The Lawlessness of William Barr, America’s New Top Law Enforcement Official

February 17, 2019 in News by RBN Staff

Attorney General | William Bar

source: www.mintpressnews.com
by Alexander Rubinstein and Cale Holmes

The relatively small amount of scrutiny William Barr fell under from Congress and Beltway thought leaders speaks to a conformity of their ideologies. But to understand what America’s new top law enforcement official really signifies as a veteran swamp creature, it is necessary to revisit Cold War history.

WASHINGTON — Congress’ confirmation of William Barr as Attorney General for the United States on Thursday has come and gone with comparatively little commotion compared to that attending his predecessor, Jeff Sessions, or Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Most media attention fixated on the potential for Barr to undermine the work of his former colleague and close collaborator, Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

The relatively small amount of scrutiny Barr fell under from Congress and Beltway thought leaders speaks to a conformity of their ideologies. But to understand what America’s new top law enforcement official really signifies as a veteran swamp creature, it is necessary to revisit Cold War history.

Despite being lauded by doves in the later stages of the Vietnam War, Robert Kennedy (RFK) remained unapologetic about his involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba during the Kennedy administration. In a statement four days after the invasion, then-Attorney General RFK seemingly denied U.S. involvement in the paramilitary assault on Playa Giron.

As the world knew full well that it was the U.S. behind the incursion, his brother, President John F. Kennedy, had to discontinue airstrikes after the Cuban military secured the bay.

In his declassified diary, RFK wrote in May 1961 regarding the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, “If we do not get back to a position where nations have some respect, and even fear [illegible], we shall never beat these bastards.”

And so RFK, working with the CIA, went on to greenlight the U.S.’s post-Bay of Pigs regime-change policy for Cuba: Operation Mongoose, which was “designed to do what the Bay of Pigs invasion failed to do: remove the Communist Castro regime from power in Cuba,” according to the State Department’s Office of the Historian. Mongoose included:

[A] coordinated program of political, psychological, military, sabotage, and intelligence operations, as well as proposed assassination attempts on key political leaders, including [Fidel] Castro. Monthly components of the operation were to be set in place to destabilize the communist regime, including the publication of Anti-Castro propaganda, provision of armaments for militant opposition groups, and establishment of guerilla bases throughout the country, all leading up to preparations for an October 1962 military intervention in Cuba.”

To secure these objectives — some of which, like the 1962 military intervention, failed to come to fruition– the CIA poisoned scuba diving gear, which was then gifted to Fidel Castro, and teamed up with Mafia hitmen, RFK’s supposed political enemies. In the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis and during the U.S. naval blockade, Mongoose agents killed 400 petrochemical workers.

RFK’s declassified diary demonstrates a turning point in U.S. foreign policy, one in which the office of attorney general would go on to play a more decisive role in often illegal foreign policy, from the waging of wars to crafting policies regarding the rights — or lack thereof — of detainees at American foreign military bases and black sites.

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