TBR News April 28, 2019

The Voice of the White House Washington, D.C. April 28, 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 28:”I hear at lunch stories about Trump’s unconcealed glee at his forthcoming Mexican adventure. If he can’t stop a flood of potential border-crossers one way,he will do it another and bask in the adulation and approval of the pointy-head red cap wearers. King Donald I will try to be crowned in the Nationl Cathedral in DC while dozens cheer and jump up and down. Maybe Canada will be next to feel the Imperial Wrath. He is not going after Venezuela because Putin sent Russian military personnel there and it is one thing to bully and invade Mexico and quite another to pick a fight with the Russian military”

 

 

The Table of Contents

• Pentagon expected to send about 300 more troops to border
• Fort Huachuca and the coming Operation Southern Liberation
• Unanswered Questions in the Mueller Report Point to a Sprawling Russian Spy Game
• Jared Kushner, Not Maria Butina, Is America’s Real Foreign Agent
• Encyclopedia of American Loons
• The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
• ASSASSINATION!

Pentagon expected to send about 300 more troops to border

April 28, 2019

by Robert Burns,

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon may send about 300 more troops to the U.S.-Mexico border in roles that could put them in contact with migrants and thus mark a break from current practice, officials said.

Charles Summers, a spokesman for Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, said Shanahan was expected to approve the proposal, which was developed as a response to a call from the Department of Homeland Security for additional military assistance.

The new troops would be in support roles such as driving buses with detained migrants and providing meals to them. It would also include Department of Defense lawyers helping to process the migrants.

There currently are about 2,900 active-duty troops operating in support of DHS at the border, plus about 2,000 National Guard troops. A key aspect of the policy governing military involvement at the border has been a prohibition on direct contact with migrants. This is meant to emphasis that the military is not in a law enforcement role.

Summers said the proposal being considered by Shanahan would include an “amendment” to the current policy on avoiding contact with migrants. This would be necessary in order to carry out tasks such as providing meals, legal assistance and transportation, he said.

“We have Border Patrol stations where (they) are literally overwhelmed with migrants, so we’re merely delineating the fact that we will have some of our troops handing out meals and therefore would come in contact with migrants,” Summers said.

The proposal was first reported by The Washington Post.

 

Fort Huachuca and the coming Operation Southern Liberation

April 28, 2019

Fort Huachuca in Arizona, is the Military Intelligence center for the US Southwest. In addition to many US intelligence units, it is also home to German and British intelligence units.

Fort Huachuca is the home of the 111th Military Intelligence Brigade, which conducts Military Intelligence (MI) MOS-related training for the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines. The MI Officer Basic Course is also taught on the installation. The Army’s MI branch also held the proponency for unmanned aerial vehicles due to their intelligence-gathering capabilities, until April 2006, when the Aviation branch took control of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Training Battalion. Additional training in human intelligence (e.g. interrogation, counter-intelligence), imagery intelligence, and electronic intelligence and analysis is also conducted within the 111th.

Fort Huachuca is also home of the 11th Signal Brigade, which is the Army’s force projection signal brigade. It is a major subordinate command of the Army Signal Command with the mission of providing contingency command and control communications in support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Department of the Army, or Army Signal Command requirements worldwide.

Active units at Ft. Huachuca

• 312th Military Intelligence Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division
• 501st Military Intelligence Battalion, 1st Armored Division
• 101st Military Intelligence Battalion, 1st Infantry Division
• 102nd Military Intelligence Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division
• 103rd Military Intelligence Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division
• 125th Military Intelligence Battalion, 25th Infantry Division
• 313th Military Intelligence Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division
• 311th Military Intelligence Battalion, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)
• 504th Military Intelligence Brigade, III Corps, Ft. Hood, TX
• 15th Military Intelligence Battalion
• 163rd Military Intelligence Battalion
• 303rd Military Intelligence Battalion
• 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, V Corps – Germany
• 165th Military Intelligence Battalion
• 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion
• 1st Military Intelligence Battalion
• 525th Military Intelligence Brigade, XVIII Corps (Airborne) – Ft. Bragg, NC
• 224th Military Intelligence Battalion
• 319th Military Intelligence Battalion
• 325th Military Intelligence Battalion
• 519th Military Intelligence Battalion
• 501st Military Intelligence Brigade, – Republic of Korea
• 524th Military Intelligence Battalion
• 3rd Military Intelligence Battalion
• 532nd Military Intelligence Battalion
• 527th Military Intelligence Battalion
• 513th Military Intelligence Brigade, – Ft. Gordon, GA
• 201st Military Intelligence Battalion
• 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion
• 204th Military Intelligence Battalion
• 297th Military Intelligence Battalion
• 66th Military Intelligence Group – Darmstadt, Germany
• 109th Military Intelligence Battalion – Menwith Hill Station, UK
• 2nd Military Intelligence Battalion – Darmstadt, Germany
• 704th Military Intelligence Brigade, Ft. Meade, Maryland
• 741st Military Intelligence Battalion
• 742nd Military Intelligence Battalion
• 743rd Military Intelligence Battalion
• 902nd Military Intelligence Group, Ft. Meade, Maryland
• 308th Military Intelligence Battalion
• 310th Military Intelligence Battalion
• 500th Military Intelligence Brigade, United States Army Pacific Command, Hawaii
• 205th Military Intelligence Battalion
• 301st Military Intelligence Battalion
• 441st Military Intelligence Battalion
• 732nd Military Intelligence Battalion
• 116th Military Intelligence Group – Ft. Gordon, GA
• 206th Military Intelligence Battalion

The following military units are currently en route to the U.S.-Mexico border, (to be headquartered at Ft. Huachuca , Az) to meet President Donald Trump’s directive to deploy active duty forces through Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico.This is to be in support of Operation Southern Liberation.  DoD now reports more than 7,000 troops will be tasked to support the Department of Homeland Security in its cleansing of drug dealers and all illegal aliens on the Mexican side of the US/Mexico border.

Fort Bragg, North Carolina

• Headquarters & Headquarters Command, 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command
• 2nd Assault Helicopter Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division
• Headquarters & Headquarters Company, 16th Military Police Brigade
• 51st Medical Company, 28th Combat Support Hospital
• 172nd Preventive Medicine
• 264th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion
• 329th Movement Control Team
• 403rd Inland Cargo Transfer Company
• Headquarters & Headquarters Detachment, 503rd Military Police Battalion

Fort Carson, Colorado

• Headquarters & Headquarters Company, 4th Sustainment Brigade, 4th Infantry Division
• Headquarters & Headquarters Company, 68th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 4th Sustainment Brigade, 4th Infantry Division

Peterson Air Force, Colorado

• Joint Enabling Capability Team and Aviation Planner from U.S. Northern Command

Scott Air Force Base, Illinois

• Joint Public Support Element – Public Affairs

Fort Meade, Maryland

• 55th Signal Company (Combat Camera)

Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia

• 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade Headquarters, 3rd Infantry Division
• 90th Human Resources Company, 3rd Special Troops Battalion, 3rd Sustainment Brigade

Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, Texas

• Defense Logistics Agency Contingency Contracting Team
• 4th Expeditionary Sustainment Command Assessment Team
• Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 505th Military Intelligence Brigade

Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington

• 5th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment, I Corps
• 87th Engineer Sapper Company, 555th Engineer Brigade

Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina

• 1st Combat Camera Squadron

Fort Bliss, Texas

• 24th Press Camp Headquarters, 1st Armored Division

Fort Hood, Texas

• 89th Military Police Brigade, III Corps
• Headquarters, 62nd Engineer Battalion, 36th Engineer Brigade
• 937th Engineer Sapper Company, 8th Engineer Battalion, 36th Engineer Brigade
• 104th Engineer Construction, 62nd Engineer Battalion, 36th Engineer Brigade
• 289th Quartermaster Company, 553rd Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division Sustainment Brigade

Fort Knox, Kentucky

• Headquarters & Headquarters Detachment, 19th Engineer Battalion, 20th Engineer Brigade
• 15th Engineer Company (Horizontal), 19th Engineer Battalion
• 541st Engineer Sapper Company, 19th Engineer Battalion

Fort Campbell, Kentucky

• 887th Engineer Support Company, 101st Airborne Division Sustainment Brigade
• 372nd Inland Cargo Transfer Company, 129th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 101st Airborne Division Sustainment Brigade
• 74th Transportation Company, 129th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 101st Airborne Division Sustainment Brigade

Fort Riley, Kansas

• Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 97th Military Police Battalion, 1st Infantry Division
• 977th Military Police Company Combat Support
• 287th Military Police Company Combat Support
• 41st Engineer Company (Clearance), 4th Engineer Battalion, 36th Engineer Brigade
• Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 97th Military Police Battalion, 1st Infantry Division

 

Unanswered Questions in the Mueller Report Point to a Sprawling Russian Spy Game

April 28, 2019

by James Risen

The Intrcept

Throughout Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Paul Manafort had a target on his back. The former Trump campaign chair’s longstanding ties to powerful figures in Ukraine and Russia triggered intense scrutiny from Mueller, as he and his fellow prosecutors sought to determine whether President Donald Trump or the people around him conspired with Moscow to win the presidency.

Mueller saw Manafort as a central figure in his investigation and went after him repeatedly and aggressively; as a result, Manafort ultimately faced a variety of charges in federal courts in Virginia and Washington, D.C. Mueller offered Manafort a plea deal in exchange for Manafort telling the special counsel what he knew about Trump and Russia. But Mueller eventually grew angry because Manafort continued to lie to him. A federal judge determined that Manafort had violated his plea agreement, in part by lying about his communications with a longtime Manafort employee who the FBI assessed had ties to Russian intelligence. Manafort is now in prison.

In the end, Mueller’s investigators could not find evidence that Manafort coordinated his actions with the sophisticated Russian cybercampaign to help Trump win. But the report makes clear that there were many instances in which Mueller wasn’t able to get to the bottom of things and often couldn’t determine the whole story behind the Trump-Russia contacts.

In fact, the report documents a series of strange and still unexplained contacts between the Trump crowd and Russia. It is filled with unresolved mysteries.

One reason Mueller wasn’t able to answer many of the questions surrounding those contacts was that he had to navigate a blizzard of lies. “The investigation established that several individuals affiliated with the Trump campaign lied to [the Mueller team], and to Congress, about their interactions with Russian-affiliated individuals and related matters,” the report states. “Those lies materially impaired the investigation of Russian election interference.”

Some in the Trump circle, including Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, faced criminal charges for their falsehoods. In other cases, Mueller was blocked by the refusal of key figures to talk, while other potential witnesses were not credible or were out of reach overseas.

When it came to the infamous June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York between key members of the Trump circle and a Russian lawyer, for example, Mueller was unable to question the two most important participants. The president’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., refused to be interviewed by Mueller, while Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer, was in Russia and couldn’t be questioned. The report says that Mueller considered bringing campaign finance charges against some in the Trump circle who participated in the meeting but decided not to.

And what are we to make of the brief but mysterious interactions during the campaign between George Papadopoulos, a young Trump foreign policy adviser, and Sergei Millian, an American who was born in Belarus? Among other contacts with Papadopoulos, Millian sent him a Facebook message in August 2016 promising to “share with you a disruptive technology that might be instrumental in your political work for the campaign.”

The report notes that Mueller’s team was “not fully able to explore the contact because the individual at issue, Sergei Millian, remained out of the country since the inception of our investigation and declined to meet with members of [Mueller’s team] despite our repeated efforts to obtain an interview.”  (This isn’t the first time Millian’s name has surfaced in connection with the Trump-Russia case. During the campaign, Millian reportedly told an associate that Trump had longstanding ties to Russia and that the Russians were passing on damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Millian’s assertions ended up as secondhand information in the Steele dossier, an opposition research report on possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia compiled by a former British intelligence officer in 2016.)

In yet another instance, Mueller investigated whether anyone around Trump coordinated with WikiLeaks to release stolen emails from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta on October 7, 2016, about an hour after the Washington Post reported on an “Access Hollywood” audiotape of Trump using crude language about women. The release of the emails seemed designed to distract attention from the “Access Hollywood” tape, which had the makings of a major political scandal.

Jerome Corsi, a conservative author with close ties to Trump ally Roger Stone, told Mueller that he believed his actions prompted the quick WikiLeaks release, but Mueller’s report says investigators couldn’t corroborate Corsi’s story. The report doesn’t offer any other explanation for the release of the Podesta emails on what turned out to be one of the most important days of the 2016 campaign.

Mueller’s frustration with Manafort’s lies reflects a major theme in the report’s account of the contacts between people around Trump and figures with ties to Russia. Although Mueller’s investigation “identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges,” the report states. It adds that “the evidence was not sufficient to charge that any member of the Trump campaign conspired with representatives of the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election.”

It’s important to remember that as special counsel, Mueller was trying to answer very narrow questions about whether contacts between the Trump circle and Russia were directly related to the Russian cybercampaign against the Democratic Party, and whether those actions violated federal law.

But that narrow scope may have obscured the possibility that the Russians were seeking to gain influence in the United States in many different ways at the same time. The reality is that every great power, including the United States and Russia, conducts many different intelligence operations simultaneously against its adversaries. The cyberoffensive against the Democratic Party, launched by the GRU, Russian military intelligence, could have been going on separately from a more diffuse Russian effort to gather intelligence and probe for influence in Washington.

The report makes clear that Manafort remained a frustrating enigma to Mueller. It’s not hard to read between the lines and glean that Mueller, the straight-arrow prosecutor, former FBI director, and former Marine, was revulsed by the international political consultant’s corrupt behavior and found it difficult to comprehend his willingness to work for Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. In this regard, Manafort was a sort of object of fascination for Mueller.

Mueller had good reason to focus on Manafort. Before he joined the Trump campaign, Manafort made millions working for Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with extensive international aluminum and power holdings and close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Rick Gates, Manafort’s former deputy, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI and agreed to cooperate with the special counsel’s office, explained that Deripaska used Manafort to install friendly political officials in countries where Deripaska had business interests.

Manafort’s work for Deripaska began in about 2005 and ultimately led him to Rinat Akhmetov, a Ukrainian oligarch who brought Manafort in as a political consultant in Ukraine for the pro-Russian Party of Regions. Manafort helped Viktor Yanukovych, the Party of Regions candidate, win the presidency in 2010. Manafort became a close adviser to Yanukovych until he was forced to flee to Russia in 2014 in the wake of the Maidan Revolution in Kiev that ousted his government.

With Yanukovych’s ouster, Manafort lost his meal ticket in Ukraine. By then, his relations with Deripaska had also turned bitter. Deripaska had invested in a fund created by Manafort that had failed, and he wanted his money back.

By the time Manafort joined the Trump team, he was eager to make peace with Deripaska. The Mueller report says that right after joining the campaign, Manafort asked Gates, who had accompanied him into Trump’s orbit, to prepare memos for Deripaska, Akhmetov, and two other Ukrainian oligarchs about Manafort’s new post with Trump and his willingness to work on Ukrainian politics in the future.

During this period, Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian national and longtime Manafort employee, served as an intermediary between Manafort, Deripaska, and Yanukovych. The FBI has concluded that Kilimnik has ties to Russian intelligence; indeed, Kilimnik’s connection to Deripaska was through a Deripaska deputy who had previously served in the defense attaché’s office in the Russian embassy in Washington. While it is not known whether the Deripaska deputy, Victor Boyarkin, has an intelligence background, a position in an embassy defense attaché’s office is commonly used as cover for intelligence officers.

Manafort met with Kilimnik twice in the United States during the campaign. In one meeting, Manafort discussed with Kilimnik the political situation in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, according to the report.

Manafort also arranged for Gates to send Kilimnik updates on the Trump campaign, including internal polling data, which he asked Kilimnik to pass on to Deripaska. Manafort also communicated with Kilimnik about pro-Russian peace plans for Ukraine at least four times during and after the campaign.

Those frequent communications between Manafort and prominent people from Ukraine and Russia in the midst of the campaign certainly raised Mueller’s suspicions. But Mueller ultimately couldn’t find evidence of a connection between Manafort’s decision to give polling data to Kilimnik and the Russian cyberoffensive in the 2016 election. The special counsel and his team “could not reliably determine Manafort’s purpose in sharing internal polling data with Kilimnik during the campaign period,” the report notes, adding that “because of questions about Manafort’s credibility and our limited ability to gather evidence on what happened to the polling data after it was sent to Kilimnik, [Mueller’s team] could not assess what Kilimnik [or others with whom he may have shared it] did with it.”

Mueller’s investigators did not find evidence that Manafort passed along information about the Ukrainian peace plan he discussed with Kilimnik to Trump or anyone else in the campaign, or, later, to members of the Trump administration. But Mueller also notes that “while Manafort denied that he spoke to members of the Trump campaign or the new Administration about the peace plan, he lied to the [special counsel’s] office and the grand jury about the peace plan and his meetings with Kilmnik, and his unreliability on this subject was among the reasons that [the judge in his case] found that he breached his cooperation agreement.”

While the evidence Mueller gathered about Manafort may not have been sufficient to bring criminal charges, it does fit the pattern of information that might typically emerge in a counterintelligence investigation, which is very different from a criminal inquiry.

The Mueller report documents Manafort’s deep connections with Russians and Ukrainians, and shows that he shared internal campaign data with them in the hopes of winning their favor and “monetizing” his work with Trump. But the report also suggests that as Trump’s campaign chair, Manafort opened a secret backchannel with Russia for his own selfish reasons that had nothing to do with Russia’s efforts to help Trump win the election.

In one conversation with Mueller’s team, Manafort may have given the special counsel a candid answer about what was going on in his case: He made it clear that while Deripaska may not have played any role in the GRU’s cybercampaign, the oligarch still saw Manafort as a valuable long-term asset.

If Trump won, “Deripaska would want to use Manafort to advance whatever interests Deripaska had in the United States and elsewhere,” Manafort told Mueller. And Deripaska, remember, was very close to Putin.

In court documents, the Justice Department painted a similar picture of Maria Butina, the young Russian woman who has pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as an agent of the Russian Federation. (Butina was sentenced on Friday to 18 months in prison. After she completes her sentence, she will be deported.)

Butina was “not a spy in the traditional sense,” the Justice Department now says. Yet she was still part of a “deliberate intelligence operation by the Russian Federation,” according to an affidavit from a former high-level FBI counterintelligence official. She was in the United States to “spot and assess” Americans who might be susceptible to recruitment as foreign intelligence assets. In addition, she sought to establish a backchannel of communication to bypass formal diplomatic channels between Moscow and Washington.

Manafort and Butina may have been on two sides of a complex new kind of spy game that few outsiders understand.

 

Jared Kushner, Not Maria Butina, Is America’s Real Foreign Agent

April 25, 2019

by Philip Giraldi

The Unz Review

[This column was written before Ms. Butina’s Friday sentencing.]

 

Maria Butina is in jail for doing nothing while Jared Kushner, who needed a godfathered security clearance due to his close Israeli ties, struts through the White House as senior advisor to the president.

The Mueller Special Counsel inquiry is far from over even though a final report on its findings has been issued. Although the investigation had a mandate to explore all aspects of the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election, from the start the focus was on the possibility that some members of the Trump campaign had colluded with the Kremlin to influence the outcome of the election to favor the GOP candidate. Even though that could not be demonstrated, many prominent Trump critics, to include Laurence Tribe of the Harvard Law School, are demanding that the investigation continue until Congress has discovered “the full facts of Russia’s interference [to include] the ways in which that interference is continuing in anticipation of 2020, and the full story of how the president and his team welcomed, benefited from, repaid, and obstructed lawful investigation into that interference and the president’s cooperation with it.”

Tribe should perhaps read the report more carefully. While it does indeed confirm some Russian meddling, it does not demonstrate that anyone in the Trump circle benefited from it or cooperated with it. The objective currently being promoted by dedicated Trump critics like Tribe is to make a case to impeach the president based on the alleged enormity of the Russian activity, which is not borne out by the facts: the Russian role was intermittent, small scale and basically ineffective.

One interesting aspect of the Mueller inquiry and the ongoing Russophobia that it has generated is the essential hypocrisy of the Washington Establishment. It is generally agreed that whatever Russia actually did, it did not affect the outcome of the election. That the Kremlin was using intelligence resources to act against Hillary Clinton should surprise no one as she described Russian President Vladimir Putin as Hitler and also made clear that she would be taking a very hard line against Moscow.

The anti-Russia frenzy in Washington generated by the vengeful Democrats and an Establishment fearful of a loss of privilege and entitlement claimed a number of victims. Among them was Russian citizen Maria Butina, who has a court date and will very likely be sentenced tomorrow.

Regarding Butina, the United States Department of Justice would apparently have you believe that the Kremlin sought to subvert the five-million-member strong National Rifle Association (NRA) by having a Russian citizen take out a life membership in the organization with the intention of corrupting it and turning it into an instrument for subverting American democracy. Maria Butina has, by the way, a long and well documented history as an advocate for gun ownership and was a co-founder in Russia of Right to Bear Arms, which is not an intelligence front organization of some kind. It is rather a genuine lobbying group with an active membership and agenda. Contrary to what has been reported in the mainstream media, Russians can own guns but the licensing and registration procedures are long and complicated, which Right to Bear Arms, modeling itself on the NRA, is seeking to change

Butina, a graduate student at American University, is now in a federal prison, having been charged with collusion and failure to register as an agent of the Russian Federation. She was arrested on July 15, 2018. It is decidedly unusual to arrest and confine someone who has failed to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA), but she has not been granted bail because, as a Russian citizen, she is considered to be a “flight risk,” likely to try to flee the US and return home.

FARA requires all individuals and organizations acting on behalf of foreign governments to registered with the Department of Justice and to report their sources of income and contacts. Federal prosecutors have claimed that Butina was reporting back to a Russian official while deliberating cultivating influential figures in the United States as potential resources to advance Russian interests, a process that is described in intelligence circles as “spotting and assessing.”

Maria eventually pleaded guilty of not registering under FARA to mitigate any punishment, hoping that she would be allowed to return to Russia after a few months in prison on top of the nine months she has already served. She has reportedly fully cooperated the US authorities, turning over documents, answering questions and undergoing hours of interrogation by federal investigators before and after her guilty plea.

Maria Butina basically did nothing that damaged US security and it is difficult to see where her behavior was even criminal, but the prosecution is asking for 18 months in prison for her in addition to the time served. She would be, in fact, one of only a handful of individuals ever to be imprisoned over FARA, and they all come from countries that Washington considers to be unfriendly, to include Cuba, Saddam’s Iraq and Russia. Normally the failure to comply with FARA is handled with a fine and compulsory registration.

 

Encyclopedia of American Loons

• Wendell Bird

If you take a quick look at the courtcases involving creationism in public schools in the US, one name tends to pop up so often that it is hard to avoid giving him an entry in our Encyclopedia. Wendell Bird is an Atlanta-based attorney who concentrates primarily on litigation and in tax laws affecting exempt organizations. Now, of course any defendant deserves an attorney, and defending creationism in public schools is as such not itself an indication of lunacy, but Bird definitely seems to have a personal interest in the creationism-evolution debate, and that interest is not guided by reason, evidence or science.

Oh, what the heck. Bird is a former staff attorney for the Institute of Creation Research, for crying out loud, and the Discotute’s current strategies for getting creationism into public schools are really a continuation of Bird’s tactics from the 1980s (this timeline of creationism is illuminating). Bird is, in other words, among the founders of the Intelligent Design movement and its outreach strategies (no, Bird is not a scientist, but the Intelligent Design movement has, contrary to what they assert, never been about science but about getting their unscientific musings into public schools).

So, for instance, Bird defended Louisiana’s “equal time” law in the famous 1985 Edwards v. Aguillard, which was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Court of Appeals and eventually by the U.S. Supreme Court (good resource here); during the case Bird, interestingly, pushed the “academic freedom” strategy hard, arguing that it is “a basic concept of fairness, teaching all the evidence” (never mind that the “evidence” procured in favor of creationism was not evidence for creationism in any case). He also took the familiar crackpot trick of quote-mining to new levels; apparently with the help of Paul Nelson, he assembled a massive 500-page brief that consisted almost entirely of thousands of quotes from authorities on every topic bearing on “creation science”, from astrophysics to biology to philosophy to religion. Given the obvious dishonesty involved, the brief failed to convince the judges, but Bird later turned his brief into a large, two-volume book, The Origin of Species Revisited.

It all began in the 1970s; in 1978, then Yale Law School student (under Robert Bork) Bird wrote an article arguing that the U.S. Constitution required the teaching of “scientific creationism” in public schools, an argument he further developed for the Institute for Creation Research to a resolution (authored by Bird) “concerning balanced presentation of alternate scientific theories of origins,” intended as a model for local school boards that wished to adopt a policy of teaching creationism. That strategy was then the basis for the defense in McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, a case where Bird was the primary legal advisor for the anti-science rabble. But the resolution was also the model for all later creationist bills and “academic freedom” bills used to try to get religiously-motivated science denial taught as science in public schools (e.g. this one and these), and Bird’s defense deliberately tried to gloss over explicitly religious or Biblical language to make everything sound more scientifically acceptable – instead of God’s creation of species, he would talk about their “abrupt appearance” and explicit references to the Bible would be removed – the very same strategy pushed by religious fundamentalists under the heading “Intelligent Design” to this day.

In 2007 Bird led a notorious lawsuit against the University of California, brought on by some private Christian high schools (Association of Christian Schools International et al., or ACSI) against the U.C. because the U.C. doesn’t give credit for certain courses taught at these private schools (described in some detail here). The courses in question included “science” courses that used Bob Jones University textbooks full of fake fundamentalist pseudoscience. During the case Bird applied his usual tactics, including radical quote-mining (it’s pretty striking that an experienced attorney would fail to realize that quote-mining is an exceptionally bad idea in a court case, where the references usually will be checked) and – but of course – persecution complexes: By not treating denialist pseudoscience as equivalent to science, the U.C. is persecuting Christians, the way Bird sees things; also the fact that “[t]he senior reviewer is Buddhist, and the reviewer who handled religious school science courses and drafted most policies is Jewish …” is evidence of anti-Christian bias. Needless to say, perhaps, the ACSI lost, but their tactics still reveals a mindset that is pretty scary.

Diagnosis: One of the movers and shakers behind anti-science legislations in the US, and arguably one of the founders of the modern Intelligent Design movement. A scary and hugely influential figure, in other words.

• Brian Rohrbough

This is really a tragic case, but we need to cover it. Brian Rohrbough is the former (2008) vice presidential candidate of America’s Independent Party, running on the ticket with Alan Keyes, and president of the splinter anti-abortion group American Right to Life.

Rohrbough’s career as a fanatic wingnut started for real when his son was killed during the Columbine High School Massacre; Rohrbough – understandably enough – sought explanations, and settled, completely without foundation in reality, on the conclusion that America was plagued by a “culture of death”, specifically manifested through (or caused by) legalized abortion and the removal of religion from public school classrooms; specifically, Rohrbough blames school violence on the theory evolution: “This country is in a moral free-fall [it really isn’t, by any coherent standard]. For over two generations, the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum, expelling God from the school and from the government, replacing him with evolution, where the strong kill the weak, without moral consequences and life has no inherent value,” because as Rohrbough understands it (which is not) the theory of evolution is a value system. He did, of course, offer no evidence for a causal link or even a correlation between teaching evolution and moral deterioration, for rather obvious reasons

Diagnosis: Yes, it is mostly a tragic case, and perhaps we should really call out the spineless journalists who give him opportunities to spread this nonsense on e.g. primetime national TV instead. But there is no way around the fact that Rohrbough is a deeply delusional loon either.

 

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

April 28, 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. 53

Date: Thursday, December 5, 1996

Commenced: 2:10 PM CST

Concluded: 2:25 PM CST

GD: Good afternoon, Robert. Still coping with the cold?

RTC: The temperature or my nose?

GD: Oh, both.

RTC: I stay inside and take medicine. At my age, the cold goes away and so does the person. No, pretty much under control. How are you doing?

GD: The diabetes is under control but my son is not. If he ever told me the truth, I would fall flat on the floor. He has the unfortunate habit of knocking his girl friends up and then ditching them. Not only do I disapprove of such behavior but I am the one who has weeping and pregnant people on my front porch while he hides in the bathroom. I have other things I would rather do, I can assure you.

RTC: Well, no, such is not good. What happens with the pregnant ones?

GD: I have to pay for the abortions and I am quite opposed to abortion. It would be a mess otherwise. Of course, he will never pay me back. I will have to take him to the vet one of these days and have him neutered. Save me a lot of grief and money.

RTC: There are always problems, aren’t there?

GD: Increasingly, Robert, increasingly. Listen, you and I spoke once about the origin of AIDS….

RTC: That wasn’t us; it was the Navy if you will recall.

GD: I think we have talked about this more than once. And killing of the chink’s rice crops. Well, from a pragmatic point of view, I can see the benefit of doing that. China is coming up very fast and soon enough, she will produce goods better and cheaper than we do. That’s what was behind the First World War. The Brits had a lock on manufactured goods until the Germans caught up with them. Instead of competing, they started a war and everyone went down. I suppose starving the Chinese would be better than nuking them. Less radioactive material in the air. Still, if the Chinese get too big, too fast, they will collapse internally unless, and I stress this, unless they get rid of the ancient Communist bosses and go over to a Western style republic complete with corruption at the highest levels. With their natural business acumen, industrious nature and a rigid dictatorship over everything, something will give in sooner or later. I suppose your people will be giving them a push. Maybe internal strife, maybe something else.

RTC: Well, I am out of it now and it’s their worry. Did you ever talk to Herr Mueller about things like this?

GD: Sometimes but when I was living in Bern, I discussed these things with a very senior KGB person.

RTC: Anyone I know?

GD: First Directorate and all. Probably. Is it snowing there?

RTC: Not now. I don’t suppose….

GD: No, I would rather not. It’s funny about our counter-intelligence. They won’t talk with me even though I know more than they do about their subjects.

RTC: Oh, of course not. Tell the FBI that the CIA wants to talk with you in private and see how fast they occupy your living room.

GD: One against the other, eh? Do it all the time in business. Oh and yes, I almost forgot. A Russian publisher’s representative was chatting with me the other day and mentioned, in passing, that your agency is now full of Jews and that a number of these are keeping their diplomatic pouches crammed with our secrets. You knew that?

RTC: I believe it. Can you give me names?

GD: A pleasure. I will have a list with names and home addresses sent to you from a friend in Maryland. I know nothing about it. Would you shoot them?

RTC: Heart attacks are much easier and less ostentatious. We can’t have that, Gregory. But something from the Russians to us via you is suspect. Not that you are a problem but how do we know they won’t pick out especially effective agents and ruin them?

GD: We don’t, so watch them and see. If they visit the Israeli embassy there, why then you have some confirmation. How would I do it? Take the suspect aside and give them some very reasonable but entirely false information with some zingers included. Then, if this shows up, you have confirmation. And then the car accident or the heart attack.

RTC: Gregory, the additives are not original with you but I applaud your grasp.

GD: Why not just ship all of them down to a new CIA station on McMurdo Sound in the Antarctic and forget to fly in winter supplies. Like food and heating oil. Come spring, a tragic discovery when the snow-covered camp is dug out by rescuers who were alarmed by the lack of reports on the bowel movements of penguins.

RTC: You have a perverse sense of humor Gregory but there is something to say about that.

GD: Or send them on special missions into Arab territory and tip off the Arabs. Let them draw and quarter them without any assistance from you. A nice condolence letter, machine-signed from the director, and some plastic flowers would do nicely.

RTC: Yes and a nice star on the wall.

GD: If I were doing it, there would more stars than the Milky Way.

RTC: We have had to remove a number of bad apples from our barrels, Gregory. Not Jews generally although a few got too uppity.

GD: Do you have any black agents in the field?

RTC: Now that you mention it, we do not. But by God, we do have black waiters in the executive dining rooms. Does that sound better to you?

GD: It’s a start. I note that the Jews like to sponsor blacks so if things go wrong, they will have walking sandbags to absorb the bullets that are meant for them. You should read ‘The True Believer’ by Hoffer. Very good book. Short, sharp and very much to the point.  Speaking of landfill candidates, how are the Switzers across the street doing?

RTC: Still there. Maybe you can come up with another idea.

GD: Well a huge car bomb set off just as their Ambassador is starting on a drive to some function might make a point.

RTC: You forget, Gregory, that I live right across the street. Think of my windows.

GD: True. Well, give me some time and I can come up with a solution.

RTC: A Final Solution?

GD: Ah, there we go with the Jews again. My God, what was that sound?

RFC: I was sneezing and knocked over a lamp.

GD: I thought someone blew up the Swiss Embassy.

RTC: There you go, trying to cheer an old man up. There’s broken lamp all over the floor and maybe we can talk again later.

(Concluded at 2:25 PM CST)

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

 

ASSASSINATION!

April 28, 2019

by Christian Jürs

DEFINITIONS

Assassination is a term thought to be derived from “Hashish”, a drug similar to marijuana, said to have been used by Hasan-Dan-Sabah to induce motivation in his followers, who were assigned to carry out political and other murders, usually at the cost of their lives.

The real story of the Assassins contains several fascinating elements. First, there is the use of political murder, which is what the sect is chiefly remembered for today. Then there is their complex philosophy, which guided their development and culminated in the extraordinary proclamation of the ‘Resurrection’ at Alamut. This in turn was followed by the tragedy of the destruction of Alamut by the Mongols. Yet, amazingly, this was not the end for the Assassins, for they were reborn as the Khojas in India; the Agha Khan is the lineal descendant of the rulers of Alamut

The name `assassin’ is, of course, synonymous with political murder. In 1092 the famous statesman Nizam al-Mulk was on his way to Baghdad when he was approached from a youth from Daylam (the region of Alamut) in the guise of a suppliant. The man suddenly drew a knife from his robe and wounded the minister fatally. This is generally supposed to have been the first assassination carried out by Hasan’s orders. The Ismailis claimed it was done to avenge the death of a carpenter, but doubtless there were more important political reasons. Murder as a political weapon was not, of course, an Ismaili invention, and indeed it appears that a number of groups in Iran were making use of it at the time. The Ismailis, however, undoubtedly took the trend further than most. They may have believed that it was more humane to kill one man selectively than a multitude in a battle. In this respect they were significantly different from modern terrorists. In any case, given the fact that they were so enormously outnumbered by their enemies, terrorism was a logical enough expedient.

It is usually said that a special corps of assassins – the fidais – existed, but this is doubtful, at least until a much later date. Marco Polo, who visited the site of Alamut in the thirteenth century, after its destruction by the Mongols, relates the romantic legend of how the fidais were trained by the Grand Master. The `Old Man’, as Marco Polo calls him, following the Crusader usage, was said to have constructed a fantastic pleasure garden, flowing with wine, honey, milk, and water, and populated by beautiful women.

It is here used to describe the planned killing of a person who is not under the legal jurisdiction of the killer, who is not physically in the hands of the killer, who has been selected by a resistance organization for death, and who has been selected by a resistance organization for death, and whose death provides positive advantages to that organization. The Hashshashin (also Hashishin, Hashashiyyin or Assassins) had a militant basis as a religious sect (often referred to as a cult) of Ismaili Muslims from the Nizari sub-sect. They were thought to be active in the 8th to 14th centuries. This mystic secret society killed members of the Abbasid elite for political or religious motivations. The word “assassin” is derived from their name. Their own name for the sect was al-da’wa al-jadīda (الدعوةالجديدة) which means “the new doctrine.” They called themselves fedayeen from the Arabic fidā’ī, which means “one who is ready to sacrifice his/her life for a cause.”

During the Cold War, the United States attempted several times to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan issued Executive Order 12333, which codified a policy first laid down in 1976 by the Ford administration. It stated, “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.”

In 1986, the American air strikes against Libya included an attack on the barracks where Muammar Qaddafi was known to be sleeping. The attack resulted in the death of Qaddafi’s infant daughter.[ During the 1991 Gulf War, the United States struck many of Iraq’s most important command bunkers with bunker-busting bombs in hopes of killing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Since the rise of al-Qaeda, both the Clinton and Bush administrations have backed “targeted killings.” In 1998, in retaliation for the al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa, the Clinton administration launched cruise missiles against a training camp in Afghanistan where bin Laden had been hours before. Reportedly, the United States nearly killed the leader of Taliban, Mullah Omar, with a Predator-launched Hellfire missile on the first night of Operation Enduring Freedom. In May 2002, the CIA launched a Hellfire missile from a Predator drone in an effort to kill the Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

On November 3, 2002, a US Central Intelligence Agency-operated MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) fired a Hellfire missile that destroyed a car carrying six suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. The target of the attack was Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, the top al-Qaeda operative in Yemen. Among those killed in the attack was a US citizen, Yemeni-American Ahmed Hijazi

According to Bush administration, the killing of an American in this fashion was legal. “I can assure you that no constitutional questions are raised here. There are authorities that the president can give to officials. He’s well within the balance of accepted practice and the letter of his constitutional authority,” said Condoleezza Rice, the US national security adviser.

The key technique was infiltration, either physical concealment and stealthy movement or the attempt to gain access to a person’s guard or staff with the aim of replacing or subverting them. The actual assassination would be the same close-contact stabbing, quieter smothering or strangulation, poisons and poisonous creatures were also used, and disembowelment was also relished. The mushroom death cap has been the traditional choice of assassins: it cannot be distinguished as poisonous by taste, and the symptoms of the poisoning show out only after some days or a week

Assassination can also imitate suicide. If the hit is thought out correctly and the assassin is skilled enough to prepare for all possible out comes, he/she can make a murder look like a suicide. For example: If a Handgun was used, it can be deployed correctly by leaving the mark’s hand at the correct angle to complete the suicide illusion. Pushing someone from a great height can also have the same effect, a mark being thrown off a balcony can be posed as a “jumper” situation.

EMPLOYMENT

Assassination is an extreme measure not normally used in clandestine operations. It should be assumed that it will never be ordered or authorized by any U.S. Headquarters, though the latter may in rare instances agree to its execution by members of an associated foreign service. This reticence is partly due to the necessity for committing communications to paper. No assassination instructions should ever be written or recorded. Consequently, the decision to employ this technique must nearly always be reached in the field, at the area where the act will take place. Decision and instructions should be confined to an absolute minimum of persons. Ideally, only one person will be involved. No report may be made, but usually the act will be properly covered by normal news services, whose output is available to all concerned.

JUSTIFICATION

Murder is not morally justifiable. Self-defense may be argued if the victim has knowledge which may destroy the resistance organization if divulged. Assassination of persons responsible for atrocities or reprisals may be regarded as just punishment. Killing a political leader whose burgeoning career is a clear and present danger to the cause of freedom may be held necessary.

But assassination can seldom be employed with a clear conscience. Persons who are morally squeamish should not attempt it.

CLASSIFICATIONS

The techniques employed will vary according to whether the subject is unaware of his danger, aware but unguarded, or guarded. They will also be affected by whether or not the assassin is to be killed with the subject hereafter, assassinations in which the subject is unaware will be termed “simple”; those where the subject is aware but unguarded will be termed “chase”; those where the victim is guarded will be termed “guarded.”

If the assassin is to die with the subject, the act will be called “lost.” If the assassin is to escape, the adjective will be “safe.” It should be noted that no compromises should exist here. The assassin must not fall alive into enemy hands.

A further type division is caused by the need to conceal the fact that the subject was actually the victim of assassination, rather than an accident or natural causes. If such concealment is desirable the operation will be called “secret” ;; if concealment is immaterial, the act will be called “open”; while if the assassination requires publicity to be effective it will be termed “terroristic.”

Following these definitions, the assassination of Julius Caesar was safe, simple, and terroristic, while that of Huey Long was lost, guarded and open. Obviously, successful secret assassinations are not recorded as assassination at all. [Illeg] o f Thailand and Augustus Caesar may have been the victims of safe, guarded and secret assassination. Chase assassinations usually involve clandestine agents or members of criminal organizations.

THE ASSASSIN

In safe assassinations, the assassin needs the usual qualities of a clandestine agent. He should be determined, courageous, intelligent, resourceful, and physically active. If special equipment is to be used, such as firearms or drugs, it is clear that he must have outstanding skill with such equipment.

Except in terroristic assassinations, it is desirable that the assassin be transient in the area. He should have an absolute minimum of contact with the rest of the organization and his instructions should be given orally by one person only. His safe evacuation after the act is absolutely essential, but here again contact should be as limited as possible. It is preferable that the person issuing instructions also conduct any withdrawal or covering action which may be necessary.

In lost assassination, the assassin must be a fanatic of some sort. Politics, religion, and revenge are about the only feasible motives. Since a fanatic is unstable psychologically, he must be handled with extreme care. He must not know the identities of the other members of the organization, for although it is intended that he die in the act, something may go wrong. While the Assassin of Trotsky has never revealed any significant information, it was unsound to depend on this when the act was planned.

PLANNING

When the decision to assassinate has been reached, the tactics of the operation must be planned, based upon an estimate of the situation similar to that used in military operations. The preliminary estimate will reveal gaps in information and possibly indicate a need for special equipment which must be procured or constructed. When all necessary data has been collected, an effective tactical plan can be prepared. All planning must be mental; no papers should ever contain evidence of the operation.

In resistance situations, assassination may be used as a counter-reprisal. Since this requires advertising to be effective, the resistance organization must be in a position to warn high officials publicly that their lives will be the price of reprisal action against innocent people. Such a threat is of no value unless it can be carried out, so it may be necessary to plan the assassination of various responsible officers of the oppressive regime and hold such plans in readiness to be used only if provoked by excessive brutality. Such plans must be modified frequently to meet changes in the tactical situation.

TECHNIQUES

The essential point of assassination is the death of the subject. A human being may be killed in many ways but sureness is often overlooked by those who may be emotionally unstrung by the seriousness of this act they intend to commit. The specific technique employed will depend upon a large number of variables, but should be constant in one point: Death must be absolutely certain. The attempt on Hitler’s life failed because the conspiracy did not give this matter proper attention.

Techniques may be considered as follows:

1. Manual.

It is possible to kill a man with the bare hands, but very few are skillful enough to do it well. Even a highly trained Judo expert will hesitate to risk killing by hand unless he has absolutely no alternative. However, the simplest local tools a re often much the most efficient means of assassination. A hammer, axe, wrench, screw driver, fire poker, kitchen knife, lamp stand, or anything hard, heavy and handy will suffice. A length of rope or wire or a belt will do if the assassin is strong and agile. All such improvised weapons have the important advantage of availability and apparent innocence. The obviously lethal machine gun failed to kill Trotsky where an item of sporting goods succeeded.

In all safe cases where the assassin may be subject to search, either before or after the act, specialized weapons should not be used. Even in the lost case, the assassin may accidentally be searched before the act and should not carry an incriminating device if any sort of lethal weapon can be improvised at or near the site. If the assassin normally carries weapons because of the nature of his job, it may still be desirable to improvise and implement at the scene to avoid disclosure of his identity.

2. Accidents.

(‘It is not difficult to arrange a killing but arraigning a suicide is much more difficult’ ..J.V. Stalin)

For secret assassination, either simple or chase, the contrived accident is the most effective technique. When successfully executed, it causes little excitement and is only casually investigated.

The most efficient accident, in simple assassination, is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. Elevator shafts, stairwells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve. Bridge falls into water are not reliable. In simple cases a private meeting with the subject may be arranged at a properly-cased location. The act may be executed by sudden, vigorous [excised] of the ankles, tipping the subject over the edge. If the assassin immediately sets up an outcry, playing the “horrified wit ness”, no alibi or surreptitious withdrawal is necessary. In chase cases it will usually be necessary to stun or drug the subject before dropping him. Care is required to insure that no wound or condition not attributable to the fall is discernible after death.

Falls into the sea or swiftly flowing rivers may suffice if the subject cannot swim. It will be more reliable if the assassin can arrange to attempt rescue, as he can thus be sure of the subject’s death and at the same time establish a workable alibi. (Assassination of Princess Diana here)

If the subject’s personal habits make it feasible, alcohol may be used [2 words excised] to prepare him for a contrived accident of any kind.

Falls before trains or subway cars are usually effective, but require exact timing and can seldom be free from unexpected observation.

Automobile accidents are a less satisfactory means of assassination. If the subject is deliberately run down, very exact timing is necessary and investigation is likely to be thorough. If the subject’s car is tampered with, reliability is very lo w. The subject may be stunned or drugged and then placed in the car, but this is only reliable when the car can be run off a high cliff or into deep water without observation.

Arson can cause accidental death if the subject is drugged and left in a burning building. Reliability is not satisfactory unless the building is isolated and highly combustible.

3. Drugs.

In all types of assassination except terroristic, drugs can be very effective. If the assassin is trained as a doctor or nurse and the subject is under medical care, this is an easy and rare method. An overdose of morphine administered as a sedative will cause death without disturbance and is difficult to detect. The size of the dose will depend upon whether the subject has been using narcotics regularly. If not, two grains will suffice.

If the subject drinks heavily, morphine or a similar narcotic can be injected at the passing out stage, and the cause of death will often be held to be acute alcoholism.

Specific poisons, such as arsenic or strychine, are effective but their possession or procurement is incriminating, and accurate dosage is problematical. Poison was used unsuccessfully in the assassination of Rasputin and Kolohan, though the latter case is more accurately described as a murder.

4. Edged Weapons

Any locally obtained edged device may be successfully employed. A certain minimum of anatomical knowledge is needed for reliability.

Puncture wounds of the body cavity may not be reliable unless the heart is reached. The heart is protected by the rib cage and is not always easy to locate.

Abdominal wounds were once nearly always mortal, but modern medical treatment has made this no longer true.

Absolute reliability is obtained by severing the spinal cord in the cervical region. This can be done with the point of a knife or a light blow of an axe or hatchet.

Another reliable method is the severing of both jugular and carotid blood vessels on both sides of the windpipe.

If the subject has been rendered unconscious by other wounds or drugs, either of the above methods can be used to insure death.

5. Blunt Weapons

As with edge weapons, blunt weapons require some anatomical knowledge for effective use. Their main advantage is their universal availability. A hammer may be picked up almost anywhere in the world. Baseball and [illeg] bats are very widely distributed. Even a rock or a heavy stick will do, and nothing resembling a weapon need be procured, carried or subsequently disposed of.

Blows should be directed to the temple, the area just below and behind the ear, and the lower, rear portion of the skull. Of course, if the blow is very heavy, any portion of the upper skull will do. The lower frontal portion of the head, from th e eyes to the throat, can withstand enormous blows without fatal consequences.

6. Firearms

Firearms are often used in assassination, often very ineffectively. The assassin usually has insufficient technical knowledge of the limitations of weapons, and expects more range, accuracy and killing power than can be provided with reliability. Since certainty of death is the major requirement, firearms should be used which can provide destructive power at least 100% in excess of that thought to be necessary, and ranges should be half that considered practical for the weapon.

Firearms have other drawbacks. Their possession is often incriminating. They may be difficult to obtain. They require a degree of experience from the user. They are [illeg]. Their [illeg] is consistently over-rated.

However, there are many cases in which firearms are probably more efficient than any other means. These cases usually involve distance between the assassin and the subject, or comparative physical weakness of the assassin, as with a woman.

(a) The precision rifle. In guarded assassination, a good hunting or target rifle should always be considered as a possibility.

(b) Absolute reliability can nearly always be achieved at a distance of one hundred yards. In ideal circumstances, t he range may be extended to 250 yards. The rifle should be a well made bolt or falling block action type, handling a powerful long-range cartridge. The .300 F.A.B. Magnum is probably the best cartridge readily available. Other excellent calibers are . 375 M.[illeg]. Magnum, .270 Winchester, .30 – 106 p.s., 8 x 60 MM Magnum, 9.3 x 62 kk and others of this type. These are preferable to ordinary military calibers, since ammunition available for them is usually of the expanding bullet type, whereas most ammunition for military rifles is full jacketed and hence not sufficiently lethal. Military ammunition should not be altered by filing or drilling bullets, as this will adversely affect accuracy.

The rifle may be of the “bull gun” variety, with extra heavy barrel and set triggers, but in any case should be capable of maximum precision. Ideally, the weapon should be able to group in one inch at one hundred yards, but 21/2″ groups are adequate. The sight should be telescopic, not only for accuracy, but because such a sight is much better in dim light or near darkness. As long as the bare outline of the target is discernable, a telescope sight will work, even if the rifle and shooter are in total darkness.

An expanding, hunting bullet of such calibers as described above will produce extravagant laceration and shock at short or mid-range. If a man is struck just once in the body cavity, his death is almost entirely certain