TBR News April 21, 2019

The Voice of the White House Washington, D.C. April  21, 2019: “Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.

When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.

I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.

He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.

He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.

His latest business is to re-institute a universal draft in America.

He wants to do this to remove tens of thousands of unemployed young Americans from the streets so they won’t come together and fight him.

Commentary for April 21:Trump’s supportive AG thought by sanitizing the Mueller report, he could help his chief but the end result is growing suspicion and anger among the great mass of the public, dismay among the ranks of the right wing fanatics and happiness in the liberal camp. Even severely censored, the Mueller report condems Trump as an individual that many now do not want in the Oval Office and the word ‘impeachment’ is not only heard in the White House staff restaurant but all over town. Can Trump win? Not unless he bullies the entire country and he is not capable of that magnitude of mendacity.”

 

The Table of Contents

• Trump’s moral squalor, not impeachment, will remove him from power
• House Judiciary Chair Nadler says obstruction by Trump, if proven, is ‘impeachable’ offense
• The Best Hot Take on the Mueller Report Is From 1796
• Encyclopedia of American LoonsPsychology:
• What are anxiety disorders?
• The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
• FBI arrests leader of armed group stopping migrants in New Mexico
• Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown 
• What is InfraGard?
• Georgia’s “Rose Revolution”: A made-in-America coup.

 

Trump’s moral squalor, not impeachment, will remove him from power

Congress cannot rid us of this appalling man. Democrats must focus on voters who hold the keys to the White House

April 21, 2019

by Robert Reich

The Guardian

Democrats in Congress and talking heads on television will be consumed in the coming weeks by whether the evidence in the Mueller report, especially of obstruction of justice, merits impeachment.

Meanwhile, the question of “wink-wink” cooperation with Russia still looms. Mueller’s quote of Trump, when first learning a special counsel had been appointed – “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked” – has already become a national tagline. Why, Americans wonder, would Trump be “fucked” if he hadn’t done something so awful as to cause its revelation to “fuck” him?

Added to this will be Mueller’s own testimony before Congress, and Congress’s own investigations of Trump.

But let’s be real. Trump will not be removed by impeachment. No president has been. With a Republican Senate controlled by the most irresponsible political hack ever to be majority leader, the chances are nil.

Which means Trump will have to be removed the old-fashioned way – by voters in an election 19 months away.

The practical question is whether the Mueller report and all that surrounds it will affect that election.

Most Americans hold a low opinion of Trump. He’s the only president in Gallup polling history never to have earned the support of majority for single day of his term.

Yet Mueller’s report probably won’t move any of the 40% who have held tight to Trump regardless.

So how to reach the 11% or 12% who may decide the outcome?

Reveal his moral loathsomeness.

Democrats and progressives tend to shy away from morality, given how rightwing evangelicals have used it against abortion, contraceptives and equal marriage rights.

But that’s to ignore Americans’ deep sense of right and wrong. Character counts, and presidential character counts most of all.

Even though Mueller apparently doesn’t believe a sitting president can be indicted, he provides a devastating indictment of Trump’s character.

Trump is revealed as a chronic liar. He claimed he never asked for loyalty from FBI director James Comey. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never asked Comey to let the “Michael Flynn matter go”. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never pushed the White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. Mueller finds he did. Trump even lied about inviting Comey to dinner, claiming falsely, in public, that Comey requested it. Trump enlists others to lie. He lies to his staff.

Trump treats his subordinates horribly. He hides things from them. He yells at them. He orders them to carry out illegal acts.

He acts like a thug. He regrets his lawyers are not as good at protecting him as was his early mentor Roy Cohn – a mob lawyer. When reports surface about the now infamous Trump Tower meeting of June 2016, Trump directs the cover-up.

Trump is unprincipled. The few people in the White House and the cabinet who stand up to him, according to Mueller – threatening to resign rather than carry out his illegal orders – are now gone. They resigned or were fired.

This is a portrait of a morally bankrupt man.

We still don’t have the full story of Trump’s tax evasion and his business dealings with Russian financiers. But we know he has lied to business associates, stiffed contractors, cheated on his wife by having sex with a porn star, paid the porn star hush money, and boosted his wealth while in office with foreign cash.

It continues. In recent weeks he wilfully endangered the life of a member of Congress by disseminating a propaganda video, similar to those historically used by extremist political groups, tying her to the 9/11 tragedy because she is a Muslim American speaking up for Muslim Americans. She has received death threats, including one by a supporter of Trump who was arrested.

He has also attacked the deceased senator John McCain, whom he falsely accused of leaking the Steele dossier and finishing last in his class at Annapolis. Then Trump retweeted a note from a supporter saying “millions of Americans truly LOVE President Trump, not McCain”. Americans know McCain was tortured in a prison camp for five years, in service to this country.

How many of Trump’s followers or those who might otherwise be tempted to vote for him in 2020 will recoil from this moral squalor?

Donald Trump is the living embodiment of the seven deadly sins – pride, greed, lust, gluttony, wrath, envy and sloth – and he is the precise obverse of the seven virtues as enunciated by Pope Gregory in 590 AD: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.

Legal debates about obstruction of justice are fine. But no voter in 2020 should be allowed to overlook this basic reality: Donald Trump is a morally despicable human being.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. He is also a columnist for Guardian US

 

House Judiciary Chair Nadler says obstruction by Trump, if proven, is ‘impeachable’ offense

April 21, 2019

by Sarah N. Lynch

Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said on Sunday that if the evidence shows that President Donald Trump obstructed justice in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, then it could be an “impeachable” offense.

“If proven, some of this would be impeachable, yes,” Nadler said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Nadler said that Democrats are not currently pursuing such an action, but that they plan to “go where the evidence leads” them.

Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Bill Berkrot

 

The Best Hot Take on the Mueller Report Is From 1796

April 20, 2019

by Jon Schwarz

The Intercept

The Mueller report is now (mostly) public. The lurid speculation from Democrats and chunks of the corporate media that President Donald Trump was somehow a Russian agent was false. But the report, and Mueller’s previous indictments, should persuade any reasonable person that the Russian government did indeed intervene in the 2016 election in support of Trump.

The response from the U.S. political system to Russia’s meddling has been uniformly appalling, although in different ways from different factions. The whole thing’s such a degrading catastrophe that it’s tempting to give up on politics and human beings generally. But since we’re stuck with both, let’s take a step back and consider some profound advice on this subject from George Washington.

Incredibly enough, Washington called this whole thing back in 1796 as he was leaving office as America’s first president. His Farewell Address, as it became known, was until the 20th century as celebrated as the Gettysburg Address is now. The Senate still reads it every year on Washington’s birthday.

America’s founding fathers, Washington included, had grievous flaws. But they were serious people, who genuinely risked death to rebel against the British Empire. Because their lives depended on thinking deeply about politics, they did so in a way that few U.S. politicians have since.

So we should pay attention to the fact that much of Washington’s Farewell Address is devoted to a specific warning: “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”

These words may sound overwrought or anachronistic. But Washington wasn’t president of the current United States, the center of the largest empire in world history. In fact, Washington implied in his Farewell Address that the U.S. could be considered “small or weak” and faced rivals who were “great and powerful.” Moreover, he had direct experience with the efficacy of foreign interference: The American Revolution would never have succeeded without French troops and matériel, provided by Louis XVI in an effort to humiliate his hated British rivals. This support was so critical that French commanders and Washington jointly accepted the British surrender at Yorktown that ended the war. (Then, in perhaps history’s greatest example of blowback, regular French citizens were so impressed by the American Revolution that they staged one of their own and decapitated Louis. Whoops!)

Americans have almost totally forgotten the relevant subsequent history. But the 223 years since the Farewell Address have proven that Washington’s anxieties were justified. Foreign influence indeed has repeatedly and perniciously warped U.S. politics.

The Civil War would likely have ended in a Union victory years earlier if Great Britain hadn’t unofficially intervened on the side of the Confederacy: The South had a minuscule industrial base and needed the British to build their navy and manufacture their guns. After the war, the U.S. forced Great Britain to pay $15 million for damages caused by the ships it had built for the rebels.

The British manipulated American politics with more success 50 years later, via a covert propaganda campaign designed to nudge the U.S. to enter World War I on their side. The head of the effort secretly told the British cabinet, “In the eyes of the American people the quiet and subterranean nature of our work has the appearance of a purely private patriotism and enterprise.” The British government tried to bribe the newly founded New Republic by offering to buy 50,000 copies of every issue if the magazine continued its pro-Allies stance. (The New Republic turned them down.)

More recently, Richard Nixon conspired with the government of South Vietnam during his 1968 presidential campaign to sabotage Lyndon Johnson’s attempts to strike a peace deal with North Vietnam and end the Vietnam War. The election was extremely close, with Nixon beating LBJ’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, by just 500,000 votes out of 73 million cast. If Nixon hadn’t scuttled Johnson’s efforts, or if Nixon’s treachery had been revealed, it’s likely that Humphrey would have won. Instead, Nixon took the White House, and in 1973 signed a treaty with North Vietnam on essentially the same terms available in 1968. In the meantime, 20,000 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians died.

Just 12 years later, in 1980, Ronald Reagan’s campaign almost certainly colluded with Iran’s newborn Islamic Republic. During the chaos of the Iranian revolution the year before, students in Tehran had overrun the U.S. embassy there and seized 52 Americans as hostages. Reagan’s top staff were deeply worried that President Jimmy Carter would strike a politically popular deal just before the election to get the hostages out. The evidence is quite strong that Reagan campaign therefore made some kind of agreement with Iran to keep the hostages until the moment Reagan was inaugurated. As the January 1981 headline in The Onion book “Our Dumb Century” put it: “Hostages Released: Reagan Urges American People Not to Put Two and Two Together.”

That brings us to today and the total collapse of America’s elites.

Because foreign interference is a genuine, serious issue, Democratic leaders and the corporate press owed it to Americans to treat it that way. They could have focused on what could be proven and kept what was provable in perspective. Yes, Russia attempted to influence the 2016 election in various ways. No, this was not an “act of war,” and in fact it appears to have been one of the milder examples of foreign meddling in history. Washington would have counseled that this behavior from other countries is unfortunate but a given, and that we should therefore “observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all.”

Instead Democrats and large chunks of the media jumped directly to incendiary delirium. Against all odds, they managed to accuse Trump of the only crime he hasn’t committed: conspiring with Russia. This incompetence was particularly impressive since the Democrats had consciously decided not to make an issue of the foreign collusion committed by the GOP’s candidate in 1968 and (probably) 1980. Helping Republicans cover up real crimes and accusing them of imaginary ones: That’s the Democratic Party.

Top Democrats also demonstrated — given their enthusiasm for America’s bipartisan subversion of the political systems of numberless countries — that they are ridiculous hypocrites. A week before Election Day in 2016, it was revealed that Hillary Clinton said privately in 2006 that “we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win” that year’s Palestinian elections. To her, it was an act of great incompetence by George W. Bush not to have rigged it sufficiently.

And that wasn’t the end of the core dishonesty of many Democrats. As Washington explained, concern about foreign influence “must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other.” The Democratic Party’s leadership does not oppose and in fact welcomes the powerful influence of Israel and the Persian Gulf petro-states on U.S. politics. Indeed, given that Washington wrote that “real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious,” he would not be surprised to see how the political system has treated Rep. Ilhan Omar. (The GOP feel similar equanimity about Israel and the Gulf states, but at least for this moment they appear to welcome foreign meddling from any country, rather than picking and choosing which meddling is acceptable.)

Yet none of this exonerates Trump & Co. Regular grassroots Democrats, and just regular Americans, have every right to be furious and disgusted with Republican behavior during the Russia imbrogli

The fact that the U.S. government has brutally intervened in the politics of dozens of other countries doesn’t mean that normal Americans can’t legitimately be angry about Russia’s 2016 meddling or the GOP’s response. The governments of Iran, Egypt and Chile have done their share of intervening in the politics of other countries, but regular Iranians, Egyptians, and Chileans still have every right to furious about U.S. interference in their politics.

Given the unusual circumstances of Trump’s election, it’s also understandable that regular Democrats are maddened by his glee in governing from the far right. His margin of victory was so thin — just 80,000 votes in three states gave him his electoral college victory — that it’s irrational to deny that Russia’s interference, as weak as it was by historical comparison, may have made the difference. It’s also irrational to be certain it did make the difference. But a president with any sense of patriotism and fairness would have acted in the most conciliatory way possible.

The fact that the information released in various hacks was accurate, and that Clinton and the Democratic National Committee should never have concealed the important aspects of them, likewise doesn’t invalidate anger from everyday Democrats. Imposing transparency on one candidate but not the other is to place a heavy thumb on the scales.

Finally, and most fundamentally, the citizens of all countries have the right to expect their leaders to oppose attempts by foreign nations to influence their politics, even if an attempt benefits them. Instead, the intense factionalism of Trump and the GOP generally has made them incapable of even pretending to care. In a healthy democracy, Trump wouldn’t, even “in jest,” have asked Russia to steal Clinton’s emails. When Donald Trump Jr. was told that the Russian government wanted to give him damaging information about Clinton as part of its support for his father’s campaign, he would have called the FBI. Sen. Mitch McConnell wouldn’t have refused Barack Obama’s September 2016 request to participate in a “show of solidarity and bipartisan unity” against foreign meddling. Most of all, Republicans would be deeply concerned by the new information in the Mueller report about Russia’s attempts to manipulate the nuts and bolts of the U.S. voting system. Their failure is exactly what Washington feared: “The spirit of party,” he said, “opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.”

Washington also predicted the Democratic response to the blatant sectarianism of the GOP. “The continual mischiefs” of factionalism by one side, Washington wrote, inevitably create disastrous responses from the opposing faction. Their ensuing mirror-image loyalty to party over country “agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another.”

All this barely scratches the surface of the wisdom in Washington’s Farewell Address, and its applicability to our current predicament. Anyone who reads it in its entirety will be startled and alarmed by his prescience. What’s most distressing is that Washington predicted that his effort would all be for nothing:

‘In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations.’

Encyclopedia of American Loons

Sallie Bernard

SafeMinds is an advocacy group dedicated (to a large extent) to antivaxx lobbying and, in particular, to the utterly discredited hypothesis that mercury causes autism. And, for people with little aptitude for scientific evidence, little time for critical thinking, and a stake in the outcome, no study, however rigorous, is going to change their minds (as the name suggests, the group is entirely impervious to evidence).

Sallie Bernard is the executive director of SafeMinds, and a committed promoter of denialism and pseudoscience. A fine case in point is her comments on an article concerning a seven-year study of 1,047 children who received mercury-containing vaccines as infants funded by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention – which, of course, found no indication of developmental delays. As the authors of the study pointed out, “[a] majority of the selected families declined to participate or could not be located, and we were able to enroll only 30% of the subjects included for recruitment. Therefore, our findings may have been influenced by selection bias.” Bernard interpreted this as meaning that the study was biased and worthless. Of course, as the authors point out, the selection bias would almost certainly have biased the study in favor of harm, but Bernard missed that. And Bernard was, in fact, a consultant for the study and helped contribute to its design; but you know: when it nevertheless failed to show what she had already determined that it ought to show, what can she do?

Most of her errors are, however, even more obvious. When a major report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), entitled “Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality” showed that vaccines are safe, she went full Orwellian (including conspiracy mongering), once again demonstrating that no evidence, study or science will ever, no matter what, make her and her organization change their mind about the alleged causal links between mercury and autism. After all, Bernard herself published a rather infamous paper supporting a link in the pseudojournal (yes!) Medical Hypotheses back in 2001. And yes, her tactics are the same as always: conspiracies, shifting goalposts and pharma shill gambits abound. An illuminating discussion of her and SafeMinds’ techniques can be found here

Diagnosis: A major player in the anti-vaccine movement, Bernard makes sure to employ all the familiar canards, all the obfuscation, and a complete lack of criticial thinking skills to dismiss any evidence (i.e. all evidence) against what she very zealously believes for reasons that have little to do with evidence. Dangerous mumpsimus.

Robert Scott Bell

The Robert Scott Bell show is a lunatic altmed conspiracy podcast on on the lunatic fringe “Republic Broadcasting Network”. The podcast is characterized by conspiracy theories that would make even the whale.to audience pause (well, not really) and the misuse of technical terminology to make incoherent rants on medicine sound plausible to those without any knowledge of medicine or physiology or command of the vocabulary whatsoever. Bell is a proponent of a range of quackery and crackpottery, from homeopathy to colloidal silver (to treat autism, no less), and a range of denialist positions, from anti-vaccination to HIV denialism. Apparently his claims have sounded sufficiently impressive to the reality-challenged for him to be given space and time e.g. at the quackfest Autism One. Mike Adams is a fan; Adams is also a fan of David Icke. (In fact, Adams shared his by now infamous McNugget of comical gold on Bell’s show).

We are not going to discuss the extent of Bell’s ridiculousness, but take his and one April Boden’s discussion of the HPV vaccine as an example of the style and content. Apparently HPV is a harmless virus that does not cause cervical cancer at all. Indeed, like most “viruses” the HPV is “expressed under cellular stress,” and is suppressed or made completely inactive in a healthy, well-regulated cell. So, cells which are nurtured and fed essential nutrients, like essential fatty acids, selenium and glutathione regularly stop the expression of “viruses.” Cells “which are dysregulated, starved for nutrients and intoxicated by chemicals, pesticides, heavy metals and neurotoxins often express viruses.” (You don’t need much background in medicine to recognize this as a word salad.) So why, then, does government recommend the HPV vaccine? Well, the truth is, apparently, that “California [the rant was broadcast when HPV was introduced there] is broke, and in order to make up its endless budget shortfall, it is selling its children into pharmaceutical slavery. Yes, it’s a conspiracy, just like HIV – not a fatal disease, according to the show, but an excuse to distribute lethal drugs like AZT to kill off parts of the population to save money. Yup, that’s reality as they see it over at Robert Scott Bell’s show

And when Jon Stewart criticized anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, Bell didn’t take itlightly. According to Bell, Stewart is a “Nazi” waging war on “all of us who believe in health freedom and healing liberty,” and “he’s ready to take us out and put us in concentration camps,” since everyone who disagrees with Bell obviously and by default want to commit genocide.

Diagnosis: Hysterically insane, fuming, incoherently babbling tinfoil hatter. Now, Bell is apparently fringe even for the fringe, so his impact is presumably somewhat limited. Still.

 

Psychology: What are anxiety disorders?

The number of people suffering from anxiety disorders has increased by 15 percent since 2005. What are the symptoms and what can be done about this mental illness?

April 18, 2019

by Sophia Wagner

DW

In 2015, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 264 million people were affected by anxiety disorders. But what are they exactly?

After all, anxiety is quite normal and, in many cases, justified, because it protects us from danger. An anxiety disorder, however, is about situations in which there is no danger. From a purely rational point of view, the anxiety is completely unfounded, but it can still feel very real.

Generalized anxiety disorder

There are different forms of anxiety disorders. These include, for example, phobias.

One of the most restrictive though is Generalized Anxiety Disorder. While in a phobia the anxiety is bound to concrete situations or objects (for example, arachnophobia or a fear of flying), Generalized Anxiety Disorder is much less specific. It is like a constant companion, a shadow that lurks around the next corner and can strike at any time.

This does not mean that people who struggle with this psychological illness are in a permanent state of misery. For many of those affected, constant stress is simply the norm. Beginning in their teens, those with Generalized Anxiety Disorder learn to hide their worries and to manage them in everyday life. Nevertheless, fear takes its toll.

Contributing factors

One’s likelihood of having an anxiety disorder depends on various factors. For example, women are affected twice as often as men. Some people are also genetically more susceptible to stress and anxiety. A person’s environment and traumatic experiences can also play a role in the development of anxiety disorders.

Typical symptoms include fatigue, poor sleep and digestive problems. Anyone who has the feeling that they cannot get out of a whirlpool of worries and fears for more than six months should seek the advice of an expert. In addition, a few small changes in everyday life could also have a positive effect:

Sports

Working out two to three times a week for at least 30 minutes is important. It doesn’t really matter what type of exercise it is either: running, going to the gym, playing football, swimming. The main point is to get exhausted.

Activity helps to break down the adrenaline you release in stressful situations. Additionally, the body reacts to exercise similarly to how it reacts to stress. Your pulse goes up, you sweat, you start to breathe harder. Thus the body learns to deal with these reactions during sports and can cope better with the next attack of stress.

Nutrition

A healthy diet with a lot of whole grains, vegetables and omega-3s can alleviate stress. What should be avoided are starchy foods like bread or pasta made from normal flour. This kind of food keeps insulin levels high. High insulin levels can lead to inflammatory reactions in the body, which can negatively affect the brain. Fresh fruit and vegetables, on the other hand, fight inflammation. There are even substances which, if eaten regularly, act like natural tranquilizers. These include omega-3 fatty acids and tryptophan. That’s an amino acid found in milk, for example.

Coffee, however, is bad for nervous people because of its caffeine. It doesn’t only wake you up, it also drives your heart rate up. The body interprets this as a stress signal.

Relaxation

In addition to exercise and proper nutrition, relaxation techniques are also great for reducing stress. Yoga, meditation and awareness training, for example. This has to do with the way you breathe. Those who are stressed breathe flatly. This triggers an automated reaction in the body called “fight or flight”. It signals to the body that it’s in danger and stress hormones are released. Deep, slow breathing, on the other hand, activates the so-called “rest and digest” reaction. The body relaxes, and stress hormones are reduced.

Those who incorporate these habits into their life should feel an improvement after about two months. If this does not happen, talking to a doctor or undergoing therapy may be in order.

 

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

April 21, 2019

by Dr. Peter Janney

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, on 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 the 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 out 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 its 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.

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 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 publication.

 

Conversation No. 51

Date: Saturday, November 30, 1996

Commenced: 11:30 AM CST

Concluded: 11; 45 AM CST

 

RTC: I was reading over your analysis of the present political and business status and I thought it was interesting. At least I thought your final conclusions were not at all outrageous. But I should caution you against sending such things to Kimmel or Bill. Kimmel would be outraged and Bill will pass this on to Langley because that’s what he does.

GD: None of that surprises me, Robert. I was just stating the obvious. At least it is obvious to me. I suppose if you read history, everything is so compressed and obvious but if you are living it, the end is not always clear. Distance is always important in making conclusions. People don’t like to do this because they want this or that kind of ending so they twist and distort the obvious to suit themselves. When I was writing such reports in the Army, I learned very quickly on not to express attitudes that were opposite of my superiors, no matter how obvious they might be.

RTC: A manifestation of early survival instinct, Gregory.

GD: Yes, why not? No one cares about inconvenient truths but they dearly love convenient lies. But the truth is still there, isn’t it?

RTC: Yes, but we never see it until it’s too late.

GD: The French Revolution was entirely predictable but only if you could stand back from it. Not a revolt of the masses but initially a perfectly reasonable desire for a burgeoning middle business class to gain parity with the great triumvirate: The Monarchy, the Nobility and the Church. Of course the latter trio did not want to share power and the ensuing struggle spilled over and the mob got it. Reasonable beginnings but terrible endings.

RTC: But could have anyone foreseen the end?

GD: Good point. A few but not the ones that mattered. A Polish writer, Bloch, very accurately foresaw the deadly trench warfare of the First World War but at the time he wrote, the great bulk of military theorists had more conventional views so no one heard him. Afterwards, of course, he became famous. At the time, not. The same with my views.

RTC: I must confess, Gregory, that I am a little conventional and predictions of social upheaval, anarchy and economic collapse are a bit alien to me.

GD: Yet you were accustomed to predict such things in other governments you wanted to either replace or destroy. Correct?

RTC: Well, we fomented more than one revolution and collapsed more than one economy but we didn’t predict these things, Gregory, we made them happen. You don’t plan to make a revolution or collapse our economy.

GD: No, I don’t. But if you see a man building a house on the beach, doesn’t it occur to him that a good storm might easily topple it? After all, Robert, the Bible says this but, of course, it’s only common sense.  No empire, and we have an empire now, ever lasted forever. Rome did not and England did not. They rise and they fall. It will be the same with us. After two major wars, we rule. Of course we contested with Russia but since we were better grounded economically, we survived. They may yet come back but it’s not for certain. I see China as our immediate rival but they have uncontrolled capitalism under the control of an aging dictatorship and I would predict that they will shoot up economically and this boom will frighten the leaders. Money creates the desire for power and an empowered mass is very dangerous. And we learned after 1929 that if our marketplace had no controls, it would indulge in peak or collapse on a regular and very destructive basis. Remove these controls would be like blowing up a dam and flooding all the countryside below it. Money for a few and disaster for the rest. Clinton has not encouraged this decontrol but God help us if the right wing ever gets into power. We have all kinds of fiscal dinosaurs waiting in the wings, mating with the lunatics of the religious right and they may yet have their day. Unfettered markets and Jesus in every home, no stores open on Sunday and the Ten Commandments in every classroom. Oh, and not to mention a stake through the heart of the evil Darwin. Nuts. The world is only 6,000 years old and the Grand Canyon was created by Noah’s mythical flood. Action and reaction. If that dismal project comes to pass, there will be a reaction, believe me.

RTC: But your predictions of revolution?

GD: People get bored sometimes, Robert, get tired of taxes and dream of some kind of social paradise where everyone is equal. Who knows what monsters are waiting to be born? But the economy is based on credit and like a Ponzi scheme, credit has its limits. You can only use it so far and no further and if we go too far with our credit cards and loans, the end can be easily seen as the python said as he wrapped himself around the tree.

RTC: Well, it won’t happen during the rest of my lifetime, Gregory. Perhaps in yours.

GD: Probably. We need a Bismarck now but we won’t get him. Democracy is its own worst enemy, Robert. Greed, lack of coordination, corruption, and God alone knows what else. And our national education system is a horror. We are cranking out generations of the illiterate and ill-informed and these know-nothings will eventually get into power. Then we need all the help God can give us. Well, we always get what we pay for, don’t we? Political correctness is idiotic. We should teach our children to question, to evaluate and to analyze, not bleat in their pens like placid sheep. It’s like trying to stab someone with a pound of butter.

RTC: (Laughter) Well, a fat and comfortable public….

GD: Yes, a fat public. Well, it’s only a matter of conjecture, isn’t it? What is it the Bible says? While we are in the light, let us walk in the light for the darkness cometh. Something like that. Enough realistic pessimism for the day, Robert. I recall telling Kimmel, when I found out he taught Sunday school, that he ought to let his little charges read the Song of Solomon and he had a fit. But, I told him, it’s in the Bible so it can’t be wrong. He didn’t see it that way. One dimensional. Never ask questions because you might not like the answers. The truth will not make you free but cause spastic colon. Anyway, I like to speculate, Robert, that’s all. If a dam is leaking, is it wrong to predict a collapse?

RTC: The real estate people down below it would not approve of such sentiments.

GD: No, but they probably live on higher ground.

 

(Concluded at 11:45 CST)

 

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Conversations+with+the+Crow+by+Gregory+Douglas

FBI arrests leader of armed group stopping migrants in New Mexico

by Andrew Hay

April 20, 2019

Reuters

TAOS, N.M. (Reuters) – The FBI on Saturday said it had arrested Larry Hopkins, the leader of an armed group that is stopping undocumented migrants after they cross the U.S.-Mexico border into New Mexico.

The arrest came two days after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) accused the group of illegally detaining migrants and New Mexico’s Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham ordered an investigation.

Hopkins, 69, also known as Johnny Horton, was arrested in Sunland Park, New Mexico, on a federal complaint charging him with being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.

“We’re not worried about it, he’s going to be cleared,” said Jim Benvie, a spokesman for the United Constitutional Patriots (UCP), blaming his arrest on political pressure from Lujan Grisham.

Hopkins is the “national commander” of the UCP, which has had around half a dozen members camped out on a rotating basis near Sunland Park since late February.

PATRIOTS OR FASCISTS?

The UCP describes itself as a “patriot group” helping U.S. Border Patrol cope with record numbers of Central American families crossing the border to seek asylum.

Dressed in camouflage and carrying rifles, UCP members have helped U.S. Border Patrol detain over 5,600 migrants in the last two months, Benvie said. Videos posted online by the group show members telling migrants to stop, sit down, and wait for agents to arrive. Critics accuse the UCP of impersonating law enforcement.

Crowdfunding sites PayPal and GoFundMe on Friday barred the group, citing policies not to promote hate or violence, after the ACLU called the UCP a “fascist militia.”

“Today’s arrest by the FBI indicates clearly that the rule of law should be in the hands of trained law enforcement officials, not armed vigilantes,” New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas said in a statement of Hopkins’s arrest.

Hopkins was previously arrested in Oregon in 2006 on suspicion of impersonating a police officer and being a felon in possession of a firearm, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

NO STANDOFFS

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a statement it did not support citizens taking law enforcement into their own hands and instead encouraged the public to be its eyes and ears on the border.

Benvie said the UCP was doing just that and had the support of local Border Patrol and police.

Mostly military veteransUCP members carry weapons for self defense and at no time pointed guns at migrants, as they have been accused of, Benvie said.

Despite having funding sources cut off, Benvie said the group’s online support had swelled since it came under attack this week. Its Facebook followers have more than doubled since Thursday.

Asked what the group would do if told to leave by state police, Benvie said they would probably go and, if they felt the order violated their constitutional rights, sue the state of New Mexico.

“There’s not going to be any standoffs, this isn’t the Bundy Ranch,” Benvie said, in reference to a 2014 armed confrontation in Nevada.

Reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Christopher Cushing

 

Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown 

Social science is being militarised to develop ‘operational tools’ to target peaceful activists and protest movements

A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term “warfighter-relevant insights” for senior officials and decision makers in “the defense policy community,” and to inform policy implemented by “combatant commands.”

Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis – the DoD ‘Minerva Research Initiative’ partners with universities “to improve DoD’s basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US.”

Among the projects awarded for the period 2014-2017 is a Cornell University-led study managed by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research which aims to develop an empirical model “of the dynamics of social movement mobilization and contagions.” The project will determine “the critical mass (tipping point)” of social contagions by studying their “digital traces” in the cases of “the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the 2011 Russian Duma elections, the 2012 Nigerian fuel subsidy crisis and the 2013 Gazi park protests in Turkey.”

Twitter posts and conversations will be examined “to identify individuals mobilized in a social contagion and when they become mobilized.”

Another project awarded this year to the University of Washington “seeks to uncover the conditions under which political movements aimed at large-scale political and economic change originate,” along with their “characteristics and consequences.” The project, managed by the US Army Research Office, focuses on “large-scale movements involving more than 1,000 participants in enduring activity,” and will cover 58 countries in total.

Last year, the DoD’s Minerva Initiative funded a project to determine ‘Who Does Not Become a Terrorist, and Why?’ which, however, conflates peaceful activists with “supporters of political violence” who are different from terrorists only in that they do not embark on “armed militancy” themselves. The project explicitly sets out to study non-violent activists:

“In every context we find many individuals who share the demographic, family, cultural, and/or socioeconomic background of those who decided to engage in terrorism, and yet refrained themselves from taking up armed militancy, even though they were sympathetic to the end goals of armed groups. The field of terrorism studies has not, until recently, attempted to look at this control group. This project is not about terrorists, but about supporters of political violence.”

The project’s 14 case studies each “involve extensive interviews with ten or more activists and militants in parties and NGOs who, though sympathetic to radical causes, have chosen a path of non-violence.”

I contacted the project’s principal investigator, Prof Maria Rasmussen of the US Naval Postgraduate School, asking why non-violent activists working for NGOs should be equated to supporters of political violence – and which “parties and NGOs” were being investigated – but received no response.

Similarly, Minerva program  staff refused to answer a series of similar questions I put to them, including asking how “radical causes” promoted by peaceful NGOs constituted a potential national security threat of interest to the DoD.

Does the US Department of Defense see protest movements and social activism in different parts of the world as a threat to US national security? If so, why? Does the US Department of Defense consider political movements aiming for large scale political and economic change as a national security matter? If so, why? Activism, protest, ‘political movements’ and of course NGOs are a vital element of a healthy civil society and democracy – why is it that the DoD is funding research to investigate such issues?

“The Department of Defense takes seriously its role in the security of the United States, its citizens, and US allies and partners. While every security challenge does not cause conflict, and every conflict does not involve the US military, Minerva helps fund basic social science research that helps increase the Department of Defense’s understanding of what causes instability and insecurity around the world. By better understanding these conflicts and their causes beforehand, the Department of Defense can better prepare for the dynamic future security environment.”

In 2013, Minerva funded a University of Maryland project in collaboration with the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to gauge the risk of civil unrest due to climate change. The three-year $1.9 million project is developing models to anticipate what could happen to societies under a range of potential climate change scenarios.

From the outset, the Minerva program  was slated to provide over $75 million over five years for social and behavioral science research. This year alone it has been allocated a total budget of $17.8 million by US Congress.

An internal Minerva staff email communication referenced in a 2012 Masters dissertation reveals that the program  is geared toward producing quick results that are directly applicable to field operations. The dissertation was part of a Minerva-funded project on “counter-radical Muslim discourse” at Arizona State University.

The internal email from Prof Steve Corman, a principal investigator for the project, describes a meeting hosted by the DoD’s Human Social Cultural and Behavioral Modeling (HSCB) program in which senior Pentagon officials said their priority was “to develop capabilities that are deliverable quickly” in the form of “models and tools that can be integrated with operations.”

Although Office of Naval Research supervisor Dr Harold Hawkins had assured the university researchers at the outset that the project was merely “a basic research effort, so we shouldn’t be concerned about doing applied stuff”, the meeting in fact showed that DoD is looking to “feed results” into “applications,” Corman said in the email. He advised his researchers to “think about shaping results, reports, etc., so they [DoD] can clearly see their application for tools that can be taken to the field.”

Many independent scholars are critical of what they see as the US government’s efforts to militarize social science in the service of war. In May 2008, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) wrote to the US government noting that the Pentagon lacks “the kind of infrastructure for evaluating anthropological [and other social science] research” in a way that involves “rigorous, balanced and objective peer review”, calling for such research to be managed instead by civilian agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The following month, the DoD signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the NSF to cooperate on the management of Minerva. In response, the AAA cautioned that although research proposals would now be evaluated by NSF’s merit-review panels. “Pentagon officials will have decision-making power in deciding who sits on the panels”:

“… there remain concerns within the discipline that research will only be funded when it supports the Pentagon’s agenda. Other critics of the program , including the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, have raised concerns that the program  would discourage research in other important areas and undermine the role of the university as a place for independent discussion and critique of the military.”

According to Prof David Price, a cultural anthropologist at St Martin’s University in Washington DC and author of Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in Service of the Militarized State, “when you looked at the individual bits of many of these projects they sort of looked like normal social science, textual analysis, historical research, and so on, but when you added these bits up they all shared themes of legibility with all the distortions of over-simplification. Minerva is farming out the piece-work of empire in ways that can allow individuals to disassociate their individual contributions from the larger project.”

Prof Price has previously exposed how the Pentagon’s Human Terrain Systems (HTS) program  – designed to embed social scientists in military field operations – routinely conducted training scenarios set in regions “within the United States.”

Citing a summary critique of the program  sent to HTS directors by a former employee, Price reported that the HTS training scenarios “adapted COIN [counterinsurgency] for Afghanistan/Iraq” to domestic situations “in the USA where the local population was seen from the military perspective as threatening the established balance of power and influence, and challenging law and order.”

One war-game, said Price, involved environmental activists protesting pollution from a coal-fired plant near Missouri, some of whom were members of the well-known environmental NGO Sierra Club. Participants were tasked to “identify those who were ‘problem-solvers’ and those who were ‘problem-causers,’ and the rest of the population whom would be the target of the information operations to move their Center of Gravity toward that set of viewpoints and values which was the ‘desired end-state’ of the military’s strategy.”

Such war-games are consistent with a raft of Pentagon planning documents which suggest that National Security Agency (NSA) mass surveillance is partially motivated to prepare for the destabilizing impact of coming environmental, energy and economic shocks.

James Petras, Bartle Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University in New York, concurs with Price’s concerns. Minerva-funded social scientists tied to Pentagon counterinsurgency operations are involved in the “study of emotions in stoking or quelling ideologically driven movements,” he said, including how “to counteract grassroots movements.”

Minerva is a prime example of the deeply narrow-minded and self-defeating nature of military ideology. Worse still, the unwillingness of DoD officials to answer the most basic questions is symptomatic of a simple fact – in their unswerving mission to defend an increasingly unpopular global system serving the interests of a tiny minority, security agencies have no qualms about painting the rest of us as potential terrorists.

 

What is InfraGard?

Collaboration for National Infrastructure Protection

From drinking water supplies to communications systems, chemical production processes to agricultural resources, Americans depend on a select group of critical infrastructures to sustain our way of life.  Any attempts to harm or destroy these resources would directly impact the security of the United States and its citizens.

Most of these systems and services are owned and operated by private industry. Therefore, the protection of our nation’s infrastructure cannot be accomplished by the federal government alone. It requires coordinated action from numerous stakeholders – including government, the private sector, law enforcement and concerned citizens.

InfraGard is the critical link that forms a tightly-knit working relationship across all levels. Each InfraGard chapter is geographically linked with an FBI Field Office, providing all stakeholders immediate access to experts from law enforcement, industry, academic institutions and other federal, state and local government agencies. By utilizing the talents and expertise of the InfraGard network, information is shared to mitigate threats to our nation’s critical infrastructures and key resources.

Collaboration and communication are the keys to protection.  Providing timely and accurate information to those responsible for safeguarding our critical infrastructures, even at a local level, is paramount in the fight to protect the United States and its resources.

Who is InfraGard?

Subject Matter Experts

At its core, InfraGard’s strength and effectiveness is based upon the subject matter expertise of its trusted membership.

An InfraGard member is a private-sector volunteer with an inherent concern for national security. Driven to protect their own industry and further motivated to share their professional and personal knowledge to safeguard the country, InfraGard members connect to a national network of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) communicate with federal law enforcement and government agencies through their local InfraGard chapters, and contribute to the security and protection of our national infrastructure from threats and attacks.

What does InfraGard protect?

Critical Infrastructures and Key Resources

Critical infrastructures are physical and cyber-based systems that are essential to the minimum operations of the economy and the government (as defined in Presidential Decision Directive/NSC 63, May 1998) Key resources are individual targets whose destruction would not endanger security on a national scales, but would create local disaster or profoundly damage national morale (as defined in Homeland Security Presidential Directive-7, December 2003) Together, critical infrastructures and key resources are so vital that their incapacity or destruction would have a debilitating impact on the defense, economic security, public health or national confidence of the United States.

InfraGard has SMEs around the country in each of the following 17 categories of critical infrastructures and key resources, as recognized by the National Infrastructure Protection Plan:

Critical Infrastructures:

• Agriculture and Food
• Banking and Finance
• Chemical
• Defense Industrial Base
• Drinking Water and Wastewater Treatment Systems
• Emergency Services
• Energy
• Information Technology
• National Monuments and Icons
• Postal and Shipping
• Public Health and Healthcare
• Telecommunications
• Transportation Systems

Key Resources:

• Commercial Facilities
• Commercial Nuclear Reactors, Materials and Waste
• Dams
• Government Facilities

The benefits of joining InfraGard include:

> Network with other companies that help maintain our national infrastructure.

> Quick Fact: 350 of our nation’s Fortune 500 have a representative in InfraGard.

> Gain access to an FBI secure communication network complete with VPN encrypted website, webmail, listservs, message boards and much more.

> Learn time-sensitive, infrastructure related security information from government sources such as DHS and the FBI.

> Get invitations and discounts to important training seminars and conferences.

> Best of all, there is no cost to join InfraGard

Our 45000+ membership is voluntary yet exclusive and is comprised of individuals from both the public and private sector. The main goal of the Washington, DC Nations Capital Chapter of InfraGard is to promote ongoing dialogue, education, community outreach and timely communication between public and private members. Furthermore, to achieve and sustain risk-based target levels of capability to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from all hazards or events, and to minimize their impact on lives, property, and the economy.

InfraGard members gain access to vital information and education that enables them to in turn provide assistance to prevent and address terrorism and other transnational crimes. InfraGard members are provided threat advisories, alerts and warnings and access to a robust secure web-VPN site and e-mail. InfraGard also helps promote an effective liaison with local, state and federal agencies, to include the Department of Homeland Security.

The FBI retained InfraGard as an FBI sponsored program, and will work closely with DHS in support of the CIP mission. The FBI will further facilitate InfraGard’s continuing role in CIP activities and further develop InfraGard’s ability to support the FBI’s investigative mission, especially as it pertains to counterterrorism and cyber crimes. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security Office of Infrastructure Protection are currently executing an InfraGard Partnership Program Plan under a Memorandum of Understanding signed in December 2007.

Current Washington Field Office (WFO) cleared InfraGard members are encouraged to register on the Cybercop ExtraNet Portal to validate your affiliation with this chapter. For more information on how to become a member of InfraGard, please visit InfraGard National for more details.

 

ALASKA CHAPTER

• Anchorage

infragard-anchorage@infragard.org

Arizona

• Phoenix

www.phoenixinfragard.net

infragard-phoenix@infragard.org

• Southern Arizona

E.G. “Ken” Kendrick

Founder Datatel, Inc.

Arkansas

• Little Rock

Jay Allen

Sr. Vice President Corporate Affairs Wal-Mart

Robert Madison Murphy

Founder Murphy Oil Corp.

California

• Los Angeles
• San Diego
• Sacramento
• San Francisco

Roland Arnall

Chair Ameriquest Capital Corp.

Edward G. Atsinger III

CEO & President       Salem Communications

Frank E. Baxter

Chair & CEO Jefferies & Co.

Herbert F.Boeckmann II

President Galpin Motors

Steven A. Burd

President, Chair & CEO Safeway, Inc.

Wen Pin Chang

President Trade Union International

Deepak Chopra

President & CEO       OSI Systems Inc

Dwight W. Decker

Chair & CEO Conexant Systems, Inc.

Charles E. DuPont Jr.

President Charles DuPont Co.

Dale Dykema

Chair & CEO TD Service Financial

Matt Fong

President Strategic Advisory Group

Stephen E. Frank

Chair, CEO & President Southern California Edison

Robert E. Grady

Managing Director,Carlyle Venture Partners Carlyle Group

Robert A. Kotick

Chair & CEO Activision

1. Floyd Kvamme

Partner Emeritus Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

David H. Murdock

Chair & CEO Dole Food Co.

Palmer N. Murray Morgan Stanley

Jerry Perenchio

Chair & CEOnivision Communications

Gregory Slayton

CEO Slayton Capital

Marc I. Stern

TCW Group President Trust Co. of the West

Jerry Weintraub

Producer Warner Brothers

Joe M. Weller

Chair & CEO Nestle USA

Colorado

• Denver

www.denverinfragard.org/

Bruce D. Benson Chair & President Benson Mineral Group

Connecticut

• www.infragard-ct.org

Mr. Jonathan Bush

CEO & President       Riggs Investment Management Co.

George A.L. David

CEO & Chair United Technologies Corp.

Mr. Patrick J. Durkin

Managing Director Credit Suisse First Boston Corp.

Mr. Roger A. Enrico

Ex-Chairman & Ex-CEO PepsiCo

Edward D. Kratovil

Vice President UST, Inc.

Delaware

• www.deinfragard.org

Florida

• Jacksonville

www.infragard-jax.org

• Miami

www.infragardsfl.org

• Tampa

infragard-tampa@infragard.org

• Tallahassee

www.tallahasseeinfragard.org

• Pensacola

www.infragard-nwfl.org

rcochran@leo.gov

• Orlando

infragard-tampa@infragard.org

James J. Blosser Lobbyist Poole McKinley & Blosser

1. David Brown II Chair Broad & Cassel

Alvin “Pete” R. Carpenter Vice Chair CSX Transportation

Robert Edward Coker Senior Vice President Public AffairsU.S. Sugar Corp.

Husein A. Cumber  Assistant Vice President Public Affairs Florida East Coast Industries

Mr. Richard M. DeVos Co-founder   Alticor, Inc. (formerly Amway)

1. Nelson Fairbanks Retired President & CEO U.S. Sugar Corp.

Todd S. Farha Chair & CEO WellCare Health Plans, Inc.

David Hart Finance Directo WellCare Health Plans, Inc.

Tramm Hudson Executive Vice President Provident Bank of Florida

Manuel D. Medina CEO & Chair Terremark Worldwide

Clinton Pownall CEO Computer Bus Consultants, Inc.

George C. Zoley Chair & CEO Wackenhut Corrections Corp.

Georgia

• Atlanta

www.infragardatlanta.org

• Savannah

www.infragardcoastalempire.org

John D. Carswell insurance Marsh USA, Inc.

Fred E. Cooper Chair Cooper Capital

James C. Edenfield Co-founder American Software

Dwight H. Evans Executive Vice President Southern Company

Otis B. Ingram III President Ingram & LeGrand Lumber Co.

Hawaii

• Honolulu

www.infragardhawaii.org/

Idaho

• Boise

dominic.venturi@infragard.org

Illinois

• Chicago
• Springfield

infragard-illinois.org

Robert N. Burt

Chair & CEO FMC Corp.

John A. Canning

Chair & CEO Madison Dearborn Partners

Samuel K. Skinner

Retired Chair & CEO U.S. Freightways Corp.

William H. Strong Vice Chair & Managing Director Morgan Stanley

Indiana

• Fort Wayne

www.infragard-nei.net

Stephen Goldsmith

Senior Vice President Affiliated Computer Services, Inc.

Todd Huston Director of Business Operations        Komputrol

• Indianapolis

New chapter website coming soon

Iowa

• Des Moines

Mr. David Fisher

Chair & President Onthank Company

Kansas

• Kansas City

www.infragardkc.org

Kentucky

• Louisville

www.infragardky.org

Robert M. Duncan

CEO Inez Deposit Bank

Louisiana

• Baton Rouge – Coming soon!
• Lafayette – Coming Soon!
• New Orleans

www.infragard.net/chapters/neworleans

Maine

• http://infragard-me.org

Maryland

• Baltimore

www.mdinfragard.net

• Wilmington

David G. Albert

Lobbyist Park Strategies

Thomas A. Allegretti

President American Waterways Operators

Jeffrey S. Amling

Managing Partner of Global Media Deutsche Bank

Stephen G. Canton

CEO

Teleglobe Buisness Solutions

Mr. Thomas R. Kuhn

President Edison Electric Institute

Massachusetts

• Boston

infragard-boston@infragard.org

http://www.infragard-boston.org

Stephen Albano

Founder, President & CEO Offtech, Inc.

Mr. Herbert F. Collins

Chair   Boston Capital Partners

Richard J. Egan

Chair Emeritus EMC Corp.

Stephen L. Guillard

CEO    Harborside Healthcare

Bracebridge H. Young Jr.

Partner Mariner Investment Group

Michigan

• Detroit

Robert Liggett

Chair   Liggett Communications

Andrea Fisher Newman

Senior Vice President Government Affairs Northwest Airlines

Peter Secchia

Chair   Universal Forest Products

Paul F. Welday

President Strategic Public Affairs

Minnesota

• Minneapolis

Rudy Boschwitz

Chair   Home Valu

William McGuire

Chair & CEO UnitedHealth Group

Mississippi

• Jackson

infragard-jackson@infragard.org

Bill J. Dore President & CEO Global Industries

Missouri

• Jefferson City

infragard.missouri.org.

• Kansas City

infragardkc.org

• St. Louis

Mr.. Stephen Brauer

Chair, CEO Hunter Engineering

August Busch III

Chair & President Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc.

Mr. William H. T. ‘Bucky’ Bush

Chair   Bush-O’Donnell Co.

Irl Engelhardt

CEO & Chair Peabody Energy Corp.

Raymond & Ann Wagner Jr.

Vice President Legislative Affairs Enterprise Rent-A-Car

Montana

• infragard-su@fbi.gov

Nebraska

• Omaha

Duane W. Acklie

Chair   Crete Carrier Corp.

Richard K. Davidson

Chair, CEO & President        Union Pacific Corp.

David L. Sokol

Chair & CEO MidAmerican Energy Holdings

Nevada

• Sierra Nevada
• Southern Nevada

Sheldon Adelson

Chair   Las Vegas Sands, Inc.

Charles Mathewson

Chair & CEOInternational Game Technology

New Hampshire

• infragard.boston@fbi.gov

New Jersey

• Newark

www.njinfragard.org

Lawrence E. Bathgate II

Attorney Bathgate Wegener & Wolf

Robert B. Chernin

Vice President of Transportation Capacity Group

James Courter

CEO IDT Corp.

James C. Finkle

PresidenCB Finkle Jr. Co.

Douglas Forrester

President Benecard Services Inc.

Ellsworth G. Havens

Vice President Corporate DevelopmentEnglewood Hospital

Hon. Gualberto Medina

Vice President International Affairs NET 2 PHONE

Thomas A. Renyi

Chair & CEO   Bank of New York

Joel A. Schleicher

Ex-Chair & CEO        Interpath

New Mexico

• Albuquerque

www.infragardnm.org

Colin Riley McMillan

Ex-Chair & CEO Permian Exploration Corp.

New York

• Albany
• Buffalo
• Hudson Valley
• Long Island
• New York
• Rochester

Jeffrey Ballabon

Vice President of Publicity Primedia

1. Doug Barclay

Attorney Hiscock & Barclay

Bruce A. Blakeman Attorney Robert Blakeman Associates

Geoffrey T. Boisi Vice Chair JPMorgan

Mark Broxmeyer President & CEO Fairfield Properties

James E. Cayne Chair & CEO Bear Stearns & Co.

Francois de Saint Phalle U.S. Equities Co-head     Warburg Dillon Read

Bruce S. Gelb Retired Vice Chair Bristol-Myers Squibb

Rich L. Gelfond Co-CEO IMAX Corp

Joseph J. Grano Chair & CEO UBS Wealth Management USA

Douglas R. Korn Senior Managing Director Bear Stearns & Co.

Henry Kravis Founding Partner Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts

Stephen M. Lessing Managing Director Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

John Mack CEOCredit Suisse First Boston Corp.

Hank McKinnell Chair & CEO Pfizer

Peter J. Murphy Bear Wagner Specialists CEO Bear Stearns & Co.

Steven Price CEO LiveWire Corp.

James Quigley CEO Deloitte & Touche

Stephen A. Schwarzman President, CEO & Co-founderBlackstone Group

Ivan Seidenberg President & CEO   Verizon Communications, Inc.

George H. Walker IV Managing Director Goldman Sachs & Co.

North Carolina

• Charlotte

www.ncinfragard.org

• Eastern Carolina

www.ecinfragard.org

James P. Cain

Lobbyist Kilpatrick Stockton

James B. Culbertson

Founder & President Financial Computing, Inc.

James H. Hance Jr.

Vice Chair Bank of America

1. Kennedy Thompson

Chair, CEO & President Wachovia Corp.

North Dakota

• North Dakota

http://www.infragard-nd.org

Ohio

• Cincinnati

www.infragard.net/chapters/cincinnati

• Cleveland

www.nocinfragard.org

• Columbus

infragard.columbus.oh.us

• Dayton

www.infragard.dayton.oh.us

• Toledo

www.toledoinfragard.org/

Peter W. Adams

Executive Alliance Capital Management

Anthony J. Alexander

President FirstEnergy Corp.

William A. Antonoplos

Lobbyist Antonoplos & Associates

Ron Beshear

Managing Partner Beshear General Agency Northwestern Mutual Life

Richard T. Farmer

Chair & Founder Cintas Corporation

Carl H. Lindner III

Co-President American Financial Group

Carl H. Lindner Jr.

CEO American Financial Group

Walden W. O’Dell

CEO Diebold Systems

James E. Rogers

Chair, President & CEO Cinergy Corp.

Oklahoma

• Oklahoma City

Oregon

• Portland

www.oregoninfragard.org

Pennsylvania

• Harrisburg
• Philadelphia

www.infragardphl.org

• Pittsburgh

www.infragard-pittsburgh.org

Carl M. Buchholz

Executive Partner Blank Rome

Stephen B. Burke

Executive Vice President Comcast Corp.

Drew Lewis

Ex-Chair Union Pacific Cor

Rhode Island

o Rhode Island

This chapter is associated with the Boston chapter

infragard-boston@infragard.org

http://www.infragard-boston.org

San Juan

infragard-sanjuan@infragard.org

South Carolina

• Columbia

Barry D. Wynn

CEO Colonial Group

South Dakota

• infragard-minneapolis@infragard.org

Tennessee

• Chattanooga

infragard-chattanooga@infragard.org

1. Andrew Adams

President National Healthcare Corp.

James A. Haslam II

Chair & Founder       Pilot Corp.

Allen Morgan Jr.

CEO    Morgan Keegan & Co.

Frederick W. Smith

Chair, President & CEO        FedEx

Garland ‘Buddy’ S. Williamson

Retired Vice President Worldwide Operations Eastman Chemical

• Knoxville

www.infragard-etn.org/

• Memphis

www.infragardmemphis.org

• Nashville

www.infragard-midtn.org

Texas

• Austin

http://infragard-texas.us

• North Texas
• El Paso

www.infragardep.org.

• Houston

www.infragardhouston.org

• San Antonio

www.infragard-sanantonio.org

 

 

 

James L. Blythe

Managing Partner Blythe-Nelson

Tucker Bridwell

President Mansefeldt Investment Corp.

Robert H. Brown Jr.

Founder, President Frost Securities Inc

Alan R. Buckwalter III

Chair of Southwest Region JPMorgan

Mr. J. Fred Bucy Jr.

Retired CEO & President Texas Instruments

Mr. & Mrs. Jerry Bullin

President Bryan Research & Engineering

Lee Bass

President Bass Family Enterprises

Neil Bush

CEO Ignite! Inc.

Mr. Glenn Collins Founder    Crystion

Mr. & Mrs. Peter R. Coneway

Limited Partner Goldman Sachs & Co.

Nathan E. Crain

President ShopOnline

John F. Davis III

Chair & CEO Pegasus Systems Inc

John E. Drury

Chair & CEO Waste Management, Inc.

Archie W. Dunham

Chair ConocoPhillips

Tom Frost Jr.

Senior Chair Cullen/Frost Bankers, Inc.

1. David Guerra

President International Bank of Commerce

Rolf Haberecht

Chair & CEO VLSI Packaging Corp.

John K. Harkins

Business Development Manager Bosch Telecom, Inc.

Jeffrey M. Heller

President & COO EDS

William O. Hunt

Ex-Chair Internet America, Inc.

Richard R. Kilgust

Partner PricewaterhouseCoopers

David McClanahan

President & CEO Centerpoint Energy

Gordon McKenna

Chair   TeleQuest

Jack L. Messman

Chair & CEO Novell, Inc.

Clifton H. Morris Jr.

Chair Americredit Corp

1. Maurice Myers

Chair, President & CEO Waste Management, Inc.

Robert H. Whilden Jr.

General Counsel & Executive Vice President BMC Software, Inc.

Edward E. Whitacre Jr.

Chair & CEO SBC Communications

Robert E. Zincke

Executive Vice President Kroger Co.

Utah

• Salt Lake City

Tim Bridgewater

Managing Director Interlink Capital Strategies

Vermont

• Vermont Chapter Website

Rodolphe ‘Skip’ M. Vallee

Chair & CEO R.L. Vallee, Inc.

Virginia

• DC Metro Area
• Norfolk

Charlie & Judy Black

Lobbyists BKSH & Associates; Brownstein Hyatt & Far

Kirk Blalock

Lobbyist Fierce Isakowitz & Blalock

Leslie J. Brorsen

Managing Director Government Relations  Ernst & Young

Marvin Pierce Bush

Co-Founder Winston Partners

Peter Davidson

Senior vice president Verizon

Richard Fink

Executive Vice President Koch Industries

1. Heywood Fralin

CEO Medical Facilities of America

Kevin Gentry

Vice President Strategic Development Koch Charitable Foundation

Kevin P. McMahon

Vice President, Government Affairs TRW Automotive

Jeffrey L. McWaters

Chair & CEO AMERIGROUP Corp.

• Richmond

Washington, D.C.

• www.infragardnationscapital.org

Lanny Griffith

Chief Operating Officer Barbour Griffith & Rogers

Charles L. Grizzle

President & Chair Grizzle Co.

James A. Baker IV

Attorney Baker Botts

1. Carter Beese

President Riggs Capital Partners

Wayne Berman

Owner Berman Enterprises, Inc.

David Carmen

President & CEO       Carmen Group

Alfred W. Cortese Jr.

Lobbyist Cortese, PLLC

Ronald F. Docksai

Vice President Government Relations Bayer Corp

Jack N. Gerard

President National Mining Association

Bill Graves

President & CEO American Trucking Association

Mr. Dirk W. Van Dongen

President National Assoc.of Wholesale Distributors

Jules Frank Mermoud

Ex-Senior Vice President Aegis Communication

1. Henson Moore

President & CEO American Forest & Paper Association

Washington

• Washington Infragard

www.infragard-wa.org

John Connors

Chief Financial Officer Microsoft

Frank Dulcich  President & CEO Pacific Seafood

John Kelly

Attorney Microsoft

Susan McCaw

President COM Investments

Wayne M. Perry

CEO Edge Wireless

West Virginia

• www.infragard.net/chapters/west_virginia

Wisconsin

• Madison

infragard-madison@infragard.org

James R. Klauser

State Government Affairs Director Wisconsin Electric Corp.

• Milwaukee

infragard-milwaukee@infragard.org

Mark J. Block

President Telecommunications Group

Wyoming

• infragard-dn@fbi.gov

 

GEORGIA’S “ROSE REVOLUTION”: A MADE-IN-AMERICA COUP

by Barry Grey and Vladimir Volkov

The United States has followed its successful regime change in the strategic Caucasian nation of Georgia with a series of moves aimed at pressing its advantage over its major rival in the region, Russia.

On December 2, nine days after Eduard Shevardnadze resigned as president of the former Soviet republic, his US-backed successors joined with the American secretary of state, Colin Powell, to publicly criticize Russia and demand that it remove its troops from Georgia and another former Soviet territory, Moldova. The open conflict between Washington and Moscow occurred at the annual summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), held in the Dutch city of Maastricht.

The American delegation and others persuaded Moldova’s president to reject a Russian plan to station Russian troops in a breakaway region of Moldova until 2020. Powell went on to call on Russia to withdraw its troops from Georgia, and warned Moscow against supporting separatist leaders in several rebellious regions within Russia’s Caucasian neighbor to the south.

Georgia’s interim president, the former parliamentary speaker, Nino Burdzhanadze, came out of a meeting with Russia’s foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, and denounced the Russian leader, complaining that Moscow was “not ready to start new relations with Georgia.”

Washington’s aggressive stand toward Moscow coincided with the announcement that US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld would visit the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on December 5. Rumsfeld’s visit is more than a show of US support for Georgia’s new rulers. It follows rumblings about possible military confrontations between the new regime in Tbilisi and the breakaway provinces of Abkhahzia and South Osettia in the north, and Adjara in the south.

Last week, Russian president Vladimir Putin hosted talks with the leaders of the three provinces in Moscow, and Aslan Abashidze of Adjara said he was counting on Russian troops based in the Black Sea port of Batumi to repel any aggressive actions from Tbilisi. Abashidze has refused to recognize the new regime, closed Adjara’s borders with the rest of Georgia, and threatened to boycott Georgian parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for January 4. These elections will be little more than a formality, as the US-backed forces that seized power over the weekend of November 22-23 have coalesced around the current mayor of Tbilisi and most prominent leader of the insurgency, Mikhail Saakashvili.

Earlier in the week, President George Bush telephoned acting Georgian president Burdzhanadze and promised to intervene, if necessary, to uphold Georgia’s “sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity,” in the words of a US National Security Council spokesman. Thus, Rumsfeld’s visit has the character of a blunt warning to Russia and suggests a strengthening of the American military presence in Georgia.

A focus of great power intrigue

The US-backed coup in Georgia and Washington’s subsequent diplomatic saber-rattling have nothing to do with the spread of democracy or similar cliches. Georgia, strategically situated between the Black Sea and the oil-rich Caspian, has long been a focus of intrigue and conflict between the great powers. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, the goal of weakening Russian influence and achieving US domination of Georgia and the rest of the Caucasus became a central preoccupation of US imperialist policy.

Ukraine’s postmodern coup d’etat

Yushchenko got the US nod, and money flooded in to his supporters

The intelligence liaison between the United States and Israel dates back to the early 1960s, when the governments of Israel and the United States had agreed to exchange intelligence secrets. . . . Most important of all as far as the Israelis were concerned, the Central Intelligence Agency along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had undertaken to supply the Israelis with some top secret equipment, including the most advanced computers for cryptanalysis, as well as to train selected Israeli officers in their use.49 After Angleton’s dismissal from the CIA in 1975, the liaison unit was abolished and the Israeli account was moved to the appropriate Directorate of Operations regional division of the CIA. The CIA also began to operate more independently of the Mossad; in the late 1970s the agency began operating on the West Bank William J. Casey, in his first three years as CIA Director (1981-1984), provided Israeli intelligence with access to sensitive photographs and other reconnaissance information that the Israelis had been denied under the Carter Administration