Copyright John T. Reed
My wife and I were invited to a pitch about the West Point Combating Terrorism Center. We went in spite of it being so far away we had to spend the night near the event. It was started after 9/11 because the bureaucracy did not seem able to react fast enough. Ross Perot put up the initial money. My wife donated $1,500 to it.
A year later, when we were at West Point for my 40th reunion, we asked to visit the Center. They refused to let us, even thought our names were in their brochure as significant donors. As an occasional investigative journalist, I found that very suspicious.
I found the structure suspicious, too. You can make donations to it. I think it must be an Internal Revenue Code §501C organization, that is, a non-profit to whom you can make deductible contributions. It is located on the military base at West Point and staffed and headed by active-duty U.S. military officers. It claims to be “an independent, privately funded, research and educational institution…” So move it to Georgetown University and staff it with civilians.
I would not be surprised if the use of 501C in this case is illegal and maybe unconstitutional.
But here is the more recent issue. It is apparently an arm of the liberal wing of the Democrat Party and the Obama political operation.
Check out this 1/17/13 article in the Washington Times:
West Point center cites dangers of “far right” is U.S.
Here is a link to the paper the Times is writing about: http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/challengers-from-the-sidelines-understanding-americas-violent-far-right
1. I would like our $1,500 back.
2. I would not be surprised if Ross Perot wants his seed money back.
3. The whole idea of the way this center has been organized needs to be investigated. The House needs to do it because subpoena power is needed to deal with the government. For example, private reporters can,, and probably would, be excluded from West Point. But it should also be investigated by the media because they are more objective than the Congress or the military’s own inspector general. It appears unaccountable to anyone in the government and outside Congressional power to raise or lower its appropriations.
They said it was non-profit because civilian college professors would not cooperate with an actual military organization because of anti-military bias.
That makes no sense to me. For one thing, U.S. colleges and universities have long had zillions of paid arrangements with the federal government including the military.
I suspect they have avoided scrutiny so far because to criticize them would seem to be pro-terrorist. That’s stupid.
I wrote an article a year or two ago saying people think the military is conservative. No, I argued. It is liberal. Their commander in chief is Barack Obama. They are lifetime federal government employees—indeed since they were teenagers, they know nothing else. Their advancement is like any other government organization, based on ratings by superiors, office politics, currying favor with the most powerful government officials, and so on. They do not oppose big government. They are big government. Indeed, the defense department is still the largest government department.
Apparently, the Combating Terrorism Center is at least partly interested in combating conservative Republicans. The enemy of my boss is my enemy.
Shut it down. It is redundant with the U.S. Military Academy and every other school for teaching military officers, not to mention the FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, and so on. If anyone wants to preserve it, move it to a civilian university and lose the active-duty military personnel who work there. And let’s see it start criticizing aspects of U.S. government combating terrorism policy.
John T. Reed
Link to information about John T. Reed’s Succeeding book which, in part, relates lessons learned about succeeding in life from being in the military