What Did the President Know, and When Did He Know It? President Obama’s ‘Nixon Moment’ Is Here

Helga Zepp-LaRouche 

Howard Baker, the former ranking member of the Senate committee investigating Watergate, posed the decisive question, whose question finally forced President Nixon, faced with the threat of impeachment, to resign: “What did the President know, and when did he know it?” Exactly the same question could be posed now in respect to what President Obama knew about the terror attack in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, when U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his coworkers were murdered, as the most decisive among many issues which could lead to Obama‘s removal from office. 

The nearly daily escalating resistance against Obama‘s continuing ignoring of the Constitution, comes not a moment too soon. The escalating confrontation from the U.S., NATO, and the European Union against Russia and China threatens to spark a thermonuclear Third World War. Both the crisis around Ukraine and the ongoing eastern expansion of NATO and the EU, as well as the Hundred Years’ War between Sunnis and Shi’ites in Southwest Asia, stemming in reality from Tony Blair’s fake memorandum of 2003 as a pretext for that Iraq war, have the potential to expand throughout the region into a global war. The next global financial crash lies immediately before us, and the war which the vulture funds are waging against Argentina is in reality the decisive battle between a murderous empire and the right of sovereign states to defend their citizens and the general welfare. Only a fundamental change in U.S. policy, which can be accomplished only through the immediate impeachment of Obama, will make it possible to overcome the strategic and civilizational crisis, and to realize the existing alternatives long proposed by the LaRouche movement and the Civil Rights Solidarity Movement (BüSo).

The just-published book Blood Feud by Edward Klein (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2014) reports on the account of a close associate of Hillary Clinton about the events on the day of the terror attack in Benghazi. Mrs. Clinton, then Secretary of State, had already received detailed information on the preplanned attack with heavy weapons by Ansar al-Sharia, an organization linked to al-Qaeda, when she got a call from Obama at 10 p.m. According to Klein, Obama ordered her to lie and to issue an official statement from the State Department, according to which the attack was the result of a spontaneous demonstration directed against a video which slandered the Prophet Mohammed. 

Both Hillary and Bill Clinton, whom she subsequently telephoned, came to the conclusion, according to Klein, that Obama, who had waged his election campaign around his alleged victory over al-Qaeda, obviously feared for his re-election, and therefore decided to put out these lies. They likewise agreed that the story wouldn’t hold up. 

Immediately after the book came out, members of the LaRouche Political Action Committee (LaRouche PAC) verified the facts presented there with two highly qualified sources—one of whom had been an eyewitness to the events of Sept. 11, 2012—and could thus corroborate that this account of the telephone call between Obama and Clinton was correct. Then LaRouche issued a press release demanding the immediate impeachment of Obama, since he lied to the American population and covered up such an abominable crime as the murder of four U.S. government officials.

The Congress Reacts

Weeks before, a memorandum from White House advisor Ben Rhodes had come to light, in which Rhodes had laid out the previous “slanderous video” version about the attack as the official line, and that by all means the impression that Obama had made a serious policy mistake was to be avoided. On May 8, Congress had established a select investigative committee on the events in Benghazi, which has already begun its work, and which has the authority to interrogate witnesses under oath. The question of what the President knew and when he knew it, will come up there. 

But this is not the only trouble Obama faces. Meanwhile various institutional forces have reacted to the now undeniable fact that Obama has repeatedly and blatantly flouted the Constitution—from the separation of powers to the prescription in the Constitution that only Congress has the power to declare war, and the prohibition against the killing or imprisonment of Americans without due legal process. It is clear by now to the great majority of the population, that all Obama‘s electoral promises in 2008 were merely public-relations tricks, and that he has pursued President George W. Bush’s policies in every respect, only even worse. 

On June 26, the Supreme Court ruled 9 to 0 that three of five recess appointments which Obama made in January 2012 to the National Labor Relations Board, under the pretext that the Senate was not in session, without its approval, were unconstitutional. At the same time, Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner announced that he was going to sue Obama for continually violating the Constitution and breaking the law. 

And what is Obama doing? 

Although Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) has submitted a resolution to Congress saying that any President who starts a war, without getting the approval of Congress, will be subject to impeachment, Obama‘s first reaction to the Supreme Court ruling and Boehner’s declaration, was that he, as the Commander in Chief, has the authority, according to Article II of the Constitution to declare such a war. Obama deliberately ignored Article I, which specifies the overriding power of the Congress in this area (Section 8). Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, in reaction to Obama‘s renewed disregard for the Constitution intensified his campaign to insist that only the Congress has the power to declare war.

The Alternative

Lyndon LaRouche commented on these developments in an interview with the Voice of Russia on June 26: “Particularly after the past two days, we can say that the likelihood is, that Obama will be thrown out of office. If that does not occur, however, for some reason or other, we’re looking at thermonuclear war.” 

The decision confronts us in the very short term, as to whether there will be war, or whether we can end the murderous casino economy in time, and replace it with a new, rational system of physical economy, such as that which existed at the time of German reconstruction after 1945, and which famously led to the German economic miracle which astonished the world. 

New York Federal Judge Thomas Griesa has set June 30 as the deadline by which Argentina has to pay the “vulture funds,” something it neither can nor will do. Meanwhile, Argentina is being supported by all of Latin America, the G77, Russia, and China. All these countries and institution have understood, that this battle is a confrontation between a dying Anglo-American Empire and the sovereign right of nations to defend their populations from a murderous band of speculators and oligarchs. 

The Russian economist and advisor to President Putin, Sergei Glazyev, expressed it in a commentary published in EIR thus: “This is a small group of the American oligarchy. And it is also fascism, is in its own way, based not on radical nationalism, but on global hegemonism. These Neocons are real misanthropes and Satanists, who are even prepared to drop the atomic bomb!” 

In the face of this crystal-clear confrontation between nations and forces that demand progress for humanity, and those who have in mind only the interests of a small group of oligarchs, unscrupulous imperialists and paper-shufflers, the policy of the EU and the apparently limitless cowardice and servility of most of the European heads of state is noteworthy. The opportunism of politicians, to whom their perks are a hundred times more important than the welfare of the citizens whom they are actually supposed to represent, is only outdone by the whorish professional ethics of the media, the mentality of the bankers, who literally walk over dead bodies, and, naturally, the satanic perfidy of the British Empire. 

Citizens have to finally wake up and take a stand. But they should not wait too long, or it will not be a rude awakening, but none at all. 

Now is the time to put the BüSo’s solution on the agenda: Glass-Steagall banking separation, a new d-mark, a credit system, the World Land-Bridge, and a cultural renaissance. The majority of mankind is ready for this path. 

Links: [1] http://bueso.de/node/7447 

This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.