The Slaughterhouse Informer

A Compendiium of Various Official Lies, Business Scandals, Small Murders, Frauds, and Other Gross Defects of Our Current Political, Business and Religious Moral Lepers.

Presenting a new magazine that contains material that is not found elsewhere and is very difficult to post on the Internet. The ‘Voice of the White House’ will appear in each issue containing material not found on TBR News for very obvious reasons.This publication will appear once a week, on Wednesday, every week, will be ten pages in length and is available by subscription only. The price is $5.00 a month and can be paid via PayPal or by check, sent to ‘Morris Productions, 1350 E. New Yort St. Ste A2-190, Aurora, Il 60504.’ If you don’t like it, and Bush supporters can read the Drudge Report for free, you can cancel at any time.

The Voice of the White House

 (Reprinted from the Slaughterhouse Informer with permission. Ed)          

                Washington, D.C., October 14, 2008: “It doesn’t take a Rhodes scholar to realize that we are living in an era of tighter and tighter governmental control of the public. The Bush Administration has deliberately embarked on a course of greatly heightened surveillance, or potential surveillance, of a public that might, at some future point, wish to physically become in open rebellion against governmental institutions. In this study, I am going to consider one aspect of this control: The influence of the American military over the American press and other forms of media

                As a legacy of the Vietnam War, the politicized U.S. military of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries became ever more deeply engaged in "perception management." Convinced that hostile reporters harmed the war effort in Southeast Asia, buoyed by favorable public reaction to its domination of the press during the First Gulf War, and capitalizing on the media's own negative public image, the armed forces has come to regard the media and information more generally as something to be manipulated for the military's own purposes.

                The current American military has devoted enormous energy to learning how to manipulate the media. As a measure of how far the armed forces are willing to go, consider the following 1993 statement by a military instructor: "Learning to deal with reporters is just as important as learning to kill the enemy." "Spin control" was critical as well. An Army instructor, for instance, insisted that soldiers tell not just any story, but a "positive Army story."

The Army, in particular, aggressively has sought to maintain spin control. It imposed, for example, the so-called "Ricks rule" in 1996 to counter frank, but politically incorrect, comments by its troops in Bosnia. Ultimately, discouraging candor proved to be counterproductive. A participant in a 1996 Army survey glumly reported that "telling the truth ends careers quicker than making stupid mistakes or getting caught doing something wrong." Ironically, the Army's success at suppressing the media during the First Gulf War planted the seed of its own demise. With the public uneducated about the Army's capabilities, the Army was reduced to only four active divisions and followed the Air Force into disestablishment in early 2007.

Not surprising, the Defense Department, which tends to lead agencies in adopting new technologies and management techniques, has leapt boots first into blogging. The department allows soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to blog as long as they don't include sensitive or classified information in their posts. In October 2006, Defense formed its New Media office, to explore collaborative tools with government-friendly blogs or outright controlled outlets. The push to experiment came from the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, which says the department operates in a 24-7 new media environment.

Defense officials have found that blogs, along with wikis and social networks, promote collaboration better than traditional communication methods such as e-mail.

"If you have one location, and people can add or exchange comments, it creates more active, viable collaboration ability," says Roxie Merritt, Defense's director of new media. "It's more efficient, faster and more in-depth. With the advent of text messages and all the rest, e-mail is becoming obsolete."

When Defense assembled the new media team, officials first considered creating a blog, but then decided to rely on the network of bloggers who already were writing about Defense operations, including Doc in the Box, The Long War Journal and Andrew Lubin's The Military Observer. The office began including the bloggers in discussions about operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, veterans health care and other military issues, similar to the way the department talks with the media - setting up conference calls with traditional bloggers and top Defense officials. The access helps bloggers write about the topics in-depth and gives the department more opportunities to get its perspective out on the Web.

Defense hosted its first roundtable for bloggers in February 2007, with Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, then-head of communications for the Multi-National Force - Iraq. Caldwell, who is now commander of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., discussed how smuggled explosive devices and other weapons going from Iran to Iraq had increased casualties.

The department also posts videos of news briefings, speeches and combat footage on its Web site and YouTube.

                We also have the example of The Lincoln Group (formerly known as Iraqex) that is a Washington, D.C. contractor with operations in Iraq hired by the United States military to perform public relations. They operate from the Green Zone at Sector 222, 34th St, Bldg 5 Karatet Mariam, Baghdad, Iraq and 1130 17th St. NW Suite 400 Washington, DC. On November 30, 2005, the Los Angeles Times revealed that the company had been paying for news stories in Iraqi newspapers. Prior to that report, Lincoln Group of Washington, DC was awarded an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract, with a potential maximum value of $100,000,000, for media approach planning, prototype product development, commercial quality product development, product distribution and dissemination, and media effects analysis for the Joint Psychological Operations Support element and other government agencies.

                Their  work is performed CONUS and OCONUS and task orders may be issued from June 7, 2005 - June 6, 2010. This contract was awarded on a competitive basis pursuant to FAR 6.102. The contract number is H92222-05-D-1010.”

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2008, Issue No. 100
October 16, 2008

 NATO ENLARGEMENT, AND MORE FROM CRS

                Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public include the following (all pdf).

                U.S. Nuclear Cooperation With India: Issues for Congress, updated October 2, 2008.

                Iraq's Debt Relief: Procedure and Potential Implications for International Debt Relief, updated October 2, 2008.

                NATO Enlargement: Albania, Croatia, and Possible Future Candidates, October 6, 2008.

                Navy DDG-1000 Destroyer Program: Background, Oversight Issues, and Options for Congress, updated October 9, 2008.

                Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress, updated October 2, 2008.

                Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler Aircraft: Background and Issues for Congress, updated October 2, 2008.

                Direct Overt U.S. Aid, Export Assistance and Military Reimbursements to Pakistan, FY2002-FY2009, updated October 16, 2008.


AIR FORCE ON DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPON SAFETY

                A new U.S. Air Force Instruction (pdf) establishes a safety program for directed energy weapons (DEW) in view of the fact that "DEW systems create unique hazards that are different from conventional and nuclear weapons."

                "Potential DEW systems covered by this instruction include, but are not limited to, high-energy lasers, weaponized microwave and millimeter wave beams, explosive-driven electromagnetic pulse devices, acoustic weapons, laser induced plasma channel systems, non-lethal directed energy devices, and atomic-scale and subatomic particle beam weapons."

                See Air Force Instruction 91-401, Directed Energy Weapon Safety, September 29, 2008.


AIR FORCE ROLE IN NUCLEAR WEAPON MANAGEMENT

                Another new U.S. Air Force Instruction (pdf) describes the Air Force role in joint DoD-DOE nuclear weapons development, production, refurbishment, and retirement activities.

                "Although the DoD and DOE co-manage nuclear weapons through all system life cycle phases, each has specific responsibilities," the Instruction explains.

                "The DOE through the NNSA is responsible for designing, developing, building, sustaining, and dismantling all nuclear warheads. The DoD through the service component is responsible for developing the requirements and specifications for nuclear warhead operational characteristics; the environments in which the warhead must perform or remain safe; the determination of design acceptability; and the military requirements for warhead quantities."

                See Joint Air Force-National Nuclear Security Administration (AF-NNSA) Nuclear Weapons Life Cycle Management, AF Instruction 63-103, September 24, 2008.


FOIA POLICY IN THE OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

                A newly revised Pentagon instruction (pdf) updates Freedom of Information Act policy regarding requests submitted to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

                "A classified document containing unclassified information may not be denied in total under exemption 1 [of the Freedom of Information Act, which exempts properly classified information] unless the unclassified information, when taken in aggregate, would reveal classified information."

                Furthermore, the instruction says, "It is OSD policy that OSD and JS Components shall promote the public trust by making the maximum amount of information available to the public on the operation and activities of the Department of Defense, consistent with the Department's responsibility to ensure national security."

                See Office of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Staff (JS) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Program, Administrative Instruction No. 108,  September 29, 2008.

Conversations with the Crow: Part 36

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, February 11, 1997

Commenced: 9:05 AM CST

Concluded: 9:42 AM CST

RTC: Why, Gregory, so soon after our last conversation? We’ll have to be careful or Emily might get jealous. Do you have something new for me to chew on?

GD: No, I’ve been working on the latest Mueller book and I’m about worked out for the rest of the day. Writing is not hard, Robert, but the research is a killer. Still, if you don’t want the rat-faced gits in your old agency or Wolfe’s decaying Hebrews braying at you like a barn full of donkeys in a fire, you have to dot every I and cross every T. Not that these chinless wonders are capable of finding errors but eventually someone might and then the jackass chorus begins. No, Corson told me my strong suit was my research and my stronger one was taking the results of it and making it readable without being a pompous, opinionated university pedant. When I worked for Army Intelligence years ago, I was well-known for my research. Of course, the whole office hated me.

RTC: And why so?

GD: Actually, because I worked on my material until I had finished, even if I had to spend the night in the office. I was known to have slept on my desk and subsisted on coffee. But the work got done and, most important, it got done right. And I never tried to shove my own views down anyone’s throat. I liked then, as I like now, to present both sides of an issue, clearly and without passion, letting the reader make up their own mind.

RTC: Very, very rare, talent, Gregory. Bill commented on this once and I would have to agree. Well, who do you work for now? This seems to be in your blood.

GD: Myself. I am a wonderful boss, Robert, really inspired and so kind to myself.

RTC: Do you treat yourself well at Christmas?

GD: Oh yes, Christmas. I haven’t had a Christmas card for years and not a present from anyone. It’s just another day for me and quieter than most.

RTC: I would invite you to have Christmas with us but my son would be unhappy.

GD: Well, thank you for the thought.

RTC: And how is the Mueller book coming?

GD: Fine, and the blow-flies from your former agency are starting to buzz around again. Let’s see how much I can clip them for this time.

RTC: Well, I suppose if they can’t be more creative, they have to pay the price.

GD: No, they would never come right out and try to communicate with me. Why, the Gods do not deign to descend to earth to speak with mere mortals. And they pay the price, too. After all, they don’t care how much of the taxpayer’s money ends up in my pocket. What about the fool returning to his own folly? Or the dog to his own vomit? At least they don’t descend to the petty and sadistic harassments that we find in the local police.

RTC: I would hope not.

GD: That puts me in mind of a sordid but highly entertaining incident in my earlier life. Most people remember Thanksgivings’ with the grandparents or their first experience in the cramped backseat of the family car but I recall more entertaining things.

RTC: Are you planning to enlighten me? This has nothing to do with the Company, has it? You’re rather negative today, Gregory.

GD: I’m negative all the time. No, nothing to do with your people. Just an example of how to deal with illegally intrusive agencies. I was living in a rural area once and in a nearby town was a friend of mine. He was a gun collector. He actually collected Swiss Lugers.

RTC: German?

GD: No, Swiss. Beautifully made pieces.

RTC: I can well imagine. Go on.

GD: Anyway, he collected these and people knew about this. I want to stress that they were quite legal. The local sheriff’s people somehow got wind of this and began to harass him. I think they just wanted to frighten him and steal his collection. The police love to do things like that. When I was younger, I knew one cop who liked to take war relics like Japanese swords away from kids because he said they were illegal, which they were not. I fixed his wagon good but this is not the forum for that one. So he had vague and sinister threats like, ‘You could to prison for years…’ and so on. He told me about this harassment. He had no money and it was a rural area where there are no real lawyers to intervene so I gave the matter a lot of thought and finally hit on a plan to rid himself of the swine. Not nice but it worked.

RTC: Yes. What did you do? Shoot someone?

GD: Oh God no. Someone else did.

RTC: This is beginning to sound rather ugly.

GD: It does get that way. First off, I told him to hide the guns, the Lugers, away from his home and I gave him some suggestions. He did but he hated to lose physical control of them. Now you know, in the rural area in his county was a junk yard that was run by an old nut. He was convinced that the Communists were taking over the local schools and kept getting up at local governmental meetings and bitching about this. And, of course, sent long misspelled letters to the local paper. I didn’t know him personally but I knew, or found out, a lot about him. He shot the neighborhood dogs and cats and was, in my estimation at least, a perfect foil. My friend now had no weapons, legal or otherwise, in his physical possession. So I got the name of the chief of detectives that was hoping to add some nice pieces to his personal gun collection and I called him at home. They wouldn’t have a trace on his line then. I told him a good deal of really accurate information to establish my bonifides and then said that he also had two German machine pistols, which I went into some detail on and that he had hidden them with the owner of the junkyard who, I knew, was also a gun collector. This one was not very smart and he bought the whole cake. I waited a few days and then called the junk dealer. I told him I was on the local sheriff’s staff and we knew a gang of armed Communists were going to come out to his place and kill him.

RTC: Oh sweet Jesus, you didn’t? No, you did. Go on but I know the ending.

GD: Naturally. One dark night, two cars full of deputies, all heavily armed with guns and shovels, drove down his lane, lights out. The junkyard dogs started barking and the old man was ready. The one I talked to, kicked down his door and the old man let fly with a 12 gauge shotgun, full choke, pointblank range, both barrels, right in the face. Down went the greedy one with no head left. Reload and the one behind got both barrels in the tum-tum. Another one got it in the leg and they later had to cut if off above the knee. Screaming, shouting, guns going off all over the place, screams from the junkyard as the vicious dogs munched on deputies. My God, Robert, the neighbors said it sounded like the battle of Cold Harbor. Some deputy had a Truflight 37 millimeter flare gun and he got winged and let fly up in the air. That’s the sort of tear gas gun that is really designed to set fire to buildings. A little tear gas for effect and a lot of incendiary material. The Feds used that in LA to nail the SLA. ‘Oh, gosh,’ they say after they burned down a house with fifteen people in it,’ someone must have knocked over a candle in there.’ So one of these shells went up and came down on a neighbor’s house. Set it on fire and by the time the rural fire boys managed to get out there, it had burnt to the ground with a wheel-chair bound granny inside. Of course they finally killed the old man and all of his dogs and his place burnt down with two of the law roasted along with the old man. You could see the flames for miles. The next day, the remaining law-breakers were out there, picking through the smoking rubble and digging in the junkyard in a frantic search for the guns. Of course there weren’t any guns. And as a precaution, I had told my friend to absent himself from the area and visit friends. Of course they came after him but he was 500 miles away and had been there before, during and after the carnage. And now the really nice part. The old man’s son was a prominent lawyer in another state and I called him up, telling him I was a horrified local policeman. He had no idea what had happened so I said they had killed his father and burned his house down because he was making trouble for them. That lawyer went ballistic, as they say, and believed every word I said. And when he descended on the town, along with the FBI, I would like to have been in the civic offices. Of course I wasn’t because I am not stupid but there were copious newspaper accounts and local gossip. I know there were several closed coffins at various funerals in the weeks to come. And huge lawsuits, Federal charges and so on followed. The local law could give no reason why they raided the place other than to claim some informant had phoned in a tip. Who was this informant? No idea. The lawyer got big money in the end, people were arrested and many new faces were seen in the much subdued sheriff’s office. And I had my friend contact the son and tell him a story and tell him he was terrified for his life. The lawyer used his testimony and, good for him, paid for my friend’s exit from the area and his comfortable establishment under a new name elsewhere.

RTC: Probably got him under Witness Protection. That’s quite a story, Gregory, but I believe it. Your friend kept his guns?

GD: That was the drill, Robert, he kept his guns. There never were any machine guns of course. I moved away out of prudence about this time so I can’t tell you any more.

RTC: Take care of your friends, Gregory, don’t you?

GD: Always, Robert. And I take care of the bad people as well. Does this turn you off?
RTC: Not really. I see a typical abuse of power there, Gregory and I’m really so happy we seem to get on with each other.

GD: Now he could just have moved away but why should he have to do that? They were wrong and that’s the end of the matter.

RTC: I told Bill once that you should have worked for us.

GD: No, I would not have. I am happy when I work by myself and I would not do well in a bureaucracy. They aren’t overly bright and they love to tell you why you can’t do this or that. The point is, Robert, that you win the real battle, not the paper one.

(Concluded at 9:42 AM CST)

The Crowley Papers

            Among the papers of Robert Crowley are a number of high-level CIA directives. One, rather long but very detailed one, tells how to murder people without detection and there are others of a similar theme.  One of the most fascinating items is a completed manuscript by Crowley concerning the military, political and, most important, the intelligence chronicles of the war in Vietnam from 1945 through 1975. We will start serializing this here when the Conversations section is concluded. Here is a relatively harmless one that tells agents how to harass their enemies with a view to causing them to change sides. BH

The Methodology of Psychological Warfare(PSYWAR)

DEFINITION

                1.The strength of any enemy (foreign or domestic, political or military) consists largely of those individuals who occupy key positions in the enemy organization, as leaders, speakers, writers, organizers, cabinet members, senior government officials, army commanders and staff officers, and so forth. Any effort to defeat the enemy must therefore concentrate to a great extent upon these key enemy individuals.

                2. If such an effort is made by means short of physical violence, we call it “psychological warfare”. If it is focused less upon convincing those individuals by logical reasoning, but primarily upon moving them in the desired direction by means of harassment, by frightening, confusing and misleading them, we speak of ‘nerve war’. Such a nerve war can be waged against an entire nation of against major groups of the population. In this study, we shall discuss only nerve war against individuals, that is, against key personalities in the enemy camp.

SELECTION OF TARGETS

                3. In order to make the most effective effort, it is necessary to select only a limited number of enemy personalities as targets. Effective nerve war involves, in most cases, a considerable amount of effort; concentrate this, therefore, exclusively on persons who are specifically important to the enemy or, conversely, a real danger to your side, i.e.,. as persuasive speakers or successful organizers who may penetrate your own side). It is important not to target more individuals than can be effectively dealt with. Should there exist more key enemy personalities than you can attack simultaneously, it is necessary to prioritize them, dealing with the first group on the list first and then add further targets on the primary list when and as indicated and only after you have dealt with the primary list targets.

                4. It is not necessary to select targets according to their official ranks and titles but according to their real importance as individuals. For instance, in a political party, the chairman is not always the most important personality just as the mayor might not always be the most important individual in a municipal government. Always target the individual who has the greatest influence upon his colleagues and his followers, the party with the greatest intelligence who is the most specifically devoted to the enemy cause or who is the most accomplished speaker, organizer or writer.

                5. Targets ought to be selected according to the ability to attack them.One must assume that the enemy leader is possessed of a strong personality, is heavily guarded and an object of respect and affection so he is not to be considered as a prime target. In point of fact, personal attacks or manipulations against him might well prove to be counter-effective because they are more than certain to enrage his supporters. But consider that while the leader might be unassailable,

-Page 2-

his closest associates are not and if he is deprived of their services, this in and of itself might prove to be a very effective attack.

                6. Once a target has been selected, it will be necessary to gather as much personal information about him as possible. Among this information should be their political or ideological views and most especially possible points of difference between him and his party, government etc. Also not possible changes of his direction in the past, his personal habits, his personal life. In these areas, points of vulnerability or secrets, the revelation of which might destroy or cripple his effectiveness as a leader. Political, fiscal and sexual failings must be exploited. It is also important to learn who his enemies, declared and covert, are and to discover any differences in his relationship with family members and close personal friends. The more complete the profile you can assemble on your target, the greater chances of your success will be.

PURPOSE

                7. Although it might not be possible to do so, the optimum objective would be to bring your opponent over to your side. For instance, a fanatical person is very difficult to appeal to. And many potential converts might be ill-advised to court because of serious flaws in their backgrounds that would discredit them in the eyes of others. Everything depends on a multiplicity of factors which must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

                8. In such a case, where a potential convert has too much negativity in their background, it is expedient that one destroy this individual’s use to the enemy. Not, it is pointed out, by killing them but to force the subject to leave the enemy, but not to join your side, for example to force them to abandon all public activity or to emigrate. In order that the enemy not kill the subject, you can lure him out of harms way by giving him a counterfeit order from a superior, ordering him to go to a safer, distant location.

TECHNIQUES

            9.  The methodology you should, or should not, use to achieve the objective described above will, of course, vary according to whether you wish to either recruit the subject or destroy his usefulness to the enemy. Also, methods will differ according to the area in which you are operating as well as the circumstances extant there at the time of your undertaking. Finally, a great deal will depend upon the individual whom you have targeted.. Please do not consider, therefore, the following postulations as a poured-in-concrete dictum that must be applied in all cases. Flexibility is always the keynote in dealing with each individual and set of circumstances. Creativity is a great asset in all such matters.

            10.  One of the most effective methods of effecting a change of sides in your target, is to convince them that his leaders have serious, or even fatal, plans against him or his political group.[ Josef Fouché used this method with brilliant success in toppling Robespierre during the French Revolution] As a possible scenario, if your subject is a retired military officer, you ought to convince him that the party in power plans to purge all such officers but that your side can not only save them but help them prosper. As another example, should you be aware of a past legal offense of which the subject is guilty, such as embezzlement of public funds, you ought to convince him that his fellow workers are in the process of assembling evidence against him for prosecution in order to avoid guilt by association.

                11. Should you wish to destroy a subject, direct your efforts not at him personally but at his colleagues or his superiors; supply these entities, in an untraceable method,  with material, genuine or forged, that the subject is a traitor, is planning a putsch against them, is in correspondence with their enemies or alert them that his actions, genuine or contrived, will, should they become known to their enemies, cause them great embarrassment and supply these enemies ammunition to topple them from office. The obvious result of their acceptance of these false but plausible charges will be for them to rid themselves of a possible menace.

            12. The most proven and effective technique one can utilize in such matters are the instituting of misleading rumors, anonymous letters or telephone calls as well as visible symbols such as graffiti, leaflets or misleading conversations with others in public places Another visible symbol could be threatening objects such as a coffin or a hangman’s noose at the subject’s home of, again, painting threstening signs on or near his property, such as: “This man is a spy,” or “You have only 5 more days to live.” One can also send the subject a fake bomb such as an alarm clock with a note saying that this is the final warning . As far as telephone calls are concerned, it is suggested that telephone calls ought to be made in the very early hours of the day, between one and four AM when a listener’s psychological resistance is generally at its lowest point. .Making death treats to members of the subject’s family, especially wives or small children, can be very effective.

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13. It is always important to consider your subject’s psychological vulnerability. For example, if he is in the midst of a festive birthday celebration, he could receive a telephone call intimating an imminent major party purge, the sudden sharp descent from his abnormally elevated psychological mood can create great depression and disorientation. Further, if he gets such a message when he is depressed, whether from political, family, business or other reasons, the psychological blow will fall even harder on him than normally. All of this presupposes that you have a close observation of the subject, his circumstance and the tenor of his political and personal life.

14. If your subject should suddenly be praised by his enemies, this will engender great suspicions in his fellows. For example, if the subject makes a violent political speech and the opposition praises him for his moderation and differentiates him as better or more reasonable than his colleagues or is easier to approach than the others, this will serve to embarrass him as well as sow seeds of dissention and doubt amongst his co-workers, especially if he belongs to a political movement that is characterized by great inner distrust and an inbred fear of any deviatiationism.  This perception could be achieved by writing such a subject a letter from a friendly source outside the country that is inherently hostile to his government or party. If it is ascertained that such a foreign letter would be subject to censorship, its contents would be guaranteed to reach others and to his detriment.

15, If local conditions permit, it is possible to denounce a subject to competent authority for any invented violation of the law. His guilt or innocence is of no concern; only that the charges are believed and acted upon.. It is possible that an apparently inconsequential breach of the law could have unexpected consequences for the subject. For an example, if you can ascertain that the subject had a secret meeting with another, he could be denounced to the local police for the commission of a gross sexual act in, let us say, a car or in a park, Cohabitation with minor children is far better than the same act committed with an aduklt and willing prostitute. If the subject is arrested or otherwise brought before the authorities to answer the accusation, he will find himself in the very awkward and often impossible position of trying to prove where he was and what he was doing there.

                16. If your intent is to force the subject to leave his position or his party, one way of achieving this is to spread false rumors to his wife, his parents or other relatives or close friends who might have influence with him. It could be said that the subject was going to be sent out of the country for indoctrination and under circumstances where beautiful women would be readily available to service his sexual needs. The point here would be to so upset his wife, for example, that she would pressure him to leave his position or his political party,

                17. It might prove of value to supply forged documents in your campaign. As an example, one could mail to the subject, an official-appearing summons, on the correct stationary, ordering him to appear at a future date before the political authorities to explain, for instance, his possible connections with foreign intelligence agents or similar negative entities. He then might be energized, and sufficiently alarmed, to flee before facing a kangaroo court, To accomplish this, it is necessary to have access to official stationary and official stamps.

                18. Whichever method is chosen among those herein suggested, it will be absolutely imperative to relentlessly pursue your subject and very methodically until he is worn down psychologically or, conversely, it is apparent that further attempts to subvert the subject will prove to be unsuccessful. Remember that repetition is one of the strongest devices in propaganda and the cumulative effect of various means increase with every additional step you take.

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It is vital that you do not give the subject any time to recover from the various attacks you launch on him and also very important to have others attacking him at the same time but from different directions.

                19. It is imperative that in your actions, you do not expose yourself, not only to protect yourself from exposure and any counter measures but also because the attacks should always be seen to have originated from an invisible, mysterious and powerful sources. Spreading rumors in public places with anonymous listeners is very effective for the ripples will be certain to spread and will then come to the attention of others from many and diverse sources, lending strength to the image of an all-powerful and all-seeing enemy, Do not write anonymous letter yourself but get others to do so and never mail them from an address that could be connected to your person, Any telephone calls should be made from remote public phones and these phones must never be reused for anonymous calls to anyone else.

The Collapse of America’s Banking and Credit

The $55 trillion question
October 17, 2008

By Pepe Escobar

Asia Times

                WASHINGTON - Before this - thankfully - last United States presidential debate, Republican candidate Senator John McCain had promised "I'll whip [Barack] Obama's you-know-what". Well, he whipped nothing. He told Americans he was not President George W Bush. And then he presented himself as Joe the Plumber - a new working class heir to vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Joe Six-Pack. And then he got "hurting and angry". And then he lost the plot. Independent voters duly took note - and awarded one more debate to Obama. Three to none. Game virtually over.

                Obama - always cool and calculating, carefully hedging his bets - still refuses to stare America in the face and admit that the real economy will tank, and the resulting mass unemployment will be proportionally as devastating as during the 1930s.

                Both McCain and Obama remain prisoners of the neo-liberal Washington Consensus. Obama's top economic advisor is Austan Goolsbee, a Friedmanite from the University of Chicago, not exactly someone capable of reasoning outside of the golden Goldman Sachs box.

                But the whole scenario gets more dangerous. As McCain inexorably implodes, an extremely angry Republican party in most of its strands rears its ugly head - the extraordinary levels of hate at recent McCain-Palin rallies are just the tip of the iceberg. This correspondent has seen the mob become really brown-shirt scary, brandishing "Obama bin Lyin" placards or yelling "Kill him!" In the official Republican website in Sacramento, California, there was even a direct link between Obama and Osama bin Laden - with an explicit call to "Waterboard Barack Obama" (it was finally pulled out by Republican leaders).

                Meanwhile, not insignificant hordes of sensible Republicans are in desertion mode, appalled by the shenanigans of the mooseburger-eating creationist from Alaska. As the real economy on ground level is bound to get much worse before election day, that will only add more fuel to Republican fire, something that happens to turn off independent and undecided voters in droves. All conditions are in place for an Obama landslide.

                Obama is leading in Ohio, as in virtually any swing state except Indiana, according to Real Clear Politics polls. This is due a great deal to the Obama campaign's formidable ground game. According to Democratic operative Josh Lyman, the Obama headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, a mega-church with a basement the size of a supermarket, is staffed by no less than 600 hyperactive tech youths. So it may all translate into an Obama landslide. And then what?

Requiem for a revolution

                It is now funeral rites time for the Reagan Revolution - the rich gumbo of the moneyed northeast mixed with southern New Puritans finally crashing with massive indigestion, leaving in its wake legions of indebted-to-death, flat-waged-to-death Americans.

                But will it be funeral rites time for domestic, legalized corporate crime (a majority of US corporations don't even pay any income taxes) and diversionary wars of choice in the Middle East-Central Asia "arc of instability"?

                The Reagan Revolution spawned al-Qaeda, which spawned blowback, which spawned serial, over-inflated Pentagon budgets. American taxpayers have shelled out over $1 trillion to fight elusive "terrorists" - money for nothing. It's impossible not to be reminded of one Bin Laden a few days before the 2004 presidential election, asserting in his "Message to the American people" video that al-Qaeda's strategy was to bleed the empire to bankruptcy. It has been a slo-mo 9/11 for over seven years now - with the 2008 financial crisis as the icing on the gory cake.

                Will it be the end of serial bubbles, which handsomely profited no more than the wealthiest 3 million Americans (the real Masters of the Universe, now controlling 20% of the country's wealth, and buying every congressman in sight) - while the average wage of the average US worker is lower now than in 1973?

                Neither Obama nor McCain is admitting that the US remains below average as an industrialized nation in a whole range of indicators. Obama has said so, but McCain is not answering whether the budget for US higher education will increase. Neither is answering whether the American gulag of 2 million incarcerated citizens will be shrunk. Neither is flatly admitting the US government must regulate a series of key industries and competently provide services.

                Both prisoners of the "war on terror" framework, neither admits that rampant, worldwide hardcore militarization is not the answer, compared to better diplomacy and better investigative teams proficient in foreign languages. Under the sketched, unadventurous Obama doctrine, the Bush doctrine's Iraq war has softly migrated from nation-building to "realist" stabilization.

Drowning in numbers

                And then there are the "invisible" crisis numbers. The CDS market - the market for credit default swaps invented by McCain's economic adviser Phil Gramm in 2000 (via the Commodities Future Modernization Act) - is now worth no less than a staggering $62 trillion. It was "only" $900 billion in 2000. This Wall Street speculation racket is now an astonishing five times the size of all the holdings in the New York Stock Exchange.

                Nobody knows what will happen to it - a leftover from the fall of Lehman Brothers. And no one is even starting to talk about the $1 trillion black hole of credit-card debt which may well swallow two remaining US bank giants, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America.

                The now indispensable Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who predicted the financial crisis way back in 2006, is adamant: this will be the worst US recession in 40 years, lasting as long as 24 months, with unemployment reaching 9% and depressed home prices falling another 15%.

                Roubini stresses, "The US government will need to double its purchase of bank stakes and force lenders to eliminate dividends to save them from bankruptcy." And forget about a market rally. "The stock market is going to stop rallying soon enough when they see the economy is really tanking right now."

As for total credit losses from the subprime mortgage market meltdown, they will be "closer to $3 trillion", up from his initial estimate of $1 trillion to $2 trillion. Last week, the (discredited) International Monetary Fund said it would be $1.4 trillion. The IMF is now warning of imminent "systemic meltdown".

                And that's nothing compared to warnings from former Comptroller General David Walker - the head of the US government's accountability office for 10 years. Walker told talk show host Bill Maher "both these guys that are running right now will only make it worse. The bottom line is both of their proposals will make our debts and our deficits worse."

                Maher and Walker joked that the debt clock in New York has run out of digits. According to Walker, "The number that they were showing was over $10 trillion. We got over $40 trillion more off the balance sheet. This country is in a $55 trillion hole. That's $480,000 per household [compare it to median household income in America, which is less than $50,000 a year]. That's the number we need to be focusing on. It goes up by $2 to $3 trillion a year even with a balanced budget." And all this on top of urgent, necessary reforms of social security, the health care system, and the tax system.

Gimme an insurrection

                In Western Europe, there are already rumblings of "a new revolution" - the cultured classes talking about an insurrection of the analog against the virtual, of re-establishing the link between money and value. Conceptually, America is not that far advanced. But all the conditions seem to be in place at least for Obama to ditch the "war on terror" - and launch a war on poverty. Will he have the balls - and the means - for it?

                Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

The Charmed Lives of the Crony Capitalists

How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

by Pam Martens 

counterpunch

In 1897, when 8-year old Virginia O’Hanlon posed her Santa Claus query to the New York Sun, she received a heart-warming editorial response reassuring her that “He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist….”

                Today, we hand our 8 year olds a $13 trillion national debt while our Congress hands Wall Street banksters the national purse without so much as a hearing to determine the cause of the debt collapse.  Worse still, the money is doled out to the very same individuals who leveraged their institutions to casino status.

                Americans are correctly outraged at the spectacle of U.S. crony capitalism crashing stock and bond markets around the globe while simultaneously  watching the poster boys of crony capitalism on Monday, October 13, 2008  march up the granite steps of the United States Treasury building in their Armani shoes and heist a fresh $125 Billion of taxpayer dough in broad daylight. 

                The U.S. Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson’s, $700 billion bailout plan to buy up distressed mortgage assets has spun off its own $250 billion subsidiary plan (skipping that pesky detail called taxation with representation) to inject $125 billion in equity capital into 9 of the biggest commercial and investment banks in the country.  Another $125 billion may possibly go to smaller regional banks and thrifts, assuming they will sign on to the deal.

                And what will taxpayers get for their investment in these financial firms whose stock prices are getting hammered as the public recoils in revulsion at what they have done to our financial system?  The taxpayers, who were not invited to send their own legal representative to the negotiating table, will receive a paltry 5% dividend, exactly half of what Warren Buffett received for his recent investment in General Electric, a company that actually makes something real, like jet engines and light bulbs.

                Now we learn from the U.S. Treasury web site that it has hired the law firm of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett to represent our taxpayer interests going forward at a cost to us of $300,000 for six months work. But we’re not allowed to know their hourly wages; that information has been blacked out on the Treasury’s contract.  Curiously, the Treasury has named in its contract the specific lawyers it wants to work for us.  Two of those are Lee A. Meyerson and David Eisenberg.  Mr. Meyerson has been a central player in facilitating the bank consolidations that have led to the present train wreck, including building JPMorgan Chase from the body parts of Chemical Bank, Chase Manhattan and Bank One.

                Mr. Eisenberg has played a central role in the proliferation of the credit derivatives blowing up on the books of the Frankenbanks created by Mr. Meyerson.  Here’s what the Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett web site says about its relationships and Mr. Eisenberg’s work

“The Firm’s practice benefits from established relationships with all of the major investment banks…Mr. Eisenberg is responsible for creating the asset-backed practice at the firm and has represented clients involved in the structuring of the first asset-backed commercial paper program, the first public offering of credit card-backed securities by a bank and the first offering of asset-backed securities supported by dealer floor plan loans…Mr. Eisenberg represents JPMorgan Chase Bank, as issuer, in its ongoing program of public offerings of its credit card receivables backed notes. In addition Mr. Eisenberg represented JPMorgan Chase Bank in connection with the issuance of notes backed by commercial loans and in connection with its offerings of Leveraged Notes for Credit Exposure, a credit derivative product.  Mr. Eisenberg has also represented underwriters, issuers and sponsors of modeled index catastrophe bonds.  Mr. Eisenberg has represented sellers and buyers of credit protection in connection with synthetic securitizations of consumer loans, commercial loans and high yield bonds.”

                This is an unconscionable conflict of interest given that JPMorgan Chase is receiving $25 billion of taxpayer funds under this bailout and that the program is very likely to be buying the very toxic waste for which Mr. Eisenberg wrote legal opinions and assisted in proliferating.

                What most Americans do not understand, because mainstream media rarely explains it, is the incestuous relationship between the U.S. Treasury and this small band of financial marauders who busted the entire financial system with insane levels of leveraged derivative bets.

                The bulk of the $125 billion will be dispersed among Uncle Sam’s own brokers, or in street parlance, Primary Dealers. Primary dealers are those financial firms anointed by the Federal Reserve to participate in the Fed’s open market activities and are required to participate to a significant degree in buying up Treasury securities at every Treasury auction.  In other words, without these firms, the U.S. Government would have no means of financing its own funding needs. 

                Treasury, therefore, has an obvious conflict of interest in keeping these firms alive, even when they are the walking dead. Here’s how much of the $125 Billion the Fed’s Primary Dealers will collect: Citigroup, $25 Billion; JPMorgan Chase & Co., $25 Billion; Bank of America and its soon to be acquired brokerage, Merrill Lynch, $25 Billion; Goldman Sachs, $10 Billion; Morgan Stanley, $10 Billion.  In other words, of the first $125 billion outlay from the emergency bailout fund, 76% is going to shore up Uncle Sam’s brokers and $300,000 is going to retain one of Wall Street’s favorite law firms.

                In 1988 there were 46 primary dealers.  That number had shrunk to 30 by 1999.  In June 2008 there were 20, in no small part as a result of the mergers facilitated by Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett.   In rapid succession since July, three more have disappeared from bad bets: Countrywide Securities (shotgun marriage with Bank of America); Lehman Brothers, bankrupt; Bear, Stearns (shotgun marriage with J.P. Morgan Securities). That currently leaves 17 and that number will drop to 16 when Merrill Lynch is folded into Bank of America. (The rest of the 16 primary dealers that are not getting part of the $125 billion are foreign banks.)

                In addition to the repeal of the depression era, investor protection legislation known as the Glass Steagall Act, the removal of credit default swaps from regulation by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, various U.S. Supreme Court decisions upholding Wall Street’s ability to run its own private justice system shrouded in darkness, there was one more key regulatory change that greased the tracks of this train wreck. On January 22, 1992 the Federal Reserve announced that its New York region would “discontinue the ‘dealer surveillance’ now exercised over Primary Dealers through the monitoring of specific Federal Reserve standards and through regular on-site inspection visits by Federal Reserve dealer surveillance staff.”

                In other words, as bank consolidation left the country with fewer and fewer Primary Dealers and more and more “too big to fail candidates,” instead of beefing up surveillance, the Federal Reserve amazingly dropped inspections. Who was at the helm of the Federal Reserve when this nutty decision was made: the same man who lobbied for the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act that ushered in the merger of depositor banks with casino investment banks and brokerages; the same man who lobbied for the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 to allow for unregulated derivatives markets. The man, of course, is Alan Greenspan who served a breathtaking 19 years as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.  That, by the way, is the approximate number I would assign to how many years it will take to repair the collapse of confidence engendered by his crony wealth transfer system created under the guise of free market capitalism.

                Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years; she has no security position, long or shot, in any company mentioned in this article.  She writes on public interest issues from New Hampshire.  She can be reached at pamk741@aol.com