Q Post 3729 and Post 3732 Back Channels and Q's later post about needing a pick-me-up. I AGREE. I wanted to know what a BACK CHANNEL is, and why Q thinks it's important, so I looked into it. Very interesting info. I also wanted to tell Q that I agree that AFTER A LONG DAY one does need a LITTLE PICK-ME-UP.  Thanks for BEING UP SO LATE POSTING Q, and being there for us. And by the way, your posts about SPELLING CORRECTIONS and being "ON THE MOVE" make me smile. I was just thinking of that earlier this week, and thinking how I missed reading your spelling errors because you are ON THE MOVE. 3729 Backchannels are Important Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 19 Dec 2019 - 1:21:22 AM Backchannels are important. Know your history and you will know why. Q "So what exactly is a back channel, and when is it appropriate? “It essentially means CREATING A CHANNEL OF COMMUNICATION with ANOTHER GOVERNMENT or with REPRESENTATIVES of another government, that is discreet, that doesn’t go through the official channels of diplomatic cables, of using ambassadors and more formal methods of communicating," says Peter Kornbluh, who co-wrote the book "Back Channel To Cuba: the Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana." Kornbluh is also a senior analyst at the National Security Archive at George Washington University. “Presidents have often used it," Kornbluh says, “when they want to keep their contacts and proposals secret from other parts of the bureaucracy in the United States that might not be supportive of the policy initiative, or simply from the issue of leaks — when you need just a small group of people to know what you’re doing in order to safeguard negotiations that are very delicate, but will have extensive rewards if they come to fruition.” “Every president has used them in one form or another,” explains Kornbluh. “Nixon used them ... for the opening to China. There were back channels with Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War. Barack Obama famously used them to arrive at an agreement of engagement with Raul Castro’s government in Cuba. In fact, in the case of Cuba, just about every president since Eisenhower has used back-channel communications because of the delicacy and the political sensitivity of negotiating with the Cubans over the years.” ROBERT KENNEDY'S BACK CHANNEL WITH THE RUSSIANS. "In researching a book on Robert F. Kennedy, I have become familiar with the back channel relationship my subject carried on with a Cold War figure named Georgi Bolshokov.  I owe this information to Evan Thomas’ excellent biography of Kennedy, which came in the year 2000. Georgi Bolshakov was a mid-level figure at the Soviet embassy here in Washington, also a colonel in the KGB known to be close to Nikita Khrushchev’s son-in-law.  Bolshkov was popular with American reporters, including Charles Bartlett, a close friend of President Kennedy, the one who introduced him to Jacqueline. In the spring of 1961, Bolshokov passed word through his American reporter friends that he wanted to meet the president’s brother. When the two men got together, Bobby suggested they open a BACK CHANNEL between President Kennedy and Khrushchev apart from the US Department of State. Bobby’s first goal with Bolshakov, according to biographer Thomas, was to have the Russian agent get word to Khrushchev that, no matter what had just happened in the Bay of Pigs, his brother would fight if the Soviets pushed, especially if they tried grab US-occupied West Berlin. Unfortunately, the Bolshokov back channel did nothing to prevent a disastrous summit meeting between the two leaders that June in Vienna.  In that meeting, Khrushchev bullied the American president, leaving him with the frightening impression that the prospect of a nuclear war had not seemed to deter the man sitting across from him.  In a later, even more critical moment, the back channel between Bobby and Bolshakov, again according to Thomas, may have proven strikingly effective.  During the fearful days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy used Bolshakov to suggest to Khrushchev that the US might secretly agree to remove its missiles from Turkey if the Soviets would remove theirs from Cuba. That ended up being THE DEAL that PREVENTED A NUCLEAR WAR." http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/robert-kennedys-back-channel-the-russians PART OF POST 3732 7560835 Directly after a +? Sometimes after a long day one needs a little pick-me-up. Q