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, 3105 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  

The Voice of the White House

          Washington, D.C., February 26, 2009: “There is an old song about someone called Hard-Hearted Hannah and her merry pranks and one of the lines tells us that Hannah even poured water on a drowning man. Now we have a similar care wherein many, many American (and foreign) investors are being systematically ripped off on a grand scale by the manufacturing, merchandising and selling of badly adulterated investment silver and gold American coins. It is also now known that Credit Suisse gold bars, and a good deal of bullion European coinage is also being faked as well as the Canadian Maple leaf and the famous Krugerrands. All of these counterfeit items are being currently manufactured in China and sold all over the world as a hedge investment to millions. These coins, and bars, are made using laser-cut dies and therefore appear to be perfect. In order to enhance their profits, the Chinese adulterate both the gold and silver content of their fakes so that these can be detected by weighing them. Most collectors of these pieces, however, buy their investment pieces by mail and cannot weigh their purchases in advance. I have seen the figures of the numbers of coins, and other investment precious metals, sold and in this country alone, the numbers are in the many of millions. This counterfeiting is, of course, a serious crime but not in China where screwing the Americans is a great game. Adulterating pet food, toothpaste, milk and other products to cut their expenses is a well-known trait of the Celestials and anyone who thinks the innocent government in Beijing is not fully aware of this is an idiot. If some particularly nasty story of poisoned food or toys (lead paint) becomes known in America, the authorities take out a factory owner and shoot him hut the fun goes on. What these assholes have done is to destroy the coin market and, like the crooked mortgage brokers and their banking crime partners, screw the American public to the wall. What is needed is a good Forest Preserve and lots and lots of rope. As far as the Chinese are concerned, we should at once block any kind of Chinese product from entering this country. We should also block the arrogant and vicious Mexican drug dealers from brazenly setting up shop on this side of the border. With the Chinese, we can cut off our trade and with the beaner drug lords, we can capture them and cut off their heads or other body parts.”

Mass Counterfeiting of American coins

February 27, 2009

by Brian Harring

brianharring@yahoo.com

                 With the collapsing American economy, many Americans are rushing to invest in gold; either coins or bar, and also silver. One of the most popular forms of this investment are American coins.  Where there is a need, there is always someone to fill it and in this case, the filling consists of  the massive counterfeiting of gold coins, silver coins, and even Swiss gold bars in China. Initially, it appeared they were only faking Morgan dollars, but then it turned out they were also making $20 Liberty, and Indian Head gold $2.50, $5, and $10 coins, of all dates. Evidently, this is extremely easy with today's computer-and-laser-die-cutting technology, and the fakes are being die-struck in vast quantities, not cast, and visually at least, are superb copies.

                The good news is that these fakes are readily detectable with a 0.01 - gram scale, as the Chinese in their greed are using lower carats of gold and lower grades of silver than the genuine coins, to maximize profit, and thus, in most cases, the fake coins and bars are lighter than the real ones. In a few cases, the silver coins of high numismatic interest are actually OVER weight - it appears that the supply of accurate planchet stock is a major difficulty for the forgers.

                Here are links to a two-part article about this in Coin World Magazine:

                http://www.coinworldonline.com/counterfeits/articles/20081203/counterfeit_1.asp

                http://www.coinworldonline.com/counterfeits/articles/20081203/counterfeit_2.asp

                Note: They are even faking PCGS and ANACS slabs!!:

                http://www.coinworldonline.com/counterfeits/articles/20081203/counterfeit_3.asp

                A friend who has an extremely wealthy friend in Europe (on the order of several hundreds of millions) asked this person to make enquiries at his bank. The bank told him candidly that indeed, the Chinese are also faking sovereigns, half sovereigns, French 20 Franc gold, and various denominations of Nicholas II Russian Rubles, of all dates, as well as Swiss gold bars. They said any gold bars they are offered for purchase are both weighed and the serial numbers checked with the manufacturers. The Chinese do not know the serial and manufacture date numbering systems on the gold bars, and so that error is quickly detectable.

                The US Secret Service has just this week been made aware of this problem, which was new to them, and if they decide to launch an investigation, they have indicated that while they cannot do anything about the operations in China, they can, and will, seize any counterfeit US coins they come across. Dealers in these fakes would also be liable to fines and jail time. Foreign fakes are not under their purview, but if that business turns out to be substantial, there could conceivably be an FBI investigation of fraud in interstate commerce, targeting companies who are mail-ordering fake foreign coins. Individuals who have been cheated might also sue their suppliers - in short, this could turn into a huge mess.

                General appearance aside, it is very easy it is to spot fakes - just with a scale reading to 1/00th of a gram, and a table of the correct weights and sizes of the coins or bars they are buying. (In the case of large-size bargold, unless buying from the manufacturer or a reputable bank, the serial numbers need to be verified, so that one does not buy a Chinese bar with a lead or mercury core)

                Herewith a listing of what I have uncovered so far:

                1; The U.S .Morgan silver dollar. All dates and all mint marks;

                2: The U.S. gold coins viz the $2.50, $5.00 and $10.00 Indian head issues

                3. The U.S. copper penny viz 1909 S  vdb

                4. Three gold Imperial Russian roubles from the reign of Nicholas II

                5. A gold 20 franc coin with the head of Napoleon I on the obverse

                6. The South African Krugerrand

                7. British sovereigns and half sovereigns of different monarchs and dates

                And in addition, they are also making fake gold bars from the Credit Suisse people.

                It was always considered that numismatics as a relatively fraud-free area of collecting, but it appears that a coin collector today has to carry a digital scale around. This doesn't affect me very much, but I too have wondered at the sudden appearance of all the Morgan dollars. Fortunately, the ones I have came down to me from my grandfather, and I'll be very careful picking up individual pieces that fill blanks.

                As for Krugerands and similar gold pieces that are traded for bullion prices, it is obvious that the Chinese have lowered the purity and thus debase the value; otherwise, a fake Krug would have as much gold as a real one.

MORGAN SILVER DOLLARS (1878-1921)

Note: It is very important to understand that most of these coins were removed from circulation and melted down for their silver content. Therefore, the enormous numbers of Morgan dollars, “recently discovered, in mint condition, in an old vault,” is only a predictable fabrication designed to sell the fakes to the gullible.

Official specifications, including weight of originals

Morgan Dollars

Minted: 1878 to 1904, 1921
Designer: George T. Morgan
Gross weight: 26.73 grams
Composition: .900 silver/.100 copper
Net silver content: 0.77344 oz.
Size: 38.1 mm diameter

Indian Head $2.50 gold coin

Designer  Bela Lyon Pratt

Gross weight: 4.18 grams

Net Weight .12094 oz pure gold

Composition: .900 gold, 100 copper

Diameter: 18 mm, reeded edge

Mints: Philadelphia  1908-1915, 1926-1929

Denver 1911, 1914, 1925

Indian head $5.00 gold coin

Designer: Bela Lyon Pratt

Gross weight: 8.359 grams

Gold content: 0.24187 oz

Composition: 90% gold, 10% copper

Diameter: 21.6 mm

Dates: 1908-16m, 1929

Reeded edge

Mints:

Denver (1908-11; 1914), Philadelphia (1908-15; 1929), San Francisco (1908-16

Indian head $10.00 gold

Designer: Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Gross weight: 16.718 grams

Net weight: .48375 oz pure gold

Composition: .900 gold, 100 copper

Diameter: 27 mm, Raised stars on edge

Mints: Philadelphia  1907-1933, San Francisco 1908-1930

Denver: 1908-1914

                `While many of these fake coins are widely advertised in the American prnit and television media, many are also sold on eBay

                These single-coin auctions are usually listed with a starting price of 5 or 10 cents, and they usually close around those prices when the swindler  gets a buyer. These fake coins cost the Chinese about 50 cents to make but the swindlers make most of their profit from the shipping expense they collect from their victims.

                This is a common practice with China-based sellers on eBay. They sell the counterfeit item very cheaply, but then charge as much as $70 or more for shipping. Doing this serves two useful functions. First, their Final Value Fee expense is minimal, since eBay bases this fee on the auction’s closing price. Secondly, if an item is returned to the seller for some reason, the buyer can only recover that minimal bid amount since shipping and handling is typically nonrefundable.

Counterfeiting significant to China’s overall economy
by Susan Headley
Special to Coin World

The counterfeiting of general goods and infringement of intellectual rights (such as software piracy) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) comprises a significant portion of China’s overall economy. Consider these facts:

- In 2006, an estimated 8 percent of China’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was generated from counterfeiting.

- The PRC’s own State Council Research and Development Center estimated that there were $19 billion to $24 billion worth of counterfeit goods flooding China’s economy in 2001.

- Brand owners estimated that 15 to 20 percent of all well-known brands in the PRC are counterfeit.

- Up to 80 percent of all worldwide counterfeiting is done in China, according to some estimates.

- In 2005, U.S. Customs seized $93 million worth of counterfeit and infringing goods, nearly 70 percent of which came from China (and this is only what Customs actually caught entering the country, which is probably a small percentage of the total).

- The manufacture of counterfeits is primarily centered in the two southern Chinese provinces of Fujian and Guangdong.

The Long Arm of the Lawless 
February 25, 2009

by Bruce Berman

bruce@bruceberman.com
               

                 Last week we discussed the impact that crime, and specifically kidnapping, has been having on Mexican citizens and foreigners visiting or living in Mexico. We pointed out that there is almost no area of Mexico immune from the crime and violence. As if on cue, on the night of Feb. 21 a group of heavily armed men threw two grenades at a police building in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero state, wounding at least five people. Zihuatanejo is a normally quiet beach resort just north of Acapulco; the attack has caused the town's entire police force to go on strike. (Police strikes, or threats of strikes, are not uncommon in Mexico.)

                 Mexican police have regularly been targeted by drug cartels, with police officials even having been forced to seek safety in the United States, but such incidents have occurred most frequently in areas of high cartel activity like Veracruz state or Palomas. The Zihuatanejo incident is proof of the pervasiveness of violence in Mexico, and demonstrates the impact that such violence quickly can have on an area generally considered safe.

                 Significantly, the impact of violent Mexican criminals stretches far beyond Mexico itself. In recent weeks, Mexican criminals have been involved in killings in Argentina, Peru and Guatemala, and Mexican criminals have been arrested as far away as Italy and Spain. Their impact -- and the extreme violence they embrace -- is therefore not limited to Mexico or even just to Latin America. For some years now, STRATFOR has discussed the threat that Mexican cartel violence could spread to the United States, and we have chronicled the spread of such violence to the U.S.-Mexican border and beyond.

                 Traditionally, Mexican drug-trafficking organizations had focused largely on the transfer of narcotics through Mexico. Once the South American cartels encountered serious problems bringing narcotics directly into the United States, they began to focus more on transporting the narcotics to Mexico. From that point, the Mexican cartels transported them north and then handed them off to U.S. street gangs and other organizations, which handled much of the narcotics distribution inside the United States. In recent years, however, these Mexican groups have grown in power and have begun to take greater control of the entire narcotics-trafficking supply chain.

                With greater control comes greater profitability as the percentages demanded by middlemen are cut out. The Mexican cartels have worked to have a greater presence in Central and South America, and now import from South America into Mexico an increasing percentage of the products they sell. They are also diversifying their routes and have gone global; they now even traffic their wares to Europe. At the same time, Mexican drug-trafficking organizations also have increased their distribution operations inside the United States to expand their profits even further. As these Mexican organizations continue to spread
beyond the border areas, their profits and power will extend even further – and they will bring their culture of violence to new areas.

 Burned in Phoenix

                 The spillover of violence from Mexico began some time ago in border towns like Laredo and El Paso in Texas, where merchants and wealthy families face extortion and kidnapping threats from Mexican gangs, and where drug dealers who refuse to pay "taxes" to Mexican cartel bosses are gunned down. But
now, the threat posed by Mexican criminals is beginning to spread north from the U.S.-Mexican border. One location that has felt this expanding threat most acutely is Phoenix, some 185 miles north of the border. Some sensational cases have highlighted the increased threat in Phoenix, such as a June 2008 armed
assault in which a group of heavily armed cartel gunmen dressed like a Phoenix Police Department tactical team fired more than 100 rounds into a residence during the targeted killing of a Jamaican drug dealer who had double-crossed a Mexican cartel. We have also observed cartel-related violence in places like
Dallas and Austin, Texas. But Phoenix has been the hardest hit.

                 Narcotics smuggling and drug-related assassinations are not the only thing the Mexican criminals have brought to Phoenix. Other criminal gangs have been heavily involved in human smuggling, arms smuggling, money laundering and other crimes. Due to the confluence of these Mexican criminal gangs, Phoenix has now become the kidnapping-for-ransom capital of the United States. According to a
Phoenix Police Department source, the department received 368 kidnapping reports last year. As we discussed last week, kidnapping is a highly underreported crime in places such as Mexico, making it very difficult to measure accurately. Based upon experience with kidnapping statistics in other parts of the world --specifically Latin America -- it would not be unreasonable to assume that there were at least as many unreported kidnappings in Phoenix as there are reported kidnappings.

                 At present, the kidnapping environment in the United States is very different from that of Mexico, Guatemala or Colombia. In those countries, kidnapping runs rampant and has become a well-developed industry with a substantial established infrastructure. Police corruption and incompetence ensures that kidnappers are rarely caught or successfully prosecuted.

                 A variety of motives can lie behind kidnappings. In the United States, crime statistics demonstrate that motives such as sexual exploitation, custody disputes and short-term kidnapping for robbery have far surpassed the number of reported kidnappings conducted for ransom. In places like Mexico, kidnapping for
ransom is much more common.

                The FBI handles kidnapping investigations in the United States. It has  developed highly sophisticated teams of agents and resources to devote to investigating this type of crime. Local police departments are also far more  proficient and professional in the United States than in Mexico. Because of the advanced capabilities of law enforcement in the United States, the overwhelming majority of criminals involved in kidnapping-for-ransom cases reported to police-- between 95 percent and 98 percent -- are caught and convicted. There are also stiff federal penalties for kidnapping. Because of this, kidnapping for ransom
has become a relatively rare crime in the United States.

                 Most kidnapping for ransom that does happen in the United States occurs within immigrant communities. In these cases, the perpetrators and victims belong to the same immigrant group (e.g., Chinese Triad gangs kidnapping the families of Chinese businesspeople, or Haitian criminals kidnapping Haitian immigrants) -- which is what is happening in Phoenix. The vast majority of the368 known kidnapping victims in Phoenix are Mexican and Central American immigrants who are being victimized by Mexican or Mexican-American criminals.

                 The problem in Phoenix involves two main types of kidnapping. One is theabduction of drug dealers or their children, the other is the abduction of illegal aliens.

                Drug-related kidnappings often are not strict kidnappings for ransom per se. Instead, they are intended to force the drug dealer to repay a debt to the drug trafficking organization that ordered the kidnapping.

                 Non drug-related kidnappings are very different from traditional kidnappings in Mexico or the United States, in which a high-value target is abducted and held for a large ransom. Instead, some of the gangs operating in Phoenix are basing their business model on volume, and are willing to hold a
large number of victims for a much smaller individual pay out. Reports have emerged of kidnapping gangs in Phoenix carjacking entire vans full of illegal immigrants away from the coyote smuggling them into the United States. The kidnappers then transport the illegal immigrants to a safe house, where they are held captive in squalid conditions -- and often tortured or sexually assaulted with a family member listening in on the phone -- to coerce the victims' family members in the United States or Mexico to pay the ransom for their release. There are also reports of the gangs picking up vehicles full of victims at day labor sites and then transporting them to the kidnapping safe house rather than to the purported work site.

                 Drug-related kidnappings are less frequent than the nondrug-related abduction of illegal immigrants, but in both types of abductions, the victims are not likely to seek police assistance due to their immigration status or their involvement in illegal activity. This strongly suggests the kidnapping problem greatly exceeds the number of cases reported to police.

Implications for the United States

                The kidnapping gangs in Phoenix that target illegal immigrants have found their chosen crime to be lucrative and relatively risk-free. If the flow of illegal immigrants had continued at high levels, there is very little doubt the kidnappers' operations would have continued as they have for the past few years. The current economic downturn, however, means the flow of illegal immigrants has begun to slow -- and by some accounts has even begun to reverse. (Reports suggest many Mexicans are returning home after being unable to find jobs in the United States.)

                 This reduction in the pool of targets means that we might be fast approaching a point where these groups, which have become accustomed to kidnapping as a source of easy money -- and their primary source of income -- might be forced to change their method of operating to make a living. While some might pursue other types of criminal activity, some might well decide to diversify their pool of victims. Watching for this shift in targeting is of critical importance. Were some of these gangs to begin targeting U.S. citizens rather than just criminals or illegal immigrants, a tremendous panic would ensue, along with demands to catch the perpetrators.

                 Such a shift would bring a huge amount of law enforcement pressure onto the kidnapping gangs, to include the FBI. While the FBI is fairly hard-pressed for resources given its heavy counterterrorism, foreign counterintelligence and white-collar crime caseload, it almost certainly would be able to reassign the resources needed to respond to such kidnappings in the face of publicity and a public outcry. Such a law enforcement effort could neutralize these gangs fairly quickly, but probably not quickly enough to prevent any victims from being abducted or harmed.

                Since criminal groups are not comprised of fools alone, at least some of these groups will realize that targeting soccer moms will bring an avalanche of law enforcement attention upon them. Therefore, it is very likely that if kidnapping targets become harder to find in Phoenix -- or if the law enforcement
environment becomes too hostile due to the growing realization of this problem -- then the groups may shift geography rather than targeting criteria. In such a scenario, professional kidnapping gangs from Phoenix might migrate to other locations with large communities of Latin American illegal immigrants to victimize. Some of these locations could be relatively close to the Mexican border like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, San Diego or Los Angeles, though they could also include locations farther inland like Chicago, Atlanta, New York, or even the communities around meat and poultry packing plants in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic states. Such a migration of ethnic criminals would not be unprecedented: Chinese Triad groups from New York for some time have traveled elsewhere on the East Coast, like Atlanta, to engage in
extortion and kidnapping against Chinese businessmen there.

                The issue of Mexican drug-traffic organizations kidnapping in the United States merits careful attention, especially since criminal gangs in other areasof the country could start imitating the tactics of the Phoenix gangs.

Comment: There is one certain solution to this dangerous and growing problem. General Stonewall Jackson said it best: “Kill them. Kill them all.” If these swine and their fellow-travelers are caught, take them out into the nearby desert, castrate them, shoot them in the stomach and leave them for the buzzards. You could pay eager Americans a bounty for testicles…ears don’t count. BH

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2009, Issue No. 20
February 27, 2009

COURT FAVORS ATTORNEY'S RIGHT TO CLASSIFIED INFO

            A federal court this week said that litigants have a First Amendment right to provide classified information to their attorneys when doing so is necessary to protect their interests.  The ruling is implicitly at odds with a common government practice of denying attorneys access to classified information in Freedom of Information Act cases, pre-publication review disputes, and other matters.

                There is a "First Amendment right to share [classified] information with an attorney when such sharing is necessary for an attorney to advise his client of his rights," wrote Judge Gladys Kessler (pdf) of the DC District Court.

                The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by former Defense Intelligence Agency employee Anthony Shaffer against the DIA in connection with the controversial intelligence program known as Able Danger.  DIA sought to bar Shaffer from providing classified information about the program to his attorney, Mark S. Zaid, even though he holds a security clearance.  Mr. Zaid challenged the denial, and the court found merit in his complaint.

                "Without knowing all that his client, and the Defendants, know, Plaintiff Shaffer's counsel cannot be prepared to adequately represent his client's interests," Judge Kessler concluded.

                Executive branch agencies have frequently barred attorneys from access to classified information in civil litigation, effectively driving a wedge between the litigant and his counsel, particularly in disputes involving prepublication review of manuscripts that are said to contain classified information.  "I have faced this issue numerous times," Mr. Zaid said.

                The new ruling may make it harder to continue that practice.  (See more from the Legal Times blog here.)


FOCUS ON FUSION CENTERS

                The Department of Homeland Security has produced a new "Concept of Operations" (pdf) to define how the Department will support and oversee the network of dozens of "fusion centers" that have been established around the country.  The fusion centers are intended to promote a collaborative approach among federal, state and local authorities to combating terrorism and criminal activity.

                Preparation of the new DHS Concept of Operations was required by the "9/11 Commission Recommendations Act of 2007."  The document has not been formally released, but a copy was obtained by Secrecy News.  See "Interaction with State and Local Fusion Centers: Concept of Operations," December 2008.

                The Concept of Operations is programmatic rather than descriptive.  It explains the intended operation of the fusion center system, not how (or whether) it works in practice-- a topic on which there are conflicting views.

                "Despite their lofty claims, federal officials are misleading you if they have caused you to believe that fusion centers are actually 'fusing' any data, that interdepartmental systems in DOJ, DHS, or DOD are integrating anything but inconsequential records, or that nationwide networks like N-DEX and HSDN are systematically transporting data that is being used by state and local police departments," said former U.S. Attorney John McKay (pdf) at a September 24, 2008 hearing.  "If you accept these assertions at face value, you will be misinformed."

                From another perspective, there is "not enough terrorism" to justify the creation and maintenance of the fusion center system. "There is, more often than not, insufficient purely 'terrorist' activity to support a multi-jurisdictional and multi-governmental level fusion center that exclusively processes terrorist activity," according to Sacramento police officer Milton Nenneman.  ("Fusion Centers Face 'Insufficient' Terrorist Activity," Secrecy News, June 3, 2008).

                Others take a more favorable view.  "I would say that fusion centers have emerged as what may be the most significant change in the structural landscape of criminal intelligence in at least the past 25 years," said Russell M. Porter (pdf), director of the Iowa State fusion center.

                Some of these issues were addressed in a recently published Senate hearing record.  See "Focus on Fusion Centers: A Progress Report," hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, April 17, 2008.

                The most widely shared official view seems to be that fusion centers offer significant advantages, especially to law enforcement agencies, but that they are still far from fulfilling their potential or optimizing their utility.  A similar view was expressed recently by the DHS Office of Inspector General in "DHS' Role in State and Local Fusion Centers is Evolving" (pdf), December 10, 2008.

                The ACLU discussed its view of "What's Wrong with Fusion Centers" in December 2007 (with a July 2008 update).

                The Electronic Privacy Information Center provides related background, resources and critical commentary here.


VARIOUS ITEMS

                The release of President Obama's first Presidential Policy Directive on "Organization of the National Security System" was reported by Karen DeYoung in the Washington Post and by Josh Gerstein in Politico.

                "Secretary of Defense Robert Gates lifted a blanket ban on news media coverage of the honor guard ceremonies that mark the return of military casualties from abroad," the National Security Archive noted.

                The unreleased Bush Administration documents that are most coveted by reporters, civil libertarians, and others are discussed in "Opening the Files on Bush's Secrets" by Jon Wiener in The Nation, March 16, 2009.

                A new Army Field Manual on "Electronic Warfare in Operations" (pdf) has been issued as part of "an overall effort by the Army to rebuild its internal Electronic Warfare capability."  It also serves as a useful primer on the subject.  The new Field Manual, FM 3-36, has been approved for unrestricted release.

                A new trial date has been set in the "AIPAC Case," in which two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee are charged with improperly receiving and transmitting classified national defense information.  The new date is  May 27, 2009.


PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS, AND MORE FROM CRS

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

                "Presidential Records: Issues for the 111th Congress," February 17, 2009.

                "F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Program: Background, Status, and Issues," updated February 17, 2009.

                "Strategic Arms Control After START: Issues and Options," updated February 12, 2009.

                "Herring v. United States: Extension of the Good-Faith Exception to the Exclusionary Rule in Fourth Amendment Cases," February 2, 2009.

                "U.S. Motor Vehicle Industry: Federal Financial Assistance and Restructuring," January 30, 2009.

                "India-U.S. Relations," updated January 30, 2009.

                "Compulsory DNA Collection: A Fourth Amendment Analysis," updated January 23, 2009.

Conversations with the Crow: Part 70

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!

Conversation 70

Date: Tuesday July 30, 1996

Commenced: 8:30 AM CST

Concluded: 8:55 AM CST

GD: Good morning, Robert.

RTC: And the same to you, Gregory.

GD: Robert, I know you were not in the CIA’s technical branch but I often wonder when I am on the phone, am I being listened to?
RTC: You don’t have to be from the technical people to know the answer to that one. It’s not so much that you are being snooped on but that you can be observed by almost anyone at any time. We listened in on people and opened mail. That’s the reason why Jim was sacked but that was only an excuse. He was getting crazy. But as far as the telephone is concerned, yes, you could be listened to at any time. It’s not a bug on your phone so much as full and complete cooperation by the telephone people with various agencies. We did it, the FBI and the NSA do it and probably others as well. Your mail can be opened, addresses copied and so on. For instance, if you have a private Swiss bank account, we have the postal people copy down and forward to us the cover of any letter sent by a Swiss bank to an American addressee. We don’t have to open the letter to know it’s a monthly bank statement. And then we know where your account is. And the NSA listen in on each and every phone call overseas. You see, they tap into the communications satellites. Of course there are huge numbers of calls every day so their computers are set to pick out certain words. Like Abu Nidal for instance. Once a key word comes up, the conversation is taped and listened to later. 

GD: And the television sets can be used as a monitoring device but only if they’re connected to the cable TV system.

RTC: I’ve heard that but then I rarely watch the garbage on television.

GD: You can circumvent that simply by disconnecting your set from the cable system. Just take out the plug. Put it back later. Or, what I would do, would be to hold a really sizzling but totally fake disinformation conversation right in front of the set. You know…’the Russians really pay well for that information…’ and also ‘ yes the entire building has been mined. One push of a button and we can make the front pages of every newspaper in the world.’ Can you imagine the uproar on the other end? Of course you never are specific and just enough to drive them into a frenzy. I’ve done this a number of times but only twice did I ever find out what a huge stink I caused. Loved it then and I love it now.  Oh yes, Bill told me the other day that he saved Bobby Inman from exposure once. When I asked him from what, he shut down. Can you comment on this?

RTC: Probably the homosexual issue. They are very sensitive to that one.

GD: Why? And is Inman a faggot?

RTC: Now, now, I’ll let Bill discuss this with you. My information would only be second hand. And it has been long felt that if an agent were a fairy, he could be gotten at by the Russians and blackmailed or set up and turned.

GD: Well, that makes sense but there are so many people like that in DC that it would be difficult not to find a few in various agencies. I think it must be the military bases with their legions of muscled hustlers that draws these people. And the, of course, one gets into an agency and of course has to have company.

RTC: Yes. The Jews are the same way. You let one in and pretty soon, the office looks like a synagogue. And it’s always us against them. The same way with the fairies. That’s the main reason why I object to having them on board.

GD: But the problem with Inman….

RTC: Back in 1980 there was a fairy scare over at NSA. Real McCarthy purges, finger pointing, anonymous letters and so on. A number of the top brass there were scared shitless lest they, too, got exposed. Bill knows some of this and he has known Inman for a long time. There was an ugly incident when he was in law school. I was told that Bill was able to shut the matter down. That is one of the reasons Bill has such good rapport in certain circles.

GD: He’s blackmailing them?

RTC: In a sense. During the Carter days, Bill could pretty well get what he wanted from certain highly placed intelligence people. I think I should leave it at that, Gregory. Talk to Bill about this if you like but I doubt he’ll tell you anything and, yes, you are right. Washington is indeed full of those people. A lot in Congress, the military, especially the Air Force and various agencies. The FBI is rather picky but we and NSA have quite a few queers on board. The NSG has more than its share. And if you go into some of the faggot bars here, you might see a number of the prominent dancing around in mesh stockings and wearing really bad wigs.

GD: Oh, I’ve seen these in San Francisco. The wigs look like dead cats. They don’t look any more like women than my dog but who argues with self-delusion? Five kids and a wife at home and into the lavatories with the holes in the partitions after work. During the week, his name is George but on Saturdays, his name is Phyllis.

RTC: (Laughter) Yes, we are overrun here.

GD: Well, at least you can’t dump that one on Clinton although God knows that the weird Christian freaks might try. My God, they hate him and as far as I am concerned, these bone headed twits are far worse than the queens. They believe in the strangest things and are really obnoxious swine. They believe the world is only six thousand years old, that Noah’s ark came to ground at 5,000 feet on a mountain side and God only knows what other myths. I mean, Robert, if another religious cult arose that worshipped the Easter Bunny, it wouldn’t any more unbelievable than the Evangelicals. By the way, did you know that Crisco’s main production plant in New Jersey burned down last night? Yes. Millions now living will never fry.

RTC: (Laughter) Ah, Gregory, I can see why so many hate you so much.

GD: Well, one day, it will come out that Heini Mueller, head of the Gestapo and number two man on the wanted Nazi escapee list was living right near you and visiting the White House.

RTC: We may have to wait a while before that gets to be public knowledge. My God, the Hebes would scream so loud we would have to stuff hundred dollar bills into their mouths like a mama bird shoving worms into her babies. They are such arrogant and demanding people.

GD: Yes, God’s chosen people, Robert. I wonder what God chose them for? Probably to wait in line for the showers somewhere in Poland.

RTC: If that’s true, Gregory, God should have finished the job.

(Concluded at 8:55 AM CST)