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“Everyone who was sympathetic to the United States was executed,” explains former KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov in his famed 1984 interview with G. Edward Griffin. “This picture shows the part of the building of USSR embassy and my supervisors. On the left, is Comrade Mehdi – an Indian communist. And on the right, Comrade Mitrokhin. My supervisors in the secret Department of Research and Counterpropaganda. It has nothing to do with either research or counterpropaganda. Most of the activity of the department was to compile huge amount, volume of information on individuals who were instrumental in creating public opinion – publishers, editors, journalists, actors, educationalists, professors of political science, members of parliament, representative’s of business circles.

“Most of these people were divided roughly into groups,” explains Bezmenov. “Those who would tow the Soviet foreign policy, they would be promoted to the positions of power – through media and public opinion and manipulation. Those who refused the Soviet influence in their own country would be character assassinated or executed physically; counter revolution.

“Same way as in small town of Hue in South Vietnam, several thousands of Vietnamese were executed in one night when the city was captured by Vietcong for only two days. And American CIA could never figure out how could possibly communists know each individual, where he lives, where to get him and would be arrested in one night, basically, in some four hours before dawn, put on a van, taken out to the city limits and shot?

“The answer is very simple,” explains Bezmenov. “Long before communists occupy the city, there was extensive network of informers, local Vietnamese citizens who knew absolutely everything about people who are instrumental in public opinion. Including barbers and taxi drivers, everyone who was sympathetic to the United States was executed.”

A seemingly incredible feat accomplished long before the modern digital age of the Department of Homeland Security and various other information gathering agencies; the potentiality for Americans to find themselves on one list or another has never been greater in the United States today.

“I can’t (begin to) tell you how fundamentally dangerous all of this is,” warns retired federal Judge Nancy Gertner in a March 14, 2025 ‘Democracy Now!’ YouTube video titled, “A Coup Attempt? A Retired Judge’s Warning About Elon Musk’s Abuse of Power.” A current Harvard Law School professor with 17-years experience on the bench, “The judiciary is one of the institutions that deal with checks and balances,” explains Gertner. “And if you take them out of the picture you’re going the way of Hungary, you’re going the way of Russia – and it’s extraordinarily troubling.”

“And, can you talk about President Trump simply not obeying the courts?” asks host Amy Goodman in a follow up question to the professor. “I mean, U.S. Marshals are a kind of army for the courts but they’re under the Justice Department, Trump’s Justice Department – the heads of that calling themselves Trump’s lawyers.”

“The Marshals are supposed to be the enforcer of judgments,” explains Gertner. “And as you say, they are under the supervision of the Department of Justice. The authorizing legislation however says that the Marshals shall enforce the law. And, so there’s a division here. On the one hand, the authorizing statue says they shall enforce the law. Even if Pam Bondi says, ‘You know, I’m sorry. That law doesn’t matter. We’re going to skip over that law.’ They still have an obligation to enforce the law. If they did not, then we would have a constitutional crisis. Saying that doesn’t describe what that would mean – constitutional crisis. What does that mean for all of us?

“Then it would mean, really, a marching on Washington. Deluging all the, our congressmen and representatives. It could mean mass demonstrations; I mean, it’s almost the end of law. And at that point people have to make it clear, as the population in Israel did, as populations in Poland did; that this is beyond the pale. This is not what our Constitution was meant to accomplish.”

“Judge,” asks Goodman, “Would you call DOGE’s taking over federal agencies; you know, run by, as President Trump keeps saying, Elon Musk – the richest man in the world. Who gave the most money to the president to be reelected; would you call what’s happened as judges push back across the country and say tens of thousands of workers have to be reinstated. Would you call what has happened a coup?”

“What has happened with Elon Musk? I have called it a coup; if it succeeds it will have been a coup,” explains Gertner with great certainty. “In other words, if the definition of a coup is a small group of people who are not elected, and there was Musk, who (is) taking over the power of the government? Yes, I would call it a coup.

“I mean, he, there are challenges around the country to his authority – to Musk’s authority. Musk, who is not confirmed by Congress. Who is selected by means that no one exactly knows. Who is given powers that no one knows about? Who is getting access to information that only government officials who have been appropriately selected can get. And if he's successful in that, there are challenges to that – if he is successful? Yes, I would call that a coup.”

With a former federal judge warning that the Trump administration defying the courts is ostensibly the end to the rule of law, potentially leading to mass demonstrations and even a deluging of our constitutional representatives; a CBS report from Cristian Benavides could be a harbinger of things to come.

“The government of El Salvador released images Sunday showing what they say are 261 gang members deported from the U.S., mainly from Venezuela, that will be held in detention by that country. The announcement comes after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from invoking a 1798 law called the Alien Enemies Act.

“The law would allow the arrest and deportation, without typical due process; of Venezuela migrants who are accused of being members of the South American gang Tren De Aragua. The judge in Washington blocked the deportations with a 14-day restraining order," explains Benavides. "He said planes already in the air carrying deportees should turn around. It’s unclear if the Trump administration violated that order.

“'We want to get rid of Tren De Aragua gang members – they’re terrorists too,” explains Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the report continues.”The president designated them, asked me to designate, and I did, as a terrorist organization. We want to get rid of them as well. We don’t want terrorists in America. I don’t know how hard that is to understand?'

“On Face the Nation,” continues Benavides, “Secretary of State Marco Rubio also defended the administration’s move to begin deportation proceedings against Mahmoud Khalil, a U.S. permanent resident who organized pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University.”

With an uncomfortable leap made in the same report from Rubio designating Tren De Aragua gang members as terrorists, deported to a third world mega-prison without any form of due process – to the Secretary of State also defending the deportation process of a permanent U.S. resident; it may pay dividends to take a closer look at who else the United States government has designated as potential domestic terrorists.

According to Congress.gov, Americans who harbor racially or ethnically motivated views, anti-government or anti-authority ideologies and or those considered being on the fringe of animal rights, the environment, abortion, religion, gender or sexual orientation ideologies may all be considered potential domestic terrorists. Factor in an end to the rule of law scenario, where your right to due process is essentially non-existent and there is little stopping a tyrannical government from designating anyone it wants as an “enemy of the State” and shipping them off to the gulag in Siberia or worse. The seriousness of the situation “fundamentally dangerous” as the Harvard law professor has so eloquently stated.

With Bezmenov warning that the traditional targets of authoritarian purges in the past have included various members of the media, entertainment, education, government and even business circles; a small glimpse of exactly what a constitutional crisis could begin to look like in the United States starts to come into focus. The Trump administrations utter disregard for the courts described as a declaration of war against the American people by MSNBC and beyond the pale, teetering on the end to the rule of law by a former federal judge. The access granted to Elon Musk and his DOGE employees to some of the governments most sensitive database systems paralleling the communist’s efforts in South Vietnam to collect the personal identifying information of those instrumental in shaping public opinion. All of whom were ceremonially loaded into a van, taken outside the city limits and shot; "everyone who was sympathetic to the United States was executed."