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.

Civil insurrection in America and government countermeasures: The official papers

By Bradley Moscrip

An in-depth study of official American plans to construct FEMA detention centers in America and specific recent U.S. Army domestic counterinsurgency plans. Here is a sampling of the ebook contents:

Gun Control by Confiscation

As the American general population is known to be the most heavily armed in the world, immediately upon the declaration of Martial Law and the execution by the military of counterinsurgency programs, it has been determined that the BATF, will begin the process of rounding up all rifles, pistols and so-called assault weaponry from the civil population. Lists of gun collectors obtained from firearms dealers, gun magazine subscription lists and other sources will be the basis for these mass confiscations. Gun owners will be supplied documentation by the BATF showing which pieces have been confiscated so that in the future, they will be told, they can recover their weapons when the state of emergency has passed. In actuality, weapons that do not have a high value or are not suitable for arming loyalist police forces, will be destroyed by order

This study is available from tbrnews at $5.00 by PayPal  

TBR NEWS January 19, 2009

The Voice of the White House

            Washington, D.C., January 18, 2009: “The entire city is jammed with attendees for the Grand Inauguration and if you have an extra bedroom, den or even comfortable garage, you can easily rent it out for huge money. D.C. is filled with the eager and expectant and it reminds me of a sort of political Woodstock. All those eager, hopeful faces seen to long for the Ascension of St. Barak to some heavenward plane from whence he will somehow make everything right again. They will have money and the ability to spend it on all those useless things they had in the past, magic new cell phones, DVDs, useless trips to the Caribbean or Mexico (can’t go to Mexico anymore because anarchy reigns there, complete anarchy) new huge cars, wonderful luxury condos built with lots of plastic that is sure to warp and crack, drugs of choice and other really important objects to delight their jaded tastes. Will they get them? Will the new Messiah give them back their useless toys? Guess!  The merry-go-round has broken and everyone will have to get off and walk home in the rain but Obama will certainly try. But by trying, he will have to fight entrenched entities like a thousand different business entities who have been used to completely controlling the Bush White House. He will fight powerful, selfish and relatively useless groups like the Jesus Freaks and the Jews with their fierce love is Israel and constant braying about their fake Holocaust, and he will have an enormous, bloated civil service that comes to work an hour late and goes home an hour early every day and does less work than an autistic mongoloid idiot. And whose salary ought, in all right, be gift-wrapped. I predict that Obama, who has vast public support and is thereby feared and hated by all of the above, had best not go into large crowds because some Lee Harvey Oswald type will shoot him. Like the real Oswald, he will be a patsy for some shadowy group who will never be discovered and there will be an enormous tsunami of public outrage. Of course, the cliques, the so-called Power Elite, will only laugh as they enjoy a good cigar at the Metropolitan or Cosmos clubs and then the realigning of a iconoclastic new government will begin and the K street creeps will be back again, sneaking into the White House or the Senate Office Building with bags full of money. ‘Fuck the public’is their motto and a populist President is nothing against the power of economic privilege.”

Letters to the Editor:

From: jacerino@pacbell.net
To: tbrnews@hotmail.com
Subject: source of Madoff info
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 19:12:35 -0800

                Where are you fishing for this information?  Not that it’s beyond comprehension, considering the strong arm tactics of the out going administration, but the allegation that more than 4/5ths of the money is safely sequestered in Israeli banks is quite startling.  Furthermore, the fact that none of Madoff’s assets will ever be made public is astounding.  Again, what are your sources, are they documented and if so, why can’t we go wide with this?  My folks were victimized by this vampire and I’d like to see as much information go public as possible. 

Please advise,

Thanks,

Jace Kent

From: walter storch [mailto:tbrnews@hotmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2009 7:47 PM
To: Jace Kent
Subject: RE: source of Madoff info

                My source? We have a close contact with a computer code specialist who works for the DHS in California. His job? To crack the codes of foreign banks and check on the deposits of enemies of the Bush administration. When the Madoff thing erupted, I told him that it would be very easy for Bernie to stash most of his takings and that stories saying he gave most of the money back to earlier investors was simplistic in light of the stated return of 7-8% he paid. Assuming those statements are true, it would be a matter of ease to stash the money where it could not be siezed, such as Israel or Lichtenstein, invest it at, say 15% and pay back 8%  In most Ponzi schemes, the payback rate is much higher and it then is true that most of what comes in goes to the initial investors.
                I assure you that this matter will get no space in the media and neither will any Congressional investgation dare touch on it.
                Bernie admitted stealing $50 billion and yet he was allowed out on bail. Why? Because if Bernie talked, there would be terrible political reprecussions.
                The problem is, as I see it, that if Bernie feels too much heat, he might talk and if he did, many people, to specifically include the President, might become highly embarassed.
                The solution to this? Either give him a fatal heart attack or somehow let him "escape" to Israel from whence he will never be extradited.
                After all, they have all of his money.
                And given the ability of our investigative agencies to track international electronic movement of money, how has the movement of $50 billion managed to escape any notice?
                And why did FOUR SEC audits of Bernie discover nothing?

            I know a number of people who do such work and all of them, without exception, have told me that it would be child's play to spot him.
                We must conclude that either the SEC is staffed with autistic children or Bernie and his thefts were strictly off limits.
                Follow Occam's Razor which says that complicated issues must be reduced to their basics and in so doing the truth will always be found.

            I know that no matter how many people Bernie has looted, the matter will be pushed under the rug...('Oh look! An airplane crashed into the river!") and the very obvious question: Where did Berine put his loot? will get ignored. This is a very natural and primary question that many have asked but to answer it would be to do terrible damage to Israeli officials and banks and American officials who might have benefited from his lootings or, more realistically, are afraid of stirring up the Jewish community in the United States.
 
Walter Storch

From: jacerino@pacbell.net
To: tbrnews@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: source of Madoff info
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:53:39 -0800

                Unfortunately, there’s not a shred of proof, merely conjecture based on your hatred of the current administration and what seems a distrust of Jews, and Israel.  I’m more than a little reticent to take you at your word regardless or your “DHS” contact in CA.  Proof and suspicion are worlds apart.  This theory of yours is at best finger pointing and at worst, anti-Semitic trash talk.  A little more substance, a little less speculation.

Response:

In the end, it isn't what I, or anyone else thinks; what matters is what the public perceives.
                I come from a family of bankers and am not at all amazed about the Madoff swindle; the entire "hedge fund" concept will be found to be riddled with frauds and many will collapse, their founders either ending up in Federal jails or exiles in foreign countries.
                 I personally have ample proof of what I have said or I would not have printed it. On the other hand, I do not abuse confidences and so my informants will remain my informants, not subject to public, and official, scrutiny.
                In the past, I have been approached by private individuals, such as yourself, as well as official agencies, seeking , and often demanding, to know who my informants are and to present proof of statements they individually or collectively dislike.
                I tell both of these groups that I do not abuse confidences and further, I inform governmental investigators that they are paid to discover facts and I am not.
                I have the attitude in all of this, and in fact, in all my dealings, that people may say as they like and I shall do as I like.
                I, personally, have nothing against Jews but in the current political/economic climate, scapegoats, real or imagined, will be needed to assuage the losses of the lower middle classes and, based on history, Jews will be blamed.
                Bernie Madoff will be the posterboy for all of this unfortunate business and Central and South American immigrants, legal or otherwise, will also come in for serious problems.

I neither favor nor disfavor this sort of an attitude; I merely observe.
                There is a rising tide of anti-Semitism in this country, hastened along by the actions of the Likudists in the neocon movement, and by the predatory financial activities of Madoff and a number of his co-religionists, the perceived brutalities of the state of Israel and many other factors which, in an economically positive society only are the playthings of a small circle. Now, the circle is expanding and there are those who will exploit it.
                When I produce, and post, articles on this, and related, subjects, my readership surges upwards at a truly amazing speed. If, on the other hand, I preached a doctrine of acceptance, kindness, forgiveness, Jesus- attributed brotherly love, and such like passive themes, I would have three readers a day instead of, let us say, 30,000.
                To be a success in my business, one has not only to objectively understand the present but to predict the future and to do both in a clear and logical way.
                Bernie Madoff has stolen billions, mostly from his co-religionists, but in addition to robbing them, he has done them a great disservice to because, in the public mind, he will be identified with them.
                To address your own concerns, study the known facts.
                Bernie Madoff stole billions of dollars over a long period of time. No one knows what he did with the money.
                Given his relatively low return investment rate of 8%, he could easily still have the bulk of the monies he stole.
                The question will obviously arise; where is it? Putting illogical, but understandable, emotion aside, the answer to this is very, very obvious and I assure you that I shall hammer away at it in every issue of my two websites and my private journal.
                I will continue to do this, unless and until, until the lost billions are found in a bank in North Dakota or Bad Seepage, Ohio.
                That these postulations are annoying various individuals and official entities is of absolutely no concern to me, but my readership is.
 
Regards,
 
Walter Storch

Missing money manager believed alive: associate

January 17, 2009

Reuters

MIAMI (Reuters) - A missing Florida money manager is believed to be alive, his business associate said on Saturday as police investigated the possible disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars from investment funds.

The family of Sarasota, Florida, philanthropist and fund manager Arthur Nadel, 75, reported him missing on Wednesday and on Friday Sarasota police launched an investigation into complaints that "hundreds of millions of dollars" may have vanished from the funds Nadel managed.

Nadel, president of Scoop Management Inc, left a note for his family that was characterized by a local newspaper as a suicide note. Police would not disclose its contents but said his family believed he was "distraught" at the time of his disappearance.

Neil Moody, a business associate, said Nadel has since been in contact with his wife. He said he believed Nadel was still alive.

"At this point we have every indication that he is," Moody told Reuters, adding that he did not know where Nadel was.

"If we knew where he was, we'd be on him," Moody said.

The Florida investigation, which the Sarasota Herald-Tribune said could involve as much as $350 million, began just over a month after the arrest of New York money manager Bernard Madoff on charges he ran a giant $50 billion Ponzi scheme that shook the investment world.

The Madoff case rattled charities and wealthy families in Palm Beach on Florida's east coast. The Nadel allegations have struck hard in Sarasota, on the state's west coast, where the missing money manager was well-known in society circles and a prominent donor to local causes.

Nadel's Sarasota-based Scoop Management managed funds branded as Valhalla, Viking, and Scoop. The Herald-Tribune said Moody told investors in a statement this week that the funds may have "virtually no remaining value."

The paper said Moody had contacted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and other authorities to report the situation.

VICTIMS CONTACT POLICE

Moody's lawyer, James Fox Miller of Boies, Schiller and Flexner, issued a brief statement on Saturday via email saying that Moody was a victim of Nadel's "unauthorized and inappropriate actions."

"We are co-operating with all the appropriate authorities, and are in the process of gathering facts," the statement said.

Moody is also prominent in Sarasota social circles and active in causes ranging from the YMCA to the local symphony. He was the founder of Valhalla Management and Viking Management, according to published reports.

Geoff Quisenberry, Nadel's stepson, was quoted in the Herald-Tribune on Saturday as saying Nadel's family was not ready to comment on the allegations.

"Other than that, all I can say is ... we love him. We miss him. We hope that he is safe, and we hope that he comes home," Quisenberry told the newspaper.

Sarasota police said the investigation began on Friday after calls from at least five possible victims. Capt. Bill Spitler said many of the victims appeared to have lost $500,000 or more, some the majority of their life savings.

(Editing by Eric Beech)

Israel War to Ignite Terror, Threaten Global Economy and possibly Spark World War III

January 16, 2009

Trends Institute

            CAIRO, ­ Israel’s invasion of Gaza sets up the United States and any other nation supporting Israel as terror targets, predicts Gerald Celente. The Trends Research Institute Director also warns that should Israel continue the invasion, or take the war beyond Gaza, the world risks both a 1973-style oil shock and global conflict.

                “Regardless of whose side you take, what you believe in, who did what to whom and when this is just the latest chapter of ‘Crusades 2000′,” said Celente, who coined the term in 1993 and has written about it extensively. Yet, unlike preceding Crusades confined to the Holy Land, the trend seer says the current violence will spread globally. (See “Crusades 2000,” Trends Journal, Fall 1993; Trends 2000 Warner Books 1997; “Crusades 2000,” Trends Journal, Spring 2006.)

Armed and Dangerous

                World news sources report a Middle East up-in-arms and seething at the lopsided Israeli massacre that has left over 1,000 Palestinians dead, thousands wounded, and Gaza in ruins. In comparison, three Israeli civilians and less than a dozen Jewish soldiers have been killed; scant damage has been inflicted on Israel.

                The incessant US media and government message focuses on Israel’s “right to defend itself” while minimizing or ignoring the long sequence of Israeli provocations leading up to its invasion while also failing to cite the real tally from the preceding mutual hostilities. In the months prior to Israel’s December 27th attack, homemade Hamas projectiles fired into Israel killed no one. (Over the past several years prior to the invasion, 13 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. Between 2005 and 2007 alone, the Israeli Defense Force killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.)

                Also largely absent from United States war coverage are the contributing factors Palestinians claim precipitated their primitive Qassam rocket launches into Israel. Chief among them, Israel’s 18-month starvation blockade of 1.5 million impoverished Palestinians squeezed into densely populated Gaza (described by the Vatican as “a big concentration camp”) and Israel’s pre- invasion assassination of six Palestinian officials.

                According to the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations, the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch and other government and NGOs, Israel’s response has been both disproportionate and illegal. Among the condemnations, Israel’s military has been accused of firing white phosphorus artillery packed shells on civilians. The UN special envoy for human rights accused the Israeli army of ” committing a shocking series of atrocities by using modern weaponry against a defenseless population - attacking a population that has been enduring a severe blockade for many months.”

                For its part, since the onset of hostilities, the United States had prevented approval of a UN Security Council statement calling for an immediate cease-fire. And when the United Nations Security Council voted for a “durable and fully respected” cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, “leading to the full withdrawal” of Israel’s forces from the Palestinian territory, the US abstained from voting. (The New York Times reported that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert “placed a phone call to President Bush” and that “Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice had been forced to abstain” from the UN resolution.)

                “Major trends are brewing that if not quickly corrected or stanched, will lead to disaster,” Celente forecasts, citing fears among Israel’s neighbors that they could be the next victims.

                “Throughout 2008, reports had been circulating that Israel was planning a military strike against Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, and The New York Times all but confirmed it on January 11th,” Celente said. “While President Bush has made scores of disastrous foreign policy decisions during his reign, he should be congratulated for turning down Israel’s request for specialized bunker-busting bombs needed to take out the nuclear facility.”

                An attack on Iran by either Israel or the US will spark the onset of World War III, predicts Celente.

                “If oil producers sympathetic to the Palestinian cause cut the flow of oil, or if they cut supply in fear of being the next Israeli target, the world will go from a terrible recession immediately into the ‘Greatest Depression’,” Celente said.

                (OPEC used the oil weapon in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, embargoing the US and other countries who sided with Israel.)

                Beyond escalating economic dangers, Washington has placed itself in terror’s bulls-eye Celente said, pointing to last weeks US Senate and House passage offering “unwavering commitment” for Israel. “Today, we reaffirm that Israel, like any nation, has a right to self-defense when under attack,” said House speaker Nancy Pelosi. “The rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza, which were increasing in frequency and range, constituted an unacceptable security threat to which Israel had a responsibility to respond.”

                Should Washington continue its “unwavering commitment” to Israel while taking direct measures to destroy Palestinians, Americans should also be aware that those left standing will seek revenge, Celente said. “News reports of US supplied ships bringing munitions to Israel to be used against Palestinians, and Israel’s claims that the UN school they shelled killing some 50 civilians was the fault of a US-supplied weapon malfunction will not be forgotten by those seeking revenge,” said Celente.
.”

http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/trend-alert-israel-war-to-ignite-ww3/ 

Olmert claims Rice embarrassed over UN vote

January 13, 2009,

Irish Times

Israel's prime minister claimed yesterday that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was embarrassed by orders to abstain from voting last week on a UN truce resolution for Gaza that she helped arrange.

Israel had argued that the Security Council measure calling for a halt to the Gaza fighting - which passed Thursday in a 14-0 vote with the US abstaining - was unworkable because it did not guarantee Israel's security.

                Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he called President George W. Bush to seek an abstention from the US, a key Israeli ally at the United Nations.

                "I said: 'Get me President Bush on the phone,'" Olmert said in a speech in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. "They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care: 'I need to talk to him now.' He got off the podium and spoke to me."

                Olmert said he argued that the United States should not vote in favor, and the president then called Rice and told her not to do so.

                "She was left pretty embarrassed," Olmert said.

                A senior US official in Washington disputed the account.

                "The plan had been all along, as agreed by the secretary and the president, that if all of the pieces fell into place, we would abstain," the official said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

                "The government of Israel does not make policy for the United States," the official added.

                The approved resolution called for "an immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza."

                Ms Rice said later that the United States "fully supports" the resolution but abstained because it "thought it important to see the outcomes of the Egyptian mediation," referring to an Egyptian-French initiative aimed at achieving a cease-fire.

                Still, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki said he was surprised by the US abstention.

                "We were told that the Americans were going to vote in favour," he said on Friday, a day after the vote.

                But when Ms Rice came in to the Security Council chamber, she informed the Saudi foreign minister with an apology that she would abstain and would clarify later that the US supported the resolution nonetheless, according to Malki.

                "What happened in the last 10 or 15 minutes, what kind of pressure she received, from whom, this is really something that maybe we will know about later," he said.

Russia to have naval bases in Yemen, Libya, Syria - Navy
January 16, 2009

Itar-Tass

            MOSCOW, January 16 (Itar-Tass) - Russia in several years will have naval bases for its warships at the Socorta Island (Yemen), in Tartus (Syria) and Tripoli (Libya), Itar-Tass was told at the General Naval Staff of Russia on Friday.

                “The political decision on this issue has been made. It is difficult to say now how much time will be needed to create bases of our Navy in these countries, but it is undoubted that it will be done in several years. Otherwise it will be impossible to fulfil the task of the regular presence of our Navy in remote sea areas for the protection of Russia’s national interests, both from the economic and military-technical viewpoints,” an official of the General Naval Staff stressed.

                “For efficient response to the existing and potential threats to Russia’s security at distant approaches it is necessary to create a system of stationing of its Navy in remote areas. The base on the Socotra Island is needed, in particular, for ensuring security of navigation of Russian civilian ships by warships in the Arabian Sea and in the Gulf of Aden, analogous facilities in Tartus and Tripoli - for controlling and prompt reacting to the situation in the explosive regions of the Middle East,” the official said.

http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=13482050&PageNum=0

More battles ahead in Russia's 'gas war'
January 17, 2009

by M K Bhadrakumar

Asia Times

            The cause of any war is difficult to pinpoint. There is always more than one cause. And they could be just causes or ugly causes. There is no objective criterion except that the right cause is constructive while the wrong one is destructive, but then, people define by their standards.

                Of course, there is a time for all wars. Finally, there is the problem of war. The same god who sanctioned so much war and violence in the Old Testament bursts into the human situation in the New Testament with a huge promise of hope, forgiveness and reconciliation. We call this "grace".

                By these reckonings, Russia’s 13-day "gas war" with Ukrainefrom January 1 to January13) was largely atypical. True, its causes were not in any serious dispute, but its timing was simply awful, right in the middle of Orthodox Christmas. Russia has a problem with "grace" and could take a lesson or two from China on how to reconcile contradictions involving neighbors. Russia's image surely took a beating in the Western media, which eagerly puffed up the controversy.

                Unsurprisingly, the ubiquitous Americans promptly put on their trans-Atlantic leadership mantle and appeared on the scene to finger-point at the unreliable, unscrupulous, venal Russian "bullies". Anders Aslund of the Peterson Institute came up with a most ingenious thesis that actually the Russians were conspiring to make Ukraine a corrupt country, destabilize it and make it unsafe for democracy.

                But it was most certainly a war and the Russians likely won, as Old Europe did not take the cue from Washington. The win remains indeterminate, though. That is because it has been ultimately about geopolitics, where you don't conclusively win and can only avoid losing, and as China's People's Daily newspaper noted, Russia cannot turn a blind eye towards "NATO's [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] greedy expansion" and the dispute between the United States and Russia will only become "more and more intense".

War had just causes
               

The factors leading to the gas war are well known. On October 2 last year, the Russian and Ukrainian prime ministers signed a memorandum envisaging the two countries' intention to switch to market prices in the business between their gas companies - Gazprom and Nafotgaz - with the Russian side allowed to sell directly to end users in Ukraine.

                The follow-up negotiations were in an advanced stage by end-November when Kiev inexplicably began stalling on the repayment of pending debts for gas supplied to it earlier (an amount of US2.4 billion), which was a precondition for a new gas deal for 2009.

                The transfer to market prices is important for Russia as it has been heavily subsidizing the supplies for Ukraine at an average cost of $179.5 per 1,000 cubic meters, whereas it buys and delivers from the Central Asian producers at $375 per 1,000 cubic meters. Russia sought a reduction of the subsidies with a gradual increase in gas price to $250 per cubic meters for the 2009 contract, but Ukraine declined and broke off negotiations. (Gazprom also pays a transit fee to Ukraine for getting the gas across to the European market at $1.6 per 1,000 cubic meters per 100 kilometers.)

                With no contract to supply gas for 2009 in place, Moscow cut off the gas supplies to Ukraine on January 1. Ukraine retaliated by refusing to allow the transit of Russian gas to Europe. A related problem is that Ukraine had been illegally siphoning off gas destined for the European market and creating a gas reserve of its own at no cost.

                Gazprom sold to Ukraine roughly 55 billion cubic meters (bcm) gas at $179 per 1,000 cubic meters in 2008 as compared to 155 bcm at roughly $480 per 1,000 cubic meters to the European market. That is to say, Gazprom earned in excess of six times as much revenue from European countries for only thrice the volume it sold to Ukraine. Based on 2008 sales, Gazprom lost $12 billion by selling gas at a subsidized price to Ukraine. The company is in the red and has asked for a financial bailout from the Russian government.

                But Russia has no easy solutions, given the nature of the Soviet-era pipeline network. Russia has no dedicated pipeline to Europe, as all the pipelines also serve Ukrainian customers. Therefore, Kiev knows that as long as the gas remained cut off, Russia would lose revenue and Russia's ties with its European customers would get complicated, while Kiev has gas reserves to last for as much as six months even if Russia cuts off supplies.

                At the height of the gas war, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin vowed to bypass Ukraine and send gas to Europe via the Yamal Peninsula pipeline that runs through Belarus and Poland to Germany as well as the Blue Stream pipeline that crosses from Russia to Turkey across the Black Sea. But this offers no permanent solution, as the two pipelines can supply not more than 20% of the gas that is transported through the massive Ukrainian trunk route.

Orange revolution dissipating
               

What are Ukraine's motivations in precipitating the crisis? One, Ukraine is in deep economic difficulties and would genuinely want the deep Russian gas subsidies to continue. The point is, the US-sponsored Orange revolution of 2004 has brought an economy with the best growth rate among the former Soviet republics down to its knees. In November, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) extended a $16.4 billion credit line to Ukraine.

                The chief economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Erik Berglof, recently warned that the IMF package might not suffice. He said, "Ukraine is heading toward a twin currency and banking sector crisis that could well bring down most of the economies of Eastern Europe." Rapid currency devaluation is disrupting the banking system and a few Western banks face the risk of major exposure in Ukraine. The national currency hryvnia has lost over 80% of its value against the dollar in the past three months.

                Massive debt rollovers to the tune of $41.5 billion (roughly 35% of gross domestic product) are falling due and refinancing will be extremely difficult in the present climate of the world financial crisis. Ukraine's GDP may drop by as much as 10% in 2009. Industrial production contracted by 28.6% in November. A period of pain and high drama lies ahead. And Uncle Sam, engrossed in own ailments and disabilities, is in no position to bail out his progeny.

                To compound all this, Ukrainian politics, which has always been murky, is in an unprecedented stage of volatility with the two political personalities sponsored by Washington as the flag carriers of the Orange revolution - President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko - tearing into each other scandalously in a bitter, irreconcilable rivalry at a very personal level.

                According to Moscow, the two Ukrainian leaders are using the gas dispute with Russia to whip up xenophobia and rally the nation and at the same time malign each other. At any rate, there is no one in charge in Kiev who has the final word in the negotiations with Russia. Tymoshenko tried to project herself as the Ukrainian leader better able to negotiate a gas compromise with Russia and pro-US Yushchenko has accused her of mishandling the crisis.

                There is also a likely shady part to this - typical of most government business in Kiev. Tymoshenko has accused that the joint venture company RosUkrEnergo, which handles the Russian gas sales to Ukraine with which two notorious Ukrainian oligarchs are associated, is a vehicle of corruption for Yushchenko and that this is the real reason why the president scuttled her October memorandum with Putin from implementation, since it provided for doing away with middlemen and incrementally linking Russian-Ukrainian gas transactions to market price.

The American factor
               

Nonetheless, it is virtually impossible that Yushchenko, who is so manifestly under the American thumb, would precipitate a first-rate crisis in Europe without some sort of nod from Washington. (Curiously, in mid-December, Washington concluded a "strategic partnership" agreement with Kiev.) Alexander Rahr, the noted Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin said, "There are attempts in Ukraine to tarnish the image of Russia as a reliable energy partner. [Ukraine] is forming an image of Russia as a foe and Ukraine as a victim."

                To quote the editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Politics, Fedor Lukyanov, "Ukraine chose a tactic of deliberately creating a crisis through its rejection of talks and agreement, with the expectation that ultimately any major disruption of gas deliveries to Europe would hurt Gazprom's reputation as a reliable energy partner, supplier and generally speaking, as a company selling gas to Europeans. Everything that has happened after December 31 seems to me a delaying tactic ... We [Russians] are losing not a mere propaganda war but a real gas war ... It is not accidental that countries that have excellent relations with Russia such as Greece, Hungary and Bulgaria, which are among our main European partners, are experiencing the worst difficulties."

                Actually, it is the very first time that European countries are experiencing a real shortage of gas ever since Russia's supplies began three decades ago. Lukyanov underlined, "Now, each single day of the crisis will distort the European perceptions, which would blame the Russians for everything."

                All the same, the Russian political leadership has been careful not to join issue with Washington. Any criticism of the US has been muted. The maximum that Moscow was prepared to go was a reference by the senior Russian politician Andrey Kokoshin who said, "This is a consequence of the policy some figures in Washington have been pursuing over the past few years by trying to tear Ukraine away from Russia and make it a counterbalance to Russia forever."

                Clearly, Moscow realized that it might simply walk into a trap set by the hardliners in Washington at this juncture of the transition of power to president-elect Barack Obama. The Kremlin has been cautiously optimistic about a fresh start to US-Russia relations under the Obama presidency. Interestingly, the George W Bush administration has utilized the hullabaloo of the gas war in Europe to wrap up the last act in its Russia policy - concluding a security pact with Georgia on January 9, which according to reports might lead to some form of permanent US presence in the Caucasus for the first time ever.

                This is by now a familiar pattern - under cover of dust in the Western public opinion over Russia's "expansionism", advance the containment strategy towards Russia by yet another notch and draw an unwilling Europe along. The Bush administration utilized the backdrop of the war in the Caucasus last August to formalize theIn fact, the American criticism of Russia over the gas war has been so highly vitriolic that it looks every bit contrived. Aslund's outlandish thesis was typical. Stratfor, which is linked to the US security establishment, said, "Russia is once again threatening to cut natural gas supplies to Europe in the dead of winter. This time, however, Moscow's focus is much tighter. Russia is not only looking to smash the Ukrainian government, but it is looking for some specific changes in Kiev."

                The Wall Street Journal saw the gas war as the Kremlin's warning to Obama. The daily commented, "Russia's strongman [Putin] is wielding the energy club to undermine the pro-Western government in Kiev and scare the European Union into submission. The strategic stakes are as high as in Georgia last summer ... For the new Obama administration, Mr Putin has offered yet another tutorial in its coming challenges in Eurasia."

                The Washington Post exhorted the Europeans to "grasp the real message of this cold week", as "Mr Putin's regime plainly intends to use Europe's dependence on Russian energy to advance an imperialist and anti-Western geopolitical agenda." Evidently, Putin was the main target of criticism.

Old Europe cautiously moves

But the shrill propaganda failed to click. The hard-boiled Old Europeans had no time for it. The European Union reprimanded Kiev when Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, warned that Ukraine's failure to deliver Russian gas might hurt its aspirations for close ties with Brussels.

                Other European leaders also refrained from criticizing Russia. After meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicholas Sarkozy called the dispute a "bilateral [Russian-Ukrainian] matter". At the height of the crisis, former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder visited Putin in Moscow in a show of solidarity. (Putin is scheduled to pay an official visit to Germany.)

                It seems the Europeans eventually saw through the Ukrainian game, despite the adverse media publicity that Moscow received in the early stages. They decided to associate with the new monitoring mechanism suggested by Moscow to ensure that Kiev does not any more steal from the Russia gas transiting to the European market. In the medium term, European countries may also seek to create their own strategic gas reserves with Russian help. Gazprom is reportedly planning to build the biggest gas storage facility near the city of Hinrichshagen (Meklenburg-Upper Pomerania Federal Land) with a huge capacity of 10 bcm of natural gas, with some of it earmarked as strategic reserves for Germany.

                Another positive fallout for Russia is that the European countries may take a renewed interest in Russian pipeline projects - the Nord Stream under the Baltic Sea and the South Stream under the Black Sea - which aim at bypassing Ukraine for supply of gas to the European market. At a joint press conference with the visiting Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek (the Czech Republic currently heads the EU presidency), Putin said in Moscow last week, "The current crisis confirms that there is a need for a true diversification of the ways to deliver our energy resources to the main consumers in Europe." He and Schroeder agreed that Nord Stream, which is expected to come on stream in 2011, would be a guarantee against supply disruptions.

                On balance, therefore, Washington will be disappointed to note that Europe's euphoria over the Orange revolution has all but evaporated. The message was loud and clear when Barroso said with uncharacteristic bluntness, "If Ukraine wants to be closer to the EU, it should not create any problems for gas to come to the EU." Washington underestimated that for Europe, a war over energy security is not the stuff of propaganda, but is a flesh-and-blood issue for their economies especially in these troubled times and uncertain future. The extent of interdependence between Russia and its European buyers of gas indeed tells a whole story.

According to the figures of the US Energy Information Administration, Austria meets 60% of its gas from Russia via Ukraine, while the corresponding figures for other countries are: Germany (42%), Turkey (67%), Greece (82%), Italy (28%), France (24%), Hungary (60%), Czech Republic (80%), Slovakia (100%), Bosnia (100%), Serbia (87%), Bulgaria (96%), Poland (40%), Slovenia (64%), Croatia (37%), Macedonia (100%) and Romania (28%).

                Again, European countries seem to have concluded that Moscow has been driven by commercial considerations. They see the criticality of the income from gas sales to Europe for the Russian economy. The fact of the matter is that Russia faces a grave economic crisis. Oil prices anywhere below $70 create budget deficits for Russia. The rouble is declining, the stock market has crashed, unemployment is soaring, and social unrest and discontent may erupt despite Putin's popular rating soaring over 80%.

                In such a surcharged environment, Moscow has no reason to continue to subsidize the Ukrainian economy, especially with a government in Kiev which, under US instigation, has been constantly pursuing an unfriendly policy towards Russia. As Dmitry Peskov, Russian spokesman put it, "We are struggling with the consequences of the world economic crisis, but it does not mean that Russian taxpayers have to sacrifice in order to keep Ukrainian production alive."

                Besides, there is an inherent double standard in the US rhetoric. In a devastating essay in The Guardian newspaper of London, Mark Almond of Oriel College, Oxford wrote: "Keeping Russia hemmed in is why Ukraine matters to America ... Although its EU allies pay around $500 per unit, Washington wants Gazprom to subsidize the anti-Russian coalition government in Kiev by charging the poor Ukrainians only $175."

                He concluded, "Western triumphalists marked Russia down for inevitable decline. Certainly, so long as [Boris] Yeltsin let his crony capitalists plunder the country and deposit the loot in London and New York, pessimism was justified. Now, however, Russia's capitalist crew are not fly-by-night asset-strippers but ruthless capitalist politician-businessmen of the sort Britain used to produce."

Armistice far away
               

So, is the gas war over? To be sure, Russian gas supply to Europe via Ukraine has resumed. But the great game continues. Washington can draw satisfaction that only a temporary solution has been found but the final armistice depends on a Russian-Ukrainian gas deal with three interlocking elements: pricing, debts and the volume of gas to be sent across Ukraine. Europe will not find it an easy job to mediate between Russia and Ukraine.

                At the root of the impasse lies the unresolved question of Ukraine's admission to NATO, which Washington insists on despite European reservations. Washington is determined to have its way and hardliners are hoping Obama will endorse the line, while Moscow has made it clear to the Western world that it is the "red line". And Washington commentators are peeved that Old Europeans do not want to annoy Russia. Increasingly, they run down Germany for expanding its ties with Russia.

                Indeed, there are any number of issues over which Washington can instigate Yushchenko to exacerbate tensions in Ukraine's relations with Russia, such as NATO membership, Crimea and the Black Sea fleet, the Russian language, the World Trade Organization membership, territorial disputes, etc - and attempt to draw the EU into them.

                On the other hand, it suits Yushchenko politically to distract public opinion as his personal popularity is abysmally low in single digits. According to a recent poll conducted by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, 83.7% of Ukrainians feel gloomy that things are going seriously wrong in their country, with 49% calling it "critical and explosive". An Agence-France Presse dispatch from Kiev recently reported that analysts do not rule out Ukraine sliding toward authoritarian rule.

                If nothing else, Yushchenko could always turn the pages of history and pick up a lively quarrel with Moscow. In November, he decided to have an anniversary bash over Holodomor, the tragic Ukrainian famine that Joseph Stalin's collectivization drive caused in 1932-33. Yushchenko sent out invitations for a summit of world leaders and included the Kremlin in his mailing list. President Dmitry Medvedev naturally declined the invitation. Moscow had a different take on that painful slice of Soviet history. What Yushchenko called "genocide", Russian historians interpreted as "sociocide" - a murderous plot against a whole social group instead of a specific ethnic community.


Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka

, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.  

Israeli Assault Injures 1.5 Million Gazans
January 17, 2009
by Jonathan Cook

AntiWar

                This week the death toll in Gaza passed the 1,000 mark, after nearly three weeks of Israeli air and ground attacks. But surprisingly, no one has reported an even more appalling statistic: that there are some 1.5 million injured Palestinians in Gaza. How is is possible that such an astounding figure could have passed the world's media by?

                The reason apparently is that they have been relying on the highly unreliable statistics provided by official Palestinian sources. It appears that the Palestinian health ministry only records as wounded those Gazans who need to stay in hospital because of the severity of their injuries.
               
                That means they only count the more than 4,500 Gazans who have suffered injuries such as severe burns from exploding Israeli phosphorus shells; shrapnel wounds from artillery rounds; broken or lost limbs from aerial bombardment; bullet wounds; physical trauma from falling building debris; and so on.

                But in fact there is another, far more reasonable standard for assessing those injured, one that provides the far higher total of 1.5 million Gazans – or every surviving Palestinian in Gaza. The measure I am referring to is the one employed by Israel.

                Here is an example of its use. In September 2007, the international media reported that 69 Israeli soldiers had been wounded when Palestinian militants fired a rocket into the Zikim army base near the Gaza Strip. The rocket struck a tent where the soldiers were sleeping.

                It is worth noting the details of the attack. Israeli officials related that, of the 69 wounded, 11 had moderate or severe injuries and one was critically injured. A few more had light wounds. The rest, probably 50 or more, were injured in the sense that they were suffering from shock.

                So, if we apply the same standard to Gaza, that would mean 1.5 million Gazans have been wounded. Or is there still some doubt about whether the weeks of bombardment of Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on earth, have left the entire civilian population in a deep, and possibly permanent, state of shock?

                Talking of Gaza's civilians, where did they all go? Israel's so-called "war" on Gaza must be the first example in human history of a conflict where there are apparently no civilians. Or, at least, that is the impression being created by the world's leading international bodies, from the World Health Organization to the United Nations. Instead they refer to a new category of "women and children."

                Thus, those 1,000-plus dead Gazans are broken down into percentages defined in terms of "women and children" and the rest. The earliest figures stated that about 25 per cent of Gaza's dead were "women and children," and that has steadily climbed close to the 50 per cent mark since Israel's ground invasion got under way.

                The implication – one with which Israel is presumably delighted – is that the rest are Palestinian fighters, or "terrorists" as Israel would prefer us to call them. It also suggests that every man in Gaza over the age of 16 is being defined as a non-civilian – as a combatant and, again by implication, as a terrorist. In short, all Gaza's men are legitimate targets for Israeli attack.

                This is not very far from the position recently attributed to Israeli policymakers by the daily Jerusalem Post. The newspaper reported that officials had come to the view that "it would be pointless for Israel to topple Hamas because the population of Gaza is Hamas".

                On this thinking, Israel is at war with every single man, woman and child in Gaza, which is very much how it looks. Maybe we should be glad that the category of "women and children" is still being recognized – at least, for now

                The myths about the blockade of Gaza are so legion it is almost impossible to disentangle them. But let's try tackling a few.

                The first is that the blockade was a necessary response to the election of Hamas.

                Tell that to John Wolfensohn, special envoy to the Quartet, comprising the US, UN, Europe and Russia, from May 2005. His job was to oversee the disengagement. Wolfensohn was succeeded by the far less principled Tony Blair, the former British prime minister.

                In an interview with the Haaretz newspaper in 2007, Wolfensohn explained why he had resigned a year into his job, in April 2006. Shortly after the disengagement in summer 2005, he said, Israel and the US had violated the understandings made to ensure the border crossings into Gaza remained open after the Jewish settlers left. "Every aspect of that agreement was abrogated," he said.

                The economy collapsed as a result, as Gaza's farmers saw their produce rot at the crossings, and unemployment and disillusionment among Gazans rocketed. "Instead of hope, the Palestinians saw that they were put back in prison. And with 50 per cent unemployment, you would have conflict."

                It was the closure of the crossings that Wolfensohn believes partly explains Hamas' success in the subsequent elections, in early 2006. So, according to Wolfensohn, Israel's blockade preexisted Hamas' rise to power and began when Fatah were still the rulers of Gaza.

                The second myth is that the blockade was an attempt, if a futile one, to get Hamas to recognize Israel's "right to exist".

                Tell that to Dov Weisglass, former prime minister Ariel Sharon's fixer in Washington. It was he who suggested the true goal of the blockade, which Israel intensified immediately following Hamas' electoral triumph. The policy would be "like an appointment with a dietitian. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die."

                In short, according to Weisglass, Israeli policy in Gaza was "collective punishment" inflicted on the civilian population for choosing Hamas – a policy that, should it need pointing out, is a grave violation of international law and a war crime.

                The hope, it seems, was that Gazans would, as they sank into abject poverty, manage to summon up the energy to overthrow Hamas. It didn't happen.

                The third myth is that the blockade was designed to put pressure on Hamas to end the rocket fire into Israel.

                Tell that to Ehud Barak, the defense minister, and Matan Vilnai, his deputy. This pair were plotting an invasion of Gaza throughout the six-month ceasefire with Hamas, and in fact much earlier.

                In truth, they ignored every diplomatic overture from Hamas, including offers of indefinite truces, while they invested their energies in the coming ground invasion. In particular they worked on plans, noted in the Israeli media back in spring 2008, to "level" Gaza's civilian neighborhoods and create "combat zones" from which civilians could be expelled.

                One aspect of the blockade that seems to have been overlooked is the way it has been used to "soften up" Gaza, and Hamas, before Israel's attack. For three years Gaza's population has been denied food, medicines and fuel.

                Every general knows it is easier to fight an army – or militia – that is cold, tired and hungry. Could there be a better description of the Hamas fighters, as well as those "women and children," currently facing Israel's tanks and warplanes?


http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cook.php?articleid=14082

Pope Benedict sends monetary aid to the victims of the Israeli war in Gaza.

January 17, 2009

PressTV

                Leader of the Catholic world Pope Benedict XVI has sent an unspecified amount of monetary aid to the Gazan victims of the Israeli war.

                According to a Vatican statement the funds dispatched by the Vatican's office for charitable initiative aim “to help relief efforts being carried out by the tiny Catholic presence in the Gaza Strip”.

                “The material aid was sent to Gaza's small Catholic community, which serves the most vulnerable people in Jesus' birth land, today tragically hit by death, suffering and material damage", the statement read.

                Pope Benedict XVI earlier condemned the Israeli raids against Gazan civilians, saying, "Violence, wherever it comes from and whatever form it takes, must be firmly condemned."

                He lamented "a renewed outbreak of violence provoking immense damage and suffering for the civilian population."

                Israel's 22-day war on Gaza has claimed the lives of at least 1,215 Palestinians and resulted in the wounding of more than 6,000 others.

                Relations between Israel and the Vatican turned sour, shortly after a senior representative of the pontiff condemned Israel for turning Gaza into "a big concentration camp".

                "Defenseless populations are always the ones who pay. Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp," said president of Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace Cardinal Renato Martino.

                The comments drew sharp criticism from Tel Aviv with Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor saying that it "is a shocking and disappointing phenomenon" to see the vocabulary of Hamas propaganda, used by a member of the College of Cardinals.

SF/HGH

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=82723&sectionid=351020202

Israel set to swallow defeat in Gaza 

 January 17, 2009
PressTV

            A senior Israeli official has confirmed that Tel Aviv will announce a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza amid world condemnation of its conduct.

                "The Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will announce following this evening's cabinet meeting a unilateral ceasefire of hostilities in the Gaza Strip," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

                "If Hamas opens fire on Israeli forces, we reserve the right to respond," he added.

                The proposed ceasefire has been met with strong criticism in the Israeli military, reported Debkafile, which is widely believed to have links with Israeli military and intelligence sources.

                According to the report, Israel will end its war on Gaza without achieving its primary goals, including "halting rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip".

                Israel launched air and sea attacks on Gaza on December 27 and later took its operations to the next level by sending its ground forces into the strip.

                Some officials in Tel Aviv had originally described toppling the democratically-elected ruler of the strip, Hamas, as their objective in the operations. Other officials later downgraded Israeli objectives, saying they only seek to weaken the Hamas movement and bring an end to rocket attacks.

                Debkafile cited "security sources" as revealing that Israel has also assured the US and Egypt that it will stop its operations in Gaza within days and, at some point, open the six border crossings with the coastal sliver.

                Hamas had earlier vowed to continue fighting Israel until all its demands, including the opening of Gaza border-crossings, are met by Tel Aviv.

                The Israeli war on Gaza provoked worldwide condemnation of Tel Aviv, which has been accused widely of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

                Gazan resistance and the world condemnation of Israeli crimes against Palestinians — the native population of the land — are seen as the primary reasons for Israel backtracking on its previously set goals.

                Around 1,200 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 6,000 others have been wounded in the beleaguered sliver since December 27.


http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=82729&sectionid=351020202

Conversations with the Crow: Part 59

Editor’s note: When this series was prepared, a number of conversations were deliberately redacted because they were either very personal in nature or, more important, contained specific material which we felt might have considerable impact and present potential danger in publication. Now that all of the conversations are being readied for publication, along with illustrative specific notes, we are publishing many of the hitherto off-limits examples. Enjoy  them!

                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!

Harper’s Index

·         Number of news stories from 1998 to Election Day 2000 containing “George W. Bush” and “aura of inevitability”: 206

·         Amount for which Bush successfully sued Enterprise Rent-A-Car in 1999: $2,500

·         Year in which a political candidate first sued Palm Beach County over problems with hanging chads: 1984

·         Total amount the Bush campaign paid Enron and Halliburton for use of corporate jets during the 2000 recount: $15,400

·         Percentage of Bush’s first 189 appointees who also served in his father’s administration: 42

·         Minimum number of Bush appointees who have regulated industries they used to represent as lobbyists: 98

·         Years before becoming energy secretary that Spencer Abraham cosponsored a bill to abolish the Department of Energy: 2

·         Number of Chevron oil tankers named after Condoleezza Rice, at the time she became foreign policy adviser: 1

·         Date on which the GAO sued Dick Cheney to force the release of documents related to current U.S. energy policy: 2/22/02

·         Number of other officials the GAO has sued over access to federal records: 0

·         Months before September 11, 2001, that Cheney’s Energy Task Force investigated Iraq’s oil resources: 6

·         Hours after the 9/11 attacks that an Alaska congressman speculated they may have been committed by “eco-terrorists”: 9

·         Date on which the first contract for a book about September 11 was signed: 9/13/01

·         Number of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and North African men detained in the U.S. in the eight weeks after 9/11: 1,182

·         Number of them ever charged with a terrorism-related crime: 0

·         Number charged with an immigration violation: 762

·         Days since the federal government first placed the nation under an “elevated terror alert” that the level has been relaxed: 0

·         Minimum number of calls the FBI received in fall 2001 from Utah residents claiming to have seen Osama bin Laden: 20

·         Number of box cutters taken from U.S. airline passengers since January 2002: 105,075

·         Percentage of Americans in 2006 who believed that U.S. Muslims should have to carry special I.D.: 39

·         Chances an American in 2002 believed the government should regulate comedy routines that make light of terrorism: 2 in 5

·         Rank of Mom, Dad, and Rudolph Giuliani among those whom 2002 college graduates said they most wished to emulate: 1, 2, 3

·         Number of members of the rock band Anthrax who said they hoarded Cipro so as to avoid an “ironic death”: 1

·         Estimated total calories members of Congress burned giving Bush’s 2002 State of the Union standing ovations: 22,000

·         Percentage of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU: 50

·         Minimum number of laws that Bush signing statements have exempted his administration from following: 1,069

·         Estimated number of U.S. intelligence reports on Iraq that were based on information from a single defector: 100

·         Number of times the defector had ever been interviewed by U.S. intelligence agents: 0

·         Date on which Bush said of Osama bin Laden, “I truly am not that concerned about him”: 3/13/02

·         Days after the U.S. invaded Iraq that Sony trademarked “Shock & Awe” for video games: 1

·         Days later that the company gave up the trademark, citing “regrettable bad judgment”: 25

·         Number of books by Henry Kissinger found in Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz’s mansion: 2

·         Number by then–New York Times reporter Judith Miller: 1

·         Factor by which an Iraqi in 2006 was more likely to die than in the last year of the Saddam regime: 3.6

·         Factor by which the cause of death was more likely to be violence: 120

·         Chance that an Iraqi has fled his or her home since the beginning of the war: 1 in 6

·         Portion of Baghdad residents in 2007 who had a family member or friend wounded or killed since 2003: 3/4

·         Percentage of U.S. veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have filed for disability with the VA: 35

·         Chance that an Iraq war veteran who has served two or more tours now has post-traumatic stress disorder: 1 in 4

·         Number of all U.S. war veterans who have been denied Veterans Administration health care since 2003: 452,677

·         Number of eligibility restrictions for admission into the Army that have been loosened since 2003: 9

·         Percentage change from 2004 to 2007 in the number of Army recruits admitted despite having been charged with a felony: +295

·         Date on which the White House announced it had stopped looking for WMDs in Iraq: 1/12/05

·         Years since his acquittal that O. J. Simpson has said he is still looking for his wife’s “real killers”: 13

·         Minimum number of close-up photographs of Bush’s hands owned by his current chief of staff, Josh Bolten: 4

·         Number of vehicles in the motorcade that transports Bush to his regular bike ride in Maryland: 6

·         Estimated total miles he has ridden his bike as president: 5,400

·         Portion of his presidency he has spent at or en route to vacation spots: 1/3

·         Minimum number of times that Frederick Douglass was beaten in what is now Donald Rumsfeld’s vacation home: 25

·         Estimated number of juveniles whom the United States has detained as enemy combatants since 2002: 2,500

·         Minimum number of detainees who were tortured to death in U.S. custody: 8

·         Minimum number of extraordinary renditions that the United States has made since 2006: 200

·         Date on which USA Today added Guantánamo to its weather map: 1/3/05

·         Number of incidents of torture on prime-time network TV shows from 2002 to 2007: 897

·         Number on shows during the previous seven years: 110

·         Percentage change since 2000 in U.S. emigration to Canada: +79

·         Number of the thirty-eight Iraq war veterans who have run for Congress who were Democrats: 21

·         Percentage of Republicans in 2005 who said they would vote for Bush over George Washington: 62

·         Seconds it took a Maryland consultant in 2004 to pick a Diebold voting machine’s lock and remove its memory card: 10

·         Number of states John Kerry would have won in 2004 if votes by poor Americans were the only ones counted: 40

·         Number if votes by rich Americans were the only ones counted: 4

·         Portion of all U.S. income gains during the Bush Administration that have gone to the top 1 percent of earners: 3/4

·         Increase since 2000 in the number of Americans living at less than half the federal poverty level: 3,500,000

·         Percentage change since 2001 in the average amount U.S. workers spend on out-of-pocket medical expenses: +172

·         Estimated percentage by which Social Security benefits would have declined if Bush’s privatization plan had passed: –15

·         Percentage change since 2002 in the number of U.S. teens using illegal drugs: –9

·         Percentage change in the number of adults in their fifties doing so: +121

·         Number of times FDA officials met with consumer and patient groups as they revised drug-review policy in 2006: 5

·         Number of times they met with industry representatives: 113

·         Amount the Justice Department spent in 2001 installing curtains to cover two seminude statues of Justice: $8,650

·         Number of Republican officials who have been investigated by the Justice Department since 2001: 196

·         Number of Democratic officials who have been: 890

·         Number of White House officials in 2006 and 2007 authorized to discuss pending criminal cases with the DOJ: 711

·         Number of Clinton officials ever authorized to do so: 4

·         Years since a White House official as senior as I. Lewis Libby had been indicted while in office: 130

·         Number of U.S. cities and towns that have passed resolutions calling for the impeachment of President Bush: 92

·         Percentage change since 2001 in U.S. government spending on paper shredding: +466

·         Percentage of EPA scientists who say they have experienced political interference with their work since 2002: 60

·         Change since 2001 in the percentage of Americans who believe humans are causing climate change: –4

·         Number of total additions made to the U.S. endangered-species list under Bush: 61

·         Average number made yearly under Clinton: 65

·         Minimum number of pheasant hunts Dick Cheney has gone on since he shot a hunting companion in 2006: 5

·         Days after Hurricane Katrina hit that Cheney’s office ordered an electric company to restore power to two oil pipelines: 1

·         Days after the hurricane that the White House authorized sending federal troops into New Orleans: 4

·         Portion of the $3.3 billion in federal Hurricane Katrina relief spent by Mississippi that has benefited poor residents: 1/4

·         Percentage change in the number of Louisiana and Mississippi newborns named Katrina in the year after the storm: +153

·         Rank of Nevaeh, “heaven” spelled backward, among the fastest growing names given to American newborns since 2000: 1

·         Months, beginning in 2001, that the federal government’s online condom fact sheet disappeared from its website : 17

·         Minimum amount that religious groups received in congressional earmarks from 2003 to 2006: $209,000,000

·         Amount such groups received during the previous fourteen years: $107,000,000

·         Percentage change from 2003 to 2007 in the amount of money invested in U.S. faith-based mutual funds: +88

·         Average annualized percentage return during that time in the Christian and Muslim funds, respectively: +11, +15

·         Number of feet the Ground Zero pit has been built up since the site was fully cleared in 2002: 30

·         Number of 980-foot-plus “Super Tall” towers built in the Arab world in the seven years since 9/11: 4

·         Year by which the third and final phase of the 2003 “road map” to a Palestinian state was to have been reached: 2005

·         Estimated number of the twenty-five provisions of the first phase that have yet to be completed: 12

·         Number of times in 2007 that U.S. media called General David Petraeus “King David”: 14

·         Percentage change during the first ten months of the Iraq war “surge” in the number of Iraqis detained in U.S.-run prisons: +63

·         Percentage change in the number of Iraqis aged nine to seventeen detained: +285

·         Ratio of the entire U.S. federal budget in 1957, adjusted for inflation, to the amount spent so far on the Iraq war: 1:1

·         Estimated amount Bush-era policies will cost the U.S. in new debt and accrued obligations: $10,350,000,000,000

·         Percentage change in U.S. discretionary spending during Bush’s presidency: +31

·         Percentage change during Reagan’s and Clinton’s, respectively: +16, +0.3

·         Ratio in 1999 of the number of U.S. federal employees to the number of private employees on government contracts: 15:6

·         Ratio in 2006: 14:15

·         Total value of U.S. government contracts in 2000 that were awarded without competitive bidding: $73,000,000,000

·         Total in 2007: $146,000,000,000

·         Number of the five directors of the No Child Left Behind reading program with financial ties to a curriculum they developed: 4

·         Amount by which the federal government has underfunded its estimated cost to implement NCLB: $71,000,000,000

·         Minimum number of copies sold, since it was released in 2006, of Flipping Houses for Dummies: 45,000

·         Chance that the buyer of a U.S. home in 2006 now has “negative equity,” i.e., the debt on the home exceeds its value: 1 in 5

·         Estimated value of Henry Paulson’s Goldman Sachs stock when he became Treasury Secretary and sold it: $575,000,000

·         Estimated value of that stock today: $238,000,000

·         Salary in 2006 of the White House’s newly created Director for Lessons Learned: $106,641

·         Minimum number of Bush-related books published since 2001: 606

·         Number of words in the first sentence of Bill Clinton’s memoir and in that of George W. Bush’s, respectively: 49, 5

·         Minimum number of nicknames Bush has given to associates during his presidency: 75

·         Number of associates with the last name Jackson he has dubbed “Action Jackson”: 2

·         Number of press conferences at which Bush has referred to a question as a “trick”: 14

·         Number of times he has declared an event or outcome not to be “acceptable”: 149

·         Rank of Bush among U.S. presidents with the highest disapproval rating: 1

·         Average percentage of Americans who approved of the job Bush was doing during his second term: 37

·        Percentage of Russians today who approve of the direction their country took under Stalin: 37