TBR News December 2, 2016

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C.  December 2, 2016:” The Internet is filled with all manner of claims, counter-claims, vicious propaganda and, occasionally, truth. I have just finished reading a most interesting book and found its contents so revealing in explaining American motivations and foreign policy that I take the time, and space, to recommend it to anyone seeking to understand the current disruptive upheavals throughout the world. This has nothing to do with President-elect Trump or the failed Hillary but is very valuable in promoting knowledge of the inner workings of our government.

The book is “Blowback” and the author is Chalmers Johnson.

Highly recommended.”

The Rise of Russia and the ‘End of the World’

March 20, 2015

by Joe Quinn

“What the darkness cannot possess, it seeks to destroy”

You’ve probably read all sorts of theories that seek to explain the causes of the ‘new cold war’ in which we find ourselves. From the embarrassingly simplistic “Putin’s a Hitler” offered by the Western press to the more nuanced idea of an ‘energy war’ between US-Europe-Russia. The truth about why we are where we are right now, as a species, however, is actually fairly simple. But to understand it you’ll have to ditch the idea of a ‘new cold war’ and replace it with ‘the 120-year-old war that never ended’.

Over 100 years ago, in 1904, one of the founding fathers of both geopolitics and geostrategy, Oxford University graduate and co-founder of the London School of Economics, Sir Halford Mackinder, proposed a theory that expanded geopolitical analysis from the local or regional level to a global level. Geopolitics is the study (by people in positions of power) of the effects of geography (human and physical) on international politics and international relations. In layman’s terms, this means the study of how best to control as much of the world – its resources, human and natural – as possible. When you or I think about the world, we think of a big, complicated place with billions of people. When the ‘elite’ think of the world, they think of a globe, or a map, with nation states on it that can, and should, according to them, be shaped and changed en masse.

Mackinder separated the world into just a few regions.

The ‘world Island’, and area roughly comprising the interlinked continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa.

The offshore islands, including the British Isles and the islands of Japan.

The outlying islands, including the continents of North America, South America, and Australia.

The most important of these, by far, was the ‘world island’ and in particular what he called the ‘heartland’, which basically means Russia. Mackinder said that whoever controls the ‘heartland’ (Russia) controls the ‘world island’ (Eurasia and Africa), and whoever controls that, controls the world. It’s a fairly self-evident analysis of the situation because the great majority of the world’s population and resources are on the Eurasian continent, and holding a vast northern position on that landmass – with your rearguard protected by an impassable frozen ocean – gives you the prime vantage point, or ‘higher ground’ if you will.

Mackinder’s geostrategic map of the world

Mackinder probably arrived at this conclusion as a result of the British experience of Empire. The British had a large empire on which ‘the sun never set’ (and the blood never dried), and while the British elite made a lot of money, and caused a lot of suffering, by expropriating the resources of other peoples, they were never able to truly ‘rule the world’ because the ‘heartland’ (Russia) was not conquered and made a subservient state of Western powers, largely due to its massive size and the fact that Russia had long since been an Empire itself.

In 1904, Mackinder’s ideas (shared by his contemporaries) were already common currency among the anglo-American elite of the day, who sought global domination by way of the prevention of any competitor to the United States. Russia was that natural potential competitor, again due its size, resources and imperial history. So even before the turn of the 20th century, the US elite, in league with their British co-ideologues, were busying themselves with the task of ‘neutralizing’ Russia as a threat to their plans for global hegemony. As Mackinder published his ideas, US and British political, industrialist and banker types had already embarked on the process of ‘regime change’ in Russia by way of one of the ‘offshore islands’, specifically, Japan.

In 1898, Russia had agreed a convention with China that leased the Chinese port of ‘Port Arthur’ to Russia. At the time this was Russia’s only warm water Pacific seaport (and it was as strategically important as Crimea is to Russia today). Both the British and Americans were concerned about the close relationship between Russia and Germany (Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany were cousins) and the possibility that France might join them in a triple anti-British alliance. To the British and Americans this was a clear “threat to the international order”. To thwart Russian intentions in Asia, in 1902 Great Britain and Japan signed the ‘Anglo-Japanese alliance’ which stipulated that if either Japan or Great Britain were attacked by more than one enemy they would support each other militarily. This was effectively a green light from the British for Japan to go to war with Russia if necessary, safe in the knowledge that neither France nor Germany (Russia’s allies) would intervene and risk war with Britain. From this point on, Japan effectively acted as a protector of British interests in East Asia.

From February 8th 1904 to September 5th 1905 the first ‘great war’ of the 20th century was fought between Japan and Tsarist Russia, largely over access to ‘Port Arthur’. The British government supplied the Japanese navy with war ships and during the war itself passed intelligence to the Japanese. Perhaps the most significant aid to the Japanese government came in the form of loans from British and American banks and financial institutions that totaled $5billion at today’s value, including a $200 million ‘loan’ from prominent Wall St. banker Jacob Schiff. During World War I, Schiff and other Wall Street bankers would also extend loans to the Central Powers, despite officially being enemies of their adopted homeland, the USA.

Russia fielded over one million soldiers and sailors against Japan’s 500,000, but Russia still lost the war, largely due to support from the British and the Americans. The decisive battle occurred on 27-28 May 1905 when the Russian and Japanese navies met at the Tsushima strait. Two thirds of the Russian fleet was destroyed. Russia’s defeat was underlined by the Treaty of Portsmouth, which confirmed Japan’s emergence as the pre-eminent power in East Asia and forced Russia to abandon its plans to develop the Siberia-Pacific region and launch Far East trade routes. Japan also became the sixth-most powerful naval force and the war costs dealt a significant blow to the Russian economy.

Even before the war officially ended, it was Russia’s dire financial straits, the defeat at Tsushima, and pressure from the British that led the Tsar to ultimately back away from the 1905 Treaty of Bjorko he had signed with Kaiser Wilhelm (and, by implication, France). As soon as the British government and their network of anglophiles in Russia found out about the secret deal signed on the Kaiser’s yacht in the Baltic sea – a deal that would have threatened ‘world order’ by aligning Russia with Germany – they threatened to cut off funding to Russia and marshaled the Russian press, which they apparently controlled, to launch an anti-German propaganda campaign. The Kaiser wrote to the Tsar: “The whole of your influential press, have since a fortnight become violently anti-German and pro-British. Partly they are bought by the heavy sums of British money, no doubt”.

With Russia isolated and economically broken, and the threat of Eurasian integration removed, the next logical step was to get rid of the Tsar altogether and transform Russia into a controlled, retarded and ‘captive’ market for Western finance. But to achieve that goal, Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany would first have to be decisively dealt with, and that meant war. To prepare the ground for that war, the British signed the anglo-Russian entente in 1907 and then later added France to the ‘triple entente’, allying the world’s most powerful militaries against Germany.

Between 1903 and 1914, the British public was gradually whipped into an anti-German frenzy and assaulted with countless newspaper articles, books and pamphlets (falsely) warning of Germany’s aggressive rearmament and intentions to invade Britain and take over the world. British newspaper and publishing magnate at the time Alfred Harmsworth, who was intricately linked with the British political and banking elite, exerted enormous influence over the British public through his newspapers. In an interview with the French newspaper Le Matin, Harmsworth said: “The Germans make themselves odious to the whole of Europe. I will not allow my paper to publish anything which might in any way hurt the feelings of the French, but I would not like to print anything which might be agreeable to the Germans”.

The anti-German hysteria culminated in the passage of the UK’s Official Secrets Act of 1911, which effectively established the British intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6. It is fitting that these agencies, tasked today with manufacturing terrorist threats to scare the British – and global – public into supporting war, had their foundation in a manufactured threat from Germany.

The chosen ‘flash point’ for an anglo-American war to destroy Germany, weaken the European powers and make the whole of Europe subservient to Western banking interests was the Balkans. In November 1912, a telegram from the Russian ambassador in Bulgaria to the Russian foreign minister (Isvolsky) identified a representative of the British newspaper The Times who claimed that “very many people in England are working towards accentuating the complication in the Balkans to bring about the war that would result in the destruction of the German fleet and German trade”.

This Times journalist was most likely James David Bourchier, a member of the English aristocracy who was deeply involved in the Balkan League, an organisation set up in 1912 by the Russian ambassador in Belgrade, Nicholas Hartwig, to lobby for the independence of Balkan states from the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires. Nicholas Hartwig was an agent of the English monarch, Edward VII, and, thereby, of the British elite. Independence for the Balkan states was fully in line with the British elite’s aim of dismantling competing empires.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 is recorded as the spark that ignited the First World War. But this is a distortion of the facts. As mentioned, British plans for war against Germany were at least a decade old by that point. In any case, assassinations of royalty and nobility were fairly common at that time in Europe, and the death of Ferdinand was not something that would necessarily have provoked a world war. Certainly, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was only interested in quieting the Serbs, and Germany, Austria-Hungary’s ally, was decidedly against the crisis spiraling out of control.

After the assassination, the British government deceptively announced to Austria-Hungary and Germany that they accepted Austria-Hungary’s right to compensation from Serbia. When Austria delivered its July Ultimatum on July 23rd to the Serbs – a series of demands that were intentionally made unacceptable – it expected a local war to result, but Russian foreign minister Sazonov (another British agent) responded by mobilizing Russian forces on July 28th against the wishes of the Tsar. The British also quietly mobilized their own troops in anticipation of a German move against Belgium, which occurred on August 4th.

What neither Germany nor Austria-Hungary realised was that the assassination – the casus belli – had been orchestrated by the Serbs with the encouragement of British agents in the Russian government. In the 1917 court case on the assassination, Serbian colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević confessed that he hired Ferdinand’s assassins and that the murder was planned with the knowledge and approval of the Russian ambassador in Belgrade – Nicholas Hartwig – and the Russian military attaché in Belgrade, Viktor Artamonov. Both Hartwig and Artamonov were effectively in the pay of the British government. If it had been widely revealed at the time that the Russians were directly involved in the assassination, the British government could not have justified the war to the British public, who held strong anti-Tsarist opinions, thanks to being systematically fed anti-Russian propaganda during the ‘Great Game’ of the 19th century. If anything, they would have called for war against Russia.

Even as the Russian and German armies were marching out of their barracks on July 1st, the Tsar and the Kaiser were exchanging telegrams in a futile attempt to avert disaster. In a note he wrote later that day, the Kaiser finally understood the depth of British perfidy: “I have no doubt about it: England, Russia and France have agreed among themselves to take the Austro-Serbian conflict for an excuse for waging a war of extermination against us… the stupidity and ineptitude of our ally is turned into a snare for us … the net has been suddenly thrown over our head, and England sneeringly reaps the most brilliant success of her persistently prosecuted purely anti-German world policy against which we have proved ourselves helpless. We are brought into a situation which offers England the desired pretext for annihilating us under the hypocritical cloak of justice.” It should come as no surprise that during this ‘great’ war to protect the free world, British and American arms manufacturers, many with links to City of London and Wall Street banks, were arming all sides in the conflict. For just one example, the British-owned Armstrong-Pozzuoli Company, headquartered on the bay of Naples, employed 4,000 men and was the chief naval supplier to Britain’s enemy, Italy, and a high-level English naval officer, Rear Admiral Ottley, was a director! During the war, Labour MP Philip Snowden angrily told the House of Commons that “submarines and all the torpedoes used in the Austrian navy are made by the Whitehead Torpedo works in Hungary… they are making torpedoes with British capital in order to destroy British ships.” The same torpedoes were being used by German U-boats to sink British, and later American, ships.

Talk about a revolution

The disastrous effects to Russia of the British-inspired Russo-Japanese war provoked the 1905 Russian ‘revolution’ that lasted until 1907. That revolution paved the way for the overthrow of the Tsar and the coming to power of the nihilistic Bolsheviks in the October revolution of 1917. The event would define Russia’s history for the next 70 years. Far from being an impediment, the fact that Tsarist Russia was a British ally in the middle of WW1 appears, at the time, to have been seen by the British and American governments as an opportunity to stab the Tsar in the back when, and from where, he least expected it.

Like the First World War, the plan for the overthrow of the Tsar and revolution in Russia was years in the making. In fact, it seems that the 1905 Russo-Japanese war was used by the aforementioned Jacob Schiff and Co. to sow the seeds of that 1917 revolution 12 years in advance. In her book, ‘Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership’, prolific Jewish-American author Naomi Wiener Cohen states: “The Russo-Japanese war allied Schiff with George Kennan in a venture to spread revolutionary propaganda among Russian prisoners of war held by Japan (Kennan had access to these). The operation was a carefully guarded secret and not until the revolution of March 1917 was it publicly disclosed by Kennan. He then told how he had secured Japanese permission to visit the camps and how the prisoners had asked him for something to read. Arranging for the ‘Friends of Russian Freedom’ to ship over a ton of revolutionary material, he secured Schiff’s financial backing. As Kennan told it, fifty thousand officers and men returned to Russia [as] ardent revolutionists. There they became fifty thousand “seeds of liberty” in one hundred regiments that contributed to the overthrow of the Tsar.” While Schiff was a strident opponent of the Russian Tsar for his treatment of Russian Jews, it’s difficult to tell if sympathy for his co-religionists in Russia was the motivation for Schiff, and other Jewish Wall Street bankers and industrialists, to finance the Bolshevik revolution. After all, they all also reaped massive financial rewards as a result.

Russian General Arsene de Goulevitch, who witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution firsthand, stated: “The main purveyors of funds for the revolution were neither the crackpot Russian millionaires nor the armed bandits of Lenin. The ‘real’ money primarily came from certain British and American circles which for a long time past had lent their support to the Russian revolutionary cause… I have been told that over 21 million rubles were spent by Lord [Alfred] Milner in financing the Russian Revolution”. Milner was perhaps the preeminent agent of the British Empire at that time. As High Commissioner for Southern Africa, German-born Milner pioneered concentration camps and ethnic cleansing during the Boer War to expand British control of Africa. Milner was also the chief author of the Balfour Declaration, despite it being published in Arthur Balfour’s name. In his book on Milner, Edward Crankshaw summed up Milner’s ‘ideology’: “Some of the passages [in Milner’s books] on industry and society… are passages which any socialist would be proud to have written. But they were not written by a socialist. They were written by “the man who made the Boer War.” Some of the passages on Imperialism and the white man’s burden might have been written by a Tory diehard. They were written by the student of Karl Marx.”  Milner’s ideological bi-partisanship – and utter indifference to his German roots – mirrored that of the Wall Street bankers. Speaking to the League for Industrial Democracy in New York on 30th December 1924, Otto H. Kahn, who was Jacob Schiff and Felix Warburg’s partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and director of American International Corp., said: “what you radicals, and we who hold opposing views differ about, is not so much the end as the means, not so much what should be brought about, as how it should, and can, be brought about”.

De Goulevitch cites reports from local observers and journalists in Petrograd in 1917 of British and American agents handing out 25-rouble notes to soldiers of the Pavlovski regiment just before they mutinied and joined the revolution. De Goulevitch also named Sir George Buchanan, the British Ambassador to Russia at the time, as one of the main players in financing what was effectively an early ‘color revolution’ in Russia.

As Jennings C. Wise has written, “Historians must never forget that Woodrow Wilson… made it possible for Leon Trotsky to enter Russia with an American passport.”

With the Tsar gone and the Western-backed Bolsheviks in power, US and other Western governments and corporations had succeeded not only in destroying Russia’s economy and industry, but breaking off parts of the Russian empire.The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is a testament to the fecklessness of the Bolsheviks in that, in order to withdraw Russia from the war, they were forced cede territory to Germany and Austria-Hungary. The first round of negotiations stalled because the mad-cap revolutionaries believed that Germany and Austria-Hungary were on the brink of revolution themselves. When Lenin and Co. finally came to their senses, they were forced to sign an even more punitive agreement with the Central Powers. While Russia regained much of this lost territory after WWII, it lost it all again in 1991. In fact, Russia’s post-1991 western border bears a marked similarity to that imposed by the Brest-Litovsk treaty.

Under Lenin and Trotsky, the Bolshevik ‘revolution’ had effectively shut down the Russian economy and its industry, allowing Western bankers to step in to ‘rebuild’. Consider the words of American journalist, labor organizer, and publicist, Albert Rhys Williams, who was both a witness to – and participant in – the October revolution, as he testified at the Senate Overman Committee: Mr. Williams: […] it is probably true that under the Soviet government industrial life will perhaps be much slower in development than under the usual capitalistic system. But why should a great industrial country like America desire the creation and consequent competition of another great industrial rival? Are not the interests of America in this regard in line with the slow tempo of development which Soviet Russia projects for herself?

Senator Wolcott: So you are presenting an argument here which you think might appeal to the American people, your point being this; that if we recognize the Soviet government of Russia as it is constituted, we will be recognizing a government that cannot compete with us in industry for a great many years?

Mr. Williams: That is a fact.

Senator Wolcott: That is an argument that, under the Soviet government, Russia is in no position, for a great many years at least, to approach America industrially?

Mr. Williams: Absolutely. When the Bolsheviks started their first bank, Ruskombank, in 1922, one of its directors was Max May of Guaranty Trust. Guaranty Trust was a J.P. Morgan company. On joining Ruskombank, May stated: “The United States, being a rich country with well developed industries, does not need to import anything from foreign countries, but… it is greatly interested in exporting its products to other countries, and considers Russia the most suitable market for that purpose, taking into consideration the vast requirements of Russia in all lines of its economic life.” J.P. Morgan’s Guaranty Trust also raised loans for the German war effort while simultaneously funding the British and French against the Germans, and also the Russians, both under the Tsar against Germany, and then the Bolsheviks against the Tsar and for the “revolution”.

Two world wars, courtesy of the anglo-American elite.

Via Wall Street bankers, the US government under Woodrow Wilson broke with international convention after WWI and refused to forgive debts from the massive war loans it pumped to its allies, primarily Britain and France.15 Germany was in an even worse position because of the reparations demanded by the extremely harsh Treaty of Versailles. None of these countries were in a position to pay back the money owed, so the ‘Dawes Plan’ was enacted whereby the US government would loan money to Germany so that it could pay reparations to France and Britain, who would then give the money back to the US to pay off their war debt. That’s how ‘funny money’ works. Nevertheless, World War I was a boon for the USA. It went from owing foreigners $4.5 billion in 1914 to being owed $25 billion by foreigners in 1928, including Europe’s war debt. As a result, much of Europe’s gold also ended up in Fort Knox. Professor of economics Michael Hudson claims that the motivation for massive US government financial claims on Europe was political rather than economic.

Germany paid off the final tranche of its debt to the US government in 2010. The UK is still paying. The debt to the US and allies from WWI was the primary cause of the collapse of the German economy in the early 1930s that gave rise to Hitler and the Nazis… who were also financed by the same cabal of Wall Street bankers.

In 1925, a European theorist of imperialism, Gerhart Von Schulze-Gaevernitz, suggested that history would show that the most important result of World War I was not “the destruction of the royal dynasties that ruled Germany, Russia, Austria and Italy”, but the “shift in the world’s center of gravity from Europe, where it had existed since the days of Marathon, to America”. This new era of ‘superimperialism’, he said, had turned traditional imperialism on its head because now “finance capital mediates political power internationally to acquire monopolistic control and profits from natural resources, raw material and the power of labor, with the tendency towards autarky by controlling all regions, the entire world’s raw materials.”

During the 1920s Russian industry was effectively rebuilt by US corporations, with several of Lenin’s five-year plans financed by Wall Street banks. The aim was to prepare Russia for WWII, where it effectively won the war for the allies but was largely ruined (again) in the process and, like the other European powers, incurred massive debt to Wall Street and London bankers. As revealed by Antony Sutton, the extent of Western influence and control inside Soviet Russia is exemplified by the fact that, during the Vietnam war, the military vehicles being used by the North Vietnamese military to fight American soldiers were produced in a Soviet factory, the Kama River Truck Plant, owned by the US Ford corporation.

By imposing the Bolshevik Revolution on Russia, Wall Street ensured that it could not compete with the USA. For the next 70 years, the ‘managers of the world’ in the US and Western Europe expanded their global domination through the use of a bogus “Communist threat” (which they created). In the late 1980s, the Western banking elite decided that their global power was sufficient to allow them to pull back the ‘iron curtain’ and, once again, open Russia up, but this time for some ‘free market’, ‘open society’ neo-liberal plunder. All was going to plan for most of the 1990s until Vladimir Putin arrived on the scene and began to spoil the Western elites’ ‘we rule the world’ party.

So what’s the point of this little history lesson? I hope it serves to highlight two things. That over 100 years ago the Western banking/corporate/political elite – the type of people who think, and say, things like… “To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annexe the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far.”

“I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race.”

~ Cecil Rhodes …understood clearly that the only way they were going rule the world was to ensure that Russia never emerged as a competitor to their center of operations – London, and then the USA. From a practical perspective, to achieve that goal they were going to have to perpetually marginalize Russia on the Eurasian continent and prevent European nations, in particular Western European nations, from ever forming an alliance with Russia. That task began in earnest in the late 1890s. It continues to this day, but it is failing.

Since coming to power Putin has made moves to do to Russia precisely that which the Western banking elite spent over 100 years trying to prevent: make it a strong independent country, free (to the greatest extent possible) of the Western bankers’ toxic influence. Even worse, Putin’s plan does not seem to be limited merely to freeing Russia, but includes the idea of using Russia’s influence to establish a new ‘new world order’, based not on the hegemony of the few, but on multipolarity, real national sovereignty, mutual respect, and genuinely fair trade among nations. In their 15 short years at the helm in Russia, Putin and his friends have gone a long way towards achieving their goals. The response from the Western elite has been interesting to watch. From NATO’s attempts to encircle Russia in Eastern Europe, to economic sanctions imposed on the basis of trumped-up charges, to sabotaging Russia-EU economic relations, to staging a coup in Ukraine in 2014, to manipulating the price of oil and assassinating ‘opposition figures’ inside and outside Russia; the anglo-American elite are resorting to increasingly desperate and hysterical measures to maintain the global imbalance they worked so hard to achieve. But nothing they do seems to phase Russia or divert it from the path it has chosen.

So what can we expect next from the Western elites? Short of all-out nuclear war with Russia (which is not and never was an option, contrary to Cold War propaganda) what scurrilously duplicitous maneuvers are left to be made? Not many, to be sure. Perhaps the only weapon left in their arsenal is the one that, more than any other, has allowed them to dominate the globe for so long: the almighty US dollar, its position as the world’s reserve currency, and the ‘petrodollar’.

For decades, these two financial ‘instruments’ have forced all other countries to hold large reserves of the American currency, thereby providing the US economy with a ‘free ride’ and securing its position as the world’s largest economy. If the US dollar were, for some reason, to collapse, it would create massive panic in the world economic system, and result, quite possibly, in the collapse of governments around the world. This is likely the reason that both Russia and China are wasting no time in establishing the basis for a new economic order that is not dollar-based. If that initiative progresses far enough, there may come a time in the near future when the dollar can be safely ‘ditched’ and replaced with another reserve currency, or basket of currencies, thereby avoiding or mitigating the systemic threat to the global economy (if not the US economy) of a dollar collapse, and forcing the Western elite, with their base of operations in the USA, to accept a more humble and justified position among the nations.

Fat cat feeding time almost over?

Anyone who has investigated and understood the nature of these “elites” of which I speak, knows that they are not the type of people who simply accept defeat, even when it is staring them in the face. They’re like a highly narcissistic chess player who, seeing that ‘check mate’ is almost upon him, opts to knock all the pieces of the board (and maybe burn it… and the room) rather than suffer the ignominy of defeat. It can then be claimed, ‘see, you didn’t win, we’ll have to start again’. The chess analogy is appropriate given that one of the main exponents of Mackinder’s theories of Eurasian strategy is Zbigniew Brzezinski, author of The Grand Chessboard, where he wrote “it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America.”

With the US debt currently running at over 104% to GDP (and rising), and the US unable or unwilling to reduce that debt or to increase GDP, the USA is effectively insolvent, a ‘failed state’ in all but name. The only thing preventing its economic collapse is the dependency, for now, of so many other nations on the US not collapsing. Is it possible that, facing the almost certain end to their reign as rulers of the world, the Western psycho-elite will chose the ‘financial nuclear option’ of ‘doing an Enron’ and collapsing the American dollar in a last, insane and futile effort to avert defeat by bringing the whole house of cards down… so they can ‘rebuild’ from scratch?

As my opening quote asserts: “what the darkness cannot possess, it seeks to destroy.”

SECRECY NEWS

From the FAS Project on Government Secrecy

Volume 2016, Issue No. 98

December 2, 2016

2017 INTELLIGENCE BILL PASSES THE HOUSE

The Director of National Intelligence shall “review the system by which the Government classifies and declassifies information” and shall “develop recommendations… to make such system a more effective tool… and to support the appropriate declassification of information.”

That’s just one of the many requirements included in the Fiscal Year 2017 Intelligence Authorization Act (in section 708) that was approved by the House of Representatives on November 30, following negotiations with the Senate.

The House and Senate Intelligence Committees also produced an Explanatory Statement that presents extensive “unclassified congressional direction” on all kinds of intelligence policy matters high and low.

The joint Statement, included in the Congressional Record, notably adopts House language on reforming the pre-publication review requirement that current and former intelligence community employees (and certain others) must comply with. The Statement requires the DNI to “issue an IC-wide policy regarding pre-publication review” within 180 days that includes various specified elements that should improve the timeliness, clarity, and fairness of the review process.

The intelligence bill was crafted in response to Obama Administration policies and, in all likelihood, in anticipation of a Hillary Clinton Administration. But assuming that it is enacted into law, it will come into full effect in a Trump Administration of uncertain character and composition.

“There are many unknowns about the incoming administration, particularly how it will utilize and interact with the IC,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee.

“It is now more important than ever that we give the IC the tools it needs to keep us safe and provide the necessary oversight required to ensure that they act in a manner consistent with our values and at all times,” he said on the House floor.

REFUGEE ADMISSIONS AND RESETTLEMENT, & MORE FROM CRS

The total number of refugees that can be admitted to the United States this year — termed the worldwide refugee ceiling — is 110,000 persons.

The total amount is allocated among refugees from Africa (35,000), East Asia (12,000), Europe and Central Asia (4,000), Latin America/Caribbean (5,000), and Near East/South Asia (40,000), with an unallocated reserve of 14,000 persons.

Background on law and policy affecting refugees is presented in a newly updated report from the Congressional Research Service. See Refugee Admissions and Resettlement Policy, November 30, 2016.

The number of government employees involved in acquisition of U.S. military systems, equipment and services reached 158,212 as of March 2016, according to another new CRS report. See The Civil Defense Acquisition Workforce: Enhancing Recruitment Through Hiring Flexibilities, November 22, 2016.

The U.S. has gone from being a net exporter of fruits and vegetables in the 1970s to being a net importer today, CRS found. On the other hand, U.S. production of nuts is strong. As far as nuts are concerned, there have been “continued increases and, generally, a growing U.S. trade surplus.” See The U.S. Trade Situation for Fruit and Vegetable Products, updated December 1, 2016.

Other new and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following.

Demographic and Social Characteristics of Persons in Poverty: 2015, November 30, 2016

Child Welfare: An Overview of Federal Programs and Their Current Funding, updated November 30, 2016

Agency Final Rules Submitted After June 2, 2016, May Be Subject to Disapproval, CRS Insight, updated November 30, 2016

The Congressional Appropriations Process: An Introduction, November 30, 2016

Authorization of Appropriations: Procedural and Legal Issues, updated November 30, 2016

Federal Income Tax Treatment of the Family, updated November 23, 2016

Social Security: What Would Happen If the Trust Funds Ran Out?, updated November 23, 2016

Conflict of Interest and “Ethics” Provisions That May Apply to the President, CRS memorandum, November 22, 2016

Iran’s Nuclear Program: Status, updated November 30, 2016

The Central African Republic: Background and U.S. Policy, updated December 1, 2016

What Happens if Johnny Hacks His Seventh Grade Report Card?, CRS Legal Sidebar, December 1, 2016

Hollande’s move shakes up French politics

Francois Hollande’s decision not to run again for the presidency reflects the populist currents washing across Europe, not to mention the popularity of the far-right National Front.

December 2, 2016

by Elizabeth Bryant

DW

President Francois Hollande’s shock announcement that he will not seek reelection throws wide open the leftist primaries in France, but experts say it remains unlikely to change the outcome of next spring’s presidential elections which many believe will be won by the right.

Hollande’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls is now widely expected to step into the race, as he has hinted he would do. But with Valls saddled with the same political legacy as Hollande, his fate remains uncertain at best.

More broadly, analysts say, the latest developments reflect the populist and anti-establishment mood currently pervading Europe and the US.

“Francois Hollande’s decision really has an historic meaning, first because of this wave of populism across the western world,” analyst Philippe Moreau Defarges of the Paris-based French Institute of International Relations told DW. “But also for a reason that comes from France; the Gaullist presidency has ended.”

His decision makes Hollande the first French president in modern history not to seek a second term. While defending many parts of his record, Hollande acknowledged his deep unpopularity – with approval ratings as low as four percent – would further weaken the already fractured left.

His announcement was greeted with widespread approval – a Harris poll on Friday found 80 percent of French backed his decision.

Across the political spectrum, many politicians saluted his “courageous” and “dignified” withdrawal. But conservative primary winner Francois Fillon, considered a front runner for the presidency, also described Hollande’s term as ending in “political turmoil and creeping rot,” while far-right leader Marine Le Pen said it “marked a very serious political failure.”

A difficult presidency

Hollande steered the country through particularly tumultuous times that included three major terrorist attacks in France and upheaval in the Middle East and Africa. He had a hard time shaking his image as an indecisive leader or delivering on promises to grow the economy and jobs.

Several ministers left his cabinet, two of whom have thrown their hat into the presidential race. Perhaps the last straw were the deeply controversial remarks about Islam, immigration and even the justice system Hollande made to two journalists in a tell-all book this fall.

Hollande’s departure, however, may not boost the chances of his leftist party.

“The Socialist Party and the left are confronted with the same problem today – their divergence on economic questions,” said Bruno Cautres of the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po University in Paris.

Those differences will play out in next month’s Socialist primaries that may well pit more centrist Prime Minister Valls against Hollande’s onetime Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg, who accused Hollande earlier this year of “betraying the ideals of the left.”

“Manuel Valls will face the same criticism as Hollande,” Cautres told DW. “And for others in the left, economic competitiveness is the only solution.”

There are other unknowns in the race, starting with the fate of another former economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, who is riding a popular wave as a self-styled outsider. His support may be diluted, however, if another more seasoned centrist, Francois Bayrou, decides to run.

Fillon the frontrunner?

For the moment Fillon, a former prime minister who won the conservative primary by a landslide last Sunday, is widely tipped to be France’s next leader. But so far, he has failed to win over a disgruntled working class, more supportive of the far right’s Le Pen.

Observers say next year’s election marks a seismic shift in French politics

“It could transform the second round of voting, if it’s between Fillon and Marine Le Pen, into something unprecedented; a National Front seen as the defender of the working class,” said Cautres, who nonetheless dismisses Le Pen chances of winning.

Whatever the outcome, many observers say it marks a radical change in French politics, opening up a new and uncertain chapter.

“We see a whole series of tensions that are putting pressure on French democracy and the Fifth Republic,” Cautres said of a political system founded in 1958.

Already, he notes, two party bosses have been ousted in this fall’s primaries: former Cecile Duflot, of the Greens party, and conservative ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy.

“There’s a popular sentiment that politicians can be fired as rapidly as they’re voted into office,” said Cautres drawing parallels to similar protest trends in Europe and the United States.

“We are moving to new and very difficult times,” Moreau Defarges agreed. “Something is changing, and it means that we are going to have new leaders.”

Europol: ‘IS’ likely to target EU in ‘near future’

Europol has said the ‘Islamic State’ has organized several dozen people in Europe ready to carry out terror attacks. The terror group is likely to hit soft targets to instill fear in the public.

December 2, 2016

DW

The so-called “Islamic State” (IS) group is likely to carry out terror attacks in the European Union in the near future, Europol said in a report on Friday.

The Sunni extremist group has “both the will and the capability” to strike soft and hard targets in Europe, especially in those countries participating in the anti-IS coalition, the EU police agency said.

“EU Member States that participate in the anti-IS coalition are regarded by IS as legitimate targets,” it said, pointing to particular risk in France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

The report warns that as IS is weakened and defeated in Syria and Iraq, foreign fighters may return to Europe with their families, posing a long-term security challenge. Other IS members may move to Libya, which has become a foreign fighter destination as well, potentially using it as a springboard to carry out attacks in North Africa and Europe.

“Given the high numbers of radicalized Europeans who have joined IS in the conflict area, counted in the thousands, their en masse or even sporadic return would represent a long-term and highly difficult security challenge for the EU,” Europol said. “Estimates from some intelligence services indicate several dozen people directed by IS may be currently present in Europe with a capability to commit terrorist attacks.”

Terrorist networks or lone actors may use tactics developed in Syria and Iraq – including car bombs – to strike targets in Europe, the report said. Attacks may also involve the use of automatic rifles, bladed weapons and vehicles. IS is also interested in carrying out biological and chemical attacks, Europol said, noting the group is reportedly able to produce mustard gas in Syria and Iraq.

Europol said IS is likely to shift tactics to attack soft targets instead of symbolic and better protected targets like police, military and infrastructure.

“Indiscriminate attacks have a very powerful effect on the public in general, which is one of the main goals of terrorism: to seriously intimidate a population,” the report said. “This preference for soft targets means that attacking critical infrastructure such as power grids, nuclear facilities and transportation hubs is currently not a priority.”

The report said the general profile of IS-inspired jihadists in Europe is typically that of young men with criminal pasts who feel marginalized in society and are not necessarily particularly religious.  It warned of quick self-radicalization, including of those with mental health problems, as well as the role of recruiters.

“The majority of attacks carried out in the name of IS appear to have been masterminded and performed by individuals who were inspired by IS, rather than those who worked with the terrorist organization directly,” Europol said.

“Intelligence suggests, however, that IS has also put together teams in Syria which are sent to the EU tasked with carrying out attacks.” However, Europol said there was no evidence IS systematically uses refugee flows to enter Europe, but said some have entered the EU posing as refugees.  One factor for not sending highly skilled operatives with refugees is that it is unsure what country the IS member will end up in and whether they may end up in limbo at a camp. On the other hand, Europol warned IS may use irregular travel anyway in order to embed sleeper cells and conceal movements.

“Given that it is in the interests of IS to inflame the migration crisis to polarize the EU population and turn sections of it against those seeking asylum, there is a risk of some infiltration of refugee camps and other groups,” the report said, though it added that the extent of this practice was unknown.

It pointed to the refugee-terrorist connection often being exaggerated and exploited by populists and right-wing anti-immigrant parties.

Rather than IS systematically sneaking top operatives in with refugees, the report said a more “real and imminent” danger is the possibility of Syrian refugees becoming radicalized once in Europe and being systematically targeted by extremist recruiters.

Recruitment may be done in person or through propaganda disseminated through internet and social media.

In addition to IS, Europol said al-Qaeda-linked groups in Syria and other countries remain a continuing threat.

How top U.S. colleges hooked up with controversial Chinese companies

• New Oriental, China’s biggest private educator, has been accused of academic fraud.
• Thanks to two enterprising Americans, it has also gained access to leading U.S. college admissions officers.

December 2, 2016

by Steve Stecklow and Alexandra Harney

Reuters

SHANGHAI/SHELTER ISLAND, New York – Thomas Benson once ran a small liberal arts college in Vermont. Stephen Gessner served as president of the school board for New York’s Shelter Island.

More recently, they’ve been opening doors for Chinese education companies seeking a competitive edge: getting their students direct access to admissions officers at top U.S. universities.

Over the past seven years, Benson and Gessner have worked as consultants for three major Chinese companies. They recruited dozens of U.S. admissions officers to fly to China and meet in person with the companies’ student clients, with the companies picking up most of the travel expenses. Among the schools that participated: Cornell University, the University of Chicago, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.

Two companies Benson and Gessner have represented – New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc and Dipont Education Management Group – offer services to students that go far beyond meet-and-greets with admissions officers.

Eight former and current New Oriental employees and 17 former Dipont employees told Reuters the firms have engaged in college application fraud, including writing application essays and teacher recommendations, and falsifying high school transcripts.

The New Oriental employees said most clients lacked the language skills to write their own essays or personal statements, so counselors wrote them; only the top students did original work. New Oriental and Dipont deny condoning or wittingly engaging in application fraud.

Building on a model they pioneered for Dipont, Benson and Gessner helped New Oriental introduce its clients to U.S. admissions officers, linchpin players in the fast-growing business of supplying Chinese students a prestigious American education.

Beijing-based New Oriental is a behemoth. Founded in 1993, the company is China’s largest provider of private education services, serving more than two million Chinese students a year. Its shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange. The company generates about $1.5 billion in annual net revenue from programs that include test preparation and English language classes. This year, about 10,000 of its clients were enrolled in American colleges and graduate schools.

Winning the trust of American college admissions officers is an important part of the business model. New Oriental’s counseling division – Beijing New Oriental Vision Overseas Consultancy Co – has centers throughout China and 3,300 counselors and staff. It typically charges students between $1,450 and $7,300 to recommend colleges and prepare applications.

A New Oriental student contract reviewed by Reuters states that its services include “writing or polishing” parts of college applications. The contract says New Oriental will set up an email account on behalf of the client for communicating with colleges, keeping sole control of the password. Several former employees said some students never even saw their applications: The company controlled the entire process, including submitting the application to colleges.

The new insight into the business practices of Chinese education companies comes at a time when American colleges are relying more heavily on Chinese undergraduates, who tend to pay full tuition. Their numbers grew 9 percent to 135,629 students in the 2015-2016 school year, representing nearly a third of all international undergraduates, according to the Institute of International Education.

Helping Chinese kids get into U.S. schools has become a significant industry, with hundreds of companies having sprung up in China to cash in. These businesses often charge large sums for services that sometimes include helping students cheat on standardized tests and falsifying their college applications.

Ghost-writing applications for students is so common in China that some who do it speak openly about the practice.

“I wrote essays and recommendation letters for students when I worked at New Oriental, which I still do right now for my own consultancy,” former New Oriental employee David Shi told Reuters. “I know there is an ethical dilemma but it’s the nature of the industry.”

Many of the colleges participating in the New Oriental and Dipont trips said accepting travel expenses from the Chinese companies was appropriate, that they hadn’t been aware of the fraud accusations, and that none of the students received special consideration. Some said they have stopped or will stop participating in the subsidized trips. (See table.)

Benson, in a statement responding to the fraud accusations, said: “There are many bad actors and bad practices in the world of admissions counseling, in both China and the United States. In every visit we have made to China, we have been strong advocates for the highest standards of honesty in the admissions process. We believe that we and those who have traveled with us have upheld these standards.”

New Oriental said its counseling division “prides itself on its longstanding commitment to education and the very high standards it has.” It added: “The company’s operations are governed by robust policies and procedures designed to guard against any unendorsed behavior by employees who are assisting students.”

Benson, who is 76 and speaks Mandarin, used to be president of Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont. He said he has had a lifelong fascination with China. He had a Chinese roommate in college and led a program for a spring term in China as a professor at the University of Maryland in the 1980s. Benson also is the co-founder of ASIANetwork, a consortium of about 170 colleges that promotes Asian studies.

“China has been in my blood and in my family history all the way through,” he said.

He said he first met Gessner, 72, about eight years ago. At the time, Gessner was a consultant to Shanghai-based Dipont, which runs international programs in Chinese high schools and college-counseling services that can cost a student more than $32,000.

Dipont executives said they wanted to help more students study in the United States. So, they initially hired Gessner, and later Benson, to help train guidance counselors and develop student exchange programs.

Beginning in 2009, Gessner and Benson launched tours and summer camps for U.S. admissions officers to meet Dipont students in China and advise them on applying to colleges. Benson said he and Gessner recruited the universities through contacts in secondary and higher education.

To establish credibility with the colleges, they said, they set up a New York-based non-profit called the Council for American Culture and Education Inc, or CACE.

“It was a more respectable way to work as consultants. It helped us to recruit colleges,” said Gessner.

The strategy worked. The early participants included admissions officers from such prestigious institutions as Cornell, Stanford, Swarthmore College, Emory University and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Reuters reported in October that the New York Attorney General’s office planned to review the charity, which had failed to disclose its ties to Dipont in U.S. and New York State tax filings. The review could lead to a formal investigation if authorities find evidence that CACE violated New York law.

Reuters also reported that eight former Dipont employees had described how the company had engaged in application fraud, including writing essays for students and altering recommendation letters. Since the story, Reuters has interviewed nine additional former Dipont employees who gave similar accounts.

In a statement, Dipont said: “We will promptly and thoroughly investigate any credible evidence of any situation in which the company’s legal and/or ethical standards may not have been upheld by any of its employees, and will take appropriate action if we find that there have been lapses.”

In 2012, Benson and Gessner said, they were recruited as consultants by New Oriental and ceded control of CACE to Dipont.

Benson described their financial arrangement with New Oriental as “almost a carbon copy” of their deal with Dipont: The two Americans received $50,000 for arranging each tour. They also set up another New York-based nonprofit, the Council for International Culture and Education, or CICE. Benson said New Oriental has no control over CICE.

The duo enlisted many of the same colleges that had participated in Dipont camps, and added some others, including Haverford College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Florida. New Oriental covered travel expenses for tours to various cities in China.

To get the colleges to participate in the New Oriental trips, Benson and Gessner used the playbook they perfected at Dipont. Both Chinese companies paid airfare, hotel and other travel expenses for each of the admissions officers whom Benson and Gessner brought to China between 2009 and last year. “They wouldn’t go otherwise,” Benson said.

The ethics code for college admissions officers doesn’t address the propriety of such arrangements. Cigus Vanni, a retired high school counselor from Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, said it was “absolutely” unethical for colleges to accept the money. He likened it to a “pay-for-play” scheme in which prospective Chinese students get special treatment. Many American applicants to elite U.S. colleges – which can receive five to 20 applications for each available slot – don’t get to directly interact with admissions officers.

“You’re giving these people direct access to college admissions officers that no one else has,” said Vanni, who serves on the admissions practices committee of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. “And there’s something expected in return for that.”

New Oriental touts the benefits of this access to prospective clients. In promotional material on its website, the company described how, during the 2014 tour, it arranged for one of its students “to have opportunities to have close contact with a Carleton admissions officer.”

The testimonial ends with the young woman receiving an acceptance letter from Carleton College.

Carleton admissions officers went on tours subsidized by New Oriental in 2013, 2014 and 2015 and participated in six Dipont-subsidized summer camps. Paul Thiboutot, Carleton’s vice president and dean of admissions, said the Northfield, Minnesota, college was unaware of the New Oriental ad. He said Carleton is now reconsidering its involvement in such programs “and most likely will no longer participate.”

“We do indeed see ethical issues in accepting all-expense-paid trips from Chinese companies if these companies allegedly engage in college application fraud,” he said in an email.

Dan Warner, director of admission at Rice University in Houston, said when Rice agreed to send an admissions officer on a tour in 2014, it believed the trip was underwritten by CICE, not New Oriental. He said Rice probably wouldn’t have participated had it known of the company’s role. Benson said New Oriental’s role was made clear.

Olivia Qiu said she used New Oriental to apply to eight U.S. colleges in 2010. After completing a questionnaire, the counselors took over. “I didn’t write anything. They wrote everything for me,” she said.

Qiu ultimately didn’t attend any of those eight colleges. Before university, she took a job at New Oriental in Tianjin and said she wrote essays for students. Other employees, she said, wrote personal statements, supplemental essays and recommendation letters. “Sometimes, the student didn’t even see (the application) before they submitted it” to colleges, she said.

She said she quit over ethical concerns. “I just thought that’s not right, that’s not how you help students,” she said.

A current New Oriental employee said he once falsified an entire high school transcript for a student. A former employee who worked in 2014 and 2015 compared New Oriental’s college application process to an assembly line: One person was in charge of signing a service contract with parents, another compiling a college list, a third completing the application, and a fourth submitting it to universities.

Alan Li worked on applications in 2012 and 2013 in Shanghai. He said he wrote personal statements and edited recommendation letters students had written about themselves. He said he would use material for essays from questionnaires the students completed but would invent stories if necessary.

Li said he initially felt “really conflicted” but ultimately decided that a good student who was a “horrible writer” deserved a break.

By early this year, Benson and Gessner had stopped working for New Oriental and were focusing on new markets, including India, Sri Lanka and Africa.

But the duo hasn’t abandoned China. In June, CICE organized a tour for admissions officers from seven U.S. colleges on behalf of another Chinese company, EIC Group.

“I am getting a late start in putting out invitations for the summer 2016 China tour, primarily because we (CICE) have moved from New Oriental to a new Chinese partner,” Benson emailed an admissions officer at the University of Florida in March. “We were invited by EIC, a large, much more innovative Chinese organization to partner with them on a series of summer tours – boarding school, college, and graduate school.”

In addition to Florida, the schools included Colorado College, Cornell, Macalester College, Smith College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Rochester.

EIC Group paid CICE $35,000, according to Benson, and promoted the tour with an advertisement on its website. “By ‘schmoozing and exchanging ideas’ with admissions officers, you are halfway to a successful application to a famous school,” said the Chinese-language ad. The ad disappeared after Reuters questioned the company about it.

A spokeswoman for EIC said the events were open to the public, and aimed to improve Chinese students’ applications. She didn’t respond to questions about the ad.

Benson said he hadn’t seen it. “That is really bad, horrible,” he said. “My goodness.”

Additional reporting by Renee Dudley in Boston, James Pomfret in Hong Kong and the Reuters Shanghai newsroom

 America’s Only True Friend: Bibi, a man of Character

December 2, 2016

by Harry von Johnston, PhD

Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu  was born October 21 1949 in Tel Aviv, to Tzila Segal (August 28 1912 –  January 31, 2000) and Prof. Benzion Netanyahu (1910–2012)

Between 1956 and 1958, and again from 1963 to 1967, his family lived in the United States in Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania,* a suburb of Philadelphia, where he attended and graduated from Cheltenham High School and was active in a debate club.

Bibi, then a cross-dresser, worked for a time for the Bonwit-Teller department store in Philadelphjia.  The Bonwit-Teller store has been located at 17th and Chestnut streets in Philadephia. Bibi, using the name Esther Nitai, modeled women’s undergarments for this firm in 1965.

He speaks fluent English, with a noticeable Philadelphia accent.

Netanyahu returned to the United States in late 1972 to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology eventually completed an S.B. degree in architecture

At MIT, Netanyahu graduated near the top of his class, and was recruited as a management consultant for the Boston Consulting Group in Boston, Massachusetts, working at the company between 1976 and 1978.

In 1975 he earned an S.M.degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1977. Concurrently, he studied political science at Harvard University.

At that time he officially changed his name to Benjamin Ben Nitai (Nitai, a reference to both Mount Nitai and to the eponymous Jewish sage Nittai of Arbela, was a pen name often used by his father for articles.)

Spouse(s)

Miriam Weizmann (1972–1978)

Fleur Cates (1981–1984)

Sara Ben-Artzi (1991–present)

*Cheltenham Township is a home rule municipality bordering North Philadelphia in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States.

Up in the Air, Sky High, Sky High!

December 2, 2016

by Harry von Johnston, PhD

The following have been identified as being involved in CIA rendition.

Aviation Worldwide Services, LLC, sister company to Presidential (see below), both owned by Blackwater, USA Melbourne, FL, mercenaries. 1371 General Aviation Drive, Melbourne, Brevard County, Florida 32935-6310

Aviation Worldwide Services LLC (AWS) is a sister company to Presidential Airways, Inc., both of which are owned by Blackwater USA, Melbourne, FL. AWS owns the planes, and Presidential Airways operates them. The company appears to provide air services to the CIA – flight records show that its N964BW has made at least two trips to the agency’s Camp Peary training facility and N962BW went there in May 2006 Another plane it owns, N968BW, flew from Washington Dulles International Airport to Camp Peary on March 13, 2007.

Bayard Foreign Marketing LLC is is alleged to have been involved in extraordinary rendition. Bayard is a “phantom company registered in Oregon State since August 2003. 755 Pittock Block, 921 SW Washington Street ,Portland, OR 97205 Located in Multnomah County, OR Plane Registered to Bayard. The following plane was formerly owned by Bayard and was registered to Premier Executive Transport Services, Inc. after December 2004: r-N8068V (now N44982; ex N379P, N581GA) – Gulfstream V – s/n 581 r-N44982 (ex N379P, N8068V, N581GA) – Gulfstream V – s/n 581

Keeler and Tate Management LLC (AVSPEC) Legal counsel for Keeler and Tate is Streven F. Petersen who is involved in political public relations. Petersen shares an office with Paul D.Laxalt and Frank R. Petersen  The following are identified according to Number, Maker Model, and Serial Number (as of January 2006). r-N313P (now N4476S) – Boeing 737-7ET – s/n 33010 (ex- Premier Executive Transport Services, Inc. r-N4476S (N313P) – Boeing 737-7ET – s/n 33010 (ex-Premier N313P)

Path Corporation Path’s address is that of Barbara-Cherix O’Leay a real estate lawyer. 413 Rehoboth Avenue / PO Box 305, Rehoboth Beach, DE 19971, Located in Sussex County, DEThe following planes are registered to Path: N120JM – Fairchild SA227-AT – s/n AT-577 N212CP – Cessna 208B – s/n 208B0531 r-N221SG – Gates Learjet 35A – s/n 182

Premier Executive Transport Services, Inc. is an aviation contractor. the company had originally been incorporated in Delaware on Jan. 10, 1994. “On Jan. 23, 1996, Dean Plakias, a lawyer with Hill & Plakias in Dedham, Mass., filed incorporation papers with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts listing the company’s president as Bryan P. Dyess. According to public documents, Premier Executive ordered a new Gulfstream V in 1998. It was delivered in November 1999 with tail number N581GA, and re-registered in March 2000 with a new tail number, N379P. It began flights in June 2000, and changed the tail number again in December 2003.”

Presidential Airways, Inc. is a sister company to  Aviation Worldwide Services, LLC  (AWS), both of which are owned by Blackwater, USA  Melbourne, FL.

S&K Aviation, LLC is involved in Extraodrinary Rendition S&K was “first registered in Florida in December 2003 and is an active company with a registered agent.”

Wells Fargo Bank Northwest NA, a subsidiary of  Wells Fargo & Company, is Trustee for the aircraft N168BF, a Raytheon Hawker 800XP with Serial # 258373.

Rapid Air Transportation, Inc. Planes Registered to Rapid Air 10606 Baltimore Avenue ,Suite 300 , Beltsville, Prince George’s County,  MD 20705-2131Rapid is the registered owner of the following planes. However, they are operated by Tepper Aviation, Inc. N2189MLockheed 382G-44K-30 – s/n 4582, N4557C Lockheed 382G-44K-30 – s/n 5027, N8193J Lockheed 382G-44K-30 – s/n 4796

Stevens Leasing, Inc. Stevens was incorporated by Mark E. Klass (see Devon Holding & Leasing, Inc.), who is now a judge in Lexington, NC. 8130 Country Village Drive, Suite 101 Cordova, TN 38016  Located in Shelby County, TN.Planes Registered to Stevens N173S – Beech B300 – s/n FM-4 N845S – Douglas DC3 – s/n 25509 (43-48248)  N4009L – Raytheon B300C – s/n FM-9 N4042J – Beech B200 – s/n BB-874

Tepper Aviation, Inc. is based at the Bob Sikes Airport in Crestview, Florida. The company has a long association with the CIA. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was widely reported to be flying weapons into Angola to arm the UNITA rebels. More recently, it has been linked with the practice of extraordinary rendition.  Tepper is closely connected  with Crestview Aerospace Corporation: it shares the same address, and Charles R. Shanklin is a director of both companies. Additionally, Tepper director Jack E. Owen was President of Crestview Aerospace until 2001. Tepper uses a Hercules aircraft, with the registration N3867X.