TBR News March 9, 2019
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8
Washington, D.C. March 9, 2019: ”First we have Trump desiring a Hitler-style Washington military parade in his honor (which the Pentagon denined him) and now we have him piously signing Bibles for adoring rednecks.
Next, no doubt, we will see him in Papal-style robes blessing the multitude at Easter from the steps of the Washington Cathedral.
By his actions at home and abroad, Trump is doing terrible damage to the image of the American people and if the public organizes in a timely manner, they can deny him the pleasure of a second term.”
The Table of Contents
- U.S. judge may force Trump administration to reunite more families separated at Mexico border
- Neither Rain, Sleet, nor Snow Will Stop the Post Office From Spying on You
- Trump’s private talks with Putin may contain clues to his Russia romance
- Alabama’s Roy Moore, undone by allegations, considers new Senate run
- Trump is mocked online for signing copies of the Bible like they were his own book during a visit to a tornado relief center in Alabama
- Christ the Essene
- The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
U.S. judge may force Trump administration to reunite more families separated at Mexico border
March 9, 2019
Reuters
In a blow to the Trump administration’s U.S.-Mexico border strategy, a federal court judge in California has expanded the number of migrant families separated at the border that the government may be required to reunite.
San Diego-based U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw late on Friday issued a preliminary ruling that would potentially expand by thousands the number of migrants included in a class-action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Sabraw already ordered the Trump administration last year to reunite more than 2,800 migrant children who were separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border under the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy.
But he will allow more separated families to join the class-action lawsuit after a report released in January by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Inspector General, which identified potentially thousands more families that had been separated as early as July 1, 2017. The administration’s “zero tolerance” policy did not take effect until May 2018.
“The hallmark of a civilized society is measured by how it treats its people and those within its borders,” Sabraw said in his ruling.
Sabraw said that report was “a significant development in this case” and its contents “are undisputed.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to calls for comment.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump implemented the zero-tolerance policy to criminally prosecute and jail all illegal border crossers – even those traveling with their children – which led to a wave of separations last year.
The policy sparked outrage when it became public, and the backlash led Trump to sign an executive order reversing course on June 20, 2018.
The IG report said prior to the officially announced zero-tolerance policy, the government began ramping up separations in 2017 for other reasons related to a child’s safety and well-being, including separating parents with criminal records or lack of proper documents.
A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman said in January after the IG report came out that the practice of separating apprehended minors from adults to protect the interests of the children has been standard practice “for more than a decade.”
The report also said more than 100 minors, including more than two dozen under age 5, were separated after the President’s executive order.
“The court made clear that potentially thousands of children’s lives are at stake and that the Trump administration cannot simply ignore the devastation it has caused,” Lee Gelernt, ACLU lead attorney in the class-action family separation lawsuit, said on Friday.
Reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewi
Neither Rain, Sleet, nor Snow Will Stop the Post Office From Spying on You
It’s called the “Mail Cover Program” and it’s run by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Yes, even the Post Office is spying on us
February 28, 2019
by John Kiriakou
Consortium News
You may remember that last year some nut was arrested for mailing bombs to prominent Democrats, media outlets, and opponents of Donald Trump. Less than a week after the bombs went out, a suspect was arrested. Almost immediately, video turned up of him at a Trump rally, wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat and chanting for the camera. He was soon tried, convicted, and jailed. End of story.
But it wasn’t the end of the story. The investigation into the bomb incidents focused attention on an almost unknown federal surveillance program—one that poses a direct threat to the privacy and constitutional rights of every American. It’s called the “Mail Cover Program” and it’s run by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Yes, even the Post Office is spying on us.
The Mail Cover Program allows postal employees to photograph and send to federal law enforcement organizations (FBI, DHS, Secret Service, etc.) the front and back of every piece of mail the Post Office processes. It also retains the information digitally and provides it to any government agency that wants it—without a warrant.
In 2015, the USPS Inspector General issued a report saying that, “Agencies must demonstrate a reasonable basis for requesting mail covers, send hard copies of request forms to the Criminal Investigative Service Center for processing, and treat mail covers as restricted and confidential…A mail cover should not be used as a routine investigative tool. Insufficient controls over the mail cover program could hinder the Postal Inspection Service’s ability to conduct effective investigations, lead to public concerns over privacy of mail, and harm the Postal Service’s brand.”
Return to Sender
Not only were the admonitions ignored, the mail cover program actually expanded after the report’s release. Indeed, in the months after that report was issued, there were 6,000 requests for mail cover collection. Only 10 were rejected, according to the Feb. 2019 edition of Prison Legal News (P.34-35) .
I have some personal experience with the Mail Cover Program. I served 23 months in prison for blowing the whistle on the CIA’s illegal torture program. After having been locked up for two months, I decided to commission a card from a very artistically-inclined prisoner for my wife’s 40th birthday. I sent it about two weeks early, but she never received it. Finally, about four months later, the card was delivered back to me with a yellow “Return to Sender – Address Not Known” sticker on it. But underneath that sticker was a second yellow sticker. That one read, “Do Not Deliver. Hold For Supervisor. Cover Program.”
Why was I under Postal Service Surveillance? I have no idea. I had had my day in court. The case was over. But remember, the Postal Service doesn’t have to answer to anybody – my attorneys, my judge, even its own Inspector General. It doesn’t need a warrant to spy on me (or my family) and it doesn’t have to answer even to a member of Congress who might inquire as to why the spying was happening in the first place.
The problem is not just the sinister nature of a government agency (or quasi-government agency) spying on individuals with no probable cause or due process, although those are serious problems. It’s that the program is handled so poorly and so haphazardly that in some cases surveillance was initiated against individuals for no apparent law enforcement reason and that surveillance was initiated by Postal Service employees not even authorized to do so. Again, there is no recourse because the people under surveillance don’t even know that any of this is happening.
Perhaps an even more disturbing aspect of the program is the fact that between 2000 and 2012, the Postal Service initiated an average of 8,000 mail cover requests per year. But in 2013, that number jumped to 49,000. Why? Nobody knows and the Postal Service doesn’t have to say.
The question, though, is not how many cases are opened under the Mail Cover Program or even how many requests there are for the information. The real question is, “How is this constitutional?” Perhaps a secondary question is, “Why hasn’t anybody challenged the program in the courts?” In general, Americans don’t–or at least haven’t–objected to a gradual loss of civil liberties and constitutional rights. That has to stop. When even the Post Office is spying on you, you know the republic is in trouble.
Trump’s private talks with Putin may contain clues to his Russia romance
Democrats say Trump’s attempts to conceal his conversations with the Russian leader raise questions about his motivations
March 9, 2019
by Sabrina Siddiqui in Washington
The Guardian
Since Donald Trump was sworn in as president he has met his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, five times. The details of their conversations remain unknown to the public, and in most cases even to senior administration officials.
Democrats in Congress are now demanding more details of communications between the two leaders. Secrecy around such meetings, they say, raises fresh questions about the nature of Trump’s relationship with Putin at a time when his ties to Russia are the subject of several investigations.
The meetings with Putin are not the only subject of such Democratic demands. House leaders left little room for doubt this week that they will utilize their newly minted majority to cast a wide net around the president, his family and their businesses.
The judiciary committee issued document requests to 81 individuals and entities, seeking information on everything from contacts between Trump aides and Moscow to hush money payments to women and possible obstruction of justice.
It all came a week after Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, testified before Congress and implicated the president in alleged criminal activity spanning decades.
Nonetheless, according to some national security experts, when it comes to uncovering the motivations behind the president’s desire for closer relations with the Kremlin and the complex web of contacts between his associates and Moscow, few interactions might be more consequential than those between Trump and Putin.
“What kind of things are being discussed that the president does not want to share?” said Steven Pifer, a former US ambassador to Ukraine who served on Bill Clinton’s National Security Council as senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia.
“Is he discussing Trump Tower? What’s the basis for the discussion? We just don’t know.
“I don’t know why the president doesn’t have a notetaker … That would be the best way to send off any suspicions that something untoward has been done.”
In fact, translators have been present at meetings between Trump and Putin, such as in Hamburg in 2017 and in Helsinki last year. But it has been reported that the president has taken unusual steps to keep their notes private.
Trump’s posture towards Russia has been a focus of his time in the White House, confounding national security officials and exposing rifts between the president and prominent members of his administration.
In his first year in office, after Congress forced his hand by building a veto-proof majority, Trump begrudgingly signed sanctions that were passed in part to punish Moscow for its interference in the 2016 presidential election. But he resisted attempts to impose additional sanctions, including over Kremlin support for chemical weapons attacks carried out by the Assad regime in Syria.
The president has publicly disagreed with warnings from his own intelligence chiefs that the Russians are still seeking to influence US elections. The National Security Agency chief, Adm Mike Rogers, testified before Congress last year that the administration was not doing enough to disrupt Russian cyberattacks at the source, in part because the president had not authorized such an effort.
Trump has continued to express admiration for Putin, accepting his denials of Russian involvement in the 2016 election at their summit in Finland. That put the president squarely at odds with the US intelligence community and invited an avalanche of criticism.
Democrats now say Trump’s reportedly forceful attempts to conceal his communications with Putin raise questions about his motivations in pursuing closer relations with a regime largely regarded as a primary adversary.
In a joint letter this week, the chairs of the House intelligence, foreign affairs and oversight committees raised “profound national security, counterintelligence and foreign policy concerns, especially in light of Russia’s ongoing active measures campaign to improperly influence American elections.
“In addition, such allegations, if true, undermine the proper functioning of government, most notably the Department [of State]’s access to critical information germane to its diplomatic mission and its ability to develop and execute foreign policy that advances our national interests.”
If Trump’s communications were intentionally manipulated or withheld from the official record, the Democrats said, it would be a possible violation of federal law requiring “that presidents and other administration officials preserve such materials”.
Cohen’s testimony opened several lines of inquiry regarding Trump’s ties to Russia. But few revelations have drawn more scrutiny than those regarding negotiations about building a Trump Tower in MoscowCohen previously told the Senate intelligence committee conversations about a potential Trump Tower Moscow ended before February 2016, when primary voting began. It was later uncovered, through his cooperation with the special counsel, that attempts to reach a deal continued until at least that summer, past the point at which Trump had in effect secured the Republican nomination.
Cohen, who will begin a three-year prison sentence in May, has said he received an implicit order from Trump to lie to Congress. The president denies it. The president’s former lawyer and fixer also said two of Trump’s children, Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump, were briefed on Trump Tower Moscow approximately 10 times, contradicting their claims of minimal knowledge of the discussions.
Democrats have signaled they will call both Donald Jr and Ivanka before Congress. They have also summoned Felix Sater, a longtime associate of Trump, to testify in public before the intelligence committee on 14 March. Sater has been linked to the Russian mob and allegedly suggested Trump Tower Moscow, which never came to fruition, should include a $50m penthouse as a gift to Putin.
Democrats say there is reason to delve into the negotiations, which took place as the then candidate Trump lavished praise on Putin and vowed to improve US-Russia relations.
Cohen also alleged that Trump was aware of his longtime adviser Roger Stone’s outreach to WikiLeaks, in advance of its release of hacked Democratic party emails.
In their document requests, Democrats included the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, and at least three individuals associated with Stone who were believed to have been in contact with WikiLeaks: Jerome Corsi, Randy Credico and Ted Malloch.
Some of those subjects have been interviewed by the special counsel Robert Mueller. His investigation will conclude with a report to Congress. It is not expected to break with justice department guidelines suggesting a sitting president cannot be indicted.
The onslaught of congressional inquiries means the president will remain under an investigative cloud for the foreseeable future, if not the rest of his time in office. Trump has accused Democrats of “presidential harassment” and being more preoccupied with investigating than legislating.
“Instead of doing infrastructure, instead of doing healthcare, instead of doing so many things that they should be doing, they want to play games,” he said. “It’s a disgrace to our country.”
Polling has found that a majority of Americans back the Democrats’ investigations of Trump, although fewer support impeachment, the procedure to remove a president that could follow such committee investigations.
Trump has said he will cooperate with the inquiries, even as he has decried them as part of a “witch-hunt” against him. The White House has stymied several requests and is expected to argue that many of Trump’s dealings in office are protected by executive privilege.
Alice Stewart, a Republican strategist, said it was no surprise Democrats were on the offensive after campaigning in the 2018 midterms on restoring congressional oversight of the executive branch.
“They’re following through on what a lot of people expected them to do,” she said. “Republicans are going to take issue with it, but this is what their base really wants them to do.”
Stewart, a supporter of Trump, said it was “appropriate” for Democrats to ask questions and request documents.
“I take the president and the administration at their word when they say there’s nothing wrong, that there’s no collusion,” she said.
“The best way for them to put this all to rest is for them to comply with these investigations, put the information out there, let them find what they’re going to find, and then we can move on.”
Alabama’s Roy Moore, undone by allegations, considers new Senate run
March 8, 2019
by Alex Dobuzinskis
Reuters
Reuters) – Alabama Republican Roy Moore, whose unsuccessful 2017 campaign for the U.S. Senate was marred by allegations he sexually assaulted or pursued teenage girls while in his 30s, said on Friday that he may again run for the Senate.
In an interview on the Christian program “Focal Point” on American Family Radio, host Bryan Fischer asked Moore about the 2020 race for the Senate in Alabama. “Tell me what you’re thinking about throwing your hat back into the ring,” Fischer said.
“I’m seriously considering it, I think that it (the 2017 Senate race) was stolen,” Moore responded, citing what he described as misinformation campaigns against him.
Senator Doug Jones, a former federal prosecutor, defeated Moore by a narrow margin in a special election in December 2017 to fill the seat vacated by Republican Jeff Sessions when he became U.S. attorney general. Jones was the first Democrat in a quarter-century to be elected to the U.S. Senate in conservative-leaning Alabama.
If Moore, a 72-year-old former chief judge in Alabama known for staunchly conservative views, does decide to run for the Senate in 2020 and secures the Republican nomination, he could find himself facing Jones again. The term that Jones was elected to fill expires at the end of 2020.
Moore’s 2017 campaign to fill Sessions’ seat was beset by allegations from women who told the Washington Post that he had sexually assaulted or pursued them while he was in his 30s and they were teenagers. Moore denied the misconduct allegations.
In January, Alabama’s Republican attorney general, Steve Marshall, asked federal elections officials to investigate allegations that the 2017 special election was tainted by use of a misleading social media campaign against Moore. [nL1N1Z71HV]
The New York Times has reported that Democratic operatives sought to undermine Moore by creating a Facebook page claiming his supporters wanted to ban alcohol in the state. The newspaper has also reported that Democrats created a separate “false flag” Facebook page to portray Moore as supported by Russian bot accounts.
U.S. Representative Bradley Byrne is the only Republican in Alabama so far, who has formally pledged to run for the Senate in 2020, according to a report from AL.com, the website of Alabama Media Group.
Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Leslie Adler
Trump is mocked online for signing copies of the Bible like they were his own book during a visit to a tornado relief center in Alabama
- Trump was widely criticized for signing the Bibles, with Hilary Clinton’s former adviser calling him a hypocrite
- Tweeters were also quick to poke fun at the president with one remarking he ‘signed the Bible with the same hand he used to sign a check to Stormy Daniels’
by Luke Kenton and Francesca Chambers, White House Correspondent For Dailymail.com
March 9, 2019
Daily Mail
Donald Trump was greeted with a rapturous applause at an Alabama church on Friday, but the disaster-stricken crowd received more than just good wishes from the president.
Hoping to offer comfort in the wake of the deadly tornado that swept through the region last weekend, many of the hundred-strong congregation received a unique piece of memorabilia: a Trump-signed Bible.
Though the practice of a book-signing is usually reserved only to its author, Trump kindly obliged a 12-year-old boy’s request to sign his copy of the religious scripture.
And the gesture prompted a frenzy at the Providence Baptist Church, in Opelika, as many of the cheering crowd began waving their Bibles in the air too, hoping to have it branded with Trump’s distinctive, frenetic signature.
‘I enjoyed him coming,’ church volunteer Ada Ingram said. ‘I think it’s a godsend’.
Another volunteer, Emily Pike, said the president and first lady Melania Trump signed her 10-year-old daughter’s Bible, which was decorated with pink camouflage.
‘She just reached out there and said, ‘Mr. President, would you sign this?’’ Pike told the Associated Press.
Though members of the denomination seemed delighted with their autographed texts, the internet’s reaction provided a stark contrast.
Many accused Trump of being a hypocrite, claiming his political policies are a perfect contradiction to the religious teachings he was writing over.
Others berated the perceived arrogance of his gesture, accusing the President of touting the religious book as if it was of his own workings.
‘I seriously cannot imagine the absolute outrage and round-the-clock coverage this would’ve earned if President Obama went around signing Bibles. My God,’ said author Jennifer Hayden.
But among the litany of fervor, some Tweeters couldn’t resist poking fun at the president.
‘In Trump’s defense, he wrote as much of the Bible as Art of the Deal,’ jibed journalist Judd Legum.
‘People don’t understand the purpose of Trump signing Bibles,’ teased another commentor. ‘May people are without a way to prepare food after a disaster. When Trump signs a Bible, its bursts in flame and people can cook over it.’
And the 45th US President’s alleged personal affairs weren’t immune from ironic ridicule either.
‘He signed Bibles with the same hand he used — as president — to sign hush money checks to an adult filmstar,’ said former Chief of Staff to Joe Biden, Ron Klain.
‘Trump’s favorite story of the Bible is the part where Jesus pays $130,000 to keep Mary Magdalene quiet,’ added author Sarah Cooper.
The U.S. president also posed for selfies and signed hats and a $100 dollar bill that a volunteer passed him at the Baptist church.
He and first lady Melania Trump spent the afternoon consoling families who lost their homes in a deadly F4 tornado that killed 23 people in Alabama on Sunday.
The pair were warmly received during their stop in the state, which supported Trump with 62. 1 percent of the vote in his successful 2016 election.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ the president said of the devastation. ‘We love you all. We love the state of Alabama.’
Outside the church the first couple honored the dead, holding a moment of silence as they stood hand-in-hand before a memorial made of crosses representing the victims of last weekend’s storms.
The Trumps were visiting Alabama on their way to Florida, where they are spending the weekend at Mar-a-Lago and raising money for the president’s reelection campaign.
Donald and Melania Trump arrived in Alabama early Friday afternoon via helicopter after landing in Air Force One in nearby Georgia. Their aerial tour lasted approximately 25 minutes, and afterward, the president told victims that federal emergency managers will stay as long as they need to.
‘It’s hard to believe actually,’ he told reporters during a walking tour of the devastation. ‘We saw things you wouldn’t believe.’
He said that FEMA had done an ‘A plus job’ managing recovery efforts so far.
Tornadoes blitzed Alabama last weekend, killing 23 people, and ransacking parts of Georgia, where the Trumps first landed.
Greeting them on the tarmac was the state’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, and Sen. Doug Jones, a Democrat, greeted the president at the Auburn airfield and accompanied them on a walking tour of the community most-heavily affected.
‘The governor has done an incredible job,’ the president told reporters amid his tour of Beauregard, the Alabama neighborhood hit hardest.
Ivey told the president ‘we’re stronger together’ and thanked him for him for taking the time to visit.
He told reporters as he left the White House on Friday, ‘I’ll be meeting with Governor Ivey. The people of Alabama, they got hit very hard by the tornadoes.
‘We’re stopping there, then we’re going to Florida. And we’re going to do a lot of work. We’ll be working very hard,’ he said.
First lady Melania Trump and the couple’s son, Barron, were on the trip with the president. They left the White House just before 10 am from the residential entrance, after the president took questions from the press on the sentencing of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and a myriad of other subject.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen joined them for the flight down to Alabama. Sen. Richard Shelby and Rep. Mike Rogers, both of whom were Alabama Republicans, also flew down with the Trumps.
Following the aerial tour of the damage that the group made via helicopter over Georgia and Alabama, the president and first lady met with survivors of the Lee County tornado and received a briefing from Kathy Carson, the county’s emergency manager.
The Trumps toured the Beauregard neighborhood, where they met the family of Sheila Creech and Marshall Lynn Grimes.
Creech fled Panama City after Hurricane Michael in October of 2018 and relocated to Beauregard, where the White House says she was living with Grimes.
Grimes’s daughter is in the hospital and her friend, Taylor Thornton, 10, died at the home during the tornado. The Trumps were to meet with son Chris Grimes and his wife Denise, as well as the deceased’s brother David and his wife Kristen.
Family members shared with the president and first lady, showing them Grimes’ motorcycle vest and his bible. The president hugged the grieving family members.
He told reporters that he recognized the wreckage from his flyover in Marine One.
‘I saw this. And it’s hard to believe,’ the president said. ‘You saw things that you wouldn’t believe.’
Also on their list of stops was the home of Susanne and John Polk, who was in the hospital when the tornado hit. The White House said that Mrs. Polk had left her home to visit her husband when she was informed that a tornado had just hit the area.
A member of the Beauregard Volunteer Fire Department, she aided in the search and rescue of the community.
The Trumps were scheduled to visit with another survivor of the tornado, Tamatha ‘Tammy’ Cardwell, who was at home when the weather event took place, and her husband James ‘Jim’ Cardwell.
The president said Tuesday that he would review the wreckage himself on Friday.
‘It’s been a tragic situation,’ Trump said at a White House event on Tuesday. ‘But a lot of good work is being done. I’m in constant touch with the governor and also the governor of Georgia.’
He said Friday, as he thanked volunteers, ‘We couldn’t get here fast enough.
‘I wanted to come the day it happened,’ he told them at the makeshift operation at Providence Baptist Church.
President Trump said Monday that he had directed federal emergency managers ‘to give the A Plus treatment to the Great State of Alabama and the wonderful people who have been so devastated by the Tornadoes’ that injured nearly 100 people.
He told reporters Friday that FEMA had ‘done and incredible job’ and thanked emergency managers for their efforts.
The first lady made no public comments but shared photos of her family arriving at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington for their flight on Air Force One from the air.
‘On our way to visit the great people of Alabama!’ she said.
They arrived at Fort Benning’s Lawson Army Airfield in Air Force One and traveled to Auburn University Regional Airport across the border in Alabama after that.
After spending several hours in the area, the Trumps left late Friday afternoon for Palm Beach, where the president has two evening events.
Donald Trump is participating in a joint fundraising committee roundtable and reception for Trump Victory, a Republican National Committee operation working in tandem with his 2020 reelection campaign, on Friday evening.
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and RNC Finance Chair Todd Ricketts are co-hosts of the closed-press event.
The fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago is Trump’s first major money-raising event of the calendar year. He is running for a second term with the party’s backing.
Christ the Essene
March 9, 2019
by John Dorker, DD
The British philosopher, William of Occam, has stated that entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity; that the simplest answer to a complex problem is the correct one.
If this thesis, called Occam’s Razor, is applied to many convoluted historical situations such as the origins of various international wars or incidents like the assassination of Kennedy or the realities behind the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, myths and legends fall and the truth remains standing amongst the rubble.
Ongoing but increasingly limited, public interest in the life and preachings of Jesus the Christ has highlighted this parallel problem: the Christ’s life, ministry and death are so surrounded with a thick growth of myth and legend that it takes a serious, and thoroughly objective, effort to hack through this undergrowth to find the actual, as opposed to the legendary, Jesus.
Stripped of centuries of myth-making, legend and creative writing, the actual facts about Jesus the Christ show a man who is certainly a powerful figure and whose teachings resound, though greatly diminished, even two thousand years after his death.
In an analytical historical study of Jesus, stripped of legend, myth and deliberate propaganda, the real figure emerges from the myth and a strong reality replaces a weak fiction.
Consider, then, this study as an educational process and not an iconoclastic attack and in that light, the resulting revelations will have a powerful, and in the end, a positive, and certainly lasting, effect.
Truth can, indeed, be beneficial. But not to all.
God Hates Fags!
“It’s NOT OK to be gay. It will damn the soul, destroy the life, and doom any nation that tolerates such evil. God Hates Fags is a profound theological statement, which America needs more than it needs oxygen or bread.” — Westboro Baptist Church “News Release,” May 3, 1999.
Although an extreme attitude, the anti-homosexual hysteria expressed by the mid-west Baptist church is prevalent in the preachings and dogmas of the Evangelical, far-right Christian churches. A number of these churches have called for the imprisonment of all homosexuals and a few demand their execution.
That their views are increasingly at odds with the views of the general public is of no concern to them. In their minds, they are right, the others wrong and they will, by one means or another, force the majority to obey the minority.
The interesting part of this hysterical and irrational hatred can be found in the self-hatred of closet gays who have a significant representation in the ministries, but from a historical point of view, the great irony is that the icon of their religion, Jesus, was himself a practicing homosexual!
Not even the year of Jesus’ birth is known although many theologians have concluded that Jesus was born sometime in the autumn, between 11 and 13 CE. Also, there is disagreement about where Jesus was born. Different theologians, as opposed to historians, argue Bethlehem in Judea, and Nazareth.
That was prior to certain archeological discoveries in the Dead Sea area.
From the Dead Sea scrolls, we learn that Jesus was born in Alexandria, Egypt, to an Egyptian Jewish father and Egyptian mother.
He was not born in a stable in Bethlehem nor were there any wise men visiting nor a special star hovering overhead.
The basis of all of this revisionist material is clearly set forth in a scroll found at Cave #3 on the Dead Sea in 1953.
It is on parchment (used only for important documents…the rest were on papyrus) and was written at the time of Jesus, about 50-55 CE.
The document is the only extant period reference to Jesus; all the others were created, often out of whole cloth, two hundred years later, and in the case of significant paragraphs in Josephus, later Christian forgeries.
This revealing scroll has been forensically tested as to age, type of ink, handwriting etc and was very clearly created at the time and place indicated.
The text of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written in four different languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Nabataean.
The scroll in question here, from cave #3 is in Nabataean, used from the 2nd century BCE to the 4th century CE
From this we discover that Jesus was a Jew but born in Alexandria, Egypt, ten years after the date ascribed in the Gospels to his nativity.
‘Bar Nasha’(son of man) was Jesus name for himself.
Jesus was not a Nazerene, as is often stated in the New Testament, but an Alexandrian Jew. His parents immigrated to Palestine, and the young Jesus joined the Essene religious movement where Jesus’ elder brother was a member of this religious and agricultural cult. He subsequently became heavily involved in their revolts against the occupying Roman power, was one of the leaders in a revolt attempt, fled when the Roman troops attacked in a pre-emptive strike, leaving many of his fellow cult members to be captured by the Romans and all later crucified.
He escaped with a small number of Essenes to the desert where he remained until he died.
The interesting aspect of this is that the Essene cult was an all-male agricultural commune and very specifically homosexual in nature and practice.
In the scroll, Jesus’ sexual orientation is specifically addressed and names of his male lovers covered.
It should be noted that the scrolls themselves were prepared by members of the Essene cult who were themselves homosexuals and therefore not critical of Jesus orientation.
During the Procuratorship of Antonius Felix (52 to 58 CE) Jesus amassed a mob of about 30,000 Palestinian Jewish dissidents, planning to attack Jerusalem and drive out the Roman garrison. One of Jesus’s Essene close associates, a man named Judas, informed Felix of the impending raid and it was stopped by Roman troops with a heavy loss of life for the rebels. Many were taken prisoner, tried and later crucified for rebellion against the Roman government but the period records show, very clearly, that their leader, Jesus from Alexandria, escaped and vanished into the desert. Roman period writings show that this man came out of the desert with a force of 30,000 and went up the Mount of Olives in order to fall on the city of Jerusalem, expel the Roman garrison and become ruler. Felix engaged the Egyptian and his followers in battle and dispersed them, taking most of them prisoners.
Josephus, who lived and wrote during the period, wrote about this plot of an Egyptian Jew under the procurator Felix.
The history of Josephus is full of similar occurrences.,which show the state of mind of the Jewish population at the time of Jesus.
An attempted putsch by the Alexandrian Essene prophet, Jesus, would be fully in accord with it.
If we think of Jesus’ activism as such an attempt against Roman authority, the betrayal of the Essenes to the Roman authorities by Jesus’ co-conspirator, Judas, becomes understandable as well.
Marcus Antonius Felix was the Roman procurator of Iudaea Province 52-58 CE, in succession to Ventidius Cumanus.
The period of his rule was marked by internal feuds and disturbances on the part of the Jewish population, which he put down with great severity.
On returning to Rome, Felix was accused of using a dispute between the Jews and Syrians of Caesarea as a pretext to slay and plunder the inhabitants, but through the intercession of his brother, the freedman Pallas, who had great influence with the Emperor Nero, he escaped unpunished.
Porcius Festus succeeded him as procurator of Judea.
The Essenes
After his move to Judea, Jesus became an Essene, and Christianity as we know today evolved directly from this sect of Judaism, with which it shared a majority of ideas and symbols
The Essenes were a religious sect of Judaism that existed from the 2nd century BCE to the the 1st Century CE, in Qumran, a plateau in the Judean desert along the Dead Sea.
The origin of the name Essene is debated. Some credible possibilities are either a version of the Greek word for “holy,” or an Aramaic dialect term for “pious.” In their writings, they refer to themselves as the “Sons of Light”.
The Essenes are discussed in detail by Josephus and Philo. Scholars very clearly believe that the community at Qumran, that produced the Dead Sea scrolls, were Essenes that Jesus was an Essene, and Christianity as we know it today evolved from this sect of Judaism.
The Essenes were, in any case, an agricultural community that had a communistic approach to their life style. There was a common purse and shared wealth and much, if not most, of the first expressed Christian dogma came directly from the Essenes.
Unfortunately for religious acceptance reasons, like the Spartans and Zulus who were essentially a military community cult, the agricultural Essenes were male-oriented and firmly homosexual in nature.
The Essenes were finally outlawed by the Romans following their participation in on-going revolts, and many members were subsequently crucified in a general crackdown under Titus, not because of their sexual practices but because of their political opposition to Roman rule.
The small remnants of the Essenes either retreated to their Dead Sea area and eventually died out or changed their names and joined other more acceptable Jewish religious groups.
Before the discovery and publication of a number of the Dead Sea scrolls, little was popularly known about the Essenes other than from the writings of a few select contemporary authors. These authors included; the Jewish priest and Galilean commander, Flavius Josephus, in his “Jewish Wars” written about 73-75 CE (Jewish Wars 2:119-161) and Josephus’ “Antiquities of the Jews” written about twenty years later. (Antiquities 18:11, 18-22); Josephus, claiming first hand knowledge, called the Essenes, the Essenoi.
The earliest mention of the Essenes is by the Jewish philosopher. Philo (20 BCE – c. 50 CE) of Alexandria Philo wrote that there were more than 4,000 Essenes (Essaioi) living in villages throughout the Palestinian- Syrian area. Among their neighbors they were noted for their love of God and their concerns with piety, honesty, morality, philanthropy, holiness, equality, and freedom.
The deeply religious Essenes did not marry and lived a celibate life, and practiced communal residence, money, property, food and clothing.
They cherished freedom, possessed no slaves, and rejected the use of weapons or participation in commerce.
Philo did not mention any names or places, nor any background to the origins of this group.
The next reference to the Essenes is by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder (died 79 CE) in his Natural History (N’H,V,XV). Pliny relates in a few lines that the Essenes did not marry, possessed no money, and had existed for “thousands of generations.”
Unlike Philo, who did not mention any particular geographical location of the Essenes other than the whole land of Israel, Pliny, also a geographer and explorer, , located them in the desert near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, where the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered in the year 1947 by Muhammed edh-Dhib and Ahmed Mohammed, two Bedouin shepherds of the Ta’amireh tribe.
At this point we find this passage, which contains the only description of local people in this section of Pliny’s work
“From [or towards] the west onward, Essenes flee the banks [or shores] that harm; a group set apart [or isolated] and in the entire world beyond all others extraordinary [or unique] — without any women, stifling every urge, without money [or possessions], consort of palms.”
The nature of the organization clearly indicates that it was an outspoken communism. They lived in common dwellings, 4000 strong in the time of Josephus, in various villages and rural cities of Judea.
“They live there together,” Philo says of them, “organized by corporations and clubs for friendship and dining (kata thasous, hetairias kai syssitia poioumenoi), and regularly occupied in labors for the community.
“None of them desires to have property of his own, neither a house nor a slave nor a piece of land nor herds nor whatever else constitutes wealth. But they put everything together indiscriminately, and all of them use it in common.
“The money they earn by their labor in various ways they hand over to an elected administrator. Out of it he buys what is needed, and gives them ample food and whatever else is needed for life.”
It might be inferred from this that each man produced for himself or worked for wages.
Somewhat later, Josephus gave a detailed account of the Essenes in The Jewish War (75 CE) with a shorter description in Antiquities of the Jews (94 CE) and The Life of Flavius Josephus (97 CE). Claiming firsthand knowledge, he lists the Essenoi as one of the three sects of Jewish philosophy to include the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
He relates the same information Philo did on the Essenes concerning piety, celibacy, the absence of personal property and of money, the belief in communality, alienation from associating with women, and commitment to a strict observance of the Sabbath. According to Josephus, they had customs and observances such as collective ownership, the sharing of a common purse, the electing of a leader to attend to the interests of them all whose orders they obeyed, were forbidden from swearing oaths and sacrificing animals controlled their temper and served as channels of peace, carried weapons only as protection against robbers, had no slaves but served each other and, as a result of communal ownership, did not engage in trading. He further adds that the Essenes ritually immersed in water every morning, ate together after prayer, devoted themselves to charity and benevolence, forbade the expression of anger, studied the books of the elders, preserved secrets, and were an all-male society, enjoying their own company in preference to that of women.
Also, there was the observation that the Essenes were an all-male cult, using women to produce male children. Women who produced female children were expelled from the Essene community along with their female child. Like the Spartans, and to a lesser degree, the Greeks, women were used exclusively for breeding purposes.
Both Josephus and Philo have lengthy accounts of their communal meetings, meals and religious celebrations.
Their theology included belief in the immortality of the soul and that they would receive their souls back after death. Part of their activities included purification by water rituals, which was supported by rainwater catchment and storage.
Josephus describes their life as follows:
“After this [the morning prayer] they are dismissed by their chiefs and each goes to the work he has learned, and when they have diligently labored until the fifth hour [counting from sunrise, about eleven o’clock] they come together at a stated place, gird themselves with white cloths and wash their bodies in cold water. After this purification they go into the refectory, into which no one has entry who is not a member of their sect. When they have sat down in silence, the baker puts bread before each man and the cook sets a dish before each with one kind of food. Then a priest blesses the food; and it is not permitted to taste anything before prayer. At the end of the midday meal they give thanks again, and thus before and after eating they praise God, the giver of all food. Then they put off their mantles like sacred clothing and go to work again until evening. Supper is taken in the same way as dinner, and when guests come [members of the order from elsewhere, since strangers were not allowed in the refectory.], they too sit at table with them. Neither outcries nor disorder sully the house, and when they converse, one speaks after the other, not all at once, so that people who are not of their order feel the quiet in the house as mysteriously impressive. The cause of their quiet life is their constant moderation, for they eat and drink no more than is required for maintaining their life.
“In general they do no work except on the instructions of their chiefs, with the exception that they may be free in showing sympathy and helpfulness. Whenever an emergency requires it, any one of them may assist those who need and deserve help, or bring food to the poor. But they may not contribute anything to their friends or relatives without the consent of their chief.”
Their communism was carried to an extreme. It extended to their clothing. Philo says:
“Not only food, but clothing as well is in common with them. For there are heavy cloaks prepared for the winter, and light outer garments for summer, so that every man may make use of them as he will. For what one has counts as the property of all, and what all of them have counts as everyman’s.”
They rejected slavery. Farming was their chief occupation, but they also engaged in crafts. Only the manufacture of luxury articles and weapons of war was forbidden, along with trade.
The basis of their whole communistic system was community of consumption, not social production. There is some talk of the latter too, but it is only a question of work that brings in money for individuals either for wages or for goods sold, in either case the work is done outside the social organization.
All the members of the order however have their lodging and meals in common. That is what held them together, above all. It was the communism of common housekeeping. This requires giving up separate housekeeping, separate families and separate marriages.
From the Essenes down through all the early Christian communistic-type sects we can see that all of them are very firmly against marriage.
The Essenes, in fact, rejected all social contact with women.
Josephus says this in the eighth chapter of the second book of his history of the Jewish War, from which these quotations on the Essenes have been taken. But in the eighteenth book of his Jewish Antiquities, chapter one, he says on the same question:
“They do not take wives and hold no slaves. They hold that the latter is unjust, and the first would give rise to disputes.”
“They reject marriage, but adopt strange children while they are still young and teachable, consider them as their own children and instruct them in their ways and customs. It is not that they would do away with or forbid marriage or the reproduction of the species. But they say that the unchastity of women must be guarded against, since none of them is satisfied with one man alone.”
In both places it is only practical considerations, not asceticism that is the basis of opposition to marriage. Josephus knew the Essenes from his own observations. He had been successively with the Sadducees. Essenes and Pharisees until he stayed finally with the latter.
Thus Josephus is in an excellent position to tell us the basis of the Essenes’ hostility to marriage with women.
Not all the Essenes took the first way. Josephus reports in the previously cited eighth chapter of the second book on the Jewish War:
“There is still another sort of Essenes, who are in thorough accord with the previous ones in their way of living, their manners and rules, but differ from them in the matter of marriage. For they say, that those who refrain from marital relations would deprive life of its most important function (meros), reproduction would constantly decrease and the human race would soon die out, if everyone thought as they did. These people have the custom of trying (dokimazontes) wives for three years. If they have shown after three purifications that they are fit to bear children, they marry them. As soon as one is pregnant, her husband no longer sleeps with her. That is to show that they enter into marriage not for the sake of sensual pleasure, but only for the sake of producing children.”
The passage is not quite clear; but it says at least that these marriages of the Essenes were very different from the customary ones. The “trying” of wives does not seem conceivable except on the presumption of a sort of community of wives kept solely for breeding purposes.
Josephus uses the name Essenes in his two main accounts[as well as in some other contexts (“an account of the Essenes”; “the gate of the Essenes”; “Judas of the Essene race” but some manuscripts read here Essaion; “holding the Essenes in honour”;”a certain Essene named Manaemus”; “to hold all Essenes in honour”; “the Essenes”;. In several places, however, Josephus has Essaios, which is usually assumed to mean Essene (“Judas of the Essaios race”; “Simon of the Essaios race”;”John the Essaios”; “those who are called by us Essaioi”; “Simon a man of the Essaios race”).
Philo’s usage is Essaioi, although he admits this Greek form of the original name that according to his etymology signifies “holiness” to be inexact. Pliny’s Latin text has Esseni. Josephus identified the Essenes as one of the three major Jewish sects of that period.
It was proposed, before the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered, that the name came into several Greek spellings from a Hebrew self-designation later found in some Dead Sea scrolls, ‘osey hatorah, “observers of torah.” Though dozens of etymology suggestions have been published, this is the only etymology published before 1947 that was confirmed by Qumran text self-designation references, and it is gaining acceptance among scholars. It’s recognized as the etymology of the form Ossaioi (and note that Philo also offered an O spelling) and Essaioi and Esseni spelling variations have been discussed by VanderKam, Goranson and others. In medieval Hebrew (e.g. Sefer Yosippon) Hassidim (“the pious ones”) replaces “Essenes”. While this Hebrew name is not the etymology of Essaioi/Esseni, the Aramaic equivalent Hesi’im known from Eastern Aramaic texts has been suggested
If one identifies the community at Qumran with the Essenes (and that the community at Qumran are the authors of the Dead Sea scrolls), then according to the Dead Sea scrolls, the Essenes’ community school was called “Yahad” (meaning “unity”) in order to differentiate themselves from the rest of the Jews who are repeatedly labeled “The Breakers of the Covenant
The Essenes were the followers of a group of priests who had essentially rejected the Second Temple. They argued that the Essene community was itself the new Temple, although they did not reject the notion of the Temple outright. Eventually, they believed, they would be triumphant, gaining control of the Temple and remaking it according to their own ideals.
Accordingly, the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE was for them a symbol of imminent victory. With this Roman victory over the rebellious Jews came the end of the Sadducees and the end of the house of Shammai.
The Essenes also believed strongly in the end-times and wrote an entire scroll on that subject. The “Rule of War” detailed the battle plans for the “final” battle. When the Romans overran Jerusalem in 68-70 CE they believed that it was time for them to fight the last battle.
They had been ready and prepared for it and therefore threw their entire beings and everything they had into it. They may have thought they were strong, but they were not strong enough to withstand the Romans. They, and other Jewish groups, were mercilessly and almost totally annihilated. The last few remaining Essenes in Judea were no longer able to maintain their identity, and some merged with the Hillelite Pharisees, out of which was born the tradition of Rabbinical Judaism.
Traditional theological writings and, through them, sociatal attitudes, depict Christianity as the creation of a single man, Jesus the Christ. This view persists even today amongst traditional Christian scholars.. At present, it is acknowledged by many scholars and historians that Jesus is no longer considered a deity, but he still held to have been an extraordinary personality, who came to the fore with the intention of founding a new religion, and did so, with tremendous, if delayed, success.
The British historian, Gibbon, in his definitive Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (written between 1774 and 1788), has clearly pointed out how striking it is that none of Jesus’ contemporary Jewish and Roman historians mentions him, although he is said, in the New Testament, to have accomplished such remarkable feats.
“But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world to these evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, daemons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the world.”
At Jesus’ death, according to Christian tradition, the whole earth, or at least all of Palestine, was in darkness for three hours. This took place in the days of the elder Pliny, who devoted a special chapter of his Natural History to eclipses; but of this eclipse and the darkness he says nothing. (Gibbon, Chapter 15).
The first mention of Jesus by a non-Christian is apparently found in the Jewish Antiquities of Flavius Josephus. The third chapter of book 18 deals with the procurator Pontius Pilate, and says among other things:
“About this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if he can be called human, for he worked miracles and was a teacher of men, who received the truth gladly; and he found many followers among Jews and Greeks. This was the Christ. Although later Pilate sentenced him to the cross on the complaint of the nobles of our people, those who had loved him remained true to him. For he appeared again to them on the third day, risen to new life, as the prophets of God had prophesied this and thousands of other wonderful things about him. From his comes the name of the Christians, whose sect (phylon) has continued to exist ever since.”
Josephus speaks of Christ again in the 20th book, chapter 9,1, where the high priest Ananus is said in the time of the procurator Albinus to have brought it about that:
“James. The brother of Jesus, said to be the Christ (tou legomenou christou), together with some others, was brought to court, accused as a breaker of the law and delivered over to be stoned to death.”
These pieces of evidence have always been highly prized by Christians; for they come from a non-Christian, a Jew and Pharisee, born in the year 37 CE and living in Jerusalem, and so very well able to have authentic facts about Jesus. And his testimony was the more valuable in that as a Jew he had no reason to falsify on behalf of the Christians.
But it was the promotion and exaltation of Jesus on the part of a pious Jew that made the first passage highly suspect and early-on. The authenticity of these passages was disputed as early as the sixteenth century, and today it is completely agreed by almost all Biblical scholars that it is forgery and does not stem from Josephus. It was inserted in the third century by a Christian copyist, who obviously took offense at the fact that Josephus, who repeats the most trivial gossip from Palestine, says nothing at all about the person of Jesus. The dedicated Christian felt, with understandable justice, that the absence of any such mention in Josephus weighed against the existence or at least the significance of his Savior. Now the discovery of this forgery became strong testimony against Jesus.
But the passage concerning James is also in doubt. It is true that Origen (185 to 254 CE) mentions testimony by Josephus concerning James; this occurs in his commentary on Matthew. He remarks that it is surprising that nonetheless Josephus did not believe in Jesus as the Christ. In his polemic against Celsius, Origen cites this statement of Josephus about James and again notes Josephus’ unbelief. These statements by Origen constitute one of the proofs that the striking passage about Jesus in which Josephus recognizes him as the Messiah, the Christ, could not have been in the original text of Josephus. In point of fact, original period copies of the Josephus writings do not include the passages on Jesus or James.
The passage about James that Origen found in Josephus was also an early Christian forgery. In it the destruction of Jerusalem is said to be a punishment for the execution of James; but this fabrication is not found in the other manuscripts of Josephus. The passage as it occurs in the manuscripts of Josephus that have come down to us is not cited by Origen, while he mentions the other version three times on other occasions. And yet he carefully assembled all the testimony that could be got from Josephus that had value for the Christian faith. It would seem likely that the passage of Josephus about James that has come down to us is also fraudulent, and was first inserted by a pious Christian, to the greater glory of God sometime after Origen, but before Eusebius, who cites the passage.
Like the mention of Jesus and James, the reference to John the Baptist in Josephus (Antiquities, XVIII, 5,2) is also highly suspect as another early Christian creation. And if John did exist, there is a body of thought that he might have been Jesus’ older brother, lover and mentor.
But even if the statement about James was genuine, it would prove at most that there was a Jesus, whom people called the Christ, that is, the Messiah. It could not prove anything more.
The next mention of Jesus by a non-Christian writer is found in the Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus, composed around the year 100 CE. In the fifteenth book the conflagration of Rome under Nero is described, and chapter 44 says:
“In order to counteract the rumor (that blamed Nero for the fire} he brought forward as the guilty ones, men hated for their crimes and called Christians by the people; and punished them with the most exquisite torments. The founder of their name, Christ, was executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius; the superstition was thereby suppressed for the moment, but broke out again, not only in Judea, the land in which this evil originated, but in Rome itself, to which everything horrible or shameful streams from all sides and finds increase. First a few were taken, who made confessions; then on their indications an enormous throng, who were not accused directly of the crime of arson, but of hatred of humanity. There execution became a pastime; they were covered with the skins of wild beasts and then torn to pieces by dogs, or they were crucified, or prepared for burning and set on fire as soon as it was dark, prepared for burning and set on fire as soon as it was dark. Nero lent his gardens for this spectacle and arranged the circus games, in which he mingled among the crowd in the clothing of a charioteer or drove a chariot himself. Although these were criminals who deserved the severest punishment, sympathy arose for them as being sacrificed not so much for the general good but to satisfy the rage of an individual.”
However, its authenticity too is disputed, since Dio Cassius had known nothing of a persecution of Christians under Nero, although he lived a hundred years later than Tacitus. Suetonius, writing shortly after Tacitus, also speaks, in his biography of Nero, of a persecution of Christians, “men who had given themselves over to a new and evil superstition” (chapter 16).
But Suetonius tells us absolutely nothing at all about Jesus and Tacitus does not ever mention his name.
Christ, the Greek work for “the anointed,” is merely the Greek translation of the Hebrew work “Messiah.” As to Christ’s work and the contents of his doctrine, Tacitus says nothing.
The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
March 9, 2019
by Dr. Peter Janney
On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.
Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.
Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.
After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.
The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.
When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..
A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.
The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.
Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks,”: Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.
Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas in 1993 when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publication.
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Conversations+with+the+Crow+by+Gregory+Douglas
Conversation No. 65
Date: Tuesday, February 11, 1997
Commenced: 9:05 AM CST
Concluded: 9:42 AM CST
RTC: Why, Gregory, so soon after our last conversation? We’ll have to be careful or Emily might get jealous. Do you have something new for me to chew on?
GD: No, I’ve been working on the latest Mueller book and I’m about worked out for the rest of the day. Writing is not hard, Robert, but the research is a killer. Still, if you don’t want the rat-faced gits in your old agency or Wolfe’s decaying Hebrews braying at you like a barn full of donkeys in a fire, you have to dot every “i” and cross every “t”. Not that these chinless wonders are capable of finding errors, but eventually someone might and then the jackass chorus begins. No, Corson told me my strong suit was my research and my stronger one was taking the results of it and making it readable without being a pompous, opinionated university pedant. When I worked for Army Intelligence years ago, I was well-known for my research. Of course, the whole office hated me.
RTC: And why so?
GD: Actually, because I worked on my material until I had finished, even if I had to spend the night in the office. I was known to have slept on my desk and subsisted on coffee. But the work got done and, most important, it got done right. And I never tried to shove my own views down anyone’s throat. I liked then, as I like now, to present both sides of an issue, clearly and without passion, letting the reader make up its own mind.
RTC: Very, very rare, talent, Gregory. Bill commented on this once and I would have to agree. Well, who do you work for now? This seems to be in your blood.
GD: Myself. I am a wonderful boss, Robert, really inspired and so kind to myself.
RTC: Do you treat yourself well at Christmas?
GD: Oh yes, Christmas. I haven’t had a Christmas card for years and not a present from anyone. It’s just another day for me and quieter than most.
RTC: I would invite you to have Christmas with us, but my son would be unhappy.
GD: Well, thank you for the thought.
RTC: And how is the Mueller book coming?
GD: Fine, and the blow-flies from your former agency are starting to buzz around again. Let’s see how much I can clip them for this time.
RTC: Well, I suppose if they can’t be more creative, they have to pay the price.
GD: No, they would never come right out and try to communicate with me. Why, the Gods do not deign to descend to earth to speak with mere mortals. And they pay the price, too. After all, they don’t care how much of the taxpayer’s money ends up in my pocket. What about the fool returning to his own folly? Or the dog to his own vomit? At least they don’t descend to the petty and sadistic harassments that we find in the local police.
RTC: I would hope not.
GD: That puts me in mind of a sordid but highly entertaining incident in my earlier life. Most people remember Thanksgivings with the grandparents or their first experience in the cramped backseat of the family car but I recall more entertaining things.
RTC: Are you planning to enlighten me? This has nothing to do with the Company, has it? You’re rather negative today, Gregory.
GD: I’m negative all the time. No, nothing to do with your people. Just an example of how to deal with illegally intrusive agencies. I was living in a rural area once and in a nearby town was a friend of mine. He was a gun collector. He actually collected Swiss Lugers.
RTC: German?
GD: No, Swiss. Beautifully made pieces.
RTC: I can well imagine. Go on.
GD: Anyway, he collected these and people knew about this. I want to stress that they were quite legal. The local sheriff’s people somehow got wind of this and began to harass him. I think they just wanted to frighten him and steal his collection. The police love to do things like that. When I was younger, I knew one cop who liked to take war relics like Japanese swords away from kids because he said they were illegal, which they were not. I fixed his wagon good but this is not the forum for that one. So he had vague and sinister threats like, ‘You could go to prison for years…’ and so on. He told me about this harassment. He had no money and it was a rural area where there are no real lawyers to intervene, so I gave the matter a lot of thought and finally hit on a plan to rid himself of the swine. Not nice but it worked.
RTC: Yes. What did you do? Shoot someone?
GD: Oh God, no. Someone else did.
RTC: This is beginning to sound rather ugly.
GD: It does get that way. First off, I told him to hide the guns, the Lugers, away from his home and I gave him some suggestions. He did, but he hated to lose physical control of them. Now you know, in the rural area in his county was a junkyard that was run by an old nut. He was convinced that the Communists were taking over the local schools and kept getting up at local governmental meetings and bitching about this. And, of course, sent long misspelled letters to the local paper. I didn’t know him personally, but I knew, or found out, a lot about him. He shot the neighborhood dogs and cats and was, in my estimation at least, a perfect foil. My friend now had no weapons, legal or otherwise, in his physical possession. So I got the name of the chief of detectives that was hoping to add some nice pieces to his personal gun collection and I called him at home. They wouldn’t have a trace on his line then. I told him a good deal of really accurate information to establish my bona fides and then said that he also had two German machine pistols, which I went into some detail on and that he had hidden them with the owner of the junkyard, who, I knew, was also a gun collector. This one was not very smart and he bought the whole cake. I waited a few days and then called the junk dealer. I told him I was on the local sheriff’s staff and we knew a gang of armed Communists were going to come out to his place and kill him.
RTC: Oh, sweet Jesus, you didn’t? No, you did. Go on, but I know the ending.
GD: Naturally. One dark night, two cars full of deputies, all heavily armed with guns and shovels, drove down his lane, lights out. The junkyard dogs started barking and the old man was ready. The one I talked to, kicked down his door and the old man let fly with a 12 gauge shotgun, full choke, pointblank range, both barrels, right in the face. Down went the greedy one with no head left. Reload and the one behind got both barrels in the tum-tum. Another one got it in the leg and they later had to cut if off above the knee. Screaming, shouting, guns going off all over the place, screams from the junkyard as the vicious dogs munched on deputies. My God, Robert, the neighbors said it sounded like the Battle of Cold Harbor. Some deputy had a Truflight 37 millimeter flare gun and he got winged and let fly up in the air. That’s the sort of tear gas gun that is really designed to set fire to buildings. A little tear gas for effect and a lot of incendiary material. The Feds used that in LA to nail the SLA. ‘Oh, gosh,’ they say after they burned down a house with fifteen people in it,’ someone must have knocked over a candle in there.’ So one of these shells went up and came down on a neighbor’s house. Set it on fire and by the time the rural fire boys managed to get out there, it had burnt to the ground with a wheel-chair bound granny inside. Of course, they finally killed the old man and all of his dogs and his place burnt down with two of the law roasted along with the old man. You could see the flames for miles. The next day, the remaining law-breakers were out there, picking through the smoking rubble and digging in the junkyard in a frantic search for the guns. Of course, there weren’t any guns. And as a precaution, I had told my friend to absent himself from the area and visit friends. Of course they came after him but he was 500 miles away and had been there before, during and after the carnage. And now the really nice part. The old man’s son was a prominent lawyer in another state and I called him up, telling him I was a horrified local policeman. He had no idea what had happened, so I said they had killed his father and burned his house down because he was making trouble for them. That lawyer went ballistic, as they say, and believed every word I said. And when he descended on the town, along with the FBI, I would like to have been in the civic offices. Of course I wasn’t, because I am not stupid but there were copious newspaper accounts and local gossip. I know there were several closed coffins at various funerals in the weeks to come. And huge lawsuits, Federal charges and so on followed. The local law could give no reason why they raided the place other than to claim some informant had phoned in a tip. Who was this informant? No idea. The lawyer got big money in the end, people were arrested and many new faces were seen in the much-subdued sheriff’s office. And I had my friend contact the son and tell him a story and tell him he was terrified for his life. The lawyer used his testimony and, good for him, paid for my friend’s exit from the area and his comfortable establishment under a new name elsewhere.
RTC: Probably got him under Witness Protection. That’s quite a story, Gregory, but I believe it. Your friend kept his guns?
GD: That was the drill, Robert, he kept his guns. There never were any machine guns, of course. I moved away out of prudence about this time so I can’t tell you any more.
RTC: Take care of your friends, Gregory, don’t you?
GD: Always, Robert. And I take care of the bad people as well. Does this turn you off?
RTC: Not really. I see a typical abuse of power there, Gregory, and I’m really so happy we seem to get on with each other.
GD: Now he could just have moved away, but why should he have to do that? They were wrong and that’s the end of the matter.
RTC: I told Bill once that you should have worked for us.
GD: No, I would not have. I am happy when I work by myself and I would not do well in a bureaucracy. They aren’t overly bright and they love to tell you why you can’t do this or that. The point is, Robert, that you win the real battle, not the paper one.
(Concluded at 9:42 AM CST)