TBR News April 8, 2016
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. April 8, 2016: “ The Panama Papers were compiled for one reason but are guaranteed to explode in the face of the person who commissioned their extraction. Many prominent foreign leaders, bankers and businessmen are involved and now, many are the pleadings and threats pouring out of national capitols demanding inaction and redaction. Far too many copies of this immense trove were sent out for all of them to be squashed, desperate as many of the prominent would wish them to be. In spite of frenzied admonitions to the media for silence, silence will not come.”
Note: Readers with interesting information, questions or comments can contact us at: tbrnews@hotmail.com
Conversations with the Crow
On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.
Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal , Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment. Three months before, July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md. After Corson’s death, Trento and his Washington 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
After Crowley’s death and Trento’s raid on the Crowley files, huge gaps were subsequently discovered by horrified CIA officials and when Crowley’s friends mentioned Gregory Douglas, it was discovered that Crowley’s son had shipped two large boxes to Douglas. No one knew their contents but because Douglas was viewed as an uncontrollable loose cannon who had done considerable damage to the CIA’s reputation by his on-going publication of the history of Gestapo-Mueller, they bent every effort both to identify the missing files and make some effort to retrieve them before Douglas made any use of them.
Douglas had been in close contact with Crowley and had long phone conversations with him. He found this so interesting and informative that he taped and later transcribed them.
These conversations have been published in a book: ‘Conversations with the Crow” and this is an excerpt.
Conversation No. 30
Date: Tuesday, August 6, 1996
Commenced: 11:10 AM CST
Concluded: 11:47 AM CST
GD: Ah, good morning to you, Robert. How is life treating you today?
RTC: Good morning, Gregory. There are good days and bad days. I’m not sure about today.
GD: Certainty is illusion, Robert. I was talking to an old friend of mine last night. He’s down at Norfolk. Was Navy but retired. I went to school with him. King’s Point and then the NSG.
RTC: King’s Point is Merchant Marine.
GD: I know. They have a reserve commission and they can activate it if they want to. He did. Nuclear vessels surface and then the NSG. He was the Naval Attaché in the Dominican Republic. Worked on the Trujillo assassination. But that’s not the issue now. We got to talking about AIDS and since he had quite a bit of sherry, he told me quite a story about how that originated. I thought you might have some input on that. Want me to go on?
RTC: Why not?
GD: Well, according to him, the Navy had an experimental medical station down in Haiti. They were down there because there was a huge pool of very poor locals they could use as subjects in tests. He said that they were developing something that would lower a person’s resistance to the point where a common cold would put them out of action for weeks.
RTC: Go on. What then?
GD: Well, they hit on a virus that does this, experimented with the locals and when they were sure it actually worked, somehow they got this into local whores whom the Cuban government then shipped over to Angola to service their volunteers fighting there.
RTC: I’ve heard stories about that.
GD: But somehow, the virus mutated into something far more serious. The HIV thing. And they didn’t care if all the Cubans died, or the whores either, but it seems that some the younger Haitians got this and when American gays made excursions down there for some cheap black cock, they got it, too, and you can see where that went. Then, my friend said, after they found out what had gone wrong, the Navy shut down its facility, disposed of their volunteer locals by taking them out on boats and dumping them into the water. Anyway, that’s what he said, and I believe him. That’s what I wanted to ask you about.
RTC: There is something to that. Your friend had best be very quiet or he’ll end up taking a one-way boat trip. And I would be careful not to put any of that into one of your books. If you take my drift.
GD: No, it wouldn’t fit in with the Mueller material. It is true, then?
RTC: Basically it is. Take note that it didn’t start out to kill off all the homos, although the Christians thought it was a wonderful thing, but your friend was right when he said it mutated. I was never in that part of the agency but one hears things or talks to colleagues. I mean there was only the intention to interfere with the combat capabilities of enemy troops, not liquidate social outcasts. When we learned about this, the burn bags were used overtime at Langley.
GD: Were your people part of it?
RTC: In a sense. The Navy supplied the tactical, and we supplied the strategic. They produced the weapon and we, the targets. We were planning to use this on the Russians.
GD: Well, I know something about that aspect. You know about General Ishi?
RTC: Oh yes, I do indeed.
GD: His Japanese military units had a BW lab up in Manchuria and they used to develop the plague and God knows what else. Poisoned thousands of Chinese, wanted to loose the plague against their Russian neighbors and used Allied POW’s as lab specimens. Most of them died of plague and other nasty things.
RTC: Ah, the redoubtable Dr. Ishi. After we took over Japan, he was caught along with his staff and they were planning to try him for very ugly war crimes but MacArthur, acting on specific orders from the Pentagon, rescued him, set him with a big lab in Tokyo and back they went to developing the bubonic plague. I guess they were going to use it on the Russians if all else failed.
GD: That I know all about. Not the Japanese but using the plague against the Russians. There was a German Army doctor, a Dr. Walter Schreiber, who was a specialist in communicable diseases. He developed a form of the plague and the military used it to clean out the overcrowded Russian POW cages. Cost too much to feed and guard them. The rationale was that they never used them in the West. Roosevelt, as you might know, was planning to use mustard gas against the Germans in Russia until the Bari raid blew up a boat-full of mustard gas, and when Hitler learned of this, he threatened to let nerve gas loose on London and Washington. Amazing how quickly FDR backed off.
RTC: You do your homework, don’t you?
GD: Oh yes. Schreiber came over to us in Berlin after the war and we vetted him and sent him to San Antonio to set up a lab there to cultivate the plague. Again, we planned to use it against the Russians. I don’t what the Russians did to infuriate our sacred leaders, but I don’t think they would have deserved that. Schreiber got outed and had to be shipped back to Germany.
RTC: Drew Pearson was the man who did that.
GD: Whatever. Well, the Brits practiced BW when they gave the Indians smallpox-laced blankets back in the eighteenth century, but Mueller and I were discussing Schreiber’s project. Mueller was very angry when he heard this and rounded Schreiber up. Had to let him go. Orders from on high. Mueller said that there were no Customs agents at the borders to stop the spread of such filthiness right back from whence it came. But he told me about a CIA plan to ruin the Asian rice crop. That failed but only barely. It would have spread and ruined everyone’s rice crop. He said that creatures that dabbled in such things should be shot out of hand or they would destroy everyone, good or bad. I suppose the definition of good or bad depends on your politics, but the whole thing should be forbidden by law.
RTC: I believe it is, but only in theory.
GD: But they put the story out that AIDS came from monkeys in Africa and other funny stories.
RTC: Well, now it’s raging in Africa and they estimate that in ten years, everyone there will be infected. Of course, there is something to be said about depopulating Africa. They’re a bunch of incompetents who are sitting on very valuable natural resources, such as gold and uranium and when they all die, the treasures are there for the finding.
GD: That’s a bit cynical but true. But what about the American homosexuals?
RTC: The Christians and the far right would be in favor of exterminating them all. However, that having been said, we would lose so many really valuable public servants, not to mention all the florists and interior decorators.
GD: Thank God I’m not a Christian. They’re such filthy bigots. If they ever get into power here, I’ll move to some cleaner place.
RTC: I don’t see that happening, Gregory.
GD: I have no problems with the mainline faiths but the extremists are flat-out nuts and we don’t need that rampant and fanatical bigotry.
RTC: But it could be useful.
GD: But you can’t really control it. I’ve known a few Jesus freaks and, believe me, they are as nutty as they come. Most of them try to hide it from us sane ones but once in a while, it leaks out. It would be entertaining if the head of the Navy’s medical branch caught AIDS from his cousin or how about the DCI?
RTC: Now, now, Gregory, you must realize that accidents happen. Try not to be too judgmental about such things.
GD: It’s bloody difficult not to.
RTC: Look, Africa is full of people who are only a generation or two out of the jungle. They ran out the white people, who set up the business structure, and now they are running around with spears, eating each other. Why be concerned if they pass away and give the civilized part of the world access to their unused natural resources? After all, that’s why we killed off the head of the UN. He was interfering with the uranium business in the Congo so we had a little aircraft accident. We basically shot him out of the air. And that put an end to his meddling in important matters. Uranium, I don’t need to remind you, is vital for our weapons programs. Balance that against one meddling Swede and I don’t think there’s much of a problem.
GD: Well, for him…
RTC: Against the common good? You need to consider the practical priorities, Gregory. Believe me, we had no intention of causing AIDS. Our goal was to render a battlefield enemy incapable of combat, that’s all. These things sometimes happen and there is no reason at all to dwell on unexpected and certainly not planned consequences.
GD: Ah, remember that Lenin once said you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Of course, it didn’t originate with him and I know it won’t end there but you take the point because you articulate it. But I have to agree with Mueller when he tore into such projects. And if you know the Bible, remember that he who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword. Wars once were conducted by gentlemen with a certain amount of civility but those days are gone. Democracy, not kings, now rules and civility is dead.
RTC: You sound like a monarchist, Gregory.
GD: In many ways I am, Robert. I recall my German grandfather saying that democracy was government of the mentally misfit by the mentally mediocre and tempered by the saving grace of snobbery. Grandfather was usually right I remember once at one of his formal family dinners when one of my idiot aunts was going on about her constant attendance at the local Methodist church and her choir practices. My grandfather turned to me and told me, so the whole table could hear, that I ought to take a lesson in piety from my aunt. I recall saying, and I am not being funny here, that it seemed to me that there was considerable madness in aunt’s Methodism.
RTC: Did you actually say that, Gregory?
GD: Yes, and I was only ten, Robert.
RTC: Your family must have loved you.
GD: I don’t actually think so. When Grandfather said at some other occasion that my aunt and uncle were going to Lower Asbury Avenue, I said that they certainly would if they lived there long enough.
RTC: (Laughter) You must have been a most unpleasant child, Gregory.
GD: I do not suffer fools gladly, Robert. Lincoln has been misquoted. He said, or is supposed to have said, that God must love the common people because he made so many of them. What he actually said was that God must love fools because he had made so many of them.
RTC: Now you can see why our organization is so necessary. Imagine leaving state policy in the hands of idiots.
GD: Point of view here, Robert. Whose ox is gored? Destroying the Asian rice crop? Thousands or millions dead of starvation?
GTC: But consider the common good. These are Communists, Gregory, and they want to destroy our system.
GD: Another point of view once more, Robert. Yes, abstract Communism is utopian nonsense, just like abstract Christianity is. No one wants to work to help others, but they will help themselves. But that still does not justify slaughtering millions, does it?
RTC: But that is a very extreme and certainly tainted view, Gregory.
GD: Again, it’s the gored ox. But civilized people can disagree with each other and still remain civilized, Robert. Right?
RTC: I assume so but let’s try to be a bit more objective. You need to view the larger picture.
GD: Mueller said it so well to me once, just before one of my nice French dinners. He said that morals and ethics were excellent norms but hardly effective techniques.
RTC: Those sentiments I can agree with.
GD: A difference without much a distinction. Well, enough moralizing here. I’m glad to see that my naval friend was not just engaging in drunken babble.
RTC: I would strongly urge you not to take this issue any further. I would be concerned about your safety if you did.
GD: A point well taken. As a cross between a social Darwinist and a monarchist, even I can see the perils of contemplating moral issues from a neutral point of view.
RTC: And if you felt like giving me your talkative friend’s name and address, it might be appreciated. He ought to be spoken to.
GD: I doubt that I would want to do that, Robert. After all, I have never discussed our conversations with anyone else.
RTC: Point taken.
(Concluded 11:47 AM CST)
Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko: The biggest loser from the Panama Papers?
April 6, 2016
by Bryan MacDonald
RT
The media hype has focused on Vladimir Putin (who was actually not named) and David Cameron (who wasn’t either). However, the biggest loser from the Panama Paper’s fallout just might be Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko.
By now, you’ve endured more than two years of the Western popular press ranting and raving about “Euromaidan,” which they describe as Ukraine’s “revolution of dignity”. You’ve consumed endless op-eds and profiles white-washing Petro Poroshenko as some kind of noble protector of democratic values in the “New Ukraine.” You’ve also been exposed to endless propaganda about Ukraine’s “European choice” and misled to believe that the country is united in its desire to re-orientate westward.
By contrast, Russian media has consistently labeled Maidan, a “coup.” Lots and lots of folk on the Western think-tank circuit and opinion pages – which are often indivisible – are angry about that. They’ve long accused the Russians of trying to hoodwink people. ‘Weaponizing’ nouns, if you like.
In reality, the Russian media is right. Maidan was not a revolution. The term revolution implies that there was a dramatic structural shift in Ukraine. But there wasn’t anything of the sort. In a real transformation, the entire elite are replaced. For example, a new civil service is created and probably a fresh police force.
A Fake Revolution
In Ukraine, this didn’t happen. The same state structures still exist, like before. More or less the same people run the security services, for instance. And the media remains, broadly, owned by the same bunch of oligarchs who controlled it two years ago. The President, Poroshenko, served as Trade Minister under Viktor Yanukovich, who was deposed in the coup.
According to polls, his biggest current rival is Yulia Timoshenko. She was Energy Minster when Leonid Kuchma ran the show. In fact, none of the principles are raw greenhorns, new to the scene. Rather, the situation is quite the opposite. It’s Back To The Future, with bullet proof Porsche Cayenne’s instead of cute little Deloreans.
So, Ukraine didn’t experience a genuine revolution. Instead, there was a minor change, equivalent to shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. A group of, nominally “pro-Russian” (although many would venture “pro-themselves” and “pro-money”) oligarchs from the eastern regions were replaced by a group of ostensibly “pro-Western” oligarchs from the central and western areas. The new crew speaks better English and practices more skilled PR. That’s about all that has changed.
Poroshenko came to power promising the sun, the moon and the stars. But not the plough and stars, which he removed from Ukrainian society by banning the Communist Party, in a (hardly democratic) gesture ignored by the West.
Life is like a box of chocolates
During his campaign, the then billionaire pledged to divest himself of his Roshen confectionary business.“If I get elected, I will wipe the slate clean and sell the Roshen concern. As President of Ukraine I plan and commit to focus exclusively on welfare of the nation,” Poroshenko told Germany’s Bild tabloid before the election. He never did this.
Despite his assurances, it now appears that Poroshenko has been more concerned with his own welfare than Ukraine’s over the past couple of years. He hid money offshore, thereby depriving the struggling country of vital taxes, at the same time that a civil war has raged there. While conscripting youth from poor families to serve in an underfunded army, he’s not only been unwilling to commit his own massive wealth to the cause, he’s even refused to pay his own fair share.
Poroshenko’s attitude is best summed up the events of September 1, 2014. That day, the ‘Chocolate King’ alleged that Russia had openly attacked Ukraine. Many governments and opinion-formers took his information at face value and it led to a serious deterioration in relations between Russia and the West. Meanwhile, Poroshenko’s mind was very far away from Donbass. Now, the Panama Papers reveal that the same day, he supplied Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm at the centre of the scandal, with a copy of a utility bill to prove his home address. This is damning.
You never know what you are going to get
Last weekend, Poroshenko bemoaned the timing of this week’s Dutch referendum on Ukraine’s controversial association agreement with the EU. Back then, his reasoning was that “the real purpose for the internal Dutch discussion is about the future of the European Union and internal political clashes.” The oligarch suggested Ukraine’s chances of a favorable outcome would be damaged by Dutch domestic issues. He also, rather bizarrely accused the New York Times of “hybrid war” against his country for exposing rampant corruption. We can now assume that he was fully aware of the imminent publication of information about his own dealings, when making these statements.
As it happens, nothing has done more to kibosh Kiev’s EU prospects than the Panama Papers. Even the Kremlin’s greatest minds couldn’t possibly conceive of something so damaging. Ultimately, Poroshenko only has himself to blame here. If he’d kept his campaign promises, his white knight act might have been believable. However, his grubby financial dealings expose him for what he is, a relic of the 1990’s oligarch culture which helped to destroy much of the ex-USSR, both economically and socially, bringing untold misery to millions.
Campaigners for a Dutch ‘No’ vote have warned against admitting another large, poor and systemically crooked eastern European nation to the EU. Ukraine’s supporters continuously countered that Maidan had changed all that. This week’s revelations prove one thing. Regardless of the endless spin, Ukraine’s fundamentals remain the same. Nothing has changed.
If Dutch voters return a negative verdict in this week’s referendum, Poroshenko can’t blame “hybrid war” or Russian meddling. He can instead stare at one of his, undoubtedly expensive, mirrors and blame the figure he sees there.
China steps up Panama Papers censorship after leaders’ relatives named
Websites ordered to purge all reports related to documents following publication of political elite’s offshore secrets
April 7, 2016
by Tom Phillips
The Guardian
Beijing-Chinese censors have stepped up their censorship of websites, ordering all content related to the Panama Papers to be scrubbed as new revelations emerged of how relatives of some of the country’s top leaders had used secretive offshore companies to store their wealth.
Documents from the leaked Mossack Fonseca database showed the relations of three of the seven members of the Communist party’s elite ruling council, the politburo standing committee, had companies that were clients of the offshore law firm. They included relatives of Chinese president Xi Jinping.
A Communist party censorship directive instructed news organisations to purge all reports, blogs, bulletin boards and comments relating to this week’s highly sensitive revelations.
“Please self-inspect and delete all content related to the ‘Panama Papers’ leak,” the order said according to China Digital Times, a website run by the University of California, Berkeley.
BBC and CNN broadcasts about the revelations have been blocked all week in mainland China.
The Guardian’s website appeared to have been partially blocked on Thursday afternoon, with stories including those relating to the Panama Papers inaccessible in mainland China without the use of a virtual private network. The Economist and Time magazine have also been blocked in China in recent weeks after both magazines published prominent articles that were critical of Xi Jinping.
China’s foreign ministry had already dismissed some reports of the Panama Papers on Tuesday as “groundless accusations”.
On Thursday, when asked about the revelations by the Guardian, a foreign ministry spokesman said: “My colleague has already taken this question. We have no comment on this.”
Asked why Chinese state media had avoided covering the leaks, the spokesman added: “You can ask the media, not me, for an answer.”
Sarah Cook, a China specialist from the Freedom House advocacy group, said the intense censorship operation under way reflected Beijing’s fears that disclosures about the wealth of its political elite could spark public anger or even fuel opposition to Xi from within the party itself.
“These are methods of storing assets and money that are really for the super, super rich. From that perspective I think there is a fear and a sensitivity among Communist party leaders that this exposes the degree to which the political and economic elite are so closely intertwined and so far above your average citizen in terms of wealth,” she said.
Xi Jinping has launched a high-profile crackdown on corruption since taking power, cautioning party members that the continued pillaging of public funds could topple the party. “Many worms will disintegrate wood,” Xi warned in a 2013 speech.
The Chinese president has also ordered party officials to avoid public demonstrations of wealth in an attempt to improve the party’s image.
“This kind of blows a big hole in that effort because it exposes how the top political leaders and their families are, at the very least, super, super rich – even if this money had been obtained legally, which of course is a big question mark as well,” said Cook.
The relatives of eight of China’s most powerful politicians were named in the Panama Papers, including those of three members of the current politburo standing committee.
They include the brother-in-law of Xi Jinping, the daughter-in-law of propaganda chief Liu Yunshan and the son-in-law of vice-premier Zhang Gaoli, China’s seventh most powerful man.
Deng Jiagui, who is married to Xi’s sister, Qi Qiaoqiao, was identified as a shareholder in two British Virgin Island companies: Wealth Ming International and Best Effect Enterprises.
Jia Liqing, who is married to Liu Yunshan’s son, Liu Lefei, was the director and shareholder of a British Virgin Islands company called Ultra Time Investments Ltd.
Jia’s father is China’s former minister of public security and chief prosecutor, Jia Chunwang, the New York Times reported.
Lee Shing Put, Zhang Gaoli’s son-in-law, was linked to three companies in the British Virgin Islands: Zennon Capital Management, Sino Reliance Networks Corporation and Glory Top Investments Ltd.
Other relatives named in the leaked documents include Li Xiaolin, the daughter of former premier Li Peng, and Hu Dehua, the son of former party chief Hu Yaobang.
Chen Dongsheng, the grandson-in-law of Mao Zedong, was also tied to a British Virgin Islands incorporated company called Keen Best International Limited, according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
There is no indication of any wrongdoing on the part of any of the Chinese names found in the leaked documents.
But Cook said the revelations came at an unfortunate moment for Xi, who has been facing growing signs of resistance to his rule, including a recent public letter calling for his resignation.
Last month Chinese security agents launched a manhunt to catch those behind the anonymous letter – signed by “loyal Communist party members” – detaining more than two dozen people suspected of involvement in its publication.
“I think there is particularly a sense that [the Panama Papers revelations] could be damaging for him and his authority at a time when he is already facing challenges to his authority both from critics within the party and people outside of the party,” said Cook.
“You already have this undercurrent of people both outside the party and inside the party questioning his leadership and then something like this comes along that adds another chink in his armour in terms of the persona and the authority he has tried to create for himself.“It might almost be that this is more dangerous for Xi and for the higher leaders in terms of internal party credibility as much as the broader public.”
Willy Lam, an expert in elite Chinese politics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said he also believed revelations involving Xi’s brother-in-law could cause real political damage to the Chinese president although Beijing would paint the Panama Papers as “a western conspiracy to damage the reputation of the party”.
“Xi Jinping is under a lot of pressure, including calls for his resignation. It is possible that his enemies within the party – some of them in quite senior positions – could use this material to damage his reputation. We won’t be able to see from the outside but within the party the backstabbing and infighting could be exacerbated,” Lam said.
“It doesn’t seem that Xi is vulnerable so far but they are waiting for a chance to pounce on Xi. They are all waiting for him to make a mistake.”
Chinese newspapers and television channels have almost totally ignored the Panama Papers following censorship orders, although the state-run Global Times has attempted to portray the revelations as an American conspiracy.
“Very few US public figures were exposed by the Panama Papers, which may be related to the political awareness of the forces behind the leak,” the newspaper wrote.
In a short dispatch about the activities of the politburo standing committee, state news agency Xinhua said China’s seven top leaders had gathered this week to plant saplings to promote environmental protection.
“People plant trees so their offspring can enjoy the shade,” Xi, citing a Chinese proverb, reportedly told his colleagues.
In another story Xinhua reported the resignation of Iceland’s prime minister, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, but made no mention of the Panama Papers.
Analysts predicted Chinese censors would fail to completely block out the news.
“The Great Firewall tends to have a lot of holes in it,” said Andrew Wedeman, a China expert from Georgia State University who is writing a book about Xi Jinping’s war on corruption.
Writing on the China File website, Columbia University scholar Andrew J Nathan said the revelations about offshore assets suggested members of China’s political elite harboured doubts over the Communist party’s future.
“They don’t feel secure at home, but what exactly do they fear? Is it political strife within the regime or the fragility of the regime itself?” Nathan wrote.
Spies and shadowy allies lurk in secret, thanks to firm’s bag of tricks
Panama Papers reveal how spies and CIA gun-runners use offshore companies to stay hidden
- Offshore world blurs the line between legitimate business and the world of espionage
- ‘You can’t exactly walk around saying that you’re a spy’
April 5, 2016
by Will Fitzgibbon
McClatchy
One day during his presidential re-election campaign in September 1996, Bill Clinton walked into a room in Westin Crown Center hotel in Kansas City, Mo. At stake was a quarter-million dollars in campaign fundraising. Clinton turned to his generous host, Farhad Azima, and led the guests in song.
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you….”
Azima, an Iranian-born American charter airline executive, had long donated to both Democratic and Republican administrations. He visited the Clinton White House 10 times between October 1995 and December 1996, including private afternoon coffees with the president. Years later, as Hillary Clinton stood for election to the Senate in December 1999, Azima hosted her and 40 guests for a private dinner that raised $2,500 a head.
Azima’s Democratic fundraising activities provided an interesting twist in the career of a man who has found himself in a media storm of one of America’s major political scandals, the Iran-Contra affair, during the Republican Reagan Administration.
In the mid-1980s, senior Reagan administration officials secretly arranged to sell weapons to Iran to help free seven American hostages then use the sale proceeds to fund right-wing Nicaraguan rebels known as the Contras. On a mission to Tehran in 1985, one of Azima’s Boeing 707 cargo planes delivered 23 tons of military equipment, The New York Times reported. Azima has always claimed to know nothing about the flight or even if it happened.
“I’ve had nothing to do with Iran-Contra,” Azima told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). “I was investigated by every known agency in the U.S. and they decided there was absolutely nothing there,” said Azima. “It was a wild goose chase. The law enforcement and regulators fell for it.”
Now, records obtained by ICIJ, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and other media partners, including McClatchy, reveal new details about one of America’s most colorful political donors. The records also disclose offshore deals made by another Iran-Contra figure, the Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi.
The more than 11 million documents – which stretch from 1977 to December 2015 – show the inner workings of Mossack Fonseca & Co., a Panamanian law firm that specializes in building labyrinthine corporate structures that sometimes blur the line between legitimate business and the cloak-and-dagger world of international espionage.
Spies’ offshore dealings
The documents also pull back the curtain on hundreds of details about how former CIA gun-runners and contractors use offshore companies for personal and private gain. Further, they illuminate the workings of a host of other characters who used offshore companies during or after their work as spy chiefs, secret agents or operatives for the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
“You can’t exactly walk around saying that you’re a spy,” Loch K. Johnson, a professor at the University of Georgia, says in explaining the cover that offshore firms offer. Johnson, a former aide to a U.S. Senate committee’s intelligence inquiries, has spent decades studying CIA “front” companies.
According to the Panama Papers, Mossack Fonseca’s clients included Sheikh Kamal Adham, Saudi Arabia’s first intelligence chief who was later named by a U.S. Senate committee as the CIA’s “principal liaison for the entire the Middle East from the mid-1960s through 1979,” and who controlled offshore companies later involved in a U.S. banking scandal; retired Maj. Gen. Ricardo Rubianogroot, Colombia’s former chief of air intelligence, who was a shareholder of an aviation and logistics company; and Brig. Gen. Emmanuel Ndahiro, doctor turned spy chief to Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame.
Adham died in 1999. Ndahiro did not respond to requests for comment. Rubianogroot confirmed to ICIJ partner and Colombian investigative journalism organization, Consejo de Redacción, that he was a small shareholder in West Tech Panama, which was created to buy an American avionics company. The company is in liquidation.
“We conduct thorough due diligence on all new and prospective clients that often exceeds in stringency the existing rules and standards to which we and others are bound,” said Mossack Fonseca in a statement. “Many of our clients come through established and reputable law firms and financial institutions across the world, including the major correspondent banks…If a new client/entity is not willing and/or able to provide to us the appropriate documentation indicating who they are, and (when applicable) from where their funds are derived, we will not work with that client/entity.”
Even wannabe spooks can be found.
“’I’ll suggest a name like ‘World Insurance Services Limited’ or maybe ‘Universal Exports’ after the company used in the early James Bond stories but I don’t know if we’d get away with that!” wrote one financier to Mossack Fonseca in 2010 on behalf of a client creating a front company in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). Universal Exports was a fictional company used by the British Secret Service in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.
The files further show that Mossack Fonseca also incorporated companies named Goldfinger, SkyFall, GoldenEye, Moonraker, Spectre and Blofeld after James Bond movie titles and villains and was asked to do the same for Octopussy. There is correspondence from a man named Austin Powers, apparently his real name and not the movie character, and Jack Bauer, whom a Mossack Fonseca employee entered into the firm’s database as a client and not the television character after the employee “met him at a pub.”
But Mossack Fonseca’s connection to espionage is more often fact, not fiction.
Men in their flying machines
The secret documents show that Farhad Azima incorporated his first offshore company with Mossack Fonseca in the BVI in 2000. The company was called ALG (Asia & Pacific) Limited, a branch of his airline Aviation Leasing Group, a U.S.-based private company with a fleet of more than 60 aircraft.
It was not until 2013 when the firm ran a routine background search on the shareholders of a new company that Mossack Fonseca discovered media articles on Azima’s alleged ties to the CIA. Among the allegations found in online articles shared by Mossack Fonseca employees were that he “supplied air and logistical support” to a company owned by former CIA agents who shipped arms to Libya. Another article quoted an FBI official who said he had been warned by the CIA that Azima was “off limits.”
The firm asked Azima’s representatives to confirm his identity. But it appears that Mossack Fonseca never received a reply. The files indicate that he remained a client and that internal surprises continued.
In 2014, one year after discovering online reports of his connections to the CIA, Hosshang Hosseinpour, was cited by the U.S. Treasury Department as helping companies move tens of millions of dollars for companies in Iran, which at the time was subject to economic sanctions.
The files show that Azima and Hosseinpour appeared on corporate documents of a company that planned to buy a hotel in the nation of Georgia in 2011. That was the same year Treasury officials asserted that Hosseinpour, who co-founded the private airline FlyGeorgia, and two others first began to send millions of dollars into Iran, which led to sanctions being taken against him three years later.
The documents show that Hosseinpour briefly held shares in the company from November 2011. However, in February 2012 company administrators told Mossack Fonseca that he was not part of the company and his shares had been issued in an “administrative error.” The company, Eurasia Hotel Holdings Limited, changed its name to Eurasia Aviation Holdings and bought a Hawker Beechcraft 400XP corporate jet in 2012 for $1.625 million, files show.
Azima told ICIJ that the company was only used to buy an aircraft and that Hosseinpour had never been involved in the company.
The plane was not going to be used in the U.S., Azima said, so couldn’t be registered in the U.S. and the choice of the BVI was not for tax purposes. “I’ve filed every tax known to mankind,” Azima told ICIJ.
Hosseinpour could not be reached for comment. In 2013, before the sanctions came into force, he told The Wall Street Journal that he had no connections to Iran and “nothing to do with evading sanctions.”
Another colorful connection to the CIA in the Mossack Fonseca files is Loftur Johannesson, now a wealthy, silver-haired 85-year-old from Rekyavik, also known as “The Icelander.” Johannesson is widely reported in books and newspaper articles to have worked with the CIA in the 1970s and 1980s, supplying guns to anti-communist guerrillas in Afghanistan. With his CIA paychecks, The Icelander reportedly bought a home in Barbados and a vineyard in France.
Johannesson himself emerges in Mossack Fonseca’s files in September 2002, long after his retirement from secret service. He was connected to at least four offshore companies in the BVI and Panama linked to homes in high-priced locales, including one located behind London’s Westminster Cathedral and another in a beachfront Barbados complex where a similar home is now selling for $35 million. As recently as January 2015, Johannesson paid thousands of dollars to Mossack Fonseca for its services.
“Mr. Johannesson has been an international businessman, mainly in aviation-related activities, and he completely rejects your suggestions that he may have worked for any secret intelligence agencies,” a spokesman told ICIJ.
Agent Rocco and 008: license to incorporate
Another connection to the Iran-Contra scandal is Adnan Khashoggi. The Saudi billionaire, once thought to be the world’s most extravagant spender, negotiated billions of dollars in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in the 1970s and played “a central role for the U.S. government” with CIA operatives in selling guns to Iran, according to a 1992 U.S. Senate report co-written by then-Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is now the U.S. secretary of state.
Khashoggi appears in the Mossack Fonseca files as early as 1978, when he became president of the Panamanian company ISIS Overseas S.A. Most of his business with Mossack Fonseca appears to have taken place between the 1980s and the 2000s through at least four other companies.
Mossack Fonseca’s files do not reveal the purpose of all Khashoggi’s companies. However, two of them, Tropicterrain S.A., Panama, and Beachview Inc., were involved in mortgages for homes in Spain and the Grand Canaries islands.
There is no indication that Mossack Fonseca investigated Khashoggi’s past even though the firm processed payments from the Adnan Khashoggi Group in the same year that he made global news when the U.S. charged him with helping Ferdinand Marcos, president of the Philippines, loot millions. Khashoggi was later cleared. Mossack Fonseca’s files show the firm ceased business with Khashoggi around 2003.
The Mossack Fonseca files indicated the company did not discriminate between Cold War foes.
Another customer was Sokratis Kokkalis, now a 76-year-old Greek billionaire once accused of spying for the East German Stasi under the alias “Agent Rocco.” A German parliamentary investigation found that in the early 1960s Kokkalis regularly informed on acquaintances and contacts during his time living in Germany and Russia. Until 2010, Kokkalis owned the Greek soccer club Olympiakos, and he now owns Greece’s largest telecommunications company.
Mossack Fonseca discovered Kokkalis’s connections to espionage in February 2015 as part of routine background checks of one of his companies, Upton International Group. Kokkalis “was accused by East German officials of espionage, fraud, and money laundering in the early sixties, but the case was acquitted,” an employee wrote colleagues after an Internet search. Mossack Fonseca’s files reveal that Kokkalis’ agent did not respond to the firm’s requests for details about Kokkalis and his company, including its purpose.
There is no indication that Mossack Fonseca investigated Khashoggi’s past even though the firm processed payments from the Adnan Khashoggi Group in the same year that he made global news when the U.S. charged him with helping Ferdinand Marcos, president of the Philippines, loot millions. Khashoggi was later cleared. Mossack Fonseca’s files show the firm ceased business with Khashoggi around 2003.
The Mossack Fonseca files indicated the company did not discriminate between Cold War foes.
Another customer was Sokratis Kokkalis, now a 76-year-old Greek billionaire once accused of spying for the East German Stasi under the alias “Agent Rocco.” A German parliamentary investigation found that in the early 1960s Kokkalis regularly informed on acquaintances and contacts during his time living in Germany and Russia. Until 2010, Kokkalis owned the Greek soccer club Olympiakos, and he now owns Greece’s largest telecommunications company.
Mossack Fonseca discovered Kokkalis’s connections to espionage in February 2015 as part of routine background checks of one of his companies, Upton International Group. Kokkalis “was accused by East German officials of espionage, fraud, and money laundering in the early sixties, but the case was acquitted,” an employee wrote colleagues after an Internet search. Mossack Fonseca’s files reveal that Kokkalis’ agent did not respond to the firm’s requests for details about Kokkalis and his company, including its purpose.
Khashoggi could not be reached for comment. Kokkalis, who did not respond to requests for comment, has previously denied charges and accused “political personalities” and newspapers of a “war” against him.
In 2005, Mossack Fonseca employees learned with some alarm that someone on their books went by the name of Francisco P. Sánchez, who Mossack Fonseca employees assumed to be Francisco Paesa Sánchez, one of Spain’s most infamous secret agents. “The story… was really scary,” wrote the person who first discovered Paesa’s background. Mossack Fonseca had incorporated seven companies of which P. Sanchez was a director.
Born in Madrid before the outbreak of World War II, Paesa amassed a fortune hunting down separatists and a corrupt police chief before fleeing Spain with millions of dollars. In 1998, Paesa faked his own death; his family issued a death certificate that testified to a heart attack in Thailand. But in 2004, investigators tracked him down in Luxembourg. Paesa himself later explained that reports of his death had been a
“misunderstanding.” In December 2005, a Spanish magazine reported on what it called Paesa’s “business network” that built and owned hotels, casinos and a golf course in Morocco. Without mentioning Mossack Fonseca, the article listed the same seven companies incorporated in the BVI.
In October 2005, Mossack Fonseca had decided to distance itself from the companies of which P. Sanchez was a director. “We are concern [sic] of the impact it may have in Mossfon’s image if any scandal arises,” the firm wrote an administrator to explain its decision to cut ties with P. Sanchez’s companies.
“We believe in principle that when a client is not up front with us about any facts that are relevant for his or her dealings with us, especially their true identity and background, that this is sufficient reason to terminate our relationship with them,” wrote a senior employee.
Paesa could not be reached for comment.
Two names, nine fingers
Another Internet search, this time in March 2015, alerted the firm that another of its clients – a “Claus Mollner” – had been a customer for nearly 30 years. Among unrelated results from Facebook, a family tree or two and an academic linguistic review, there was one article from the University of Delaware.
Mollner or Mauss, also known as Agent 008 and “The Man of Nine Fingers,” thanks to the lost tip of an index finger, claims to be “Germany’s first undercover agent.” Now retired, Mauss’s website boasts of his role in “smashing 100 criminal groups.”
Colombian authorities briefly held Mauss in 1996 on charges, later dropped, that he conspired with guerillas to kidnap a woman and keep part of the ransom payment. Mauss claims the hostage takers were not rebels, that he never received ransom money and that “all operations carried out worldwide. . . have always been effected with the cooperation of German governmental agencies and authorities.”
While Mauss’s real name never appears in Mossack Fonseca’s files, hundreds of documents detail his network of companies in Panama. At least two companies held real estate in Germany.
Mauss did not personally own any offshore companies, Mauss’s lawyer told ICIJ partners Suddeutsche Zeitung and NDR public television. All companies and foundations connected to him were to “secure the personal financial interests of the Mauss family,” Mauss’s lawyer said, were disclosed and paid applicable taxes.
Mauss’s lawyer confirmed that some companies that appear in Mossack Fonseca’s files were used for “humanitarian operations” in peace and hostage negotiations “for forwarding of humanitarian goods such as hospitals, surgical instruments, large amounts of antibiotics etc.,” in order to “neutralize” extortion.
In the files it appears that in March 2015, a Mossack Fonseca employee clicked on the Google search result that linked Mollner to Mauss. Yet there is no other suggestion that Mossack Fonseca discovered his true identity. His companies continued to be on Mossack Fonseca’s books into 2015.
It probably suited Mollner – or Mauss – just fine.
As a journalist who interviewed him in 1998 observed, “The secret of his real identity was always Werner Mauss’s capital.”
‘Panama Papers’ turn up names of rogue US execs
April 7, 2016
RT
Documents dubbed the ‘Panama Papers’ have revealed the names of over 200 US residents who used the services of Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca. Among them are several businessmen charged with financial crimes, or already convicted of wrongdoing.
Some of the names on the list appear to be retired Americans seeking to buy real estate in Panama and Costa Rica, according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the US-based group that is publishing revelations from the documents obtained by an anonymous hacker in 2015.
Initial revelations by ICIJ have sought to implicate celebrities and politicians across the world. It has since emerged that Mossack Fonseca had registered over 1,000 businesses in the US – primarily in Nevada and Wyoming – and that it had many US clients in Panama as well.
Among the company’s US clients listed in the documents are four businessmen who have been convicted of financial crimes, as well as one who is currently facing serious charges. Their identities were first made public by McClatchy Newspapers.
Robert Miracle of Washington was sentenced in 2011 to 13 years in prison for mail fraud and tax evasion, over his role in a $65 million Ponzi scheme involving an oil field in Indonesia. In 2008, John Michael “Red” Crim of Pennsylvania was convicted to eight years in prison, for involvement in a plot to cheat the US tax authorities of $10 million in revenue using fraudulent trusts. The same year, Jonathan Kaplan of Massachusetts received a 5-year probation sentence for accepting a bribe from a client of his prepaid telephone card business. In 2007, California real-estate mogul Igor Olenicoff was sentenced to two years of probation and a $52 million fine, for tax evasion and use of offshore shell companies.
September 2015, on charges of securities fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. The government claims he used family members to secretly gain control of large blocks of stock in companies through “reverse mergers” between Chinese corporations and US shell companies – incorporated by Mossack Fonseca, according to McClatchy. Wey’s indictment says he accumulated tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits by manipulating the companies’ stock prices.
Announcing the indictment, US Attorney Preet Bharara of the Southern District of New York called Wey a “master of manipulation.” Wey, president of the New York Global Group, told USA Today there was no evidence he’d ever owned or controlled a foreign account.
The leaked documents have been of great interest to the US government, which said it would use them in prosecuting financial crimes as well as upholding the sanctions regime against countries such as Russia.
“The US government intently focuses on investigating possible illicit activity, including violations of US tax laws or sanctions, using all sources of information, both public and non-public,” the Department of Treasury told Bloomberg News in an emailed statement.
Ernst Wolff, a journalist and author of ‘Pillaging the World: The History and Politics of the IMF,’ says the US is using the scandal to cause upheaval around the world and redirect the flow of money into tax havens in America.
“Of course, they have to put in some American individuals and some American companies in order to kind of camouflage the whole thing,” Wolff told RT. “But those are only minor people in there. The big people in there are non-American citizens: they are Europeans; they are people from different countries all over the world.”
“This is this anti-Russian, anti-China, anti-Iran campaign that just keeps beating in America,” Gerald Celente, publisher of the Trends Journal, told RT. “I believe that this might be a push back from Soros for Russia last year banning a number of American NGOs. So, this could be payback.”
Russia’s Putin calls Panama Papers a western media disinformation campaign
In his first comments on the document leaks, Putin has denied any involvement in corruption. Although not directly mentioned in the documents, media outlets have sought to implicate Putin through his associates.
April 7, 2016
DW
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused western media outlets of pushing the story he was involved in corruption even though his name was not listed in the so-called Panama Papers.
“Our opponents are above all concerned by the unity and consolidation of the Russian nation, our multinational Russian people. They are attempting to rock us from within, to make us more obedient,” he said. “So they’ve created an information product.”
The documents published this week by more than 100 media outlets involved in analyzing the leak of 11.5 million documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca have identified a close friend of Putin’s, musician Sergei Roldugin, as the owner of $2 billion (1.75 billion euros) in offshore assets.
Putin said he was proud of Roldugin for the work he has done to support the arts and culture in Russia and pointed to a US-led disinformation campaign to weaken Russia.
Media outlets have suggested offshore arrangements and favorable loans helped people close to Putin get rich, and that the president himself hid funds through associates and offshore accounts.
Putin, however, is not directly named in the Panama Papers. On Wednesday, Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said this shows the president’s involvement is a “product of the imagination.”
The leaked documents were obtained by German daily “Süddeutsche Zeitung” from an anonymous source and shared with more than 100 media outlets through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
Among the funders of the ICIJ is billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, which Russia labeled an “undesirable organization” that was banned from the country last year. Russia has accused Soros-financed civil society groups of being a front for a potential “colored revolution.”
The Panama Papers have exposed the confidential offshore shell companies of world leaders, celebrities, sports stars and businesses.
The revelations forced Iceland’s prime minister to step down and led to multiple probes around the globe.
Although they provide confidentiality and are not illegal, offshore shell companies may be used for tax evasion, money laundering and hiding stolen funds or the wealth of politicians.
Nobody knows Putin’s wealth, but western media outlets have speculated he could be worth between $40 and $70 billion, which would make him one of the top ten wealthiest people in the world and the world’s richest leader.
Turkey Launches Probe Into Leak That Released President Erdogan’s Personal Info
Hackers posted 1.5 gigabyte file of IDs, addresses for 50 million Turkish citizens, including officials at the highest level.
April 6, 2016
Haaretz
REUTERS – Turkey is investigating how hackers have posted online the identity data of some 50 million Turks, including what they said were details about the president and prime minister, after what is believed to be the biggest data breach seen in the country.
While no group has taken credit for uploading the data to a website called the Turkish Citizenship Database, the comments posted suggest Turkey may be a target of political hackers.
The 1.5 gigabyte compressed file contains the national identity number, date of birth and full address for 49.6 million Turks, according to the website, or around two thirds of the population.
The website said it included the ID information of President Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and former president Abdullah Gul and taunted the president.
“Who would have imagined that backward ideologies, cronyism and rising religious extremism in Turkey would lead to a crumbling and vulnerable technical infrastructure?” the website says. “Do something about Erdogan! He is destroying your country beyond recognition.”
An official at Ankara’s chief prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday it was investigating the breach, but declined to give further details.
The number of Turkish citizens affected was roughly the same size as the entire electorate, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag told reporters.
“How and from where this was leaked needs to be looked into,” he said. “I believe the necessary investigations – both administrative and judicial – have been launched and whatever is necessary will be done.”
Official files
Tuncay Besikci, a computer forensics expert at auditing and consultancy firm PwC, confirmed to Reuters the file contained ID numbers and personally identifiable information of at least 46 million citizens.
Transport and Communication Minister Binali Yildirim said on Tuesday the breach appeared to date back to at least 2010. It is not clear when the file was first uploaded, although reports of it surfaced in local media this week.
He said the data was from electoral records that the state shares with political parties before elections.
However, Besikci, the computer expert, said he believed the data was taken from the government’s official Population Governance Central Database in or around 2009 and later illegally sold on to firms that dealt in asset foreclosures.
In December, Turkish Internet servers suffered one of the most intense cyberattacks seen in the country, raising fears Ankara may have been a target of political hackers.
The December hacking involved a flood of disruptive traffic, known as a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, where computers target specific Internet sites, resulting in web speeds plummeting.
Under Erdogan, Turkey has a taken a tough stance on social media sites. Turkey has blocked access to sites such as Twitter, often due to images or other content being shared.
Last month an Ankara court ordered a ban on access to both Twitter and Facebook after images from a car bombing in the capital were shared.
The Panama Papers Revealed
Section 2
by Harry von Johnston, PhD
The so-called ‘Panama Papers’ were compiled at the instructions of a wealthy American businessman through one of his front organizations. This was done, primarily, to attempt to smear Vladimir Putin and other national leaders the businessman disliked. The final cull of documents was then sent to a number of news outlets.
The fear that prominent American politicians and business leaders also disliked by the chief perpetrator and instigator might appear in these documents is causing a wave of fear in the upper levels of American oligarchs.
Here is a very small selection of the contentious Turkish régime that might be of interest to many. The entire Turkish list will be published later, as will listings for China, the UK, France, Germany, Egypt and, most especially, the United States.
Turkey
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Erdoğan-RecepTayyip‘Keçi’doc’2-cpi-16-0311.pdf
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Ergin-Sadullahdoc1-cpi-16-0345,pdf
715 KB
Basci-Erdemdoc1-cpi-16-0502.pdf
54 KB
Simsek-Mehmetdoc2-cpi-16-031.pdf
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Arinc-Bulentdoc2-cpi-16-0405.pdf
SECRECY NEWS
From the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2016, Issue No. 32
April 7, 2016
ASSESSING “SECURITY COOPERATION,” AND MORE FROM CRS
There are approximately 80 distinct “security cooperation” programs and statutory authorities by which the U.S. provides security assistance to foreign security forces, according to a Department of Defense tally.
The legal and institutional framework for delivering U.S. security aid to foreign countries is detailed in a new report from the Congressional Research Service.
“Over the past decade, Congress has substantially increased Department of State and Department of Defense (DOD) efforts to train, equip, and otherwise engage with foreign military and other security forces. As these efforts have increased, congressional questions and concerns have multiplied,” the CRS report said.
“Such concerns range from broad to specific–for example, the perceived lack of an overarching strategy for such assistance or, more specifically, the utility of the current legal framework, appropriate State Department and DOD roles and modes of coordination, and program effectiveness.”
“Current State and DOD security assistance and engagement efforts involve a range of activities, including ‘traditional’ programs transferring conventional arms for defense posture purposes, training and equipping regular and irregular forces for combat, conducting counterterrorism programs, and expanding education and training programs.”
“This report provides an overview of U.S. assistance to and engagement with foreign military and other security forces, focusing on Department of State and DOD roles. It lays out the historical evolution and current framework of the Department of State-DOD shared responsibility. It concludes with a brief overview of salient issues” including how to assess effectiveness, whether and how to modify the existing framework, and how to provide appropriate transparency for oversight.
A copy of the CRS report was obtained by Secrecy News. See Security Assistance and Cooperation: Shared Responsibility of the Departments of State and Defense, April 4, 2016.
(We are told that the FAS web site is currently inaccessible at the Pentagon, thanks to US Cyber Command. DoD personnel who wish to obtain a copy of this document or other materials are welcome to email me directly.)
Other new products of the Congressional Research Service that have not been publicly released include the following.
Supreme Court Vacancies That Arose During One Presidency and Were Filled During a Different Presidency, CRS Insight, April 5, 2016
Discharging a Senate Committee from Consideration of a Nomination, CRS Insight, April 5, 2016
Federal Lifeline Program: Modernization and Reform, CRS Insight, April 5, 2016
FDIC’s Plan to Meet Increased Deposit Insurance Fund Reserve Ratio, CRS Insight, April 4, 2016
High Frequency Trading: Overview of Recent Developments, April 4, 2016
Newly updated versions of previously released CRS reports include the following.
Millennium Challenge Corporation, updated April 5, 2016
Temporarily Filling Presidentially Appointed, Senate-Confirmed Positions, updated April 1, 2016
Calling Up Business on the Senate Floor, updated April 1, 2016
Telemarketing Regulation: National and State Do Not Call Registries, updated April 1, 2016
Overview of Private Health Insurance Provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), updated April 5, 2016
Agricultural Disaster Assistance, updated April 6, 2016
Maritime Territorial and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) Disputes Involving China: Issues for Congress, updated April 1, 2016
Navy Ford (CVN-78) Class Aircraft Carrier Program: Background and Issues for Congress, updated April 5, 2016
Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)/Frigate Program: Background and Issues for Congress, updated April 5, 2016
The Army’s M-1 Abrams, M-2/M-3 Bradley, and M-1126 Stryker: Background and Issues for Congress, updated April 5, 2016
Navy Ohio Replacement (SSBN[X]) Ballistic Missile Submarine Program: Background and Issues for Congress, updated April 5, 2016
Coast Guard Polar Icebreaker Modernization: Background and Issues for Congress, updated April 4, 2016
Conspiracy craze: why 12 million Americans believe alien lizards rule us
Psychologists are trying to determine why otherwise rational individuals can make the leap from “prudent paranoia” to illogical conspiracy theories
April 7, 2016
by Olga Oksman
BBC
According to a Public Policy Polling survey, around 12 million people in the US believe that interstellar lizards in people suits rule our country. We imported that particular belief from across the pond, where professional conspiracy theorist David Icke has long maintained that the Queen of England is a blood-drinking, shape-shifting alien.
Conspiracy theories in general are not necessary bad, according to psychologists who study them. “If we were all completely trusting, it would not be good for survival,” explains Rob Brotherton, an academic psychologist and author of Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories. “Sometimes people really don’t have our best interests in mind.”
But when people leap from thinking their boss is trying to undermine them to believing their boss might be a secret lizard person, they probably cross from what psychologists refer to as “prudent paranoia” into illogical territory.
And there are a lot of illogical ideas to pick from. Around 66 million Americans believe that aliens landed at Roswell, New Mexico; around 22 million people believe that the government faked the moon landing; and around 160 million believe that there is a conspiracy surrounding the assassination of former US president John F Kennedy.
While aliens and fake moon landings probably trigger eyerolls in many of us, defining what constitutes a conspiracy theory is difficult, Brotherton says. The government, for example, does sometimes conspire to do the unspeakable, such as the infamous 1930s Tuskegee study, initiated by the US government to examine untreated syphilis in African-American men. Researchers blocked research participants from receiving penicillin or exiting the experiment to get treatment. The study continued until a media report made it public. In this case, believing that the government was conspiring to keep people sick would have been completely accurate.
There are characteristics that help differentiate a conspiracy theory from prudent paranoia, Brotherton says. Conspiracy theories tend to depend on conspirators who are unduly evil, he explains, with genocide or world domination as a motive. Conspiracy theories also tend to assign an usually high level of competency to the conspirators, Brotherton adds, pointing out that when the government really does “shady stuff” it often isn’t able to keep it secret.
Chances are, we all know someone who believes some version of a conspiracy theory, which is why psychologists have been trying to understand what makes someone jump from logically questioning the world to looking for signs of lizard teeth in public figures. Research has shown that feelings of powerlessness and uncertainty are associated with a tendency to believe in conspiracies, says Karen Douglas, professor of social psychology at the University of Kent in the UK. Or as Joseph E Uscinski, associate professor of political science at the University of Miami and author of American Conspiracy Theories, puts it, “conspiracies are for losers”.
“I don’t mean it in the pejorative sense, but people who are out of power use conspiracy theories to strategically alert their side to danger, to close ranks, to salve their wounds,” Uscinski explains. “Think any election, the morning after, half the country says the election was rigged and the other half is happy.”
Believing in a conspiracy theory is one strategy people use to regain a sense of control, even if the conspiracy theory is unrelated to what caused the lack of control in a person’s life, Brotherton says. Conspiracy theories are a way for someone to understand what is going on in the world and try to restore some sense of control in his or her life, he explains.
Studies also find a relationship between a certain type of open mindedness and a tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. People who believe in these also believe in New Age dogmas, urban legends and all sorts of slightly unorthodox ideas, Brotherton explains. Unsurprisingly, a tendency to be suspicious and not to trust people or institutions is also positively correlated with how likely someone is to believe in a conspiracy theory.
The most widely appealing conspiracy theories are the ones that allow a person to insert their own villain of choice, Uscinski says. For example, conspiracy theories around the assassination of JFK are so popular in part because they allow believers to blame the coverup on whichever power they most fear: the US government and associated agencies like the CIA or the former Soviet Union and Cuba.
Most conspiracy theories come and go, Uscinski says, and it is hard to get more than 25% of the population to believe in a particular one. There is a natural ceiling to the number of people who will buy into any one particular conspiracy theory, says Uscinski, who points to those that emerged after the death of US supreme court Justice Antonin Scalia – which were a “flash in the pan” and quickly disappeared as people moved on to the “next thing.” But once someone believes a conspiracy theory, dissuading him or her of it is an uphill battle. That’s because belief in a conspiracy is not based on facts and logic, Brotherton explains. Something as straightforward, for example, as pointing out the lack of evidence for a conspiracy theory would only reinforce the belief that the evidence for it was suppressed. Getting someone to let go of a favorite conspiracy theory is like convincing a Republican to become a Democrat and vice versa, Uscinski says.
“We like to believe we objectively scrutinize information and come to reasonable beliefs,” Brotherton says, but in reality we have “all kinds of biases built into our brains”.
He cites a study in which researchers recruited a group of people who believed in JFK assassination conspiracy theories and a group who doubted the theories. Both groups were given a packet of purposefully ambiguous information.
If everyone was rational, the information would moderate their beliefs,” Brotherton explains, and those who were sure of a conspiracy would start to doubt it, while those who were sure there was no conspiracy would also question their stance. “The opposite happened: people picked and chose the information they wanted to believe and everyone became more sure of their initial beliefs.”
While most conspiracies tend to gain traction in a very small number of people, when someone acts on a conspiracy, it can become dangerous very quickly. Cliven Bundy’s followers have tended to believe in everything from the government secretly microchipping millennials to the United Nations running the Bureau of Land Management. People who believe that the mass shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, was faked have harassed the families of children that were killed.
Douglas and her colleague Dan Jolley, have studied the social consequences to contemporary conspiracy theories. They have examined the impact of believing in government conspiracy theories, in climate change conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. The findings were troublesome, says Douglas.
In one experiment, researchers took two groups of participants and gave one group an article about anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, such as the idea that pharmaceutical companies fake the safety and efficacy data for inoculations because the shots make so much money. The other group did not read the article. All the participants were then asked to think about being a parent of a three-year-old and asked if they would vaccinate the child against a fictional disease. The participants who had read the anti-vaccine conspiracy literature showed they were less likely to intend to have the child inoculated.
In the US, those findings are playing out in places like California, which saw an outbreak of measles in 2014 in areas where children were not routinely vaccinated. It’s understandable why people are drawn to anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, Brotherton says. When people are dealing with some of the most important choices in their lives, like how to raise their children, and something unsettling happens, “your brain will reach for explanations, for a sense of order”. A person under those circumstances is not likely to critically evaluate the evidence presented, and the internet “is full of people that are convinced that vaccines are bad”.
While, as Uscinski points out, there is a ceiling for the number of people who will buy into a particular conspiracy theory, the anti-vaccination movement is one example of how a small number of people can make a wild conspiracy theory go viral.