Palin Family Photos

Q: How do you know you are a cousin of the Palin family?
 
A: Your house has wheels and your car doesn't.

The Voice of the White House

                Washington, D.C., September 5, 2008: “While the American media is entertaining the American public with the on-going political three ringer, very serious storms are building, and have been building, in the Middle East. Putin, three times more a national leader than George Bush, has bided his time and patiently awaited his enemy, the United States to attack Russia. Both Washington and Moscow were fully aware of the pending Georgian attack on South Ossetia and both did nothing but wait. Bush saw it as another nail in Putin’s political coffin and Putin saw it for an excellent opportunity of destroying America’s credibility as an ally. The terrified flight of the much-vaunted American equipped and trained Georgian army and the ease with which the Russians were able to occupy any part of Georgia they wanted did not go unnoticed in the NATO countries and aside from the erratic Poles, what we saw in Brussels was embarrassed silence when Bush screamed for action. Our lunatic VP, Cheney, is determined to force NATO to take in Georgia but it is known inside the Beltway that this will never happen. And while Americans listen to badly written speeches and platitudes booming out over the tube, the spectre of possible war goes completely ignored. And around the White House, growingly alarmed Republican and Neocons are wondering if they can pull off another Florida vote stealing gambit again. That’s the trouble with Republicans; they live in the past. Their motto is ‘Look Backward,’ and their watchword is: ‘That which has never been, cannot be.”

Let's talk about World War III
August 26, 2008

by Nikolai Sokov

Asia Times

            It is time to seriously contemplate World War III. The most important elements are already in place. Just as so many experts on the Caucasus have predicted, the region has become a power keg and the main source of great-power rivalry.

                Obviously, disagreements between great powers go far beyond this region and, in fact, conflicts and war in the Caucasus are rather insignificant in their grand games and calculations. Yet the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and Russia all have important symbolic stakes there - there are promises to local players and fears that abandoning them might hurt reputation and global standing.

                Paradoxically, the chances of a major, global armed conflict have increased since the probability of a large-scale nuclear war has declined to zero, in all practical terms. No one fears that the world will be annihilated, and thus the world is now deemed reasonably safe for a conventional war.

                Let us try to imagine how World War III might start. World War I started with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz-Ferdinand by Serbs in Sarajevo. The act was senseless - Franz Ferdinand was widely believed to be the more sensible and moderate member of the Austrian imperial family. Russia - the ally and patron of Serbia at the time - certainly did not authorize it, although there are rumors that some Russian diplomats and intelligence officers knew about the plans. Yet Russia felt compelled to intervene on the side of Serbia when Austria - predictably - responded with all its military might: just a few years earlier Russia had abandoned Serbia to the mercy of Vienna, and doing this a second time was deemed untenable. This is, in a nutshell, how World War I unfolded.

                Let us move to the South Caucasus now. There is talk in Washington and Brussels that, following what is classified as Russian aggression, Georgia will soon receive a Membership Action Plan (MAP) for joining NATO. The prospects of membership are quite uncertain, however, because some members of NATO (aptly classified by Donald Rumsfeld as "Old Europe") are not enthusiastic. Yet in the United States the idea about "defending Georgia" is very popular, thanks to a large extent to the presidential election campaign in which candidates have been able to use the war in Georgia to their advantage.

                In fact, Georgia does not have to become a member of NATO - a long process fraught with many impediments. It is much easier to simply deploy two or three battalions of US troops in Georgian territory to convert it into a new version of West Germany during the Cold War. Fifty years ago US troops in West Germany served as hostages: American deaths as a result of a Soviet attack would have inevitably drawn the United States into a shooting war with the Soviets. This was one of the more brilliant schemes. We do not know whether it actually worked because we do not know whether the Soviet Union actually planned to attack, but the logic seems sound.

                The advantage of unilateral American guarantees of this sort is that the decision can be made quickly, it will score major political points, and avoid the inevitable squabbles of alliance politics.

                Now, the truly wild card in the game of defending Georgia is whether the Georgian leadership - in the near future this means Mikheil Saakashvili - will be prepared to play as part of a team. One irrefutable fact about what the Russians now call the "five-day war" is that for years the United States very clearly and forcefully warned Georgia to avoid direct conflict with Russia. Yet, Saakashvili and his team went to war, and when they realized they were losing they asked Washington to interfere militarily. This truly casts doubts about whether the same people will care about the US's interests when they obtain "automatic" security guarantees.

                Now imagine the repetition of exactly the same scenario a year from now. With troops in Georgia, the US government will not be able to stay away or back down. Whatever actually provokes hostilities, the US's pro-Georgian and anti-Russian version will prevail. This means America will be at war.

                The Russians cannot back down either, and their pretext will be the exact opposite of Tbilisi's and Washington's. They will be at war as well.

                Obviously, Russian troops can overwhelm the Georgian military, but they do not stand a chance against the United States. Active military doctrine has an answer to that - limited Russian use of nuclear weapons against the military bases from which Americans mount attacks and against command and control centers. We are talking about an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean and perhaps a few US bases in Europe. Welcome to World War III - mostly conventional and spiced with a few nuclear mushrooms here and there.

                The truly fascinating aspect of this gloomy scenario is that the two leading emerging economic and political powers of the world, China and India, are completely outside the game. For them, there are no interests and no stakes, whether real or imaginary, in a US-Russian war over the South Caucasus.

                This is cause for hope. If we can safely live through the transition period as economic and eventually political power shifts from traditional capitals toward Asia, we might avoid a direct clash between major powers and nuclear weapons use. The way economic trends run these days, we only need to be lucky for a few years.

            Dr Nikolai Sokov is senior research associate at James Martin Center for Non-proliferation Studies at Monterey Institute of International Studies. He is an expert on post-Soviet security politics.

Comment: To say that Russia does not stand a chance against a mighty United States in a war is complete and utter nonsense. Wars are never fought solely by bombers alone and the need for ground forces is patently obvious. Bombers cannot occupy territory after all and Dr. Sokov should know this. The Russians have a large nuclear arsenal, competent delivery systems ,and  a submarine fleet that is quite capable of launching a number of nuclear missiles at American targets. Russia is far bigger than the United States, more spread out and far less concentrated insofar as population is concerned. The U.S. could obliterate Moscow and St.Petersburg but Russia could hit New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Long Beach and the San Francisco Bay Area and inflict terrible losses on their enemy. The idea that a large U.S. carrier fleet anywhere within the range of Russian missiles could be a determinant factor in enforcing American will on Russia borders on the idiotic. The British thought this way when they sent the ‘Repulse’ and ‘Prince of Wales’ out to Singapore in 1941 to terrify the Japanese.. Sailing without escorts, the huge ships were promptly sunk by Japanese bombers. Dr. Sokov’s badly flawed opinions aside, there is no certainty, and much serious doubt, that the United States could win a war against Russia and America’s military, if not her politicians, know it very well. What Putin is conducting, and will conduct, is economic warfare against America and that war he can easily win. Russia has huge deposits of natural gas and oil while America does not. Both China and India are frantic to obtain gas and oil, which they do not have naturally, and most of Europe is now importing various amounts of Russian gas and oil. Saudi Arabia’s fabled oil riches are rapidly running out and Iraq, who has one of the largest holdings of oil, is so disrupted internally, thanks to grossly inept Bush actions that it will be years before they can begin to increase production. The United States once  had an unparalleled opportunity of establishing excellent business and political relations with Russia but chose, instead, to try to loot her resources by supporting the inept Israeli Mafia there. By doing so, America probably lost her best chance for economic and political global security,  and future professors will be writing about the awful career of the worst President in America’s history. Probably in Russian. Brian Harring

Operation Brimstone: The Bluff of the Century

September 4, 2008

by Brian Harring

Taken completely off-guard by the speed of the Russian counteroffensive in South Ossetia and shocked when he realized the implications of  the total inability of the United States to support the anti-Russian government they jobbed into place in Georgia, Bush and his neo-con advisors hit on another plan that they felt would boost America’s image as a great military world power.

Joint Task Force Exercise (JTFEX) 08-4 ‘Operation Brimstone’ commenced on July 21 in North Carolina and off the Eastern US Atlantic coast from Virginia to Florida. Of significance was the participation of British, French, Brazilian and Italian naval forces as part of a multinational US naval exercise specifically directed against Iran by Presidential Order

                This vast naval and air armarmada consists of more than 40 naval units, including carriers, warships and submarines, some of the last nuclear-armed, is in opposition  to the Iranian  Islamic Republic, a concentration last seen just before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003

.

                Four US aircraft carriers and strike forces are, or will be, positioned in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea.

The backbone of Operation Brimstone are the USS Theodore Roosevelt, USS Ronald Reagan. USS Abraham Lincoln,  and the USS Peleliu Strike Group. The US has  also sent to the Middle East, the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group

                With accompanying frigates and submarines, some 40 war ships will be in a state of readiness, in the region and/or or directly off the Iranian coastline.

                In addition to these 40-odd war ships, there are some 36 US and allied war vessels operating under USCentcom as part of a Combined Maritime Force (CMF) involved in Maritime Security  US Central Command (CENTCOM) under the command of General Petraeus, coordinates out of Bahrain, the Maritime Security Operations (MSO) in Middle East waters ( Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, Arabian Sea, Red Sea and Indian Ocean).

Although the American media has agreed not to publish any information on this task force, the Russians, and others, have. Now, the entire composition of this huge armada is known to many and the political motives for it are also known.

 In essence, George Bush and his Israeli neocon “advisors” are livid that their puppet state of Georgia was invaded by the Russians, after Georgia, with American assistance and certainy, full foreknowledge, invaded one of their provinces that was trying to join Russia. The subsequent debacle highlighted by U.S. media  film clips of burning or wrecked Georgian tanks (falsely indentified by American media sources as Russian) and reports of the panic stricken flight of the US -trained Georgian army enraged both Bush and his Israeli allies. It has become well-known that the Israelis were planning to attack Iran from two air bases in Georgia but the unexpected rout of the Georgian army forced them to rapidly flee the country, leaving their intelligence drones and trucks full of top secret papers behind for the Russians to capture. Naturally, none of this was ever reported in the American media.

Though there was no realistic way that either Bush or his neocon manipulators could put a good face on this collapse of their plans, nevertheless, they both have tried. Bush has threatened Russia with international shame and desirion but his hoped-for “strong response” by NATO was a dismal failure.       NATO might be able to fight a war, with a reasonable chance of success, against Andorra but none of the original members of NATO have even the slightest desire to engage in warfare with Russia. They have muttered softly and done nothing.

Enraged by NATO’s inaction, Bush has decided to show Russia, and Israel (with massive American help…as usual) his is to be taken seriously, which he no longer is, and convince Iran that they will no longer tolerate being thwarted, frustrated and, even worse, ignorerd. Bush and the lunatic Cheney hit on the moronic idea of establishing a partial naval blockade of Iran in the Persian Gulf to deny Iran imports of benzene and other refined oil products.

The plan, which has been leaked, both from Washington and Isreali sources, is that beause Iran imports at least 40% of its refined fuel products from Gulf neighbors, will retaliate for the embargo by shutting the Strait of Hormuz oil route chokepoint, in which case the US naval and air force stand ready to reopen the Strait and fight back any Iranian attempt to break through the blockade. An Iranian attack on the massive armada would then be used as an excuse to obliterate Tehran and areas where Israel claims that “atomic weapons” are being produced.

From intercepted diplomatic messages, it is very clear that Israel views these huge forces as back-up for a possible Israeli military attack on Iran’s nuclear installations.

The Israelis are hysterical because of the failure of their Georgian adventures and the Bush people are too obsessed with losing face to realize that by sending a huge, lumbering task force into the Persian Gulf, they have put their ships, the security of Israel and the entire fighting capabilities of the U.S. Navy at serious risk.

The frantic planners of this nonsense do not seem to realize that that there is only a narrow navigible channel in the Persian Gulf  allowing the deep draft super tankers to pass through. At the choke-point of the Hormuz Strait, the blockage of this specific area would seal  in the American task force and leave it entirely at the mercy of batteries of Surface-to-Surface Russian missiles, sold by that country to Iran, [but in fact, manned by Russian specialists]. If the Straits of Hormuz are blocked, not only will the entire taskforce be trapped but no Gulf oil can get out to the waiting world markets. The Iranian/Russian plans to block these vital straits in the case of attack have had years in which to be polished, and given their nature, would be impossible to either halt or neutralize.

If Iran is attacked by either the United States or the Israeli Air Force, there will be retaliation by the Iranians. Iranian leaders have made it clear repeatedly that an attack on Iran by the Israeli Air Force will be regarded as an attack by the United States. The potential consequences of Bush’s ill-thought and unhinged actions could very well ignite a major war, and  since any kind of diplomacy on the part of the Bush administration is non-existent, such a war is by no means impossible to contemplate

                If the Israeli Air Force attacks Iran, this will create an instant unified resistance movement by Muslims throughout the Middle East. This will include Sunni Muslims. The hatred of the Israelis by Muslims in the region is so intense that even though the Israeli Air Force attacks at Shi'ite nation, Sunni leaders will not be in a position to publicly justify such an attack. They would risk a revolution in their own countries if they did this. The best that the Israelis could expect would be silent neutrality. Retaliation on the part of Iran will be expected by all Muslim nations in the Middle East. The Russian weapons that most concern Israeli officials are the S-300 surface-to-air missile and the Iskander-E, a surface-to-surface missile with a reported maximum range of 170 miles. Iskander (NATO reporting name SS-26 Stone) is a short range, solid fuel propelled, theater quasiballistic missile system produced in Russia The launching equipment is mobile, easy to disperse from satellite observation and capable of quick response.

                In essence, the trapped U.S. fleet would be like ducks in a bathtub and the potential damage to our naval units would be catastrophic.

Strait of Hormuz

                Located between Oman and Iran, the Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.

                Hormuz is the world's most important oil chokepoint due to its daily oil flow of 16.5-17 million barrels (first half 2008E), which is roughly 40 percent of all seaborne traded oil (or 20 percent of oil traded worldwide). Oil flows averaged over 16.5 million barrels per day in 2006, dropped in 2007 to a little over 16 million barrels per day after OPEC cut production, but rose again in 2008 with rising Persian Gulf supplies.

                At its narrowest point the Strait is 21 miles wide, and the shipping lanes consist of two-mile wide channels for inbound and outbound tanker traffic, as well as a two-mile wide buffer zone. The majority of oil exported through the Strait of Hormuz travels to Asia, the United States and Western Europe. Currently, three-quarters of all Japan’s oil needs pass through this Strait. On average, 15 crude oil tankers passed through the Strait of Hormuz daily in 2007, along with tankers carrying other petroleum products and liquefied natural gas (LNG).

                Closure of the Strait of Hormuz would require the use of longer alternate routes at increased transportation costs. Alternate routes include the 745 miles-long Petroline, also known as the East-West Pipeline, across Saudi Arabia from Abqaiq to the Red Sea. The East-West Pipeline has a capacity to move five million-bbl/d. The Abqaiq-Yanbu natural gas liquids pipeline, which runs parallel to Petroline to the Red Sea, has a 290,000-bbl/d capacity. Other alternate routes could include the deactivated 1.65-million bbl/d Iraqi Pipeline across Saudi Arabia (IPSA), and the 0.5 million-bbl/d Tapline to Lebanon. Oil could also be pumped north to Ceyhan in Turkey from Iraq.

Order of Battle: Operation ‘Brimstone’

{Операция 'Самородная сера'

Объединенное Осуществление Целевой группы (JTFEX) 08-4}

Carrier Strike Group Nine

USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN72) nuclear powered supercarrier with its Carrier Air Wing Two Destroyer Squadron Nine:

USS Mobile Bay (CG53) guided missile cruiser

USS Russell (DDG59) guided missile destroyer

USS Momsen (DDG92) guided missile destroyer

USS Shoup (DDG86) guided missile destroyer

USS Ford (FFG54) guided missile frigate

USS Ingraham (FFG61) guided missile frigate

USS Rodney M. Davis (FFG60) guided missile frigate

USS Curts (FFG38) guided missile frigate

Plus two nuclear hunter-killer submarines, currently unidentified

Peleliu Expeditionary Strike Group

USS Peleliu (LHA-5) a Tarawa-class amphibious assault carrier

USS Pearl Harbor (LSD52) assault ship

USS Dubuque (LPD8) assault ship/landing dock

USS Cape St. George (CG71) guided missile cruiser

USS Halsey (DDG97) guided missile destroyer

USS Benfold (DDG65) guided missile destroyer

Carrier Strike Group Two

USS Theodore Roosevelt (DVN71) nuclear powered supercarrier with its Carrier Air Wing Eight [Set sail for the Gulf on August 5]

Destroyer Squadron 22

USS Monterey (CG61) guided missile cruiser

USS Mason (DDG87) guided missile destroyer

USS Nitze (DDG94) guided missile destroyer

USS Sullivans (DDG68) guided missile destroyer

USS Springfield (SSN761) nuclear powered hunter-killer submarine

IWO ESG ~ Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group

USS Iwo Jima (LHD7) amphibious assault carrier with its Amphibious Squadron Four and with its 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit

USS San Antonio (LPD17) assault ship

USS Velia Gulf (CG72) guided missile cruiser

USS Ramage (DDG61) guided missile destroyer

USS Carter Hall (LSD50) assault ship

USS Roosevelt (DDG80) guided missile destroyer

USS Hartford (SSN768) nuclear powered hunter-killer submarine

Carrier Strike Group Seven

USS Ronald Reagan (CVN76) nuclear powered supercarrier with its Carrier Air Wing 14 and   Destroyer Squadron 7

USS Chancellorsville (CG62) guided missile cruiser

USS Howard (DDG83) guided missile destroyer

USS Gridley (DDG101) guided missile destroyer

USS Decatur (DDG73) guided missile destroyer

USS Thach (FFG43) guided missile frigate

USNS Rainier (T-AOE-7) fast combat support ship

                Note: The USS Iwo Jima and USS Peleliu Expeditionary Strike Groups have USMC Harrier jump jets and an assortment of assault and attack helicopters. The Expeditionary Strike Groups have powerful USMC Expeditionary Units consisting of two USMC GROUND ASSAULT UNITS (MAF’S) earmarked for utilization for securing the straights which is a bottle neck with amphibious armor and ground forces trained for operating in shallow waters and in seizures of land assets, such as Qeshm Island (a 50 mile long island off of Bandar Abbas in the Gulf of Hormuz and headquarters off the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps). USS Theodore Roosevelt , the USS Ronald Reagan and the USS Iwo Jima .

                Already in place are the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea opposite Iranian shores and the USS Peleliu which is cruising in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The USS Theodore Roosevelt equipped with 80-plus combat planes, was carrying an additional load of French Naval Rafale fighter jets from the French carrier Charles de Gaulle. France's E2C Hawkeye early warning aircraft was assigned to the 4th Squadron began flight operations with Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 8 aboard Roosevelt, marking the first integrated U.S. and French carrier qualifications aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier. French Rafale fighter aircraft assigned to the 12th Squadron also joined. the following naval forces, which are already deployed in the Persian Gulf  and which consist of :

·         the nuclear powered USS Ronald Reagan Carrier and its Strike Group Seven;

·         the USS Iwo Jima,

·         -the British Royal Navy ‘s HMS Illustrious Carrier Strike Group,  aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal

·         several French warships, including the nuclear hunter-killer submarine Amethyste

·         Brazil’s navy frigate Greenhalgh and Italy’s ITS Salvatore Todaro (S 526) submarine.

                Also positioned in the region are the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea and the USS Peleliu which is currently in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

.Putin's Ruthless Gambit

The Bush Administration Falters in a Geopolitical Chess Match

September 2, 2008

by Michael T. Klare

                Many Western analysts have chosen to interpret the recent fighting in the Caucasus as the onset of a new Cold War, with a small pro-Western democracy bravely resisting a brutal reincarnation of Stalin's jack-booted Soviet Union. Others have viewed it a throwback to the age-old ethnic politics of southeastern Europe, with assorted minorities using contemporary border disputes to settle ancient scores.

Neither of these explanations is accurate. To fully grasp the recent upheavals in the Caucasus, it is necessary to view the conflict as but a minor skirmish in a far more significant geopolitical struggle between Moscow and Washington over the energy riches of the Caspian Sea basin -- with former Russian President (now Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin emerging as the reigning Grand Master of geostrategic chess and the Bush team turning out to be middling amateurs, at best.

The ultimate prize in this contest is control over the flow of oil and natural gas from the energy-rich Caspian basin to eager markets in Europe and Asia. According to the most recent tally by oil giant BP, the Caspian's leading energy producers, all former "socialist republics" of the Soviet Union -- notably Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan -- together possess approximately 48 billion barrels in proven oil reserves (roughly equivalent to those left in the U.S. and Canada) and 268 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (essentially equivalent to what Saudi Arabia possesses).

During the Soviet era, the oil and gas output of these nations was, of course, controlled by officials in Moscow and largely allocated to Russia and other Soviet republics. After the breakup of the USSR in 1991, however, Western oil companies began to participate in the hydrocarbon equivalent of a gold rush to exploit Caspian energy reservoirs, while plans were being made to channel the region's oil and gas to markets across the world.

Rush to the Caspian

In the 1990s, the Caspian Sea basin was viewed as the world's most promising new source of oil and gas, and so the major Western energy firms -- Chevron, BP, Shell, and Exxon Mobil, among others -- rushed into the region to take advantage of what seemed a golden opportunity. For these firms, persuading the governments of the newly independent Caspian states to sign deals proved to be no great hassle. They were eager to attract Western investment -- and the bribes that often came with it -- and to free themselves from Moscow's economic domination.

But there turned out to be a major catch: It was neither obvious nor easy to figure out how to move all the new oil and gas to markets in the West. After all, the Caspian is landlocked, so tankers cannot get near it, while all existing pipelines passed through Russia and were hooked into Soviet-era supply systems. While many in Washington were eager to assist U.S. firms in their drive to gain access to Caspian energy, they did not want to see the resulting oil and gas flow through Russia -- until recently, the country's leading adversary -- before reaching Western markets.

What, then, to do? Looking at the Caspian chessboard in the mid-1990s, President Bill Clinton conceived the striking notion of converting the newly independent, energy-poor Republic of Georgia into an "energy corridor" for the export of Caspian basin oil and gas to the West, thereby bypassing Russia altogether. An initial, "early-oil" pipeline was built to carry petroleum from newly-developed fields in Azerbaijan's sector of the Caspian Sea to Supsa on Georgia's Black Sea coast, where it was loaded onto tankers for delivery to international markets. This would be followed by a far more audacious scheme: the construction of the 1,000-mile BTC pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan to Tbilisi in Georgia and then on to Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast. Again, the idea was to exclude Russia -- which had, in the intervening years, been transformed into a struggling, increasingly impoverished former superpower -- from the Caspian Sea energy rush.

Clinton presided over every stage of the BTC line's initial development, from its early conception to the formal arrangements imposed by Washington on the three nations involved in its corporate structuring. (Final work on the pipeline was not completed until 2006, two years into George W. Bush's second term.) For Clinton and his advisors, this was geopolitics, pure and simple -- a calculated effort to enhance Western energy security while diminishing Moscow's control over the global flow of oil and gas. The administration's efforts to promote the construction of new pipelines through Azerbaijan and Georgia were intended "to break Russia's monopoly of control over the transportation of oil from the region," Sheila Heslin of the National Security Council bluntly told a Senate investigating committee in 1997.

Clinton understood that this strategy entailed significant risks, particularly because Washington's favored "energy corridor" passed through or near several major conflict zones -- including the Russian-backed breakaway enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. With this in mind, Clinton made a secondary decision -- to convert the new Georgian army into a military proxy of the United States, equipped and trained by the Department of Defense. From 1998 to 2000 alone, Georgia was awarded $302 million in U.S. military and economic aid -- more than any other Caspian country -- and top U.S. military officials started making regular trips to its capital, Tbilisi, to demonstrate support for then-president Eduard Shevardnadze.

In those years, Clinton was the top chess player in the Caspian region, while his Russian presidential counterpart, Boris Yeltsin, was far too preoccupied with domestic troubles and a bitter, costly, ongoing guerrilla war in Chechnya to match his moves. It was clear, however, that senior Russian officials were deeply concerned by the growing U.S. presence in their southern backyard -- what they called their "near abroad" -- and had already had begun planning for an eventual comeback. "It hasn't been left unnoticed in Russia that certain outside interests are trying to weaken our position in the Caspian basin," Andrei Y. Urnov of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared in May 2000. "No one should be perplexed that Russia is determined to resist the attempts to encroach on her interests."

Russia Resurgent

At this critical moment, a far more capable player took over on Russia's side of the geopolitical chessboard. On December 31, 1999, Vladimir V. Putin was appointed president by Yeltsin and then, on March 26, 2000, elected to a full four-year term in office. Politics in the Caucasus and the Caspian region have never been the same.

Even before assuming the presidency, Putin indicated that he believed state control over energy resources should be the basis for Russia's return to great-power status. In his doctoral dissertation, a summary of which was published in 1999, he had written that "[t]he state has the right to regulate the process of the acquisition and the use of natural resources, and particularly mineral resources [including oil and natural gas], independent of on whose property they are located." On this basis, Putin presided over the re-nationalization of many of the energy companies that had been privatized by Yeltsin and the virtual confiscation of Yukos -- once Russia's richest private energy firm -- by Russian state authorities. He also brought Gazprom, the world's largest natural gas supplier, back under state control and placed a protégé, Dmitri Medvedev -- now president of Russia -- at its helm.

Once he had restored state control over the lion's share of Russia's oil and gas resources, Putin turned his attention to the next obvious place -- the Caspian Sea basin. Here, his intent was not so much to gain ownership of its energy resources -- although Russian firms have in recent years acquired an equity share in some Caspian oil and gas fields -- but rather to dominate the export conduits used to transport its energy to Europe and Asia.

Russia already enjoyed a considerable advantage since much of Kazakhstan's oil already flowed to the West via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which passes through Russia before terminating on the Black Sea; moreover, much of Central Asia's natural gas continued to flow to Russia through pipelines built during the Soviet era. But Putin's gambit in the Caspian region evidently was meant to capture a far more ambitious prize. He wanted to ensure that most oil and gas from newly developed fields in the Caspian basin would travel west via Russia.

The first part of this drive entailed frenzied diplomacy by Putin and Medvedev (still in his role as board chairman of Gazprom) to persuade the presidents of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan to ship their future output of gas through Russia. Success was achieved when, in December 2007, Putin signed an agreement with the leaders of these countries to supply 20 billion cubic meters of gas per year through a new conduit along the Caspian's eastern shore to southern Russia -- for ultimate delivery to Europe via Gazprom's existing pipeline network.

Meanwhile, Putin moved to undermine international confidence in Georgia as a reliable future corridor for energy delivery. This became a strategic priority for Moscow because the European Union announced plans to build a $10 billion natural-gas pipeline from the Caspian, dubbed "Nabucco" after the opera by Verdi. It would run from Turkey to Austria, while linking up to an expanded South Caucasus gas pipeline that now extends from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Erzurum in Turkey. The Nabucco pipeline was intended as a dramatic move to reduce Europe's reliance on Russian natural gas -- and so has enjoyed strong support from the Bush administration.

It is against this backdrop that the recent events in Georgia unfolded.

Checkmate in Georgia

Obviously, the more oil and gas passing through Georgia on its way to the West, the greater that country's geostrategic significance in the U.S.-Russian struggle over the distribution of Caspian energy. Certainly, the Bush administration recognized this and responded by providing hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the Georgian military and helping to train specialized forces for protection of the new pipelines. But the administration's partner in Tbilisi, President Mikheil Saakashvili, was not content to play the relatively modest role of pipeline protector. Instead, he sought to pursue a megalomaniacal fantasy of recapturing the breakaway regions of Abhkazia and South Ossetia with American help. As it happened, the Bush team -- blindsided by their own neoconservative fantasies -- saw in Saakashvili a useful pawn in their pursuit of a long smoldering anti-Russian agenda. Together, they walked into a trap cleverly set by Putin.

It is hard not to conclude that Russian prime minister goaded the rash Saakashvili into invading South Ossetia by encouraging Abkhazian and South Ossetian irregulars to attack Georgian outposts and villages on the peripheries of the two enclaves. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reportedly told Saakashvili not to respond to such provocations when she met with him in July. Apparently her advice fell on deaf ears. Far more enticing, it seems, was her promise of strong U.S. backing for Georgia's rapid entry into NATO. Other American leaders, including Senator John McCain, assured Saakashvili of unwavering U.S. support. Whatever was said in these private conversations, the Georgian president seems to have interpreted them as a green light for his adventuristic impulses. On August 7th, by all accounts, his forces invaded South Ossetia and attacked its capital city of Tskhinvali, giving Putin what he long craved -- a seemingly legitimate excuse to invade Georgia and demonstrate the complete vulnerability of Clinton's (and now Bush's) vaunted energy corridor.

Today, the Georgian army is in shambles, the BTC and South Caucasus gas pipelines are within range of Russian firepower, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia have declared their independence, quickly receiving Russian recognition. In response to these developments, the Bush administration has, along with some friendly leaders in Europe, mounted a media and diplomatic counterattack, accusing Moscow of barbaric behavior and assorted violations of international law. Threats have also been made to exclude Russia from various international forums and institutions, such as the G-8 club of governments and the World Trade Organization. It is possible, then, that Moscow will suffer some isolation and inconvenience as a result of its incursion into Georgia.

None of this, so far as can be determined, will alter the picture in the Caucasus: Putin has moved his most powerful pieces onto this corner of the chessboard, America's pawn has been decisively defeated, and there's not much of a practical nature that Washington (or London or Paris or Berlin) can do to alter the outcome.

There will, of course, be more rounds to come, and it is impossible to predict how they will play out. Putin prevailed this time around because he focused on geopolitical objectives, while his opponents were blindly driven by fantasy and ideology; so long as this pattern persists, he or his successors are likely to come out on top. Only if American leaders assume a more realistic approach to Russia's resurgent power or, alternatively, choose to collaborate with Moscow in the exploitation of Caspian energy, will the risk of further strategic setbacks in the region disappear.

                Michael T. Klare is professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Metropolitan Books).

Russia may cut off oil flow to the West
August 28, 2008

by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Daily Telegraph

                Fears are mounting that Russia may restrict oil deliveries to Western Europe over coming days, in response to the threat of EU sanctions and Nato naval actions in the Black Sea.

                Any such move would be a dramatic escalation of the Georgia crisis and play havoc with the oil markets.

                Reports have begun to circulate in Moscow that Russian oil companies are under orders from the Kremlin to prepare for a supply cut to Germany and Poland through the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline. It is believed that executives from lead-producer LUKoil have been put on weekend alert.

                "They have been told to be ready to cut off supplies as soon as Monday," claimed a high-level business source, speaking to The Daily Telegraph. Any move would be timed to coincide with an emergency EU summit in Brussels, where possible sanctions against Russia are on the agenda.

More on oil

                Any evidence that the Kremlin is planning to use the oil weapon to intimidate the West could inflame global energy markets. US crude prices jumped to $119 a barrel yesterday on reports of hurricane warnings in the Gulf of Mexico, before falling back slightly.

                Global supplies remain tight despite the economic downturn engulfing North America, Europe and Japan. A supply cut at this delicate juncture could drive crude prices much higher, possibly to record levels of $150 or even $200 a barrel.

                With US and European credit spreads already trading at levels of extreme stress, a fresh oil spike would rock financial markets. The Kremlin is undoubtedly aware that it exercises extraordinary leverage, if it strikes right now.

                Such action would be seen as economic warfare but Russia has been infuriated by Nato meddling in its "backyard" and threats of punitive measures by the EU. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday accused EU diplomats of a "sick imagination".

                Armed with $580bn of foreign reserves (the world's third largest), Russia appears willing to risk its reputation as a reliable actor on the international stage in order to pursue geo-strategic ambitions.

                "We are not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a Cold War," said President Dmitry Medvedev.

                The Polish government said yesterday that Russian deliveries were still arriving smoothly. It was not aware of any move to limit supplies. The European Commission's energy directorate said it had received no warnings of retaliatory cuts.

                Russia has repeatedly restricted oil and gas deliveries over recent years as a means of diplomatic pressure, though Moscow usually explains away the reduction by referring to technical upsets or pipeline maintenance.

                Last month, deliveries to the Czech Republic through the Druzhba pipeline were cut after Prague signed an agreement with the US to install an anti-missile shield. Czech officials say supplies fell 40pc for July. The pipeline managers Transneft said the shortfall was due to "technical and commercial reasons".

                Supplies were cut to Estonia in May 2007 following a dispute with Russia over the removal of Red Army memorials. It was blamed on a "repair operation". Latvia was cut off in 2005 and 2006 in a battle for control over the Ventspils terminals. "There are ways to camouflage it," said Vincent Sabathier, a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

                "They never say, 'we're going to cut off your oil because we don't like your foreign policy'."

                A senior LUKoil official in Moscow said he was unaware of any plans to curtail deliveries. The Kremlin declined to comment.

                London-listed LUKoil is run by Russian billionaire Vagit Alekperov, who holds 20pc of the shares. LUKoil produces 2m barrels per day (b/d), or 2.5pc of world supply. It exports one fifth of its output to Germany and Poland.

                Although Russia would lose much-needed revenue if it cut deliveries, the Kremlin might hope to recoup some of the money from higher prices. Indeed, it could enhance income for a while if the weapon was calibrated skilfully. Russia exports roughly 6.5m b/d, supplying the EU with 26pc of its total oil needs and 29pc of its gas.

                A cut of just 1m b/d in global supply – and a veiled threat of more to come – would cause a major price spike.

                It is unclear whether Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or other Opec producers have enough spare capacity to plug the shortfall. "Russia is behaving in a very erratic way," said James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA. "There is a risk that they might do something like cutting oil to hurt the world's democracies, if they get angry enough."

                Mr Woolsey said the rapid move towards electric cars and other sources of power in the US and Europe means Russia's ability to use the oil weapon will soon be a diminishing asset. "Within a decade it will be very hard for Russia to push us around," he told The Daily Telegraph.

                It is widely assumed that Russia would cut gas supplies rather than oil as a means of pressuring Europe. It is very hard to find alternative sources of gas. But gas cuts would not hurt the United States. Oil is a better weapon for striking at the broader Western world.

                The price is global. The US economy could suffer serious damage from the immediate knock-on effects.

                While the Russian state is rich, the corporate sector is heavily reliant on foreign investors. The internal bond market is tiny, with just $60bn worth of ruble issues.

                Russian companies raise their funds on the world capital markets. Foreigners own half of the $1 trillion debt. Michael Ganske, Russia expert at Commerzbank, said the country was now facing a liquidity crunch. "Local investors are scared. They can see the foreigners leaving, so now they won't touch anything either. The impact on the capital markets is severe," he said.
 

The Neocons Versus Russia
August 28, 2008

theoccidentalobserver.com:

            The Russian invasion of Georgia following Georgia's attempt to reestablish its dominance over its secessionist province of South Ossetia has certainly infuriated the neocons. Max Boot and Charles Krauthammer have called for various moves to isolate Russia from the West and from the international economic community. The Weekly Standard has an article by Stuart Koehl urging Georgians to fight on with US aid, and an article by Charlie Szrom of the American Enterprise Institute (aka neocon central) advocating massive US aid and alliances among Eastern European countries.

                We know that neoconservatism is a Jewish movement — the news having finally reached the mainstream media with books like Jacob Heilbrunn's They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons. Now imagine for a moment that you are a typical Jewish neocon — that is, someone who sees the world fundamentally through Zionist lenses and, for starters, cannot fathom any difference between the interests of the United States and Israel. Or, what amounts to the same thing, imagine that you are an Israeli geopolitical strategizer. How would such a person think of the situation?

                Quite clearly, you would be very unhappy that Russia has managed to crush the Georgian military and threaten regime change in Georgia. Israel has strong connections to Georgia. It has provided weapons and training to the Georgian military (although it recently stopped providing weapons after Russian complaints). Israel also has over $1.5 billion invested in Georgia, and Israel is proposing that the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline be extended to the Israeli port of Ashkelon for transshipment to south and east Asia. Two top ministers of the Georgian government are Jews with strong ties to Israel, including Defense Minister Davit Kezerashvili who is a former Israeli fluent in Hebrew.

                The other side of the equation is that neocons have been hostile toward Russia. They supported the war that resulted in independence of Kosovo from Serbia, an ally of Russia. They also support Chechnyan independence from Russia, NATO membership for Eastern European countries formerly dominated by the USSR, and the aggressive US policy of providing missiles to Poland and the Czech Republic.

                Why the neocon hostility toward Russia? We could certainly imagine that if Russia was controlled by the Israel Lobby and Jewish interests in the same way that the United States is, this would not be happening. Indeed, a major neocon complaint is that Russia delayed sanctions against Israel's arch-enemy Iran and has supplied Iran with nuclear material as well as weaponry designed to protect its nuclear installations.

                Quite simply, we think that neocon hostility stems from the fact that Russia under Vladimir Putin proved to be far more nationalistic than is good for the Jews or for Israel. A landmark event was Putin's crackdown on the oligarchs — that small, overwhelmingly Jewish group of tycoons that came to control the industrial base of the USSR during the shift to capitalism. The oligarchs pumped huge amounts of money into the campaign to keep Boris Yeltsin in office and enrich themselves. They also supported Putin at first, but Putin gradually cut into the dominance of the oligarchs.

                When in 1996 it appeared that Yeltsin might lose his reelection to the Communists, the oligarchs poured millions into Yeltsin's campaign and began flooding the television airwaves (which they owned) with pro-Yeltsin "news" items while conspicuously failing to give any airtime to the opposition. With Yeltsin's victory, the loans-for-shares deal was finalized, catapulting the oligarchs from a small group of millionaires to a small group of billionaires. A few years later the oligarchs "guaranteed" (to use Berezovsky's term) that Vladimir Putin, like Yeltsin before him, would get elected in Russia's 2000 Presidential elections.

                A turning point was the arrest and imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of Yukos, the oil giant. Arch-neocon Richard Perle led the charge against Putin, calling for the ouster of Russia from the G-8 — the same sort of policy the neocons are proposing in the wake of the invasion of Georgia. Khodorkosky was viewed as without any feeling for Russian nationalism and far too friendly with the United States:

                Khodorkovsky has spent years pursuing what is essentially a personal, pro-American foreign policy, cultivating contacts with the most influential politicians, diplomats, bankers and public relations specialists in Washington — actions the siloviki, a group of hawks in the Kremlin made up of former KGB men, consider reprehensible....

                Compounding this perceived threat are Khodorkovsky's efforts to endear himself to the White House. One only need look at the people who have rallied to Khodorkovsky's defense the article mentions Stuart Eizenstat, Richard Perle, George Soros, and John McCain (!) to see how the siloviki could make a convincing case to cut Khodorkovsky down to size.

                The crackdown against the oligarchs resulted in agonized complaints about the demise of democracy in Russia, and we are sure to see more such complaints in the wake of the invasion of Georgia. The neocons much preferred a democracy in which the Jewish oligarchs completely controlled the media and could buy large blocs of the Duma — in other words, a democracy that much more resembles our own.

                The fact that Soros and Eizenstat — both associated with the left — also condemned Khodorkovsky's arrest suggests a Jewish consensus on this issue. Soros was also deeply involved in the so-called Rose Revolution that vaulted Mikheil Saakashvili into the presidency of Georgia.

                Moreover, the most recent ADL document on anti-Semitism in Russia notes that despite better relations between the Russian government and Jews within Russia, there have been no changes in Russia's foreign policy toward Iran or its policy of engagement with the Palestinian group Hamas. This contrasts with the ADL's stance early in Vladimir Putin's presidency when the ADL complained that the Russian leadership did not immediately condemn what the ADL terms "Governor of Kursk Alexander Mikhailov’s blatantly anti-Semitic statement." Mikhailov had expressed his gratitude for the support Putin had given him in his struggle against "filth" — a reference to the previous governor of Kursk, Alexander Rutskoy, Boris Berezovsky, and the All-Russian Jewish Congress. Berezovsky is a former Russian-Jewish media tycoon who used his control of the main television channel to promote Boris Yeltsin for president in 1996 but fled Russia after the ascent of Putin after being charged with fraud. Rutskoy, who is Jewish, was seen as allied with Berezovsky. The ADL complained that the Russian leadership chastised Mikhailov only after a "storm of protest that Mikhailov’s conduct generated among Jews and the mainstream media in Russia and abroad."

                No wonder Pat Buchanan recently termed democracy a "flickering star" because democratic governments are so often out of touch with the people they rule, whereas governments like China and Russia enjoy overwhelming popular support. This is so on a wide range of issues in the US — immigration policy being the most egregious example. In the area of foreign policy we have seen that a small cabal of neocons could successfully promote US involvement in a costly and disastrous war in Iraq — a war on behalf of Israel and certainly not in the interests of the United States.

                And speaking of democracy, the fact that John McCain came to the defense of Khodorkovsky is yet another indication that he is completely tied into the neocon foreign policy establishment. Just recently it became known that Randy Scheunemann, McCain's foreign policy adviser, was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the government of Georgia. Scheunemann was also President of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, sponsored by Bill Kristols' Project for a New American Century. Kristol, like the other neocons, is eager for the US to stand up to Russia over Georgia: "Is it not true today, as it was in the 1920s and ’30s, that delay and irresolution on the part of the democracies simply invite future threats and graver dangers?" Ah, the old argumentum ad Hitlerum.

                There can be no greater condemnation of American democracy than that John McCain will be the candidate of one of the major parties, while the other party will nominate Barack Obama.

                Finally, we should remember that from 1881 until the fall of the Czar, in addition to dominating the revolutionary movement in Russia, there was a Jewish consensus to use their influence in Europe and America to oppose Russia. This had an effect on a wide range of issues, including the financing of Japan in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905, the abrogation of the American-Russian trade agreement in 1908, and the financing of revolutionaries within Russia by wealthy Jews such as Jacob Schiff.

                The triumph of Bolshevism resulted in a period of Jewish dominance in the Soviet Union and unimaginable horrors for the Russian people. This period of Jewish dominance and its disastrous effects on the Russian people are doubtless not far from the minds of Russia's current leaders.

                We can expect a similarly long and persistent Jewish campaign against Russia, waged with all the intensity of the 1881–1917 campaign. In an age of nuclear weapons the stakes are very high for the entire planet.

Conversations with the Crow: Part 29

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: Monday, December 2, 1996

Commenced:  9:45 AM CST

Concluded: 10:21 AM CST

GD: Good morning, Robert. Well, we should be having a nice lunch in a week from today.

RTC: I’m very eager to meet you, Gregory. The telephone is fine but nothing like a face-to-face to really establish a good relationship.

GD: I agree. As I understand it, you will ship your annotated copies of the complete Warren Report to my hotel and you will bring with you the material on ZIPPER. And pass it to me away from the others. Right?
RTC: That’s the drill now, Gregory. I have the books boxed and you may have to take them with you as shipped baggage. A bit much to stuck into the overhead bins.

GD: Understood. But the rest of it?

RTC: No, that you can keep under your seat or up above. No problem with that.

GD: I am looking forward to all of this, Robert, but a little concerned about your friends. Kimmel I can do without, if you take my meaning.

RTC: Gregory, I will be there and he won’t stray off the path.

GD: That’s a comfort. Dueling with the blind is not entertaining. You know, I have been doing my homework on the ZIPPER themes and if you have the time, I have a number of questions.

RTC: Go ahead.

GD: Well, theories abound on this. One says this and another says that. You have given me your background, pretty much, and I am trying to pick the wheat from the chaff as they say. Why use Oswald?

RTC: Obvious, Gregory. We wanted a war with Soviet Russia, that’s why we used Oswald. Here he is, a professed Marxist and defector to the Soviet Union, shooting the president. We had to establish a trail to the KGB so we got, or rather Jim Angleton got, our station chief in Mexico City, Win Scott, to work up a scenario placing Oswald in that city and visiting the Soviet and Cuban embassies. They prepared a paper showing Oswald was in connection with Comrade V.V. Kostikov, head of the 13^th section of the KGB…assassinations…and so on. They fucked the whole thing up so badly that we had to drop it. Fake pictures of someone not even remotely resembling Oswald, fake stories and they were working on a fake letter from Oswald to Kostikov in which he told him he was going to become a great hero by killing Kennedy. The motives? Kennedy’s humiliation of the Russians over the Cuban missile business. Howard Hunt was involved with this and he is a very vain and stupid person. He’s a little like Bill Corson, Gregory, but you mustn’t repeat any of this. Very self-important person, with delusions.

GD: Won’t say a word

RTC: I knew you wouldn’t. Bill can fool the Trentos who are as gullible as he is phony and they both deserve each other, believe me. No, they ruined the Russian plan at the beginning. You see, after Kennedy was dead, our agency would reveal to all the world that the Russians had plotted this and then Johnson would order a surprise nuclear attack on them. Of course Johnson was a gutless wonder, going this way and going that so unless we got the New York Times and other papers we influenced, to start a firestorm of anger in Americans, that one was as dead as the dodo. We had it all planned out, too. Later, they got Oswald’s bitch of a wife being deposed and two phony Russian translators who would claim that she had seen the very rifle in Russia. Of course that was a .22 target rifle and the one we planted was the cheap wop piece with a cheaper scope so that one went out.

GD: Posner claims that Marina’s uncle was only a deputy sheriff in Russia. He said uncle had been a local bigwig in the MVD which was “just like the sheriff’s office.” Even I know better than that. In fact, as you know, Robert, the MVD was the ministry that ran the KGB. Did Posner expect anyone to believe that silly shit?
RTC: I know what you mean but of course he did. Another self-important hebe with the brains of a cockroach but a willing tool, Gregory, You don’t have to love them to use them after all.

GD: So the war fell through. Did Johnson get wet pants?

RTC: No, it never went that far. Still, it was a distraction but I always wince when I read the breathless expose in the Warren sludge.

GD: And there are so many theories.

RTC: Tell me about it, Gregory. Some we cooked up but mostly they are the work of the tiny of brain and the huge of ego. Oh yes, it was the mob, out to get Kennedy because of his brother’s attacks on them ordered by Joe, the ex-bootlegger. Listen, I know people in the Chicago mob and as much as they detested Kennedy, and they did get him elected by voting every cemetery early and often, they are far too smart to even try to kill a sitting president. We had the cooperation of the leadership of the FBI, who would have the lead in the investigation but the mob would not and if that ever got out, Hoover would have to clean their respective clocks for them. No, in spite of their hatred of him, they would never have done such a thing.

GD: And the Cuban anti-Castro people…

RTC: Yes, emotional enough and after they felt Kennedy had deserted them during the Bay of Pigs disaster, they had plenty of motive but no opportunity and emotional as they are, they would boast and Hoover’s men would have nailed them.

GD: And Lansky and the mob people who wanted to get back into the gambling business in Cuba.

RTC: The same. Meyer Lansky was a very smart man and the same I said about the Chicago mob would hold true for him and his boys. They wished Kennedy dead but let someone else do it.

GD: Yes, and Castro.

RTC: Castro is not a stupid man and even though it leaked out, on purpose of course, that we were trying to kill him, Castro did not have the connections to reverse the attacks on him. Like the mob and others, he was not sad to see Kennedy killed but had nothing to do with any real plotting. This sort of silly shit keeps the buffs all a twitter and with all of the books, seminars, tapes and so on, they keep anyone from digging too deeply into the realities of the dastardly deed. All the stories about mysterious tramps, men with umbrellas, men in the sewer, fake epileptics throwing convenient fits and so on are just smoke and mirrors. All the mob bosses, Cuban exiles, rich Texas oilmen, Richard Nixon and anyone else suggested either couldn’t or wouldn’t have tried to shoot Kennedy. You see, we had Hoover and the Johnson people in our camp. With these, we could shut off any inconvenient revelations at any time. And we have iron influence, let’s call it, with the major media so no worry there. We have various retrospective television programs, usually somewhere around November 22 each year that rehash all the idiot stories and I watch them with great humor. Beats ‘I Love Lucy’ for real humor.

GD: When you started this, was it solely to provide an excuse for nuking the Russians?

RTC: No, that was a sort of afterthought, Gregory. Angleton hated the Russians and he did know that the Kennedy people were in touch with the KGB and Khrushchev people so he went from there. You might say that Jim was the sparkplug on that engine, right along. I wouldn’t pay any attention to the conspiracy books, Gregory. You know better than that, don’t you?
GD: Yes, of course, but if I am going to write about it, I will have to know what others have said. And I can just hear the squealings if and when I do this.

RTC: Oh yes, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned or a tin-horned academic one-upped.

GD: That I agree with but the concept of one man, Jim Angleton, having the power to start a nuclear war is horrifying to me and I assume it will be to others. This is a manifestation of far too much power concentrated in too few hands. What kind of oversight was there? How many wars and assassinations were caused by someone’s upset stomach or throbbing piles? I said this Kennedy business is a microcosm of ill-advised plots and I hope you aren’t upset with me when I tell you that I am very glad it never happened. You sent me the German intercepts of the Roosevelt and Churchill talks over their secret lines and that smacks of the same thing. Personal spite, vaunting ambition and tens of thousands or millions die. Not good, Robert, not good at all.

RTC: If you ever walked in the corridors of power, Gregory, you would have a more realistic view. I don’t mind that you have occasional lapses into idealism but please don’t let it cloud your judgment.

GD: It’s a little like doing the breast stroke in a septic tank.

(Concluded at 10:21 AM CST)

Mr Cheney goes to Georgia
August 30, 2008

by Kaveh L Afrasiabi

Asia Times
 

United States Vice President Dick Cheney heads to Georgia next week, complementing the port visit of US warships delivering humanitarian assistance, most likely to pledge American military assistance to beleaguered Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who must now deal with Russia's recognition of the independence of the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

                Concerning the latter, in an opinion column in Financial Times, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has justified Moscow's move, citing "international precedents" and claiming that Russia has "reconciled itself to the loss" of 14 former Soviet republics [1]. Judging by how Moscow has tried to keep those republics under its sway one way or another, for example forcing Georgia to join the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in 1994, Medvedev's claim may be taken with a pinch of salt.

                Given Tbilisi's adamant rejection of South Ossetia's and Abkhazia's desire for independence and Saakashvili's vow to regain his country's full territorial integrity, the Georgian crisis is bound to linger for months, if not years, without resolution, particularly if the US continues to push for Georgia's inclusion into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

                Theoretically, with Germany dropping its opposition to Georgia's bid to join NATO, as it did at the recent NATO summit in Bucharest, nothing stands in the way of NATO's expansion to the South Caucasus, or Ukraine for that matter, also on Cheney's travel itinerary. There is, though, the geopolitical reality of a stern Russian reaction that could further complicate the now-frozen NATO-Russia relations, given Moscow's decision this week to suspend all cooperation with NATO, including planned joint exercises.

                Any aggressive push by NATO to induct Georgia at this critical hour would be nothing short of recklessness, since it would automatically throw NATO into direct conflict with Russia.

                The US under the George W Bush administration has however not been averse to military recklessness, which would explain its decision to send naval vessels to the war zone.

                The US-backed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline passes through Georgian territory and letting Russia dictate events in Georgia has a definite implication in terms of energy security, given the fierce pipeline geopolitics in the Eurasian landmass, Europe's heavy energy dependency on Russia and Moscow's willingness to rely on the energy card for security bargaining with Europe.

                This alone may explain why the European Union, which has been divided over a response to the Georgian crisis, has largely consented to the US's muscular reaction. The issue has now turned into a defining moment of the post-Cold War era because of its broader implications.

                From Russia's point of view, carving out Georgia into separate territories is the proper antidote to NATO's planned expansion, to offset the US's growing encroachment, and a clear warning to neighboring states, such as Azerbaijan and Ukraine, to refrain from cozying up to US or NATO.

                Russia is now devoting more energy to building up both the CIS network and the implementation of its collective security principle, and equally important, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which had a summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, this week (attended by Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad as an observer).

                Should the SCO, which comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, consent to Iran's quest for full membership, then Russia may reciprocate the US's unwanted encroachment into its backyard by gaining a foothold in the US's traditional turf, the oil-prized Persian Gulf, via Iran.

                With the Russians building a power plant in Bushehr in Iran and Russian oil and gas companies energetically involved in Iran's energy sector, the door has already been opened for a future security dimension to such a Russian presence in the Persian Gulf.

                In a worst-case scenario, should the US pile up the pressure on Moscow in the Caucasus (Ukraine has already expressed an interest in a US-installed anti-missile system), Moscow may resort to backing anti-NATO forces in the region, including the Taliban in Afghanistan.

                As Cheney heads to Georgia to pledge firm American support for the combative Tbilisi government, he and other White House officials may want to think twice before taking steps that could have such dire consequences. These include Moscow possibly substantially increasing its naval presence in the Black Sea.

                This fissure between Russia and the US throws into turmoil the future of Russia's cooperation with the West on such international issues as the nuclear program's of Iran and North Korea, as well as the future of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty agreement that expires in December 2009.

                The US's triumphalism prevents Washington policy-makers from properly gauging the numerous instances in which Russia could counteract the US's encroachment by taking advantage of US vulnerabilities, such as military overstretch and multiple and diversified foes.

                Cheney would also want to beware of not making over-commitments to Georgia that would tie the hands of next administration in the White House.

Note
                1. Medvedev told the SCO summit, "I told them about the real events [in South Ossetia] not the ones told by the Western media, which indicated a different culprit for the fierce battle." He also mentioned that "SCO has broadened the possibilities of observer states [such as Iran]. From now on, they can take part in the organization's activities and we may invite certain countries to the solution of certain important problems." Russia's envoy to SCO, Vitaly Vorobyov, has expressed a great deal of optimism about SCO's potential.

                Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.