# Think Tank > History >  The Real Ronald Reagan - Exposing the Myth

## FrankRep

*The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline*
- James Perloff, 1988



*Chapter 11 - A Second Look at Ronald Reagan*


*Reagan and the Establishment*

After Mao Tse-tung took power in 1949 with help from the State Department, the cry in America was "Who lost China?" In the Autumn 1979 Foreign Affairs, editor William P. Bundy wrote a piece called "Who lost Patagonia? Foreign Policy in the 1980 Campaign." Bundy patently feared that Jimmy Carter's foreign intrigues world revive deep scrutiny in the U.S. Government and its Establishment connection. His article contended that our allies were falling apart on their own; that it was happenstance that this occurred "on Jimmy Carter's watch"; and that there should be no "reckless charges," like those raised about postwar China.

Many Americans, however, had different ideas. Even those unfamiliar with the Establishment and its _modus operandi_ sensed something very wrong with Jimmy Carter's foreign policy. Though the major media kept mum, smaller publications joined with conservatives in stripping the Trilateralist of his farm boy mask.

Even campaigner Ronald Reagan hopped on the bandwagon, addressing Trilateral monopolization of the Carter regime. (See, for example, the February 8, 1980 New York Times.) This help Reagan win the backing of Main Street conservatives and primary victories over George Bush, who was known as the Establishment's Republican in 1980. David Rockefeller, Edwin Rockefeller, Helen Rockefeller, Laurence Rockefeller, Mary Rockefeller, and Godfrey Rockefeller all gave the maximum contribution allowable under law to Bush, a true Establishment scion. His father, along with Robert Lovett, had been a partner in Brown Brothers Harriman - Averell Harriman's international banking firm. George Bush was a Skull and Bonesman, a director of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Trilateral Commission. He shrewdly resigned from the latter two as he initiated his campaign.

Ronald Reagan thus began by playing the Goldwater of 1980. But soon he proved that his Hollywood training was not for naught. Carey McWilliams noted in the Los Angeles Times in July of that year:


It is my belief that the Establishment - that elusive but very real force in American life - has of recent weeks opted decisively for Ronald Reagan.

In the August 1980 Playboy, Robert Scheer reported:


Prior to the New Hampshire primary, David Rockefeller convened a secret meeting of like-minded Republicans aimed at developing a strategy for stopping Reagan by supporting Bush and, failing that, getting Gerald Ford into the race. Reagan heard about the meeting and was, according to one aide, "really hurt." This aide reports that Reagan turned to him and demanded, "What have they got against me? I support big oil, I support big business, who don't they trust me?" ...

In any event, when Reagan scored his resounding triumph in New Hampshire in February, the overtures to the East began to work. New York establishment lawyer Bill Casey (CFR), who became campaign director the day of the New Hampshire victory, began building bridges and promising that a more moderate Reagan would emerge after the Republican Convention.

Indeed, one did. Reagan picked Bush for his running mate, and after the election, put together a transition team that included 28 CFR men, among them the eternal John J. McCloy. As President, his appointed more than 80 individuals to his administration who were members of the Council, the Trilateral Commission, or both.

For his Chief of Staff (later Treasury Secretary), Reagan designated James Baker, who had been Bush's campaign manager.

For Treasury Secretary (later Chief of Staff) he chose Donald Regan, a Harvard-Wall Street-CFR man.

His original Secretary of State was Alexander Haig, a former assistant to Cyrus Vance and Henry Kissinger. When Haig joined Kissinger's staff in 1969, he was a colonel; by 1972 he become four-star general, in a leapfrogging career reminiscent of Marshall and Eisenhower. Later he became supreme commander of NATO and was, of course, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Succeeding Haig at State in 1982 was George Pratt Shultz, a director of the CFR and a member of the Pratt family of the Standard Oil fortune (it was Mrs. Harold Pratt who donated Pratt House to the Council). His appointment seeming pleasing to back-to-back authors in Foreign Affairs, to which the Secretary contributed the lead article for the spring 1985 issue. Known as an advocate of accommodation with the USSR, it was he who, years earlier, had signed the accords resulting in the Kama River truck factory being built for the Soviets by the West.

When Shultz picked retired banker John C. Whitehead for Deputy Secretary of State, the New York Times commented: "Mr. Whitehead brings to the job no apparent expertise in international diplomacy... In describing his attributes for the job, Mr. Schultz said that Mr. Whitehead was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was regularly invited to dinners given by Henry A. Kissinger, former secretary of state."

As Secretary of Defense, the President named Casper Weinberger, who had been a Nixon administrator and belonged to the Trilateral Commission. He was replaced in 1987 by Frank Carlucci of the CFR.

In 1985, Winston Lord, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Kissinger aide, became Reagan's ambassador to the People's Republic of China.

When Lord left Pratt House to assume his new responsibilities, the Council need a new president. One of the three final candidates under consideration was Robert McFarlane, who had been Ronald Reagan's National Security Adviser.

Reagan chose Malcolm Baldrige (CFR) as Commerce Secretary, William Brock (CFR) as Labor Secretary, Alan Greenspan (CFR-TC) as Federal Reserve Board Chairman, and on the list goes.


*Reagan Policy*


Ronald Reagan has been billed as a thoroughgoing conservative. But history bear witness that, like Eisenhower's and Nixon's, his conservatism rarely goes beyond his speeches.

Campaigning in 1980, Reagan said he intended to balance the budget by 1983. Jimmy Carter's annual federal deficits ranged from $40.2 billion to $78.9 billion. Under Mr. Reagan, the red ink came to a record $127.9 billion in fiscal 1982, then skyrocketed to $208.9 billion in 1983. The subsequent deficits, in billions of dollars, were as follows:

1984 - $185.3 billion
1985 - $212.3 billion
1986 - $220.7 billion
1987 - $173.2 billion (estimated)

Reagan's annual deficits have actually exceeded the annual budgets of Lyndon B. Johnson, who had a Vietnam War to pay for as well as the Great Society. He has chalked up government debt than all the Presidents before them combined. It is true that Congress shares in the responsibility for this, but the blame cannot simply be offloaded on them; the President's own budget proposals have contained estimated deficits in the $100-200 billion range since fiscal 1983.

Reagan is touted as an enemy of taxation and big government. Yet during his first term, although he did cut tax rates, he also pushed through the largest tax increase in our nation's history, as well as boosts in the gasoline and Social Security taxes. And his big government got bigger: the civilian work force in the executive branch grew by nearly 100,000 between 1981 and 1986.

In 1983, Walter Heller, former economic advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, was prompted to write a column in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Mr. Reagan Is a Keynesian Now." In 1984, economist Richard Parker echoed this conclusion in the Los Angeles Times, noting: "While he proclaims Reaganomics' success, Reagan also owes Americans a shocking confession: He's become a born-again Keynesian." That same year, economist Lester Thurow observed in Newsweek that "President Reagan has become the ultimate Keynesian."

He continued:


Not only is the Reagan Administration rehabilitating exactly the economic policies it pledged to bury when entering office, it is applying them more vigorously than any Keynesian would have dared. Imagine what conservatives would be saying if a liberal Keynesian Democratic president has dared to run a $200 billion deficit.

Supposedly a proponent of military strength, candidate Reagan criticized Jimmy Carter for abiding by the Salt II treaty, which the Senate has refused to ratify. He called it "fatally flawed" and said he would spurn it. Yet as President he complied with Salt II until late 1986, even after the treaty would have expired had it ever been ratified, and despite numerous Soviet violations. In 1986, he ordered two Poseidon ballistic missile submarines dismantled to ensure we would stay within Salt II limits.

The President agreed to no increase in defense spending in 1986, whereas White House hopeful Walter Mondale had advocated increases of at least three percent annually. This Reagan's defense budget that year was actually smaller than the one proposed be this liberal Democratic rival. In The New American in 1986, William F. Jasper summed other holes in the President's warrior reputation:


The Reagan administration has also cut back construction of new Trident submarines; refused deployment of Minuteman III missiles despite its authorization by Congress; reduced MX missile planned deployment; continued deactivation of B-52 strategic bombers; cancelled production of air-launched cruise missiles; cut back production of the B-1 bomber; and failed to reconstruct our dismantled anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system. In short, Mr. Reagan's policies have been disastrous for America's defense capabilities.

Today, while prospect of SDI is becoming increasingly remote, few Americans seem to realize that the nuclear deterrent of the United States still consists principally of: antiquated B-52 bombers, designed under Truman and constructed under Eisenhower and Kennedy; ICBM's from the Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon years (after sitting in their silos for two decades, no one really knows how well they would work); and Poseidon submarines built before 1967. Ronald Reagan has reinforced these with some new B-1 bombers, MX missiles, and Trident submarines, but in very limited quantities - considerably less than the rates of attrition would call for. In contrast, the Soviets have never stopped expanding and modernizing all segments of their nuclear forces. Reagan's most significant strategic advance was probably the placement of a medium-range missiles in Europe - and these he agreed to withdraw completely when he signed the INF treaty in late 1987! Contrary to the popular impression, the Reagan administration has left America on the brink of decisive nuclear inferiority.

Most people consider the President a determined anti-Communist; this was an image he established early on with his well-publicized description of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire." But here again, his actions have fallen short of his words.


*** When Communist Poland defaulted on its interest payments to American banks in 1982, Ronald Reagan didn't pressure Warsaw - instead, he bailed out the banks by having the U.S. taxpayers pick up the tab.

*** The Reagan administration channeled money into El Salvador to help José Napoleón Duarte win his 1984 election over the anti-Communist Roberto d'Aubuisson. Duarte is a Socialist; he has seized the nation's banks  and large farms; in fact, when he previously ran to president in 1972, his running mate was Guillermo Ungo - current of El Salvador's Marxist guerrillas.

*** When Jimmy Carter broke relations with Taiwan, Ronald Reagan called it an "outright betrayal of a close friend and ally." As President, however, he did not attempt to restore relations with Free China. Furthermore, in August 1982 he issued a joint communiqué with Peking stating that the U.S. "does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan." Under Reagan, trade with Red China has greatly multiplied; in 1986, the administration pressed through Congress the sale of $550 million in advanced avionics equipment, giving some of the mainland's fighters in all-weather capacity Taiwan's air force lacks.

*** In Angola, Jonas Savimbi's UNITA freedom fighters are trying to unseat the pro-Soviet ruling regime, which is kept in power by nearly 40,000 Cuban troops. Much publicly has been accorded the $15 million in military assistance given Savimbi by Reagan - but overlooked is the more than $200 million in credits granted Angola's Marxist government by the Export-Import Bank. Tens of millions in aid have also been sent to Communist Mozambique, even though it is using Soviet weapons to suppress a liberation movement by the pro-Western RENAMO (Mozambique National Resistance). 

*** When the Philippine crisis reached its climax in 1986, Ronald Reagan joined hands with the international left, withdrawing support from President Marcos. Foreign Affairs, which had previously served as a forum for Beningo Aquino, anticipated the situation in its winter 1984/1985 issue:


If Marcos cannot or will not accept the reforms necessary to ensure stability, them we must be willing to call his bluff, and look even further down the line, toward the inevitable emergence of a new Philippine leadership.

The article stated that the fate of the Philippines must remain an internal affair, but added: "U.S. leverage should not be underestimated; U.S. efforts to shape the setting for the inevitable Philippine transition can almost certainly have some benefit."

Ferdinand Marcos was no saint, but he may look like one compared to the Communists, if and when they wrest the islands from Corazon Aquino.

*** In response to the Afghanistan invasion, Jimmy Carter embargoed grain to the Soviet Union. But Mr. Reagan approved sale of our wheat to Moscow again - at heavily subsidized rates. On December 27, 1986, the President warned that Soviet leaders "must be made to understand that they will continue to pay a higher and higher price until they accept the necessity for a political solution involving the prompt withdrawal of their forces from Afghanistan and self-determination for the Afghan people. The very next day, however, administration officials said they were ending most controls of the export of oil and gas equipment and technology to the USSR. Reagan did allow Afghanistan's brave freedom fighters, the Mujahideen, some weapons, but he pledged the cut these off during his negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1987! The curtailment had in fact been brewing as much as two years earlier. At that time, according to William Safire in the New York Times:


[T]hree State Department functionaries cooked up a plan to accommodate Soviet demands about withdrawal from Afghanistan. The key concession: permit the Russian to continue arms shipments to its puppet Governments while US cut off aid to the Mujahideen ...

The secret letter assured Moscow that upon the day its troops withdrawal began, "foreign interference" would stop - meaning that the C.I.A.-channeled aid to the [Afghan rebels] would be terminated ...

It is known to insiders as "the Day One deal": American aid to the Afghan resistance, but not Soviet aid to the puppet Kabul regime, would stop on Day One of yearlong Soviet troop pullout.

After exposure led the public protest, the President began to disavow the policy. But a UPI story dated March 21, 1988 carried this incredible report:


The United States and Soviet Union, seeking to ensure an orderly Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, are sharing data on radical Islamic guerrilla factions viewed as a threat to a settlement, according to administration officials ...

Such maneuvering may mean curbing U.S. support for the Islamic rebel factions the administration has so relied on during the 8 1/2-year old guerrilla war against Soviet occupation forces, they said ...

A CIA source, speaking of the rebels, confirmed a shift in the US position, [and] said, "We want to see some groups fed to other groups" - intelligence terminology for neutralizing undesirable elements ...

Asked about US-Soviet discussions about the Mujahideen, a State Department spokesman declined comment on grounds it is an intelligence matter.

Conservatives have been pleased with some facets of Ronald Reagan's performance, such as his judicial appointments and the Grenada rescue mission. There is, of course, the controversial "Contra aid" he has sought. But this, despite energetic Congressional opposition, is far less than the Nicaraguan freedom fighters would need to defeat the Sandinistas, whose army takes to the field with heavy tanks and helicopter gunships from the Soviet Union. At best, they are being allowed to fight a "no-win" war of containment. Furthermore, the administration has backed ex-Sandinistas and other former opponents of Somoza (such as Eden Pastora and Adolfo Calero) as headers of the Contras, giving the whole operation the smell of a sellout. Even Pastora, known as "Commander Zero," has been a guest at Pratt House. (As this book went to press, the Contras had been forced into a cease-fire on Sandinista terms, with a de facto surrender in the works.)

The Reagan record shows that, all things considered, his policies are the same ones that have steered our nation for over 50 years. That the Establishment has tolerated him for two terms tends to suggest that it may be more comfortable with a conservative-image Republican as President. This allowed its program to advance relatively unhindered, and puts Washington watchdogs to sleep.

In 1971, Lyndon Baines Johnson said of President Nixon: "Can't you just see the uproar if I had been responsible for Taiwan getting kicked out of the United Nations? Or if I had imposed sweeping national controls on prices and wages? Nixon has gotten by with it. If I had tried to do it, or Truman, or Humphrey, or any Democrat, we would have been clobbered." Walter Mondale must have similar thoughts about Ronald Reagan.

In an article in Foreign Affairs in 1981, former Kissinger aide William G. Hyland wrote foreseeingly: "Just as Nixon had the anti-Communist credentials to develop an opening to Peking, so Reagan has the credentials to initiate a new relationship with the U.S.S.R." That, presumably, applied to the rest of the Establishment agenda as well. We presume Mr. Hyland is familiar with the Establishment agenda. In 1984, he replaced William Bundy as editor of Foreign Affairs.


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## FrankRep

*The Power and Influence of the Council on Foreign Relations*




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*2009: Council On Foreign Relations*
During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama consistently promised Americans “change” and such promises aren’t new to the voting public as was seen with Carter and his Trilateral Commission group, chief among these the CFR. by James Perloff



*2009 - Hillary Clinton Lets CFR Cat Out of the Bag*
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking at the Washington branch office of the Council on Foreign Relations on July 15, confirmed that the CFR directs U.S. government policies and steers our country.

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## FrankRep

**

*The Insiders: The Architects of the New World Order*
John F. McManus, 2004


*Part II: The Reagan Years*


By early 1980, the accumulated exposure of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, the two most identifiable Insider organizations, had begun to produce some dramatic effects. For one, these organizations became well enough known to be "hot topics" on the campaign circuit. Informed voters from coast to coast, especially those who were disenchanted with the Carter Administration, began to seek candidates who were not tied to either of these groups.

In New Hampshire, for instance, where the first presidential primary is held every fourth February, most of the candidates for the Republican nomination were happily responding to voters that they were "not now and never have been" members of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission or his Council on Foreign Relations. But Republican candidates George Bush and John Anderson could not join in such a response because each had connections to both of these elitist organizations.

This issue was not confined solely to New Hampshire either. It was a nationwide phenomenon. Witness a February 8, 1980 article in the New York Times. Reporting on a Ronald Reagan campaign trip through the South during the first week of February, the article stated that Mr. Reagan had attacked President Carter's foreign policy because he had found that "19 key members of the Administration are or have been members of the Trilateral Commission." It also noted that when Mr. Reagan was pressed to back up his charge, an aide listed the names of President Carter, Vice President Mondale, Secretary of State Vance, Secretary of Defense Brown, and fifteen other Carter officials.

The report further stated that Reagan advisor Edwin Meese told the reporters: "...all of these people come out of an international economic-industrial organization with a pattern of thinking on world affairs." He made the very interesting comment that their influence led to a "softening" of our nation's defense capability. Both he and Mr. Reagan could have added that practically all of these Carter Administration officials were also members of the Council on Foreign Relations. But neither chose to do so.

*Anti-Elitist Reversals* 

The history of that period shows that Ronald Reagan exploited this issue very capably. On February 26th, in New Hampshire where the matter had become the deciding issue in the primary, voters gave him a lopsided victory. His strong showing and the correspondingly weak showing by George Bush delighted the nation's conservatives and set a pattern for future victories that carried Mr. Reagan all the way to the White House.

But something else happened on February 26, 1980 that should have raised many more eyebrows than it did. On the very day that Ronald Reagan convincingly won the nation's first primary, he replaced his campaign manager with longtime Council on Foreign Relations member William J. Casey. Mr. Casey served as the Reagan campaign manager for the balance of the campaign, and was later rewarded with an appointment as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The selection of William J. Casey in the strategically important position of campaign manager was highly significant. He is a New York lawyer who served the Nixon Administration in several positions including Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and Chairman of the Export-Import Bank. In those two posts especially, he gained a reputation as a crusader for U.S. taxpayer-financed aid and trade with communist nations.

During this same period, while serving as an official of the State Department, Casey declared in a public speech given in Garden City, New York, that he favored U.S. policies leading to interdependence among nations and to the sacrificing of our nation's independence. These attitudes are thoroughly in agreement with the long-term objectives of the Insiders, but are not at all consistent with the public positions taken by Mr. Reagan. But very few made note of the Casey appointment because very few knew anything about Mr. Casey.

With CFR member William J. Casey on the team, the Reagan campaign was still able to focus attention on the Trilateral Commission and on fellow Republican George Bush's ties to it. But nothing was said about the older, larger, and more dangerously influential Council on Foreign Relations.

*Rockefeller Ties*

In April 1980, Mr. Reagan told an interviewer from the Christian Science Monitor that he would shun the directions of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission. But George Bush, who had recently resigned both from the Trilateral Commission and from the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, could not shake the stigma of his Insider connection.

In Florida, understanding about the Trilateral Commission led to widespread use of a political advertisement which claimed, "The same people who gave you Jimmy Carter want now to give you George Bush." An identical ad appeared in Texas. The Reagan bandwagon, propelled in part by its attack on the Insiders, began to score one primary victory after another.

Eventually, Ronald Reagan convincingly won the Republican nomination. Conservatives across the nation were delighted That is, they were delighted until he shocked his supporters by selecting George Bush as his running mate. George Bush was the very epitome of the Insider Establishment type that had made so many of these people strong Reagan backers in the first place. That night, at the Republican convention, the word "betrayal" was in common usage.

Ronald Reagan had repeatedly and publicly promised that he would pick a running mate who shared his well-known conservative views. But, of all the Republicans available, he picked the man who was the darling of the Rockefellers. Nor was the Rockefeller-Bush relationship any secret.

Campaign finance information had already revealed that prior to December 31,1979, the Bush for President campaign had received individual $1,000 contributions (the highest amount allowed by law) from David Rockefeller, Edwin Rockefeller, Helen Rockefeller, Laurance Rockefeller, Mary Rockefeller, Godfrey Rockefeller, and several other Rockefeller relatives and employees.

Staunch Reagan supporters frantically tried to stop the Bush nomination. But political considerations quickly forced them to go along. One after another, they began to state that their man was still at the top of the ticket. "It was Reagan-Bush, not Bush-Reagan," they said. But all had to admit that the issue of Trilateral domination of the Carter Administration could hardly be used with a Trilateralist veteran like Bush on the ticket.

From the time William Casey joined the Reagan team in February, the issue of CFR domination of America could not be used. And when George Bush was tapped as the Reagan running mate, the Trilateral issue was also dead. Only a very few realized that when those two issues were lost, the hope that future President Reagan would keep Insiders from key positions in government was also lost.

As the summer of 1980 faded into fall, Insiders were showing up in every conceivable part of the Reagan campaign. In September. a casual "Prelude to Victory" party was given by the Reagans at their rented East Coast home in Middleburg, Virginia. A photo taken at the party shows that the place of honor, at Mr. Reagan's immediate right, was given to none other than David Rockefeller, the leader of the CFR and the Trilateral Commission. Guests at this party included Dr. Henry Kissinger and other CFR and Trilateral members.

Two weeks before the election, the front page of the New York Times carried a photo showing the future President campaigning in Cincinnati. Alongside him as his foreign policy advisors who the President said would answer questions for him, were Senator Howard Baker, former Ambassador Anne Armstrong, and former Secretaries of State William P. Rogers and Henry Kissinger. All were members of either the CFR or the Trilateral Commission or both.

*Stacking the Cabinet*

Election Day 1980 produced a Reagan landslide. Caught up in misguided euphoria, conservatives began talking about the return of fiscal and diplomatic sanity to the federal government. But the shock they felt when their man had chosen George Bush as his running mate returned when President-elect Reagan announced his selections for the new cabinet.

For Secretary of State, he chose Alexander Haig, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. For Secretary of the Treasury, Donald Regan, and for Secretary of Commerce, Malcolm Baldrige — both members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Back in February, Edwin Meese had told reporters that Mr. Reagan opposed the Trilateral Commission because the organization's influence led to a "softening of defense." Yet, he chose for his Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, a member of the Trilateral Commission. Men from the same Insider team were still in power! 

Five months after Mr. Reagan had been sworn in as President, the Council on Foreign Relations noted in its Annual Report that 257 of its members were serving as U.S. government officials As in previous administrations, these individuals filled many of the important Assistant Secretary and Deputy Secretary posts at the State Department, Defense Department, Treasury Department, and so on.

For the critically important post of White House Chief of Staff, Mr. Reagan named James Baker III. The White House Chief of Staff determines who gets to see the President, what reading material will appear on his desk, and what his policy options might be on any given situation. But James Baker had fought against Ronald Reagan as the campaign manager for George Bush in 1980, and as a campaign staffer for Gerald Ford in 1976. He is a confirmed liberal who was an opponent of the philosophy enunciated by Mr. Reagan during the 1980 campaign. In his White House post, he leads a team of like-minded men who have virtually isolated the President from the many conservatives who supported his election bid.

*Policy Reversals*

As President, Mr. Reagan has been given the image of a tough anti-communist and a frugal budget-cutter. But the images do not hold up under close scrutiny. Only one year after taking office, he acquiesced in the taxpayer-funded bailout of Poland's indebtedness to large international banks. Even worse, he skirted the law which mandates that any nation in such financial difficulty must be formally declared in default before the U.S. government could assume its debts. What made this action doubly revealing was that it occurred at the very time that thousands of Polish citizens had been incarcerated in a typical communist crackdown against even a slight semblance of freedom.

During 1981 and 1982, Ronald Reagan personally signed authorizations for the U.S. Export-Import Bank to finance nuclear steam turbines for communist Rumania and power generation equipment and a steel plant for communist China. Tens of millions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars are being provided for the industrialization of these Red tyrannies.

Also, Reagan Administration officials announced plans to sell arms to Red China; they told anti-communist businessmen in El Salvador that the U.S. would oppose efforts by any anti-communist Salvadorans to gain control of their country; and these same Administration officials refused to honor a pledge to supply Free Chinese on Taiwan with the fighter planes deemed necessary by the Chinese for defense.

When the President authorized a joint Peking-Washington communique which stated that military support for the Free Chinese is no longer our nation's "long term policy," even CFR member Dan Rather of CBS News called the document a startling reversal of frequently stated Reagan rhetoric.

On the domestic front, the record of reversals is just as dramatic. When Mr. Reagan campaigned against Jimmy Carter, he said he would cut two percent ($13 billion) from the fiscal 1981 budget which he would inherit if elected.33 He did nothing about that budget. Instead, he went to work immediately on the budget for the following year.

On February 18, 1981, in one of his first speeches to the nation as President, he delivered his own budget proposals. In that address, he stated: "It is important to note that we are reducing the rate of increase in taxing and spending. We are not attempting to cut either spending or taxing to a level below that which we presently have." (Emphasis added.) Yet, America was inundated with propaganda which had practically everyone believing that the Reagan economic package contained a substantial reduction in federal spending. Supposed budget cuts were labelled "massive," "drastic," "historic," and "cruel." But simple arithmetic showed that what President Reagan proposed for fiscal 1982 was $40 billion more spending than could be found in the 1981 budget. By the end of fiscal 1982, instead of being reduced as candidate Reagan had promised, that figure had grown to a $70 billion increase over spending from 1981. And the deficit associated with it soared to $110 billion.

But the Reagan reputation, which had been gained by his campaign oratory and by erroneous descriptions of his economic program, continued to delight conservatives and anger liberals. At a press conference one year later on March 31, 1982, a reporter asked the President to respond to the accusation that he cared little for the nation's poor. Part of his lengthy response included the following statement: "Maybe this is the time with all the talk that's going around to expose once and for all the fairy tale, the myth, that we somehow are, overall, cutting government spending.... We're not gutting the programs for the needy." He then heatedly boasted that federal spending for student loans, welfare, meals, rents, job training, and social security was higher than it had been under Jimmy Carter's last budget.

It was the Reagan-led conservative philosophy that won a decisive victory in the 1980 elections. Promises to get tough with the communists, to cut spending, to balance the budget, and to abolish the Departments of Education and Energy appealed to millions. But there has been no change in the government's direction. America continues to help communists and to harm our nation's anticommunist friends. Federal spending continues to grow, and deficits are skyrocketing. And the bureaucrats at the Departments of Education and Energy are still in place.

*More Reagan Duplicity*

At the halfway point of the Reagan four-year Presidential term, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office forecast budget deficits in the $150 billion range for the Reagan-directed fiscal years 1982, 1984 and 1985.34 Others insisted that the deficits would be even higher. The largest deficit in the nation's history, prior to the Reagan Administration, was $66 billion during the Ford years. Budget deficits, of course, translate into inflation, high interest rates, business slowdown, higher taxes, and unemployment. If federal spending were no more than federal revenue, if we had the benefit of a balanced budget in other words, some of these problems would be far less severe.

Shortly after he took office, Mr. Reagan twisted the arms of conservative senators and congressmen to get them to raise the ceiling on the national debt. Had he insisted on no further increases, the spiraling growth of government could have been checked. But instead, he used his influence to authorize more debt. Then he did the very same thing again eight months later, and again in 1982. As a result, interest on the debt alone grew to $117 billion for fiscal 1982. 

In his State of the Union address on January 26, 1982, President Reagan again appealed to conservative Americans when he stated: 


Raising taxes won't balance the budget. It will encourage more government spending and less private investment. Raising taxes will slow economic growth, reduce production and destroy future jobs.... So, I will not ask you to try to balance the budget on the backs of the American taxpayers. I will seek no tax increases this year.

But, in August 1982, his actions again failed to parallel his rhetoric, and he used all the muscle he could muster to get Congress to pass the largest tax increase in our nation's history — $227 billion over five years. Opponents of this huge tax increase were the principled conservatives who had supported his election bid. The President's allies on the tax increases included big spending liberals like Senator Edward Kennedy and Speaker of the House "Tip" O'Neill.

One result of the failure of the Reagan Administration to stand by the philosophy which brought the President to the White House is that conservatives everywhere have been blamed for the nation's woes. The congressional elections of 1982 amounted to a significant setback for the entire conservative movement. It seemed to many voters that the conservative program had been tried and found wanting. The truth is that the conservative program has yet to be tried. And the reason why it has not been tried is that the Insiders who surround Ronald Reagan are still in control.

The President himself supplied dramatic evidence of the existence of this control in comments he made about the $5.5 billion increase in gasoline taxes he signed into law on January 5, 1983.

At his press conference on September 28,1982, he was asked: "Knowing of your great distaste for taxes and tax increases, can you assure the American people now that you will flatly rule out any tax increases, revenue enhancers or specifically an increase in the gasoline tax?"

Mr. Reagan responded: "Unless there's a palace coup and I'm overtaken or overthrown, no, I don't see the necessity for that. I see the necessity for more economies, more reductions in government spending...."

Less than three months later, he was vigorously promoting that increase in the gasoline tax. Call it a "palace coup" or whatever, the chain of events certainly suggests that someone other than the President is in control.

*CFR Lineage*

When CFR member Alexander Haig resigned as Secretary of State, CFR board member George P. Shultz was immediately named to replace him. During confirmation hearings, several senators and a number of political writers worried openly about what became known as "the Bechtel Connection." It seemed almost sinister to them to have Mr. Shultz join another former Bechtel Corporation executive, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, in the Reagan Cabinet's inner circle. But the senators and the supposedly hard-nosed, prying reporters were assured that there was no cause for alarm, and the matter died.

If a common corporate lineage of these two cabinet officials stirs concern, however, why is there no concern whatsoever over the fact that both are current members of the Council on Foreign Relations? And why not even a bare mention of the fact that Mr. Shultz would be the tenth Secretary of State in a row to hold CFR membership before or immediately after his tenure?

That the CFR owns the State Department can hardly be denied. But it can be ignored, which is precisely what has been going on in America for decades. The result? Most Americans remain totally unaware that the same powerful Insiders still control our government.

The Council on Foreign Relations rarely receives any press coverage. When confronted by adversaries, spokesmen for the organization repeatedly insist that it is merely a glorified study group which takes no positions and has no stated policy on foreign or domestic affairs. Rather, they insist, the CFR merely offers the diverse thinking given by important students of world affairs.

Yet, in an unusually frank article about the Council appearing in the New York Times for October 30, 1982, author Richard Bernstein obviously reflected the attitude of the CFR executives with whom he had spoken when he wrote: "It [the Council] numbers among its achievements much of the country's post World War II planning, the basic ideas for reconciliation with China and the framework for an end to military involvement in Indochina."

If an organization takes no positions and has no stated policies, how can it list as "achievements" the shaping of some of our government's most important decisions over the past forty years? And what "achievements" these have been!

Post World War II planning has seen the United States descend from undisputed world leadership and the admiration of virtually all nations to being militarily threatened by the USSR and being despised by almost everyone else. Post World War II planning, for which the CFR claims credit, has seen the United States bumble its way from a defeat here to a setback there to an error in judgment somewhere else, while freedom has retreated everywhere and the world increasingly falls under communist control.

Reconciliation with China, rather than being an achievement, puts our nation in bed with the world's most brutal tyranny and is making us adversaries of the friendly, productive, free and honorable Chinese on Taiwan.

Nor is the disgraceful conclusion to our military involvement in Indochina anything of which to be proud. The end saw three nations — Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam — fall to typically brutal communist tyranny. The toll in human slaughter which had followed in the wake of our nation's pullout from Southeast Asia is indescribable. And those who said that these nations would not fall like dominoes are now strangely silent. 

It is highly significant to see this corroboration of our long-held belief that the CFR helps to shape our nation's policies. The policies noted in Bernstein's New York Times article have produced communist victories in every case. It is, therefore, even more significant to have this admission of the remarkable dovetailing of CFR and communist goals. 

*Double Jeopardy Elitism*

The Trilateral Commission also attempts to convey the impression that it exists simply as a high-level discussion group which merely fosters economic and political cooperation. In 1982, the Commission released East-West Trade At A Crossroads which it quickly claimed contained only the views of its authors.

This study recommends an increase in the trade with communist nations that fuels their military capabilities. Even after noting that the communist bloc nations are already heavily in debt to the West, and that previous trade had "produced no significant change in the foreign policy of the Soviet Union," the study also recommends supplying even more credit to stimulate greater trade. That credit, of course, is to be supplied by America's taxpayers. Nor is this any departure from previously held positions published by the Commission, or enunciated by its members.

What is most significant is that the recommendations given by this Trilateral Commission report are wholly in tune with the policies both of the U.S. government and the governments of the communist bloc nations. The American people do supply the communist nations with equipment, technology and credit, even while communist troops crush Poland and ravage Afghanistan, and while Soviet missiles are menacing the United States. What this Trilateral Commission publication recommends is no less consistent with Soviet desires than have been the so-called achievements of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Insiders of the Council on Foreign Relations and the newer Trilateral Commission have been controlling U.S. policy for decades. Unfortunately, these same individuals are still running things, despite the fact that the nomination and election of Ronald Reagan can be substantially attributed to a growing national revulsion at years of Insider control of this nation.

*The Reagan Enigma*

How then can one explain Ronald Reagan, the man on whom so many Americans placed such great hope? All we can say is that there are several theories to choose from, all of which fall in the realm of speculation.

One theory holds that he is a good man with fine instincts and excellent intentions, but is such a hater of confrontation that he has effectively been steamrolled by the non-conservatives who surround him.

Another theory holds that he was never a real conservative in the first place, but i8 a very capable orator who can read a good speech and produce a convincing image. The United Republicans of California published such a view in 1975, after having experienced all of the years that Ronald Reagan governed their state.

One individual who shares the view that Mr. Reagan's political effect has never been conservative is Thomas Gale Moore of Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In a syndicated column appearing in May 1981, he discussed the much-publicized Reagan plans to cut spending and reduce bureaucratic regulation. But Mr. Moore then cautioned:


Skeptics find President Reagan's record as governor, often alluded to during the campaign, far from reassuring, especially since he used much the same rhetoric during his gubernatorial campaigns as appeared later during his campaign for the presidency.

While in Sacramento, he converted the state income tax into one of the most progressive in the nation, introduced withholding taxes, raised sales taxes, and sharply increased taxes on business.

While he was in office, California government expenditures increased faster than was typical of other states. Notwithstanding his campaign rhetoric, welfare expenditures alone escalated 61 percent in real terms during his two terms as governor.

That is hardly a record that should merit the label "conservative."

A third theory would excuse the President by holding that government is out of control in the fiscal sense, and that previously arranged international entanglements are so binding that not even a President can reverse runaway spending or call a halt to the increasingly obvious pro-communist stance taken by Washington. Happily, there are not too many who believe that this theory has any validity.

Finally, another theory, which is not inconsistent with certain aspects of the first two given above, is that, while Ronald Reagan is indeed the President, he is not the boss. Nor have a number of his predecessors really been in charge. Instead, the Insiders who really run America select a man whom they then permit to occupy the White House. But it is they who still run the government through like-minded individuals with whom they surround the President.

When Ronald Reagan announced that CFR member Donald Regan was to be his Secretary of the Treasury, an aide pointed out that Mr. Regan had donated $1,000, the maximum personal contribution allowed by law, to Jimmy Carter's reelection campaign. And that, in 1980, Donald Regan had also contributed to and raised money for left-wing congressmen who were engaged in tight races with conservative, Reagan-backed challengers. When an aide asked then President-elect Reagan why he would choose a man with such a background, Mr. Reagan is reported to have said: "Why didn't anyone tell me?"

Why indeed did Ronald Reagan place Donald Regan in his cabinet? We suggest that he did not make the selection, but that the Insiders made it and have made many others, and that such a practice has been the rule rather than the exception for years.

In late 1960, when John Kennedy formed his cabinet, his selections included Robert McNamara for Secretary of Defense. At a gathering prior to their taking office, Mr. Kennedy had to be introduced to Mr. McNamara. Could he logically have picked a man to be Secretary of Defense whom he had never met? Or. is it not more reasonable to assume that the selection had been made for him? As Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara did a great deal to destroy our nation's then-unchallenged military advantage.

Time magazine reported that Richard Nixon selected Henry Kissinger for the White House post of Director of National Security based on having once met him at a cocktail party, and having read one of his books. Yet, CFR member Henry Kissinger was widely reported to have wept publicly when his patron Nelson Rockefeller lost the 1968 Republican nomination to Richard Nixon. Did Nixon choose Kissinger? Or, were the reports in U.S. News & World Report and elsewhere correct when they openly stated the Rockefellers placed Kissinger in the Nixon Administration's inner circle?

*Routing the Insiders*

There is, of course, nothing wrong with any President relying on the advice of others in selecting his top assistants. What is vitally important is whose advice is being followed, what type of individuals are named to the positions, and what they do with the power given to them.

It is our view, as we implied earlier, that a tightly knit and very powerful group has run America far more than has any recent President. Its effect on our nation has been horrible. We call this group The Insiders and we dare to label their activity a conspiracy — a conspiracy that must be exposed and routed if the disastrous national policies of the past several decades are to be reversed.
...

*Footnotes*
http://www.scribd.com/doc/8717004/Th...John-F-McManus

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## kahless

I wonder if the book goes into Reagans intrusive policies into family life.  All fathers in the US were made into potential criminals and wifes given incentives for divorce with Reagan coining the term "Deadbeat Dads".

Ronald Reagan's Mistake
http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive.../gay061304.htm




> Under Reagan, the reach of the welfare program expanded beyond its means-tested boundaries to include families without regard to economic status and was transformed from a helping hand to a corrupt, over-controlling police organization that exercises unchecked power that far exceeds that of the IRS. 
> 
> Under the weight of the huge expanded program and its billions in additional annual funding, the system of checks and balances has collapsed and basic human rights have been eliminated. Millions of ordinary people have been labeled social criminals and a significant number of them have been jailed for not living up to arbitrary standards and for not reaching sometimes unobtainable goals. In at least one case, a man was beaten to death by guards while imprisoned, not because he posed a mortal threat, but because of what the program's propaganda machine had labeled him – a "deadbeat dad."  Brian Armstrong of Milford, New Hampshire lost his job. He was jailed without trial in January 2000 for missing a hearing. One week later he was dead.


Under Reagan's watch we also ended up with the most evil piece of legislation, the 1986 Bradley Amendment 1986, 42 U.S.C. § 666(a)(9)(c) 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Amendment



> "The 1986 Bradley Amendment to Title IV-D forbids any reduction of arrearage or retroactive reduction for any reason, ever. This reinforces the approach that inability to pay is no excuse. Needless to say, there are endless stories of men who are now crushed by a debt they will never be able to pay because they were:
>  In a coma A captive of Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War In jail Medically incapacitated Lost their job but were confident of another so did nothing until it was too late Did not know they could not ask for retroactive adjustments and waited too long Cannot afford a lawyer to seek adjustment when adjustment was warranted Wouldn’t use the legal system even if they could, feeling it alien from their world, so don’t ask for a reduction when the legal establishment expects them to.

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## anaconda

The Shadows of Power sure contains a lot of typos. More like "Shadows of Decent Editing."

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## FrankRep

> The Shadows of Power sure contains a lot of typos. More like "Shadows of Decent Editing."


I typed it manually. The typos are probably mine.

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## squarepusher

/////////////

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## Indy Vidual

Nobody is perfect

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## FrankRep

> Nobody is perfect


*Ron Paul Quit The Republican Party Because Of Ronald Reagan's BIG Government Policies*

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## Indy Vidual

and...
Ron Paul Quit The LP Because 3rd parties have 'no chance' to win.
Edit: Yes, I know about Reagan, he was an actor.

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## nobody's_hero

The sad part:

We know that Reagan _said_ all the right things and didn't do much of what he said, but if he were alive and tried to campaign today on the same _message_ he campaigned on years ago, *Reagan couldn't win the Republican nomination today*.

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## Indy Vidual

R.I.P. Bedtime For Bonzo.

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## LibertyEagle

> The sad part:
> 
> We know that Reagan _said_ all the right things and didn't do much of what he said, but if he were alive and tried to campaign today on the same _message_ he campaigned on years ago, *Reagan couldn't win the Republican nomination today*.


Maybe you're right, but I still believe he could.  He made people believe in America again.  In what made us great in the first place.  It's really not that much different than what Obama did, although the message was different.  Obama was positive and upbeat, painted a picture for them of the America he wanted (although he was deceitful) and made people believe he knew who to achieve it.

Both appealed to emotion.

It can be done again.

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## FrankRep

> The sad part:
> 
> We know that Reagan _said_ all the right things and didn't do much of what he said, but if he were alive and tried to campaign today on the same _message_ he campaigned on years ago, *Reagan couldn't win the Republican nomination today*.


Are you kidding? Establishment Republicans are calling for a New Reagan Revolution. 

In the past, they were calling Sarah Palin the New Reagan.

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## nobody's_hero

> Are you kidding? Establishment Republicans are calling for a New Reagan Revolution. 
> 
> In the past, they were calling Sarah Palin the New Reagan.


Not what I'm seeing, but given that there are so many splits in the Republican party, you may be right. 

Ron Paul is basically a copy of Reagan with the distinction that what he *says* is actually consistent with what he *does*, and they aren't calling for Ron Paul, so while they might be calling for a 'Reagan revolution', if it ever got too close for comfort where a Reaganite might win, they'd ensure he lost . . .

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## LibertyEagle

> Not what I'm seeing, but given that there are so many splits in the Republican party, you may be right. 
> 
> *Ron Paul is basically a copy of Reagan with the distinction that what he says is actually consistent with what he does, and they aren't calling for Ron Paul, so . . .*


Because he has not described it like Ronald Reagan did.  People do not see the correlation at all.  

There is a reason why so many Republicans like Rand more than Ron, even though they differ very little in their beliefs.

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## nobody's_hero

> Because he has not described it like Ronald Reagan did.  People do not see the correlation at all.  
> 
> There is a reason why so many Republicans like Rand more than Ron, even though they differ very little in their beliefs.


So do you think if it were a race between G.W. Bush or Reagan, Reagan would win (assuming, of course, he were still alive)? I'd say it would at best be too close to call, which is rather scary. A lot has changed in the GOP over the past 25 years.

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## FrankRep

> Ron Paul is basically a copy of Reagan with the distinction that what he *says* is actually consistent with what he *does*,


As you said, Ron Paul is *NOT* the New Reagan.

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## Indy Vidual

> So do you think if it were a race between G.W. Bush or Reagan, Reagan would win (assuming, of course, he were still alive)? I'd say it would at best be too close to call, which is rather scary. A lot has changed in the GOP over the past 25 years.


W 1999 or the even dumber W 2004?
I think Reagan could beat either, if that was our only choice.

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## pcosmar

Mixed feelings.
First, Reagan said some good things and some I disagree with. I am not sure he was allowed to do what he wanted to do.
Secondly, Bush was imposed on him against his wishes.I am not sure how much of the Reagan Administration/Reagan Era was due to Reagan at all. 
I personally believe that Bush Sr. and TPTB used his popularity and his name but ran things behind his back. Especially after the shooting and as his mind deteriorated.

I don't see it as the "Reagan Era" as much as the Bush Era.

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## Indy Vidual

> Mixed feelings.
> First, Reagan said some good things and some I disagree with. I am not sure he was allowed to do what he wanted to do.
> Secondly, Bush was imposed on him against his wishes.I am not sure how much of the Reagan Administration/Reagan Era was due to Reagan at all. 
> I personally believe that Bush Sr. and TPTB used his popularity and his name but ran things behind his back. Especially after the shooting and as his mind deteriorated.
> 
> I don't see it as the "Reagan Era" as much as the Bush Era.


+1984

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## Fredom101

Reagan sucked. Period. But so did every other US president. The problem is the idea that we don't own ourselves, that we have to force "leaders" on ourselves and our neighbors. 

When we all realize that we own ourselves, the idea of having a president will start to sound idiotic.

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## FrankRep

> Ron Paul Quit The LP Because 3rd parties have 'no chance' to win.


*Some background:*


Ron Paul: "[Larry McDonald] was the most principled man in Congress." 
- The Philadelphia Inquirer


Ron Paul on Congressman Larry McDonald, the President of the John Birch Society.


Ron Paul went to Congressman *Larry McDonald, a Democrat*, for advice on running for Congress.  *McDonald said, "Run in the party you think you can WIN because political parties are irrelevant."* This made Ron Paul become a Republican.

Ron Paul explains:

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