ECHOES OF A 21-YEAR OLD STORY: ARE WE LIVING AND WITNESSING DEATH OF A CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC?
Former Presidents George H. Bush and Bill Clinton seen during 1992 campaign events
BACK THEN (1992), A VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION BY A U.S. PRESIDENT SEEMED LIKE A BIG DEAL. NOW, IT IS DEJA VU” (Truth in Media)
This is a story inspired by a border incident in January 1994, when I was still working as a war correspondent in the Balkans. The piece revealed George H. Bush’s unconstitutional troop deployment in 1992.
So why bring it up now? Because the story illustrates how deeply our Republic has sunk in the last 23 years. Back then, violations of the Constitution by U.S. presidents seemed like a big deal. Now, they are deja vu.
Which means that we are living and witnessing the death of a Republic our Founding Fathers have envisaged. Is it too late to save it? You tell me…
* * *
Did Two U.S. Presidents Break the Law When Sending Troops to Macedonia?
LIKE WATERGATE, COVER UP WAS WORSE THAN ORIGINAL CRIME [click to read full story]
An American (Armed Forces Press) Reporter Unlawfully Arrested by American Troops in Macedonia
PHOENIX, June 1, 1998 – With the New World Order’s globalism metastasizing around the world like cancer, sometimes one has to look at places half a world away to find examples of violations of the U.S. Constitution by our Chief Executives and their proxies. Deployment of American troops under the United Nations flag in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia appears to be a case in point. And as Watergate has shown, breaking the law once often leads the culprits to commit even greater transgressions as a part of the cover-up.
Enter the story of Richard Haverinen, an American citizen and an American Forces Network (AFN) newsman, who claims to have been unlawfully arrested and detained for six hours in January 1994 by the U.S. soldiers serving as U.N. personnel in Macedonia, while on an assignment there for the AFN. “My constitutional rights were violated,” this former U.S. soldier told TiM in a late April telephone interview. “I was stopped, taken into custody by military police, brought back to Camp Able Sentry, and detained and told I was not allowed to leave the compound,” Haverinen claimed in a sworn affidavit dated Aug. 15, 1996. He has since quit his AFN job.
Read more…
http://www.truthinmedia.org/Bulletins/tim98-6-1.html
LETTER TO THE EDITOR:
Richard Haverinen, a former AFP reporter and the chief protagonist in the above story, sent me a note today (Nov 23, 2o15):
One thing that never was fixed in the original story was that Sgt. Christian Mulvey was not military police. He was from the public affairs office at Third Infantry Division in Wuerzburg, Germany, the same town where my AFN affiliate station was located. Apparently I had caused so much panic by asking “Is this anything we can do a story about,” that TWO people had to be whisked to Macedonia to heal the trauma. It was Mulvey who told me “Major Richards didn’t want you flying off anywhere.”
That statement, and the fact that a military policeman ordered me into his vehicle as I was walking from Camp Able Sentry to the nearly Skopje airport, is how I knew for certain that I was subject to unlawful arrest by military personnel. If I had wanted to fly to Disney World, I had a lawful right to do so. I am not a slave. The Army chose to make me a prisoner.
Rick
DJURDJEVIC: The preceding was a story the Truth in Media published over 17 years ago. So why bring it up again now?
Two days ago, the American reporter Richard Haverinen referenced in this article contacted me. He had almost met one of the chief protagonists in this story (Gen Carter Ham), and wanted to share that with me. Ham, the man who tried to impose
the gag rule about the Jan 13, 1994 incident on the Macedonian-Serbian border, had moved up in the world. For a while. You can see him in the left shot with Obama at the Ramstein base in Germany.
But then his is now a retired U.S. General who had served as Commander of U.S. Africa Command at the time of the 2011 attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya. He retired from active duty in June 2013.
Meanwhile, I had completely forgotten about this old Truth in Media piece until Richard Haverinen brought it back to my consciousness a few days ago. After all, it has been more than 17 years and many war stories since I covered that one.
What made me dust off this piece and bring it up again?
In hindsight, back then, violations of the Constitution by the U.S. presidents seemed like a big deal. Now, they are routine.
Let me repeat:
BACK THEN (1992), VIOLATIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION BY U.S. PRESIDENTS SEEMED LIKE A BIG DEAL. NOW, THEY ARE DEJA VU. SAD, BUT TRUE.
* * *
Leave a Reply