TBR News June 4, 2017

The Voice of the White House  

Washington, D.C. June 4 , 2017: “The latest fanatic Islamist murderous attack in London will most certainly not frighten the Brutish from their cooperation in the military attacks on IS in Syria.

Throughout Europe, especially in France, Sweden and now, England, there is a growing anger in the general population against rabid Muslims.

There have also been terrorist incidents in Norway and Germany.

Earlier toleration of Muslim immigrants by liberal governments has resulted in large numbers of potential terrorists coming into their countries and if these governments do not take prompt and decisive action, the public anger will manifest itself in bloody retaliation during the course of which many innocent Muslims will be killed or driven out of the countries involved.

What is needed to prevent this latter-day holocaust would be a firm but just governmental reaction and that would consist of rounding up and deporting any immigrant known to be hostile to their host country.

Given the muddle-headed mediocrities that run most modern governments, reason will not prevail and when a tipping point is reached, the public will react with violence, not reason.”

Table of Contents

• Is America On The Path To Suicide?
• London attackers kill seven, PM May says ‘enough is enough’
• ‘Oi, cowards!’: Londoners fought back as killers rampaged

• Police arrest 12 in connection with London terror attack
• London attack: 12 arrested in Barking after van and knife attack
• Saudi Arabia Lavishes Conservative U.K. Officials With Gifts, Travel, And Plum Consultancies

• China ‘fully committed’ to stopping North Korean missile program

• When it comes to a real estate contract, be sure you understand what you’re signing
• Examples of modern political assassinations, foreign and domestic

 Is America On The Path To Suicide?

Some people think America a great country.

Others see it as a loony bin whose rulers belong in padded cells.

June 3, 2017

by Gar Smith

darkmoon

Top Russian officials are concerned that a bill passed by the US Congress will do more than increase sanctions on North Korea. Moscow claims H.R. 1644 violates its sovereignty and constitutes an “act of war.”

On May 4, 2017, House Resolution 1644, the innocently named “Korean Interdiction and Modernization of Sanctions Act,” was quickly passed by the US House of Representatives by a vote of 419-1 and it was just as quickly labeled an “act of war” by a top Russian official.

What caught the eye of Russian critics was Section 104, the part of the bill that presumed to grant the US “inspection authorities” over shipping ports (and major airports) far beyond the Korean Peninsula – specifically, ports in China, Russia, Syria, and Iran.

The bill identifies more than 20 foreign targets for intrusive American inspection, including two ports in China,  ten ports in Iran, three ports in Syria as well as Damascus International Airport, and three ports in Russia.

Under the proposed law, the US Secretary of Homeland Security could use the National Targeting Center’s Automated Targeting System to search ANY ship, plane, or conveyance that has “entered the territory, waters, or airspace of North Korea, or landed in any of the sea ports or airports of North Korea.” Any vessel, aircraft, or vehicle found in violation of this US law — [including Russian and Chinese ships] — would be subject to “seizure and forfeiture.”

“I hope this bill will never be implemented,”  Konstantin Kosachev, chair of the Russian Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee, told Sputnik News, “because its implementation envisions a scenario of power with forced inspections of all vessels by US warships. Such a power scenario is beyond comprehension, because it means a declaration of war.”

“No country in the world, no international organization, has authorized the US to monitor implementation of any resolutions of the UN Security Council,” Kosachev observed.

Kosachev’s Upper House colleague, Alexey Pushkov, underscored this concern. “It is absolutely unclear how the bill will be implemented,” Pushkov stated. “To control Russian ports, the US will have to introduce a blockade and inspect all ships, which amounts to an act of war.”

Pushkov argued that the lopsided 419-1 vote “indicates the nature of the legal and political culture of the US Congress.”

Andrey Krasov, the First Deputy Head of the Defense Committee in Russia’s Lower House, greeted news of the US move with a mixture of disbelief and indignation:

“Why on Earth did America assume these responsibilities? Who gave it such powers to control the seaports of our country? Neither Russia nor international organizations asked Washington to do so. One can only answer that any unfriendly step by the US administration against Russia and our allies will receive a symmetrical adequate response.

IN ANY CASE, NO AMERICAN SHIP WILL ENTER OUR WATERS. OUR ARMED FORCES AND OUR FLEET HAVE EVERY MEANS TO SEVERELY PUNISH THOSE WHO WILL DARE TO ENTER OUR TERRITORIAL WATERS. (Emphasis added)

America claims it has the right to invade Russian territorial waters and forcibly inspect ships in Vladistock and two other Russian ports. (See map above). There is no doubt whatever that this amounts to an act of war. Surely Russia would then have the right to bomb US air carriers in retaliation? (LD)

Krasov suggested that Washington’s “saber-rattling” was another sign that the US has no interest in accommodating other members of the world community – especially rivals like China and Russia. “These are heavyweights which, in principle, do not fit into the US’s overall concept on governing and ruling the whole world.”

Vladimir Baranov, a Russian ferry line operator whose vessels ply the waters between Vladivostok and the North Korean port city of Rajin, told Sputnik News that “the US physically cannot control Russian ports – you have to visit the Port Authority, demand documents, that sort of thing. This is essentially a bluff by the US, an attempt to show that it controls the world.”

Alexander Latkin, a professor from the Vladivostok State University of Economics and Service, was similarly skeptical: “How could the US control our ports operations? It might have been possible if the US possessed a percentage of the port’s equity but, as far as I know, all of the shareholders are Russian. It is essentially a political move by the US. The Americans don’t have any legal or economic basis for controlling our ports.”

Adding to the growing uncertainty over rising US/Russia tensions, top Russian military officials have expressed alarm over signs that the Pentagon is making preparations for a preemptive nuclear strike on Russia.

On March 28, 2017, Lt. Gen. Victor Poznihir, Deputy Chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces, warned that the placement of US anti-ballistic missiles near Russia’s borders “creates a powerful clandestine potential for delivering a surprise nuclear missile strike against Russia.” He repeated this concern again on April 26, when he alerted the Moscow International Security Conference that the Russian General Staff’s Operations Command is convinced Washington is preparing to exercise the “nuclear option.”

This terrifying news went virtually unnoted by the US media. On May 11, columnist Paul Craig Roberts (a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under Ronald Reagan and former associate editor of The Wall Street Journal) cited Poznihir’s comments in a clearly agitated blog post.

According to Roberts, a Google search revealed that this “most alarming of all announcements” had only been reported in a single US publication – the Times-Gazette of Ashland, Ohio. Roberts was alarmed to discover that no “US senator or representative or any European, Canadian, or Australian politician has raised a voice of concern that the West was now preparing for a first strike on Russia” nor had anyone reached out to “ask Putin how this serious situation could be defused.”

“Never in my life have I experienced the situation where two nuclear powers [Russia and China] were convinced that the third was going to surprise them with a nuclear attack,” Roberts wrote. Despite this existential threat, Roberts notes, there has been “zero awareness and no discussion” of the growing risks.

“Putin has been issuing warnings for years,” Roberts writes. “Putin has said over and over, ‘I issue warnings and no one hears. How do I get through to you?’”

IS AMERICA ON THE PATH TO SUICIDE?

The US Senate now has a critical role to play.

The bill is currently before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. The committee has an opportunity to acknowledge the grave risks created by H.R. 1644 and make sure that no companion bill ever makes it to the Senate floor.

If this ill-conceived legislation is allowed to survive, our survival — and the survival of millions of others – cannot be guaranteed.

A new word is now being used to describe America by millions of people in China: the word “baizuo“, a derogatory term expressing contempt for “ignorant and arrogant westerners who pity the rest of the world and think they are saviors.”

The word is frequently applied to America’s ruling class: its liberal elites who look down on their own people and treat them as cannon fodder for endless wars on behalf of a foreign country in the Middle East whose chief raison d’être appears to be land grabbing and world domination.

That the US House of Representatives should vote 419 to 1 for invading Russian territorial waters, in what clearly amounts to an act of war, is all the proof we need that 419 out of 420 American politicians are not altogether sane.

It looks like the patients have taken over the asylum.

 

London attackers kill seven, PM May says ‘enough is enough’

June 4, 2017

by Estelle Shirbon and William James

Reuters

London-British Prime Minister Theresa May called on Sunday for a stronger response to Islamist extremism after three attackers drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge and stabbed others nearby, killing seven people and injuring 48.

London’s Metropolitan Police arrested 12 people in the Barking district of east London in connection with the attack and raids were continuing there, the force said.

The attack occurred five days before a parliamentary election and was the third to hit Britain in less than three months. May said the vote would go ahead as planned on Thursday.

“It is time to say enough is enough,” the Conservative leader said in a televised statement outside her Downing Street office, where flags few at half-mast.

“We cannot and must not pretend that things can continue as they are,” May said, calling for a beefed-up counter-terrorism strategy that could include longer jail sentences for some offences and new cyberspace regulations.

Less than two weeks ago, a suicide bomber killed 22 children and adults at a concert by U.S. singer Ariana Grande in Manchester in northern England. In March, in a attack similar to Saturday’s, five people died after a man drove into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge in central London and stabbed a policeman.

On Saturday night, police shot dead the three male assailants in the Borough Market area near London Bridge within eight minutes of receiving the first emergency call shortly after 10 p.m. (2100 GMT).

Eyewitnesses described harrowing scenes as the attackers’ white van veered on and off the bridge sidewalk, hitting people along the way, and the three men then ran into an area packed with bars and restaurants, stabbing people indiscriminately.

Accounts emerged of people trying to barricade themselves in a pub while others tried throwing tables and other objects to fend off the attackers.

May’s government announced that a nationwide minute of silence would be held at 1000 GMT on Tuesday to pay respect to the victims of the attack and flags would remain at half-mast on government buildings until Tuesday evening.

At an apartment block in Barking, a resident told Sky News he heard controlled explosions early on Sunday morning as police gained access to the building. A Reuters photographer later saw four women being removed from the building, shielding their faces as they stepped into police vans.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the London Bridge attack.

Islamic State, losing territory in Syria and Iraq to an advance backed by a U.S.-led coalition, had sent out a call on instant messaging service Telegram early on Saturday urging its followers to carry out attacks with trucks, knives and guns against “Crusaders” during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Islamist militants have carried out scores of deadly attacks in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the United States over the past two years.

NOT CONNECTED TO MANCHESTER, WESTMINSTER ATTACKS

“We believe we are experiencing a new trend in the threat we face as terrorism breeds terrorism,” May said.

“Perpetrators are inspired to attack not only on the basis of carefully constructed plots … and not even as lone attackers radicalised online, but by copying one another and often using the crudest of means of attack.”

She said the series of attacks were not connected in terms of planning and execution, but were inspired by what she called a “single, evil ideology of Islamist extremism” that represented a perversion of Islam and of the truth. She said this ideology had to be confronted both abroad and at home.

“While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is – to be frank – far too much tolerance of extremism in our country,” she said, urging Britons to be more robust in stamping it out in the public sector and in wider society.

U.S. President Donald Trump, taking to Twitter on Sunday, urged the world to stop being “politically correct” in order to ensure public security against terrorism.

Most of the main political parties suspended election campaigning on Sunday, but May said this would resume on Monday. The anti-European Union UK Independence Party said it would not suspend its campaign because disrupting democracy was what the extremists wanted.

London Bridge is a major transport hub and nearby Borough Market is a fashionable warren of alleyways leavened with bars and restaurants that is always bustling on a Saturday night.

The area remained cordoned off and patrolled by armed police and counter-terrorism officers on Sunday, with train stations closed. Forensic investigators could be seen working on the bridge, where buses and taxis stood abandoned.

At several points outside the cordon, people started laying flowers and messages of grief and solidarity as the day progressed.

Ariana Grande and other music stars were due to give a benefit concert at Manchester’s Old Trafford cricket ground on Sunday evening to raise funds for victims of the concert bombing and their families. Police said the event would go ahead as planned though security would be increased.

“Today’s One Love Manchester benefit concert will not only continue, but will do so with greater purpose,” Grande’s manager, Scooter Braun, said on Twitter after the London attack.

Manchester police said a minute’s silence had been held at the start of a charity soccer match at Manchester United’s stadium to honor the victims of both the concert and London Bridge attacks.

FAKE EXPLOSIVE VESTS

The three attackers on Saturday night were wearing what looked like explosive vests that were later found to have been fake. May said the assailants’ aim had been to sow panic. The BBC showed a photograph of two possible attackers shot by police, one of whom had canisters strapped to his body.

The London Ambulance Service said 48 people had been taken to five hospitals across the capital and a number of others had been treated at the scene for minor injuries. Police said some of those in hospital had life-threatening injuries.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the official threat level in Britain remained at severe, meaning a militant attack is highly likely. It had been raised to critical after the Manchester attack, then lowered again days later.

“One of the things we can do is show that we aren’t going to be cowed is by voting on Thursday and making sure that we understand the importance of our democracy, our civil liberties and our human rights,” Khan said.

Roy Smith, a police officer who was at the scene during the unfolding emergency, expressed his shock on Twitter.

“Started shift taking photos with children playing on the South Bank. Ended it giving CPR to innocent victims attacked at London Bridge,” he wrote, adding a broken heart emoji.

In tweets, Trump offered help to Britain but also leveled apparent criticism of Khan for saying there was no need to be alarmed. Khan had earlier said Londoners would see an increased police presence on the streets of the city and people should not be alarmed by that.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin were among those who sent messages of condolences and made statements of solidarity.

Pope Francis invited thousands of pilgrims who attended mass in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City on Sunday to pray for the victims of the London attack.

Four French nationals were among those injured in the London attack, French officials said. Australia said two of its citizens were caught up in it and one of them was in hospital.

The Manchester bombing on May 22 was the deadliest attack in Britain since July 2005, when four British Muslim suicide bombers killed 52 people in coordinated assaults on London’s transport network.

(Additional reporting by UK bureau, Dylan Martinez, Hannah McKay, William Schomberg, Elisabeth O’Leary, Marine Pennetier in Paris, Steve Scherer in Rome, Polina Devitt in Moscow, Paul Carrel in Berlin and David Morgan in Washington; writing by Estelle Shirbon and Pravin Char; editing by Mark Heinrich)

 ‘Oi, cowards!’: Londoners fought back as killers rampaged

June 4, 2017

Reuters

When three men armed with a van and knives went on the attack in a bustling area of the British capital on Saturday night, Londoners fought back with whatever came to hand, in some cases hurling chairs and tables to ward them off.

The attack, which saw the assailants kill at least seven people and injure almost 50 before they were shot dead by police, began with a van being driven at high speed into a crowd of pedestrians on London Bridge.

“It looked like he was aiming for groups of people,” Mark Roberts, a 53-year-old management consultant, told Reuters. He saw at least six people on the ground after the van veered on and off the pavement.

“It was horrendous.”

The knife-wielding assailants then took their attack to nearby Borough Market, where survivors described a hellish scene in an area packed with people enjoying a night out in bars and restaurants.

Gerard Vowles told Sky TV that he was on the street near the Southwark Tavern pub, the scene of multiple stabbings, when he heard someone say: “I’ve been stabbed, I’ve been stabbed.”

“I thought they were joking,” he said.

He said he then saw a woman and man being stabbed while the attackers shouted: “This is for Allah”, and recalled how he tried to distract the men.

“As they left I was going “Oi, oi, cowards!” Vowles said. “I was just trying to get their attention by throwing things at them … I thought if I throw bottles or chairs they can come after me. If I can get them to come to the main road then the police can stop them, they can obviously shoot them.”

Britain’s transport police chief praised the actions of one of his officers injured in the attack who took on the assailants armed only with a baton.

“For an officer who only joined us less than two years ago, the bravery he showed was outstanding and makes me extremely proud,” Chief Constable Paul Crowther said in a statement.

Other witnesses reported seeing a man with a large blade, similar to a kitchen knife, and victims bleeding from stab wounds. They said people were fleeing the area in panic.

One witness, who only gave the BBC his first name of Ben, said he saw a man dressed in red who was stabbing a man with a blade that appeared to be about 10 inches long.

“He was being stabbed quite coldly and he slumped to the ground,” he said of the victim. The attacker then walked towards Southwark Tavern where a chair was thrown towards him, shortly before gunshots rang out.

(Reporting by Reuters staff; Compiled and written by William Schomberg and Elisabeth O’Leary; Editing by Pravin Char and Catherine Evans)

 Police arrest 12 in connection with London terror attack

At least seven people have been killed in London after a vehicle attack on London Bridge followed by a stabbing spree. Twelve people have been arrested in connection with the attack.

June 4, 2017

DW

Three knife-wielding attackers in a van plowed into pedestrians on London Bridge on Saturday evening before going on a stabbing spree in nearby streets and bars in what authorities described as a new trend in militant Islamist terrorism.

Seven people died and dozens of others were injured in the attacks on the bridge and in the nearby busy Borough Market area before police shot dead the three men, who were wearing what looked like explosive vests that later turned out to be fakes. Police managed to kill the attackers within eight minutes of receiving first emergency calls.

Twelve people were arrested in counterterrorism raids in the Barking area of east London, police said on Sunday.

“The investigation into last night’s horrific attack in London is progressing rapidly as the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) continue to piece together exactly what occurred,” police said in a statement, adding that “a number of addresses” in Barking continue to be searched.

The London Ambulance Service said 48 people had been transported to five hospitals across the British capital. A London Transport Police officer armed only with a baton when he confronted the attackers was among those seriously injured with face, leg and head stab wounds.

German officials confirmed on Sunday that two Germans were hurt in the attack, including one person who was severely injured. A Canadian was killed in the attack and a Spanish citizen, one Australian and four French people were also among the wounded.

At the time of the attacks – around 10:00 p.m. local time (2100 UTC) – streets around London Bridge and Borough Market were crowded with people enjoying a Saturday night out in the district’s fashionable bars and restaurants.

British broadcaster BBC radio said witnesses described people throwing tables and chairs at the attackers to protect themselves.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, which come days ahead of a June 8 national election, and less than two weeks after 22 people were killed in a suicide attack in the northern city of Manchester while attending a concert by US pop singer Ariana Grande.

Saturday’s attacks bore similarities to one in March on Westminster Bridge in London, in which a man plowed into a crowd of pedestrians, killing five, and then stabbed a police officer to death in the grounds of parliament before being shot dead.

Crisis meeting

Following a meeting of the government’s COBRA emergency committee on Sunday, British Prime Minister Theresa May made a statement in which she called for increased unity in face of the terrorist threat.

“We cannot and must not pretend that things can continue as they are,” May said, calling for more international control of the internet to take away terrorists’ “safe spaces” to spread their ideology and gain recruits. She added that in the real world “there is – to be frank – far too much tolerance of extremism in our country.”

May said Saturday’s attacks were not connected to the Manchester and Westminster attacks in planning, but they were inspired by a “single, evil ideology of Islamist extremism” that perverted Islam as irreconcilable with Western values of tolerance and democracy.

“We believe we are experiencing a new trend in the threat we face as terrorism breeds terrorism,” she said. “Perpetrators are inspired to attack not only on the basis of carefully constructed plots … and not even as lone attackers radicalized online, but by copying one another and often using the crudest of means of attack.”

She concluded her comments by saying: “United we will take on and defeat our enemies.”

Both the ruling Conservative Party and the Labour Party said on Sunday they would suspend their national campaigning for the upcoming election for a day.

However, the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) said it would continue with its campaign, with leader Paul Nuttall saying that a suspension of campaigning was “precisely what the extremists would want us to do.”

British police have asked for people with photos or videos of the incidents to hand them to authorities so they can be used as possible evidence.

International condemnation

World leaders were quick to condemn the attacks.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a statement that her thoughts were with victims and their families and that Germany “stood firmly and resolutely at Great Britain’s side against every form of terrorism.”

US President Donald Trump offered US assistance to Britain but also used the incident as an opportunity to call for his ban on travelers to the US from several Muslim countries – which he sees as a security measure – to go into force.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Twitter that “France is standing more than ever side by side with the UK.”   France itself is still under a state of emergency after a string of Islamic extremist attacks.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan called on British citizens not to be cowed by the attacks and to vote on Thursday, as “one of the things these terrorists hate is voting; they hate democracy.”

London attack: 12 arrested in Barking after van and knife attack

June 4, 2017

BBC News

Twelve people have been arrested after the London terror attack which left seven people dead and 48 injured.

The arrests in Barking, east London, followed a raid at a flat belonging to one of th

A van hit pedestrians on London Bridge at 21:58 BST on Saturday. Three men then got out and stabbed people in nearby Borough Market.

The attackers were shot dead by eight officers who fired 50 bullets. A member of the public was accidentally shot.

The member of the public remains in hospital in a non-critical condition, Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said.

“The situation these officers were confronted with was critical, a matter of life and death – three armed men wearing what appeared to be suicide belts,” he said.

“They had already attacked and killed members of the public and had to be stopped immediately.”

The suspected suicide vests were later found to be hoaxes.

Thirty-six people are in hospital with a “range of injuries”, he said, and 21 are in a critical condition.

Elizabeth O’Neill, mother of Daniel O’Neill, who was stabbed, told the BBC that the 23-year-old has a seven-inch scar from the knife attack.

“He had just stepped outside the bar for a second and a man ran up to him and said ‘this is for my family, this is for Islam’ and put a knife in him,” Ms O’Neill said.

“I’m still in shock. I can’t quite believe it’s happened.”

Controlled explosions were carried out at the flat in Barking during the raids on Sunday morning.

According to neighbours, the dead attacker lived there for about three years and was married with two children.

It is the third terror attack in the UK in three months, following the car and knife attack in Westminster in March, in which five people were killed, and the Manchester bombing less than two weeks ago, in which 22 people were killed.

Most political parties have suspended national general election campaigning, but the prime minister said full campaigning would resume on Monday.

The general election will go ahead as planned on Thursday.

Condemning the attack, Theresa May said it was “time to say enough is enough”.

Eyewitnesses described a van travelling at high speed along London Bridge, hitting pedestrians, before crashing close to the Barrowboy and Banker pub.

The white Renault van used was recently hired by one of the attackers, Mr Rowley said.

Three men then got out wearing fake bomb vests and began attacking people in the nearby market – an area known for its bars and restaurants.

Four police officers who tried to stop the attack were among those injured, two of them seriously.

One of them was an off-duty officer and amateur rugby player who tackled one of the terrorists, suffering stab wounds.

Another, a British Transport Police officer who joined the force less than two years ago, took on the attackers armed with only his baton.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick praised their “extraordinary bravery”.

The three suspects were shot dead within eight minutes of the first 999 call being received.

Among the main developments:

• Prime Minister Theresa May has made a private visit to King’s College Hospital in south London to visit some of the injured
• There will be a minute’s silence on Tuesday at 11:00 BST in remembrance of those who lost their lives and all others affected by the attacks
• A Canadian national was among those killed, the country’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said
• Two Australian citizens “have been directly impacted” says the country’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull
• Four French citizens have been injured, one seriously, according to foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian
• The Met Police has set up a casualty bureau on 0800 096 1233 and 020 7158 0197 for people concerned about friends or relatives

BBC reporter Holly Jones, who was on the bridge, said the van was “probably travelling at about 50 miles an hour” and hit “five or six people”.

According to another witness, Eric, the men inside jumped out once the van crashed and “ran towards the people that they nearly ran over”.

“[Then] they literally just started kicking them, punching them, they took out knives… it was a rampage really,” he said.

One man, Gerard, told the BBC he saw a woman being stabbed “10 or 15 times” by men shouting “This is for Allah”.

Steven Gibbs, who was drinking in a pub metres from the scene, told the BBC: “A black cab drove past and the driver shouted, ‘Terrorist attack, run!’

“I stood up to take a look and then all of a sudden there were gunshots. Lots of people were screaming.”

#SofaforLondon

Hundreds of people were left stranded after being unable to return to their homes and hotels.

As with the Manchester attack, there were stories of Londoners coming to each other’s aide, offering free taxi rides, free accommodation or just the opportunity to call friends and family – many using the hashtag on social media #sofaforLondon.

Speaking in Downing Street after a meeting of the government’s emergency Cobra committee, the prime minister said the country “cannot and must not pretend that things can continue as they are”.

“We believe we are experiencing a new trend in the threat we face as terrorism breeds terrorism,” she said.

Mrs May said the counter-terrorism strategy would be reviewed and the UK would work with other countries to prevent the internet being a “safe space” for terrorists.

She said there was “too much tolerance of extremism in our country” and while it would involve “some difficult and embarrassing conversations”, that must change.

The country’s terror level remains at severe – meaning an attack is highly likely – but has not been raised to critical as it was after the Manchester Arena bombing.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd said: “We’re staying at severe because we think they have got all the main perpetrators.”

Inspired by IS: By Frank Gardner, BBC security correspondent

All through the night, supporters of so-called Islamic State celebrated the London attack, even before any claim was made by IS.

There was never much doubt either in their minds, or in those of British counter-terorism officials, that this was a jihadist attack inspired by IS.

It follows a widely-circulated propaganda message put out by the group on social media urging its followers to attack civilians in the West using trucks, knives or guns.

The message makes reference to the current Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Last year, attacks intensified during this month with deaths resulting in Istanbul, Dhaka and Baghdad.

Some analysts see this as a last desperate bid by IS to its supporters, following multiple setbacks in the Middle East where its self-proclaimed caliphate is shrinking fast.

But the ideology of IS is likely to survive those defeats – and will continue to fuel terrorist attacks around the world.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the capital remained the “safest global city” and would not be cowed by terrorism.

Harun Khan, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said Muslims everywhere were “outraged and disgusted at these cowards who once again have destroyed the lives of our fellow Britons”.

He added: “That this should happen in this month of Ramadan, when many Muslims were praying and fasting only goes to show that these people respect neither life nor faith.”

With three attacks in three months, terrorism against soft targets is beginning to feel, to some people, like the new normal.

The brutal reality is that this kind of threat is absolutely typical of what jihadists sought to achieve in all their attacks across Europe.

Since 2013 security services in the UK have foiled 18 plots. A large proportion of those have involved suspects who set out to commit acts of violence similar to the attack on Westminster Bridge and London Bridge.

Plans to use bombs, such as at Manchester Arena, are rarer because plotters need to have the technical skills for such an appalling attack – but attacking people with cars and knives is far easier and has long been encouraged by so-called Islamic State and other jihadists.

The aim of the three attackers last night is abundantly clear – not only did they want to kill, but they wanted to lose their own lives.

They would’ve known full well that attacking people in the street would draw armed police in their direction and the fake bomb belts they were wearing would, in their own warped minds, hasten their demise.

The police are asking anyone with photographs or videos of the incident to upload them here.

The area around the attack scene remains cordoned off, with London Bridge closed. Neighbouring Southwark Bridge has now reopened.

Many other roads, including Borough High Street and Lower Thames Street, are also closed, and trains are not stopping at London Bridge rail station or Tube station.

Saudi Arabia Lavishes Conservative U.K. Officials With Gifts, Travel, And Plum Consultancies

June 4 2017

by Lee Fang

The Intercept

New figures released by British Parliament show that, at a time when U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s ties to Saudi Arabia have become an election issue, conservative government officials and members of Parliament were lavished with money by the oil-rich Saudi government with gifts, travel expenses, and consulting fees.

Tory lawmakers received the cash as the U.K. backs Saudi Arabia’s brutal war against Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has made the U.K.’s uneasy alliance with the Saudis an election issue, with voters going to the polls on June 8. The Tories’ ties to Saudi Arabia, Labour leaders charge, have resulted in record weapons sales — conservative governments have licensed £3.3 billion ($4.2 billion) in arms sales to the Saudi military since the onset of the Yemen campaign — and a reluctance to criticize human rights abuses.

While Tory politicians have defended the arms sales to Saudis as a move to shore up Britain’s allies in the region, Tory members of Parliament have collected £99,396 ($128,035) in gifts, travel expenses, and consulting fees from the government of Saudi Arabia since the Yemen war began.

The kingdom’s financial ties to Tory parliamentarians are detailed in the register of financial interests, a disclosure published by Parliament.

Some of the the Saudi kingdom’s largesse came in the form of gifts. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, who has come under fire for defending a mass execution in Saudi Arabia that included a nonviolent government critic, accepted a watch from the Saudi ambassador worth £1,950 ($2,514). Tory MP Charlotte Leslie, who has presided over parliamentary debate regarding foreign policy in the Middle East, received a food basket from the Saudi Embassy with an estimated value of £500 ($644).

The Saudi Arabian government has also picked up the tab for four expense-paid junkets taken by Tory lawmakers to visit the kingdom since the Yemen war began. The costs for accommodation, travel, and meals for the lawmakers range from £2,888 ($3,724) to £6,722 ($8,668). At least 18 conservative lawmakers have participated in the trips, according to the register of financial interests.

Tory Rehman Chishti, one of the participants in a Saudi junket last year, was also paid £2,000 ($2,579) per month as an adviser to the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, a state-backed think tank in Saudi Arabia. The arrangement began in February 2016.

The gift-giving appears to be part of an influence effort on both sides of the Atlantic. As the Intercept has reported, the Saudi Arabian government has rapidly expanded its lobbying presence in Washington, D.C., hiring consultants and public relations experts with close ties to President Donald Trump. Since 2015, the number of registered agents working for the Saudi Kingdom grew from 25 to 145 individuals.

The arms trade is one of several issues confronting Saudi Arabian officials. This week, The Guardian revealed that Prime Minister Theresa May’s conservative government has signaled that it will suppress a report on foreign funding for extremist groups, which is believed to document Saudi ties to Islamic fundamentalists.

China ‘fully committed’ to stopping North Korean missile program

June 2, 2017

by Robin Emmott and Philip Blenkinsop

Reuters

China, North Korea’s only significant diplomatic ally, is opposed to Pyongyang’s missile launches and will support any new United Nations sanctions against the country, China’s Premier Li Keqiang said on Friday.

“We are firmly committed to the denuclearisaton of the peninsular and opposed to nuclear tests and missile launches by North Korea,” he told a news conference following a meeting with European Union leaders.

“China has always vigorously implemented (U.N.) Security Council resolutions. Sanctions lists issued by the Security Council have been strictly complied with by China. Should the Security Council ask for new actions, we will act accordingly.”

The United Nations Security Council is considering a U.S. and Chinese proposal to blacklist more North Korean individuals and entities after the country’s repeated ballistic missile launches, diplomats said on Thursday.

When it comes to a real estate contract, be sure you understand what you’re signing

June 2, 2017

by Benny L. Kass

The Washington Post

The contract I just signed to purchase a house contained the following language: “If the buyer defaults, the earnest money will be forfeited to the seller. This is to be considered liquidated damages and not as a penalty.” Can you please explain what this means? — Beth

Shame on you, Beth, for signing a contract without fully understanding what it means. It could have required that your car and your current pension plans be given to the seller if you did not go to closing. Just kidding, but stranger things have happened when people sign something they don’t understand.

In your case, should you not be able to finalize the deal, you may have to forfeit or lose the earnest money you posted when you initially signed the sales contract. But the law is clear that if the amount you are forfeiting is not consistent with what the seller may have lost because you did not go to closing — but instead is really a penalty — the law will not allow you to lose your deposit.

So lawyers put in the language you question to protect the sellers.

[Low inventory and rising prices are forcing many home buyers to become less picky]

However, that does not mean you will lose your deposit, if you can prove that the money is disproportionate to the actual loss that your seller may face.

Oversimplified, the damages will be accepted as “liquidated” if the seller cannot really anticipate what the losses will be should you default. Accordingly, it is typical for that language to appear in real estate contracts.

So, for my buyer readers, try to post as little of a deposit as possible; and for my seller clients, try to get as large a deposit as possible.

Hopefully, you will eventually split the difference. And of course, this is completely academic if the buyer closes the deal.

My husband and I plan to buy an investment property and want to make sure our other assets are protected. What is the best way for us to take title? — Emily

I cannot provide specific legal advice. However, in general, there are three ways in which title can be held.

First, you can take title individually, in the names of you and your husband. That provides the least protection. Even if you have more than adequate insurance — including umbrella coverage — there is always the possibility that your other assets can be grabbed. For example, a court judgment exceeds the insurance limits; or the insurance carrier declines coverage for reasons spelled out in the insurance policy.

Next, you can take title in the name of a corporation. Talk with your financial advisers about this approach; from my experience, there is too much paper work and corporate filings required to make this a favorable option.

[The upside and downside of becoming a landlord in retirement]

Next, you can take title in the name of a limited liability company (LLC). Although I don’t normally make recommendations, this is what I generally suggest to my investor clients. The LLC provides the same protection as if it were a corporation but with less complications and less paperwork. Oversimplified, it is called a “pass through” entity; the LLC files an information tax return but the profits or losses are “passed through” and you include those numbers on your individual tax returns.

Every project is different; review these alternative but discuss with your financial and legal advisers. The recent tax proposals submitted to Congress by President Trump seem to favor pass-through legal entities, and as we all know, Congress has the final say.

I am a teacher, and I live in a co-op. I paid $200,000 cash for my apartment in 2003. In 2008, I took out an HELOC loan on my equity. I now owe $75, 000 on it. When I signed the papers, I was told that if I did not sell my home before principal and interest payment kick in I would just need to apply for refinancing. I did that a few months ago while rates were low and everything was set within a week. My FICO score hovers at 800. At the last minute, I was called by the bank to say “sorry, we no longer finance co-ops as we did when you got yours.”

I cannot find an instance where my co-op had a problem with a bank. In checking around, I have not been able to find any local banks who finance co-ops, especially for such a low amount.

Any suggestions? I do not want to sell my house and renting is astronomical.  — Kim

Assuming your cooperative apartment did not dramatically go down in value since you bought it some 14 years ago, you clearly have considerable equity. I know that not every lender is prepared — or even understands — how cooperative funding works, but clearly there are lenders out there that can assist.

First, is there a teacher’s credit union near you? From my experience, many credit unions will make you a loan based primarily on your credit standing. They need to take the ownership certificate (often called “shareloan certificate”) as security, but that is something that any local real estate attorney can easily assist in doing.

Another source of lending is the National Cooperative Bank ( www.ncb.coop ). Although its main office is in Arlington, Va., it can make loans all over the United States.

Examples of modern political assassinations, foreign and domestic

June 4, 2017

by Harry von Johnston, PhD

1. Salvador Allende

When Salvador Allende, a committed Marxist, came within three percent of winning the Chilean presidency in 1958, the United States decided that the next election, in 1964, could not be left in the hands of providence, or democracy.

Washington took it all very gravely. At the outset of the Kennedy administration in 1961, an electoral committee was established, composed of top-level officials from the State Department, the CIA and the White House. In Santiago, a parallel committee of embassy and CIA people was set up.

“U.S. government intervention in Chile in 1964 was blatant and almost obscene,” said one intelligence officer strategically placed at the time. “We were shipping people off right and left, mainly State Dept. but also CIA, with all sorts of covers.” All in all, as many as 100 American operatives were dedicated to the operation.

They began laying the groundwork for the election years ahead, a Senate investigating committee has disclosed, “by establishing operational relationships with key political parties and by creating propaganda and organizational mechanisms capable of influencing key sectors of the population.” Projects were undertaken “to help train and organize ‘anti-communists”‘ among peasants, slum dwellers, organized labor, students, the media, etc..

After channeling funds to several non-leftist parties, the electoral team eventually settled on a man of the center, Eduardo Frei, the candidate of the Christian Democratic Party, as the one most likely to block Allende’s rise to power. The CIA underwrote more than half the party’s total campaign costs, one of the reasons that the Agency’s overall electoral operation reduced the U.S. Treasury by an estimated $20 million-much more per voter than that spent by the Johnson and Goldwater campaigns combined in the same Year in the United States. The bulk of the expenditures went toward propaganda.

The operation worked. It worked beyond expectations. Frei received 56 percent of the vote to Allende’s 39 percent. The CIA regarded “the anti-communist scare campaign as the most effective activity undertaken”, noted the Senate committee. This was the tactic directed toward Chilean women in particular. As things turned out, Allende won the men’s vote by 67,000 over Frei (in Chile men and women vote separately), but amongst the women Frei came out ahead by 469,000… testimony, once again, to the remarkable ease with which the minds of the masses of people can be manipulated, in any and all societies.

What was there about Salvador Allende that warranted all this feverish activity? What threat did he represent, this man against whom the great technical and economic resources of the world’s most powerful nation were brought to bear? Allende was a man whose political program, as described by the Senate committee report, was to “redistribute income [two percent of the population received 46 percent of the income] and reshape the Chilean economy, beginning with the nationalization of major industries, especially the copper companies; greatly expanded agrarian reform; and expanded relations with socialist and communist countries.”

A man committed to such a program could be expected by American policy makers to lead his country along a path independent of the priorities of US foreign policy and the multinationals. (As his later term as president confirmed, he was independent of any other country as well.)

“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.”

Thus spoke Henry Kissinger, principal adviser to the President of the United States on matters of national security. The date was 27 June 1970, a meeting of the National Security Council’s 40 Committee, and the people Kissinger suspected of Imminent Irresponsibility were Chileans whom he feared might finally elect Salvador Allende as their president.

The United States did not stand by idly. At this meeting approval was given to a $300,000 increase in the anti-Allende “spoiling” operation which was already underway. The CIA trained its disinformation heavy artillery on the Chilean electorate, firing shells marked: “An Allende victory means violence and Stalinist repression.” Black propaganda was employed to undermine Allende’s coalition and support by sowing dissent between the Communist Party and the Socialist Party, the main members of the coalition, and between the Communist Party and the [communist dominated]CUTCh.

Nevertheless, on 4 September Allende won a plurality of the votes. On 24 October, the Chilean Congress would meet to choose between him and the runner-up, Jorge Alessandri of the Conservative National Party. By tradition, Allende was certain to become president.

The United States had seven weeks to prevent him from taking office. On 15 September, President Nixon met with Kissinger, CIA Director Richard Helms, and Attorney General John Mitchell. Helms’ handwritten notes of the meeting have become famous: ” One in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile! … not concerned with risks involved … $10,000,000 available, more if necessary … make the economy scream.

Funds were authorized by the 40 Committee to bribe Chilean congressmen to vote for Alessandri, but this was soon abandoned as infusible, and under intense pressure from Richard Nixon, American efforts were concentrated on inducing the Chilean military to stage a coup and then cancel the congressional vote altogether.’ At the same time, Nixon and Kissinger made it clear to the CIA that an assassination of Allende would not be unwelcome. One White House options-paper discussed various ways this could be carried out.

Meanwhile, the Agency was in active consultation with several Chilean military officers who were receptive to the suggestion of a coup. (The difficulty in finding such officers was described by the CIA as a problem in overcoming “the apolitical, constitutional-oriented inertia of the Chilean military.) They were assured that the United States would give them full support short of direct military involvement. The immediate obstacle faced by the officers was the determined opposition of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Rene Schneider, who insisted that the constitutional process be followed. He would have to be “removed”.

In the early morn of 22 October the CIA passed “sterilized” machine guns and ammunition to some of the conspirators. (Earlier they had passed tear gas.) That same day Schneider was mortally wounded in an attempted kidnap (or “kidnap”) on his way to work. The CIA station in Santiago cabled its headquarters that the general had been shot with the same kind of weapons it had delivered to the military plotters, although the Agency later claimed to the Senate that the actual assassins were not the same ones it had passed the weapons to.

The assassination did not avail the conspirators’ purpose. It only served to rally the army around the flag of constitutionalism; and time was running out. Two days later, Salvador Allende was confirmed by the Chilean Congress. On 3 November he took office as president.

The stage was set for a clash of two experiments. One was Allende’s “socialist” experiment aimed at lifting Chile from the mire of underdevelopment and dependency and the poor from deprivation. The other was, as CIA Director William Colby later put it, a “prototype or laboratory experiment to test the techniques of heavy financial investment in an effort to discredit and bring down a government.”

Although there were few individual features of this experiment which were unique for the CIA, in sum total it was perhaps the most multifarious intervention ever undertaken by the United States. In the process it brought a new word into the language: destabilizatlon.

“Not a nut or bolt [will] be allowed to reach Chile under Allende”, warned American Ambassador Edward Korry before the confirmation. The Chilean economy, so extraordinarily dependent upon the United States, was the country’s soft underbelly, easy to pound. Over the next three years, new US government assistance programs for Chile plummeted almost to the vanishing point, similarly with loans from the US Export-Import Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, in which the United States held what amounted to a veto; and the World Bank made no new loans at all to Chile during 1971-73. US government financial assistance or guarantees to American private investment in Chile were cut back sharply and American businesses were given the word to tighten the economic noose.

What this boycott translated into were things like the many buses and taxis out of commission in Chile due to a lack of replacement parts; and similar difficulties in the copper, steel, electricity and petroleum industries. American suppliers refused to sell needed parts despite Chile’s offer to pay cash in advance.

Multinational ITT, which didn’t need to be told what to do, stated in a 1970 memorandum: “A more realistic hope among those who want to block Allende is that a swiftly deteriorating economy will touch off a wave of violence leading to a military coup.”

In the midst of the near disappearance of economic aid, and contrary to its warning, the United States increased its military assistance to Chile during 1972 and 1973 as well as training Chilean military personnel in the United States and Panama. The Allende government, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, was reluctant to refuse this “assistance” for fear of antagonizing its military leaders.

Perhaps nothing produced more discontent in the population than the shortages, the little daily annoyances when one couldn’t get a favorite food, or flour or cooking oil, or toilet paper, bed sheets or soap, or the one part needed to make the TV set or the car run; or, worst of all, when a nicotine addict couldn’t get a cigarette. Some of the scarcity resulted from Chile being a society in transition: various changeovers to state ownership, experiments in workers’ control, etc. But this was minor compared to the effect of the aid squeeze and the practices of the omnipresent American corporations. Equally telling were the extended strikes in Chile, which relied heavily on CIA financial support for their prolongation.

In October 1972, for example, an association of private truck owners instituted a work-stoppage aimed at disrupting the flow of food and other important commodities, including in their embargo even newspapers which supported the government (subtlety was not the order of the day in this ultra-polarized country). On the heels of this came store closures, countless petit-bourgeois doing their bit to turn the screws of public inconvenience- and when they were open, many held back on certain goods, like cigarettes, to sell them on the black market to those who could afford the higher prices. Then most private bus companies stopped running, on top of this, various professional and white-collar workers, largely unsympathetic to the government, walked out, with or without CIA help.

Much of this campaign was aimed at wearing down the patience of the public, convincing them that “socialism can’t work in Chile”. Yet there had been worse shortages for most of the people before the Allende government-shortages of food, housing, health care, and education, for example. At least half the population had suffered from malnutrition. Allende, who was a medical doctor, explained his free milk program by pointing out that “Today in Chile there are over 600,000 children mentally retarded because they were not adequately nourished during the first eight months of their lives, because they did not receive the necessary proteins.”

Financial aid was not the CIA’s only input into the strike scene. More than 100 members of Chllean professional associations and employers’ guilds were graduates of the school run by the American Institute for Free Labor Development in Front Royal, Virginia-“The Little Anti-Red Schoolhouse”. AIFLD, the ClA’s principal Latin America labor organization, also assisted in the formation of a new professional association in May 1971: the Confederation of Chilean Professionals. The labor specialists of AIFLD had more than a decade’s experience in the art of fomenting economic turmoil (or keeping workers quiescent when the occasion called for it).

CIA propaganda merchants had a field day with the disorder and the shortages, exacerbating both by instigating panic buying. All the techniques, the whole of the media saturation, the handy organizations created for each and every purpose, so efficiently employed in 1964 and 1970, were facilitated by the virtually unlimited license granted the press: headlines and stories which spread rumors about everything from nationalizations to bad meat and undrinkable water … “Economic Chaos! Chile on Brink of Doom!” in the largest type one could ever expect to see in a newspaper … raising the specter of civil war, when not actually calling for lt., literally … alarmist stories which anywhere else in the world would have been branded seditious … the worst of London’s daily tabloids or the National Enquirer of the United States appear as staid as a journal of dentistry by comparison.

The government contingency plans were presumably obtained by the Agency through its infiltration of the various parties which made up Allende’s Unidad Popular (UP) coalition. CIA agents in the upper echelons of Allende’s own Socialist Party were “paid to make mistakes in their jobs” In Washington, burglary was the Agency’s tactic of choice for obtaining documents. Papers were taken from the homes of several employees of the Chilean Embassy; and the embassy itself, which had been bugged for some time, was burgled in May 1972 by some of the same men who the next month staged the Watergate break-in.

In March 1973, the UP won about 44 percent of the vote in congressional elections compared to some 36 percent in 1970. It was said to be the largest increase an incumbent party had ever received in Chile after being in power more than two years. The opposition parties had publicly expressed their optimism about capturing two-thirds of the congressional seats and thus being able to impeach Allende. Now they faced three more years under him, with the prospect of being unable, despite their best and most underhanded efforts, to prevent his popularity from increasing even further.

During the spring and summer the destabilization process escalated. There was a whole series of demonstrations and strikes, with an even longer one by the truckers. Time magazine reported: “While most of the country survived on short rations, the truckers seemed unusually well equipped for a lengthy holdout.” A reporter asked a group of truckers who were camping and dining on “a lavish communal meal of steak, vegetables, wine and empanadas” where the money for it came from. “From the CIA,” they answered laughing.

There was as well daily sabotage and violence, including assassination. In June, an abortive attack upon the Presidential Palace was carried out by the military and Patria y Liberatad.

In September the military prevailed. “It is clear,” said the Senate investigating committee, “the CIA received intelligence reports on the coup planning of the group which carried out the successful September 11 coup throughout the months of July, August, and September 1973.”

The American role on that fateful day was one of substance and shadow. The coup began in the Pacific coast port of Valparaiso with the dispatch of Chilean naval troops to Santiago, while US Navy ships were present offshore, ostensibly to participate in joint maneuvers with the Chilean Navy. The American ships stayed outside of Chilean waters but renamed on the alert. A US WB-575 plane-an airborne communications control system-piloted by US Air Force officers, cruised in the Chilean sky. At the same time, American observation and fighter planes were landing at the US air base in Mendoza, Argentina, not far from the Chilean border.

Washington knows no heresy in the Third World but independence. In the case of Salvador Allende independence came clothed in an especially provocative costume-a Marxist constitutionally elected who continued to honor the constitution. This would not do. It shook the very foundation stones upon which the anti-communist tower is built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that “communists” can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing an brainwashing the population. There could be only one thing worse than a Marxist in power-an elected Marxist in power.

 

2. William Colby

William E. Colby January 1920-28 April 1996), intelligence officer, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, the son of Elbridge Colby, an army officer and educator, and Margaret Mary Egan Colby, an ardent Catholic who guided her son in the path of that religion. William Colby was also influenced by his father’s liberal views and by the family’s peripatetic movements to locations as diverse as China and Vermont, where he studied at Burlington High School. He attended Princeton University, where he felt himself to be an outsider, educated as he had been at public schools and presenting, at five feet, eight inches, topped by eyeglasses, the appearance of a young man unlikely to win acceptance through athletic prowess. He graduated with an A.B. in 1940.

In 1941 Colby joined the U.S. Army and in 1943 the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS trained him for special missions, and he served behind enemy lines in France and Norway. In an effort to prevent German troops from being redeployed through Norway to be used against advancing Allied forces in Germany, he led the raid to destroy the Tangen railroad bridge–a daring and spectacular success, though the bridge was soon rebuilt.

In 1945 Colby married Barbara Heinzen; they had four children. He obtained a law degree from Columbia University in 1947, the same year that Congress approved the formation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). After working for a short time in a law firm, Colby in 1949 joined the new agency. He served in Stockholm (1951-1953) and then in Rome (1953-1958), where he helped to arrange the secret subsidization of political parties to prevent communist electoral victories. Most of the recipients were centrist or slightly left of center, a political alignment that proved effective in combating communism but that gave Colby the reputation of having endorsed the “opening to the Left.”

Colby was CIA station chief in Saigon from 1959 to 1962 and headed the agency’s Far East division from 1962 to 1967. Then from 1968 to 1971 he directed the Phoenix program in South Vietnam, which sought to identify and eliminate communist activists (the Viet Cong) at the village level. Colby felt that the program was superior to the use of military force, which he believed was too blunt an instrument and alienated the Vietnamese. Nevertheless, estimates of the number killed under Phoenix range as high as 60,000 people. (Colby put the number at 20,587.) Phoenix has also been defended on relativist grounds–the Viet Cong assassinated nearly 40,000 of their enemies in the period from 1957 to 1972. But none of these arguments could prevent the program from becoming a focal point of the antiwar movement. Although Colby maintained that the deaths characteristically arose in combat and not as a result of cold-blooded murder, critics of Phoenix labeled it an assassination program and a crime against humanity.

After Phoenix, Colby rose within the CIA’s Washington bureaucracy, and on 4 September 1973 President Richard Nixon appointed him director of the agency. During his tenure the press and Congress turned on the CIA, accusing it of crimes and misdemeanors ranging from assassination plots to espionage against Americans at home. When in 1975 both houses of Congress set up inquiries into the activities of the intelligence community, Colby offered significant if limited cooperation. For example, he handed over to the Senate committee chaired by Idaho Democrat Frank Church details of the CIA’s recent operations against the left-leaning government in Chile. The agency’s attempts to sabotage the Chilean economy had contributed to the downfall of South America’s oldest democracy and to the installation of a vicious dictatorship. Colby’s candor on such matters shocked colleagues in the CIA, some of whom never forgave him for opening up the activities of what was, after all, a secret agency. His only daughter, Catherine, had died after a painful illness in April 1973, and colleagues speculated that the tragedy unlocked what some regarded as Colby’s already overdeveloped Christian conscience. Though he strenuously denied that his daughter had opposed Phoenix, perhaps Colby did want to atone for his part in the program. It is also clear that he disapproved of certain of the CIA’s activities that he called “deplorable” and “wrong” and wanted them stopped. In any case, he realized that a display of flexibility in his dealings with Congress would increase the agency’s chances of survival.

With CIA morale at a low ebb, Colby’s enemies began to line up. On the Left, a coalition of muckraking journalists, Vietnam War critics, and ambitious legislators refused to give him credit for attempting to open up the agency. On the Right, conservatives such as Barry Goldwater disliked Colby’s liberalism and concessions to the Church committee. Colby had become politically vulnerable, and on 30 January 1976 President Gerald Ford replaced him with George H. W. Bush. Colby had introduced some significant reforms, such as the prohibition of assassination as an instrument of national policy and the practice of informing select members of Congress about the CIA’s activities, but his intelligence career was over.

Colby’s life continued to be eventful. In 1978 he published his memoir, Honorable Men, in which he defended himself against the Left over Phoenix and against the Right over his decision to clear the air while director of the CIA. In 1982, following the enactment of stringent secrecy legislation in the administration of President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. government began proceedings against Colby for making unauthorized disclosures, in the French-language edition of his memoir, about American efforts to retrieve secret codes from a sunken Soviet submarine. His agreement to pay a $10,000 fine in an out-of-court settlement barely covered the cracks between Colby and his enemies on the Right.

In 1984 Colby divorced his first wife and married a former diplomat, Sally Shelton. He had resumed legal practice and lectured widely, taking up a new cause–the campaign for a freeze on nuclear arms.

Late in the evening of April 27 1996, Colby is stated to have left his vacation home in Rock Point, Maryland, during a storm and, without a life jacket, got into a canoe and went out onto the choppy waters..

His body was found after an eight-day search that included helicopters, divers, dogs and sonar equipment. Colby was found lying facedown in a marshy riverbank. The life jacket his friends said he usually wore was missing. The body was found 20 yards from the canoe, after the area had been thoroughly searched multiple times.

The subsequent inquest conveniently found that he died from “drowning and hypothermia” after collapsing from a heart attack, or perhaps a stroke, and falling out of his canoe.