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Notice
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Also,
although we generally do not accept advertising or ask for money to
run the free site, we are now trying to get a full translation of a
mass of documents in Hebrew and Russian that our Brian Harring has
received from one of his contacts. This is all material dealing
specifically with the Russian/Georgian war and much of it shows the
role played by Israel in it. Competent translators are not cheap so
if any of our readers find our reportage of this matter to be
interesting, and we would like to announce that nearly 350,000 have
looked at our site in the past week, we would be happy to receive
any donation possible.. Checks should be made out to” Morris
Productions, Inc’. at 3015 East New York St., Ste. A2-190, Aurora,
IL, 60504. Ed.
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C.
August 29, 2008: “Much wailing and rending of garments over at the
Israeli Embassy over the Georgian debacle recently. It was planned
that their airforce people would attack Iran during the confusion
caused by the artillery bombardment in South Ossetia but the swift
and totally unanticipated Russian response took everyone by
surprise. Putin’s people captured all kinds of highly sensitive
documents and the Bush people are terrified about what might turn
up. Israel is furious and at more than loss of equipment and
documents. They had been pushing the feeble-minded McCain into
putting the detestable Joe Lieberman onto the ticked at VP because
it is obvious that McCain would never finish his first term and
Israel would have one of her strongest supporters in the Oval
Office. McCain had promised a US attack on Iran but this is not to
be, given the disaster in Georgia so the garments are rent and the
ashes cast while the Israelis look for someone else to pull their
chestnuts out of a fire of their own making.”
The
Truth About Georgia
August 28, 2008
by Brian Harring
www.brianharring@yahoo.com
As one of the great turning points in American
history recedes from the confusion of the battlefield, many truths
are beginning to slowly emerge…but never in the controlled
American media. In the first place, no matter how the Administration
or its creatures like John McCain try to conceal it, America has
received terrible
damage not only to its image but to its global reputation. Bush and
Cheney had done their best to belittle and goad Russia’s Vladimir
Putin and when he reacted, they fled the field in terror, leaving
behind many tons of valuable military equipment, trucks full of
highly secret papers, a number of dead American soldiers, an
outraged and howling Israel and the shattered remains of their
Cacausian puppet state which was set up not only to antagonize Putin
but to give their Israeli a convenient base from which to launch
brutal attacks on Iran. As Russia and China have made it very clear
that any attacks on Iran would cause serious problems, Israel
decided that instead of pushing an ever-eager to please Bush into
doing their dirty work for them (as he obediently did with Iraq)
they would do it themselves and in such a way as to be certain to
draw the United States into any possible imbroglio that might
result.
Note
that Georgia, firmly in the pocket of the United States, would have
never launched a massive artillery and armor attack against South
Ossetia without active United States complicity and assistance . The
Israelis were also deeply involved in this, one of their IDF
intelligence units conducting aerial observations over suspected
areas of possible Russian retaliatory buildups on their side of the
boarder by using their own drone spy planes and passing any
information gained from these flights not to the Georgians but to
their friends, the Americans.
In
Georgia at the time of the attack, there were over two thousand
troops engaged in intensive training of the Georgian army and added
to this number there were approximately 1,000 soldiers from the
Vicenza, Italy-based Southern European Task Force (Airborne) and the
Kaiserslautern-based 21st Theater Sustainment Command, along with
Marine reservists with the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines out of Ohio,
and the state of Georgia’s Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion,
121st Infantry. This was under the command of the U.S.
Special Operations Command, a division of EUCOM. And
this controlled GSSOP (Georgia Sustainment and Stability Operations
Program), which has trained over 5,000 Georgian troops, some for
eventual service in Iraq. As a condition for Georgian service in
Iraq, there were promises of getting Georgia NATO membership in
year. 2009.
The
U.S. trainers, usually a team of 70 Americans taking a 600
man Georgian infantry battalion through a 17 week training program,
concentrate on combat subjects. Other training programs
instructed support and staff troops.
The
decision to invade South Ossetia did not originate in Tiblisi but in
Washington. Bush agreed that if Georgia could be pushed into
attacking an area known to be of especial interest to Moscow, a
probably Russian reaction could be blown up in the American press
out of all proportion to its actuality and this could quickly be
used by a faltering McCain’s presidential campaign. As McCain is
well-known to be very pro-Israel, Tel Aviv also supported a Georgian
offensive and did everything it could to promote it, realizing that
in the chaos following, they could launch their sneak attacks on
Iran.
Artillery
specialists from the
48th Infantry Brigade's 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry were heavily
involved in the Georgian artillery buildup and
at least four of the casualties of the Russian counter-attack were
black American soldiers.
The
Israelis, who had close ties with Georgia and whose Defense Minister
was an Israeli citizen, as usual played both sides, contacted the
Russians and tipped them off about the pending attack in return for
what they hoped would be Russian aid in an Israeli attack on Iran.
The Russians generally detest and certainly distrust Jews, having
had decades of very painful experience with them under Stalin so
they took the Israeli information and put it to good use and, of
course, had no intention of becoming involved in any anti-Iranian
activity.
This
entire third grade farce exploded in Washington’s face, the U.S.
military fled the country, leaving the trusting Georgians to be
dealt with massive Russian armor attacks, the Israelis ran away
almost as fast but left their drones and much valuable spy equipment
behind as they hastened back to the security of Israel. The betrayed
and tricked Georgians were left behind as were the tons of American
tazpayer-funded equipment.
Now,
our press rants about the evil Putin and forgets what it knows about
the idiotic connivances and badly failed plots. McCain did indeed
wave his arms around and shout defiance at Putin and given his
deteriorating mental condition, probably forgot all about it ten
minutes later. As well as the huge material losses, the United
States has received a terrible body blow to its perceived integrity
and strength and in the end, Vladimir Putin will benefit from the
debacle far more than the doddering McCain ever could.
.
War With Russia Is On The Agenda
August
26, 2008
by
Paul Craig Roberts
Global
Research,
Information Clearing House
Thinking about the massive failure of the US media to report
truthfully is sobering. The United States, bristling with nuclear
weapons and pursuing a policy of world hegemony, has a population
that is kept in the dark--indeed brainwashed--about the most
important and most dangerous events of our time.
The power of the Israel Lobby is an important component of
keeping Americans in the dark. Recently I watched a documentary that
demonstrates the control that the Israel Lobby exercises over
Americans’ view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The
documentary is available here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14055.htm
As a result of the US media’s one-sided coverage, few
Americans are aware that for decades Israel has been ethnically
cleansing Palestinians from their homes and lands under protection
of America’s veto in the United Nations. Instead, the dispossessed
Palestinians are portrayed as mindless terrorists who attack
innocent Israel.
If one reads Israeli newspapers, such as Haaretz, or
publications from Israeli organizations, such as the Israeli
Committee Against House Demolitions, one gets a radically different
view of the situation than the propagandistic version delivered by
US media and evangelical pulpits.
Most Americans know of the 2000 attack by Muslim terrorists
on the USS Cole in Aden harbor that resulted in 17 dead and 39
wounded American sailors. But few have heard of Israel’s 1967
attack on the USS Liberty that left 34 American sailors dead and 174
wounded. Pressured by the Israel Lobby, President Johnson ordered
Admiral McCain, father of the Republican presidential nominee, to
cover up the attack. To this day there never has been a
congressional investigation.
The failure of the American media is again evident in the
coverage of the Georgian-Russian conflict. The US media presented
the conflict as a Russian invasion of Georgia, whereas in actual
fact the American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian military
launched a sneak attack to kill and to drive the Russian population
out of South Ossetia, a separatist province.
Russian peacekeepers, together with Georgian ones, had been
stationed in South Ossetia since the early 1990s. On orders from
Mikheil Saakashvili, the American puppet “president” of Georgia,
the Georgian peacekeepers turned their weapons on the unsuspecting
Russian peacekeepers and murdered them.
This action by Saakashvili, elected with money from the
neoconservative National Endowment for Democracy, an
election-rigging tool of US hegemony, was a war crime. In truth, the
Russians should have hung Saakashvili, as he is far more guilty than
was Saddam Hussein. But it is Russia, not Saakashvili, that the US
media has demonized.
Americans have become perfect subjects for George Orwell’s
Big Brother. They sit stupidly in front of the TV news or the New
York Times or Washington Post and absorb the lies fed to them. What
is wrong with Americans? Why do they put up with it? Are Americans
the nation of sheep that Judge Andrew P. Napolitano says they are?
Americans flaunt “freedom and democracy” and live under a
Ministry of Propaganda.
Two decades ago, President Reagan reached agreement with
Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev to end the dangerous cold war.
But every one of Reagan’s successors has sought to pick a new
fight with Russia. In violation of the agreement, NATO has been
taken to Russia’s borders, and the US is determined to put former
constituent parts of Russia herself into NATO. In an effort to
neutralize Russia’s nuclear deterrent and compromise her
independence, the US is putting anti-ballistic missile bases on
Russia’s borders.
The gratuitously aggressive US military policy toward Russia
will lead to nuclear war. I am confident that if Americans elect
John McCain, or the Republicans steal another presidential election,
there will be nuclear war in the second decade of the 21st century.
The neocon lies, propaganda, macho flag-waving, and use of US
foreign policy in the interests of a few military-security firms,
oil companies, and Israel are all leading in that direction.
The November election is perhaps the last chance to avoid
nuclear war. But the opportunity might already have been missed. The
Republicans have chosen as their candidate one of the most ignorant
warmongers alive. The Democrats’ choice was between one of the
most divisive women in America and a man of mixed race with a funny
name. Considering American’s taste for war, the Democratic
candidate could fail to defeat the GOP war candidate.
Many Americans will vote against Obama because he is black.
Why does mixed ancestry confer the black label? If America’s
population was predominantly black, would Obama be considered white?
Race and propaganda are more likely to determine the outcome
of the November election than any awareness or consideration of real
issues by voters.
The real issues are suffocated by the media. The American
middle class is being destroyed by jobs offshoring and work visas
for foreigners, while the incomes of the super rich are soaring. The
US dollar’s reserve currency status is eroded. The US is massively
in debt at home and abroad. Health insurance is unaffordable for the
vast majority of the population. Injured veterans are being nickeled
and dimed, while Halliburton’s profits escalate. Americans are
losing their homes, while the US government bails out banks. Wars
with Iran, Russia, and China are being planned in order to secure US
hegemony.
Americans no longer have a government that is for the people
and by the people. They have a government for and by special
interests and an insane ideology.
But Americans have war, which lets them take out all their
frustrations, resentments, and disappointments on “Muslim
terrorists” and “Russian aggressors.” Few Americans are
disturbed that 1.25 million Iraqis and an unknown number of Afghans
have died as a result of American invasions based on
Bush regime lies and deceptions. Even Americans, like Senator
Biden, Obama’s selection for vice president, who understand that
the wars are based on lies, still want the US to win. So, it was all
a mistake and a deception, but let’s win anyway and keep on
killing.
I know people who still complain that the US did not nuke
North Vietnam. When I ask why Vietnam should have been nuked, they
reply, “if we had nuked them we would have won.”
What would America have won? The answer is world loathing and
the loss of the cold war.
For many Americans, war is like a sports contest in which
they take vicarious pleasure and cheer on their side to victory.
Millions of Americans are still bitter that “the liberal media”
and war protesters caused America to lose the Vietnam war, and they
are determined that this won’t happen again. These Americans have
no realization that there was no more reason for the US to be
fighting in Vietnam 40 years ago than to be fighting today in Iraq
and Afghanistan or tomorrow in Iran.
Obama, if elected, is no guarantee against nuclear war. Obama
has shown that he is as much under the Israel Lobby’s thumb as
McCain. Obama’s foreign affairs advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is
not a neocon, but he was born in Warsaw, Poland, and has the
Pole’s animosity toward Russia. The Bush administration has
already changed US war doctrine to permit preemptive nuclear attack.
With the US government determined to ring Russia with puppet states
and military bases, war is inevitable.
Presidential appointees face confirmation in the Senate. Any
of Obama’s appointees who might be out of step with plans for US
and Israeli hegemony could expect opposition from large corporations
and the Israel Lobby. There is no assurance that an Obama
administration would not be positioned on “the issues” by the
same special interests that have positioned the Bush administration.
Americans are filled with hubris, not with knowledge. They
have no awareness of the calamity that their government’s pursuit
of hegemony is bringing to themselves and to life on earth.
Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in
the Reagan Administration. He is a former Associate Editor of the
Wall Street Journal, a 16-year columnist for Business Week, and a
columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service and Creator’s
Syndicate in Los Angeles. He has held numerous university
professorships, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political
Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown
University and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford
University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by the President of
France and the US Treasury’s Silver Medal for “outstanding
contributions to the formulation of US economic policy.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9954
USA to Evacuate disgraced Georgian President in Case
of National Coup
26.08.2008: Pravda.Ru
http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/26-08-2008/106199-usa_georgia-0
The USA said that one country Russia
can not recognize independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and
that the process should be conducted by the United Nations
Organization. US President Bush urged his Russian counterpart Dmitry
Medvedev not to recognize the republics and reiterated that the USA
supported the territorial integrity of Georgia.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel also set out a hope that
Medvedev would say no to the State Duma and the Federation Council.
New EU members are ready to end their relations with Russia. Moscow
is prepared for a chill: Medvedev is ready to cut back relations
with NATO, whereas Putin does not see any pluses in Russia’s WTO
membership.
White House spokesman Tony Fratto stated Monday that the
status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia should be solved by the
international community and the United Nations, but never by one
country alone.
Fratto’s statement followed the decision of the Russian
parliament (State Duma) and the Federation Council, which supported
the aspirations of the two republics to become independent and
sovereign states.
Washington immediately described the decision of the Russian
lawmakers as unacceptable. Spokespeople for the US administration
stated that Russia must respect the territorial integrity and
sovereignty of Georgia.
"I call on Russia's leadership to meet its commitments
and not recognize these separatist regions," Bush said in a
statement from Texas, where he is vacationing at his ranch.
"Georgia's territorial integrity and borders must
command the same respect as every other nation's, including
Russia's," the president said.
Bush said independence for the two regions would undercut the
international attempt to resolve Georgia's border disputes, a United
Nations effort that Russia has supported.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel expects Dmitry Medvedev not
to support the appeal of the Federation Council and the State Suma
to recognize independence of the two nations.
“I expect that the president will not sign off on the
decision, as this would create a critical situation with regard to
the territorial integrity of Georgia,'' Merkel said.
The summit of the European Union on Georgia, which opens in
Brussels on September 1, is expected to become an arena for more
anti-Russian initiatives. Some EU members urge to punish Russia for
its politics in the Caucasus.
Former communist countries of Europe offered to freeze
partnership and visa-free entry talks with Russia. They also use the
support of Britain and Sweden suggesting the boycott of Winter
Olympics 2014 in Russia.
President Medvedev stated at a recent meeting with Russia’s
ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, that it was NATO-members that
were interested in their cooperation with Russia, but not vice
versa.
“If they are willing to completely end their ties with us,
nothing horrible will happen for Russia,” Medvedev said.
“We have been developing partnership ties with NATO for
quite a long time, but we do not need illusions of partnership. We a
ready to make any decision, including the one that will end the
relationship in general,” he added.
NATO headquarters responded immediately and said that it
would be a mistake for Russia to put an end to its contacts with
NATO.
Prime Minister Putin stated at a recent session of his
government that he did not see any pluses of Russia’s
incorporation into the World Trade Organization.
“This does not mean that we must stop our strategic moves
towards the WTO, but one has to clarify relations with partners,”
Putin said.
The US administration is perfectly aware of the fact that the
crisis in Georgia may trigger a civil war in the country. The
Georgians may topple their president against the background of a
significant price growth in the nation, which took place after the
beginning of Georgia’s aggression in South Ossetia.
Russian newspapers say that the USA has been greatly
disappointed in Mikhail Saakashvili. The Georgian president has not
justified USA’s hopes and his career in politics will end very
soon. The Georgian president is completely incapable of acting
adequately and reasonably and may thus completely ruin USA’s plans
in the region.
Senator Joseph Biden became personally certain of that during
his meeting with Saakashvili in Tbilisi. The fate of the Georgian
leader has been determined, a source close to the US Embassy in
Georgia said.
A helicopter of the US Coast Guard cutter Dallas, which is
drifting near the port of Batumi, will evacuate the disgraced
Georgian president to the USA in case of a coup.
Russia
recognizes breakaway Georgian regions
August
26, 2008
AP
MOSCOW
- Russia formally recognized the breakaway Georgian territories at
the heart of its war with Georgia on Tuesday, heightening tensions
with the West as the United States dispatched military ships bearing
aid to a port city still controlled by Russian troops.
Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev said Georgia forced Russia's hand by
launching an attack targeting South Ossetia on Aug. 7 in an apparent
bid to seize control of the breakaway region.
In
response, Russian tanks and troops drove deep into the U.S. ally's
territory in a five-day war that
Moscow
saw as a justified response to a military threat in its backyard and
the West viewed as a repeat of Soviet-style intervention in its
vassal states.
"This
is not an easy choice but this is the only chance to save people's
lives," Medvedev said Tuesday in a televised address announcing
Russia's recognition of the breakaway territories.
Russian
forces have staked out positions beyond the de-facto borders of the
separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The two
territories have effectively ruled themselves following wars in the
1990s.
"Georgia
chose the least human way to achieve its goal — to absorb South
Ossetia by eliminating a whole nation," Medvedev said.
Russia's
military presence seems likely to further weaken Georgia, a Western
ally in the Caucasus region, a major transit corridor for energy
supplies to Europe and a strategic crossroads close to the Middle
East, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia and energy-rich Central Asia.
On
the heels of Russia's first post-Soviet invasion of a foreign
country, recognition was another stark demonstration of the
Kremlin's determination to hold sway in lands where its clout is
jeopardized by NATO's expansion and growing Western influence.
Medvedev
ignored Western warnings against recognizing the independence claims
of the two regions, which broke from Georgian government control in
early 1990s wars and have run their own affairs with Russian
support.
After
Russia's parliament urged the move in unanimous votes Monday, the
U.S. State Department said recognition would be
"unacceptable" and President Bush urged the Kremlin
against it.
Conversations
with the Crow: Part 27
Editor’s
note: When we ran the first conversation
in this series, there was the question of reader interest and
acceptability. It is pleasant to report that our server was jammed
with viewers and the only other tbrnews story that has had more
viewers was our Forward Base Falcon story that had a half a million
viewers in less that two days. We are now going to reprint all
of the Crowley conversations, including a very interesting
one on John McCain, in
chronological sequence. It is also pleasant to note that two
publishers and three reporters have all expressed concrete interest
in the Crowley conversations. It is even more pleasurable to note
that a number of people inside the Beltway and in McLean, Virginia,
have been screaming with rage!
On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader
of the CIA's Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington
hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer's
Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph
Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on
Crowley's widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in
Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley's CIA files.
Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front
Royal , Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with
the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always
considered to be a potential major embarrassment. Three months
before, July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William
R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung
cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.
After Corson's death, Trento and a well-known Washington
fix-lawyer went to Corson's bank, got into his safe deposit box and
removed a manuscript entitled 'Zipper.' This manuscript, which dealt
with Crowley's involvement in the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered
to be closed forever.
The small group
of CIA officials gathered at Trento's house to search through the
Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A
few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of
files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply
vanished.
When published material concerning the CIA's actions against
Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA's
horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly
erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included
devastating material on the CIA's activities in South East Asia to
include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the
notorious 'Regional Interrogation Centers' in Viet Nam and, worse
still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of
the assassination of President John Kennedy..
A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied,
using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid "historians"
and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced.
The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the
compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied
himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA
plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out
into the outside world.
The originals had vanished and an extensive search was
conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success.
Crowley's survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed
extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of
highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally,
removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close
friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of
Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton
conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files our
of the agency. Crowley did the same thing
right before his own retirement , secretly removing thousands
of pages of classified
information that covered his entire agency career.
Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley
joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the
Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty
Tricks,”: Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the
CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a
half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in
N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated,
having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War
II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant
colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and
colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in
military intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA
at inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent
within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his
retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for
operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of
Operations.
One of Crowley’s first major assignments within the agency
was to assist in the recruitment and management of prominent World
War II Nazis, especially those with advanced intelligence
experience. One of the CIA’s major recruitment coups was Heinrich
Mueller, once head of Hitler’s Gestapo who had fled to Switzerland
after the collapse of the Third Reich and worked as an
anti-Communist expert for Masson of Swiss counterintelligence.
Mueller was initially hired by Colonel James Critchfield of the CIA,
who was running the Gehlen Organization out of Pullach in
southern Germany. Crowley eventually came to despise Critchfield but
the colonel was totally unaware of this, to his later dismay.
Crowley’s real expertise within the agency was the Soviet
KGB. One of his main jobs throughout his career was acting as the
agency liaison with corporations like ITT, which the CIA often used
as fronts for moving large amounts of cash off their books. He was
deeply involved in the efforts by the U.S. to overthrow the
democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile,
which eventually got him into legal problems with regard to
investigations of the U.S. government’s grand jury where he has
perjured himself in an agency cover-up
After his retirement, Crowley began to search
for someone who might be able to write a competent history of his
career. His first choice fell on British author John Costello
(author of Ten Days to Destiny, The Pacific War and other
works) but, discovering that Costello was a very aggressive
homosexual, he dropped him and tentatively turned to Joseph Trento
who had assisted Crowley and William Corson in writing a book on the
KGB. When Crowley discovered that Trento had an ambiguous and
probably cooperative relationship with the CIA, he began to distrust
him and continued his search for an author.
Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas
in 1993 when he
found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his
first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who
had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted
Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative
telephone conversations that lasted for four years. . In 1996,
Crowley , Crowley told Douglas
that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately
tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas,
for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that
Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record
their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning
to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publications.
In 1998, when Crowley was slated to go into
the hospital for exploratory surgery,
he had his son, Greg, ship two large foot lockers of
documents to Douglas with the caveat that they were not to be opened
until after Crowley’s death. These documents, totaled
an astonishing 15,000 pages of CIA classified files involving
many covert operations, both foreign and domestic, during the Cold
War.
After Crowley’s death and Trento’s raid on
the Crowley files, huge gaps were subsequently discovered by
horrified CIA officials and when Crowley’s friends mentioned
Gregory Douglas, it was discovered that Crowley’s son had shipped
two large boxes to Douglas. No one knew their contents but because
Douglas was viewed as an uncontrollable loose cannon who had done
considerable damage to the CIA’s reputation by his on-going
publication of the history of Gestapo-Mueller, they bent every
effort both to identify the missing files and make some effort to
retrieve them before Douglas made any use of them.
All of this furor eventually came to the attention of Dr.
Peter Janney, a Massachusetts clinical psychologist and son of
Wistar Janney, another career senior CIA official, colleague of not
only Bob Crowley but Cord Meyer, Richard Helms, Jim Angleton and
others. Janney was working on a book concerning the murder of Mary
Pinchot Meyer, former wife of Cord Meyer, a high-level CIA official,
and later the mistress of President John F. Kennedy.
Douglas had authored a book, ‘Regicide’ which
dealt with Crowley’s part in the Kennedy assassination and he
obviously had access to at least some of Crowley’s papers. Janney
was very well connected inside the CIA’s higher levels and when he
discovered that Douglas had indeed known, and had often spoken with,
Crowley and that after Crowley’s death, the FBI had descended on
Crowley’s widow and son, warning them to never speak with Douglas
about anything, he contacted Douglas and finally obtained from him a
number of original documents, including the originals of the
transcribed conversations with Robert Crowley.
In spite of the burn bags, the top secret safes and the
vigilance of the CIA to keep its own secrets, the truth has an
embarrassing and often very fatal habit of emerging, albeit decades
later.
While CIA drug running , money-launderings and brutal
assassinations are very often strongly rumored and suspected, it has
so far not been possible to actually pin them down but it is more
than possible that the publication of the transcribed and detailed
Crowley-Douglas conversations will do a great deal towards
accomplishing this.
These
many transcribed conversations are relatively short because Crowley
was a man who tired easily but they make excellent reading. There is
an interesting admixture of shocking revelations on the part of the
retired CIA official and often rampant anti-social (and very
entertaining) activities on the part of Douglas but readers of this
new and on-going series are gently reminded to always look for the
truth in the jest!
Date:
Tuesday, November 26, 1996
Commenced:
1:45 PM CST
Concluded:
2:16 PM CST
GD:
Good morning, Robert. Well, I have all my reservations lined up and
we should be getting together on the 9th of December. I
have hotel reservations and it isn’t too far to the University
Club but I’ll take a cab. About noon?
RTC:
Yes, that’s the drill. Now, look, Gregory, if you get there early
and then Kimmel and Bill are there, be polite but non-committal with
both of them. I should be on time but one never knows. Kimmel is
looking for any way to discredit you so be very careful with him.
Have you ever met him before?
GD:
No, just talked on the phone.
RTC:
A tall blonde fellow, a little past his prime but an impressive
type. Has a deep, well-regulated voice and likes to overawe people.
You won’t be overawed, will you?
GD: I doubt it. I am sure Mueller was twice the man Kimmel is and
Heini never overawed me. We got along fine on those grounds.
RTC:
Look, can you tell me the name of your hotel?
GD: Certainly. It’s the Capitol Hill Suites. The phone number
there is…just a second….202 543-6000 and my reservation number
is C 1820CE8. I’ll be checking in on Saturday afternoon and I have
a lunch date with Willis Carto on Sunday. He is doing a piece in his
paper on the Mueller books and wants to do an interview.
RTC:
Fine. OK, here’s what I have in mind. I have all the Warren
Commission books, all 26 or so volumes. I have gone through every
one of them and made notes all over the pages. You can read my
writing very clearly. I have marked up all the irrelevant material,
the fake material and the factual material. I think when you come to
write about the ZIPPER business, this will be of great help to you.
I will have them delivered to you in a sealed box over the weekend.
And whatever you do, do not mention this to either Tom or Bill. Just
leave the box sealed and take it back with you on the plane. When
are you leaving to go back?
GD:
The 10th.
RTC:
Fine. And I have put together a big packet of material on the ZIPPER
business that I will put into a briefcase and bring with me to the
Club. After lunch, we can go somewhere and I can give it to you.
Everything you want is in there, all original papers, notes,
transcriptions and so on. But remember your promise to keep this
under your hat until after I’m gone.
For some odd reason, Bill and Trento think they are going to
get their hands on all this. I never made any concrete promises but
when people pester me, I give satisfactory but non-binding comments.
None of them would dare to publish a word of any of this and I know
you will. I did give Bill a copy, but only a copy, of the Driscoll
report and he thinks he has the world by the balls. Anyway, talk
about Pearl Harbor and keep Tom happy. Also, try to keep your
discussion of Mueller to a bare minimum. Tom is hot on Pearl but
everyone else wants to find out about Mueller. What can you prove,
what evidence, if any, do you have of his working for us and so on.
I’ve warned you before on all of this but just be vague and go off
on a story. But for God’s sake, don’t tell them stories about
soap in the soup or things like that. Kimmel has no sense of humor
and would try to accuse you of mass poisonings or something. Bill
just talks too much.
GD:
I appreciate the confidence but since the Mueller book came out,
I’ve been bombarded with requests from broken down academics to
stop by with their friend, Willy, just to look at my precious
documents. I don’t know where they find these people, Robert, but
they do not engender any confidence in our precious government. They
should really keep their mouths closed or all the flies will get
out. No, childish games like that go nowhere. What about the Kennedy
buffs, as they call them?
RTC:
Almost all of that is in the package for you. You see, we set up a
disinformation group to spread confusion and to distract anyone from
digging too deeply. You know, the man with the umbrella, the man in
the storm drains, the wandering people in the train yards, the third
figure on the sixth floor of the book building, Hoover on the roof
of a building along with Nixon and the Hunt brothers. And a fake
Oswald renting a car or buying a gun. Not to mention the really bad
stories, which Hunt made up, of Oswald in Mexico City. God, reams of
paper with no end. The truth, which is all there, is much more
simple.
GD:
Question, Robert. This business with Ruby. Was he involved?
RTC:
Well, yes. The Chicago mob, with whom I have family connections, got
him to do a job on Oswald. That was a setup. You see, Oswald had
nothing to do with the business but was involved in other things for
us. If he came to trial, very ugly things could have come out and we
couldn’t control a courtroom scene. Better to insure it never went
that far.
GD:
And Ruby?
RTC:
The locals were going to try him and he was starting to sweat the
electric chair so he threatened to talk.
GD:
But he died in jail. Did you get to him in there?
RTC:
Certainly. Ruby died of rampant cancer. As you are aware, Gregory,
we can give people fatal heart attacks and cancer is only a little
more difficult and problematical. A medical examination, an
injection with cells and so on. Ask a good oncologist. It is
possible to do this. It takes more time but what did Ruby have?
There was no immediate danger of him blabbing so we pacified him
with stories of last minute rescues and let him die.
GD:
I was watching the telly and I saw them bring out the rifle. I know
a great deal about guns, Robert, and they showed very clear shots of
it. Besides, the local cop who found it ran a gun shop and he must
have known it was an Argentine Mauser and not a worthless Carcano
6.5mm. Why did they make the change?
RTC:
As I recall it, they had ordered the smaller piece through the mail
to a fake PO box in Oswald’s fake name. Oswald worked for ONI and
used several names.
GD:
Not the FBI?
RTC:
Oh, no, the ONI. These people won’t allow their people to work for
another agency.
GD:
Just a point or two. These fake stories….how many of them are
yours?
RTC: Gregory, when such things happen and cannot be instantly
clarified, the lunatic fringe leaps up waving their arms with all
kinds of strange stories. We have the Farrell woman who is their top
librarian and we can plant any kind of a distraction we want but
actually, most of the distractions are from the fertile imaginations
of self-important people. The Russians must have had a wonderful
time with all of this smoke and mirrors. After all, we used Oswald
solely because of his Russian connections. We felt it would point
right back to them again. We got two birds with one stone. But then
the nuts were more interested in people with umbrellas and so on so
we stopped pushing the Russian connection. Yes, Lee was in Russia
and yes, he was working for the ONI. The Atsugi connection was what
got their attention. Oswald was very smart but very abrasive and I
notice his wife was the niece of a top MVD man. Figure that one out.
Anyway, they are relieved. And besides, if they ever got their hands
on ZIPPER, they would make hay. We have to be a little careful here
because of the Stalin business. You see, L.P. Beria, their
intelligence chief, had come over to our side in the early ‘50s.
He built their atomic program but Stalin was getting senile and very
dangerous. Beria knew his days were numbered so he made contact with
us and agreed to work with us. Shutting off the cold war, getting
Russian troops out of the DDR and so on. This progressed and as he
grew more desperate with his sinking star, we hit on the idea of
getting rid of Comrade Stalin and setting Beria up in his place. Old
L.P. was a sex fiend and loved little girls and boys so it was no
problem to keep him line. And of course the Jewish business cropped
up. Stalin used Jews but he hated them and was, in his increasing
madness, planning to exterminate them like he had exterminated so
many others. Beria was Jewish as was Molotov’s wife so there was
general fear that the axe could fall on all of them.
GD:
Fouche used this ploy to bring down Robespierre. ‘Oh, you are on
the death list’ and so on.
RTC:
I didn’t know about that.
GD:
There is no new thing under the sun, Robert. How did they kill
Stalin? I assume he was well guarded.
RTC:
Oh yes, and paranoid as hell. We got some rat poison that works on
the blood. What…
GD:
Wafrarin.
RTC:
Something like that. Got it from people in Wisconsin. Anyway, Beria
slipped it into Joe’s booze and off he went with a stroke. Of
course he started bleeding from the mouth but no one noticed that
and then Beria got in. Did you know that Stalin was going to
transport all the Jews in Moscow off to Siberia in the middle of
winter and freeze the lot of them to death? Oh yes, and they all
joined forces to save themselves. I think rat poison was apt. Stalin
was a terrible monster.
GD:
He did thin out the Russian population. Did anyone here, besides
your people, know about this?
RTC: Eisenhower was noticed on this and jumped at it. Thought it was
a wonderful idea. You know, when I told you about the Army plan to
attack American targets like aircraft and blowing up buildings and
use this as a basis for attacking Castro, old Ike jumped for joy.
Kennedy stopped it.
GD:
Do you have anything on this?
RTC:
The Stalin business? Yes, I do. The Army plan? No, I do not.
GD:
Well, at least I know about it. Can I get the Stalin material?
RTC:
I can put it into the packet for you. Now getting this to you might
be a problem. Kimmel does not like the idea of me taking with you
and at the lunch, will watch both of us like a hawk. I think after
the lunch, we might go into the Club library.
GD:
I have a better idea. I looked at a DC map and I see the National
Portrait Gallery is nearby. I have an ancestor whose picture is up
there and I always wanted to see it. We could take a cab over there
because of your leg and leave Tom and Bill behind.
RTC:
Might I ask who the ancestor was?
GD:
Certainly. Robert Morris. He was a Philadelphia banker…Welling and
Morris…and he financed Washington. They call him ‘Robert the
Signer’ because there were other Morris people and he signed the
Declaration of Independence.
RTC:
That’s impressive. Be sure you mention this to Tom. That’ll get
him ever more upset. His ancestors were farmers about the time yours
was making history. Oh, yes, that will excite him. Just think, the
evil Gregory Douglas is descended from an American hero, a founding
father. I’d love to watch his face when you spring this one on
him.
GD:
It means less than nothing to me what people care about. Yes, and
then you can give me your packet away from prying and jealous eyes.
RTC:
We can push them into the Club bar, get them started…do you drink,
by the way?
GD:
No.
RTC:
Well, I’ll tell them my doctor said I couldn’t so off we can go
to look at your ancestor. My basic reason, Gregory, for getting you
to do this is because it might come out in the future and I really
want the American people to know that we had very good reasons for
putting ZIPPER in action. It wasn’t just a South American junta.
We had very good reasons and I only hope you make it clear that this
had a real and solid basis for action. I don’t regret our actions
for a minute but in the future, historians ought to have all the
facts before they judge. You do see my point?
GD: Of course and there would be no reason to write this unless I
explained why you and your friends undertook such a drastic action.
That has to be part of the whole package. An interesting microcosm,
Robert, a history of a major assassination plot, capturing world
attention, all in a small book and very accurate. Instead of
speculating on the sinking of the Maine or who told what to whom
before Pearl Harbor, we have it all down nice and crisp and
accurate.
RTC:
Ah, there, you have the crux of it, Gregory. Now, let us return to
our daily lives and look forward to our meeting.
(Concluded
at 2:16 PM CST)
SECRECY
NEWS
from the FAS Project on
Government Secrecy
Volume 2008, Issue No.
84
August 27, 2008
NASA
SECURITY BADGE HOLDER MAY POSE A SAFETY HAZARD
A secure identification badge holder that was issued to NASA
employees could pose a threat to sensitive NASA operations or
personnel, the agency warned.
The badge holders were issued to comply with President Bush's
Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12, which requires all
government personnel to possess a secure, tamper-proof form of
identification.
But the NASA badge holders, which are "electromagnetically
opaque" to guard against unauthorized scanning of the identity
badges, have created new safety problems of their own.
"The
current issue with the badge holder is the possibility of the badge
holder becoming a Foreign Object Damage (FOD) hazard to ...
hardware, or a projectile hazard under certain circumstances,"
wrote Randy J. Aden, the senior security official at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, in an email
message to all JPL personnel on August 22. http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2008/08/nasa082208.html
A NASA Kennedy Space Center Safety Notice on August 15
provided additional background.
"The badge
holder may separate with little effort, allowing the clips, the
front half of the holder and badge ID to separate creating a
significant FOD hazard in controlled areas," the Safety Notice
explained. http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2008/08/nasa081508.pdf
Consequently, "personnel should ensure the badge holder
is not worn, or is properly secured, in the vicinity of sensitive
... hardware, such as electronics, where FOD may be an issue,"
Mr. Aden advised.
Also, "When removing your badge, do not point [the] end
with metal clips towards your face or another person" in order
to minimize the projectile threat, the NASA Safety Notice suggested.
NASA's implementation of Homeland Security Presidential
Directive-12 is controversial for other reasons as well, especially
at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. While the Directive requires agencies
to verify their employees' identities, JPL has instituted a
far-reaching background investigation process that goes far beyond
that.
At JPL, the HSPD-12 "identification" procedure
includes a potentially open-ended investigation into employees'
finances, intimate relations, and personal conduct. It is roughly
comparable to a security clearance background investigation,
although few scientists are involved in classified research at JPL,
which is mainly devoted to planetary exploration.
Last year, 28
senior scientists at JPL filed a lawsuit to challenge the Lab's
implementation of HSPD-12, which they described as overly intrusive
and unconstitutional. Descriptive information on the case, which
remains pending, is available from the plaintiffs here: http://www.hspd12jpl.org/overview.html
The official JPL
web site states that "The successful implementation of HSPD-12
will increase the security of Federal facilities and Federal IT
systems. This will provide better protection for the employees,
theinformation systems and the employee's work products." http://hspd12.nasa.gov/home/index.html
Neither the JPL public web site nor other NASA web sites
mention the new
badge holder safety issue.
RECENTLY PUBLISHED
HEARINGS ON NATIONAL SECURITY
Numerous
congressional records on national security policy have been
published in the last couple of weeks, including those listed below.
Some of them may have continuing reference value.
"Department
of Justice to Guantanamo Bay: Administration Lawyers and
Administration Interrogation Rules (Part I)," House Judiciary
Committee,May 6, 2008: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2008_hr/gtmo.pdf
"Diplomatic
Assurances and Rendition to T-rture: The Perspective of the State
Department's Legal Adviser," House Foreign Affairs
Committee,June10,2008 http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2008_hr/rendition.pdf
"Improving
Detainee Policy: Handling Terrorism Detainees Within the American
Justice System," Senate Judiciary Committee, June 4, 2008: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2008_hr/detainee.pdf
"The
National Security Letters Reform Act of 2007," House Judiciary
Committee, April 15, 2008: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2008_hr/letters2.html
"Federal
Bureau of Investigation (Part II)," House Judiciary Committee,
April 23, 2008: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2008_hr/fbi.pdf
"Warrantless
Surveillance and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: The Role
of Checks and Balances in Protecting Americans' Privacy
Rights," House Judiciary Committee, September 5, 2007: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_hr/warrantless.pdf
"FISA for the Future: Balancing Security and
Liberty," House Intelligence Committee, September 18, 2007: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_hr/fisa091807.pdf
"Nomination
of Dr. Donald M. Kerr to be Principal Deputy Director ofNational
Intelligence," Senate Intelligence Committee, August 1, 2007: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_hr/kerr.html
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