TBR News July 6, 2016
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. July 6, 2016: “We are out of the country on business and will return July 9.”
The Müller Washington Journals 1948-1951
At the beginning of December, 1948, a German national arrived in Washington, D.C. to take up an important position with the newly-formed CIA. He was a specialist on almost every aspect of Soviet intelligence and had actively fought them, both in his native Bavaria where he was head of the political police in Munich and later in Berlin as head of Amt IV of the State Security Office, also known as the Gestapo.
His name was Heinrich Müller.
Even as a young man, Heini Müller had kept daily journals of his activities, journals that covered his military service as a pilot in the Imperial German air arm and an apprentice policeman in Munich. He continued these journals throughout the war and while employed by the top CIA leadership in Washington, continued his daily notations.
This work is a translation of his complete journals from December of 1948 through September of 1951.
When Heinrich Müller was hired by the CIA¹s station chief in Bern, Switzerland, James Kronthal in 1948, he had misgivings about working for his former enemies but pragmatism and the lure of large amounts of money won him over to what he considered to be merely an extension of his life-work against the agents of the Comintern. What he discovered after living and working in official Washington for four years was that the nation¹s capital was, in truth, what he once humorously claimed sounded like a cross between a zoo and a lunatic asylum. His journals, in addition to personal letters, various reports and other personal material, give a very clear, but not particularly flattering, view of the inmates of both the zoo and the asylum.
Müller moved, albeit very carefully, in the rarefied atmosphere of senior policy personnel, military leaders, heads of various intelligence agencies and the White House itself. He was a very observant, quick-witted person who took copious notes of what he saw. This was not a departure from his earlier habits because Heinrich Müller had always kept a journal, even when he was a lowly Bavarian police officer, and his comments about personalities and events in the Third Reich are just as pungent and entertaining as the ones he made while in America.
The reason for publishing this phase of his eventful life is that so many agencies in the United States and their supporters do not want to believe that a man of Müller¹s position could ever have been employed by their country in general or their agency in specific.
Sunday, 29. April, 1951
My birthday today and Bunny, who has been having problems associated with the pregnancy, had a surprise for me. The staff and a few friends were down in the afternoon and we had a very pleasant musical afternoon. Bunny played Bach’s Musical Offering knowing how much I love it and this was followed by a very good baritone singing a number of songs, including ‘Che faro senza Euridice?’ from Gluck’s “Orpheo” which is another of my favorites. In the early evening, we had white sausages from Munich and a keg of good German beer that were flown in as supercargo on an Army plane. The staff and I enjoyed the German feast more than the French one we had for lunch and everyone sang songs and in all, I had a very pleasant time
Long conversation with Bunny after the guests left. She tried to apologize for her moods but I stopped her and said that I certainly understood these things and expressed my concern for her…for our first child. All in all, she is very level headed which is one of the reasons I married her. She suggested that we celebrate the Chief’s birthday (April 20th, Hitler’s birthday, ed.) and mine on a day in between and somehow the subject of a cousin of hers came up. It seems he was born the day before Christmas and the family decided to save money by giving him one set of presents. When he got older and married, he told his wife and her family that he was born in July!
Thursday, 3. May, 1951.
I have the opportunity to go to Europe! This time, partially on business where I am to get together with Krichbaum and others and partially on pleasure. I will wish to attend several music performances, Salzburg, Beyreuth, Ansbach and so on. An opportunity to revisit Munich, see a few relatives and old friends and then back again in August. I will have my usual protection and my papers will indicate I am with U.S. Army intelligence. Either that or a minor diplomat but I want no connection with the State Department so it will probably be the Army. Bunny will go, of course, if the timing is right and her pregnancy is not too far advanced. The child will be born sometime in September so if we go in July, Bunny will be seven months along which is on the borderline as far as I am concerned but she seems not to worry about it. We shall see.
It will be interesting to go back. I read a novel recently by Thomas Wolfe, a very great American writer, now dead, entitled “You Can’t Go Home Again.” Perhaps one actually can. This is merely sentimentality but we are all guilty of that once in awhile!
There have been a series of meetings at the CIA concerning its expansion into the academic field. All very tentative but certainly projected to be executed as soon as the structures are approved.
The CIA now feels that it wants to get as much insight…and control…in important areas as it can. It wants domestic surveillance (which puts it in conflict with Hoover’s FBI) communications overviews (such as the telephone system, the telegraph system and eventually, the mails), the development of new technology that might be of use to it such as radar, new aircraft, advanced weapons systems and so on. Also on the agenda is a plan whereby foreign students, studying in the U.S., can be observed and if it is decided they might be useful, means by which they could be recruited to serve the CIA. I would say, “to serve the United States and its interests” but the CIA is not the United States but a country-within-a-country. It has no loyalty to the U.S. but only to itself and its own goals.
If these goals conflict with those of the nation, the CIA rules (in its own mind).
Students who might be considered as future leaders or important political or military figures (VMI students and so on) in other countries, are to be “turned”, either with bribes or better, by being caught in embarrassing sexual acts and blackmailed.
As Dulles says, “A bought man ought to stay bought and a file on his bad acts is always a means to be certain he stays bought.”
No one here anticipates any problems with the schools (MIT is slated to begin the drive because of the technology produced by it and the type of students who attend it) and I am told that academics have to be beaten off with clubs, so eager are they to get CIA money.
Most of these professors are a sorry lot. They don’t make much money, are susceptible to bribery, like to be flattered and have a surprisingly low sense of professional ethics. Plagiarism is rampant in the higher education bastions and most professors engage in endless jealous warfare with each other over grants, titles and publications (which their students produce for them).
Not even in Germany, but certainly in Russia, was such infiltration planned or even attempted on such a bold, Neronic scale.
In the communications fields, they want absolute control so that they can intercept messages from every American governmental department, all foreign diplomatic traffic, all military traffic and the ability to listen to every telephone conversation in the United States!
“Tapping” telephones is something the Gestapo perfected and two of my best communications men have been assisting the CIA in setting up various programs. Colonel Behn has been involved in this, giving official access to his ITT units.
This is interesting to me and I am reading the material at home (I am not supposed to know what it going on!) and watching this country move from the remnants of a democracy to an embryonic fascist state. Better that than communist!
The Center of International Studies, paid for and controlled entirely by the CIA, was set up at MIT in 1951 and other such entities followed at major, and some minor, universities and colleges across the country. Most universities terminated their working arrangements with the CIA but not before an entire generation of willing academics sold their services to the CIA. An inspection of an existing list of academics who worked for the CIA reads like a Who’s Who of the academic world.
By 1971, both the CIA and FBI were heavily engaged in domestic surveillance programs in the United States. These programs grew to be so pervasive and oppressive that in 1971, FBI director Hoover, alarmed at the degree and extent of illegal surveillance, balked at extending the cooperation of his agency any further and was instrumental in causing these enormous internal spy operations to collapse, at least insofar as CIA participation was concerned. Without Hoover’s FBI to assist them, the CIA programs began to wither and die and even James Angleton’s program to open, read and copy first class mail, a serious felony, was exposed and Angleton fired in 1976.
The domestic surveillance programs now in place are conducted by more than one agency and, in theory at least, are all-inclusive.
Every citizen of the United States is supposed to possess a Social Security card and the number on this card is the key used to unlock all the areas where sensitive personal information on all citizens is stored. The computer has simplified not only record keeping but also surveillance activities. Everything pertaining to a citizen is kept in computer files and the government, and some private agencies who work with the government, have unlimited and unrestricted access to these computer files.
Birth and death records, highly personal and often potentially embarrassing medical files, bank accounts, criminal files, credit card records that indicate travel and purchases, tax records, ownership of cars, planes, boats and real estate, credit bureau reports, Social Security and other official agency material and dozens of other records that are the sum and total of the population of the United States are all quickly available to interested officialdom through the offices of the computer systems.
It is no longer possible to fly commercially domestically without producing photo identification and all of this data is made available to various agencies via the computer
Even the television set in the living room (or often more interestingly, the bedroom) can be used as a surveillance device. It is a well-known fact that the functions of the AM and FM units found in all television set can be reversed and the set can be used as a transmitter, even when it is turned off.
None of this is done in a secret location in Washington but is accomplished at the subject’s local cable head. It should be noted that this wonderfully Orwellian program only works if the victim is connected to a television cable system, one of the best reasons for using a satellite disk. Contrary to rumor, the set can only be used for audio transmission, not visual, so bedroom activities can only be heard, not seen.
Not even the fax machine, or the personal computer, is secure because the technology exists, and is used, to have copies of faxed documents sent directly into a federal office at the same time they are being printed out at the recipient’s home or office.
While it is quite true that the American public are constantly subject to observations like ants in a glass ant farm, they should comfort themselves with the knowledge that this is for their own welfare and certainly not a manifestation of a burgeoning police state.
Obama, in shift, says he will keep 8,400 U.S. troops in Afghanistan until 2017
July 6, 2016
Reuters
President Barack Obama, saying the security situation in Afghanistan remained precarious, said on Wednesday he will keep U.S. troop levels there at 8,400 through the end of his administration rather than reducing them to 5,500 by year’s end as previously planned.
Obama, in a statement at the White House, said the role of U.S. forces in Afghanistan would remain unchanged: training and advising Afghan police and troops, and supporting counterterrorism missions against the Taliban and other groups. Obama’s presidency ends in January.
Obama, who took office in 2009 pledging to wind down the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he had ended America’s combat mission in Afghanistan. But he acknowledged that security concerns persist.
“The security situation in Afghanistan remains precarious,” Obama said. “The Taliban remains a threat. They’ve gained ground in some places.”
Taliban forces now hold more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, according to recent United Nations estimates.
Obama spoke in advance of a July 8-9 NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland, where alliance members are expected to confirm their support for the Kabul government.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Writing by David Alexander and Warren Strobel; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Will Dunham)
91% of EU citizens believe ISIS will pose threat to Europe in next 5yrs – poll
July 6, 2016
RT
A majority of EU citizens believe Islamic State will pose a serious threat to Europe over the next five years and that attacks such as those that rocked Paris in November 2015 could happen again, a recent poll revealed.
The survey ‘Project 28’ conducted by the Szazadveg Foundation, an independent think-tank organization, was concluded in April this year. However, it was only published after the Brexit referendum in the UK.
One of the questions the think-tank asked was: “How likely do you expect that a terrorist attack like what just happened in Paris could happen in your country?”
The Paris attacks, claimed by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants, killed at least 130 and injured more than 400 people in November 2015.
According to the poll, 36 percent answered “it is very likely” that a Paris-style attack would happen in their country. Another 50 percent believe the attack is “likely” to happen. Only 13 percent think IS attacks won’t happen in Europe in the nearest future, the poll added.
Europe is on high alert after the recent terror attacks in France and Belgium that claimed about 180 lives. Numerous reports have emerged, saying that IS plans to attack European cities this year.
According to the poll, respondents saw a direct link between mass illegal migration and terrorism, with 65 percent “agreeing with the statement that the migrant wave increases the threat of terrorism in their country.”
The majority of respondents (91 percent) believe IS will be “a serious threat” to Europe over the next 5 years.
“ISIS claimed responsibility for the terrorist attacks, so the assessment of Islamic State gaining ground was also an important part of our research. We asked the respondents how much of a threat they felt that the Islamic State will pose in Europe over the next five years. In response …61 percent thought it will be a very serious threat and 30 percent thought that it will be a somewhat serious threat.”
In April, Das Bild newspaper reported that Islamic State is planning terrorist attacks on resorts in southern Europe, including France, Italy and Spain, adding that suicide bombers are expected to be disguised as beach vendors.
In 2015, Hungarian media repeatedly said that terrorists disguised as refugees may easily sneak into Europe. Later, it was revealed that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Paris attacks’ mastermind, boasted how easily he had slipped into the EU disguised as a refugee.
General Breedlove and the Russophobes
They’re determined to start World War III
July 6, 2016
by Justin Raimondo
AntiWar
The Roman republic began its descent into empire as victorious generals – starting with one Julius Caesar – returned to claim the fruits of their victories, their final conquest being the republic itself. “Crossing the Rubicon” has today become a phrase meaning an event that cannot be undone, usually of ominous portent, and surely this applies to the machinations of one General Philip Breedlove, former Supreme Commander of NATO.
Revealed by hackers who broke into his email accounts, Breedlove’s plot to start World War III with Russia recalls the recklessness of Dr. Strangelove in a movie of the same name – except this isn’t a movie, it’s reality.
Coordinating with sympathetic retired military personnel, such as Wesley Clark, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Harlan Ullman, a top official of the Atlantic Council, the idea was – as Ullman put it – to “leverage, cajole, convince or coerce the U.S. to react” to an alleged Russian threat in Europe. Another academic contact, one Phillip Karber, head of the neoconservative Potomac Foundation, was involved in disseminating a crude forgery supposed to have depicted Russian tanks in Ukraine. Naturally, the Washington Free Beacon fell for it, as did Sen. James Inhofe. Confirmation bias is pandemic in these circles.
Breedlove has himself been at the center of similar hoaxes, claiming that tens of thousands of Russian troops are present in Ukraine, armed to the teeth with the latest advanced weaponry: this was an outright lie, as the German intelligence agency, the BND, pointed out.
Another retired general in this network, Wesley Clark, acted as an intermediary between Washington officials and the Kiev regime: he lobbied the Obama administration through neoconservative Victoria Nuland to send advanced offensive weaponry to Ukraine. Gen. Clark,, you’ll recall, tried to start World War III by ordering an attack on a Russian military contingent in Pristina during the Kosovo war, and was prevented from doing so by the British refusal to go along with it.
Testifying before Congress, Breedlove directly contradicted both the administration and our NATO allies, declaring that Russia was getting ready to invade Ukraine with a force of 80,000 troops. The Ukrainian regime took up the cry, with President Poroshenko declaring martial law – a ready excuse to shut down his political opponents and institute conscription – and demanding that the West come to his aid. Of course, there was no such invasion, but that didn’t matter – the propaganda blitz, with the help of the Russophobic “liberal” media, had accomplished its purpose of establishing the Russian Threat. Cold War II was launched.
Speaking of the media, the more “liberal” precincts of the Fourth Estate have been ablaze with calls to arms against the Russkies, especially since Donald Trump has declared his willingness to get along with Vladimir Putin. Jonathan Chait, writing in New York magazine, declares that Trump is “Putin’s patsy.” Trump’s sin? Like Obama, he’s unwilling to get the US involved in Ukraine. Comparing Trump’s rhetoric on Russia with his China-bashing, he wonders why Trump is soft on the “misogynistic” Putin while he would “stand up” to China in the South China Sea. The answer is glaringly obvious: Trump, like most Americans, thinks we have no business in Ukraine. On the other hand, China, in the Trumpian calculus, is running a huge trade deficit with the US.
Franklin Foer, whose tenure at The New Republic was famously cut short by a change in ownership and a chorus of neocon blubbering and caterwauling, enters the Cold War II sweepstakes with his own rhyming indictment of Trump as a Manchurian candidate: “Putin’s Puppet.” In a trope that must have delighted his old neocon warhorses at TNR, Foer compares Trump’s White House bid to the “Communist-infiltrated” campaign of former Vice President Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party candidate in the 1948 presidential election He even strongly implies that Trump is on the receiving end of Kremlin gold: “Why wouldn’t the Russians offer him the same furtive assistance they’ve lavished on Le Pen, Berlusconi, and the rest?” Evidence? Foer and his fellow neo-McCarthyites can’t be bothered with such mundane details.
Reading this nonsense is like going back in a time machine to those glory days of the 1950s, when every patriotic American had a bomb shelter in his backyard and was busy looking for a commie under every bed. Except for one big difference: communism is extinct, except for the faculty lounges of a few elite universities. Russia has come out of the long nightmare of totalitarianism, however inconsistently and hesitantly, its ramshackle economy sputtering and coughing, the sick man of Europe considerably shrunken in size, influence, and military prowess. And yet still the Cold Warriors are manning their battle-stations, more determined than ever to bring the Kremlin to its knees – with billionaires like George Soros lurking in the background, hoping to recoup his lost investments in Russia and acquire the defeated nation’s remaining assets.
Speaking of Soros, he’s a major contributor to Foer’s new employer, the New America think tank: his son, Jonathan, sits on the New America board. (Thirty percent of New America’s funding comes from the US government, including the State Department.)
New America is the premier Democratic party thinktank, where a great deal of the top Obama administration officials came out of and where Hillary Clinton is bound to draw much of her staffing should she win the White House. And of course Hillary famously compared Putin to Hitler, and is eager to restart the “war of civilizations” against the Slavs begun by her husband.
New America is also where the corporate liberals meet the neocons: on the board alongside the Soros gang and such blue chip liberals as James Fallows are neocon David Brooks, “reformocon” Reihan Salam (executive editor of National Review), and Walter Russell Meade of The American Interest, a neocon outlet.
What we have here is a grand alliance of Russophobes, stretching from the neocon right to the “liberal’ left, and also including a substantial military element, i.e., the US Army, which is lobbying for more funding. In order to win that funding, they are competing with the other services for scarce resources and must convince lawmakers that the “threat” from ramshackle Russia is so great that we must prepare to fight a land war with the Russkies in Poland and the Baltics.
Trump is right that we have common interests with Russia, that NATO is obsolete, and that we have nothing to gain by antagonizing the Russian bear. While Russia takes on ISIS in Syria, and is battling terrorists on its own territory, an unsavory amalgam of Clintonistas, rebellious generals, and warmongering neocons is plotting to restart the Cold War. Is it a coincidence that these are the same people who hate Trump, bemoan Brexit, and supported the Iraq war?
I don’t think so.
New Wave of Hate Crimes Makes Muslim-Americans Fear for the Future
July 6 2016
by Murtaza Hussain
The Intercept
On July 3, optometrist Arslan Tajammul was ambushed, shot and left for dead as he walked through the parking lot of his local mosque in Houston headed for morning prayers. He remains in intensive care.
While local police say the motive for the attack is still under investigation, Tajammul’s shooting shook the local community. “It is very scary right now given the current political climate,” one man told local news reporters. “This is a community place, we have kids that come here, we have people young and old come here.”
The shooting of Tajammul was only the latest in a string of violent incidents targeting Muslim-Americans. Recent shootings and assaults have amplified an already widespread climate of fear among Muslims.
A report by Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative in May found that hate violence has spiked across the country, partly in correlation with the U.S. presidential campaign. And since then, popular anger over terrorist attacks has continued to build.
The response from presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and many other Republican political figures — characterizing terror as an issue with a minority group generally, rather than a security issue — has helped generate an increasingly toxic environment.
“Words have consequences. If you push the limits of acceptable discourse to the extremes, you push people already on the edge over it,” says Haroon Moghul, a fellow at the Center for Global Policy. “Rather than look inward in introspection, as incidentally Muslims are always demanded to in the wake of terrorist attacks, many of our leaders point outwards and find villains to blame. Its no wonder they’ve given birth to so many vigilantes.”
This week Missouri Republican gubernatorial candidate Eric Greitens sent out a fundraising email offering “ISIS HUNTING PERMIT” bumper stickers for sale to his prospective constituents. The stickers alarmed Muslims living in Missouri, who said they might encourage gun violence against them by others in their community.
The threat of vigilante gun violence became real for a group of young Somali-American men in Minnesota last week, when they were shot by a man who yelled anti-Muslim epithets before opening fire. Two of the young men were hit. Local police say they are investigating the incident as a hate crime. Burhan Mohamed, a friend of the victims told The Intercept that the assailants had yelled “F*** Muslims” before firing. “We’re certainly vigilant,” Mohamed says. “I know some of the young men so that hit a little too close to home.”
Anti-Muslim violence in the United States following terrorist attacks is not a new phenomenon. Following the 9/11 attacks, a wave of assaults, arson and even several murders targeted Muslims and those who were perceived to be Muslim by their assailants. But in some ways circumstances are different this time. Unlike George W. Bush, who, despite his other flaws, steadfastly refused to demonize Muslims in general, many political figures today are less restrained.
A potent example of the trickle-down nature of race-based nationalism can be seen in Britain, where a xenophobic referendum campaign to take the country out of the European Union has now spawned a wave of anti-minority attacks, the worldview of the perpetrators having been validated by leading politicians and the media. Some American Muslims fear that Trump’s popularity might end up legitimizing public discrimination against them, whether he wins or not.
If it does, the events of the past few weeks could be just the beginning.
“You can’t keep telling people they’re under existential, civilizational threat and expect them to carry on as they did before,” says Moghul.
Leaker, Speaker, Soldier, Spy
The Charmed Life of David Petraeus
by Nick Turse
TomDispatch
I ran into David Petraeus the other night. Or rather, I ran after him.
It’s been more than a year since I first tried to connect with the retired four-star general and ex-CIA director — and no luck yet. On a recent evening, as the sky was turning from a crisp ice blue into a host of Easter-egg hues, I missed him again. Led from a curtained “backstage” area where he had retreated after a midtown Manhattan event, Petraeus moved briskly to a staff-only room, then into a tightly packed elevator, and momentarily out onto the street before being quickly ushered into a waiting late-model, black Mercedes S550.
And then he was gone, whisked into the warm New York night, companions in tow.
For the previous hour, Petraeus had been in conversation with Peter Bergen, a journalist, CNN analyst, and vice president at New America, the think tank sponsoring the event. Looking fit and well-rested in a smart dark-blue suit, the former four-star offered palatable, pat, and — judging from the approving murmurs of the audience — popular answers to a host of questions about national security issues ranging from the fight against the Islamic State to domestic gun control. While voicing support for the Second Amendment, for example, he spoke about implementing “common sense solutions to the availability of weapons,” specifically keeping guns out of the hands of “domestic abusers” and those on the no-fly list. Even as he expressed “great respect” for those who carried out acts of torture in the wake of 9/11, he denounced its use — except in the case of a “ticking time bomb.” In an era when victory hasn’t been a word much used in relation to the American military, he even predicted something close to it on the horizon. “I’ve said from the very beginning, even in the darkest days, the Islamic State would be defeated in Iraq,” he told the appreciative crowd.
I went to the event hoping to ask Petraeus a question or two, but Bergen never called on me during the Q & A portion of the evening. My attendance was not, however, a total loss.
Watching the retired general in action, I was reminded of the peculiarity of this peculiar era — an age of generals whose careers are made in winless wars; years in which such high-ranking, mission-unaccomplished officers rotate through revolving doors that lead not only to top posts with major weapons merchants, but also too-big-to-fail banks, top universities, cutting-edge tech companies, healthcare firms, and other corporate behemoths. Hardly a soul, it seems, cares that these generals and admirals have had leading roles in quagmire wars or even, in two prominent cases, saw their government service cease as a result of career-ending scandal. And Citizen David Petraeus is undoubtedly the epitome of this phenomenon.
Celebrated as the most cerebral of generals, the West Point grad and Princeton Ph.D. rose to stardom during the Iraq War — credited with pacifying the restive city of Mosul before becoming one of the architects of the new Iraqi Army. Petraeus would then return to the United States where he revamped and revived the Army’s failed counterinsurgency doctrine from the Vietnam War, before being tapped to lead “The Surge” of U.S. forces in Iraq — an effort to turn around the foundering conflict. Through it all, Petraeus waged one of the most deft self-promotion campaigns in recent memory, cultivating politicians, academics, and especially fawning journalists who reported on his running stamina, his penchant for push-ups, and even — I kid you not — how he woke a lieutenant from what was thought to be an irreversible coma by shouting the battle cry of his unit.
A series of biographers would lionize the general who, after achieving what to some looked like success in Iraq, went on to head U.S. Central Command, overseeing the conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan. When the military career of his subordinate General Stanley McChrystal imploded, Petraeus was sent once more unto the breach to spearhead an Afghan War surge and win another quagmire war.
And win Petraeus did. Not in Afghanistan, of course. That war grinds on without end. But the Teflon general somehow emerged from it all with people talking about him as a future presidential contender. Looking back at Petraeus’s successes, one understands just what a feat this was. Statistics show that Petraeus never actually pacified Mosul, which has now been under the control of the Islamic State (ISIS) for years. The army Petraeus helped build in Iraq crumbled in the face of that same force which, in some cases, was even supported by Sunni fighters Petraeus had put on the U.S. payroll to make The Surge appear successful.
Indeed, Petraeus had come to New America’s New York headquarters to answer one question in particular: “What will the next president’s national security challenges be?” Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, Iraq, Afghanistan: precisely the set of groups he had fought, places he had fought in, or what had resulted from his supposed victories.
Retired Brass, Then and Now
“What can you do with a general, when he stops being a general? Oh, what can you do with a general who retires?”
Irving Berlin first posed these questions in 1948 and Bing Crosby crooned them six years later in White Christmas, the lavish Hollywood musical that has become a holiday season staple.
These are not, however, questions which seem to have plagued David Petraeus. He retired from the Army in 2011 to take a job as director of the CIA, only to resign in disgrace a year later when it was revealed that he had leaked classified information to his biographer and one-time lover Paula Broadwell and then lied about it to the FBI. Thanks to a deal with federal prosecutors, Petraeus pled guilty to just a single misdemeanor and served no jail time, allowing him, as the New York Times reported last year, “to focus on his lucrative post-government career as a partner in a private equity firm and a worldwide speaker on national security issues.”
In the Bing and Berlin era, following back-to-back victories in world wars, things were different. Take George C. Marshall, a five-star general and the most important U.S. military leader during World War II who is best remembered today for the post-war European recovery plan that bore his name. Fellow five-star general and later president Dwight Eisenhower recalled that, during the Second World War, Marshall “did not want to sit in Washington and be a chief of staff. I am sure he wanted a field command, but he wouldn’t even allow his chief [President Franklin Roosevelt] to know what he wanted, because he said, ‘I am here to serve and not to satisfy personal ambition.’” That mindset seemed to remain his guiding directive after he retired in 1945 and went on to serve as a special envoy to China, secretary of state, and secretary of defense.
Marshall reportedly refused a number of lucrative offers to write his memoirs, including the then-princely sum of a million dollars after taxes from Time and Life publisher Henry Luce. He did so on the grounds that it was unethical to profit from service to the United States or to benefit from the sacrifices of the men who had served under him, supposedly telling one publisher “that he had not spent his life serving the government in order to sell his life story to the Saturday Evening Post.” In his last years, he finally cooperated with a biographer and gave his archives to the George C. Marshall Research Foundation on “the condition that no monetary returns from a book or books based on his materials would go to him or his family but would be used for the research program of the Marshall Foundation.” Even his biographer was asked to “waive the right to any royalties from the biography.” Marshall also declined to serve on any corporate boards.
Marshall may have been a paragon of restraint and moral rectitude, but he wasn’t alone. As late as the years 1994-1998, according to an analysis by the Boston Globe, fewer than 50% of retiring three- and four-star officers went to work as consultants or defense executives. By 2004-2008, that number had jumped to 80%. An analysis by the Washington D.C.-based nonprofit group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, found that it was still at a lofty 70% for the years 2009-2011.
Celebrity generals like Petraeus and fellow former four-star generals Stanley McChrystal (whose military career was also consumed in the flames of scandal) and Ray Odierno (who retired amid controversy), as well as retired admiral and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, don’t even need to enter the world of arms dealers and defense firms. These days, those jobs may increasingly be left to second-tier military luminaries like Marine Corps general James Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now on the board of directors at Raytheon, as well as former Vice Admiral and Director of Naval Intelligence Jack Dorsett, who joined Northrop Grumman.
If, however, you are one of the military’s top stars, the sky is increasingly the limit. You can, for instance, lead a consulting firm (McChrystal and Mullen) or advise or even join the boards of banks and civilian corporations like JPMorgan Chase (Odierno), Jet Blue (McChrystal), and General Motors (Mullen).
For his part, after putting his extramarital affair behind him, Petraeus became a partner at the private equity firm Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co. L.P. (KKR), where he also serves as the chairman of the KKR Global Institute and, according to his bio, “oversees the institute’s thought leadership platform focused on geopolitical and macro-economic trends, as well as environmental, social, and governance issues.” His lieutenants include a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and campaign manager for President George W. Bush, as well as a former leading light at Morgan Stanley.
KKR’s portfolio boasts a bit of everything, from Alliant Insurance Services and Panasonic Healthcare to a host of Chinese firms (Rundong Automobile Group and Asia Dairy, among them). There are also defense firms under its umbrella, including TASC, the self-proclaimed “premier provider of advanced systems engineering and integration services across the Intelligence Community, Department of Defense, and civilian agencies of the federal government,” and Airbus Group’s defense electronics business which KKR recently bought for $1.2 billion.
KKR is, however, just where Petraeus’s post-military, post-CIA résumé begins.
A Man for Four Seasons
“Nobody thinks of assigning him, when they stop wining and dining him,” wrote Irving Berlin 68 years ago.
How times do change. When it comes to Petraeus, the wining and dining is evidently unending — as when Financial Times columnist Edward Luce took him to the Four Seasons Restaurant earlier this year for a lunch of tuna tartare, poached salmon, and a bowl of mixed berries with cream.
At the elegant eatery, just a short walk from Petraeus’s Manhattan office, the former CIA chief left Luce momentarily forlorn. “When I inquire what keeps him busy nowadays his answer goes on for so long I half regret asking,” he wrote.
I evidently heard a version of the same well prepared lines when, parrying a question from journalist Fred Kaplan at the New America event I attended, Petraeus produced a wall of words explaining how busy he is. In the process, he shed light on just what it means to be a retired celebrity general from America’s winless wars. “I’ve got a day job with KKR. I teach once a week at the City University of New York — Honors College. I do a week per semester at USC [University of Southern California]. I do several days at Harvard. I’m on the speaking circuit. I do pro bono stuff like this. I’m the co-chairman of the Wilson Institute’s Global Advisory Council, the senior vice president of RUSI [Royal United Services Institute, a research institution focused on military issues]. I’m on three other think tank boards,” he said.
In an era when fellow leakers of government secrets — from National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden to CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou to Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning — have ended up in exile or prison, Petraeus’s post-leak life has obviously been quite another matter.
The experience of former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake who shared unclassified information about that agency’s wasteful ways with a reporter is more typical of what leakers should expect. Although the Justice Department eventually dropped the most serious charges against him — he pled guilty to a single misdemeanor — he lost his job and his pension, went bankrupt, and has spent years working at an Apple store after being prosecuted under the World War I-era Espionage Act. “My social contacts are gone, and I’m persona non grata,” he told Defense One last year. “I can’t find any work in government contracting or in the quasi-government space, those who defend whistleblowers won’t touch me.”
Petraeus, on the other hand, shared with his lover and biographer eight highly classified “black books” that the government says included “the identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings, and defendant David Howell Petraeus’s discussions with the President of the United States of America.” Petraeus was prosecuted, pled guilty, and was sentenced to two years of probation and fined $100,000.
Yet it’s Petraeus who today moves in rarified circles and through hallowed halls, with memberships and posts at one influential institution after another. In addition to the positions he mentioned at New America, his CV includes: honorary visiting professor at Exeter University, co-chairman of the Task Force on North America at the Council on Foreign Relations, co-chairman of the Global Advisory Committee at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, member of the Concordia Summit’s Concordia Leadership Council, member of the board of trustees at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, member of the National Security Advisory Council of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, and a seat on the board of directors at the Atlantic Council.
Brand Petraeus
About a year ago, I tried to contact Petraeus through KKR as well as the Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York, to get a comment on a story. I never received a reply.
I figured he was ducking me — or anyone asking potentially difficult questions — or that his gatekeepers didn’t think I was important enough to respond to. But perhaps he was simply too busy. To be honest, I didn’t realize just how crowded his schedule was. (Of course, FT’s Edward Luce reports that when he sent Petraeus an email invite, the retired general accepted within minutes, so maybe it’s because I wasn’t then holding out the prospect of a meal at the Four Seasons.)
I attended the New America event because I had yet more questions for Petraeus. But I wasn’t as fortunate as Fred Kaplan — author, by the way, of The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War — and wasn’t quite speedy or nimble enough to catch the former general before he slipped into the backseat of that luxurious Mercedes sedan.
Irving Berlin’s “What Can You Do With A General?” ends on a somber note that sounds better in Crosby’s dulcimer tones than it reads on the page: “It seems this country never has enjoyed, so many one and two and three and four-star generals, unemployed.”
Today, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff retiring after 38 years receives a pension of about $20,000 a month, not exactly a shabby unemployment check for the rest of your life, but one that many in the tight-knit fraternity of top officers are still eager to supplement. Take General Cartwright, who joined Raytheon in 2012 and, according to Morningstar, the investment research firm, receives close to $364,000 per year in compensation from that company while holding more than $1.2 million in its stock.
All of this left me with yet more questions for Petraeus (whose pension is reportedly worth more than $18,000 per month or $220,000 per year) about a mindset that seems light years distant from the one Marshall espoused during his retirement. I was curious, for instance, about his take on why the winning of wars isn’t a prerequisite for cashing in on one’s leadership in them, and why the personal and professional costs of scandal are so incredibly selective.
Today, it seems, a robust Rolodex with the right global roster, a marquee name, and a cultivated geopolitical brand covers a multitude of sins. And that’s precisely the type of firepower that Petraeus brings to the table.
After a year without a reply, I got in touch with KKR again. This time, through an intermediary, Petraeus provided me an answer to a new request for an interview. “Thank you for your interest, Nick, but he respectfully declines at this time,” I was told.
I’m hoping, however, that the retired general changes his mind. For the privilege of asking Petraeus various questions, I’d be more than happy to take him to lunch at the Four Seasons.
With that tony power-lunch spot closing down soon as part of a plan to relocate elsewhere, we’d need to act fast. Getting a table could be tough.
Luckily, I know just the name to drop.
Even without charges, FBI rebuke leaves a heavy political cloud over Clinton
July 5, 2016
by Philip Rucker, Abby Phillip and Anne Gearan
Washington Post
Hillary Clinton may avoid criminal charges, but the searing rebuke of her “extremely careless” email practices Tuesday by FBI Director James B. Comey is likely to reverberate through the November election and, if she wins, well into her presidency.
In a methodical, 15-minute statement bringing an end to the FBI investigation of Clinton’s personal email system while she was secretary of state, Comey laid bare a litany of facts that amounted to a stern admonishment of her judgment, management and stewardship of state secrets.
Even as Comey lifted a legal cloud by announcing that the FBI would not recommend criminal charges, he systematically obliterated many of the key defenses Clinton and her advisers have offered to reassure the public in the 15 months since the discovery that she used a private email system. For instance, Clinton had insisted that she did not send or receive classified materials, but Comey said the FBI found that 110 of her emails contained classified information.
For weeks now, Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has been arguing that her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, is unfit to be president and cannot be trusted in the Oval Office. She had hoped that a rally Tuesday afternoon in Charlotte with President Obama — their first joint appearance of the campaign — would underscore that contrast with Trump.
Instead, the remarks by Comey — a Republican with a sterling reputation among leaders of both parties — delivered from a lectern at FBI headquarters cast fresh doubt on Clinton’s own fitness and trustworthiness.
“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” Comey said.
The Clinton campaign had no advance warning of the precise timing or contents of Comey’s announcement, although an FBI interview conducted with Clinton on Saturday was widely viewed as a final step in resolving the investigation. Comey said he had not coordinated or reviewed his statement with any part of the government.
At Clinton’s New York campaign headquarters, staffers scrambled to gather around the large television screens arrayed in the office as Comey took the lectern, not knowing what he would say. Clinton herself was poised to deliver unrelated remarks to a teachers union in Washington before boarding Air Force One with Obama to fly to North Carolina.
The specter of a criminal indictment for Clinton had loomed over the final months of Obama’s term as the president has been enjoying some of the best approval ratings of his presidency. An unscheduled personal meeting at the Phoenix airport last week between former president Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, whose department will ultimately decide on charges, also garnered criticism from both sides of the aisle.
But Hillary Clinton and her Democratic allies breathed a sigh of relief after Comey all but erased the possibility that she might be indicted. Although he said the FBI was referring the decision to the Justice Department, Comey added that “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” It would be highly unusual for federal prosecutors not to follow the bureau’s counsel.
“We are pleased that the career officials handling this case have determined that no further action by the Department is appropriate,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement. “As the Secretary has long said, it was a mistake to use her personal email and she would not do it again. We are glad that this matter is now resolved.”
The Clinton campaign had no advance warning of the precise timing or contents of Comey’s announcement, although an FBI interview conducted with Clinton on Saturday was widely viewed as a final step in resolving the investigation. Comey said he had not coordinated or reviewed his statement with any part of the government.
At Clinton’s New York campaign headquarters, staffers scrambled to gather around the large television screens arrayed in the office as Comey took the lectern, not knowing what he would say. Clinton herself was poised to deliver unrelated remarks to a teachers union in Washington before boarding Air Force One with Obama to fly to North Carolina.
The specter of a criminal indictment for Clinton had loomed over the final months of Obama’s term as the president has been enjoying some of the best approval ratings of his presidency. An unscheduled personal meeting at the Phoenix airport last week between former president Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, whose department will ultimately decide on charges, also garnered criticism from both sides of the aisle.
But Hillary Clinton and her Democratic allies breathed a sigh of relief after Comey all but erased the possibility that she might be indicted. Although he said the FBI was referring the decision to the Justice Department, Comey added that “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” It would be highly unusual for federal prosecutors not to follow the bureau’s counsel.
“We are pleased that the career officials handling this case have determined that no further action by the Department is appropriate,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement. “As the Secretary has long said, it was a mistake to use her personal email and she would not do it again. We are glad that this matter is now resolved.”
Public polls show that many voters do not trust Clinton and that the email controversy already has harmed her political standing. Polls consistently show that roughly two-thirds of Americans do not consider Clinton “honest and trustworthy” — typically her lowest rating in a series of attribute questions.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll in June found that 56 percent of all adults disapprove of her handling of questions about her email use — 44 percent of them “strongly disapproving.”
It is unclear whether the FBI’s findings, delivered by Comey on Tuesday, will further erode Clinton’s standing with the public. Republican pollster Neil Newhouse described the FBI’s findings as “damning results, just not indictable,” and expects fallout in the polls.
“Very little of her explanations hold up, most are at odds with the facts, and it was much worse than she admitted,” Newhouse said in an email Tuesday. “I’m not sure voters are going to be surprised, but when she’s already trailing on the key attributes of ‘honest and trustworthy’ to Donald Trump, today’s FBI findings are going to dig her hole even deeper.”
However, Clinton’s allies, including former congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), believe the political fallout from the email controversy already has occurred.
“The criticism of her, the damage she suffered from having made a big mistake and having been irresponsible for using that server, has already happened,” Frank said in an interview. “She’s already paid a political price for it.”
Sen. Timothy M. Kaine (D-Va.) — a potential Clinton running mate — told reporters in Richmond: “I never believed this was going to be something in the criminal realm or even close to it. I have expected to get to this place where this is in the matter of lessons learned.”
Senior Democrats expect Trump and his allies to bang the drums about the email controversy for the remainder of the campaign, but they think that the issue, short of an indictment, will have little currency with persuadable voters.
“Comey cut the legs out from under the only narrative that could have hurt her,” Democratic strategist Robert Shrum said. “I assume that Trump will continue to try to make hay out of this, and I think it will go about as well as the Republicans did on Whitewater or Benghazi or anything else. I just think it’s fundamentally over.”
Rosalind S. Helderman in Washington and Jenna Portnoy in Richmond contributed to this report.
Washington Has Been Obsessed With Punishing Secrecy Violations — until Hillary Clinton
July 5, 2016
by Glenn reenwald
The Intercept
Secrecy is a virtual religion in Washington. Those who violate its dogma have been punished in the harshest and most excessive manner – at least when they possess little political power or influence. As has been widely noted, the Obama administration has prosecuted more leakers under the 1917 Espionage Act than all prior administrations combined. Secrecy in DC is so revered that even the most banal documents are reflexively marked classified, making their disclosure or mishandling a felony. As former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden said back in 2000, “Everything’s secret. I mean, I got an email saying ‘Merry Christmas.’ It carried a top secret NSA classification marking.”
People who leak to media outlets for the selfless purpose of informing the public – Daniel Ellsberg, Tom Drake, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden – face decades in prison. Those who leak for more ignoble and self-serving ends – such as enabling hagiography (Leon Panetta, David Petreaus) or ingratiating oneself to one’s mistress (Petraeus) – face career destruction, though they are usually spared if they are sufficiently Important-in-DC. For low-level, powerless Nobodies-in-DC, even the mere mishandling of classified information – without any intent to leak but merely to, say, work from home – has resulted in criminal prosecution, career destruction and the permanent loss of security clearance.
This extreme, unforgiving, unreasonable, excessive posture toward classified information came to an instant halt in Washington today – just in time to save Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations. FBI Director James Comey, an Obama appointee who served in the Bush DOJ, held a press conference earlier this afternoon in which he condemned Clinton on the ground that she and her colleagues were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” including Top Secret material.
Comey also detailed that her key public statements defending her conduct – i.e., she never sent classified information over her personal email account and that she had turned over all “work-related” emails to the State Department – were utterly false; insisted “that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position . . . should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation”; and argued that she endangered national security because of the possibility “that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.” Comey also noted that others who have done what Clinton did “are often subject to security or administrative sanctions” – such as demotion, career harm, or loss of security clearance.
Despite all of these highly incriminating findings, Comey explained, the FBI is recommending to the Justice Department that Clinton not be charged with any crime. “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information,” he said, “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” To justify this claim, Comey cited “the context of a person’s actions” and her “intent.” In other words, there is evidence that she did exactly what the criminal law prohibits, but it was more negligent and careless than malicious and deliberate.
Looked at in isolation, I have no particular objection to this decision. In fact, I agree with it: I don’t think what Clinton did rose to the level of criminality, and if I were in the Justice Department, I would not want to see her prosecuted for it. I do think there was malignant intent: using a personal email account and installing a home server always seemed to be designed, at least in part, to control her communications and hide them from FOIA and similar disclosure obligations. As The New York Times noted in May about a highly incriminating report from the State Department’s own Auditor General: “emails disclosed in the report made it clear that she worried that personal emails could be publicly released under the Freedom of Information Act.”
Moreover, Comey expressly found that – contrary to her repeated statements – “the FBI also discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014.” The Inspector General’s report similarly, in the words of the NYT, “undermined some of Mrs. Clinton’s previous statements defending her use of the server.” Still, charging someone with a felony requires more than lying or unethical motives; it should require a clear intent to break the law along with substantial intended harm, none of which is sufficiently present here.
But this case does not exist in isolation. It exists in a political climate where secrecy is regarded as the highest end, where people have their lives destroyed for the most trivial – or, worse, the most well-intentioned – violations of secrecy laws, even in the absence of any evidence of harm or malignant intent. And these are injustices that Hillary Clinton and most of her stalwart Democratic followers have never once opposed – but rather enthusiastically cheered. In 2011, Army Private Chelsea Manning was charged with multiple felonies and faced decades in prison for leaking documents that she firmly believed the public had the right to see; unlike the documents Clinton recklessly mishandled, none of those was Top Secret. Nonetheless, this is what then-Secretary Clinton said in justifying her prosecution:
I think that in an age where so much information is flying through cyberspace, we all have to be aware of the fact that some information which is sensitive, which does affect the security of individuals and relationships, deserves to be protected and we will continue to take necessary steps to do so.
Comey’s announcement also takes place in a society that imprisons more of its citizens than any other in the world by far, for more trivial offenses than any western nation – overwhelmingly when they are poor or otherwise marginalized due to their race or ethnicity. The sort of leniency and mercy and prosecutorial restraint Comey extended today to Hillary Clinton is simply unavailable for most Americans.
What happened here is glaringly obvious. It is the tawdry by-product of a criminal justice mentality in which – as I documented in my 2011 book With Liberty and Justice for Some – those who wield the greatest political and economic power are virtually exempt from the rule of law even when they commit the most egregious crimes, while only those who are powerless and marginalized are harshly punished, often for the most trivial transgressions.
Had someone who was obscure and unimportant and powerless done what Hillary Clinton did – recklessly and secretly install a shoddy home server and worked with Top Secret information on it, then outright lied to the public about it when they were caught – they would have been criminally charged long ago, with little fuss or objection. But Hillary Clinton is the opposite of unimportant. She’s the multi-millionaire former First Lady, Senator from New York, and Secretary of State, supported by virtually the entire political, financial and media establishment to be the next President, arguably the only person standing between Donald Trump and the White House.
Like the Wall Street tycoons whose systemic fraud triggered the 2008 global financial crisis, and like the military and political officials who instituted a worldwide regime of torture, Hillary Clinton is too important to be treated the same as everyone else under the law. “Felony charges appear to be reserved for people of the lowest ranks. Everyone else who does it either doesn’t get charged or gets charged with a misdemeanor,” Virginia defense attorney Edward MacMahon told Politico last year about secrecy prosecutions. Washington defense attorney Abbe Lowell has similarly denounced the “profound double standard” governing how the Obama DOJ prosecutes secrecy cases: “lower-level employees are prosecuted . . . because they are easy targets and lack the resources and political connections to fight back.”
The fact that Clinton is who she is undoubtedly what caused the FBI to accord her the massive benefit of the doubt when assessing her motives, when finding nothing that was – in the words of Comey – “clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice.”
But a system that accords treatment based on who someone is, rather than what they’ve done, is the opposite of one conducted under the rule of law. It is, instead, one of systemic privilege. As Thomas Jefferson put it in a 1784 letter to George Washington, the ultimate foundation of any constitutional order is “the denial of every preeminence.” Hillary Clinton has long been the beneficiary of this systemic privilege in so many ways, and today, she received her biggest gift from it yet.
The Obama-appointed FBI Director gave a press conference showing that she recklessly handled Top Secret information, engaged in conduct prohibited by law, and lied about it repeatedly to the public. But she won’t be prosecuted or imprisoned for any of that, so Democrats are celebrating. But if there is to be anything positive that can come from this lowly affair, perhaps Democrats might start demanding the same reasonable leniency and prosecutorial restraint for everyone else who isn’t Hillary Clinton.
Farage: ‘The Europe project is now dying’
Sentiment for leaving the EU is running high in Denmark, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Italy. Nigel Farage is reveling in the prospect that a united Europe appears to be unraveling.
July 6, 2016
DW
Speaking in Strasbourg on Wednesday, Nigel Farage – the original advocate, if not the final architect, of Britain’s exit from the European Union – said that Britain’s departure will be good for the average British voter. He also maintained that the European Union would be foolish not to negotiate a mutually beneficial trade deal with a sovereign UK and insisted he had no regrets about resigning as leader of Britain’s right-wing populist party, which he founded.
“What was achieved on June 23 was a remarkable victory for the little people,” Farage told a press conference on Wednesday, referring to Britain’s nationwide referendum, in which voters chose to leave the EU by a margin of 52 to 48 percent.
Brexit
Farage: ‘The Europe project is now dying’
Sentiment for leaving the EU is running high in Denmark, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Italy. Nigel Farage is reveling in the prospect that a united Europe appears to be unraveling.
Speaking in Strasbourg on Wednesday, Nigel Farage – the original advocate, if not the final architect, of Britain’s exit from the European Union – said that Britain’s departure will be good for the average British voter. He also maintained that the European Union would be foolish not to negotiate a mutually beneficial trade deal with a sovereign UK and insisted he had no regrets about resigning as leader of Britain’s right-wing populist party, which he founded.
“What was achieved on June 23 was a remarkable victory for the little people,” Farage told a press conference on Wednesday, referring to Britain’s nationwide referendum, in which voters chose to leave the EU by a margin of 52 to 48 percent.
He called the result irreversible, and said there’s no turning back, even though there is talk of another referendum.
“The result is the result we’re not going to have a rematch,” he said. “We are going to leave the EU and get back our sovereignty.”
His decision to resign as leader of the United Kingdom’s Independent Party (UKIP) is not an indication of any past regrets or fears about the future. On the contrary, he said, he hopes to spread his separatist message across Europe.
“Our result offers a beacon of hope to movements right across the European Union,” he said, ticking off Denmark, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Italy as countries with growing support for leaving the EU.
“Nothing will ever be the same again, the European project is now dying,” he intoned.
Farage’s bizarre claim
In choosing to step down as the UKIP leader, Farage added, bizarrely, “I’m not a career politician,” he said, “I’ve done my bit.” This despite being a Member of the European Parliament since 1999, and a founding member of UKIP in 1993.
He poured doubt on the prospects of Scotland leaving the UK for the EU, even though the Scottish electorate voted to “Remain” and Scottish leaders are openly considering ways to stay in the EU.
“Would she really want a separation from the UK,” he asked rhetorically. “I don’t think she would, I feel pretty confident in that.”
He added that Scotland prospered when oil was selling at more than $110 (99 euros) per barrel. But with oil prices now under $50 per barrel Farage said Scotland is better off in the UK.
Asked about the rhetoric and methods used by the so-called Brexit camp in the run-up to the referendum, which many have characterized as a series of distortions and lies, Farage pointed a finger of blame at the Remain camp.
“No one made a positive argument for the political union,” he said, “If they had they would have lost by more.”
Who, or What, Is Sorcha Faal? Planet X Revealed!
by Harry von Johnston, PhD
Sorcha Faal turns out to be a nom de plume for David Booth, a retired computer programmer from New Hampshire who stirred up limited controversy in conspioracy circles with the promotion of his book ‘Code Red: The Coming Destruction of the United States 2004.’Booth claimed the book originated in a “consecutive ten day dream” he alleged he experienced in 2003 in which he saw a large sized planetary body pass close to Earth causing an explosion.
This was then built up into the story about ‘Planet X,’ a heretofore unknown planet in our solar system on a very long, elliptical orbit.
In May 2003, it was alleged by the lunatic fringe that the non-existant “Planet X” would pass close enough to the Earth to affect it in some way, causing it to flip over (what many call a “pole shift”) and spur many other huge disasters.
The end result was solemnly predicted be the deaths of many billions of people. There are a large number of web pages, chat rooms and books about Planet X and its horrible effects on the Earth.
So the question is, does this planet exist, and did it come close enough to Earth in May 2003 and cause great catastrophes? Did an atomic bomb explode over downtown Houston, Texas, on December 25th, 2004 by orders of Paul Wolfowitz? Many internet readers were breathlessly informed of this by a Canadian masquerading as the “German Guy,” a purported senior intelligence official in the German BND.
Houston still stands, undamaged, and as far as the mythical ‘Planet X’ is concerned, here is a comment from the official NASA website:
From the NASA website:
There is no known Planet X or 10th planet in our solar system. Scientists have been looking for about a hundred years. It was believed that such a planet was required to explain the orbital characteristics of the outer planets Uranus and Neptune. Many searches have been performed and, to date, no evidence of such a planet has emerged. In addition, better information about the masses of outer planets has also now shown that no other planets are necessary to explain the planetary orbits.
There also is no Sorcha Faal in St. Petersburg, Russia or Florida. None of the Russian scientific bodies listed in the Faal accounts, specifically the Russian Academy of Science, has any record of such a person.
NATO-Russia Council to meet in possible move to ease tensions
July 6, 2016
Reuters
NATO envoys will hold a further formal meeting with Russia on July 13, days after the alliance’s summit in Warsaw, in a sign Washington and Moscow want to defuse tensions in Europe.
The forum bringing together Russia and its former Cold War adversary NATO last met in April after an almost two-year hiatus as relations sank to their lowest level in decades over Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.
The NATO-Russia Council will meet again at ambassadorial level in Brussels next week following the NATO summit in Warsaw in which Western leaders will cement a new deterrent against what they say is Russian aggression in Ukraine.
The West and Russia remain at odds over Ukraine, but the Russia-NATO Council session hints at a willingness to patch up diplomatic ties and avoid any accidental clashes in the region.
“Our discussions will focus on the crisis in and around Ukraine and the need to fully implement the Minsk Agreements,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement.
He was referring to the peace deal signed in Belarus last year that aims to end the conflict involving pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
“We will also look at military activities, with a particular focus on transparency and risk reduction, as well as the security situation in Afghanistan,” the statement said.
(Reporting by Robin Emmott)
ISIS’ Fallujah factories made rockets & ammo on ‘almost industrial scale’ – investigation
July 6, 2016
RT
Islamic State has produced thousands of rockets and bombs in Fallujah, Iraq, running highly efficient and well-organized weapons factories, according to an investigation by a UK research organization.
The investigation by Conflict Armament Research (CAR) goes beyond common perceptions of the terror group that see it as a bunch of fanatics dependent on supplies from the outside world.
“Effective organization and a strict division of labor has allowed Islamic State forces to manufacture improvised weapons on a quasi-industrial scale,” CAR wrote in a report based on field investigations in Fallujah, re-taken from the Islamists in late June.
It says Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) ran several workshops in the city, with some of them manufacturing “many thousands of weapons over a matter of months,” including “a range of improvised rockets and bombs to supplement its arsenal of military grade weapons.”
“Recently abandoned machinery, component parts, and chemical precursors found in the Fallujah workshops indicate that IS forces engaged in large-scale improvised weapon production,” the paper noted.
These workshops were described as very sophisticated and able to produce complex weapons systems such as rocket-assisted munitions, “a process that involved machining warheads, rocket motor nozzles, and coupling screws.”
Daily production of improvised weapons was strictly controlled by Islamic State’s so-called “Committee for Military Development and Production” that “coordinates labor and manufacturing capacity across a range of workshops.”
The production cycle was overseen by Islamic State “managers” who carefully registered the quantity and type of output in their written notes.
Notably, Islamic State’s research and development experts tested various types of weapons before large-scale production, the CAR report said, citing workshop papers found at one of the Islamists’ facilities in Fallujah.
The documents, along with other evidence, suggest “a sophisticated production chain, involving seven different workshops responsible for various stages of a weapon’s production,” the CAR report said. It also noted that similar IS factories were found earlier in the Iraqi cities of Kobane and Tikrit in 2015, and in Ramadi in 2016.
Previous media reports suggested that Islamic State not only produced conventional arms but also developed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical munitions.
Islamic State itself has repeatedly claimed it has obtained a “dirty bomb,” but international experts say the chances of terror groups obtaining such weapons are slim.
“You can hardly say that the risks are zero, they use plutonium and cesium from hospitals and theoretically try to put such things together,” Hans Blix, the former head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, told RT in April.
“Yes, that’s bad… but the nuclear bombs are much worse.”