US Politics

The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against America Peter Baker and Susan Glasser offer a beautifully written, utterly dispiriting history of the man who attacked democracyThe US labors in Donald Trump’s shadow, the Republican party “reborn in his image”, to quote Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. Trump is out of office but not out of sight or mind. Determined to explain “what happened” on 6 January 2021, when Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, the husband-and-wife team examines his term in the White House and its chaotic aftermath. Their narrative is riveting, their observations dispiriting.Trump chief of staff used book on president’s mental health as guideRead moreThe US is still counted as a liberal democracy but is poised to stumble out of that state. The stench of autocratization wafts. Maga-world demanded a Caesar. It came close to realizing its dream.In electing Trump, Baker and Glasser write, the US empowered a leader who “attacked basic principles of constitutional democracy at home” and “venerated” strongmen abroad. Whether the system winds up in the “morgue” and how much time remains to make sure it doesn’t are the authors’ open questions.Trump spoke kindly of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. He treated Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine as a plaything, to be blackmailed for personal gain.In a moment of pique, Trump sought to give the Israeli-controlled West Bank to King Abdullah of Jordan. For Benjamin Netanyahu, the former and possibly future prime minister of Israel, he had a tart “fuck him”.At home, the US is mired in a cold civil war. Half the country deems Trump unfit to hold office, half would grant him a second term, possibly as president for life. Trump’s “big lie”, that the 2020 election was stolen, is potent.The tectonics of education, religion and race clang loudly – and occasionally violently. The insurrection stands as bloody testament to populism and Christian nationalism. The cross and the noose are icons. The Confederacy has risen.Baker is the New York Times’s chief White House correspondent. Glasser works for the New Yorker and CNN. Their book is meticulously researched and beautifully written. Those who were in and around the West Wing talk and share documents. Baker and Glasser lay out receipts. They conducted more than 300 interviews. They met Trump at Mar-a-Lago, “his rococo palace by the sea”, to which we now know he took more than 300 classified documents.“When we sat down with [him] a year after his defeat,” Baker and Glasser write, “the first thing he told us was a lie.”Imagine that.Trump falsely claimed the Biden administration had asked him to record a public service announcement promoting Covid vaccinations. Eventually, he forgot he had spun that yarn. It never happened.Baker and Glasser depict a tempestuous president and a storm-filled presidency. Trump’s time behind the Resolute Desk translated into “fits of rage, late-night Twitter storms, abrupt dismissals”. The authors now compare Trump to Napoleon, exiled to Elba.Congress impeached him twice. He never won the popular vote. His legitimacy flowed from the electoral college, the biggest quirk in the constitution, a document he readily and repeatedly defiled. Tradition and norms counted little. The military came to understand that Trump was bent on staging a coup. The guardrails nearly failed.The führer was a role-model. Trump loudly complained to John Kelly, his second chief of staff, a retired Marine Corps general and a father bereaved in the 9/11 wars: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”“Which generals?”“The German generals in world war II.”“You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?”It’s fair to say Trump probably did not know that. He dodged the Vietnam draft, suffering from “bone spurs”, with better things to do. He is … not a reader.In Trump’s White House, Baker and Glasser write, Kelly used The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a study by 27 mental health professionals, as some sort of owner’s manual.A week before Christmas 2020, Trump met another retired general, the freshly pardoned Michael Flynn, and other election-deniers including Patrick Byrne, once a boyfriend of Maria Butina, a convicted Russian agent. Hours later, past midnight, Trump tweeted “Big protest in DC on January 6th … Be there, will be wild!”In that moment, the fears of Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff who saw the coup coming, “no longer seemed far-fetched”. Now, as new midterm elections approach, Republicans signal that they will grill Milley if they retake the House.Baker and Glasser also write of how Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump sought refuge from the Trumpian storm, despite being his senior advisers. They endeavored to keep their hands clean but the muck cascaded downward.Not everyone shared their discomfort. Donald Trump Jr proposed “ways to annul the will of the voters”. Rick Perry, the energy secretary, pushed for Republican state legislatures to declare Trump the winner regardless of reality.“HERE’s an AGGRESSIVE STRATEGY,” a Perry text message read.Trump’s increasing tirade against FBI and DoJ endangering lives of officialsRead moreIn such a rogues’ gallery, even the wife of a sitting supreme court justice, Ginni Thomas, stood ready to help. Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, was a child who yearned for his parent’s affection. He would say and do anything. And yet he managed to spill the beans on Trump testing positive for Covid before debating Biden. Trump called Meadows “fucking stupid”. Meadows has since complied with subpoenas issued by the Department of Justice and the January 6 committee.Baker and Glasser conclude by noting Trump’s advanced age and looking at “would-be Trumps” who might pick up the torch. They name Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley and Tucker Carlson.On Thursday, Trump threatened violence if he is criminally charged.“I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before,” he said. “I don’t think the people of the US would stand for it.”As Timbuk 3 once sang, with grim irony: “The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.”
The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 is published in the US by Penguin Random House
TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansThe far rightreviewsReuse this content More

Fox News and Republicans try to shift attention to crime as midterms loomRightwing leaders push ‘soft on crime’ narrative to propel Republicans this fall, as most voters focus on abortion rights With most US voters indicating that the preservation of abortion rights is their chief focus as midterm elections loom, the face of Fox News and Republican politicians appear to be trying to shift attention to crime, a progressive media watchdog has warned.As Democrats seek to maintain razor-thin advantages in both congressional chambers, an analysis from Media Matters for America notes that on 19 August, the highest-rated Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, implored “every Republican candidate in the United States” to pitch themselves as favoring “law and order and equality under the law”.‘He could be a good president’: is Tucker Carlson the next Donald Trump?Read moreSince then, the word “crime” has appeared in 29% of Republican political ads, up from 12% in July, Media Matters said, citing reporting from the Washington Post.In one of the most closely watched contests, the Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, Dr Mehmet Oz, then launched ads attacking his Democratic rival, John Fetterman, on criminal justice.Blake Masters – a past Carlson guest and Republican Senate candidate in Arizona – last week derided the Democrats as “the party of crime”.A new survey by the Pew Research Center showed 56% of voters said abortion would be “very important” at the polls after the US supreme court struck down the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that established the right to terminate a pregnancy.A separate poll from the Wall Street Journal found that 60% of voters support abortion rights in most or all cases.Media Matters said it is not new for Republicans – who hailed the supreme court ruling in June – to fixate on crime and the concept of “law and order” as a topic in national elections.The left-leaning nonprofit pointed to a notorious ad about a convicted murderer, Willie Horton, that George HW Bush aired during his successful run to the Oval Office in 1988. The ad accused his Democratic rival, Michael Dukakis, of being soft on crime while Massachusetts governor because Horton raped a woman and robbed a man during a temporary furlough from prison in that state.Media Matters also said that Carlson and Republicans have echoed each other before. For instance, Republicans joined the star Fox News host in characterizing Black activists’ protests against police brutality after the 2020 murder of George Floyd as a threat to safety.But despite the increase in overall crime that the US has experienced in recent years across Democratic and Republican cities and states, murder and other violent offenses remain well below levels in the early 1990s, part of which was under a Republican White House.While property crime rates have fallen, murder rates have increased roughly equally in Republican-controlled cities as in their Democratic counterparts, said a Brennan Center for Justice report cited by Media Matters.The analysis also found that Republican candidates have not clearly outlined what federal-level policies they would adopt to drive down crime.Despite claims that Joe Biden has done nothing to address crime, the president recently signed both the first federal gun safety bill in nearly 30 years and the American Rescue Plan, under which he successfully pushed for $10bn for policing and public safety.Every Republican in Congress opposed the American Rescue Plan, which was aimed at helping the national economy recover in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.A spokesperson for New York City-based Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Media Matters analysis.TopicsRepublicansFox NewsUS television industryUS politicsTV newsTelevision industrynewsReuse this content More

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After Joe Biden delivered a landmark speech a couple of weeks ago warning that the extremism of Donald Trump’s Republican supporters now threatened the country’s democratic foundations, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the journalist Luke Mogelson, who has written a book chronicling the transformation of America in the run-up to January 6

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Judge proposed by Trump named special master in Mar-a-Lago records caseJudge Cannon appointed Judge Raymond Dearie to vet documents and denied the DoJ’s plea to continue reviewing the seized records A federal judge has named Raymond Dearie, a senior US district judge with experience handling US national security matters, as an independent arbiter to vet records seized by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Florida estate in an ongoing criminal investigation.Mar-a-Lago documents: Trump delaying tactics causing ‘irreparable harm’ – DoJRead moreFlorida-based US district judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday appointed Dearie to serve as a special master in the legal fight between Trump and the Department of Justice over government documents the former president kept at his Florida resort.Dearie was one of two candidates for the post proposed by the former president, and the US justice department had said it would not oppose his appointment.In her order, Cannon also rejected the justice department’s demand that prosecutors would be allowed to continue their review of the seized records while the dispute is ongoing, and their assertion that the investigation is urgent due to the highly classified and sensitive material in the records.“The court does not find it appropriate to accept the government’s conclusions on these important and disputed issues without further review by a neutral third party in an expedited and orderly fashion,” Cannon said in the ruling.Dearie, who is 78 and based in Brooklyn, is tasked with deciding whether any of the documents seized by the FBI during the August search are privileged – either due to attorney-client confidentiality or through a legal principle called executive privilege – and should be off limits to federal investigators.Dearie has until 30 November – after the midterms – to finish the review. Trump will be required to pay costs associated with the special master.Earlier this month, Cannon had granted a request by Trump’s lawyers to name a special master to vet the seized records. Mar-a-Lago a magnet for spies, officials warn after nuclear file reportedly foundRead moreTrump is under investigation by the justice department for retaining government records – some of which were marked as highly classified, including “Top Secret” – at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach after leaving office in January 2021. During a search of the property, FBI agents seized more than 11,000 records and 48 empty folders marked classified.The justice department also is looking into possible obstruction of the investigation after it found evidence that records may have been removed or concealed from the FBI when it sent agents to the property in June to try to recover all classified documents.Dearie served as US attorney in Brooklyn before being appointed to the federal bench there by Republican president Ronald Reagan in 1986, and was chief judge of that court from 2007 to 2011. He assumed what is called senior status – a sort of semi-retirement with a reduced case load – in 2011, a role in which he continues to serve.The justice department had said in a court filing on Monday that Dearie’s experience as a judge qualified him for the special master role, but opposed the other candidate proposed by Trump’s team, private attorney Paul Huck. Trump’s lawyers opposed the two retired federal judges proposed by the department.On the bench, Dearie was one of multiple judges presiding over cases against several men accused in 2009 of plotting to bomb New York City’s subway system at the direction of al-Qaida leaders.Dearie was appointed in 2011 to the foreign intelligence surveillance court, which reviews warrant applications from the US government on matters of national security, where he served until 2019.In 2017, he was one of four federal judges who approved warrants used to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page amid concern about Trump campaign contacts with Russians, according to papers released to media outlets that sued for the records. The justice department had opposed Trump’s request for a special master to review the seized documents to see if any should be withheld from investigators as privileged. In ruling in favor of Trump’s request for a special master, Cannon rejected the department’s arguments that the records belong to the government and that because Trump is no longer president he cannot claim executive privilege. Cannon was appointed to the bench by Trump in 2020.The documents probe is one of several federal and state investigations Trump is facing from his time in office and in private business as he considers another run for the presidency in 2024.TopicsDonald TrumpMar-a-LagoFloridaFBIUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

“White supremacist will not have the last word and this venom and violence cannot be the story of our time,” Biden said. Biden listed off a series of attacks against Jewish people, trans people, Asian Americans…He specifically mentioned the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, and violence against Asian Americans amid the pandemic, and bomb threats at HBCUs. “All forms of hate fueled violence have no place in America,” he said, adding that we must “silence it, rather than remain silent.”Reality Winner, the intelligence contractor who served more than four years in prison for leaking a report on Russian interference in the 2016 US election, has said she finds accusations that Donald Trump mishandled sensitive documents “incredibly ironic”, given her prosecution under his administration.An FBI search of the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida last month found more than 300 classified documents.Speaking to NBC News, Winner, 30, said: “It is incredibly ironic, and I would just let the justice department sort it out.”Winner added that it “wasn’t hard to believe” Trump held on to classified documents.Reflecting on her own prison sentence, she said: “What I did when I broke the law was a political act at a very politically charged time.”Winner also said she did not believe Trump should go to prison. She did not comment further on whether the former president should face charges under the Espionage Act, as she did in 2017.“This is not a case where I expect to see any prison time,” Winner said, “and I’m just fine with that.”Winner was released early, on good behavior, in June 2021.The US is expected to announce a new $600m arms package to help the Ukrainian military, Reuters reports:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Two of the people familiar with the deliberations said the package could be announced later this evening
Several sources said it was expected the package would contain munitions, including more High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS). Two of the sources said the package would include ammunition for howitzers
The White House declined to comment.
Washington has sent about $15.1bn in security assistance to the Kyiv government since Russia’s invasion.Here’s a 2017 interview by my colleague Lois Beckett with Susan Bro: More

Biden vows to combat ‘venom and violence’ of white supremacy President also decries Trump’s reluctance to condemn rightwing racism at Charlottesville rally in 2017 Joe Biden vowed to combat the “venom and violence” of white supremacy in America and decried Donald Trump’s reluctance to condemn the rightwing racism on display in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, which spurred Biden to run against him for the presidency.“White supremacists will not have the last word and this venom and violence cannot be the story of our time,” Biden said on Thursday in a summit at the White House to push back on rising hate crime in the US, entitled United We Stand.The US president also unveiled a new set of initiatives aimed at countering hate-fueled violence.Biden and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, delivered remarks at the summit, which was attended by lawmakers of both parties and community leaders from across the county.In his afternoon speech, Biden announced what he called “a new era” of national service to “foster stronger communities”.He is asking Congress to raise the payment for national service through programs such as Americorps, an independent federal agency that involves millions of Americans in volunteer work for a stipend, to $15 an hour.The president also mentioned new training on identifying and reporting hate-fueled violence for local law enforcement groups, workplaces and houses of worship.The Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services will work with schools on programs to deter bullying, the White House said. And the Department of Homeland Security will offer $20m in grants for state, local and tribal governments, non-profits and universities to prevent hate-fueled violence.Biden did not mention former president Trump by name, but while discussing the notorious “Unite the Right” 2017 rally in Charlottesville, he did refer to “the last guy” defending the white supremacists in the aftermath of the violence that weekend.“When the last guy was asked, ‘What do you think?’ he said he thought there were some fine people on both sides,” Biden said.He added: “We remain in a battle for the soul of our nation,” a theme he used in his 2020 presidential campaign and has lately revived to galvanize votes in this November’s midterm elections.Survivors and loved ones of victims of hate-fueled violencealso participated in the gathering and spoke about horrors experienced because of racism, xenophobia and antisemitism.The president was introduced by Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer – who was murdered in 2017 while protesting against the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, mown down in a far-right terrorist attack by a neo-Nazi sympathizer who deliberately rammed his car into counter-demonstrators.“Across the country, hate crimes are on the rise,” Bro said. And while her daughter’s death received national and international attention, “all too often these hateful attacks are committed against people of color with unacceptably little public attention,” she added.Biden had specifically asked Bro to introduce him at the summit.He later tweeted: “White supremacy and all forms of hate-fueled violence have no place in America. Failure to call it out is complicity. Silence is complicity. And we cannot remain silent.”White supremacy and all forms of hate-fueled violence have no place in America. Failure to call it out is complicity. Silence is complicity. And we cannot remain silent.— President Biden (@POTUS) September 15, 2022
Last year Charlottesville removed a Confederate statue that had been a focal location for the rightwing rally in 2017 from the town after a long legal battle. The state capital of Richmond not long after took similar action.Thursday’s summit came four months after a white supremacist gunman attacked a supermarket in a predominantly Black area of Buffalo, New York, killing 10.Similar attacks in recent years have included the 2019 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where a gunman had published an anti-immigrant screed, and the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.The White House earlier said federal agencies would strengthen coordination to address hate crimes and more resources would be made available to schools, libraries and other community institutions to prevent hate-fueled attacks.In addition to the new policies, major technology companies have outlined steps to limit the spread of hate content on their platforms.YouTube said it would start removing content glorifying violent acts that could inspire similar violence, even if the content creators are not linked to a designated terrorist group.Microsoft pledged to expand its application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect and prevent violence, while Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced a partnership with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies’ Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism.The White House earlier noted that Biden signed the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act last year. That bipartisan law addressed the increase in reports of hate-related incidents against Asian Americans, amid the coronavirus pandemic.In June, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant attempt to address gun violence in 30 years. The legislation expanded background checks among the youngest gun buyers and included funding for states to enact “red-flag laws” which help keep firearms out of the hands of those considered a danger to themselves or others.Biden promised to help heal “the soul of the nation” but evidence suggests that the country is more divided than it has been in decades. According to a survey last month, two in five Americans believe a civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next decade.The survey also found that two-thirds of Americans believe political divisions have worsened since Biden took office.TopicsJoe BidenKamala HarrisUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

In August 2022, a statewide referendum in Kansas saw citizens overwhelmingly reject a plan to insert anti-abortion language into the state’s constitution. It comes as a slew of similar votes on abortion rights are planned in the coming months – putting the issue directly to the people after the Supreme Court struck down the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.

But are referendums and citizens initiatives good for democracy? It may seem like an odd question to pose on International Day for Democracy, especially at a time when many feel democracy is imperiled both in the U.S. and around the world.

As someone who researches democracy, I know the answer isn’t simple. It depends on the kind of initiative and the reason that it comes to be held.

First, some simple distinctions. Referendums and citizens initiatives are mechanisms of direct democracy – instances in which members of the public vote on issues that are commonly decided, in representative systems, by legislatures or governments. While with referendums it is typically the government that places questions on the ballot, with citizens initiatives – more common at the state level in the U.S. – the vote originates outside of government, usually through petition drives.

The Chicago Center on Democracy, which I lead at the University of Chicago, recently launched a website that tracks many of these direct democracy efforts over the past half-century.

Appealing to the masses or settling scores

That a majority of democracies retain some form of direct democracy is a testament to the legitimacy with which citizens’ voices are heard, even when, in fact, most decisions are made by our elected leaders. Often, national governments call referendums to bring important questions directly to its citizens.

But why would governments ever decide to turn a decision over to the people?

In some cases, they have no choice. Many countries, among them Australia, require that constitutional amendments be approved in popular referendums.

In other instances, such votes are optional. United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron, for example, was under no obligation to undertake a 2016 referendum on continued EU membership. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos had plenty of legislative support that same year to ratify peace accords with a rebel group through an act of congress. But he turned the decision over to the people, instead.

Pushing a Brexit referendum backfired on then-Prime Minister David Cameron.
Brian Lawless/PA Images via Getty Images

One reason leaders voluntarily put important issues before voters is to solve disputes within their own political parties. The Brexit vote is a case in point. The U.K. Conservative Party was deeply divided over British membership in the EU, and – as Cameron later acknowledges in his memoirs – his position as head of the party, and thus as prime minister, was increasingly threatened.

In these instances, the government is in effect using the people as a referee to decide an internal dispute. It is a high-risk move, though. For Cameron, going to the country meant the end of his premiership. And six years on, the U.K. is still dealing with the fallout of that vote.

Sometimes leaders seek public support on issues about which they expect powerful opposition upon implementation. Colombia’s Santos expected resistance to the peace deal from opponents, including wealthy landed interests. He used the people as a kind of force field to protect the policy. But again, the strategy backfired. The Colombian accords were defeated, and have since faced powerful resistance when subsequent attempts were made to implement them through legislative approval.

But do these two high-profile instances illustrate fatal flaws in referendums, and direct democracy in general? Perhaps not.

Though plenty of disinformation circulated before both votes, the results probably fairly accurately reflected the people’s preferences. Moreover, they illustrate the perils to political leaders of placing issues of crucial importance before voters – they can’t be sure they will like the results.

And when their referendums fail, they may set back causes that these politicians care about. For example, Brazil held a referendum on gun control in 2005. It failed, and later pro-guns rights president Jair Bolsonaro used its failure to try to loosen restrictions on firearms, claiming that the failure of the referendum allowed him to do so.

Tool of demagogues

Sometimes the prime minister or president does prevail. A kind of referendum was used in Australia in 2017 to pressure the legislature into legalizing same-sex marriage. Conservative politicians were willing to hold a vote, with the same kind of “referee logic” as in Brexit – they were opposed to same-sex marriage, but preferred to go along with the public’s will, rather than continue to fight over this internally divisive issue.

In the end, the pro-marriage equality prime minister opted for a “postal survey” rather than a formal referendum. And the gamble worked for Australia’s leader – a very large majority expressed support of same-sex marriage and the prime minister got his way.

For every Colombia-style debacle, in which a leader holds an optional referendum but fails, one can point to governments putting matters to a popular vote to produce a force field, and winning. The approval of the public can make policy immune to –- or at least undermine – later opposition. Such was the case of same-sex marriage in Ireland, passed by referendum in 2015. The following year, Ireland settled the issue of abortion access, overturning a ban by a two-thirds majority.

Referendums are not only used by democratic leaders but also by autocrats and demagogues. Russian president Vladimir Putin put a series of constitutional reforms before voters in 2020, including one that overturned Putin’s prior term limit in office.

Accusations of fraud and intimidation followed the vote. The process could hardly have been more at odds with direct democracy and the autonomous expression of the people’s will.

Getting policy to line up with people’s will

There are no national referendums in the U.S. But American voters have a great deal of experience with initiatives at the state level – and with state-wide referendums, as well. These votes have the potential to force governments to abide by the people’s will in cases where legislators may be resisting popular policies.

Yet problems can arise with these exercises in direct democracy. Even though they are presumably citizens’ initiatives, the influence of political parties, special interests, lobbyists and big money can turn them into something quite different, as was the experience of California in the 1990s – which in turn undermined the public’s satisfaction in the initiative process.

But recently we have seen a spate of state initiatives that seem more promising – where majorities of citizens are demanding that their state legislatures bring policy more in line with public opinion. Florida voters approved ex-felon voting; Arizona voters approved bigger budgets for public schools; Missouri voters forced a reluctant legislature to expand Medicare in their state. All of these initiatives were backed with popular public support.

Most recently, Kansans said “no,” in referendum, to inserting pro-life language into their state´s constitution.

‘Let the people decide!’

The potential for mechanisms of direct democracy to improve citizen representation depends on the context in which they are held, including the manner in which they are placed on the ballot and the motives of those who placed them there.

At one extreme are autocrats like Vladimir Putin who held votes that augment his power and the length of his term. At the other are citizens frustrated by legislators whose actions stray far from public opinion. In between are measures sponsored by governments that may want to insulate policies they care about with the help of the people’s backing, and parties that throw their hands up, in the context of internal divisions, and say, “let the people decide.” More

US hid fears of radiation in Moscow embassy in 70s from staff, documents revealPresident Ford and state secretaries complained to Soviet Union about health concerns over ‘Moscow signal’ The US complained to the Soviet Union for more than a decade about microwave radiation directed at its embassy in Moscow, but kept concerns secret from embassy staff for nine years, according to newly declassified documents.The reported microwave radiation came to be known as the “Moscow signal” and was the source of frequent complaints from Washington. US officials were unsure of either the purpose of the signal or the potential health effects of long-term exposure to low-level microwave radiation.The declassified documents, obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, provide a historical perspective on current anxiety about “Havana syndrome”, a cluster of mysterious neurological symptoms afflicting scores of US diplomats and spies, which the US believes may have been caused deliberately by some form of directed energy weapon.The first reference to the Moscow signal was in a June 1967 state department memo recording a conversation between the then US secretary of state, Dean Rusk, and the Soviet foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, in which Rusk raised the matter of the “electro-magnetic signal” aimed at the embassy in Moscow. Gromyko expressed scepticism about the claim, but Rusk insisted there was “no doubt whatever about it” and sketched a rough diagram to illustrate his point. Gromyko said he would “look into the matter” but no change in the level of radiation was detected.Over the years that followed, the microwave signals multiplied and intensified.President Gerald Ford wrote to the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, in December 1975: “These transmissions have created levels of radiation within the embassy which may, in the opinion of our medical authorities, represent a hazard to the health of the American families living and working in that building. Indeed, in one particular case, they may already have caused a serious health problem for one member of our embassy staff.”Ford was almost certainly referring to the ambassador Walter Stoessel, who became ill with leukaemia at that time, and died of the disease a decade later.In his reply to the president, Brezhnev insisted the electromagnetic field around the US embassy was “of industrial origin”.Despite US fears about the health effects, embassy staff were not informed, apparently because of concerns the story would leak to the media and upset arms control negotiations with Moscow. Stoessel’s illness was kept secret.In a 1975 conversation with the then Soviet ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, the US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, asked for the signal to be turned off before he made a planned visit to Moscow or, he joked, “You could give me a radiation treatment”.“We really are sitting on it here, but too many people know about it,” Kissinger told the ambassador. If it was discovered that the Nixon and Ford administrations had known about the problem and done nothing to stop it, he said, “we will catch hell”.The embassy staff were finally informed in 1976. A state department telegram from February of that year said employees should be briefed in small groups but they should not pass on the details to their dependants. However, the telegram recommended that pregnant staff or family members be medically evacuated immediately for tests.The Soviet leadership took no heed of the US complaints and it is unclear when the Moscow signal was turned off, if it ever existed. US experts were mystified over the purpose of the microwave radiation, with the two leading theories being that it was intended to neutralise electronic intelligence gathering by the embassy, or to activate listening devices built into the structure of the embassy.When the previous embassy building was demolished in 1964, dozens of microphones had been found embedded in its walls.TopicsUS foreign policyUS politicsRussianewsReuse this content More