TBR News January 3, 2012

Jan 03 2012

 

December 25, 272 AD

 First official public celebration of Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, a pagan Roman holiday that was later co-opted by Christians to celebrate the birth of their favorite Jew. Turning the holiday into “Christmas” (in 336 AD) was part of a pattern of the church stealing various pagan festivals and feast days

 

 

The Voice of the White House

 

                Washington, D.C., January 3, 2012: “I was having lunch with a French diplomat, an economic expert, and we were talking about the looming monetary crisis in the EU. It is fairly obvious to outside observers that the entire structure is beginning to fall apart. Countries with stable economies are asked to give billions of euros to countries with unstable or even collapsing economies. The Greeks on the leadership level are willing to accept enforced austerity in return for economic support but the public, used to years of free food, are in open rebellion. Italy is in serious economic trouble and Spain is right behind them. Neither France nor Germany wish to pour money down a hole and in spite of press releases talking about unity of spirit, the truth is that France, Germany, Russia and one Scandinavian country are making firm plans for their own economic and political union to replace the collapsing EU. It is fairly well known in Washington that our CIA has been behind the “voter protests” in Russia, hoping to kick Putin out before he starts on an expansionist program. The reabsorption of the Ukraine would be a major blow to the CIA’s “encirclement” program, a program that was dealt a nearly mortal blow by the Russian incursion into Georgia. Now, the U.S. is seen as a paper tiger and if Putin stays in power, all the efforts of the CIA to isolate Russia (so we can get our hands on her oil and gas) are in serious danger.”

A Knife in the Dark: A Brief History of Israeli Espionage against the U.S.

December 10, 2011

by Craig Gottlieb          

            Between 1998 and early 2001, more than 200 Israeli nationals were arrested or detained inside the United States, on a variety of visa violations and other nominally petty violations, including low-level drug trafficking. The majority of these detainees claimed they were Israeli art students, peddling art work to cover their college tuitions; or were toy vendors, employed by an Israeli-owned Miami Beach company, Quality Sales Corporation, which investigations link to Israel’s equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency.

            The emerging pattern of surveillance of American government facilities, and established links to suspected Arab and Islamic terrorist cells prior to Sept. 11, by these Israeli nationals, set off alarm bells, following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Prior to Sept. 11, a series of highly-classified government memos had been circulated by the CIA and the NSA, pronouncing this Israeli espionage operation a major national security problem.

            Israel is not a friend to the United States. This is because Israel runs one of the most aggressive and damaging espionage networks targeting the US. The fact of Israeli penetration into the country is not a subject that is ever discussed in the media or in the circles of governance, due to the extreme sensitivity of the US-Israel relationship coupled with the burden of the Israel lobby, which punishes legislators who dare to criticize the Jewish state. . .
            In 2005 the FBI noted that Israel maintains “an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States.” A key Israeli method, said the FBI report, is computer intrusion. In 1996, the Defense Intelligence Service, a branch of the Pentagon, issued a warning that “the collection of scientific intelligence in the United States [is] the third highest priority of Israeli Intelligence after information on its Arab neighbors and information on secret US policies or decisions relating to Israel.” In 1979, the Central Intelligence Agency produced a scathing survey of Israeli intelligence activities that targeted the US government. Like any worthy spy service, Israeli intelligence early on employed wiretaps as an effective tool, according to the CIA report. In 1954, the US Ambassador in Tel Aviv discovered in his office a hidden microphone “planted by the Israelis,” and two years later telephone taps were found in the residence of the US military attaché In a telegram to Washington, the ambassador at the time cabled a warning: “Department must assume that all conversations [in] my office are known to the Israelis.” The former ambassador to Qatar, Andrew Killgore, who also served as a foreign officer in Jerusalem and Beirut, told me Israeli taps of US missions and embassies in the Middle East were part of a “standard operating procedure.”

 According to the 1979 CIA report, the Israelis, while targeting political secrets, also devote “a considerable portion of their covert operations to obtaining scientific and technical intelligence.” These operations involved, among other machinations, “attempts to penetrate certain classified defense projects in the United States.” The penetrations, according to the CIA report, were effected using “deep cover enterprises,” which the report described as “firms and organizations, some specifically created for, or adaptable to, a specific objective.”

The agency, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), was set up by the then Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operted under the patronage of hard-line conservatives in the highest levels of the Bush Administrtion, the Pentagon and in the White House itself, led in that areas by then Vice-President Cheney . . .
            As the most powerful man in the White House, Cheney was deeply involved in the intelligence field and made three trips to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to demand a more ‘forward-leaning interpretation’ of information relating to the possibility that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. That there were no such weapons and that the CIA so advised the Vice President, he refused to accept their analysis and continued to insist that they produce documents supporting his thesis. In this he was aided by his chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, The latter was later convicted of a felony and sentenced to prison.  

            The OSP had access to an enormous amount of “raw” intelligence which came, in part, from the CIA’s directorate of operations whose job it is to receive and evaluate incoming reports from their agents around the world.

            I Background of Israeli foreign and domestic intelligence: The origin of Israeli intelligence services lies in the underground organizations that were formed to assist Aliya (Jewish immigration to Palestine), during the period of British mandate. In 1884, the Choveve Zion (the lovers of Zion) met in the Prussian city of Pinsk to constitute ideas on the return of the Jews to Palestine. Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish State came out in 1896 and in the same year he convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland to consider the idea of a Jewish national homeland 2. In 1900, under the auspices of the fourth Zionist Congress, the Jewish National Fund was created whose task was to purchase land in Palestine 3. Upon the defeat of the Ottoman Empire with the Arab help, the British promised independence to the Palestinians. On the other hand, the British in 1917 issued the Balfour Declaration and pledged for the establishment of a national home for Jewish people in the land of Palestine, which later in 1922, was granted to Britain as a Òmandate’ by the League of Nations.

            The Pre-1948 Waves of Jewish Immigration: The first Aliya took place from 1882-1904 and the second one from 1904-1914, both of which derived support from the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Colonial Trust and the Jewish National Fund 4. During the British mandate, the Zionist underground resistance force, Haganah, had as its information arm, an organization known as Sherut Yedioth. The Sherut later came to be known as SHAI which began its worldwide operations in 1929 until an independent Israel was created in 1948 5. Its task was to collect political intelligence for the sake of Zionist propaganda and to infiltrate the anti-Zionist and extremist groups in Palestine as well as the neighbouring Arab countries 6.

            Two routes of immigration were open to the Jews to emigrate from Europe, one legal and the other illegal. The legal immigration was allowed by the British but the numbers were small. Between 1939-1944, Britain allowed 75,000 Jews to enter Palestine legally and after that, if it allowed more Jews to immigrate, it would do so only with the Arab consent. The Jewish agency that came into being due to the need for illegal immigration of Jews to Palestine was the Mossad le Aliyah Bet 7 This institution at that point incorporated ten people who worked in six countries: Switzerland, Austria, France, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. And it was the duty of these agents to make false passports, arrange escape routes and charter ships to take illegal immigrants to Palestine without being detected by the British authorities 8.

 Another pre-independence agency that formed the executing arm of the Haganah was Palmach which was military in character, whereas another organization Rekhesh was involved in covert operations and arms smuggling for the underground Jewish forces that had infiltrated the Arab townships 9.

 The post-1948 agencies: After becoming an independent state the SHAI was disbanded in favour of IDF (Israeli Defence Forces). Its political department was responsible to collect intelligence worldwide. Sherut Bitachon Klali was formed as a general security service for the sake of internal security and counter-espionage, also known as SHABAK or Shin Beth in Hebrew 10.

 In 1951, Ben-Gurion initiated the Central Institute for Intelligence and Special Duties (Mossad Letafkidim Meouychadim) commonly known as Mossad. Its initial function was to assess operation feasibility of military intelligence and nomination of targets, but after the creation of Military intelligence Agaf Modiin (AMAN) in 1953, it became independent of the Military Intelligence. In 1960, when Shimon Peres was in the ministry of defense, LEKEM (the Bureau of Scientific Relations) was instituted to collect scientific and technical intelligence for technological development, specially in relation to the weapon systems 11.

THE STRUCTURE OF ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE:

II. The Overall Structure of Israeli Intelligence Services:

            With the exception of Mossad and Shin Beth, the overall structure of Israeli intelligence services can be understood as a confederation  12. The Israeli case displays a confederation structure at a tertiary level. In the sense that the MI is accountable to the director of military intelligence, who reports to the chief of staff, who in turn is responsible to the Minister of Defense. This bureaucratic chain of command is peculiar in a Confederation-type intelligence organization as in the case of UK. Similarly the Research and Political Handling Center through its own director is accountable to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs whereas the Special Division links up to the IG of National Police through the investigation department. And the IG, through the Ministry of Interior reports to the Prime Minister.

            It is interesting to note that the Advisers on Intelligence and Anti-terrorism on one hand and the Advisers on Political and Military Matters on the other hand are directly linked with the Prime Minister, with each other and also with the Director General of Foreign Ministry and the Director of MI (See below, Figure 1):

FIGURE NO. 1 OVERALL STRUCTURE OF THE ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
(Source: Foreign Intelligence Organizations, Richelson.)

Adviser on Intelligence  PRIME MINISTER Advisers on Political Matters

 

Adviser on Anti-Terrorism   Adviser on Military   Matters
Minister of Foreign Affairs Minister of  Interior Minister of Defence
Director General   Chief of Staff
  Inspector General of National Police Director of Mossad (Chairman of VaÕadat) MI Dir of MI
Chief Research & Political Handling Center    
  Investigation Department MOSSAD
Special Division    

            The organization of Mossad and Shin Beth is a centralized one with no intermediate layer of accountability between the Directors of Mossad, Shin Beth and the Prime Minister.

 The Internal Structure of Mossad: The Mossad is based in Tel Aviv with recently estimated number of about 1,200 personnel and until lately, the identity of the Mossad director was a state secret1 3. Mossad has a total of eight departments. The director oversees, the Research, Technology and Technical Operations Departments. The director also chaperons Operation Planning and Coordination, Manpower Finance Logistics and Security, Training, Collection and Political Action, and Liaison. The latter two conduct single or multiple stations in Central America, South America, Eastern Europe/USSR, Africa, Asia and Ocean, Mediterranean and the Middle East, Europe and North America. Under the Political Action and Liaison Department is known to exist the Special Operations Division which runs highly sensitive covert operations 14. (See Figure No. 2)

FIGURE NO. 2 INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF MOSSAD

(Organization of the Mossad (1971). Source: Foreign Intelligence Organizations; Jefferey Richelson)

Director

 

Research Technology Technical Operations

 

Dir. Collection Director Political Action & Liaison Cent. America Director Training Director Manpower, Finance Logistics & Security Director Operational Planning & Coordination

South America Special Operations Divisions

Eastern Europe/ USSR

Africa

Asia & Oceana

Mediterranean & the Near East

Europe

North America

            Intelligence is direction of Field Security Units, Territorial Command Combat Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence and Naval Intelligence 15.

            Lastly, the General Security Service of Israel is known as Shin Beth, which is primarily responsible for counter-espionage and internal security. Shin Beth is organized into eight operational and functional departments: Arab Affairs, Non-Arab Affairs, Protective Security, Operational Support, Technology, Interrogation and Legal Counsel, Coordination and Planning, and Administration 16. The first three constitute the operational division and the rest, Support Divisions. Although there is a deputy director’s office, all of the other departments are also directly responsible to the director.

            Coordination of the Israeli Management Structure: The pivotal faculty of Intelligence Community in Israel is known as the Va’adat Rashei Hasherutim or simply Va’adat. The Va’adat consists of the directors of Mossad, AMAN, Shin Beth and IG Police.

            It also includes the Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Director of the Research and Political Planning Center and the anti-terrorist advisers of the Prime Minister, political and military17 both. All the members of Va’adat are supposedly at parity, however, in terms of importance and power, the director of AMAN is known to eclipse the director of Mossad 18.

FUNCTIONS OF THE ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES

            1. Functions of Mossad: Mossad’s essential functions are: human intelligence collection, covert action and counter terrorism. Its primary focus is to do clandestine operations against the Arab countries as well as against other organizations throughout the world  19. The Mossad collects information on the leadership, disposition, morale and armaments of the Arab Military forces 20. Mossad monitors the Arab commercial activity in relation to weapons acquisition and attempts to sabotage the Arab statesÕ recruitment of military, economic and political experts 21.

            Although exact functional detail remains somewhat abstruse, the largest of the departments with responsibility for most espionage operations is the Department of Collections. The Political Action and Liaison Department is responsible for liaison with friendly states, as well as those states that do not have any diplomatic ties with Israel22. Israeli liaison and manoeuvring between friendly and non-friendly states is amazingly professional.

            It exchanges intelligence information not only with countries like the US with whom it has formal ties, but also with states as diverse as Egypt, Pakistan, Iran and India. It provided Pakistan some information on India that was obtained by the Israeli agent in the US, Jonathan Jay Pollard, in return for some strategic information about some other countries. At the same time Israel exchanged information with India about the Pakistan’s endeavours to construct the atom bomb 23.

            The Special Operations Division or Metsada conducts highly sensitive assassinations, engages in sabotage, paramilitary operations and psychological warfare projects 24. Among the least violent functions of Mossad is its liaison, propaganda and training 25. About 10 Israeli agents trained nearly one hundred Sri Lankans in intelligence tactics in order to combat the Tamil Separatists in Northern Sri Lanka 26. Among the more violent functions of Mossad are kidnapping and assassinations. Colonel Mustapha Hafez, an Egyptian intelligence officer was killed by Mossad as he was considered a key element in the organization of the Palestinians 27. In 1972, in Munich, Germany the Black September faction of PLO kidnapped and subsequently killed ten Israeli athletes in an attempt to recover two hundred Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. This started the most extensive set of assassinations undertaken by the Mossad. The Mossad set up a special unit called the Wrath of God to carry out this operation which it successfully completed by eliminating its targets one by one 28.

            Lohamah Psichologit or the LAP Department of Mossad operates for its psychological warfare, propaganda and deception operations. The Research Department produces the intelligence in form of daily reports, situation reports, weekly summaries and detailed monthly reports from its different geographical desks 29.

            One of the very important functions of Mossad besides gathering intelligence is the acquisition of military hardware, the assessment of enemy equipment and the enhancement of Israeli capabilities. One of Mossad’s most successful acquisitions was the theft of highly enriched Uranium from an American company, Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp., located in Apollo, Pennsylvania 30. This took place in 1965. The president of the company stated that 386.1 pounds of Uranium, enough for at least ten atom bombs, was simply lost ! However, the experts believed that it was transferred to Israel.

            2. Functions of Shin Beth: The Arab Affairs Department conducts anti-terrorist operations, maintenance of an index on Arab terrorists and it also performs political subversion. Whereas the non-Arab department, which is divided into Communist and non-Communist sub-sections, is responsible for the functions of penetration of foreign intelligence organizations, diplomatic missions in Israel and interrogation of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe 31. The Protective Security Branch of Shin Beth functions as the guardian of all the state buildings, embassies, defense related industries, scientific installations, industrial plants and the national airline 32.

            All foreigners are regarded with suspicion by the Shin Beth, regardless of nationality and religion. Informants are recruited from professions of hospitality industry, educational institutions and trade unions with occupations such as bartenders, telephone operators, secretaries, prostitutes and taxi drivers 33.

            3. The Functions of AMAN: The Military Intelligence of Israel produces comprehensive national intelligence estimates for the prime minister and cabinet, which includes communications intercepts, target studies on the contact Arab states in propinquity, and intelligence on the risk of war 34. AMAN’s Foreign Relations Department maintains liaison with the foreign intelligence organizations, engages in deep reconnaissance and conducts cross-border operations 35.

            4. Air Force Intelligence and the Naval Intelligence: The Air Force Intelligence performs the function of data collection by the means of aerial reconnaissance and signals intelligence using a variety of intelligence equipment which also includes the use of RPVs (remotely piloted vehicles), which are recoverable and recyclable after first use 36. These devices are excellent for photographic information which can be directly transmitted to the commander’s headquarters who can make immediate decisions regarding troop deployment without sending out the ground reconnaissance 37.

            The Naval intelligence is a small service which provides AMAN on a consultative basis, assessments of the sea-based threats to Israel. Its targeting department is also responsible for coastal studies, naval gunfire missions and beach studies for amphibious assaults 38.

 

1947. Information obtained by the Jewish-owned Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in its spy operations on US citizens is used by the House Select Committee on Unamerican Activities. Subcommittee Chair Clare Hoffman dismisses the ADL’s reports on suspected communists as hearsay.

1950 John Davitt, former chief of the Justice Department’s internal security section notes that the Israeli intelligence service is the second most active in the United States after the Soviets.

1954 A hidden microphone planted by the Israelis is discovered in the Office of the US Ambassador in Tel Aviv.

1956 Telephone taps are found connected to two telephones in the residence of the US military attach in Tel Aviv.

1954 “The Lavon Affair”. Israeli agents recruited Egyptian citizens of Jewish descent to bomb Western targets in Egypt, and plant evidence to frame Arabs, in an apparent attempt to upset US-Egyptian relations. Israeli defense minister Pinchas Lavon is eventually removed from office, though many think real responsibility lay with David Ben-Gurion.

1965 Israel  illegally obtained enriched uranium from NUMEC Corporation. (Washington Post, 6/5/86, Charles R. Babcock, “US an Intelligence Target of the Israelis, Officials Say.”)

1967 Israel attacks the USS Liberty, a CIA intelligence- gathering vessel flying a US flag, operating at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, killing 34 crew members.. In 2004, Captain Ward Boston, Senior Legal Counsel for the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the attack swears under oath that President Lyndon Johnson ordered the investigation to conclude that the deliberate assault was an “unfortunate accident,” even though the evidence indicates the attack was deliberate. Given the use by Israel of unmarked boats and planes, and the machine-gunning of USS Liberty‘s lifeboats, the most likely explanation is that USS Liberty was to be sunk with all hands, with evidence left to frame Egypt for the sinking. This would have dragged the US into the war on Israel’s side.

1970 While working for Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Richard Perle is caught by the FBI giving classified information to Israel. Nothing is done.

1978, Stephen Bryen, then a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, is overheard in a DC hotel offering confidential documents to top Israeli military officials. Bryen obtains a lawyer, Nathan Lewin, and the case heads for the grand jury, but is mysteriously dropped. Bryen later goes to work for Richard Perle.

1979 Shin Beth [the Israeli internal security agency] tries to penetrate the US Consulate General in Jerusalem through a “Honey Trap”, using a clerical employee who was having an affair with a Jerusalem girl.

1984  Jonathan Jay Pollard, a graduate of Stanford University and an employee of the Naval Investigative Service (NIS) surface ships division  was accused and convicted of stealing over a million highly sensitive documents and selling them to the Israeli government. As an example, Pollard stole and copied  the latest version of Radio-Signal Notations (RASIN), a 10-volume manual comprehensively detailing America’s global electronic surveillance network. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison on one count of espionage on March 4, 1987. Pollard is federal prisoner #09185-016 and is incarcerated at the Butner Federal Correction Complex in Butner, North Carolina.

1985 The New York Times reports the FBI is aware of at least a dozen incidents in which American officials transferred classified information to the Israelis, quoting [former Assistant Director of the F.B.I.] Mr. [Raymond] Wannal. The Justice Department does not prosecute.

1985 Richard Smyth, the owner of MILCO, was indicted on charges of smuggling nuclear timing devices to Israel ( Washington Post, 10/31/86).

1987 April 24 Wall Street Journal headline: “Role of Israel in Iran-Contra Scandal Won’t be Explored in Detail by Panels”

1992 The Wall Street Journal reports that Israeli agents apparently tried to steal Recon Optical Inc’s top-secret airborne spy-camera system.

1992 Stephen Bryen, caught offering confidential documents to Israel in 1978, is serving on board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs while continuing as a paid consultant — with security clearance — on exports of sensitive US technology.

1992 “The Samson Option,” by Seymour M. Hersh reports, illicitly obtained intelligence was flying so voluminously from LAKAM into Israeli intelligence that a special code name, JUMBO, was added to the security markings already on the documents. There were strict orders, Ari Ben-Menashe recalled: “Anything marked JUMBO was not supposed to be discussed with your American counterparts.”

1993. The ADL is caught operating a massive spying operation on critics of Israel, Arab-Americans, the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, Oakland Educational Association, NAACP, Irish Northern Aid, International Indian Treaty Council, the Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco police. Data collected was sent directly to Israel via their Embassy and in some cases to South Africa. Pressure from Jewish organizations forced San Francisco authorities to drop the criminal case, but the ADL settles a civil lawsuit for an undisclosed sum of cash.

1995 The Defense Investigative Service circulated a memo warning US military contractors that ” Israel aggressively collects [ US] military and industrial technology.” The report stated that Israel obtains information using “ethnic targeting, financial aggrandizement, and identification and exploitation of individual frailties” of US citizens.

1996 A General Accounting Office report “Defense Industrial Security: Weaknesses in US Security Arrangements With Foreign-Owned Defense Contractors” found that according to intelligence sources “Country A” (identified by intelligence sources as Israel, Washington Times, 2/22/96) “conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally.” The Jerusalem Post (8/30/96) quoted the report, “Classified military information and sensitive military technologies are high-priority targets for the intelligence agencies of this country.” The report described “An espionage operation run by the intelligence organization responsible for collecting scientific and technologic information for [ Israel] paid a US government employee to obtain US classified military intelligence documents.” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (Shawn L. Twing, April 1996) noted that this was “a reference to the 1985 arrest of Jonathan Pollard, a civilian US naval intelligence analyst who provided Israel’s LAKAM [Office of Special Tasks] espionage agency an estimated 800,000 pages of classified US intelligence information.”

The GAO report also noted that “Several citizens of [ Israel] were caught in the United States stealing sensitive technology used in manufacturing artillery gun tubes.”

1996 An Office of Naval Intelligence document, “Worldwide Challenges to Naval Strike Warfare” reported that ” US technology has been acquired [by China] through Israel in the form of the Lavi fighter and possibly SAM [surface-to-air] missile technology.” Jane’s Defense Weekly (2/28/96) noted that “until now, the intelligence community has not openly confirmed the transfer of US technology [via Israel] to China.” The report noted that this “represents a dramatic step forward for Chinese military aviation.” (Flight International, 3/13/96)

1997 An Army mechanical engineer, David A. Tenenbaum, “inadvertently” gives classified military information on missile systems and armored vehicles to Israeli officials (New York Times, 2/20/97).

1997 The Washington Post reports US intelligence has intercepted a conversation in which two Israeli officials had discussed the possibility of getting a confidential letter that then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher had written to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. One of the Israelis, identified only as Dov, had commented that they may get the letter from Mega, the code name for Israel’s top agent inside the United States.

1997 US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, complains privately to the Israeli government about heavy-handed surveillance by Israeli intelligence agents.

1997 Israeli agents place a tap on Monica Lewinsky’s phone at the Watergate and record phone sex sessions between her and President Bill Clinton. The Ken Starr report confirms that Clinton warned Lewinsky their conversations were being taped and ended the affair. At the same time, the FBI’s hunt for Mega is called off. Mega is later revealed to be XXXXXXXXX

2001 It is discovered that US drug agent’s communications have been penetrated. Suspicion falls on two companies, AMDOCS and Comverse Infosys, both owned by Israelis. AMDOCS generates billing data for most US phone companies and is able to provide detailed logs of who is talking to whom. Comverse Infosys builds the tapping equipment used by law enforcement to eavesdrop on all American telephone calls, but suspicion forms that Comverse, which gets half of its research and development budget from the Israeli government, has built a back door into the system that is being exploited by Israeli intelligence and that the information gleaned on US drug interdiction efforts is finding its way to drug smugglers. The investigation by the FBI leads to the exposure of the largest foreign spy ring ever uncovered inside the United States, operated by Israel. Half of the suspected spies have been arrested when 9-11 happens. On 9-11, 5 Israelis are arrested for dancing and cheering while the World Trade Towers collapse. Supposedly employed by Urban Moving Systems, the Israelis are caught with multiple passports and a lot of cash. Two of them are later revealed to be Mossad. As witness reports track the activity of the Israelis, it emerges that they were seen at Liberty Park at the time of the first impact, suggesting a foreknowledge of what was to come. The Israelis are interrogated, and then eventually sent back to Israel. The owner of the moving company used as a cover by the Mossad agents abandons his business and flees to Israel. The United States Government then classifies all of the evidence related to the Israeli agents and their connections to 9-11. All of this is reported to the public via a four part story on Fox News by Carl Cameron. Pressure from Jewish groups, primarily AIPAC, forces Fox News to remove the story from their website. Two hours prior to the 9-11 attacks, Odigo, an Israeli company with offices just a few blocks from the World Trade Towers, received an advance warning via the internet. The manager of the New York Office provided the FBI with the IP address of the sender of the message, which turned out to be located in the Israeli Embassy in Washington, hence could not be further investigated.   

2001 The FBI  investigated 5 Israeli moving companies as possible fronts for Israeli intelligence.

2001 The Jewish Defense League’s Irv Rubin arrested for planning to bomb a US Congressman. He was murdered in the LA County Jail dies before he could be brought to trial.

2001 The Isreali Mossad, in conjunction with senior members of the Bush administration, penetrated a Saudi terrorist group located at Hollywood, Florida, and materially assisted them in preparing for an aerial assault on various significant American targets. The White House was kept fully courant of the Mossad’s actions by the Israeli Embassy personnel in Washington. 

2002 The DEA issues a report that Israeli spies, posing as art students, had aggressively been trying to penetrate US Government offices.

2002 Police near the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in southern Washington State stop a suspicious truck and detain two Israelis, one of whom is illegally in the United States. The two men were driving at high speed in a Ryder rental truck, which they claimed had been used to “deliver furniture.” The next day, police discovered traces of TNT and RDX military-grade plastic explosives inside the passenger cabin and on the steering wheel of the vehicle. The FBI then announces that the tests that showed explosives were false positives by cigarette smoke, a claim test experts say is ridiculous. Based on an alibi provided by a woman, the case is closed and the Israelis are handed over to INS to be sent back to Israel. One week later, the woman who provided the alibi vanishes.

2003 The Police Chief of Cloudcroft, New Mexico, stops a truck speeding through a school zone. The drivers turn out to be Israelis with expired passports. Claiming to be movers, the truck contains junk furniture and several boxes. The Israelis are handed over to immigration. The contents of the boxers are not revealed to the public. It is later revealed that they contain “extensive documentation” concerning earlier atomic weapon’s testings at nearby Alamagordo, NM

2003 Israel deployed assassination squads into other countries, including the United States. The US Government does not officially protest when they were informed by the Israeli Embassy that these squads were intended to kill known Muslim terrorists possibly operating inside the United States.

2004 Police near the Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Tennessee stop a truck after a three mile chase, during which the driver throws a bottle containing a strange liquid from the cab. The drivers turn out to be Israelis using fake Ids. The FBI refuses to investigate and, on orders from the Department of Justice in Washington,  the Israelis are released.

2004 Two Israelis try to enter Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, home to eight Trident submarines. Their truck tests positive for explosives.

2004, The authoritative Jane’s Intelligence Group noted that Israel’s intelligence organizations “have been spying on the US and running clandestine operations since Israel was established.” The former deputy director of counterintelligence at FBI, Harry B. Brandon, last year told Congressional Quarterly magazine that “the Israelis are interested in commercial as much as military secrets.”

2005 August 4,2005 a federal grand jury indiocted Lawrence Franklin a former United States Department of Defense employee, on five charges of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 in that Franklin passed secret information regarding United States policy towards Iran to staff members of  the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Franklin, pled guilty to several espionage-related charges and was sentenced in January 2006 to nearly 13 years of prison but was later released due to pressure from the Israeli government. 

2009: October 20, 2009  Stewart Nozette, a scientist who worked for NASA and had a top-level government security clearance, is charged with trying to sell US secrets to Israel after an FBI sting operation. The FBI pretended to be Mossad agents.

            2010: A thick file of official Israeli governmental directives obtained by Army codebreakers from the communications systems of the Israeli Embassy in Washington was copied and circulated around the national capitol. The fury of the Jewish community descended upon the White House and President Obama instituted a secret investigation into the surveillance of the Israelis. Among the documents were outright demands that the Ambassador instruct the American President that Israel ordered American airforce units to carpet bomb, using bunker-buser bombs, a thick swatch of land in southern Lebanon on the grounds that Hezbollah had untold long range missiles stockpiled there in anticiption of a raid on Israel at some undetermined future point. There also was a lengthy report from Tel Aviv that the Army or other DoD agency had intercepted and decoded Israeli plans to create a false Iranian attack on U.S. forces to compel the United States to take military measures against Iran in Israel’s favor.

And then there has been the long-standing and on-going problem of Mossad importation of illegal drugs into the United States through Florida and parts of the Gulf Coast. For example there is an on-going massive ecstasy trafficking operation, delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal drugs, manufactured in the Netherlands, to cities across the United States. The drug trafficking operation is also engaged in black market diamond smuggling, using Hassidic Jews as couriers., and under the specific  ontrol of American-based Mossaad units now in place

Portions of the funds garnered from the illegal operations, according to DoD intercepted sources, were funneled to offshore bank accounts of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, now in a vegetative state in an Israeli hospital. Some of these dirty funds were specifically diverted to Sharon’s election campaigns. This Israeli mafia apparatus receives technical support via a number of Israeli communications firms, that subcontract with major American telephone companies and government law enforcement agencies.

Spy operations, targeted at mosques and other centers of the Islamic-American communities. According to sources, the goal is to foment nominally “Arab” or “Islamic” labeled violence and terrorism inside the United States, to win Bush Administration support for an Israeli war against the Palestinians and Arabs. These sources believe further, Israeli-abetted terror attacks are to be expected.

            Surveillance of U.S. government law enforcement, military and intelligence facilities, to gather profile information for such terrorist attacks, as well as espionage penetration. Organized teams of young, “recently retired” Israeli Defense Force soldiers, often associated with specialty units engaged in electronic signal intercepts and explosive ordinance, have targeted at least 36 domestic U.S. military bases, and many federal law enforcement and intelligence installations. A second feature of this targeting of USG facilities is the recruitment of “a new generation of Jonathan Pollards”

 

President Obama Signs Indefinite Detention Bill Into Law

December 31, 2011

ACLU

WASHINGTON – President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law today. The statute contains a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision.  While President Obama issued a signing statement saying he had “serious reservations” about the provisions, the statement only applies to how his administration would use the authorities granted by the NDAA, and would not affect how the law is interpreted by subsequent administrations.  The White House had threatened to veto an earlier version of the NDAA, but reversed course shortly before Congress voted on the final bill.
            “President Obama’s action today is a blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director. “The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.  The ACLU will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally.”
             Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody, and many in Congress now assert that the NDAA should be used in the same way again. The ACLU believes that any military detention of American citizens or others within the United States is unconstitutional and illegal, including under the NDAA. In addition, the breadth of the NDAA’s detention authority violates international law because it is not limited to people captured in the context of an actual armed conflict as required by the laws of war.
            “We are incredibly disappointed that President Obama signed this new law even though his administration had already claimed overly broad detention authority in court,” said Romero. “Any hope that the Obama administration would roll back the constitutional excesses of George Bush in the war on terror was extinguished today. Thankfully, we have three branches of government, and the final word belongs to the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on the scope of detention authority. But Congress and the president also have a role to play in cleaning up the mess they have created because no American citizen or anyone else should live in fear of this or any future president misusing the NDAA’s detention authority.”
            The bill also contains provisions making it difficult to transfer suspects out of military detention, which prompted FBI Director Robert Mueller to testify that it could jeopardize criminal investigations.  It also restricts the transfers of cleared detainees from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to foreign countries for resettlement or repatriation, making it more difficult to close Guantanamo, as President Obama pledged to do in one of his first acts in office.

 

Obama’s spin doctor bruises hacks with ‘nastygrams’

Jay Carney’s combative approach has led to formal complaints about profane language

December 24, 2011

by Guy Adams

Independent/UK 

He is no Alastair Campbell.

Neither is he in quite the same league as C J Cregg, the gruff, no-nonsense spin doctor from The West Wing. But a growing proportion of White House news correspondents are starting to discover that you cross swords with Jay Carney at your peril.

Mr Carney, who became Barack Obama’s press secretary in February, has taken such a combative approach to media management that senior members of the presidential press pool recently called a crisis meeting to demand that he soften his tone.

At the centre of their complaints, according to The Washington Post, are so-called “nastygrams”, aggressive, critical emails sent with growing frequency by Mr Carney and his staff.

Some of the more delicate members of the press have also been upset by profane language with which they are increasingly upbraided over the telephone by government spin doctors. Their concerns were formally raised at a meeting in November between the White House Correspondents Association [WHCA] and Mr Carney’s office.

According to the WHCA president, Caren Bohan, who is a reporter for Reuters, the meeting was held to discuss a series of “tense interactions” between the two sides. Several reporters interviewed by the Post claimed that the nature of official communications has become more hostile under Mr Carney.

Among them was Carl Cannon, the Washington editor of the Real Clear Politics website. He described the official reaction to his article about Mr Obama’s use of the White House for his party’s political fundraisers as: “a screaming, profane diatribe that lasted two or three phone calls.” The incident convinced him that Mr Obama’s media managers “either favour you or try to punish you, depending if they see you as friend or foe”.

Julie Mason, a radio reporter, said Mr Carney used an email to brand one of her stories “partisan, inflammatory and tendentious”. One of his colleagues sent her an animated picture of a crying mime artist, apparently to suggest she was whining.

Tensions in the White House press room are historically allowed to remain below the radar and the US media generally has a far less adversarial relationship with government spokesmen than their counterparts in the UK. Mr Carney told the Post that he has “good, very cordial” relations with reporters. He also attempted to deny that his occasionally fraught dealings with the Fourth Estate were worthy of coverage. “Where have you been?” he asked. “You’re kind of discovering that the wheel is round here.”

Poor rural villages show China’s economic dilemma

November 28, 2011

BBC

 

 The debt problems in Europe have led many to hope that China will use its financial muscle to save the world. But China has its own pressing economic problems, as Michael Bristow finds out.

China’s remarkable economic development is reflected in its booming cities of skyscrapers, expensive cars and designer clothes shops.

Few foreign visitors travelling to Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou fail to be impressed by the country’s recent achievements.

But there is another side of China that is less visible – the poor rural areas that suggest growth has been uneven, or worse, has left some behind.

China has the world’s second-biggest economy but, because of its 1.3bn people, it has a per-capita income on a par with countries such as Tunisia and Angola.

Just three hours drive from Beijing is the village of Yihezhuang – where nearly 300 people have an average income of less than 1,000 yuan ($157, £101) a year.

China’s leaders are under political pressure to provide these people with basic services before helping out richer Western nations.

Wartime base

It is not easy to get to Yihezhuang, which has been built in the mountains that run along the border between Beijing and Hebei province.

There is just a basic track running about 7km (4 miles) from the main road to the village. Some homes can be reached only on foot.

Its isolated location – and its proximity to Beijing – is probably why the communists chose this place as a base to fight the Japanese in World War II.

Older residents still remember treating wounded soldiers.

The village was poor then and there is not much to suggest it has benefited from China’s rapid economic growth over the last few decades.

 Villagers in Yihezhuang eke out a meagre living by growing maize and raising animals

People live in dilapidated courtyard homes, where the only source of heating is a large bed warmed by a smoky fire underneath.

This is how most rural houses are heated in northern China, where temperatures regularly drop below freezing in winter.

“We don’t get any subsidies from the government,” said villager Liu Wenxiang, 54.

“We were enrolled in a pension scheme earlier this year, but we won’t receive any money until we’re 60. My mother’s nearly 80 and she isn’t covered at all.”

One way in which China can help the world’s economy is by persuading its people to buy more foreign products.

But in the home belonging to Mrs Liu’s parents there is little that a Westerner would recognise as a consumer product.

A chipped teapot on a small table, a broken-down sideboard and an earthenware pot filled with water are the most obvious items in its main room.

It is going to be a long time before this family can afford expensive kitchen appliances or computer gadgets.

 

Escaping poverty

Liu Wenxiang’s father has lung cancer and spends most of his time sitting on the heated bed, bundled up in multiple layers of clothing.

The family say they do not have enough money to give him proper treatment. “What can we do?” said the sick man’s wife.

 Villagers hope to turn their mountain homes into tourist attractions

China’s government is in the process of introducing health insurance across the country, but coverage is patchy.

Yihezhuang’s residents recently joined this scheme, but getting back money spent on health care is not easy, they say.

As in many Chinese villages, there are few young adults. Most have gone away to seek work in the towns and cities.

Those who are left eke out a living growing maize and vegetables – most of which is kept by households for their own consumption. Others keep goats, pigs and chickens.

The situation in the village is extreme – a fact acknowledged by provincial leaders, who visited in October to see what could be done to help.

“We must do all we can to help impoverished areas and villagers find projects and industries that allow them to escape poverty,” said Shen Xiaoping, Hebei’s deputy governor.

But there are thousands of villages like this one across China, whose rural people have not benefited as much as city dwellers from economic growth.

In urban areas, the average disposable income was 19,109 yuan ($2,990, £1,930) last year. It was less than a third of that in the countryside.

Independent economist Andy Xie said China should help these people by cutting their tax burden, and improving welfare and education provision.

That takes precedence over helping others. “Why would we rescue Greece? Does it buy from us or sell to China?” said the economist.

Change is already coming to Yihezhuang. The dirt path that once linked the village with the outside world – and was often washed away by floodwater – has now been replaced by a government-funded stone road.

The authorities plan to pave it properly in the next few years.

When than happens, village accountant Liu Dianshan said, people will turn their poor but picturesque homes into tourist destinations.

“Visitors will be able to stay in farmers’ homes and we’ll be able to move people to more convenient parts of the village,” said a hopeful Mr Liu.

That might take some years, but China’s leaders know that fulfilling these dreams – and others like them – is more important than sorting out foreign debt problems.

 

Mild weather redefines winter landscape

 

December 30, 2011

by Juliet Eilperin and Darryl Fears  

 At the National Arboretum, the white petals of snowdrops — normally an early spring flower — have unfurled. In Maine’s Acadia National Park, lakes still have patches of open water instead of being frozen solid. And in Donna Izlar’s back yard in downtown Atlanta, the apricot tree has started blooming.

 It’s not in your imagination. The unusually mild temperatures across several regions of the country in the past few months are disrupting the natural cycles that define the winter landscape.

            A lack of snow in Iowa has cities rejoicing, because they are saving big bucks when it comes to time, equipment and supplies like salt. But winter is not yet over. (Dec. 29)

What began as elevated temperatures at the start of fall in parts of the United States have become “dramatically” warmer around the Great Lakes and New England, according to Deke Arndt, chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center. And in the Washington area, the region is on track for its fourth-warmest year on record, along with its seventh-warmest December.

That, in turn, has created conditions where plants are blooming earlier and some birds are lingering before moving south.

“It’s a weird kind of fall blending right into spring,” said Scott Aker, head of horticulture at National Arboretum.

The pattern is most pronounced in eastern Montana, northeastern Minnesota and parts of North Dakota, Arndt said, where December temperatures so far have averaged 10 degrees above normal. But the mild weather extends to other Great Lakes states along with New England and the mid-Atlantic, with temperatures this month averaging between six and eight degrees above normal.

Just 19.6 percent of the continental United States is now covered in snow, according to the latest snow analysis by NOAA, compared with 50.3 percent this time last year.

Both scientists and those who question dire global warming predictions emphasize that one warm season should not be interpreted as a broader sign of climate change.

“It’s about long-term trends, and one year does not make a trend,” said Doug Inkley, a senior scientist at the National Wildlife Federation.

Temperature anomalies happen for many reasons, and Arndt said some of the mild weather stems from a persistent ridge of high pressure that has settled over the eastern third of the country, pumping up south winds in many areas. But he added that the shifts in seasonality now on display are in line with the warming the United States has experienced in recent years.

“We’ve seen consistently in the last couple of decades more consistent warm episodes for the season than cold episodes,” Arndt said, adding the “climate wrapper” that affects local weather is akin to the connection between parenting and how children behave. “There’s always local factors to a kid’s behavior. Maybe he was stressed out, or didn’t get enough sleep, or was hanging out with other kids who don’t behave. But when you see a pattern to that, you think, ‘Maybe it is parenting.’ ”

The decreasing frequency of cold snaps should not lead anyone to conclude that there is dramatic warming across the globe, said Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. Climate change is happening, he said, but not at the “magnitude” that some suggest.

 

WHO “deeply concerned” by mutated birdflu research

 

December 30, 2011

by Kate Kelland

Reuters

 

 LONDON LONDONThe World Health Organization issued a stern warning on Friday to scientists who have engineered a highly pathogenic form of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, saying their work carries significant risks and must be tightly controlled.

The United Nations health body said it was “deeply concerned about the potential negative consequences” of work by two leading flu research teams who this month said they had found ways to make H5N1 into a easily transmissable form capable of causing lethal human pandemics.

The work by the teams, one in The Netherlands and one in the United States, has already prompted an unprecedented censorship call from U.S. security advisers who fear that publishing details of the research could give potential attackers the know-how to make a bioterror weapon.

The U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity has asked two journals that want to publish the work to make only redacted versions of studies available, a request to which the journal editors and many leading scientists object.

In its first comment on the controversy, the WHO said: “While it is clear that conducting research to gain such knowledge must continue, it is also clear that certain research, and especially that which can generate more dangerous forms of the virus….has risks.”

H5N1 bird flu is extremely deadly in people who are directly exposed to it from infected birds. Since the virus was first detected in 1997, about 600 people have contracted it and more than half of them have died.

But so far it has not yet naturally mutated into a form that can pass easily from person to person, although many scientists fear this kind of mutation is likely to happen at some point and will constitute a major health threat if it does.

MUTATIONS

Flu researchers around the world have been working for many years trying to figure out which mutations would give H5N1 the ability to spread easily from one person to another, while at the same time maintaining its deadly properties.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health funded the two research teams to carry out research into how the virus could become more transmissible in humans, with the aim of gaining insight on how to react if the mutation occurred naturally.

The WHO said such research should be done “only after all important public health risks and benefits have been identified” and “it is certain that the necessary protections to minimize the potential for negative consequences are in place.”

The agency also said it was vital that new rules on the sharing of viruses and scientific know-how were enforced to ensure those countries at most immediate risk from H5N1, mainly developing countries in Asia such as Indonesia, Vietnam and others, would benefit from advances in research.

During the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009-2010, many developing countries complained they had no life-saving antivirals or vaccines to combat the new virus, despite having made samples of the virus available to researchers and pharmaceutical companies to develop the medicines.

It is normally laboratories in wealthy developed countries that have the level of scientific expertise needed to work on complex flu viruses, while bird, or avian, flu viruses themselves often come from less well developed Asian countries.

A new Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework was agreed and adopted by all WHO member states in May 2011 to set rules for sharing flu viruses that have pandemic potential, and sharing the benefits of the expertise gained.

“WHO considers it critically important that scientists who undertake research with influenza viruses with pandemic potential samples fully abide by the new requirements,” the U.N. agency said in its statement.

(Editing by Alistair Lyon)

 

Bird flu virus kills Chinese man

Bus driver from Guangdong dies after testing positive for H5N1 strain, despite having had no apparent contact with poultry

December 31, 2011

guardian.co.uk

A Chinese man diagnosed with the country’s first case of bird flu in more than a year has died in the southern city of Shenzhen.

The 39-year-old bus driver was admitted to hospital with pneumonia but tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus.

The strain has a high mortality rate, killing up to 60% of infected humans.

The man, surnamed Chen, developed a fever on 21 December and was admitted to hospital on Christmas Day. Local health officials said 120 people who had close contact with Chen have not developed any abnormal symptoms.

The Chinese health ministry has informed the World Health Organisation about the case, health officials added.

During the month prior to his fever, Chen, apparently had no direct contact with poultry and did not travel out of Shenzhen.

The city, home to 10 million people, is separated by a small river from Hong Kong, where 19,000 chickens have been slaughtered after two were confirmed last week to have died from the H5N1 virus.

Hong Kong also banned imports and sales of live poultry for three weeks after an infected chicken carcass was found at a wholesale market. Tests later confirmed that an Oriental magpie robin found dead on 17 December was also infected.

H5N1 rarely infects humans and usually only those who come into close contact with diseased poultry. China‘s last reported human case of H5N1 was in June 2010. A pregnant 22-year-old woman from central Hubei province died after being exposed to sick and dead poultry.

Paul Assails Rivals’ Criticism of His Policy on Iran

December 30, 2011

by Michael D. Shear and Richard A. Oppel, Jr.

New York Times

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DES MOINES — Representative Ron Paul of Texas assailed criticism of his opposition to United States military involvement abroad, saying he fears an overreaction to worries about Iran’s nuclear program could lead to war.

Mr. Paul’s rivals have hammered him for days as too dovish and suggested that he would do nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Mitt Romney again criticized Mr. Paul on Friday in an interview on the Fox News Channel, saying, “I don’t think Ron Paul represents the mainstream of Republican thought with regards to issues, particularly in foreign policy.”

Mr. Romney and other Republican candidates have said they would take military action if economic, diplomatic and other pressure did not prevent Iran from building a nuclear device, warning that Tehran could launch a first-strike nuclear attack on Israel.

Mr. Paul, though, stuck to his guns. Before a crowd at a public library in Sioux Center, he noted that others say Iran “might get a nuclear weapon someday, and wouldn’t it be good if we have a pre-emptive attack on Iran right now to make sure they never got a weapon.”

“I would say no, I wouldn’t do that, mainly because right now there are no signs they are” seeking to build a bomb, Mr. Paul said.

And if Iran did build a nuclear bomb, he said, “What are the odds of them using it? Probably zero. They just are not going to commit suicide. The Israelis have 300 of them.”

But Mr. Paul was also careful to say that the president is “obligated” to respond to an imminent attack on the United States. “You don’t have to wait until they have put their feet on our soil,” he said.

A new poll by NBC News released on Friday again showed Mr. Paul tied with Mr. Romney in Iowa, suggesting that the attacks on his foreign policy positions have so far had little effect. But polls have also showed that Mr. Paul’s opposition to American military intervention abroad is a major reason many Republicans give to oppose his candidacy.

Aides said Mr. Paul was scheduled to fly back to Texas on Friday night to spend the New Year’s holiday with his family before returning to Iowa to campaign on Monday with his son, Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky.

In the meantime, Mr. Paul’s rivals continued their last-minute sprints across Iowa in the hopes of rallying support among an electorate that appears to remain open to persuasion.

Rick Santorum, who has seen his support rise sharply in several recent Iowa polls, was mobbed by reporters during an afternoon stop at a Buffalo Wild Wings Grill and Bar in Ames, where patrons were gathered to watch Iowa State battle Rutgers in the Pinstripe Bowl.

Despite a tiny turnout of only a few supporters and some angry yells of “sit down” and “we’re trying to watch football,” Mr. Santorum said he was encouraged by the new energy evidenced by the media scrum that now follows him.

“I’m a little bit surprised at the scale of the turnout here today — let me apologize to everybody here,” Mr. Santorum said. “No. It’s great.”

Mr. Romney left Iowa on Friday afternoon for a quick overnight jaunt to New Hampshire. But as he campaigned with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey at a morning rally in Des Moines, Mr. Romney took a sharp jab at President Obama.

“He’s in Hawaii right now,” Mr. Romney said. “We’re out in the cold and the rain and the wind because we care about America, he’s out there. He just finished his 90th round of golf.”

Small crowds greeted Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota as she completed the final stops on her tour of all 99 Iowa counties. She has been running consistently in the single digits in polls in Iowa despite her heavy focus on the state. A “super PAC” supporting Mrs. Bachmann, No Compromise, tried to secure air time on KCCI, the CBS station in Des Moines, but was rejected because the station said the ad was too shoddy for network television.

Campaigning at Doughy Joey’s Peetza-Joynt in Waterloo, Iowa, Mr. Perry continued to criticize Mr. Santorum for seeking earmarks while in Congress.

“Please tell me why you asked taxpayers to support the bridge to nowhere in Alaska?” Mr. Perry said to the crowd.

 

Michael D. Shear reported from Des Moines, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Sioux Center, Iowa.

 

 

 

Conversations with the Crow

 

When the CIA discovered that their former Deputy Director of Clandestine Affairs, Robert T. Crowley, had been talking with author Gregory Douglas, they became fearful (because of what Crowley knew) and outraged (because they knew Douglas would publish eventually) and made many efforts to silence Crowley, mostly by having dozens of FBI agents call or visit him at his Washington home and try to convince him to stop talking to Douglas, whom they considered to be an evil, loose cannon.          

Crowley did not listen to them (no one else ever does, either) and Douglas made through shorthand notes of each and every one of their many conversation. TBR News published most of these (some of the really vile ones were left out of the book but will be included on this site as a later addendum ) and the entire collection was later produced as an Ebook.

 Now, we reliably learn, various Washington alphabet agencies are trying to find a way to block the circulation of this highly negative, entertaining and dangerous work, so to show our solidarity with our beloved leaders and protectors, and our sincere appreciation for their corrupt and coercive actions, we are going to reprint the entire work, chapter by chapter. (The complete book can be obtained by going to:

http://www.shop.conversationswiththecrow.com/Conversations-with-the-Crow-CWC-GD01.htm

 

 

 

Conversation No. 106

Date: Saturday, October 11, 1997

Commenced:  8:50 AM CST

Concluded: 9:02 AM CST

GD: Good morning, Robert. Did you get the book?

RTC: I did, Interesting, I knew your friend Mueller was hip-deep in the art business but I really was unaware of how enormous a business it really was. Or is?

GD: Well, when Heini died, it died with him. And hiw wife made me haul off most of his stock. She wanted nothing to do with it. I mean, she didn’t know it was all stolen but she must have wondered how Heini could get so much of it. She kept a few pieces, a few small Renaissance bronzes as I recall, but I got the rest. Jesus, I had to rent a U-Haul to take it away.

RTC: I won’t ask you what happened to it. Are you rich?

GD: It varies. Money comes in but money goes out. No, I have the art stashed with your boxes of documents. If the authorities ever found either one of these, I would have huge lawyer fees. On the other hand, they might run over me with a truck while I am in a local mall. And just think, the governments of a dozen countries would coo with joy to be able to recover their lost treasures. Fuck them, Robert, without grease. The stuff it mine and I will do with it as I wish. Goering looted dozens of Jewish collections in Paris in ’40 and Mueller had the Rothschild Renaissance gold coin collection. Sell off one small piece here and there but never bank the money in Switzerland. I buy gold with my money and then put the gold away.

RTC: Not, I hope, in a safe deposit box.

GD: Christ no. That’s the second place they look after your garage or a local storage place in a space rented under your name. No, safe where they can’t get at it. I collect things relating to Hitler. I have his will, notes from Eva Braun, Gestapo files on his close associates, note paper, book plates, lecture notes and so on. Poor Irving would shit himself dry if he ever saw any of it. Of course he won’t and someday, I will find a publisher your people don’t control and put out a nice coffee table book to rival one I just saw on the Shroud of Turin. The difference will be that my book will have authentic items. Shroud is a dismal fake. Oh and I don’t have any diaries. I ought to include a chapter on these as well since I was in on the making of them. My God, people are such fools.

RTC: People believe what they want to, Gregory.

GD: Yes, a man will never believe his wife is boffing a back jazz drummer, even if he walks in on them. Amazing how blind some become. Anyway, the thought of the dread chief of the Gestapo, broiler of fat Jewish babies, visiting with Harry in the White House and selling off stolen art and living very high on the American hog is a howler. No wonder your people are dampening their chairs over the Mueller books. What revelations will be next? I think that in the end, when all the dust settles and Tel Aviv is a radioactive ruin, Hitler will emerge as a far more sympathetic person that the trained academics like to rant about. And conversely, old fat Churchill will suffer very badly. A gay, fat egotist who destroyed his country. And I can talk about the ditzy Mountbatten who attacked Dieppe on his own and took terrible losses. A typical product of the British royal family. Mueller said they were mostly inbred idiots who married their own cousins and produced children with the intellect of chickens.

RTC: (Laughter) As an Irishman, I find that refreshing. How perceptive of your friend.

GD: My friend and your employee. Just think, there is Heni, the barbecue king, employer of Eichmann, having lunch with your DCI at the Cosmos Club. Not to mention your financial support of Rauff and Mengele in South America. My God, if any of this ever really gets out, the ADL will stand in front of the CIA headquarters and pelt exiting employees with rotten bagels.

RTC: (Laughter) Why rotten?
GD: You can get them much cheaper.

RTC: (Laughter) So true. But back to the stolen art. How can you sell any of this without getting caught?
GD: Most of the original owners are either dead or cakes of hand soap. Your people never stole anything famous in ’48. Common but very valuable stuff. Sell it to a posh gallery who think you are a well-dressed twit who has no idea what Grandmonther’s old piece is worth. If it is a nice icon, worth or say twenty thousand, they will be kind enough to offer you five hundred as a starter and come all the way up to four thousand. Just take it and have a nice lunch with a really good wine after it’s all over. And on it goes. And someday, a horrified person sees their late Aunt Reba’s Monet for sale by a Swiss gallery and calls their lawyer, screaming with rage. So much fun. And remember, Napoleon looted all of Europe for the Louvre but now he is considered a real patron of the arts. What they will say about me I dare not begin to voice. It might shock you so close to lunch, or on the other hand, so soon after breakfast. If Kimmel had any idea how the land really lay, I would be visited by his gentlemen in flak vests. They would haul off locked trunks with labels saying ‘Stolen Art” and when they broke them open down at the office, they would find nothing but the contents of the cat litter box and some very ripe chicken parts. Anyway, when you finish with the book, send it back by the usual route and I will send you something even more interesting.

RTC: How kind of you to entertain an old man in his declining years.

GD: I’ll be there soon enough, Robert.

(Concluded at 9:02 AM CST)

 

 

Dramatis personae:

            James Jesus Angleton: Once head of the CIA’s Counterintelligence division, later fired because of his obsessive and illegal behavior, tapping the phones of many important government officials in search of elusive Soviet spies. A good friend of Robert Crowley and a co-conspirator with him in the assassination of President Kennedy

            James P. Atwood: (April 16, 1930-April 20, 1997) A CIA employee, located in Berlin, Atwood had a most interesting career. He worked for any other intelligence agency, domestic or foreign, that would pay him, was involved in selling surplus Russian atomic artillery shells to the Pakistan government and was also most successful in the manufacturing of counterfeit German dress daggers. Too talkative, Atwood eventually had a sudden, and fatal, “seizure” while lunching with CIA associates.

            William Corson: A Marine Corps Colonel and President Carter’s representative to the CIA. A friend of Crowley and Kimmel, Corson was an intelligent man whose main failing was a frantic desire to be seen as an important person. This led to his making fictional or highly exaggerated claims.

            John Costello: A British historian who was popular with revisionist circles. Died of AIDS on a trans-Atlantic flight to the United States.

            James Critchfield: Former U.S. Army Colonel who worked for the CIA and organizaed the Cehlen Org. at Pullach, Germany. This organization was filled to the Plimsoll line with former Gestapo and SD personnel, many of whom were wanted for various purported crimes. He hired Heinrich Müller in 1948 and went on to represent the CIA in the Persian Gulf.

            Robert T. Crowley: Once the deputy director of Clandestine Operations and head of the group that interacted with corporate America. A former West Point football player who was one of the founders of the original CIA. Crowley was involved at a very high level with many of the machinations of the CIA.

            Gregory Douglas: A retired newspaperman, onetime friend of Heinrich Müller and latterly, of Robert Crowley. Inherited stacks of files from the former (along with many interesting works of art acquired during the war and even more papers from Robert Crowley.) Lives comfortably in a nice house overlooking the Mediterranean.

            Reinhard Gehlen: A retired German general who had once been in charge of the intelligence for the German high command on Russian military activities. Fired by Hitler for incompetence, he was therefore naturally hired by first, the U.S. Army and then, as his level of incompetence rose, with the CIA. His Nazi-stuffed organization eventually became the current German Bundes Nachrichten Dienst.

            Thomas K. Kimmel, Jr: A grandson of Admiral Husband Kimmel, Naval commander at Pearl Harbor who was scapegoated after the Japanese attack. Kimmel was a senior FBI official who knew both Gregory Douglas and Robert Crowley and made a number of attempts to discourage Crowley from talking with Douglas. He was singularly unsuccessful. Kimmel subsequently retired, lives in Florida, and works for the CIA as an “advisor.”

            Willi Krichbaum: A Senior Colonel (Oberführer) in the SS, head of the wartime Secret Field Police of the German Army and Heinrich Müller’s standing deputy in the Gestapo. After the war, Krichbaum went to work for the Critchfield organization and was their chief recruiter and hired many of his former SS friends. Krichbaum put Critchfield in touch with Müller in 1948.

            Heinrich Müller: A former military pilot in the Bavarian Army in WWI, Müller  became a political police officer in Munich and was later made the head of the Secret State Police or Gestapo. After the war, Müller escaped to Switzerland where he worked for Swiss intelligence as a specialist on Communist espionage and was hired by James Critchfield, head of the Gehlen Organization, in 1948. Müller subsequently was moved to Washington where he worked for the CIA until he retired.

            Joseph Trento: A writer on intelligence subjects, Trento and his wife “assisted” both Crowley and Corson in writing a book on the Russian KGB. Trento believed that he would inherit all of Crowley’s extensive files but after Crowley’s death, he discovered that the files had been gutted and the most important, and sensitive, ones given to Gregory Douglas. Trento was not happy about this. Neither were his employers.

            Frank Wisner: A Founding Father of the CIA who promised much to the Hungarians and then failed them. First, a raging lunatic who was removed from Langley, screaming, in a strait jacket and later, blowing off the top of his head with a shotgun.           

            Robert Wolfe: A retired librarian from the National Archives who worked closely with the CIA on covering up embarrassing historical material in the files of the Archives. A strong supporter of holocaust writers specializing in creative writing. Although he prefers to be called ‘Dr,’ in reality he has no PhD.

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