Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Ex-Spy Chief Admits Role In ‘Deep State’ Intelligence War On Trump

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | December 12, 2107

An ex-spy chief who spoke out publicly against Trump while inspiring other career intelligence figures to follow suit has admitted his leading role in the intelligence community waging political war against the president, describing his actions as something he didn’t “fully think through”. In a surprisingly frank interview, the CIA’s Michael Morell – who was longtime Deputy Director and former Acting Director of the nation’s most powerful intelligence agency – said that it wasn’t a great idea to leak against and bash a new president.

Morell had the dubious distinction of being George W. Bush’s personal daily briefer for the agency before and after 9/11, and also served under Obama until his retirement. In the summer of 2016 he took the unusual step (for a former intelligence chief) of openly endorsing Hillary Clinton in a New York Times op-ed entitled, I Ran the C.I.A. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton, after which he continued to be both an outspoken critic of Trump and an early CIA voice promoting the Russian collusion and election meddling narrative.


Acting director of the CIA Michael Morell with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta
in 2013. Image source: Wiki Commons, DoD

As Politico’s Susan Glasser put in a newly published interview, Morell “has emerged out of the shadows of the deep state” to become one of Trump’s foremost critics speaking within the intel community. However, Politico summarizes the interview as follows:

But in a revealingly self-critical and at times surprising interview for this week’s Global POLITICO, Morell acknowledges that he and other spy-world critics of the president failed to fully “think through” the negative backlash generated by their going political. “There was a significant downside,” Morell said in the interview.

Not only had Morell during his previous NYT op-ed stated that he was committed to doing “everything I can to ensure that she is elected as our 45th president” but he went so far as to call then candidate Trump “a threat to our national security” – while making the extraordinary claim that “in the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”

Curiously, Morell in his latest Politico interview indicates when asked about his “public profile” and activism so soon after leaving the agency (something that was relatively unusual prior to Trump taking office) that his post-retirement media appearances have been approved and/or received some level of oversight by the CIA. In the interview Morell states, “I did a 60 Minutes interview about my life inside CIA, and it’s something the agency thought that was a good thing to do, and I taped most of it before I left the agency.”

While such CIA review of former employees’ publications and media interaction is nothing new, in Morell’s case was an unprecedented example of a very high profile intelligence figure explicitly campaigning for a presidential candidate and against another while specifically invoking his role at the CIA (he began his NYT column with, “During a 33-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, I served presidents of both parties — three Republicans and three Democrats…” followed by a litany of key national security events he was central to).

The other important confirmation to come out of the discussion is the clear guiding assumption of the interview – that the intelligence “deep state” did in fact go to war with Trump – which has now been confirmed by Morell himself, which is essentially to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.

The key exchange in the Politico interview begins as follows:

Glasser: Okay, so, flash-forward a year. Was that a mistake?

Morell: So, I don’t think it was a mistake. I think there were downsides to it that I didn’t think about at the time. I was concerned about what is the impact it would have on the agency, right? Very concerned about that, thought that through. But I don’t think I fully thought through the implications.

And one of the ways I’ve thought about that, Susan, is—okay, how did Donald Trump see this? Right? And from—it’s very important—one of the things we do as intelligence analysts is make sure that our guy—the president—understands the other guy. Right?

So, let’s put ourselves here in Donald Trump’s shoes. So, what does he see? Right? He sees a former director of CIA and a former director of NSA, Mike Hayden, who I have the greatest respect for, criticizing him and his policies. Right? And he could rightfully have said, “Huh, what’s going on with these intelligence guys?” Right?

Morell here seems to confirm Trump’s narrative of events concerning Russiagate “fake news” and willful intelligence leaks intended to damage the president, despite his opening obfuscation of “I don’t think it was a mistake” (so he’s essentially admitting the negative consequences but with no regrets).

Surprisingly, Morell even implicates himself with the words, “And then he sees a former acting director and deputy director of CIA criticizing him and endorsing his opponent.” The interview continues:

Glasser: It embroiders his narrative.

Morell: Exactly. And then he sees a former acting director and deputy director of CIA criticizing him and endorsing his opponent. And then he gets his first intelligence briefing, after becoming the Republican nominee, and within 24 to 48 hours, there are leaks out of that that are critical of him and his then-national security advisor, Mike Flynn.

And so, this stuff starts to build, right? And he must have said to himself, “What is it with these intelligence guys? Are they political?” The current director at the time, John Brennan, during the campaign occasionally would push back on things that Donald Trump had said.

So, when Trump talked about the Iran nuclear deal being the worst deal in the history of American diplomacy, and he was going to tear it up on the first day—John Brennan came out publicly and said, “That would be an act of folly.” So, he sees current sitting director pushing back on him. Right?

Then he becomes president, and he’s supposed to be getting a daily brief from the moment he becomes the president-elect. Right? And he doesn’t. And within a few days, there’s leaks about how he’s not taking his briefing. So, he must have thought—right?—that, “Who are these guys? Are these guys out to get me? Is this a political organization? Can I think about them as a political organization when I become president?”

So, I think there was a significant downside to those of us who became political in that moment. So, if I could have thought of that, would I have ended up in a different place? I don’t know. But it’s something I didn’t think about.

Despite Morell’s attempts to mitigate his own significant contributions toward creating a climate of distrust between the White House and the intelligence bureaucracy, it seems clear to the interviewee that Morell’s admissions lend credence to Trump’s side.

Indeed, Susan Glasser reasons, based on Morell’s unexpected confessions, that “you or others who spoke out and have continued to speak out actually tend to underscore his feeling that there’s a political divide.”

Glasser: Well, it’s very interesting, because of course, there are so many things you don’t know at that moment in time, including, of course, I’m sure you assumed, along with everybody else, that Hillary Clinton was likely to be elected, and you saw this as contributing to that in some way. But it’s certainly relevant in the context of the situation we find ourselves in a year later. And, if it tends to embolden Trump in his critique of your former colleagues who are still serving in the intelligence agencies, and not only has this been a theme that he has struck repeatedly to criticize—but also to politicize this.

And inadvertently, perhaps, you or others who spoke out and have continued to speak out actually tend to underscore his feeling that there’s a political divide, and now you and others are on one side of it, and potentially all your former colleagues, and then he’s on the other side of it…

Morell: Yeah, and you can’t pick and choose like that. And when people in the intelligence community—particularly people in CIA, because for every other part of the intelligence community except CIA, you’re working for a cabinet member. At CIA, you are working for the president of the United States. That is your customer. Right? 00:08:03 So, when you see your customer questioning what it is that you are providing to him or her, and that person seems to be cherry-picking what they accept and what they don’t accept, it’s demoralizing. And when it’s demoralizing, people take actions, right? So, I live pretty close to the agency, and there’s a coffee shop between me and the agency, and I’ve met a number of agency officers in that coffee shop who have said to me, “I’m thinking about leaving.”

Yet Morell in a round about way previously admitted that he is personally one of the chief authors of precisely this “demoralizing” scenario in which the president doesn’t fully trust his intelligence briefers.

But we should all remember that this is a man who on the one hand described “Russia’s hacking is the political equivalent of 9/11” and constantly hyped “Russian propaganda”, while on the other he went on a lengthy RT News segment in order to promote his newly published book.

December 12, 2017 Posted by | Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

The Cold War Now and Then

By William Blum | Dissident Voice | December 6, 2017

“He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did.” – President Trump re Vladimir Putin after their meeting in Vietnam.

Putin later added that he knew “absolutely nothing” about Russian contacts with Trump campaign officials. “They can do what they want, looking for some sensation. But there are no sensations.”1

Numerous US intelligence agencies have said otherwise. Former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, responded to Trump’s remarks by declaring: “The president was given clear and indisputable evidence that Russia interfered in the election.”

As we’ll see below, there isn’t too much of the “clear and indisputable” stuff. And this, of course, is the same James Clapper who made an admittedly false statement to Congress in March 2013, when he responded, “No, sir” and “not wittingly” to a question about whether the National Security Agency was collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans. Lies don’t usually come in any size larger than that.

Virtually every member of Congress who has publicly stated a position on the issue has criticized Russia for interfering in the 2016 American presidential election. And it would be very difficult to find a member of the mainstream media which has questioned this thesis.

What is the poor consumer of news to make of these gross contradictions? Here are some things to keep in mind:

How do we know that the tweets and advertisements “sent by Russians” -– those presented as attempts to sway the vote -– were actually sent by Russians? The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), composed of National Security Agency and CIA veterans, recently declared that the CIA knows how to disguise the origin of emails and tweets. The Washington Post has as well reported that Twitter “makes it easy for users to hide their true identities.”2 Even if these communications were actually sent from Russia, how do we know that they came from the Russian government, and not from any of the other 144.3 million residents of Russia?

Even if they were sent by the Russian government, we have to ask: Why would they do that? Do the Russians think the United States is a Third World, under-developed, backward Banana Republic easily influenced and moved by a bunch of simple condemnations of the plight of blacks in America and the Clinton “dynasty”? Or clichéd statements about other controversial issues, such as gun rights and immigration? If so, many Democratic and Republican officials would love to know the secret of the Russians’ method. Consider also that Facebook has stated that 90 percent of the alleged-Russian-bought content that ran on its network did not even mention Trump or Clinton.3

On top of all this is the complete absence of even the charge, much less with any supporting evidence, of Russian interference in the actual voting or counting of votes.

After his remark suggesting he believed Putin’s assertion that there had been no Russian meddling in the election, Trump – of course, as usual – attempted to backtrack and distance himself from his words after drawing criticism at home; while James Clapper declared: “The fact the president of the United States would take Putin at his word over that of the intelligence community is quite simply unconscionable.”4

Given Clapper’s large-size lie referred to above, can Trump be faulted for being skeptical of the intelligence community’s Holy Writ? Purposeful lies of the intelligence community during the first Cold War were legendary, many hailed as brilliant tactics when later revealed. The CIA, for example, had phony articles and editorials planted in foreign newspapers (real Fake News), made sex films of target subjects caught in flagrante delicto who had been lured to Agency safe houses by female agents, had Communist embassy personnel expelled because of phony CIA documents, and much more.

The Post recently published an article entitled “How did Russian trolls get into your Facebook feed? Silicon Valley made it easy.” In the midst of this “exposé,” The Post stated: “There’s no way to tell if you personally saw a Russian post or tweet.”5 So … Do the Cold Warriors have a case to make or do they not? Or do they just want us to remember that the Russkis are bad? So it goes.

An organization in Czechoslovakia with the self-appointed name of European Values has produced a lengthy report entitled “The Kremlin’s Platform for ‘Useful Idiots’ in the West: An Overview of RT’s Editorial Strategy and Evidence of Impact”. It includes a long list of people who have appeared on the Russian-owned TV station RT (formerly Russia Today), which can be seen in the US, the UK and other countries. Those who’ve been guests on RT are the “idiots” useful to Moscow. (The list is not complete. I’ve been on RT about five times, but I’m not listed. Where is my Idiot Badge?)

RT’s YouTube channel has more than two million followers and claims to be the “most-watched news network” on the video site. Its Facebook page has more than 4 million likes and followers. Can this explain why the powers-that-be forget about a thing called freedom-of-speech and treat the station like an enemy? The US government recently forced RT America to register as a foreign agent and has cut off the station’s Congressional press credentials.

The Cold War strategist, George Kennan, wrote prophetically: “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”6

Writer John Wight has described the new Cold War as being “in response to Russia’s recovery from the demise of the Soviet Union and the failed attempt to turn the country into a wholly owned subsidiary of Washington via the imposition of free market economic shock treatment thereafter.”

So let’s see what other brilliance the New Cold War brings us. … Ah yes, another headline in the Post (November 18, 2017): “British alarm rising over possible Russian meddling in Brexit”. Of course, why else would the British people have voted to leave the European Union? But wait a moment, again, one of the British researchers behind the report “said that the accounts they analyzed – which claimed Russian as their language when they were set up but tweeted in English – posted a mixture of pro-‘leave’ and pro-‘remain’ messages regarding Brexit. Commentators have said that the goal may simply have been to sow discord and division in society.”

Was there ever a time when the Post would have been embarrassed to be so openly, amateurishly biased about Russia? Perhaps during the few years between the two Cold Wars.

In case you don’t remember how stupid Cold War Number One was …

  • 1948: The Pittsburgh Press published the names, addresses, and places of employment of about 1,000 citizens who had signed presidential-nominating petitions for former Vice President Henry Wallace, running under the Progressive Party. This, and a number of other lists of “communists”, published in the mainstream media, resulted in people losing their jobs, being expelled from unions, having their children abused, being denied state welfare benefits, and suffering various other punishments.
  • Around 1950: The House Committee on Un-American Activities published a pamphlet, “100 Things You Should Know About Communism in the U.S.A.” This included information about what a communist takeover of the United States would mean:Q: What would happen to my insurance?A: It would go to the Communists.Q: Would communism give me something better than I have now?A: Not unless you are in a penitentiary serving a life sentence at hard labor.
  • 1950s: Mrs. Ada White, member of the Indiana State Textbook Commission, believed that Robin Hood was a Communist and urged that books that told the Robin Hood story be banned from Indiana schools.
  • As evidence that anti-communist mania was not limited to the lunatic fringe or conservative newspaper publishers, here is Clark Kerr, president of the University of California at Berkeley in a 1959 speech: “Perhaps 2 or even 20 million people have been killed in China by the new [communist] regime.” One person wrote to Kerr: “I am wondering how you would judge a person who estimates the age of a passerby on the street as being ‘perhaps 2 or even 20 years old.’ Or what would you think of a physician who tells you to take ‘perhaps 2 or even twenty teaspoonsful of a remedy’?”
  • Throughout the cold war, traffic in phony Lenin quotes was brisk, each one passed around from one publication or speaker to another for years. Here’s U.S. News and World Report in 1958 demonstrating communist duplicity by quoting Lenin: “Promises are like pie crusts, made to be broken.” Secretary of State John Foster Dulles used it in a speech shortly afterward, one of many to do so during the cold war. Lenin actually did use a very similar line, but he explicitly stated that he was quoting an English proverb (it comes from Jonathan Swift) and his purpose was to show the unreliability of the bourgeoisie, not of communists.“First we will take Eastern Europe, then the masses of Asia, then we will encircle the United States, which will be the last bastion of capitalism. We will not have to attack. It will fall like an overripe fruit into our hands.” This Lenin “quotation” had the usual wide circulation, even winding up in the Congressional Record in 1962. This was not simply a careless attribution; this was an out-and-out fabrication; an extensive search, including by the Library of Congress and the United States Information Agency failed to find its origin.
  • A favorite theme of the anti-communists was that a principal force behind drug trafficking was a communist plot to demoralize the United States. Here’s a small sample:Don Keller, District Attorney for San Diego County, California in 1953: “We know that more heroin is being produced south of the border than ever before and we are beginning to hear stories of financial backing by big shot Communists operating out of Mexico City.”Henry Giordano, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1964, interviewed in the American Legion Magazine: Interviewer: “I’ve been told that the communists are trying to flood our country with narcotics to weaken our moral and physical stamina. Is that true?”Giordano: “As far as the drugs are concerned, it’s true. There’s a terrific flow of drugs coming out of Yunnan Province of China. … There’s no question that in that particular area this is the aim of the Red Chinese. It should be apparent that if you could addict a population you would degrade a nation’s moral fiber.”Fulton Lewis, Jr., prominent conservative radio broadcaster and newspaper columnist, 1965: “Narcotics of Cuban origin – marijuana, cocaine, opium, and heroin – are now peddled in big cities and tiny hamlets throughout this country. Several Cubans arrested by the Los Angeles police have boasted they are communists.” We were also told that along with drugs another tool of the commies to undermine America’s spirit was fluoridation of the water.
  • Mickey Spillane was one of the most successful writers of the 1950s, selling millions of his anti-communist thriller mysteries. Here is his hero, Mike Hammer, in “One Lonely Night”, boasting of his delight in the grisly murders he commits, all in the name of destroying a communist plot to steal atomic secrets. After a night of carnage, the triumphant Hammer gloats, “I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it. I pumped slugs into the nastiest bunch of bastards you ever saw. … They were Commies. … Pretty soon what’s left of Russia and the slime that breeds there won’t be worth mentioning and I’m glad because I had a part in the killing. God, but it was fun!”
  • 1952: A campaign against the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) because it was tainted with “atheism and communism”, and was “subversive” because it preached internationalism. Any attempt to introduce an international point of view in the schools was seen as undermining patriotism and loyalty to the United States. A bill in the US Senate, clearly aimed at UNESCO, called for a ban on the funding of “any international agency that directly or indirectly promoted one-world government or world citizenship.” There was also opposition to UNESCO’s association with the UN Declaration of Human Rights on the grounds that it was trying to replace the American Bill of Rights with a less liberty-giving covenant of human rights.
  • 1955: A US Army 6-page pamphlet, “How to Spot a Communist”, informed us that a communist could be spotted by his predisposition to discuss civil rights, racial and religious discrimination, the immigration laws, anti-subversive legislation, curbs on unions, and peace. Good Americans were advised to keep their ears stretched for such give-away terms as “chauvinism”, “book-burning”, “colonialism”, “demagogy”, “witch hunt”, “reactionary”, “progressive”, and “exploitation”. Another “distinguishing mark” of “Communist language” was a “preference for long sentences.” After some ridicule, the Army rescinded the pamphlet.
  • 1958: The noted sportscaster Bill Stern (one of the heroes of my innocent youth) observed on the radio that the lack of interest in “big time” football at New York University, City College of New York, Chicago, and Harvard “is due to the widespread acceptance of Communism at the universities.”
  • 1960: US General Thomas Power speaking about nuclear war or a first strike by the US: “The whole idea is to kill the bastards! At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!” The response from one of those present was: “Well, you’d better make sure that they’re a man and a woman.”
  • 1966: The Boys Club of America is, of course, wholesome and patriotic. Imagine their horror when they were confused with the Dubois Clubs. (W.E.B. Du Bois had been a very prominent civil rights activist.) When the Justice Department required the DuBois Clubs to register as a Communist front group, good loyal Americans knew what to do. They called up the Boys Club to announce that they would no longer contribute any money, or to threaten violence against them; and sure enough an explosion damaged the national headquarters of the youth group in San Francisco. Then former Vice President Richard Nixon, who was national board chairman of the Boys Club, declared: “This is an almost classic example of Communist deception and duplicity. The ‘DuBois Clubs’ are not unaware of the confusion they are causing among our supporters and among many other good citizens.”
  • 1966: “Rhythm, Riots and Revolution: An Analysis of the Communist Use of Music, The Communist Master Music Plan”, by David A. Noebel, published by Christian Crusade Publications, (expanded version of 1965 pamphlet: “Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles”). Some chapters: Communist Use of Mind Warfare … Nature of Red Record Companies … Destructive Nature of Beatle Music … Communist Subversion of Folk Music … Folk Music and the Negro Revolution … Folk Music and the College Revolution
  • 1968: William Calley, US Army Lieutenant, charged with overseeing the massacre of more than 100 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai in 1968, said some years later: “In all my years in the Army I was never taught that communists were human beings. We were there to kill ideology carried by – I don’t know – pawns, blobs, pieces of flesh. I was there to destroy communism. We never conceived of old people, men, women, children, babies.”
  • 1977: Scientists theorized that the earth’s protective ozone layer was being damaged by synthetic chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons. The manufacturers and users of CFCs were not happy. They made life difficult for the lead scientist. The president of one aerosol manufacturing firm suggested that criticism of CFCs was “orchestrated by the Ministry of Disinformation of the KGB.”
  • 1978: Life inside a California youth camp of the ultra anti-communist John Birch Society: Five hours each day of lectures on communism, Americanism and “The Conspiracy”; campers learned that the Soviet government had created a famine and spread a virus to kill a large number of citizens and make the rest of them more manageable; the famine led starving adults to eat their children; communist guerrillas in Southeast Asia jammed chopsticks into children’s ears, piercing their eardrums; American movies are all under the control of the Communists; the theme is always that capitalism is no better than communism; you can’t find a dictionary now that isn’t under communist influence; the communists are also taking over the Bibles.
  • The Reagan administration declared that the Russians were spraying toxic chemicals over Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan – the so-called “yellow rain” – and had caused more than ten thousand deaths by 1982 alone, (including, in Afghanistan, 3,042 deaths attributed to 47 separate incidents between the summer of 1979 and the summer of 1981, so precise was the information). Secretary of State Alexander Haig was a prime dispenser of such stories, and President Reagan himself denounced the Soviet Union thusly more than 15 times in documents and speeches. The “yellow rain”, it turned out, was pollen-laden feces dropped by huge swarms of honeybees flying far overhead.
  • 1982: In commenting about sexual harassment in the Army, General John Crosby stated that the Army doesn’t care about soldiers’ social lives – “The basic purpose of the United States Army is to kill Russians,” he said.
  • 1983: The US invasion of Grenada, the home of the Cuban ambassador is damaged and looted by American soldiers; on one wall is written “AA”, symbol of the 82nd Airborne Division; beside it the message: “Eat shit, commie faggot.” … “I want to fuck communism out of this little island,” says a marine, “and fuck it right back to Moscow.”
  • 1984: During a sound check just before his weekly broadcast, President Reagan spoke these words into the microphone: “My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I have signed legislation to outlaw Russia, forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” His words were picked up by at least two radio networks.
  • 1985: October 29 BBC interview with Ronald Reagan: asked about the differences he saw between the US and Russia, the president replied: “I’m no linguist, but I’ve been told that in the Russian language there isn’t even a word for freedom.” (The word is “svoboda”.)
  • 1986: Soviet artists and cultural officials criticized Rambo-like American films as an expression of “anti-Russian phobia even more pathological than in the days of McCarthyism”. Russian film-maker Stanislav Rostofsky claimed that on one visit to an American school “a young girl trembled with fury when she heard I was from the Soviet Union, and said she hated Russians.”
  • 1986: Roy Cohn, who achieved considerable fame and notoriety in the 1950s as an assistant to the communist-witch-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy, died, reportedly of AIDS. Cohn, though homosexual, had denied that he was and had denounced such rumors as communist smears.
  • 1986: After American journalist Nicholas Daniloff was arrested in Moscow for “spying” and held in custody for two weeks, New York Mayor Edward Koch sent a group of 10 visiting Soviet students storming out of City Hall in fury. “The Soviet government is the pits,” said Koch, visibly shocking the students, ranging in age from 10 to 18 years. One 14-year-old student was so outraged he declared: “I don’t want to stay in this house. I want to go to the bus and go far away from this place. The mayor is very rude. We never had a worse welcome anywhere.” As matters turned out, it appeared that Daniloff had not been completely pure when it came to his news gathering.
  • 1989: After the infamous Chinese crackdown on dissenters in Tiananmen Square in June, the US news media was replete with reports that the governments of Nicaragua, Vietnam and Cuba had expressed their support of the Chinese leadership. Said the Wall Street Journal: “Nicaragua, with Cuba and Vietnam, constituted the only countries in the world to approve the Chinese Communists’ slaughter of the students in Tiananmen Square.” But it was all someone’s fabrication; no such support had been expressed by any of the three governments. At that time, as now, there were few, if any, organizations other than the CIA which could manipulate major Western media in such a manner.7

NOTE: It should be remembered that the worst consequences of anti-communism were not those discussed above. The worst consequences, the ultra-criminal consequences, were the abominable death, destruction, and violation of human rights that we know under various names: Vietnam, Chile, Korea, Guatemala, Cambodia, Indonesia, Brazil, Greece, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and many others.

Al Franken

Poor Al, who made us laugh for years on Saturday Night Live, is now disgraced as a woman molester – not one of the worst of the current pathetic crop, but he still looks bad. However, everything is relative, and it must be pointed out that the Senator is guilty of a worse moral transgression.

The erstwhile comedian would like you to believe that he was against the war in Iraq since it began. But he went to that sad country at least four times to entertain American troops. Does that make sense? Why does the Defense Department bring entertainers to military bases? To lift the soldiers’ spirits, of course. And why does the military want to lift the soldiers’ spirits? Because a happier soldier does his job better. And what is the soldier’s job? For example, all the charming war crimes and human-rights violations in Iraq that have been documented in great detail for many years. Didn’t Franken know what American soldiers do for a living?

Country singer Darryl Worley, who leans “a lot to the right,” as he puts it, said he was far from pleased that Franken was coming along on the tour to Iraq. “You know, I just don’t understand – why would somebody be on this tour if they’re not supportive of the war? If he decides to play politics, I’m not gonna put up with it.”8

A year after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Franken criticized the Bush administration because they “failed to send enough troops to do the job right.”9 What “job” did the man think the troops were sent to do that had not been performed to his standards because of lack of manpower? Did he want them to be more efficient at killing Iraqis who resisted the occupation? The volunteer American troops in Iraq did not even have the defense of having been drafted against their wishes.

Franken has been lifting soldiers’ spirits for a long time. In 2009 he was honored by the United Service Organization (USO) for his ten years of entertaining troops abroad. That includes Kosovo in 1999, as imperialist an occupation as you’ll ever want to see. He called his USO experience “one of the best things I’ve ever done.”10 Franken has also spoken at West Point (2005), encouraging the next generation of imperialist warriors. Is this a man to challenge the militarization of America at home and abroad?

Tom Hayden wrote this about Franken in 2005 when Franken had a regular program on the Air America radio network: “Is anyone else disappointed with Al Franken’s daily defense of the continued war in Iraq? Not Bush’s version of the war, because that would undermine Air America’s laudable purpose of rallying an anti-Bush audience. But, well, Kerry’s version of the war, one that can be better managed and won, somehow with better body armor and fewer torture cells.”11

While in Iraq to entertain the troops, Franken declared that the Bush administration “blew the diplomacy so we didn’t have a real coalition,” then failed to send enough troops to do the job right. “Out of sheer hubris, they have put the lives of these guys in jeopardy.”8

Franken was implying that if the United States had been more successful in bribing and threatening other countries to lend their name to the coalition fighting the war in Iraq the United States would have had a better chance of WINNING the war.

Is this the sentiment of someone opposed to the war? Or in support of it? It is actually the mind of an American liberal in all its depressing mushiness.

To be put on the tombstone of Western civilization

On November 15, 2017, at Christie’s auction house in New York City, a painting was sold for $450,312,500.

  1. Washington Post, November 12, 2017.
  2. Washington Post, October 10, 2017.
  3. Washington Post, November 15, 2017.
  4. Reuters, November 12, 2017.
  5. Washington Post, November 2, 2017.
  6. Wikipedia entry for George Kennan
  7. Sources for almost all of this section can be found in William Blum, “Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire” (2005), chapter 12; or the author can be queried at moc.loa@6mulbb
  8. Washington Post, February 16, 2004.
  9. Ibid.
  10. Star Tribune, Minneapolis, March 26, 2009.
  11. Huffington Post, June 2005.

December 6, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

The Intercept Withheld NSA Doc That May Have Altered Course Of Syrian War

If this document had been published sooner, it could have dramatically changed the course of the war by exposing the true face of the “moderate rebels” — and potentially saved tens of thousands of lives. That didn’t happen, and no reason has been given by the Intercept for its delay.

By Whitney Webb | Mint Press News | October 30, 2017

On Tuesday, the Intercept published a hitherto unknown document from the trove of National Security Administration (NSA) documents leaked by Edward Snowden over three years ago. The document was notable as it shed light on the early days of the Syrian conflict and the fact that, for the past six years, so-called “revolutionary” groups aimed at toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have largely acted as proxies for foreign governments pushing regime change.

The document explicitly reveals that an attack led by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which was intended to mark the anniversary of the 2011 “uprising” that sparked the Syrian conflict, was directed by a Saudi prince. The document proves, in essence, that the armed opposition in Syria – from the earlier years of the conflict – was under the direct command of foreign governments pushing for regime change.

An NSA graphic released by The Intercept outlines Saudi involvement in organizing and supplying Syrian opposition forces for attacks on Syria’s civilian infrastructure.

According to the document, Saudi Prince Salman bin Sultan had ordered the FSA to “light up Damascus” and “flatten” the city’s civilian airport. The Saudis had also “sent 120 tons of explosives/weapons to opposition forces” for the operation. The Saudis, as the document notes, were “very pleased” with the outcome, which claimed at least 60 lives.

The implications of the NSA document are significant. It offers the clearest proof, in the form of official U.S. government documents, detailing the direct relationship between the armed Syrian opposition and foreign governments, and exposing the fact that this relationship existed much earlier than the mainstream narrative on the conflict had previously suggested.

However, the Intercept article regarding the document is unusual for several reasons. First, the report inaccurately claims that the attack launched at the Saudis’ behest did not result in any confirmed casualties. Second, it states that the 2011 uprising in Syria was an organic, “peaceful” movement that led the Syrian government to wage “an open war against their own people” — a narrative that has since been debunked.

Yet, the largest oversight of all is the article’s failure to mention the U.S.’ role in funding the Free Syrian Army, as well as the CIA’s well-documented role in training the FSA and pumping tons of weapons into Syria in order to foment and exacerbate the conflict in its early days. In light of the NSA document’s revelation that the U.S. had been given advance notice of the planned FSA attack – on a civilian target, no less – Washington’s decision to let it proceed clearly suggests that the U.S. was involved in and well aware of the Saudi directives to the FSA. However, the Intercept piece chooses not to mention this crucial context.

Intercept’s three-plus year delay in releasing document

Perhaps even more troubling than the article’s failure to mention the CIA’s well-documented role in backing the Free Syrian Army, now exposed as a proxy force following orders from the Saudi royal family, is the fact that the Intercept had access to this document for nearly three-and-a-half years – deciding to publish only now that the Syrian conflict is effectively over and those pushing for regime change have lost. If this document had been published sooner, it could have dramatically changed the course of the war by exposing the true face of the “moderate rebels” — and potentially saved tens of thousands of lives.

That didn’t happen, however, and no reason has been given by the publication for its notable delay. The Intercept has exclusive publishing rights and an exclusive hold on the content of the Snowden leaks, of which this newly released document is a part. Indeed, the Intercept was founded after the Snowden leaks were made public and its first hires were Glenn Greenwald and Lauren Poitras, the only journalists possessing the full Snowden cache. Those documents now belong to the Intercept’s founder — billionaire eBay founder,  — and his for-profit media company, First Look Media.

Examining Omidyar’s connections to the U.S. political establishment offers a plausible reason for the Intercept’s delay in publishing documents so crucial to understanding the situation in Syria. Omidyar was a frequent guest of the Obama White House from 2009 to 2013, garnering more face-to-face visits with Obama during his two terms than did Google’s Eric Schmidt, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, New York Times owner Arthur Sulzberger and even fellow tech billionaire turned major media owner, Jeff Bezos.

Omidyar also directly co-invested with the U.S. State Department, via USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), in opposition groups that played a key role in overthrowing Ukraine’s democratically elected government in 2014 – a U.S.-brokered regime-change operation that shares some notable similarities with the Syrian conflict. His investments with USAID have continued since the Intercept’s founding, helping fund the NGO’s more recent overseas programs aimed at “advancing U.S. national security interests” abroad.

Also worth noting is the fact that PayPal, of which Omidyar is a major owner, has allegedly been implicated in several of the still-withheld NSA documents for its business relationship with the NSA and its role in the agency’s mass spying program. In addition, former Intercept writers have asserted that Omidyar was “shockingly disinterested in the actual journalism” of the paper, suggesting that the Intercept was created explicitly to delay the release of damaging documents from the Snowden cache until deemed acceptable to the U.S. political establishment and others who stood to lose face were the entire cache to have been made public.

Indeed, another interesting coincidence supporting this thesis is the fact that the Intercept published this latest piece only after the U.S. State Department itself began to report more honestly on the nature of these so-called “rebels.” A day before the Intercept’s story on Syrian “rebels” and the Saudis, the U.S. State Department – for the first time – admitted that “moderate” rebels in Syria had previously used chemical weapons, a charge it had categorically denied for years in order to facilitate laying the blame for any and all chemical weapons attacks in Syria on the Syrian government.

In other words, the Intercept released the document, which effectively destroys Washington’s “moderate rebels” narrative with its own internal documents, only after the U.S. government itself began to unravel that very same narrative.

The Intercept did not respond to MintPress News’ request for comment regarding the timing of the document’s release.

 

Founder’s connections shape Intercept’s journalism

Omidyar’s connection to U.S. regime-change efforts abroad may also explain why the Intercept – until now, that is – has consistently given voice to journalists who have echoed the U.S. establishment regarding the Syrian conflict.

For instance, Murtaza Hussain – the author of this latest Intercept piece – has written numerous stories downplaying the terrorist and Wahhabist elements of the Syrian “rebels.” In the last two years, Hussain has written pieces portraying known Al-Qaeda propagandists, such as Bilal Abdul Kareem, and Al-Qaeda-linked organizations, such as the White Helmets, in an overwhelmingly positive light, failing to mention in both cases the significant evidence tying these entities to known terrorist groups. In another piece, published last August, Hussain gave voice to al-Nusra Front leadership in a lengthy interview that largely whitewashed the group’s Wahhabist leanings and links to terrorist acts in Syria.

Last September, on Twitter, Hussain asserted that Saudi Arabia’s funding of armed factions was not necessarily “good” but that “there is little to indicate they contribute to terrorism.” That last statement has been thoroughly debunked for years, but most recently by Hussain’s own piece on the newly released NSA document.

Hussain is by no means the only Intercept writer who has taken such a pro-opposition stance regarding Syria. A recent Intercept piece on Syria, published in September, committed glaring factual errors on basic facts about the war, while also mistranslating a speech given by Assad so as to link him to American white nationalists. In addition, the paper recently hired Maryam Saleh, a journalist who has called Shia Muslims “dogs” and has taken to Twitter in recent months to downplay the role of the U.S. coalition in airstrikes in Syria. She also has ties to the U.S.-financed propaganda group Kafranbel Media Center, which has close relations with the terrorist group Ahrar al-Sham.

For a paper ostensibly dedicated to “fearless, adversarial” journalism, it is strange that the Intercept gives voice to journalists who echo the U.S. position regarding the Syrian war while rarely publishing the work of journalists who have challenged prevailing Western narratives on that war — journalists who, as the Intercept itself recently revealed, have been right all along regarding the myth of the Syrian “moderate rebel.” Yet, given Omidyar’s political connections and the paper’s handling of the Snowden cache, this unfortunate decision is unsurprising.

December 3, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Even Russian Dissidents Say Americans Have Gone Crazy Over Putin

By Glen Ford | Black Agenda Report | November 30, 2017

The New York Times last week opened its pages to critics of the U.S. corporate media’s obsession with Vladimir Putin’s endlessly alleged, but never proven, campaign to subvert “American democracy.” After a year of unrelenting anti-Kremlin propaganda, the Times briefly lifted its curtain of censorship to allow a counter-narrative on “Russiagate” – but only for one discreet group: Russian “dissidents.” (See “Why Putin’s Foes Deplore U.S. Fixation on Election Meddling,” November 23.)

These “pro-Western liberals who look to the United States as an exemplar of democratic values and journalistic excellence,” as the Times describes them, are dismayed, insulted and angry at the non-stop lunacy churned out by U.S. media. If the Times, the Washington Post, CNN and most of the Democratic Party are to be believed, President Putin is a superman, “an almighty force from a James Bond saga,” said Leonid M. Volkov, chief of staff for anti-Putin politician Aleksei A. Navalny . How could the Russian opposition ever hope to overcome such a titan — a man who can wreck the political order in the world’s reigning superpower with the expenditure of only $100,000 on Facebook? “This image is very bad for us,” Volkov told the Times. “Putin is not a master geopolitical genius.”

Putin has been made to look “invincible,” said Michael Idov, a Russian-American screenwriter (the closest the Times got to giving a fellow American the opportunity to challenge the corporate Russiagate obsession).

The New York Times has cultivated a cabal of pro-western Russian politicians ever since Bill Clinton’s presidency, when U.S. bankers helped to create the Russian oligarchy with assets stolen from the wreckage of the Soviet state. Vladimir Putin is credited with taming the oligarchs, who nevertheless remain embedded in the nation’s infrastructure. The politicians the Times calls “dissidents” hate Putin, but they are also proud to be Russian, and cannot abide U.S. scape-goating of their nation. The Americans sound crazy. “What is happening with ‘the investigation into Russian interference,’ is not just a disgrace but a collective eclipse of the mind,” said Volko.

It is obvious to every politically aware Russian that Donald Trump and his team of incompetents met with hardly any Russians of consequence on his trips to that country — mostly wannabes and hustlers. But, U.S. audiences can’t distinguish one Russian from the other, and know only one Russian face: Putin’s.

Journalist Oleg V. Kashin, a Kremlin critic, said: “The image of Putin’s Russia constructed by Western and, above all, American media outlets over the past 18 months shocks even the most anti-Putin reader in Russia.” Times correspondent Higgins reports that Kashin “complained that the American media has consistently misconstrued the way Russia works, presenting marginal opportunists and self-interested businessmen with no real link to the Kremlin as state-controlled agents working on orders from Mr. Putin.”

The New York Times and the Washington Post know their way around Moscow — and if they don’t, the CIA will give them directions. Indeed, their friends, the Russian “dissidents,” would have been glad to advise the U.S. media on Russiagate, but that would have made a boring story about small time sleaze in a cold climate. What the U.S. War Party needed was a new cold war to accompany Washington’s global military offensive.

U.S. “liberals” and “progressives” hate Trump more than they value peace, and are not nearly as smart as they think they are. Professor of history Ivan I. Kurilla, who specializes in American studies at the European University in St. Petersburg, said anti-Trump Americans want to foist him on Russia — politically exiling the Orange Menace to somebody else’s country. “American liberals are so upset about Trump that they cannot believe he is a real product of American life,” said Kurilla. “They try to portray him as something created by Russia. This whole thing is about America, not Russia.”

The Times’ Russian dissident friends despise RT, the state-supported Russia news agency, but are worried about Washington’s demand that RT register as a foreign agent. Until only a few years ago, U.S. NGOs were hyper-active in Russia, spending millions to create and subsidize opposition to Putin’s United Russia party, hoping to foment a “color” revolution. Western-oriented political actors in Russia fear that Russiagate will provoke a Kremlin crackdown on activists that are too closely identified with the U.S. The truth is, the “dissidents” interviewed by the New York Times are dependent on western corporate media for legitimacy and visibility. The real opposition in Russia is the Communist Party, which is the second largest party in the country but gets almost no coverage in the U.S. press, while the western-allied opposition hardly shows up in the polls.

Thus, even the nature of “dissent” in Russia is grossly distorted by the U.S media, which commits a similar crime against truth on its home turf. The New York Times went all the way to Moscow and St. Petersburg to solicit critiques of Russiagate coverage (“propaganda” is a better term), but rigidly censors American skeptics.

In so doing, they create a bubble of fear and ignorance that envelops the country — while everything inside, shrinks.

Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com

December 2, 2017 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Turkey’s Erdogan won’t capitulate

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | December 2, 2017

As the countdown begins for the trial in a Manhattan federal court next week of the Turkish-Iranian millionaire gold trader Reza Zarrab over violations of US sanctions against Iran, Turkey is hardening its stance. President Recep Erdogan has said that Turkey cannot be prosecuted in a fake court. (See my article in Asia Times, Gold dealer’s testimony puts Erdogan on shaky ground.)

Importantly, on Friday, the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office issued an arrest warrant for a former top CIA official Graham Fuller alleging his involvement in the failed coup attempt in Turkey in July last year. The Turkish security is apparently in possession of information that Fuller was in the country during the coup attempt on July 15 and abruptly left after the coup failed. Fuller participated in a secret meeting of the coup plotters on July 15-16, which was held in the Buyukada Island in the Sea of Marmara off Istanbul.

For the first time, Ankara is inches away from hinting that last year’s was a CIA-sponsored coup attempt, aimed at overthrowing Erdogan’s government. The government has alleged previously that the coup plotters intended to “eliminate” Erdogan.

This is an extremely serious development insofar as Turkey is, in effect, alleging that the spy agency of a major NATO ally, which swears by Article 5 of the alliance’s charter on collective security, actually conspired to overthrow its established government which enjoyed a democratic mandate.

From all indications, Turkish intelligence would have collected a lot of evidence regarding the coup before making the move to seek Fuller’s arrest. At least some of the evidence would also have been provided by friendly countries such as Russia and Iran. We will never know whether the Russian and Iranian intelligence are in possession of hard information pointing at CIA involvement in the coup attempt in Turkey, but the possibility cannot be ruled out. The Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Zarif was constantly interacting telephonically with his Turkish counterpart through the fateful night of the coup attempt when things were on razor’s edge.

Ankara announced on Friday that Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu will be attending the NATO Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Brussels on December 5-6. Cavusoglu is sure to bump into US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. One can only wish to be a fly on the wall at the NATO Hqs. Indeed, if the US plan is to leverage the Zarrab case to pressure Turkey to change course in its foreign policies and revert to its cold-war era role as the West’s junior partner in the region, it may boomarang. Turkey may be preparing to go on the offensive.

Make no mistake, Turkey will follow up on the arrest warrant for Fuller. Fuller was a mentor of the controversial Islamist preacher Fetullah Gulen. According to Turkish reports, Fuller had recommended Gulen’s application for the Green Card, which in turn enabled the latter to live in exile in the US for almost two decades after he fled Turkey in 1998. Turkish intelligence keeps a close tab on Gulen’s activities Ankara has often hinted that Gulen is actively in contact with the US establishment.

If Erdogan wants to hit the Americans hard, he won’t have to look beyond next-door Syria. Erdogan’s key advisor Ibrahim Kalin has written in the pro-government Sabah newspaper today that with the defeat of ISIS, the US has no justification to support the Syrian Kurds. To quote Kalin,

  • This question was discussed during a recent phone call between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. President Donald Trump on Nov. 24. Trump’s response was affirmative, adding that the huge military support the U.S. is providing to the YPG should have ended before. His statement was contradicted only a few days later by the Pentagon.

There is an implicit warning here that Turkey is drawing a red line. Kalin disclosed in the article that Pentagon is using the pictures of Kurdish women fighters to “romanticize” the US-Kurdish alliance. Kalin wrote, “[It is] a useful instrument to sell propaganda to Western audiences, but an affront to the female body and personality. Among the many ironies of this policy, this one is stunning: America’s best ally in Syria is a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization that fights against Turkey, a key U.S. ally, and seeks autonomy and eventual independence in Syria.”

The Turkish intelligence has got through to the chief spokesman of the US-backed Kuridsh alliance (known as the Syrian Democratic Front) Talal Silo who has “defected” to Turkey recently. In an interview with the Anadolu news agency today, Silo has spilt the beans, exposing the Pentagon’s nefarious activities in Syria that threaten Turkish national security interests. The transcript of the interview is here.

December 2, 2017 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Cunningness of the CIA’s JFK Assassination Cover-Up

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | November 3, 2017

Whatever else might be said about the assassination of President Kennedy, one thing is for sure: The cover-up of this particular U.S. regime-change operation was one of the most ingenious and cunning plots ever designed. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, given that practically from its inception in 1947 the CIA was specializing in the arts of assassination, regime change, and cover-up.

As far back as 1953, the CIA published an assassination manual that the CIA succeeded in keeping secret from the American people for more than 40 years. It came to light in 1997 as a result of a Freedom of Information request. That was around the time that the Assassination Records Review Board, which was overseeing the mandatory release of JFK-related assassination records of the CIA and other federal agencies that had been kept secret from the American people since 1963.

Today, Americans can read the CIA’s assassination manual online. Titled “Study of Assassination,” the manual spells out various ways to assassinate people. Here is what the manual states in part regarding the use of firearms:

Firearms are often used in assassination, often very ineffectively…. Public figures or guarded officials may be killed with great reliability and some safety if a firing point can be established prior to an official occasion. The propaganda value of this system may be very high.

The manual also makes it clear that the CIA was studying ways to assassinate people without being detected. Note the following excerpt:

For secret assassination, either simple or chase, the contrived accident is the most effective technique. When successfully executed, it causes little excitement and is only casually investigated.

It would be safe to assume that the CIA continued developing and expanding on the assassination principles enunciated in that early assassination manual. That’s what we would expect from an agency whose specialties included assassination. We can also assume that the CIA continued to refine the ways to avoid detection when assassinating someone.

The CIA published that secret assassination manual as part of its preparations for a U.S. regime-change operation in Guatemala, one that was designed to violently remove the nation’s democratically elected socialist president, Jacobo Arbenz, from office and replace him with an unelected, right-wing, pro-U.S. military general.

As part of the Guatemala regime-change operation, the CIA prepared a list of Guatemalan officials to be assassinated. While the CIA has never revealed the names of the people it targeted for assassination, there is little doubt that Arbenz, the president, was at the top of the list.

There is something important to note: Neither Arbenz nor any other Guatemalan official had ever attacked the United States or even threatened to do so.

So, why were they targeted for assassination? Because Arbenz had reached out to the Russians and Cubans in a spirit of peace and friendship, just as John Kennedy would do ten years later. That’s why the CIA targeted Guatemala for regime change and why it targeted Arbenz and other Guatemalan officials for assassination.

Although Arbenz was able to escape the country, the CIA’s regime-change operation was a total success, with Arbenz being replaced by the pro-U.S. Gen. Carlos Castillo Armas, who proceeded to instigate a reign of terror across Guatemala.

The Guatemalan operation was brilliant and ingenious. The CIA officials were secretly honored for protecting “national security” by removing President Arbenz from office and replacing him with a pro-U.S. military general. Tracy Barnes, one of the CIA officials responsible for the operation, was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the CIA’s second-highest medal.

The CIA’s cover-up in the JFK assassination was even more brilliant and ingenious.

The doctors at Parkland Hospital stated that President Kennedy had a big exit-sized wound in the back of his head, which implied a shot having been fired from the front. At a press conference immediately after the president died, two treating physicians stated that the other wound — the one in the front of Kennedy’s neck — was an entry wound, which implied that Kennedy had been hit by another shot fired from the front.

This necessarily meant that Kennedy had been shot from the front, not the rear, where accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was situated.

Keep in mind something important: After he was arrested, Oswald claimed his innocence. But he also went a step further. He said that he was being framed for the crime.

The obvious question arises: Why frame an innocent man who is situated in the rear by killing the president with shots fired from the front? Wouldn’t it be more logical to either have the shots fired from the rear, where Oswald was, or, alternatively, place Oswald in the front, where the shots were fired?

That’s where the brilliance, ingenuity, and cunningness of the cover-up come into play.

If Oswald is in the rear and since shots are fired from the front, that could mean only one thing: that Oswald had confederates firing from the front.

Who would those confederates be? There could be only one answer: communists. Soviet and Cuban communists, to be more specific.

How would we know this? That’s where Oswald’s trip to Mexico City right before the assassination comes into play.

Oswald traveled to Mexico City where he purportedly visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies and where he supposedly met with a premier assassin for the Soviet Union.

Keep in mind that this was the height of the Cold War between the United States and that the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, had taken place the previous year.

So, President Kennedy has been assassinated. Oswald is immediately arrested. He has confederates firing from the front, who almost certainly are Soviet and Cuban communists, especially since Oswald has supposedly just recently visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City.

What does all that mean? An assassination of the president by the Soviet Union and Cuba is obviously an act of war. That means nuclear war is about to break out because there is no way that the United States is going to sit idly by when the Reds have just assassinated America’s president.

Except for one thing: The communist part and the nuclear-war part were concocted. That was all part of the plan. That was the ingenious way that the CIA was able to get the investigation into the assassination squelched just as soon as Oswald was murdered.

In the early days of the Warren Commission, commission chairman Earl Warren called a top-secret meeting of the commission. Its purpose was to discuss information that Warren had received that Oswald was actually a U.S. intelligence agent or an informant for the FBI or both.

How did Warren resolve this troubling issue? He simply asked the heads of the CIA and FBI whether it was true. They said no. That was the end of the matter.

The issue was so sensitive that Warren ordered the members of the commission to never reveal the meeting to the American people. He ordered all notes and other written references to be destroyed. He also ordered the court reporter to destroy her notes of the meeting. Unbeknownst to him, the court reporter inadvertently kept a recording of the meeting that ultimately came to light.

This troubling issue arose again yesterday, November 2, in the Washington Post in an article entitled “Tantalizing Mystery of JFK Assassination Files Solved – 23 Years Ago.” In the article, author Ian Shapira points out that among the long-secret CIA records that were recently released was a deposition of former CIA Director Richard Helms taken in 1975 before the President’s Commission on CIA Activities, which stated as follows:

BELIN: Well, now, the final area of my interrogation relates to charges that the CIA was in some way conspiratorially involved with the assassination of President Kennedy. During the time of the Warren Commission, you were Deputy Director of Plans, is that correct?

HELMS: I believe so.

BELIN: Is there any information involved with the assassination of President Kennedy which in any way shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was in some way a CIA agent or an age[nt.…

That’s where the transcript ends according to few secret records of the CIA that were recently released by the National Archives.

Shapira points out, “Several news organizations, including The Washington Post, seized on the truncated file as an example of the government’s continued secrecy about the assassination.” Shapira points out that Helms’ full deposition has been in the public arena since 1994.

(The year 1994 was during the tenure of the Assassination Records Review Board, the agency charged with securing the mandated release of JFK assassination records from the CIA and other federal agencies. The ARRB had been formed after Americans had learned of the official secrecy after watching Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, which posited that the JFK assassination was a U.S. regime-change operation, no different in principle from the one the CIA had carried out in Guatemala nine years before.)

Shapira then proceeds to provide the answer that Helms gave, which, as he points out, has been public:

HELMS: Mr. Belin, this question, and I think you may recall this, was raised at the time and the Agency was never able to find any evidence whatsoever, and we really searched that it had any contact with Lee Harvey Oswald. As far as the FBI was concerned, my recollection is not all that precise. I believe that Mr. Hoover testified that he had not been an agent of theirs either. He was certainly not an agent of the CIA. He was certainly never used by the CIA. Whether any CIA officer ever talked to him any  place or not I don’t know but I certainly felt quite comfortable — I believe Mr. [John] McCone [a previous CIA director] was asked to testify before the Commission on this point. I believe he was asked to testify. It was a hot item anyway at the time. And my recollection is that I informed Mr. McCone that we could find no evidence that Oswald had any connection with the CIA.

Shapira ends his article by suggesting that commentators should do more complete research, maybe even use Google, before they jump to conclusions.

But Shapira would be wise to follow his own advice because he himself is guilty of what he accuses others of. That’s because he failed to conclude his article with one great big important point about former CIA Director Richard Helms.

What is that great big important point that Shapira, who, according to his tagline on his article, “enjoys writing about people who have served in the military and intelligence communities,” left out of his article?

Perjury. He left out that former CIA Director Richard Helms was a perjurer. A liar. A CIA official who would tell falsehoods, even under oath, whenever he felt that “national security” required it.

Shapira failed to note that Helms was convicted in a federal district court of lying to Congress under oath about another CIA regime-change operation ten years after the Kennedy assassination in Chile.

Interesting enough, in the Chile regime-change operation, the CIA and the Pentagon were telling their counterparts in the Chilean national-security establishment that they had a moral duty to violate their nation’s constitution and violently remove their nation’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, from office. The reason? Allende was reaching out to the Russians and Cubans in a spirit of peace and friendship, just as Arbenz had done and just as Kennedy had done.

Thus, given that Helms was an admitted perjurer and convicted liar, what value does his denial that Oswald was an intelligence agent have? It has no value at all. And Shapira, who “enjoys writing about people who have served in the military and intelligence communities,” had an ethical duty to point out Helms’ proclivity for lying in his article.

The circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly establishes that Oswald was working for U.S. intelligence. How often have you ever heard of a U.S. Marine communist? If Oswald was a genuine communist, why would he have joined the Marines in the 1950s, given that the Marines hated communists and had just helped kill millions of them in the Korean War? Why would a genuine communist want to join an organization in which he could be ordered, on a moment’s notice, to return to Korea or be sent to Vietnam, Laos, China, the Soviet Union, or Europe to kill communists? Don’t forget: this is the height of the Cold War!

After Oswald supposedly tried to “defect” to the Soviet Union and promised to give the Russians all the secrets he learned about in the military, why would U.S. officials agree to let him back in the country, and with a communist wife? Why wouldn’t they indict him or at least haul him before a federal grand jury to testify as to what secrets he gave the Russians? Why wouldn’t they harass, abuse, humiliate, persecute, or prosecute him, like they did to Martin Luther King, Dalton Trumbo, John Walker Lindh, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and other people they have deemed to be communists or traitors? How is it possible that Oswald could learn fluent Russian while serving in the U.S. military without having U.S. military tutors teaching him? How is it possible that a veteran who embarrasses the U.S. Marine Corps by openly proselytizing for communism in New Orleans is able to saunter across the Cold War stage of history, not long after the McCarthy hearings, without nary a care in the world?

The answer: Helms lied. There is no reasonable doubt that Oswald was a U.S. intelligence agent, one who was ordered to travel to Mexico City to set the framework for his frame-up.

But things obviously went dreadfully wrong in Mexico City, which is why the CIA had to shut down that part of the post-assassination investigation. Not surprisingly, the CIA’s Mexico City operations regarding Oswald are among the 98 percent of the records that Trump and the CIA have chosen to continue keeping secret from the American people, on grounds of “national security” of course.

Thus, when Oswald was claiming that he was being framed, there could be only one entity that he could have been thinking about: the CIA, the agency whose officials, as former Washington Post investigative reporter Jefferson Morley has documented, were secretly monitoring his activities in the weeks leading up to the assassination, no doubt to ensure that Oswald had not figured out what was about to happen to him.

We can assume that any frame-up by the CIA is going to be good. The operation is going to be carefully planned and executed.

But no plan is perfect. Things are inevitably going to go wrong. The pieces aren’t going to fit together perfectly. The Mexico City operation is a good example of that. That’s why the CIA has to continue keeping those records secret.

But here’s another example, a small but important one: Recall that Oswald supposedly hid the rifle before he headed down the steps from the sixth floor of the school book depository. Ask yourself: If someone has just assassinated the president of the United States, is he really going to take the time to hide the rifle? What good would that do? Wouldn’t officials conduct a thorough search of the area? Wouldn’t an assassin instead simply leave the rifle there and get out of there as soon as he could?

Then why the hidden rifle? Because it’s consistent with a frame-up. The framers had to hide the rifle in advance in a place where no one would see it during the morning of the assassination, which took place after noon.

No matter how good a frame-up was, the CIA knew that it could be detected with an aggressive investigation. That’s where ingenuity and cunning come into play. They had to figure out a way to shut down the investigation so that the frame-up would remain intact.

That’s why they had shots fired from the front and placed Oswald in the rear. The idea was that since an investigation would lead to Oswald’s supposed communist confederates in the front, which in turn would lead to nuclear war, the investigation had to be shut down immediately, especially since it was the CIA itself that had started the assassination game by repeatedly attempting, in partnership with the Mafia, to assassinate Castro.

It was one of the most brilliant and cunning ruses in history. They get the body out of Parkland by force, in violation of Texas law, and put it in the hands of the military in Maryland, which conducts a secret fraudulent and bogus autopsy. (See my book The Kennedy Autopsy.) Lyndon Johnson telephones Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade on the night of the assassination and orders him to shut down any investigation of a conspiracy because it might lead to nuclear war. As soon as Oswald is assassinated, the FBI orders Wade to turn over all his investigative files to the FBI. At the same time, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and FBI Head J. Edgar Hoover both write secret memos and reports saying any further investigation must stop immediately. Lyndon Johnson gets Earl Warren and Sen. Richard Russel to join the Warren Commission by telling them that the assassination could lead to World War III. Johnson appoints former CIA Director Allan Dulles, who Kennedy had fired as a result of the CIA’s regime-change operation at the Bay of Pigs, to the Warren Commission, thereby guaranteeing that there will be no investigation of the CIA.

Then keep all the records secret for decades, when many people won’t care anymore who killed President Kennedy. And employ Operation Mockingbird-like journalistic assets in the private sector to flood the market with alternative “conspiracy theories” to confound and confuse the public. And smear anyone who questions the official narrative as a “communist sympathizer” or a “conspiracy theorist.”

The CIA’s cunning cover-up in the JFK assassination worked brilliantly. Thanks to President Trump and the CIA’s decision to continue keeping 98 percent of the CIA’s decades-long secret records secret from the American people, the CIA’s cunning cover-up of the JFK assassination continues to work brilliantly today.

See:

The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger

JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne

Regime Change: The JFK Assassination by Jacob Hornberger

The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State by Jacob Hornberger

CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files by Jefferson Morley

“The National Security State and JFK,” a FFF conference featuring Oliver Stone and ten other speakers

“Altered History: Exposing Deceit and Deception in the JFK Assassination Medical Evidence,” a five-part video by Douglas P. Horne

December 1, 2017 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Turkey issues arrest warrant for top CIA analyst over failed coup

MEMO | December 1, 2017

Turkey has issued an arrest warrant for the former vice-chairman of the CIA, Graham Fuller, over his alleged involvement in the 2016 failed coup.

The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office issued the arrest warrant today for the top US intelligence analyst as part of an ongoing investigation into the bloodiest coup in Turkish history that tried to overthrow the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Fuller was, reportedly, in Turkey during the coup attempt on 15 July, and left the country after the attempted military takeover. The warrant, according to Turkish news agencies, accuses Fuller of “attempting to overthrow the government of the Republic of Turkey and obstructing the duties of the Republic of Turkey.” Fuller is also alleged to have obtained “state information for military espionage purposes,” and “attempted to overthrow the constitutional order.”

Turkish authorities appear to have connected Fuller to a number of other figures with links to the failed coup. He is said to have been in contact with the American academic Henri Barkey, who also has an arrest warrant hanging over him.

According to the Turkish Hurriyet newspaper, Barkey is accused by prosecutors of organising and coordinating the coup attempt in a meeting on Istanbul’s Büyükada Island on 15-16 July 2016. Prosecutors claim that Fuller also participated in that meeting.

It’s reported that Fuller came to the attention of the Turkish authorities after a tip off from Russian intelligence agencies who claim to possess “concrete evidence that CIA agents commanded the failed coup attempt” and that Fuller and Barker had both attended the meeting on Büyükada.

Turkish officials also think that Fuller was instrumental in obtaining permanent US residency for the Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen who has been accused of being the mastermind behind the coup.

Read: Turkey to host international symposium on coups

 

December 1, 2017 Posted by | Deception | , , | Leave a comment

JFK at 100: The War on Our Heroes Part 2

By Kit | OffGuardian | November 21, 2017

In the first half of this article, published on JFK’s centenary, I discussed the general degradation of the intellectual and moral character of figurehead politicians, the concomitant societal decay, and whether or not this is a deliberate policy or a by-product of promoting sociopaths above their ability to function.

In this half we will re-examine the death of JFK, not just as a simple assassination, but as an act of psychic-warfare on the general populace, and explore the long-lasting effect on the American psyche.

A Nation of Hamlets

We’ve all become Hamlets in our country, children of a slain father-leader whose killers still possess the throne. The ghost of John F. Kennedy confronts us with the secret murder at the heart of the American Dream.”Jim Garrison – JFK

The death of Kennedy is a story that won’t go away, a splinter at the back of the American mind. Driving them mad. If a country can be compared to an individual, then a fallen king can be a dead parent. A father lost before his time. An adolescent trauma, rotting and unconfronted and repressed. Informing every moment, every decision.

The JFK obsession has been dismissed by some as nothing more than a cult of personality, a trite fetishising of the too-soon-departed, equivalent to the worship of Jim Morrison or Marilyn Monroe. But I see it as going deeper than that, somewhere behind the glitz and glamour of “Camelot” there was something more substantial. An idea. “And ideas are bullet proof”.

That, perhaps, explains the cultural push back against both investigation of the Kennedy assassination, and praise of his presidency. The man was killed over five decades ago, but the political establishment still feel the need to assassinate him. Over and over again.

He is portrayed as naive and arrogant for ignoring “experts” and getting involved in Vietnam. A spoilt rich kid whose father bought the election. A womanizing drug addict.

In this Guardian article, for example, published earlier this year to mark the centenary, the author makes reference to Kennedy’s extra-marital affairs, and criticises him for his “secret medical conditions” as if they are somehow relevant to his politics. The final two paragraphs are then given over to Kissinger’s biographer who proceeds to compare Kennedy, unfavourably, to Donald Trump:

The realities of the Kennedy White House are so extraordinarily scuzzy that Trump is a kind of saintly figure by contrast.”

For years now, from both sides of the right-left paradigm, there has been a steady effort to “fight back” against the “sanctified” picture of JFK. That particular charge has been led by Noam Chomsky, who is keen to paint JFK as just another politician. “Worse than Obama”, he says in this interview.

It’s obviously true that the election of Kennedy didn’t instantly and completely halt any and all military and covert operations, the world didn’t become a Coca Cola advert on January 20th 1961. But to lay that at the feet of the new President, when he was in the process of taking control of a highly secretive framework of machinery designed to promote war and chaos, and compartmentalise information, is disingenuous at best.

Yes, the Bay of Pigs invasion was a disaster – one that Kennedy is routinely blamed for – but that was planned under Eisenhower (even Chomsky admits that). Kennedy’s reticence to turn it into a full-scale war – which the military repeatedly pressured him to do – led to him being labeled “soft on communism”. He beheaded the CIA afterwards, forcing the resignation of Allen Dulles and several others.

And yes, the irresponsible and provocative placing of Jupiter missiles in Turkey led to the Cuban Missile Crisis – but it was Kennedy’s readiness to make a deal that prevented a near-miss from blooming into a mushroom cloud. One wonders how many modern presidents would have resolved that situation peacefully.

And, finally, yes, his administration carried on the Eisenhower era policies of arming the south Vietnamese – but Kennedy was committed to ending that support and to pulling out of Vietnam. This is an established fact. But for his assassination, there would have been no Vietnam war.

As an argument, the idea that Kennedy was nothing more than a proto-Obama, a smiling salesman in an expensive suit, would perhaps carry more weight if he hadn’t been murdered in public. Generally speaking, you don’t need to execute mascots and frontmen.

We are being asked to live in an insane world – one where we are expected to believe that the most influential act of political murder of the last 100 years happened for no reason at all. Kennedy wasn’t important. Kennedy didn’t stand for anything. Kennedy died for no reason.

The massive divergence between the established, allowable consensus and genuine weight of public opinion has driven a wedge into the American psyche. The Jungian collective mind is schizophrenic in America, driven insane by mass-cognitive dissonance. Every poll of the American people ever done on this topic, dating back to November 29th 1963, only a week after the shooting, has shown a clear majority believe in a conspiracy to kill their president. Public support for the “Lone Gunmen” theory has never surveyed at better than 30%.

Less than one in three people have ever believed the official narrative, but is that reality reflected in the media? Never. Films and documentaries and TV productions (with one noteworthy exception) routinely portray the assassination in the absurd terms laid down by the Warren commission. Attempting to undermine, straw-man or completely ignore any other interpretations.

Whether you view the President as the father of the nation, or the concept of democracy as the father of America, the US citizenry are reduced to a nation of Hamlets. Forced to watch their father die and his killer usurp the power that should, by right, be passed to them.

Cursed with the certain knowledge that their country is poisoned, their society sick. They try to pursue the truth, but are told by every voice they consider authority… that they are mad. To let it go.

Our heroes are stamped out before our eyes, and their ghosts cry out for justice we cannot provide. We want to act, but are deprived of the kind leadership that can coalesce angry people into a movement with direction and purpose. The media muddy the water and sow discord, whilst any voice that tries to rise above the din of distraction, to make us whole and just, is shut out. Locked up. Gunned down.

Of All Sad Words…

Here we are. Lyndon Johnson, more of the same. Nobody voted for him… It felt for a second like everything was about to change. Pete Campbell – Mad Men

The public execution of John Fitzgerald Kennedy is a watershed moment in the history, not just of America, but the world. Possibly the key moment of the entire 20th century. From that violent wellspring flowed Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and Bush. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

America, the ideal America described in the constitution, died on November 22nd 1963. It’s important to remember: Thing’s could have been so different.

At its heart, the American system of government is one of the fairest ever devised by man, the US Constitution one of most fair-minded and important pieces of legislation ever drafted. But from its founding as a nation America has been in a near-constant state of internal struggle. In the early days it was Jefferson vs. Hamilton, Democratic-Republicans vs Federalists. The push of central government against the rights of individual states. The idea of a stable cooperative vs the push to nationhood and, inevitably, empire. That same struggle exists in Europe today.

Slowly but surely, over the first two-hundred years of American existence, the ideals of the constitution were knocked-back, limited, qualified, in the push for more centralised power and the building of an Empire. States were forced through military might to stay in the Union against their will. It became America’s “manifest destiny” to commit genocide against Native Americans and steal their land.

Over time the American Imperialists fermented into what we call the Deep State. Interconnected families of enormous wealth and immeasurable economic influence, given complete monetary control after the founding of the Federal Reserve, and handed the reins of military and political power when Harry Truman signed the order that established the CIA. Truman declared, later in life:

I think [the creation of the CIA] was a mistake. And if I’d known what was going to happen, I never would have done it… Why, they’ve got an organization over there in Virginia now that is practically the equal of the Pentagon in many ways. And I think I’ve told you, one Pentagon is one too many.

In the decade following that order the CIA backed anti-democratic coups in Guatemala, Iran, and the Congo. Resulting in decades of oppression and millions of deaths. It set a pattern that would repeat right up to the present day.

This gluttonous pursuit of wealth and power was only ever held in check by constitutional safe-guards against out-right tyranny. A rivalry personified in the clash between Kennedy’s administration and the giants of the American intelligence community, Allen Dulles and J. Edgar Hoover. Kennedy’s assassination ended that rivalry, and ever since that day the barely controlled Imperialist drive has run rampant.

Consider everything that might have been different if the Kennedy side had won that struggle, if he had made good his alleged threat to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces”.

Firstly, and most obviously, there is Vietnam. The war that drove America mad. The prototype for all American “interventions” since, a war started on an absurd lie, fought brutally and inefficiently by a system more interested in selling helicopters than saving lives. From Vietnam flows Cambodia, Laos, Angola, Grenada, Iraq, the Balkans, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Libya and Syria. Five decades of Orwellian, perpetual warfare. Millions of lives destroyed. All started by that first domino, Vietnam.

Outside of overt warfare, there are covert actions. A tamed intelligence service could never have launched military coups in Ecuador, Brazil, Greece, Dominican Republic, Cambodia, Indonesia, Bolivia, Chile and Haiti. Without illegal and punitive sanctions, who knows how countries like Cuba, Venezuela and Libya would have fared.

Who knows what men like Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King would have achieved, if an emboldened and all-powerful intelligence community hadn’t gunned them down before our eyes.

Kennedy was in favour of universal health care along the lines of the NHS, he wanted to abandon the space race and cooperate with the Soviets on a mission to the moon. He pushed for black civil rights and de-segregation and signed into law the Equal Pay Act. He argued for nuclear disarmament and pushed the nuclear testing ban.

We’ll never know exactly what kind of world was taken from us all the day American democracy was destroyed and a coup government installed. It may have been not much better than this one, but how much worse could it be?

An Assault on the Public Mind

Power resides where men believe it resides; it’s a trick, a shadow on the wall, and a very small man can cast a very large shadow.” Varys – Game of Thrones

You will have realised by now that, when I discuss the JFK assassination, I talk about it as a deep-state operation. A conspiracy. To me that is the only rational reading of the evidence, and I have thought so ever since, aged 12, I first watched Oliver Stone’s fantastic film JFK. The evidence all points in one direction, a CIA-sponsored operation using an intelligence operative as a fall guy, who is then “liquidated” before his trial. To cling to the official story has been insane ever since Arlen Specter proposed the insulting “magic bullet theory”.

Far more interesting, and perhaps important, than the who and how of the case, is the why.

Let’s revisit JFK through the lens of a declining Empire, run entirely by psychopaths. Psychopaths, not just on an individual, but an institutional level. Battling alphabet agencies competing over influence, all placed under threat by Kennedy’s alleged desire to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the winds”, can become united in a need to remove said threat, and re-assert their authority.

In that light, the assassination of JFK can be seen as more than the political removal of an inconvenient man. If JFK represented, as he certainly has come to represent since his death, hope for a better society, then what does it say to society at large to blow his brains out in a public square?

There are much easier ways to remove a “difficult” politician than killing him. It’s far better to bring him to heel through pressure, or to buy him with bribes and favours. You can blackmail him with dirt or release the dirt and impeach him, as was done with Clinton. If he doesn’t respond to bribes, and has no dirt to dish, then you can bring pressure on his party to keep him from being nominated, as was done with Henry Wallace in the 1940s. You can fix primaries, as was done with Bernie Sanders only last year.

You can perform “soft coups”, hamstringing an administration with bureaucratic resistance whilst leaking sensitive material to a cooperative media – undermining the authority and credibility of the executive branch until it has no choice but to resign. As they did with Nixon and are attempting to do with Trump. The Falklands War and the Iran hostage situation were both used to secure public support for the “approved” candidates just before and after important elections. The 2000 and 2004 elections were outright fixed.

The deep state has evolved a long list of tactics for controlling who wears the public face of power. Assassinations are at the very bottom of this list. They are hard to do, difficult to cover up, and so damn final. That there is a general institutional reluctance to utilise assassination as a tool, not on moral but pragmatic grounds, is a logical conclusion based on the rarity of political assassinations in general.

Do not forget that JFK was killed in November ’63, he lad less a year of his first term left. Unseating him in 1964 would have been difficult, but doubtless easier than covering up a CIA-backed assassination for the next 54 years (and counting).

So why was he killed?

You can reason that his removal was a strong reaction, an almost reflexive autonomic rejection, of what the system deemed a strong, and immediate, threat. That he was, through whatever circumstances, immune to threats, unresponsive to pressure and impossible to bribe. That being the case, death becomes the only recourse.

This reasoning might explain the act, but not the method.

Generally speaking, murders aren’t committed in public. If murder becomes a practical solution to a political problem, there are far simpler means to that end than guns. Kennedy could fall down the stairs of the White House. His car could explode. His plane could crash. He was on pain meds for his back, an accidental overdose or “complication” would be easy enough to arrange. There would be dozens of times a week when the president was alone but for his security detail… anything can happen.

You could do whatever you wanted to the man in private, behind closed doors, then make up any story you wanted and beam it out on every channel. A horrible accident. A national tragedy. Now let’s invade Vietnam.

If your goal is simply his death, there’s a massive spectrum of possibilities available to you. Most of them offering a higher degree of secrecy than a rifle, all them requiring a smaller number of personnel.

There’s only one interpretation that fully explains all of this. One that lays open the thought process of the deep-state:

The man must be killed for questioning your authority, but he must also be SEEN to be killed, to reinforce that authority. It can be argued that the assassination was as much a message to the world as anything else. A public execution displays contempt for the victim, and conveys raw power to the witnesses.

Vercingetorix was paraded in chains at Caesar’s Triumph, before his eventual execution. Richard II lay in state after Henry IV had him starved to death. Saddam Hussein’s execution was “leaked” online. Gaddafi publicly raped to death.

Jesus, before his post-mortem PR team ret-conned him into a literal God, was an anti-Imperial rabble-rouser. A political revolutionary nailed to a tree to quieten talk of rebellion.

Power is an ephemeral concept, bestowed by the vast majority on to a tiny minority entirely through the process of belief. The only way to win power is to convince people you already have it. That is most easily done through displays of brutality and the nurturing of public fear. As medieval monarchs would mount heads on spikes, so do our new rulers terrorise us with the public execution of our chosen leaders.

Behold the head of a traitor, flying back and to the left.

November 21, 2017 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

RT, Sputnik and Media Censorship in America

OffGuardian | November 21, 2017

Just a few days ago RTAmerica was forced to register as a foreign agent in the United States. Using this designation as justification, Twitter and Facebook have now banned RT and Sputnik from advertising on their services. This is all over alleged Russian “interference” in the 2016 Presidential Election, for which there is still not a single piece of clear evidence.

This is the United States of America, where freedom of the press is literally one of the founding principles of the nation. They celebrate their freedom every time they’re forced to stand through their national anthem.

What would the press reaction have been if Russia had forced the BBC, for example, to register as a foreign agent?

In fact, how many American or European media outlets have ever been forced to register as foreign agents in “autocratic” Russia where Putin has allegedly “shut down the free press”?

Zero.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has operated in Russia and Eastern Europe for nearly 70 years. It’s an American destabilization programme. That’s not a “conspiracy theory”. It is acknowledged in the public record that RFE/RL was established by the State Dept. and the CIA in order to spread American propaganda behind the Iron Curtain. They have never been barred from operating in Russia.

Now, imagine it was on the public record that the FSB had founded RT. Imagine it was written into Sputnik’s mission statement that their job was to undermine the American government. Would they have been allowed to broadcast in the US? Would they have come anywhere NEAR 68 years of operation?

Look at the Moscow Times, a notionally Russian paper that is owned by a Finnish conglomerate and prints exclusively in English. It is routinely, even pathologically, critical of the Russian government. Would this situation ever be allowed to stand in reverse? If there were a newspaper calling itself The London Times, which was owned by a Venezuelan and printed nothing but anti-government stories, exclusively in Russian…would it be allowed to operate? Would people cite it as a decent source of information?

Look at CNN, where Anderson Cooper – ex-CIA “intern” – solemnly nods his way through autocues full of baseless propaganda. Repeating, verbatim, the statements of nameless “intelligence sources”, without analysis or question. Can you imagine if RT’s headline reporter had worked for the KGB? Luke Harding would have written a (very bad) book about it by now. Can you imagine if RT’s news crews had been caught, numerous times, literally faking news footage (several times)?

These double standards are never addressed or acknowledged in the “free press” of NATO aligned nations.

Radio Free Europe has a story covering Russia’s “tit-for-tat” sanctions on US media outlets. It is hilariously without irony.

They interview the American ambassador to Russia – Jon Huntsman – who says, with a straight face:

We just think the principles of free media in any free society and democracy are absolutely critical for strength and well-being…Freedom of speech is a part of that. That’s why we in the embassy care about the issue. That’s why we’re going to follow the work that is going on in the Duma and the legislation that is being drafted very, very carefully. Because we’re concerned about it.”

He defends America’s stance on RT, whilst attacking Russia’s counter moves, claiming America is sanctioning RT in the name of “transparency” and that:

That’s far different from designating somebody a foreign agent

The US Ambassador to Russia, apparently, needs some help keeping up with current events because “designating somebody a foreign agent” is exactly what the US government has done. For some reason the (funded by the CIA) editorial staff of RFE/RL don’t feel the need to correct him. Even though their headline from three days earlier completely contradicts him.

Apparently journalistic standards are only for other people. And state censorship of the media, like all other crimes against humanity, is OK when America does it.

November 21, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

JFK Files Reveal US Planned to Buy Soviet Planes to Carry Out False Flag Attacks

Sputnik – November 20, 2017

The recently released batch of files related to the Kennedy assassination includes a curious document revealing secret plans by the US government to purchase or build Soviet aircraft for the purpose of staging false flag attacks on the US or its allies, thus giving Washington the pretext it needed to go to war with Moscow or its allies.

According to the partially declassified document, a March 22, 1962 meeting attended by the Special Group Augmented (SGA), a high-level Kennedy administration committee charged with overthrowing the Cuban government, included a discussion on the different possibilities for obtaining Soviet planes.

The SGA group, which formally included Attorney General Robert Kennedy, CIA Director John McCone, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer, could also be attended by Secretary of State Dean Rusk and President Kennedy himself.

The document fragment lists various Soviet aircraft, including MiG-17 and MiG-19 fighters, as well as the Il-14 military cargo transport, and how much time and money it would take to reproduce them to withstand distant observation and/or up close examination. Another option, according to an analysis by the CIA cited by the document, was to try to obtain the planes via defecting pilots, or purchasing them from non-Soviet Bloc countries; these options were deemed problematic. The document also explains why the Soviet planes are so desirable, including their possible use to stage false flag attacks against the US to justify a US military response.

“There is a possibility that such aircraft could be used in a deception operation designed to confuse enemy planes in the air, to launch a surprise attack against enemy installations or in a provocation operation in which Soviet aircraft would appear to attack US or friendly installations in order to provide an excuse for US intervention,” the document reads.

Finally, the fragment explains that “if the planes were to be used in such covert operations, it would seem preferable to manufacture them in the United States.”

It’s not clear whether the document was connected to Operation Northwoods, a proposed Pentagon and Joint Chiefs of Staff false flag operation calling on the CIA and other agencies to stage terrorist attacks against US civilian and military targets and blame it on the Cuban government, thus justifying a war against Cuba. According to US political historian Robert Dallek, the idea within the Kennedy administration to manufacture or otherwise obtain the Soviet aircraft was hatched by CIA Director McCone.

November 20, 2017 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Google exec says new algorithm will suppress RT and Sputnik, ‘those kinds of sites’

Sputnik – 20.11.2017

Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, announced Saturday that the company will “engineer” algorithms that will make it harder for articles from Sputnik News and RT to appear on the Google News service.

“We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites — it’s basically RT and Sputnik,” Schmidt said during a question and answer session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada. “We are well of aware of it, and we are trying to engineer the systems to prevent [the content being delivered to wide audiences]. But we don’t want to ban the sites — that’s not how we operate.”

Schmidt’s response came after a guest in the audience asked the 62-year-old executive whether Google facilitated “Russian propaganda.” The comments were in relation to a larger discussion on the search engine’s Google News services which offers viewers a range of articles on certain topics.

Schmidt later noted that he was “very strongly not in favor of censorship,” but that instead he had faith in “ranking” stories. He did not comment on whether engineering a computer program to hide information could be seen as amounting to censorship.

Giving insight on the capabilities of the new algorithm, the official did indicate that it would be able to detect “repetitive, exploitative, false, and weaponized” information.

In response to Schmidt’s statement, RT’s Margarita Simonyan said, “Good to have Google on record as defying all logic and reason: facts aren’t allowed if they come from RT, ‘because Russia’ — even if we have Google on Congressional record saying they’ve found no manipulation of their platform or policy violations by RT.”

November 20, 2017 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

The Company We Sadly Keep

By Geoff Dutton | Progressive Pilgrim Review | October 25, 2107

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” ~ Upton Sinclair

A triple-threat epidemic is sweeping the land—not just some deadly virus, water-born disease, or auto-immune reactions to toxins, although those too plague us—but of secrecy, unaccountability, and impunity, bypassing checks and balances, impervious to any outside scrutiny or supervision. This cancer on the Republic has metastasized throughout halls of power and workplaces almost everywhere.

In the private sector, when you sign on as an “exempt” employee (mostly meaning you get paid a fixed annual salary without union or overtime), you may be required to agree to:

  • Have your communications, even keystrokes, monitored
  • Company-arranged arbitration in the event of a dispute
  • Be dismissed for any violation of company policies
  • Possibly take a drug test and/or a personality test
  • Hold the company blameless for any grievance against a fellow employee
  • Not work for any company offering similar products or services for some period of time.

That is to say, we make the rules here, and what happens in the company stays in the company. It’s no one else’s business how or why they’re applied.

It gets worse. Let’s say you separate from the company on bad terms, having been harassed or blocked from advancing or doing your job, or because you were the wrong age, sex or race, or just weren’t sufficiently docile. If you take it upstairs, file a grievance, or hire a lawyer, eventually you may be offered a sum to settle the matter. In return, you must agree not to disclose terms of settlement or publicly allege abuse or misconduct. As we’ve been told, whatever Ailes, O’Reilly, and Weinstein affairs were “resolved” involved no admissions of culpability and gagging and binding the plaintiffs. Impervious to decency, justice, or shame, they have you by the gonads. Proving that you were wronged and then obtaining justice is a long, agonizing, and expensive process. Most people have better things to do with their time and money, something employers bank on.

Depending on where you work and what you do, it can get much, much worse. If you work for the federal government directly, as a contractor or an employee thereof, as a condition of employment you may be asked to sign a secrecy agreement, an offer you can’t refuse and an oath you cannot later renege. Such paper handcuffs first flowered in the idyllic 1950s, that post-war paradise of Leave-It-to-Beaver families in spanking new suburbs and lifetime jobs in unionized workplaces. To forestall leaks, spy agencies exacted them from employees who knew or might know state secrets. The higher the classification of content involved, the more draconian were the potential consequences for disclosure. The chances of leaks from today’s vast assemblages of classified materials in networked environments have multiplied manifold since then. Among other things, this implies a need to swear to secrecy any employee within two or three degrees of separation from someone who handles classified documents, such as the IT geeks and the receptionist.

Secrecy agreements are confidentiality agreements on steroids. Ironclad. Undoable. Not availing of congressional or judicial redress. And should you pester an I.G. with documentation of the organization’s illegal, harmful, or unconstitutional activities, any evidence you present on your behalf is likely to vanish from public scrutiny forever. It’s all set up so you can’t refuse and they can never lose. Item 8 of the standard Federal secrecy agreement (Standard Form 312; there are others) states “Unless and until I am released in writing by an authorized representative of the United States Government, I understand that all conditions and obligations imposed upon me by this Agreement apply during the time I am granted access to classified information, and at all times thereafter.” (emphasis added). It also advises “nothing in this Agreement constitutes a waiver by the United States of the right to prosecute me for any statutory violation.”

The statutes cited are sections 641, 793, 794, 798, 952 and 1924, title 18, United States Code; the provisions of section 783(b}, title 50, United States Code; and the provisions of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. Also noted is section 4(b) of the infamous Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 (the McCarran Act), which has ruined many lives. After Harry Truman vetoed it (calling it “the greatest danger to freedom of speech, press, and assembly since the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798,” a “mockery of the Bill of Rights” and a “long step toward totalitarianism,”) Congress overrode the veto 286-48 and 57-10. Where were all the other lawmakers that fine September day, one might ask? Burning their ACLU membership cards?

* * *

By now, hundreds of thousands if not millions of workers have been coercively bound by secrecy agreements. Artfully, from Allen Dulles on, the capos and consiglieres of the security state insinuated their racket into military and civilian agencies and critical contractors, salting their ranks with spooks. Expanding their territory, of course, multiplied the number of workers privy to their operations. Given that any of these people might be inclined or induced to reveal mob activities, how to silence them? Simple; bind their lips as soon as they get involved with secrecy agreements. If any balk at that, use subtle means of persuasion like reassigning them to the boondocks, skipping them over for promotion, or threatening to have their heads examined.

Former high-ranking CIA analyst and covert operative Kevin Shipp came forward in 2010 with details on the shadow government of the deep state that intelligence agencies control, and how they manage to control Congress as well. A summary of Shipp’s recent presentation at a Geoengineering Watch assembly in ZeroHedge states:

… that there are “over 10,000 secret sites in the U.S.” that formed after 9/11. There are “1,271 secret government agencies, 1,931 large private corporations [involved with the spy agencies] and over 4,800,000 Americans that he knows of who have a secrecy clearance, and 854,000 who have Top Secret clearance, explaining they signed their lives away bound by an agreement.

The video of Shipp’s talk is an hour long, but worth watching.

What turned Shipp into a transparency activist, of all things, was toxic mold in a house the CIA put him and his family into while on assignment at Camp Stanley, an Army weapons depot near San Antonio. As detailed in a 2011 NYT story, the Shippses got sick and filed a wrongful harm lawsuit against the Agency that they predictably lost, and not long afterward he was drummed out after 25 years a spook. Shipp claims that his phone and house continue to be bugged and he is constantly followed when driving. (Incidentally, the only other NYT story to mention Mr. Shipp came in 2014. It identified Camp Stanley as a major CIA weapons depot that had supplied arms and ammunition for the Bay of Pigs and other CIA terrorist operations. More recently, it said, “the Army sought to purchase two million rounds of ammunition of the caliber that fits AK-47 rifles, which American soldiers do not use. The delivery address: Camp Stanley.”). The Times doesn’t seem interested in covering what Shipp has been saying about his former employer more recently. Some news is not fit to print.

* * *

One would think that out of all the ears and eyeballs privy to dicey classified programs more lips might loosen. But any insider bent on exposing misdeeds will soon find out that whistleblower protections are a farce; complaining about illegal activities to elected representatives or an I.G. can lead to harassment that can last for the rest of one’s life. In whistleblower lawsuits, the government can invoke the non-statutory State Secrets Privilege (I would call it the Secret State Privilege) to exclude evidence or dismiss the complaint entirely, and has done so about once a year since 1953. For more ugly details about how the Secret State silences whistleblowers, see Shipp’s communique to Geoengineering Watch two years ago.

As a further deterrent to truth-telling, Obama’s 2011 Executive order 13587 tasked all Federal agencies and associated contractors with implementing Insider Threat Programs (ITP) to identify, monitor, and profile potential leakers of secret information. TechDirt reported that when Senator Chuck Grassley asked the head of the ITP whether the program protects whistleblowers, he was assured that it does; to avoid being swept up, they simply need to “register” before blowing. I can hear it now: “Oh sure, Mr. Snowden, go right ahead. We’re sure you mean no harm.”

The Secret State (or as Shipp calls it, the Shadow Government) takes such extreme precautions because it needs its activities to remain invisible and deniable. Of course, this is what rulers and regimes have done since time immemorial. And to do this effectively requires a vast panopticon to oversee its minions and identify potential troublemakers; secret police, basically, such as the USSR’s KGB, East Germany’s Stasi, Turkey’s MIT, Syria’s GID, and so on. It’s simply the price of doing business as a cloaked agency. All this surveillance is costly, but the good news is you get more bang for your security buck nowadays. Thanks to the technology of illicit eavesdropping and cooperative agreements with the likes of AT&T and Google, the Internet and mobile networks make this ambitious task a piece of cake.

Aesop said “a man is known by the company he keeps.” CIA people call their agency The Company. Twelve US Presidents have not only kept it, they have allowed it to metastasize into a hideous monstrosity rampaging out of control. Of them, only John F. Kennedy threatened to dismantle it, and look what happened to him.

November 19, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »