The Legend Of The Bactrian Gold

Do you enjoy Indiana Jones films, Humphrey Bogart mysteries, and patriotic fervor? No, I’m not writing another film review — I’m talking about a real-life story that has more drama than any showing at the local cinema. It’s the story of the legendary Bactrian gold, and how we owe its existence today to the bravery of seven men, including one very unlikely hero:

It was a mystery of legendary proportions. When a 2,000-year-old treasure trove went missing from Afghanistan’s National Museum in the 1980s, the rumors abounded: Did the Soviets take it? Was it looted and sold on the black market? Were 22,000 pieces of gold, jewel-encrusted crowns and magnificent daggers melted down and traded for weapons?
As it turns out, none of these plausible scenarios ever happened. Instead, a mysterious group of Afghans had stowed the so-called Bactrian gold underground and guarded its secret for over two decades of war and chaos. This month, some of the artifacts are on display at the Guimet Museum in Paris.
The group, the so-called “key holders,” held the keys to the underground vault where the treasure was kept underneath the presidential palace grounds. They are believed to have hidden the treasure sometime after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. They diligently kept their secret throughout the civil war of the 1990s and the period of Taliban rule all the way up through the 2001 American-led invasion.

Der Spiegel lays out the story in broad strokes, but fortunately I saw a History Channel special on the Bactrian discovery. The treasures of the Bactrian period had long eluded archeologists, and some had assumed them to be nothing more than legend, or the victim of graverobbers over the centuries. However, a Russian archeologist named Viktor Sarianidi finally discovered a trove of golden treasure at a burial site in eastern Afghanistan. The discovery made news around the world, but world events conspired to keep Sarianidi from fully exploring his find and properly cataloguing his treasure.
The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the following year, touching off a decade-long resistance. Partisan bands formed and the area of Sarianidi’s discovery became treacherous. Increasingly, the war encroached on the area, and Sarianidi feared not only for his life but for the priceless treasures he kept discovering. If the rebels got their hands on the gold, they could melt it down and get millions for weapons and other necessities. After sticking it out as long as he could, he finally ended work at the site and took the treasures to Kabul and the Soviet-propped government.
The government first had the treasure displayed in an Afghan museum, but by the end of the 1980s and the Soviet withdrawal, the situation got too dangerous to leave them in the open. Mohammed Najibullah, the Soviet puppet in charge of Afghanistan, had the Bactrian gold locked in the most secure place in the country — the Central Bank. The facility had a hidden vault, deep below the surface, with seven locks and seven keys. Najibullah distributed the keys to trusted officials, all of whom pledged their lives to guard the secret of the Bactrian gold, even while the Najibullah government teetered on the edge of collapse.
A while afterwards in 1996, Kabul fell to the Taliban. Soon they found out about the Bactrian gold and the other treasures hidden in the Central Bank and attempted to open the safe. When they could not break it, they captured Najibullah and tried to torture the solution out of him. Everyone knew that the pre-Mohammed artwork would never survive exposure to the Taliban, who had already destroyed much of the art and treasure still left in Afghanistan’s museums; they would have melted it all down for the value of the gold. According to the History Channel special, the Taliban killed Najibullah because even under torture he would not reveal the names of those who held the keys to the safe. They strung him and his brother up outside the presidential palace and mutilated their bodies, but they never found the keys to the treasure.
After the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the retreat of the Taliban from Kabul, the keyholders sought out Hamid Karzai and told him of the treasure. In disbelief, the men opened the safe and discovered not just the Bactrian gold, but also a number of other treasures, as well as the gold bars from the Afghan treasury. Najibullah, a puppet who had run the secret police in Afghanistan for his Soviet masters, proved himself an Afghan patriot in the end, at least in this small measure.
It’s an amazing story, and if it appears again on the History Channel, be sure to catch it.

Pearl Harbor at 65

About this time 65 years ago, Imperial Japan conducted a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in their bid to knock America out of the Pacific. Japan actually intended to give Cordell Hull their declaration of war an hour prior to the attack, part of a coordinated offensive that would hit US installations throughout the Pacific over a matter of hours. A delay in gaining an audience with the Secretary of State created the conditions for the perfidious bombing at Hawaii. No matter — the attack successfully crippled the Pacific Fleet, at least for a short time. The picture below comes from the Naval Archives, a color photograph from a film shot of the USS Arizona as its ammunition magazines exploded:

This also marks what appears to be the last meeting of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. Too many of their members have passed away or have become too infirm to travel; the affiliated associations have even begun to disband for lack of membership. For sixty-five years, they have upheld their motto — “Remember Pearl Harbor, and Keep America Alert”. However, some see the 9/11 attacks as a failure of America to listen to them:

The survivors say they have more than horrific memories to offer. “Remember Pearl Harbor” is just the first half of the association’s motto; the rest is “Keep America alert.”
Martinez said many Pearl Harbor survivors were disheartened by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, “as if they had not done their job hard enough.”
Once again, it seemed that America had been caught sleeping. Interest in Pearl Harbor and its aging survivors surged. The old soldiers are much in demand — to sign autographs, walk in parades, speak to classrooms and pose for pictures. Visits to the USS Arizona Memorial are at record levels.

Unfortunately, we seem to be attempting to learn all of the old lessons again the hard way, including appeasement. It’s hardly the best way to remember Pearl Harbor or its key role in launching the United States as a superpower, but perhaps the anniversary will remind people of the feckless nature of appeasing tyrants and radicals determined to end our way of life. Let’s hope so.
Michelle Malkin has an excellent post on this subject. Be sure to read it.

The CIA Covered For Eichmann

While the entire world looked for Adolf Eichmann, the colorless bureaucrat that headed the Nazi “Final Solution” that sent millions of Jews to their ghastly deaths, the CIA knew exactly where to find him. Why didn’t they capture him, or at least reveal his whereabouts to the Mossad? The American government needed to protect a former Nazi who worked for the anti-Soviet West German government of Konrad Adenauer:

The United States was aware of the hiding place and alias of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi war criminal and architect of the “Final Solution” to exterminate the Jews, but did nothing to pursue him, according to CIA documents.
Timothy Naftali, a University of Virginia historian who has looked through the newly released documents, said yesterday they showed that West German intelligence had told the CIA that Eichmann was living in Argentina under the pseudonym Clemens two years before he was abducted by the Israelis – but the Americans did not want him captured because they feared what he might say that could compromise Hans Globke, who supported America’s anti-communist goals in Europe.

Globke supposedly never joined the Nazi Party, or at least that was the official line that allowed Globke to escape de-Nazification and to enter the West German government. This revelation casts serious doubt on that claim.
In its way, this provides a microcosm of the ambiguity that prevailed at the end of World War II, as our former ally swallowed all of Eastern Europe after we gave them the opening at Potsdam and Yalta to do so. As America saw a new kind of fascism succeed where Hitler had failed, we turned to the Germans in the Free Zone to assume the front lines in the new war within just a few years of our victory over them. This necessitated a number of compromises — but hiding Eichmann, the man who engineered the most notorious genocide in history, went too far. This is an embarrassment that we will find difficult to live down.

Patrick Henry’s Dirty Little Secret

Pssst … do you want to know a dirty little secret about Markos Moulitsas’ hero du jour, Patrick Henry? The man that Kos notes approvingly in terms of character, writing that “When our nation was founded, we had men of real character and courage fighting for their nascent America, one in which liberty and freedom trumped the authorative tendencies of the monarchy. Patrick Henry gave words to those efforts: ‘Give me liberty or give me death!'”
It turns out that Henry never served in the Revolution — and even when given a commission and a command, he declined to serve:

1775 August 26: Although Henry had no military experience, he was elected colonel of the First Virginia Regiment and commander-in-chief of the Virginia militia.
1776 February 28: Henry resigned his military appointment.

Wow — who knew that Kos would celebrate such a chickenhawk!
Of course, that slur would be ludicrous to use on Patrick Henry. Instead of picking up a gun and commanding an army, Henry relied on his better skills and went into politics and rhetoric to fight for freedom. He urged the armed uprising as one of the leading pundits of his age, from his seat in the Virginia Assembly and as governor of the independent Commonwealth of Virginia. His proclamation for liberty or death did not mean that he intended on grabbing his pistol and run out into the nearest battle he could find. It did mean that he made liberty, freedom, and democracy his life’s work — and in doing so, he helped form the basis of the mandate of Americans to throw off the British monarchy and engage in the world’s greatest experiment in self-rule. His contribution to American freedom is no less honorable for his refusal to serve in the Revolutionary Army, and no less important.
All Kos did with his screed is demonstrate that he has nothing more than a facile understanding of both American history and the nature of civilian-based democratic government rather than military juntas.
UPDATE: Roger Ailes and CQ reader Duckman rightly point out that Patrick Henry did take part in one engagement, a raid to secure powder a few days after Lexington in May 1775 — before he received his commission, in fact. Mea culpa. However — and this is my point — Patrick Henry’s worth to the American Revolution has little or nothing to do with this one uncontested military effort on Henry’s part. If that qualifies Henry as a hero in Kos’ eyes, then why wouldn’t flying two years of defense missions in a notoriously unreliable jet protecting the homeland qualify as well? Especially since the latter person requested a transfer to combat while the former resigned his commission just as the war started to heat up? Rather than “denigrating” Henry, as Duckman says I did, I pointed out that Henry’s greatness had nothing to do with whether he served in a combat position at any point in his life, but in the work he did to push for the creation of this nation of freedom and liberty. He used his best skills to the fullest extent to perform great work. That isn’t validated by his presence at one single engagement just as it isn’t invalidated by his resignation of his commission after the war started — as I argued.
The nitpickers get one fact right (and I got one wrong, of course) while managing to miss the entire point. Debating war policy based on the worthiness of one’s prior service to the nation is a stupid, juvenile exercise, very much akin to measuring genitalia to determine manliness. Try focusing on the policy itself rather than the military experience of those who debate it.

The Ten Worst Americans: The Explanation

In response to Alexandra’s challenge at All Things Beautiful to name the Ten Worst Americans of All Time, I asked CQ readers to make their own suggestions as I considered the choices. Speaking from a historical perspective, it really is quite difficult to come up with a list of “worst Americans”. Most of our history is spent pursuing what we did well, and our failures tend to get shoved under the carpet. Some people simply rise to the occasion, however, and our history has its fair share of the scandalous and the downright evil.
For my consideration, I decided that the status of American had to be part of their “crimes”. In other words, simply picking someone like Ted Bundy or Charles Manson would be too easy. Their evil, though real and in most cases worse than what you’ll read on this list, doesn’t have to do with their innate American heritage. I went looking for the people who sinned against America itself, or the ideal of America. Otherwise, we’d just be looking at body counts.
I also tried to avoid picking contemporary political figures, as we do not have sufficient historical perspective to make that kind of determination. (I do have one exception to this.) Don’t expect to see Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi on this list, nor Teddy Kennedy or Bill Clinton.
A couple of people barely missed the list. Earl Warren came under strong consideration for his efforts to set up the Japanese internment camps, as did Chief Justice Taney for his concurrence in the cowardly and cruel Dred Scott decision. Someone suggested William Randolph Hearst, a yellow journalist of the first order, and that was very tempting.
In the end, I came up with ten that I think will be intriguing and provocative, and I wrote explanations for each. Below you will find posts in groups of three, except for #1 which will have its own spot. The essays make it too long to put into a single post. I’m going to really enjoy the commentary for each of these, and I think we will have a great debate over this — and I may just surprise a few people.

The Ten Worst Americans: Number One

• #1: John Edgar Hoover
At first, this attorney-cum-supercop only wanted to make America safer, but in short order, this bureaucrat re-enacted every Machiavellian nightmare while transforming a backwater investigative office into the free world’s most effective police force. He didn’t last 47 years as America’s top cop by playing fair. He used his influence and abused his power to accrue files on almost every political player, friend or foe, to use as blackmail to increase his personal power or as leverage for legislative and executive action. He became the closest thing America has ever known to an emperor and managed to die before his empire came crashing down around him. The tragedy of his life can be seen in his contradictions: a gay man who persecuted homosexuals; his undeniable love of country getting consumed by his thirst for power; his desire to enforce the law giving way to his paranoid domestic-espionage activities designed to derail political opponents, such as Martin Luther King and others he deemed dangerous. Hoover did good work as well in creating a first-class law enforcement agency, but his ego forced it to miss the rise of the Italian Mafia and his racism kept it lily-white far past his death.
For the unfettered power he garnered through his Orwellian efforts and his reflexive use of blackmail to maintain that power — a power which cowed presidents and Congresses alike for decades — Hoover is, I believe, the obvious choice of worst American in national history.

The Ten Worst Americans: 2-4

• #2: John Wilkes Booth
Booth had been a star of the American stage, along with his famous family. In an early precursor to Hollywood cluelessness, Booth got involved in politics, became a fanatical Southern sympathizer, and considered Lincoln a tyrant on the order of Julius Caesar. He joined a conspiracy to murder Lincoln and most of the chain of command, but only Booth was successful in his assassination attempt. Dramatically declaring “Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged!” and leaping from the balcony of the Ford Theater (and breaking his leg for his theatrics), Booth wound up dying ignominiously in a barn after getting shot by Union troops.
Unfortunately for the US and ironically because of the actions of this Southern sympathizer, command passed from the pro-reconciliation Lincoln to the more radical Reconstructionists of the Republican Party. Lincoln wanted to heal the breech by welcoming back the South and restoring the citizenship of the rebels, freeing the slaves and easing their transition to full citizenship as well. His plans may never have been successful, but we never had the chance to find out. Instead, the enraged North locked the South down in a military occupation that did not stop until the disputed election of 1876, and the resentment that built in the South created the backlash of Jim Crow, whose effects can still be felt to this day.
But hey, he must have known what he was doing – he was famous, right?
• #3: Benedict Arnold
Not quite the unmitigated weasel that history has painted him, Arnold actually started the American Revolution as one of George Washington’s most trusted officers. However, Arnold became frustrated with a perceived lack of recognition for his talents and accomplishments and, spurred on by his pro-Crown wife, switched sides. He offered up West Point to the British, a strategic site that would have spelled the end for Washington and the Revolution had it not been for the fortunate capture of the messenger carrying Arnold’s offer to the British. He wound up spending the rest of his life in England, well-feted but never completely trusted by anyone.
• #4: Nathan Bedford Forrest
This hardline Confederate gets a pass for his activities during the Civil War, but his post-war activities gets him on the list instead. Forrest founded the Ku Klux Klan, at first more of a drinking club but shortly under his direction became a feared terrorist group rising in opposition to Reconstruction. Later, he renounced the group for its uncontrollable violence, but without a doubt Forrest started the Klan with the intent of terrorizing the former slaves and the people who had set them free. It has lasted to this day as a group dedicated to racist policies and has spawned dozens of splinter groups.
It should be noted, however, that his great-grandson N.B. Forrest III fought bravely in WWII, achieved the rank of Brigadier General in the US Army Air Corps, and gave his life for his nation in 1943 in a bombing raid over Germany.

The Ten Worst Americans: 5-7

• #5: Stephen Douglas
Now known primarily for the series of gentlemanly debates he held with Abraham Lincoln leading to the latter’s election in 1860, Douglas earlier had done almost everything he could to ensure that civil war would eventually break out. Douglas’ ambition for the White House led him to break the Missouri Compromise and replace it with the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, breaking the territory into two parts in an effort to extend slavery into at least one portion of the territory. He pushed for a plebiscite to determine the status of each part, setting off a war between the pro- and anti-slavery mobs that flocked to Kansas in response. The conflict, known as “Bleeding Kansas” or “Bloody Kansas”, took years to settle and only missed being part of the Civil War by a couple of months. Democrats should take note: it was this man who inspired the Republican Party to form in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
Douglas gets the nod over John Calhoun here mostly because Calhoun sincerely believed in states’ rights and nullification. Douglas started a war so he could become President.
• #6: Richard Nixon
The only president to resign his office in disgrace, although perhaps not the only president who should have done so. Nixon, like his contemporaries Hoover and McCarthy, presented such a classically tragic figure for the good that he tried to do. In the end, the tremendous damage he did eclipsed all of that, including the famous Opening of Red China. He abused his power for his own sake, using the FBI and the CIA to attack his enemies, real and imagined. His abuses, in fact, color our ability to defend the nation to this day. His legacy lives on in the Gorelick Wall, in the FISA warrant issue, in special prosecutors like Patrick Fitzgerald; Nixon brought a plague onto the body politic that will last for decades to come. Although he later rehabilitated himself somewhat, the damage he did in his presidency may never really end.
• #7: Joe McCarthy
Tail-gunner Joe had all of the same qualities of Greek tragedy as Hoover, but on a much shorter time scale. Originally seeking to root out the Communists from the US government – which the Verona intercepts would later prove was a very real threat – McCarthy singlehandedly destroyed the credibility of the anti-Communist effort through demagoguery, lies, and character assassination. McCarthy embodied the result of what happens when people use the ends to justify all means. In the end, his behavior on television shocked the nation and freed the Senate to finally censure him, but more tragically than that, it led an entire generation to dismiss Communist infiltration as a threat to the security of the nation. He has long been Hollywood’s bete noir, although most of the so-called blacklisting came from the efforts of the House Un-American Activities Committee, not the Senate. (McCarthy’s focus was on the federal bureaucracy and the Army, not Hollywood.)

The Ten Worst Americans: 8-10

• #8: Aaron Burr
The only Vice President in American history to kill a man while in office, and he killed a man better than he, Alexander Hamilton, in a duel. (Reportedly, Hamilton shot wide and only intended to satisfy honor; Burr returned the favor by shooting Hamilton through the liver, although he did not find out about Hamilton’s intentions until later – and even then, found them “contemptible, if true”.) He resigned in disgrace and became one of only two men to quit as Vice President; Spiro Agnew didn’t come until 170 years later. He conspired to build a competing empire in the Southwest after having been chased out of the United States, but never came close to accomplishing his goal. Tried for treason but acquitted, Burr satisfied himself by running through his second wife’s money while debauching as many women as possible. She had him served on his deathbed with divorce papers – by the son of Alexander Hamilton.
• #9: John Walker Jr
Many people included the Rosenbergs on their list of the worst Americans, but the Rosenbergs largely gave the Soviets what they would eventually have divined on their own anyway. John Walker Jr stands out among espionage cases as perhaps the most egregious case, one in which advanced crypto passed into KGB control and allowed them access to our most secret communications. Walker eventually recruited his best friend, his brother, and even his son to spy with him, and even thought about creating “franchises” of espionage within the US military in order to increase the flow of money. And it was all about money to Walker; unlike other spies like the Rosenbergs who had political motivations for their treasonous behavior, Walker sold out America strictly for American cash, and lots of it. In fact, he only got caught because he cheaped out on paying his wife alimony, and she flipped for the FBI, unaware that her own son had gotten caught up in the family business. John’s reaction? He told the FBI that he should have killed Barbara years earlier.
I worked in the defense industry when Walker got caught, and the kind of information he sent to the Soviets could easily have lost us any war had it not been discovered. It would have made Enigma look like a parlor trick. This cold-hearted bastard should have been shot, and I don’t even support the death penalty under normal conditions. Instead, he’s doing life, after having cooperated in return for an easier sentence for his son, who got out of prison in 2000 after 15 years behind bars. And in case you’re curious, it cost you and me over a billion dollars to replace the crypto that Walker sold for a few hundred thousand bucks.
• #10: Jimmy Carter
I would normally leave off any contemporary political person until they had passed away, as their lives still might provide some kind of merit. However, after a promising beginning of his post-presidential career of building houses for the homeless, Carter has inveigled himself into so many foreign-policy crises and made them exponentially worse that it’s becoming more and more difficult to believe it isn’t done with purpose. His efforts to defuse the North Korean crisis deflected what had been until then a rather effective strategy by Bill Clinton to use a military threat to stop Pyongyang from producing nukes. After Carter jumped into the negotiations uninvited – violating the Logan Act – Carter’s prestige within his party and the US forced Clinton to accept the ridiculous Framework agreement that allowed Pyongyang to go nuclear within months. Carter has done the same with Haiti as well, and has traveled the globe to support many a leftist dictator or autocrat as long as they opposed American interests.
But the real reason Carter winds up here at #10 is because he singlehandedly almost lost the Cold War and allowed the start of the Islamofascist terror war during his single term in office. His naiveté in dealing with the Soviet Union, captured perfectly by kissing the jowled cheek of the Soviet dictator Leonid Brezhnev, led him to believe that worldwide Communism was here to stay and that we could do nothing about it. He also assured Americans that we had nothing to fear from the Soviets, who really weren’t bad guys – right up until they invaded Afghanistan. Even then, his response in boycotting the Olympic Games of 1980 has to remain one of the most embarrassing examples of displayed impotence in our nation’s history.
The winner in that category, however, also belongs to Carter. In November 1979, after pulling his support from the Shah in the highly strategic nation of Iran and watching him fall to an Islamist uprising, the same nutcases sacked our embassy in Teheran, an undeniable act of war. Instead of giving an ultimatum for the return of our embassy and the release of our diplomatic staff, Carter sat for 444 excruciating days, doing little except pleading publicly for mercy. He staged one – one! – military response to the crisis months later, which failed miserably. The failure to act not only allowed the rickety Khomeini government to survive, but gave Islamofascism a tremendous boost of prestige throughout the Middle East. It also allowed Iran to become a center for the funding and direction of terrorist activities for the past three decades, a legacy that has finally engulfed us since 9/11.
Other administrations have made their own mistakes in remaining blind to the threat of Islamist terror, but Carter played midwife to it and enabled it to survive when he had every opportunity and a perfect casus belli to kill it in its cradle.
UPDATE: A couple of CQ readers, including Michael Barone, have written to inform me that three VPs have resigned from office. In addition to Agnew and Burr, the third was John C. Calhoun, who resigned his office a couple of months early so he could take a seat in the Senate early enough to vote on pending legislation. This is the same John C Calhoun that some readers included on their own lists of the worst Americans.

The Ten Worst Americans?

Alexandra at All Things Beautiful has a challenge up for the blogosphere — a post asking us to select the ten worst Americans of all time. I’ve been giving this some serious consideration today, and I have to admit, it’s a poser of a question. In order to qualify, one would have to have committed some dreadful act in the name of the country, or against it; it seems to me that simply relying on the criminal would produce far too many easy candidates.
I’ll be posting my thoughts during the week, but if CQ readers have any ideas, make sure to include them in the comments. Don’t forget to visit Alexandra for updates on other bloggers as well.