Steve Flowers: John Patterson
Alabama lost its oldest past Governor when John Patterson passed away last month. He died on the same land where he was born in rural Tallapoosa County. Patterson was 99 years old, and he would have been 100 in September. He was the epitome of the greatest generation. He was a veteran of World War II. He volunteered for the Army as a private and left the Army at the end of the war as a major. Patterson then came home and obtained his law degree, then joined his father in the practice of law. He soon thereafter became Attorney General of Alabama, then governor, then spent several decades as a Justice on the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. Patterson’s involvement with state government spanned half a century. John Patterson served as governor from 1959 to 1963. He holds the distinction of being the only person to ever beat George Wallace in a governor’s race. Patterson and Wallace were both making their first race for governor in 1958. Patterson beat Wallace soundly. Wallace never stood a chance. It would have been hard for anyone to beat a man in a race for Governor of Alabama, who had both the race issue and sympathy vote. Patterson had the Ku Klux Klan endorsement in that race. Wallace was actually considered a progressive and softer on the race issue than Patterson. Patterson had become Attorney General of Alabama at a very young age after his father, Albert Patterson, was assassinated just 16 days after winning the race for Alabama’s Attorney General in 1954. The elder Patterson had run with the promise to clean up Phenix City, which had been the most corrupt, sinful city in the South if not the nation. It was the redneck version of Las Vegas. However, unlike Las Vegas, everything they did in Phenix City was not legal or condoned. The east Alabama town near Ft. Benning and Columbus, Georgia, was run by a corrupt rural mafia. This mafia gunned down Albert Patterson in an alley behind his law office. The younger Patterson was then picked to replace his father as the Democratic Attorney General nominee. John Patterson became Alabama Attorney General at age 33. Just days after his election, a movie was made about the Phenix City saga. Between that and his well-publicized anti-civil rights actions, by the time John Patterson got ready to run for Governor of Alabama, he was a folk hero to Alabamians. Wallace thought he was going to win the governor’s race on his first try in 1958. However, when he got into the heat of the campaign, he realized that he was running against a legend. It seemed like everybody in the state had seen the movie “The Phenix City Story.” The sympathy for Patterson was too much to overcome. In addition, the race issue had become paramount, and Patterson owned it. After Wallace lost, he was in a deep depression for a few weeks, but finally got out of bed, shaved, and looked in the mirror and said aloud, “I got out segged, and I will never be out segged again.” A governor could not succeed himself at that time. He knew Patterson could not run again in 1962. He grabbed the race issue and ran nonstop for four years, and captured the governor’s office in 1962. Patterson did a good job as governor. He was governor during the beginning of the volatile first movements towards Civil Rights. A lot of it played out in plain view of his Governor’s Office looking down on Dexter Avenue. He took a very adamant, stringent position against integration and all of the protests. Governor Patterson wrote his biography published by New South Books in 2008 entitled Nobody but the People, which was, by the way, his campaign slogan in his 1958 race for governor. We visited at length during the year he was touring the state with his book. During our visits, he revealed remarkable stories surrounding the era when he was Attorney General and Governor of Alabama. In the last few years, we visited at his farm home in Goldville. He was amazingly sharp. His friends and relatives were surrounding him when he passed away. John Patterson has a special place in Alabama political history. See you next week. Steve Flowers is Alabama’s leading political columnist. His weekly column appears in over 60 Alabama newspapers. He served 16 years in the state legislature. Steve may be reached at www.steveflowers.
Latest hack to test Joe Biden’s vow for consequences for Russia
President Joe Biden said he would “deliver” a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the latest ransomware attacks targeting American businesses, setting up a test of Biden’s ability to balance his pledge to respond firmly to cyber breaches with his goal of developing a stable relationship with Russia. The administration faces few easy options for a ransomware threat that in recent months has emerged as a major national security challenge, with attacks from Russia-based gangs that have targeted vital infrastructure and extorted multimillion-dollar payments from victims.The White House says the damage from the latest attack — affecting as many as 1,500 businesses worldwide — appeared minimal, though cybersecurity experts said information remained incomplete. The malicious intrusion exploited a powerful remote-management tool run by Miami-based software company Kaseya. It occurred weeks after Biden made clear to Putin that the U.S. was growing impatient with cyberattacks emanating from Russia. But Biden finds himself in a difficult position as he seeks to press Putin to crack down on Russian cyber gangs targeting U.S. and international business for financial gain and dial back Kremlin-connected cyber espionage. The administration is mindful that punitive actions against Russia can escalate into tit-for-tat exchanges that heighten tensions between nuclear superpowers. The latest hack also comes after some Republicans accused the Democratic president of showing deference to Putin by meeting with him and making America weaker in the process. Biden has faced criticism of being too soft on Putin even though former President Donald Trump declined to blame Russia for hacks and interference in the 2016 election despite U.S. intelligence community findings. Biden met Wednesday with Vice President Kamala Harris and top national security aides to discuss the problem. As he departed the White House to travel to Illinois, Biden was opaque when asked what exactly he would convey to Putin. “I will deliver it to him,” Biden told reporters. A White House National Security Council spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday that combating ransomware remained a priority, but that the years-long threat “won’t just turn off as easy as pulling down a light switch.” “No one thing is going to work alone, and only together will we significantly impact the threat,” the statement said. U.S. officials say they’ve preached to the private sector about hardening cybersecurity defenses, worked to disrupt channels for ransomware payments, and scored a success last month with the recovery of most of a multimillion-dollar payment made by a fuel pipeline company. But they’ve been cautious about carrying out retaliatory offensive cyber actions for fear it could quickly spiral into a greater crisis. There are also practical limits to what the U.S. can do to thwart Russian cyber gangs. Biden and top administration officials repeatedly said around last month’s meeting with Putin that their goal was building a “predictable,” stable relationship. An all-out cyberwar would seem to work against this goal. “It’s a very fine line that they have to walk as far as providing some kind of consequence for that behavior without it escalating to where cyberattacks are out of control, or increase it to a conflict that goes beyond the cyberspace,” said Jonathan Trimble, a retired FBI agent and cybersecurity executive. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that Russian and U.S. representatives were meeting next week and would discuss the matter. She said administration officials used Wednesday’s meeting to discuss building resilience to attacks and other efforts to combat the problem and also addressed policies on payments to hackers. The administration has yet to attribute the latest major attack to Russian hackers. Psaki did not directly answer how Biden might respond but said he has “a range of options, should he determine to take action.” Cybersecurity experts swiftly identified REvil as responsible for the attack, and the notorious Russia-linked gang appeared to admit it publicly by offering on its dark website to make available a universal decryptor that would unscramble all affected machines if paid $70 million in cryptocurrency. Biden said he set red lines by handing a list to Putin of some 16 critical infrastructure entities, including water systems and the energy sector, in the U.S. that are off-limits to attack. He said, “responsible countries need to take action against criminals who conduct ransomware activities on their territory.” The Kaseya attack did not appear to affect any critical infrastructure. Nevertheless, the incident shows that ransomware attacks, even if they don’t target critical infrastructure, have the potential to be damaging when done on a massive scale. Biden also suggested that he told Putin that he stood ready to retaliate should the Russians go too far. “I pointed out to him that we have significant cyber capability. And he knows it,” Biden said. Further complicating matters, the Republican National Committee said Tuesday one of its contractors had been breached, though it did not say by whom. The RNC said no data was accessed. The administration has already taken action against the Russians for cyberespionage, announcing in April the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats and sanctions against several dozen people and companies over Kremlin interference in last year’s presidential election and the hacking of federal agencies. The U.S. has other tools at its disposal. Assuming it can gather the evidence it needs to identify the hackers, the Justice Department can bring indictments — though absent the defendants voluntarily departing Russia, there is little chance of them facing justice in American courts. Hacks not only from Russians but also the Chinese have continued even after indictments. There’s also the chance investigators in at least some cases can recover from criminals ransom that has been paid. The Justice Department clawed back a portion of the $4.4 million forked over to a Russian-linked cyber gang responsible for the attack on Colonial Pipeline, an attack that stymied the gasoline supply in the southeast U.S. for days. James Lewis, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the U.S. has been for too long in a “defensive crouch” when responding to ransomware
Confederate monument damaged but still stands in Tuskegee
A council member using a saw cut into a 115-year-old Confederate memorial at the center of historic Tuskegee on Wednesday but failed to topple it, marking the latest move in a push to remove the contentious monument from the nearly all-Black Alabama town. Johnny Ford, a former mayor whose City Council district includes the park where the monument is located, said he took action because constituents voted in a public meeting last week in favor of removing the rebel memorial, which has been the subject of complaints and a target for vandals on and off for years. Using a lift to reach the statue of a Confederate soldier atop a stone pedestal, Ford said he sawed into a leg of the memorial, which was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The group has refused to take down the statue even though Tuskegee, a town of 8,100, is 97% Black and known internationally as a home of Black empowerment. Ford said he stopped cutting when Sheriff Andre Brunson showed up and asked him to quit. But Ford said the fight isn’t over. “We can’t have a Confederate statue which represents slavery standing up in the middle of our town,” Ford said in an interview with The Associated Press. Brunson said it appeared Ford and another man had cut all the way through one ankle of the statue with an electric saw, but an engineer would have to conduct a full assessment. Neither man was arrested, Brunson said, but a report will be sent to the district attorney, and he added charges are possible. “I understand what many people think and what he thinks, but it’s still destruction of property,” Brunson said. Tuskegee is the home of Tuskegee University and the place where the first Black military pilots, the Tuskegee Airmen, trained during World War II. Leaders previously draped the monument’s pedestal with tarps to cover pro-Confederate writing, and the statue itself was covered later by Ford. Demonstrators protesting the shooting death of a civil rights worker in 1966 attempted to pull down the statue but failed. It has been vandalized with spray paint several times in recent years. Louis Maxwell, the chairman of the Macon County Commission, said the county wants the statue removed and has been talking with an attorney for the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which owns both the monument and the plot where it’s located under an arrangement dating back to 1906. Maxwell said he feared Ford’s action might be a setback to avoiding a lawsuit. “This had quieted down to give us a chance to work on it, but now it’s going to rear up again,” he said. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Expert: Low COVID vaccination rate puts Alabama at risk
Alabama’s low vaccination rate makes the state vulnerable to an increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths, an infectious disease expert warned Wednesday. Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Division of Infectious Diseases, said “hospitalization rates are increasing exactly as we saw before” in regions of the country with low vaccination rates. “We are starting to see that trend and are very, very concerned,” Marrazzo said of Alabama. Alabama has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country with about one-third of people fully vaccinated. Marrazzo warned that unvaccinated people can be a “factory” for virus variants because it increases the opportunity for the virus to mutate into new forms that “allow it to do all those things that we are scared of.” “The virus loves unvaccinated people. Why? Because it’s a complete party. They get in there. They can multiply.” Alabama has seen a slight uptick in COVID-19 hospitalizations and the percent of tests coming back positive, state numbers show. There were 256 people in state hospitals with COVID-19 on Wednesday, although that is a fraction of the 3,000 that were hospitalized at the peak of the pandemic. Dr. Don Williamson, the former state health officer who now heads the Alabama Hospital Association, said he thinks the increase is tied to low vaccination rate plus the spread of the highly contagious delta variant. However, he said he is hopeful it won’t return to where it was in January because of the high vaccination rate among elderly people, who are most at risk for complications. The percentage of tests returning positive for COVID-19 has increased to 4.8%, the highest point since mid-May, the Alabama Department of Public Health said in a news release. “Young people and others who are taking a wait-and-see stance on vaccination should be aware that they need to protect themselves, their families, friends, and communities by getting vaccinated as soon as they can,” the department said. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
