Turkey’s intelligence organization foils Mossad attempt to kidnap Palestinian Iron Dome hacker
A view of the headquarters of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) in the capital Ankara on January 5, 2020.
Press TV -November 22, 2023
Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has rescued a renowned Palestinian hacker from the Israeli Mossad spy agency seeking to kidnap or possibly kill him.
MIT rescued Omar A, who was behind the disruption of Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system in 2015 and 2016, in an international operation and offered him protection as he was targeted by Mossad in Turkey and Malaysia.
The young Gazan hacker was sought by the Israeli regime for a long time after his hacking of the Iron Dome helped al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, launch missile strikes against Israel at the time.
Omar, a computer programming graduate of the Islamic University of Gaza, moved to Istanbul in 2020 after Mossad identified him as the one behind the disruptions. MIT was aware of his residence in Turkey due to his background as a hacker.
In an attempt to deceive him, Mossad offered him jobs at software companies several times but Omar, suspicious of Israel’s involvement, rejected the offers.
Omar was about to accept to join a team for an online project in June 2022 and to travel abroad for the project as Mossad was intent on taking him to Tel Aviv for interrogation. But MIT contacted him and warned him against the scheme.
The Palestinian hacker decided to take a vacation in Malaysia in September 2022. The Istanbul branch of MIT’s counter-intelligence department intervened again and installed tracking software on his cellphone after warning him against a possible abduction while abroad.
Indeed, he was kidnapped days later in Kuala Lumpur and was taken to a remote cabin some 50 kilometers (31.06 miles) from the Malaysian capital.
There, he was interrogated and tortured by suspects working for Mossad and was questioned on the methods he employed to infiltrate Iron Dome.
When MIT became aware of the abduction, Turkish officials contacted Malaysian authorities and through tracking software, helped them pinpoint the location where Omar was held.
Malaysian security forces raided the house and rescued Omar. Eleven suspects were arrested in connection with his abduction. Omar returned to Turkey and was taken to a safe house provided by MIT.
Turkey’s MIT has earlier uncovered similar Mossad plots to spy on Palestinians in the country.
Back in July, Turkish authorities said they had uncovered and disrupted a vast “ghost” Mossad spy network centered in Istanbul, following months of surveillance.
The substantial efforts by Turkey’s MIT exposed 56 operatives allegedly spying on non-Turkish citizens in Turkey in the service of Mossad.
The vast network consisted of citizens from various West Asian countries.
The findings by MIT revealed that the Mossad agents would gather information about foreigners through various surveillance methods, vehicle movements using GPS, and hacking into password-protected networks using Wi-Fi and location tracking devices.
These Mossad spies also used several fake websites in multiple languages, mainly Arabic, to secure technical locations and real IP addresses of the targeted individuals.
Also in May, Turkish media outlets reported that local authorities had managed to arrest 11 people accused of being part of a Mossad-led network.
Turkey has also broken Mossad-aligned spy rings in 2022 and 2021.
Kennedy Assassination: “CIA-Did-It” Theorists Are Covering for Israel
BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 17, 2023
Dick Russell’s recent biography, The Real RFK Jr.: Trials of a Truth Warrior, contains two chapters on RFK Jr.’s quest for truth on the assassinations of his father and uncle.[1] Here is an excerpt from chapter 28:
He was approaching his midfifties when, in 2008, while preparing to give an environmental talk at the Franciscan Monastery in Niagara, New York, Bobby [RFK Jr.] found a copy of a just-published book “on my greenroom table, left as an anonymous gift for me.” It was titled JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by Catholic theologian James W. Douglass. Bobby found the book “a fascinating and meticulous dissection of the circumstances surrounding the assassination.” Bobby spent a lot of time examining Douglass’s thorough footnotes. He noted “the extraordinary analysis implicated rogue CIA operatives connected to the Cuban project and its Mob cronies.” Bobby was impressed enough to send the book to President Kennedy’s speechwriter Ted Sorenson [Sorensen], who wrote him back in 2010: “It sat on a table for two weeks and then I picked it up. And once I started I couldn’t put it down. And you know for so many years none of us who were close to Jack could handle ever looking at this stuff and all of the conspiracy books. Well, it seemed that nothing they had would stand up in court. All of us were, you know, ‘it won’t bring Jack back.’ But I read this and it opened my eyes and it opened my mind and now I’m going to do something about it.” Sorenson said he’d spoken to the author and planned to write a foreword for the paperback edition. “Thanks for getting the ball rolling,” he wrote Bobby. However, Sorenson later told Douglass that his wife and daughter had persuaded him that his association with Jack had always been about the president’s life and he should leave it at that. Sorenson died soon after that. Bobby himself “embarked on the painful project of reading the wider literature on the subject.”[2]
I have quoted this paragraph at length because it illustrates the remarkable impact of James Douglass’s book, JFK and the Unspeakable, published in 2008. With the endorsement of some of the most prominent JFK-assassination researchers, including film-maker Oliver Stone, it has become the Gideon’s Bible of every JFK amateur. It is representative of the dominant school — I’ll call them the CIA-theorists — but the author, a longtime Catholic peace activist with a big heart and a poetic mind, gives his book a spiritual flavor, lifting the story to mythical, even mystical level. It is the story of a man who “turned” from Cold Warrior to peacemaker (during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis), and saved the world from nuclear Armageddon; a man who saw death approaching, but lived up to his ideal of nuclear disarmament, and became immortal. A heroic peacemaker. A Christ, almost.
The basic storyline of the book is questionable. According to Jim DeEugenio , there was no “conversion”, because Kennedy had never been a Cold Warrior, despite his rhetoric in the 1960 campaign.[3] Other specifics in Douglass’s narrative, such as the two-Oswald scenario (borrowed from Richard Popkins’s 1966 book The Second Oswald), have also received criticism. Nevertheless, Douglass is praised for having defended the CIA-theory with unprecedented talent, and explained in eloquent terms “why it matters.”
What’s wrong with Douglass?
I was impressed by Douglass’s book when I first read it in 2011. It set me on the most fascinating intellectual quest, and I am grateful for that. I found a French publisher and helped with the translation.[4] But, within a year, as I became familiar with part of Douglass’s bibliography and explored other lines of inquiry, I became aware of the book’s shortcomings, and puzzled by them. Two thick files are missing entirely from Douglass’s material: Johnson and Israel. This is a common characteristic of most works aimed at indicting the CIA, such as Oliver Stone’s recent documentary written by DiEugenio, which I have reviewed here.
I also find the structure of Douglass’s book artful: interweaving Oswald’s story, to prove that he was handled by the CIA, and Kennedy’s story, to prove that the CIA hated him, maintains a constant sense of correlation between those two stories, and it does constitute strong circumstantial evidence that the CIA was involved in the assassination, but it does not prove that the masterminds of the assassination were in the CIA. Far from it.
First of all, what CIA are we talking about? Certainly not the CIA that CIA director John McCone (appointed by Kennedy) knew about. Most CIA-theorists agree that the CIA’s strings attached to Oswald came from the office of Counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton. In the words of John Newman, a respected CIA-theorist, “No one else in the Agency had the access, the authority, and the diabolically ingenious mind to manage this sophisticated plot.”[5] But Angleton was certainly not “the CIA.” Rather, as Peter Dale Scott wrote, he “managed a ‘second CIA’ within the CIA.”[6] According to his biographer Jefferson Morley, Angleton operated on his own initiative, sealed from scrutiny and free of any accountability; his supervisor, Richard Helms, “let Angleton do as he pleased, few questions asked,” McCone had no idea what Angleton was doing. Another biographer, Tom Mangold, notes that Angleton’s Counterintelligence Staff “had its very own secret slush fund, which Angleton tightly controlled,” an arrangement “which gave Angleton a unique authority to run his own little operations without undue supervision.”[7] In fact, Angleton was regarded by many of his peers as a madman whose paranoid obsession with uncovering Soviet moles did great damage to the Agency. The only reason why he was not fired before 1974 (by director William Colby) is because he kept too many files on too many people.
It is inconceivable that Angleton directed the whole operation. But if he was not following orders from Richard Helms — and there is not a single piece of evidence that Helms knew of the assassination —, under whose direction or influence was he operating? That is an easy one: besides Counterintelligence, Angleton headed the “Israeli Desk”, and he had more intimate contacts with the hierarchy of the Mossad than with his own. He loved Israelis as much as he hated Communists — apparently believing that one man could not be both. Meir Amit, head of Mossad from 1963 to 1968, called him “the biggest Zionist” in Washington, while Robert Amory, head of the CIA Directorate of Intelligence, called him a “co-opted Israeli agent.”[8] While Angleton was disgraced in the U.S. after his forced resignation, he was honored in Israel. After his death in 1987, according to the Washington Post, five former heads of Mossad and Shin Bet and three former Israeli military intelligence chiefs were present “to pay final tribute to a beloved member of their covert fraternity.” Among the services he rendered Israel, “Angleton reportedly aided Israel in obtaining technical nuclear data.”[9]
Douglass never mentions Angleton’s Israeli connection. He never mentions Jack Ruby’s Israeli connection either, although Seth Kantor had made them very clear in his book Who Was Jack Ruby? written in 1978. For Douglass, he is just “CIA-connected nightclub owner Jack Ruby.”[10] Only by scrutinizing the endnotes can we learn his real name, Jacob Rubenstein (doesn’t sound so Sicilian anymore). Ruby was not “Mafia”. Like his mentor Mickey Cohen, he was connected to both Meyer Lansky (boss of the Jewish Crime Syndicate), and Menahem Begin (former Irgun terrorist in chief).
Finally, Douglass, like most CIA-theorists, keeps Johnson out of the loop, ignoring the evidence accumulated through 50 years of research that Johnson was in full control before, during and after Kennedy’s assassination. How could Douglass miss Johnson? First, by not asking the most important question: How did they kill Kennedy? In other words: “Why Dallas, Texas?” Texas was a hostile state for Kennedy (“We’re heading into nut country,” Kennedy said to Jackie), but it was Johnson’s kingdom, and Johnson knew all Kennedy-haters there. At the very least, there is no way around the premise that the conspirators knew in advance that Johnson would cover them. But Douglass got around it.
I say “Dimona”, you say “Auschwitz”
Having corresponded with Douglass for the translation, I shared my concerns with him by email and letter. First, I advised him to read Phillip Nelson’s book LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK’s Assassination (2010), and encouraged him to reconsider Johnson’s role. He answered that he bought Nelson’s book, but didn’t find it convincing, without elaborating.
Later, I questioned Douglass about his silence over Kennedy’s determination to forestall Israel’s nuclear ambitions. Kennedy’s effort to lead the world towards general nuclear disarmament is the central and most inspiring theme in Douglass’s book. Kennedy’s resolute opposition to Israel’s secret nuclear bomb factory is the most dramatic manifestation of that effort. For what reason, then, did Douglass choose not to mention it? I asked him in an interview for the French website Reopen 9/11, and in a long, personal letter. In the interview, Douglass answered: “I have found no convincing evidence that Israel was involved in the Kennedy assassination. The story I wrote is about the reasons for his death. For Israel to be included in this story, Kennedy’s resistance to Israel’s nuclear weapons program would have to be linked to the plot against his life.” By letter, he responded to my arguments with a personal testimony of how Jewish writer André Schwarz-Bart, author of the novel The Last of the Just, “helped to liberate me from the Christendom that has so murderous a heritage, and to introduce me to a Jewish perspective that I needed to see from within a boxcar approaching Auschwitz.” From there he stated that he does not work on the assumption of Israel’s responsibility in the Kennedy assassination, 9/11, or any other crime.
His justification struck me as irrelevant and irrational, yet very revealing. If I say “Dimona,” Douglass says “Auschwitz,” implying, I suppose, that Jews should not be suspected of guilt in the JFK assassination since they are, by essence, innocent victims. Or was I to understand that just mentioning Dimona would risk hurting the Jews, who already suffered so much from the hands of Christians? Or that the word “Dimona” has anti-Semitic overtones? Whatever the reason, the troubling fact is that Douglass decided to omit from his book anything that could suggest any complicity of Israel with “the Unspeakable”. We can say about Douglass what Stephen Green wrote about LBJ after 1963: “he saw no Dimona, heard no Dimona, and spoke no Dimona.”[11]
I would not normally share the content of personal letters, but I made an exception because Douglass’s reference to Shwarz-Bart is not confidential (he wrote articles about him), and because it is of public interest, as a candid explanation for the censorship that CIA-theorists consistently impose on themselves regarding Israel in general, and Dimona in particular.
Self-censorship can be strategically justifiable. For example, living in France, I do not openly profess my heretical beliefs on the Holocaust, in order to avoid being put in jail by the powerful French Inquisition. So I can also conceive that Douglass would censor himself as a strategy to minimize the risk of being banned by publishers, and to maximize readership. This is not what Douglass told me, but if this is nevertheless the real reason, I can even agree that it was worth it, since Douglass’s book converted RFK Jr. and other influential people to the falsehood of the official theory.
However, it is one thing to avoid a topic altogether, and another to write a book pretending to have solved once and for all the Kennedy assassination, while concealing the facts that may point to a different solution. It is actually worse than that: Douglass kept silent on Kennedy’s angst over Dimona even though it would have reinforced his main thesis about Kennedy’s determination to stop and reverse nuclear proliferation. For some reason, Douglass made sure he didn’t give his readers the slightest chance to start imagining that Israel had any part in Kennedy’s problem with “the Unspeakable”. Which has led me to say that Israel is the truly unspeakable in JFK and the Unspeakable, and which motivated me to write The Unspoken Kennedy Truth.
The CIA-theory as a shield for Israel
In this article, I will explain in some detail why the CIA-theory is wrong. By the CIA-theory, I do not mean the theory that high-ranking officers of the CIA were involved (I believe that to be the case). I mean the theory that a core group of CIA executives, with a few military top brass, masterminded and orchestrated the assassination. To the question “Who Killed JFK?” we can of course include both the CIA and the Mossad, as well as the FBI, the Pentagon, the Mafia, Cuban exiles, Texan oil barons, and what have you. But the important question is: Which group was the prime mover? Who had conceived the plot long before others were brought into it? Who was leading, or misleading, all others involved? Who, in the distribution of tasks on a need-to-know principle, knew the global scheme? Not who pulled the trigger, but who pulled the main ropes? As we will see, the answer cannot be the CIA. It cannot be Angleton, and it cannot even be Johnson.
I express my gratitude for the work of the dozens of researchers who built up the case against the CIA from the 1960s. Some of them are heroic. They have accumulated enough evidence to prove the conspiracy and the cover-up beyond a reasonable doubt. That is a great success. However, their general CIA-theory must now be recognized as a failure. It was a false lead from the start. Vince Salandria, one of the earliest critique of the Warren Commission (his first article was published in the Legal Intelligence in 1964), held as a teacher by many JFK investigators and by Douglass himself (who dedicated his book to him), became disillusioned by his own CIA-theory, saying frankly to Gaeton Fonzi in 1975: “I’m afraid we were misled. All the critics, myself included, were misled very early. … the interests of those who killed Kennedy now transcend national boundaries and national priorities. No doubt we are dealing now with an international conspiracy.”[12]
The CIA-theory, I will argue, serves as a cover for the real perpetrators, like the KGB-theory. The KGB-theory quickly fell apart because it was meant to and because it contains no truth whatsoever, while the CIA-theory is more resistant because it has some truth. The CIA is deeply compromised, but the masterminds were somewhere else. They needed the CIA to be compromised enough for the U.S. government to be forced to cover the whole affair. At the same time, they use the CIA-theory to shield their own group from suspicion. That is why Israeli sayanim working in the news, book or movie industries have diligently kept the CIA-story alive in public opinion. This was pre-planned limited hangout. In “Did Israel kill the Kennedys?” I have given examples of Zionist agents planting signposts to direct the skeptics towards the CIA and the Mafia (rather than the Mossad and the Mishpucka). The classic example is Arnon Milchan, producer of Oliver Stone’s film JFK released, who, by his own admission, acted as a secret Israeli agent working to boost Israel’s nuclear program — it’s always about Dimona. Another example, which had previously escaped me, is the New York Times revealing on April 25, 1966 that Kennedy “said to one of the highest officials of his administration that he wanted ‘to splinter the C.I.A. in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds,’” an untraceable statement that has now become one of the most quoted by CIA-theorists, who, in this case, show blind confidence in the reliability of the New York Times.[13]
An additional proof that the leading CIA-theorists are less interested in searching for the truth than in covering for Israel’s crimes came to me a two weeks ago, in the form of an email from Benjamin Wecht, son of Cyril Wecht and program administrator for the annual symposium on the JFK assassination organized by Citizens Against Political Action (CAPA) at the Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law of Dusquesne University, Pittsburg:
I’m writing to inform you that the poster you’ve proposed for presentation here next month has been rejected, as it fails to meet the academic standards of this institution and, moreover, espouses a position that we feel would be particularly inflammatory – if not outright disruptive – at this time and in this place. Our partnering organization, Citizens Against Political Assassinations, is in full concurrence with our decision.
This was in response to a submission that Karl Golovin and I sent for the “poster session” of the upcoming symposium organized on the occasion of the 60th anniversary (see our poster at the end of this article, and get it in high-resolution here). Considering the speciousness of Wecht’s denial or my “academic standards,” and considering his position that accusing Israel of the crime of the century is “inflammatory” and “disruptive”, I think it is fair to call Wecht and the organization he represents shameless gatekeepers for Israel. Ultimately, accusing Oswald and accusing the CIA of the crime of the century both serve the same purpose. Which explains why CAPA’s chairman Cyril Wecht, the forensic pathologist tirelessly denouncing the lie of the “single bullet,” was a friend of Arlen Specter, the inventor of that lie, whom he helped become U.S. senator in 2004.[14]
Did Johnson foil the CIA plan?
To understand why the CIA-theory is wrong, we have to start with its biggest inconsistency. Almost unanimously, from Mark Lane to James Douglass, CIA-theorists assume that the assassination was conceived as a false-flag operation to blame Castro and/or the Soviets, and to justify retaliation against them.
This is a natural assumption, based on two facts. First, Oswald was clearly set up as a pro-Castro communist. The scheme included the visits and telephone calls by an Oswald impersonator to both the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City in late September and early October 1963. The day following Kennedy’s assassination, television networks and national newspapers presented the assumed assassin as a “Pro-Castro Marxist.”[15]
Secondly, we know that invading Cuba to topple Castro’s pro-Soviet regime was the CIA’s obsession since the late 50s. Under officers like E. Howard Hunt, the CIA organized, funded and trained some of the hundreds of thousands of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami. As a result, “the CIA’s presence in Miami grew to overwhelming dimensions,” wrote investigative journalist Gaeton Fonzi. “And as pervasive as that presence was before the Bay of Pigs, it was but a prelude to a later, larger operation.”[16] After the Bay of Pigs (April 1961), “a massive and, this time, truly secret war was launched against the Castro regime,” code named JM/WAVE, and involving “scores of front operations throughout the area,” as well as planes, ships, warehouses of weapons, and paramilitary training camps. Even after the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962), when Kennedy pledged not to invade Cuba, the anti-Castro Cubans on the CIA payroll tried to provoke incidents with Cuba. In April 1963, for example, the paramilitary group Alpha 66 attacked Soviet ships in order “to publicly embarrass Kennedy and force him to move against Castro,” in the words of Alpha 66’s CIA adviser David Atlee Phillips.[17]
Those two facts — the patsy’s pro-Castro profile designed by the CIA, and the CIA’s anti-Castro war plans — lead to the too obvious inference that the purpose of the Dallas shooting was to forge a false pretext for retaliating against Cuba. That theory has become so dominant in JFK research that most conspiracy-minded people consider it as proven beyond doubt.
However, it has one major flaw: there was no invasion of Cuba following Kennedy’s assassination. This fact is embarrassing for CIA-theorists. Although they don’t like to put it this way, it means that the CIA plan failed. If the conspirators believed that setting up Oswald, a documented supporter of Fidel Castro with links to the Soviet Union, would result in a full-scale war against Cuba, they must have been terribly disappointed. James Douglass credits Lyndon Johnson for defeating their plan:
The CIA’s case scapegoated Cuba and the U.S.S.R. through Oswald for the president’s assassination and steered the United States toward an invasion of Cuba and a nuclear attack on the U.S.S.R.. However, LBJ did not want to begin and end his presidency with a global war.[18]
To Johnson’s credit, he refused to let the Soviets take the blame for Kennedy’s murder; to his discredit, he decided not to confront the CIA over what it had done in Mexico City. Thus, while the secondary purpose of the assassination plot was stymied, its primary purpose was achieved.[19]
Indeed, from November 23, Johnson worked the phone to smother the rumor of a Communist conspiracy, and started hand-picking the members of the Warren Commission with the express mission of proving the lone-nut theory in order to avoid a nuclear war that would kill “40 millions Americans in an hour” (Johnson’s leitmotiv). Johnson never seems to have contemplated invading Cuba. He kept Kennedy’s promise to Castro and Khrushchev not to do so — a promise which the CIA regarded as an act of treason. In short, according to Douglass, Johnson was not part of the conspiracy, he actually frustrated the conspirators who had bet on his following their script. Johnson couldn’t save Kennedy, but he saved us from WWIII. And he saved the conspirators as well: no one was fired.
That is simply not credible. How can someone working on JFK’s assassination so casually exclude LBJ from the suspects, when he should be the prime suspect in terms of motive (the presidency), means (the vice-presidency) and opportunity (Dallas). Just consider the little known fact, revealed by Dallas Parkland Hospital Dr. Charles Crenshaw in his book Conspiracy of Silence (1992), that Johnson called the hospital while Dr. Crenshaw was trying to save Oswald’s life, and insisted that he leave the operating room and come to the phone, while an unknown agent with a pistol hanging from his back pocket was left with Oswald. “Dr. Crenshaw,” said Johnson on the phone, “I want a deathbed confession from the accused assassin. There’s a man in the operating room who will take the statement. I will expect full cooperation in this matter.” The important word, here, is “death,” as Dr. Crenshaw understood. When he came back to the operating room, the agent had disappeared and Oswald’s heart stopped beating. It is clear that Johnson wanted Ruby’s job finished. Despite such outrageous direct interference of Johnson, CIA-theorists claim that Johnson was not involved in the conspiracy, but only in the cover-up.
Douglass’s storyline in a nutshell, again: The CIA assassinated Kennedy under the false flag of Communist Cuba, with the presupposition that Johnson was going to retaliate against it. They worked the media to that effect (because, you know, the CIA controls the media). But Johnson, though taken by surprise on November 22, quickly reacted the next day and took control of all investigations and even of media coverage, to defeat the CIA plan.
It must have been infuriating for the CIA to be cheated of their Cuban invasion after all they had gone through — the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Cuban Missile “appeasement”, and the trouble of assassinating the president. Wouldn’t they want to assassinate Johnson, now? And yet, there is no sign of tension between Langley and the Oval Office after November 1963. We are asked to believe that the CIA, totally disarmed by Johnson’s unexpected reaction, instantly surrendered and went along with the useless, absurd lone-nut theory, even participating in defeating their own painfully staged false-flag. Allen Dulles himself, the CIA director fired by Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs, joined the Warren Commission tasked by Johnson to quench rumors of a Communist plot. The mainstream media quickly fell in line and the Communist conspiracy disappeared entirely from the news (where is Mockingbird when you need it?).
Think about it and reach your own conclusion as to how credible this scenario is. It comes down to this: Do you think the conspirators’ plan failed or that it succeeded? If it succeeded, then it was not the CIA’s plan as CIA-theorists see it. It was someone else’s plan.
The invisible coup
Why would the CIA want to kill Kennedy, anyway? Why not simply make him lose the election in 1964. Surely the CIA had the means to do that, if their control of the media was as great as CIA-theorists tell us. Did the CIA have an urgent need to kill Kennedy, that could not wait one year? No. In a campaign year, Kennedy wasn’t going to do anything that could give his enemies a reason to call him a Communist appeaser. Regarding Vietnam for example, he told Kenny O’Donnell: “If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have another Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands, but I can do it after I’m reelected. So we had better make damned sure that I am reelected.”[20] He did sign, on October 11, 1963, a cautious executive order NSAM 263 for the withdrawal of “1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963” and “by the end of 1965 … the bulk of U.S. personnel,”[21] but if Kennedy was defeated electorally in 1964, that executive order would be of little consequence. It was, anyway, trashed by Johnson. As Ron Unz has recently repeated,
most of the different groups that wanted to get rid of [Kennedy] would just have waited and concentrated on political means, and that includes Dulles. This included using their media contacts to damage him politically. The only two that desperately needed to get rid of him immediately were LBJ, whom he was about to drop from the ticket and destroy politically, and Israel, because of the immediate efforts to eliminate their nuclear development program at Dimona. That’s why LBJ and Israel are the overwhelmingly logical suspects.
Research on the JFK assassination must start from the premise that it was a coup d’état. CIA-theorists tend to minimize the primal fact that the assassination resulted in a change of president. So let’s repeat the obvious: whoever assassinated Kennedy wanted to put Johnson in power. That is why defeating Kennedy electorally was not an option: Johnson would have fallen with Kennedy (his epic corruption was to be exposed anyway). Kennedy’s death was Johnson’s only chance to become president — and, perhaps, to avoid prison. But Johnson could not do it alone, so let me rephrase: Kennedy’s death was the only way for the conspirators to make Johnson president.
Can we identify those conspirators? If they needed Johnson as president in 1963, they must be the ones who blackmailed Kennedy into taking Johnson as vice-president in 1960. “I was left with no choice, those bastards were trying to frame me,” Kennedy once confided to Hyman Raskin to justify his choice of Johnson, despite strong opposition from his team, especially his brother Robert.[22] Among the “bastards” was Washington Post columnist Joseph Alsop, who considered himself “one of the warmest American supporters of the Israeli cause,” according to the New York Times obituary. We know from Arthur Schlesinger Jr. that Kennedy made his decision after a closed-door conversation with Alsop and his boss Philip Graham.[23] After Kennedy’s assassination, Alsop was the first to urge Johnson to set up a presidential commission to convince the public that Oswald acted alone. His argument was: “you do not wish to inflict on the Attorney General, the painful task of reviewing the evidence concerning his own brother’s assassination.”[24]
In 1960, the “bastards” needed to put Johnson behind Kennedy’s back, so that if and when necessary, they could knock Kennedy out and have Johnson step into the Oval Office. The purpose of the Kennedy assassination had nothing to do with Cuba; it was simply to replace Kennedy with Johnson. That is all it was supposed to do, and that is all it did. It was a success, not a failure.
It had to be an “invisible coup” so that Americans could be persuaded that nothing would change except the president, and that, under new circumstances, Johnson would act as Kennedy would have acted. There was one thing that Johnson reversed, but Americans did not see it until thirty years later. It concerned U.S. relations with Israel and with Israel’s enemies. Johnson was absolutely indispensable, not for the CIA, but for Israel: no other president would have gone as far as Johnson to support Israel’s invasion of Egypt and Syria in 1967. No other American president, not even Truman, would have let Israel get away with the USS Liberty massacre. Johnson not only let them get away, he helped them do it (read Phillip Nelson’s Remember the Liberty).
Johnson was committed to Israel, financially (through Abraham Feinberg, see below) and spiritually (“The line of Jewish mothers can be traced back three generations in Lyndon Johnson’s family tree”).[25] This explains why he filled the Warren Commission with Israeli agents, such as Arlen “Magic Bullet” Specter, later honored by the Israeli government as “an unswerving defender of the Jewish State.”[26]
David Ben-Gurion
Imagine detective Columbo investigating the assassination of President Kennedy. He would surely want to know if Kennedy had any strong disagreement with someone shortly before his death. In a decent scenario, he would then get his hands on some recently declassified correspondence which shows, in the words of Martin Sandler, editor of The Letters of John F. Kennedy (2013), that “a bitter dispute had developed between Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, who believed that his nation’s survival depended on its attaining nuclear capability, and Kennedy, who was vehemently opposed to it. In May 1963, Kennedy wrote to Ben-Gurion explaining why he was convinced that Israel’s pursuit of nuclear weapons capability was a serious threat to world peace.”[27]
May 12, Ben-Gurion begged Kennedy to reconsider his position on Dimona: “Mr. President, my people have the right to exist… and this existence is in danger.”[28] Reading in that same letter a bizarre reference to the “danger that one single bullet might put an end to [some king’s] life and regime,”[29] Columbo wonders if that was a veiled threat. Reading Kennedy’s next letter (June 15), he can see that Kennedy stood firm and insisted on an immediate visit “early this summer” for “resolving all doubts as to the peaceful nature intent of the Dimona project.” Kennedy made clear that American commitment to Israel could be “seriously jeopardized” in case of failure to comply. Puzzled that the archive contains no response by Ben-Gurion, Columbo soon learns that Ben-Gurion resigned upon receiving Kennedy’s letter. “Many believe his resignation was due in great measure to his dispute with Kennedy over Dimona,” according to Martin Sandler. The insinuation is that Ben-Gurion’s resignation was part of a change of strategy for eliminating the Kennedy obstacle. He would now have to listen to those who had always believed in assassination and terrorism, those whom he had exiled in 1948 but who were now back and pressing him from his right. And he resigned to preserve his place in history. We have to understand Ben-Gurion’s predicament: Egypt, Iraq and Syria had just formed the United Arab Republic and proclaimed the “liberation of Palestine” as one of its goals. Ben-Gurion wrote to Kennedy that, knowing the Arabs, “they are capable of following the Nazi example.” To claim that this was just rhetoric is to misjudge the importance of the Holocaust in Jewish psychology, and in Ben-Gurion’s in particular. In his eyes, Israel’s need for nuclear deterrence was non-negotiable. Since he had failed to overcome Kennedy’s opposition by diplomacy, somebody else would have to take care of it in a different way.
Israel’s nuclear doctrine has not changed since Ben-Gurion. It has two sides: nukes for Israel, no nukes for Arabs or Iranians. Anyone working against one of those two strategic principles threatens Israel’s existence and must be eliminated. There are many examples in Ronen Bergman’s book Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations (2019).[30] Here is an excerpt on how Meir Dagan, appointed by Ariel Sharon to the Mossad in 2002, “in charge of disrupting the Iranian nuclear weapons project, which both men saw as an existential threat to Israel.”
Dagan acted in a number of ways to fulfill this task. The most difficult way, but also the most effective, Dagan believed, was to identify Iran’s key nuclear and missile scientists, locate them, and kill them. The Mossad pinpointed fifteen such targets, of whom it eliminated six … In addition, a general of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who was in charge of the missile project, was blown up in his headquarters together with seventeen of his men.[31]
Ben-Gurion handed the Kennedy problem to those who had always relied on murder to eliminate obstacles to the Zionist cause. Yitzhak Shamir was possibly the man of the situation. Disgraced by Ben-Gurion after his assassination of U.N. mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948, Shamir had been allowed back into the Mossad in 1955, where he formed a special hit squad with former members of the murderous Lehi (or Stern Gang). This unit was active until 1964, the year after JFK’s assassination. It carried out an estimated 147 attacks on perceived enemies of Israel, targeting especially “German scientists working to develop missiles and other advanced weapons for Egypt.”[32] Yitzhak Shamir had declared in 1943:
Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: “Ye shall blot them out to the last man.”[33]
Do you think that such a biblical psychopath would have hesitated to assassinate Kennedy if given the go-ahead? He would have enjoyed it! Conscious of committing the crime of the century for his bloodthirsty god, would he not want to have it filmed, for the historical record? And why not, for the fun of it, send a message with the bullet, in the form of a man holding Chamberlain’s black umbrella to his face? If you think that’s irrational, please read “A Conversation in Hell” by John Podhoretz.
Yitzhak Shamir would go on to become prime minister in 1983, just following Menachem Begin, another terrorist responsible for the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946. Obviously, the assassination of Kennedy changed profoundly not only America, but Israel too. No single death, really, has had so profound an effect on world history as Kennedy’s.
Abraham Feinberg
The Kennedy problem had another dimension, which, in my scenario, Columbo discovers by borrowing Seymour Hersh’s Samson Option from his local library. There he learns that, during the 1960 campaign, Kennedy had been approached by Zionist financier Abraham Feinberg, whose business, writes Hersh, was “to ensure continued Democratic Party support for Israel” (in other words, buy Democratic candidates). After Kennedy’s nomination by the Democrats, Feinberg organized a meeting between the candidate and a group of potential Jewish donors in his New York apartment. Feinberg’s message was, according to what Kennedy told Charles Bartlett: “We know your campaign is in trouble. We’re willing to pay your bills if you’ll let us have control of your Middle East policy.” Kennedy was deeply upset and decided that, “if he ever did get to be President, he was going to do something about it.”[34] In the meantime, JFK pocketed 500,000 Jewish dollars and reaped 80 percent of the Jewish votes. Once in office, he made Myer (Mike) Feldman his advisor on the Middle East. According to Alan Hart, “it was a political debt that had to be paid. Feldman’s appointment was one of the conditions of the campaign funding provided by Feinberg and his associates.”[35] Kennedy was aware that Feldman was essentially an Israeli spy in the White House. “I imagine Mike’s having a meeting of the Zionists in the cabinet room,” he once said to Charles Bartlett.[36] Kennedy may have reasoned that it is an advantage to know who’s spying on you, but he probably underestimated the amount of Israeli spying that went on in his White House. He also underestimated the extent to which Feinberg and his Zionist friends held him accountable.
Kennedy never surrendered his U.S. Middle East policy to Israel. Former high-ranking U.S. diplomat Richard H. Curtiss remarked in his book A Changing Image: American Perceptions of the Arab-Israeli Dispute: “It is surprising to realize, with the benefit of hindsight, that from the time Kennedy entered office as the narrowly-elected candidate of a party heavily dependent upon Jewish support, he was planning to take a whole new look at U.S. Mideast policy,” and “to develop good new personal relationships with individual Arab leaders.”[37] The paradox did not escape Feinberg. Kennedy had to be punished. Considering the aggravating circumstance of his father’s appeasement policy during WWII, a biblical punishment was required.
Feinberg was a powerful figure, and one that should be given more attention by JFK researchers. The founder of Americans for Haganah, he was deeply involved in the Israeli arms smuggling network in the United States, of which Jack Ruby had been part. In the 1950s and 60s, besides building up AIPAC, he was actively involved in Israel’s quest of the Holy Nuke.[38] It was Feinberg who organized the only meeting between Ben-Gurion and Kennedy, in New York on May 30, 1961, when Ben-Gurion first begged Kennedy to look the other way from Dimona.[39] Commenting on that meeting, Feinberg said to Hersh: “There’s no way of describing the relationship between Jack Kennedy and Ben-Gurion because there’s no way B.G. was dealing with JFK as an equal, … B.G. could be vicious, and he had such a hatred of the old man.” The “old man,” here, meant the patriarch Joe Kennedy, JFK’s father.[40] It must also be noted that Feinberg had fundraised for LBJ ever since his first stolen election for Senate in 1948.[41]
The Double-Cross scenario
Let us go back to the inner contradiction of the CIA-theory, the failure of the supposed CIA plan to trigger the invasion of Cuba. John Newman, a retired U.S. Army major and Political Science professor, has thought of a solution. In an epilogue added to the 2008 edition of his 1995 book Oswald and the CIA (to which Ron Unz has drawn attention here and here), Newman reasons that the real purpose for setting up Oswald as a Communist was not to trigger the invasion of Cuba, but to create a “World War III virus” that Johnson would use as a “national security” pretext to shut all investigations and intimidate everyone, from government officials down to the average American, into accepting the lone-gunner theory, even in the face of its obvious falsehood; “the World War III pretext for a national security cover-up was built into the fabric of the plot to assassinate President Kennedy.”[42] Oswald’s Communist connections made the headlines just long enough to make everyone panicked, and then salvation was offered by the government to a grateful nation: just pretend to believe that Oswald acted alone, or else the Soviets will Hiroshima you. It worked perfectly, because it was plan A, not plan B.
Newman’s analysis is a fine improvement to the CIA-theory. But it doesn’t solve the problem. Since Newman believes it was a CIA plan, and more precisely Angleton’s plan, that begs the question of why the CIA would set up a plan that would finally frustrate them of an easy pretext to invade Cuba. We also have to consider that Angleton defended the KGB-theory all his life. When the KGB officer Yuri Nosenko defected to the United States in 1964, and claimed to know for certain that the Soviets had nothing to do with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Angleton was determined to prove him a liar and kept him in custody under intense questioning and deprivation for 1,277 days. He failed to break his will, and Nosenko was ultimately vindicated. Angleton stuck to his KGB-theory much longer than necessary, and was the main source for Edward Jay Epstein’s book, Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald (1978), which laid the blame on the KGB.[43]
Was Angleton keeping the KGB-theory alive as a way to maintain Americans under the obligation to swallow the lone-nut-theory, lest they trigger WWIII? It is possible, but it is quite unlike Angleton, who, according to all testimonies, was genuinely obsessed with blaming the Soviets for every evil on the surface of the earth, and continued to cause massive damage in the CIA with his quest for “the mole”, especially in the Office of Soviet Analysis, where everyone speaking Russian fell under suspicion. I think it is more likely that Angleton had been led to believe, from the beginning, that his plan would lead to an invasion of Cuba, a crackdown on Communist sympathizers, and perhaps WWIII.
This leads us back to hypothesize that there were actually two distinct plans, one incorporating the other. Angleton, as well as Howard Hunt and a few other CIA officers handling the Cuban exiles, were following a plan that included blaming Castro for the Dallas shooting. But they were double-crossed by another group of conspirators, who were not aiming at toppling Castro, and not even interested in Latin America, but had other concerns. That other group monitored and probably even inspired the CIA plan, but diverted it from its original purpose. They were overseeing the whole scheme from a higher vantage point, while the CIA plotters saw only part of it, though believing they saw it all.
Going one step further, some have made the hypothesis that the CIA plan did not include a real assassination, but only a failed attempt, meant not to kill Kennedy, but to put irresistible pressure on him to do something about Cuba. In that hypothesis, the harmless CIA plan was used and modified by a group who wanted to take Kennedy out and put Johnson in.
In Final Judgment, Michael Piper mentions a few JFK researchers who have thought of the possibility that the CIA found itself an unwitting accomplice in an assassination committed by a third party, and was left with no choice but to cover the whole plot in order to cover its part in it.[44] As early as 1968, an author writing under the pen name James Hepburn cryptically hinted at this idea in Farewell America — a book worth reading, well-informed and insightful on Kennedy’s policies. “The plan,” Hepburn wrote, “consisted of influencing public opinion by simulating an attack against President Kennedy, whose policy of coexistence with the Communists deserved a reprimand” (my emphasis). Since things didn’t unfold according to “the plan,” the implication is that there was a plan above the plan, a conspiracy woven around the conspiracy.[45]
Dick Russell, RFK Jr.’s recent biographer, had pondered the possibility of a double-cross in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1992), based on the testimony of longtime CIA contract agent Gerry Patrick Hemming, “a soldier of fortune who eventually ended up training embittered Cuban exiles in Florida for guerrilla warfare against Castro,” and crossed path with Oswald in 1959.[46] Hemming told Russell: “There was a third force — pretty much outside CIA channels, outside our own private operation down in the [Florida] Keys — that was doing all kinds of shit, and had been all through ‘63.”[47] In the words of Russell: “Gerry Patrick Hemming … maintains that some of the exiles who thought they knew the score in 1963 have today become convinced that they were being used. … They took the bait.”[48] Russell cut these passages off in his shortened 2003 edition, possibly out of concern for Piper’s use of them, since his idea of the “third force” differed from Piper’s: “In the end,” he wrote, “we are left with this terrible question: Was the CIA’s relationship with Oswald … usurped by another group? … A group … that was part of a Pentagon/‘ultraright economic’ apparatus?”[49]
Piper also drew attention to a book written by Gary Wean, a former detective sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department, titled There’s a Fish in the Courthouse (1987, 2nd edition 1996).[50] The full chapter 44 of Wean’s book, dealing with the Kennedy assassination, is included in this pdf document, together with other interesting thoughts by the same author. Wean claimed to have been introduced, through Dallas County Sheriff Bill Decker, to a man he simply called “John”, but later identified as Texas Senator John Tower. “John” told him that CIA man Howard Hunt was involved with Lee Harvey Oswald, but not in planning the President’s assassination. According to “John”,
[Hunt’s] scheme was to inflame the American people against Castro and stir patriotism to a boiling point not felt since the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Enraged Americans would demand that our military invade Cuba and wipe out the two-bit dictator for his barbarous attempt to assassinate President Kennedy. … There was to be an attempt on the life of President Kennedy so realistic that its failure would be looked upon as nothing less than a miracle. The footprints would lead directly to Castro’s doorstep, a trail the rankest amateur couldn’t lose.
However, the plan was hijacked from outside the CIA, by someone who knew “all these minute details [of Hunt’s plan] to pull it off the way they did. Something frightening, horribly sinister had interposed Hunt’s mission.” “Hunt’s wild scheme had created the lunatic effect of positioning Kennedy as the target in a shooting gallery,” and someone else had taken advantage of it.
As Wean interprets these revelations, “Hunt’s scheme of a phony assassination was monitored from the beginning by an insidious enemy”; there was a “conspiracy to double cross a conspiracy.” Wean’s source “John” (Tower) did not identify this “insidious enemy,” but Wean, drawing from his knowledge of organized crime, believes that the CIA plan was hijacked by “the Mishpucka” — as, according to Wean, Jewish gangsters named their ethnic criminal organization (the word means “the Family” in Yiddish). Wean has much to say about the Mishpucka’s ties to the Israeli Deep State. However, like Douglass, he does not see the connection to Johnson, and assumes that Johnson was part of neither the CIA’s nor the Mishpucka’s conspiracy, but only of the cover-up.
Writing in 1987, Wean could not think of a more precise motive for the Mishpucka to assassinate Kennedy than greed for war money. JFK was killed because he “had been on the verge of negotiating World Peace,” and that’s bad for business. We know today that Israel had a more precise and urgent need to take Kennedy out. In short, JFK’s assassination was a coup d’état to replace a pro-Egypt president by a pro-Israel president, one who would let Israel make as many nukes as they want with material stolen from the U.S., and would let them triple their territory in 1967.
Frankly, I doubt that Wean got his double-cross scenario from John Tower (who was dead when Wean identified him as his source). I believe he got it from his own reasoning and imagination.
And all things considered, I find the scenario of a failed assassination staged by the CIA and morphed into a real one by Israel not quite satisfactory, for the following reason: without Israeli interference, such a CIA plan was doomed to fail, because Kennedy would have easily seen through it. He would have known that Castro had nothing to do with it, and he would not have submitted to the pressure. Rather, he would have had his brother conduct a full investigation and would have found out that Oswald was a CIA stooge. His vengeance would have turned against the CIA, not against Castro. Perhaps Angleton was crazy enough to think he could have manipulated Kennedy and get away with it. But then, he was also crazy enough to want to assassinate Kennedy for real.
Either way, the most likely scenario, in my opinion at this stage, is that Angleton had been encouraged or convinced, directly or indirectly by his Mossad “friends” and by Johnson, to stage the Dallas ambush, or contribute to it, with, perhaps, the help of Hunt and a few Cuban exiles, not forgetting the Secret Service (although the latter’s participation to the crime, through agent Emory Roberts and a few others, was certainly supervised by Johnson).[51]
Why would Israel need to hijack a CIA operation, rather than just kill Kennedy themselves? Very simply, as I said, they needed the CIA to be so deeply compromised that the whole U.S. government would want to keep the lid on the whole affair. They needed the CIA not so much for preparing the killing zone as for cleaning it up afterwards and doing the cover-up for them. They also needed evidence of the CIA’s implication as a “limited hangout” to stir the skeptics in that direction — a strategy that has been so successful that the CIA-theory has now gained mainstream exposure.
This scenario is similar to the one I have theorized in “The 9/11 Double-Cross Conspiracy Theory,” and I believe it is a favorite Israeli operating principle.
Laurent Guyénot is the author of the book The Unspoken Kennedy Truth, and of the film Israel and the Assassinations of the Kennedy Brothers.
Notes
[1] Russell is no newcomer to the JFK assassination, having written two books about it, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1992), and On the Trail of the JFK Assassins (2008).
[2] Dick Russell, The Real RFK Jr.: Trials of a Truth Warrior, Skyhorse, 2023, p. 329.
[3] “DiEugenio at the VMI seminar, 16 September 2017, www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/jim-dieugenio-at-the-vmi-seminar
[4] James Douglass, JFK et l’Indicible: Pourquoi Kennedy a été assassiné, Demi-Lune, 2013.
[5] John M. Newman, Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK, Skyhorse, 2008, pp. 613-637. Excerpts on on spartacus-educational.com
[6] Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, University of California Press, 1993, p. 54.
[7] Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior — James Jesus Angleton: The CIA’s Master Spy Hunter, Simon & Schuster, 1991, p. 52.
[8] Jefferson Morley, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton, St. Martin’s Press, 2017, p. 78.
[9] Glenn Frankel, “The Secret Ceremony,” Washington Post, December 5, 1987, on www.washingtonpost.com. Andy Court’s article, “Spy Chiefs Honour a CIA Friend,” Jerusalem Post, December 5, 1987, is not online.
[10] James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, Touchstone, 2008, p. xxxi.
[11] Stephen Green, Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations With a Militant Israel, William Morrow & Co., 1984, p. 166.
[12] Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation: What Insiders Know About the Assassination of JFK, Skyhorse, 2013, chapter 3.
[13] Tom Wicker, John W. Finney, Max Frankel, F.W. Kenworthy, “C.I.A.: Maker of Policy, or Tool?”, New York Times, April 25, 1966, quoted in Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 15.
[14] The link to the article in Pittsburg Post Gazette, which I accessed in 2022, is no longer working: https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-federal/2004/09/14/Democrat-Wecht-backs-GOP-s-Specter-in-re-election-bid/stories/200409140195
[15] Jefferson Morley, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA, University Press of Kansas, 2008, p. 207.
[16] Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation: What Insiders Know About the Assassination of JFK, Skyhorse, 2013, chapter 4.
[17] James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, Touchstone, 2008, p. xxv and 57.
[18] Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 81.
[19] Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 232.
[20] Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 126.
[21] Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 187.
[22] Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, Little, Brown & Co, 1997, p. 126, quoted in Phillip Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK’s Assassination, XLibris, 2010, p. 320.
[23] Arthur Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days: John Kennedy in the White House (1965), Mariner Books, 2002, p. 56. Also in Donald Ritchie, Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps, Oxford UP, 2005, p. 146.
[24] Donald Gibson gives the full telephone transcript in “The Creation of the ‘Warren Commission’”, in James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X, Ferral House, 2003. Alsop was a vocal supporter of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, and a strong advocate for escalation under Johnson, as David Halberstam documents in The Best and The Brightest, Modern Library, 2001, p. 567.
[25] Morris Smith, “Our First Jewish President Lyndon Johnson? – an update!!,” 5 Towns Jewish Times, April 11, 2013, no longer on 5tjt.com, but accessible via the Wayback Machine on web.archive.org/web/20180812064546/http://www.5tjt.com/our-first-jewish-president-lyndon-johnson-an-update/ A French version published by Tribune Juive is accessible on www.tribunejuive.info/2016/11/07/un-president-americain-juif-par-victor-kuperminc/
[26] Natasha Mozgovaya, “Prominent Jewish-American politician Arlen Specter dies at 82,” Haaretz, October 14, 2012, on www.haaretz.com.
[27] Martin Sandler, The Letters of John F. Kennedy, Bloomsbury, 2013, p. 333. Listen to Sandler here on this topic: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4547313/user-clip-jfk-gurion-mossad-dimona
[28] Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, Columbia UP, 1998, pp. 109 and 14; Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, Random House, 1991, p. 121.
[29] Monika Wiesak, America’s Last President: What the World Lost When It Lost John F. Kennedy, self-published, 2022, p. 214.
[30] Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, John Murray, 2019, p. xv.
[31] Bergman, Rise and Kill First, p. 3.
[32] According to a Haaretz article written by Yossi Melman and dated July 3, 1992, mentioned by Piper, Final Judgment, pp. 118-119. This article cannot be found in Haaretz’s archive, but was quoted the next day by the Washington Times, and by the Los Angeles Times: “Shamir Ran Mossad Hit Squad,” Lost Angeles Times, July 4, 1992 https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-07-04-mn-1072-story.html
[33] “Document: Shamir on Terrorism (1943),” Middle East Report 152 (May/June 1988), on merip.org/1988/05/shamir-on-terrorism-1943/
[34] Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, Random House, 1991, pp. 93, 97.
[35] Alan Hart, Zionism, the Real Enemy of the Jews, vol. 2: David Becomes Goliath, Clarity Press, 2009, p. 269.
[36] Hersh, The Samson Option, pp. 98-100, quoted in Piper Final Judgment, pp. 101-102.
[37] Richard H. Curtiss, A Changing Image: American Perceptions of the Arab-Israeli Dispute, quoted in Piper, Final Judgment, p. 88. Curtiss’s book is hard to get at a reasonable price, but one speech by him, “The Cost of Israel to the American Public,” can be read on Alison Weir’s website “If Americans Knew”, https://ifamericansknew.org/stat/cost2.html
[38] Michael Collins Piper, Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy, American Free Press, 6th ed., 2005, p. 96.
[39] Hersh, The Samson Option, p. 111; “Kennedy-Ben-Gurion Meeting (May 30, 1961),” on www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/
[40] Hersh, The Samson Option, p. 102.
[41] Hart, Zionism, the Real Enemy of the Jews, vol. 2: David Becomes Goliath, p. 250. On the 1948 stolen election, read Phillip Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK’s Assassination, XLibris, 2010, p. 66-74.
[42] Newman, Oswald and the CIA, pp. 613-637. Excerpts on spartacus-educational.com
[43] As pointed out by Carl Oglesby in The JFK Assassination: The Facts and the Theories, Signet Books, 1992, p. 145, quoted in Michael Collins Piper, Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy, American Free Press, 6th ed., 2005, pp. 166-169.
[44] Piper, Final Judgment, pp. 291-296.
[45] James Hepburn, Farewell America, Frontiers, 1968, pp. 337-338, quoted in Piper, Final Judgment, p. 301.
[46] Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1992, p. 177.
[47] Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, p. 539.
[48] Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, pp. 703-704.
[49] Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, p. 693.
[50] Gareth Wean, There’s a Fish in the Courthouse, Casitas Books, 1987, 2nd edition 1996, pp. 695-699. The relevant chapter (44) and other interesting thoughts by Wean can be read on https://archive.org/details/NoticesAndReportsToThePeopleByGaryWean . A useful critical reading of chapter 44 can be read on https://kenrahn.com/JFK/Critical_Summaries/Articles/Wean_Chap_44.html
[51] For the record, Vince Palamara mentioned, without much conviction, the hypothesis of a “security test” by the Secret Service, in response to Edgar Hoover’s intrigue to the take over White House security (the Secret Service was headed by the Department of Treasury): “The original idea of the security tests may have been to cement the Secret Service’s role as the protector of the President, having successfully stopped an assassination attempt. Conversely, the agency (and the tests) may have been compromised by those in the know” (Vincent Michael Palamara, Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect President Kennedy, Trineday, 2013, kindle l. 4586). However, considering the numerous breaches of rule and the scandalously poor performance by the Secret Service on that fatal day, I find the hypothesis not credible).
- The Gospel of Gaza
- Israel’s Biblical Psychopathy
- Kennedy: An Israeli Perspective
- The Crusade Is Over
- Byzantine Revisionism Unlocks World History
- RFK’s False-Flag Assassination, and the Forgotten Palestinian Patsy
- JFK and America’s Destiny Betrayed
- President Kennedy’s Assassination Was a Zionist Coup
- Angleton, Mossad, and the Kennedy Assassinations
- The 9/11 “Double-Cross” Conspiracy Theory
Of Related Interest
RFK’s False-Flag Assassination, and the Forgotten Palestinian Patsy
Debunking The Conspiracy Theory That Netanyahu Wanted Last Weekend’s Attacks To Happen
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | OCTOBER 9, 2023
Hamas’ sneak attack on Israel over the weekend prompted speculation among some on social media that the latter knew about these plans in advance but allegedly had an interest in letting them happen. According to proponents of this conspiracy theory, embattled Prime Minister Netanyahu wanted to unite his politically divided people and/or establish the pretext for destroying Hamas, ergo why he supposedly let these attacks unfold. That doesn’t make much sense though if one really thinks about it.
It’s fashionable nowadays to claim that leaders sometimes provoke foreign conflicts to distract from domestic political problems, but that’s arguably not the case with the latest Israeli-Hamas war. In fact, Netanyahu was pursuing the exact opposite approach up until last weekend as suggested by credible reports over the months that he was engaged in secret talks with Saudi Arabia over recognizing Israel. This was aimed at uniting Israelis around him and unlocking their country’s geo-economic potential.
Had these efforts borne fruit, then not only would his fiercest opponents have been forced to praise him for this diplomatic achievement, but Israel could then have profited from its central role in the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) that was unveiled last month. Both goals required Saudi recognition of Israel, which Netanyahu hoped to obtain without recognizing Palestine’s independence, but that’s now in doubt since Riyadh might freeze these talks after Israel’s bombing of Gaza.
Those who claim that he knew about Hamas’ plans in advance but still let them happen are either unaware of his secret talks with Saudi Arabia, downplay their grand strategic importance, or think that they were all a ruse in preparation of this convoluted plot to establish the pretext for destroying Hamas. About that dimension of their conspiracy theory, it’s difficult to imagine that security-obsessed Netanyahu would let his country’s enemies inflict such unprecedented damage to Israel for that purpose.
He could always have simply exploited comparatively minor rocket fire to justify a disproportionate bombing campaign against that group without having to first lose literally hundreds of civilians and soldiers. Hamas’ breaching of the border barrier was also a strong blow to the Israeli psyche from which its people might never recover after having assumed that its construction would forever protect them. The same goes for that group doubling the territory under its control during the climax of its attacks.
Observers can still be opposed to the border barrier in particular, Israeli policy towards Palestine in general, and Netanyahu personally while also acknowledging that he’s such a security-obsessed leader that it doesn’t make sense to claim that he’d let Hamas powerfully undermine all three for any reason. He looks extremely weak after what happened, Israeli policy towards Palestine is now questioned from both sides like never before, and the border barrier is no longer deemed to be a credible defense.
These three outcomes represent the sum of Netanyahu’s worst nightmares, not to mention the likely failure of his plans to obtain Saudi recognition of Israel that would in turn unlock his country’s geo-economic potential via IMEC, all of which indisputably contradict Israeli interests. It remains unclear exactly how all of Israel’s security systems failed at the same time during last weekend’s attacks, nor has anyone explained the intelligence failures up until then either, but that’s indeed what happened.
The conspiracy theory speculating that Netanyahu knew about all this in advance but still let it happen doesn’t stand up to scrutiny as proven in this piece and is pretty much only predicated on the false perception that Israel’s intelligence services are omnipotent. They’re run by humans though and are therefore naturally imperfect, yet those who claim otherwise impart godlike power to the Mossad. This gives Israel too much credit while denying Hamas’ independent ability to organize attacks of this scale.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn Revisited
BY LARRY ROMANOFF • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 2, 2022
Introduction
Dominique Strauss-Khan (DSK) was a former minister in various French governments and most latterly the Managing Director of the IMF. In 2011 he was involved in a sexual scandal in New York, eventually exonerated but ruined nonetheless. This story is of vital importance in understanding and making sense of our current geopolitical circumstances, important not because the event happened but because it was possible for such an event to happen, and that there are people with the power to make it happen.
The conspiracy theorists should have had a field day with this one, and all indications are that they would have been correct. The general rule is that if a story doesn’t make sense, it’s usually not true. As with most fabricated stories, this one has many gaps that cannot easily be plugged, and serious questions that were either not addressed or were riddled with implausible explanations.
This episode began on May 14, 2011, at the Sofitel Hotel in NYC. Around noon, a hotel maid, Nafissatou Diallo, a ~35-year-old immigrant from Guinea, entered DSK’s room to clean it. Initial reports were that the man emerged naked from the bathroom and sexually assaulted the maid who eventually broke free and notified the authorities. In the meantime, DSK checked out of the hotel and left for the airport to take a flight to Germany. The NYC police took him off the plane, arrested and charged him with seven criminal acts that included four felony charges of attempted rape and sexual abuse, plus misdemeanor offences including unlawful imprisonment.[1] DSK was denied bail on the grounds of being a flight risk, and was incarcerated at Rikers Island. The following day, he was offered bail on condition that he resign his position as Managing Director of the IMF; he agreed a day later and was released into house arrest pending a hearing.
On 19 May, DSK was indicted by a grand jury on all seven charges, and ordered to stand trial. He was required to post a $1 million cash bail, wear an electronic monitoring device, surrender all his passports, and hire armed guards to ensure he didn’t violate his house arrest. He was also required to post a $5 million bond.[2]
The prosecution’s case began to fall apart almost immediately, progressively disintegrated over the following six weeks, and by July 1 prosecutors told the judge that they had “reassessed the strength of their case in the light of the housekeeper’s diminished credibility”, and sent a letter to DSK’s lawyers admitting serious inconsistencies in the maid’s tale.[3] [4] Also on July 1, DSK was freed from house arrest and had his bail dropped because the circumstances of the case had “changed substantially”.[5]
However, further hearings were still necessary to determine the extent of the charges to be prosecuted, with the next hearing date set for July 18, an important date as we will see. These hearings lingered until August 23 when all charges against DSK were finally dropped and he was free to return home to France.[6][7] [8]
However, the man’s problems weren’t over. Almost immediately upon his return to France, a young woman named Tristine Bannon attempted to file charges against DSK for an “attempted rape” that had occurred some 9 years earlier. In October, after much media publicity, the French prosecutors dropped the investigation from a lack of evidence.[9][10]
But a few months later, in March 2012, French prosecutors announced another investigation on DSK about his “possible connection” to a gang rape that supposedly occurred in Washington, D.C. At about the same time, authorities began yet another investigation in France, this time with allegations about his supposed involvement in hiring prostitutes for sex parties at hotels in Lille, Paris and Washington.[11] [12]
By October of 2012, prosecutors announced that they were discontinuing the investigation of the gang rape allegations,[12] but troubles remained. Amid a continuing media frenzy, in July of 2013 French prosecutors announced that DSK was to stand trial on allegations of “aggravated pimping” at the Carlton hotel in Lille.[13]
The accusations were that orgies had been held at this hotel and DSK had been instrumental in hiring prostitutes for the events. This court case dragged on for two years, the French media providing weekly details with very specific references to DSK and his conduct, some claiming “he had sex with every girl in the room”.[14] DSK was acquitted of all these charges in June of 2015.[15]
Still more. While the French media were hyperventilating over the juicy details of DSK’s real or imagined sexual exploits, Able Ferrara produced a feature film titled “Welcome to New York“, starring Gérard Depardieu as DSK and Jacqueline Bisset as his wife Anne Sinclair.[16] The film was built around the story in the Sofitel hotel and apparently “portrayed both characters in an unforgiving light”. Ms. Sinclair, who is by all accounts a thoroughly lovely person, said the film was “disgusting”, and DSK sued the film’s producers for libel. Then still more. In 2020, there was a Netflix “documentary” titled “Room 2806: The Accusation“, based on the Sofitel event and the other alleged accusations against DSK.[17]
By this time, after months of unfavorable exposure in the US and nearly four years of the same in France, it could be truly said that Strauss-Khan’s political, public, and social careers were at an end. After years of publicity, investigations and trials, DSK had been acquitted on all charges in all countries. It appears there never was sufficient evidence to support any of the allegations made against him, but the man would never again hold any international positions and was by this time much too toxic to ever re-enter French politics. DSK has since remarried and is doing “financial consulting” and giving speeches. The end. Well, almost the end.
The Handmaid’s Tale – a Futuristic Dystopian Novel (with due apologies to Margaret Atwood)
According to her claims to the police and her testimony at the Grand Jury hearing, and according to the New York Times, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, the Wall Street Journal and many others:
The maid inserted her card-key, opened the door, and called aloud several times to learn if the room were occupied. Receiving no response, she entered and began her tasks. Then, “the married Strauss-Kahn” emerged naked from the bathroom, chased the maid around his suite, “locked the door” so she couldn’t escape, then dragged her into a bathroom and “engaged in a criminal sexual act”. There was much confusion as to whether the criminal sexual act was anal, oral, or none of the above. However, while chasing and dragging her around the suite, DSK was apparently yelling “Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know who I am?” When the maid begged the man to desist on grounds she could lose her job, DSK comforted her by saying “Oh, baby, don’t worry baby. You won’t lose your job”. There was also confusion as to injuries incurred by both parties, the maid apparently suffering “a torn shoulder ligament” in her struggles, while DSK was reported to have suffered severe bruises on his back when the maid forcefully shoved him into some furniture.
The maid then fled the man’s suite and cowered in fear in a hallway until a maintenance supervisor discovered her, after which they notified hotel security who performed an investigation, confirmed the torn pantyhose, discovered DSK’s DNA and semen on the walls and carpet, and eventually notified the police. In the meantime, DSK had dressed, packed his things, checked out of the hotel, and took a taxi to the airport in an attempt to flee the country.
But justice never sleeps. It seems that in his haste to flee the country DSK left behind one of his mobile phones. Taking a great risk, being as guilty as he was, he nevertheless called the hotel to ask if the phone had been left in his room; after some discussion, the hotel staff called him to say they had indeed found his phone and would deliver it to the airport. The NYPD then escorted DSK off the plane as the doors were closing for departure, and arrested him. You know the rest, except that none of “the rest” was as it appeared to be.
Some Chinks in the Armor
Ancillary Hotel Services, Turn-Downs Included
At the outset of this event, before all the wagons had been properly circled, the hotel security staff and the NYPD independently confirmed to DSK’s lawyers that the woman was known to act as a prostitute in the hotel, offering special services and “turn-downs”. That much appears certain, but when the claims became public too quickly, everyone rushed to deny them and a hotel representative said, “We have no knowledge about that”.
The Crime Scene: DNA “linked to Maid”
The first rule of criminal investigations is that you don’t contaminate the crime scene. Yet the maid returned to clean the room, no doubt doing so immaculately as is the standard with Accor Hotels everywhere. And she wasn’t the only one. Syed Haque, a room service employee, came to pick up the breakfast dishes which had already been collected several hours prior. Renata Markozani, the head of housekeeping, entered the room to examine the situation, and also Brian Yearwood, the hotel’s chief engineer, with no explanation as to his purpose. Then the hotel security staff who, with little or no training in criminal investigations, went to the room to perform such. Between all of these, any evidence actually existing would have been either contaminated, destroyed – or planted.
It should be noted that anyone with access to a hotel guest’s clothing, toiletry, bedding, linen or laundry, has access to everything necessary to spread that guest’s DNA (possibly including sperm and other body secretions) on any surface or clothing anywhere. In this context, it is not irrelevant that DSK apparently had a woman spend the night with him in that room. The simple fact is that nothing found in that room later by police investigators could possibly have qualified as “evidence” of the crime in question.
The mass media flooded the nation with news that DSK’s DNA had been found (almost) everywhere, linking it to ‘the maid’ without noting the method of linkage.[18][19][20]
The New York Times was there first, citing “a person briefed in the matter“, stating DSK’s DNA and semen were found on the maid, on her clothing, on the walls, on the carpet, and perhaps on the ceiling. After this information had been duly digested by the public, the police and prosecutors stated that no such evidence had actually been obtained or released. “A prominent US defense lawyer claimed that there was substantial doubt . . . [about] the so-called DNA evidence and the match . . . since accurate DNA testing normally takes several weeks.” However, the DNA linked to the maid was headline material, the denials not so much . The Wall Street Journal reported that DSK’s DNA sample and semen were found on the woman’s shirt, quoting “sources close to the investigation” and citing “law enforcement officials” who immediately stated they had never said any such thing.[21]
In fact, there was never actual confirmation of any of this, and the investigators claimed to have found no traces of semen in the sink where the maid claimed it had been spit. The NYPD and the prosecutors simply let media speculation run wild and did nothing to combat it. All of the claims were based on leaked rumors.
Hotel security officers “conducted an investigation” and claimed to have found semen on the floor and wall. They then called the police, setting off the chain of events that led to the arrest at the airport. We are to believe that the mall-cop wannabes comprising hotel security were competent to perform a criminal investigation, and equipped and able to perform lab tests.
The Perpetrator Flees, Leaving Behind ‘Valuable Items”
The US media, led by the NYT, led us to believe that DSK attacked this woman, then fled to the airport in a panic, evidenced by his leaving behind a mobile phone and “other valuables”, the authorities apprehending him during the last seconds before his “fleeing the country”. But DSK didn’t flee; on the contrary, we have a witness account from a woman who used the elevator with him who said that she found him pleasantly calm. He waited patiently in line and checked out without anybody noticing anything wrong, took a cab to a restaurant where he had lunch with his daughter and then went to the airport to take a flight with a ticket that had been purchased days earlier. DSK was leaving the US for Germany where he had an arranged appointment with Angela Merkel. And, for the record, nothing was “left behind” including “other valuables”. What did happen was that one of his mobile phones was lifted from his room.
The NYT led us to believe DSK was arrested on, and then removed from, the airplane, just as the doors were closing for departure. But that description was a bald lie. The truth was that the hotel, on instruction, called DSK to tell them they had found his missing phone. Apparently, it was the police who then called to tell him that his phone was at the gate desk, and asked him to exit from the plane to retrieve it. When he deplaned, he was arrested. Leaving the Air France plane to recover the phone was a strong indication of a lack of guilt since while on the aircraft he was technically on French sovereign territory and could not have been taken into custody. If he were concerned, he could have asked a stewardess to get his mobile phone for him or the detectives to deliver it to the steward. All of his behavior suggests the acts of an innocent man.
The NYT seemed eager to leave the impression that DSK left the hotel in a panic, overcome with fear and anxiety, and was in a headlong rush to flee the country. We have this almost certainly fictitious account: “A guest at the hotel, . . . said the livery driver who drove Mr. Strauss-Kahn to Kennedy Airport was also his driver on Saturday night. “He said Strauss-Kahn was in a huge hurry, . . . He wanted to leave as soon as possible. He looked upset and stressed.”[22] The BBC claimed this “was not the first time Mr. Strauss-Kahn had been involved in such an incident” (even though it was the first time), and further that “he had been arrested attempting to flee the country”, which of course was not true.[23]
The Mysterious Telephone Call
“Investigators with the Manhattan district attorney’s office learned that the woman made a recorded call to a prison inmate on May 15, the day after DSK’s arrest, with words to the effect of, “Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing”.[24] This would seem to confirm claims by DSK’s lawyers that the encounter (if indeed there had been an encounter) was consensual and that the woman was attempting extortion. The woman later claimed her words had been “mistranslated”. In a 3-hour interview with Newsweek, the woman said she hopes God punishes him. “We are poor, but we are good,” she said. “I don’t think about money.”[25] Diallo’s lawyer said she mentioned Strauss-Kahn’s money in the telephone call only to say that her alleged attacker was influential.[26]
More interesting was that the authorities required a full 6 weeks to translate the conversation because, according to them, it was in a “unique dialect of Fulani,” a language from the woman’s native country, Guinea. But there are no ‘unique dialects’ of the language, Fulani being one of the three major West African languages and extremely common, with the NYC area having more than 100,000 Fulani speakers. Moreover, the courts knew this, the police knew it, and local interpreting agencies claimed they had many occasions to provide Fulani interpreters, often on a daily basis. The New York Times was one of the principal promoters of this falsehood (and of many more). It is obvious the authorities lied about needing 6 weeks to arrange the translation, and it is just as obvious that they withheld the information until DSK was out of the running for the French Presidential Primaries.
The Money and the Phones
One of the threads running through the media presentations was that the prosecutors discovered flaws in the woman’s testimony and evidence of criminal activity, immediately notifying DSK’s lawyers. The NYT particularly pushed this narrative, stating “Still, it was the prosecutor’s investigators who found the information about the woman.”[27] Their claim appeared to have been almost entirely untrue. DSK’s legal team hired a private investigation company, Guidepost Solutions, which uncovered the claimant’s criminal background and reported that to the DA’s office, and which eventually exonerated DSK. Such investigations are rarely if ever done by police to help a defendant who has already been indicted.
The first discovery made by the private investigators was that someone had opened five different bank accounts in the woman’s name, with five different banks, in five different states (Arizona, Georgia, New York, Pennsylvania, and one unidentified)[28]
and had deposited US$20,000 in each one. Standard CIA practice for payoffs.[29][30][31]
Given that the woman’s ‘friend’ was in prison for minor drug offenses, the US media, led by the NYT at full volume, tried to relate the payments partially to her friend’s drug dealing, but the depositors were never identified, another sure sign of a CIA payoff. This apparently wasn’t enough of an issue for the media to question. We will never know where the money came from, but the simple fact that the media refused to touch this part of the story makes the conclusion almost certain. The NYT made a small concession to reality, stating there had been “unusual activity in her bank accounts”.[32]
The private investigators also discovered that the woman had at least 3 mobile phones with three different phone companies and was spending over $500 every month on calls. On a maid’s salary? On calls to whom? As a reporter, that’s the first question I would ask. Another almost sure sign of CIA involvement. The media reported every other trivial detail but weren’t interested in this one.
The Timeline
The maid’s account and the prosecution’s case began to unravel in many other directions at the same time. The maid initially told investigators she had hidden after the attack until she saw her alleged attacker leave, after which she reported the assault to a supervisor. But the hotel’s card key register proved that she first mysteriously entered another room for a few minutes, then cleaned a nearby room, then returned to the room in which the alleged attack took place, cleaned it, then spoke to supervisors.[33]
There is another curiosity here: the maid’s cleaning assignments until that day had always involved rooms scattered on various floors, but on this day was given the 28th floor exclusively, so there would be no other hotel staff on that floor that day. The story was that she assumed duties of a colleague on leave, but the lawyers believed this was a method to give her access to DSK “for some nefarious reason.”
According to the card key records, the maid entered another room adjacent to that of DSK three times prior to entering his room, and again immediately when leaving his room after the alleged assault occurred. This information was omitted from her police reports and her Grand Jury testimony. The hotel refused to identify the (probably CIA) occupant of that room. All indications are that she was reporting to her handlers for last-minute instructions, then reporting her success afterward. The media omitted the fact of the second hotel employee entering the room while the maid was still there. This appears to be when DSK’s mobile phone went missing.
Edward Jay Epstein wrote an excellent article that was published in the NYT’s Review of Books.[34] The full version is available here on the Financial Times;[35]
I urge you to read it; it contains scores of questionable details, excellently-researched and documented, that cast a very dirty light on everything that occurred. Also, an article in the Business Insider[36] is excellent, asking “So is Strauss-Kahn the target of some form of political plot? Even if the alleged victim isn’t a witting part of a honey trap, what has been released so far by the New York police looks like railroad job, with a rush to discredit the target for the rest of his life. Even the latest pictures are designed to make the Frenchman look guilty?” The Guardian[37] and Forbes[38] also have excellent articles that identify the inconsistencies. And two others you may care to read.[39][40]
A Few More Inconsistencies
The woman’s account is riddled with inconsistent statements. She told the grand jury in sworn testimony that she left the room, waited in the corridor until DSK left and then reported the incident, and only when confronted with electronic card key evidence, did she admit she cleaned another room and then returned to the scene of the crime before reporting the incident. She told investigators that she fled the room as soon as she could, but she told the rape counselor at the hospital that she waited in the room for DSK to get dressed. Why would she do that, after having been raped? She claimed in testimony that the two never spoke, then told ABC-TV anchor Robin Roberts that they spoke at some length. In fact, she had three completely different versions of the events that transpired and of her activity following.
If the woman had sustained injuries – including a “torn shoulder ligament” as authorities claimed, how would she then proceed to clean rooms? If the woman had been raped and injured, why wouldn’t she seek help and medical attention immediately? A “torn ligament” would be painful and require immediate treatment.
There was much more. It was discovered that the woman had “had practice at this kind of storytelling before”. “Further investigation revealed that the [maid] had lied on her 2004 asylum claim about being gang-raped in her home country of Guinea. More damaging still, she had rehearsed the narrative of lies for asylum so often, listening to them over and over on an audiotape supplied by a male accomplice, that even years later she would break down crying as she told the story—until, finally, under very tough questioning by assistant district attorneys, she admitted the asylum narrative was a fabrication.”[41] Her stories were apparently so well-told that listeners would often be driven to tears as well.
“The most seasoned professionals in the office working on this case were brought to tears by this woman’s life story. I mean literally brought to tears,” says Linda Fairstein, former chief of the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit. “She was so convincing that cops, advocates, professionals, bought the story. And then the prosecutors got to work.” But with the Arizona phone call and the asylum stories as background, the more investigators examined the accuser’s story, the more anomalies began to multiply.”[42][43][44][45][46][47]
There were also questions raised about the physical possibilities of such an assault being able to take place. The maid was young with DSK in his 60s, at 5’10” much taller than DSK and more heavily-built, with one observer stating “She could have kicked the crap out of him”. “. . she’s a big woman, how could he have overpowered her?”[48] Many news reports from Europe claim the woman agreed (or offered) to perform oral sex, then attempted blackmail and extortion. Olivier Mazerolle, a senior political journalist at France’s BFM television, claimed to have obtained details from sources in the US, and maintains this is what actually occurred.[49]
“Is it reasonable to believe that a 62-year-old man, even one as oversexed as DSK is supposed to be, would emerge naked from the bathroom of his hotel suite sexually to confront a maid whom he had never met before, and whom he did not expect? Is it reasonable to believe that stark naked and wielding no weapon he could have forced a taller, younger and more muscular woman to commit oral sex twice [in 6 minutes], and that the transaction would have resulted without some level of participation on her part? And is it believable that she didn’t offer any resistance, cry out or flee when she presumably knew where the door was, having worked in the hotel for three and one-half years?”[50]
“It strains credulity to think an internationally respected financial leader would hurl himself naked from his hotel bathroom onto a decidedly unattractive maid who happened to be cleaning his room, then force her to perform oral sex on him. It’s all made to sound like the actions of a psychopath more than a lustful Frenchman.” It would seem absurd for a man who can hire young models or woo women from higher brackets, to forcibly rape a woman, then have a leisurely lunch with his daughter and finally get caught only because he himself gave away his whereabouts in multiple calls when trying to recover his mobile phone.
In the final version of events, the alleged victim committed multiple counts of perjury, tax fraud, visa and passport fraud, conspiracy to commit extortion, possible drug-related offenses, but neither the police nor the media appear to have any interest in pursuing these details. Nor was there any interest in the five bank accounts. The woman told 37 substantial lies, mostly under oath but, according to her lawyer, “She made some mistakes here, but that doesn’t mean she is not a rape victim.” Mistakes? It will be almost certain proof that this entire bizarre event was a political fraud organised at the highest levels, when we realise that no action was ever taken against the woman for her string of crimes and the unexplained cash.
The Missing Blackberry
This is exceptionally curious and one of the keys to the entire entrapment process. One of DSK’s mobile phones, a Blackberry that he used for IMF work and very personal calls, went missing. It seems that DSK had already packed his things, including his phones, prior to taking a shower and dressing to leave the hotel. After the encounter with the maid, he used this phone to call his daughter and confirm their lunch appointment. The maid admitted to remaining in the room at that time, and perhaps the other hotel employee was there at the same time. DSK then apparently placed the phone in his briefcase, after which it disappeared, and was never found.[51]
DSK had already been warned that his phone had been hacked. A friend working in Sarkozy’s election office notified him that personal messages sent to his wife from that phone had been intercepted and read at Sarkozy’s office. The records obtained from BlackBerry show that the missing phone’s GPS circuitry was disabled at 12.51, preventing the phone from sending out signals identifying its location. It appears the phone never left the Sofitel. “Evidently unaware of what was happening at the Sofitel, he called the hotel from the taxi, asking if his phone had been found. When he was called back 13 minutes later, he told a hotel employee that he was at JFK airport. The police rushed there and, at 4:45, called him off the flight and took him into custody.”[52] Blackberry could not explain how the phone had been disabled, being something requiring extreme technical knowledge.
The “Dancing Israelis”
After the maid alleged that DSK sexually harassed her, the security team called John Sheehan, the security director for Accor, the French company that owns the Sofitel. His boss has ties to Ange Mancini, who was then Sarkozy’s coordinator for intelligence. Sheehan was seen on surveillance footage with an unidentified man who accompanied Diallo to the hotel security celebrating shortly before the police arrived: “The two men high-five each other, clap their hands, and do what looks like an extraordinary dance of celebration that lasts for three minutes.” One of DSK’s attorneys, William Taylor, who claims to have seen the footage, tells the Post, “They could have won the lottery. It seems directly related to speaking with Diallo and calling the police.”[53][54][55]
Media Frenzy and Speculation
“When police and prosecutors convict a suspect in the media before he is even charged, it typically means that there is no evidence against him and that demonisation is serving as the substitute.” Everything about this story has a stink of conspiracy, of sexual entrapment of the kind that got Julian Assange, Mordechai Vanunu and many others. Even more curious was that none of the mainstream media cared to connect the dots to see where they led.
When reviewing the accounts of this tale, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the mass media, at least in the English-speaking world, had been instructed to speculate as wildly as possible and to fabricate any details they considered useful or titillating. “James Cox, law professor at Duke University, said: he was surprised that the prosecution had not done more homework on their witness before making such strong statements about the case and the strength of its witness.”[56] There were many serious questions over their handling of the case, especially the notorious “perp walk”, which saw DSK paraded in front of press cameras.
The media focus centered on the story of the alleged victim rather than on who was pulling the strings behind the scenes in what visibly appears to have been a political frame-up. The NYPD, the prosecutor, the CIA, were letting the media speculate publicly. The entire story, based only on speculation and a complete absence of facts, has the look and feel of giving the gullible public just enough information to come to the wrong conclusion.
The NYT
In fact, the most likely hypothesis, which is that DSK was deliberately set up, was not only totally avoided by the mainstream media, but any reader comments at the time were either not posted (NYT ) or were deleted immediately after posting. There is ample evidence that the media – especially in the US – had been instructed to monitor and control all comment on this issue.
At the time, it was fascinating to watch the NYT during the three months of this episode. There was no way to avoid the conclusion that the editors were firmly controlling the reader comments on all their DSK articles. Not even a hint of a suggestion of a setup was permitted until one article on July 6, long after all the damage had been done. The comment threads were constantly led to topics like “rich white man, poor black woman”, or the US legal system, or how money can buy freedom or how even liars can be raped. Whenever a comment was posted that was “off-topic”, more correct ones were inserted to bring readers back into focus.
There seemed little doubt that the NYT was on the same page as the NYPD, the DA and, we must assume, the CIA and the City of London. Not only did the editors control the posts, they added some of their own, to the “Highlights”, to help readers focus. Among them was this gem: “While France will now criticize us, we should remember that French people enjoy few of the rights we do when accused. French “authorities” can hold people for up to one year without charges in an attempt to pressure them for cooperation in a criminal case. In Europe, the presumption generally is that the person accused is guilty and he must prove otherwise.”
It is astonishing that the Times had the gall to do this. France can retain a person for no more than 24 to 48 hours before release, and the NYT editors would surely be aware of this.[57] No newspaper would make such a claim without checking its accuracy, so we must conclude they knowingly made a false statement, seriously maligning France in the process and leaving a disturbingly dishonest impression on the 80% of Americans who are sufficiently uninformed and gullible to believe anything.
The “Settlement”
The New York Times first reported that DSK had agreed to pay the maid $6 million as a settlement, attributing the news to “French media sources”,[58] while the same French media sources attributed the claim to the NYT. Other media claimed that “friends of Strauss-Kahn” offered the chambermaid’s impoverished family in Guinea, West Africa, a ‘seven-figure’ sum to convince her to drop the charges. Then almost everyone joined in with the identical claim,[59][60][61] even posting a (surely) fictitious photo of the maid’s “family”.[62]
It became a circus, with DSK’s lawyers stating the claims as “flatly false”.
Perhaps another WHO Worldwide Pandemic
One of the more entertaining bits of the media having fun was the “evidence” suddenly surfacing from every corner that DSK was only one of perhaps thousands of such. My favorite was the UK Daily Mail’s claim that maids at the New York Hilton and “in various other hotels around the U.S.” were having to hide from male guests running around naked in the hotel corridors, screaming “I need sex”.[63] The newspaper helpfully suggested all hotel maids needed to wear ‘panic buttons’.
The Question of Diplomatic Immunity
This was curious. As Managing Director of the IMF, DSK should have had full diplomatic immunity, not that the US would honor it, and in fact the judge in the hearing dismissed this. But it appears the IMF had the power to demand immunity for its CEO, and in fact the IMF Board had at least one meeting to discuss the matter.[64][65]
No information was released, but IMF rules stipulate an 85% agreement on all decisions and, with the US controlling 18% of the vote, we can assume the US exercised its veto and killed DSK’s one chance to escape the trap. He would still have full immunity from civil suits, however. This aspect was totally ignored by all the media, and should not have been.
Rikers Island
Rikers Island is widely-known as one of the most brutal and dangerous prisons in the world. It “has always been a place of exceptional violence”, with weapons everywhere, with rival gangs ruling the cellblocks, a place notorious for the brutality of the prison guards and the deranged mental instability of most inmates, 1,000 of which are stabbed or killed each year.[66][67]
Only the dregs of society are sent there, and incarceration for a civilised person would be terrifying to say the least – which would have been the entire point of sending DSK there. The prospect of remaining there for months until trial, coupled with the slim prospects of survival, would encourage a man to comply with any conditions demanded for bail and removal – including resigning his job as MD of the IMF. DSK was sent to Rikers on May 17, presented with his options the next morning, and his official resignation processed on the following day, May 19, when he was released on bail.
Persons of Interest
In order to properly connect the dots, we need to identify some of the main players and their relations to each other.
Frank G. Wisner Sr.
Frank Wisner has been described as a “master diplomat” (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Dean Acheson) and also a “master spy”, (America’s least-known but most famous spy). He was none of those things. Wisner was a criminally-insane Jewish psychopath,[68] the co-founder of the CIA and the designer and operator of Operation Gladio in Europe[69] which he ran together with Allen Dulles (then head of the CIA), and which was one of the bloodiest terror programs ever inflicted on the world. He was largely responsible for the American coup that removed Mohammed Mossadegh as Prime Minister in Iran in 1953, and also primarily responsible for the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala in 1954, one of the dirtiest, bloodiest, and most unjust of such US government atrocities.
Frank G. Wisner Jr.
Young Frank, also seconded into the US Foreign Service, was an American Ambassador to several countries as well as Under Secretary of State for International Security Affairs under Bill Clinton. He also served as Deputy Executive Secretary of the Department of State under Cyrus Vance. Wisner Jr. was heavily involved in the tragedy in Yugoslavia and primarily behind the push for the independence of Kosovo to help Madeline Albright and George Soros “take over” the communications infrastructure there (an $800 million gift). However, Wisner Jr. is best known for his financial crimes for which the term “unscrupulous” would be something of an understatement. Wisner was part of the inner circle at Enron whose financial manipulations ruined countless thousands of investors, and he was the Vice-Chairman of AIG when its share prices collapsed by 95%, prior to the Khazar-dictated taxpayer bailout.[70]
Pál (Paul) Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa
This man, a Greek-Hungarian Jew, was the father of Nicolas Sarkozy who became the President of France. Paul married several times, Nicholas resulting from the first marriage with Andrée Mallah. His father and birth mother both abandoned Nicholas and he was taken in by Paul’s third wife Christine de Ganay after her divorce with Paul. Christine de Ganay subsequently married Frank Wisner Jr, who more or less raised Nicholas and taught him everything he knew (at least all the dirty parts of American and French politics and finance). “It was [Wisner] who introduced then-teenage Sarkozy to CIA insiders and facilitated his entry into French political circles”, and one of Wisner’s sons was Sarkozy’s campaign manager.
Cyrus Vance Sr.
Cyrus Roberts Vance Sr. was an American lawyer and Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter. He was also Deputy Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Army, and General Counsel of the Department of Defense.
Cyrus Vance Jr.
This is where things become interesting. Cyrus Vance was the Manhattan District Attorney, conveniently appointed just in time to handle the three most notorious sexual scandal cases in recent memory (all involving Jews): Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn. In the case of Jeffrey Epstein, Vance’s office argued in court for dismissal of charges and his removal from a sex offender’s list, claiming “there are no real victims here.”[71]
Vance would later argue that his “assistant DA” made these court representations without his knowledge. We are to believe that in the most spectacular sexual abuse and sexual-entrapment scheme ever recorded, and certainly the biggest case in his career, Vance had no idea what his own assistant was proposing in court. It was Vance (in an arranged plea bargain) who managed to free Epstein from a life sentence and give him only 13 months in prison where he was allowed out during the day (to look after business) and only slept in the prison at night.
Does anyone recall Epstein being given a ‘perp walk’? Was he incarcerated at Rikers Island? Did he have to post millions in bail, wear a bracelet and have to hire armed guards at his own expense ($240,000 per month for DSK)? Was Jeffrey Epstein denied bail because he was a flight risk? No.
Something similar occurred with Harvey Weinstein, with Vance declining to prosecute the Hollywood producer in spite of the huge amount of evidence against him. But it wasn’t all bad. Vance did manage to obtain a sentence of 428 years against another serial rapist who had the misfortune of not having been born Jewish.
Let’s review some connections. Nicholas Sarkozy, our Jewish-Hungarian midget, was raised by the Jew Frank Wisner who worked for Cyrus Vance Sr., and who introduced Sarkozy to the (Jewish-created) CIA and to US and French politics. Sarkozy and Cyrus Vance Jr. were of the same age (one year apart) and certainly knew each other well since their fathers worked together and their families socialised together. And who was appointed as the lead prosecutor against DSK? Cyrus Vance Jr. In what was clearly one of the most egregious set-ups in recent memory, Vance was later loudly applauded by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other US media, as well as by multiple government officials for “acting with integrity” in a case where a poor woman made “a credible accusation against a very powerful man”.
Sarkozy and Mossad
Nicholas Sarkozy was confirmed as a Mossad agent, the details revealed in articles by Le Figaro, an influential French daily, providing evidence of Sarkozy having been recruited as an Israeli spy, “one of the thousands of Jewish citizens of countries other than Israel who cooperate with the Mossad”. This information was apparently given to the French police in detail prior to Sarkozy’s election as president, but suppressed until the scandal emerged. “This was so important an issue that within 24 hours after Le Figaro’s exposé, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was on a state visit to France” – ostensibly to discuss Iran’s nuclear agenda, but in fact an attempt to deal with the fallout.
According to media reports, the French police were investigating documents concerning Sarkozy’s alleged espionage activities against France on behalf of Mossad, which Le Figaro claimed dated as far back as 1983, which was when Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin recruited the “young and promising” Sarkozy as part of the ordered infiltration of the French ruling Gaullist Party.
Tristane Banon
Tristane Banon, a 32-year-old journalist, claimed that DSK sexually assaulted and tried to rape her a decade earlier. She is “the daughter of one of Strauss-Kahn’s discarded mistresses and the goddaughter of his second wife.”[72] This woman, with her lingering memory of an encounter with DSK from 9 years prior, chose the correct moment to bring it to the public. And this latter is also surpassingly strange; the mother came to the defense of her daughter by “confessing” that she also had an affair with DSK at around the same time. How this would help her daughter’s case was not made clear. At least, not to me.
Her case was so weak (and 9 years too late) that there was no chance for it to lead anywhere, but it would help to keep DSK out of the Presidential Palace. Mrs. Banon worked for atlantico.fr, a pro-Sarkozy website which was co-founded by Arnaud Dassier, the man behind Sarkozy’s web campaign of 2007, and the man who started the smear campaign against DSK a few weeks before May 15th. Of interest is Banon’s claim that “politics played no part” in her decision to air this old issue again, that she “was not approached by the Right” to fire another torpedo into DSKs political career.[73][74]
Christine Lagarde
Christine Lagarde is a Jew.[75] Both the City of London and Israel wanted her as the new IMF head, which was why she had beforehand declared her availability and “eagerness to serve”. Lagarde was a hard-headed “corporatist” member of the Bilderberg Group and the WEF, and definitely in favor of the new world order intended to preserve Khazarian Jewish hegemony worldwide. The IMF Executive Board issued a press release on June 28 2011, confirming her appointment as IMF Managing Director.[76][77]
The report from the prosecutor was released to the media June 29, and presented to the court on July 1. Lagarde’s succession to the IMF occurred a few days prior to a New York Court ruling which completely exonerated Dominique Strauss Khan on the basis of lack of evidence. It apparently wasn’t of concern that Lagarde was under criminal investigation at the time for an illegal application of some $400 million in funds.
French Media Reports: Who Told Who What When?
One indication that DSK’s political enemies were implicated is the fact, made public by the French press, that Sarkozy’s political team in France knew about DSK’s arrest not only before the NYC police announced it, but before the actual arrest had occurred. In fact, Sarkozy’s office and the French media reported DSK’s arrest while he would still have been in a taxi on the way to the airport. No one has attempted to explain this. The evidence is that the NYC Hotel Manager called France’s Presidential Palace over an hour before the news was released in NYC, which is how the French media knew that DSK was going to be arrested before the arrest actually took place.
The first person in France to announce the arrest was Jonathan Pinet, a campaigner for Sarkozy’s party, who apparently tweeted the info at the time DSK was in the taxi to meet his daughter for lunch. And he apparently made other posts only minutes after the arrest itself. Shortly after, Arnaud Dassier, Sarkozy’s campaign director, was also commenting on the event, sooner than any journalist in the US. Confronted with this strange coincidence, he said he got the information from a friend who knew someone working in the NYC Sofitel hotel. How would anyone at the Sofitel know whether or when an arrest was made? Why would the NYPD report to the Sofitel, and why was all this information crossing the Atlantic in real time?
More interesting, Xavier Graff, the duty officer at Accor in Paris, sent e-mails several weeks after DSK’s arrest claiming full credit for “bringing down” the IMF chief.[78] Also worthy of note is that the top management of the ACCOR Hotel group in France was known to have close ties to Claude Gueant, Sarkozy’s closest advisor and his Minister of the Interior. The hotel’s Director of Security was a former agent of DGSE (French CIA), who had worked under Sarkozy personally. And finally, Ray Kelly, the head of the NYPD, had been decorated “Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur” by Sarkozy himself, the two men having had a close personal relationship with much contact since that time.
The French Presidential Election
DSK survived the first assault (in the US) because the widespread public feeling in France was that it was clearly a staged event, a “set-up”, and still leaving him as the favorite and with a strong political base. Thus, he was wounded but not destroyed, so the charade proceeded to Plan B, with accusations of rape or attempted rape, and of arranging the hire of prostitutes for orgies. Just as in the US, all charges were eventually dropped because there had never been any supporting evidence for those allegations, but the court cases continued until the man’s name had been sufficiently blackened that his political career descended to ground zero.
Ruining DSK would not have raised Sarkozy’s standing in the polls; he was still widely disliked and considered “crazy”. But this would have removed his most dangerous opponent, leaving no one else with sufficient public status to challenge him. So, one clear purpose of the entire event was to ensure Sarkozy’s re-election by destroying his only credible opponent. Sarkozy was definitely running scared; not only being attacked on the streets in France, but in a then-recent appearance in Algeria the crowds were all yelling “Get out! F*** off, Sarkozy”.
A former justice minister, Robert Badinter, called DSK’s treatment “a lynching, a murder by media.” The “perp walk”, the unshaven pervert-in-a-trench-coat photos, is a perverted and sadistic US tradition resurrected from the medieval era, and forms an inexcusable and humiliating breach of the principle of the presumption of innocence. Besides that, we had the “suicide watch”, the grossly unreasonable bail conditions that included from the first day his resignation from the IMF.
It was all designed to inflict the maximum possible public humiliation to forestall any chance of DSK’s return to politics. Also, the charges were not dropped, nor his passport returned, until after the French election primaries. To represent the Socialist Party and be their leader, he would have had to have been in France for the primaries which closed on July 13. However, his court date was set for July 18. This was not a mere unfortunate coincidence.
You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to smell something fishy here; in fact, it requires a leap of faith to not smell the odor. The proverbial elephant in the room should be obvious to all readers. There appears to be little question that one of two pillars of Strauss-Kahn’s demise was a perceived necessary “regime change” at the IMF. The other would appear to be desperation on the part of Israel and the City of London to remove Strauss-Kahn from French Presidential contention in order to preserve Sarkozy – their “man in Paris”. The Jews and Zionists in Israel were desperate to maintain Sarkozy in power because he would ensure the protection of Israel’s practices and the status of French Jews, while containing the anti-Israel sentiment in France. Israel’s government and French Jews and Zionists were among Sarkozy’s strongest electoral support. “We can refer to Israel’s conceited triumphalism with which they greeted Sarkozy’s election: “we are persuaded that the new president will continue eradicating anti-Israeli resistance”.
“The arrest of [DSK] has all the appearances of a frame-up ordered by powerful members of the financial establishment, in liaison with France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, whose presidency has served the interests of the US and Israel at the expense of those of France and the European Union. Immediately following Strauss Kahn’s arrest, pressures were exerted . . . to speed up his replacement as Managing Director of the IMF.”
The IMF and the Dollar
As head of the IMF, DSK was far from a saint in dealing with indebted countries. It was he who oversaw the destruction and permanent colonisation of Greece – an enormous sovereign disaster of which too few people seem aware. And in this, he was definitely following the instructions and template of the Khazarian mafia in the City of London. If you don’t know the details, you may care to read this: Humanity at the Crossroads.[79] You need reference only the brief paragraphs on Greece.
One of the circumstances that many considered a precipitating cause of DSK’s removal, was his conviction of the need for a new world currency, suggesting that SDRs be used much more broadly instead of the US dollar for international trade and payments,[80] leading to a prevailing theory that the US$ be removed. Thierry Meyssan wrote a scholarly article on this,[81]and Mike Whitney wrote an opinion piece claiming “Dominique Strauss-Kahn Was Trying to Torpedo the Dollar.”[82]
But DSK was in no way arguing for the elimination of the US$ in international settlements as for the creation of more stability since poor nations were easily whipsawed by borrowing in US$ at low rates then subjected to bankruptcy when rates rose. It’s true this wouldn’t have earned him many friends since the bankruptcies were part of the plan. But in any case, no changes to the world system could have been made without the cooperation of the US. It doesn’t seem widely-known, but changes to IMF protocols require an 85% approval vote while the US controls 17% of the votes – giving the US a de facto veto on everything.
A larger part of the problem was that the IMF (under DSK) was pushing hard for other nations like China and Russia to obtain a larger and more realistic representation at the IMF. DSK tried to push through reforms that would have considerably increased the share of emerging countries, and that would have produced enemies in all the entrenched Western countries who would be loath to surrender their financial power over the rest of the world.
But much worse than this, DSK was strongly recommending that nations abandon much of their income tax regime and draw their revenue from inheritance taxes on the extremely wealthy. A suggestion like this to the same nations that house the Rothschilds, Sassoons, Warburgs and Sebag-Montefioris would be equivalent to a declaration of war. Almost as bad, DSK was also on record as stating that the FED’s excessively loose monetary policies (directed from the City of London) were responsible for the massive transfers of wealth to the top 1% in each economic cycle. He stated flatly that it was the FED’s excess liquidity that causes the sharp rises in inequality “because that liquidity does not fall into every pocket”.
And worse again, he also stated that the nationalisation of infrastructure, land, and even corporate interests, were “indispensable” for “national independence”. In his words, “The exhaustion of the traditional tools of social democracy, notably redistribution, has led us to redefine a new socialism . . . That rests on the correction of innate market inequalities at root. That leads to a society which permits each person to develop their talents independently of their social conditions at birth. That’s a new humanism which I think we need.”
Suggesting socialism, inheritance confiscations, nationalisations and wealth redistribution to the Satanist trillionaire capitalists who are at the pinnacle of world financial power, is not a way to win friends. Nor is any suggestion of “humanism”. I suspect this latter point alone would have caused his demise, since the template of the Khazar Jews for the past 100 years has been to push small countries into unpayable debt traps and then confiscate all the nation’s infrastructure, arable land, and water aquifers in lieu of cash payment. In these three items, I believe DSK signed his own death warrant three times.[83][84 One of his allies said: “Everyone knows that his weakness is seducing women. That’s how they got to him. . . the aim was to “decapitate the IMF”.
This is perhaps an aside, but where do you suppose the World Bank and IMF obtain their trillions to lend to undeveloped nations? They are not banks that have deposits to lend. The money comes from the Jewish financiers in the City of London, and it is they who direct the terms and who push for unrepayable loans, and it is they who confiscate the infrastructure and land.[85] This is so true that the Rothschilds recently established a new “bank” just to control all their holdings of arable land that has been confiscated from poor countries. In case you don’t know, the Jewish-controlled government of Ukraine, the “breadbasket of Europe”, amended its laws to permit huge swaths of the world’s most fertile soil to disappear forever into this Khazarian abyss.
Epilogue: Who Did This?
One fact I didn’t mention above is that DSK had been warned by friends in various positions that he would become the victim of a plot using some form of sexual entrapment. Also, the French media revealed from an interview with DSK’s wife that he had said to her several months prior, “They are out to get me“. Who were “they”? Certainly not the NYPD, who had neither cause nor leverage.
Why would NYPD detectives and prosecutors be so irresponsible as to set out, deliberately and apparently vengefully, to destroy the career of the second most relevant person in France, based solely on the word of a woman who was already known as a hotel prostitute? In a real world, they could have made a complete investigation and then arrested DSK on his return to the US. He would have to return, since the IMF offices are in Washington.
Nor could it have been the US State Department. The head of the World Bank is traditionally selected by the Jewish handlers of the US government, while the head of the IMF is traditionally filled by the Jewish financiers in Europe. Thus, the US administration also had no leverage, even if they felt they had cause.
It could not have been Nicholas Sarkozy and his election team. They might well have had considerable “cause”, but Sarkozy didn’t have the power to engineer something this vast, especially in the US where it required intense cooperation from the police, the prosecutors, the courts, the media – and the silence of the US government. Sarkozy’s team was clearly kept informed, on what would appear to be nearly a minute-by-minute basis, but they weren’t the engineers. There is no way the US government would give a (disliked) European politician the freedom and power to commit such an immense theatrical crime on US soil, merely to assist his own re-election. Nor would they permit him to use their police, courts and prosecutors to fraudulently force a rival’s resignation from an unrelated UN position.
If the US were concerned that DSK was trying to torpedo the dollar, it is conceivable the White House might have sent someone to the NYPD to say, “This guy is causing us trouble; give him a hard time”. But even the President of the United States hasn’t the power to approach the NYPD and the courts and instruct them to launch a trap based entirely on fraudulent charges and faked evidence to destroy the head of the IMF and force his removal. The President doesn’t have the power to engineer something that hugely illegal which would require participation from so many parties, including the obvious payment to the “victim” for her fraudulent testimony. Such a thing would be unprecedented and would leak. The US administration might well attempt to profit from such an event already in progress, but would never dare to plan and execute something of this nature.
The only people with the power to do this, to plan and execute all the portions of the US side of this theatrical performance, and to obtain the necessary silence from all participants, are the alphabet agencies. The (Khazar-controlled) CIA has the power to say, “This is a matter of the utmost national security. You will comply with our instructions in all details and, if you dare ever breathe a word of this, you will most likely disappear and your family along with you.” The CIA could enforce obedience from the NYPD, the hotel, the prosecutor’s office, the judges and the courts, the phone companies, the airport authorities, and could easily arrange the multiple bank accounts and mobile phones. They are skilled at creating and planting evidence, and they have the power to control media information and disinformation. That’s what they do, and their authority is more or less absolute.
This is an aside, but an important one. In an interview with the wife of Lee Harvey Oswald (JFK’s alleged assassin), she was quoted as saying, “The answer to the Kennedy assassination lies with the [Rothschild-controlled] Federal Reserve. It is wrong to blame it on only James Jesus Angleton and the CIA, per se. They are all fingers on the same hand. The people who control the money are above the CIA.”
The question then remains, from whom were the CIA taking their instruction? It would not have been from the US administration, and certainly not from Sarkozy’s election team. Who was it, who was “out to get” DSK? The answers to all the questions trace to the Jewish bankers in the City of London, the master to whom both Israel’s Mossad and the CIA ultimately report, and these are the people who, for their own reasons, wanted a final extermination of DSK, to utterly ruin the man for his disobedience, and remove him forever as a potential nuisance. DSK was released on bail (from Rikers Island) only on condition that he resign his position as MD of the IMF. This wasn’t the NYPD’s idea, nor the position of the US government. This could have emanated only from the Khazarian mafia in the City of London. It was they who wanted DSK removed from office.
DSK is a Jew, until recently one of the world’s most powerful men, yet still far removed from the “inner circle” of the Khazar mafia in London. If this is what these people will so freely do to one of their own, you can imagine the rickety scaffolding on which the rest of us stand. There is no shortage of unusual and suspicious deaths of those daring to reveal inconvenient truths – or threatening to reveal them. Think of Gary Webb, Michael Hastings and Anne Heche. Think of Robert Maxwell, the Jewish media mogul (real name: Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch) and Mossad’s ‘assisted suicide’ (see note 86) in helping him fall naked off his yacht in the middle of the night to drown in the Atlantic Ocean, shortly after boasting that “they can’t do anything to me because I know where all the bodies are buried.”
Lastly, it must not go unnoticed that the New York Times was a leader in this escapade, “setting the agenda for the nation”[87] and clearly being “a finger on the same hand” as the Khazarian mafia in the City of London. All the Western media lie to their readers and viewers, but the NYT carries a special responsibility for the power of its disinformation and misinformation practices. The day needs to come soon when the NYT is no longer respected as a source of information, but instead despised as a major link in the chain of fascism and fear that will soon bind all of us.
Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).
His full archive can be seen at https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com*
Notes
[1] Strauss-Kahn arrest: IMF head detained at Rikers Island
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-13420440
[2] Strauss-Kahn indicted by grand jury, is granted $1 million cash bail
https://news.yahoo.com/news/strauss-kahn-indicted-grand-jury-granted-1-million-232344073.html
[3] Letter from prosecutors on Strauss-Kahn accuser’s story
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-strausskahn-accuser-idUSTRE76053W20110701
[4] Letter from prosecutors on the accuser of Strauss-Kahn
[5] Strauss-Kahn Is Released From House Arrest
https://www.npr.org/2011/07/01/137549786/strauss-kahn-sex-assault-case-may-be-crumbling
[6] Recommendation for Dismissal of Strauss-Kahn Case
[7] All charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn dismissed
[8] Strauss-Kahn Drama Ends With Short Final Scene
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/nyregion/charges-against-strauss-kahn-dismissed.html
[9] French Strauss-Kahn sex assault probe dropped
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-strausskahn-france-inquiry-idUSTRE79C3JT20111013
[10] La plainte de Tristane Banon contre Dominique Strauss-Kahn classée sans suite
[11] French prosecutor drops Strauss-Kahn ‘gang rape’ probe
https://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/02/world/europe/france-strauss-kahn/index.html
[12] DSK investigated over prostitution allegations
https://www.abc.net.au/lateline/dsk-investigated-over-prostitution-allegations/3916424
[13] Dominique Strauss-Kahn to stand trial for pimping, French prosecutors say
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/26/dominique-strauss-kahn-trial-pimping
[14] DSK’s extraordinary excuse: ‘I didn’t know I was sleeping with prostitutes at orgies because they were all naked at the time’
[15] French Court Acquits Dominique Strauss-Kahn in Case That Put His Sex Life on View
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/13/world/europe/dsk-acquitted-aggravated-pimping-charges.html
[16] Why D.S.K. Won’t Go Away
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/opinion/sunday/why-dsk-wont-go-away.html
[17] Room 2806: The Accusation
https://www.netflix.com/pt-en/title/81068760
[18] Strauss-Kahn DNA ‘linked to maid’
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/strauss-kahn-dna-linked-to-maid-1.877071
[19] Dominique Strauss-Kahn DNA ‘linked to maid’
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-13519035.amp
[20] Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers complain about police leaks
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-strausskahn-leaks-idUKTRE74P57T20110526
[21] NYPD deny they are source of reports suggesting Strauss-Kahn’s DNA matched sample taken from alleged victim’s clothes.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/5/24/police-deny-leaking-strauss-kahn-dna-report
[22] Police Seek Evidence From I.M.F. Chief on Sex Attack
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/nyregion/maid-picks-imf-chief-as-attacker-in-lineup.html
[23] Strauss-Kahn arrest: IMF head detained at Rikers Island
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-13420440
[24] The Dominique Strauss-Kahn Affair: To Proceed Or Not To Proceed?
[25] “DSK Maid” Tells of Her Alleged Rape by Strauss-Kahn: Exclusive
https://www.newsweek.com/dsk-maid-tells-her-alleged-rape-strauss-kahn-exclusive-68379
[26] Sex charges dismissed against Strauss-Kahn
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/8/23/sex-charges-dismissed-against-strauss-kahn
[27] Strauss-Kahn Prosecution Said to Be Near Collapse
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/nyregion/strauss-kahn-case-seen-as-in-jeopardy.html
[28] Strauss-Kahn Prosecution Said to Be Near Collapse
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/nyregion/strauss-kahn-case-seen-as-in-jeopardy.html
[29] Dominique Strauss-Kahn released on recognizance after questions emerge about accuser’s story
[30] Dominique Strauss-Kahn freed as case details aired outside court room
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/01/dominique-strauss-kahn-court
[31] Dominique Strauss-Kahn lawyers meeting with Manhattan prosecutors
https://www.silive.com/news/2011/07/dominique_strauss-kahn_lawyers.html
[32] Strauss-Kahn Is Released From House Arrest
https://www.npr.org/2011/07/01/137549786/strauss-kahn-sex-assault-case-may-be-crumbling ?
[33] Dominique Strauss-Kahn freed as case details aired outside court room
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/01/dominique-strauss-kahn-court
[34] What Really Happened to Strauss-Kahn?
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/12/22/what-really-happened-dominique-strauss-kahn/
[35] One afternoon in Manhattan: Dominique Strauss-Kahn: what happened in the New York hotel?
https://www.ft.com/content/11e061f0-1780-11e1-b157-00144feabdc0
[36] 10 Questions About Evidence In The Case Of The Chambermaid Versus Dominique Strauss-Kahn
https://www.businessinsider.com/fully-functioning-and-operational–ten-or-so-nave-questions-about-the-evidence-in-the-case-of-the-chambermaid-versus-dominique-strauss-kahn-2011-5
[37] Six out of 10 for the Dominique Strauss-Kahn conspiracy theory
https://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2011/nov/28/dominique-strauss-kahn-conspiracy-theory
[38] The Dominique Strauss-Kahn Affair: To Proceed Or Not To Proceed?
[39] Investigative Journalist Implies DSK Was Set Up By Sarkozy’s Party
https://gothamist.com/news/investigative-journalist-implies-dsk-was-set-up-by-sarkozys-party
[40] The plot to destroy DSK
https://nypost.com/2011/11/27/the-plot-to-destroy-dsk/
[41] Christopher Dickey World News Editor Newsweek and The Daily Beast as Paris bureau chief
John Solomon Updated Jul. 13, 2017 6:57PM ET / Published Jul. 01, 2011 9:52PM ET
[42] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/01/dominique-strauss-kahn-court
Dominique Strauss-Kahn freed as case details aired outside court room
[43] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-strausskahn-accuser-idUSTRE76053W20110701
Letter from prosecutors on Strauss-Kahn accuser’s story
[44] Letter from prosecutors on the accuser of Strauss-Kahn
[45] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-strausskahn-prosecutors-idUKTRE77L6MK20110823
Strauss-Kahn accuser lies torpedo case
[46] Sex charges dismissed against Strauss-Kahn
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/8/23/sex-charges-dismissed-against-strauss-kahn
[47] Strauss-Kahn Is Released From House Arrest
[48] Dominique Strauss-Kahn lawyers meeting with Manhattan prosecutors
https://www.silive.com/news/2011/07/dominique_strauss-kahn_lawyers.html
[49] Now disgraced ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn to get $250,000 ‘golden parachute’… funded by U.S. TAXPAYERS
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1390651/Disgraced-banker-Dominique-Strauss-Kahn-250-000-golden-handshake–taxpayer.html
[50] The Dominique Strauss-Kahn Affair: To Proceed Or Not To Proceed?
[51] One afternoon in Manhattan: Dominique Strauss-Kahn: what happened in the New York hotel?
https://www.ft.com/content/11e061f0-1780-11e1-b157-00144feabdc0
[52] https://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2011/nov/28/dominique-strauss-kahn-conspiracy-theorym
Six out of 10 for the Dominique Strauss-Kahn conspiracy theory
[53] One afternoon in Manhattan: Dominique Strauss-Kahn: what happened in the New York hotel?
https://www.ft.com/content/11e061f0-1780-11e1-b157-00144feabdc0m
[54] Investigative Journalist Implies DSK Was Set Up By Sarkozy’s Party
https://gothamist.com/news/investigative-journalist-implies-dsk-was-set-up-by-sarkozys-party
[55] The plot to destroy DSK
https://nypost.com/2011/11/27/the-plot-to-destroy-dsk/
[56] Dominique Strauss-Kahn freed as case details aired outside court room
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/01/dominique-strauss-kahn-court
[57] Arrested in France – Legal Framework of Police detention
https://www.sba-avocats.com/criminal-defense-attorney-paris-france-police-custody.html
[58] Hotel Worker Settles Claim Strauss-Kahn Forced Sex
[59] Strauss-Kahn’s friends ‘secretly tried to pay off “raped” hotel maid’s family in Guinea’.
[60] Strauss Kahn ‘will pay $6m to settle hotel maid’s civil suit’
[61] Strauss-Kahn to pay hotel maid $6m
https://www.smh.com.au/world/strausskahn-to-pay-hotel-maid-6m-20121201-2anca.html
[62] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2012/11/30/strauss-kahn-lawyers-deny-6m-maid-settlement
Strauss-Kahn lawyers deny $6m-maid settlement
[63] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1390177/Call-New-York-hotel-maids-fitted-panic-buttons-horror-tales-dog-attacks-naked-men-emerge-Strauss-Kahn-attack.html
[64] 10 Questions About Evidence In The Case Of The Chambermaid Versus Dominique Strauss-Kahn
https://www.businessinsider.com/fully-functioning-and-operational–ten-or-so-nave-questions-about-the-evidence-in-the-case-of-the-chambermaid-versus-dominique-strauss-kahn-2011-5
[65] Former IMF boss claims immunity in civil case
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/9/27/former-imf-boss-claims-immunity-in-civil-case
[66] What Is Rikers Island?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/nyregion/rikers-island-prison-new-york.html
[67] Strauss-Kahn arrest: IMF head detained at Rikers Island
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-13420440
[68] Clinton’s Jewish US. Ambassadors:
http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-occupiedgovernments-usa-ambassadors.html
[69] CIA: Frank G. Wisner arrived in Cairo
https://www.voltairenet.org/article168337.html
[70] CIA: Frank G. Wisner arrived in Cairo
https://www.voltairenet.org/article168337.html
[71] Cyrus Vance’s Office Sought Reduced Sex-Offender Status for Epstein
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/nyregion/cyrus-vance-epstein.html
[72] The Dominique Strauss-Kahn Affair: To Proceed Or Not To Proceed?
[73] How France hid the sleazy truth about the rutting chimpanzee
[74] Accused Rapist Dominique Strauss-Kahn To Settle With His Accuser
https://www.africanglobe.net/headlines/accused-rapist-dominique-strauss-kahn-settle-accuser/
[75] Promoting Peace, Tolerance, and Respect
https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2018/09/30/sp092618-promoting-peace-tolerance-and-respect
[76] Strauss-Kahn arrest: IMF head detained at Rikers Island
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-13420440
[77] Regime Change at the IMF: Christine Lagarde and The Frame-Up of Dominique Strauss-Kahn
https://www.globalresearch.ca/regime-change-at-the-imf-the-frame-up-of-dominique-strauss-kahn/24866
[78] The plot to destroy DSK
https://nypost.com/2011/11/27/the-plot-to-destroy-dsk/
Humanity at the Crossroads
[79] https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/humanity-at-the-crossroads-2/
[80] UK Telegraph – International Monetary Fund director Dominique Strauss-Kahn calls for new world currency
[81] Obama, financial war and the elimination of DSK
https://www.voltairenet.org/article170083.html
[82] Dominique Strauss-Kahn Was Trying to Torpedo the Dollar
https://www.ibtimes.com/dominique-strauss-kahn-was-trying-torpedo-dollar-285599
[83] Dominique Strauss-Kahn: This Crisis Is Harder To Handle Than The Great Depression
[84] Strauss-Kahn affair turns French politics upside down
https://www.bbc.com/news/13407908
[85] World Map of Privatisation
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/5634/
[86] According to Wikipedia who always tell the truth about everything, especially everything Jewish, Maxwell’s “standard practice” when he wanted to urinate was to remove all his clothing and pee over the rail of his yacht into the Mediterranean. Documented evidence of this “standard practice” is of course non-existent, but if we can’t trust Wikipedia who can we trust.
[87] Propaganda and the Media — Part 3 – Establishing and Controlling the Narrative
Israel likely behind 1981 bombings of German, Swiss engineering firms, expert claims
BY JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | INTELNEWS | JANUARY 5, 2022
ISRAEL’S PRIMARY EXTERNAL INTELLIGENCE agency, the Mossad, was likely behind a series of mysterious bombings in 1981, which targeted German and Swiss engineering firms believed to be aiding the Pakistani nuclear program, according to new exposé by a leading Swiss newspaper. Several bomb attacks targeted a number of engineering firms in Switzerland and what was then West Germany in 1981. Alongside these attacks, there were threatening telephone calls that targeted West German and Swiss engineers.
A previously unknown militant group calling itself the Organization for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in South Asia took responsibility for these actions. Its members mailed a number of political manifestos to the German and Swiss press, and repeatedly issue proclamations via telephone in broken German or English, according to contemporary accounts. Interestingly, the Organization for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in South Asia has never been heard of since.
Now, however, one of Switzerland’s leading newspapers, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), claims in a new report that the violent actions against German and Swiss scientists and engineering firms were likely undertaken by the Israeli Mossad. In a leading article published on Saturday, the Swiss daily cited “new, previously unseen documents from archives” in Switzerland and the United States, which allegedly shed light on these mysterious attacks.
The report rests partly on the work of Swiss historian Adrian Hänni, who argues that Israeli intelligence was eager to prevent Pakistan from acquiring access to nuclear energy. The prospect of Pakistan becoming the first Muslim-majority nuclear state was viewed by Israel as an “existential threat”, according to Hänni. Additionally, the Mossad had credible information that senior officials in Islamabad worked closely with the Islamic Republic of Iran, one of Israel’s mortal regional enemies. These factors convinced the Israeli leadership of the time to authorize a covert operation against a number of European firms and scientists who were allegedly aiding Islamabad’s pursuit of a nuclear arsenal, according to the NZZ.
Isabel Maxwell: Israel’s “Back Door” Into Silicon Valley
BY WHITNEY WEBB |
UNLIMITED HANGOUT| JULY 24, 2020
This is Part II of the series “The Maxwell Family Business: Espionage” and focuses on Isabel Maxwell. Part I can be found here.
In 1992, Israel’s government created the Yozma Program at the urging of Chief Scientist of Israel’s Ministry of Industry and Trade – Yigal Erlich – as Erlich moved to leave that position. The Yozma Program aimed to “incentivize venture investment” by creating state-linked venture capital funds, which later spawned a myriad of Israeli hi-tech start ups by merging them with major, foreign technology companies. According to Erlich’s website, he had lobbied Israel’s government to launch Yozma because he had “identified a market failure and a huge need in Israel to establish for the first time a professionally-managed venture capital industry that will fund the exponential growth of high tech ventures coming out of Israel.” He then “convinced the Israeli government to allocate $100 million for his venture capital vision.”
Erlich’s vision would also result in the fusion of Israel’s hi-tech sector, which he helped to create, with Israel’s intelligence apparatus, with numerous Israeli hi-tech conglomerates created with funding from the Yozma program and its successors doubling as tools of Israeli espionage. Notably, not long before Erlich convinced Israel to place $100 million into this program, Israeli intelligence, thanks largely to the work of infamous spymaster Rafi Eitan, had learned the benefits of placing backdoors for their intelligence services into commercial software through the theft and subversion of the PROMIS software. As noted in Part I of this series, Israel’s bugged version of PROMIS was largely marketed by Robert Maxwell.
After the Yozma program was established, the first venture capital fund it created was called Gemini Israel Ventures and Israel’s government chose a man named Ed Mlavksy to lead it. Mlavksy, at the time, was the Executive Director of the Israel-U.S. Bi-national Industrial Research and Development Foundation (BIRD), where Erlich was Chairman of the Executive Committee. Mlavsky states that, while heading the BIRD foundation, “he was responsible for investments of $100 million in more than 300 joint projects between U.S. and Israeli high-tech companies.” BIRD’s connections to Gemini Israel Ventures and the Yozma Program in general are interesting, given that – just a few years prior – it had come under scrutiny for its role in the one of the worst spy cases in U.S. history – the Jonathan Pollard affair.
Jonathan Pollard had been a naval intelligence analyst turned Israeli spy who passed troves of documents regarding U.S. military technology (specifically nuclear technology) as well as clandestine U.S. intelligence operations to Israeli intelligence, specifically to the now defunct spy agency Lekem. Pollard’s handler was none other than Rafi Eitan, who had engineered Israel’s outsized role in the PROMIS software scandal. In the indictment of Pollard for espionage, it was noted that Pollard delivered documents to agents of Israel at two locations, one of which was an apartment owned by Harold Katz, the then-legal counsel to the BIRD foundation and an adviser to Israel’s military, which oversaw Lekem. Government officials told the New York Times at the time that they believed Katz “has detailed knowledge about the [Pollard] spy ring and could implicate senior Israeli officials.”
Journalist Claudia Wright, writing in 1987, openly speculated about whether the close ties between Katz and Pollard’s handlers meant that BIRD itself had been used to pass funds to Pollard or that BIRD funds themselves, most of which were provided by U.S. taxpayers as opposed to public claims of “joint” funding, had been used to pay Pollard for his “services” to Israel. In her article, she notes that Mlavsky had considerable discretion over the use of those funds while the U.S. official in charge of overseeing the U.S.’ interests in BIRD did “not know how investment is regulated” by the foundation. In addition, no U.S. official had access to any audit of the foundation, which were said to be conducted by an Israel-based accounting firm with no U.S. offices. The New York Times noted at the time that Katz specifically “may have knowledge of the method used to pay Mr. Pollard, who received tens of thousands of dollars from his Israeli handlers.”
After BIRD’s Mlavsky was chosen to head Gemini Israel Ventures, one of the first companies the firm invested in was called CommTouch (now known as Cyren and majority owned by Warburg-Pincus). Founded in 1991 by Gideon Mantel, a former officer in a “special bomb-squad unit” for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), alongside Amir Lev and Nahum Sharfman, CommTouch was initially focused “on selling, maintaining and servicing stand-alone email client software products for mainframe and personal computers.” They specifically courted Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), meaning companies whose products are used as components in the products of another company that are then sold to end users. Integration of its products into those of major software and hardware developers would allow CommTouch’s products to be widely used but unseen. A Wired article discussing CommTouch noted as much, stating that CommTouch products are meant “to be as seamless and unnoticeable as the copper is to a phone caller.”
However, from their founding through early 1997, CommTouch struggled to stay afloat, unable to turn a profit and unable to secure any notable deals or to expand its company beyond 25 employees. Yet, thanks to Gemini Israel Ventures and “grants” from Israel’s government, which were used to finance the research and development of its products, CommTouch managed to stay afloat. As late as 2006, CommTouch noted in official documents that the company “has a history of losses and may never achieve profitability,” further noting that they hemorrhaged millions of dollars a year in net losses. Clearly, the decision by Gemini Israel Ventures and Israel’s government to continue to pour money into a decidedly unprofitable company for several years was motivated by something other than profits.
At some point in early 1997, CommTouch decided to enter the U.S. market and began seeking out a new President for the firm who had “local clout.” “We knew exactly what we were looking for,” Gideon Mantel later told Wired of CommTouch’s search, “Someone who knows her way around the Valley.” They found their woman in the daughter of Israeli “superspy” and PROMIS salesman par excellence, Isabel Maxwell.
An Intriguing Pedigree
Mantel and CommTouch allegedly chose to court Isabel Maxwell for their company’s presidency through an unspecified placement company and were “attracted to her expertise and insight in Silicon Valley when it sought her out.” The Israeli outlet Globes states that Gideon Mantel “went to Isabel Maxwell as soon as he arrived in Silicon Valley and realized that in order to progress, an e-mail solutions company like CommTouch needed help from someone who knew the rules of the game.” Wired offers a similar portrayal, further adding that it was “Gideon Mantel [who] got Isabel Maxwell to take the job.”
Mantel told Jewish Weekly that while Maxwell’s pedigree, i.e. being Robert Maxwell’s daughter, “was very intriguing at the beginning… it wasn’t her name that made the decision for us.” However, Mantel, in separate reports, compares Isabel to her father on numerous occasions when praising her professional abilities. For example, he told Haaretz that Isabel “is not cowed by anyone, and she never gives in…. She got all that at home. They taught her to go after things and not give up.” Similarly, he told Wired that “Like her father, she is a fighter,” later adding that “She always charges. She has no fear. Of course, it is from her father. It is in her blood.” Given that Robert Maxwell is rarely posthumously remembered (in media anyway) as “a fighter” and “fearless,” it goes without saying that Mantel views him with a degree of reverence that he also associates with his daughter Isabel.
Isabel, notably, has herself stated on several occasions that her acceptance of Mantel’s offer to be CommTouch’s President was also informed by her father’s controversial ties to Israel. She told Haaretz that her reasons for accepting the CommTouch presidency was “from the heart” because it was “a chance to continue her father’s involvement in Israel,” leading her to reject other more lucrative job offers from actually established companies that she had received at the time. She similarly described her reasons for joining CommTouch to Jewish Weekly as “an affair of the heart,” adding that “it had to do with my father and my history.” The New York Times quoted her as saying that she had “considered other California-based Internet start-ups [in 1997], but felt a pull toward CommTouch and the Israeli connection.”
Isabel has some interesting views on her father, whom she describes as the “ultimate survivor,” and his involvement in Israel. She describes him as “highly complex,” adding that she doesn’t “have rose-coloured glasses about him,” but nonetheless says she is “proud” of his controversial legacy and that “if he were alive today that he would be proud of us too.” She said something similar to The Guardian in 2002, stating that “‘I’m sure [my father would] be thrilled to know what I’m doing now,’…. throwing back her head and laughing loudly.” In addition, when asked who the most influential person in her life had been, Isabel responded “My father was most influential in my life. He was a very accomplished man and achieved many of his goals during his life. I learned very much from him and have made many of his ways my own.”
Isabel told Haaretz around that same time that “When I was with him [her father], I felt power. Like being at the White House… Beyond that, it was a collective power, not my personal power. I was part of this unit,” apparently referring to her other siblings, Ghislaine and Christine among them, and suggesting that they were collectively extensions of their father’s power.
However, Isabel stands out from her other siblings, and even Ghislaine, in terms of a sense of loyalty to her father and to the state of Israel. According to Elizabeth Maxwell, Isabel’s mother, Isabel “is also loyal to the memory of her father, and to what Judaism represents in her life. All my children were brought up as Anglicans, but Isabel was very taken by the Jewish faith and the politics in Israel” compared to her other children, including Ghislaine.
Indeed, Isabel has close relationships to several prominent former Mossad officials and Israeli heads of state, with several of those relationships having been “forged by her father.” A now scrubbed report published by the Jerusalem Post in 2003, entitled “Isabel Maxwell Fights Back,” notes that “Maxwell travels in the same circles as her father, but she is more comfortable behind the camera, not in front of it… she is carrying on her father’s legacy in Israel, albeit in her own way.” It also noted that, by 2003, Isabel was visiting Israel every month, visiting her father’s grave on the Mount of Olives at least once every visit.
Arguably the most interesting part of the now-scrubbed Jerusalem Post article is the way in which Isabel views her father’s legacy. In discussing the book by Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, Robert Maxwell, Israel’s Superspy: The Life and Death of a Media Mogul, Isabel – even though she participated in interviews for the book – rejected its premise that her father was a “spy”and went on a private smear campaign against the book and its authors prior to its publication.
Tellingly, she does not object to the book’s contents regarding her father’s activities on Israel’s behalf, including his role in the PROMIS software scandal or Iran-Contra, but merely objects to the use of the word “spy” to describe those activities. “My father was certainly a ‘patriot’ and helped in back business and political channels between governments,” Isabel told the Jerusalem Post, “But that did not and does not make him a ‘spy.’” It could be said, then, that Isabel would view her subsequent career “in back business and political channels” via the “same circles as her father” as similarly “patriotic.” Yet, for those that consider her father a “spy” for his activities, that would also mean extending the same to Isabel, who self-identifies as Israeli.
Aside from her father’s own ties to Israeli intelligence, it is worth noting that Isabel’s own history – up to the point she joined CommTouch – involved her working for the Israeli intelligence front company used by her father to sell bugged PROMIS software in the U.S., Information on Demand, and subsequently the search engine Magellan, of which she shared ownership with her sister Christine (whose ties to U.S. intelligence will be explored in Part IV) and her sister Ghislaine, a sexual blackmailer and sex trafficker operating on behalf of U.S. and Israeli intelligence. Isabel’s past with both Magellan and Information on Demand were clearly known to CommTouch at the time of Isabel’s hiring. It also worth noting that, on several occasions, Isabel credits CommTouch’s success with the ties of all of its Israeli employees to the Israeli military and military intelligence, resulting in – per Isabel – a “dogged work ethic” and a “trained mind-set” among its Israeli workforce.
As will be shown in more detail in Part III of this series, upon departing CommTouch, Isabel deepened her already close ties to prominent Israeli politicians and intelligence officials, serving alongside ex-Mossad directors and counting former Israeli chief intelligence officers and heads of state among her “family friends” and business partners. This involvement continued during the period when her son was given a prominent position at the Middle East affairs desk at the State Department when it was headed by Hillary Clinton, who – as many are now aware – has close and controversial ties to Isabel’s sister, Ghislaine.
Microsoft’s Co-founders put CommTouch “On the Map”
Upon taking the job at the Israeli tech firm, Maxwell’s promotion of the company was called “almost messianic” even though her enthusiasm was described as “hard to fathom” given the lackluster performance of the company and its products. However, soon after becoming CommTouch’s president, her personal connections to prominent figures in Silicon Valley – forged through her past work at Magellan – paid off and the company announced new partnershipswith Sun Microsystems, Cisco, and Nippon Telephone and Telegraph, among others. At CommTouch, Maxwell managed“all sales and marketing activities for CommTouch and co-direct[ed] strategic business development.”
Some reports have noted that Maxwell’s connections with prominent Silicon Valley figures were the key to her professional success, with Globes noting that “Everyone who has worked closely with Maxwell says that her advantage lies in her ability to help penetrate the market with a new product by opening the right doors,” an “advantage” also ascribed to her father while he sold bugged PROMIS software on behalf of Israeli intelligence. Yet, despite Isabel’s penchant for “opening the right doors,” reports well into Maxwell’s career at CommTouch still referred to the firm as “an obscure software developer.”
However, out of all the alliances and partnerships Isabel negotiated early on during her time at CommTouch, it was her dealings with Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen that would put CommTouch “on the map.” Maxwell had previously negotiated a major deal with Microsoft’s Bill Gates earlier during her time as the McKinley Group/Magellan’s Executive Vice President, resulting in Microsoft announcing that the Maxwell-owned Magellan would power the search option for the company’s MSN service.
Bill Gates at Deal Book Conference in New York, 2019
Yet, it appears that Microsoft’s co-founders did much more than put CommTouch “on the map,” but ended up preventing the collapse of its initial public offering, a fate that had befallen Isabel Maxwell’s previous company, the McKinely Group, not long before. Indeed, CommTouch kept pushing back its IPO until a massive investment from firms tied to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen was announced in July 1999.
The investment from Allen’s Vulcan Ventures Inc. and Go2Net Inc resulted in a jump in “interest in the stock sale and in CommTouch, until now an obscure software developer,” according to a Bloomberg report, and also inflated their stock price immediately prior to their going public. The money from Allen-linked investment would be specifically used “to expand sales and marketing and build its presence in international markets.” Allen’s decision to invest in the company seems odd from a financial perspective, given that CommTouch had never turned a profit and had netted over $4 million in losses just the year before. Yet, thanks to Allen’s timely investment and apparent coordination with the company’s repeated delays of its IPO, CommTouch was valued at over $230 million when it went public, as opposed to a $150 million valuation just weeks prior to Allen’s investment.
It’s not exactly clear why Paul Allen came to the rescue of CommTouch’s IPO and what he expected to gain from his investment. However, it is worth pointing out that Allen was among the members of an exclusive online community of elites set up in 2004 called “Small World,” whose membership also included Jeffrey Epstein and Epstein-linked figures like Lynn Forester de Rothschild and Naomi Campbell, as well as Petrina Khashoggi, the daughter of Adnan Khashoggi, a former client of Epstein’s. Small World’s largest shareholder was Harvey Weinstein, the now-disgraced media mogul who was a business partner of Epstein and was since accused by a number of women of sexual abuse.
Less than three months after Allen’s investments in CommTouch in October 1999, the company announced that it had struck a major deal with Microsoft whereby “Microsoft will utilize the CommTouch Custom MailTM service to provide private label web-based email solutions for select MSN partners and international markets.” In addition, per the agreement, “CommTouch will provide MSN Messenger Service and Microsoft Passport to its customers while building upon its Windows NT expertise by supporting future MSN messaging technologies.”
The agreement came less than two years after Microsoft had purchased Hotmail, which – up until the CommTouch/Microsoft agreement – had been one of CommTouch’s main competitors for its web-based e-mail services. In other words, this meant that Microsoft would use CommTouch’s “behind the scenes” software as the backbone of its web-based e-mail services, Hotmail included. “We are looking forward to further enhancing our relationship with Microsoft by integrating other state-of-the-art Microsoft products,” Gideon Mantel of CommTouch said upon the deal’s public announcement.
In December 1999, Microsoft then announced that it had invested $20 million in the company by purchasing 4.7% of CommTouch stock. The announcement pushed CommTouch stock prices from $11.63 a share to $49.13 in just a few hours time. Part of that deal had been finalized by Richard Sorkin, a recently appointed CommTouch director. Sorkin had just become a multimillionaire following the sale of Zip2, Elon Musk’s first company where Sorkin had been CEO.
It further appears that Bill Gates, then head of Microsoft, made a personal investment in CommTouch at the behest of Isabel Maxwell. In an October 2000 article published in The Guardian, Isabel “jokes about persuading Bill Gates to make a personal investment” in CommTouch sometime during this time frame.
The article then oddly notes the following regarding Isabel Maxwell and Bill Gates:
“In a faux southern belle accent, [Isabel] purrs: ‘He’s got to spend $375m a year to keep his tax free status, why not allow me to help him.’ She explodes with laughter.”
Given that individuals as wealthy as Gates cannot have “tax free status” and that this article was published soon after the creation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Isabel’s statements suggest that it was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, which manages the foundation’s endowment assets, that had made this sizable investment in CommTouch. Furthermore, it is worth highlighting the odd way in which Isabel describes her dealings with Gates, speaking of her interactions with him in a way not found in any of Isabel’s numerous other interviews on a wide variety of topics (i.e. “purring”, speaking in a fake Southern accent). This odd behavior may be related to Isabel’s previous interactions with Gates and/or the mysterious relationship between Gates and Epstein, alluded to in a 2001 Evening Standard article, and eyewitness testimony regarding Epstein’s and Ghislaine Maxwell’s comments about Bill Gates in 1995, discussed in Part I of this series.
After 2000, CommTouch’s business and clout expanded rapidly, with Maxwell subsequently crediting Bill Gates-led Microsoft and Paul Allen’s investment for the company’s shifting fortunes. Maxwell, as quoted in the 2002 book Fast Alliances, states that Microsoft viewed CommTouch as a key “distribution network,” adding that “Microsoft’s investment in us put us on the map. It gave us instant credibility, validated our technology and service in the marketplace.” By this time, Microsoft’s ties to CommTouch had deepened with new partnerships, including CommTouch’s hosting of Microsoft Exchange.
Though Isabel was able to secure lucrative investments and alliances for CommTouch and see its products integrated into key software and hardware components produced and sold by Microsoft and other tech giants, she was unable to turn the tide of the company’s dire financial performance, with CommTouch netting a loss of $4.4 million in 1998 and similar losses well into the 2000s, with net losses totalling $24 million in the year 2000 (just one year after the sizable investments from Microsoft, Paul Allen and Bill Gates). The losses continued even after Isabel formally left the company and became President Emeritus in 2001. By 2006, the company was over $170 million in debt.
The One-Woman Liaison Between Israel and Silicon Valley
Isabel Maxwell would leave her role at CommTouch in 2001, but remained President Emeritus for years afterward retaining a sizable amount of CommTouch stock then-valued at around $9.5 million. While Maxwell remained honorary president, CommTouch added Yair Shamir, son of former Israeli Prime Minister and friend of Robert Maxwell, Yitzhak Shamir, to its board. Yair Shamir, Chairman of the Israeli government owned corporation, IAI (Israeli Aerospace Industries) when he joined CommTouch’s board, had previously managed Scitex when it was owned by Robert Maxwell. After nearly collapsing due to its long-standing debt burden a few years later, CommTouch was rebranded as Cyren and, today, runs in the background of Microsoft, Google, Intel, McAfee and Dell products, among many others.
Haaretz wrote in 2002 that Isabel, as CommTouch was in dire financial straits, had decided to “work only on things involving Israel. Even the failure of CommTouch, the Israeli Internet company she headed, hasn’t deterred her: She still believes in the medium, and she still believes in Israel.” Maxwell would subsequently create “a unique niche for herself in high tech as a liaison between Israeli companies in the initial development stages and private angel investors in the US” as a private consultant, subsequently creating Maxwell Communications Network in 2006. That company offered “cross-border communications, funding and market research to leading venture capitalists and hi-tech companies in the US and Israel.” However, she notes that her “specialty” was in “helping Israeli high-tech companies.”
During this period (2001-2006), Isabel would also head an Israeli tech company that “protects children online,” at a time when her sister – Ghislaine Maxwell – was actively abusing and trafficking children as part of an intelligence-linked operation alongside Jeffrey Epstein. Isabel took the job at iCognito (now Pure Sight) “because it [the company] is in Israel, and because of its technology.” She also joined the board of the Israeli company Backweb alongside Gil Shwed, a famous alumnus of Unit 8200 (often likened to Israel’s NSA equivalent) and co-founder of Israeli tech giant Check Point, which is a long-time partner of CommTouch.
Isabel’s close involvement with former Israeli heads of state and heads of intelligence would only deepen after leaving CommTouch, particularly with former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. The Jerusalem Post described the Peres-Isabel relationship as “close” and “forged by her father.” Isabel was also in close contact with former Mossad deputy director David Kimche (until his death in 2010) and former head of Israeli military intelligence and Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Notably, Ehud Barak, in addition in being a major player in the Israeli-U.S. hi-tech scene, was also closely associated with Jeffrey Epstein and Isabel’s sister Ghisaline, having recruited Epstein for Israeli military intelligence and overseeing the Lekem agency at the time of the PROMIS scandal (including Robert Maxwell’s role) and the Pollard Affair as well as Israel’s involvement Iran-Contra. Barak was also a frequent visitor to Epstein’s island and slept over in New York apartments that were owned by Epstein’s brother and which housed many of Epstein’s underage “sex slaves.”
Also notable is the fact that Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein would themselves become involved in Isabel’s world, i.e. the growing nexus between Silicon Valley and Israel, courting and allegedly blackmailing major Silicon Valley executives while also investing in Israeli intelligence-connected start-ups. During this time, Isabel was a major player in venture capital networks and other organizations aiming to further develop ties between Israeli intelligence-linked start-ups and U.S. tech companies, which is now part of an openly admitted Israeli intelligence operation (in which Microsoft plays a major role). The ties of Isabel, Ghislaine and Epstein to this hi-tech world of Israeli espionage, as well as Isabel having inspired what would later become Ghislaine’s TerraMar project and her ties to powerful groups like the World Economic Forum and even the Hillary Clinton-led State Department, will be explored in the next installment of this series.
Whitney Webb has been a professional writer, researcher and journalist since 2016. She has written for several websites and, from 2017 to 2020, was a staff writer and senior investigative reporter for Mint Press News. She currently writes for The Last American Vagabond.
After Beirut blast, Israel revives tales of Hezbollah ammonium nitrate terror plots
By Gareth Porter | The Grayzone | August 26, 2020
Israeli officials have exploited the massive explosion at the Port of Beirut this August to revive a dormant propaganda campaign that had accused the Lebanese militia and political party Hezbollah of storing ammonium nitrate in several countries to wage terror attacks on Israelis.
The Israeli intelligence apparatus had planted a series of stories from 2012 to 2019 claiming Hezbollah sought out ammonium nitrate as the explosive of choice for terrorist operations. According to the narrative, Hezbollah planned to covertly store the explosive substance in locations from Southeast Asia to Europe and the US — only to be foiled repeatedly by Mossad. In each one of those cases, however, the factual record either contradicted the Israeli claims or revealed a complete dearth of evidence.
The narrative first debuted in the Israeli press after a June 2019 story in the British pro-Israel daily The Telegraph on alleged Hezbollah storage of the explosive around London. The Times of Israel introduced for the first time the much broader theme that Hezbollah planned to use the explosive for “huge, game-changing attacks on Israeli targets globally.”
Next, “new details” appeared in the Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth from “unnamed Israeli intelligence officials,” disclosing how Israel had supposedly stymied ammonium nitrate-based terror plots by Hezbollah in London, Cyprus and Thailand.
Following the calamity of the Beirut explosion, the narrative story was opportunistically revived in the Israeli media, with The Times of Israel summarizing an Israeli Channel 13 report citing an “unsourced assessment” that Hezbollah “apparently planned to use the ammonium nitrate stockpile that caused a massive blast at Beirut’s port this week against Israel in a ‘Third Lebanon War’.”
A review of the supposedly open-and-shut cases in both Thailand and Cyprus, however, reveals serious questions about the evidence used to accuse Hezbollah suspects and the role of the Mossad in those cases. It also shows that an alleged Hezbollah plot involving ammonium nitrate in New York City was contrived by the FBI and Justice Department without any real evidence.
Thailand: Muddling the Issue, Bending the Law
The arrest of Hussein Atris, a dual Swedish-Lebanese citizen, in Bangkok on January 13, 2012 occurred after the Mossad received a report that a terrorist attack was due to occur in the middle of that month. The Israeli intelligence agency had given the Thai police a list of 14 or 15 suspects — all Iranian or Lebanese — to be placed under surveillance, including Atris.
But it was Atris who received the bulk of attention. After his arrest, he told police about goods he had stored in a commercial building in Bangkok. Shortly after his arrest, he was taken out of his cell to a house where he was interrogated by three Mossad agents, as was typical of Mossad operations in countries where Israel cultivated close relations with law enforcement. On January 17, Thai police visited the commercial building near Bangkok and reportedly found 4.8 tons of urea fertilizer and 40 liters (100 pounds) of ammonium nitrate.
Atris was immediately charged by the police with “possession of prohibited substances.” But in fact, the ammonium nitrate that Atris had stored in the building was not illegal; it was merely a component of frozen gel packs for sore muscles commonly bought and sold wholesale and retail all over the world.
The boxes of gel packs were stored along with electric fans, slippers and copy paper on the second floor of the building. And as Atris explained to his interrogators and to a reporter from the Swedish dailyAftonbladet who interviewed him in jail, he had been purchasing various goods in Asia and exporting them to other countries like Liberia. He had already arranged for a freighter to ship the goods he had stored there, as the chief of Bangkok metropolitan police confirmed in an interview with the New York Times.
The Mossad interrogators refused to accept the explanation by Atris and accused him of lying about his business. Further clouding the picture, police found two tons of urea fertilizer in bags labeled as cat litter on the same floor as the cold packs. But Atris told an interviewer he had never dealt with fertilizer in his business, and that he believed “it must have been placed in our storage facility by someone, probably Mossad.”
Mossad and its Thai allies were committed to the idea that Atris was a Hezbollah operative from the beginning, even though they apparently had no actual hard evidence to back it up. The claim of Hezbollah membership was nevertheless sold successfully to cooperative local and national news media. A Reuters story headlined “Thailand: Hezbollah man arrested in terror scare.” When he was brought to trial in 2013, Atris firmly denied any links to Hezbollah, and the court ultimately found that there was no evidence to support the contention by the police and Mossad that he was in any way involved with the Lebanese movement.
International press coverage of the case blurred details in a way that incorrectly suggested terrorist intent. When Atris’s case went to trial in July 2013, Agence-France Presse falsely reported that he and “unidentified accomplices” had “packed more than six tons of ammonium nitrate into bags,” thus confusing the already commercially-packaged cold packs with the urea fertilizer, which was not an illegal substance under Thai law and which he specifically denied owning. Time magazine distorted the case more seriously by referring to the bags of urea fertilizer as “chemicals being assembled into explosives… in bags labeled as kitty litter.”
In the end, Atris was convicted of “illegal possession” of ammonium nitrate, which was a banned substance under Thai law. However, the country had not intended for the provision to apply to frozen gel packs for pain relief, which are commonly traded in bulk internationally.
Despite the absence of any evidence that Atris was either a Hezbollah agent or a terrorist, the US State Department bowed to its Israeli allies and declared him to be “a member of Hezbollah’s overseas terrorist unit.”
Cyprus: The mysterious appearance of ammonium nitrate
In 2015, the Cypriot government’s prosecuted Canadian-Lebanese Hussein Bassam Abdallah for allegedly being part of a Hezbollah ammonium nitrate terrorist plot after police found 420 boxes of the fertilizer in the house where he was staying. Yet virtually no details about the case were ever released because the entire legal process took place behind closed doors. What’s more, Abdallah’s defense was never made public.
Furthermore, information from the Kuwaiti daily Al-Jarida, which Israelis have often used to disseminate propaganda into the Arab Middle East, raises serious questions about the origin of the ammonium nitrate found in the house where Abdallah was staying. The newspaper published a story citing a “private source” who said that Mossad agents had been tracking Abdallah, following his every movement and intercepting all his phone calls from Cyprus. The Mossad surveillance continued, according to the story, “until he obtained the materials and fertilizer, after which Cypriot authorities were informed [and] raided his place of residence and arrested him and seized two tons of [ammonium nitrate].…”
By reporting an apparent Mossad account that the ammonium nitrate was not at the house until just before Mossad tipped off the police, the Al-Jarida account obviously suggested that the timing of its appearance was not merely coincidental.
This was not the first time that Mossad-related evidence against one of its targets turned out to be highly suspect. Two Iranian men who were visiting Mombasa, Kenya in 2012 were charged with having buried 15 kg of the explosive RDX on a golf course. However, they had been interrogated — and one of them allegedly drugged — by three Mossad agents. Though Kenyan police had supposedly been carrying out constant surveillance on them for the entire length of their stay, no direct evidence of the Iranians ever possessing RDX came to light. That anomaly resulted in the case against the Iranians being thrown out by Kenya’s Court of Appeal , and suggested that Mossad itself had planted the explosive on the golf course.
In Abdallah’s case, the evidence also indicated the use of a classical prosecution tactic was employed to force him to admit to a Hezbollah ammonium nitrate terrorism plot: forcing a plea bargain on him by the threat of a much longer sentence if he refused to plead guilty.
After the first week of interrogation, a Cypriot security official told a journalist that Abdallah denied all charges against him and was not “cooperating” — meaning he was not admitting what both Israel and Cyprus wanted him to. Weeks later, however, following a trial closed to the public, Abdallah admitted to all eight charges against him. The semi-official Cyprus News Agency reported he had given the police a statement that the ammonium nitrate was to have been used for terrorist attacks against Jewish or Israeli interests in Cyprus. In return he was given a six-year sentence instead of the 14 years he would have received without the deal.
Abdallah’s defense lawyer, Savvas A. Angelides, pressed his client to accept the plea bargain, advancing the political interests of Cyprus as a close ally of Israel. For his part, Angelides had his eyes on a high-level national security posting in his country’s government. Sure enough, in early 2018, the lawyer was appointed Defense Minister of Cyprus.
The idea that Hezbollah obtained ammonium nitrate for use in New York City – another Israeli contention – was not supported by any evidence whatsoever. In this case, a Lebanese-American named Ali Kourani stood accused of hatching a Hezbollah terror plot. But the closest the US Justice Department could come to linking to ammonium nitrate was a statement in its criminal complaint against him.
It claimed that in May 2009, Kourani “entered China at an airport in Guangzhou, the location of Guangzhou Company-1, i.e., the manufacturer of the ammonium nitrate-based First Aid ice packs sized in connection with thwarted IJO attacks in Thailand and Cyprus.” The suggestion that a trip to Quangzhou somehow counted as evidence of an effort to procure ammonium nitrate for Hezbollah terrorism was patently absurd.
London and Germany: Mossad’s phantom Hezbollah explosives
The next apparent Israeli intel dump arrived in the form of a June 2019 story in the Telegraph UK, a right-wing Murdoch-owned daily which loyally follows Israeli propaganda lines. According to the report, in 2015, the UK MI5 intelligence service and London’s Metropolitan Police were tipped off by the Mossad about thousands of ice packs containing three tons of ammonium nitrate in warehouses in Northwest London. The Telegraph revealed that London police had arrested one man “on suspicion of plotting terrorism” but had eventually released him without charges. That detail was the giveaway that the British had come to realize that they had no evidence linking cold packs or their owner to any Hezbollah terrorist plot — contrary to the Israel narrative.
The Telegraph’s suggestion that MI5 decided not to prosecute to disrupt the threat isn’t credible, because no one was ever prosecuted. And its implication that the British government kept quiet about the episode because it was protecting the Iran nuclear deal did not apply once Trump tore up the agreement in 2018. The British government, which banned Hezbollah in February 2020, has never suggested that the Lebanese militia had been plotting to use ammonium nitrate from warehouses in the UK to carry out terrorist attacks.
According to a report this May by Israel’s Channel 12, days before Germany announced its banning of Hezbollah from the country, Mossad had gathered information on alleged Hezbollah terrorism-related activities in Germany. The supposed plotting consisted of the identification of warehouses in southern Germany where the Mossad said Hezbollah was storing ‘hundreds of kilograms” of ammonium nitrate.
After the information was presented to German intelligence and law enforcement agencies, according to the report, the German Interior Ministry announced in April 2020 that it was banning Hezbollah. It simultaneously raided four mosque associations accused of being close to Hezbollah. But German law enforcement never announced any action regarding warehouses supposedly holding ammonium nitrate, indicating that the German government found nothing that backed up the claims by Mossad.
Hoping to seize the Beirut explosion as a historic propaganda opportunity, the Israelis clearly believe they can fashion a new and more powerful narrative by knitting together false claims related to these episodes. Their objective is to achieve their longtime objective of forcing Hezbollah out of the Lebanese government by implicating it in the calamitous blast. So far, Western corporate media appears inclined to accept the baseless Israeli claims on face value. The day after the blast in Beirut, the Washington Post reported that Hezbollah “has long shown an interest in acquiring [ammonium nitrate] for use in a variety of terrorist plots.”
Claim: ‘Epstein Worked for Israel’
Pedophile, spy’s daughter were blackmailing public figures for Mossad.
By Philip Giraldi | American free press | February 5, 2020
The saga of pedophile procurer to the rich and famous Jeffrey Epstein continues to enthrall, even if the Department of Justice appears to have no interest in learning the details of what appears to be a major Israeli spy operation. There have been a number of new developments in the past several weeks, confirming that Epstein had been a longtime Israeli intelligence asset targeting prominent Americans while also suggesting that he was murdered in his prison cell in New York rather than a suicide.
Of interest to many following the story with the apparent exception of the FBI, a former Israeli intelligence officer has written a book describing how Epstein and his partner in crime Ghislaine Maxwell were blackmailing prominent politicians on behalf of Israel’s foreign intelligence service Mossad. According to Ari Ben-Menashe, the two had been working directly for the Israeli government since the 1980s and their operation, which was funded by Mossad and also by prominent American Jews, was a classic “honey-trap” which used underage girls as bait to attract well-known politicians from around the world, a list that included Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton. The politicians would then be photographed and video recorded when they were in bed with the girls.
Ben-Menashe’s soon-to-be-released book Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales describes how Epstein was introduced to Maxwell originally by her father, Robert, a Czech-born British media tycoon, who was also a long-term Israeli agent. After his death, he was given a state funeral by Israel in which six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence listened while Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized: “He has done more for Israel than can today be said.”
Ben-Menashe was Robert Maxwell’s agent handler, meaning that he was the government intelligence officer who actually met with the high-level spy. Through Maxwell, Epstein also met prominent Israelis, including Ehud Barak, prime minister from 1999-2001, who had a business relationship with the American financier and occasionally visited the Epstein mansion in New York City.
To be sure Ben-Menashe, has something of a peculiar personal history due to his Mossad connection and he wants to sell his book, but no one has stated that he is wrong on his facts, even though his claims are largely unsubstantiated. And one might also add that last year’s hidden camera undercover exposés of Israeli agents working clandestinely to bring down unfriendly politicians and government officials in both Britain and the United States suggests that Israel is particularly aggressive in its influence operations.
One would have thought that the alleged ongoing investigation of Epstein would include a questioning of possible victims of the blackmail, to include Clinton, but there is no suggestion from anyone that that has actually taken place. And what about Ghislaine Maxwell, who was certainly complicit in the crimes against the girls who were used as well as regarding those who were later blackmailed?
Ghislaine, like Clinton, has never been asked to answer any questions about what she and Epstein were up to, though there is a Reuters report that she is being “investigated.” She has meanwhile been spotted in Los Angeles sipping a coffee at an open-air café. Most recently, the Jewish Telegraph Agency reports that “Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who has been accused of helping late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, is reportedly hiding out in Israel.”
A New York Post article confirms that Ghislaine sometimes travels to Britain on her UK passport but that she is currently in Israel “where her powerful contacts have provided her with safe houses and protection. Ghislaine is protected. . . . They would trade information about the powerful people caught in his net—caught at Epstein’s house.” Apart from her status as a Mossad asset and the protection it provides, generally speaking, Israel will not extradite any Jew who has been charged with a crime in another country, which is why so many Russian-Jewish organized crime figures have taken Israeli citizenship. So Ghislaine is unlikely ever to appear in an American courtroom.
And then there is the increased uncertainty about how Epstein died in jail. The authorities continue to claim it was suicide but one has to wonder how he managed to kill himself, if that is indeed the case, as he was reportedly on suicide watch at the prison and he should have been stripped of any clothing or cell furnishings that would have been usable to that end. So he is dead, but did he do it himself or was he helped? There are many prominent individuals and powerful government agencies that will be very pleased that he is gone, as most of his secrets will have gone to the grave with him.
There was certainly a warning that something might happen. Two weeks before his death, he was reportedly found unconscious in his jail cell with marks around his neck. It was suggested that he might have tried to kill himself or, alternatively, had been beaten up by another inmate. There was also considerable speculation that some aggrieved part of the Deep State was trying to assassinate him to silence him.
The recent release of a post-mortem in the jail as well as autopsy photos of Epstein on “60 Minutes” combined with the revelation that procedures in the prison were irregular have reopened the controversy over exactly how the convicted pedophile died with at least one more prominent pathologist saying that the images indicate that he was murdered, not a suicide.
The photos were reviewed by Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist and a former New York City medical examiner, who claimed that the evidence indicates that Epstein didn’t take his own life. Baden had been a witness at the original four-hour autopsy, and it was his judgement that the photos confirm that the fractures sustained by Epstein don’t suggest suicide. He also observed that the noose made from a bed sheet included in the photos of the autopsy report doesn’t appear to match the wound on Epstein’s throat because it would have created a wider “furrow mark.”
Baden also said, “There were fractures of the left, the right, thyroid cartilage and the left hyoid bone. I have never seen three fractures like this in a suicidal hanging. Sometimes there’s a fracture of the hyoid bone or a fracture of the thyroid cartilage. And going over a thousand jail hangings, suicides in the New York City state prisons over the past 40-50 years, no one had three fractures.”
Per Newsweek’s reporting of Dr. Baden’s analysis. “He also wondered why Epstein would fashion a noose out of bed linen when his cell contained a long electrical cord attached to a sleep apnea machine, [saying] ‘There were other wires and cords present that it would’ve been easy to use to hang oneself within a few minutes. . . . The forensic evidence released so far, including autopsy, point much more to murder and strangulation than the suicide and suicidal hanging.’”
And then there is always the big question which remains unanswered or even unasked. Conclusive evidence that Epstein was an Israeli intelligence agent might well be derived from the former U.S. Attorney in Miami Alexander Acosta’s comments when being later cleared by the Trump transition team. He was asked, “Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]? . . . Acosta testified that he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had ‘been told’ to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. ‘I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone.’”
And then there is also the continuing mystery around Epstein’s possession of a genuine Austrian passport. How did he get it? Austrian passports are highly desirable in intelligence circles because the country is neutral and its holders can travel just about everywhere without a visa.
How Government and Media Are Prepping America for a Failed 2020 Election
Feature photo | Graphic by Claudio Cabrera for MintPress News
By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | January 28, 2020
As World War II drew to a close in Europe, British philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote that “neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.”
Though numerous examples in the post-World War II era have proven Russell’s point, perhaps one of the best examples was the U.S. public’s willingness to swallow lie after lie about Saddam Hussein’s Iraq due to the climate of fear that followed the September 11 attacks. Those lies, propagated by dubious intelligence, government officials and a compliant media, resulted in catastrophes – large and small, both abroad and at home.
Today, an analogous narrative is being crafted by many of the same players – both in media and government – yet it has avoided scrutiny, even from independent media.
Over the past several months and with a renewed zeal in just the last few weeks, anonymous intelligence officials, dubious “experts” and establishment media outlets have crafted a narrative about the coming “chaos” of the 2020 election, months before it takes place. Per that narrative, certain state actors will use specific technologies to target the “American mind” in order to undermine the coming presidential election. The narrative holds that those efforts will be so successful that the U.S. will never recover as a democracy.
Though these anonymous government sources and their stenographers have already named the countries who will be responsible and the technologies they will use, they also admit that no evidence yet exists to back up these claims, meaning they are — at best — pure speculation.
Headlines such as “Hackers Are Coming for the 2020 Election — And We’re Not Ready,” “Basically Every US National Security Leader Is Warning About Foreign Interference In The 2020 Election,” and “U.S. intel agencies: Russia and China plotting to interfere in 2020 election” have become increasingly common, despite no available evidence, as have warnings that the American public is defenseless against the old scourge of “fake news” and the new scourge of “deep fakes.” Some media reports have gone so far to say that actual foreign meddling isn’t even necessary as merely the fear of foreign meddling could be enough to upend the American political system beyond repair.
Historically, the goal of such fear-inducing narratives has been the trading of civil liberties for increased security, or rather, the appearance of increased security. Yet, when the need for security is felt due to a fear that is based on government-driven speculation and not on evidence, the goal of that narrative is not about protecting the public from a real, tangible threat but instead about the consolidation of power by the very groups responsible for crafting it — in this case, the intelligence community and other key players in the national security state.
However, what is particularly odd about this narrative surrounding imminent “chaos” and meddling in the upcoming 2020 election is the fact that, not only have the instruments of said meddling been named and described in detail, but their use in the election was recently simulated by a company with deep ties to both U.S. and Israeli intelligence. That simulation, organized and run by the Israeli-American company Cybereason, ended with scores of Americans dead, the cancellation of the 2020 election, the imposition of martial law and a spike in fear among the American populace.
Many of the technologies used to create that chaotic and horrific scenario in the Cybereason simulation are the very same technologies that U.S. federal officials and corporate media outlets have promoted as the core of the very toolkit that they claim will be used to undermine the coming election, such as deep fakes and hacks of critical infrastructure, consumer devices and even vehicles.
While the narrative in place has already laid the blame at the feet of U.S. rival states China, Russia and Iran, these very technologies are instead dominated by companies that are tied to the very same intelligence agencies as Cybereason, specifically Israeli military intelligence.
With intelligence agencies in the U.S. and Israel not only crafting the narrative about 2020 foreign meddling, but also dominating these technologies and simulating their use to upend the coming election, it becomes crucial to consider the motivations behind this narrative and if these intelligence agencies have ulterior motives in promoting and simulating such outcomes that would effectively end American democracy and hand almost total power to the national security state.
Media, intelligence foreshadow tech-powered doom for 2020
Even though the 2020 U.S. election is still months away, a plethora of media reports over the past six months (and even before then) have been raising concern after concern about how the U.S. election is still so vulnerable to foreign meddling that such meddling is essentially an inevitability.
Part of the reason for the recent pick-up in fear mongering appears to have been the release of a joint statement issued by key members of the Trump administration last November. That statement, authored by Attorney General Bill Barr, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan, acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, FBI Director Christopher Wray, NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Christopher Krebs, claimed that foreign interference in 2020 was imminent despite admitting that there is no evidence of interference having taken place:
Our adversaries want to undermine our democratic institutions, influence public sentiment and affect government policies. Russia, China, Iran, and other foreign malicious actors all will seek to interfere in the voting process or influence voter perceptions. Adversaries may try to accomplish their goals through a variety of means, including social media campaigns, directing disinformation operations or conducting disruptive or destructive cyber-attacks on state and local infrastructure.
While at this time we have no evidence of a compromise or disruption to election infrastructure that would enable adversaries to prevent voting, change vote counts or disrupt the ability to tally votes, we continue to vigilantly monitor any threats to U.S. elections (emphasis added).”
Despite the key caveat of there being no evidence at the time the statement was issued, media reports used the statement to claim that foreign interference in 2020 was imminent, such as in these reports from BuzzFeed, ABC News, and Newsweek.
In addition to the reports that have cast the involvement of state actors — namely Russia, Iran and China — as assured despite no evidence, other reports have made the claim that this allegedly imminent interference will inevitably be successful, largely due to claims that the tactics used will rely heavily on technology that the U.S. can’t hope to successfully counter. CSO Online, an online news outlets that provides news, analysis and research on security and risk management, recently warned that “fixing America’s voting and election infrastructure problems is a long-term proposition, one that won’t be fixed in time for the election in November” while the New York Times warned of imminent chaos and that “stealthier” malevolent foreign actors had already created the foundation for “an ugly campaign season marred by hacking and disinformation.” Wired claimed last year that U.S. election security “is still hurting at every level.”
In another example, Rolling Stone published an article earlier this month with the headline “Hackers Are Coming for the 2020 Election — And We’re Not Ready,” which claims that “the reality is that: “We’ve made progress since the last election — but we’re much less secure than we should be.” The article goes on to say that claim that the goal isn’t necessarily to hack voting machines or change results, but “to merely create the impression of an attack as a way to undermine our faith in the electoral process.”
It continues:
The target is the minds of the American people,” says Joshua Geltzer, a former counterterrorism director on the National Security Council. “In some ways, we’re less vulnerable than we were in 2016. In other ways, it’s more.” Nearly every expert agrees on this: The worst-case scenario, the one we need to prepare for, is a situation that causes Americans to question the bedrock of our democracy — free and fair elections.”
Well before this type of rhetoric made its way into the U.S. media, Israeli intelligence-linked tech firm Cybereason claimed, in a release on its website that “messing with a voter’s mind” would have a bigger impact than changing vote totals, even before the 2016 election. That release, published by Cybereason prior to the last presidential election, was authored by the company’s CEO, Lior Div, who used to lead offensive hacking operations against nation-states for Israeli military intelligence.
Notably, of all of these media reports, there is a clear consensus that one of the main tactics that will soon be used to meddle in the coming U.S. election will be the use of so-called “deep fakes.” Deriving its name from a combination of “deep learning” and “fake,” deep fakes involve video and audio that has been manipulated using artificial intelligence (AI) to create media that appears to be authentic, but is not. Concern about its use in the upcoming election has spurred not only a wealth of media reports on the matter but has prompted both the U.S. military and Congress to take action to limit its potential misuse.
One thing that stands out about the media narrative regarding election meddling and deep fakes is that several news organizations have published articles that state that deep fakes will be used to undermine the 2020 election, as opposed to stating that they could be used or that they are a phenomenon worthy of attention (though some reports have taken this more measured approach).
The reason for this level of confidence may owe to statements made by prominent U.S. intelligence officials last year, including those made by Dan Coats, the former Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who claimed in the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment for the U.S. Intelligence Community that deep fakes and other hi-tech forms of fake media would be used to disrupt the 2020 election. Coats specifically stated:
Adversaries and strategic competitors probably will attempt to use deep fakes or similar machine-learning technologies to create convincing—but false—image, audio, and video files to augment influence campaigns directed against the United States and our allies and partners.”
Since Coats made the warning, numerous media reports have promoted the concern with little scrutiny, representing just one of the numerous times in U.S. history where narratives first authored by U.S. intelligence are subsequently promoted heavily by U.S. media, even when the claim made by intelligence officials is speculative, as it is in this case. Indeed, the narratives being promoted with respect to the 2020 election involve many of the same intelligence agencies (American and Israeli) and media outlets who promoted claims that were later proven false about “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion, among other pertinent examples.
Notably, deep fakes figured prominently and was the tool most used by malevolent hackers in Cybereason’s 2020 election simulation, which saw both video and audio-only deep fakes used to spread misinformation on national and local TV channels in order to impersonate police officers and election officials and to create fake bomb threats by posing as the terror group Daesh (ISIS). Cybereason also happens to be a partner of the organization funding the most well-known creator and producer of deep fakes in the world, an organization that — much like Cybereason itself — is openly tied to Israeli intelligence.
Aside from deep fakes, other technologies weaponized in Cybereason’s election simulation have also been the subject of several media reports, such as the hacking of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and appliances and even the hacking of vehicles that have some form of internet connectivity. In the Cybereason simulation, IoT hacks were used to cut power to polling stations and disseminate disinformation while vehicles were hacked to conduct terror attacks against civilians waiting in line to vote, killing several and injuring hundreds.
Most media reports have claimed that these technologies will be part of the coming “explosion” in cyber warfare in 2020 and do not specifically link them to imminent election meddling. Others, however, have made the link to the election explicit.
Naming the culprits in advance
In addition to the apparent consensus on how foreign meddling will occur during the 2020 election, there is also agreement regarding which countries will be responsible. Again, this is largely based on statements made by U.S. national security officials. For instance, the joint statement issued last November by the DOJ, DOD, DHS, DNI, FBI, NSA, and CISA regarding 2020 election security, states that “Russia, China, Iran, and other foreign malicious actors all will seek to interfere in the voting process or influence voter perceptions” before adding “at this time we have no evidence.”
Similarly, the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment for the U.S. Intelligence Community, written by then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, names these same three countries in relation to imminent 2020 election interference and states that their interference in the 2020 election is “almost certain.” The assessment adds the following about each nation:
- Russia: “Russia’s social media efforts will continue to focus on aggravating social and racial tensions, undermining trust in authorities, and criticizing perceived anti-Russia politicians.”
- China: “China will continue to use legal, political, and economic levers—such as the lure of Chinese markets—to shape the information environment. It is also capable of using cyber attacks against systems in the United States to censor or suppress viewpoints it deems politically sensitive.”
- Iran: “Iran, which has used social media campaigns to target audiences in both the United States and allied nations with messages aligned with Iranian interests, will continue to use online influence operations to try to advance its interests.”
Coats’ assessment was enough to spawn numerous stories on the imminent threat that these three nations pose to the 2020 election, with headlines such as “U.S. intel agencies: Russia and China plotting to interfere in 2020 election.”
The vast majority of warnings regarding future election interference have come from U.S. intelligence officials with a dubious record of trustworthiness and a history of using the media to spread propaganda and disinformation, most famously through Operation Mockingbird. Most — if not all — of the recent and numerous articles on imminent interference rely heavily on claims made by the two aforementioned government documents, documents crafted by U.S. intelligence agencies for public consumption, as well as claims made by anonymous U.S. officials.
A screenshot from the 2019 National Threat Assessment lists Russia, China and Iran as primary threats to the United States
A recent New York Times article, for example, titled “Chaos Is the Point’: Russian Hackers and Trolls Grow Stealthier in 2020,” is based almost entirely on “interviews with dozens of officials and experts,” though the only government official named in the article is Shelby Pierson, the intelligence community’s election threats executive. The most quoted experts named in the article are Ben Nimmo, formerly of the hawkish, NATO-funded Atlantic Council and now with Graphika, and Laura Rosenberger, director of the neoconservative-created Alliance for Securing Democracy. The article nonetheless cites “American officials” and “current and former officials” several times to make claims about imminent election interference that paint a bleak picture of the current election season.
A recent article from The Hill relies on the acting head of DHS, Chad Wolf, as its only source, citing Wolf’s claim that “we fully expect Russia to attempt to interfere in the 2020 elections to sow public discord and undermine our democratic institutions” amid other warnings that Wolf gave about Chinese and Iranian cyber threats to U.S. elections. Other articles, including one titled “Russia, China plan to adjust their tactics to hack, influence 2020 elections” cite only Shelby Pierson of the U.S. intelligence community as its source for that headline’s claim. Another titled “Russia isn’t the only threat to 2020 elections, says U.S. intel” cites only anonymous U.S. intelligence officials, as the headline suggests.
Though Russia and China have consistently been named as the most likely election meddlers, reports have also been drumming up the likelihood that Iran will emerge as 2020’s foreign meddler of choice, especially in the months prior to and weeks after the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani by the Trump administration. A recent “informal poll” conducted by the Washington Post asked hawkish think tank fellows, employees at companies like Raytheon and current and former federal officials if Iran would likely retaliate against the U.S. via cyberattack. The Post ran the results of the poll under the headline “Get ready for serious cyberattacks from Iran, experts say.”
Despite the media’s numerous warnings of imminent and “serious” cyber-retaliation from Iran, the only cyberattack attributed to the country after Soleimani’s death was the vandalism of the Federal Depository Library Program website, a rather benign act that was nevertheless blasted across headlines such as “US government website hacked with pro-Iranian messages, image of bloodied Trump.” The U.S. government is quoted in that article as saying that “At this time, there is no confirmation that this was the action of Iranian state-sponsored actors.”
Also notably absent from media reports is the fact that WikiLeaks revealed in 2017 that the CIA had stockpiled a library of “stolen” cyberattack techniques produced in other nations, including Russia and Iran. Those revelations, part of the Vault 7 release, revealed that the CIA’s UMBRAGE group was capable of “misdirect[ing] attribution [for cyberattacks actually done by the CIA] by leaving behind the ‘fingerprints’ of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.” In other words, the CIA was more than capable of conducting “false flag” cyber attacks and blaming them on foreign actors.
Notably, one of the viruses being blamed on Iran for cyberattacks targeting the U.S. ahead of the 2020 election — called Shamoon — was “stolen” by the CIA’s UMBRAGE and cited in the WikiLeaks release.
Conflict of interest-ridden Microsoft “defends democracy”
Last year saw the tech behemoth Microsoft join the effort to blame foreign state actors, specifically Iran, for cyberattacks against the U.S. This helped to bolster assertions that had largely originated with a handful of U.S. intelligence officials and hawkish, neoconservative-aligned think tanks as media reports on Microsoft’s related claims treated the company as an independent private sector observer.
Yet, as MintPress investigations have revealed, Microsoft has clear conflicts of interest with respect to election interference. Its “Defending Democracy” program has spawned tools like “NewsGuard” and “ElectionGuard” that it claims will help protect U.S. democracy, but — upon closer examination — instead have the opposite effect.
Last January, MintPress exposed NewsGuard’s neoconservative backers and how special interest groups were backing the program in an effort to censor independent journalism under the guise of the fight against “fake news.” Subsequent investigations revealed the risk that Microsoft’s ElectionGuard poses to U.S. voting machines, which it claims to make more secure and how the platform was developed by companies closely tied to the Pentagon’s infamous research branch DARPA and Israeli military intelligence Unit 8200.
ElecionGuard software has since been adopted by numerous voting machine manufacturers and is slated to be used in some Democratic Primary votes. Notably, the push for the adoption of ElectionGuard software has been spearheaded by the recently created Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is the federal agency tasked with overseeing election security and is headed by Christopher Krebs, a former high level Microsoft executive.
In recent months, Microsoft has also been at the center of claims that Iran attempted to hack U.S. presidential campaigns ahead of 2020 as well as claims that Iran plans to target the U.S. power grid and other critical infrastructure with cyberattacks.
Last October, Microsoft penned a blog post discussing a “threat group” it named Phosphorus that they “believe originates from Iran and is linked to the Iranian government.” The post went on to claim that Phosphorus attempted to target a U.S. presidential campaign, which later media reports claimed was President Trump’s re-election campaign. Microsoft concluded that the attempt was “not technically sophisticated” and ultimately unsuccessful, but felt compelled to disclose it and link it to Iran’s government.
Though it provided no evidence for the hack or its reasons for “believing” that the attack originated from Iran, media reports treated Microsoft’s declaration as proof that Iran had begun actively meddling in the 2020 election. Headlines such as “Iranian Hackers Target Trump Campaign as 2020 Threats Mount,” “Iran-linked Hackers Target Trump 2020 Campaign, Microsoft says”, “Microsoft: Iran government-linked hacker targeted 2020 presidential campaign” and “Microsoft Says Iranians Tried To Hack U.S. Presidential Campaign,” were blasted across the front pages of American media. None of the reports scrutinized Microsoft’s claims or noted the clear conflict of interest Microsoft had in making such claims due to its efforts to see its own ElectionGuard Software adopted nationwide.
Media reports also left out the fact that Microsoft is a major government contractor for the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon. Notably, the Trump campaign, which Microsoft said was the target of this attack, was later identified as the only major presidential campaign using Microsoft’s “AccountGuard” software, part of its dubious “Defending Democracy” program that also spawned NewsGuard and ElectionGuard. AccountGuard claims to protect campaign-linked emails and data from hackers.
Microsoft surfaced not long after, again claiming that Iran was maliciously targeting the United States’ civilian infrastructure. This subsequent claim was first published by Wired and later covered by other outlets. Those reports cite a single person, Microsoft security researcher Ned Moran, who claimed that an Iran-backed hacking group called APT33 was targeting the U.S. “physical control systems used in electric utilities, manufacturing, and oil refineries.”
“They’re trying to deliver messages to their adversaries and trying to compel and change their adversaries’ behavior,” Moran told Wired. Moran also stated that “Microsoft hasn’t seen direct evidence of APT33 carrying out a disruptive cyberattack rather than mere espionage or reconnaissance, it’s seen incidents where the group has at least laid the groundwork for those attacks (emphasis added).”
Cybereason helps craft the narrative
While U.S. intelligence officials and media outlets alike have been largely responsible for setting the narrative that imminent meddling will be conducted by Russia, China and Iran, key components of that narrative, particularly with respect to China and Iran, have been laid by Cybereason, a company that recently ran 2020 doomsday election simulations and that has close ties to the intelligence communities of both the U.S. and Israel.
Shortly after the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani earlier this month, an operation conducted in concert with Israeli intelligence, Cybereason warned that Iran could imminently retaliate with a cyber threat and quoted its own employees who explained what and how Iran would likely target in retaliation. Cybereason’s CSO Sam Curry, who actively participated in the firm’s 2020 doomsday election simulations, stated:
This means that Iran’s “forceful revenge” response is likely to be less about the flash and all about the bang. If you have connected systems that are responsible for kinetic world effects, like ICS systems and critical infrastructure around water, energy or vital services, it’s time to pay attention. Iran and the US are engaged in Cyber brinksmanship, which means that the gloves are off as Iran picks it’s targets (emphasis added).”
Cybereason also quoted visiting fellow for the National Security Institute and former advisor to the U.S. Secret Service (which participated in Cyberaeson’s election simulations), Anne Marie Zettlemoyer, who claimed that Iran could soon target Wall Street and critical U.S. infrastructure like the power grid:
An attack against the financial systems can be devastating economically and weaken the confidence and viability of markets. However, we cannot ignore the physical consequences and manifestations that can come from a cyberattack, particularly against critical infrastructure like energy and industry control systems.”
Cybereason’s claims regarding Iran’s interest in “critical infrastructure” systems likely originated with Microsoft, the claims were then parroted by the media in several reports, many of which quoted Cybereason’s Sam Curry. Curry is also a contributor to major news outlets like Forbes where he writes about Iran’s cyber warfare capabilities.
Notably, in Cybereason’s recent allegations against Iran, it states that “it’s clear that Iran has been preparing for future geopolitical conflict by gaining access to critical infrastructure and other important operations in the United States.” It backs these claims by citing an article authored by Curry for Forbes. Following Soleimani’s death, numerous media reports, including in the UK’s The Independent and ABC News, have cited Curry as an “expert” source in claiming that Iran would retaliate with cyberattacks.
Microsoft’s claims about foreign hackers and meddling — the evidence for which have never been made public but has been parroted as fact nonetheless — are frequently supported by Cybereason.
Last August, Microsoft claimed to have foiled Russian attempts at hacking two Republican-affiliated think tanks and, despite providing no evidence, Cybereason’s then-senior director of intelligence services Ross Rustici was quoted as an expert in several media reports as saying that such behavior was to be expected from Russia. In one such report, Rustici stated:
We’re very good at fighting the last war, but the Russians are very good at evolving their game. I suspect if they’re going to do a psychological operation around the elections, the way they do it will be different than what they did in 2016. How effective the defenses we’ve built for what they did in 2016 will be for those attacks is yet to be seen.”
None of the media reports quoting Rustici mentioned Cybereason’s ties to Israeli intelligence, referring to tech firms only a “Boston-based cybersecurity company” and similar variants. Cybereason’s Intelligence Group is stuffed with former and active members of U.S. and Israeli intelligence services and has released several reports about nation-state hacking with a focus on Russia and China.
Cybereason has also been at the forefront of claims that China has been engaged in aggressive cyberattacks against multinational companies that have also seen widespread coverage in U.S. media, despite the untransparent nature of the evidence for Cybereason’s claims.
In a story that received major coverage from outlets such as Fox News, Reuters, CNBC and others, Cybereason unveiled what it called “Operation Soft Cell,” an operation that stole mass troves of data from several global telecommunications companies. In each story, Cybereason is the sole source of the claim and declined to provide the name or location of any of the affected companies. The firm also claimed to have determined that the attack was likely perpetrated by someone “backed by a nation state, and is affiliated with China.” It further claimed to have debriefed and coordinated responses with U.S. intelligence.
In an article for Reuters, Cybereason stated that “this time as opposed to in the past we are sure enough to say that the attack originated in China” while Cybereason separately told CyberScoop that it had “found hacking tools such as a modified web shell and a remote access trojan that are commonly associated with, but not unique to, Chinese hackers.” Despite the incongruity, media reports laid the blame squarely on China, as seen in headlines such as “Chinese spies have been sucking up call records at multinational telecoms, researchers say.”
Prior to uncovering Operation Soft Cell, Cybereason had warned on its blogs in the months and years prior that China would imminently target U.S. companies. The revelation of Operation Soft Cell — which originated exclusively with Cybereason — has been used to build the case that China is openly engaged in cyberwarfare against its rival states, like the United States, and targeting “democracy itself.”
Best Known Deep Fake Creator is Funded by Israeli Intelligence
While the media, and even Cybereason itself, have helped lay the foundation to blame specific state actors for 2020 election meddling well ahead of the fact, it is worth revisiting Cybereason’s “Operation Blackout” election simulation and the tactics used by the “bad actors” in that scenario.
That simulation, discussed in detail in the first installment of this series, saw the weaponization of specific technologies, namely deep fakes, hacks of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and hacks of vehicles, in order to target the 2020 U.S. election, resulting in the cancellation of the election and the imposition of martial law.
Given the current narrative regarding what state actors are likely to meddle in the 2020 election — namely Russia, China and Iran — and the tactics they will allegedly use, it is important to explore the sources of the technologies weaponized per that narrative as well as in “Operation Blackout.”
Indeed, if there is any clear overlap between the creators of those technologies and the state actors being blamed in advance for their imminent use, it would certainly lend credibility to the claims promoted by U.S. intelligence, the media and companies like Microsoft and Cybereason.
Yet, upon closer examination, it becomes clear that the companies and state actors most involved in developing these technologies are the very ones claiming that Russia, China and Iran will use them to undermine the 2020 election.
Take for instance the use of deep fakes. Not only have numerous media reports focused on how deep fakes will be used to meddle in the 2020 elections, but Cybereason’s doomsday election simulation saw “bad actors” rely heavily on their use to spread disinformation and even make fake bomb threats. While much has been said of the coming election and deep fakes, remarkably few reports have bothered to look at the company best known for creating viral deep fakes.
Canny AI has garnered considerable media attention over the past few years for its persuasive deep fake videos that have frequently gone viral. In the last year alone, the tech firm’s viral deep fakes have included a controversial video of Mark Zuckerberg where the Facebook co-founder appears to be saying “Imagine this for a second: One man, with total control of billions of people’s stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures,” as well as a video showing Richard Nixon giving a speech he never actually gave. More recently, Canny AI was behind the viral videos immediately prior to the 2019 U.K. general election that appeared to show Jeremy Corbyn and his rival Boris Johnson endorsing each other and another video that showed world leaders singing John Lennon’s “Imagine”:
Oddly, many of the media reports that discuss these viral videos fail to mention the role of Canny AI in creating these viral deep fakes and instead only mention the organization or artists with whom Canny AI partnered to create them. For instance, the Corbyn-Johnson videos were reported to have been produced by the group Future Advocacy and artist Bill Posters, but it was actually Canny AI that created those videos for that group. Similarly, the Nixon Speech deep fake was reported by several outlets as having been solely created by MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality. However, the Boston Globe noted that “the [MIT] team worked with Canny AI, an Israeli company that does Video Dialogue Replacement, and Respeecher, a Ukrainian startup specializing in speech-to-speech synthetic voice production” to create the video.
The Zuckerberg deep fake that Canny AI created led to lots of positive press for the company, with several media reports dubbing them as the company using “deep fakes for good” and that uses the controversial technology “responsibly.” The Zuckerberg deep fake has been cited as one of the main drivers behind Facebook’s new “deep fake” policy, which only bans some deep fake videos and has been criticized by U.S. lawmakers as insufficient. Notably, neither Facebook nor Facebook-owned Instagram ever took down Canny AI’s deep fake of Zuckerburg.
Given the concern over deep fakes in relation to the coming election and Canny AI standing out as the main producer of deep fakes that have gone viral over the past year, it is important to point out that Canny AI has ties to a state actor with a history of election meddling: the state of Israel.
Indeed, Canny AI is 100 percent funded by an Israeli start-up accelerator called Xcelerator, a joint venture between Tel Aviv University and Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet (sometimes called Shabak). According to Start Up Nation Central, the Paul Singer-created organization that promotes Israeli technology start ups, Xcelerator-funded “start-ups participating in the program benefit from close mentoring from content and technology experts from the Shabak, experts from Tel Aviv University, and industry leaders. The connection to the Shabak also provides the entrepreneurs with ways to test the capabilities of their technologies and cooperation opportunities (emphasis added).”
In addition, Xcelerator is partnered not only with Israeli intelligence directly, but also with Cybereason, the very company that explored the use of deep fakes in the 2020 U.S. presidential election that saw the election cancelled and martial law declared as well as a company that itself has deep ties to Israeli intelligence. Other notable partners of Xcelerator include NEC Corp, which has intimate ties to top Cybereason investor Softbank; Check Point Technologies, which has ties to Israeli military intelligence Unit 8200; and the Israeli start-up accelerator Team8. In previous reports published by MintPress, Team8 was discussed in detail, particularly their recent hire of former director of the NSA and former head of U.S. Cyber Command Mike Rogers, and their close ties to Paul Singer’s Start Up Nation Central, which itself has deep ties to U.S. neoconservatives.
It is also worth noting that Xcelerator also backs an “anti-fake news” start-up called Cyabra, which has direct ties to Israel’s Mossad and offers its AI-driven “disinformation protection” to government agencies as well as politicians, particularly during election seasons. Two of Cyabra’s co-founders previously co-founded Psy-Group, which attempted to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election by weaponizing “fake news” and social media and later closed down its operations after U.S. government scrutiny into its activities began as part of the Mueller investigation.
Psy-Group also engaged in doxxing campaigns targeting Palesintian rights activists in the U.S. which were planned in conjunction with Ram Ben-Barak, the former deputy director of the Mossad who now advises Cyabra. Given that much of the concern ahead of the next election is related not only to deep fakes but also “fake news,” Cyabra’s rise and its clear ties to Mossad and the now defunct Psy-Group are important to note.
Furthermore, in examining the other technologies weaponized during Cybereason’s 2020 election simulation and cited in the aforementioned media narrative regarding 2020 meddling, a pattern similar to that of Canny AI emerges.
Indeed, the other technologies linked to these “bad actors” and foreign meddlers — namely hacking IoT devices and hacking vehicles — are also pioneered by companies with deep ties to Israeli military intelligence, specifically Unit 8200, and Israeli tech companies that have aggressively spied on U.S. government institutions in collusion with Israeli intelligence in the past, namely Comverse (now Verint) and Amdocs.
Hacking the Internet of Things
In Cybereason’s doomsday election simulation, another of the tactics used was the hacking of devices and appliances connected to the internet, often referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT) and which includes everything from smartphones to power grid infrastructure to city traffic lights.
While most reports on IoT hacks to date have focused on “lone wolf” or non-state-aligned actors, one company has stood out for its efforts to create a tool that would allow governments and intelligence agencies to hack these devices with ease. That company, called Toka, announced in 2018 that it planned to offer “a one-stop hacking shop for governments that require extra capability to fight terrorists and other threats to national security in the digital domain,” with “a special focus on [hacking] the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), covering tech like Amazon Echo, Nest connected home products, as well as connected fridges, thermostats and alarms.”
The Israel-based company, which raised $12.5 million within months of launching, has since been busy marketing its services to governments around the world, most recently France where it described its product portfolio as “empower[ing] governments, Intelligence, and law enforcement agencies to enhance Homeland Security with groundbreaking cyber-intelligence and operational capabilities” during an exposition in Paris last November.
Even though Toka openly markets the ability to hack private consumer devices to governments and law enforcement agencies around the world, the clear threat to privacy has gone ignored by media outlets as the company has garnered nearly no media attention since it launched nearly two years ago.
Yet, Toka is not only notable for what it offers but also for its founders and investors. Indeed, the co-founders of Toka have been described as an “all-star” team, largely because of the role of former Israeli Prime Minister and former head of Israeli military intelligence, Ehud Barak. Barak, in addition to co-founding the company, serves as its director and is also the chairman of the board of the controversial Israeli company Carbyne911, which markets software to emergency call centers in the United States. Interestingly, Cybereason’s 2020 doomsday election simulation also dealt with the hacking and weaponization of 911 call centers. Also of note is the fact that another of Carbyne911’s leadership team, former Unit 8200 commander Pinchas Buchris, is an adviser to Cybereason.
Toka’s top brass is a who’s who of former Israeli military and intelligence officials
In addition to Barak, Toka was co-founded by retired Brigadier General Yaron Rosen, former Chief of the IDF’s cyber staff, where he was “the lead architect of all [IDF] cyber activities” including those executed by Israeli military intelligence Unit 8200. Rosen, who now serves as Toka’s CEO, has stated that Toka’s technology will only be sold to countries allied with the U.S. and Israel, telling Forbes that “Russia, China and ‘other enemy countries’ would never be customers.”
Toka’s leadership and software architects are similarly tied into Israel’s national security state. Several — including the “architect” of its hacking software — previously worked for Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office and developed “offensive technologies” for Israel’s head of state and other top Toka employees and executives share numerous connections to Unit 8200, other divisions of Israeli military intelligence and Unit 8200-connected tech companies like Check Point Technologies.
Though Toka’s leadership team makes its ties to Israeli military intelligence abundantly clear, important connections also appear in examining Toka’s investors. One of the major investors in Toka is Dell technologies, one of the world’s largest technology companies that was founded by Michael Dell, a well-known pro-Israel partisan who has donated millions of dollars to the Friends of the IDF and one of the top supporters of the so-called “anti-BDS” bills that prevent publicly employed individuals or public institutions from supporting non-violent boycotts of Israel, even on humanitarian grounds. It goes without saying that a major technology company investing in a company that markets the hacking of that very technology (computers, IoT, smartphones, etc.) should be a red flag.
With a major foot in the door through its connections to Dell, whose products are used by the private and public sectors around the world, other investors in Toka again reveal its ties to Israel’s military intelligence and the same controversial Israeli tech companies that have aggressively spied on the U.S. government in the past — Amdocs and Comverse. For instance, Entrèe Capital, a venture capital fund that is one of Toka’s main investors, is managed by Aviad Eyal and Ran Achituv. The latter, who manages Entrée’s investment in Toka and sits on Toka’s board of directors, is the founder of the IDF’s satellite-based signals intelligence unit and also a former senior Vice President at both Amdocs and Comverse Infosys (Verint).
Another notable investor in Toka is the venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz, which is advised by former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, a close friend of the infamous pedophile Jeffery Epstein, whose own ties to Israeli military intelligence have been discussed in several MintPress reports. Epstein was also a close friend of Ehud Barak, co-founder and director of Toka, and invested at least $1 million in another company with close ties to Barak, Carbyne911. The remaining investors in Toka are Launch Capital, which is deeply tied to the Pritzker family — one of the wealthiest families in the U.S. with close ties to the Clintons and Obamas as well as the U.S.’ pro-Israel lobby, and Ray Rothrock, a venture capitalist who spent nearly three decades at VenRock, the Rockefeller family venture capital fund.
Unit 8200 – From Hacking Cars to Protecting Them?
Arguably the most disturbing aspect of Cybereason’s “Operation Blackout” election simulation was the hacking of vehicles that were then rammed into civilians waiting in line to vote at polling stations. In the simulation, this led to scores of dead Americans and hundreds of injuries.
As was the case with other technologies used to undermine the 2020 election in the simulation, this technology — the hacking of vehicles — is the bread and butter of an Israeli cybersecurity firm called Upstream Security that specializes in automobiles and boasts deep ties to the country’s military intelligence service.
Though vehicle hacking seemed out of left field when the 2020 election simulation took place last November, media reports about the imminent dangers of “car hacking” began to emerge just a month after the exercise took place, most of which cited a December 2019 report created by Upstream. Some of those reports have warned that car hacking could be used to undermine the coming U.S. election.
One report titled “Car Hacking Hits the Streets,” cites only Upstream’s report to claim that “In 2020, the connected-car market will reach a tipping point, with the majority of vehicles already connected to the Internet when sold in the United States, representing a large base of potential targets for attacks.” Another report, titled “New study shows just how bad vehicle hacking has gotten,” uses Upstream’s report (i.e. study) to claim that hacks of regular vehicles have exploded since 2016 and that most of the cars on U.S. roads today are vulnerable to hackers and that over 80 percent of those hacks occur remotely.
Neither report noted Upstream’s ties to Israeli military intelligence. Equally notable is the fact that both reports that covered the Upstream-written study say that only manufacturers can address the problem by partnering with a company like Upstream.
A screenshot from an Upstream promotional video
Lucky for Upstream, they have already partnered with a slew of auto manufacturers, including Hyundai, Volvo, Renault and even U.S. auto insurance giants like Nationwide, who now number among Upstream’s most important investors. The company’s original investors are Charles River Ventures, one of Cybereason’s first investors, and Israeli venture capital firm Glilot Capital.
Glilot Capital’s interest in Upstream is telling given the firm’s deep ties to Israel’s Unit 8200. Glilot was founded by two former Israeli military intelligence officers and has “a heavy focus on the cyber sector and the entrepreneurs who emerge from the elite Unit 8200,” according to the Jerusalem Post. Even the name of the firm is an homage to Unit 8200, as the unit’s main base is located in Glilot, near Herzliya.
“It’s as if Americans called a VC Fort Meade Capital [the US Army base in Maryland where the National Security Agency and the United States Cyber Command are headquartered], some VC names are meant to be symbolic, as in our case. Glilot is the home of several of the best intelligence and technology units in the IDF, it’s where we came from and it is where we find our best entrepreneurs,” Glilot Capital co-founder Arik Kleinstein told the Jerusalem Post in 2016.
Upstream is certainly the type of company that Glilot Capital is used to investing in. It was founded by two Israelis who both served in the IDF, with one of them serving in an elite intelligence unit. Upstream’s co-founders, Yoav Levy and Yonathan Appel, met while working at Check Point Technologies, the Unit 8200 alumni-founded company with deep ties to Israel’s military intelligence and military-industrial complex as well as the IoT hacking company Toka. Notably, Upstream recently partnered with the Japanese company Fujitsu, a longtime partner with Softbank — Cybereason’s main investor.
Softbank has also invested heavily in another Unit 8200-founded vehicle security start-up called Argus Cyber Security, a firm known for its numerous demonstrations showing how easy it is to hack vehicles. Argus is also backed by Nadav Zafrir, the former Unit 8200 commander who now runs Team8. Argus’ CEO Ofer Ben-Noon, a former captain in Unit 8200, told Forbes in 2014 that “Everything will be hacked in every single [car] brand. It will take time, it might be weeks, months, or a couple of years, but eventually it will happen.”
Since then, Unit 8200 alumni from Argus, Upstream and other Israeli automobile cybersecurity firms have shown media outlets around the world how much easier hacking vehicles has become in the years since Ben-Noon first made the claim. One such report from VICE includes a vehicle hacking demonstration, courtesy of a Unit 8200 alumni, and notes that “most cars today are susceptible to hacker attacks.”
Of course, Unit 8200 isn’t the only intelligence agency known to be experts at hacking vehicles. Indeed, in 2017, WikiLeaks revealed that the CIA was capable of hacking vehicles and exploring their use in committing “undetectable assassinations.”
“Bring down nations to their knees”
At the Tel Aviv Cybertech Conference in 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated the following:
Today warfare has changed dramatically…With a click of a button, you can bring down nations to their knees very rapidly if you so desire and if you’re willing to take the risks, because every system can be hacked. Our hospitals, our airplanes, our cars, our banks. The most important word here is our data banks, they can be hacked.”
Media reports and even members of the Israeli public and private sector have openly acknowledged that Israel’s intelligence apparatus — from Unit 8200 to the Mossad — remains directly linked to many of the private technology companies founded by its former members, especially in the field of cybersecurity. Though reports on the matter often praise this merging of Israel’s public and private spheres, they rarely acknowledge the documented corruption within Unit 8200, the unit’s dark past in recruiting felons and even pedophiles to join its ranks, or the danger posed by having companies directly linked to foreign intelligence being given access to the U.S. government’s most classified and sensitive systems and data.
The last omission is particularly troubling given that Israeli intelligence has not only been caught aggressively using private tech companies to spy on U.S. federal agencies and networks, but also intercepting the private communications of at least two U.S. presidents and using a notorious pedophile to sexually blackmail American politicians.
As was mentioned in the first installment of this series, Cybereason’s CEO Lior Div offers a clear example of this worrisome bridge between Israel’s public and private sector, as Div has openly stated that he views his work at Cybereason as a “continuation” of his service to Israeli military intelligence, where he led offensive cyberattacks against other nations.
Given Div’s past statements and his company’s clear ties to both Israeli and U.S. intelligence, Cybereason’s simulation of the 2020 U.S. election — which involved terrorist attacks and led to the election’s cancellation and the imposition of martial law — is highly concerning. This is particularly so considering that Cybereason’s investors have direct ties to individuals who would benefit from the election’s cancellation and also considering the clear narrative that has emerged in recent months regarding how the coming election will inevitably fall victim to tech-driven “chaos” in coming months.
The clear overlap between Cybereason’s simulation and the intelligence-driven media narrative is clear cause for concern, especially considering that the technologies that they highlight as ultimately upending the election are dominated by the very same intelligence agencies simulating and crafting that narrative.
The keyword that has been used to describe the end result of both Cybereason’s simulation and the prevailing media narrative regarding the 2020 election is “chaos,” chaos so imminent, widespread and unruly that it will shake American democracy to its core.
What has been left unsaid, however, is that a government’s solution to “chaos” is always the imposition of “order.” This means that — whatever “chaos” ultimately ensues prior to or on election day — will result in a government response that will do much more to crush freedom and undermine democracy than any act of foreign meddling has, be it real or imagined.
Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.
Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell reportedly hiding in Israel
If Americans Knew | January 12, 2020
Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports: “Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who has been accused of helping late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, is reportedly hiding out in Israel.”
The story quotes a New York Post article based on information from an unnamed source who told the Post : “She is sometimes in the U.K., but most often in other countries, such as Israel, where her powerful contacts have provided her with safe houses and protection.”
According to the Post source: “Ghislaine is protected. She and Jeffrey were assets of sorts for multiple foreign governments. They would trade information about the powerful people caught in his net — caught at Epstein’s house.”
Reuters recently reported that the FBI is investigating Maxwell, who allegedly recruited under age girls to have sex with Epstein. It is unknown whether the Israeli government is assisting the US in locating Maxwell. Critics have complained that Israeli law enforcement is frequently lax on those who have committed crimes in other countries. The US gives Israel over $10 million per day.
Maxwell is the the daughter of Robert Maxwell, who died under mysterious circumstances in 1991. Maxwell was an Anglo-Jewish multi-millionaire who was suspected of working with the Israeli Mossad.
Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reports: “After his death, he was given a state funeral by Israel in which six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence listened while Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized: “He has done more for Israel than can today be said.”
Giraldi writes that the Epstein case “has all the hallmarks of a major espionage case, possibly tied to Israel… the whole filming procedure smacks of a sophisticated intelligence service compiling material to blackmail prominent politicians and other public figures.”
Epstein, who had been facing sex trafficking charges for allegedly abusing dozens of girls as young as 14, died in a New York City jail cell in August. While law enforcement officials said it was suicide, a forensic pathologist hired by his family said the autopsy pointed to homicide.
An attorney for one of the young victims says Maxwell “was integral in maintaining the sex trafficking ring,”
“Jeffrey Epstein couldn’t have done what he did for as long as he did it without the services of somebody like Ghislaine Maxwell. She is as culpable, in my judgment, as Jeffrey Epstein himself.”
Victims depict her as dominating, controlling, and abusive.
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On The Transgender Agenda
Lies are Unbekoming | May 12, 2016
I’ve been following Jennifer Bilek’s reporting on the Transgender Agenda for the last year.
In my opinion, she is doing the best investigative journalism, in the world, on the top-down nature of this society deforming “input” and “normalization”.
What we don’t understand is the scale of money behind this push, and the individuals controlling this weaponized capital. These are questions that go to the heart of Jennifer’s work. … continue
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- Using Nets On The Seafloor To Retrieve Seafood ‘Roughly The Same As Running 100 Coal-Fired Plants’
- New Paper: Global Warming Leading To HIMALAYAN COOLING, Preventing Glacial Melt!
- DNA Evidence Reveals Domestic Cats, Dogs, African Wildcats, Frogs Lived In The Arctic 9000 Years Ago
- -80°C: Antarctic Vostok Station Records “Extreme Winter Cold”…Not Even Winter Yet!
- The German E-Vehicle Nightmare, 2024 Q1 Sales Plummet 14%… “Graveyard” For Unsold Cars
- Newly Discovered 90,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Reveal How Much Higher Sea Levels Used To Be
- Germany’s Economic Bloodbath Worsens As Green Revolution Causes Economy To Bleed To Death
- Water Vapor Absorbs 84 Times More Radiation Than CO2 … Clouds Drove 89% Of 1982-2018 Warming
- The 97% Consensus Claim Is In Fact 97% Bogus
- Post-1980s Increases In Shortwave Radiation Explains Europe’s Warming Trends Far Better Than CO2
Aletho News 
