Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

A dark page from the CIA’s history: What was Project Artichoke, launched 74 years ago?

By Erkin Oncan | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 22, 2025

One of the most useful instruments hidden behind the U.S. empire’s rhetoric of “freedom and democracy” was the Central Intelligence Agency, founded on September 18, 1947, as the successor of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

Since its creation, the CIA has carried out countless inhumane operations: assassinations, coups, drug trafficking, support for terrorism, conspiracies. The list of its crimes is endless. But among the darkest and most inhumane chapters of its record lie the notorious “mind control” experiments.

The “Scientific Intelligence Office”

The CIA’s so-called “scientific branches,” which were in fact used for these experiments, are infamous for their scandals. These activities, always cloaked under the veil of “national security” and secrecy, began with the Scientific Branch within the Office of Reports and Estimates. On December 31, 1948—barely a year after the CIA’s founding—this branch was merged with the Nuclear Energy Group of the Office of Special Operations to form the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI).

Of course, these units never pursued “scientific discovery” or any purpose for the benefit of humanity. Their main objective was to develop special interrogation techniques and to transform individuals into instruments who could act against their own will, under CIA command.

Between 1949 and 1950, a program code-named Bluebird was initiated for this purpose. Soon after, it evolved into what became known as Artichoke.

CIA code names often had little apparent connection to the projects’ real purpose, but they frequently carried subtle allusions. The transition from “Bluebird”—a symbol of happiness and hope in English—to “Artichoke,” a vegetable with tightly layered leaves, can be read as a metaphor for gradually peeling away the layers of the human mind.

On August 20, 1951, Project Artichoke was officially launched. It would later evolve into MKUltra, the infamous mind control program that remains one of the CIA’s most sinister undertakings.

The project’s core goal was to test whether a human being could be forced to act against their own will—even against their instinct for self-preservation—in order to serve the CIA’s interests. One CIA document framed the mission with chilling clarity:

“Can an individual be made to perform an act of attempted assassination against a prominent political leader, against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-preservation?”

This single sentence demonstrates how the United States treated the human mind as nothing more than a laboratory specimen.

Experiments on subjects involved hypnosis, LSD, morphine addiction and withdrawal, isolation, and electroshock. Some of these methods were even tested directly within the agency itself.

The Frank Olson Case

At this point, one must recall the case of Frank Olson, an American scientist working on biological warfare who died under suspicious circumstances.

In the 1950s, Olson was stationed at Fort Detrick, a U.S. Army facility, and was closely connected to the CIA’s secret projects such as Artichoke.

In November 1953, at a CIA retreat in Maryland, Olson was secretly dosed with LSD. Following this, he suffered severe psychological distress and began questioning the morality of his research, expressing unease over the CIA’s clandestine biological and chemical experiments.

His superiors, alarmed by Olson’s state of mind, quickly decided he had become a liability.

On November 24, 1953, Olson was taken to New York’s Statler Hotel under the supervision of CIA officer Robert Lashbrook. In the early hours of November 28, Olson fell to his death from the 13th-floor window of his hotel room. The official explanation: suicide.

Years later, in 1975, the Rockefeller Commission report revealed that the CIA had conducted LSD experiments on humans, identifying Olson as one of the victims. Public pressure forced a new investigation. In the 1990s, an independent autopsy concluded that Olson had suffered blunt-force trauma to the head before his fall—suggesting he may have been pushed.

Beyond Drugs: Biological Warfare

Project Artichoke extended far beyond the use of drugs. The CIA also explored diseases such as dengue fever and experimented with viruses as potential biological weapons—not to kill, but to incapacitate and disable.

The agency focused its inhumane experiments on the most vulnerable groups within the imperial system: “weaker peoples, the uneducated, refugees, prisoners of war, and defectors.”

Other reports revealed even darker ambitions: creating assassins capable of eliminating political figures—or even U.S. officials themselves—under the program’s methods. This chilling fact showed that the imperial machine was willing to turn against its own citizens if necessary.

Although much about the project remains secret, evidence indicates that these experiments were carried out not only on U.S. soil, but also in Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, and the Philippines—mostly targeting “foreigners.”

The populations of countries under U.S. hegemony were turned into guinea pigs for American laboratories.

The Road to MKUltra

The “results” gathered from Artichoke fed directly into the CIA’s later and far more infamous MKUltra program, launched in 1953.

In 1977, CIA Director Stansfield Turner admitted before a joint U.S. Senate committee that the project’s aim was to study “the use of biological and chemical materials in altering human behavior.”

American journalist Stephen Kinzer, who investigated these secret CIA projects, documented that mescaline—later used by the CIA in its experiments—was first tested on humans at Nazi concentration camps such as Dachau.

In 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court revealed that the CIA had indirectly funded 162 different secret projects through contracts with universities, research foundations, and similar institutions. At least 80 organizations and 185 researchers were involved—many of them unaware they were working for the CIA.

A Legacy of Inhumanity

Project Artichoke is just one example of the inhumane operations carried out by the United States against the peoples of the world—and even against its own citizens. While U.S. politicians preached “peace” and “democracy” abroad, their intelligence services were busy developing technologies to enslave, control, and even weaponize human beings as assassins.

August 22, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Germany Reboots Ukrainian Nord Stream Red Herring Plot

21st-Century Wire | August 22, 2025

The Italian authorities have arrested a Ukrainian national in the historic town of San Clemente, in the Rimini province. The man is alleged to have played a significant role in the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea back in September 2022. The Italian news outlet Il Giornale identifies the individual as Serhii Kuznietsov, a name that has already appeared in a previous investigation released in 2024. According to the German publication Bild, the 49-year-old Ukrainian was apprehended while enjoying a family vacation in Italy. He faces charges from the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office for his alleged involvement in the Nord Stream explosions. Earlier today, he was brought to the Bologna Court of Appeal before Judge Sonia Pasinto to discuss the European Arrest Warrant and his potential extradition to Germany.

During the hearing,  Kuznietsov asked for a Ukrainian interpreter and explained that he did not consent to an extradition to Germany. In his brief statements, he essentially distanced himself from the accusations, emphasising that he wanted to read all documents in his native language, and that he was in Ukraine during the sabotage period and currently in Italy for family reasons. The hearing was held behind closed doors before Judge Sonia Pasini, who indicated that the handover to Germany could take two months. Deputy Attorney General Licia Scagliarini is in charge of the case. Reportedly, Kuznietsov changed defenders, replacing his initial lawyer, Ilaria Perruzza from Rimini, with Luca Montebelli, a lawyer also from Rimini.

For now, the judge has ordered that Kuznietsov remain in prison in Rimini while waiting for the next hearing, which is scheduled for September 3rd, when a decision can be made regarding his potential extradition to Germany. Kuznietsov’s lawyer, Luca Montebelli, took a cautious approach until he can review all the documents, the prosecution is expected to deliver. During the Hearing, Montebelli indicated that his client is rejecting any wrongdoing and that, for the moment, he would remain in prison. Montebelli described Kuznietsov as calm and serene.

While the story seems to perfectly fit the narrative pushed by the German investigation, it is important to realise that there is more than meets the eye, and much evidence that suggests that this entire German ‘Vaudeville’ is nothing more than an attempt to pin the blame on Ukrainian patsies, to protect the identies of the true Nord Stream’s saboteurs.


Serhii Kuznietsov(aka Kuznetsov Sergeï Anatolyevich ) taken to the Court of Appeal of Bologna, Italy (Source: BILD )

On the night of August 20-21, Kuznietsov was arrested by the Carabinieri officers from Misano Adriatico police at a hotel in San Clemente, where he was staying with his wife and two children. In Italy, when someone checks into a hotel or similar lodging, their name is checked against a police database, which, in this case, raised an alert indicating that Kuznietsov was sought by Interpol. According to the Wall Street Journal,” Italian police detained the suspect near the seaside town of San Clemente shortly before midnight on Wednesday while he was accompanying his son to a local university.” Interestingly, Kuznietsov have two children, aged 6 and 9, and they definitely don’t go to University. Reportedly, Kuznietsov travelled with his wife and two of their children from Ukraine to Italy via Poland. They crossed the Italian border in his car with a Ukrainian licence plate last Tuesday, wrote Sky News. Again, another extravagant claim, for a man wanted by Interpol. Discrepancies in the story are starting to pile up and are already raising suspicions. Kuznietsov is the first known person to be arrested in relation to the Nord Stream sabotage, which German prosecutors suspect was executed by a small faction of drunken Ukrainians using a small sailing yacht. 


Hotel La Pescaccia in San Clemente, where Kuznietsovwas apprehended

The Times reported that Serhii Kuznietsov served as a captain in the Ukrainian army and was previously an agent for the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine). The media also indicated that he commanded an elite air defense unit during the initial months of the 2022 conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Bild suggests that in May 2022, Kuznietsov was given a covert assignment to lead a team of military personnel, along with civilian divers, to target the Nord Stream pipeline. This operation, referred to as “Operation Diameter,” was allegedly deliberated by high-ranking Ukrainian officials and supervised by the then-Chief of the General Staff, Valery Salushny,  the former Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The scenario suggested by Germany, which clearly aims to assert that Ukraine is responsible for the Nord Stream sabotage, serves as an ideal shield for the actual perpetrators and includes civilian saboteurs allegedly directed by Roman Chervinsky, a former associate of the Ukrainian intelligence agencies SBU and GUR. As the German investigations progressed, Kuznietsov and Zhuravlev, along with two other Ukrainians, Ievgen and Svitlana Uspenskiy, who own a Scuba Diving business, were brought into the fold as they came under suspicion for their involvement in sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines. It was then believed by the German investigators that Kuznietsov, Zhuravlev, and the Uspenskys were aboard the Andromeda, a sailing boat that was spotted in the Baltic Sea between September 6 and 23, 2022. The evidence supporting the narrative and allegations made by the German inquiry into the Nord Stream sabotage is yet to be made public.

In Germany, Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig made a statement following Kuznietsov’s arrest. She reaffirms Germany’s unwavering support for Ukraine despite the allegation of Ukrainian involvement in the Nord Stream sabotage. She claims to seek justice for Germany.

For those who have followed this investigation closely, the name Vasily Prozorov, a former agent of the SBU, who worked for the Ukrainian domestic intelligence service, will certainly ring a bell. In June 16, 2024, Prozorov published on Free21, a platform for journalistic contributions and qualified debates founded in 2014 by the Danish journalist Tommy Hansen, a complete exposé which exposed the interactions between Ukrainian and Western intelligence services, including the SBU (Ukraine’s Domestic Intelligence Service) and the GUR (Ukrainian Military Intelligence Service), which according to Prozorov not only commit terrorist acts but are also used by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as cover organizations for their nefarious activities. Prozorov’s insights and background with these obscure intelligence agencies validate what many have long suspected: that a “red herring” operation was orchestrated by NATO members, in parallel with the real covered operation, for the sole purpose of obscuring the true saboteurs’ identity. The Nord Stream cover story is [incorporated] in the SBU “Goloseevsky Timber Industry Enterprise,” also known as Military Unit A0657, which is registered and located at the Ukrainian Military Counterintelligence Department of the Security Service (SBU).

DOCUMENT: Vasily Prozorov exposé: “The Nord Stream cover story” (Source: Free21)

If you are interested in this topic, you may want to read our latest investigation into the Nord Stream sabotage, titled “Nord Stream Revelation – Submarines in the ‘NATO Lake,” available exclusively on 21st-Century Wire.

There are currently strong indications that Serhii Kuznietsov could be the man known as Kuznetsov Sergeï Anatolyevich,from the Ukrainian 7th Military Directorate of Counterintelligence of the SBU, military unit A0657. 

It is a developing story and will keep reporting on the topic…

August 22, 2025 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , | Leave a comment

Top CIA analyst behind Russiagate loses her job – Economist

RT | August 22, 2025

One of the CIA’s most senior Russia analysts has lost her job during President Donald Trump’s campaign to depoliticize the intelligence services, The Economist reported on Thursday.

The officer, whose identity was not disclosed, oversaw the drafting of a report accusing Russia of interfering in the 2016 US presidential election in favor of Trump.

The Economist described her as “the country’s top intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia,” who coordinated operations related to the former Soviet Union. According to the outlet, her security clearance was revoked on August 19, along with those of 36 other current and former officials.

The Kremlin denied the allegations of election meddling, while Trump and the Republicans denounced them as a “hoax” by former President Barack Obama and the Democrats to delegitimize Trump’s first election victory and undermine his presidency.

Since mid-July, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has released multiple documents that she claims expose a coordinated effort by senior Obama-era officials to falsely accuse Trump of colluding with Russia.

Earlier this week, Gabbard announced that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees 18 agencies, will be reduced by nearly 50%. The US intelligence community has become “plagued with unauthorized intelligence leaks, politicization, and weaponization of intelligence,” she said.

Gabbard also said the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC), created by Congress in the wake of the Russiagate allegations, will be significantly scaled back and stripped of some of its core functions.

August 22, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Russia had no preference in 2016 US election – Gabbard

RT | August 20, 2025

Russia did not favor Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 US presidential election and the administration of then-President Barack Obama was well aware of that, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard has said.

Since mid-July, Gabbard has released multiple documents which allegedly expose a coordinated effort by senior Obama-era officials to falsely accuse Trump of colluding with Russia and delegitimize his first election win.

During an appearance on the Hannity program on Fox News on Tuesday, Gabbard insisted that “the intelligence community assessed in the months leading up to that 2016 election that, yes, Russia was trying to interfere in our election by sowing discord and chaos, but stating over and over again that Russia did not appear to have any preference for one candidate over the other.”

At the time, Moscow viewed both Trump and Clinton “as equally bad for Russia’s interest,” she said.

“The big shift – that happened around what is now commonly known as ‘Russiagate’ – was after the election,” Gabbard claimed.

In early December 2016, Obama called a meeting of his national security council leadership, telling then-DNI James Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan to come up with a new “politicized and weaponized fake intelligence” assessment, claiming that “Russia, [President Vladimir] Putin did try to interfere in the election because he wanted Trump to win,” she alleged.

Russiagate was the “real crime” by Obama officials against the American people because it undermined their votes, Gabbard stressed.

Earlier on Tuesday, Gabbard announced that her office had stripped security clearances from 37 current and former US intelligence officials, including Clapper, for allegedly politicizing and manipulating intelligence.

Trump said earlier that all those behind the Russiagate hoax should pay a “big price” for what he labeled a deliberate attempt to sabotage his presidency.

Moscow has consistently denied any interference in the 2016 election, with Russian officials calling the US accusations a product of partisan infighting. The Russiagate scandal severely strained US-Russia relations, resulting in sanctions, asset seizures, and a breakdown in diplomatic engagement.

August 20, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s man inside the CIA betrayed the US, new files show

By Kit Klarenberg, Wyatt Reed | The Grayzone | August 15, 2025

Veteran CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton secretly oversaw a top-level spy ring involving Jewish émigrés and Israeli operatives without “any clearances” from Congress or Langley itself, according to recently declassified documents published as part of the Trump administration’s pledge to disclose all available information on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The files provide a fresh and often disturbing look at a spy described by historian Jefferson Morley as “a leading architect of America’s strategic relationship with Israel,” detailing Angleton’s role in transforming the Mossad into a fearsome agency with global reach, while assisting Israel’s theft of US nuclear material and protecting Zionist terrorists.

Angleton established the Jewish emigre spying network in the aftermath of WWII, with the apparent goal of infiltrating the Soviet Union. But as the files show, the spymaster considered his “most important” task to be maintaining the supply of Jewish immigrants flowing from the Soviet Union towards the burgeoning Israeli state.

According to Angelton, his Jewish assets were responsible for 22,000 reports on the USSR, generating several intelligence masterstrokes. Chief among them was the publication of Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Kruschev’s famous 1956 secret speech denouncing Stalin, which the spymaster boasted “practically created revolutions in Hungary and Poland.” Elsewhere, Angleton bragged that his arrangement with Israel had produced “500 Polish intelligence officers who were Jewish” who “knew more about Polish intelligence than the Poles.”

Other passages appear to show Angleton taking credit for securing the “release” of several Zionist terrorists affiliated with the Irgun militia before they could be convicted for bombing the British embassy in Rome. Though the group had been captured by Italian authorities, the newly-disclosed files indicate the terror cell was freed on the orders of the CIA.

The information was originally divulged in 1975 to senators serving on the Church Committee, which probed widespread abuses by US intelligence in the decades prior. Congress was particularly interested in claims by New York Times foreign correspondent Tad Szulc, who testified under oath that Angleton had personally informed him that the US provided technical information on nuclear devices to Israel in the late 1950s. The new documents show that Angleton was deceptive under questioning, and evaded questions on Israel’s nuclear espionage efforts on the record.

Additional unsealed FBI documents, which refer to Israel’s Mossad as Angleton’s “primary source” of information, confirm that the CIA’s head of counterintelligence relied heavily on Tel Aviv to solidify his position within the Agency – and also add to the growing body of evidence that Angleton may not have been operating with US interests in mind throughout his 21-year tenure.

Other newly declassified files from the FBI have shown that Angleton maintained a wildly lopsided relationship with the Bureau, which saw federal agents deferring to the CIA counterintelligence chief after they caught him surveilling the correspondence of huge numbers of Americans. The files show Angleton openly admitting he would have been fired if Langley caught wind of his leaks to the Bureau.

A side-by-side analysis of the now-unredacted Church Committee files compared with their previously-released versions from 2018 demonstrates that even after 70 years, Washington felt compelled to conceal details of its real relationship with Israel’s founders. Over a dozen references to “Israel,” “Tel Aviv,” or descriptions of figures as “Jewish,” which were scrubbed from the 2018 release, can now be viewed on the National Archives site.

The documents reveal that Angleton repeatedly lied to multiple Congressional bodies, including the Church Committee, which investigated CIA abuses, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which probed the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Angleton was similarly evasive when interrogated over Israel’s nuclear weapons program, and about CIA knowledge or complicity in the scheme.

Those documents also reveal that Angleton’s CIA counterintelligence staff ordered Lee Harvey Oswald’s removal from federal watchlists six weeks before Kennedy’s assassination, despite his classification as a high security risk. The surveillance of Oswald was personally overseen by a member of Angleton’s intelligence network of Jewish emigres, Reuben Efron, a CIA spy from Lithuania. Angleton had placed Efron in charge of an Agency program called HT/Lingual which intercepted and read correspondences between Oswald and his family.

Numerous historians have questioned why the CIA counterintelligence chief insisted for decades on personally overseeing what he described as the “Israeli account.” Though several off-the-record interactions remain impossible to parse, the documents show that when grilled about his “unusually close” connections to the Israeli Mossad, Angleton acknowledged forming an “arrangement” in which, “in most simplistic terms, [the Israelis] were informed that we would not work with them against the Arabs, [but] that we would work with them on Soviet bloc Intelligence and communism.”

Freeing Zionist terrorists

One of the earliest instances of Angleton’s cooperation with Zionist elements came as Zionist militants embarked on a terrorist campaign to pressure the British colonial authorities to leave Mandate Palestine.

In October 1946, three months after they bombed the British administrative headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, members of the right-wing Irgun militia planted explosives in the British embassy in Rome in a failed bid to assassinate the UK’s ambassador to Italy.

According to Angleton, after the Irgun “blew up the British embassy in Rome” in 1946, the CIA intervened to ensure they escaped Italy without prosecution.

“We had the members of the group, and then we had the dilemma again as to whether we turned them over to the British authorities,” noted Angleton, who had served as counterintelligence chief for the Italian branch of the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA’s predecessor. “And we were in a position to make the decision one way or the other. And eventually we came down on the side of releasing them.”

A secret deal with the Mossad

As Washington sought to manage the political ruptures caused by the creation of Israel, and monitor the wave of Soviet migrants pouring into the self-proclaimed Jewish state, Angleton framed his takeover of “the Israeli account” as a convenient way for US intelligence to kill two birds with one stone.

“The other side of the Israeli problem was that you had thousands coming from the Soviet Union and you had the Soviets making use of the immigration for the purpose of sending illegal agents into the West and breaking down all the travel control, identifications and so on. And so there was both a security problem and a political problem.”

To manage these “problems,” the US and Israelis brokered a deal involving the secret exchange of “papers and signals, communications intelligence, [and] the other products of intelligence action,” Angleton stated. The spy chief claimed the only records of the 1951 arrangement held by the US side would be in the possession of the Agency, and admitted US Congress had been left in the dark, telling senators, “I don’t think there were any clearances obtained from the Hill.”

Asked by one legislator how it was “possible for succeeding directors of the intelligence agency to understand what the agreements were between” US and Israeli intelligence, Angleton responded: “Very simple. They saw the production to begin with. And they met with directors or the head of Israeli intelligence. And they met with Ambassadors and prime ministers. And they were very much involved.”

Grooming Zionist spies “outside the structure” of the CIA

Angleton was especially protective of what he called “the fiduciary relationship” with Tel Aviv, assembling a close-knit clique of Jewish Americans with dubious loyalties to manage it as World War Two drew to a close. “I started from the south side with two Jewish men who worked with me during the war,” he explained. Having “sent them over as ordinary people under cover” to get their bearings in newly-formed Israel, Angleton “brought over six others and put them through some months of training, outside of the structure” of the CIA.

“To break down the fiduciary relationship – which is after all a personal business – all the men I have had, were men who stayed in it and came back to headquarters and went back to Tel Aviv, they went to the National Security Council, and went back to Tel Aviv, et cetera.”

“It was probably the most economical operation that has ever been devised in the U.S. Government,” Angleton crowed. “I don’t think there was [sic] more than 10 people that were hired in the same process.”

Having trained these spies “outside of the structure” of the CIA, it’s unclear how Angleton ensured they remained faithful to US national security objectives, or whether he ever intended to.

Enabling Israeli theft of US nuclear material, spying on America

Angleton’s role in enabling Israel’s wanton theft of nuclear material from an American facility is one of the more shocking episodes in the US-Israeli relationship. The scene of the crime was the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, or NUMEC, a uranium processing facility in Apollo, Pennsylvania owned by a Zionist financier named David Lowenthal. In 1965, Zalman Shapiro, a fellow Zionist hired by Lowenthal to run the plant, illegally diverted hundreds of kilograms of nuclear fissile material to Israel. Posing as a scientist, the notorious Mossad spy Rafi Eitan visited NUMEC three years later to continue the heist.

As Jefferson Morley documented in his biography of Angleton, “The Ghost,” the late CIA counterintelligence chief made sure the CIA looked the other way as Israel constructed its first nuclear weapon out of the stolen fissile material. According to Morley, “Angleton, it is fair to say, thought collaboration with Israel was more important than U.S. non-proliferation policy.”

A 1977 investigation by the US Government Accountability Office found that the CIA withheld information about the NUMEC nuclear theft from the FBI and Department of Energy, and “found that certain key individuals had not been contacted by the FBI almost 2 years into the FBI’s current investigation.”

The latest batch of Church Committee files add new detail about Angleton’s compromising of US national security to benefit Israel, and his attempts to cover up his betrayal.

During his testimony before the Committee, Angleton was pressed about media reports alleging that he and his counterintelligence unit provided Israel with technical support for constructing nuclear weapons. He strenuously denied the charges, insisting the CIA had never played any role in providing Tel Aviv with nuclear materials. However, when questioned about whether “Israeli intelligence efforts” were ever conducted in the US “aimed at acquiring… nuclear technology,” Angleton equivocated.

First, he blustered, “there have been many efforts by many countries to acquire technical knowledge in this country, and that doesn’t exclude the Israelis.” Asked if CIA counterintelligence had “certain knowledge” of Israeli agents “trying to acquire nuclear secrets in the US,” Angleton pleaded, “Do I have to respond to that?”

The Committee then went “off record” at the senators’ request, making Angleton’s responses impossible to scrutinize.

In a secret 1975 memorandum to the FBI, the ousted CIA counterintelligence chief disclosed that he had “avoided any direct answers” during his Senate testimony on Israel’s spies carrying out “intelligence collection” to gather “nuclear information” in the United States.

Just days later, a Bureau report on “Israeli intelligence collection capabilities” revealed Angleton entertained “frequent personal liaison contacts” with Mossad representatives at Israel’s Washington DC embassy between February 1969 and October 1972. This “special relationship” involved “the exchange of extremely sensitive information.”

Further, the 1975 FBI memo on Angleton disclosed the Israeli embassy’s establishment of a “technical intelligence network” seven years earlier which was directed by an Israel scientist who worked on Tel Aviv’s nuclear program. This may explain why Angleton was so cagey under Senate questioning.

“Israeli matters” trigger Angleton’s downfall

The Church Committee files show Angleton bristled at then-CIA Director William Colby’s efforts to apply a modicum of transparency to the Agency’s activities, especially as they related to Israel. The spymaster warned that if the USSR ever caught wind of Langley’s use of the self-proclaimed Jewish state as a de facto halfway house for communist turncoats, they would almost certainly end their policy of encouraging Eastern European Jews to migrate to Israel:

“This idea of opening the doors and letting the light in, and breaking down compartmentation, and breaking down the need to know, would inevitably put in jeopardy the immigration, if the Soviets should learn the extent of the activities,” Angleton stated.

Colby fired Angleton in 1974 after the New York Times revealed that he devised an illegal program of domestic spying targeting antiwar American dissidents. In his testimony, Angleton framed their clash as an interpersonal conflict, describing Colby as “not my cup of tea professionally or in any other way.”

Yet Angleton also acknowledged to Senate that a “dispute in connection with these Israeli matters” between himself and Colby contributed to his departure from the Agency. Was this a reference to the former spook’s involvement in Israeli theft of US nuclear secrets, enabling Israel to acquire the bomb?

Whatever the case, it was clear why Angleton would be remembered more fondly in Israel than inside the country he ostensibly served.

On December 4, 1987, the director of Israel’s Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence services gathered in secret on a hillside in Jerusalem to plant a tree in honor of Angleton. They were joined there by five former Israeli spy chiefs and three former military intelligence officers.

Despite attempts to keep the ceremony under wraps, two local reporters managed to evade the cordon to record the ceremony for the former CIA counter-intelligence director, who had died seven months prior. Together, the Israeli spooks laid a memorial stone that read, “In memory of a dear friend, James (Jim) Angleton.”

August 19, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Déjà Vu on JFK at the Washington Post

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | July 21, 2025

The Washington Post is giving me a déjà vu feeling about the JFK assassination. After publishing an extraordinary article detailing how recently revealed records of the CIA disclose that it has been lying continuously about the George Joannides matter for more than 60 years, the Post has now followed up with an editorial emphasizing how important it is for government institutions to begin telling the truth so that we can renew our trust in government. Otherwise, the Post suggests, people will continue to have paranoid delusions that give rise to conspiracy theories.

What?

It has just been revealed that the CIA has lied about a critically important aspect of the Kennedy assassination. Oh well, ho hum. We all know that the CIA lies. Golly, if only the CIA would start telling the truth. Then we no longer would have all these silly conspiracy theories.

Why the seemingly blasé attitude toward the CIA’s lies regarding Joannides? My hunch is that it’s because long ago the Post subscribed to the lone-nut theory of the assassination — a theory to which it has obviously remained wedded regardless of the overwhelming circumstantial evidence of guilt on the part of the national-security establishment, including the evidence establishing the fraudulent autopsy that the military conducted on JFK’s body on the very evening of the assassination. As the Post writes in its editorial, “When Oswald killed Kennedy…”

That’s got to explain the lack of interest in following up on why the CIA has lied about Joannides for so long. In other words, the Post could have written an editorial calling on the CIA to come clean — to explain why it has lied about Joannides for so long. Okay, sure, the CIA officials who began the lying in 1963 are all dead. But somehow the instruction to continue the lying about Joannides was transmitted from CIA generation to CIA generation. How did that happen? Why did it happen? Who are the people in the CIA today who received that instruction? What was told to them?

The Post could be leading the way in demanding answers from the CIA. Rather than simply exhorting the CIA to tell the truth in the future, it could be calling on Congresswoman Luna to subpoena CIA officials to explain under oath the reasons for the lies surrounding Joannides. Isn’t that the moral and ethical duty of the press?

My opinion is that the basic problem is that by steadfastly hewing to the official lone-nut theory of the assassination, the Post, as well as much of the other mainstream press, simply cannot bring itself to think the unthinkable — that the lone-nut theory of the assassination is simply wrong — that the assassination was, in fact, a regime-change operation orchestrated and carried about by the U.S. national-security establishment. After all, what the Post cannot deny is that the 60 years of CIA’s lies about Joannides is a puzzle piece that fits perfectly within the overall mosaic of a national-security state regime-change operation.

The reason that the CIA’s attitude seems like déjà vu all over again for me is that we saw this same phenomenon take place back in the 1990s. On November 8, 1998, the Post published a story about how the Assassination Records Review Board had determined that there had been two brain exams as part of the JFK autopsy. You can read the story here.

What was that significant? Well, one reason is that the military pathologists claimed that there was only one brain exam, which meant that they were doing exactly what those CIA officials have been doing. They were intentionally, knowingly, and deliberately lying! Another reason is that the second brain exam necessarily involved a brain that belonged to someone other than Kennedy. Isn’t that something worth investigating? The Post article states “The central contention of the report is that brain photographs in the Kennedy records are not of Kennedy’s brain and show much less damage than Kennedy sustained when he was shot in Dallas and brought to Parkland Hospital there on Nov. 22, 1963…. ‘I am 90 to 95 percent certain that the photographs in the Archives are not of President Kennedy’s brain,’ [Douglas] Horne, a former naval officer, said in an interview.”

Now, wouldn’t you think that that would be enough for a mainstream paper to send an investigative reporter to get to the bottom of all this? After all, an allegation that the military is lying about something that is quite important — the fraudulent autopsy of a president — is a fairly serious accusation. Isn’t that worth checking out? Isn’t that the job of an independent press?

Apparently not because the Post, as far as I know, did not launch any investigation into the matters that it itself detailed in that 1998 article, just as it is showing no proclivity toward doing insofar as the Joannides lies are concerned. After publishing that article in 1998, they apparently just dropped the matter, just as they are apparently now ready to drop the Joannides matter.

Moreover, don’t forget: Someone had slipped a provision into the JFK Records Act that prohibited the Assassination Records Review Board from reinvestigating any aspect of the assassination. Surely, the Post knew that. So, given that the ARRB was prohibited from getting to the bottom of the two brain exams and the rest of the fraudulent autopsy, shouldn’t that have motivated the mainstream press, which was not operating under such a prohibition, to undertake such an investigation. Obviously not.

When the Post talks about the distrust of government among the American people, it conveniently avoids another critically important point — that the American people have an equal distrust in the mainstream press. I wonder why.

August 8, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Whistleblower exposes real 2016 US election meddling

By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | August 5, 2025

On July 30th, the ODNI declassified damning evidence from a US intelligence community whistleblower. They attest to being aggressively – but unsuccessfully – pressured by superiors into signing off on the infamous 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, which expressed “high confidence” Russia interfered in the previous year’s Presidential election to ensure Donald Trump’s victory. Their testimony indicates senior US spy agency officials not only well-knew the ICA’s findings were bogus, but consciously ignored and suppressed far more compelling evidence of widespread, non-Russian meddling in the vote.

The whistleblower is a US intelligence veteran who from 2015 to 2020 served as Deputy National Intelligence Officer, at the ODNI-overseen National Intelligence Council. They specialised in “cyber issues”, including “cyber-enabled information operations”. Prior to the 2016 vote, they led the production of an ICA on “cyber threats” to US elections, at the order of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, for which they were “commended”. They were then tasked by the outgoing Obama administration to assist in the 2017 ICA’s production.

That assessment purported to expose “Russian activities and intentions” in the Presidential election. The whistleblower’s role was to investigate alleged attempts by Moscow “to access US election-related infrastructure”, as “reporting suggested many Russia-attributed IP addresses were making connection attempts that the [US intelligence community] could not explain the purpose of.” However, an official – name redacted – subsequently “directed us to abandon any further study of the subject,” on the basis it was “something else.”

For the whistleblower, the “abrupt dismissal of the study effort” raised significant concerns about the true nature and source of the “Russia-attributed cyber activity.” They suspected their superiors were attempting to conceal how state or non-state actors closer to home may have been engaged in “Domain Name Service (DNS) record manipulation”, to falsely ascribe cyber meddling efforts to Moscow. Their anxieties only multiplied when superiors rebuffed their attempts to include references to “other nations’ efforts to influence the 2016 Presidential election” in the 2017 ICA.

The whistleblower’s “professional judgment… was multiple nations were seeking to shape the views of the US electorate,” and therefore influence their voting preferences. This assessment was based not only on relentless negative media coverage of Trump in allied countries, including Britain and other “NATO partners”, but the “interception of electronic communications from members of [Trump’s] incoming Presidential administration.” The source of this interception is redacted. So too is the identity of an official who repeatedly demanded the whistleblower conceal this from the National Security Council.

‘Tradecraft Standards’

The ICA’s release on January 6th 2017, 11 days prior to Trump’s inauguration, ignited a media frenzy over the President-elect’s potential ties to Russia, and the Kremlin’s purported role in installing him in the White House. The New York Times dubbed the document a “damning and surprisingly detailed account” of Moscow’s “efforts to undermine the American electoral system.” The Washington Post boldly described it as “a remarkably blunt assessment”, and “extraordinary postmortem of a Russian assault on a pillar of American democracy.”

In reality, the ICA offered zero evidence to support its bombastic headline conclusions. It was claimed “full supporting information on key elements of [Russia’s] influence campaign” was “highly classified”. Bizarrely, much of the Assessment’s content focused instead on the output of Russian media – both for domestic and international audiences – with no relevance whatsoever to the 2016 election. This included RT America coverage of topics including police brutality, fracking, and “alleged Wall Street greed.”

The whistleblower records how when they learned the ICA was so heavily dependent on a “simplistic treatment” of “English language Russian media articles”, they expressed “substantial concern” over the “legitimacy” of the Assessment’s “analytic tradecraft”. They moreover “could not concur in good conscience based on information available,” and their “professional analytic judgement,” of a “decisive Russian preference” for Trump’s victory, as concluded by the ICA. The whistleblower thus refused to sign off on its findings.

This was not well-received by a senior US intelligence official, name redacted. Leading up to the ICA’s release, they sought to harass and suborn the whistleblower into endorsing the Assessment. After multiple failed attempts to bully the whistleblower to “abandon” their “tradecraft standards” and simply “trust” there was “reporting you are not allowed to see,” which “if you saw it, you would agree,” the official strongly implied the whistleblower’s subsequent promotion was contingent on their agreement.

When this approach didn’t work, the “visibly frustrated” official fulminated, “I need you to agree with these judgments, so that DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] will go along with them.” This prompted discussion between the pair about the DIA’s “supposed trust” in the whistleblower, and “the necessity” of them proving their “bona fides” as an intelligence community officer “by doing what it took to bring DIA on board as an additional [intelligence] Agency signing on to the 2017 ICA.”

Refusing to compromise on “standards, tradecraft, and ethics”, the whistleblower defied his superior’s direct order “to misrepresent my views to DIA.” While unexplored in the declassified file, the official’s desperation for the DIA to endorse the ICA is understandable. In September 2020, it was revealed the entire US intelligence community had no “confidence” in the Assessment. In fact, then-CIA director John Brennan personally wrote the report’s incendiary conclusions, before selecting a coterie of his close Agency confidantes to sign off.

Many US intelligence analysts conversely assessed Russia favoured Hillary Clinton’s victory, and viewed Trump as a potentially dangerous “wild card”. As such, creating the false impression of US intelligence community unanimity over Brennan’s concocted conclusion was of paramount importance to the CIA chief. In the end, only the Agency, FBI, and NSA publicly endorsed the ICA’s findings. Even then, the NSA – which closely monitors communications of Russian officials, and could therefore detect any high-level discussions about the 2016 election in Moscow – merely expressed “moderate confidence”.

‘Something Else’

The whistleblower’s testimony indicates they were surprised the FBI expressed “high confidence” in the 2017 ICA. They were aware “as recently as September 2016,” the Bureau had “pushed back” against suggestions “of Russian intent to influence” the Presidential election, believing “such a judgement would be misleading.” The whistleblower notes the FBI “altered its positions… without any new data other than the election’s unexpected result [emphasis added] and public speculation Russia had ‘hacked’ the vote – a scenario [the US intelligence community] judged simply did not occur.”

They were furthermore shocked to learn years later disgraced former MI6 spy Christopher Steele’s ‘Trump-Russia’ dossier was a core component of the “highly classified” material, upon which the ICA’s dynamite conclusions heavily relied. It was their understanding the ODNI viewed the dossier at the time “as non-credible sensationalism”, the Office’s chief, James Clapper, considered it “untrustworthy”, and Steele’s ludicrous claims “had never been taken seriously” by US intelligence more widely.

The whistleblower’s grave, myriad anxieties about the Assessment’s construction led them to approach a variety of US government oversight agencies, including the Intelligence Community Inspector General, with what they knew. Despite receiving acknowledgement they “had witnessed malfeasance”, the whistleblower was stonewalled, and their evidence never appears to have reached any relevant authority, let alone been acted upon. Given the explosive nature of the whistleblower’s insider testimony, ominous questions abound over why they encountered such resistance – and where the non-Russian interference they identified truly emanated from.

The whistleblower’s account of being tasked to investigate alleged Russian hacking of “election-related infrastructure” the US intelligence community found inexplicable, only to be told to leave it alone as it was “something else”, is particularly striking. There are several explanations for this activity, all of which point to concerted attempts to falsely concoct the narrative of Russian election interference for malign purposes. For example, in September 2016, Hillary Clinton-connected lawyer Michael Sussmann approached the FBI, claiming to possess explosive evidence of Trump’s collusion with Moscow.

The material comprised DNS logs, supposedly indicating the Trump Organization used a secret server belonging to Russia’s Alfa Bank for back-channel communications with the Kremlin. This was fed to the media, and excitedly reported by certain liberal outlets prior to the election. However, The Intercept rubbished the trove, given the DNS records supplied couldn’t “prove anything at all, and certainly not ‘communication’ between Trump and Alfa,” meaning “no one… can show that a single message was exchanged between Trump and Alfa.”

An alternative may be the Department of Homeland Security was responsible for targeting election infrastructure. In December 2016, The Wall Street Journal reported an attempted hack into the state of Georgia’s voter registration database traced back to a DHS IP address. The incursion came at a time the Department was lobbying for election systems to be regarded as “critical infrastructure”, therefore making their protection part of the agency’s formal purview.

On January 6th 2017, the same day the ICA dropped, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson jubilantly announced he had designated “election infrastructure” part of the agency’s already vast domestic spying remit. He acknowledged “many state and local election officials… are opposed to this designation.” It was certainly a good day to bury bad news – and assist the CIA and Clinton campaign in furthering nonsense conspiracy theories about Russian attempts to “hack” the 2016 Presidential election, therefore hopefully invalidating its “unexpected result”.

August 5, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Ghislaine Maxwell and Michael Townley

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | July 29, 2025

Why am I convinced that Jeffrey Epstein was part of the deep state — that is, with Mossad, the CIA, or both? Simply because of the plea bargain he received in 2008. In my opinion, there is simply no way that wealthy, prominent, influential men could have pressured a U.S. Attorney to give Epstein that plea bargain. The plea bargain was so super-sweet that there is only one entity that would have had the power to secure it — the same entity that I have long contended is actually running the federal government — the national-security establishment, which consists of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.

Keep in mind that U.S. Attorneys are not like state District Attorneys. U.S. Attorneys don’t have to answer to the voters. Although they don’t have lifetime appointments, like federal judges do, their term in office is essentially the same as the president. They are very powerful people within their particular jurisdictional realm.

The U.S. Attorney in Miami had Epstein dead to rights. Any federal prosecutor could have easily secured multiple convictions against him for sexually trafficking many underage girls. A federal judge would undoubtedly have sent him to prison for the rest of his life.

Instead, he managed a super-sweet plea bargain in which he was permitted to plead guilty to a relatively minor prostitution charge in state court, not federal court. He served out a 13-month jail sentence and in the county jail, not the state penitentiary. He was also permitted to leave the jail every morning and return at night. And his co-conspirators were shielded from prosecution in Florida.

Again, in my opinion, only the national-security branch of the federal government wields that much power. Ever since the Kennedy assassination, nobody in the federal government — including the executive, legislative, and judicial branches — has dared to buck the deep state.

It is my opinion that that the deep state is looking for a way to secure Ghislaine Maxwell’s early release from prison. If Epstein was, in fact, part of the deep state, it is a virtual certainty that she knows it. But my hunch is that the deep-state officials have assured her that they will manage to get her an early release from prison, so long as she keeps her mouth shut and doesn’t reveal Epstein’s deep-state connection.

Why would they let her serve any time? After all, she’s now been in prison for 5 years. Because sometimes the deep state loses control over events. For example, it was obviously able to control Epstein’s prosecution in 2008 but lost control when federal prosecutors in New York indicted him again in 2019. Epstein, of course, is now dead, but Maxwell is still very much alive. She got convicted in federal court in New York for her role in facilitating and participating in the sexual abuse of underage girls by Epstein. She received a sentence of 20 years. Compare that to the 18-month sentence that Epstein himself received with his super-sweet plea bargain.

At 63 years old, Ghislaine Maxwell has no interest in serving out her entire 20-year prison sentence. After five years in prison, she undoubtedly wants out. My hunch is that she is pressuring the deep state to get her a pardon or a commutation. The implicit threat, of course, is that she’ll disclose what she knows if she isn’t released. Killing her would be an option but would obviously be very problematic, especially given Epstein’s “suicide.” Thus, it is my conviction that the deep state, right now, is putting big-time pressure on President Trump for a pardon or commutation for Maxwell.

A similar thing happened with a deep-state operative and murderer named Michael Townley. Townley is the guy who personally installed the bomb that killed former Chilean official Orlando Letelier and his American assistant Ronni Moffitt in 1976. Townley inserted the bomb in Letelier’s car, which exploded when Letelier and Moffitt were on their way to work in Washington, D.C.

Let me emphasize something important: Townley was a cold-blooded murderer. And this was not the only murder in which he was involved. He was also involved in the murder of the former head of the Chilean armed forces, Gen. Carlos Prats. He was also a key figure in Operation Condor, which arguably was the biggest state-sponsored assassination ring in history.

The mainstream consensus is that Townley was not a U.S. deep-state operative. The consensus is based on the fact that the CIA and Townley denied that he was one of its operatives. Moreover, there have never been any CIA records revealing that Townley was a CIA operative.

But there is one big problem with reaching a conclusion on that basis: The CIA lies. Everyone knows that the CIA lies. Recall, for example, CIA Director Richard Helms committing perjury in sworn testimony before Congress. Recall the sweetheart plea bargain he received that permitted him to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, for which he received a fine. Recall how he was honored by CIA personnel when he returned to CIA headquarters.

Or consider the lies regarding CIA official George Joannides — lies that continued until just recently when they were uncovered. Consider that the CIA gave Joannides a medal for his lies.

Don’t forget also the CIA’s destruction of its MKULTRA files and, more recently, its torture videotapes. If the CIA destroys records, it can also alter, modify, and create records that deliver a false narrative.

We do know that Townley made contact with the CIA and sought employment. The official story is that the CIA rejected him. Thus, Townley ended up going to work for the Chilean deep state after the Pinochet coup in 1973 that the CIA had helped bring about. Specifically, he went to work for a secret Gestapo-like agency called DINA, which was responsible for arresting thousands of people for the “crime” of being socialists, torturing them brutally, raping them, executing them, or permanently disappearing them.

The head of DINA was a Chilean deep-state operative named Col. Manuel Contreras. There is something important to note about Contreras: He was also a paid asset of the CIA.

So, the CIA helped to bring about the coup. The coup leaders established DINA, which rounded up innocent people, tortured or raped them, and executed or disappeared them. DINA’s head was a paid asset of the CIA. Michael Townley went to work for DINA. Perhaps it’s worth noting what CIA asset Contreras stated about Townley: “He was never a DINA agent … instead, a CIA agent since February 1971.”

While most everyone has concluded that Townley wasn’t also working for the CIA, I myself have absolutely no doubts that Townley was a CIA operative. On what do I base my conclusion? Primarily on his plea bargain. Like Jeffrey Epstein, Townley received a super-sweet plea bargain that, in my opinion, only the deep state could have gotten for him.

Remember: This guy had murdered two innocent people on the streets of Washington, D.C. He should have received a sentence of life without parole. Instead, he was permitted to plead guilty to conspiracy to murder and then was sentenced to serve only 10 years. But get this: He was released after having served only 5 years. And get this: He was released into the Federal Witness Protection Program, whereby the feds secured new identities for him and his family so that they could restart their lives anew. To this day, no one except a few feds knows where Townley is living because the federal government continues to protect this cold-blooded murderer. How weird is that? Not weird at all if Townley was, in fact, a U.S. deep-state operative?

To my knowledge, there is no public record of the federal prison in which Townley served those five years, but I have no doubts it was a “Club Fed” — that is, one of the nice, comfortable federal prisons rather than a high-security penitentiary for convicted murderers. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Townley was given the same type of arrangement that Epstein was given with respect to being able to leave the prison every morning and return at night.

So, why did Townley even have to serve 5 years? Because sometimes things get out of the control even for the deep state, and someone has to pay the price. Epstein had to serve 13 months in jail. Townley had to serve 5 years in prison. Ghislaine Maxwell has had to serve 5 years in prison.

But I have no doubts whatsoever that Ghislaine Maxwell will not be serving out her 20-year sentence. The deep state is too powerful, and the deep state can’t afford to let her talk. My opinion is that Ghislaine Maxwell will be receiving a pardon or a commutation before President Trump leaves office.

August 5, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , | 1 Comment

The CIA Built Hundreds of Covert Websites. Here’s What They Were Hiding

By Alan Macleod | MintPress News | August 1, 2025

The CIA didn’t just infiltrate governments; it infiltrated the internet itself. For over a decade, Langley operated a sprawling network of covert websites that served as global spy terminals disguised as harmless blogs, news hubs, and fan pages.

Beginning in 2004, the CIA established a vast network of at least 885 websites, ranging from Johnny Carson and Star Wars fan pages to online message boards about Rastafari. Spanning 29 languages and targeting at least 36 countries directly, these websites were aimed not only at adversaries such as China, Venezuela, and Russia, but also at allied nations, including France, Italy, and Spain, showing that the United States treats its friends much like its foes.

Covert Soccer Blogs and Cracked Passwords

Gholamreza Hosseini is a former CIA informant. In 2007, the Tehran-based industrial engineer contacted the agency and offered to pass them information about Iran’s nuclear energy program. His CIA handlers showed him how to use IranianGoals.com to communicate with them. Iranian Goals was a Farsi-language website that appeared to be dedicated to local soccer news. However, what appeared to be a search bar at the bottom of the home page was actually a password field. Typing the correct word into it would trigger a login process, revealing a secret messaging interface. Each informant had their own webpage, designed specifically for them, to insulate them from others in the network.

It seemed like an ingenious idea. However, Hosseini and the other spies were soon detected, thanks to some sloppy mistakes in Washington, D.C. An Iranian double agent revealed to the authorities their unique website, and some basic detective work led to the uncovering of the entire network.

The CIA purchased the hosting space for dozens, perhaps hundreds, of these websites in bulk, often from the same internet providers, or the same server space. That meant that the IP addresses of these websites were consecutive, akin to housing each informant in adjacent properties on the same street.

Thus, if you looked at neighboring IP addresses, you would see similarly designed websites and could easily put two and two together. Even with some relatively basic online searches, Iranian authorities were able to identify dozens of CIA-run websites. From there, they simply waited to see who would access them.

The Iranian Intelligence Ministry claimed that 30 individuals were arrested and a further 42 CIA operatives were identified. Some websites, such as IranianGoalKicks.com, FirstNewsSource.com, and Farsi-NewsAndWeather.com, can still be accessed through the Internet Wayback Machine. A complete list of known CIA webpages can be found here.

Hosseini spent more than nine years in prison and was released in 2019. He has received no support from American officials, who have not even contacted him since his arrest. The U.S., however, continues to attempt to overthrow the Iranian government, sponsoring high-profile opposition figures and hijacking domestic protest movements. In June, it also carried out airstrikes on nuclear facilities across the country.

Spying on Allies and Adversaries Alike

The network of websites spanned a wide range of topics. Few would guess that Rasta Direct, a website dedicated to the relatively niche religion of Rastafari, had anything to do with U.S. intelligence. The CIA also created Star Wars Web, a fan page for the sci-fi franchise, and All Johnny, a page dedicated to late-night legend Johnny Carson. Sports, gaming and news blogs, however, were the most common topics for fake websites.

These websites served as cover for informants, offering some level of plausible deniability if casually examined. Upon close inspection, however, few of these pages provided any unique content and simply rehosted news and blogs from elsewhere, linking to already available resources.

Informants in enemy nations, such as Venezuela, used sites like Noticias-Caracas and El Correo De Noticias to communicate with Langley, while Russian moles used My Online Game Source and TodaysNewsAndWeather-Ru.com, and other similar platforms.

However, a vast network of informants in allied countries, such as France, Spain and Italy, was also uncovered, using financial news, mountaineering, and running websites to pass on vital information to the CIA.

Germany was another country Washington actively targeted. In 2013, it was revealed that the U.S. had been bugging the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel for over a decade, sparking a major diplomatic rift. One year later, in 2014, Germany detained one of its own intelligence officials after catching him spying for the United States.

The Collapse of the CIA’s China Network

China, however, remains a top target for the CIA. The organization maintains an extensive network of informants across the country, who, when the network was active, used platforms such as eChessNews.com and SportsNewsFinder.com to transmit information back to the United States.

But, as in Iran, Chinese authorities began to dismantle the network. Starting in late 2010, the spying network was systematically dismantled by officials, likely using similar tactics to those of the Iranians. Unlike Iran, however, China simply executed those operatives. It is believed that the CIA lost around 30 informants in the purge. The affair is considered one of the worst intelligence failures in the agency’s nearly 80-year history.

Since then, the U.S. spying network in China has been severely diminished. Earlier this year, the CIA changed tack, publicly releasing two videos encouraging disaffected Communist Party officials to spy for them in exchange for money and the prospect of a new life in America.

“As I rise within the party, I watch those above me being discarded like worn-out shoes, but now I realize that my fate was just as precarious as theirs,” the narrator says in one. “Our leaders’ failure to fulfil repeated promises of prosperity has become a well-known secret… It’s time to build my own dream,” he says in another.

The CIA instructs would-be traitors to download the Tor Browser and contact the CIA via its website. While Tor is marketed in the West as a privacy tool, a previous MintPress News investigation revealed that it was created with funding from the U.S. government by a company with ties to the CIA. Last year, Washington passed a $1.6 billion bill to finance anti-China propaganda worldwide.

Weaponizing Apps and Platforms

This is not the only time that the U.S. national security state has created fake web platforms in order to stoke regime change around the world. In 2010, USAID—a CIA front organization—secretly created the Cuban social media app, Zunzuneo.

Often described as “Cuba’s Twitter,” Zunzuneo rocketed to prominence. The app had been designed to offer a reliable and affordable service, undercutting the competition, before gaining dominance and slowly disseminating anti-government messages to the island.

Then, at a given time, Zunzuneo would urge users to join protests coordinated by the U.S. in an attempt to foment a color revolution on the island.

In an effort to hide its ownership of the project, the U.S. government held a secret meeting with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to encourage him to take it over. It is unclear to what extent, if at all, Dorsey contributed to the project, as he has declined to comment on the matter. In 2012, Zunzuneo was abruptly shut down.

Infiltrating Journalism and Big Tech

While the 885 fake websites were not established to influence public opinion, today, the U.S. government sponsors thousands of journalists worldwide for precisely this purpose. Earlier this year, the Trump administration’s decision to pause funding to USAID inadvertently exposed a network of more than 6,200 reporters working at nearly 1,000 news outlets or journalism organizations who were all quietly paid to promote pro-U.S. messaging in their countries.

Oksana Romanyuk, director of the Ukrainian Institute for Mass Information, warned that nearly 90% of her country’s media outlets rely on funding from USAID to survive. A survey of 20 leading media organizations in Belarus revealed that 60% of their budget came from Washington. In Iran, more than 30 anti-government groups came together for a crisis response meeting, while in Cuba and Nicaragua, anti-government press resorted to soliciting donations from readers.

The CIA has also successfully infiltrated the largest and most popular social media networks, giving the agency substantial control over what the world sees (and does not see) in their news feeds.

Facebook has hired dozens of former CIA officials to run its most sensitive operations. Perhaps the most notable of these individuals is Aaron Berman.

As the platform’s senior misinformation manager, Berman ultimately has the final say over what content is promoted and what is demoted or deleted from Facebook. Yet, until 2019, Berman was a high-ranking CIA officer, responsible for writing the president’s daily security brief. It was at that time that he jumped ship from Langley to Facebook, despite appearing to have little relevant professional experience.

Google, if anything, is even more saturated with former spies.

A MintPress News investigation revealed that dozens of former CIA agents hold top jobs at the Silicon Valley giant. Among these is Jacqueline Lopour, who spent more than ten years at the agency working on Middle East affairs before being recruited to become Google’s senior Intelligence, Trust, and Safety manager. The role gives her considerable influence on the direction of the company. This form of state censorship is how the agency prefers to shape the internet today.

The CIA continues to maintain a vast worldwide network of informants. Today, they use custom-built apps such as Tor or Signal to communicate. If they are caught by their own countries, they will likely be left to their fate, like Hosseini was. Being a spy or a stool pigeon for the CIA is as perilous as ever.

August 2, 2025 Posted by | Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Russiagate only tip of iceberg in Western demonization of Russia – expert

RT | July 20, 2025

US National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard’s revelations about the role of former President Barack Obama’s administration in the Russiagate scandal are “shocking,” but they expose only the surface of a broader Western anti-Russia campaign, Professor Oliver Boyd-Barrett has told RT.

On Friday, Gabbard released newly declassified documents describing a coordinated effort by senior Obama-era officials – led by Obama himself – to falsely accuse Donald Trump of colluding with Russia during the 2016 election. The documents indicate that Obama ordered officials to discard intelligence assessments that found no Russian involvement in Trump’s campaign and replace them with claims blaming Moscow based on fabricated data. The scandal led to the years-long Trump-Russia probe known as ‘Russiagate.’

“This is an extraordinary moment, that the head of intelligence in the US has made such a bold, in some ways shocking, statement of the truth,” Boyd-Barrett, a professor at Bowling Green State University and author of an in-depth study of Russiagate, said on Saturday. He noted the moment was especially striking as Gabbard called for prosecution of those involved in what she described as a “coup” attempt.

Boyd-Barrett, however, emphasized that to “fully comprehend” Russiagate, it must be viewed as only a small part of a broader Western campaign to demonize Russia, “that goes decades back.”

“It’s part of a much deeper agenda – we’re talking Russia narrative… the broader context of an anti-Russian campaign that was stoked artificially around the time of the late 90s when the West had so clearly decided that NATO was going to move eastwards regardless of whatever anyone in Russia or anyone in the US had to say,” he said. He also warned against reducing Russiagate to a personal political ploy, noting that blaming it solely on Obama or Hillary Clinton’s election anxiety is “too simple an explanation.”

Moscow has repeatedly denied interfering in the US electoral process.

July 20, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump administration ordered to restore funding to US propaganda outlet

RT | July 20, 2025

A federal judge has ordered the administration of US President Donald Trump to restore funding for state-run Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), ruling that the decision to stop the support was “unprecedented” and lacked any basis.

RFE/RL was a key tool for spreading Western propaganda in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War and was funded by the CIA. The outlet currently receives nearly all of its funding from Congress.

The Trump administration has sought to cut funding for RFE/RL and several other state-linked outlets. It has denounced the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the body that oversees state-funded media, saying it is “not salvageable,” while indulging in “obscene overspending.” The administration also claimed it is crawling with “spies and terrorist sympathizers.”

Consequently, the USAGM essentially froze funding for RFE/RL and refused to enter into a new contract with the outlet after the previous agreement expired in March. This led to staff furloughs and programming cuts, though the EU stepped in to fill the budgetary gap.

On Friday, Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Trump administration lacks the legal authority to refuse Congress-approved funding of more than $70 million, arguing that they provided no clear basis for the move.

”It is unprecedented for an agency to demand that entirely new terms govern its decades-old working relationship with a grantee entity,” he wrote. He went on to rebuke the USAGM for a lack of responses to RFE/RL to negotiate a new agreement, describing it as “stonewalling” and adding that the agency went dark for days or even weeks.

The “USAGM’s flagrant disregard for its funding responsibilities” caused RFE/RL to suffer “mass furloughs, cancelation of programming, and inevitable damage to the global influence that RFE/RL has built over decades,” the ruling said.

RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus welcomed the court’s decision. “This victory provides our journalists with the momentum necessary to continue reaching the nearly 47 million people each week… With this ruling, RFE/RL can continue to advance US national security interests.”

July 20, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Tulsi Gabbard releases ‘overwhelming evidence’ of Obama coup plot against Trump

RT | July 18, 2025

Former President Barack Obama’s administration deliberately manipulated intelligence to frame Russia for interfering in the 2016 presidential election, according to newly declassified documents released on Friday by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

Gabbard unveiled more than 100 pages of emails, memos, and internal communications, which she described as “overwhelming evidence” of a coordinated effort by senior Obama-era officials to politicize intelligence and launch the multi-year Trump–Russia collusion investigation. She dubbed it “a treasonous conspiracy to subvert the will of the American people.”

The scandal severely damaged relations between Moscow and Washington, leading to sanctions, asset seizures, and a breakdown in normal diplomacy.

”This intelligence was weaponized,” Gabbard said. “It was used as a justification for endless smears, for sanctions from Congress, and for covert investigations.” She added: “When key internal assessments found that Russia ‘did not impact recent U.S. election results,’ those findings were suppressed.”

“For months before the 2016 election, the Intelligence Community maintained that Russia lacked both the intent and capability to hack U.S. elections,” Gabbard noted. “But once President Trump won, everything changed.”

One document — a draft President’s Daily Brief dated December 8, 2016 — stated Russia “did not impact recent U.S. election results” through cyberattacks. The report, prepared by the CIA, NSA, FBI, DHS, and other agencies, found no evidence of voting interference.

Yet Fox News reported on Friday that the document was pulled — “based on new guidance,” according to internal emails. Hours later, a high-level Situation Room meeting took place, attended by officials including DNI James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

According to declassified notes, attendees agreed to produce a new intelligence assessment at President Obama’s request. That report, released on January 6, 2017, claimed Russia had intervened in the election to help Donald Trump — directly contradicting earlier assessments.

Gabbard claims the revised assessment leaned on the discredited Steele Dossier — compiled by a former British spy — while sidelining dissenting views within the intelligence apparatus. “This was not intelligence gathering,” Gabbard stated. “It was narrative building.”

Confirmed as DNI earlier this year — after a contentious process — Gabbard says she has forwarded the documents to the Department of Justice. She has urged investigations into former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey, who are reportedly facing criminal inquiries. “No matter how powerful, every person involved must be brought to justice,” she stressed. “Our nation’s integrity depends on accountability.”

“The integrity of our democratic republic depends on full accountability,” Gabbard concluded. “Nothing less will restore the public’s trust — and ensure nothing like this ever happens again.”

July 18, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Russophobia | , , , , , , | 4 Comments

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »