TBR News December 8, 2018

Dec 08 2018

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. December 8, 2018 :”As the legal anaconda, personified by Mr. Mueller, tightens its stranglehold on the President, the latter is screaming with rage and fear, sending out reams of semi-literate Twitter messages to his loyal supporters on farms all across the nation. Trump will never go quietly into that good night so one can clearly envision our leader being dragged out the back door of the White House draped in a strait jacket and stuffed into a waiting ambulance. Nixon, at least, had the sense to quit before they nailed him but Donald will crawl under the Oval Office desk and scream his defiance at the men in the white suits. And the roadways around the White House will be clogged with White House staffers, running in all directions and clutching small plants, pictures of their mother and other treasures rescued from their former desk tops. Though is it doubtful he is looking at it, Mr. Mueller would be a far better occupant of the abandoned Presidential office than the present incumbent.”

The Table of Contents 

  • Paris ‘yellow vest’ protests
  • French police clash with ‘yellow vest’ protesters in Paris
  • Color of outrage: Yellow Vests rallies sweep across France and abroad
  • S. prosecutors name Trump in hush payments, detail Russian contacts
  • Mob mentality: how Mueller is working to turn Trump’s troops
  • Special counsel Robert Mueller files new details on Trump aides
  • White House chief of staff Kelly expected to leave imminently
  • The Donald Undone: Tilting at the Swamp, Succumbing to the Empire
  • Colonel James Atwood in the shadows
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

 Paris ‘yellow vest’ protestslive updates +++

Officers have fired tear gas at protesters seeking to reach the Elysee Palace.

— Police have detained hundreds of people under suspicion of intent to commit violence, destruction, or vandalism.

— According to police, some 8,000 people have gathered for protests in Paris, with the Champs Elysees and Place de la Bastille being the main focal points.

— Some 89,000 police have been deployed across France, with demonstrations also taking place in Belgium and the Netherlands.

All updates in Universal Coordinated Time (UTC)

13:30 US President Donald Trump has attacked the Paris agreement on Twitter, citing the ongoing protests in the French capital as proof that his decision to reject the agreement was correct.

13:20 According to DW correspondent Lisa Louis, protests on the Champs Elysees itself have been relatively calm so far, with scuffles taking place in side streets.

Famous Paris tourist spots have gone on lockdown as the city braces for protests against French President Macron’s policies. Police made arrests in anticipation of possible violence in the city.

December 8, 2018

DW

13:00 Police have used water cannon against protesters throwing flares and lighting fires in one of the French capital’s main shopping districts. There have been scattered clashes as demonstrators seeking to reach the Elysee Palace and demanding the resignation of President Emmanuel Macron.

Water cannon is also reported to have been used in Brussels, against protesters throwing stones near to Belgian government offices and the national parliament. Hundreds of yellow-vested demonstrators have been chanting for both Macron and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel to resign.

12:40 According to figures from the French Interior Ministry, there are 31,000 yellow vests protesting across France, with some 8,000 of them in the capital, Paris. The figure for the capital is down on last week.

12:00 Police say there have now been 514 arrests, with 272 people remanded into custody.

11:45 A key part of the new police strategy in Paris appears to have been the confiscation of protective gear, such as goggles and gas masks as well as items that could be used as weapons, including small but heavy petanque bowling balls. The National Gendarmerie said some 5,000 people had been subject to checks, amid scenes that sometimes turned violent.

Police said some 8,000 police were deployed in the capital ahead of the protests in a mobilization that was “out of the ordinary,” with 89,000 prepared for action across the country.

11:20 The protests have crossed borders with police in Brussels making some 70 arrests in connection with protests. European Union institutions in the Belgian capital, including the offices of the European Commission and the European Parliament, were sealed off as a precautionary measure. In the Netherlands, demonstrations were planned in the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

Demonstrations are taking place in both Belgium and in the Netherlands. Neither country has proposed a fuel tax hike of its own.

11:00 The Eiffel Tower and Louvre Museum are closed, along with hundreds of shops and businesses amid fears of possible looting. Many metro stations have also been shut, with top-flight football matches and major concerts canceled.

10:40 French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe says some 481 people have been arrested in Paris on the third weekend of protests by the yellow vests movement.

Officials said a large number of the individuals arrested as the city prepared for a fresh wave of protests were suspected of joining a gathering to prepare for violence, destruction, or vandalism. Most were later released.

Police in Paris had earlier fired tear gas canisters at yellow vest demonstrators as they gathered to stage another weekend of protests against French President Emmanuel Macron.

The tear gas was fired as the protests reached the Champs Elysees. One protester told DW’s Catherine Martens that police had aggravated the situation.

Protesters told DW’s Lisa Louis that police had removed protective gear from protesters before allowing them onto the Champs Elysees.

Demonstrators wearing the trademark fluorescent “yellow vests” had gathered before dawn on Saturday, near the Arc de Triomphe. The landmark itself was damaged last weekend when it became the epicenter of violent protests in which 100 people were injured.

Fear of extremist infiltration

Members of the movement have called for calm, with representatives having met French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Friday in an effort to ease tension.

But the French government has expressed fear that the protests over higher living costs could be hijacked by extremists from both the left and right of the political spectrum.

“According to the information we have, some radicalized and rebellious people will try to get mobilized tomorrow,” Interior Minister Christophe Castaner told a press conference on Friday. “Some ultra-violent people want to take part.”

Protesters broaden demands

President Emmanuel Macron earlier this week announced that the planned increased in petrol and diesel taxes — which acted as a catalyst for the unrest — would be canceled outright.

However, prominent protesters with wider demands — including broader tax cuts and salary raises — insisted they would descend on Paris anyway.

 

French police clash with ‘yellow vest’ protesters in Paris

December 8, 2018

by Sybille de La Hamaide and Emmanuel Jarry

Reuters

PARIS (Reuters) – French riot police fired tear gas and clashed with “yellow vest” protesters in central Paris on Saturday during the latest in a wave of demonstrations against the high cost of living that have shaken President Emmanuel Macron’s authority

Authorities said 575 people had been searched and briefly arrested and 361 people of them remained in custody after police found potential weapons such as hammers, baseball bats and metal petanque balls on them.

Hundreds of protesters were milling around the Arc de Triomphe monument, which was defaced with anti-Macron graffiti last Saturday, when rioters also torched dozens of cars and looted shops in the worst rioting in Paris since May 1968.

A police spokeswoman told reporters there were about 1,500 protesters on the Champs Elysees boulevard. Large groups of people spilled into other areas and heading to eastern Paris, where a march against climate change was scheduled for the afternoon. Some also temporarily blocked the ring road circling central Paris.

“We took the train for 11 hours just to protest today. We feel scorned by these technocrats that govern us,” said Gilles Noblet, a demonstrator from the southwest region of Ariege.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe appealed for restraint.

“We will do all we can so that today can be a day without violence, so that the dialogue that we started this week can continue in the best possible circumstances,” he said on French television.

On Tuesday, Philippe announced the government was suspending planned increases to fuel taxes for at least six months to help defuse weeks of protests, the first U-turn by Macron since he came to power 18 months ago.

About 89,000 police were deployed across France on Saturday, some 8,000 of them in Paris.

“TROUBLEMAKERS”

“We have prepared a robust response,” Interior Minister Christophe Castaner told online news site Brut. He called on peaceful protesters not to get mixed up with “hooligans”.

“The troublemakers can only be effective when they disguise themselves as yellow vests. Violence is never a good way to get what you want. Now is the time for discussion,” he said.

“We have come here for a peaceful march, not to smash things. We want equality, we want to live, not survive,” said Guillaume Le Grac, 28, who works in a slaughterhouse in the town of Guingamp in Britanny.

Protesters, using social media, have billed the weekend as “Act IV” in a dramatic challenge to Macron and his policies.

Small groups of riot police moved quickly among protesters and clamped down on anyone trying to damage shops or public amenities.

Much of Paris looked like a ghost town, with museums, department stores closed on what should have been a festive pre-Christmas shopping day.

Many shops were boarded up to avoid looting and street furniture and construction site materials have been removed to prevent them from being used as projectiles.

Tourists were few and residents were advised to stay at home if at all possible. Dozens of streets were closed to traffic, while the Eiffel Tower and world-famous museums such as the Musee d’Orsay, the Centre Pompidou and the Louvre were shut.

“Tourists are a bit disoriented – no subway, no shopping, no museums… but they seem to take it in their stride,” said hotel receptionist Pascal, who declined to give his surname.

The protests, named after the high-visibility safety jackets French motorists have to keep in their cars, erupted in November over the squeeze on household budgets caused by fuel taxes.

Demonstrations have since swelled into a broad, sometimes violent rebellion against Macron, a challenge made more difficult to handle since the movement has no formal leader.

Authorities say the protests have been hijacked by far-right and anarchist elements bent on violence and stirring up social unrest in a direct affront to Macron and the security forces.

Despite the government’s climbdown over the fuel tax, the ‘yellow vests’ continue to demand more concessions, including lower taxes, a higher minimum wage, lower energy costs, better retirement benefits and even Macron’s resignation.

Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry, Sybille de la Hamaide, Sudip Kar-Gupta, Simon Carraud, Matthias Blamont, Marine Pennetier and Michaela Cabrera; Writing by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Gareth Jones

 

Color of outrage: Yellow Vests rallies sweep across France and abroad

December 8, 2018

RT

France has been gripped by rallies as Yellow Vests demand new concessions from the government. Hundreds of protesters, including the movement’s leader, were detained during the demonstrations.

Yellow Vest mayhem has hit the country for the 4th consecutive weekend. Protests in the capital this Saturday resulted in clashes between demonstrators and police, with officers resorting to tear gas. Hundreds were detained and taken into custody in the capital.

People in other regions have also risen up in protest.

A Yellow Vests leader detained in Grenoble.

One of the voices of the Yellow Vests, Julien Terrier, was detained during a rally in the city of Grenoble in southeastern France, the local police prefecture confirmed. He was among 18 people taken into police custody.

Later, up to 1,000 demonstrators marched to the local police station, chanting “free Julien Terrier.”

1,000 march in Marseille

About a thousand protesters gathered in the center of the southern city of Marseille. The march was relatively peaceful. “We are not here to break anything, we have to march openly, if we see anyone who [violates the order], he will be excluded,” one of the protesters said.

Tense atmosphere in Strasbourg

Yellow Vests occupied the center of the city, with police flocking to the area of the protest. “We want to ensure that people get together,” one of the movement’s leaders told the crowd.

Officers were seen in full gear getting ready to respond to clashes if necessary.

70 detained in Brussels

The spirit of the Yellow Vests demonstrations has even reached neighboring Belgium.

At least 70 people were detained in Brussels this Saturday. Protesters gathered in Arts Lois and Porte de Namur districts in the center of the city. Police said the detentions were merely a “preventive measure.”

 

U.S. prosecutors name Trump in hush payments, detail Russian contacts

December 7, 2018

by Nathan Layne and Brendan Pierson

Reuters

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors said on Friday President Donald Trump directed his personal lawyer to make illegal hush payments to two women ahead of the 2016 election, and also detailed a previously unknown attempt by a Russian to help the Trump campaign.

In court filings, federal prosecutors in New York and those working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller made the case for why Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, deserved prison time.

The documents turned up the heat on Trump by confirming prosecutors’ belief of his involvement in a campaign finance violation, while adding to a growing list of contacts between campaign aides and Russians in 2015 and 2016, legal experts said.

“In total, the prosecutors seem to be saying the president was more aware than he has claimed to be,” former federal prosecutor Michael Zeldin said.

Prosecutors in both of the Cohen cases were required to submit separate memos on Friday on his cooperation to U.S. District Judge William Pauley in Manhattan, who will decide on the former lawyer’s sentence on Dec. 12.

While Cohen implicated the president in the hush payments to two women — adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal — in his guilty plea in August in New York, the filing on Friday marked the first time federal prosecutors officially concurred.

It said Cohen made the payments in “coordination with and the direction of” Trump.

Democrats jumped on that assertion and called for steps to protect Mueller’s probe into possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign.

“These legal documents outline serious and criminal wrongdoing, including felony violations of campaign finance laws at the direction of President Trump,” Senator Diane Feinstein said in a statement.

The president has denied any collusion with Russia, and accuses Mueller’s prosecutors of pressuring his former aides to lie about him, his campaign and his business dealings. Russia has denied interfering in the election to help Trump.

In new tweets on Friday, Trump accused federal investigators and senior officials of having conflicts of interest, without offering evidence. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders called Cohen a liar and dismissed the filings as insignificant.

“The government’s filings in Mr. Cohen’s case tell us nothing of value that wasn’t already known,” Sanders said.

RUSSIAN CONTACTS

Last week, Cohen admitted to lying to congressional investigators in an attempt to minimize his efforts to secure the Kremlin’s help for a Trump skyscraper in Moscow. He has said he did so to stay in sync with Trump’s political messaging, and that he consulted with the White House while preparing to testify to Congress.

Mueller said on Friday that Cohen repeated his false statements about the project in his first meeting with Mueller’s office, admitting the truth only in a later meeting in September after he had pleaded guilty to the separate New York charges.

On Friday, Mueller said Cohen’s false statements to Congress had “obscured the fact” that the skyscraper project held the potential to reap “hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources” for the Trump Organization.

Mueller said that discussions about the potential Moscow development were relevant to the investigation because they occurred “at a time of sustained efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the U.S. presidential election.”

In addition to coming clean on the Moscow project, Cohen provided information to Mueller about several attempts by Russians to contact the Trump’s campaign, according to Friday’s filing.

In November 2015, Cohen spoke with a Russian national who said he could offer the campaign “political synergy” with Russia and repeatedly proposed a meeting with Putin. Cohen did not follow up on the offer, the filing says.

Mueller also said in the filing that Cohen had provided “relevant and useful information concerning his contacts with persons connected to the White House” in 2017 and 2018.

Mueller also detailed alleged lies told by Manafort during interviews with prosecutors and the FBI. Last month Mueller voided Manafort’s plea agreement because, they said, he was not telling the truth.

They said Manafort told “multiple discernible lies,” including about his communications with a political consultant will alleged ties to Russian intelligence, and about interactions with Trump administration officials even after Manafort was first indicted in late 2017.

PUSHING FOR TIME

The filings followed a sentencing memo earlier this week regarding Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who Mueller praised for providing “substantial” cooperation and argued for no prison time.

Cohen had been hoping prosecutors would make a similar recommendation in his case. But the New York prosecutors were unsparing in their descriptions of his conduct, saying he was motivated by “personal greed” and that he “repeatedly used his power and influence for deceptive ends.”

They said Cohen should receive some credit for cooperating with Mueller but noted he had not entered into a similar agreement with their office. They said his sentence should reflect a “modest” reduction from the four to five years they said federal guidelines would suggest.

Mueller, for his part, praised Cohen for voluntarily providing information about his own and others’ conduct on “core topics under investigation” and described the information as “credible and consistent with other evidence” they had obtained.

Considering that cooperation, Mueller suggested the sentence for lying to Congress run concurrently with the sentence in the New York case.

Reporting by Nathan Layne; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Lisa Lambert, Richard Cowan, Roberta Rampton and Makini Brice; Editing by Paul Simao, Jonathan Oatis and Sonya Hepinstall

 

Mob mentality: how Mueller is working to turn Trump’s troops

As the special counsel ‘flips’ presidential allies one by one, prosecutors see parallels to efforts against organized crime

December 8, 2018

by Tom McCarthy

The Guardian

Before the curtain lifts on the final act of the Robert Mueller investigation – which is not necessarily to say the final act of the Donald Trump presidency – there has been a a scramble for seats as second-tier figures in the drama choose sides.

Some of the players have agreed to work with the special counsel as he investigates possible collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Others are standing by Trump. Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort vowed never to work with Mueller, then agreed to work with Mueller, then allegedly tried to put one over Mueller.

Like the methodical prosecutor he is, Mueller has forced each target of his investigation, one by one, to pick a side, offering reduced penalties to cooperators such as Michael Flynn and hammering Manafort, whom Mueller accused Friday of lying to investigators about maintaining contacts inside the White House as recently as May.

Trump, for his part, has been trying to disrupt the process, praising former aides who “refused to break” and “still have guts” while slamming his former attack dog Michael Cohen, who has been cooperating with Mueller, as a “weak” liar and a bad lawyer to boot.

The secret of why, exactly, Trump appears to be growing so desperate in the face of his former aides’ mutiny – by midday Friday, the president had tweeted seven times about Mueller – promises to be revealed in the final act.

The drama, meanwhile, has heated up aggressively in the last week, with former Trump adviser Roger Stone invoking fifth amendment protections to maintain his silence, and Mueller unveiling the extent of Cohen’s co-operation, writing approvingly of Flynn’s conduct, and explaining to a judge how Manafort allegedly tried to outsmart him.

To a certain set of federal prosecutors, the visible struggle between Trump and Mueller for the loyalty of former Trump aides is familiar, because it is straight out of the playbook for prosecuting organized crime.

“The decision to cooperate with prosecutors always comes down to loyalty,” said Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor from the southern district of New York who helped dismantle the Sicilian mafia.

“Who are you going to prioritize?” Honig said. “Are you going to cooperate and minimize your own exposure, and likely minimize the pain, and emotional and financial hardship on your family – or are you going to stay loyal to the people who you committed crimes with?”

Controversially, owing to its potentially disastrous erosion of the rule of law coming from the mouth of a president, Trump has objected to Mueller’s tactic of “flipping” witnesses – Flynn, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos, Cohen, Manafort (temporarily) and counting – arguing that it amounts to an enticement to lie.

“You know they make up stories, people make up stories,” Trump told Fox News in August. “This whole thing about flipping, they call it, I know all about flipping. For 30 to 40 years I’ve been watching flippers … It almost ought to be outlawed. It’s not fair.”

But Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor who was part of the team that convicted the Gambino family boss John Gotti, said not only is “flipping” a witness fair, it is “exceedingly common” in group investigations.

“This is what you do when you’re investigating the Gambino crime family, or a motorcycle gang, or any other group of criminals that are engaged in a conspiracy,” said Cotter. “You’ve got to get inside. And usually you need somebody on the inside to tell you what’s going on, and that opens up some doors.”

All the former prosecutors the Guardian spoke with cautioned that they did not mean by their analysis to say that Trump is a mob boss, or that the Mueller investigation is strictly an organized crime investigation. But the similarities kept coming up.

Daniel Goldman was deputy chief of the organized crime unit in the southern district of New York, where he was an assistant US attorney for a decade.

“To play the mafia analogy out a little further,” Goldman said, “mob bosses hold sway over their soldiers because they hold the purse strings for their soldiers and their soldiers’ families, particularly when they go to jail, and they sort of rule with an implicit iron fist that reacts to cooperation with violence up to, potentially, death.

“Trump holds sway over his associates through his presidential pardon power and he’s not afraid to explicitly reference that power in connection to individuals who may have information about his own criminal activity. And so the parallels are very strong.”

Of the various ways he has broken precedent as president, Trump’s visibly dangling pardons in an apparent effort to shore up the loyalty of former aides has caused deep consternation among those with professional experience enforcing the law.

On the same day that Trump said Cohen should serve a “full sentence”, he tweeted that Stone was the victim of a “rogue and out of control prosecutor” and praised Stone’s “guts”. Days earlier he had said a pardon for Manafort was not “off the table”.

“It’s an amazing thing for a president of the United States to say,” said Cotter. “The possibility of a pardon is explicitly mentioned by the one person on the whole planet who can give him a pardon. It’s stunning. It’s stunning. And I think it’s obstruction of justice.”

Goldman echoed Cotter’s outrage.

“I think even putting aside whether or not it’s criminal, it is incredibly disheartening for anyone who believes in the rule of law, who believes in our criminal justice system, that you would have the chief law enforcement officer in the land who is unable to think about this investigation in anything other than personal ways,” Goldman said.

One cipher in the visible struggle over loyalty has been Manafort, who has switched “sides” twice and appears to have attempted an end-run around the special counsel.

Not smart, said Cotter.

“The beginning of every single meeting is the government lawyer telling them across the table, to their face, ‘You must not lie to me,’” he said. “‘If you lie to me it’s going to be far worse than if you simply stood up now and walked out that door. If you’re not going to tell me the whole truth the whole way, please get up and walk out that door.’

“Manafort just apparently thought he was clever, and he was smarter than everybody else, and it blew up in his face, and frankly it always does.”

As for when the final act in the Mueller investigation will begin, the swarm of court filings and jockeying of the past two weeks could indicate that “there’s still quite a bit to go”, said Honig.

“I think these past couple weeks have shown us that we’re not really in the ninth inning as some people had said,” he said, “that Mueller’s still got a lot of information that he’s processing and dealing with that’s turning into potentially criminal charges – and I think that the bigger picture is sort of starting to come into focus.”

Cotter said: “We’re in stage two. We’re hearing the indictments and the pleas, people cooperating. Then there’s going to be a stage three, where people who are not cooperating, just – the hammer falls.

“And I don’t know if it’s going to be Don Jr, or [Jared] Kushner, or who knows. But I think it’s going to happen, and I can’t tell you when. But I think it’s going to happen.”

 

Special counsel Robert Mueller files new details on Trump aides

Court documents reveal how Trump’s former personal lawyer helped the investigation into Russian election meddling. The president went on a Twitter tirade before the special counsel filings were set to be made.

Decenber 8, 2018

DW

President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen deserves “a substantial term of imprisonment” for a number of financial crimes, federal prosecutors in New York said Friday.

In separate filings, prosecutors and special counsel Robert Mueller’s office laid out their recommendations for Cohen’s sentencing next week and for the first time detailed the degree of his cooperation with the Russia probe.

In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight federal crimes including tax evasion and violating campaign finance laws, including paying hush money on behalf of Trump to women with whom the president had affairs. Last week, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about an aborted Trump Organization real estate project in Russia.

Court papers filed by Mueller said Cohen went to “significant lengths” to assist the Mueller probe, although he initially lied in August.

Cohen “provided information about his own contacts with Russian interests during the campaign and discussions with others in the course of making those contacts,” the court documents said.

Mueller said the president’s former right-hand man had dealings with the Kremlin late into 2016 to facilitate the construction of a Trump skyscraper in Moscow. Cohen also provided information about Russian contacts with the Trump campaign.

Prosecutors said that although Cohen has cooperated with the Mueller probe he nonetheless deserves to spend time in prison.

Separately, Mueller submitted a court filing in the case of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. According to the filing, Manafort lied to investigators on multiple occasions about ties to Russian-Ukranian political consultant Konstantin Kilimnik, who is accused of obstruction of justice. He also lied about a payment to a firm working for Manafort and contacts with Trump administration officials.

The latest drips

The Manafort and Cohen filings will come on the heels of a similar sentencing filing for former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn last Friday. The Flynn filing suggested he should serve no prison time, for providing “substantial” cooperation.

The court filings are part of the endless drip of information coming to light as to the findings of Mueller and his team, who have been notoriously tight-lipped about the status of their investigation. The only clues to the course of the investigation have come from previous filings and convictions. It is expected that the special counsel is nearing the end of its 19-month investigation but nothing is certain at this point.

Trump on the rampage

One thing, however, seems glaringly obvious: President Donald Trump is increasingly agitated. On Friday, the president went on a raging Twitter rant, attacking Mueller and his team in a series of tweets.

Beyond the president’s usual claims that Mueller’s investigation is a witch hunt and accusing him of having conflicts of interest without substantiating those claims, Trump announced that his lawyer Rudy Giuliani was preparing a response to the pending Mueller report: “We will be doing a major counter report to the Mueller report.”

Comey on the Hill

Separately, former FBI Director James Comey, who was also attacked in Trump’s early-morning Twitter flurry, appeared on Capitol Hill to deliver closed-door testimony before two panels at the US House of Representatives. It was Trump’s firing of Comey in May 2017 that triggered the Mueller investigation. The firing has subsequently been a focal point, raising the issue of whether Trump has actively obstructed justice.

Mueller’s new boss?

On Friday Trump also announced that he had selected William Barr as his nominee for the position of US attorney general, a position Barr held under former President George H.W. Bush. Barr would replace ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom Trump hounded for failing to protect him from the Mueller probe.

Barr has voiced support for Trump’s firing of Comey and his constant calls to reopen investigations into political rival Hillary Clinton. Furthermore, Barr, who would be in charge of the Mueller probe should he be confirmed by the Senate, has questioned the political fairness of the team’s members, suggesting they were biased against Trump.

 

White House chief of staff Kelly expected to leave imminently

December 7, 2018

by  Andrew Restuccia, Christopher Cadelago and Gabby Orr

Politico

The Trump White House’s longest-running personnel drama may finally be over: Chief of staff John Kelly is expected to step down in the coming days, according to two administration officials.

Kelly, a retired Marine general who joined the White House staff in July 2017, has weathered several months of rumors that the president wants him out. But the officials said this time seemed different, noting that the relationship between the president and his embattled chief of staff has recently bottomed out and that his departure seems imminent.

The decision is not official and Trump, who has reportedly come close to firing Kelly before, could once again change his mind. Other aides cautioned that the timing of Kelly’s departure remains up in the air.

Two sources close to the situation said the White House is working to accommodate Kelly’s departure in an appropriate manner “as opposed to [the] fire-by-tweet” maneuver Trump has previously used to dismiss high-ranking officials, including ex-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was forced out last month. A formal announcement could occur Monday, giving Trump the weekend to strike an agreement with his chief of staff about the details surrounding his departure.

“They’re trying to put together a dignified way for Kelly to leave,” said a former White House official, who characterized the circumstance as delicate, given Kelly’s rank as a retired four-star Marine general and Trump’s oft-repeated refrain about respecting America’s military personnel.

Of course, the plan to gracefully oust Kelly will only work if he agrees to resign — something the chief of staff has long been reluctant to do — and the president refrains from firing him outright. Kelly has told friends repeatedly in recent months that, despite the grueling demands of his job and constant speculation about his relationship with the first family, he serves “at the pleasure of the president” and would never quit on his own.

Kelly was not at the White House on Friday because he had taken the day off. As a result, he was not among the senior aides who were seen with Trump as he departed for a Friday trip to Kansas City. Friday’s senior staff meeting, which is usually led by Kelly, was canceled, one of the administration officials said. Two administration officials cautioned that staff meetings are often nixed when they overlap with presidential travel.

Of course, the plan to gracefully oust Kelly will only work if he agrees to resign — something the chief of staff has long been reluctant to do — and the president refrains from firing him outright. Kelly has told friends repeatedly in recent months that, despite the grueling demands of his job and constant speculation about his relationship with the first family, he serves “at the pleasure of the president” and would never quit on his own.

Kelly was not at the White House on Friday because he had taken the day off. As a result, he was not among the senior aides who were seen with Trump as he departed for a Friday trip to Kansas City. Friday’s senior staff meeting, which is usually led by Kelly, was canceled, one of the administration officials said. Two administration officials cautioned that staff meetings are often nixed when they overlap with presidential travel.

White House spokespeople did not respond to repeated inquiries and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ office door was closed as of Friday morning.

 

The Donald Undone: Tilting at the Swamp, Succumbing to the Empire

December 8, 2018

by David Stockman

AntiWar

You can’t build the Empire and drain the Swamp at the same time. That’s because the Swamp is largely the fruit of Empire. And it’s also the reason that the Donald is being rapidly undone.

Indeed, it is the Empire’s $800 billion national security budget which feeds Washington’s vast complex of weapons suppliers, intelligence contractors, national security bureaucrats, NGOs, think tanks, K-street lobbies, so-called “law” firms and all-purpose racketeers. It’s what accounts for the Imperial City’s unseemly and ill-gotten prosperity.

It goes without saying that the number one priority of these denizens of Empire is to keep the gravy train rolling. That is accomplished by inventing and exaggerating threats to America’s homeland security and by formulating far-flung and misbegotten missions designed to extend and reinforce Washington’s global hegemony.

As we demonstrate elsewhere, a true homeland security defense budget would consist of the strategic nuclear triad and modest conventional forces to defend the nation’s shoreline and air space; it would cost about $250 billion per year plus a few $10 billion more for a State Department which minded its own business.

So the $500 billion difference is the fiscal cost of Empire, which is pushing the US toward an immense generational fiscal crisis. But it’s also a measure of the giant larder that fills the Swamp with the projects and busywork of Washington’s global hegemony.

In fact, it is the vasty deep of that $500 billion larder which gives rise to the forces that not only thwart the Donald’s desire to drain the Swamp, but actually enlist him the cause of deepening its brackish waters.

Moreover, these missions encompass far more than direct military occupations, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq; or indirect aggressions, such as in Washington’s arming of antigovernment terrorists in Syria and facilitating and supplying Saudi Arabia’s genocidal bombing campaign in Yemen; or even the kind of rank provocation implicit in the 29,000 troops Washington still bivouacs on the Korean peninsula 65 years after the war there ended and the thousands of US and NATO forces which conduct virtually constant maneuvers and war games on the very borders of Russia.

OFAC and Washington’s Economic Sanctions Strike Force

Beyond the Empire’s purely military dimension lies a vast stratum of economic and financial warfare. The US currently has sanctions – trade, financial and proscribed nationals – on more than 30 countries including highly visible alleged malefactors like Russia, Iran and North Korea – but also Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Syria, to name a few.

These sanctions are enforced by an office in the US Treasury Department, which is aptly named the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC). Being openly in the business of controlling the assets of foreign countries, in fact, its name speaks volumes about the daily purposes of the Imperial City.

In addition to enforcement actions against the above named three dozen countries, OFAC’s global reach has been fantastically expanded by the so-called war on terror, and the mechanism of sanctioning “Specially Designated Nationals” or SDNs.

We are here talking about individual citizens and officers of foreign countries, one at a time. It so happens that the OFAC periodically publishes a list of SDNs and the latest one (May 24, 2018) is a staggering 1,132 pages long. By our reckoning it lists in excess of 500,000 foreign evil doers of one type or another.

The fact that it takes 221 pages just to get through the “A’s” in its alphabetical listing – owing to the prevalence of Ali’s, Abdul’s, and Ahmed’s – is perhaps indicative of the nature and scope of Washington’s SDN dragnet.

Needless to say, sanctioning 500,000 foreigners generates endless make-work for the denizens of the Swamp and the phalanx of national security agencies and private contractors which employ them. But it’s all in a day’s work in the Empire because this list exists only by virtue of Washington’s self-appointed role of global policeman and hegemon of global order.

Moreover, the list now encompasses far more than the Abdul’s and Ahmed’s arising from the Imperial City’s misbegotten “war on terror”. In truth, the latter has actually been a hatchery of terror in the form of blowback and vengeful retaliation for Washington’s military devastation of the Middle East and elsewhere.

Nevertheless, there are also thousands of Russian, Iranian and Chinese names on this list owing to Washington’s putting a hex on certain disapproved behaviors and policies of these nations. And many tens of thousands more names appear for the sin of not compliantly observing Washington’s sanctions on third-parties with which they had wished to do business.

That is, OFAC is now into a higher level of economic warfare: Sanctioning those who fail to sanction the sanctioned.

Here’s the thing. Almost none of this busywork of Empire has anything to do with the safety and security of the American homeland.

It is the fruit of middle eastern interventions and occupations which should never have happened – going all the way back to the first Gulf War and all that followed.

Indeed, it goes back even further in time to Washington’s siding with Saddam Hussein during the 1980s Iran/Iraq War and to the so-called Charlie Wilson’s War during which the CIA recruited and armed the mujahedeen in Afghanistan against the Soviets after the latter’s misbegotten invasion of the “graveyard of empires” in 1979.

It is also the fruit of a needless demonization of Russia and Putin, which, as we have seen, comprise no threat to the American homeland whatsoever; and also, increasingly, the designation of alleged Chinese malefactors for failure to enforce Washington’s foreign policy.

Imperial Arrogance: Sanctioning China For Not Enforcing Washington’s Economic War On Iran

The Trump Administration’s recent attempt – purposeful or not – to destroy China’s second largest telecom supplier (ZTE) is an hideous case in point. Once upon a time that would have been considered an act of war, but under the aegis of Empire the shoe goes on the other foot: It’s China’s fault, apparently, that ZTE failed to comply with Washington’s hex on Iran.

In effect, the Donald is getting sucked into functioning as another handmaid of Empire rather than actually performing the noble work of draining the Swamp. After all, the essence of draining the Swamp boils down to shrinking the state and unleashing the energies of free market capitalism – including generation of more export to the rest of the world.

But in the ZTE case, Trump and his neocon and warhawk advisors were doing just the opposite. They had slapped an edict on US telecom component and software suppliers like Qualcomm, prohibiting them from engaging in acts of trade with China’s #2 telecom equipment manufacturer and the #4 mobile phone provider in the world.

That is, they were about the business of pumping the Swamp full with even more busybody regulation and bloat – and once again bamboozling the Donald with phony threats to national security.

In this case, ZTE apparently violated “sanctions” put upon Iran and North Korea by the Empire in its self-appointed role of global policeman.

That’s right. There have been no charges that ZTE has “stolen” American technology or subsidized exports to the harm of American cell phone factories – because, well, there are none left.

The Chinese state-owned company’s only alleged offense, in fact, was not functioning as a complaint enforcement arm of Washington’s foreign sanctions strike force.

But threatening to bring daily production at ZTE to a halt because it cannot (in the short-run) make cell phones without those designed-in Qualcomm parts, the Donald was also in danger of putting the kibosh on American production, jobs and leadership in the high technology components end of ZTE’s business.

Since ZTE sits on a giant mountain of debt, however,the Chinese had no choice in the near term except to bend over and request Washington’s bar of soap. To that end, in fact, they are now negotiating the complete housecleaning of the company’s board and top executives and replacing them with names satisfactory to Washington.

Indeed, when this compromise settlement with China was announced a few months ago, we learned that the Donald had told his “friend” President Xi Jinping that in return for letting ZTE off the sanctions hook, Washington would be happy to collect a $1.3 billion fine and take control of company’s board and management!

But here’s the thing. ZTE is not only a state-owned company; it’s also a core national technology champion in the Red Ponzi’s statist scheme of economic management.

So the idea that Washington should control ZTE is flat-out idiotic, yet it stems 100% from the Empire’s hex on Iran and North Korea – a futile, destructive exercise in the sanctions game which never should have happened in the first place.

As we have frequently explained, Iran should be free to conduct a foreign policy of its own choosing in its own middle eastern neighborhood; and that if we got the machinery of war and empire out of the way, the Koreans – north and south – would readily find a way to denuclearize, demilitarize and economically reunite.

And yet that’s not the half of it. The Donald’s doddering Secretary of Commerce and former crony capitalist thief, Wilbur Ross, explained to bubble vision at the time of the July deal that “compliance” would be assured by placing an entire squadron of Washington operatives inside the company on a permanent basis to makes sure it does not again violate Washington’s sanctions and other edicts.

That’s right. Wilbur proposes to run China’s giant state telecom company from the Commerce Department Building on Constitution Avenue.

That’s draining the swamp?

Well, at least there is some irony – surely not intended – in proposing to control a communist state industrial behemoth from Constitution Avenue.

Then again, through the largesse of the state and the Fed’s Bubble Finance, Wilbur Ross became a self-proclaimed billionaire, like his boss.

So how would either have a clue about draining the real statist Swamp?

China Trade Deal – Recipe for a Big Washington Trade Nanny

And that gets us to the Donald utterly wrong-headed pursuit of an overall “trade deal” with China – a prospect that has the far-flung agencies and contractors in the Imperial City giddy with anticipation. It would simply mean a whole new regime of economic meddling, trade management, bureaucratic enforcement and sanctions for not measuring up.

It would also have the meters running overtime at Washington’s law firms and consultancies, which would be overrun with demand from Chinese companies and state agencies seeking help with “compliance”.

The fact is, America doesn’t need no stinkin’ trade deal with China.

Yes, as we have seen, we did import $526 billion last year from China compared to just $130 billion of exports. But that $396 billion deficit is due to factors that trade negotiators and enforcement bureaucrats could not fix in a month of Sundays. As we have shown, it’s an artifact of bad money and the machinations of central bankers, starting with the Fed.

So even though China doesn’t import much, it’s not mainly owing to its high tariffs or its labyrinth of non-tariff barriers. Instead, it results from the fact that Beijing has run the People Printing Press overtime for the last 25 years and has thereby buried its economy in $40 trillion of unsustainable and unrepayable debt – debts that will eventually grind its economy to a halt or trigger the mother of all financial implosions.

In the interim, however, it won’t import much because most foreign suppliers – and most especially the US – cannot compete with a state controlled economy temporarily blessed with spanking new, debt-financed capital equipment, essentially proletarian labor in a red economy and a minimal welfare state burden on businesses owing (temporarily) to favorable demographics and the stingy benefit policies of its allegedly socialist rulers in Beijing.

Thus, even if the Donald should succeed in strong-arming Beijing into tripling its current $15 billion of agricultural imports from the US and doubling its $20 billion of energy imports, the resulting $50 billion uptick in combined exports from these sectors wouldn’t make a dent in the trade deficit.

And even if they do cut their tariffs on auto imports as promised, that’s not going to amount to a hill of beans, either. That because a long time ago all high volume US auto producers – GM, Ford and Chrysler – recognized that taking coals to Newcastle was the better part of wisdom.

That is, they all moved their assembly plants and their parts suppliers to China where they face capital and labor costs that are only a fraction of those in the US. Accordingly, there is not a snowball’s chance in the hot place that US based production – other than perhaps in the case of tiny volumes of niche or prestige vehicles – can compete in China’s 30 million unit auto market.

In fact, autos and parts exports to China currently amount to less than $5 billion, and there is no reason to believe there is much upside at all – even with a zero tariff.

Even when it comes to the heavy capital equipment made by Caterpillar or the advanced commercial aircraft supplied by Boeing – these US suppliers are doing a increasing share of their production and valued added in their own or JV plants in China, not Peoria and Seattle.

And as to most consumer goods, fuggetaboutit!

On the other hand, the Donald doesn’t have a clue about the other side of the equation – the $526 billion of annual US imports from China. That baleful fact, however, is the legacy of 30 years of monetary central planning by the Fed, not cheating by the Chinese.

The essence of the Fed’s false prosperity trick was to enable American households to live beyond their means by raising their debts by nearly 6X to $15.6 trillion during the last three decades – even as wage and salary incomes grew by only 3.7X.

The difference essentially reflected unearned consumption borrowed from the economic future, but also on the margin was supplied by goods emanating from the far lower cost factories of the Red Ponzi.

The 30-Year Borrowing Binge: Household Debt Versus Wage And Salary Income

At the same time, as we have seen, the Fed’s insensible pursuit of 2.00% inflation essentially inflated the cost-price-wage structure of the US economy, and at the very worst time imaginable: That is, after Mr. Deng’s early 1990’s pronouncement that it is “glorious to be rich” and its adoption of mercantilist, credit fueled, state-driven economic development model.

In a word, China was draining its rice paddies of cheap industrial labor, thereby driving the global labor cost curve downward – at the very time that the geniuses in the Eccles Building did their level best to inflate the nominal wage levels of US factories in the opposite direction. The result was that the borrowed consumption of the American household sector got supplied by the peasantry-turned-factory worker in the Red Ponz1.

So, is some kind of Imperial City fostered “trade deal” going to alter these deeply embedded historical legacies?

No, they will not – that is, at least not until sound money policies are once again replanted in the Eccles Building.

The arrival of Janet Yellen in tie and trousers at the helm of the Fed, however, means that the one chance the Donald had to do something meaningful about the China trade gap has been blown.

That’s not only owing to the appointment of Jerome Powell, who is a Keynesian Imperial City lifer, but also due to the constant drumbeat of suggestion from the White House that the Donald is a “low interest man” and would prefer to keep the monetary status quo in place; or more recently, has even demanded that the Fed cut an interest rate target that is still negative in real terms..

So why is the Donald wasting his time and fueling growth of Imperial Washington via his “art of the deal” dueling with President XI?

In part, of course, that’s because the Donald has been a lifelong dyed-in-the-wool protectionist – a virtual paragon of 18th century mercantilism.

Needless to say, protectionism and mercantilism are the health of the Swamp because they rest on government-to-government deals, not the enlightened self-interest and mutual benefits of capitalist commerce.

Accordingly, the central pillar of the Donald’s economic policy – new bilateral “trade deals” – is inherently designed to fill the Swamp, not drain it.

In the first place, if the Red Suzerains are economically benighted enough to figuratively throw rocks into their own harbors to repel imports and to subsidize exports with cheap credit, repressed wages and other state subventions, guess what?

It’s their wealth being penalized, not America’s. The Red Ponzi is effectively sending foreign aid to America!

Technology Protectionism – Trojan Horse of the Warfare State

And it is here where the Imperial City has taken the Donald by the short orange ones. The Warfare State sees trade as just another venue of battle – and in this case based on the completely spurious notion that China’s alleged theft of US intellectual property is a threat to national security.

That just patent nonsense because nearly every technology in today’s world is dual use. So if you start with the false premise that China has the will and capability to threaten America militarily – either now or in the relevant future – you are automatically embarking down the road of state control of the economy and an ever deeper Swamp

in the Imperial City.

The fact is, the Red Ponzi is a giant house of cards that cannot survive in the long-run, and in the mid-term is completely dependent of US markets to earn the dollar surpluses that it needs to keep its $40 trillion tower of debt from having a crash landing.

So the truth is, it doesn’t matter what technologies the Chinese have – they are almost definitionally not a threat to the American homeland. Nevertheless, the Donald’s glandular protectionism plays right into the hands of the Washington hegemonists.

They now have him busily attempting to administer a trade spanking to China because purportedly it does not buy enough American soybeans, LNG and Ford Explorers.

But the Deep State has something far bigger in mind. Namely, the complete control of trade in the name of national security in the new age of advanced information technology – and on that front the Donald is turning out to be a battering ram beyond their wildest dreams.

For instance, here is what a true Swamp creature has to say about the matter. Mr. Paul Rosenzweig is apparently a Republican but actually a certified denizen of the Imperial City.

“I knew what was critical in 1958 – tanks, airplanes, avionics. Now, truthfully, everything is information. The world is about information, not about things,” said Paul Rosenzweig, who worked with CFIUS while at the Department of Homeland Security during President George W. Bush’s second term. “And that means everything is critical infrastructure. That, in some sense, means CFIUS really should be managing all global trade.”

Needless to say, the misbegotten China Trade Deal is only one of the many avenues by which the Empire has enlisted the Donald in the business of deepening the Swamp, not draining it.

 

Colonel James Atwood in the shadows

December 8, 2018

by Christian Jürs

Since at least 1981, a worldwide network of ‘free-standing’ [i.e., no direct U.S. government ties] companies, including airlines, aviation and military spare parts suppliers, and trading companies, has been utilized by the CIA and the U.S. government to illegally ship arms and military spare parts to Iran and to the Contras. These companies were set up with the approval and knowledge of senior CIA officials and other senior U.S. government officials and staffed primarily by ex-CIA, ex-FBI and ex-military officers.

These CIA-controlled companies include Aero Systems, Inc., of Miami, Arrow Air, Aero Systems Pvt. Ltd of Singapore, Hierax of Hong Kong, Pan Aviation in Miami, Merex in Georgia, Sur International, St. Lucia Airways, Global International Airways, International Air Tours of Nigeria, Continental Shelf Explorations, Inc., Jupiter, Florida, Varicon, Inc., Dane Aviation Supply of Miami, Parvus, Safir, International Trading and Investment Guaranty Corp., Ltd., and Information Security International Inc., Zenith Technical Enterprises, Ltd., Mineral Carriers, Ltd.

During the Iran Contra affair, General Secord’s arms shipments, arraigned through the CIA, transferred weapons destined for Central America to MEREX CORP,  (MEREX INTERNATIONAL ARMS), Savannah, Ga. Combat Military Ordinances Ltd., controlled by retired military officer JAMES P. ATWOOD, occupied the Merex address. Atwood, a retired Lieutenant Colonel of U.S. Military Intelligence and later a CIA officer stationed in their Berlin office, was involved in major arms trades with CIA-sponsored international buyers, specifically Middle Eastern Arab states. Monzer Al-Kassar utilized the Merex firm for some of his weapons transactions with the Enterprise.  Merex weapons systems was founded by Otto Skorzeny’s associate Gerhard Mertins  in Bonn after the war and was considered a CIA proprietary firm. Mertex was close to and worked with the BND, the German intelligence service evolved from the CIA-controlled Gehlen organization.

Atwood was involved with Interarmco, run by Samuel Cummings, an Englishman who ran the largest arms firm in the world. Cummings died in Monaco because he had looted his CIA employers and found that principality safer than Warrenton, Virginia. Also connected with Atwood’s firm were Collector’s Armory, Thomas Nelson Prop, and a George Petersen of Springfield, Virginia, and Emmanuel (Manny) Wiegenberg, a Canadian arms dealer.and look into Atwood’s role in supplying weapons and explosives to the Quebec Libré movement. The head of the Canada Desk at the Company was actively encouraging this group to split away from Canada. This is a chapter that the CIA does not want discussed. Also look into Atwood’s connections with Skorzeny and the IRA/Provo wing.

One of Atwood’s Irish connections is the man who blew up Lord Louis Mountbatten in 1979 and I have a file on this as well (but not here) You might also want to investigate the shipping of weapons into the southern Mexican provinces by Atwood and his Guatemala based consortium. Atwood had a number of ex-Gestapo and SD people on board,some of whom were wanted. Klaus Barbie was also connected.

Barbie, who was Gestapo chief in Lyon, France, during the war, worked for the CIC after the war and fled to South America when his American handlers tipped him off. Barbie took some of the hidden Nazi gold and invested it in several businesses and  also continued to prosper by starting the Estrella Company which sold bark, coca paste, and assault weapons to a former SS officer, Frederich Schwend in Lima, Peru. Schwend had been trained by the OSS in the early 1940s after he had informed Allen Dulles that the German SS had hidden millions in gold, cash, and loot as the European war was winding down. Atwood knew about the Weissensee hoard but didn’t have what I obtained from Bob Crowley, to wit the overlay for the map that showed what was buried and where.  Both Schwend and Barbie formed Transmaritania which was a shipping company that also generated millions of dollars in profits from the cocaine business. They purchased their weapons from another SS colleague, Colonel Otto Skorzeny who had been head of SS Commando units towards the end of the war, later worked for the CIA  and had started the Merex weapons business in Bonn after the war. Also a person to consider is one Walter Rauff, a senior SD officer, friend of Dulles and once head of the SD in Milan (after a tour in Tunesia as head of the SD there during Rommel’s campaign in Africa. The Rauff story is even more entertaining than the Barbie one and more disruptive. Rauff worked for the CIA and I got a lovely Renoir painting from him (probably looted) that will look nice in my new study in France.

Atwood’s activities are linked to Robert Crowley (who knew him and disliked him) ,to Jim Critchfield and a number of other CIA luminaries.

Arrested by the Army’s CIC in the early 60s, for misuse of government mail, tax fraud and other matters,  Atwood  got the CIA to force the charges against him dropped. All the paperwork was supposed to have been destroyed but a copy of the 62 count indictment plus the Chicago Federal judge’s orders have survived.

Atwood operated in the Middle East, Germany and Central America. He sold US secrets to Marcus Wolfe of the Stasi and the BND photographed them together in East Berlin

He smuggled guns into Guatemala and Nicaragua and drugs into the US.

Atwood’s role in supplying weapons and explosives to the Quebec Libré movement. The head of the Canada Desk at the Company was actively encouraging this group to split away from Canada. This is a chapter that the CIA does not want discussed. Atwood’s connections with Skorzeny and the IRA/Provo wing make dramatic reading. One of Atwood’s Irish connections is the man who ran the cell that blew up Lord Louis Mountbatten in 1979. There is also the shipping of weapons into the southern Mexican provinces by Atwood and his Guatemala based consortium. Oceanic Cargo.

Atwood had a number of ex-Gestapo and SD people on board, some of whom were wanted for war crimes.

Both Schwend and Klaus Barbie formed Transmaritania which was a shipping company that also generated millions of dollars in profits from the cocaine business. They purchased their weapons from another SS colleague, Colonel Otto Skorzeny who had been head of SS Commando units towards the end of the war, later worked for the CIA and had started the Merex weapons business in Bonn after the war. Another Atwood contact was one Walter Rauff, a senior SD officer, friend of Dulles and once head of the SD in Milan (after a tour in Tunisia as head of the SD there during Rommel’s campaign in Africa.) The Rauff story is even more entertaining than the Barbie one and more disruptive when it becomes public. Rauff worked for the CIA, lived unmolested and well protected by the CIA, in South America .

While Atwood was involved in supplying weapons to Cuban insurgents for the Bay of Pigs incident, he stated to a number of his associates that he learned of highly classified information on the accidental release, in Florida, of deadly toxins that the CIA was planning to use in advance of the invasion to “soften up” Castro’s militia.

The designated head of the CIA, Porter Goss, was a CIA agent in Florida at this time, was involved in the planning and expected execution of the Cuban invasion and suddenly became “very ill”, as his specs on Google point out, and had to retire. Atwood told his friends that Goss, later a Florida political figure, was a participating party in this specific part of the CIA invasion plans.

In 1992, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was considerable concern expressed in US intelligence circles about the whereabouts, and also the security of, certain ex-Soviet military tactical atomic warheads. In the 1960s, the Soviet Union launched R&D to miniaturize and improve reliability of nuclear weapons. Development activities included strategic systems for the Navy; cruise missiles, aviation bombs and artillery projectiles [the smallest nuclear charge was developed for a 152mm artillery projectile].The model is based on unclassified data on the components in an atomic artillery shell, to see if such a system could be reassembled in a suitcase. Indeed, as it turns out, the physics package, neutron generators, batteries, arming mechanism and other essentials of a small atomic weapon can fit, just barely, in an attaché case. The result is a plutonium-fueled gun-type atomic weapon having a yield of one-to-ten kilotons, the same yield range attributed  in a 1998 US media interview by General Lebed to the Russian “nuclear suitcase” weapon.”

The smallest possible bomb-like object would be a single critical mass of plutonium (or U-233) at maximum density under normal conditions. An unreflected spherical alpha-phase critical mass of Pu-239 weighs 10.5 kg and is 10.1 cm across.

In 1992, following his successful treasure hunt in Austria, James Atwood, the former Interarmco people and an Israeli Russian named  Yurenko (actually Schemiel  Gofshstein) formed a consortium in conjunction with James Critchfield, retired senior CIA specialist on oil matters in the Mideast  to obtain a number of these obsolete but still viable weapons. Both Critchfield and the Interarmco people had, at the behest of the CIA, supplied weapons to the rebels in Afghanistan during their protracted struggle with the Soviet Union. Critchfield worked with the Dalai Lama of Tibet in a guerrilla war against Communist China and headed a CIA task force during the Cuban missile crisis. He also ran regional agency operations when the two superpowers raced to secure satellites first in Eastern Europe, then in the Middle East. In the early 1960s, Critchfield recommended to the CIA that the United States support the Baath Party, which staged a 1963 coup against the Iraqi government that the CIA believed was falling under Soviet influence. Critchfield later boasted, during the Iran-Iraq war that he and the CIA “had created Saddam Hussein.” With the growing political importance of Middle East oil, he became the CIA’s national intelligence officer for energy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, then an energy policy planner at the White House. He also fronted a dummy CIA corporation in the Middle East known as Basic Resources, which was used to gather OPEC-related intelligence for the Nixon administration. .

Critchfield was the chief of the CIA’s Near East and South Asia division in the 1960s and a national intelligence officer for energy as the oil shortage crisis began in the early 1970s.  Officially retiring from the CIA in 1974, Critchfield became a consultant, corporate president of Tetra Tech International  a Honeywell Inc. subsidiary  and which managed oil, gas, and water projects in the strategic Masandam Peninsula. It sits on the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the West’s oil is transported. At the same time, Critchfield was a primary adviser to the Sultan of Oman., focusing on Middle East energy resources, especially those in Oman.

 

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

December 8, 2018

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 publications.

 

Conversation No. 18

Date: Wednesday, June 26, 1996

Commenced: 11:15 AM CST

Concluded: 11:40 AM CST

 

RTC: I did some digging in the archives, through the kindness of a friend, and dug up the story about your Vancouver caper. The Vancouver Sun had a running account of it. My God, what an uproar you caused! Mounties here and there, mass arrests, utter Christmas chaos in the shops. Wherever did you come up with such an idea, Gregory?
GD: From the German Operation Bernhard, Robert. They counterfeited the British pound note, destroyed its value, made millions in the process and did a good deal to bankrupt Britain after the war. The confidence in the almighty pound was gone. I figured that if the Canadians could gleefully steal all my money, I could teach them all a lesson in manners.

RTC: You surely did that. How much did you get out of it?
GD: Nothing. No, I take that back. They stole four dollars and ten cents from me and I got four dollars and ten cents back. I didn’t do it to make money, Robert. I did it to teach them a lesson and I think I succeeded. Besides, I got my money back.

RTC: It cost the Canucks millions.

GD: So what? I never counterfeited the money and I never took a penny from the money. All I did was to walk around Vancouver at the height of the Christmas season, scattering money here and there. So much in the Sally Ann pots, so much for the Hare Krishna people, so much in public lavatories, telephone booths, retail stores and finally, in a wild orgy of joy, scattering the money out of the back of a friend’s van all over the town. And on a windy night at that. Twenties all over like leaves in early autumn. Oh my and the next day, small children, finding the money, rushed to candy or comic book stores and were promptly arrested. Hysteria reigned. And what was left over from my charitable scatterings was tossed by myself off the roof of my downtown hotel, late at night and in a good wind coming up Granville Street from the water. Oh yes, I did have my fun. I got to visit all my Canadian friends, treat them all to wonderful dinners in return for all the dinners they gave me and give them the pure Christmas tide joy of tossing tens of thousands of dollars worth of fake Canadian money all over town. Yes, it was entertaining and instructive.

RTC: Instructive?

GD: To see the growing hysteria on the television and to hear the constant hooting of police sirens as another 90 year old grandmother was dragged off to the cooler because she found a stack of my little children in a phone booth and was using them to buy Christmas presents. Lawyers were frantic, families hysterical, the police completely beyond their depth and Ottawa in a frenzy. They said it was the biggest counterfeiting ring in Canadian history and the press was split between deciding whether Chinese drug dealers or the Mafia were responsible.  But there was even more fun later on.

RTC: You were caught.

GD: For a time, but I got out from under it. But the thing I do remember the best and savor on cold winter nights when I have no money, and naturally, no friends, is the thought of my dear friends in the Secret Service.

RTC: Now, given what you did, I can’t imagine you could call them that. They certainly couldn’t say that about you.

GD: No, I suppose not. You see, I was working on a new book down at the same print shop that had turned out the Canadian money in the first place. The owner, as I found out, was a convicted child molester named Temple. He did call himself Church from time to time but that is neither here nor there. Poor Temple had a loose mouth and bragged to some black fellow he was trying to impress and that one ran to the Feds. So one day, when I came in to work on the light table, I was introduced to two creatures known as Bob and Joe. They were introduced to me as members of the Mafia. How entertaining, Robert. I know Mafiosa and they are all Sicilians, not strange people that looked like they escaped from Arkansas. Mafia my ass. Anyway, one had a wire that a blind man would have seen, a box under his shirt. And as subtle as a fart in a bathtub. I remember one of them getting me off to one side and asking me about the joys of counterfeiting. Of course I made both of them in about thirty seconds but did enjoy myself. I told Bobby, off the record, that I had a friend working at Treasury who stole bearer bonds and flogged them to me at pennies apiece.

RTC: Jesus…

GD: Ah, yes, and his eyes bugged and his tongue hung out. What did I do with them? Bobby asked me. Did I keep them at home? Oh no, I told him with a wink. I sold them. To whom he wanted to know. To the KGB people who used them to finance their North American spy rings.

RTC: Merciful Christ, Gregory. You did that? You aren’t pulling my leg?
GD: No, I was pulling his. I also told him I was selling the bonds to a major criminal family in London, the Minge family.

RTC: Never heard of them.

GD: Oh they do exist, or the name is well known to the London people. So later, I learned from my lawyer, the Secret Service got ahold of their representative at the London Embassy and had him ask Scotland Yard about this. As I understand it, that one told some official that his people were interested in London Minges. The official responded by saying ‘What do think I am? A bloody pimp?’ You see, a ‘minge’ is Cockney for a woman’s delicate parts. Also used to denote streetwalkers.

RTC: (Loud and prolonged laughter) You’ll be the death of me with your chronicles, Gregory.

GD: Well, it took a while to find out about this but when the Federal courthouse people heard about it, it made for many days of merriment. The Secret Service was not entertained. I often wondered what would have happened if the Brits rounded up some old hookers and sent them to the Embassy? Little boys would have been more effective. You know about the State Department people. They weren’t happy but later, after I dissed the charges, the Canadians tried to lure me back to Canada to put me away for centuries. You see, Robert, I told my lawyer that if I was extradited to Canada, I would tell my friends on the Sun that I was actually working for the CIA who were the sponsors of the Quebec Libreé movement and gave them plastique explosive. Of course your Canada Desk actually did support the terrorists and I had chapter and verse on this. So I was not deported and let go.

RTC: Gregory, that was very nasty of you. Of course it was true. Where did you find out about that one?
GD: A former girlfriend told me. She was pissed off at the Agency and I am a very good listener. It saved my ass, Robert. But to get back to the story. They tried to lure me back so I told them they could meet with me at the San Francisco airport and that I could give them the plates for the money which, I might tell you, they never found. So I read in the paper that Nixon was expected in ‘Frisco and I told my new friends from Vancouver that they could just fly down and meet me. I picked the day Richard was flying in and by God, sir, they did come down. In a private plane with, as I was told, restraints on board. My, my what were they going to use these for? Anyway, I called up the airport Hilton and made reservations in the name of Harry Brunser. Just for accuracy, Robert, a Brunser is San Francisco street slang for an anus.

RTC: (Laughter)

GD: Yes, and I got the desk clerk to assign me a room number. I passed this to the Canadians and in due time, they came down in a private plane, drove up to the hotel in a rented car and all went inside. Of course before this happened, I called up the Secret Service and told them French Canadian terrorists were going to fly into San Francisco and shoot Nixon. I said they would be staying at the Hilton under the name of Brunser. I hate to miss good entertainment so I was sitting in the hotel parking lot, wearing a rabat…

RTC: A what?
GD: A rabat. Catholic priests wear them. A priest’s collar and bib. I always wear it with a black suit and rimless glasses. Anyway, up drives the car and into the lobby go my new friends. About two minutes later, after they have mentioned the key word to the primed desk man, two vans full of men in flak vests rushed into the lobby.

RTC: Oh merciful Jesus, if I didn’t know you better….how terrible. But funny.

GD: Yes. The Canadians were all dragged out, yelling and shouting, except for one who put up a fight and pulled a gun. They had him by the arms and legs because he couldn’t walk anymore. And what, they were asked later, were they doing with automatic weapons? And handcuffs? They eventually were allowed to go back to Canada after their plane was put back together and I got a call from my lawyer, a few days later, who indicated that such pranks were not appreciated and a repetition of them might not be nice for me. He did laugh, however.  I understand the judge in my case laughed too. He called me the Professor Moriarty of Northern California.

(Concluded at 11:40 AM CST)

 

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