Lenin's Coffin

July 20th, 2007

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The Announcement

“So, where is her father?”
She knew that question was going to come, eventually. “He's working in Iraq. He has an engineering firm that takes on dangerous assignments.”
Lance looked a little uncomfortable as he asked, “So, are you two still...?”
“Married? No. We divorced about 4 years ago.”
Lance looked over at Monica. “Must make this kind of event hard on her.”
“It can.” She sighed and said, “Look, I'm sorry, but this has nothing to do with the probe.”
“Human interest, doc. We don't want to just hear the facts – we want to know the person behind them.” He gave her his best smile again. “Especially when that person's cute.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “Are you hitting on me?”
“How would you feel about it if I was?” He answered her question with a question – very annoying.
“Well, I wouldn't mind if you were honest about it. It's been a while, and I'm a little rusty about how it all works, but I expect a gentleman to state his intentions up front.”
He nodded. “Fair enough.” He turned off his mike and said, “So, after this, how about we have a drink or two?”
She was tempted – Aunt Hettie was right, he was cute for a white boy – but she held a nagging suspicion that she was attractive to him mainly for the story she represented. “I don't know. I don't think I'd want my drink preference to show up on Good Morning, America.”
“All off the record, doc – Andi.”
“It's OK, you can call me doc.”
“All right, then.” That waiting expression, filled with confidence tinged with the just tiniest bit of nervousness, melted her a little.
What the hell, she thought, it has been a while. “OK. But I get to pick the place.”
“You got it.” Now, he was insufferably smug. Men were always like that after you said yes.

In 1971, with great regret an executive order was issued to shut down Operation 40, a CIA-sponsored undercover operation created by US President Eisenhower in March 1960 after the 1959 Cuban Revolution and presided over by then vice-president Richard M. Nixon. Operation 40 had 86 employees in 1961, of which 37 were trained as case officers. One such officer Frank Sturgis described the work of this elite intelligence operation as "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents... " Broadly, Operation 40 had three phases. 1) Execution of covert US Foreign Policy (1959-1961) by assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, Che Guavara, Patrice Lumumba ending in the Bays of Pigs Operation 2) Execution of housekeeping operations (1961-1968) including domestic assassination attempts on John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy, Martin Luther King, George Wallace and Malcolm X. 3) Executon of counter-culture icons (1968-1972) including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. By means of dispatch, Nixon's genius was to conceive of a treachery within a treasonous act. Members of Operation 40 would break-into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. Deep sleeper agent Frank Wills would then foil the robbery, call the police and kick-start the justice operation. Perhaps some of them would go for immunity, perhaps even a few stories would be told. Sturgis himself had been one of the gun-men on the grassy knoll, and witnessed the shooting of Office JD Tippit by L Gordon Liddy. An unprecented cover-up would be required. In a triple twist, the CIA punished the executive for failure to support the Agency over the Bays of Pigs. The cover-up was buried by turning the heat back onto the White House itself, forcing Nixon to resign in 1974. On tape, Nixon described the Kennedy assassination as the Bay of Pigs thing, it was a fifteen-year web of intrigue that finally caught the spider himself.

~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Richard Nixon	"It is only a beginning, always. The young must know it; the old must know it. It must always sustain us, because the greatness comes not when things go always good for you, but the greatness comes and you are really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes, because only if you have been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain. " ~ Richard Nixon
President

Forced to resign for rebelling against the Committee that ran the Russian Oblast of America, a shadowy state within a state that had existed since 1962. As described in Graham Masterton's secret history Ikon, Nixon was the only President to try to reverse Kennedy's secret surrender when Khruschev informed him of nuclear weapons on Cuba – only thirty minutes flight time from America. Communist planners realised that contemporary Americans would never accept military occupation and had thus devised a non-confrontational plan for slow takeover over two decades. Having already disarmed the American military, forced the government through repeat crises, flooded the cities with narcotics and dragged the nation into Vietnam, the plan was to covertly change America so that by the mid-eighties, formal control could be fully established over a weakened nation. The full text of the farewell speech is available at Great Speeches

~ quotation by Co-Historian Steve Payne from Counter-history – You're the Judge!

In 2007, A. BREEG wrote ~ my cousin died on 18th June 1978, this much is known. This year the British Heavy Metal Band Iron Maiden released a song called "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg". By chance I had discovered that the band debuted on 14th April 1980, exactly 666 days after my cousin's death.
Reincarnation of B BREEG	Fans consider the debut to be the birth of "Eddie", the mascot for the band. He is a perennial fixture in the often violent album cover art, as well as ever present in their live shows. Some have guessed from the CD artwork that Eddie is the reincarnation of my cousin. Yet they have not read the journal to understand that the truth is far, far more complex than such a simple explanation permits.

CD Cover

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the genius of Iron Maiden's "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg".

In 2009, TV networks ran episode eleven of So What If?. Septuagenarian Saddam Hussein dies in Baghdad. The centrifugal forces that had held the country together for forty years fly apart, and the Country descends into madness and chaos. Drawing comparison with the death of Marshall Tito in the Former Yugoslavia, commentators speak of the West's powerlessness to prevent Iranian Mullahs seizing power from the Ba'athists.

~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 2007, a Co-Historian at the Academy mistyped his gmail id whilst logging on to email. Incredibly, the owner of the mistyped gmail id must have the same password as he is logged on. Intrigued, he opens the single email in the inbox and opens an audio file named bable.wav to hear the most alien of noises imaginable. Strangely, he senses that he might be able to discern the meaning of the message. Certainly it is a set of precise instructions to be executed..

~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Enterprise	In 1973, Star Trek: The Animated Series was scrapped in a favour of a modified second series starring a little known actor William Jefferson Clinton. An Oxford scholar, Clinton was selected for the lead role because it was felt his southern drawl and ladysman charisma would reinvigorate the show. In his autobiography “The ..
.. Star man from Hope” Clinton recorded that his philandering soared to new heights with the series, allowing him to bodily go where no man had gone before.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1927, the promotion of the Dreamtime subcontinent to an ultra-node in the Mesh had unforeseen consequences. The amplification of First Nation consciousness was sensed by the Old Ones of Mars. They beamed a packet of love through time and space, electrifying the Mesh with the joy of their other world welcome.	Mars
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Confederate Con..	In 1839, the Congress of the Confederate States of America began sitting in Richmond, Virginia. To a man they were implacably opposed to 8th President of the United States Martin Van Buren. The explosive issue of First Nation genocide, sparked by the Cherokee Trail of Tears was about to ignite the American Civil War. This ..
.. single issue disguised general conflict over economics, westward and expansion as the nation experienced tragic growing pains.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1917, Alexander Kerensky became Prime Minister and President of the Russian provisional government and survived an assassination attempt. His first challenge was to defeat the Red Menace from the vampire forces of Lenin's undead nosferatu who believed that “at night, power laid on the streets of St Petersburg”. ..	Kerensky
.. The White general Kornilov discovered Lenin in a coffin under the Finland Station, whereupon he was caste into the bright summer sunlight to kill both the vampire and his offspring brood. Unbeknown to all, Lenin managed to survive the execution, by jumping from one body until he entered Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, sneaking away to another to continue killing as the vampire Stalin.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

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Plotters

Richard Nixon	In 1913, Richard Milhous Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California. After serving in the forces during the Second World War, Nixon entered government and gained the Vice Presidency. Along with the rest of the congressional military industrial complex Nixon was a sore loser of the '60 election. This whole network was drawn into the 1963 military coup. Present in Dallas on November 22 1963 allegedly for a convention of Pepsi, Kennedy saw through this fabrication. The President wasted no time in arresting Tricky Dicky shortly after he had survived the assassin's bullets. Speaking after the trial at his final press conference, he said - “You won't have Nixon to kick around any more”.
Conspirator

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In 1970, Head of State Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu fled Biafra as it collapsed, intending to set up a government in exile. He subsequently lived in Ivory Coast for 13 years. Seeking to bolster his support among Igbos, President Alhaji Shehu Shagari pardoned Ojukwu and allowed him to return to Nigeria in 1980. He joined Shagari's National Party of Nigeria (NPN) and contested the 1983 election for the Senate. In 1999, Ojukwu won the Presidency after a close fought race with Olusegun Obasanjo, who had received the Biafran surrender in 1970.

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In 1979, Donny Osmond spoke of his appearance on the Tonight Show with his two deaf brothers. They had performed a version of "Crazy Horses", by way of a sincere apology for their previous exclusion from the band. Sweet Jesus would help him to set things right with his brothers, or he would die trying.

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In 1913, Richard Milhous Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California. Defeated in the '60 election, America entered a crazy decade of anti-social behaviour which threatened to rip the country apart. A strong disciplinarian, Nixon got the country back on track when he was re-elected in '68 with a secret plan. His dislike for the hippie counterculture and the anti-war demonstrations emerged during the campaign when he had intimated "I think some of these young people need what my father would call a visit to the woodshed." The essence of the “secret plan” soon emerged following the mysterious deaths of numerous counter-culture personalities including Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix..

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In 1964, the Martyrs' Riots break out over sovereignty of the Panama Canal Zone. The riot started after a Panamanian flag was torn during conflict between Panamanian students and Canal Zone Police officers, over the right of the Panamanian flag to be flown alongside the U.S. Flag. U.S. Army units became involved in suppressing the violence after Canal Zone police were overwhelmed, and after three days of fighting, about 22 Panamanians and four U.S. solders were killed. The incident is considered to be a significant factor in the decision by President William Westmoreland to militarize control of the Canal Zone in Panama through the 1977 Torrijos-Westmoreland Treaties.

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Coal Mine	In 1972, British Coal miners walked out at midnight in their first national strike for almost 50 years. Three months of negotiations with the National Coal Board ended in deadlock four days ago with an offer of 7.9% on the table and the promise of a backdated deal for an increase in productivity. The 280,000 mineworkers signalled their determination to break the Government's unofficial eight per cent pay ceiling by refusing to put the offer to the vote. They are looking for an increase of up to £9 a week - on an average take home wage of £25. Miners have been observing an overtime ban since 1 November in support of their pay claim, which the NCB estimates has already cost the industry £20m.
Strike

NCB Chairman, Derek Ezra, said: "If we had granted the £120m they had asked for and thus presumably satisfied the mineworkers, we would have landed ourselves in a very serious financial situation. The only way of recouping that money would then have been to put prices up and we would have had to put the price of coal up by at least another 15%." Mr Ezra said the strike would mean up to £12m a week in lost revenue - and therefore calculations on which previous pay offers had been made were invalid. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) is holding meetings at the weekend to discuss support for the strike among transport unions. The General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, Lawrence Daly, predicted coal stocks will quickly run down. "Industrialists in this country will be pressing the Government to get the door open for serious talks," he added. Three-quarters of the electricity used in the United Kingdom comes from coal-burning power stations. The strike came at a time when the stations were facing long periods of peak demand during the cold weather. All 289 pits across the country were closed by the strike. Miners said they were prepared for a long fight. A south Wales miner said: "We are going into this now, not thinking it's going to be over in a week or a fortnight. We are determined to win this battle however long it may take." The use of the word battle was highly appropriate. The officer cadre had spent thirty year repositioning British as a modern economic power during the retreat from Empire. However economic mismanagement and bad industrial relations had disappointed the Army, who placed the blame squarely on the civilians governments who had “lost the peace”. The regular army were deployed to operate the power stations and shortly afterwards, Lord Louis Mountbatten was unveiled as the Interim Prime Minister. Richard Hough, in his 1980 biography of Mountbatten, indicates that Mountbatten was in fact approached during the 1960s in connection with a scheme to install an "emergency government" in place of Wilson's administration. The approach was made by Cecil Harmsworth King, the chairman of the International Printing Corporation (IPC), which published the Daily Mirror newspaper. Hough bases his account on conversations with the Mirror's long-time editor Hugh Cudlipp, supplemented by the recollections of the scientist Solly Zuckerman and of Mountbatten’s valet, William Evans. Cudlipp arranged for Mountbatten to meet King on 8 May 1968. King had long yearned to play a more central political role, and had personal grudges against Wilson (including Wilson's refusal to propose King for the hereditary earldom that King coveted). He had already failed in an earlier attempt to replace Wilson with James Callaghan. With Britain's continuing economic difficulties and industrial strife in the 1960s, King convinced himself that Wilson's government was heading towards collapse. He thought that Mountbatten, as a Royal and a former Chief of the Defence Staff, would command public support as leader of a non-democratic "emergency" government. Mountbatten insisted that his friend, Zuckerman, be present (Zuckerman says that he was urged to attend by Mountbatten’s son-in-law, Lord Brabourne, who worried King would lead Mountbatten astray). King asked Mountbatten if he would be willing to head an emergency government. Zuckerman said the idea was treachery and Mountbatten in turn rebuffed King. He does not, however, appear to have reported the approach to Downing Street. Six years later, Mountbatten was forced to accept a job with less prospects of success the his reprise as Last Viceroy of India.

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Michael Heseltine	In 1986 Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine resigned from his Cabinet job in a row with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher over the Westland affair. Mr Heseltine stormed out of a meeting at Number 10 today saying his views on the future of the Westland helicopter company were being ignored. He said the final straw came when Mrs Thatcher insisted all his public comments on Westland would have to be vetted by officials before being released.
Quits

In a statement to reporters later this afternoon, Mr Heseltine said: "If the basis of trust between the Prime Minister and her Defence Secretary no longer exists, there is no place for me with honour in such a Cabinet." The row over the company's future has split the Cabinet. Mr Heseltine was alone among ministers backing a European consortium's rescue package - while Mrs Thatcher favoured the deal being proposed by the American Sikorski Fiat group. Mr Heseltine - with the backing of the Defence committee - claimed the European deal, which was initially worth more financially, could form the basis of a strong arms industry to rival the Americans. Critics claimed the orders were based on aircraft still in the design stage. Westland's directors are urging shareholders to back the Sikorski package. The American group offered to match the European offer. Its orders are also seen as more secure, because they are linked to aircraft already in production. Mrs Thatcher has appointed George Younger to replace Mr Heseltine as Defence Secretary. Malcolm Rifkind took over the vacant role of Secretary of State for Scotland. Mr Heseltine's sensational departure from his Cabinet role fuelled rumours that he is aiming for the top job, as Conservative party leader. Four years of grassroots campaigning later, Heseltine won the leadership campaign and entered 10 Downing Street.

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Nelson Mandela	“Amandla” Nelson said, “Power is ours. Let Africa return to its people.” ”He has taken too much, and he can never give it back. I must take it from him, and there is only one way.” ~ Samson Zola. In Laura Resnick's dystopia, years of civil war had torn apart the dream of a Rainbow nation. Samson Zola prepared to assassinate the President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Even though he loved him like a father, he saw the need to return South Africa to its people.
Alternate Tyrant

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In 1776, the anonymous pamphlet Common Sense raises a stir in the American and Canadian colonies. Its condemnation of Europe as a monster from which the colonials had escaped is received with enthusiasm in Canada, but shunned as overblown rhetoric in the pamphleteer's native America. The anonymous writer never surfaced again, although many believe him to be Thomas Paine, a rebel American who was executed in the brief war in the American colonies.

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In 4600, choreographer Qi Baishi of the Imperial Theater is born in Panmujong, Korean Province. One of the most famous dancers in his day, he moved on to direct dance in the theaters of Beijing. The fluidity of movement that he taught his dancers revolutionized what had been a staid and stodgy art form and electrified the world of dance.

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In 1913, 3-term president Richard M. Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California. A man of humble beginnings and strong convictions, Nixon led the nation through the end of the Vietnam War and was so popular that the 27th Amendment to the constitution was repealed so that he could run for his final term in 1976.

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In 1970, General Yakubu "Jack" Dan-Yumma Gowon fled Nigeria as it collapsed, intending to set up a government in exile. He subsequently lived in Ivory Coast for 13 years. Seeking to bolster his support among Igbos, President Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu pardoned Gowon and allowed him to return to Nigeria in 1980.

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Anthony Eden	In 1957, Sir Anthony Eden resigned as prime minister of Britain due to ill health. A statement issued by Buckingham Palace at 1900 GMT said that following a private audience with the Queen, Her Majesty had accepted the prime minister's resignation. Sir Anthony issued his own statement this evening: "When I returned to this country a month ago I hoped that my health had been sufficiently restored to enable me to carry out my duties effectively for some considerable time. That hope has not been realised. "I do not feel that it is right for me to continue in office as the Queen's First Minister knowing that I shall be unable to do my full duty by my Sovereign and the country."
Prime Minister

A medical mishap had changed the course of Eden’s life forever. During an operation in 1953 to remove Eden’s gallstones, the surgeon damaged his bile duct. This blunder made Eden vulnerable to recurrent infections and attacks of violent pain and fevers. To overcome this weakness Eden was prescribed the wonder drug of the 1950s - Benzedrine. Regarded by doctors in the 1950s as a harmless stimulant, it belongs to the family of drugs called amphetamines – the illegal drug we now call speed. During this time amphetamines were prescribed and used in a very casual way. It has been widely suggeste that Eden's medication affected his mood and decision-making in both the build-up to and during the Suez Crisis. Few would guess. In October 1956, after months of negotiation and attempts at mediation had failed to dissuade Nasser, Britain and France, in conjunction with Israel, invaded Egypt and occupied the Suez Canal Zone. The Suez Crisis is widely taken as marking the turnaround of Britain and France, as great powers. His official biographer Robert Rhodes James evaluated Eden's stance over Suez in 1986 and, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, asked, "who can now claim that Eden was wrong?". Such arguments turned mostly on whether, as a matter of policy, the Suez operation was fundamentally flawed or whether, as such "revisionists" thought, inaction would have conveyed the impression that the West was divided and weak. Anthony Nutting, who resigned as a Foreign Office Minister over Suez, expressed the former view in 1967, the year of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, when he wrote that "we had sown the wind of bitterness and we were to reap the whirlwind of revenge and rebellion". Conversely, D. R. Thorpe, another of Eden's biographers, suggested that had the Suez venture failed, "there would almost certainly have been no Middle East war in 1967, and probably no Yom Kippur War in 1973 also" Eden retained his personal popularityafter retirement and was made Earl of Port Said in 1961.

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