The Alleged Editor

1999—The FBI admits, six years after the fact, that the tear gas canisters it fired into David Koresh’s compound in Waco were incendiary—but still denies they started the fatal fire. 1995—In Athens, Ga., zany House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) announces his new policy for winning the drug war: executing “27 or 30 or 35 people at one time.” 1985—Ronald Reagan admits that, as head of the Screen Actors Guild, he ratted on its members to the FBI. 1967—J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI sets out to “expose, disrupt, misdirect [and] discredit” the Black Panthers. 1967—George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, is shot dead by …

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1970—Graduate student Robert Fassnacht is killed and three others are injured when peaceniks blow up a physics lab at the U. of Wisconsin. 1967—Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin scatter 300 one-dollar bills on the floor of the Stock Exchange. Bedlam erupts as capitalists scramble. 1964—I.F. Stone reports the U.S. government and press “have kept the full truth about the Tonkin Bay incidents from the American public.” 1963—The State Dept. orders Amb. Lodge to encourage Vietnamese generals to stage a coup. 1954—Genial old Ike signs the first U.S. law banning a political party—the Communist Party, of course. 1936—After a 12-year hiatus, J. Edgar Hoover gets the …

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2010—Gareth Williams, money-laundering investigator for MI6, is found dead inside a locked gym bag in a London “safe house.” Metropolitan Police rule he died alone by accident. 2000—The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals rules that applicants can be denied jobs as cops on the grounds that they’re too smart. 1971—For the Chamber of Commerce, future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell lays out a plan for Right Wingers to reverse the New Deal with a huge propaganda campaign. 1968—Yippees nominate a pig for President, saying, “if we can’t have him in the White House, we can have him for breakfast.” 1966—Robert Strange McNamara announces new standards. …

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2016—The lift span of the Sarah Long Bridge is raised for the last time. 2008—An Afghan security contractor tricks U.S. forces into eliminating a rival with a AC-130 gunship. In two hours it kills 91 in Azizabad. Most are civilian women and children. Fox’s Ollie North, embedded in the bloody fiasco, calls it a great victory. 2002—The Bush Administration announces trade sanctions on North Korea, with which we do not trade. 1992—An FBI sniper wounds Randy Weaver and kills his wife Vicki at Ruby Ridge in Idaho. 1991—Derick Lynn Peterson’s obstinant heart continues beating for ten minutes after his electrocution, so Virginia officials zap him …

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2017—During an eclipse, as an aide says, “Don’t look,” President Trump removes protective glasses and stares directly at the sun. 2017—The Navy destroyer U.S.S. McCain collides with a freighter in the Gulf of Molucca; ten sailors die. This, 65 days after the destroyer U.S.S. Fitzgerald hits a freight ship off Honshu, killing seven aboard. 1992—Samuel Weaver, 14, and U.S. Marshal W.F. Degan die in a shootout at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. 1976—A two-day occupation of the Seabrook, N.H. nuke site begins. 1963—Ngo Dinh Nhu’s secret police kill hundreds of Buddhist protestors across Vietnam—for democracy. 1927—Justice Louis Brandeis refuses to hear a request for a stay of …

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2018—Greta Thunberg strikes, demanding action on the climate crisis. 1998—Days after admitting he’d lied about sex with an intern, Bill Clinton throws 13 Tomahawk missiles at Sudan’s only pharmaceutical factory. 1965—Keene, N.H. seminary student & civil rights worker Jonathan Daniels is murdered in Nayneville, Ala. White jurors acquit his killer. 1945—Charles de Gaulle is warned by his ex-puppet Emperor Bao Dai that if France tries to rule Vietnam, “it will no longer be obeyed; each village will be a nest of resistance, each former collaborator an enemy, and your officials and colonists will themselves ask to leave this atmosphere which they will be unable to …

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