STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Things that I know are true, part II

Personal Witness To The Murder of Ambassador Francis E. Meloy Jr By The War Criminal,  Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

  My dear readers, this blog is one of the most painful ones that I have ever had to write. 

As many of you know, I have had an extensive amount of experience as a physician, psychiatrist, Intelligence Operative, a ‘counter terrorist’ expert and a ‘regime changer’. 

But never once in my polymath career had I witnessed an outstanding Ambassador like Francis E. Meloy literally beg for his life. 

  As I remember Ambassador Meloy, I found him to be an outstanding Career Diplomat, who had served honorably in the US Navy during WWII [like Spike Dubs]. He had also served as US Ambassador to the Dominican Republic from 1969 to 1973.  He was stationed as Ambassador to Guatemala from 1973 to 1976. 

Because of his impressive history as a career diplomat, he was assigned to the most dangerous embassy in 1976—Lebanon. 

At that time, I was intimately involved in trying to manage a ‘civil war’ raging in Lebanon between Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Christian Phalangist groups. To say the least, this was one of the worst civil wars that I had been involved in.

At the time, I was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Management responsible for overseeing the Office to Combat Terrorism and many other Intelligence operations. I reported to only one many –Under Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, an impressive Falstaffian character with the charm of a Russian Bear and the determination of a German Shephard. But he had the largest heart and greatest concern for his fellow Career Diplomats and Foreign Service Officers. 

  I make a special point about this incredible man—Larry Eagleburger—because of him and those like him and Dubs, Chas Freeman, Frank Wisner, Thomas Pinkerton, Patrick Kennedy and many others –the Foreign Service was one of the most incredible organizations I had the  unique  privilege of working for.

  Actually from time to time, Larry and I would argue over his insistence that a particular FSO should be dismissed and I would often counter by saying that if he, Larry, or any other part of the State Department, had not trained that FSO to do his job, then it was incumbent on us, the Bureau of Management to train and retain that FSO.

 I emphasize this point  because Ambassador Francis E. Meloy jr and his Economic Counselor Robert O. Waring, also quite gifted, were specifically chosen by Larry and I to represent our US Embassy in Lebanon during a most trying and dangerous period in that country. 

Dear readers, are you beginning to see how history repeats itself in moments of international crises, our professional diplomats [as well as our intelligence operatives and military personnel at the level below Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense] are more than willing to serve our country ----knowing fully well that they would be risking their lives, just like Ambassador Stevens and the four other Special Forces/CIA heroes who died needlessly in Benghazi.

  But back to my personal tragedy. I say personal because the deaths of both Ambassador Francis E. Meloy and FSO Robert O. Waring still haunt me to this day.

As a psychiatrist, I knew that I had repressed the memory of those hours before and after their deaths that arose reflexively when I had heard and read about the deaths of our heroes in Benghazi and how they had begged for help which was denied by the SecDef , Gen Dempsey, SecState Hillary Clinton, and Obama and his coterie of ‘choir boys’.

  Before I continue, my narrative, I think that it is important for you my readers to understand that when I was recruited to be the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State by Lawrence Eagleburger, there were several conditions under which I agreed to work with the State Department. 

I must admit that it sounds arrogant for a USN Captain, a political psychiatrist trained at Harvard/MIT, to make any demands of Larry. Especially when I was only 34 years old and had already served in creating the beginning of ‘regime change’ in the Soviet Union, using the Soviet Psychiatric Hospital to take out Soviet ‘political dissidents,” falsely labeled as “Chronic Schizophrenic”.  

Sidebar: Dear Reader if you want to learn about past Soviet and present day Putin’s repression of political dissidents please read my novel, The Mind Palace,  which describes the horrible conditions that the Soviets created in order  to ‘interrogate’ Soviet dissidents,  particularly Baptist, Fundamental Christians, and Jewish Scientists. Now it’s the Pussy Riot who have been sent to the Gulags. Nothing really changes with new leadership. Does it? 

Back to that horrible assassination.

  Larry was the kind of man who loved my ‘chutzpah’ and admired my past ‘accomplishments’ in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.

  The fact was that I was not eager to serve SecState Henry Kissinger. This was not a secret to Larry or others in the Nixon Administration.
  I personally and professionally, condemned Henry for the war crimes he committed in Vietnam, Laos, and then Cambodia. His relentless bombing of innocent civilians in SE Asia and the lie he and Nixon had perpetrated about the Gulf Of Tonkin Attack initially fabricated by President Lyndon B Johnson.

  But there was much more to detest about Henry which Larry understood and accepted. I found him not only to be a war criminal but a coward, a ‘Nixon backstabber’ reporting everything to Scotty Reston of the NY Times. He was ‘self–aggrandizer’ and ‘fabricator’ of myths that made him sound strategically brilliant and tactically exemplary. He courted the sycophant reporters like the Kalb brother to write hagiographies of him.

  But I knew his personal weaknesses: his shame of being a German Jew; and his need to always be addressed as “Doctor”. Henry had received a PHD and I knew he wanted to be a psychiatrist, but he was not really intellectually capable of becoming one. 

His great claim to ‘success’ was and is his ability ‘suck up to powerful people’, a sycophant of the worst kind. His sponsor was none other than Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a decent man with very little intellectual prowess as was true of most of the Rockefeller family.  

So let’s put this entire scenario in perspective. 

I demanded that Henry was never to meet me; and, I was never to meet him or even listen to anything that Henry might have demanded of me. 

 In other words, I told Larry that “as far as I was concerned, Kissinger could go fuck himself!!” Those were the exact words and Larry just laughed and personally confirmed me as his DAS for Management.
Larry was a connoisseur of talent. He personally picked a young FSO named Pat Kennedy who for thirty years of my career in and out of the State Department would become the premiere manager/administrator of the Department. Today, he is the Under Secretary of State for Management, in effect, he is the new Larry.

Larry picked seasoned ambassadors for many positions who also grew to prominence –Ambassador Thomas Pickering, an outstanding career FSO who has served in more posts than I can recall. He is now in charge of the investigation of the Steven’s murder. 

Back to our narrative….

Ambassador Meloy was ordered personally by Henry Kissinger to present his Ambassadorial Credentials to the new Lebanese President. But Meloy knew all too well as I and Larry knew as well that for Melroy to do this during a completely uncontrollable and unpredictable civil war would mean certain death the minute he left the American Embassy.
  Henry refused to hear his case.  Instead, his false baritone voice, he insisted that Meloy ‘present his credentials’ especially in a time like this in order to show the world that we, Americans, were not afraid of civil war. 

  When Larry and I heard this nonsensical palaver from none other than the coward Kissinger, Larry and I [through Larry] vehemently urged Henry to rescind the order. We knew and as did Henry that Meloy’s leaving the embassy for an insignificant diplomatic formality that could have been postponed indefinitely was a “sure sentence of death for Meloy”.  

 

Then on the long distance secure telephone, Meloy pleaded with Larry and me to do something about his ridiculous order and stop Henry carrying out this nonsensical charade of diplomacy. Melroy even correctly called this ‘nothing but Henry’s vanity’.  And for that, he did not want to die. 

The outcome was as predicted.
 

On June 16, 1976,  Meloy and Waring and their  driver Zuhair Mohammed Moghrabi were kidnapped by PFLP teenagers with RPG’s and as they crossed the Green Line dividing the two conflicting parties, the Ambassador, his economic officer and the driver were murdered.  A few hours later, their bodies were found on the beautiful, crystal sand beaches of Ramlet al-Baida.

  This is the true story of the death of a brave, courageous Ambassador Francis E. Meloy Jr and Robert O. Waring, US Economic Counselor.

Did they have to die for our country? Clearly no!

  Did they have to die for Kissinger’s malignant narcism and self-aggrandizing need to make himself appear strong when in fact he was a murdering coward? 

 Clearly the answer was ‘yes’. 

  Kissinger, like Billhill Clinton, or Bush Jr, or Cheney, or Bob McNamara, or Condi, or Rumsfeld, or Tenet, or Michael Haydn, or the neocons, or many others in the White House, State Department,  Defense Department, or CIA – all who have willingly and enthusiastically encouraged or were directly complicit in the murder of civilians abroad but also here in the United States will NEVER BE PROSECUTED.  

  Our system of collusion, crony capitalism, and political corruption will always shroud the guilt of the political perpetrators of crime and silence it with the absence of a true investigation [not like the ersatz 9/11 commission]  and allow the passage of time to create  false narratives and a posthumous legacy of innocence. 

Witness the books of nonsense and self-glorification that Kissinger keeps writing, a continuous clap trap of stupidity and perseverations of a coward and murderer insisting on American strength and aggressiveness. If only the world were to really know how pathetic Henry really is and was,  then Henry could go quickly to his grave with the ignominy and anonymity he truly deserves.

  I dedicate this blog to the brave diplomatic warriors of our State Department, pray that one day, a career diplomat like Thomas Pickering, Frank Wisner or Chas Freeman eventually arise to serve as the Secretary of State rather than some political toddy of the White House who may have done nothing more than create and preserve the career of a political Frankenstein whether he be a Republican or Democrat.

  It’s time for the American Public to conduct their own Nuremberg Trials examining the malfeasance and miscreant behavior of their appointed political civil servants. 

Let the truth emerge finally, so that someone like myself and others, will have no further need to write blogs filled with past memories of murder, assassination and falsehoods. 

 Only the truth will truly set us free!!!