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Announcing TBR Ebooks!

Starting with a new publication concerning the background behind the 9/11 attacks, TBR News will be presenting a series of interesting, informative and definitive works for our readers. Future titles will include the complete Voice of the White House with much more added material that was considered too controversial to post, the heavily-censored Armenian Holocaust of 1916, the Bush-Lay private correspondence, the Assassination of JFK,Pearl Harbor intrigues and rare documents, Malaparte’s inside study of the making of revolution, sensational selected articles from the German Rudolf historical revision files, unpublished before Rudolf’s arrest and forced deportation to Germany, World War II studies of holocaust history, taken from secret German files and much more. Please see the title page for more information.

The Editors

Descending Into Darkness: The Harring Report

A well-researched study into the background of the 9/11 attack: Who knew what and when did they know it. Russian and German intelligence material, not published before show that the U.S. had ample warning...and did nothing about it.

THE VOICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE

The full collection of the twice-weekly commentary of what is really going on inside the corrupt Bush White House. The spectrum includes the Gannon scandal, the planned invasion of Iran, many stories of stupidity and corruption coupled with biting sarcasm. Interesting to note that many, if not most, of the predictions have come true.

REGICIDE The Official Assassination of John F. Kennedy

A landmark book that sold very well in hardback, this work contains actual intelligence documents concerning the inside U.S. plans to kill Kennedy; the reasons, the methods and the results.

The Final Reckoning: An Analysis of Demographics in Holocaust Literature

By Harold Kreig, Lt.Col, AUS ret.

This is the first rational, heavily documented work on the subject of the Holocaust. Colonel Krieg has taken thousands of documents, including the official SS concentration camp records from 1935 through 1945 and official U.S. government postwar analysis of the system and the casualties and causes of death and produced a book that is highly informative and readable.  Heavily footnoted and annotated, ‘The Final Reckoning’ is logical and compelling and is an historical work that should be read through by any student of the period and subject.

Coup D’Etat: The Technique Of Revolution

By Curzio Malaparte

First published in Italy by Curzio Malaparte in 1928, this is a seminal work on historical seizures of power from Napoleon through Hitler.

Gestapo-Chief: The CIA & Heinrich Müller by Gregory Douglas

                In 1948, the former head of Hitelr’s Gestapo was interviewed by senior officials of the CIA in Switzerland where Müller had been in hiding since the end of the Second World War. His interview, for Colonel James Critchfield of the CIA’s Gehlen Organization, runs to nearly a thousand pages and for years was hidden in the CIA’s files.

                This is a translation of a part of the interview, which was initially conducted in German and then translated into English for CIA use.

                It is a fascinating series of historical episodes covering both the Axis and Allied sides with comments on Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, Henry Wallace, Winston Churchill, the 20^th of July bomb plot against Hitler, Bishop von Galen’s heroic, and successful, attacks on the Nazis and their euthanasia program, the concentration camps, the Duke of Windsor, the Roger Casement diaries and many more fascinating and insightful views of a man who ran the most effective counter-intelligence agency in modern times. 

                There is also extensive information on the attempts on the part of the CIA to silence or discredit the fact that the Gestapo Chief worked for the United States and eventually came to live in Washington, D.C. as part of the notorious “Operation Paperclip.”

                Fascinating inside views of many top Nazis and CIA officials. 

The CIA COvenant: Nazis in Washington

by Gregory Douglas

* From the end of World War II, the American CIA imported thousands of Nazis into the United States to work for them, many on the list of wanted war criminals

*One of the most important of these was Heinrich Mueller, once head of Hitler's Gestapo. Mueller was recruited by Colonel James Critchfield who ran the CIA's "Gehnel Organization' in Munich.

* Mueller kept journals and this book is a translation of three years (1948-1951) of notes and observations made of top CIA officials, President Truman, top U.S. government officials, plans for murder, thefts, kidnappings, wholesale thefts of public money and a terrifying pattern of uncontrolled ambition, unchecked by any person or agency.

* Also included are CIA and other agency's activities that have never been revealed.

*Mueller's deals in stolen Nazi art for the CIA are covered in detail.

*Also to be found are the steps the frightened CIA have taken to prevent the publication, sales or distribution of this work.

An Essay on the Principle of Population

by Thomas Malthus

The 1798 classic study of how supplies of food do not keep up with an expanding population

Malthus' theory is that population growth is geometric while the food supply increase is arithmetic.

A very literate and current study that clearly highlights present and current population problems

With the world's population higher than ever before, this is a work of great and current interest

CONSPIRACIES for Fun and Profit

Contents
The Evil Catholics Murdered Abraham Lincoln
TWA Flight 800: The Gathering of the Nuts
The Real Truth About the Kennedy Assassination!
The Great 9-11 Plot
Who is Sorcha Faal?
The Bush Indictments
Faked Conspiracy photos
The Sinking of the MV Estonia
The German Guy and the Destruction of Houston
The Great Contrail Conspiracy
Planet X
Remote Viewing unveiled

Notice!

Our new security system prevents email messages coming through the AOL server from being delivered to our address. This is because of the probability of unwelcome and problematical attachments to messages from this source, coupled with the fact that AOL’s voluntary cooperation with various American, and foreign, law enforcement groups makes contact with them in any form a risky business.  Correspondents wishing to contact TBR News are suggested to use another server. Ed.

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people, On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
- H.L. Mencken

“That we are to stand by the president, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
-Theodore Roosevelt

“Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited. The discrediting is not an automatic result of the blunders and abuses of those in power, but the deliberate work of men of words with a grievance.”
-Eric Hoffer The True Believer

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

America’s Enemies!

There are four entities who represent the most dangerous enemies to American liberties since George III.

They are:

1.                    The Neocons or Likudists who owe their personal allegiance to another country and now completely control our foreign policy. They lied and deceived us into the Iraq war and are demanding that more and more American soldiers die to preserve their own country and ideals.

2.                    The Christian Evangelical right who is trying to force the United States into becoming a theocracy under their rule. They know in their hearts that they alone can restructure a secular humanist America into their idea of Heaven on Earth.

3.                    An element of American society that call themselves Patriots and are obsessively militaristic and great admirers of the corporate or fascistic state. Many of these have been very minor members of the American military and as a counterbalance to their reserve or rear area tours of duty, are rabidly in favor of draconian military action, the bloodier the better. Usually these drumbeaters are too old, or too fat, to fight and have no sons of draft age.

4.                    George W. Bush, who is the worst president in the history of the United States and directly responsible for the huge death tolls in Iraq, is determined to rule the United States until God puts a stop to him and is even more determined to force the American people into becoming obedient, Christian and self-sacrificing lemmings who worship at his shrine and march in step.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., May 14, 2007: “The top man at Justice is quitting, Gonzales won’t because his daddy wants to keep him, Blair has left and Brown, according to my information, wants nothing to do with Iraq and thinks Bush is a nut case. We just had another fake “terrorist warning” which is considered a joke around here, the death tolls in Iraq are climbing and Bush’s approval ratings are reaching the 0 level. I have spoken with a number of Republican Congressmen and they all feel that the President is a candidate for the funny farm and soon enough, they will all desert him in a panic.  The Democrats are afraid to go too far with Bush because the evil Karl Rove has the dirt on many of them and threatens to expose them. Shades of Colonel Hoover! Growing rumors inside the Beltway that some time ago, a very senior CIA official gave away thousands of pages of documents to a writer, mainly because he was getting soft in the head. Now, they might surface. What’s in them? God knows. Murders, embezzlements, drug sales, whatever. It gives the increasingly useless CIA something else to worry about. The military brass at the Pentagon are muttering about removing Bush who, they believe, has ruined their military beyond repair. ‘Christ,’ one General said to a few of us on Sunday, “the beaners could invade Texas and we couldn’t do a fucking thing about it…!’ The Hebrews are yelling that we aren’t doing enough for Mother Israel and Russia just aced Cheney’s oil plans by grabbing up the oil for themselves. He is not happy and a few more slaps in his face and Dick the Prick will have a fatal pump attack. Not too soon, I say. I feel sorry for the maintenance staff that has to clean up his carpet after they wheel him out in a zipped-up rubber bag..”

Ridge reveals clashes on alerts

May 10, 2007

by Mimi Hall,

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says.

Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or "high" risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled.

His comments at a Washington forum describe spirited debates over terrorist intelligence and provide rare insight into the inner workings of the nation's homeland security apparatus.

Ridge said he wanted to "debunk the myth" that his agency was responsible for repeatedly raising the alert under a color-coded system he unveiled in 2002.

"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert). ... There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?' "

Revising or scrapping the color-coded alert system is under review by new Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff. Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said "improvements and adjustments" may be announced within the next few months.

The threat level was last raised on a nationwide scale in December 2003, to orange from yellow — or "elevated" risk — where the alert level is now. In most cases, Ridge said Homeland Security officials didn't want to raise the level because they knew local governments and businesses would have to spend money putting temporary security upgrades in place.

"You have to use that tool of communication very sparingly," Ridge said at the forum, which was attended by seven other former department leaders.

The level is raised if a majority on the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council favors it and President Bush concurs. Among those on the council with Ridge were Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI chief Robert Mueller, CIA director George Tenet, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Ridge and Ashcroft publicly clashed over how to communicate threat information to the public. But Ridge has never before discussed internal dissention over the threat level.

The color-coded system was controversial from the start. Polls showed the public found it confusing.

Russia Wins New Gas Deal, Undermining Rival U.S. Plan

May 12, 2007

by Henry Meyer

Bloomberg

Russia agreed to build a new pipeline to import more natural-gas from Turkmenistan, bolstering its dominant hold on supplies to Europe and heading off a rival U.S.- backed plan that would bypass Russian territory.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met his counterparts from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan today and a final agreement will be signed by Sept. 1. The three leaders also agreed to improve an existing pipeline, part of which runs through Kazakhstan. The combined project will boost supplies by 40 percent.

Russia relies on imports from Turkmenistan to meet its energy export obligations to Europe, where it sells its own gas for more than twice what it pays for Turkmen supplies. Russia is also seeking to head off a rival U.S. plan for a Trans-Caspian pipeline that would lessen Europe's dependence on Russia.

``Russia will have first call on Turkmen gas, Roland Nash, head of research at Moscow-based brokerage Renaissance Capital, said by telephone today. Turkmenistan may still use the U.S.- proposed pipeline as a ``bargaining chip to persuade Russia to pay more for the gas, he said.

The new pipeline agreements will increase capacity by about 20 billion cubic meters a year by 2012, Putin said in comments broadcast on Russian television from Turkmenistan's Caspian port city of Turkmenbashi. Russia state media said the new pipeline would cost $1 billion, compared with $10 billion for the U.S.- backed alternative.

Russia already buys about 50 billion cubic meters a year, equal to four-fifths of Turkmenistan's production. It buys the gas at $100 per 1,000 cubic meters and sells its own production to Europe for $255. Russia's gas export monopoly OAO Gazprom supplies about a quarter of Europe's gas needs.

Caspian Sea

Construction of the new pipeline, which would go along the coast of the Caspian Sea through Kazakhstan to Russia, is scheduled to start in the second half of next year, the three leaders said in a joint statement issued through Interfax.

Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov said the U.S.- backed pipeline project is still ``on the table,'' in comments broadcast by Russian state television. The pipeline would run from Turkmenistan to Europe via Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.

``Keeping the door to the U.S. is sensible for Turkmenistan, but the country is in Russia's backyard,'' Nash said.

Turkmenistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, signed a 25-year agreement on deliveries with Gazprom in 2003.

Gazprom Chief Executive Officer Alexei Miller said the new pipeline agreement should eventually allow Russia to buy 80 billion cubic meters of Turkmen gas a year. The pipelines may also increase imports from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, he said in comments reported by Interfax.

Gas Reserves

Turkmenistan's gas reserves are equal to about 102 trillion cubic feet, compared with Russia's 1,688 trillion cubic feet, according to BP Plc. Turkmenistan has the second-largest gas reserves within the former Soviet Union of 15 states.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said today's agreement was dictated by ``pragmatism and wasn't an attempt to ``go around U.S. interests. U.S. energy companies have invested billions of dollars in Kazakhstan, which has 3.3 percent of the world's oil reserves.

Brown may loosen U.K. ties to Bush

May 11, 2007

by Kevin Sullivan

MSNBC

LONDON - Gordon Brown, who is set to become prime minister of Britain on June 27, was sitting in the White House one day last month chatting with national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley when, as Brown later put it, "President Bush happened to drop in for a meeting."

Two of the world's most powerful politicians, in their first substantial conversation, chatted for 45 minutes about Iraq, Afghanistan and world trade. White House officials said the meeting was hardly happenstance but planned in advance.

The fact that the icebreaking session was held so quietly, and that the British finance minister so carefully played down his first meeting with the U.S. president, illustrates the pickle in which Brown finds himself as he prepares to take over from Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair on Thursday announced a date for his long-expected departure from office, June 27.

Brown, 56, has more knowledge and experience regarding the United States than perhaps any British leader in history, according to analysts here. He has studied U.S. politics, economics and social policy intimately. He vacations on Cape Cod and has extraordinarily close friendships in U.S. political circles.

But analysts here say the British public's toxic feelings toward Bush and the Iraq war — and Blair's unyielding support for both — mean that Prime Minister Brown will have to maintain a certain distance from the White House, at least until next year's presidential election.

"His personal relations with Bush will be much cooler, and deliberately so," said James Naughtie, a prominent BBC radio broadcaster who wrote a book about the relationship between Brown and Blair. "He won't stand up and take Bush on in some crude way. But I would not be at all surprised if over the next six or nine months there is some collision and headlines here say relations with Washington have cooled. Brown knows that large numbers of people in this country would say, 'At last!' "

Allstate Cuts Its Losses, Drops Risky Policies

May 12, 2007

AP

Allstate says it will stop writing new homeowners policies in California beginning in July.

An Allstate spokesman says the move is to help control its catastrophe exposure in the state, which is prone to wildfires and earthquakes.

The move will not affect current customers, nor will it affect auto insurance.

Allstate agents in the state will continue to work with customers, but will offer new homeowners customers insurance through partner Pacific Specialty Insurance.

Allstate has also trimmed coastal exposure in other states that are prone to natural catastrophes.

Allstate has also stopped writing new homeowners policies in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida and New Jersey as well as in eight coastal New York counties.

Comment: Allstate Insurance Company has a very bad reputation for finding obscure reasons not to pay out on policies. In one case, a policy holder had pulled his car off the road onto the shoulder to look at a map when he was struck by a speeding car. Allstate refused to pay, claiming that he was not actually on the street at the time. The policy holder had to take Allstate to court (a very common occurrence) and the company was ordered by the court to honor the policy. In another case, a family was staying at a local motel temporarily while their  house was being painted. During the night, a fire broke out in their house and it burned down. Allstate refused to honor the claim because, as they said, the ‘house was not lived in at the time of the fire and we considered it abandoned.” The courts forced Allstate to honor the claim. Court records are filled with such litigations against Allstate. No wonder their rates are so low: They don’t pay their claims!  BH

The madam, her girls and a city in fear

As the woman who ran a Washington call-girl ring fights prosecution, her lethal weapon is the names of 10,000 clients, reports Paul Harris

May 13, 2007

The Observer

Deborah Jeane Palfrey first knew something was wrong on a trip to Germany. She suddenly found her bank card was not working any more. Then, back in her hotel room, a journalist from a gossip website called her.

He had been leaked a court document detailing Palfrey's alleged sex empire in Washington DC, serving the rich and powerful with a ring of beautiful, university-educated call girls. Her assets had been seized by the government. As Palfrey struggled to understand what was happening, the journalist wanted to know if she was ashamed of herself.

The 'DC Madam' scandal had just been born. It is a story that has gripped Washington's usually staid political classes. Palfrey stands accused of running a prostitution ring for more than 13 years. It is a charge she denies, maintaining her girls dealt out only massages and erotic role-play. She made them all sign agreements not to engage in illegal behaviour. Palfrey has vowed to identify the men who used her services to prove her story, and she has years of phone records to help her. All across the Washington area there are now thousands of nervous, powerful - often married - men.

But the DC Madam story is much more than a titillating guessing game. The scale of her operation exposed a dark underside of Washington life. Often decried as a dull government town, it has shown how sex and prostitution are key to how Washington works. From Nasa to the Pentagon to the State Department, officials of all levels were using Palfrey's girls. The saga has also revealed a deep hypocrisy, showing how powerful men talk publicly of their 'family values' and then have escorts visit them in hotel rooms. As Rob Capriccioso, editor of Big Head DC, a Washington news and gossip website, says: 'Tawdry sex is everywhere in Washington.'

It is not a scandal that is going to go away. Last Sunday, as President Bush sat in St John's Church in Lafayette Square for the morning service, the Rev Luis Leon remarked on Palfrey's case in his sermon. 'Here in Washington DC a lot of people get in trouble on this one,' Leon said. When the President's priest is talking about a sex scandal, you know trouble is brewing in Washington.

Palfrey's clients came from all walks of life. There is a Bush administration economist, a prominent company chief executive, Nasa officials, men who work at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, lobbyists for Republicans and Democrats, the commander of an air force squadron and at least five other military officers.

So far the identities - of perhaps up to 10,000 men - have remained secret. Only two have been exposed. One was Harlan Ullman, a military expert and the author of the 'shock and awe' strategy used in Iraq. The other was State Department official Randall Tobias, who, ironically, is a leading advocate of fighting prostitution abroad. He has now resigned.

The one thing all the men have in common was that they once rang Pamela Martin and Associates, the cover name for Palfrey's operation, which advertised, like hundreds of other 'massage' services in Washington, online or in local newspapers.

Calls were rerouted to Palfrey's home in California - specifically to a phone in her laundry room, where she sometimes battled the sound of her washing machine as she took down details of her client's desires. She ran a network of about 130 girls. One was a legal secretary, another a University of Maryland academic and another an instructor at a naval academy. They charged $300 an hour.

It was lucrative, but not a goldmine.Over 13 years she earned $2m. That's enough to get very comfortable with, but hardly a fortune. The surprising truth of the DC Madam is how ordinary her operation was. Compared to the high-octane glamour of Hollywood's famous madam Heidi Fleiss, or New York's blueblood procuress Sydney Biddle Barrows, Palfrey was very Washington: subdued, respectable and modest.

That modesty is displayed during her court appearances, where she has eschewed fashionable clothes, wearing navy blue outfits and subdued makeup. 'She looks like she should be wearing little white gloves. She's a soft-spoken woman. I curse more than her,' said Lee Mirabel, a radio host who acts as her spokeswoman.

Palfrey would send out weekly messages to her girls, offering advice like a corporate newsletter. 'Nail colour is to match lipstick colour,' she suggested. She also said girls should use 'fat cream for the thighs'. But the missives also acknowledged the legally shaky side of the business. She warned of an investigation by a Virginia vice squad officer, advising girls to burn or shred evidence of their client meetings within 24 hours. 'Destroy the data immediately!!!!!!!', she demanded.

Palfrey had good reason to be worried. She had been caught before. She was arrested in California in 1990 for running a smaller escort service. She ended up disappearing during her trial, leaving a long note with her lawyer saying the idea of prison was 'an absurd and unthinkable horror'. But she was caught on the Canadian border the next year and served 18 months in jail. Not that it deterred her. She started Pamela Martin and Associates - where she was known as 'Miz Julia' - in 1993, shortly after she was released.

Her luck held out longer the second time around. She ran her business without incident until 2004, when - unknown to her - a tip -off to the tax authorities alerted them to her activities. It is believed to have come from someone angered by discovering his girlfriend was one of Palfrey's escorts.

For two years detectives investigated the business, finally descending on it in October last year. But investigators combing through her home did not notice a huge pile of phone records. In total they weighed 21kg and recorded more than quarter of a million phone calls dating from the Clinton years through to the current Bush administration. The records were in Palfrey's hands - the police had been looking for 'a little black book', unaware that Palfrey did not have one.

Now she is using those lists to show the DC establishment who used her service that she will not go quietly. 'She has always realised the depth and breadth behind the names on her lists, and she has effectively used her own power in order to try to come out on top,' says Capriccioso.

One of Palfrey's missives is more telling than beauty tips. 'Congress is back in session,' she enthused to her girls. 'This always helps to boost business!'

For the truth exposed by the DC Madam - and largely ignored by the American press so far - has been how ingrained the sex industry is in Washington. Escort services operate openly. In the metro area of the city an online search reveals more than 8,000 adverts for escort services. 'That's more escort services than there are McDonald's,' says Mirabel.

In many ways Washington represents a perfect market for a booming sex industry. Being a government-dominated town, it is heavily male - many rich, powerful and middle-aged. It is home to major international organisations, such as the World Bank, that are full of well-paid workers away from their home countries, where prostitution might be more socially acceptable. Or, like many visiting diplomats or businessmen, they might simply be lonely.

Washington also plays host to the Pentagon and the huge military support structure that surrounds it. Many of the calls on Palfrey's list come from Pentagon City numbers. The five-star Ritz-Carlton (one of the most common numbers on Palfrey's lists) is nearby.

'It is going on unabated. There are brothels and services of every type,' says Bill Keisling, a crime writer and friend of Palfrey. Palfrey's attempts to publicise those who used her services has led many to accuse her of blackmail. But the real story of victimhood is not the men who may be exposed or already have been. The real victim here is Brandy Britton, one of Palfrey's girls who was arrested by local police just as the investigation reached full swing. Britton, a former lecturer in sociology and biology, was also a call girl, entertaining clients in her suburban home. Her arrest threw her into the full glare of the media. She could not take the exposure and the mother-of-two hanged herself in January. 'The press ruined her,' says Keisling.

Others who have had their private lives exposed in the Washington media know how bad it can feel. 'One day you're just living your life, then suddenly it's everyone's business,' says Jessica Cutler, a former junior Senate aide whose blog about her numerous affairs in Washington became a scandal when her identity was revealed. She was fired.

But then the DC Madam scandal is, at its heart, about hypocrisy. It is about the Washington movers and shakers sweating out the prospect of Palfrey's court case. It is about the public face of a city whose political denizens exhort others to standards they clearly fail to meet themselves. 'We think of ourselves as faithful to our Puritan founders, but the US regularly loses its innocence with scandals like this,' says Bruce Gronbeck, an expert on political scandal at the University of Iowa.

Palfrey is not giving up. She recently turned over about 20 per cent of her client list to ABC News. She claims she did it to enlist its help in identifying her clients so they could exonerate her; it is a disingenuous argument. ABC's main investigative reporter, Brian Ross, concluded the names they found were not newsworthy enough to publish - yet it still devoted a prime-time show to highlighting the case and its exclusive interview with Palfrey.

Palfrey has barely begun. She will find other ways to get the names into the public domain. Many won't blame her. 'I never named names, but if she's getting in trouble, so should her clients,' says Cutler.

Palfrey has been selling interviews on eBay. She has also handed over a whole new section of her list to a group of Washington investigative writers and there is the coming court case in which she will be defended by Preston Burton, the lawyer who once represented Monica Lewinsky. That seems fitting. 'She's decided to fight this until the end,' says Mirabel.

The story of the DC Madam may have only just begun.

Sin city

A wave of scandals is marring President George W Bush's second term:

· Paul Wolfowitz

The head of the World Bank, a Bush favourite, is fighting for his job over allegations that he ordered promotion and a pay rise for girlfriend Shaha Riza.

· Alberto Gonzales

The US Attorney General is accused of setting up the sacking of eight US attorneys who were 'not sympathetic enough' to the White House.

· George Tenet

The ex-CIA head says Vice-President Dick Cheney pressed ahead with the Iraq invasion despite CIA warnings.

· Jack Abramoff

Ex-lobbyist with strong Republican ties was jailed for fraud and corruption.

Ex-CIA Official Pushed Millions in Secret Deals to Pal, Prosecutors Say

May 13, 2007

by Vic Walter / Justin Rood

ABC News

A former top CIA official steered an aviation contracting opportunity worth $132 million to a longtime friend, despite his friend’s lack of experience in the field, according to federal prosecutors.

Onetime CIA Executive Director Kyle “Dusty” Foggo directed CIA employees to hire his childhood pal, Brent Wilkes, to provide covert civilian air travel for the agency, charge prosecutors in a new indictment

The indictment is an offshoot of the investigation into former congressman Randall “Duke” Cunningham, who is now serving an eight-year sentence on corruption charges. Cunningham named Wilkes as one of his bribers in a November 2005 plea deal.

Prosecutors say Wilkes plied Cunningham with over $700,000 in gifts and cash to win favors from the lawmaker, including earmarking federal funding, intimidating Pentagon officials, and intervening in the immigration process for a foreign business partner.

Prosecutors faulted Foggo for pushing Wilkes to get the aviation contract even though he “had no prior experience in aviation.” Wilkes did have some experience: one of his companies, Group W Transportation, owned a 1/8-share of a Lear Jet, which he used to fly himself and lawmakers, including Cunningham and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, around the United States.

Foggo helped Wilkes with other opportunities, according to the new filings. He pushed CIA employees to sign deals worth millions with Wilkes-controlled businesses to supply armored vehicles, lease secure top-secret facilities and even provide bottled water for the clandestine service, prosecutors allege. Foggo, who ran day-to-day operations for the CIA, even gave Wilkes sensitive national security-related information in an effort to help him win business with the agency, according to the documents.

Prosecutors quoted from emails to illustrate the men’s close working relationship. When Wilkes and Foggo encountered a roadblock, Foggo offered to apply “grease” to get a speedy resolution, according to e-mails quoted by prosecutors. Another time, Wilkes wrote an employee to say Foggo had vowed to “sprinkle some magic dust” to solve a problem.

The two were also close personal friends - college roommates, best men at each other’s weddings, and named their sons after each other. Wilkes kept an empty executive office at his company’s San Diego headquarters for Foggo to use once he resigned the CIA and joined the company, ADCS. In the new filing, prosecutors allege Wilkes named Foggo a trustee for his family trust, if he and his wife were to die.

The indictments were released by the San Diego, Calif. U.S. Attorney’s office Friday evening. The documents supersede earlier indictments issued Feb. 13, just two days before former San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam left, after being terminated by the Bush administration.

The two men now face 30 charges of fraud, bribery and money laundering, and are scheduled for an arraignment on the new charges Monday. Mark MacDougall, a lawyer for Foggo, told ABC News he could not comment at this time. Wilkes lawyer Mark Geragos did not respond to requests for comment on the new indictments. Wilkes and Foggo had pleaded not guilty to earlier charges stemming from the probe.

Contingencies for nuclear terrorist attack

Government working up plan to prevent chaos in wake of bombing of major city

By James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer

May 11, 2007

As concerns grow that terrorists might attack a major American city with a nuclear bomb, a high-level group of government and military officials has been quietly preparing an emergency survival program that would include the building of bomb shelters, steps to prevent panicked evacuations and the possible suspension of some civil liberties.

Many experts say the likelihood of al Qaeda or some other terrorist group producing a working nuclear weapon with illicitly obtained weapons-grade fuel is not large, but such a strike would be far more lethal, frightening and disruptive than the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Not only could the numbers killed and wounded be far higher, but the explosion could, experts say, ignite widespread fires, shut down most transportation, halt much economic activity and cause a possible disintegration of government order.

The efforts to prepare a detailed blueprint for survival took a step forward last month when senior government and military officials and other experts, organized by a joint Stanford-Harvard program called the Preventive Defense Project, met behind closed doors in Washington for a day-long workshop.

The session, called "The Day After," was premised on the idea that efforts focusing on preventing such a strike were no longer enough, and that the prospect of a collapse of government order was so great if there were an attack that the country needed to begin preparing an emergency program.

One of the participants, retired Vice Adm. Roger Rufe, is a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security who is currently designing the government's nuclear attack response plan.

The organizers of the nonpartisan project, Stanford's William Perry, a secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, and Harvard's Ashton Carter, a senior Defense Department official during the Clinton years, assumed the detonation of a bomb similar in size to the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima in World War II.

Such a weapon, with a force of around 10 to 15 kilotons, is small compared with most Cold War-era warheads, but is roughly the yield of a relatively simple bomb. That would be considerably more powerful and lethal than a so-called dirty bomb, which is a conventional explosive packed with some dangerous radioactive material that would be dispersed by the explosion.

The 41 participants -- including the directors of the country's two nuclear weapons laboratories, Homeland Security officials, a number of top military commanders and former government officials -- discussed how all levels of government ought to respond to protect the country from a second nuclear attack, to limit health problems from the radioactive fallout and to restore civil order. Comments inside the session were confidential, but a number of the participants described their views and the ideas exchanged.

A paper the organizers are writing, summarizing their recommendations, urges local governments and individuals to build underground bomb shelters, much as people did in the early days of the Cold War; encourages authorities who survive to prevent evacuation of at least some of the areas attacked for three days to avoid roadway paralysis and damage from exposure to radioactive fallout; and proposes suspending regulations on radiation exposure so that first responders would be able to act, even if that caused higher cancer rates.

"The public at large will expect that their government had thought through this possibility and to have planned for it," Carter said in an interview. "This kind of an event would be unprecedented. We have had glimpses of something like this with Hiroshima, and glimpses with 9/11 and with Katrina. But those are only glimpses."

Perhaps the most sobering issue discussed was the possibility of a chaotic, long-term crisis triggered by fears that the attackers might have more bombs. Such uncertainty could sow panic nationwide.

"If one bomb goes off, there are likely to be more to follow," Carter said. "This fact, that nuclear terrorism will appear as a syndrome rather than a single episode, has major consequences." It would, he added, require powerful government intervention to force people to do something many may resist -- staying put.

Fred Ikle, a former Defense Department official in the Reagan administration who authored a book last year urging attack preparation, "Annihilation from Within," said that the government should plan how it could restrict civil liberties and enforce a sort of martial law in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, but also have guidelines for how those liberties could be restored later.

That prospect underscored a central divide among participants at the recent meeting, several said.

Some participants argued that the federal government needs to educate first responders and other officials as quickly as possible on how to act even if transportation and communication systems break down, as seems likely, and if the government is unable to issue orders.

"There was a clear consensus that a nuclear bomb detonated in the United States or a friendly country would be an earth-shaking event, and we need to know how we will respond beforehand," said Ikle. "I wish we had started earlier, because this kind of planning can make an important difference."

But others said the meeting made it clear that the results of any attack would be so devastating and the turmoil so difficult to control, if not impossible, that the lesson should have been that the U.S. government needs to place a far greater emphasis on prevention.

"Your cities would empty and people would completely lose confidence in the ability of the government to protect them," said Steve Fetter, dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. "You'd have nothing that resembles our current social order. I'm not sure any preparation can be sufficient to deal with that."

Fetter added, "We have to hold current policymakers more responsible" for taking all out measures to prevent a nuclear attack.

Raymond Jeanloz, a nuclear weapons expert at UC Berkeley and a government adviser on nuclear issues, said that California might be better prepared than most states because of long-standing plans for dealing with earthquakes and other natural disasters. Those plans, he said, could be a useful model for first responders.

He added, as others did, that the dislocation and panic caused by a nuclear strike could make any responses unpredictable.

"The most difficult thing is the fear that this kind of planning, even talking about it, can cause," Jeanloz said.

Michael May, a former director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, defended the survival planning, saying that people should get used to the idea that such a crisis, while dire, could be managed -- a key step in restoring calm.

"You have to demystify the nuclear issue," said May, who now teaches at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. "By talking about this, you take away the feeling of helplessness."

This article appeared on page A - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle

’Tis Spring and the Voice of the Loonie is Heard in the Land!

Atheist offers to send letters post-Rapture

May 14, 2007

by Katherine Boyle, Religion News Service

USA Today

Neither snow, nor rain, nor fire and brimstone will keep Joshua Witter from the swift completion of his appointed rounds come the end of the world.

Witter, a 24-year-old self-described atheist living in Orlando, is the creator of the Post-Rapture Post, which bills itself as "the postal service of the saved."

For as little as $4.99, Witter offers to deliver your letters to friends and loved ones left behind after the Rapture, when some Christians believe they will be whisked up to heaven while everyone else — the "Left Behind" of the popular book series — suffers a series of tribulations.

As Witter sees it, it will fall to the unsaved to serve as the postmen of the Apocalypse.

"Do you want to take the chance that your loved ones will have to suffer through your ascension into Heaven without knowing how you really feel in your heart?" the site asks. "Sign up for the Post-Rapture Post today to guarantee that, while you are gone, you will remain in the thoughts of those left behind."

"Holy crap, a plan B.," wrote one of the site's visitors, known only as Fred B. from Oregon. "This is my kind of religion."

Others weren't so charitable. "I am shocked at your website," penned a woman identified as Kim F. "It is not even remotely funny. ... All who are a part of this, surely, God will judge to damnation."

As an atheist, one of the things Witter doesn't believe in is any sort of damnation. Or the Rapture. Or God, for that matter. Even if there is a Rapture, he said, it's best to prepare because Witter is pretty sure he'll be one of the many left behind.

"The Bible says that only those that repent of their sins and accept Jesus as the True Son of God will be saved," the site reads. "We do neither. Some of our personal sins include: drunkenness, heresy, sacrilege/blasphemy, gluttony, laciviousness, and sloth. There is no way we are going to disappear into Heaven any time soon."

Witter guarantees that should the Rapture arrive, he would deliver all letters entrusted to him.

He created the website in 2004 after graduating from Syracuse University. "My friends think it's hilarious," he said. "We all like it."

But he also thinks it is logical.

"If you are a good person after the Rapture, (you'll ascend)," Witter said. "If you have a son you want to behave so that he might also see Jesus," you send him a letter.

Social bookmarking sites and the blogosphere have generated interest in the Post-Rapture Post. Witter said he received about 2,000 e-mails after fark.com posted a link to the site.

So far, just 11 people have purchased letters from Witter's site, all of whom chose the least expensive, Class I message for $4.99.

Letters that are delivered on fancy resume paper are available for $9.99, but medieval-style parchment costs $799.99.

"I wish someone would order the expensive one," Witter said.

The merchandise on the site is more popular.

Witter said he has sold about 300 T-shirts, Rapture survival guides and coffee mugs. He is not sure how much money he's made, but says it's enough to at least break even.

It also has earned him a few nasty letters.

"I get about 80% hate mail," Witter acknowledged. The other 20% fall roughly into two categories: people who appreciate the satire, and fellow atheists — offering their services as postal workers after the Rapture.

Comment: If the nut fringe believes in this silly crap, why don’t they all join hands and jump off a high bridge, singing hymns? The sane among us would be rid of their mindless babblings and Jesus will have someone to play hockey with. The popular nut books ought to be called, ‘My Left Behind’ which is more to the point.  BH