TBR News November 11, 2018
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8
Washington, D.C. November 11, 2018:” We will be out of the office until November 12. Ed”
The Table of Contents
- Donald Trump has said 2291 false things as U.S. president: No. 77
- The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
- From Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump: An American century
- The Huge Mortgage Fraud
Donald Trump has said 2291 false things as U.S. president: No. 77
August 8, 2018
by Daniel Dale, Washington Bureau Chief
The Toronto Star, Canada
The Star is keeping track of every false claim U.S. President Donald Trump has made since his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. Why? Historians say there has never been such a constant liar in the Oval Office. We think dishonesty should be challenged. We think inaccurate information should be corrected
If Trump is a serial liar, why call this a list of “false claims,” not lies? You can read our detailed explanation here. The short answer is that we can’t be sure that each and every one was intentional. In some cases, he may have been confused or ignorant. What we know, objectively, is that he was not teling the truth.
Last updated: Aug 8, 2018
- Jun 7, 2018
“Please tell Prime Minister Trudeau and President Macron that they are charging the U.S. massive tariffs and create non-monetary barriers. The EU trade surplus with the U.S. is $151 Billion…”
Source: Twitter
in fact: The $151 billion figure counts only trade in goods and ignores trade in services, in which the U.S. has a significant surplus. Including all kinds of trade, the overall U.S. trade balance with the European Union in 2017 was a deficit of $102 billion, according to U.S. government statistics.
Trump has repeated this claim 29 times
“…Canada keeps our farmers and others out. Look forward to seeing them tomorrow.”
Source: Twitter
in fact: Canada does have some protectionism in its agricultural market; its supply management system for dairy and poultry is a prime example. The sweeping claim that Canada keeps out U.S. farmers, though, is patently false. According to a chart released three months prior by Trump’s Department of Agriculture, Canada took more U.S. agricultural exports in 2017, $20.5 billion, than any other country.
Trump has repeated this claim 2 times
“The Obama Administration is now accused of trying to give Iran secret access to the financial system of the United States. This is totally illegal.”
Source: Twitter
in fact: There is no credible allegation that the Obama administration’s behaviour was “illegal.” Trump was referring to the revelation, in a report by Senate Republicans, that the Obama administration had secretly granted a special license to allow Iran to access U.S. banks to convert money that was stuck in Omani currency into U.S. dollars. The report appeared to show that Obama officials misled Congress when they said Iran would not have access to the banking system, but it did not claim that issuing the license was against the law.
- Jun 8, 2018
“If you look at the young sailor — Saucier — I mean he went to jail over not classified, a much lower level. And it’s very unfair that he goes to jail, and that Comey’s allowed to do it all over. It’s very unfair.”
Source: Exchange with media before departure for G7
in fact: Navy sailor Kristian Saucier, whom Trump pardoned, was convicted of illegally retaining national defense information after he took and kept cellphone photos of restricted areas of a submarine. The information was classified as “confidential.” That is the lowest level of classification, but it is still classification.
“Well, the Democrats — (family separation at the border) is a Democrat bill. The Democrats can end that very quickly. All they have to do is sit down with us and negotiate a real bill allows us to keep criminals out of this country. It’s very easy.” And: “Because I don’t like the children being separated from the parents. I don’t like it. I hate it.” And: “But that’s a Democrat bill that we’re enforcing. We can change it in one day. All they have to do is come and see us.”
Source: Exchange with media before departure for G7
in fact: There is no “Democrat bill” that requires Trump to separate children and parents at the border. This is simply a Trump policy.
Trump has repeated this claim 7 times
“It’s a witch hunt. No collusion, no obstruction, no nothing. Now, the Democrats have had massive collusion, massive obstruction, and they should be investigated.”
Source: Exchange with media before departure for G7
in fact: The word “collusion” — in common language, a “secret agreement or co-operation especially for an illegal or deceitful purpose” — simply does not apply to the Russia-related activities of the Democrats. This accusation is based on the fact that the British ex-spy who produced a research dossier on the Trump campaign’s alleged links to Russia, which was funded in part by Clinton’s campaign, used Russian sources in compiling his information. This does not come close to meeting the definition of “collusion.”
Trump has repeated this claim 22 times
“We have massive trade deficits with almost every country.”
Source: Exchange with media before departure for G7
in fact: The U.S. does not have a trade deficit with “almost every country,” let alone a “massive” deficit. While the U.S. has a substantial overall trade deficit — $566 billion in 2017 — it has surpluses with more than half of its trading partners, according to data from the U.S. government’s own International Trade Commission: in 2017, the U.S. had surpluses with Hong Kong, Brazil, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia, Chile, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Kuwait and dozens more countries and territories. And that’s only counting trade in merchandise; when you count trade in services too, the U.S. also has a surplus with Canada. And while Trump is free to claim his actions will eventually reduce deficits, they have not done so yet: the overall 2017 deficit was the largest for any year since 2008.
Trump has repeated this claim 21 times
- Jun 9, 2018
“There was no reason this should happen. There’s no reason that we should have big trade deficits with virtually every country in the world.”
Source: Press conference upon G7 departure
in fact: The U.S. does not have a trade deficit with “virtually every country in the world.” While the U.S. has a substantial overall trade deficit — $566 billion in 2017 — it has surpluses with more than half of its trading partners, according to data from the U.S. government’s own International Trade Commission: in 2017, the U.S. had surpluses with Hong Kong, Brazil, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia, Chile, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Kuwait and dozens more countries and territories. And that’s only counting trade in merchandise; when you count trade in services too, the U.S. also has a surplus with Canada. And while Trump is free to claim his actions will eventually reduce deficits, they have not done so yet: the overall 2017 deficit was the largest for any year since 2008.
Trump has repeated this claim 21 times
“And as an example, with one country we have $375 billion in trade deficits. We can’t lose. You could make the case that they lost years ago. But when you’re down $375 billion, you can’t lose. And we have to bring them up.”
Source: Press conference upon G7 departure
in fact: Trump was referring to China. The net U.S. trade deficit with China was $337 billion in 2017. It was only $375 billion if you exclude trade in services and only count trade in goods. Trump did not specify that he was doing so.
Trump has repeated this claim 51 times
“And I don’t blame other leaders for that. I blame our past leaders. There was no reason that this should have happened. Last year, they lost eight-hundred — we as a nation, over the years — but the latest number is $817 billion on trade. That’s ridiculous and it’s unacceptable.”
Source: Press conference upon G7 departure
in fact: The U.S. had a $566 billion trade deficit in 2017. The deficit was $810 billion if you ignore all trade in services and only count trade in goods. Trump did not specify he was doing so.
Trump has repeated this claim 30 times
“We started building the wall, as you know. $1.6 billion — and we’re going to keep that going.”
Source: Press conference upon G7 departure
in fact: Construction on Trump’s border wall has not started. When he has made this claim in the past, Trump has appeared to be referring to a project in which a 2.25-mile stretch of existing wall in California is being replaced by a taller wall. That project was proposed in 2009, and the Los Angeles Times reported that Border Patrol spokesperson Jonathan Pacheco told reporters in March: “First and foremost, this isn’t Trump’s wall. This isn’t the infrastructure that Trump is trying to bring in. … This new wall replacement has absolutely nothing to do with the prototypes that were shown over in the San Diego area.” The $1.6 billion Congress allocated to border projects in 2018 is not for the type of giant concrete wall Trump has proposed: spending on that kind of wall is expressly prohibited in the legislation, and much of the congressional allocation is for replacement and reinforcement projects rather than new construction.
Trump has repeated this claim 20 times
“We have $100 billion trade deficit with Mexico and that doesn’t include all the drugs that are pouring in because we have no wall.”
Source: Press conference upon G7 departure
in fact: The U.S. does not have a $100 billion trade deficit with Mexico. Trump was off by at least $31 billion, or at least $29 billion if you give him the benefit of the doubt. The U.S. trade deficit with Mexico was $71 billion in 2017 when counting goods alone, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Including trade in services, the net deficit was $69 billion, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis says. (The Bureau of Economic Analysis uses a different method of calculating deficits and surpluses than the Census Bureau.)
Trump has repeated this claim 34 times
- Jun 10, 2018
“…And add to that the fact that the U.S. pays close to the entire cost of NATO-protecting many of these same countries that rip us off on Trade (they pay only a fraction of the cost-and laugh!).”
Source: Twitter
in fact: “Close to the entire cost of NATO” is an exaggeration. According to NATO’s 2018 annual report, U.S. defence spending represented 72 per cent of the alliance’s total defence spending in 2017. With regard to direct contributions to NATO’s own common budget, the U.S. contributes a much smaller agreed-upon percentage: 22 per cent.
Trump has repeated this claim 14 times
“The European Union had a $151 Billion Surplus-should pay much more for Military!”
Source: Twitter
in fact: The $151 billion figure counts only trade in goods and ignores trade in services, in which the U.S. has a significant surplus. Including all kinds of trade, the overall U.S. trade balance with the European Union in 2017 was a deficit of $102 billion, according to U.S. government statistics.
Trump has repeated this claim 29 times
“Why should I, as President of the United States, allow countries to continue to make Massive Trade Surpluses, as they have for decades, while our Farmers, Workers & Taxpayers have such a big and unfair price to pay? Not fair to the PEOPLE of America! $800 Billion Trade Deficit…”
Source: Twitter
in fact: The U.S. had a $566 billion trade deficit in 2017. The deficit can only be described as $800 billion — $810 billion, to be precise — if you ignore all trade in services and only count trade in goods. Trump did not specify that he was doing so.
Trump has repeated this claim 30 times
“Fair Trade is now to be called Fool Trade if it is not Reciprocal. According to a Canada release, they make almost 100 Billion Dollars in Trade with U.S. (guess they were bragging and got caught!). Minimum is 17B. Tax Dairy from us at 270%.”
Source: Twitter
in fact: This is comprehensively inaccurate. Canada did not issue a release, or get caught “bragging,” about a $100 billion trade surplus with the U.S. Trump’s administration found this number — $98 billion — on the Statistics Canada website. Second, this number is not the official trade balance number used by either the U.S. or Canada. According to Trump’s own Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the U.S. had a $8.4 billion trade surplus with Canada in 2017. According to Canadian figures, calculated differently, Canada had a $26 billion surplus of its own. The $98 billion figure includes “re-exports,” goods imported to Canada from other countries, say a shirt from China, and then shipped on to the U.S. By using this figure, Trump is double-counting that shirt as part of the trade deficit with China and also with Canada.
Trump has repeated this claim 3 times
- Jun 12, 2018
“Germany, the European Union is a disaster for us. We lost $151 billion last year. Billion, not million. We lost $151 billion. They don’t take our product. They won’t take our agriculture.”
Source: Interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos
in fact: While U.S. farmers do face some trade barriers in selling into the European Union, it is a gross exaggeration to say they “they won’t take our agriculture.” According to the website of Trump’s own Department of Agriculture, the U.S. exported $11.6 billion in agricultural items to the European Union in 2016. That is a 55 per cent increase, the department noted, from $7.5 billion in exports in 2006. The department also noted that the E.U. is the fourth-largest agricultural export market for the U.S.
Trump has repeated this claim 13 times
“Germany, the European Union is a disaster for us. We lost $151 billion last year. Billion, not, million. We lost $151 billion.”
Source: Interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos
in fact: The $151 billion figure counts only trade in goods and ignores trade in services, in which the U.S. has a significant surplus. Including all kinds of trade, the overall U.S. trade balance with the European Union in 2017 was a deficit of $102 billion, according to U.S. government statistics.
Trump has repeated this claim 29 times
“We have been taken advantage of as a country for decades by friends and enemies both. We have been, our trade is a disaster, our trade deals. We lose $817 billion, was the last count on a yearly basis.”
Source: Interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos
in fact: The U.S. had a $566 billion trade deficit in 2017, Trump’s administration announced the month prior to this remark. The was $810 billion if you ignore all trade in services and only count trade in goods. As usual, Trump did not specify that he was doing so.
Trump has repeated this claim 30 times
“And you know the so called semi-famous picture of…Right. She (Angela Merkel) was looking at me, you know what we were doing? We were talking while we were waiting for the final copy of the document. That was, that was such an innocent picture. You know, we put out that picture. That was put out by my people. That was really a picture of me sitting this way.” And: “…I just do want to say, though, that picture was supposed to be a friendly picture. That was put out by us.”
Source: Interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos
in fact: The G7 photo Trump was referring to — in which he sat, arms crossed, as the German chancellor leaned over a table in his direction — was released by Merkel’s office, not his administration. When National Security Adviser John Bolton later tweeted out the photo himself, putting his own pro-Trump spin on it, gave the photo credit to a spokesperson for the German government.
Stephanopoulos: “Does that mean that any deal with North Korea has to be tougher than the Iran deal?” Trump: “I don’t think a deal could be softer. First of all, we’re not paying $150 billion, OK, we’re paying nothing from that standpoint other than, you will see what happens.”
Source: Interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos
in fact: Trump was again suggesting, as he had said 16 times before this, that the Iran nuclear deal involved the U.S. paying Iran $150 billion. That is not true. Experts said Iran had about $100 billion in worldwide assets at the time; after the nuclear deal unfroze Iranian assets, Iran was able to access a percentage of that $100 billion, but not all of it. PolitiFact reported: “The actual amount available to Iran is about $60 billion, estimates Garbis Iradian, chief economist at the Institute of International Finance. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew pinned it at $56 billion, while Iranian officials say $35 billion, according to Richard Nephew, an expert on economic sanctions at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.”
Trump has repeated this claim 19 times
“So Bret — I saw on your show and I’ve seen 120 days ago we were down 16 points (in the generic ballot midterm poll). Now I see Reuters has us up 2 and another one was up 6 and one it was down 3.”
Source: Interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier
in fact: Trump’s present-tense claim about the Reuters poll, “Reuters has us up 2,” was no longer true at the time he spoke. Though one of Reuters’s updates, in May, showed Republicans with a slim lead, Democrats had gone back up by 10 at this point in June.
“And I’m not blaming President Obama, I’m saying during Obama, during Bush, during Clinton — this should have happened. Clinton got played (by South Korea). I mean when you look at what happened, he gave billions of dollars and it was like just a total waste of money.”
Source: Interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier
in fact: The Washington Post reports that “billions” is an exaggeration: “Under the Clinton accord with North Korea, between 1995 and 2003 the United States spent about $400 million supplying the fuel oil to North Korea that was required under the deal. An international consortium spent about $2.5 billion to replace the North’s plutonium reactor with two light-water reactors; the project was not completed before the deal collapsed…the money mostly went to South Korean and Japanese companies, not North Korea.” The New York Times reached the same conclusion: “From 1994 to 2003, the United States contributed over $400 million in financial support to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, or K.E.D.O., the international consortium tasked with overseeing the project. Most of that money went toward fuel shipments. The amount provided during the Clinton administration was about $250 million, said Jeffrey Lewis, an analyst at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.”
Trump has repeated this claim 5 times
“But we have 32,000 soldiers in South Korea. I would like to get them home. I would like to.”
Source: Interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier
in fact: The U.S. does not have 32,000 soldiers in South Korea. According to the most recent statistics from the military’s Defense Manpower Data Center, issued in March 2018, the U.S. has 24,915 active duty personnel in South Korea, 28,187 military personnel in total.
Trump has repeated this claim 5 times
“But since we took out of that deal — we got out of that (Iran nuclear) deal, I think Iran is a much different place. I don’t think they’re looking so much to the Mediterranean and Syria and Yemen. They’re starting to pull people out of Yemen. They’re starting to pull people out of Syria.”
Source: Interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity
in fact: Experts on Syria and Yemen said they saw no evidence of such a change in Iranian behaviour as a result of Trump’s move to abandon the nuclear deal. “That claim doesn’t match the evidence on the ground,” said Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert and a resident scholar at the Arabia Foundation. Johnsen cautioned that Trump has access to classified information he has not seen, but “from the publicly available evidence, we haven’t seen anything that would suggest there’s an exodus of any Iranian trainers or any Iranian experts” or “any suggestion Iran has curtailed or otherwise halted or stopped the smuggling of ballistic missiles.” Asked about the veracity of the Yemen claim, Michael Knights, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said, “Don’t know — I see no evidence of that.” Asked about both claims, Ilan Goldenberg, a former Obama administration official and now director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, said, “I haven’t seen anything to verify this. Iran remains deeply entrenched in Syria with 50,000 to 100,000 thousand Iranian trainee Shi’a militia fighters playing a central role. In Yemen their position is much less significant but I have also not heard of any meaningful change to their posture.” Joshua Landis, a Syria expert and director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, said, “Iran has pulled some of its troops out of Syria — we believe because the war in Syria is winding down. Iran still has many advisor, experts and ‘proxy’ militias in Syria. We have no indication Iran is pulling people out because of financial distress caused by sanctions.”
“Last year we lost $500 billion with China. We can’t do that anymore.”
Source: Interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity
in fact: The U.S. has never once had a $500 billion trade deficit with China, according to U.S. government data — even if you only count goods trade and don’t count the services trade at which the U.S. excels. The deficit was $337 billion in 2017.
Trump has repeated this claim 51 times
“And he (Kim Jong Un) understands it. He understands it. So, for the thousands and thousands, I guess way over 6,000 (soldiers) that we know of in terms of the remains, they’ll be brought back.”
Source: Singapore press conference after summit with Kim Jong Un
in fact: The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States estimates that the remains of 5,300 deceased U.S. soldiers who died in North Korea are unaccounted for. (More than 7,500 soldiers ni total are unaccounted for from the war, but the rest are not believed to have been in North Korea.) In addition, it is certain that not all of the 5,300 soldiers will have their remains found. The Associated Press reported: “Trump is also glossing over the surely impossible odds of locating the remains of all Americans missing from the war, more than six decades later. Several thousand are still missing in South Korea despite its close alliance and history of cooperation with the U.S…Between 1996 and 2005, joint U.S.-North Korea military search teams conducted 33 joint recovery operations and recovered 229 sets of American remains.”
Trump has repeated this claim 2 times
“And no, I have a good relationship with Justin Trudeau. I really did. Other than he had a news conference that he had because he assumed I was in an airplane and I wasn’t watching.”
Source: Singapore press conference after summit with Kim Jong Un
in fact: Trudeau did not hold his G7 news conference because he thought Trump could not watch it live. Trudeau simply spoke at the conclusion of the summit. Trump happened to be on his plane trip to Singapore at the time. Contrary to Trump’s suggestions that Trudeau used the news conference to make incendiary statements he did not want Trump to see, Trudeau simply repeated his previous criticism of Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs.
“They (the European Union) don’t take our agricultural products, barely.”
Source: Singapore press conference after summit with Kim Jong Un
in fact: While U.S. farmers do face some trade barriers exporting to the European Union, it is a gross exaggeration to say “they don’t take our agricultural products, barely.” According to the website of Trump’s own U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. exported $11.6 billion in agricultural items to the European Union in 2016. That is a 55 per cent increase, the department noted, from $7.5 billion in exports in 2006. The department also noted that the E.U. is the fourth-largest agricultural export market for the U.S.
Trump has repeated this claim 13 times
“Over the last couple of years, and over the last many years — but over the last couple of years, this country has lost $800 billion on trade with other countries, the biggest one being China. Eight-hundred billion dollars.”
Source: Singapore press conference after summit with Kim Jong Un
in fact: The U.S. had a $566 billion trade deficit in 2017. The deficit can only be described as $800 billion — $810 billion, to be precise — if you ignore all trade in services and only count trade in goods.
Trump has repeated this claim 30 times
“They (Canada) don’t take our farm products — many of them. They charge what was 270 percent, but somebody told me the other day that a few months ago they raised it to 295 percent for dairy products.”
Source: Singapore press conference after summit with Kim Jong Un
in fact: The 295 per cent tariff does indeed exist — it is on cream — but it is not new, contrary to Trump’s claim. A columnist complained in the Ottawa Citizen about this very tariff in 2007: “How inflated are Canadian prices? Extremely inflated. Our tariff on milk is 241 per cent. On cream: 295.5 per cent.”
“Canada does have very big advantages over us in terms of trade deficits. We have a big trade deficit with Canada, I was reading, where, oh, it’s actually a surplus. Not a surplus. It’s either $17 (billion), but it could actually be $100 (billion). You know, they put out a document. I don’t know if you saw it. They didn’t want me to see it, but we found it. Perhaps they were trying to show the power they have. It’s close to $100 billion a year loss with Canada.”
Source: Singapore press conference after summit with Kim Jong Un
in fact: This is comprehensively inaccurate. Canada did not “put out a document” boasting of a $100 billion trade surplus with the U.S. Trump’s administration found this number — $98 billion — on a chart deep in the Statistics Canada website. Second, this number is not the official trade balance number used by either the U.S. or Canada. According to Trump’s own Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the U.S. had a $8.4 billion trade surplus with Canada in 2017. According to Canadian figures, calculated differently, Canada had a surplus of its own of more than $20 billion. The $98 billion figure includes “re-exports,” goods imported to Canada from other countries, say a t-shirt from China, and then shipped on to the U.S. By using this figure, Trump is double-counting that t-shirt as part of the trade deficit with China and also with Canada.
Trump has repeated this claim 3 times
“For many years, with China being, obviously, the most successful at it, but the European Union is second — $151 billion we lost. They were represented at the meeting. And we’re being taken advantage of on trade.”
Source: Singapore press conference after summit with Kim Jong Un
in fact: The $151 billion figure counts only trade in goods and ignores trade in services, in which the U.S. has a significant surplus. Including all kinds of trade, the overall U.S. trade balance with the European Union in 2017 was a deficit of $102 billion, according to U.S. government statistics.
Trump has repeated this claim 29 times
“For seven months, you haven’t had a nuclear test; you haven’t had a nuclear explosion. I remember a nuclear event took place — 8.8 on the Richter scale. And they announced — I heard it on the radio — they announced that a massive — you know, an earthquake took place somewhere in Asia. And then they said it was in North Korea. And then they found out it was a nuclear test. I said, ‘I never heard of a Richter scale in the high 8s.'”
Source: Singapore press conference after summit with Kim Jong Un
in fact: No North Korean nuclear test has registered nearly so high on earthquake measurement scales. (For the record, most scientists now use the moment magnitude scale, not the Richter scale.) The Sept. 2017 test Trump appeared to be referring to registered at 6.3, not 8.8. As the Associated Press noted: “An 8.8 quake would be 316 times bigger — and release 5,623 times more energy — than a 6.3.”
Trump has repeated this claim 2 times
“I want to bring our soldiers back home. We have, right now, 32,000 soldiers in South Korea, and I’d like to be able to bring them back home.”
Source: Singapore press conference after summit with Kim Jong Un
in fact: The U.S. does not have 32,000 soldiers in South Korea. According to the most recent statistics from the military’s Defense Manpower Data Center, issued in March 2018, the U.S. has 24,915 active duty personnel in South Korea, 28,187 military personnel in total.
Trump has repeated this claim 5 times
The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
November 11, 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. 63
Date: Friday, February 7, 1997
Commenced: 11:55 AM CST
Concluded: 12:35 PM CST
RTC: Hello there, Gregory. I hope you’re feeling better than I am.
GD: You have a cold?
RTC: No, getting old. Some advice, Gregory. Don’t get old. The worst part isn’t forgetting things, it’s remembering. And knowing you are helpless to correct the present. But there still is correcting the past.
GD: Historians do that all the time. Hitler lost so Hitler was always wrong. Roosevelt won so Roosevelt was always right. Saints and sinners. It depends entirely on who wins.
RTC: True. I told you I once met Roosevelt, didn’t I? My father got me in to see him. Old and shaky, but still clever. Phony old bastard, one thing to the face and another to the back, but very shrewd in political circles. He set up a powerful movement, but as soon as he hit the floor, they started to dismantle it.
GD: Müller was filling me in on the anti-Communist activities he was involved in. McCarthy and all of that.
RTC: Well, Franklin put them all in, and Truman threw them all out. Most of them were Jewish so we were all accused of anti-Semitism, but we held all the cards then and they knew it, so criticism was muted. It wouldn’t be that way now, but times change.
GD: They always do and a smart man changes with them.
RTC: Some times the older forms are better.
GD: Yes, but people grow tired of old forms and want new ones. A revolution might mean more money and power for some and death or disgrace for others. The wheel does turn.
RTC: So it does. I wanted to give you a little background here, Gregory, about you. You see, at one time, these others wanted to set up a sort of private think tank. They wanted to call it after the oracle of Delphi. Tom Kimmel, Bill Corson, the Trento ménage, Critchfield and others. But they wanted me to be the honcho.
GD: And why you?
RTC: I have the connections with the business community. I could get big money people behind the idea. It was a sort of miniature Company if you will. Money and power. We always called it the Company because it was a huge business conglomerate. But anyway, this think tank would bring all of us lots of money. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel too happy with the make up of it. Kimmel is pompous and entirely too much obsessed with his late Grandfather; the Trentos are very lightweight, but aren’t really aware of it; and poor Bill is a perpetual wannabe, running around trying to sound like a great keeper of various unknown secrets. We tried Costello. Tom liked him because of his Pearl Harbor writings, but I never liked him. There was a screw loose in his brain somewhere. And of course being a fairy didn’t improve his objectivity. I gave up on John after his trip to Reno. He hated you, you know.
GD: My heart is breaking. I should have given him some of my old shorts to chew on.
RTC: Now do let’s be serious, Gregory. John was a spiteful person but I got the impression he thought you were much worse than he was and since he was hiding his perversions, he probably thought you could see through him. I think people get that impression: That you watch and see too much. Of course, it doesn’t help that you run your mouth and say terrible things about self-made saints. Anyway, I didn’t want John involved and then I began to have some interest in you. Of course, I couldn’t put you forward for the group because Kimmel detested you and Bill didn’t know where to turn. He liked you but always listened to others in making up his mind. When I ditched Costello and Bill knew you and I were talking, Kimmel went through the roof. He didn’t like me talking to you and spent much time getting his oafs at Justice to ring me up and tell me how terrible you were. Tom likes to get others to do his dirty work, I noticed long ago. The Trento family didn’t know you and Bill is actually afraid of you. So the private study group for profit more or less died a natural death. I wanted to include you but they did not so there it ended.
GD: I would have had no problem working with you but not with the others. Bill is a lightweight, Kimmel a gasbag and the one Trento book I tried to read was hopeless.
RTC: Yes.
GD: ‘And slime had they for mortar.’—Genesis 11:3.
RTC: Citing Scripture, Gregory? I thought the Devil did that.
GD: He does. Daily. Now we call him Pat Robertson.
RTC: Where’s your Christian charity?
GD: I sold it to buy a gun.
RTC: Yes. Well, to get back to the subject here, which is the fact that these gentlemen do not like you, but I do. They have stopped yapping about you because I told them to shut up, but no doubt they still run around behind my back and try to stab you in the back. Never to the face, but in the back.
GD: Not to change the subject, Robert, but why do you really call it the Company?
RTC: Because it’s a huge business. We are one of the most powerful businesses on the planet, Gregory. We make enormous sums of money, have established a tight and very complete control over the media, have the White House doing as we tell them to, overturn foreign governments if they dare to thwart our business ventures, and so on.
GD: Business ventures?
RTC: A generalized case in point. A left-wing nigger gets into power in the Congo. The Congo has huge uranium deposits. Will Moscow get the uranium? The Belgian businessmen come to us for help. We agree to help them and we get into a civil war and murder Lumumba. One of our men drove around with his rotting corpse in his trunk. The head of the UN starts to interfere in matters, so we have an aircraft accident that kills him very dead and stops the interference. We tell the President about the uppity nigger but not about poor dead Dag. We tell them what we want them to hear and nothing more.
GD: And the business aspect?
RTC: The drugs, of course, bring in astronomical amounts of loose money. And if some rival group cuts into the business, we get them removed. Ever read about huge heroin busts somewhere? Our rivals going down for the third time. All of this is part and parcel of the Plan.
GD: Sounds like the Templar’s Plan.
RTC: Ah, you know about this, do you? Which one of the seven dwarves enlightened you? Not Kimmel, but probably Bill.
GD: Actually no. I was speaking of the Plan of the Templars…
RTC: Ah, you see, you do know that. You knew Allen was an initiate, didn’t you?
GD: Well, not in so many words. Didn’t the Templars get disbanded for having too much money? I think they killed DeMolay…
RTC: Now don’t change the subject here. They were never really disbanded, but they went underground. Do you know how much money they had? The French only got a little bit of it. Now let me know, who told you?
GD: You did, actually. Just now. I was thinking of Umberto Eco’s excellent Foucault’s Pendulum and his discussion of the survival of the Templars.
RTC: I missed that one. Is that an old book?
GD: No. Late ‘80s, if I remember. Brilliant historical pastiche. Eco’s an Italian scholar and the book is wonderful, although I doubt very few people in America would understand a word of it. They don’t teach history in our public schools, only political correctness. You can no longer look for the chink in someone’s armor anymore because Asians are terribly offended and you dare not call a spade a spade.
RTC: Yes, yes, I know all that. Stunts the mind.
GD: It’s my impression, based on my visits to your town, that they don’t have any minds to stunt.
RTC: Don’t forget, Gregory, that I was in government service as well.
GD: There are always exceptions, Robert.
RTC: Many thanks for your kindness, Gregory. The Templars have always had money but they have been an underground power for so long, they are set in their ways. We are public and they are not, so there is a sort of joint partnership here. As I said, Dulles was taken in when he was in Switzerland. One of the Jung people, as I remember. They can open doors, Gregory, don’t ever think they can’t, but they are always out of the sunlight.
GD: Like the mythic vampires.
RTC: Custom and usage, as they say. We have common interests, believe me.
GD: Catholic group?
RTC: Not anymore.
GD: Well, I had an ancestor in the Teutonic Knights, and they really never went away. And the Knights of Malta still have some influence in Papal matters. Interesting about the Templars, though. I thought Eco was just a good story teller. Could be. Secret societies have always intrigued parts of the public. The dread Masons, for example. Of course, before the French Revolution, they had a great deal of clandestine power in France, but now I think they’re just a high class fraternal organization. Müller told me that the Nazis were obsessed with the Masons, but when the Gestapo got around to really investigating them, they found nothing sinister at all. Just a social organization and nothing more.
RTC: You know quite a bit about so many interesting things. I can see why you got on with the kraut and why the rat pack here hates you. I must ask you please not to discuss this business with anyone. I would also ask you not to put it into anything you write concerning me. The Kennedy business is bad enough, but no one would believe a word of the other business.
GD: I agree, Robert. But if I have to give up a really interesting story, can I get more information on Kennedy?
RTC: Yes, I can send you more. I did give Bill a copy of the Russian report, but nothing more. He started bragging about this, so I basically shut him down. Of course, it doesn’t really say anything, but once is enough when someone starts to leak out material they have sworn to keep silent about.
GD: And have you tested me?
RTC: I don’t need to. You aren’t trying to make points with the bosses like they are. I hate to say it because I am friendly with all of them, but they are just a bunch of useless ass kissers. You certainly are not.
GD: No, I am not. I don’t trust anyone in the establishment. My God, you ought to listen to what the Landreth people were telling me, [I want to wet myself,] that they can put me on the cover of Time magazine. Of course I really believe them and I would like nothing better than to have my picture on the cover of Time magazine. It used to be a good news magazine but now it’s worse than People Magazine which sells very well in the supermarket checkout lines. And right next to the National Enquirer which is probably written by the same people.
RTC: I think the day of the printed paper or magazine is dying. We still have our hand in on that game. We moved to television, but that is also losing out, so we are moving into the Internet. But don’t ask me about that, because I know nothing about it. We view the Internet as very dangerous because we can’t begin to control it. Set up a few people with money and push them. Hope for the best, you know. but doubtful.
GD: The Templars story is interesting, mainly because I read Eco and know something about their early days.
RTC: When the conspiracy idiots babble on about secret societies, they don’t have any idea what they’re talking about. They go on about the CFR and the Masons but they don’t know the half of it.
GD: Did you ever read Mills’ The Power Elite? Came out in ’54 and is a little out of date but very good.
RTC: Can’t say as I have. Didn’t you mention this once? No matter. I might have but years ago. Speculative?
GD: Concrete, realistic and so on. The reason why the American public is so wrapped up in conspiracy theories is because they have lost all faith in their government and most of our major institutions such as banks, the press, mainline religion and so on. I remember the so-called OPEC panic when the price of gas at the pump went up every ten minutes. There was no OPEC crisis, but just the oil companies creating a panic so they could make huge profits. Ever notice, Robert, how the price of gas at the pump soars just at the beginning of summer when everyone drives on trips and then comes down in winter when no one drives? And how the price of fuel oil drops off in summer when no one needs it but then shoots up every winter when everyone does? Tell me, are these accidents?
RTC: Of course not, Gregory, of course not.
GD: I’m surprised that people don’t pick up on this.
RTC: They won’t pick up on anything at all and what if they did? A little talk here and there and they pay the bills.
GD: And the sheep get shorn again.
RTC: Yes, if you want to put it that way. That’s why they’re there, isn’t it?
(Conclusion at 12:35 PM CST)
From Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump: An American century
When US troops began fighting in World War I, it decided the outcome of the conflict. It lead to President Woodrow Wilson’s foundation of a liberal world order under US leadership — which Trump is now destroying.
November 11, 2018
by Michael Knigge (Washington / cc)
DW
On January 8, 1918, US President Woodrow Wilson stood before the two chambers of the US Congress and presented his Fourteen Points, a set of now-famous principles which outlined the US war aims in Europe and the Middle East.
Most importantly, they sketched a restructuring of the world order, in which the right of peoples to self-determination would be the guiding principle. Not only that: Wilson called for free trade, an end to secret diplomacy and the creation of a League of Nations.
In Wilson’s principles, presented in the final year of World War I, the outline of the liberal world order eventually created under American leadership after World War II was already visible. It was a world order that would prevail as more and more countries chose to follow America’s lead. Only now does it seem to be threatened — by another US president.Rejecting the foundations of US foreign policy
The current occupant of the White House, President Donald Trump, is one of a kind. Over the last century there hasn’t been a single American head of state who would have questioned the foundations of US foreign policy as fundamentally as the 45th president.
There have, of course, always been isolationist forces in the United States. Wilson failed to convince his domestic audience of his ideas for an international framework for peace. But the rejection of his Fourteen Points program came from an isolationist Congress — not the White House, which is why Wilson is still seen as having paved the way for American internationalism. Until its controversial entry into World War I, the United States had traditionally tried to stay out of international conflicts, especially in Europe.
Wilson: Cooperative foreign policy
The horrors of the Great War led Wilson to conclude that the US should try to implement a multilateral foreign policy based on cooperation. This is also apparent in his much-quoted address to Congress in 1917 leading up to the declaration of war against Germany, in which Wilson emphasized that “the world must be made safe for democracy.”
Wilson is often misquoted as having said that the United States must make the world safe for democracy — a small but significant difference. Wilson did not believe the US could do this alone, but that it was a job for the entire world, under American leadership.
His plan for a League of Nations would provide the framework for this cooperative, international political organization. Wilson wanted to create an organization in which action could be taken only if all the members agreed — so every nation would effectively have a right of veto. The fact that the League of Nations lasted just under three decades — and that the US itself never joined — shows just how controversial Wilson’s idea was.
Trump: Unilateral decisions
Since Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, the US has already pulled out of numerous treaties sanctioned by the United Nations and has withdrawn from several UN organizations. John Cooper, professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin, has written several books about Woodrow Wilson. He believes Trump can rightly be seen as the antithesis of Wilson because of his nationalistic approach.
“[Trump] is a repudiation of 100 years of internationalism. He just wants to go it alone in the world, throw his weight around and make unilateral decisions based upon his whims,” said Cooper.
It’s not just their attitude to the international role of the US that makes Trump and Wilson polar opposites. Their views on immigration — then, as now, a fiercely debated topic — could not be more different.
Wilson took a clear stand against the anti-immigrant sentiment that arose in the US during World War I, directed toward war refugees from Europe in particular. When the US Congress passed a law in 1917 that limited immigration, Wilson vetoed it. Congress, however, overruled the veto with a two-thirds majority — an indication of the strength of anti-immigrant feeling at the time.
‘Wilson hated demagogues’
Here, too, parallels with the present day are obvious. Instead of confronting rampant xenophobia, Trump has been fueling it since the first day of his candidacy. And he hasn’t just been all talk — he has used the full power of his office to split up families at the border and deport undocumented immigrants. He also wants to restrict legal immigration to the US, and reduce the number of refugees the country takes in to a historic low.
It’s still too soon to judge how Trump’s confrontation with the politics of internationalism will end. However, with nearly two years of his presidency behind us, Cooper has seen enough to know that Wilson “would view Trump with horror and alarm. […] Trump just wants to wants to roil things up — and Wilson absolutely hated demagogues.”
That, in itself, is a key difference between the two US presidents at either end of a century.
The Huge Mortgage Fraud
November 11, 2018
by Christian Jürs
This is rapidly becoming a decade of official deceit and public disillusion.
The issue under discussion here is MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration System).
MERS, set up by the government in 1995, now claims to be a privately-held company and their official function is stated to be ‘keeping track of a confidential electronic registry of mortgages and the modifications to servicing rights and ownership of the loans.’ MERS is actually a U.S. government initiated organization like Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac and its current shareholders include AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, WaMu, CitiMortgage, Countrywide, GMAC, Guaranty Bank, and Merrill Lynch. All of these entities have been intimately, and disastrously, involved with the so-called “housing bubble,” and were subsequently quickly bailed out by the supportive Bush administration
In addition to its publicly stated purpose of simplifying mortgage registration MERS was also set up to assist in the creation of so-called Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and Structured investment Vehicles (SIV). The CDOs is a type of structured asset-backed security (ABS) whose value and payments are derived from a portfolio of fixed-income underlying assets. CDOs securities are split into different risk classes, or tranches, which permits these entities to be minced into tiny tranches and sold off by the big investment banks to pensions, foreign investors and retail investors. who in turn have discounted and resold them over and over.
It is well-known inside the American banking institutions that these highly questionable, potentially unsafe investment packages were deliberately marketed to countries, such as China and Saudi Arabia, that are not in favor with elements of the American government and banking industry and were, and are, marketed with full knowledge of their fragility.
The basic problem with this MERS system that while it does organize the mortgage market, it also knowingly permits fiscal sausage-making whereby a huge number of American domestic and business mortgages, (59 million by conservative estimate) are sliced up, put into the aforesaid “investment packages” and sold to customers both domestic and foreign.
This results in the frightening fact that the holders of mortgages, so chopped and packed, are not possible to identify by MERS or anyone else, at any time and by any agency. This means that any property holder, be they a domestic home owner or a business owner, is paying their monthly fees for property they can never own. Because of the diversity of the packaging, it is totally and completely impossible to ascertain what person or organization owns a specific mortgage and as a result, a clear title to MERS-controlled property is impossible to get at any time, even if a mortgage is fully paid. No person or entity, has been, or never can be, identified who can come forward and legally release the lien on the property once the loan is paid.
In short, MERS conceals this fact from the public with the not-unreasonable assumption that by the time the owner of the home or business discovers that they have only been paying rent on property they can never get clear title to, all the primary parties; the banks, the government agencies, the mortgage companies, or the title companies, will be dead and gone. MERS is set up to guarantee this fact but, gradually, little by little, mostly by word of mouth, the public is beginning to realize that their American dream of owning a house is nothing but a sham and a delusion.
The solution to this is quite simple. If a home or business American mortgage payer , goes to the property offices in their county and looks at their registered property, they can clearly see if MERS is the purported holder of the mortgage. This is fraudulent – MERS has never advanced any funds in the transaction and owns nothing. It is merely a registry. If MERS is the listed holder, the mortgage payers will never, ever, get clear title to their property.
In this case, the property occupier has two choices: They can either turn the matter over to a real estate attorney or simply continue pouring good money after bad. And is there relief? Indeed there is. In case after case (95% by record) if the matter is brought to the attention of a court of law, Federal or state, the courts rule that if the actual owner of the mortgage cannot be located after a reasonable period of time, the owner receives a clear title from the court and does not need to make any further payments to an unidentified creditor! It will stop any MERS based foreclosure mid process and further, any person who was fraudulently foreclosed by MERS, which never held their mortgage, and forced from their home can sue MERS and, through the courts, regain their lost homes.