TBR News September 27, 2019

Sep 27 2019

The Voice of the White House Washington, D.C. September 27, 2019:

“Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.

When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.

I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.

He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.

He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.

It is becoming more and more evident to even the least intelligent American voter that Trump is vicious, corrupt and amoral. He has stated often that even if he loses the election in 2020, he will not leave the White House. I have news for Donald but this is not the place to discuss it.

Commentary for September 27: “Trump is so angry that anyone, probably someone in the CIA, would dare to intercept one of his shake-down conversations that he is running around the place insisting he wants the source jailed and tried for treason. The AG is in his pocket but I doubt if that will work out in the future. Trump is also screaming that the courts will not allow him to be impeached. Actually, the staff in the White House, pro or anti Trump are beginning to become very nervous about their jobs and some are planning to leave our National Loony Bin.”

 

The Table of Contents

  • Whistleblower: Donald Trump sought foreign ‘interference’ in 2020 election
  • Donald Trump’s Call With Ukrainian Leader, One Day After Robert Mueller’s Congressional Testimony, Shows the President Is a Brazen Criminal
  • Whistleblower report reveals how far Trump’s dubious ethics have spread
  • Trump and the Russians: Facts, not Fictions
  • Deutsche Bank, the Bayrock Group, Donald Trump and Drug Money Laundering
  • How to Find Spy Devices in Your Home, Car, Cell Phone, or Computer
  • Face masks to decoy t-shirts: The rise of anti-surveillance fashion
  • “Anti-Surveillance Clothing” Creates A New Wrinkle In Facial Detection
  • How to Sweep For Bugs and Hidden Cameras
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
  • Encyclopedia of American Loons

 

 

Whistleblower: Donald Trump sought foreign ‘interference’ in 2020 election

The whistleblower said Trump’s actions in a phone call with Ukraine’s leader were “a violation of law or executive order.” The White House was also accused of attempting to conceal “all records” of the call.

September 26, 2019

DW

The US House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released a declassified version of a whistleblower report at the center of Democrats’ impeachment probe of President Donald Trump.

The whistleblower, whose identity has not been made public, said in the report that Trump used his office to solicit interference in the 2020 presidential election from a foreign country.

“I am deeply concerned that the actions described below constitute ‘a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of law or executive order’ that ‘does not include differences of opinion concerning public policy matters,’ consistent with the definition of an ‘urgent concern,'” the report said.

The whistleblower wrote that “among other things,” Trump’s reported election interference included “pressuring a foreign government to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals,” in reference to a July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

In the call, the US president prodded his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

A summarized transcript of that phone call was released by the White House on Wednesday morning.

Later on Thursday, Trump lashed out at whoever supplied information to the whistleblower, reported to be a CIA official.

William Barr ‘appears’ to be implicated

The whistleblower said that Rudolph Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, was “a central figure” in the president’s interference effort, but that Attorney General William Barr also “appeared to be involved as well.”

In the account, the whistleblower said he or she was not a “direct witness,” but had received the information from more than half a dozen officials as part of routine “interagency business.”

“The White House officials who told me this information were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call,” the memo read, adding that a discussion was ongoing among White House lawyers over the likelihood that they had “witnessed the president abuse his office for personal gain.”

Attempts to conceal call transcript

According to the whistleblower, multiple officials said that senior figures in the White House intervened to “lock down all records of the phone call,” in particular, the official transcript’s text.

White House officials told the whistleblower that they were “directed by White House lawyers” to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system” where it would be typically stored.

The intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, received the whistleblower’s complaint and after review, deemed it of “urgent concern.”

Atkinson passed it along to Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, who then rejected the classification of “urgent concern,” and effectively thwarted efforts to bring the complaint to Congress for investigation.

Maguire questioned

In the aftermath of the impeachment inquiry announcement, Maguire presented himself before US lawmakers on Thursday to discuss his reasoning and answer questions about the complaint.

Maguire told the committee that he did not know the identity of the whistleblower but that he felt the person was “acting in good faith.”

“I think the whistleblower did the right thing,” adding that the person followed the law “every step of the way.”

Maguire told congress members that he had not seen any other whistleblower complaint in American history that “touched on such complicated and sensitive issues.”

“I believe that this matter is unprecedented,” he said.

Maguire did not provide an opinion on whether it was good or bad that a US citizen would seeking foreign assistance in an election, but had a strong stance against the overall topic.

“No one, none of us, is above the law in this country,” he said.

“The great challenge that we face is not necessarily a kinetic strike with Russia, or China, or Iran, or North Korea. I think the greatest challenge that we do have is to maintain the integrity of our election system,” Maguire added.

 

Donald Trump’s Call With Ukrainian Leader, One Day After Robert Mueller’s Congressional Testimony, Shows the President Is a Brazen Criminal

September 26, 2019

by James Risen

The Intercept

Career criminal Donald Trump just barely avoided prosecution earlier this year when special counsel Robert Mueller pulled his punches and refused to indict the president for either obstruction of justice or campaign finance violations in connection with the Trump-Russia investigation. Mueller’s decision not to indict Trump came despite overwhelming evidence in Mueller’s own final report that the president of the United States was guilty of a crime.

Most people who survive that kind of legal threat would lie low, at least for a while, and try to get back to some level of normalcy. But Trump is a habitual criminal, and his reaction to escaping Mueller’s investigation was to go on yet another crime spree.

In fact, Trump has been acting like a bank robber who beat one rap because of a technicality, and so decides to rob every bank in sight.

In the Trump-Russia inquiry, Mueller was able to prove that the Russian government intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win. But he never could prove, at least to his own satisfaction, that Trump or the people around him had colluded with Moscow in its election interference. Mueller did show that Trump campaign officials met with Russians in an effort to gather dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and that Trump was guilty of obstruction of justice in trying to make the whole Russian case go away.

But Mueller decided that he couldn’t prove that, by asking for opposition research from foreigners, the Trump campaign had violated the campaign finance law that bans accepting things of value from foreigners.

Mueller also built a conclusive case that Trump was guilty of obstruction of justice, based on a series of actions seeking to derail the Russia investigation. But Mueller decided that, since the Justice Department has a long-standing legal opinion arguing that a sitting president can’t be indicted, he wouldn’t charge Trump with obstruction.

In the end, Mueller didn’t indict Trump for anything, and Congress decided not to try to impeach Trump in connection with the Russia probe. On July 24, Mueller testified before Congress about his investigation and final report. After his testimony, the special counsel quietly exited the scene, having let Trump off the hook.

The president was a free man.

So what did Trump do with his newfound freedom?

The very next day — on July 25 — he was at it again, this time with Ukraine.

Trump got on the phone that day with the new president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, and repeatedly sought his help in an attempt to damage Trump’s political rival, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. This time, there was no question, as there had been in the Russia case, about whether Trump directly sought the help of a foreign power to help him win an election. A summary of the call released by the White House on Wednesday proves Trump did exactly that.

The summary is based on notes taken by White House staffers who were listening in on the telephone conversation between Zelensky and Trump. The notes are not an exact transcript, and may soften or omit the most egregious statements by Trump.

But what is in the memorandum is bad enough. It shows that Trump repeatedly asked Zelensky to help him go after Biden. Trump asked the Ukrainian president to work with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, and Attorney General William Barr to help them manufacture lies about Biden and his son Hunter’s involvement with a Ukrainian company.

Trump acts like a mob boss on the phone call. He demands Zelensky’s help and then observes that Ukraine’s economy will soon improve.

“I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it,” Trump said, according to the summary. “I’m sure you will figure it out. … Your economy is going to get better and better I predict. You have a lot of assets.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, noted Wednesday just how much Trump’s language on the call sounded like it was straight out of the mafia playbook.

“The transcript of the call reads like a classic mob shakedown,” Schiff wrote on Twitter. “I have a favor to ask – Investigate my opponent – My people will be in touch. Nice country you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to her.”

On Thursday morning, after weeks of contentious back and forth, a complaint from a government whistleblower about Trump’s efforts to force the Ukrainian government to damage Biden was made public. The complaint shows that the phone call was just one part of a larger campaign by Trump and those around him to use the presidency for his personal political gain.

“In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,” the complaint states. Trump “sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President’s 2020 reelection bid,” the whistleblower wrote. “I am also concerned that these actions pose risks to U.S. national security and undermine the U.S. Government’s efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in U.S. elections.”

For months, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi resisted calls to impeach Trump over the Russia investigation and other abuses of power and criminal activity. Pelosi worried that trying to impeach Trump would endanger House Democrats in competitive swing districts, and that any articles of impeachment would fail in the Republican-controlled Senate. Even if the House found grounds to impeach, Pelosi’s thinking went, Trump would remain in power.

The anti-climactic outcome of the Mueller probe proved to be the biggest obstacle. By concluding that he couldn’t prove collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow, Mueller undercut the best argument for impeachment and convinced Pelosi that it wasn’t the right time to push for it.

But the Ukraine case has suddenly put impeachment back on the table. That’s because Trump’s effort to get the Ukrainian president to help him destroy his Democratic rival appears to be a clear abuse of the power of the presidency. In this case, Trump is damned by his own words. And the Ukraine case has a very simple narrative that is relatively easy for both Congress and the public to understand: Trump called a foreign leader and sought his help to damage a political rival.

Given the obvious set of facts in the Ukraine case, it would have been difficult for Pelosi to continue to avoid impeachment. To do so would have required turning a blind eye to what may be the most blatant criminal activity Trump has engaged in since taking office.

If Trump isn’t called to account for this, he would rightly believe he can get away with anything.

 

Whistleblower report reveals how far Trump’s dubious ethics have spread

Report indicates there were a lot of people involved in Trump’s scheme to tamper in the 2020 election and prosecute opponents

by Tom McCarthy in New York

The Guardian

The critics are calling it “horrifying,” “pure dynamite,” and “INSANE”.

It’s a blockbuster that arrived too late for summer, but with the president obsessing, Congress investigating and main street America processing, the buzz around a whistleblower complaint about Donald Trump released early on Thursday appears likely only to grow.

Some have predicted it will end with Trump impeached, the Republican party in tatters and multiple officials attached to the president and the White House out of jobs and possibly defending themselves against criminal charges.

The Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe said attorney general William Barr had worked himself into a predicament on par with the attorney general under Richard Nixon.

“Bill Barr is up to his eyebrows in the criminal conspiracy,” Tribe tweeted. “He’s Trump’s John Mitchell. Mitchell ended up in prison. It’s all unraveling.”

What could one document hold to generate so much huff?

In short, the complaint is a record of a months-long attempt by Trump to extract from Ukraine two silver bullets, one that would “prove” his opponents cheated in the last election, and one that would win him the next election.

If that seems like a lot to hope for from Ukraine – if the plan seems a bit implausible, wild even – no one, of any political stripe, can be heard at the moment to be saying that it was a good plan.

But the complaint indicates with damning detail that that was indeed the plan; that Trump went a long way toward carrying it out; that he was helped in his scheme by his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as well as by lawyers and officials in the White House and apparently in the departments of justice and state allegedly including Barr; and that the Ukrainians had begun to try to understand what silver bullets Trump wanted and where they could get them, so as not to risk missing out on US aid worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Through a spokesperson, Barr has denied involvement. Speaking on Fox News, Giuliani has enthusiastically detailed his involvement, but said he was working at the behest of the state department, which the state department has denied.

What appears to have so alarmed career government ethics and oversight officials, however, is the extent to which the now released complaint reveals that Trump’s ethical rot, as they perceive it, has spread beyond the Oval Office, beyond the White House, beyond the cabinet and through the government.

Among its many revelations, the complaint says in a footnote that somebody in the White House is in the habit of taking transcripts of Trump’s conversations out of the relatively accessible system where they normally would be filed and putting them into a standalone “codeword-level” computer system normally reserved for America’s top secrets “solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive – rather than national security sensitive – information”.

Trump used to have a safe for hush money deals he made with women that was kept by a friend who published the National Enquirer. The complaint indicates that that same arrangement is still in effect, only now the deals have to do with Trump’s political enemies, and the safe is the one they usually use to keep records for things like flying five helicopters into Pakistan at midnight.

The overriding sense is there were a lot of people involved in a scheme by the president to both tamper in an upcoming election and to prosecute political opponents, with the help of a foreign government, secured in part by holding up hundreds of millions of dollars in aid previously appropriated by Congress.

The whistleblower complaint says it is based on the account of “more than half a dozen US officials”. In accurately describing the contents of a 25 July phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president – though the whistleblower was not on the call – the complaint says “approximately a dozen White House officials” and at least one state department official listened to the call. After that, “multiple” state department and intelligence officials were briefed on the call, the complaint says.

The complaint indicates knowledge of guilt on the part of officials involved, describing a “‘discussion ongoing’ with White House lawyers about how to treat the call because of the likelihood, in the officials’ retelling, that they had witnessed the president abuse his office for personal gain”.

That knowledge of guilt appears to have endured for months. According to the complaint, seven months before the July phone call, Giuliani met in New York with a Ukrainian prosecutor who later made public statements propping up both a conspiracy theory threatening to Joe Biden and a conspiracy theory accusing Democrats of collaborating with Ukraine to throw the 2016 election.

Those were the two silver bullets Trump was after, as made plain in a summary of the July call released on Wednesday.

The Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, was valuable, and Trump leaned on the new Ukrainian president to hold him over, the complaint alleges. Trump brought up the prosecutor in the July phone conversation, according to the summary, and received assurances from the Ukrainian president that he would put the right man on the job.

It appears, then, that Trump made an effort to sow corruption in the Ukrainian government, by pressuring the president to appoint a prosecutor general preferred by Trump for that prosecutor’s willingness to hunt for Trump’s silver bullets or maybe to make some.

Meanwhile a lot of people in the US government knew about this plan, and had watched its mechanisms unfold, according to the whistleblower complaint. “Attorney general Barr appears to be involved as well,” the complaint alleges.

Yet while Barr allegedly participated in the Ukrainian plan – although he denies having contacted Ukrainian officials at Trump’s behest, as Trump repeatedly assured the Ukrainian president Barr would – Barr also is actively overseeing justice department inquiries relating to the plan, including one internal inquiry that determined that the plan did not violate campaign finance laws banning campaigns from accepting anything “of value” from foreign sources.

The “complaint makes Barr’s decision to not recuse and [the justice department] decision to not undertake even cursory investigation indefensible,” tweeted Susan Hennessey, executive editor of the Lawfare blog. “Barr had secured a legacy as former [attorney general] & stalwart [justice department] institutionalist. Now his name will forever be associated with the worst degradations of the Department.”

Reasonable people concerned about how far Trump’s rot has spread have been waiting for a document that would tear away the tiles and reveal all the termites – tax returns, or emails, or special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Not one has, until, possibly, the nine-page document released on Thursday, which among other things demonstrated that however far the decay has gone, there are unnamed officials working in the US government who still remain untouched.

 

Trump and the Russians: Facts, not Fictions

  • President Trump was jobbed into his office with the full cooperation of Russian intelligence.
  • They own Wikileaks entirely and released the damning, and authentic, “Podesta papers” concurrent with Hillary Clinton’s campaign. This did damage to her campaign and was a major contributory factor to her narrow defeat and Trump’s election.
  • Trump is not an honest man by any stretch of imagination.
  • Trump has constantly engaged in bribing and manipulations and does this through second parties such as Cohen his former lawyer or Manafort, his campaign manager during the election.
  • Trump and his entourage have made a number of trips to Russia (I have a listing of all of these along with Russian personages he was in contact with), seeking financing and permission to build luxury hotels in that country
  • Trump’s actions, as President, are deliberate efforts to alienate both the putative allies of the US such as Germany, France, Canada and, to a lesser degree, Mexico.
  • Trump has deliberately launched pointless, and destructive, attacks against Mexican and Muslim immigrants, as well as Canadian and German imports. All this has done is to create a highly negative image of his persona primarily and secondarily, the global image of the United States.
  • Trump’s tariffs, and threats of tariffs, have engendered counter-tariffs that will, when implemented, create serious economic problems for American businessmen and, eventually, the public.
  • Trump’s foolish support of the Israeli far right has done, and is doing, serious damage to the US image in the Middle East. It should be noted that Russian influence in the Shiite areas of the Middle East, is growing. Also note that Iran, and parts of Iraq, both Shiite, have extensive oil reserves and that Saudi Arabia, a Sunni state, once America’s primary source of badly-need oil, is running dry.
  • Ergo, the Middle East areas where Russia is having growing influence have oil and if Russia sets itself up as major oil merchandizing source, this will give them tremendous economic leverage vis a vis the United States which is the world’s largest consumer of oil and its by products.
  • By alienating America’s allies and disrupting that country’s social structure, Trump benefits only Russia and its interests.
  • The concept of Trump taking bribes from the Russians (or the PRC) is completely understandable if one applies the concept of Occam’s Razor to the tumult and disruption he is deliberately causing both domestically and in foreign areas.
  • If he is caught at this, and I understand the FBI was deeply interested in his Russian connections long before he ran for President, either we will have to deal with another Dallas or Trump will suffer a fatal heart attack.Vice-President Pence, a Christian fanatic, would then have to be told to mind his manners or suffer similar terminal problems.
  • Trump is aware of the FBI investigation, aware of what they can find, and probably have already uncovered, so he fired the head of the FBI and even now, according to a very reliable source, is determined to replace the FBI with the cooperative CIA (their former head, Pompeo, is now Secretary of State) as the sole foreign and domestic intelligence agency. He, and his handlers, want to nip any FBI revelations in the bud so that Trump can continue on his course of castrating the United States as a global power.
  • It is quite evident that Trump is unbalanced to a dangerous degree and that even his senior staff view him as both dangerous and totally unpredictable. The problem that arises from the strong and growing opposition to Trump is the polarization of the voter base in the United States and if it becomes a wide-spread belief that the president of the US is an agent of a foreign power, it would be the worst scandal in American history

Donald Trump has pursued business deals in Russia since 1987, and has sometimes traveled there to explore potential business opportunities. In 1996, Trump trademark applications were submitted for potential Russian real estate development deals. Mr.Trump’s partners and children have repeatedly visited Moscow, connecting with developers and government officials to explore joint venture opportunities. Mr.Trump was never able to successfully conclude any real estate deals in Russia. However, individual Russians have invested heavily in Trump properties, and following Mr.Trump’s bankruptcies in the 1990s he borrowed money from Russian sources. In 2008 his son Donald Trump Jr. said that Russia was an important source of money for the Trump businesses.

In 1996 Mr.Trump partnered with Liggett-Ducat, a small company, and planned to build an upscale residential development on a Liggett-Ducat property in Moscow. Trump commissioned New York architect Ted Liebman, who did the sketches.

In 1987 Mr.Trump visited Russia to investigate developing a hotel

In Russia, Mr.Trump promoted the proposal and acclaimed the Russian economic market. At a news conference reported by The Moscow Times, Mr.Trump said he hadn’t been “as impressed with the potential of a city as I have been with Moscow” in contrast to other cities had visited “all over the world.

By this time, Mr.Trump made known his desire to build in Moscow to government officials for almost ten years ranging from the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev (they first met in Washington in 1987) to the military figure Alexander Lebed.

Moscow’s mayor, Yuri M. Luzhkov, showed Trump plans for a very large shopping mall to be located underground in the vicinity of the Kremlin. The mayor complimented Mr.Trump’s suggestion that this mall should have access to the Moscow Metro, and it was eventually connected to the Okhotny Ryad station. Although the 1996 residential development did not happen, Mr.Trump was by this time well known in Russia.

Between 2000–2010, Mr.Trump entered into a partnership with a development company headquartered in New York represented by a Russian immigrant, Felix Sater. During this period, they partnered for an assortment of deals that included building Trump towers internationally and Russia was included. For example, in 2005 Slater acted as an agent for building a Trump tower alongside Moscow River with letters of intent in hand and “square footage was being analyzed.”

In 2006, Mr.Trump’s children Donald Jr. and Ivanka stayed in the Hotel National, Moscow for several days, across from the Kremlin, to interview prospective partners, with the intention of formulating real estate development projects.

Sater had also traveled to Moscow with Mr. Trump, his wife Ivanka and son Donald Jr.

Mr. Trump was associated with Tevfik Arif, formerly a Soviet commerce official and founder of a development company called the Bayrock Group, of which Sater was also a partner.

Bayrock searched for deals in Russia while Trump Towers company were attempting to further expand in the United States. Mr. Sater said, “We looked at some very, very large properties in Russia,” on the scale of “…a large Vegas high-rise.”

In 2007, Bayrock organized a potential deal in Moscow between Trump International Hotel and Russian investors

During 2006–2008 Mr.Trump’s company applied for a number of trademarks in Russia with the goal of real estate developments. These trademark applications include: Trump, Trump Tower, Trump International Hotel and Tower, and Trump Home.

In 2008, Mr. Trump spoke at a Manhattan real estate conference, stating that he really prefered Moscow over all cities in the world and that within 18 months he had been in Russia a half-dozen times.

Mr.Trump had received large and undisclosed payments over 10 years from Russians for hotel rooms, rounds of golf, or Trump-licensed products such as wine, ties, or mattresses, which would not have been identified as coming from Russian sources in the tax returns

A secret KGB memo under date of February 1, 1984 concerned the necessity of making an expanded use of the facilities of cooperating foreign intelligence services—for example, Czechoslovakian or East German intelligence networks.

The most revealing section concerned kompromat.

The document specifically requested any compromising information about Donald Trump, including illegal acts in financial and commercial affairs, intrigues, speculation, bribes, graft … and exploitation of his position to enrich himself. Plus any other information that would compromise the subject (Trump) to his country’s authorities and the general public. Naturally the information could be used to cause him serious problems in his country if exposed.

Finally, the report mentioned that his attitude towards women was also of interest. The point of interest would be if he was the habit of having affairs with women.

Mr. Trumps’ first trip to Moscow came after he found himself seated next to the Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin in 1986. His original position was Soviet ambassador to the U.N. Dubinin’s mission as ambassador was to make contact with America’s business elite.

There was a luncheon held by Leonard Lauder, the son of Estée Lauder. Mr. Trump was invited to meet the Ambassador. Ambassador Dubinin spoke fluent English and during the course of the luncheon Trump spoke at length with the Ambassador who proposed that Trump build a large luxury hotel, directly across from the Kremlin, in association with the Soviet government.

Mr.Trump at once became interested in the project and expressed his willingness to cooperate on such a project.

By January 1987, Mr.Trump had become a “prominent person” status and therefore Ambassador Dubinin deemed Mr.Trump interesting enough to arrange his trip to Moscow. U.S.-based Soviet diplomat, Vitaly Churkin—the future U.N. ambassador—was of assistance in this project.

Mr. Trump first visited the Soviet Union on July 4, 1987.

Mr. Trump flew to Moscow for the first time, together with his wife Ivana and Lisa Calandra, Ivana’s Italian-American assistant. Ambassador Dubinin’s invitation to Trump to visit Moscow was a standard operation exercise by the KGB.

The Trump trip was orchestrated by the Intourist Agency which was under the control of the KGB. Its duty was to investigate and monitor all foreigners coming into the Soviet Union.

The Trumps were treated with great courtesy by Soviet officials and they were housed in Lenin’s suite at the National Hotel, at the bottom of Tverskaya Street, near Red Square.

The hotel was connected to the Intourist complex next door and was under KGB control.

The Lenin suite had been fixed for electronic surveillance.

In November of 2013, the Miss Universe pageant was held iin Moscow

It was there that  Mr. Trump — then the pageant’s owner — spent several days socializing with Russia’s business and political elite and becoming acquainted with a wealthy developer whose connections his son would later seek to capitalize on. The developer, Aras Agalarov, offered to pass on information about potential rival Mrs. Clinton from Russia’s top prosecutor to help a projected Trump presidential campaign.

The contest was held at Crocus City Hall, a venue owned by Agalarov. The event would be a family affair: Agalarov’s son, a pop singer named Emin, performed on stage and his wife was a judge.

Mr.Trump remained on good and productive terms with the Agalarov family, at one point, appearing in a music video with Emin and sending him a videotaped greeting on his 35th birthday.

During his trip to Moscow on November 9-11, 2013 for the Miss Universe pageant, Mr.Trump surrounded himself with business people and those necessary to sign a deal which would bring a Trump Tower project to Moscow. These were: Aras Agalarov, Emin Agalarov,Yulya (Yulia) Alferova,Herman Gref, Artem Klyushin, Vladimir Kozhin, Chuck LaBella, Rotem Rosen, Phil Ruffin, Alex Sapir, Keith Schiller, Roustam Tariko and Bob Van Ronkel.

At first, President Putin, who had planned on meeting Mr.Trump at the pageant, sent numerous individuals tied to the Russian construction sector to the event to discuss potential lucrative building plans and to ascertain Mr. Trump’s attitudes.

President Putin to establish a distance, stated he was unable to attend the pagent because of a last-minute visit from the King of the Netherlands.

Previous to this meeting, there had been no positive positions on the possibility that Mr. Trump, with Russian assistance and financing, might construct a luxury hotel in Moscow. Trump made several tweets thanking individuals in Moscow and bragging about his future plans. Then on November 12th, 2013 Trump posted a link to the Moscow Times, remarking that his organization was working on building a luxury hotel in Moscow “@AgalarovAras I had a great weekend with you and your family. You have done a FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next. EMIN was WOW!”

This hotel deal was finalized during Trump’s weekend stay in Moscow for his Miss Universe pageant. At the Four Seasons Hotel at Ulitsa Okhotnyy Ryad, 2, a private meeting was held between Mr. Trump and President Putin. As the President is fluent in English, no other person was present. President Putin praised the business abilities of Mr. Trump and said that he would be a “refreshing person” as President of the United States. President Putin said that his people would be pleased to support Mr. Trump and that if this support was deemed material in achieving a victory, President Putin had one request to make of Mr. Trump. President Putin said his best wish was to establish “friendly and cooperative attitudes” by both parties, firmer business contacts and an abandonment of the policy of threats to the Russian Republic. President Putin stressed that certain very right-wing groups in America had been constantly agitating against him and against the Russian Republic and he hoped that Mr. Trump, if elected, could ignore these few people and work with, not against the Russian Republic. Mr. Trump repeatedly assured the President that he would be most eager to do just that and he agreed to work with various people in the United States who were friendly towards, and had connections with, the Russian Republic.

This most important conversation was recorded as a form of kompromat. And it is certain that a direct quid pro quo took place in November of 2013 between President Putin and Mr. Trump.

On June 16, 2015, Mr. Trump announced his candidacy for President

Throughout his career, Trump has always felt comfortable operating at or beyond the ethical boundaries that constrain typical businesses. In the 1980s, he worked with La Cosa Nostra, which controlled the New York cement trade, and later employed Michael Cohen and Felix Sater, both of whom have links to the Russian Mafia. Trump habitually refused to pay his counter parties, and if the people he burned (or any journalists) got in his way, he bullied them with threats. He also used LLCs which he created for the purpose of swindling firm who, for example, laid new carpet in one of his hotels. The vendor billed the LLC which promptly went bankrupt. This has been a favorite gambit of Trump.

Trump continually acts like a man with a great deal to hide: declining to testify to anything under oath, dangling  Presidential pardons to keep potential witnesses and former employees from incriminating him, publicly chastising his attorney general for not quashing the whole Russian investigation, and endorsing Russia’s claims that it had nothing to do with the election. (“Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” he tweeted last month, contradicting the conclusion of every U.S. intelligence and counter-intelligence agency.) Trump’s behavior toward Russia looks exactly like that of an accessory after the fact.

 

Deutsche Bank, the Bayrock Group, Donald Trump and Drug Money Laundering

 

Deutsche Bank AG is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany.

The bank is operational in 58 countries with a large presence in Europe, the Americas and Asia. As of April 2018, Deutsche Bank is the 15th largest bank in the world by total assets. As the largest German banking institution in the world, it is a component of the DAX stock market index.

The company is a universal bank resting on three pillars – the Private & Commercial Bank, the Corporate & Investment Bank (CIB) and Asset Management (DWS). Its investment banking operations often command substantial deal flow and maintain different “sell side” and “buy side” departments.

Relationship with Donald Trump

The bank kept writing checks even after Trump defaulted on loans worth hundreds of millions and sued it. Now Congressional investigators are going to court to uncover the financial records behind their relationship.

The remarkably troubled recent history of Deutsche Bank, its past money-laundering woes — and the bank’s striking relationship with Trump — became the subject of investigation by the German State Attorney’s office. The German bank loaned a cumulative total of around $2.5 billion to Trump projects over the past two decades, and the bank continued writing him nine-figure checks even after he defaulted on a $640 million obligation and sued the bank, blaming it for his failure to pay back the debt.

  • Deutsche Bank’s private wealth unit loaned Trump $48 million — after he had defaulted on his $640 million loan and the bank’s commercial unit didn’t want to lend him any further funds — so that Trump could pay back another unit of Deutsche Bank.
  • Deutsche Bank loaned Trump’s company $125 million as part of the overall $150 million purchase of the ailing Doral golf resort in Miami in 2012. The loans’ primary collateral was land and buildings that he paid only $105 million for, county land records show. The apparent favorable terms raised questions about whether the bank’s loan was unusually risky.
  • To widespread alarm, and at least one protest that Trump would not be able to pay his lease obligations, Deutsche Bank’s private wealth group loaned the Trump Organization an additional $175 million to renovate the Old Post Office Building in Washington and turn it into a luxury hotel.

Like Trump, Deutsche Bank has been scrutinized for its dealings in Russia. The bank paid more than $600 million to regulators in 2017 and agreed to a consent order that cited “serious compliance deficiencies” that “spanned Deutsche Bank’s global empire.” The case focused on “mirror trades,” which Deutsche Bank facilitated between 2011 and 2015. The trades were sham transactions whose sole purpose appeared to be to illicitly convert rubles into pounds and dollars — some $10 billion worth.

The bank was “laundering money for wealthy Russians and people connected to Putin and the Kremlin in a variety of ways for almost the exact time period that they were doing business with Donald Trump,” “And all of that money through Deutsche Bank was being channeled through the same exact legal entity in the U.S. that was handling the Donald Trump relationship in the U.S. And so there are a lot of coincidences here.”

It wasn’t just Donald Trump who maintained a warm relationship with Deutsche. The German bank looked after his entire family. Jared Kushner, Ivanka, and Kushner’s mother Seryl Stadtmauer were all Deutsche clients.

The large German financial conglomerate Deutsche Bank, later to become one of Donald Trump’s favored institutions, became entangled with Russia after the bank bought boutique investment bank UFG in order to gain entry into Moscow’s financial markets. UFG’s chairman, Charles Ryan, was an American banker; his partner was Boris Fyodorov, formerly Russia’s Finance Minister in the Yeltsin administration. Deutsche’s future co-CEO, Anshu Jain, was the one who wants Deutsche to become more involved with Russia. Other investment banks soon found Deutsche’s business practices suspicious. Christopher Barter, at the time the CEO of Goldman Sachs Moscow, said later: “They were doing some very curious things. Nobody could make sense of their business. We found the nature and concentration of their business with VTB (Vneshtorgbank) quite galling. Nobody else could touch VTB.” VTB was known to be deeply connected to Russian intelligence, the FSB.

An issue was a very large sum of money that Trump borrowed from the German bank in 2005 to fund the construction of the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago. Trump had personally guaranteed to repay the $US640 million ($828.7 million) debt.

Since then, a global financial crash had arrived. Trump had defaulted on payment, with $US330 million still outstanding. In late November 2008, Deutsche was seeking an immediate $US40 million from the tycoon, plus interest, legal fees and costs.

In 2010 Trump settled his feud with Deutsche. This was done, extraordinarily, by borrowing more money from … Deutsche Bank.

Shut out from its real estate division, Trump turned to another part of the same institution – Deutsche’s private wealth division, which typically deals with high net worth individuals. It doesn’t normally do property. Still, the unit lent him the money.

And later gave him another $US25 to $US50 million in credit.

According to one estimate, Deutsche Bank’s Moscow subsidiary began notching up profits of $US500 million to $US1 billion a year, with VTB generating somewhere between 50 and 80 per cent of all revenue. In Moscow, a Russian client bought blue-chip Russian stocks from Deutsche Bank Moscow in companies like Gazprom or Sberbank. The payment was in roubles. The size of a typical order was $US2 million to $US3 million. Shortly afterwards a non-Russian “customer” sold exactly the same number of securities to Deutsche Bank in London, paying in dollars.

These “mirror trades” were fake and had no economic logic. The selling parties were based in offshore territories like Cyprus or the British Virgin Islands. Billions were moved out of one Deutsche Bank, from its modern glass office at Building 2, 82 Sadovnicheskaya Street, to another Deutsche Bank, at 60 Wall Street. There were nearly 6000 transactions. Nobody in New York or London or Frankfurt or any of the international financial centres really noticed.the chairman of Trump and his companies’ estimated $360 million in outstanding loans from Deutsche Bank.

Trump’s assets manager at Deutsche, Rosemary Vrablic, specialized in real estate and is close enough to Trump and his family — both Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are clients — that she was invited to attend the inauguration. In the past decade, the Deutsche Bank private wealth unit helped finance three of Trump’s properties, including a golf resort near Miami (Doral), a new hotel in Washington DC and Trump Tower in Chicago, all of which include personal guarantees by Trump. He and his organization currently owe Deutsche Bank over $300

“Deutsche Bank is our long-standing partner and has been working in Russia since 1881 … It would take ages to describe everything that Deutsche Bank is doing in Russia,” Putin said at the time.

The bank kept writing checks even after Trump defaulted on loans worth hundreds of millions and sued it. Now Congressional investigators are going to court to uncover the financial records behind their relationship.

The remarkably troubled recent history of Deutsche Bank, its past money-laundering woes — and the bank’s striking relationship with Trump — became the subject of investigation by the German State Attorney’s office. The German bank loaned a cumulative total of around $2.5 billion to Trump projects over the past two decades, and the bank continued writing him nine-figure checks even after he defaulted on a $640 million obligation and sued the bank, blaming it for his failure to pay back the debt.

  • Deutsche Bank’s private wealth unit loaned Trump $48 million — after he had defaulted on his $640 million loan and the bank’s commercial unit didn’t want to lend him any further funds — so that Trump could pay back another unit of Deutsche Bank.
  • Deutsche Bank loaned Trump’s company $125 million as part of the overall $150 million purchase of the ailing Doral golf resort in Miami in 2012. The loans’ primary collateral was land and buildings that he paid only $105 million for, county land records show. The apparent favorable terms raised questions about whether the bank’s loan was unusually risky.
  • To widespread alarm, and at least one protest that Trump would not be able to pay his lease obligations, Deutsche Bank’s private wealth group loaned the Trump Organization an additional $175 million to renovate the Old Post Office Building in Washington and turn it into a luxury hotel.

Trump began doing business with the Bayrock Group, a real estate development organization with its headquarters in the Trump Tower. He met founder Tevfik Arif, a Russian born in then-Soviet Kazakhstan, and Russian-born American businessman Felix Sater 1, COO of Bayrock and a convicted felon, through a Trump Tower leasing agent. Bayrock arranged for the Trump Organization to become involved in multiple developments that were marketed under the Trump name.

The first Trump-Bayrock deal, a 19-story condominium tower and hotel complex in Phoenix, fell through in 2005 after organized resistance from residents. A follow-up project in Fort Lauderdale also collapsed after lawsuits and claims of criminal fraud tarnished the project’s reputation. Trump dodged the lawsuit by asserting he was not the developer and bore no responsibility for the problems.

Eventually, Trump and Bayrock engaged in a series of deals leading to the construction of the Trump SoHo in New York, which became the centerpiece of a RICO investigation. The firm’s organizational structure was deliberately designed to make it difficult to determine how it worked, or who profited from what business dealing.

Trump had turned to Bayrock after a series of six straight corporate bankruptcies devastated his portfolio; he was now essentially an entertainer portraying himself as a business mogul who was actually struggling to re-establish himself and his brand. “[T]he massive illicit outflows from Russia and oil-rich [former Soviet Union states] like Kazahkstan and Azerbaijan from the mid-1990s provided precisely the kind of undiscriminating investors that he needed. These outflows arrived at just the right time to fund several of Trump’s post-2000 high-risk real estate and casino ventures – most of which failed.”

His financing opportunities were severely limited, as most of the banks he previously did business with wanted no further dealings with himMarch 1, 2018: Top Trump Fundraiser Sought $75 Million Fee for Persuading DOJ to Drop Money Laundering Investigation

According to media reports, Elliott Broidy, a convicted felon,a deputy chair of the Republican National Committee and a top fundraiser for the Trump campaign with inside access to Trump and his administration, sought a $75 million fee if he could persuade the Justice Department to drop an investigation into an investment deal involving the Malaysian Prime Minister.

 

How to Find Spy Devices in Your Home, Car, Cell Phone, or Computer

Reasons You Might Be a Target for Spying

Turbo Future

How do you know if you are being watched? How do you know if you aren’t? These days, private surveillance is becoming more and more common. Reasons that someone may be spying on you include:

  • You own a company.
  • You have an important, responsible, or secretive job.
  • You have attended confidential interviews or meetings.
  • You are a scientist, politician, journalist, witness, attorney, judge, police officer, or local government official.
  • Your partner or spouse believes you are having an affair.
  • You are getting divorced.
  • You are petitioning for sole custody of your children.
  • You are a suspected activist or terrorist.
  • You have logged in to certain websites.
  • You file for disability or workers compensation.
  • Your neighbor hates you.
  • Your friend, neighbor, or relative is under suspicion.
  • You have recently made a substantial insurance claim.
  • You are very wealthy or possess something valuable.
  • You are a celebrity.
  • You are the victim of a stalker.
  • Someone believes they can get ransom money out of you if they access or capture your personal information.
  • Someone wants to take and use photos of you or members of your family—perhaps for profit or revenge.

Of course, our personal data and behavior is constantly being tracked by the government, search engines, social media, websites we visit, and possibly by our employers, but this article is intended for individuals who suspect that they are being singled out and targeted for a specific reason in a personal privacy threat.

How to Detect Hidden Cameras in Your Home

These days, cameras are so small they might be hidden anywhere to spy on you. They can be as small as a fingertip and hidden in tissue boxes, books, bookshelves, clocks, stuffed animals, potted plants, or anywhere. Although the camera will likely be well-hidden, its lens has to be visible, even if it’s behind glass. A simple, cost-effective method to detect hidden spy cameras is to use a flashlight or the light on your phone to find them.

Most cameras have green or red lights. These might have been covered, but if there wasn’t time to install it properly, you might be able to find the camera by these lights.

How to Make a DIY Camera Detector

1.Wait until dark and turn off all the lights and block out any light from outside.

2.Grab a cardboard tube—a roll of paper towel is ideal. Hold the tube up to one eye and close the other.

3.Turn on your smart phone’s flashlight, or use a regular flashlight.

4.Now slowly scan every inch of the room. You are looking for a tiny light with a halo, which is the reflection of the camera lens.

If you don’t see any lights, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any cameras. Maybe the person who installed them hid them carefully.

How to Use Your Cell Phone to Find a Hidden Camera

  • Call a friend, put them on speakerphone, and ask them to hold the line open (stay on the phone).
  • Walk around the room and listen for electric interference (snaps, pops, cracks, or buzzing).
  • These noises may indicate hidden electronic devices.

Use an RF (Radio Frequency) Detector

These devices are readily available and range from $10 to $200. You can use one to scan for hidden wireless devices and signals in your home. Turn it on and follow the instructions, which include moving or sweeping slowly and listening for feedback. You may need to test each room on several of the device’s frequencies.

How to Find Hidden Mics, Bugs, or Listening Devices

Anyone can buy apps to eavesdrop on you. Many require access to your device to install. Sometimes they’re hidden on the SIM card rather than on the operating system. However, some might be installed OTA (over-the-air, remotely).

  • One thing to think about is the bug’s power supply. Some run on batteries, and as a result, they have a limited lifespan. If someone wants to listen to you constantly, they’ll need a device with a steady and dependable power source, so always pay attention to visible wires that may indicate a hidden bug.
  • A bug might steal power from other devices. For example, some can hide in a USB cable and draw power any time the cord is plugged in.
  • When the house is empty and traffic noise outside has subsided, walk around and switch off all electrical appliances, such as the refrigerator and computers. Be still and listen. Walk around the house quietly and listen out for any soft buzzing or bleeping. Track down the source.
  • Electric switch plates are a favorite place for bug installations. Check every switch plate and wall socket by first looking at it and then trying to move it. If it has been recently disturbed, may be visually out of alignment or loose. Turn off the power, unscrew the plate, and see if there’s anything behind it that shouldn’t be there.
  • Check your smoke detectors, wall and ceiling light fittings, ceiling tiles, clocks, and lamps. Warning: Don’t go poking screwdrivers anywhere near live electrical wiring.
  • Look out for paint discoloration on walls or ceilings. A small, circular mark may be an indication of a micro-camera or listening device. Check the baseboards for bumps or signs of disturbance.
  • Use your flashlight and hands to thoroughly examine every piece of furniture. Run your fingers along out-of-sight edges. Turn the furniture upside down. Look carefully for small holes in upholstery.
  • Take notice of tiny patches of white dust from dry walls on baseboards or on sills. See if you can determine where it came from. It could be debris from the installation of a tiny pinhole camera.
  • Examine every ornament and other innocuous objects in a room–pictures are good places to hide devices, and so are pillows.
  • Try all the door locks to make sure they feel and work the same as usual. A lock that has been tampered with may exhibit stiffness, sticking, or feel very loose.

Remember, installing an external device to listen to your private conversations isn’t necessary if the device already has a microphone (like your cell phone or computer, for example).

How to Tell If Your Car Is Bugged or Tracked

Check your car for listening devices the same way you’d check your home or office: A hand-held RF device might help.

While you’re at it, you’ll probably also want to check both the exterior and interior of your car for GPS trackers, which often look like small two or three inch boxes with magnetic strips to hold them to the body of the car. There are two types to look for:

  • Monitored. These send real-time information about where you are right now to a computer or a smartphone. These work like cell phones transmitting data either constantly, while the car is being used, or at pre-set intervals. Some are hardwired into your car’s power supply, but they might also be battery-operated. These are more likely to be found inside your car.
  • Unmonitored. These cheaper models collect and store data inside the device to be accessed later. When your car is moving, the tracker collects information about where you go to be downloaded manually later. These are more likely to be found on the exterior of your car.

How to Find a GPS Tracker on Your Car

1.Check the exterior. This is the most likely spot for a tracker, since it’s the easiest place for a person to place a device. Use a flashlight and a mirror on a pole to really observe every part of your car’s exterior: in wheel wells, under the chassis, behind the bumpers, behind the side mirrors, etc.

2.Check under the hood. It’s less likely a device will be there since it’s not as easily accessed and the device will be exposed to higher temperatures, but check everywhere: on the underside of the hood itself, behind the radiator, around the battery, air ducts, etc.

3.Search the interior. The first thing to notice is if there are any mysterious wires connected to your data port. Check the glove compartment and under your seats. Use the flashlight and the mirror to look inside vents.

4.Check the trunk. Look around the spare tire and elsewhere. Don’t forget to check for something attached to the underside of the door itself.

Use an Electronic RF Sweeper

You can use an electronic RF sweeper to find out if there is any inexplicable wireless or cellular activity that could lead you to a bug. Turn it it on and walk slowly around and inside your car, sweeping it in all the places listed above. The sweeper might emit a noise, a light, or a vibration if it detects any wireless transmissions

How to Find Out If Your Cell Phone Is Being Monitored or Bugged

  • Is your battery losing its charge? If you see sudden drops in your phone’s charge when you have not been using it, or if you find yourself suddenly needing to charge it more often, this may mean that the battery is being depleted by someone who’s remotely activating your microphone or accessing voice or text messages.
  • Does your phone seem to have a mind of its own? If it turns off and on by itself or won’t shut down (or hesitates before it will), makes noises (especially a pulsating, static noise that hints that the mic or speaker is active), randomly starts installing apps, or if the light is still lit after you shut it off, this may mean someone is controlling it remotely.
  • Do you hear a lot of interference on the line? This could be caused by a bad connection, but it’s also a sign someone is listening in, as some call recording software mimics a conference call.
  • Do you hear blips and pops from computers, phones, televisions, and radios? Since phone transmissions often interfere with other electronic devices, and many phone tapping devices use frequencies that might interfere with your electronics, if you hear electronic echo or static coming from devices when you’re not on your phone, it might indicate remote activity.
  • Is your phone warm, even when you haven’t been using it? This is a sign that the phone is working and depleting the battery.
  • Do you get SMS text messages that look like random, meaningless strings of numbers and symbols? This may indicate fumbled attempts at coded transmissions.
  • Have you seen an unexplained jump in the cost of your data? If your phone bills shoot up for no apparent reason, someone else may be running up your data bill.

What to Do If Your Cell Phone Has Been Hacked

Keep in mind that these signs might only mean that you need a new battery, regular transmission of data is being interrupted by a poor connection, you need to call your provider and argue about the cost of your plan, there was a glitch in the hardware or software, or your phone is on the fritz.

On the other hand, you might have a good reason to be suspicious. See the instructions below for finding and deleting spyware. There are many useful apps that help you monitor your battery use. For a quick fix, if you take the battery out of your phone when it’s not in use, this can deter unwanted activity.

How to Find Out If Your Cell Phone Is Being Tracked

  1. Check for Signs of Jailbreaking

“Jailbreaking” is when someone manages to install tracking or spyware apps on your iPhone by bypassing Apple’s strict built-in rules against using software from other sources. There’s no easy way to know if someone has jailbroken your phone, but if they were in a rush, they may have forgotten to cover their tracks and neglected to delete the software they used to do it.

1.Swipe right on your home screen (since the app probably won’t necessarily show with an icon).

2.Look for suspicious software or apps. Common jailbreaking tools to look for are Icy, Installer, Cydia, Installous, or SBSettings.

3.If you use a file explorer app like ES File Explorer, look in your message, email, and image folders.

4.Jailbreaking apps often use GPS to monitor your location and send reports via data roaming, so huge data bills are another thing to look for.

5.Before you delete anything suspicious, double-check to make sure what it is.

  1. Block Spy Apps With an Antivirus App

Even if you already have antivirus apps, it may be time to upgrade or find a better one.

  1. Do a Factory Reset

Resetting any phone to its original factory settings will get rid of any spy software there might be, you must make sure to back up your data first, or you’ll lose it all.

  1. Check Data Usage

Spyware apps take data from your phone and send it to someone else (the person who’s spying on you). One way to find out is by keeping track of data that’s being used by the apps installed on your phone. Go to Settings —> Data Usage, and look through the entries in App Usage to see if any unfamiliar or unknown apps have recently been using a lot of data. You might install a data monitor app to monitor usage, as well.

How to Find Spy Software on Your iPhone or Android Cell Phone

Since smartphones are almost always connected to the internet, they can be remotely hacked. The hacking doesn’t have to be remote, either: Maybe someone physically got ahold of your device and installed a keystroke logger or some other kind of tracking app.

Spy apps and programs often disguise their file names so you won’t notice them, but sometimes they’re daringly honest and use terms like “spy,” “stealth,” “monitor,” etc. So if you see anything you don’t recognize and don’t remember downloading, you should investigate it.

iPhone

It’s hard to hijack an iPhone, but it’s still possible. Someone might download your personal data via a shared network, for example.

Dig around in your iPhone directory. If you see any suspicious files, ask an Apple store consultant about them or simply upgrade to the latest iOS version. Make sure you back up all your data first.

Android

To check your files to see if there’s anything suspicious…

1.Go to Settings –>

2.Applications –>

3.Manage Applications or Running Services

4.Investigate any files or apps you don’t recognize. Don’t delete or remove anything before you know what it is, though, and if you’re not sure, then get advice from an expert on proper deletion methods. It’s a simple matter to look up the purpose of any file/app on the web.

Signs Your Landline Is Bugged

  • Do you hear small noises on your phone during a conversation? Indications of a line tap are volume changes, minor drops (i.e. tiny gaps in the other person’s speech), static, popping noises, hissing, or any other unusual sounds. These occur when two connectors are hooked up, such as a wiretap to a phone line. Listen for anything unusual as you hang up the phone.
  • Is your telephone making odd sounds when it not in use? This would indicate that the phone itself is being used as a listening device. In other words, it is acting as a microphone and will pick up any conversation in the room.
  • If you can hear a dial tone even when your phone is on the hook, this is a sign that it may have been tapped.
  • Silent phone calls (when you pick up but it sounds like no one is there) may mean that the phone has been hooked up to a slave device. Listen out for electronic sounds like buzzing or high-pitched beeping. At the same time, silent calls are common these days and usually caused by computer error, so by themselves, they are not cause for concern.

What to do: Locate the B-Box or cross-connect box for your phone and check the two wires (“cable pair”) associated with your landline. Are there any extra cables or devices attached? A service technician can help you, or you can hire a company to do a wire tap connection sweep.

Is Your Computer Being Monitored by Someone Else?

Five years ago, if you wondered if someone was watching you, people would think you were paranoid. But we should all know by now that we’re being watched online: by the government, by search engines like Google, by sites like Amazon and Facebook, and probably by the companies we work for. Today, any jealous boyfriend, concerned parent, or nosy neighbor can easily purchase commercial snooping software to spy on anyone they want.

If you have reasons to suspect that your connections or conversations are not private and that someone is watching your activity or your data is being sent to someone else (you might notice suspicious battery depletions or internet history, or mysterious lag times and other clues), then you’ll want to look for leaks.

Signs Your Computer Is Being Spied On

  • It suddenly starts working very slowly, and functions that once happened quickly are taking a lot more time. This in itself is not an indication of spying malware; most older computers slow down over time.
  • Your mouse moves with a mind of its own: opening, scrolling, and closing apps and docs.
  • Your online banking accounts show missing funds or charges you don’t recognize.
  • You get confirmation emails from stores about payments for things you did not order.
  • Apps open randomly or you find things open that you didn’t open yourself.

How to Find Spyware on Your Computer

1.Scan for malware. Scanning your computer with anti-virus, anti-malware, and anti-rootkit programs can help find data leaks. Really sneaky spyware might add itself to the exception list on your anti-virus program, so use more than one program.

2.Check your recent items/activity to see if any third-party software—also known as remote control software or virtual network computing software—is being used that you did not install yourself. These programs allow someone to view your activity on your computer, see your desktop, run applications, change your settings, and access your data. These were designed to allow IT administrators to manage and oversee a company’s computers, but anyone can use them. Look for anything with “VNC” in its name, LogMeIn, or GoToMyPC. If you find something you don’t recognize, do a search to find out what it is, and also search for proper methods for uninstalling them.

3.Check where your iCloud backups are being sent. If they’re being sent to a third party, you’ll want to know about it.

4.Check your History. On your search browsers, you can look at the History to see which sites have been visited. You can look at History to see if anyone else has been using your computer to look things up, and you should also know that anyone who has access to your computer can see where you’ve been on the internet. Saving this record of your viewing history allows web pages to load faster when you return, but deleting the History means no one can see where you’ve been. Google “how to view browsing history on [insert name of your device]” or “how to delete browsing history on [insert name of your device]” to learn more.

5.Open your Task Manager. If you’re on Windows, you can open your task manager by keying Ctrl+Alt+Delete, then clicking “open task manager” and scrolling down the list of applications and processes that are running. If you see something that looks unfamiliar, Google it to find out what it is. For example, Lanschool (which is listed as Student.exe) uses a Chrome extension to collect and store your browsing history, and Eaglesvr takes and stores screenshots of your screen every three seconds. To stop it temporarily, you might be able to right click to end the process, but usually it needs to be uninstalled properly in a multi-step process.

6.Look for keyloggers. Keyloggers record everything you type, including passwords. Check your Task Manager or Activity Monitor.

7.Check your ports. Ports are virtual data connection points through which computers share information. If someone is monitoring you remotely, there will be an open port enabling the data transfer.

8.Identify the TCP connections. Identify outbound connections by using a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) which shows all the connections from your computer to others. You can download a TCPView program to make the process easier.

Computer Counter-Surveillance Techniques

1.Reset your wireless router. Anyone who can access your wireless router can also monitor your activity. It’s one of the easiest ways to hack your computer.

2.Use a different network. Sometimes, a person hopes you’ll do the same things you always do. They might be using a keylogger program that can only upload data to someone else on the same network.

3.Use end-to-end encryption. With E2EE, only the communicating parties can read the messages. No third parties can decode the data.

4.Install your own email-tracking software. Use counter-spy tactics by installing programs like ReadNotify or GetNotify to see when and where each of your emails was opened and for how long, or if it was forwarded without your knowledge.

5.Use encrypted email. Switch to an encrypted email client so that only the people you send email to will be able to decode it.

6.Put a sticker over your camera and keep a cordless jack inserted into your mic port.

7.Change your password

Warning Signs That You’re Being Watched

If you believe you may be a target for a covert operation, the first thing to do is look for evidence that someone is watching or listening to your private conversations. Here are the warning signs to look out for:

  • Someone you know (your partner, a colleague, or neighbor) may inadvertently let slip something that you said in privacy, that they could only have overheard. If you question them, they will glibly deflect you by saying they guessed, that someone else told them, or that they made an assumption. Don’t argue or pursue the point.
  • If information appears in the press that no one except you and your trusted friends/personnel have access to, that’s a major sign that you are under surveillance.
  • A stalker likes his victim to be aware that he has access to private conversations—it adds to the fear-factor—and he will often find ways to let you know you are being watched, followed, or listened to.
  • If your home was broken into or burgled, even if nothing significant was taken. You may not even notice if a door was left open or a window forced and you won’t ever notice that someone has been inside your home. Make sure your children tell you if they discover an unlocked door that isn’t usually left unlocked, or an open window downstairs.

Use Technical Surveillance Counter-Measures (TSCM)

TSCM (technical surveillance counter-measures) is the list of things you can do to search for and prevent bugs, cameras, GPS, and other devices from spying on you. The lists included in this article are TSCM.

You can look for surveillance devices yourself or hire an expert to help you. The device used most often for TSCM is a radio frequency (RF) detector which are cheap and easy to buy online. Any spy device that uses electricity or a battery might be detected with a RF detector, including hidden cameras, bugs, or GPS devices.

In order for it to work, you must first turn off all the electronic and wireless devices you know about. This will help the scanner locate the ones you don’t know about.

If You Believe Someone is Entering Your Property

Some commenters have mentioned that they believe someone is entering their property when they are not at home, or at night. If you think this may be the case, you need to collect proof. The easiest way of doing this is by installing one or two small surveillance cameras on your property.

These easy-to-set-up cameras can be remotely monitored by a smart phone app. They also have SD cards to record activity. Choose a motion detector camera like a Kamtron security camera. While I have never suspected anyone of entering our home, these little devices are also excellent for monitoring our dogs’ behavior when we are out.

The Kamtron can also pick up activity in the dark up to 20 feet in distance, so most rooms are covered.

Other reasons for installing a security camera are monitoring the activity of people you do allow into your home: carers, dog walkers, baby-sitters, etc.

If you are concerned about unauthorized people, such as an ex partner or stalking landlord coming into your home, install at least one surveillance camera for proof and protection.

Bug, Camera, or GPS Detector Devices

Any spy device that transmits wirelessly might be detected with a RF detector, including hidden cameras, bugs, or GPS devices. You carry it around your home, office, or car and it gives an audible warning when it is within 10 meters of any source of transmission. Ensure you turn off all ‘innocent’ devices and remove cellphones, laptops, etc. prior to scanning a room or else you’ll get a false signal.

Bug detectors can usually find audio or video transmitters as they operate on simple RF (radio frequencies). This is why your FM radio is capable of detecting such devices. However, these bug detectors are much more sensitive so it may well be worthwhile investing in one for your peace of mind.

How to Check for Spy Devices With an FM Radio

Even without buying a fancy device, you might use your radio to find electronic surveillance devices. The radio will emit feedback if there’s any electronic transmissions. You may be familiar with this feedback phenomenon when it happens with speakers. Well, when it occurs with an FM radio, it’s because of the same thing–the radio is picking up transmissions from the bug and can often lead you right to it.

  • Tune your radio in to a silent spot at the high end of the FM band.
  • Carry the radio around the room. If it begins to make odd sounds such as a high-pitched squeal, move it until the sound reaches its loudest pitch. That should be the source of the transmission.

You can also do a similar sweep with a small hand-held TV. Check channels 2, 7, 13, 14, 50-60, and 66-68 for marked interference. It works with analog or digital.

Is It Against the Law to Spy on Someone?

In most countries and jurisdictions (but laws and policies vary from place to place)…

  • You don’t have any right to privacy in a public space. However, a private citizen is usually not allowed to record another person without their knowledge or consent. It is illegal for a private citizen spy on someone via a hidden camera in a private space.
  • A person is allowed to hide cameras in their own home or property, even if they don’t warn you about their presence. If they have a valid reason for installing a camera, it will likely be deemed legal.
  • In many states, it’s legal to record a conversation in which you are involved without the consent of all the others involved in the conversation. However, in many states it is illegal to record private conversations unless everyone involved gives consent.
  • It’s legal for someone to place a GPS device on a vehicle they own or on their own property.
  • It is illegal to install spyware on someone’s phone or computer, but there are exceptions to this rule. If it’s a work computer, your employer might be allowed to install certain types of IT software, for example. If you ever gave that person permission to use your phone, computer, or car, and you discover later that they installed spyware after you gave them access to your device, it may not be deemed illegal.
  • If you ever give someone your password, then you basically lose the right to claim they behaved illegally by using it.
  • It’s legal for someone to hire a private eye to watch, follow, or listen to you, as long as the spying is done without breaking any laws.

 

Face masks to decoy t-shirts: The rise of anti-surveillance fashion

Artists and fashion designers are coming up with novel ways to stay private in public

September 26, 2019

by Umberto Bacchi and Adela Suliman

Thomson Reuters Foundation

LONDON, Sept 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As top designers wrapped up London Fashion Week and made their way to Paris to grab the world’s attention with their lavish creations, a group of artists in London were making their own fashion statement, in a bid to become invisible.

Emily Roderick, 23, and her cohorts in “The Dazzle Club” walked around the British capital last week with blue, red and black stripes painted across their faces in an effort to escape the watchful eye of facial-recognition cameras.

The artists took their silent stroll through the city’s King’s Cross area hoping their bold make-up would act as camouflage and confuse the cameras.

“We’re hiding in plain sight,” Roderick told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, explaining that bright colours and dark shades of make-up are known to hamper a camera’s ability to accurately recognise faces.

Computers have become adept at identifying people in recent years, unlocking a myriad of applications for facial recognition, from tracking criminals to counting truants.

But as cameras appear at unlikely spots across the globe, activists raise fears about lost privacy and say society might be on the doorstep of a dystopia where Big Brother sees all.

Altering people’s looks to cheat cameras has become increasingly popular with artists and designers in recent years, as the use of facial recognition has grown more pervasive, raising fears over privacy, according to fashion experts.

From sunglasses to face masks, numerous wearable devices promising a veil of anonymity are making their way into the mainstream, said Henry Navarro Delgado, an art and fashion professor at Canada’s Ryerson University.

“There has always been something subversive about streetwear, and one of the new areas of subversion is definitely surveillance and, in particular, facial recognition,” he said.

In Hong Kong, for example, protesters against a bill that would have allowed people to be sent to mainland China for trial have sought to avoid surveillance by wearing masks and dressing in black.

 

“Anti-Surveillance Clothing” Creates A New Wrinkle In Facial Detection

by Larry Anderson

Security Informed

The latest challenge to facial recognition technology is “anti-surveillance clothing,” aimed at confusing facial recognition algorithms as a way of preserving “privacy.” The clothing, covered with ghostly face-like designs to specifically trigger face-detection algorithms, are a backlash against the looming possibility of facial recognition being used in retail environments and for other commercial purposes.

Increasingly Common Facial Recognition Technology

It’s another possible obstacle to the use of a technology that has faced many challenges already. Successful implementations of facial recognition technology have been elusive over the years, especially when it comes to identifying “faces in a crowd.” Variables such as partial obstructions, movement, lighting, etc., have been a challenge to the algorithms tasked with identifying faces. Most successful face recognition systems have been those that have controlled the positioning of each face in order to maximize recognition. People walking single-file through a door, for example, provide faces one by one to make them easier to recognize.

Despite the challenges, face recognition technology is becoming more common. The ability to recognize faces (and identities) is central to new marketing technologies such as automated customer service or signage that targets an individual’s buying habits. For example, face recognition is an element in Amazon Go’s recently announced automated convenience store concept.

Infringement On Privacy?

Clothing or other textiles with face-like patterns are being positioned as a way for consumers to fight back against any perceived invasions of privacy. Berlin-based artist and technologist Adam Harvey is designing the clothing to confuse face recognition software algorithms. In effect, the clothing “overloads an algorithm with what it wants, oversaturating an area with faces to divert the gaze of the computer vision algorithm,” Harvey told a recent hacking conference in Hamburg. One pattern would reportedly give a computer more than 1,200 possible facial detections.

Concerns about face recognition algorithms extend beyond the ability to identify a person. Algorithms can also identify traits such as “calm” or “kind,” or demographics such as age and gender. Using such small bits of data to drive marketing efforts is problematic for many. Harvey points to the capabilities as another way that facial recognition is changing our expectations of privacy – and even more reason to fight back.

Harvey’s Other Anti-Surveillance Work

It’s not the first time Harvey has been involved in trying to foil facial recognition systems; he previously proposed using makeup and hairstyling to prevent machines from detecting a face.

There are also some “anti-drone stealth wear” fashions on the market, made of silver-plated fabric that reflects thermal radiation to enable the wearer to avert overhead thermal surveillance.

Privacy is an ongoing concern in the physical security and video surveillance market, and public opinion is evolving. In the online world, many of us are willing to give up a level of privacy if we perceive a benefit tradeoff. But what about the physical world?

Face detection technology is a common feature of today’s video surveillance cameras, and facial recognition algorithms are becoming more sophisticated.

Questions of privacy in the physical world have not yet evolved, and it’s unclear what benefits (if any) there are for consumers to allow machines to invade their privacy. Until those benefits become apparent, it’s not surprising there would be backlash.

However, anti-surveillance clothing would have to really catch on to make any real difference, wouldn’t it?

 

How to Sweep For Bugs and Hidden Cameras

by Lily Hay Newman

WIRED

If you’re facing targeted security threats, your problems run deeper than spyware on your devices. You need to check your physical spaces as well—your home, hotel room, office, and so on—for hidden cameras, mics, and other eavesdropping tools that someone may have planted. That means performing regular “technical surveillance counter measures” inspections. In other words?

Checking for bugs.

“Hackers bug lots of places, including some people wouldn’t think of,” says Jill Johnston, president of KJB Security Products, a security and surveillance device wholesaler. “Tanning beds, dressing rooms, bathrooms, hidden cameras in an Airbnb, on your car, in your house. You want to be able to scan a room and feel safe.”

Look Around, Look Around

First, take a close look at your surroundings. Carefully check for anything new or out of place, and listen to your gut about whether anything seems off. You don’t have to see the bug itself; installing eavesdropping devices can involve changes as subtle as shifting an object or a piece of furniture. A bug could be lodged in an inconspicuous object planted in plain sight, or it could be glued behind a small hole drilled in a wall.

Next, review the list of devices that are connected to your router for any that you don’t recognize. Usually bugs that need internet connectivity will have a more clandestine plan for accessing the web, though, like using their own hotspot or SIM card, so also check the Wi-Fi networks with a strong signal available around you. Anything that’s not coming from a neighbor or a nearby business, or other likely suspect, could be a bug’s own network.

It’s also important to think about a bug’s power supply. Some may run on a battery, giving them a limited lifespan, but persistent surveillance requires a steady power source. Always follow visible wires, scan for wires in walls, and check outlets, crowded power strips, and extension cords. It’s also worth considering what devices you have in the open that bugs could hide in to steal power. For example, this audio bug (complete with SIM card) hides in a USB to micro-USB cord, drawing power any time the cord is plugged in, while listening to everything around it.

Scantron

Once you’ve completed a thorough visual and physical inspection, you can use a variety of scanning tools to conduct a more advanced check. Truly spy-grade bugs often incorporate mechanisms to try to defeat scanners, so you’ll have more success if you conduct multiple types of sweeps than if you rely on a one-size-fits-all approach.

“I tell everybody that calls, there’s no one device that I can sell you that will do everything,” says Jon Marshall, president of the surveillance device seller Spy Gadgets.

Now turn off all wireless devices; not just laptops and smartphones but routers, set-top boxes, and that connected refrigerator that seemed like a good idea at the time. Then use a radiofrequency detector from a surveillance product seller—or even Amazon—to scan for transmitters by moving the instrument slowly and methodically around the space. You can also check your clothes and your bags for things like GPS-tracking bugs this way. Some devices show a visual graph of activity, while others make a sound that gets louder as you get closer to an RF-emitting source. Anything broadcasting a radio signal will pop up.

Commercial bugs usually fall in the 10 MHz to 8 MHz range, but some sweeping devices look at 10 hertz all the way to 24 GHz. Reliable instruments that can scan a broad RF range cost hundreds of dollars, but depending on your situation you could opt for cheaper models. Simple bugs can also create static or sound distortions as you turn the dial on a commercial AM/FM radio.

And, if you’re really worried that you’ll miss a bug that you know is somewhere in the room, you can use a white noise machine—or a white noise app on your smartphone—or audio jammer to stymie prying ears.

Advanced Checks

Some bugs obfuscate their radio frequencies altogether, or might happen to be powered off during your sweep. To identify those, use a device called a “nonlinear junction detector,” which helps sniff out semiconductor electronics. Benign objects—even a nail in a wall—can create false positives, though, so carefully vet whatever turns up. One of the most prominent NLJD manufacturers, Research Electronics International, is based in Tennessee, and offers extensive device training for customers purchasing its Orion bug detectors, which cost about $10,000 to $20,000 depending on the model.

Remember, too, that snoops aren’t just listening; sometimes they watch as well. Fortunately, checking for night-vision cameras comes significantly cheaper than high-end bug detectors; infrared scanners cost about $100 to $300. You can also use IR and visible light emitters (even a flashlight) to scan for the glint of camera lenses reflecting light back. Some apps, like Glint Finder for Android and Spy Hidden Camera Detector for iOS, use your smartphone flash to scan for camera lenses.

Bugs always need a way to deliver the data they’re gathering to their owners, so deep bug sweeps should go beyond regular electronics detection to scan for laser beam and microwave transmission setups. These rigs can encode and send data out of a room to an attacker without using traditional methods. Radiofrequency scanners with a wide enough range check for microwaves, and many general-purpose antisurveillance tools feature laser-detection modes.

Regular Upkeep

Sweeps also shouldn’t be one-off occasions. Record your results, especially if you don’t find anything suspicious, so you can establish a baseline that will help you compare readings over time and detect anomalies down the road. Persistent spectrum analyzers, like Delta X, will watch for changes on a number of different feeds over time, but they cost about $14,000.

It takes Jim Hopper from Stranger Things a long time to tear his house apart looking for government bugs (spoiler: the mic is in an overhead light). And that’s in 1983, when there weren’t a lot of electronics to check. If the process seems daunting or too pricey to undertake alone, there are always professional services who can sweep for you. “If you have a serious problem and it’s a serious threat, hire someone who has all the tools in their tool box and the expertise, and they’ll sweep,” says Spy Gadgets’ Marshall.

There’s a lot you can do yourself, though, before things get too expensive and complicated. Besides, if you’re in that deep, there might not be anyone left you can trust except yourself.

 

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

September 27, 2019

by Dr. Peter Janney

On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.

Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.

Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.

After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.

The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.

When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..

A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.

The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.

Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks. ”

Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.

Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas in 1993 when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publication.

 

Conversation No. 43

Date: Friday, October 25, 1996

Commenced: 3:45 PM CST

Concluded: 4:15 PM CST

GD: Good afternoon, Robert. Everything going well for you? How was your doctor’s appointment?

RTC: Well, no results but I am resigned to being old, Gregory. When you get to my age, you’ll count the day as wonderful if you can open your eyes in the morning. How is it with you?

GD: It goes. Moving to Illinois was not the best of ideas but my son left me little choice. It was move or else.

RTC: Or else what?

GD: He would leave and I would be stuck with a huge rent for a big house with a swimming pool that he insisted we have but he only used once. I used it all the time but I had to clean it and with all the trees and the occasional drowned squirrel, it was a wonderful addition that I would never want again unless I was rich enough to afford a weekly pool service. Of course the scumbag neighbors wanted their filthy kids to use it but I said that was not possible. I told them my insurance forbade it but actually, who wants an army of screaming little assholes using the pool as their private toilet?

RTC: Sounds like you put your Scrooge hat on this morning.

GD: Actually, I like kids. If you barbecue the small ones, they go well with a pitcher of Jack Daniels.

RTC: For God’s sake, don’t ever say that around a Jew or you’ll go stone deaf from the screaming.

GD: Oh, I know you’re right about that one. It’s a little like saying that you’re looking for a chink in someone’s armor and Asian-Americans start shouting. And never call a spade, a spade.

RTC: Yes. We live in an artificial society, Gregory. Our primitive selves still heft the vanished club with which to smite other cave-dwellers.

GD: In the Mueller book, I made reference to the fact that we now have nice-nice titles for people. I said we call janitors ‘sanitary engineers’ and that Mongoloids are now called ‘differently abled.’ And some reader wrote a nasty letter to my publisher about this which he forwarded for my comment. She said she was horrified and repulsed by the use of the Mongoloid idiot implication. Her little Timmy was the sweetest child on earth and I ought to be thrashed for calling him this terrible, forbidden name.

RTC: Did you reply?

GD: Oh yes. I wrote to her that having read her letter with sorrow because she was stuck with a retard, I suggested, very pointedly, that she ought to put some chlorine in her gene pool.

RTC: (Laughter) Gregory, you didn’t.

GD: Why not? Hell, the Greeks knew something about genes and they left their retards out on the mountainside to either die slowly or more quickly when the animals got them. Keeps the race clean if you follow me. Now, we let the innates breed and they are filling what passes for civilization with all kinds of lopsided mongrels. Malthus doesn’t mention eugenics but I feel that the herd should be thinned and the best breeding stock put in a separate pen to avoid two legged goats or chickens covered with fur.

RTC: You sound like a Nazi. As I recall, we had that Dr. Mengele on the payroll. Down in South America where we wanted him to do work on breeding superior people.

GD: Jesus H. Christ, Robert, talk about infuriating the Jews. If they ever found out about that delightful fact, all their newspapers, magazines and television stations would do terrible damage to the CIA. My grandfather was a Nazi but I am not.

RTC: Over there?

GD: No, here. A member of the AO in good standing.

RTC: Pardon?

GD: The Auslands Organization. Party members residing outside Germany. He was a banker with close connections to the Schreoder people in Cologne. Party member since 1923.

RTC: Well, the CIA is now full of Jews so if they find that out, they will do more than keep your books out of the bookstores.

GD: I suppose if I turned my back on them, I might have some trouble. They don’t like confrontation and love to work in the dark or through surrogates. They hate the Mueller books, not because Mueller was anti-Semitic but because he is presented as a human being. To professional Jews, all Germans are evil. Little children of eight were trained to visit the concentration camp in their neighborhood and toss screaming Jewish babies into the giant bonfires that burned day and night.

RTC: Now I know you’re joking.

GD: Of course but that sort of silly crap is very close to what they do.

RTC: Of course it’s to make money and gain moral superiority. ‘Oh Mr. Salesman, my whole family died in the gas chambers. Terrible. Can you give a poor survivor 50% off on that couch?’

GD: Robert, that’s very unkind. True but unkind.

RTC: I remember when they attacked the Liberty and were killing Americans. Deliberate of course and the Navy sent aircraft to wipe them out. Johnson found out about this and stopped the flight. Why? He didn’t want to offend Israel.

GD: What about dead Americans?

RTC: Pales into insignificance when balanced against the vital needs of precious Israel. At the time, they were murdering captured Etyptian soldiers and they didn’t want us listening in so the tried to sink the ship.

GD: And Pollard…

RTC: Oh my, yes and even now they want us to liberate him. They made him an honorary member of the Knesset and put big bucks away for him in a private account. And this for an American who was stealing important secrets and giving them to what was supposed to be an ally.

GD: Did you ever read the Bunche report?

RTC: Ralph Bunche. The UN man?

GD: Yes. After the Jews murdered Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross and one of their royal family, solely because he refused to allow them to butcher Arab farmers, they killed him and Bunche, who was on Cypress dealing with refugees, was given his job. The UN prepared a chronology of violence in Palestine from ’44 until ’48…day by day. A wonderful chronicle of arson, murder, kidnapping, poisoning and God alone knows what atrocities. Blowing up hotels full of people and so on. I got a copy from an Army friend and if you like, I can send you a photo copy.

RTC: That I would like to see although there’s nothing I can do about it now.

GD: And when you were in the CIA?

RTC: I never liked dealing with those people. Jim Angleton loved them and kissed their asses but I never trusted any of them.

GD: Especially our allies?

RTC: Oh no, they are not our allies. If it weren’t for the fact that Jews have lots of money and own almost all the newspapers and TV stations, we wouldn’t be so eager to kiss their hairy asses, believe me.

GD: Well, the wheel turns, Robert, and one day there will be a reckoning of sorts. I don’t forsee enormous gas chambers being built in Detroit but the public can get very unpleasant when it gets angry.

RTC: But without the papers and TV and with political correctness in full swing, I can’t see mobs in the street burning down kosher meat stores.

GD: Who knows the way the wheel turns?

RTC: But don’t put any of this into future books, Gregory. Not a good idea. You will be accused of masterminding the assassination of Lincoln.

GD: Well, they may have the newspapers but there are other avenues. I remember once when I was giving a lecture, some old bitch came up to me afterwards and began telling me how her whole family had been turned into lampshades and soap at Auschwutz. She dared me to respond but I did.

RTC: And? God help us all, what did you say?

GD: Why, I said my uncle had died at Auischwitz during the war. She blinked and asked me if he were a Jew.

GD: I told her no, he was not. I said he got drunk on the Fuehrer’s birthday, fell out of a guard tower and broke his neck.

RTC: My God, you have balls, Gregory. What did she do?

GD: I think she swallowed her false teeth. However, everyone around us started laughing so not everyone was mad at me. She waddled off before I could tell her about the new German pizza oven that seated four.

RTC: Gregory, do let us change the subject. Suppose some Jewish FBI agents were listening to this?

GD: I would offer a special bargain on hand soap. I could set up a booth at a fair with hand soap in piles and a sign saying ‘Find a Relative!’ over it. Probably not a good idea. They would ask me for a 50% discount. Oh, by the way, to change the subject…

RTC: Thank God…

GD: Yes. Did you know that the British Prince Consort, Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, was a German, not a Greek. He also had been a uniformed member of several Nazi organizations before he joined the Royal Navy. His brother had been a member of the SS and his sister had been a German nurse so they never got invited to the royal wedding. His uncle was Prince Phillip of Hesse who lived in Italy where he married their Crown Princess. He was Hitler’s art dealer in Italy. Phillip is related to the last Empress of Russia, the German Kaiser  and others. His uncle was a general in the SA. I have a snapshot of him in his Hitler Youth uniform, dagger and all, with a friend of mine when both were at a Hitler Youth rally. I would imagine the IRA would love to buy that one.

RTC: I had heard something about this. Phil is a nasty piece of arrogant work. Anthony Blunt…

GD: I know all about his going to Germany and hiding references to Phillp’s Nazi past. That’s why he never got arrested when he was exposed as a Russian spy.

RTC: You do get around, Gregory.

GD: If we got together, I could tell you lots of interesting facts, Robert. Well, enough evil for the moment. My dog is making go outside noises so I had best leave you. I will call you later, OK?

RTC: Salud.

 

(Concluded at 4:15 Pm CST)

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

 

Encyclopedia of American Loons

Sue McIntosh

Medical Voices is a pseudoscience & conspiracy webpage with a particular focus on promoting anti-vaccine material. It is not a good place for information, but notable for soliciting material from some of the most widely recognized quacks and crackpots on the Internet, such as Joe Mercola and Suzanne Humphries, and for really trying to make their posts look like serious studies, which they are not by any measure of imagination.

Sue McIntosh is an MD, but not one to trust for advice remotely medical (nor probably anything else). McIntosh is a rabid conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine activist, roughly on the lizard-people-are-eating-Arkansas trajectory, and as such a good match for Medical Voices. Her views are nicely laid out in her article “Stop All Vaccines!”, in which she complains that children are being protected from more and more dangerous diseases by vaccines she labels “toxic”, and laments how delusional conspiracy theories about vaccines are not taken seriously and are even ridiculed just because they are ridiculous. Ridiculing ridiculous conspiracy theories can, as McIntosh sees it, only be a result of – wait for it – corruption and conspiracy. Therefore, McIntosh concludes, doctors and scientists are motivated only by profit, to create illness rather than health … and the purpose, apparently, is population control (for which getting rid of vaccines altogether would of course be a far more effective means – perhaps we ought to speculate about McIntosh’s own motivations for trying to get people to stop getting them?

Diagnosis: The word “toxic” is sort of a dog whistle – it clearly displays to informed readers that the author using it has no clue about basic chemistry and is the victim of a severe case of Dunning-Kruger. McIntosh is a moron and – despite her formal qualifications – obviously completely unfit to offer health advice.

 

Daniel McGivern

Expeditions to find Noah’s Ark are a dime a dozen, and they tend to end with delusional religious fanatics proudly proclaiming that they have found it, since if you’re delusional enough to engage on a project like this to begin with (other than for the laughs), you are usually not the kind of person who has the faintest trace of a clue about how to assess any evidence you may come across. Ron Wyatt found it; Bob Cornuke found it in 2006; a Chinese team found it in 2010 (though that was probably a hoax rather than a matter of delusion); and in 2011 a team of “scientists” led by Daniel McGivern discovered two large sections of Noah’s ark resting just below the surface atop Mount Ararat in Turkey – it was Pat Roberston’s Christian Broadcasting Network that used the term “scientists”, by the way. Apparently the team used military satellite imagery and ground penetrating radar technology to locate the ruins, which they promptly believed were wooden. “The evidence is overwhelming,” McGivern added. “This is the large piece from Noah’s ark.” Methinks McGivern has a poor grasp of the meaning of the word “overwhelming”. Other people who saw the satellite images maintained that the structure in question looked suspiciously like rocks.

The discovery would apparently have been “the greatest event since the resurrection of Christ,” though McGivern curiously seemed to have had no plans to actually excavate it. He did plan an expedition, however, led by a local guy who have apparently been involved in Noah’s Ark hoaxes before, but apparently that expedition came to nought. Even the WND appears to have been skeptical.

Diagnosis: Ok, so we’re not entirely sure McGivern is actually a loon. But anyone who listens to him certainly is, and apparently some people did.

 

 

 

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