Obama Advisors Feared a Coup If the Administration Prosecuted War Crimes

September 9th, 2011

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

Roger Shuler
Firedoglake.com
September 8, 2011

Advisors for President-Elect Barack Obama feared the new administration would face a coup if it prosecuted Bush-era war crimes, according to a new report out this morning.

Christopher Edley Jr., law dean at the University of California and a high-ranking member of the Obama transition team, made the revelation during a 9/11 forum at his law school on September 2. Andrew Kreig, director of the D.C.-based Justice Integrity Project, reports that Edley’s comments were in response to questions from Susan Harman, a long-time California peace advocate.

Edley apparently tried to justify Obama’s “look forward, not backwards” policy toward Bush-era lawbreaking. Instead, Kreig writes, Edley revealed the Obama team’s weakness in the face of Republican thuggery:

Edley’s rationale implies that Obama and his team fear the military/national security forces that he is supposed be commanding–and that Republicans have intimidated him right from the start of his presidency even though voters in 2008 rejected Republicans by the largest combined presidential-congressional mandate in recent U.S. history. Edley responded to our request for additional information by providing a description of the transition team’s fears, which we present below as an exclusive email interview. Among his important points is that transition officials, not Obama, agreed that he faced the possibility of a coup.

In their prepared remarks, speakers at the Cal law school, known as Boalt Hall, repeatedly called for accountability and support for the rule of law. Based on the Obama administration’s record on justice issues, Harman said she found the comments “surreal.”

Former Bush Justice Department official John C. Yoo, known as the “torture memo lawyer,” serves as a faculty member at Boalt Hall, perhaps making the occasion seem even more surreal.

Harman decided to ask some tough questions–and she received news-making answers. Reports Kreig:

Edley responded that Obama’s team feared that leadership in the U.S. armed forces, the CIA and NSA might “revolt” if the new Obama administration prosecuted war crimes by U.S. authorities and lower-ranking personnel. Also, Edley told Harman that his fellow decision-makers on Obama’s team feared that a prosecution inquiry could lead to Republican efforts to thwart the Obama agenda in Congress.

Harman shared this account by email and Google Groups with our Justice Integrity Project and others. Among recipients was David Swanson, an antiwar activist who since last January has been organizing a grassroots effort to replace Obama on the Democratic 2012 ticket.

Here is Harman’s account of what transpired on September 2:

I said I was overwhelmed by the surreality of Yoo being on the law faculty . . . when he was singlehandedly responsible for the three worst policies of the Bush Administration. They all burbled about academic freedom and the McCarthy era, and said it isn’t their job to prosecute him. Duh.

Then Dean Chris Edley volunteered that he’d been party to very high-level discussions during Obama’s transition about prosecuting the criminals. He said they decided against it. I asked why. Two reasons: 1) it was thought that the CIA, NSA, and military would revolt, and 2) it was thought the Repugnants would retaliate by blocking every piece of legislation they tried to move (which, of course, they’ve done anyhow).

Afterwards I told him that CIA friends confirmed that Obama would have been in danger, but I added that he bent over backwards to protect the criminals, and gave as an example the DOJ’s defense (state secrets) of Jeppesen (the rendition arm of Boeing) a few days after his inauguration.

He shrugged and said they will never be prosecuted, and that sometimes politics trumps rule of law.

“It must not,” I said.

“It shouldn’t,” he said, and walked off.

This is the Dean of the Berkeley School of Law.

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Kreig sought a response from Edley, who confirmed the comments that Harman reported. Here are several points Edley made in his written reply:

Thanks for the opportunity.

1. You can read about the Miller Institute at http://www.law.berkeley.edu/1194.htm. The faculty cochairs of it are me and Prof. David Caron, who also happens to be Honorary President of the American Society of International Law. I don’t know why Ms. Harman thinks Professor Yoo has received a “promotion” or special position.

2. I didn’t hear anyone burbling. I think the panelists, along with me, were perfectly cogent and articulate. I’ve also written about it to my students and alumni several times. Ms. Harman strongly disagrees. She did not specifically engage our points about academic freedom, including the McCarthy era precedents. Those examples are especially important to Californians for whom the ugliness of that era had special significance for Hollywood and state universities. Remember, too, that Berkeley was the home of the Free Speech Movement.

3. Ms. Harman accurately conveyed the substance of my comment about the Obama Transition. I’d add three points: I never discussed these matters with the President Elect; the summary offered by one of the senior national security folks was, “We don’t want to engage in a witch hunt,” to which I replied, “Neither do I, but I also care about the Rule of Law and, whether or not there ultimately are prosecutions, the question of whether laws were broken and where the lines should be drawn deserve to be aired”; that discussion as a whole was brief.

4. My point about politics is simple and non-controversial to people trained in law. I was not referring to politics trumping Law in the sense of President Nixon thinking he could do anything he wanted with respect to the Watergate scandal. I was referring to what every first year law student learns about prosecutorial discretion and the political accountability of prosecutors, which the “system” assumes will be a check on prosecutorial abuses more often than a source of them.

5. A frustrating thing to me about these discussions is that non-academics don’t seem particularly to appreciate the fragility and importance of academic freedom. A university isn’t equipped or competent to do a factual investigation of what took place at DOJ or in secret White House meetings. Nor should it make judgments about what faculty do outside of their professorial duties when there is no evident impermissible impact on their teaching. (For Professor Yoo, there is none.) The right forum investigating and punishing alleged crimes is in the criminal justice system, not a research university. Our job is already tough enough.

6. Finally, another frustrating thing is that advocates are often fierce in their belief that they know what the law is, and they know when someone else’s view is extreme. Your typical law professor is, I think, far more humble. We tend to see multiple sides to important issues, and lots of gray. Even if we are convinced of something, we work hard to understand the counterarguments, just to be sure. If there aren’t any, then MAYBE one could characterize the other position as extreme. My guess is that Professor Yoo’s constitutional theories and statutory interpretation would win at least three votes among current justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. I don’t like it, but that’s my reading of the caselaw. Does 3 out of 9 make it extreme? If so, then a lot of my heroes are or were “extreme.”

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25 Responses to “Obama Advisors Feared a Coup If the Administration Prosecuted War Crimes”

If people of ethical integrity took over the government … it would be called a coup.

It is easier for Obama to run his office like a gang of crooks then have any expectation of righteousness. He had this negative expectation years before he entered any office. The White House is an “us and them” gangland mentality easy to manipulate by fellow crime-masters. Bird of a feather flock together. Maybe when Obama leaves the temple, he could write a book about the White-House culture, insanity. These people are out of touch, and ‘master’ has drunken their poison.
As a response to the corporate ZioNAZI fascist’s extreme fear at the rise and resurgence of the spirit of True Republican Freedom (Individual Liberty) in America symbolized by the Ron Paul victory, the criminal, illegal and unconstitutional permanent Tory Fascist national-socialist US Terror-Army Criminal Mafia Cabal have ordered themselves arch-cowardly new hi-tech criminal (suicide bombing) US Army-Terrorist Kamikaze Drones.

foxnews.com/scitech/2011/09/07/us-army-orders-first-suicide-drones/

Undoubtedly they will be used for a continuation of their decades-long domestic and foreign political assassination programs. Suicide bombing has long been the established-religious fascist illegal criminal and unconstitutional ZioNAZI al CIAduh Mafia’s policy for years in the criminal-fascist establishment of religionism in Palestine program and the 9/11 Daniel Chapter 8 Show, but this “standard criminal terrorist utility” psychotic drone-suicide war-criminality technology brings such evil and malignant cowardice to new levels of convenience in criminal corruption.

These are nuclear armed criminal military fascist religious socialist bankster terrorists in High Places
No Zionist war criminal shall ever be punished.
There is really only one solution.

Someone needs to locate Vampire Central and burn them out with napalm or white phosporus while they are sleeping.

If you wipe out Vampire Central, everyone will snap out of it as their spirts are freed from servitude to the NWO. Killing off stray blood suckers, warwolfs and zombies(politicians and lawmakers) will accomplish nothing.

I know this sounds like some kind of joke, but the stoolies and stooges in office are only a storefront brought to the public by manistream. In this case, everything mainstream tells us is an illusion, like a fishing lure with bright feathers and shiney plated spoons, or a moose calling horn to attract the prey. Hollywood, The Price Is Right, The Lives Of The Rich Famous, Wallstreet, Banking, Capitol Hill, wars terrorism, it’s all a Mass Psyopp of a 3rd 4th kind, designed to brainwash the masses into a state of maximum harvest by the vampires of this earth.

It is time for the people to break out the torches, hunt them down and burn out their lier, every last one of their kind. Otherwise these freaks will devour the entire human population of everything human and decent that mankind has to offer.

They need to be identifed and located!
- What we are really dealing with is an underground hold over of the Nazi party that has infiltrated all institutions and is in the process of overthrowing all institutions, as it superimposes the new/old ideodlogy.
  
  The hunt for war criminals that escaped Nuremburg and that spread and later blossomed underground decades later needs to be revealed and the hunt must continue. Their manicale blood lines need to be erradicated if freedom is to survive anywhere on this planet.
  
  Since they have reproduced and spread their ideology to all four corners of the earth, erradication will involve a fairly large number, but like all epidemics it’s to be expected. I say fight fire with fire and mass impalings of their kind like the Count inflicted, should catch their attention.
  
  The biggest thing is that the masses need to wake up and see what’s been going on in plane sight for decades now and exaclty how the global elite have been waging against humanity, disguised by mainstream as something good and deserving of respect.
Rediculous story. President Obama has been developed by the Agency just as Bush I, II, Clinton and President Obama. Just Good cop/Bad Cop game. LOL!
The only people afraid of our alphabet agencies are the people within our government…..all cowards. Thank God none of them were around when America fought the evil empire .
Fear … the magic word …

Brought to you by the ” Depends ” lobby …

They got your size … don’t worry …

P.S. They got ” Fat ass ” size , no room for balls needed !!
There’s a haunting echo here of Ike’s warning about the Military Industrial Complex that threatened Amerika’s freedoms and democratic processes.
The Bilderbergers and their subcommittees don’t pick our national leaders by holding a finger up to the wind; the Bushes, Obamas, Clintons, Harpers, Merkels, Blairs, Camerons, et al. are vetted and tested for their malleability. Throw in a little postive reinforcement and threats of exposure of skeletons in closets and this is what you get.

No way the Bushistas and fellow travelers will be brought up on charges. They haven’t survived this long at the top of the food chain for no reason. The college prof is merely recognizing the system. He may not like it but he ain’t gonna test the waters. He ain’t stupid! I’m glad I’m not that far up the ladder. I have sacrificed a possible ‘career’ but I made that choice a long, long time ago. And it’s too late to change stripes.

Hopefully, I will “sleep peaceful and calm when I’m laid to my rest.” (from “To Dream the Impossible Dream,” written for the stage musical, “Man of La Mancha” about the character. Don Quixote in Cervantes’ book. Don Quixote jousted with windmills thinking he could defeat the powers that be.)
- What if there was a man who could defeat the powers that be around the world? He would have to be god or his mother would have to be god? Which means a lot of souls throughout the history of this world are going to a place just like this earth but different. Call it hell. God has no religion if that tells you the troubles facing organized religions. All of the suffering of this world goes back to those who claim to be god in the end.
  
  It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. (REM)
  - And when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me OUT/IN.
    
    REVOLUTION, John Lennon
Your right on the money werewatching,or hit the nail on the head,either way your right.
If Soetoro goes after Bush and co., he’ll have to go after himself. He’s already guilty
of crimes against humanity and responsible for the black genocide going on in Libya.
It’s not only the fear of a coup, but how does being murdered, assassinated, or being sent an envelope full of Anthrax sound?

It has been made very clear, you are either with the shaddow government that has siezed power, or bad things will happen to you.

Just go down the list beginning with Dr. David Kelly and there were MANY that posed a threat and risk to the activities of our shaddow government. From the NY Madam, to Ivans to name just a few, and lets not forget about how they will ruin someone’s reputation using mainstream propaganda, so long as it either shuts them up, or makes them look like a fruit cake so that no one will pay any attention to what actually happened. And then there was that guy they found dead at the dump, there was a video of him with one shoe off walking in a daze in a NY parking garage – he was a former advisor that opposed the use of bioweapon RD.

I often thought they did it to Bill Clinton using Monica Lowinski, where he went from being guilty to not guilty, with admissible to not admissible testimony, back and forth again and again just to demostrate how easily they can manipulate things and turn it on a dime until they get what they want. In the case of Bill, they wanted him to sign legislation that would allow lifting of the Glass Stiegal Act and I could swear they twisted his arm every which way until they got their way with him, where he finally realized the full extent of the manipulations they could pull off before his very eyes and the public’s, and still get away with it. It absolutely amazed me how they tossed him around like a rag doll on that issue, as if it were some sort of mind game that could not be “topped.”

If you step back and look at the big picture, NO ONE stands up to these bastards because they have made so many examples of what will happen, just look at JFK. If Obama attempted to investigate and prosecute any claims of war crimes, I am sure he would be assassinated and he knows it, he’s not totally stupid and I am also fairly sure they already have total control of him with the real birth certificate which still remains at large until such time as they may need it, so long as he obeys.

Far more powerful than bribery, is the power of assassination(murder) and after that blackmail, in the form of character assassination, unless favors and blind eyed oversights are granted on demand.

What is hard to understand?
- You are correct, Reagan tried it his way, then he found himself on the wrong end of an assassins bullet- then you saw the results…the Iran/Contra affair, with so much rampant criminality that even the Attorney General was under scrutiny, and he’s supposed to be the nations leading law-enforcement officer!!!!
  
  And yes, Kennedy paid the ultimate price.
  
  We, by separating ourselves from the parade, can live as free people, but only by making others aware of the facts. Carry copies of docs with you for proving points when debating out there…I carry certain sections of the 1974 Kissinger doc NSSM 200 re: population control to shush the naysayers that such a program exists.
  - don’t forget what happen to martin Luther king he was going to be ted kennedy’s running mate.
War criminal, Henry Kissinger was hand picked for the 911 Commission. Imagine that. The documentary, The Trials of Henry Kissinger is an eye opener. Alex Jones is right, when you are a wake you can never go back to watching the cartoon network news. aka – CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC
They all need to be tried for war crimes……….including obomba the dancing monkey.
They will all be executed live on pay-per-view tv……….I CAN’T WAIT! Please pass the popcorn.
At this point, I suppose the Obama administration is as deep into war crimes as was the Bush administration, so there will unlikely never be an investigation unless someone credible like Ron Paul becomes president.
Many Democrats would stop a investigation, it’s not just Republicans. The only people in Congress that would support the rule of law are the ones who vote no on the fake wars. But ya the killers will kill the whole lot of us before we ever see the rule of law in this country again.
The seal of the supreme court is the six pointed star of the Rothschild coat of arms which is really the freemason compass and square,the star of Rompha,Rephaim,in other words very rarely to you see them send one of there own to task . Michael Jackson ,pedofile ,got off,Slick Willie purgered himself and nothing?The crimes the Bush family has orchestrated over the years and nothing! The freemason Obama knew when he stood on the altar of Zeus that he had replicated when he was sworn in ,that he can do vertually anything he wants .Once in a while they throw us one of there own like Saddam,Gadafi ,not often enough. Jesus Christ is Lord , nibirupedia.com
This stinks of a PSY-OP, new puppets never go after the former front men

His approval and image are in the gutter, he’s been outed as a minion of the NWO agenda and now this pops up?

Maybe this will fool the low IQers and the terminally asleep, but not those that are awake and see the rigged system for what it is will not buy this attempt to rebuild his image as a conduit of change

But But I really wanted wanted to go after Bush but those meen men would have come after me, so I am forced to push the agenda forward, really I would never lie

Barack Bush, Goerge Obama, the puppets do as they are told, the last prez that went off script got his brains blown apart in Dallas

Wake up and smell the rigged system
I say smash John Yoo’s balls!!! If it’s good for you then it’s good for Yoo!!! Y’all have a goodin’!!!

“All ‘HAIL’ Thermal Expansion!!!”

HillbillyJihad TheBubbaLiberationFront
If you don’t think we’re in big trouble and that things are about to get alot worse; just read the headline. We’re screwed.
So the question is; whats the next move on the grand chess board going to be by both sides?
I think I need to change from werewatchung to weregoingtotakeactionourselves