The Dark History of Anti-Gay Innuendo - 7:47 AM 2/13/2019
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James Kirchick, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, is author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age. He is writing a history of gay Washington, D.C.
In March 1953, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover prepared a secret report for Sherman Adams, President Dwight Eisenhower’s chief of staff. The document concerned Charles “Chip” Bohlen, whom Eisenhower had nominated to succeed George F. Kennan as ambassador to the Soviet Union. A career diplomat, Bohlen had served as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s interpreter at the 1945 Yalta Conference, where the Allied powers ceded control of postwar Eastern Europe to Soviet Premier Josef Stalin. Bohlen’s involvement at Yalta made him suspect in the eyes of some Republicans, led by Senator Joe McCarthy, who tried to paint him as not only soft on the Soviets but also gay.Washington at the time was in the grips not only of the Red Scare, but a more destructive (and less-remembered) “Lavender Scare.” In the popular imagination, communist disloyalty was intertwined with sexual immorality; communists were more likely to be “sexual deviants” and vice-versa. “I don’t say every homosexual is a subversive and I don’t say every subversive is a homosexual,” Nebraska Senator Kenneth Wherry had warned in 1950. “But a man of low morality is a menace in the government, whatever he is, and they are all tied up together.” Story Continued Below Hoover’s report on Bohlen was a farrago of gossip and innuendo. “There is a definite shading in his conversation and in his manner of speech which indicates effeminacy,” one source claimed of Bohlen, who also had a “habit of running his tongue over his lip in the manner utilized by a woman” and was “quite girlish.” While another source admitted to having no relationship with Bohlen, he nonetheless volunteered to the FBI that, “Bohlen walks, acts and talks like a homosexual.” Bohlen, (who was, in fact, straight) was eventually confirmed as ambassador to the Soviet Union, and went on to have a long and distinguished Foreign Service career. He was later immortalized as one of the postwar “Wise Men” of American diplomacy. Moral disgust was not the only consideration that made being gay a disqualifying trait for government service at the time; gays, it was widely believed, were also uniquely vulnerable to blackmail. So reprehensible was being gay, the thinking went, that a gay person would rather betray his country than risk exposure of his shameful secret. The month after Hoover composed his report on Bohlen, Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, which permitted the federal government to fire those suspected of “sexual perversion,” a euphemism for being gay. Over the ensuing decades, far more people (estimates range into the thousands) would lose their jobs over (real or alleged) homosexuality than suspected communist sympathies; many thousands more were denied jobs in the first place. Fast-forward over six decades to the present, and the same smear tactics are being employed, again in service of a dubious narrative involving supposed corruption of presumed gay people by a hostile foreign power. Except this time, the inquisitionists are not reactionary Republicans, but supposedly enlightened progressives. Last month, newly elected Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar posted a tweet about Lindsey Graham in which she shared a 2015 video of the South Carolina Senator denouncing then-candidate Donald Trump. “They got to him, he is compromised!” she wrote, emphasizing the degree to which Graham’s public posture towards Trump has changed since the latter became president. Two days earlier, Jon Cooper, chairman of a Democratic Super PAC which purports to be “the nation’s largest grassroots Resistance organization,” tweeted that “a Republican” had told him “he doubts [Graham] is kowtowing to Trump (and indirectly Putin) because he’s being blackmailed over his sexual orientation (an open secret) or even financial corruption. Rather, he thinks it probably involves some pretty serious sexual kink.” And that same day, MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle speculated, “It could be that Donald Trump or somebody knows something pretty extreme about Lindsey Graham.” It’s not hard to see what comments like these are insinuating, although Omar later denied she was referring to Graham’s sexual orientation. (MSNBC declined to comment on the record about Ruhle’s intended meaning.) Wholly unsubstantiated speculation about Graham‘s sexual orientation—based on nothing more than his bachelor status—have circulated for years. In 2012, for instance, author John Heilemann referred to Graham as a “woman” on Morning Joe. Others have been even less subtle. Last January, after Graham had positive words for Trump following a meeting with senators at the White House, comedian Chelsea Handler tweeted the following missive to her 8.3 million followers: “Hey, @LindseyGrahamSC what kind of #$%&-sucking video do they have on you for you 2 be acting like this? Wouldn’t coming out be more honorable?” She followed that up in October with, “If you’re wondering why Republicans took a sick day today, it’s probably because it’s #NationalComingOutDay. Looking at you @LindseyGrahamSC.” And this week, the Washington Blade, the capital’s LGBT newspaper, put Graham’s smiling mug on the cover of its “50 Most Eligible Bachelors” issue. Graham, who declined to comment for this story, has denied he’s gay. But that’s not the point. Even if he secretly were, the accusation that he is therefore susceptible to blackmail is historically groundless, predicated upon the same flawed assumption most people held about gays at the height of the Cold War: that they would commit treason in order to avoid being outed. Story Continued Below But of all the Americans who did betray their country by committing espionage for a foreign power, there is not a single example of a gay person blackmailed into doing so. A 1991 study found that in the 117 spy cases discovered since World War II, only six involved gays, and in none of these was sexual orientation a deciding factor. That same year, asked about the impending outing of his spokesman, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney referred to the blackmail rationale as “an old chestnut” used to bar gay people unfairly from serving in sensitive government positions. To claim today, baselessly, that a closeted gay person is being blackmailed into working against his country, retroactively validates the Cold War persecution of gays, who could be denied security clearances until a 1995 Executive Order by Bill Clinton reversed Eisenhower’s mandate. The sad irony is that the only informing some gay men and women did during this time was under duress from their owngovernment, which pressured them into identifying fellow gay people so that they, too, could be purged. One of the sources in Hoover’s secret report on Bohlen was a gay man who, thanks to a “sixth sense,” claimed he could “separate the ‘queer’ from the men.” Another such informant, a former Department of Commerce employee named Thomas Tattersall, identified dozens of men and women as “homosexuals” to federal investigators. As reported by historian David K. Johnson in his book The Lavender Scare, government agents once forced Tattersall to phone a friend at the Department of Commerce so they could monitor the conversation. “Various homosexual terms were used,” they later reported, and the “tone of the conversation and the tone of voice” of the Interior employee were “definitely homosexual.” Like those who gay-bait Lindsey Graham today, assertions about an individual’s sexual deviancy in the 1950s and 60s were often based upon little more than stereotypes and conjecture. In one of the few cases where the Soviets did try to blackmail a closeted gay man, their plans backfired. When the virulently anti-communist newspaper columnist Joe Alsop visited Moscow on a reporting trip in 1957, the KGB lured him into a honey trap with an attractive young agent and took photographs of the ensuing sexual encounter. Confronting Alsop with the dirty pictures, the KGB men demanded that he work on their behalf back in Washington. Yet rather than cower and do the Soviets’ bidding, Alsop archly asked for copies of the photos depicting him in flagrante delicto, hurried straight to the U.S. Embassy and revealed everything that had happened, including his history of gay experiences. Over the rest of his long career, despite knowing that the Soviets could have exposed him at any moment (and they tried), Alsop not only never softened his strident anti-communist views, he became even more assertive in espousing them. It seems never to have entered the fevered imaginations of Graham’s antagonists that the reason he has changed his tune about Trump is not to protect the secret of his scandalous peccadilloes, but because of something even grubbier: politics. Graham is, after all, a Republican from a deep red state where Trump is popular with the people Graham needs to win re-election. But such quotidian explanations do not suit our increasingly conspiratorial times. Two years into Trump’s presidency, a large segment of the American left has become utterly unhinged about Russia. Initially expressing justified suspicions about a president with an unseemly fondness for Vladimir Putin, some now indiscriminately charge anyone who does not share their hostility to the president, or buy into their increasingly deranged theories, with being a Russian agent. By stooping to gay baiting, the McCarthyism of the “Resistance” has come full circle. | ||
| Michael Bloomberg’s $500 million anti-Trump moonshot | ||
Michael Bloomberg’s team knows the former New York City mayor would need every penny to make his case to a Democratic electorate. | Monica Schipper/Getty Images for Bloomberg Philanthropies
Billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg is preparing to spend at least $500 million from his own pocket to deny President Trump a second term, according to Democratic operatives briefed on his plans.
2020 elections
The sum represents a floor, not a ceiling, on the billionaire’s potential spending to defeat the president in 2020. By MARC CAPUTO Bloomberg has not yet announced whether he will run in the Democratic primary. If he runs, he will use that half-billion-dollar stake — roughly $175 million more than the Trump campaign spent over the course of the entire 2016 election cycle — to fuel his campaign through the 2020 primary season, with the expectation that the sum represents a floor, not a ceiling, on his potential spending. Story Continued Below If Bloomberg declines to seek the presidency, his intention is to run an unprecedented data-heavy campaign designed to operate as a shadow political party for the eventual Democratic nominee. “That’ll get us through the first few months,” Kevin Sheekey, a top advisor to the former New York City mayor, told POLITICO when asked about the $500 million plan, which is just 1 percent of Bloomberg’s estimated net worth. “Mike spent $100 million in his last New York City election. And you can do the math as you think more broadly but New York City is 3 percent of the national population,” Sheekey said. “I’m not suggesting it’s straight math. But I’m suggesting that when Mike Bloomberg is committed to making a difference and seeing something though, generally speaking he’s pretty unabashed in doing so.” To that end, Bloomberg has assembled a political team that, since late November, has been meeting at least once weekly in the Manhattan headquarters of Bloomberg Philanthropies to consider what some aides have called “Plan A” and “Plan B.” Plan A is straightforward: Bloomberg runs for president as a Democrat, not as an independent candidate as he had mused privately in the past. According to Plan B, Bloomberg uses all the data — ranging from meticulously researched profiles of voters to polling data on the top issues that move the electorate — and field staff to help the otherwise-outgunned Democratic Party nominee to end Trump’s presidency. Bloomberg said Friday at an Orlando event that he’ll make a decision in “three more weeks.” He also made clear that he’s not waiting on former Vice President Joe Biden, who’s also mulling a bid for president and who, Bloomberg advisors acknowledge, could draw from the same pool of moderate primary voters. "My decision doesn't depend on what other people are going to do," Bloomberg told the AP. "My decision depends on whether or not I think I can make a difference." Still, the subject of Biden has come up in discussions with those who have discussed Bloomberg’s options with his team. In those conversations, Democratic operatives say, Bloomberg’s team members have indicated that they’re polling and conducting focus groups, and are familiar with primary election calendar and the complicated politics of wringing delegates from various states. They’re also under no illusions about the difficulties of a Democratic Party newcomer running as a centrist in a progressive primary. But Bloomberg’s aides are operating under the assumption that while the billionaire can’t buy the nomination, hundreds of millions of dollars can put him in contention. “Five hundred million is just an obscene amount of money. It’s crazy, enough to buy up all the TV ad inventory in the seven or eight states that really matter in a primary,” said a Democratic consultant familiar with the plans who privately shared information from a conversation with a top Bloomberg advisor. The consultant said it was unclear what Bloomberg would ultimately decide. But the mission would be similar either way. Story Continued Below “They’re going to do the infrastructure and logistical work to fill in the gaps for the state and national parties so that whoever the nominee is would inherit a state-of-the-art, fully functioning infrastructure,” the consultant said. “It’s being done with a clear and specific purpose: stopping Donald Trump.” Bloomberg’s team knows the 76-year-old would need every penny to make his case to a Democratic electorate that’s shifting ever-leftward and that’s increasingly suspicious of billionaires and older white males. Progressives also doubt his Democratic bonafides for having backed Republican candidates in the past, supporting the stop-and-frisk New York City policing policies that disproportionately targeted African-Americans and supporting gas and oil pipelines that leave some Democrats doubting his commitment to fight climate change — despite his commitment of $218 million to help cities reduce their carbon footprint while also financing the Sierra Club’s unprecedented Beyond Coal campaign that has shuttered 282 coal-fired electricity plants. Though raised a Democrat, Bloomberg was elected to the first of his three New York mayoral terms as a Republican, became an independent in 2007 before he left office in 2013 and registered last year as a Democrat. But if Bloomberg runs, his polling would likely show there’s a path for a centrist in a field of progressives, who presumably would cannibalize the progressive base. Surveys from Bloomberg’s longtime pollster, Doug Schoen, shows that 80 percent of Democratic primary voters respond positively to Bloomberg’s biography. “When people learn about his involvement in climate change activism and gun safety, and when they learn that he’s not just a billionaire — but he came from a middle class background and his dad never earned more than $6,000 a year, and you talk about the work he’s done on the ground and his philanthropy — Dem primary voters view him favorably,” said one Democrat familiar with the polling. With a net worth of $50 billion, Bloomberg contributed so much last year to charity — $767 million — that he was the nation’s second-biggest philanthropist behind Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Bloomberg’s charitable causes also overlap top issues for the Democratic electorate, such as climate change and gun control. His giving provides a ripe area for contrast: the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ compared to the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Bloomberg’s charity has given away at least $8.2 billion to actual charities. Trump’s foundation agreed last year to dissolve amid an investigation from New York’s attorney general, who said it was “functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests [and engaged in] a shocking pattern of illegality.” In a primary, Bloomberg’s deep pockets would enable an extended run with adequate resources, said Sheekey, a longtime political adviser. “The pressure for most people is two things: the need to raise money and the need to find the best and most-competitive staff,” he said. “Obviously the first is not a problem for Mike and since we started this process, we’ve put together a core staff that we’re very happy with that is committed to staying with Mike as long as he wants, partly because Mike has talked about, if he doesn’t run, going down a separate path and having the kind of impact on a larger scale than he did in the last midterm.” Sheekey, who makes the case for Bloomberg for president better than Bloomberg himself, runs the weekly data-and-strategy meetings with Howard Wolfson, who oversaw Bloomberg’s political operation last year — when the former mayor contributed $110 million to 24 Democratic congressional candidates, 21 of whom won. Story Continued Below His top advisor at City Hall and the executive director of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Patti Harris, rounds out the inner circle’s troika. A data-driven effort like the one the Bloomberg operation envisions, as first reported by the Atlantic, hearkens back to the roots of the billionaire’s wealth. A self-made man, he parlayed a small Wall Street fortune into a mammoth financial data and information services firm that branched out into a fully functioning media empire. Yet Bloomberg has had what appears to be paralysis by analysis. He had planned to announce his decision on whether to run at the beginning of the month. But he needed more time and more numbers to decide by March — a date that’s still not set in stone. “The data,” Sheekey said, “is a little more complicated than what he initially envisioned. And I think he also realized he’s not under any pressure to decide.” | ||
| INSIGHT-Qatar revamps investment strategy after Kushner building bailout - Macroeconomic News | ||
* Firm in which Qatar invested bails out Kushner tower in NY
* Jared Kushner an ally of Saudi prince who led Qatar boycott * Bailout prompts Doha to rethink investment strategy - sources * Aims to avoid investing in funds it does not control - sources (Updates Feb. 11 story with QIA comment) By Dmitry Zhdannikov, Herbert Lash and Saeed Azhar LONDON/NEW YORK/DUBAI, Feb 11 (Reuters) - When news emerged that Qatar may have unwittingly helped bail out a New York skyscraper owned by the family of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law, eyebrows were raised in Doha. Kushner, a senior White House adviser, was a close ally of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman - a key architect of a regional boycott against Qatar, which Riyadh accuses of sponsoring terrorism. Doha denies the charge. Brookfield, a global property investor in which the Qatari government has placed investments, struck a deal last year that rescued the Kushner Companies' 666 Fifth Avenue tower in Manhattan from financial straits. The bailout, in which Doha played no part and first learned about in the media, has prompted a rethink of how the gas-rich kingdom invests money abroad via its giant sovereign wealth fund, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. The country has decided that the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) will aim to avoid putting money in funds or other investment vehicles it does not have full control over, according to the sources, who are familiar with the QIA's strategy. "Qatar started looking into how its name got involved into the deal and found out it was because of a fund it co-owned," said one of the sources. "So QIA ultimately triggered a strategy revamp." A QIA spokesman said: "QIA had absolutely no involvement in the 666 Fifth Avenue development and the claims about QIA's investment strategy are not true. There has been no change in investment strategy with regards to taking majority control." The QIA did not address other detailed questions from Reuters including about its future investments via funds and any desire to have more control over those money flows. Canada's Brookfield Asset Management Inc bailed out 666 Fifth Avenue via its real estate unit Brookfield Property Partners, in which the QIA acquired a 9 percent stake five years ago. Both parent and unit declined to comment. The QIA's strategic shift was made late last year, according to the sources. It offers a rare insight into the thinking of one of the world's most secretive sovereign wealth funds. The revamp could have significant implications for the global investment scene because the QIA is one of the world's largest state investors, with more than $320 billion under management. The wealth fund has poured money into the West over the past decade, including rescuing British and Swiss banks during the 2008 financial crisis and investing in landmarks like New York's Plaza Hotel and the Savoy Hotel and Harrods store in London. QATARI BOYCOTT Kushner was chief executive of Kushner Companies when it acquired 666 Fifth Avenue in 2007 for $1.8 billion, a record at the time for a Manhattan office building. It has been a drag on his family's real estate company ever since. The debt-laden skyscraper was bailed out by Brookfield last August, when it took a 99-year lease on the property, paying the rent for 99 years upfront. Financial terms were not disclosed. The QIA bought a 9 percent stake in Brookfield Property Partners, which is known as BPY and is listed in Toronto and New York, for $1.8 billion in 2014. BPY has about $87 billion in assets, part of more than $330 billion managed by its parent Brookfield. The stake purchase by QIA was in line with its strategy to boost investments in prime U.S. property. The investment gave QIA no seat on the board of BPY. The Qatari wealth fund was not involved in the 666 Fifth Avenue deal, a source close to Brookfield Asset Management told Reuters. There was no requirement for Brookfield to inform the QIA beforehand. The rescue rankled with Doha, according to the two sources familiar with the QIA's strategy, because Kushner - married to U.S. President Trump's daughter Ivanka - had long been one of the key supporters in Washington of the Saudi crown prince, who is the king's favourite son and heir to the throne. Prince Mohammed was a prime mover in leading regional states to severing links with its neighbour Qatar and embargoing the small nation since mid-2017. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain accuse Qatar of sponsoring terrorism. Doha denies the allegation and says the other countries simply want to strip it of its sovereignty. "There is no upside in investing through funds for someone like QIA. Qatar wants full visibility into where its money goes," said the second source familiar with the QIA's strategy. He added that one of the reasons for Doha's concerns about the deal was that it might have been seen as an attempt by Qatar to influence the Trump administration, which was not the case. The QIA will not wind down existing investments with Brookfield or others, but will rather no longer invest in similar deals, according to the two sources. The source close to Brookfield said relations with the QIA were still strong. STILL GOING BIG The QIA's strategic revamp also followed a reshuffle at the top of the fund last November when its long-serving chief, Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohamed bin Saud al-Thani, was replaced by its former head of risk management, Mansour Ibrahim al-Mahmoud. Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani was named QIA chairman. Qatar, whose wealth comes from the world's largest exports of liquefied gas, does not provide data on how much money it places with external fund managers. "What we have seen lately is that it has have not been placing much," said a Western fund manager who regularly sources money from wealth funds. "Either they are investing themselves or they are just sitting on a lot of cash." The Qatar shift in its approach reflects a wider trend among sovereign wealth funds to reduce reliance on external investment managers, in an attempt to keep tighter control over their money. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, for example, said last year that 55 percent of its assets were managed by external managers in 2017, down from 60 percent the year before. Yet, even if the QIA is being more cautious in its choice of investment vehicles, there is little indication that its appetite for big international acquisitions has diminished. In December, new QIA chief Mahmoud told Reuters the fund was focusing on "classic" investments in the West such as real estate and financial institutions, and would also accelerate investment in technology and healthcare. "The instructions from the top are to go out and do big deals," said a Western banker who has held talks with Qatari officials. He said QIA's dealmaking had not stopped even during the height of the Gulf embargo, which initially forced the fund to put in about half of the $43 billion injected by public-sector firms into Qatari banks to mitigate the impact of outflows. With oil and gas prices growing over the past two years, Qatar has not departed from what it is best known for - snapping up big-name properties. In 2017, QIA pledged to ramp up its investments in Britain to 35 billion pounds ($45 billion) from 30 billion. Since then, it has spent about 1.7 billion pounds on real estate and another 1.1 billion on infrastructure in the country. In recent months, Qatar has bought New York's Plaza and London's Grosvenor House hotels. ($1 = 0.7724 pounds) (Additional reporting by Eric Knecht; Writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Pravin Char) (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2019. Click For Restrictions - <a href="https://agency.reuters.com/en/copyright.html" rel="nofollow">https://agency.reuters.com/en/copyright.html</a> | ||
| Today In History, Feb. 13: Antonin Scalia | Trending | oanow.com | ||
2016: Antonin ScaliaOn Feb. 13, 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia, the influential conservative and most provocative member of the U.S. Supreme Court, was found dead at a private residence in the Big Bend area of West Texas; he was 79. | ||
| Today In History, Feb. 13: Antonin Scalia | Trending | ||
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| Private Mossad for Hire | The New Yorker | ||
One evening in 2016, a twenty-five-year-old community-college student named Alex Gutiérrez was waiting tables at La Piazza Ristorante Italiano, an upscale restaurant in Tulare, in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Gutiérrez spotted Yorai Benzeevi, a physician who ran the local hospital, sitting at a table with Parmod Kumar, a member of the hospital board. They seemed to be in a celebratory mood, drinking expensive bottles of wine and laughing. This irritated Gutiérrez. The kingpins, he thought with disgust.
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