TBR News January 19, 2012

Jan 20 2012

 

The Voice of the White House

            Washington, D.C., January 19, 2012: “ARMY FORESEES EXPANDED USE OF DRONES IN U.S. AIRSPACE
            The Army issued a new directive last week to govern the growing use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or “drones” within the United States for training missions and for “domestic operations.”
            “The Army’s unmanned aircraft systems represent emerging technology that requires access to the National Airspace System,” wrote Army Secretary John M. McHugh in a January 13 memorandum.
            Towards that end, the Army produced a revised policy on UAS operations to support “expanded UAS access to the National Airspace System.”  A copy of the new policy was obtained by Secrecy News.  See Army Directive 2012-02, January 13, 2012.
            Much of the Army’s UAS activity will be devoted to UAS operator training conducted at or near military facilities, the policy indicates.  But beyond such training activities, the military also envisions a role for UAS in unspecified “domestic operations” in civilan airspace, according to a 2007 Memorandum of Agreement between the Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates domestic air traffic.
            The 2007 Memorandum, which is appended to the new Army directive, was said to “allow, in accordance with applicable law, increased access for DoD UAS into the elements of the NAS [National Airspace System] outside of DoD-managed Restricted Areas or Warning Areas.”
            The 2007 agreement was intended to “ensure DoD UAS assets have NAS access for domestic operations, including the War on Terror (WOT)…. This guidance applies to all DoD UAS, whether operated by Active, Reserve, National Guard, or other personnel.”
            A prior edition of the Army’s “Unmanned Aircraft System Flight Regulations,” which will be updated to incorporate the latest policy, can be found on the Federation of American Scientists web site here.
            The Electronic Frontier Foundation last week filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking information on domestic drone operations.” Secrecy news

Royster Newsletter for January 16, 2012 No. 49

 

http://www.adroystermilitaria.com/
 

Here the American public has a really fascinating private glimpse into the working of intelligence/counter-intelligence operations, spanning nearly 60 years. This could be the historical find of the century!

These original documents are being offered for sale by an American  document auction house and are purported to be the property of an American dealer in militaria.

Note: This is only a partial listing of circa 130 identified and cataloged files.

ADR
 

prq Inet Box 1206 SE 11479 Stockholm Sweden
 
DOCUMENT CATALOG
 
Catalog Number             Description of Contents                                         ______________________________________________________________
 

1000 BH         Extensive file (1,205 pages) of reports on Operation PHOENIX. Final paper dated January, 1971, first document dated  October, 1967. Covers the setting up of Regional Interrogation Centers, staffing, torture techniques including electric shock, beatings, chemical injections. CIA agents involved and includes a listing of U.S. military units to include Military Police, CIC and Special Forces groups involved. After-action reports from various military units to include 9th Infantry, showing the deliberate killing of all unarmed civilians located in areas suspected of harboring or supplying Viet Cong units. *

1002 BH         Medium file (223 pages)  concerning the fomenting of civil disobedience in Chile as the result of the Allende election in 1970. Included are pay vouchers for CIA bribery efforts with Chilean labor organization and student activist groups, U.S. military units involved in the final revolt, letter from  T. Karamessines, CIA Operations Director to Chile CIA Station Chief Paul Wimert, passing along a specific order from Nixon via Kissinger to kill Allende when the coup was successful. Communications to Pinochet with Nixon instructions to root out by force any remaining left wing leaders.

1003 BH         Medium file (187 pages) of reports of CIA assets containing photographs of Soviet missile sites, airfields and other strategic sites taken from commercial aircraft. Detailed descriptions of targets attached to each picture or pictures.

1004 BH         Large file (1560 pages) of CIA reports on Canadian radio intelligence intercepts from the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa (1958) and a list of suspected and identified Soviet agents or sympathizers in Canada, to include members of the Canadian Parliament and military.

1005 BH          Medium file (219 pages) of members of the German Bundeswehr in the employ of the CIA. The report covers the Innere Führung group plus members of the signals intelligence service. Another report, attached, covers CIA assets in German Foreign Office positions, in Germany and in diplomatic missions abroad.

1006:BH         Long file (1,287 pages) of events leading up to the killing of Josef Stalin in 1953 to include reports on contacts with L.P. Beria who planned to kill Stalin, believing himself to be the target for removal. Names of cut outs, CIA personnel in Finland and Denmark are noted as are original communications from Beria and agreements as to his standing down in the DDR and a list of MVD/KGB files on American informants from 1933 to present. A report on a blood-thinning agent to be made available to Beria to put into Stalin’s food plus twenty two reports from Soviet doctors on Stalin’s health, high blood pressure etc. A report on areas of cooperation between Beria’s people and CIA controllers in the event of a successful coup. *

1007 BH         Short list (125 pages) of CIA contacts with members of the American media to include press and television and book publishers. Names of contacts with bios are included as are a list of payments made and specific leaked material supplied. Also appended is a shorter list of foreign publications. Under date of August, 1989 with updates to 1992. Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, Bradlee of the same paper, Ted Koppel, Sam Donaldson and others are included.

1008 BH         A file of eighteen reports (total of 899 pages) documenting illegal activities on the part of members of the U.S. Congress. First report dated July 29, 1950 and final one September 15, 1992. Of especial note is a long file on Senator McCarthy dealing with homosexuality and alcoholism. Also an attached note concerning the Truman Administration’s use of McCarthy to remove targeted Communists. These reports contain copies of FBI surveillance reports, to include photographs and reference to tape recordings, dealing with sexual events with male and female prostitutes, drug use, bribery, and other matters.

1009 BH         A long multiple file (1,564 pages) dealing with the CIA part (Kermit Roosevelt) in overthrowing the populist Persian prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. Report from Dulles (John Foster) concerning a replacement, by force if necessary and to include a full copy of AJAX operation. Letters from AIOC on million dollar bribe paid directly to J.Angleton, head of SOG. Support of Shah requires exclusive contracts with specified western oil companies. Reports dated from May 1951 through August, 1953.

1010 BH         Medium file (419 pages) of telephone intercepts made by order of J.J. Angleton of the telephone conversations between RFK and one G.N. Bolshakov. Phone calls between 1962-1963 inclusive. Also copies of intercepted and inspected mail from RFK containing classified U.S. documents and sent to a cut-out identified as one used by Bolshakov, a Russian press (TASS) employee. Report on Bolshakov’s GRU connections.

1011 BH         Large file (988 pages) on 1961 Korean revolt of Kwangju revolt led by General Park Chung-hee and General Kin-Jong-pil. Reports on contacts maintained by CIA station in Japan to include payments made to both men, plans for the coup, lists of “undesirables” to be liquidated  Additional material on CIA connections with KCIA personnel and an agreement with them  to assassinate South Korean chief of state, Park, in 1979.

1012 BH         Small file (12 pages) of homosexual activities between FBI Director Hoover and his aide, Tolson. Surveillance pictures taken in San Francisco hotel and report by CIA agents involved. Report analyzed in 1962.

1013 BH         Long file (1,699 pages) on General Edward Lansdale. First report a study signed by DCI Dulles in  September of 1954 concerning a growing situation in former French Indo-China. There are reports by and about Lansdale starting with his attachment to the OPC in 1949-50 where he and Frank Wisner coordinated policy in neutralizing Communist influence in the Philippines.. Landsale was then sent to Saigon under diplomatic cover and many copies of his period reports are copied here. Very interesting background material including strong connections with the Catholic Church concerning Catholic Vietnamese and exchanges of intelligence information between the two entities.

1014 BH         Short file (78 pages) concerning  a Dr. Frank Olson. Olson was at the U.S. Army chemical warfare base at Ft. Detrick in Maryland and was involved with a Dr. Gottleib. Gottleib was working on a plan to introduce psychotic-inducing drugs into the water supply of the Soviet Embassy. Apparently he tested the drugs on CIA personnel first. Reports of psychotic behavior by Olson and more police and official reports on his defenstration by Gottleib’s associates. A cover-up was instituted and a number of in-house CIA memoranda attest to this. Also a discussion by Gottleib on various poisons and drugs he was experimenting with and another report of people who had died as a result of Gottleib’s various experiments and CIA efforts to neutralize any public knowledge of these. *

1015 BH         Medium file (457 pages) on CIA connections with the Columbian-based Medellín drug ring. Eight CIA internal reports, three DoS reports, one FBI report on CIA operative Milan Rodríguez and his connections with this drug ring. Receipts for CIA payments to Rodríguez of over $3 million in CIA funds, showing the routings of the money, cut-outs and payments. CIA reports on sabotaging  DEA investigations. A three-part study of the Nicaraguan Contras, also a CIA-organized and paid for organization.

1016 BH         A small file (159 pages) containing lists of known Nazi intelligence and scientific people recruited in Germany from 1946 onwards, initially by the U.S. Army and later by the CIA. A detailed list of the original names and positions of the persons involved plus their relocation information. Has three U.S. Army and one FBI report on the subject.
 
1017 BH         A small list (54 pages) of American business entities with “significant” connections to the CIA. Each business is listed along with relevant information on its owners/operators, previous and on going contacts with the CIA’s Robert Crowley, also a list of national advertising agencies with similar information. Much information about suppressed news stories and planted stories. *
 

1018 BH         A small list (32 pages) of members of the American, and foreign media, with direct CIA connections. Amounts of monies paid out.

1019 BH         A lengthy report (345 pages) concerning CIA penetration of Turkish political, military and media entities. Many names. Also included is a very interesting report on the so-called  ‘Elmali horde’ of fake ancient Greek coins sold for enormous money. Listed are such Turks in the pay of the CIA such as Fuat Aydiner, Edip Telli and five members of a top level group of Turkish government counter-intelligence to include one ministerial level person and one senior military officer. Many American coin dealers also listed. A numismatic treasure for certain!

1020 BH         A long report (432 pages) concerning the assassination of Martin Luther King. The role the FBI played (Sullivan) in setting up Ray and the CIA Montreal connections in getting Ray a Canadian passport using the persona of a Canadian law enforcement person. The FBI direct involvement in this incident is documented by transcripts of telephone conversations involving Hoover and Sullivan and two other officials. Hoover’s hatred of King is clearly documented.

1021 BH         A very long file (2) totaling 1,504 pages ) concerning INTERARMCO an the smuggling of weapons to countries the CIA was interested in and to assist in the fomenting of internal revolt. Guatemala, Pakistan and three African countries are involved. The entire MEREX business is clearly covered in detail and the Cummings organization with clandestine connections with the MVD are also included

1022 BH         Medium file (145 pages) concerning CIA-MVD cooperation and exchanging of domestic USSR and USA missile systems. The CIA gave top level information to the MVD in return for the MVD supplying them with similar information. File does not contain detailed information but only references to reports of sites and systems. Also the names of key missile experts, their home addresses and other personal information are included. 

1023 BH          Large file (2700 pages) containing the surveillance files of James J. Angleton removed by Crowley from Angleton’s files when he was fired from the CIA for aggressive domestic spying on prominent American officials and institutions. Angleton was obsessed with possible Russian infiltration of American government institutions and began to tap phones and open personal mail of people as high ranking as the President himself. Fascinating reading and great history!

1024 BH          Small file (129 pages)  containing lists of the transportation of raw opium from Afghanistan sources  by  various flights to refining areas of Columbia I South America. Listed are the names of the CIA owned aircraft companies, their pilots and co-pilots, points of departure, flight plan and a listing of the weight of each cargo.

1025 BH          Medium list (230 pages) of Indian politicians in the pay of the CIA, their posts and extracts of reports delivered to the CIA either at the U.S. Embassy or to specified drops.

1026 BH          Medium list (196 pages) of contacts with members of the British media concerning cooperation on planted and undesired articles, names, papers involved and sums paid and when.

1027 BH          Small file (45 pages) concerning the character and background of Britain’s Prince Charles.  This portrays the Prince of Wales as a person with serious emotional problems. His teddy bear  he always takes with him on trips, his numerous tawdry sexual liaisons and other issues are briefly noted along with in-house sources.          

1028 BH          Medium file (231 pages) concerning cooperation with the AT&T telephone system concerning the setting up of domestic surveillance of telephone conversations, sans warrant, of individuals specified as “of interest:” to the CIA. No target names are supplied but only the requests and agreements.

1029 BH          Large file (789 pages) Concerning India’s atomic program starting with the 1955 building of the 1 MW Apsara research reactor, built with the aid of the British  Also covered are the 1958 Phoenix project designed to produce 20 tons of atomic fuel per year. This was based on American Purex systems and was constructed by the American Vitro International firm. Lengthy technical reports and names of Indian “cooperators” are included. This was aimed at neutralizing China as a nuclear power. 

1030 BH          Medium file (300 page) on Egypt’s  Gamal Nasser and Anwar el Sadat as wartime Nazi agents. Working for the German  Abwehr. Includes copies of reports made by both political figures on activities of the British Army in Egypt.

1031 BH          Small file (39 pages) on Robert Maxwell  aka Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch. A Czech Jew and later a British press lord. He was heavily connected with Israeli intelligence and was also know to have spied for the Soviet KGB. He was killed by a Jewish CIA agent in November of 1991 when he was struck on the head and pushed into the Atlantic from his yacht to drown. His personal files were stolen by professional agents of the CIA from several of his offices and two of his homes.      

1032 BH             Large file (678 pages) of the Operation PBSUCCESS, the CIA plot to remove Jacobo Arbenz Gusman  the democratically-elected President of Guatemala The file runs from 1953 through 1954. He was  removed from office by a series of CIA plots, to include a 1954 plot called Operation WASHTUB which was a plan to plant a large cache of Soviet weaponry in Guatamela to show Soviet interest. Cummings was involved in this. The firm of Levy and Zentner and the United Fruit Company, along with the Grace Line people were the main motivators is removing Arbenez because of his plan to nationalize many of their holdings.  .

1033 BH          Medium file (315 pages) on the assassination of Indian nuclear scientist,  Homi J. Bhabha by a CIA-controlled sabotage against an Air India passenger plane which crashed near Mr. Blanc in 1966. He was viewed by the CIA as being “uncooperative and possibly subverted by the KGB.”

1034 BH          Medium file (264 pages) on the killing of Lord Louis Mountbatten, cousin to the British Queen on August 27, 1979. Mountbatten’s sailing boat was blown to pieces by a 50 pound remotely detonated bomb placed on the boat the night before by an agent of the IRA. This operation, considered as unofficial, was instigated by a ‘Dolan” CIA agent who had been working closely with the Provisional Wing of the IRA to prevent attacks by that group on American commercial targets both in Belfast and elsewhere. ‘Dolan” is only identified as an “Irishman of Canadian citizenship.” This appeared to be a personal vendetta by the “Dolan” person whose brother had died in the Dieppe raid instigated, unofficially, by Mountbatten during the Second World War.

1035 BH          Small file (11 pages) on the sale, by a CIA person, of the Raphael picture of “A man in a white shirt” that was looted by the Nazis in Warsaw in 1939. The picture was sold for 11 million dollars to an American collector in California. Partial payment was a Rembrandt  Portrait of a Rabbi which had previously been stolen from a California museum.

1036 BH          Medium file (198 pages) concerning Operation RAMQUIST or the development, in a joint U.S. Army an CIA project developing a bacteria that will attack rice crops growing in water and destroy them. This was aimed primarily at the Chinese but also could be used as a threat to “uncooperative” South East Asian countries.

1037 BH          Small file (39 pages) of identified American anti-government individuals resident in Canada. Directly from RCMP reports supplied by CIA asset in Ottawa.

1938 BH          Medium file (89 pages) of the CIA use of known Nazi SS and Gestapo people by the CIA. The so-called RUSTY file shows the Gehlen Org working closely with the CIA and gives a long list of known Nazis working for the CIA after 1948 through 1955.

1039 BH          Small file (11 pages) of the arrest and detention in a New York jail of a Swiss banker to compel him to turn over the so-called “black accounts’ in a bank under his control. The “black accounts” were the secret accounts of people of interest to the CIA

 

An Iran war is brewing from mutual ignorance and chronic miscalculation

US talk of regime change via military action is as deluded as Tehran thinking it stands to gain from a conflict

January 20, 2012

by Simon Tisdall

guardian.co.uk,

Nicolas Sarkozy’s warning that “time is running out” to avoid western military intervention in Iran was largely aimed at Russia and China, which have refused to back tougher EU and US sanctions. But for Tehran, the French president’s words will likely sound like a calculated, alarming escalation. How much longer, they may ask themselves, before we are attacked by the US or Israel or a combination, including the perfidious British and French? Why wait for the inevitable? Perhaps we should attack first?

This is how wars start, through a process of hostile rhetoric, mutual ignorance and chronic miscalculation. Anybody in Tehran following the impassioned US debate on Iran will be aware that an influential Washington constituency, aided and abetted by leading Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, favours military action sooner rather than later. For these American hardliners, it is no longer merely a question of destroying Iran’s suspected nuclear facilities. Regime change is the name of the game because, it is argued, that is the only way to ensure Iran never gets the bomb.

“A limited strike against nuclear facilities would not lead to regime change. But a broader operation might,” argued Jamie M Fly and Gary Schmitt in Foreign Affairs. “It would not even need to be a ground invasion aimed at toppling the government. The US would basically need to expand its list of targets beyond the nuclear programme to key command and control elements of the Republican Guard and the intelligence ministry, and facilities associated with other key government officials. The goal would be to compromise severely the government’s ability to control the Iranian population. This would require an extended campaign.”

Luckily, this sort of horror-fantasy does not reflect Obama administration thinking – not yet, anyway. But while both sides’ rhetoric could be dismissed as so much hot air, the infantile idea the Iranian nation would welcome US bombers and suddenly rise up as one to overthrow the theocratic regime reflects a more dangerous ignorance. This lack of mutual insight is not surprising given the estrangement that followed the 1979 revolution. But it needs to be recognised for the bear trap that it is.

When the White House sent a private message to Tehran last week about its so-called “red lines” in the Strait of Hormuz, the reaction was both puzzled and incredulous. “Out in the open they show their muscles but behind the curtains they plead to us to sit down and talk,” said Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s foreign minister.

Salehi should study American history – and what happens when red lines are ignored. Geoffrey Kemp of the German Marshall Fund in Washington noted: “Many Americans will recall that in 1964 a military encounter between North Vietnamese torpedo boats and the USS Maddox resulted in a pitched sea battle, which was enough to persuade Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that gave President Lyndon Johnson authority to begin the massive escalation in south-east Asia”.

Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute suggested Tehran’s leadership appeared to think it could “win” a Tonkin-like sea war in the Gulf if it managed to sink a single American warship. This idea might be called the “Hezbollah paradigm”, named after the 2006 Lebanon conflict, when Hezbollah claimed victory over Israel, despite suffering greater losses, simply because its forces had not been utterly destroyed.

“Iranian leaders might also decide the US and European strategy of escalating pressure leaves them with few options, in which case resistance may offer the best prospects. After all, when the US got its nose bloodied by the 1983 Beirut marine barracks bombing and the 1993 Somali ‘Black Hawk down’ incident, Washington withdrew its forces from both countries,” Clawson said.

Iran’s regime may also calculate that conflict with the US and/or Israel would serve its purposes by justifying a nuclear deterrent, by portraying them as valiant leaders of the global fight against Zionism and American imperial “global arrogance”, and by rallying the nation (rather than dividing it) behind their defiant banner. These are frightening delusions, but all are part of the developing pseudo-reality of a war in the making.

Responding to the war drums in Washington, Robert Wright, writing in Atlantic Monthly, was at pains to show that regime change is no panacea. “You’d think that our eight-year adventure in Iraq would have raised doubts about the extent to which changed regimes will hew to our policy guidelines. There we deposed an authoritarian leader and painstakingly constructed a government, only to see the new regime (a) tell America to get the hell out of the country; and (b) cosy up to an American adversary (Iran!).”

This really happened, as did much else following the invasion of Iraq that could yet be disastrously replicated in Iran on a much larger scale. But as in 2002-03, the sense grows that decision makers and opinion leaders on both sides, caught up in their own false narratives, are not listening.

 

 

Was The ‘Spanish Flu’ Epidemic Man-Made?:Sixty Million Dead In 1918-19
by Henry Makow PhD

Rense.com
            In 1948 Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo, told his CIA interrogator that the most devastating plague in human history was man-made.

  He was referring to the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 that infected 20% of the world’s population and killed between 60 and 100 million people. This is roughly 3 times as many as were killed and wounded in World War One, and is comparable to WWII losses, yet this modern plague has disappeared down the memory hole.

Mueller said the flu started as a US army bacteriological warfare weapon that somehow infected US army ranks at Camp Riley KS in March 1918, and spread around the world.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/influenza/peopleevents/pandeAMEX86.html

            He says that it “got out of control” but we cannot discount the horrible possibility that the “Spanish Flu” was a deliberate elite depopulation measure, and that it could be used again. Researchers have found connections between it and the current “Bird Flu.”

            http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4308872.stm%20

            There was nothing “Spanish” about this flu. According to Wikipedia

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu%20

            “In the U.S., about 28% of the population suffered, and 500,000 to 675,000 died. In Britain 200,000 died; in France more than 400,000. Entire villages perished in Alaska and southern Africa. In Australia an estimated 10,000 people died and in the Fiji Islands, 14% of the population died during only two weeks, and in Western Samoa 22%. An estimated 17 million died in India, about 5% of India’s population at the time. In the Indian Army, almost 22% of troops who caught the disease died of it.”

            “Indeed, symptoms in 1918 were so unusual that initially influenza was misdiagnosed as dengue, cholera, or typhoid. One observer wrote, “One of the most striking of the complications was hemorrhage from mucous membranes, especially from the nose, stomach, and intestine. Bleeding from the ears and petechial hemorrhages in the skin also occurred.

            …Another unusual feature of this pandemic was that it mostly killed young adults, with 99% of pandemic influenza deaths occurring in people under 65 and more than half in young adults 20 to 40 years old. This is unusual since influenza is normally most deadly to the very young (under age 2) and the very old (over age 70). ”

  MUELLER’S SOURCE

            At a 1944 Nazi bacteriological warfare conference in Berlin, General Walter Schreiber, Chief of the Medical Corps of the German Army told Mueller that he had spent two months in the US in 1927 conferring with his counterparts. They told him that the “so-called double blow virus” (i.e. Spanish Flu) was developed and used during the 1914 war.

            “But,” according to Mueller, “it got out of control and instead of killing the Germans who had surrendered by then, it turned back on you, and nearly everybody else.” (“Gestapo Chief: The 1948 CIA Interrogation of Heinrich Mueller” Vol. 2 by Gregory Douglas, p. 106)

            (Actually the Armistice didn’t take place until September 11, 1918.)

            The interrogator, James Kronthal, the CIA Bern Station Chief asked Mueller to explain “double blow virus.” It reminds me of AIDS.

            Mueller: “I am not a doctor, you understand, but the ‘double-blow’ referred to a virus, or actually a pair of them that worked like a prize fighter. The first blow attacked the immune system and made the victim susceptible, fatally so, to the second blow which was a form of pneumonia…[Schreiber told me] a British scientist actually developed it…Now you see why such things are insanity. These things can alter themselves and what starts out as a limited thing can change into something really terrible.”

            The subject of the Spanish Flu arose in the context of a discussion of typhus. Mueller said the Nazis deliberately introduced typhus into Russian POW camps and, along with starvation, killed about three million men. The typhus spread to Auschwitz and other concentration camps with Russian and Polish POWS.

            In the context of the Cold War, Mueller says: “If Stalin invades Europe…a little disease here and there would wipe out Stalin’s hoards and leave everything intact. Besides, a small bottle of germs is so much cheaper than an atom bomb, isn’t it? Why you could hold more soldiers in your hand than Stalin could possibly command and you don’t have to feed them clothes them or supply them with munitions. On the other hand, the threat of war…does wonders… for the economy.” (108)

            Is Mueller credible? In my opinion he is. Gregory Douglas apparently is a pseudonym for his nephew with whom he left his papers. Normally a hoax would not run to thousands of pages. The Interrogation is 800 pages. The Memoirs are 250 pages. The Microfilmed Archive apparently covers 850,000 pages. Finally, the material I have read is incredibly well informed, authoritative and consistent.

  CONCLUSION

            The “Elite” cult has made no secret of its desire to decrease the world population. (See Alan Stang, Population Extermination: How Will it be Done?

            http://www.etherzone.com/2006/stang112406.shtml

            It’s possible that World War One was a disappointment to the Elite in terms of the numbers killed. Whether the “Spanish Flu” was deliberate or not, we cannot say. But apparently the US Army has a record of experimenting with drugs/chemicals/bacteria on unwary soldiers. Did such an experiment get “out of control” at Fort Riley?

            http://www.rense.com/general36/history.htm

            So far, the Bird Flu has only killed 160 people since 2003. Is it a harbinger of something more deadly? Hopefully it isn’t but we should be mindful of the shocking precedent set by the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.

—–

            See also “Hitler’s Gestapo Chief Became Top Truman Advisor” http://www.savethemales.ca/001699.html

            See also “The Influenza Pandemic of 1918” http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/%20

— Henry Makow Ph.D. is the author of “A Long Way to go for a Date.” His articles exposing fe-manism and the New World Order can be found at his web site www.savethemales.ca He enjoys receiving comments, some of which he posts on his site using first names only. hmakow@gmail.com

 

The “anti-Semitism” smear campaign against CAP and Media Matters rolls on

 

by Glenn Greenwald

Salon

A campaign to disparage progressive writers makes a shameful comeback Last month, my Salon colleague Justin Elliott revealed that AIPAC’s former spokesman, Josh Block, had been encouraging neoconservative journalists and pundits on a private email list to attack as “anti-Semites” various Middle East commentators employed by two of the most influential Democratic-Party-aligned organizations: the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Media Matters (MM). Block distributed a dossier containing posts by these CAP and MM writers about Israel and Iran that he claimed evince anti-Semitism, and then issued these marching orders (emphasis in original): “YOU SHOULD AMPLIFY this.  And use the below [research] to attack the bad guys.” The predictable roster of neoconservative, hatemongering extremists on that email list – led by The Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin, who recruited the Simon Wiesenthal Center to the cause — dutifully spewed out articles echoing Block’s attacks against these mostly young, liberal writers: Matt Duss, Ali Gharib, Eli Clifton and Zaid Jilani at CAP’s ThinkProgress blog and Media Matters’ MJ Rosenberg (a former AIPAC employee).

Block’s once-secret email campaign followed a Politico article by Ben Smith which accused (or, rather, credited) these CAP and MM writers with deviations from “the bipartisan consensus on Israel” and voicing “a heretical and often critical stance on Israel heretofore confined to the political margins”; moreover, Smith wrote, “warm words for Israel can be hard to find on [CAP’s] blogs.” Block was quoted in that article accusing the two progressive groups of publishing “anti-Israel” and “borderline anti-Semitic stuff”;

Smith subsequently acknowledged that it was Block who had fed him files containing the supposedly anti-Semitic posts in order to enable the article to be written. As I wrote about on December 14, this seemed to be one of those very rare instances where this sort of smear campaign backfired and only the smear merchant (Block) would suffer any consequences, as Block’s own business partner, Lanny Davis, publicly repudiated Block’s smears, and the Democratic-aligned Truman National Security Project then expelled Block for using “mischaracterization or character attacks” in order to impede “the ability to debate difficult topics freely.”

But despite Block’s public humiliation, the disgusting smear campaign against these CAP and MM analysts rolls on undeterred, and the form it is taking reveals some very important points. In late December, The Jerusalem Post published an article about what it called “the anti-Israel writings of the ThinkProgress bloggers.” It quoted the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor accusing the CAP writers of “classical anti-Semitism,” and the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center accused them of “dangerous political libels resonating with historic and toxic anti-Jewish prejudices.” A cowardly “Democratic congressional staffer” anonymously called on “both parties” to repudiate the targeted writers and then added: “So long as CAP puts forth this kind of rhetoric, it will be difficult for them to be taken seriously” (because the hallmark of Seriousness is hiding behind anonymity to smear writers as anti-Semites).

Since then, the standard army of low-level smear merchants has continued attacking these CAP and MM writers as anti-Semites. Last week in Haaretz, Marty Peretz’ long-time assistant, Jamie Kirchick, ironically claimed that it was Block and other neocons who are the victims of “McCarthyism” even as Kirchick, in the same column, advanced the witch hunt to expose hidden anti-Semites in America’s think tanks and media outlets (an even greater irony is found in Kirchick’s self-anointed status as anti-bigotry crusader despite his long-term work for Peretz, probably the single most flagrant bigot and unapologetic spewer of hate speech in mainstream American discourse: but since it’s aimed at Arabs and Muslims, it’s all permissible). Earlier this week, Front Page Magazine singled out two of the targeted CAP writers with Arab-sounding names — Ali Gharib and Zaid Jilani — and accused them of being anti-American and driven by allegiance to Iran and Pakistan (that article also referred to them as “Muslim bloggers” even though Gharib, an Iranian-American, is an atheist). Yesterday, The New York Post published an Op-Ed by Commentary‘s Alana Goodman (under the headline “The White House’s Israel-bashing pals“) reporting that “three leading Jewish groups — the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the Simon Wiesenthal Center — have accused CAP and its staff of publishing ‘anti-Israel,’ ‘hateful’ and ‘toxic anti-Jewish’ material.”

Though Block has now been erased from the picture, this is clearly his smear campaign being aggressively carried out. The goal here is the same as it always is for efforts to smear critics of Israel (or those who question the AIPAC line on U.S. policy toward the region) as anti-Semites: namely, to gather scalps, even low-level ones, in order to intimidate others from questioning or challenging the Israel Lobby’s agenda and enforce orthodoxy in the mainstream of both parties. This cause has become more urgent than ever as a result of two factors: (1) increasing tensions with Iran, which many of these accusers desperately want to see devolve into war and (2) increasing freedom among mainstream pundits and even establishment Democrats to criticize the Israeli government and the domestic Israel Lobby (the 2012 election is a third factor for some, as they hope to link anti-Semitism to the White House in order to scare Jewish voters out of voting for the Democrats). Being able to display the heads of these offending writers on a pike will, it is hoped, serve to deter further dissent on these Israel-related questions in mainstream circles. But those pushing this particular smear campaign have over-played their hand in several important ways and, in doing so, have revealed more starkly than ever the true purpose and the real premises underlying their attacks.

* * * * *

There are many points to make about how this campaign has manifested, but I want to focus on one amazing aspect of it. Because these “leading Jewish groups” have whittled away their credibility by continuously exploiting charges of “anti-Semitism” for political gain and debate-suppressing ends, it is no longer sufficient for them simply to spout the accusation and be taken seriously. They are now required to specify what exactly is out of bounds and what makes someone “anti-Semitic” as opposed to a mere critic of Israeli actions. And in their answers here one finds extremely revealing — and damning — facts.

Look at what Josh Block told Politico about what makes someone an anti-Semite:

As a progressive Democrat, I am convinced that on issues as important as the US-Israel alliance and the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program, there is no room for uncivil discourse or name calling, like ‘Israel Firster or ‘Likudnik’, and policy or political rhetoric that is hostile to Israel, or suggests that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, has no place in the mainstream Democratic party discourse. I also believe that when it occurs, progressive institutions, have a responsibility not to tolerate such speech or arguments.

So according to Block, you are not allowed (unless you want to be found guilty of anti-Semitism) to use “policy rhetoric that is hostile to Israel” or — more amazingly — even to “suggest that Iran has no nuclear weapons program.” Those ideas are strictly off limits, declares the former AIPAC spokesman. Apparently, then, America’s National Intelligence Estimates of 2007 and 2010 are both anti-Semitic, since they both concluded that Iran ceased work on developing a nuclear weapon back in 2003 and that there is no conclusive evidence demonstrating it resumed; to cite those reports and to embrace their conclusions makes you an anti-Semite, since you’re not allowed to “suggest that Iran has no nuclear weapons program.” Israel’s government is also evidently suffused with anti-Semites, given that Haaretz reported this week that “the Israeli view is that while Iran continues to improve its nuclear capabilities, it has not yet decided whether to translate these capabilities into a nuclear weapon.” Make certain, though, not to mention that because, according to Block, that expression of anti-semitism “has no place in the mainstream Democratic party discourse.” To avoid being an anti-Semite, you must quietly and gratefully accept the most extreme claims about the state of Iran’s nuclear weapons program: it is not permissible to debate it.

Then there’s Jason Issacson of the American Jewish Congress, who told The Jerusalem Post that “references to Israeli ‘apartheid’ . . . are so false and hateful they reveal an ugly bias no serious policy center can countenance.” Make sure to write that down: unless you want to stand revealed as an anti-Semite, you’re not allowed to point out the stark and tragic similarities between South African bantustans and the way in which residents of the West Bank are walled off into tiny enclaves and Gazans are forcibly confined to ghettos. Those guilty of anti-Semitism on this ground not only include the President of Turkey, the Foreign Minister of Finland, and a former American President – all of whom have made that comparison – but also the publisher of Haaretz, who last year repeatedly compared Israeli treatment of the Palestinians to South African apartheid; the Israeli writer Yitzhak Loar, who has argued that the situation in the occupied territories is actually worse than South African apartheid in material ways; and also, once again, Israel’s own Defense Minister (and former Prime Minister), who last year warned that the only alternative to peace is apartheid: “If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.

But the most revealing decree comes from Abe Foxman’s Anti-Defamation League, which said this when arguing that these anti-Semitism smears against CAP and MM are warranted:

Most of their blogs come from a perspective of blaming Israel for the lack of progress in Israeli-Palestinian affairs and minimizing or rationalizing the Iranian threat.

So Israel has been brutally occupying Palestinian land for 45 years, and continues to aggressively expand settlements that all but foreclose any possibility of a two-state resolution. But as an American taxpayer — contributing to the billions of dollars of annual aid sent to Israel and affected in all sorts of ways by this conflict — you are not allowed to opine that Israel is primarily at fault for the lack of a peace agreement. If you do so opine, you’re not merely wrong, but you’ve exposed yourself as an anti-Semite. That opinion regarding the assignment of fault in the Israel-Palestinian conflict is strictly off limits.

Also strictly prohibited, according to the ADL, is “minimizing or rationalizing the Iranian threat.” This means that not only are the American intelligence agencies which produced the 2007 and 2010 NIEs guilty of anti-Semitism, as are Israeli officials who believe Iran “has not yet decided whether to translate these capabilities into a nuclear weapon,” but so too is Tamir Pardo, the current chief of the Israeli Mossad, who recently rejected the claim that Iranian nuclear weapons would pose an existential threat to Israel; ex-Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy (“[Iran is] far from posing an existential threat to Israel“; instead, domestic radicalization in Israel poses a bigger risk than Ahmadinejadbecause “ultra-Orthodox extremism has darkened our lives”; he added: “The State of Israel cannot be destroyed. An attack on Iran could affect not only Israel, but the entire region for 100 years”); ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan (“a future Israel Air Force attack on Iranian nuclear facilities was ‘the stupidest thing I have ever heard”); and Israeli Defense Minister Barak (“Iran does not constitute an existential threat against Israel”).

But remember: as an American citizen whose country may be involved directly or indirectly in a war with Iran, you are not allowed to express any opinions that constitute minimizing or rationalizing the Iranian threat.” You’re presumably also not allowed to question the wisdom and justness of sanctions against Iran even though their principal Congressional sponsor has acknowledged, proudly, that they will “take the food out of the mouths of the citizens.” If you do question any of that, then you are an anti-Semite, pronounces the ADL.

* * * * *

Is this not the most blatant evidence yet that these organizations and their adherents are manipulating and exploiting charges of anti-Semitism in order to stifle and punish perfectly legitimate political and policy debates about Israel? They are effectively admitting that “anti-Semitism” does not mean irrational hatred or animosity toward Jews — its actual definition — but rather now means: challenging or even questioning the policy assumptions and preferences of certain Jewish groups and the Israeli government. They are literally decreeing that you are barred from challenging the dubious premises of those who crave war with Iran, are further barred from questioning their fear-mongering about the Iranian nuclear program, are also barred from assigning blame to the settlement-expanding Israelis for the lack of a peace agreement, and are even barred from condemning the increasingly unsustainable and anti-democratic  treatment of the Palestinians — all upon pain of being formally condemned as anti-Semitic.

What we find yet again is this common– and quite dangerous — paradox: the very groups that are charged with fighting anti-Semitism have done more than anyone else to trivialize the accusation and thus render it impotent and meaningless. They have done this by continuously exploiting the term for completely illegitimate aims: to smear those who deviate from their policy preferences regarding Israel. As Sarah Wildman recently wrote in an Op-Ed in the Jewish newspaper, The Forward, entitled “When ‘Anti-Semitism’ is Abused”:

[W]hen anti-Semitism is falsely applied, we must also stand up and decry it as defamation, as character assault, as unjust. That is why when we debase the term by using it as a rhetorical conceit against those with whom we disagree on policy matters, we have sullied our own promises to our grandparents. For if we dilute the term, if we render the label meaningless, defanged, we have failed ourselves, our legacy, our ancestors, our children. 

I am speaking of the recent rise of the bogeyman of anti-Semitism wielded to criticize everyone, from the American ambassador to Belgium (himself the Jewish son of a Holocaust survivor), who was trying to negotiate the uncomfortable lines of Muslim-Jewish conflict in modern Europe, to foreign policy bloggers at Media Matters for America and ThinkProgress, the online magazine housed at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post, responding to a story about divisions on Israel policy in the Democratic Party, freely called these blogs anti-Semitic. Commentary took up her lead, and The Jerusalem Post than found a historian to ruminate over word choices on the blogs, likening their use to classic anti-Semitism. In the meantime, Elliott Abrams of The Weekly Standard took on Thomas Friedman, beginning his piece, “If you were an anti-Semite dedicated to spreading your hatred of Jews….”

There comes a time when we must insist on common sense. We must reject the absurd. There comes a time when we must say, “Enough.” Real anti-Semitism exists. Real, ugly, hatred of the Jewish people is all too easy to find.

But when we are forced to sift through the thousands of posts of an organization affiliated with the Democratic Party in order to come up with six or seven sentences that may, taken out of context, feel uncomfortable to the community with regard to Israel, that should not lead to pointing fingers, libeling writers and screaming about hate speech. We cannot jump up and shout that these think tanks are harboring anti-Semites or brewing hatred because we disagree with something they have written. We cannot call that anti-Semitism. We can call it policy disagreement.

But smearing those with policy disagreements as anti-Semites has become a leading tactic in these precincts. And the prime purveyors are those who have anointed themselves as the guardians and arbiters of the term, and have thus done more to dilute and trivialize it than any actual anti-Semites could ever dream of achieving. It’s the classic Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome: if you scream “anti-Semite” in order to prohibit perfectly valid ideas from being expressed, then nobody will listen or care when you scream it in order to highlight its genuine manifestations.

* * * * *

What’s really going on here is as obvious as it is odious. The primary factor in AIPAC’s astonishing success has been ensuring that its mandated policies are fully bipartisan, that there are zero differences on Israel between the two parties, so that election outcomes change nothing. They are most petrified that some actual dissent may seep into the mainstream of the two parties; that’s why Bill Kristol has demanded that Ron Paul be expelled from the GOP, and it’s why these CAP and MM writers are being attacked so savagely. Especially with a possible war with Iran on the horizon, the last thing they want — especially in the mainstream of either party — is a permissive environment where one can freely debate the accuracy of their fear-mongering premises about Iran and challenge the wisdom of that aggression.

They are particularly panicked by their eroding power to monopolize the discourse. When Time Magazine’s Joe Klein is warning of “Israel-Firsters” and pointing out the role they played in bringing about the Iraq War and now trying to repeat that feat with Iran, and when The New York Times‘ Tom Friedman is warning that U.S. policy is “held hostage” by the Israel Lobby and the U.S. Congress is “bought and paid for by the Israel Lobby,” it’s clear that things have changed. Being able to display a new scalp on their wall will enable them to exhibit that they can still dictate debate limits and punish heretics. The problem, though, is that Joe Klein and Tom Friedman are too protected (to say nothing of being too Jewish and too devoted to Israel) to bring down with anti-Semitism smears (though they certainly have tried).

So what they do instead is target young, relatively obscure writers — especially ones with names like “Zaid Jilani” and “Ali Gahrib” — in order to make an example of them. This is a truly disgusting spectacle: these commentators — all of whom are writing well within the range of mainstream opinion on Israel — are being publicly smeared early in their careers as anti-Semites as part of a coordinated, ongoing campaign planned by Josh Block and carried out by numerous journalists with large media platforms, and aided and abetted by Jewish groups trading on their credibility to suppress debate.

These accusers know that their institutional employer (CAP) — dependent both upon White House access and funding by Jewish donors — can ill-afford to be smeared as anti-Israel and anti-Semitic regardless of whether those allegations are valid or not. And that’s exactly why they’re doing it: because they sense that these young CAP writers in particular (who, revealingly, have not been heard from in their own defense since the accusations against them were first voiced) are vulnerable to character assassination and career destruction. Unsurprisingly, CAP has alternated between distancing itself from and even repudiating their writings to desperately assuring everyone that they are fully on board with standard “pro-Israel” orthodoxies.

So this smear campaign not only threatens to suppress legitimate debate about crucial policy matters in the U.S., but it also is aimed at the reputations and careers of numerous young liberal writers who have done absolutely nothing wrong. As Wildman put it about those who “debase the term by using it as a rhetorical conceit against those with whom we disagree on policy matters”: “When anti-Semitism is falsely applied, we must also stand up and decry it as defamation, as character assault, as unjust. . . .There comes a time when we must insist on common sense. We must reject the absurd. There comes a time when we must say, ‘Enough’.” We are way past that point now: both with the general smearing of Israel critics as anti-Semites and the specific, baseless attacks on these writers.

UPDATE: Part of why I decided to write about this today — beyond the proliferating smears — was that I had learned that The Washington Post‘s Peter Wallsten was working on a long article about this controversy; that article was just published this morning, and is being promoted this way on its website’s front page:

It basically rehashes all the accusations I just chronicled. It does, though, say that Jilani — one of the best commentators at CAP — “left CAP’s staff in recent days to take another job.” It also includes this pitiful (and entirely unsurprising) quote from a White House official:

“The language is corrosive and unacceptable,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. He added that the blog posts and tweets from CAP staffers “are the responsibility of the adults who run the place, not only the kids who play.”

Cooper conveyed his concerns about CAP during a private White House meeting last week with Obama’s newly hired Jewish community liaison.

The White House official, Jarrod Bernstein, told Cooper that the situation at CAP was “troubling,” adding “that is not this administration. 

The “situation” at CAP is “troubling,” said the White House official — way to stand by your most loyal institutional ally in Washington. Kudos to J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami, who “said he had no problem with ‘Israel-firster’” and then identified the real menace here:

“If the charge is that you’re putting the interests of another country before the interests of the United States in the way you would advocate that, it’s a legitimate question,” Ben-Ami said.

Ben-Ami added that Jewish groups “should tread lightly” when they make accusations of anti-Semitism. “Because when they do need to use that word, people won’t take you seriously,” he said.

Regardless of what the ultimate CAP disposition is of these writers, just think about the effect it has not only on them, but all commentators working in D.C., who see these toxic smears being spread far and wide. To say that they will not feel free to comment on matters relating to Israel is a huge understatement. That, of course, is precisely the aim of this campaign.

Authority for NYPD-CIA collaboration questioned

January 20 2012

by Matt Apuzzo

AP foreign,

            WASHINGTON (AP) — The CIA’s top lawyer never approved sending a veteran agency officer to New York, where he helped set up police spying programs, The Associated Press has learned. Such approval would have been required under the presidential order that Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said authorized the unusual assignment.

Normally, when the CIA dispatches one of its officers to work in another government agency, rules are spelled out in advance in writing to ensure the CIA doesn’t cross the line into domestic spying. Under a 1981 presidential order, the CIA is permitted to provide “specialized equipment, technical knowledge or assistance of expert personnel” to local law enforcement agencies but only when the CIA’s general counsel approves in each case.

Neither of those things happened in 2002, when CIA Director George Tenet sent veteran agency officer Lawrence Sanchez to New York, former U.S. intelligence officials told the AP. While on the CIA’s payroll, Sanchez was the architect of spying programs that transformed the NYPD into one of the nation’s most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies.

The CIA’s inspector general cleared the agency of any wrongdoing in its partnership with New York, but the absence of documentation and legal review shows how murky the rules were as the CIA and NYPD formed their unprecedented collaboration in the frenzied months after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

In a series of investigative reports since August, the AP has revealed that, with the CIA’s help, the NYPD developed spying programs that monitored every aspect of Muslim life and built databases on where innocent Muslims eat, shop, work and pray. Plainclothes officers monitored conversations in Muslim neighborhoods and wrote daily reports about what they heard.

Kelly, the police commissioner, has vigorously defended the NYPD’s relationship with the CIA. Testifying before the City Council in October, Kelly said the collaboration was authorized under the 1981 presidential order, known as No. 12333.

“Operating under this legal basis, the CIA has advised the police department on key aspects of intelligence gathering and analysis,” Kelly said.

Kelly cited the section of the presidential order, 2.6c, that also requires the CIA’s top lawyer to approve such arrangements, but he did not tell the city council that approval by the CIA’s top lawyer was required.

The CIA’s general counsel at the time, Scott Muller, did not approve the arrangement, former intelligence officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. CIA lawyers, particularly those in New York, were aware Sanchez was working out of the NYPD offices but the rules of the arrangement were not documented in advance, the officials said.

Muller, now in private practice in New York, said he had not been following the issue and declined to comment. The CIA did not respond when repeatedly asked to explain the justification for Sanchez’s assignment and why Muller did not sign off.

Sanchez, a CIA veteran who spent 15 years overseas in the former Soviet Union, South Asia and the Middle East, instructed officers on the art of collecting information without attracting attention. He directed officers and reviewed case files. Sometimes intelligence collected from NYPD’s operations was passed informally to the CIA, former NYPD officials said.

The CIA’s internal watchdog found nothing wrong with the partnership and concluded that the agency did not violate the executive order. U.S. officials have said that’s in part because the CIA never instructed Sanchez to set up the NYPD spying programs.

U.S. officials have acknowledged that the rules were murky. They attributed that to the desperate push for better intelligence following the attacks.

Sanchez left the department in late 2010 but was followed last summer by a senior clandestine operative who holds the title of special assistant to David Cohen, a former CIA officer who runs the intelligence division. The CIA has asked the AP not to publish the operative’s name. The CIA would not say whether its current general counsel approved his being sent to the NYPD.

The clandestine CIA operative’s role at the NYPD remains unclear. Officially, he is there on a sabbatical to observe the NYPD’s management. Kelly said the operative provides the NYPD with foreign intelligence. CIA Director David Petraeus described him as an adviser. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described him to Congress as an analyst, then Clapper’s office acknowledged that was incorrect.

The CIA’s relationship with the NYPD has troubled lawmakers and top intelligence officials.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said the CIA has “no business or authority in domestic spying, or in advising the NYPD how to conduct local surveillance.”

Clapper also said it did not look good for the CIA to be involved in any city police department

Conversations with the Crow

            When the CIA discovered that their former Deputy Director of Clandestine Affairs, Robert T. Crowley, had been talking with author Gregory Douglas, they became fearful (because of what Crowley knew) and outraged (because they knew Douglas would publish eventually) and made many efforts to silence Crowley, mostly by having dozens of FBI agents call or visit him at his Washington home and try to convince him to stop talking to Douglas, whom they considered to be an evil, loose cannon.          

Crowley did not listen to them (no one else ever does, either) and Douglas made through shorthand notes of each and every one of their many conversation. TBR News published most of these (some of the really vile ones were left out of the book but will be included on this site as a later addendum ) and the entire collection was later produced as an Ebook.

 Now, we reliably learn, various Washington alphabet agencies are trying to find a way to block the circulation of this highly negative, entertaining and dangerous work, so to show our solidarity with our beloved leaders and protectors, and our sincere appreciation for their corrupt and coercive actions, we are going to reprint the entire work, chapter by chapter. (The complete book can be obtained by going to:

http://www.shop.conversationswiththecrow.com/Conversations-with-the-Crow-CWC-GD01.htm

Conversation No. 110

Date: Saturday, November 1, 1997

Commenced: 8:45 AM CST

Concluded: 9:14 AM CST

GD: Good morning, Robert. Am I too early for you there?
RTC: No, you’re fine for now, Gregory but Emily wants to visit friends in an hour or so and I am obliged to tag along. I would much rather stay at home but wives have some authority so I go. How are you today?
GD: Functioning. I got up with the sun which is not usual hence the early call. I was going to extract some material from Malthus but decided to go to bed early. Even though Malthus is very, very important what is coming up, I realize that even if I published his work, no one would read it or care. It’s true that population is increasing geometrically and food supplies arithmetically but no one would care about this, even though it is going to impact terribly on them very soon. And the Internet, such as it is, is so full of nut crap that the real issues are virtually swamped. Well, your people at the CIA can certainly control most of our media but they really can’t get at the Internet because it is far too diffuse. I predict that once the newer generations, who are freaking out over the Internet and the chance to be recognized by other pimple factories will stop reading the print media and read the very abbreviated but easy to digest news on the Internet. And you can’t control that, can you?
RTC: I’ve never given the subject any real thought. I’m out of service these many years and the future is not for me to worry about.

GD: Well then, consider the past and why we are heading over the cliff down into the quarry. America was a self-contained country before the First World War, isolationist in the inter-war years and activist during and after the Second. We had destroyed Japan and Germany because Roosevelt hated them. He hated the Japanese because his maternal grandfather was a smuggler of Chinese into this country and he also smuggled opium. The Japanese were in China and were very brutal so Roosevelt had family reasons for hating them. And back some years, Roosevelt’s family were German Jews and he hated Hitler for his persecution of his ancestor’s people. Hence his instigation of the war. After he was dead and rotting in his rose garden, Truman rebuilt the industry of both Germany and Japan and kept both countries as fiefdoms of this country. The new enemy? Russia. Why? As a unifying factor. Once beloved by the Roosevelt liberals, the Stalin people were now evil and were going to invade us. Naturally, we had to keep up a huge army and start a weapons race to protect the virgins of Topeka from brutal Slavic rapes. I knew Gehlen and I know the origins of the Cold War. Faked, of course, but then so much of what we do is faked. Your agency started out as a private information collector for Truman and now, like the Army, you are a state-within-a-state. Semi-autonomous, you set policies, lie to presidents, co-mingle and cooperate with major business and banking interests, control most of our news and so on. Admit it, why not?
RTC: I consider that to be a very one-sided and very unfair analysis, Gregory. It sounds like something in Pravda.

GD: Well, Pravda means truth in English so we can go from there. Yes, two sides to every issue and often more. But in turning this country into England of the nineteenth century, you have been empire-building all over the world. Yes, of course, we must defend ourselves against the evil Communists who are going to invade Alaska and rape moose. Your agency and the Army can get huge sums of money from a frightened Congress, money you never have to account for. If some populist like Mossadegh or Castro comes to power in an area where major American industry is threatened, the CIA rushed to the President with breathless, and entirely fictional, stories of Communist expansion and the Army and your people managed to foment rebellion in the country involved and save your friend’s huge investments. I give you United Fruit in Guatemala and certain oil in Sumatra, not to mention the deals you cut with the French Michelin rubber company to send our troops to protect their enormously valuable rubber plantations in Vietnam. Fifty thousand dead Americans are not worth the price, believe me. But the end of all this is that we are now the brutal policeman of the world, beating up people our bosses don’t like, despoiling their countries, killing their leaders. And the price of all this? Universal enmity and envy. If we stumble, as we did in Vietnam, others are watching to see if we fall from power. We have not, at least so far, but like England at the end of the nineteenth century, the price of keeping up the empire got to be too great and they fell until now they are of less importance than Iceland. That’s the price of empire, Robert, eternal vigilance but a fat citizenry grows too fond of their manifest pleasures so eventually, coalitions are formed and God knows how many revolts, massacres, terrorism and so on will be loosed on the land. The Bible says that he who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind and I have a strong feeling that this whirlwind will be coming. And we are ruled by arrogance, not common sense. Having outbid Russia and causing an internal collapse, we should have rushed to embrace the newly-freed Russians instead of installing your man, the drunken and obedient Yeltsin and trying to rape the country with great glee. That failed and left a terrible legacy of hatred. Make friends, Robert, not enemies. No one needs enemies. Study Bismarck who was brilliant in keeping his country safe from enemy plots and coalitions. Form a group here, another there, keep the enemies from uniting. But men like Bismarck are very rare and most of our leaders are very stupid people with no idea of history. History repeats itself, Robert, with slight variations but most people, and their leaders as well, don’t read history and if they did, it would be some pap by Barbara Tuchman. Now we have a huge empire, kept going by the threat of force, just as the British had. Not a broad based-empire but a narrow based one. If you allow world opinion to feed on itself, you will have a legion of petty enemies, all waiting for us to stumble and if we do, God help us all.

RTC: Gregory, you have just shown very clearly why our agency is so vital to the protection of American interests. Why, if it weren’t for the CIA, enemies would all gang up on us. Right?

GD: Yes, right, but can you keep it up? The Christian ninnies are after Clinton because they want to replace him with Pat Robertson and close all the businesses down on Sunday so the sheep can go to church and stuff the collection plates. They want a permanent Republican, very right-wing religious dictatorship here but it won’t work. No one on their side is smart enough to pull it off on a permanent basis. They have to get full public cooperation and they are far too stupid to do this. Yapping about moral majorities or the imminent arrival of Jesus won’t make it, believe me. Yes, I know you people view these nuts as useful tools and they are but only up to a point. Eventually the public will tire of looking for Jesus and turn to Saturday football games and cocaine. And sometimes beer. No wonder Americans are getting to be masses of jiggling blubber. Sitting on their couches, watching the trash on the idiot box and stuffing their faces with salted fat. Diabetes, heart attacks and what all right along with lung cancer and heart attacks from their cigarettes. And consider that while our population is booming, education has collapsed here. Teachers dare not instill curiosity in their pupils and just keep promoting them upwards and outwards to get rid of them. The idiots of the country breed and their worthless calves are so dumb most of them can barely read or write and are couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the directions were on the heel. And corporations are sending all the cheap jobs to Manila and Bombay because the greedy unions have forced wages up to the point where profits topple. Pretty soon, the enormous mass of semi-literate graduates who used to get jobs in industry will have no prospects and turn to rampant drug use and its attendant petty crime. No, we need someone with balls and so far, I haven’t seen anything on the political scene that have any. And of course, they have no brains either. We always get what we pay for, Robert, every time. And recall Genesis? ‘And slime had they for mortar…’

(Concluded at 9:14 AM CST)

Dramatis personae:

                        James Jesus Angleton: Once head of the CIA’s Counterintelligence division, later fired because of his obsessive and illegal behavior, tapping the phones of many important government officials in search of elusive Soviet spies. A good friend of Robert Crowley and a co-conspirator with him in the assassination of President Kennedy

            James P. Atwood: (April 16, 1930-April 20, 1997) A CIA employee, located in Berlin, Atwood had a most interesting career. He worked for any other intelligence agency, domestic or foreign, that would pay him, was involved in selling surplus Russian atomic artillery shells to the Pakistan government and was also most successful in the manufacturing of counterfeit German dress daggers. Too talkative, Atwood eventually had a sudden, and fatal, “seizure” while lunching with CIA associates.

            William Corson: A Marine Corps Colonel and President Carter’s representative to the CIA. A friend of Crowley and Kimmel, Corson was an intelligent man whose main failing was a frantic desire to be seen as an important person. This led to his making fictional or highly exaggerated claims.

            John Costello: A British historian who was popular with revisionist circles. Died of AIDS on a trans-Atlantic flight to the United States.

            James Critchfield: Former U.S. Army Colonel who worked for the CIA and organizaed the Cehlen Org. at Pullach, Germany. This organization was filled to the Plimsoll line with former Gestapo and SD personnel, many of whom were wanted for various purported crimes. He hired Heinrich Müller in 1948 and went on to represent the CIA in the Persian Gulf.

            Robert T. Crowley: Once the deputy director of Clandestine Operations and head of the group that interacted with corporate America. A former West Point football player who was one of the founders of the original CIA. Crowley was involved at a very high level with many of the machinations of the CIA.

            Gregory Douglas: A retired newspaperman, onetime friend of Heinrich Müller and latterly, of Robert Crowley. Inherited stacks of files from the former (along with many interesting works of art acquired during the war and even more papers from Robert Crowley.) Lives comfortably in a nice house overlooking the Mediterranean.

            Reinhard Gehlen: A retired German general who had once been in charge of the intelligence for the German high command on Russian military activities. Fired by Hitler for incompetence, he was therefore naturally hired by first, the U.S. Army and then, as his level of incompetence rose, with the CIA. His Nazi-stuffed organization eventually became the current German Bundes Nachrichten Dienst.

            Thomas K. Kimmel, Jr: A grandson of Admiral Husband Kimmel, Naval commander at Pearl Harbor who was scapegoated after the Japanese attack. Kimmel was a senior FBI official who knew both Gregory Douglas and Robert Crowley and made a number of attempts to discourage Crowley from talking with Douglas. He was singularly unsuccessful. Kimmel subsequently retired, lives in Florida, and works for the CIA as an “advisor.”

            Willi Krichbaum: A Senior Colonel (Oberführer) in the SS, head of the wartime Secret Field Police of the German Army and Heinrich Müller’s standing deputy in the Gestapo. After the war, Krichbaum went to work for the Critchfield organization and was their chief recruiter and hired many of his former SS friends. Krichbaum put Critchfield in touch with Müller in 1948.

            Heinrich Müller: A former military pilot in the Bavarian Army in WWI, Müller  became a political police officer in Munich and was later made the head of the Secret State Police or Gestapo. After the war, Müller escaped to Switzerland where he worked for Swiss intelligence as a specialist on Communist espionage and was hired by James Critchfield, head of the Gehlen Organization, in 1948. Müller subsequently was moved to Washington where he worked for the CIA until he retired.

            Joseph Trento: A writer on intelligence subjects, Trento and his wife “assisted” both Crowley and Corson in writing a book on the Russian KGB. Trento believed that he would inherit all of Crowley’s extensive files but after Crowley’s death, he discovered that the files had been gutted and the most important, and sensitive, ones given to Gregory Douglas. Trento was not happy about this. Neither were his employers.

            Frank Wisner: A Founding Father of the CIA who promised much to the Hungarians and then failed them. First, a raging lunatic who was removed from Langley, screaming, in a strait jacket and later, blowing off the top of his head with a shotgun.           

            Robert Wolfe: A retired librarian from the National Archives who worked closely with the CIA on covering up embarrassing historical material in the files of the Archives. A strong supporter of holocaust writers specializing in creative writing. Although he prefers to be called ‘Dr,’ in reality he has no PhD.

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