Leon Panetta and the Santa Cruz Socialists

Trevor Loudon ^ | 6/18/11 | Trevor Loudon

[Nachum]

It is now fairly well known that President Barack Obama enjoyed a close relationship with the socialists, Trotskyites and "former" communists, who made up Chicago Democratic Socialists of America.

It is less well known, that while a California Congressman, Obama's Secretary of Defense nominee Leon Panetta also worked closely with Santa Cruz based members of the US's largest Marxist organization.

[caption id="attachment_7498" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Hugh DeLacy"][/caption]

A key point of contact was Hugh DeLacy, Panetta's friend and correspondent, from at least 1976, until his death in 1986. DeLacy was a long time Communist Party USA member, who worked closely with members of the California Communist Party splinter group who went on to form the pro-Chinese New American Movement, which in turn joined with the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee in 1982, to form Democratic Socialists of America.

Santa Cruz New American Movement and later Democratic Socialists of America, effectively took over the Santa Cruz City Council , after NAMers Mike Rotkin and Bruce Van Allen, joined with DSOCers Mardi Wormhoudt and John Laird to form a majority on the Council in 1981.

Another local DSAer, former Trotskyite Gordon Haskell served on the Santa Cruz Democratic Party Central committee for many years, while several other comrades held senior posts in the local party.

On September 6, 1986 Leon Panetta addressed a memorial service for Hugh DeLacy at the Louden Nelson Center in Santa Cruz.

Some of names on the list above indicate the circles that both DeLacy and Panetta were moving in at the time.

[caption id="attachment_7503" align="alignright" width="120" caption="Mardi Wormhoudt"][/caption]

• Presenter Mardi Wormhoudt was a member of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, who became a Santa Cruz City Councilmember in 1981, and went on to serve three terms as town Mayor. Wormhoudt , a supporter of Nicaragua's Marxist-Leninist Sandinista regime , was a delegate on the Let Nicaragua Live Tour for the Coalition for Nicaragua in 1986. She was also a member of a 1987 Sister City Delegation to Alushta in the Soviet Union.

• Jack Berman, was a life long leftist activist, a veteran of the Communist Party led Independent Progressive Party and an affiliate of the New American Movement. In the 1960s Berman worked with Hugh DeLacy in support of United Farmworkers founder Cesar Chavez - a disciple, like Barack Obama of the Chicago based father of "community organizing' Saul Alinsky.

  [caption id="attachment_7504" align="alignright" width="149" caption="John McTernan"][/caption]

• John McTernan was a Los Angeles lawyer and several decades veteran of the Communist party USA. McTernan later joined the New American Movement and eventually the Democratic Socialists of America. In 1974 Hugh DeLacy applied to the Chinese government for a free trip for a delegation that would have included McTernan, and several other communists, but the Chinese government ended up only paying for DeLacy and his wife. As a member of D.S.A. McTernan was on a list a wealthy leftists marked as possible funders of D.S.A. programs in Southern California. Others on the list included DSAers Ed Asner and Stanley Sheinbaum (later a supporter of Progressives for Obama), and entertainment figures Casey Kasem, Martin Sheen , Jackson Browne and Danny Goldberg (also Progressives for Obama).

  [caption id="attachment_7508" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Mike Rotkinj"][/caption]

• Mike Rotkin had been a member of Students for a Democratic Society He later went on to become a leader of the New American Movement . Using community-organizing techniques developed by Saul Alinsky, Cesar Chavez, ACORN and Chicago's Midwest Academy, Rotkin built up a power base on Santa Cruz's West Side through agitation for a community health center in the area. In 179, the Westside NAMers sought and obtained the endorsement of then Congressman Leon Panetta for their project. That support was re-affirmed in 1981. Rotkin used this power base to take over the Santa Cruz City Council., where he and his comrades used their power to pass such essential Council initiatives as calling for the withdrawal of all U.S. military and Economic aid to El Salvador and declaring Santa Cruz a nuclear free zone.

Leon Panetta was no stranger to the other speakers at DeLacy's memorial - he had worked with them for years. When Panetta first entered Congress in 1976, his campaign included staffer Don Lane, a future DSAer and Santa Cruz Mayor.

[caption id="attachment_7509" align="alignright" width="120" caption="John Laird"][/caption]

A member of Panetta's campaign committee that year was John Laird, a Democratic Socialist Socialist Organizing Committee member and yet another future Santa Cruz Mayor.

Leon Panetta would later work closely with John Laird in a successful campaign to stop oil drilling off the California Coast. Laird was recently appointed California Secretary of Natural Resources, by incoming leftist Governor Jerry Brown .

In the late 1970s Hugh DeLacy was effectively the California agent for the Chicago based socialist journal In These Times, a project of the New American Movement and the far left "think tank", the Institute for Policy Studies. Congressman Leon Panetta incidentally served on the Institute for policy Studies' 20th Anniversary celebrations committee in 1983. in 1999, Barack Obama was himself summoned from Chicago to New York to help establish an I.P.S "partner" organization, the leftist non profit Demos.

[caption id="attachment_7506" align="alignright" width="150" caption="James Weinstein"][/caption]

In These Times was run by DeLacy's friend, a former Communist and New American Movement founder named James Weinstein. In 2002 James Weinstein and his friends Carl Davidson and former NAMer Marilyn Katz, organized an anti Iraq War rally in Chicago's Federal Plaza. They invited a then obscure little known Illinois state Senator to speak. Barack Obama used the opportunity to rail against the War, making his first mark on the national stage. The rest is history.

All these connections, are of course mere coincidence.

President Obama chose Leon Panetta to head the CIA, and serve as Secretary of Defense (despite zero intelligence or military experience) because he was the best man in America for both jobs.

To think anything else would be paranoid....Possibly even racist.

[Nachum]

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[originalbuckeye]

I had to look up to see if he was even in the Military. Turns out he was in the Army for 2 years. I guess that's enough for a Pres..ent who would like to see the Military fade away.

[hosepipe]

Talk about a Trojan Donkey...

[radpolis]

As a lifelong Santa Cruzan, I have to say it is unfair and inaccurate to align Leon Panetta’s politics with those Commies that were mentioned. I have known those Marxist politicians all my life and despise them, because they ruined Santa Cruz.

I have met Panetta many times and he is no Commie. He was always kind of hawkish on defense and conservative on budget issues from what I remember.

Also, Panetta got his education at a Jesuit university and then worked for Richard Nixon. He started his political life as a Republican.

Further, Panetta is from Carmel. Carmel is not Santa Cruz. Clint Eastwood was the Republican mayor of Carmel when Panetta was a congressman.

The fact is for anybody to get elected in that district, you had to go crawling to the Santa Cruz Commies for support.

That doesn’t make him a Commie.

If anybody is a traitorous scumbag, it is my current Congressman, Sam Farr, who is far more left-wing than Panetta ever was.

[Nachum]

I only know this. If Obama likes him, there is something wrong with him.

More articles about Panetta are going to come out. Here is one:

Panetta keynoted pro-Soviet group’s conference
Nominee for DoD chief gave address during height of Cold War

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=312429

And the idea that he was Clinton’s chief of staff and worked so closely with those slime balls is also a red flag.

More will come out. It is a matter of time.

[WoofDog123]

I wonder why this is coming out now. Panetta is arguably the most rational person of any prominence in this administration.

[Nachum]

Panetta may be rational, but he has no business running the CIA.

[WoofDog123]

the issue is whether anyone better for US interests could rationally be expected to be allowed to be in charge during the obama regime.