré journalists at Radio Free Europe’s Voice of Free Hungary in Munich fed Dulles’s liberation and rollback propaganda to Eastern Europe for years.  During the revolution, RFE Hungarian language programs not only broadcast news of the situation, it also appealed to Hungarians to fight the Soviets.  In an internal review of RFE after the revolution, one broadcast ["Special Short World Press Review" #1 of November 4^th] was singled out as having violated policy against raising false hope for those in captive nations.  This broadcast hinted that ‘help was on the way’:

"If the Soviet troops really attack Hungary, if our expectations should hold true and Hungarians hold-out for three or four days, then the pressure upon the government of the United States to send military help to the Freedom Fighters will become irresistible!"

Other broadcasts gave Hungarians instructions on how to make Molotov Cocktails, how to sabotage railroads and telephone lines, and they clearly implied foreign aid was coming.  Where the Voice of Free Poland had urged restraint by protesters during the Polish October, the Voice of Free Hungary went the other way in encouraging resistance.  A Hungarian fighter named Aniko Vajda said the following:

"Radio Free Europe, they were saying, "hang on for three weeks. Three more weeks, we come in. We help you." So we fight for the last drop of blood we were holding onto. And what happened was, it was lying to us. Nobody came."

RFE didn’t do Imre Nagy any favors.  Without real actionable intelligence, RFE Hungarian émigré broadcasters made defamatory statements about him.  One broadcaster, Janos Olvedi, stated: 

"Instead of introducing real reforms, the [Nagy] regime tried to solve every problem by introducing only half-measures. They ignore the will of the people. Instead of setting up a popular representation, they continued to govern by way of a sham parliament."

Another broadcaster, Andor Gellert, said:

"Imre Nagy agreed to the invasion of Soviet troops. Already on this very day this step of his is put down as one of the greatest acts of treachery in Hungary's history. And this will be remembered forever. Imre Nagy, who covered his hands in Hungarian blood ... where are the traitors ... who are the murderers? Imre Nagy and his government ... only Cardinal Mindszenty has spoken out fearlessly."

These broadcasts [and others] reflected the US government’s loss of faith in Nagy, discrediting Nagy’s ability to control the public and doubting his popularity.

Hungary was a victim of other concurrent events.  On October 29, the UK, France and Israel invaded Egypt.  Months earlier, Gamel Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal.  The British and the French wanted it back.  The Israelis were more than willing to help.  All three countries are American allies.  The Americans found it difficult to criticize Soviet actions in Hungary while their own allies were doing the same thing in Egypt.  The Eisenhower Administration was more engaged in the Suez Crisis, proving that it couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time.  Adding to the Hungarians’ woes was the 1956 American presidential election.  While Eisenhower’s advisors were dealing with Suez, there was an election to be won.  Hungary was not on the back burner – it wasn’t even on the same stove as the Suez Crisis.

Eisenhower knew there was no way the US could help Hungary militarily, and he said as much.  Hungary is a landlocked country, then surrounded by Soviet satellites and Austria, which had declared its permanent neutrality in 1955.  There was no way to get American and/or NATO troops to Hungary without starting a war with the Soviets.  But that was no consolation to the Hungarians.  The Soviets had their Eastern European buffer zone and were in no mood to lose it.  The Chinese Communists pressured the Soviets into not giving in, and so they didn’t.

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was not the United States’ finest hour.  It was here that policymakers were given a heavy dose of reality, that words alone can’t change the behavior of brutal regimes.  They were also taught [I’m not sure the lesson was ‘learned’] that words have consequences.  To raise expectations of a captive people and not follow up the rhetoric with action is a very quick way to lose credibility in the eyes of those captive peoples.  The Cold War continued until the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.  Hungary was stuck with János Kádár until 1988.  On the 31^st anniversary of his execution, Imre Nagy was given a hero’s burial in a ceremony attended by more than 100,000 people.  Later that year, the People’s Republic of Hungary ceased to exist, replaced by the Republic of Hungary.  As fate would have it, this momentous occasion happened on October 23, 1989 – the 33^rd anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution.