#garrett m. graff

[deadpresidents]

"For the first 117 years of the nation's existence, Presidents never ventured far. Unsure of the legality of being "President" outside the country, the first century of Presidents carefully remained within the nation's borders. William McKinley agreed in 1901 to meet the Mexican President, but on the border of the two countries. It wasn't until Theodore Roosevelt's trip to Panama in 1906 that a President ever traveled internationally -- and he did so as quickly as possible, sprinting aboard a U.S. Navy ship to the Canal Zone and remained out of territorial waters for only ten hours...

FDR's journey by lumbering Pan Am Flying Boat from Miami to Casablanca made him the first President to travel by air, to fly abroad, and the first to set foot in Africa. Ironically, the President flew because the Secret Service and the military deemed it safer than facing the marauding Nazi U-boats in the North Atlantic. It was a difficult and time-consuming trip: four legs of flying, three stops, and three days' travel each way. All told, FDR spent nearly ninety hours in the air for a trip that today Royal Air Maroc accomplishes in about eight hours. That journey gave rise a few weeks later to the Army Air Corps' decision that the President should have his own airplane. For the long flight to Yalta in February 1945 to meet Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin as the war wound down, Roosevelt first boarded his four-engine Sacred Cow, a DC-4 aircraft painted standard Army olive drab and heavily modified to include a spacious Presidential suite and an elevator to lift his wheelchair in and out...

[Harry S.] Truman quickly picked up the air travel habit, boarding Sacred Cow just weeks after he took office to fly home to Independence, Missouri -- the first domestic flight in Presidential history. From that moment forward, Presidents seemed to be in near-constant states of travel. Walt Disney offered to design a special insignia for the plane -- a smiling cow with a halo over one horn and an Uncle Sam top hat over the other -- and it began to be bedecked with the flags of the countries it had visited: a total of fifty-one by the time it was retired in July 1947.

When Truman's second plane, a DC-6 named Independence after his hometown, was delivered, the designers at Douglas decked it out with an eagle motif, incorporating the cockpit windows as the bird's eyes, and painted a golden beak on the plane's nose.

As the Cold War deepened, [CIA Director] Allen Dulles pushed [President Dwight D.] Eisenhower to adopt a jet plane -- it was critical, he argued, that the U.S. President be seen leading technological advances -- and the fact that [Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev used jet aircraft meant it was time to retire the Presidential propeller planes...

The increasingly advanced and elaborate Presidential planes were decked out with survival gear like parachutes -- always five more than the passengers it carried, in case panicky officials deployed theirs inside the cabin accidentally. When the planes flew over oceans, Navy and Coast Guard ships were stationed in advance every 250 miles on picket duty in case of trouble. Later, as aviation technology advanced, Air Force rescue planes known as "Duck Butts" would accompany the President's plane, stocked with rescue swimmers, life rafts, and medical personnel who could aid survivors if the plane went down at sea."

-- Garrett M. Graff on the early history of air travel by the Presidents and the first dedicated Presidential planes, as well as some fascinating details about security precautions for Presidential flights during the Cold War, via Graff's excellent 2017 book Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself -- While the Rest of Us Die (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO), which is one of my favorite books of the past 10 years.

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

*or: D-DAY The Oral History: The Turning Point of WWII By the People Who Were There

[audiobookcentral]

2025 Audie Award Winners: Multi-voiced Performance Winner

[thatstormygeek]

It was unclear what role, if any, Musk’s forces would allow parliament to have in the new governmental structure by the time it next returned to the national assembly known as Capitol Hill.

What started Thursday as a political purge of the internal security services accelerated Friday into a full-blown coup, as elite technical units aligned with media oligarch Elon Musk moved to seize key systems at the national treasury, block outside access to federal personnel records, and take offline governmental communication networks. With rapidity that has stunned even longtime political observers, forces loyal to Musk’s junta have established him as the all-but undisputed unelected head of government in just a matter of days, unwinding the longtime democracy’s constitutional system and its proud nearly 250-year-old tradition of the rule of law. Having secured themselves in key ministries and in a building adjacent to the presidential office complex, Musk’s forces have begun issuing directives to civil service workers and forcing the resignation of officials deemed insufficiently loyal, like the head of the country’s aviation authority.

The mentally declining and aging head of state, who has long embraced conspiracist thinking, spent much of the week railing in bizarre public remarks against the country’s oppressed racial and ethnic minorities, whom he blamed without evidence for causing a deadly plane crash across the river from the presidential mansion. Unfounded racist attacks on those minorities have been a key foundation of Trump’s unpredicted rise to political power from a career as a real estate magnate and reality TV host and date back to his first announcement that he would seek the presidency in 2015, when he railed against “rapists” being sent into the country from its southern neighbor. In one of his first moves upon returning to the presidency, he mobilized far-right paramilitary security forces to begin raids at churches, schools, and workplaces to identify and remove racial minorities, including those who had long lived in harmony with the country’s white Christian majority. He also immediately moved to release from prison some 1,500 supporters who had participated in his unsuccessful 2021 insurrection, including members of violent far-right militias who promptly upon release swore fealty to him in any future civil unrest. Elsewhere, even as he released violent criminals onto the streets, Trump by fiat pulled longstanding government security protection from former military and health officials he felt had betrayed him.

[thomastapir]

The vast scale of it all. From the introduction to Garrett M. Graff's UFO: The Inside Story of the U.S. Government's Search for Alien Life Here--and Out There

[homenecromancer]

Here are my reading recommendations on the topic of 9/11.

You may find some of these works distressing. Please tread carefully. The government reports contain the least amount of potentially triggering content. None of these works contain any particularly objectionable (that is: gory) images, though it is extremely easy to stumble across graphic images online if you’re not careful.

All these works are pretty easy to find. I’ve linked home pages for the government reports. The National Geographic documentary is available on Dailymotion (all episodes except the second) and National Geographic’s YouTube page (where you can find the second episode). Some books may be out of print, but you can track down copies through libraries (if possible) or other means.

Government reports:

The 9/11 Commission Report.

NIST reports. There are thousands of pages of material here. I recommend: the Final Report; NIST NCSTAR 1-2: Baseline Structural Performance and Aircraft Impact Damage Analysis of the World Trade Center Towers; NIST NCSTAR 1-5: Reconstruction of the Fires in the World Trade Center Towers; NIST NCSTAR 1-6: Structural Fire Response and Probable Collapse Sequence of the World Trade Center Towers; NIST NCSTAR 1-7: Occupant Behavior, Egress, and Emergency Communication; and NIST NCSTAR 1-8: The Emergency Response Operations.

Documentary:

9/11: One Day in America. National Geographic, 6 episodes.

Articles:

“The Miracle Survivors”, by Steve Fishman for New York Magazine. 2011.

“The Falling Man”, by Tom Junod for Esquire. 2003.

Books:

102 Minutes. Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, 2005. Tight focus on survival in the World Trade Center from first impact to final collapse.

The Ground Truth. John Farmer, 2009. Argues that the US government as it stood in 2001 suffered from institutional weaknesses that left a gap open for 9/11 to happen, but were never really repaired afterwards. (I haven’t finished reading this yet.)

Never Forget: An Oral History of September 11, 2001. Mitchell Fink and Lois Mathias, 2002. Brief testimony from 81 people who were either in the WTC on 9/11, or involved in recovery efforts afterward. Frequently cited by others.

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11. Garrett M. Graff, 2019. Covers not only the WTC and New York, but the Pentagon, the US Capitol, and the movements of the President.

Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission. Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton. The 9/11 Commission Report, when read in conjunction with some of these other texts, has some visible gaps in its coverage where it pointedly avoids going further into this or that topic. This book goes into the reasons why that happened. (This is the other book I haven’t yet finished.)

American Ground. William Langewiesche, 2002. Begins with the collapse of the towers, discusses the efforts to “unbuild” the pile of rubble that replaced them.

Perfect Soldiers. Terry McDermott, 2005. Who were the hijackers? How did they end up being radicalized to the terrible degree that they were? Narrative ends at the moment of impact.

September 11: An Oral History. Dean Murphy, 2002. Mostly focuses on the WTC, with a few narratives from the Pentagon.

Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11. Mitchell Zuckoff, 2019. Synthesizes many kinds of evidence into a cohesive narrative covering the WTC, the Pentagon, and the crash of Flight 93.

[heavenbarnes]

hello lovelyyy c:

do you perchance have any non-fiction book recommendations for us? I’ve been looking for some good stuff but I honestly don’t really know where to start because I’m so used to reading fiction

It doesn’t really matter what c:

this will be the most random assortment but here i go!

joan didion (specifically the year of magical thinking and blue night)

know my name by chanel miller

pageboy by elliot page

i’m glad my mom died by jennette mccurdy

mindhunter by john douglas

cause of death by dr. cynric temple-camp

columbine by dave cullen

love stories by trent dalton

want by gillian anderson

in cold blood by truman capote

i know why the caged bird sings by maya angelou

everything i know about love by dolly alderton

the death of a president by william manchester

the only plane in the sky by garrett m. graff

[rockislandadultreads]

Nonfiction Picks: Remembering 9/11

These book recommendations explore the history and consider the aftermath surrounding the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

The Only Plane in the Sky by Garrett M. Graff

In this volume, award-winning journalist and bestselling historian Garrett Graff tells the story of the day as it was lived - in the words of those who lived it. Drawing on never-before-published transcripts, recently declassified documents, original interviews, and oral histories from nearly five hundred government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, friends, and family members, Graff paints the most vivid and human portrait of the September 11th attacks yet.

In the Shadow of the Fallen Towers by Don Brown

The consequences of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, both political and personal, were vast, and continue to reverberate today. In this graphic novel, Don Brown brings his journalistic eye and attention to individual stories to help contextualize and broaden readers' understanding of the immediate aftermath and rippling effects of one of the most impactful days in modern history. 

Power at Ground Zero by Lynne B. Sagalyn

The destruction of the World Trade Center complex on 9/11 set in motion a chain of events that fundamentally transformed both the U.S. and the wider world. But the symbolic locus of the post-9/11 world has always been "Ground Zero" - the sixteen acres in Manhattan's financial district where the twin towers collapsed. This book offers the definitive account of one of the greatest reconstruction projects in modern world history, and how the symbolism of the reconstruction extended far beyond New York.

First Casualty by Toby Harnden

This volume reveals the secret mission of the eight members of the CIA’s Team Alpha, the first Americans to be dropped behind enemy lines in Afghanistan after 9/11. Comprised of an eclectic band of linguists, tribal experts, and elite warriors, they were the first Americans to operate inside Taliban territory with the mission to track down Al- Qaeda. Award-winning author Toby Harnden gained unprecedented access to all living Team Alpha members in writing this book, drawing on extensive interviews and secret documents, as well as deep reporting inside Afghanistan.

[frank-olivier]

Politics and Prose (Bookstore, Washington, D.C.)

Garrett M. Graff: UFO - The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here and Out There (with David Ignatius, December 2023)

Sunday, December 10, 2023

[deadpresidents]

Can you recommend three history books that you couldn't put down and would be good xmas gifts for a history nut? Doesn't need to be presidents just any history.

I could spend the entire holiday season debating which books to suggest, so I'm just going with the first three books that came to my mind when I considered which books I'd choose if I could magically read them for the very first time again. Anyone would has been following me for a while will have heard me recommend these before because they are among the very best books I've ever read:

•Crucible: The Long End of the Great War and the Birth of a New World, 1917-1924 by Charles Emmerson (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) It's difficult to describe this book in a way that illustrates how incredibly interesting and original it is. It's a look at the world as it came out of World War I and slowly tried to repair itself in the Great War's aftermath. But during that period, various personalities start appearing in the story like characters in a gripping novel. Those people end up being many of the leading figures of World War II and that becomes apparent as you read the book, as does the fact that the tense state that the world was in at the time wasn't a time of peace and reconstruction, but an incubation period for what would become an even more horrific world war that was the deadliest military conflict in the history of our species. Those leading characters in Crucible drive the story, not so much because of how extraordinary they became but because of how ordinary they were when they started. Emmerson tells these stories in an extremely creative way, and it makes the 739-page book fly by despite the fact that you will NOT want it to end. Without hesitation, I can confidently say that Crucible (which was published in 2019) is the single best book I've read in the past ten years.

•Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) This doesn't mean that I'm giving my stamp of approval to Israel's long history of targeted assassinations and daring special operations. But this book is an excellent example of top-notch investigative reporting and war journalism by Ronen Bergman, who is still an immensely talented correspondent for the New York Times with deep connections throughout the Middle East. Some of the military and intelligence operations described in this book with shocking detail are absolutely mind-blowing and would seem too far-fetched if you saw them in a movie. Bergman's book gives the reader the perspective of being embedded with forces as they undertake these ridiculously dangerous missions.

•Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself -- While the Rest of Us Die by Garrett M. Graff (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) Speaking of journalists with remarkable connections, in Raven Rock Garrett Graff reveals aspects of the blueprints for America's continuity of government planning that have never been fully detailed. Beginning in the early days of the Cold War, Graff takes us through the creation of top-secret plans to keep the government functioning in case of all sorts of Doomsday scenarios. It's incredible to learn what would be prioritized (and how anything would still function) and where surviving members of the government (or their designated alternates -- which is an even crazier revelation) would run what was left of the United States in case of massive attacks that might decapitate vast sections of federal, state, or local governments. What should seem somewhat reassuring -- the fact that the government would continue to function and serve survivors, no matter what -- is frightening when Graff reveals systems that raise far more questions than it delivers answers. It even raises questions about aspects of the shadow federal government that existed during the Cold War (just in case). In some ways and for many reasons, the book is actually pretty frightening. (You'll probably start worrying about the records the U.S. Postal Service keeps about you considering all of the potential uses the government considered using it for in case of a widespread nuclear attack with massive numbers of casualties.) But it's also incredibly interesting and full of amazing details about secrets that I guarantee you'll want to share with people after you read the book. Raven Rock is right behind Crucible when it comes to the very best books of the past decade.

[blogparanormalexpresso2stuff]

UFOs and National Security: Beyond Adversarial Technology

COASTTOCOASTAMOFFICIAL Journalist and historian Garrett M. Graff, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, explores UFO phenomena, congressional hearings, and governmental intrigue. He highlights former CIA director John Brennan's 2020 statement on unexplained sky phenomena and the Pentagon's renewed UAP investigations, emphasizing the complexity beyond adversarial technology. Graff reflects on the mathematical probability of extraterrestrial life, citing habitable planets' abundance. He mentions credible UFO cases like Lonnie Zamora's 1964 encounter and government discrepancies, such as Capt. Thomas Mantell's pursuit of a UFO in 1948, later attributed to a Navy research balloon in a Project Blue Book report

To learn more about featured guest speakers on this show please visit https://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2...

[cherryblossomshadow]

[Image ID and source: Bluesky post by Garrett M. Graff (‪/@vermontgmg.bsky.social‬) reading:

Just a friendly reminder to any Dems on the House Ethics Committee that they are fully protected constitutionally if they decide to read the whole Matt Gaetz ethics report into the record on the House floor….

/end ID]

Do this!

[valleygirlintelligentsia]

5, 20, 22

What genre did you read the most of? 72% of the books I've read this year are nonfiction, more specifically maybe books about horrible survival scenarios

What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations? For sure Rebel Girl by Kathleen Hanna - it met my expectations in that it was really awesome, I only wish it was longer and more detailed.

What’s the longest book you read? Watergate: A New History by Garrett M. Graff at 832 pages!

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

The NY Times

By Frank Bruni

Flash back to Donald Trump’s first campaign for president. It should have been doomed when he mocked John McCain’s years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Or when he fantasized about one of his supporters shooting Hillary Clinton. Or when, on that “Access Hollywood” tape, he was heard reveling in the genital prerogatives of fame.

But no. And that wasn’t just because there were so many Americans so dissatisfied with conventional politicians and politics that Trump’s provocations seemed a necessary solvent for the status quo. It was also because his offenses were so numerous, and came along with such frequency, that no single scandal could get lasting attention. Each faded into the crowd.

Trump desensitized his audience as his improprieties became their own unremarkable norm. And while he may not have plotted it that way, he definitely learned his lesson.

His selections for senior jobs in his new administration attest to that education.

It’s galling that he chose a son-in-law’s father, Charles Kushner, who spent two years in prison for witness retaliation, tax evasion and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission, to live in 60,000-square-foot splendor in Paris and swan around the Champs-Élysées as the next American ambassador to France.

But is that any worse than Kash Patel storming around America’s capital in the role of F.B.I. director? As Garrett M. Graff, a historian and journalist, explained in a recent guest essay for Times Opinion, Patel’s disposition is as dangerous as his résumé is irrelevant to the post. He was chosen on the basis of his flamboyant obsequiousness to Trump, in defiance of a long tradition of F.B.I. directors who were steadfastly independent from the presidents they served. And he has vowed repeatedly to seek vengeance against Trump’s opponents and critics.

But there’s little sign of serious resistance to Patel’s confirmation from Republicans in the Senate. They have slimier fish to fry — for example, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s designee for defense secretary.

Hegseth was a comely Fox News host. He has a great head of hair. But as head of two different advocacy organizations, Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America? He was apparently a disgrace. In an article in The New Yorker this week, Jane Mayer reported that Hegseth was forced out of both jobs “in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety and personal misconduct.” That allegedly included incidents of intoxication so severe that “at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team.”

Such charges might be less credible were Hegseth’s own mom not so censorious of his sloppy and sexist ways. Sharon LaFraniere and Julie Tate of The Times reported that in 2018, she sent him an email “on behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way,” in her words. She wrote: “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man.”

On Wednesday, she attempted damage control in an interview on Fox News, saying that her son had changed. Her son, meanwhile, ricocheted around Capitol Hill trying to get skittish senators not to look at what he’s done but to look at how he looks. He also spoke at length with Megyn Kelly for her SiriusXM show. He told her that the accusations against him reflected “the art of the smear.”

But Trump himself was reportedly having second thoughts and toying with the idea of swapping out Hegseth and swapping in Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whom Trump despised and disparaged until three seconds ago. Object of ridicule to object of affection: “Meatball Ron” would be traveling one of the most well-trod paths in TrumpLand.

But Hegseth’s troubles better the odds that the conspiracy theorist and carcass fetishist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. winds up the secretary of health and human services and that the al-Assad apologist and Putin fangirl Tulsi Gabbard gets to run national intelligence. There’s only so much resistance that Republican senators can muster. Only so many times that lap dogs this thoroughly muzzled can bark.

Trump’s picks for lofty posts speak to his veneration of scoundrels — to his belief that rules are for sissies and the strong take what they want however it must be taken. He embraces one binary above all others: If you’re not predator, you’re prey.

And government is for gloating. That’s what he’s doing with his planned nominees — showing what he can get away with, whom he can stick it to.

But his choices are also a tactic. As Peter Baker wrote in The Times on Monday, Trump “appears to be following a sort of swarm strategy, flooding the Senate with many contentious nominations that might not pass muster in normal circumstances and forcing the incoming Republican majority to choose which, if any, to block and which to let through.”

It’s overkill meant to overwhelm: a blitz approach. And with this surfeit of sordid cabinet prospects, Trump has created a yardstick that generously measures anyone without, say, a criminal conviction, a rape accusation or a fortune amassed by highly suspicious means.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In a cabinet of such wretchedness, Kristi Noem is Snow White.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/opinion/trump-cabinet-hegseth-patel.html

[dreamy-conceit]

I should, of course, have realized that Richard Nixon was more likely to be guilty than stupid.

— Elliott Richardson, quoted in Garrett M. Graff’s ‘Watergate: A New History’