Category: Audio Posts: Selected Articles

Presidential candidates have always understood that in a close election, any big news story in the last weeks of a campaign could be enough to tip the contest in November. Now known as an “October surprise,” the news story might take the form of a scandalous revelation about a candidate, the outbreak of war or economic turmoil, or even a fake story planted by a political enemy.

As early as the 1840 election, New York Democrats in support of President Martin Van Buren waited until mid-October to accuse the Whig party of paying Pennsylvanians to vote in New York, a key swing state. A whig official even admitted to the scheme, but it wasn’t the bombshell scandal Democrats had hoped for. Van Buren still lost New York and the election.

“What the idea of the ‘October surprise’ suggests, above all, is that the proximity to the election is when big news can move the needle,” says David Greenberg, a political historian and journalist at Rutgers University. “The truth is, voters make up their minds based on a mixture of impressions, personalities, partisan loyalties, ideological leanings, as well as news and issues. It’s never easy to say precisely that this one thing made the difference.”

Below are seven examples of memorable (or anticipated) “October surprises” in U.S. presidential history.

1. A Forged Letter Almost Becomes Garfield’s ‘Death Warrant’ (1880)

Chinese immigration was a hot-button issue in the 1870s. In just a decade, more than 120,000 Chinese men and boys came to the United States under contract to work the railroads. Western states in particular were anxious about the influx of foreign labor and Democrats called for an immediate moratorium on Chinese immigration.

Republican candidate James Garfield took a more measured position, calling for new negotiations with China and for Congress to consider reasonable limitations on Chinese immigration that, “without violence or injustice, will place upon a sure foundation the peace of our communities and the freedom and dignity of labor.”

But just 12 days before the 1880 election, a letter emerged. Allegedly written by Garfield on House of Representatives stationary, the Republican candidate told a Massachusetts businessman named H.L. Morey that “individuals and companies have the right to buy labor where they can get it cheapest.” In other words, unrestricted Chinese immigration is good for business.

Democrats printed half a million copies of the “Morey letter” and distributed them in tightly contested states like California. They called it Garfield’s “death warrant.”

Republicans were slow to respond, but sent a team of private investigators to track down the letter’s recipient in Massachusetts. There was no H.L. Morey. Garfield declared the letter a forgery and published his handwriting side-by-side with the letter to prove it was a fake.

The forged letter did real damage, though, costing Garfield California. Although Garfield eventually won the election 214 electoral votes to 155, he barely won the popular vote by .02 percentage points.

2. FDR Almost Loses the Black Vote (1940)

The 1936 election signaled a landmark shift for Black voters. Prior to 1936, Black voters were loyal Republicans, the party of Lincoln. But as more African Americans moved out of the South to northern cities, they joined other racial and ethnic minorities fighting for better jobs and working conditions. After the Great Depression struck, Black voters flocked to Democratic Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal programs.

FDR carried 71 percent of the Black vote in 1936 and he hoped to do the same in 1940, but public opinion had changed. As America prepared for entry into World War II, Black Americans were appalled that segregation was still the norm in the U.S. military, and that FDR had done nothing about it. Meanwhile, FDR’s Republican opponent, Wendell Wilkie, was a vocal champion of civil rights.

On October 28, a high-profile incident threatened to cost FDR the Black vote for good. The president was campaigning in New York City at an event in Madison Square Garden. As FDR left for the train station, one of his staffers—a short-tempered press aide named Stephen Early—was blocked by two police officers. In a violent outburst, Early kneed one of the cops in the crotch. The officer, James Sloan, was Black.

As Sloan was rushed to the hospital, Early—the descendent of a Confederate general—issued a half-hearted apology. “A policeman appears to have been hurt,” Early told the press. “I did not attack or kick any officer. But since one officer believes I was responsible for hurting him, I wish to apologize… I cannot understand why Republican politicians are attempting to find political significance in this incident.”

Two days before the election, FDR tried to salvage the situation by announcing the creation of the Tuskegee Airmen and promoting Colonel Benjamin O. Davis Jr. to brigadier general, the first Black officer to reach that rank.

FDR ended up winning an unprecedented third term as president and only lost a small percentage of the Black vote.

3. Reagan Campaign Coins the Term ‘October Surprise’ (1980)

Interestingly, the term “October surprise” was coined during an election where there wasn’t an actual October surprise.

In 1980, the Iranian Hostage Crisis cast a shadow over the presidential election. More than 50 American citizens were held hostage at the American Embassy in Tehran with no political solution in sight. Election Day would mark a full year of their captivity. 

Ronald Reagan campaigned on a promise to free the hostages, something that President Jimmy Carter’s administration had failed to do. But inside the Reagan campaign, there was mounting suspicion that Carter had actually secured the hostages’ release, but was waiting to announce it during the final weeks of the campaign.

It was William Casey, Reagan’s campaign manager, who dubbed Carter’s alleged scheme an “October surprise.”

Time magazine reported, “[Reagan’s campaign] expects [Carter] to pull what they call ‘the October surprise,’ meaning that shortly before Election Day, he will inflate the importance of some overseas event in an attempt to rally the country around him.”

That didn’t happen, of course. Election Day came and went, the hostages remained in Tehran and Reagan won handily. The real surprise came on January 20, when Iran released the hostages just hours after Reagan’s inauguration. Democrats then accused Reagan of striking a secret deal with Iran to hold the hostages until after he took office.

4. Kissinger Prematurely Announces ‘Peace’ in Vietnam (1972)

The Vietnam War was the major political issue of both the 1968 and 1972 elections. Even though the term “October surprise” hadn’t been coined yet, the idea was very much a political phenomenon. In both 1968 and 1972, incumbent presidents tried to secure last-minute peace deals to swing the election in their favor.

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson chose not to run for reelection, but he was committed to helping his Democratic vice president, Hubert Humphrey, defeat the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon. On October 31, 1968, LBJ ordered a halt to all U.S. bombing campaigns in Vietnam, announcing “a major step toward a firm and an honorable peace in Southeast Asia.” 

But just days later, the peace talks in Vietnam fell apart and Humphrey lost to Nixon. Democrats alleged that Nixon secretly scuttled the talks by promising the South Vietnamese stronger support if he were elected president. (Casey, who later coined “October surprise,” was a Nixon aide in 1968.)

Four years later, the Vietnam War was still raging and Nixon was adamant about securing peace before Election Day 1972. In early October, there appeared to be a breakthrough in the peace talks with the North Vietnamese accepting America’s terms for an end to the conflict. Behind the scenes, though, the South Vietnamese strongly objected to the arrangement.

That didn’t stop Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security advisor, from attending a press conference on October 26 and proclaiming that “peace is at hand.” In reality, the war would continue for another three years.

“It was big news,” says Greenberg. “Today we would definitely call it an ‘October surprise,’ even though they weren’t using that phrase back then.”

Nixon was already heavily favored to win in 1972, but Kissinger’s premature “peace” announcement may have contributed to his landslide victory. 

5. Iran-Contra Indictment Is Bad News for George H.W. Bush (1992)

In 1992, President George H.W. Bush was fighting to hold onto the White House, but he faced some serious challenges. For starters, the U.S. economy was mired in a recession, never a good place for the incumbent. On top of that, the 1992 race saw the first serious third-party challenge in decades. Billionaire Ross Perot was running as a fiscal conservative and siphoning Republican voters away from Bush.

If Bush had hopes of defeating his Democratic challenger, Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, they took a serious hit in June 1992. That’s when Caspar Weinberger, who served as Secretary of Defense under President Reagan, was indicted for his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair.

What’s the connection with Bush? Bush was Reagan’s vice president and had been trying to distance himself from the scandal, in which Reagan allegedly authorized illegal weapons sales to Iran in order to funnel money to the Contras, an anti-socialist army in Nicaragua.

Weinberger was the biggest name to be charged in the case, giving credence to the idea that everyone in the Reagan administration knew about the crime, including Bush. While Weinberger’s indictment didn’t happen in October, the timing was still bad for Bush, who lost the election to Clinton.

Greenberg says that the bad economy and the failure of Reaganomics were the biggest factor in Bush’s loss, but admits that “you never quite know what goes on in the mind of individual voters as they make their decisions close to Election Day.”

Bush pardoned Weinberger before he left office.

6. A DUI Almost Derails George W. Bush (2000)

In the weeks leading up to the 2000 presidential election, polls showed that the race was a dead heat between George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore. That’s exactly the type of election that could be decided by an “October surprise.”

Just days before Election Day‚ Fox News broke a bombshell story. In 1976, George W. Bush was arrested for drunk driving in Maine after a long night of partying. The revelation seemed to confirm unflattering portrayals of the younger Bush as unfit for office.

“I’m not proud of that,” Bush told the press in a statement. “I made some mistakes. I occasionally drank too much, and I did that night. I learned my lesson.”

The news story was a last-minute gift to Gore, who won the popular vote in 2000, but famously lost the election after a recount in Florida was halted by the Supreme Court.

Republican strategist Karl Rove argued that Bush’s “October surprise” cost him five states in the 2000 election, enough to have avoided the Florida recount altogether.

7. FBI Reopens Probe into Clinton’s Emails (2016)

The 2016 election was chock-full of wild “October surprises.” On October 7, the Washington Post released a 2005 video of Republican candidate Donald Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women. That same day, Wikileaks released transcripts of Hillary Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street donors, which painted the Democratic candidate as pro-corporate. Then The New York Times reported that Trump hadn’t paid federal taxes in 18 years.

But all of those bombshell news items paled in comparison to what happened on October 28, just 11 days before the election. James Comey, the FBI director, called a press conference to announce that the intelligence agency was reopening its investigation into Clinton’s private email server—an investigation that the FBI had officially closed in July.

The resurrection of the email investigation—which had been the target of Republican ire for a year—delivered a crippling blow to the Clinton campaign. (In her memoir, Clinton said that Comey had “shivved” her.) Clinton lost the election by a narrow margin, despite winning the popular vote.

“There’s been a lot of political science research about what they call ‘recency.’ That is to say, a big scandal in July probably is not going to matter that much, at least to most people, unless it completely derails a candidate,” says Greenberg. “But the same scandal a week or two before the election, it sticks.”

America’s Lawyer E119: Major corporations and their lobbyists have found a loophole that allows them to wine and dine members of Congress without violating federal laws prohibiting those activities. The FBI has been caught AGAIN, spying on American citizens that were protesting against the military industrial complex, and this time they tried to prosecute them as terrorists. And disgraced former Senator Bob Menendez is begging a judge to toss out his felony convictions because he says that Congressional rules allow him to be corrupt. All that, and more is coming up, so don’t go anywhere – America’s Lawyer starts right now.

Transcript:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Regardless of who is leading their governments, U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies maintain a quiet, steady relationship, as that link remains a vital part of national security for both countries.

During a talk last Thursday as part of a Harvard global youth conference on foreign affairs, former CIA director John Brennan and Tamir Pardo, former head of Mossad, spoke about the close ties between the CIA and Mossad, the far-reaching “nuclear” threat posed by cyber, and state-sponsored assassinations, which both generally condemn but view as defensible in the case of “terrorists” who pose an “imminent” threat.

“As good as CIA is, the world is a very, very big place, and we need to work with our partners, such as Israel and Mossad. They have eyes and ears in places and capabilities that we depend on. Because we can’t be everywhere, all the time, that information-sharing is important,” said Brennan, who served as CIA director during President Barack Obama’s second term, from 2013 to 2017. “Tamir and I would share the most sensitive intelligence because our agencies trusted one another.”

Even without the kind of network of global partners that many larger nations have, Israel manages to punch far above its weight in intelligence with the CIA as a partner.

“We managed to do things that no one thought before that can be done in cooperation between agencies like us,” said Pardo, who joined Mossad in 1980 and served as its head from 2011 to 2016. “We never thought that [we] would be able to achieve that degree of cooperation.”

Even though the two heads of state at the time, Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had a strained relationship at best, Pardo said “it never, never stopped the cooperation between the two agencies.”

The two former intel chiefs spoke as part of a three-day virtual conference hosted by the Harvard Undergraduate Foreign Policy Initiative last week. The event provided 615 high school and early college-age students in 62 countries, many of them thinking about future careers in foreign policy, an opportunity to hear from and speak directly to nearly 150 global figures and experts in intelligence, national security, and diplomacy. Speakers included Leon Panetta, former U.S. secretary of defense and former CIA director; Michèle Flournoy, former U.S. under secretary of defense for policy; and Henry Kissinger ’50, A.M. ’52, Ph.D. ’54, secretary of state and national security adviser during the Nixon and Ford administrations and an informal adviser to the Trump administration.

Moderator John Ferguson ’22 asked Brennan and Pardo about their views on state-sponsored assassinations, an ethical concern with which many students interested in the field of intelligence wrestle, he said.

Brennan said he “strongly condemn[ed]” the involvement of country, including the U.S., in assassination, an act he defined as the targeted killing of officials of sovereign countries for political or ideological reasons outside of wartime. He criticized the January 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani, a top general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which the Trump administration hailed as a major battlefield success. But Brennan said killing members of al-Qaida and other terrorist groups was “far different in my mind” than assassination because such groups were not sovereign nations and were plotting deadly attacks against the U.S. and others. “I do believe that there is an obligation on the part of governments to do what they can to protect the lives of their citizens.”

“Cyber is a very soft and silent nuclear weapon. You can destroy a country without shooting one bullet, without launching any rocket, and you can really create a lot of damage for a very cheap price.”

Tamir Pardo

Assassination is a criminal offense and “something that should never be done,” said Pardo.

But “if you have to do it, it is because you are in a state of war with that country or with that organization, and the threat … is enormous, and there is no other way to deal with it.”

“Israel never, never killed anyone for things that he did in the past,” he added, claiming that even terrorists who had caused harm at one point but were not presently a danger would not be targeted. “We are taking those actions only if there is imminent threat of this person for the coming days, for the future.”

Cyberintelligence has become a critical and higher-profile component of national security, as cyberattacks by groups inside Russia and elsewhere hit civilian targets like private companies and city governments, and disrupt economies and public safety. Once a tactic available only to state-run intelligence agencies, today virtually anyone, even criminals, can launch cyberattacks to inflict significant economic, social, and political harm.

“Cyber is a very soft and silent nuclear weapon. You can destroy a country without shooting one bullet, without launching any rocket, and you can really create a lot of damage for a very cheap price,” including the “exceptional power” to change government policies and administrations, said Pardo.

Asked by a student whether the greater reliance on data can restore public trust in the soundness of intelligence community decisions, Brennan and Pardo suggested that negative perceptions are being shaped by a torrent of false information online and in the news. “So, I think there is the basis for that distrust,” said Brennan.

Despite greater public awareness that state and non-state actors around the world are using the internet and other digital tools to manipulate people, “I don’t think the politicians and others and even news organizations have learned the lessons” from the last several years, said Brennan. “There seems to be a total absence of integrity, honesty, and truthfulness, which I think is leading … not just to distrust, but an ignorance of the facts and misunderstanding of world events. And, with the technological developments that are underway, I think we’re going to see more and more of this proliferation of false information, unfortunately.”

Less than a decade ago, telling truth from falsehoods was fairly easy. Today, it has become much harder to separate fact from fiction in both Israel and the U.S. in part because some politicians are deliberately misleading their citizenry, said Pardo.

During the Trump and Netanyahu administrations, “Fake news was so common that no one was able to [detect] the difference between truth and lie. I think it’s your job, the young people, to make the change — and it won’t be easy,” Pardo said, noting a new wave of younger politicians who have embraced and polished these tactics.

“We did our best to prevent it for many years. But we are out of the system today. It’s your turn now.”

Israel is widely recognized as having highly sophisticated intelligence capabilities, both in terms of its ability to collect information about potential threats within its own country and outside of it. And so as details unfold about the full extent of Hamas’ unprecedented and surprise attack on 20 Israeli towns and several army bases on Oct. 7, 2023, the question lingers: How did Israel fail to piece together clues about this large-scale and highly complex plot in advance?

Israeli intelligence did detect some suspicious activity on Hamas militant networks before the attack, The New York Times reported on Oct. 10, 2023. But the warning wasn’t acted upon or fully understood in its entirety – similar to what happened in the United States shortly before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

“Intelligence analysis is like putting a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle together from individual pieces of intelligence every day and trying to make judgments for policymakers to actually do something with those insights,” said Javed Ali, a counterterrorism and intelligence scholar who spent years working in U.S. intelligence.

We spoke with Ali to try to better understand how Israeli intelligence works and the potential gaps in the system that paved the way for the Hamas incursion.

1. What questions did you have as you watched the attacks unfold?

This took an enormous amount of deliberate and careful planning, and Hamas must have gone to great lengths to conceal the plotting from Israeli intelligence. This plotting may indeed have been hidden as the plot was being coordinated.

Because of the attack’s advanced features, I also thought that Iran almost certainly played a role in supporting the operation – although some U.S. officials have so far said they do not have intelligence evidence of that happening.

Finally, Hamas is on Israel’s doorstep. One would think Israel could better understand what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank, as opposed to 1,000 miles away in Iran. How did Israel not see something this advanced right next door? Some Israeli officials have said they believed Hamas was already deterred by recent Israeli counterterrorism operations, and that the group lacked the capability to launch an attack on the scope and scale of what occurred.

2. How does Israeli intelligence work, and how is it regarded internationally?

Israel has one of the most capable and sophisticated intelligence enterprises at the international level. The current design and functioning of Israel’s intelligence system broadly mirrors that in the U.S., with respect to roles and responsibilities.

In Israel, Shin Bet is the Israeli domestic security service, so the equivalent of the FBI, which monitors threats within the country. On the foreign security side, Israel has Mossad, which is equivalent to the CIA. Third, there is an Israeli military intelligence agency, similar to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency – and there are other, smaller organizations within military intelligence that are focused on different intelligence issues.

Like most Western countries, Israel relies on a combination of different intelligence sources. This includes recruiting people to provide intelligence agencies with the sensitive information they have direct access to, which is known as human intelligence – think spies. There is what is called signals intelligence, which can be different forms of electronic communications like phone calls, emails or texts that the Israelis gain access to. Then there is imagery intelligence, which could be a satellite, for example, that captures photos of, say, militant training camps or equipment.

A fourth kind of intelligence is open source, or publicly available information that is already out there for anyone to get, such as internet chat forums. While I was winding down my work in intelligence a few years ago, there was a shift to seeing much more publicly available intelligence than other kinds of traditional intelligence.

3. How does Israel’s intelligence system differ from the US system?

Unlike the U.S., one thing that Israel doesn’t have is an overall intelligence coordinator, a single representative who knows about and oversees all of the different intelligence components.

The U.S. system has a director of national intelligence position, who runs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which was created in 2004. These were both recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, after it found that the U.S. approach to intelligence was too fragmented across different agencies and offices.

So, when there are tough issues that no one agency could resolve on its own, or analytic differences in intelligence, you need an independent office of experts to help work through those issues. That’s what this office does.

I spent several years working within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In one of my jobs there, I reported to the director of national intelligence.

There is no equivalent to that central office and function in Israel. In my opinion, Israel might consider down the road how a comprehensive intelligence coordinator could help avoid this challenge in the future.

4. What role does the US have in monitoring threats to Israel, if any?

The U.S. and Israel have a very strong intelligence relationship. That partnership is bilateral, meaning it is just between the two countries. It is not part of a larger international group of countries that share intelligence.

The U.S. also has a broader intelligence partnership, known as “Five Eyes,” with Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Nevertheless, the general rule in these strong bilateral relationships is that when one side picks up intelligence about threats to the other, it should automatically get passed on.

This may be a case where the U.S. is shifting its intelligence priorities to other parts of the world, like Ukraine, Russia and China. As a result, we may not have had significant intelligence on this particular Hamas plot, and so there was nothing to pass to Israel to warn them.

The widen war, in the Middle East, being provoked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, may very well decide who becomes America’s president next month. The current bombing of Lebanon, and the attacks on Iran, threaten to ignite the whole region into a catastrophic deadly war—that may lead to a second Donald Trump presidency.

Is this the October surprise strategy Netanyahu is employing—with President Joe Biden’s help—to kill Vice-President Kamala Harris’ chance of becoming the first female president?

That is clearly the outcome Netanyahu wants. But why is President Joe Biden helping the effort which may cause Harris the 2024 Presidential Election?

Ever since the “intelligence failure” on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals, Netanyahu has used that tragedy to benefit his political expediency. Facing criminal charges, in Israel, all-out war against Palestinians was a perfect distraction, like manna from heaven, for the embattled prime minister. The current war escalation into Lebanon is just a continuum of Netanyahu’s Machiavellian machinations to evade legal troubles in Israel.

The idea Netanyahu was working toward a peace-deal is pure fantasy. Also, many Israeli citizens reportedly want Trump to win too.

Since “birds of a feather flock together,” it is no surprise Netanyahu likes Trump. In fact, they are monstrous mirror images of one another. The irony here is while anyone who criticizes Israeli policy is smeared with the “anti-Semitic” charge, Netanyahu likes breaking bread with a racist like Trump. Then again, Netanyahu is a racist himself.

Given all this, it is hard to understand Biden’s thinking in dealing with Netanyahu—especially, since he is no longer running for reelection. Biden surely understands that Netanyahu does not want peace.

So, what is Biden’s game plan here? Why is he seemingly making Harris’ chances of becoming president more difficult? Why won’t he take a firm stance against Netanyahu?

For months now, it has been clear Muslim-Americans are understandably furious with the Biden Administration for doing nothing to stop the Gaza Genocide. For example, in the key battleground state of Michigan, we saw the emergence of the Uncommitted National Movement, which influenced many Muslim voters to seek other voting options during the 2024 Democratic presidential primaries.

To make matters worse, the Kamala Harris campaign’s decision not to have a single Palestinian voice at the Democratic National Convention wasn’t helpful. What message did this send to Palestinian-Americans, and to American Muslim voters generally, regarding the Democratic Party’s concerns for their humanity in the face of maniacal mass murder?

For all the good Biden has done, relative to other American presidents, the history books will now list him as an aider-and-abettor of Netanyahu’s genocidal crimes. From a political positioning point of view, Biden’s reticence to reign in Netanyahu was fathomable, though unethical, when he was still a reelection candidate—although his campaign was already losing support because of the arbitrary slaughter of innocent Gazans. But now that Kamala Harris is the candidate, Biden’s stance is puzzling.

This is why some are now surmising, shockingly, that Biden wants Harris to lose, because of the grievances he has with how he was forced out of the 2024 race. Before he was pressured to step aside, Biden was said to have doubted whether Harris could win the presidency. There have also been reports that Biden is complaining about being forgotten in the national conversation.

Meanwhile, over 41,000 thousand Palestinians have been bombed and blown to bits in Gaza. And over 2,000 Lebanese have been killed since Netanyahu perpetrated his latest acts of aggression.

If Biden continues to back Netanyahu’s war escalation in the Middle East, Kamala Harris will lose more Muslim, student, and anti-war votes. And the worse Netanyahu’s murderous impulses get before November 5 the more we are likely to see Trump again slithering into the White House.

A man accusing Sean ‘Diddy‘ Combs of assaulting him when he was just 16 has shared a photograph of the pair together at one of the rapper’s famous White Parties.

In a court filing lodged on Monday, the man known only as John Doe accused Diddy of assaulting him at the 1998 party, while celebrities mingled nearby.

‘There existed something sinister – a dark underbelly of crime, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, bribery and prostitution,’ the court filing stated.

‘Combs is a menace to society, women and children.’ Diddy denies the allegations against him. 

The filing also posed a potential answer to the question of all the baby oil found in Diddy’s home after his arrest, noting there are ‘allegations of Combs dousing victims in lotions or similar body oils… laced with GBH, so that the drug would be absorbed through the victim’s skin and make it easier to assault him or her.’

Diddy’s White Parties were once considered the most sought after invitation on the social scene, and were attended by a constant stream of A-list stars.

According to the new filing by Tony Buzbee, who says he is representing as many as 120 credible Diddy victims, it was also central to his alleged offending.

‘[He] would tell victims, ”this is what it takes to be famous, what are you willing to do to become a star?’

John Doe was 16 and living in New York City when he received a highly sought after invitation to the 1998 White Party in the Hamptons.

When he received the invitation, he felt like he finally had the opportunity to rub shoulders with the who’s who of the industry. He thought it could be his chance to break into the music industry,’ the court filing read.

‘As John Doe entered, he spotted countless celebrities and A-listers who form the music and entertainment industry. He recognized faces he had seen on TV and on the big screen.’

The young boy was making his way through the crowd and heading toward the restroom when he ‘unexpectedly bumped into Combs,’ the filing states.

‘Shocked, John Doe found himself face to face with Combs, a titan in the music industry, standing right in front of him at his own party.’

The picture shared in the court filing was allegedly taken at this moment, during this interaction.

The filing states: ‘Combs took an interest in John Doe and wanted to talk to him. They walked to a more private area near the portable restrooms brought in for the party.

‘There, John Doe told Combs he was a big fan of Combs and shared his dreams of becoming a star. Combs smiled, telling him he had potential and ‘the look.’ When John Doe admitted his voice was not great, Combs assured him that did not matter.

‘Combs abruptly told John Doe that he needed to drop his pants.’

John Doe was allegedly caught ‘completely off guard’ by the request, and asked Diddy to repeat himself.

‘Combs made himself clear. He instructed John Doe to drop his pants and expose his penis so that Combs could inspect it, explaining it was a rite of passage and the route to becoming a star, and also as a way to prove himself. 

‘Out of fear, anxiety and the imbalanced power dynamic between himself and Combs, John Doe then dropped his pants and exposed his penis as Combs previously instructed.’

The filing states: ‘Combs moved closer and grabbed John Doe’s penis and genitals with his hand. He firmly cupped and held onto John Doe’s genitals for an extended period of time. 

‘During this time, Combs moved his hand in such a fashion to manipulate John Doe’s genitals, squeezing and feeling them. Doe was only sixteen.’

Buzbee has repeatedly stated more high-profile people could soon be named in suits and vowed to pursue the cases against any offender ‘aggressively’.

Of the 120 people he is now representing, 25 claim they were minors at the time they were allegedly abused. 

In the filing, Buzbee said Diddy was able to target young, vulnerable people ‘through a criminal enterprise built on his success as a rapper, record producer and record executive.

‘Combs is one of the wealthiest musical artists in the world. 

‘As part of his pattern of abuse, Combs manipulated both men and women to participate in highly-orchestrated performances of sexual activity with both commercial sex workers and unsuspecting partygoers.

‘Combs has a profound contempt for women and a desire to dominate both minors and other men. 

‘His conduct shows a longstanding practice of denigrating, defeating and attempting to humiliate men, women and children.’

Combs attorney’s issued a statement to <a href=”http://DailyMail.com” rel=”nofollow”>DailyMail.com</a>.

‘The press conference and 1-800 number that preceded today’s barrage of filings were clear attempts to garner publicity,’ they said.

‘Mr. Combs and his legal team have full confidence in the facts, their legal defenses, and the integrity of the judicial process. In court, the truth will prevail: that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone—adult or minor, man or woman.’

He was charged with a host of sex trafficking and racketeering offenses following his September 16 arrest. 

Last week, a judge scheduled his trial for May 2025.  

America’s official creed turned 61 on July 30. On that date in 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Public Law 851, resolving that “In God we trust” shall henceforth be the motto of the United States, even though the phrase had already begun to appear on U.S. currency almost a hundred years earlier. The chances of such an innovation happening today are slim to nil.

Few things are more controversial in America today than the subject of God-talk in the public square. The courts have thus far rejected First Amendment petitions to expunge the loaded language from our wallets, but only by positing that the God of the Treasury is a secular impostor. In 1984, Justice William Brennan invoked “ceremonial deism”—a dictum first conceived by Yale Law School dean Eugene Rostow—to suggest that references to the Divine on legal tender or in the Pledge of Allegiance should be “protected from Establishment Clause scrutiny chiefly because they have lost through rote repetition any significant religious content.”

For guardians of the U.S. Constitution, “Thou shalt preserve the separation between church and state” is the 11^th commandment. It ensures that no single religious tradition is given preference over all others, providing for all citizens to be treated equally before the law. America’s fidelity to this principle, however inspired, may have stunted its ability to fully fathom world events.

Here’s a news flash: God never left the Middle East. This isn’t to say that he’s deserted the United States, which—despite the growth of the “Nones”—remains in many ways a deeply religious land. But over in the Middle East, religion is intertwined profoundly with national identity. It’s not relegated to the realm of personal choice, a private matter seldom discussed in polite company, but a completely public affair. And turning the American model on its head, both synagogue and mosque are very much connected to the apparatus of state throughout the region.

The July 14 shooting on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where three Arab Israeli gunmen killed two Druze policemen, has ignited passions across the region. The site, which is under the control of Israel, is administered by the Islamic waqf (religious trust). The introduction of metal detectors to screen visitors for weapons—standard practice at venues around the world—was sufficient pretext for the Palestinian Authority to suspend security coordination with Israel.

The outbreak of nationalist violence at one of humanity’s most sacred shrines—home to both ancient Jewish temples and the present-day Haram al-Sharif mosque—has once again focused global attention on the tangible and explosive nexus between faith and politics. Nothing could better epitomize the volatility of mixing sanctity with earthly dominion.

In the Middle East, loyalty to country—a relative term where borders have proven fluid historically—continues to play second fiddle to deeper spiritual ties. We’re not talking about some perfunctory expression of tribal solidarity either. A 2012 Pew Research Center survey found that a staggering 97 percent of the world’s Muslims subscribe to the shahadah, according to which “there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.” (Pointedly, the poll excluded North America and Western Europe.) And 93 percent of them observe the daytime fast throughout the holy month of Ramadan.

Meanwhile, in Israel, where 93 percent of Jews profess to taking pride in their Jewish identity, a plurality of them describe themselves as Jewish first and Israeli second. Notwithstanding a robust debate about whether “being Jewish” is foremost a religious or national attribute, the facts speak for themselves: at least 90 percent of Israeli Jews claimed that it was “important” or “very important” for them to circumcise their male infants, celebrate a bar mitzvah, and say the kaddish mourning prayer for their parents. Just over three quarters (76 percent) of them maintain the dietary laws of kashrut in their homes. These levels of ritual performance vastly outpace comparable figures for their co-religionists in the United States.

But personal observance is only half the story. In the United States, questions of devotion and praxis are confined largely to domestic affairs. Access to abortions, school prayer, and discrimination against the LGBT community are typical examples of this. To the God-fearing masses of the Middle East, where religion and state have a symbiotic relationship, they are also a core driver of foreign policy, impacting forcefully on the security and economics of the entire planet.

President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have been engaged in trying to broker a ceasefire in Syria. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson just recently returned from a failed round of shuttle diplomacy in the Persian Gulf, where he attempted to conciliate a Saudi-led consortium of four Arab states and their rival in Qatar; his two envoys have just arrived in the region to pick up where he left off. And the tenuous nuclear deal with Iran remains under administration review. At the heart of all these Middle Eastern conflicts lies a civilizational struggle for primacy between opposing versions of Islam.

In Syria, Iraq, Yemen and other quarters of the region, the Islamic Republic of Iran (note the official appellation) employs its assets and proxies to promote its vision: exporting the Islamic Revolution. Employing their own form of “replacement theology,” its leaders aim to expand the influence of their Shi‘a brand at the expense of Mecca-centered Sunni Islam. Geopolitically, through the deployment of Hizballah in Syria and Lebanon, and its de facto alliance with Moscow, Tehran supports this objective by maneuvering to keep Bashar Assad in power and preserve its beachhead on the Mediterranean. Riyadh and its Sunni allies are pushing back, not only against Iran, but also against its satellites; thus, their bitter resistance to Qatari sponsorship of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Al-Jazeera network, which threaten to undermine their regimes and ideology. This power struggle over which doctrinal interpretation will prevail will define the future of the Arab world. The demands it places on the resources and bandwidth of the United States and its Western allies are enormous.

No less consequential is Muslim hostility toward the Jewish state of Israel, whose security repeated U.S. administrations have pledged to uphold. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran—a nation once friendly with Israel—has called for the destruction of Israel, allegedly based on “well-established Islamic principles.” Saudi textbooks have branded Jews as “apes” and “swine,” and Qatar’s largest mosque hosted a sermon calling for Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque to be saved from “the claws of the Jews;” they’ve had no kind words for Christians either. Israel has found common cause with a number of Sunni Muslim states in opposing Iranian expansionism, but contagious racial sentiments continue to incite fundamentalist violence against Western targets.

Israel, meanwhile, is awash in religious discord of another sort. Recent government decisions concerning prayer arrangements at the Western Wall and religious conversion standards have sparked divisions between Judaism’s different denominations. The fallout has unleashed talk within the U.S. Jewish community of possible repercussions that could affect Israel’s standing abroad. If steadfast friends of Israel in the United States were ever to withhold their support, it could potentially trigger changes in congressional voting patterns on issues such as foreign aid.

The devil, if you’ll allow me to mix metaphors, is in the heavenly details. Belief is not simply a quaint feature of the human condition but a complex operating system that holds the key to understanding the Middle East. If diplomats and other professionals involved in international affairs are to be effective, they need to get up to speed. Cross-cultural literacy, the bread-and-butter of navigating relationships, implies more than just a bemused, superficial understanding of religious customs; it’s about engaging in reflective dialogue, not just knowing whose hand you’re allowed to shake and when. Never before has it been so important that practitioners develop a nuanced appreciation of religious canons and motivations. In too many cases, these are the powers behind the true game of thrones.

Six new accusers of Sean “Diddy” Combs have filed lawsuits against the music mogul, alleging rape, sexual abuse and sexual assault.

Two Jane Does and four John Does filed civil lawsuits against Combs, 54, in New York on Monday, marking the first accusers of 120 alleged victims with claims against Combs, which Texas-based lawyer Tony Buzbee announced earlier this month.

The cases include alleged incidents from 1995 through 2021, including the alleged sexual assault of a minor and multiple allegations of rape. Several of the assaults are alleged to have occurred at the infamous parties that Combs became known for throughout his three decades in the music industry.

The lawsuits name Combs’ various businesses as defendants. One of the men, who accuses Combs of sexually assaulting him in a Macy’s in 2008, lists the department store as a defendant, and one of the women, who says Combs raped her in a hotel, lists Marriott as a defendant. USA TODAY has reached out to Macy’s, Marriott and Combs’ reps for comment.

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Buzbee revealed in an Oct. 1 press conference that he is representing the 120 accusers, with allegations of “violent sexual assault or rape,” “facilitated sex with a controlled substance,” “dissemination of video recordings” and “sexual abuse of minors” against the embattled businessman, among other offenses.

“We will expose the enablers who enabled this conduct behind closed doors,” Buzbee said at the time. “We will pursue this matter no matter who the evidence implicates.”

Buzbee added: “It’s a long list already, but because of the nature of this case, we are going to make damn sure that we’re right before we do that. But the names that we’re going to name … are names that will shock you.”

Combs has denied all allegations brought against him. An attorney for Combs previously said in a statement, “No matter how many lawsuits are filed it won’t change the fact that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex trafficked anyone. We live in a world where anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason and without any proof. Fortunately, a fair and impartial judicial process exists to find the truth and Mr. Combs is confident he will prevail against these and other baseless claims in court.”

This new wave of legal action follows Combs’ September arrest and subsequent arraignment for sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution charges; he is set to face a criminal trial May 5. The rapper, who has maintained his innocence amid an avalanche of civil lawsuits filed over the past year alleging decades of sexual and physical abuse, remains in custody at the Special Housing Unit at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs allegedly raped woman at NY hotel

One Jane Doe accuses Combs of raping her in a Manhattan Marriott hotel room in 2004 when she was 19 years old.

The accuser says she initially met Combs at a photoshoot, where the rapper invited her and her friend to his hotel for an exclusive party. At the hotel, Jane Doe says a man “grabbed” her and her friend and brought them to a bedroom, telling them, “You know what you are here for.”

In the bedroom, the door to which was locked, Combs allegedly became “aggressive” with the two women and “eventually began forcibly touch them without consent,” the lawsuit says. He then allegedly ordered the accuser’s friend to perform oral sex on him “or else he would have them both killed.”

Combs also forced Jane Doe to take her clothes off under the threat of violence and “fondled, molested, and ultimately raped Ms. Doe, all while she was begging him to stop,” the suit alleges.

Diddy, multiple men raped unnamed man at 2021 party, lawsuit says

One man claims he was drugged and assaulted by Combs and multiple other unnamed men at a 2021 party.

The John Doe’s lawsuit says he “became disoriented” after consuming an alcoholic drink at the party in New York, and while in a state of confusion and trying to leave, he heard a male voice saying “hold on” and promising to help him. The accuser then remembers being in a bedroom, unable to move or speak.

“Multiple men began to sexually assault him through sodomy and other forced acts,” the lawsuit says. “He distinctly recalls seeing Combs above him, naked, at one point during the assault,” and he “was sodomized by at least three men.”

Sean John, Ecko feud was backdrop of sexual assault, unnamed man alleges

In another lawsuit, a man claims he was sexually assaulted by Diddy in a Macy’s store in New York in 2008.

The man says he worked as an advisor for the clothing line Ecko Clothing, a competitor of Combs’ Sean John clothing line. He alleges he was in the stockroom at a Macy’s in Manhattan in 2008 when Combs and three bodyguards entered.

After turning a corner in the stockroom, the John Doe “was hit hard around the base of the neck, possibly with a pistol,” the lawsuit says, which forced him “to his hands and knees” where “he saw that each of the bodyguards had guns in their waistbands. (John Doe) heard multiple voices call out things like ‘I’ll kill you.'”

Combs then allegedly approached the man while he was on his hands and knees and “proceeded to forcefully, and brutally, orally rape” him for at least two minutes while making derogatory comments.

“After he was finished, Combs threw (John Doe’s) head aside and said words to the effect of ‘shut up or I’ll kill you,'” the lawsuit says.

Security guard claims drugging, sexual assault at Diddy party

Yet another John Doe alleges Combs sexually assaulted him at a party in 2006.

The man says he was working for a security firm at the time and accepted a job at a Combs “white party” in East Hampton. He says he “began to feel extremely ill” at the party after consuming two alcoholic drinks that were provided to him by Combs.

As the man was disoriented, he claims Combs “forcibly pushed” him into an open van, held him down and sexually assaulted him.

Biggie Smalls music video party was site of alleged rape, lawsuit claims

In another lawsuit, a woman says she attended a promotional party in New York in 1995 for the Biggie Smalls music video “One More Chance,” where Combs approached her and asked to speak with her. When they were alone in a bathroom, he “unexpectedly began kissing” her, she says.

When she tried to pull away, the woman alleges Combs “violently struck her, slamming her head against the wall and causing her to fall to the floor.” He then allegedly hit her again, lifted her dress and raped her. After the assault, Combs allegedly threatened the woman by warning, “You better not tell anyone about this, or you will disappear.”

Unnamed male minor claims he was assaulted at Diddy White Party

Another accuser says he was 16 years old when he was sexually assaulted by Combs at a Hamptons “white party” in 1998.

At the party, the man alleges Combs instructed him to “drop his pants and expose his penis so that Combs could inspect it,” claiming this is a “rite of passage and the route to becoming a star.” Combs then allegedly grabbed the man’s genitals.

“As a result of Combs’ sexual assault onto John Doe while he was a minor, John Doe experienced damages including pain and suffering, mental anguish, physical impairment and emotional torment,” the lawsuit says. “The interaction continues to humiliate and cause shame on John Doe.”

This story has been updated to include additional information.

Contributing: Anika Reed, Jay Stahl and Edward Segarra