Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Professor Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado at Boulder opposed the U.N. sanctions on Iraq that were intended to curb Saddam’s weapons programs. Churchill also celebrated the 9-11 terrorists in his infamous article “Some People Push Back.”

Churchill even told a reporter that he read all the obituaries of the people who died in the World Trade Center on 9-11 and satisfied himself that they were overwelmingly “Little Eichmanns.”

Because of Churchill’s assumption of Indian identity, some people may think American Indians are supporting Middle Eastern terrorists. In fact, Mohawk Indians have historically been employed building New York’s skyscrapers, not blowing them up! I read in an Indian publication that on 9-11, an Indian construction team was working on one of the towers and even rescued people:

“Mohawk ironworkers helped build the World Trade Center and other monuments of the New York City skyline, and one crew was actually at work in the flight path of the plane that struck the second tower. St. Regis Mohawk Chief James Ransom noted that they joined rescue teams at great personal risk.” http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096410295

Congress is holding hearings about a Pentagon program called Able Danger. This program used something called data mining to track Al Qaeda.

According to Congressional testimony on Wednesday, February 15, 2006, one of the Able Danger heroes may be an Indian policeman named J.D. Smith. I will try to find out more details about this and post updates on this thread.

The testimony just said that Mr. Smith was a retired Indian police officer who used traditional law enforcement investigative techniques plus data mining.

According to Congressional testimony, Smith developed a new form of intelligence collection that identified M. Atta and other terrorists a year or more before the 9-11 attacks.
http://www.house.gov/hasc/schedules/2-15-06ShafferTestimony.pdf
Page 15

The faux Indian Ward Churchill will only be remembered for talking through his hat, but real American Indians will always be remembered for their contributions to signals intelligence during both world wars. They were famous as code talkers who spoke languages that the enemy could not understand.

“At Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, declared, “Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.” Connor had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock during the first two days of the battle. Those six sent and received over 800 messages, all without error.

The Japanese, who were skilled code breakers, remained baffled by the Navajo language. The Japanese chief of intelligence, Lieutenant General Seizo Arisue, said that while they were able to decipher the codes used by the US Army and Army Air Corps, they never cracked the code used by the Marines. The Navajo code talkers even stymied a Navajo soldier taken prisoner at Bataan. (About 20 Navajos served in the US Army in the Philippines.) The Navajo soldier, forced to listen to the jumbled words of talker transmissions, said to a code talker after the war, “I never figured out what you guys who got me into all that trouble were saying.”
In 1942, there were about 50,000 Navajo tribe members. As of 1945, about 540 Navajos served as Marines. From 375 to 420 of those trained as code talkers; the rest served in other capacities.”
http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/nativeamerican01/code.html

One of the Navajo code talkers, Albert Smith, was only 15 years old. “Late in his life, Albert Smith explained, the code word for America was, “Our Mother.” Our Mother stood for freedom, our religion, our ways of life, and that’s why we went in. ” http://usgovinfo.about.com/blwhrelease15.htm

Here is a recent interview with Albert Smith:

“I was enlisted in 1943, in April. I had to fib about my age, ’cause my brother and I, we wanted to go into the war together… we wanted to stay together… He was seventeen, so he move his age up two years and I move mine from 15 to 17. http://www.thenavajocodetalkers.com/bios_albertsmith.htm

Another code-talker was Samuel Jesse Smith:

“My purpose for joining the Marine Corps was to get even with the Japanese for December 7, Pearl Harbor attack.” http://www.thenavajocodetalkers.com/bios_smith.htm

Ward Churchill attended a September 23, 2005 conference about Able Danger even though he celebrated 9-11 as a victory for America’s historical “victims.” The organizers of the September “conspiracy theory” conference even suggested that President Bush had warnings about 9-11 because of Able Danger but allowed the attack to happen so that Bush cronies could make war profits.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/131zgkea.asp

Churchill’s views about 9-11 are not characteristic of American Indians. Here is how the Navajo Code Talkers Association responded to the 9-11 attack:

NCTA Proclamation In Response to Sept 11, 2001 Attack —
In response to the terrorist attack on America, September 11, 2001, the Navajo Code Talker Association, at their NCTA meeting Thursday, Sept. 27, 2001, a proclamation was read and approved:

“PROCLAMATION OF THE NAVAJO CODE TALKERS ASSOCIATION DECLARING THE READINESS AND DESIRE OF THE NAVAJO CODE TALKERS TO SUPPORT THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN HIS ANTI-TERRORISM STANCE AND TO PROVIDE ASSISTANCE TO OUR GREAT AND BELOVED COUNTRY IN THIS TIME OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY.” http://www.lapahie.com/NCTA.cfm

HELPFUL LINKS: Here is the testimony of Mr. Smith
http://www.house.gov/hasc/schedules/2-15-06SmithTestimony.pdf

Here is a general article about the contributions of American Indians to the American military
http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/nativeamerican01/inner.html
Here is the link to the famous Navajo Code Talker’s Dictionary, which was once classified:

http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/nativeamerican01/dictionary.html

I was privileged to attend a blogger Able Danger teleconference tonight with Attorney Mark Zaid who represents Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer. Special thanks to Mike at the Able Danger Blog for arranging this meeting. At the time of this post,

The Dirk Thompson Show on WTVN, an Ohio talk radio station, did an hour on Able Danger from 7pm to 8pm tonight. You can download the mp3 files of the show here-or just listen below: asdfjk adsflkj vadkinsQT Monster Blog

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