Dismemberment of Command:  America’s Military Shakeup

By Gordon Duff and New Eastern Outlook

 
It is a quiet autumn in Washington, warm seasonable breezes waft over the empty spaces. The government is shut down, victim of a constitutional crisis decades old that has allowed one or more branches of government to fall under the control of a minority party with less than 25% approval.
Worse still, due to procedural oddities, this minority, currently cited by most as having extremist beliefs, is capable of paralyzing not just America but mounting a threat against the world economy as well.
Within this framework, in these last few days of warmth and peace between summer and the onset of America’s consumer driven holiday frenzy, something else, something more dark, more sinister surfaces.
I received the email today from a senior officer in America’s Strategic Air Command:
“Gordon, during the last few days, America’s two top nuclear commanders have been dismissed for reasons none of us understand or believe. Can you get to the bottom of it?”
America’s military and intelligence community runs on gossip. There is no operational security, there are no secrets. This is a myth. Every command, every program, every event is reported, always gossip; you just have to be tied to the right insider social networks and you get everything.
We all knew the military was being “cleaned up.” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General “Marty” Dempsey, when he assumed America’s top military command, filled a position that had been virtually vacant for over a decade.
That decade and more had been filled with failures of command, dozens of them, at the highest levels, numerous inexplicable and often senseless violations of good order and discipline. Moreover, many of those violations bordered on or exceeded the necessary prerequisites to qualify as war crimes or treason.
There had always been a “revolving door” in Washington, carefully groomed military careers could propel “armchair generals” to weighty positions with defense contractors, think tanks or mysteriously funded “chairs” at prestigious universities.
Thus when General Richard Myer, a predecessor of Dempsey, while testifying before the 9/11 Commission, when unable to explain the many failures of command structures and defense protocols that allowed the attacks to proceed surprised none.
In fact, he had only assumed the chair of the Joint Chiefs a few days before 9/11. His tenure, until 2005, saw two illegal wars, a drug empire built in Afghanistan, trillions of dollars disappear in defense funding and the military itself purged of all commanders who failed to pass a political “purity test” established by Vice President Cheney.
Dempsey’s role as “house cleaner” has reached into the pinnacle of America’s nuclear command structure at a critical time, and not by coincidence.
There has been no reporting in the mainstream media regarding the 180-degree turnabout in American policy over both Syria and Iran in the past few weeks. In fact, those policies changed overnight.
The reason was never given and, even more curiously, never questioned. One day, the US was ready to rain missiles onto Syria. Anything Russia said, no matter how much supporting documentation was offered, was discarded. America had returned to the unilateralism of the Bush presidency.
Secretary of State Kerry announced to the world that the Assad government in Syria was responsible for large-scale chemical warfare in the environs of Syria’s own capitol city. Kerry had exact numbers of casualties, details on radio intercepts and full satellite data on the attacks themselves.
Then he didn’t
It was found that the radio intercepts came from “Group 8200,” identified by Colonel James Hanke, former Defense Attaché to Israel as a Mossad psychological operations unit. The “intercepts” were invented.

What follows is worse; if the intercepts were invented and the intercepts established whose forces were in control of the areas the chemical weapons were launched from, then data on the launchings was not just erroneous but totally wrong.
This began in investigation. There were also HUMINT (HUman INTelligence) sources that filled in Kerry’s “intelligence mosaic.” When a process was initiated to verify those sources, they simply disappeared “in a puff of smoke.”
The result of this investigation, one that will never be made public, is that, within both the Pentagon and White House, individuals responsible for collating and reporting intelligence to cabinet members, members of congress and even the president were, in actuality, espionage agents.
They were and are “moles.” Washington is reliving the fictional reality of a John Le Carre novel.
Further examinations of policy documents submitted covered intelligence on Iran. National Intelligence Estimates and reports from the IAEA had found that Iran had accounted for all nuclear material. Claims that Iran had diverted material for “high level enrichment” were, in fact, not just insubstantial but purposefully so.
In fact, the pattern is slowly tracing back to 9/11 and before, including any and all intelligence that led to the attacks on both Iraq and Afghanistan but much more.
As an aside, we take a second to look at Afghanistan. The former First Secretary of the Soviet and Russian embassies in Kabul was Colonel Eugene Khrushchev, a longtime friend. Gene, an expert on the region and co-editor at VT, is deeply suspicious of US involvement in the sudden and inexplicable growth in narcotics production in Afghanistan.
“Gene” as I call him, cited pronouncements by former US Envoy, Richard Holbrooke that demonstrated somewhat more than “passive support” for what had been a very small opium production issue and what had now become a massive heroin production and distribution industry.
None of this would have been possible, not under America’s military occupation of Afghanistan, without full complicity of American commanders.
Similarly, in Iraq, hundreds of billions of dollars of dollars, aid funding, military supplies, weapons, disappeared, all under close military scrutiny.
Prior to that, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld had unearthed over two trillion dollars in defense accounting “errors.”

Our question is a simple one; what happens when we take a military command authority whose normal good order and discipline is impacted by political extremism and an “unreliable” electoral process to which you throw billions of dollars of potential bribes and payoffs into the mix?
Then take this military command, now little more than a “street gang,” and arm it to the teeth, stoke it up on race hatred and religious bigotry, tell it that it is above any rule of law and loose it on half the planet.
How then does the context change, when top nuclear officers are removed, commanders of the most devastating weapons arsenals imagined?
One more thing to add into the mix, missing nuclear weapons. When Fox News today reported the firing of General Michael Carey, they were careful to cite that his removal was not over missing nuclear weapons.
One might ask; when is a denial an accusation?
Over the past six years, there have been two major command shakeups with American strategic nuclear forces. In 2007, Minot Air Force Base, a leading American nuclear defense facility accidentally misplaced an unknown number of thermonuclear warheads, ostensibly “mistakenly” shipping them to another base without authority or necessary record keeping.
Six weapons were listed as recovered. The launch/storage device used was designed to hold nine.
The American form of government was intended to not only separate “church and state” but put the military under civilian control. What does one do when those lines are blurred?
How does one restore accountability?
Moreover, based on recent events, there is an undeniable pattern that something out of the world of fiction, perhaps “Dr. Strangelove” or “Seven Days in May” has or nearly may have transpired.
Many feel an inexplicable relief that we have all come very close to a great catastrophe and are now pulling back. Those who express such inexplicable beliefs may well be justified.

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of VT. Especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

Gordon Duff

Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.

Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.

Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.

• Gordon’s Archives:  2008-2015
• Gordon’s Archives:  2016-2022