TBR News May 23, 2018

May 23 2018

The Voice of the White House  

Washington, D.C. May 23, 2018:”There have been incidents concerning American diplomatic personnel in both Cuba and China.

The affected personnel report some kind of sonic attacks, at their residences, not the diplomatic areas.

The media claims that no one knows what has caused these episodes.

In reality,these sonic attacks are executed with what is know as audio-oscellators.

These are relatively simple and easily constructed devices that project sound waves and these can cause serious problems with a target’s nervous system.

Using the system devised by the German scientist, Eberhardt, sonics can be focused and can, using the correct frequencies, destroy a human brain and kill the target.

Eberhardt did work for the German army in late 1944 and it was planned to use this sonic weaponry in conjunction with the Uhu infared system.

The question isn’t what is causing these problems but is who is responsible?

Both Cuba and China are communist countries so the usual alleged perpetrators, the Russians, are not a logical choice.

Que bono is the most logical deduction.

If someone has utilized the audio-ocellator coupled with the Eberhardt system, they have a particularly deadly, and very silent, weapon.”

Table of Contents

  • Trump escalates attacks on FBI as he fights back against Russia inquiry
  • Trump lawyer ‘paid by Ukraine’ to arrange White House talks
  • Trump may not block Twitter users over political views: judge
  • One Teen and Three FBI Operatives: Was the Government Behind a 17-Year-Old’s Terror Plot in Texas?
  • More families of Sandy Hook victims, FBI agent sue Infowars’ Alex Jones
  • S. warns citizens in China after ‘abnormal’ sound injures consulate worker
  • S. diplomats in Cuba have unusual brain syndrome, but there’s no proof they were attacked, study says
  • The Family: The Octopus of God
  • Among the Persians
  • Israeli military shot over 500 Palestinians in the head during Gaza protests
  • The Pearl Harbor Attack: Secret Hitler Conference

 Trump escalates attacks on FBI as he fights back against Russia inquiry

President wields authority as weapon to discredit agency – but experts warn Trump’s tactics could backfire

May 23, 2018

by Sabrina Siddiqui in Washington

The Guardian

Donald Trump has dramatically escalated his attacks on the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the US election, and his fightback against the Department of Justice reached a turning point this week with aspects of the inquiry itself now being investigated.

The president’s growing frustration with special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry now appears to be having an impact at high levels – as experts warned that Trump’s fresh offensive could backfire, and the former FBI director James Comey counter-punched.

Trump’s manoeuvring came as reports indicated an FBI informant was in contact with several Trump campaign officials in 2016. Trump swiftly seized on the news to claim, without evidence, that the FBI had planted a spy within his campaign and demanded that the DoJ investigate the matter.

Now a meeting will be held on Thursday between top government officials and two senior Republican lawmakers – but no Democrats – to allow the congressmen to review classified information relating to claims the FBI deployed a confidential source to gather information on Trump’s presidential campaign, the White House said on Tuesday afternoon.

Made against the backdrop of a series of characteristically fuming tweets, Trump’s demand signalled he was embracing an aggressive strategy to discredit the special counsel’s investigation.

Trump was tweeting busily and ferociously on Wednesday morning, with declarations such as: “SPYGATE could be one of the biggest political scandals in history!” and inflammatory, conspiracy-style talk about the government he heads as the “Criminal Deep State”.

Trump’s demand also marks a significant use of his authority to potentially undercut the FBI and apply direct pressure on the officials tasked with upholding the independence of Mueller and his team.

“If they had spies in my campaign, that would be a disgrace to this country,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “It would be very illegal aside from everything else.”

The deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, responded to Trump’s demand by referring the president’s inquiry to the Office of the Inspector General, which acts as the justice department’s internal watchdog. Trump subsequently reached a deal with top officials at the justice department under which Republican congressional leaders will be able to review highly classified information related to the investigation.

The course of events raised fresh concerns over Trump’s willingness to flout the norms that have historically ensured oversight of the executive branch.

On Wednesday morning the former director of the FBI, James Comey, whose controversial firing last year spurred the Mueller investigation, hit back – also via Twitter.

“Facts matter. The FBI’s use of Confidential Human Sources (the actual term) is tightly regulated and essential to protecting the country. Attacks on the FBI and lying about its work will do lasting damage to our country. How will Republicans explain this to their grandchildren?” Comey posted. In a subsequent tweet he warned about a “dangerous time” for the US.

Trump’s combative nature has also increasingly been mimicked by his beefed-up legal teamamid negotiations over the terms of a potential interview between the president and the special counsel, as new addition Rudy Giuliani tries quickly to reshape the narrative in Trump’s favour.

There has been no evidence to suggest the FBI informant was embedded with Trump’s campaign, as the president is implying. The informant, revealed over the weekend as the former University of Cambridge professor Stefan Halper, was in contact with a number of Trump aides who had come under FBI scrutiny as the agency investigated communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

The president has long cast the entire investigation as a “witch-hunt”, even as the special counsel has indicted 19 people and three companies.

“You have unprecedented dishonesty … in terms of the false statements that issue from the White House on a daily basis,” said Richard Ben-Veniste, a lawyer and former Watergate prosecutor. “Provably false statements that by comparison make Richard Nixon look like George Washington.”

Jack Sharman, who was special counsel to Congress during the Whitewater investigation into Bill and Hillary Clinton’s real estate affairs, said it was not unusual for a federal criminal investigation to expand in nature, and Trump’s constant aggressions could “cause more trouble than they’re worth”.

“They maybe unintentionally can cause other people – including perhaps investigators – to take a different tack,” he said, adding that statements “can actually raise suspicions or cause problems”.

The investigation has left Washington divided along familiar partisan lines, even as the president’s repeated outbursts against the FBI have often proved challenging for his own party.

Pressure has mounted on Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, to more clearly denounce what critics see as efforts to interfere with Mueller’s investigation.

When asked about Trump’s “demand” that the justice department investigate whether the FBI infiltrated his campaign, the House speaker, Paul Ryan, expressed support for an inspector general review.

“It’s really important that we conduct a proper oversight of the executive branch to make sure that that power is not or has not or will not be abused,” he said.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat who is on the Senate judiciary committee, said Trump and his allies were “weaponizing false claims” against the FBI and justice department.

“This calculated, coordinated strategy,” he added, “is the last resort of many criminal defendants: when an investigation has you cornered, attack the investigators.”

This week, Giuliani suggested Mueller would follow existing justice department guidelines under which a president cannot be indicted. Legal experts are torn on that.

Meanwhile, any evidence of impeachable offences would place Trump’s fate in the hands of Congress.

But any moment of reckoning may ultimately lie with the American public, which is where Trump’s efforts to taint the intelligence community and its independence might prove most consequential.

While polling has found a majority of Americans support Mueller’s investigation, a growing number of Republicans believe Trump is being framed. A striking 83% of Republican respondents to one recent survey agreed with the president’s characterisation of the investigation as a “witch-hunt”.

 

Trump lawyer ‘paid by Ukraine’ to arrange White House talks

May 23, 2018

by Paul Wood

BBC News

Kiev-Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, received a secret payment of at least $400,000 (£300,000) to fix talks between the Ukrainian president and President Trump, according to sources in Kiev close to those involved.

The payment was arranged by intermediaries acting for Ukraine’s leader, Petro Poroshenko, the sources said, though Mr Cohen was not registered as a representative of Ukraine as required by US law.

The meeting at the White House was last June.

Shortly after the Ukrainian president returned home, his country’s anti-corruption agency stopped its investigation into Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

A high-ranking Ukrainian intelligence officer in Mr Poroshenko’s administration described what happened before the visit to the White House.

Mr Cohen was brought in, he said, because Ukraine’s registered lobbyists and embassy in Washington DC could get Mr Poroshenko little more than a brief photo-op with Mr Trump. Mr Poroshenko needed something that could be portrayed as “talks”.

This senior official’s account is as follows – Mr Poroshenko decided to establish a back channel to Mr Trump. The task was given to a former aide, who asked a loyal Ukrainian MP for help.

He in turn used personal contacts in a Jewish charity in New York state, Chabad of Port Washington. This eventually led to Michael Cohen, the president’s lawyer and trusted fixer. Mr Cohen was paid $400,000.

There is no suggestion that Mr Trump knew about the payment.

A second source in Kiev gave the same details, except that the total paid to Mr Cohen was $600,000.

There was also support for the account from a lawyer in the US who has uncovered details of Mr Cohen’s finances, Michael Avenatti. He represents a porn actress, Stormy Daniels, in legal action against President Trump.

Avenatti said that Suspicious Activity Reports filed by Mr Cohen’s bank to the US Treasury showed he had received money from “Ukrainian interests”.

We spoke to Mr Cohen and to the two Ukrainians said to have opened the backchannel for their president – all three denied the story.

The senior intelligence official in Kiev also said Mr Cohen had been helped by Felix Sater, a convicted former mobster who was once Trump’s business partner. Mr Sater’s lawyer, too, denied the allegations. The Ukrainian president’s office refused to comment.

As was widely reported last June, Mr Poroshenko was still guessing at how much time he would have with Mr Trump even as he flew to Washington.

The White House schedule said only that Mr Poroshenko would “drop in” to the Oval Office while Mr Trump was having staff meetings.

That had been agreed through official channels. Mr Cohen’s fee was for getting Mr Poroshenko more than just an embarrassingly brief few minutes of small talk and a handshake, the senior official said. But negotiations continued until the early hours of the day of the visit.

The Ukrainian side were angry, the official went on, because Mr Cohen had taken “hundreds of thousands” of dollars from them for something it seemed he could not deliver.

Right up until the last moment, the Ukrainian leader was uncertain if he would avoid humiliation.

“Poroshenko’s inner circle were shocked by how dirty this whole arrangement [with Cohen] was.”

Mr Poroshenko was desperate to meet Mr Trump because of what had happened in the US presidential election campaign.

In August 2016, the New York Times published a document that appeared to show Mr Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, getting millions of dollars from pro-Russian interests in Ukraine.

It was a page of the so-called “black ledger” belonging to the Party of the Regions, the pro-Russian party that employed Mr Manafort when he ran a political consultancy in Ukraine.

The page appeared to have come from Ukraine’s National Anti Corruption Bureau, which was investigating him. Mr Manafort had to resign.

Several sources in Ukraine said Mr Poroshenko authorised the leak, believing that Hillary Clinton was certain to win the presidency.

If so, this was a disastrous mistake – Ukraine had backed the losing candidate in the US election. Regardless of how the leak came about, it hurt Mr Trump, the eventual winner.

Ukraine was (and remains) at war with Russia and Russian-backed separatists and could not afford to make an enemy of the new US president.

So Mr Poroshenko appeared relieved as he beamed and paid tribute to Mr Trump in the Oval Office.

He boasted that he had seen the new president before Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin. He called it a “substantial visit”. He held a triumphant news conference in front of the north portico of the White House.

A week after Mr Poroshenko returned home to Kiev, Ukraine’s National Anti Corruption Bureau announced that it was no longer investigating Mr Manafort.

At the time, an official there explained to me that Mr Manafort had not signed the “black ledger” acknowledging receipt of the money. And anyway, he went on, Mr Manafort was American and the law allowed the bureau only to investigate Ukrainians.

US charges facing Paul Manafort

  • conspiracy against the US, conspiracy to launder money and failure to disclose foreign assets – all related to his work in Ukraine and filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He pleaded not guilty
  • tax and bank fraud charges later filed by Mueller in US state of Virginia, also denied by Manafort

Ukraine did not terminate the Manafort inquiry altogether. The file was handed from the Anti Corruption Bureau to the state prosecutor’s office. It languished there.

Last week in Kiev, the prosecutor in charge of the case, Serhiy Horbatyuk, told me: “There was never a direct order to stop the Manafort inquiry but from the way our investigation has progressed, it’s clear that our superiors are trying to create obstacles.”

None of our sources say that Mr Trump used the Oval Office meeting to ask Mr Poroshenko to kill the Manafort investigation. But if there was a back channel, did Michael Cohen use it to tell the Ukrainians what was expected of them?

Perhaps he didn’t need to.

One source in Kiev said Mr Poroshenko had given Trump “a gift” – making sure that Ukraine would find no more evidence to give the US inquiry into whether the Trump campaign “colluded” with Russia.

Mr Poroshenko knew that to do otherwise, another source said, “would be like spitting in Trump’s face”.

A report by a member of a Western country’s intelligence community says Mr Poroshenko’s team believe they have established a “non-aggression pact” with Mr Trump.

Drawing on “senior, well placed” intelligence sources in Kiev, the report sets out this sequence of events…

As soon as Trump was elected, the report says, Ukraine stopped “proactively” investigating Manafort.

Liaison with the US government was moved away from the National Anti Corruption Bureau to a senior aide in the presidential administration.

The report states that Poroshenko returned from Washington and, in August or September, 2017, decided to completely end cooperation with the US agencies investigating Manafort. He did not give an order to implement this decision until November 2017.

The order became known to the US government after scheduled visits by Poroshenko’s senior aide to see Mueller and the CIA director, in November and December, were cancelled.

The report says that an “element of the understanding” between Poroshenko and Trump was that Ukraine agreed to import US coal and signed a $1bn contract for American-made diesel trains.

Ukraine has its own locomotive maker and its own coalmines. These deals can only be understood as Poroshenko buying American support, the reports say.

In March, the Trump administration announced the symbolically important sale of 210 Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine.

Even under President Obama, the US did not sell arms to Ukraine. A well known figure in Kiev, now retired from his old job in government, told me he didn’t like what had happened with the Manafort inquiry; however, Ukraine was fighting for its survival.

“I want the rule of law,” he said, “but I am a patriot.”

He said he had kept in touch with his former subordinates and had heard many of the details about a “Cohen backchannel”.

He said that if Ukrainians came to believe that a corrupt deal had been done over Mr Manafort: “This thing might destroy support for America.”

Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service, the SBU, did their own – secret – report on Mr Manafort.

It found that there was not one “black ledger” but three and that Mr Manafort had been paid millions of dollars more from Ukraine than had been made public. (Mr Manafort has denied any wrongdoing.)

This information was given to me by a very senior police officer who saw the report. He said it had not been passed to the Americans.

The US reporting in this piece was done by Suzanne Kianpour

 

Trump may not block Twitter users over political views: judge

May 23, 2018

by Brendan Pierson

Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A federal judge in New York on Wednesday ruled that President Donald Trump may not legally block Twitter users because doing so violates their rights under the First Amendment of the Constitution.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan came in response to a lawsuit filed against Trump in July by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and several Twitter users.

Trump was a prolific tweeter from his @RealDonaldTrump account before becoming president and since has used it to promote his agenda, announce policy and attack critics and the investigation of possible Russian connections to his presidential campaign.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, which represents the president in the case, had no immediate comment. Twitter also did not immediately comment.

The plaintiffs have said Trump’s Twitter account creates a public forum and that the president cannot block other users simply because they criticize him in replies to his tweets.

Twitter, a social media platform, lets users post short texts, called tweets, to which other users may respond.

Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Franklin Paul and Bill Trott

One Teen and Three FBI Operatives: Was the Government Behind a 17-Year-Old’s Terror Plot in Texas?

May 23 2018

by Murtaza Hussain

The Intercept

Toward the end of last year, as the Islamic State was collapsing in Iraq and Syria, a 17-year-old Texas high school student named Matin Azizi-Yarand began an online conversation. He had found a fellow traveler on the internet, and was hashing out whether to leave the United States to join ISIS abroad or carry out an attack in their name at home. “When the time akhi comes I want you to come down here // if you are willing that is // just need some more planning,” Azizi-Yarand said in a series of messages sent on December 25.

A few weeks later, Azizi-Yarand told another individual whom he had met online about his plans to try to leave the country with others. Using the Arabic term “hijrah,” or migration, he told them, “me and others are planning // either hijrah or here // We are hoping for hijrah In sha Allah // we just need the funds.”

Unbeknownst to Azizi-Yarand, both of his interlocutors were working for the government. One was an informant and another an undercover FBI agent. Another online acquaintance, with whom Azizi-Yarand had struck up a conversation in March, turned out to be an informant as well. The government operatives documented all the messages Azizi-Yarand sent to them in order to build their case.

On May 1, roughly five months after the informants received the first message from Azizi-Yarand, he was arrested at his high school in Plano, Texas. Charged with criminal solicitation to capital murder and making terrorist threats, the 17-year-old, who lived with his parents in Plano, faces the possibility of life in prison. In a statement announcing the arrest, the FBI said that it had coordinated with local law enforcement to apprehend him and added it was “not aware of any additional threats associated with this arrest.”

Among other allegations stemming from the investigation, the government said Azizi-Yarand had planned to conduct a mass shooting in ISIS’s name at a Texas mall. Two affidavits made public at the time of his arrest said that he sent more than $1,400 to his government co-conspirators to purchase weapons and tactical equipment for the attack.

Azizi-Yarand’s case touches on some of the most controversial aspects of the government approach to domestic counterterrorism operations. His young age and the involvement of multiple informants and undercover agents in the sting operation against him raise questions about whether Azizi-Yarand, like many other domestic ISIS supporters, would have actually been able to conduct an act of terrorism without government assistance.

One hundred and forty-seven people have been arrested in the United States on ISIS-related federal charges, according to The Intercept’s “Trial and Terror” database. Some were arrested while making plans to travel abroad to join ISIS, while others were alleged to have been involved in planning attacks domestically. With the collapse of ISIS’s so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria, the rate of arrests of suspected ISIS allies has dropped considerably in 2018. Azizi-Yarand is one of only a handful of Americans taken into custody for supporting the nearly defunct terrorist group this year.

While the “Trial and Terror” database tracks federal prosecutions, Azizi-Yarand is one of a small number of terrorism defendants set to be tried in state courts. In another such case, a developmentally impaired 18-year-old named Mahin Khan was tried and convicted in 2016 in Arizona’s state courts on charges of supporting ISIS. With Azizi-Yarand, the government made clear that it had opted for a state court because harsher penalties could be imposed. “Azizi-Yarand, at 17 years old, is a juvenile under federal law, but is an adult under Texas state law,” the local U.S. attorney’s office said a statement. “Federal law limits our ability to certify a juvenile as an adult for prosecution, and in light of that, we determined that state prosecution of the subject will best address the case.”

The most comprehensive account of the government’s case against Azizi-Yarand is outlined in the affidavits, which document how the investigation into his online activities was conducted. There is no recounting of the initial contact between Azizi-Yarand and the informant in December, but the document describes how the conversations that the 17-year-old had with a series of government operatives culminated in an alleged plot to commit an act of terrorism this May.

While more details about the case are likely to be revealed over time, experts have begun to question whether the tactics used against the young Azizi-Yarand were appropriate.

“We have seen in other cases that, when a vulnerable person is surrounded by older, influential informants and undercover officers, it is easy for them to manipulate the person into agreeing to participate in a plot that they would otherwise not have considered,” said Arun Kundnani, a lecturer on terrorism studies at New York University. He said the documents released so far in the case indicate that Azizi-Yarand had expressed doubts or changed his mind about his plans at various points during the investigation.

“We only have a tiny amount of information about the extensive, monthslong interaction between Azizi-Yarand and the at least three persons working with the FBI to investigate him,” he said. “Until we have seen the full record of that interaction, it is impossible to rule out manipulation.”

In his conversations with the government operatives, Azizi-Yarand said he wanted to either travel to join ISIS in one of its foreign territories or conduct an attack in the U.S. on behalf of the group. The ideas he expressed to informants were sometimes disturbingly violent. He mused about attacking targets in America, including potentially a school, a Hindu temple, or a local mall. At one point, he fantasized about dousing a police officer with gasoline and immolating them.

Amid his wavering on whether to go aboard or launch an attack at home, Azizi-Yarand said that he had been saving money and that he would be “a genius with our jihad plans.” He also indicated in his communications that he had been speaking to others about his plans online, though it is unclear who he was referring to. In one communication on March 30, he told one of the informants, “I’m not getting martyd [sic] without you.”

In a messaged dated February 18, 2018, the undercover agent pointed out to Azizi-Yarand that he had been “having doubts” two weeks ago. Azizi-Yarand replied that his doubts had been about Islam, not about fighting. Over the next several weeks, according to the government, he began to make concrete plans with his online co-conspirators to acquire ammunition, money, and equipment to carry out an attack. He also took scouting pictures of a local mall and began writing a manifesto, stating that the attack would be vengeance against the United States for “slaughtering the Muslims with fighter jets and other such weaponry.”

The online discussions with the government operatives eventually progressed to an in-person meeting. In April, Azizi-Yarand took an Uber to meet the first informant he had met online in December at a hotel. They discussed the plot to attack the mall, which Azizi-Yarand said was “not too in depth” and would just be a “run and gun” mission. They also walked over to the mall while discussing the plot. Throughout the meeting, Azizi-Yarand was text-messaging another government operative — the undercover FBI agent he had met online — to keep them updated about his discussions with the informant.

After Azizi-Yarand and the informant parted ways, the young Texan continued communicating about the plot for the next several weeks with his group of government co-conspirators, until he was arrested at his high school earlier this month.

As with many ISIS-related cases in the United States, Azizi-Yarand’s situation is clouded by ambiguity. Over the course of the five-month investigation, he oscillated between trying to find a way to travel abroad to join ISIS and making bloodthirsty statements about committing violence on their behalf at home. But his young age and the level of time and resources allocated to the sting operation raise issues as to what degree the government operatives involved in the case may have ultimately encouraged the teenager to turn his online fantasies into reality. The absence of any other type of intervention that could have avoided criminal charges and a potential life sentence in prison also point to a particularly aggressive law enforcement approach. In an interview with a local NBC affiliate following his arrest, Azizi-Yarand’s father Reza Azizi said he had “no clue” what his son had been doing online, describing him as a “good kid” and a “good student.”

The fact that Azizi-Yarand’s parents were oblivious to the months that their son had spent on his computer discussing terrorism with government informants stands as a particular sore spot to some experts.

“It’s hard enough for parents to tell who their kids are socializing with physically, but when law enforcement agencies are using sting operations to target very young people online, it makes monitoring their behavior even harder,” Sahar Aziz, a national security expert at Rutgers Law School, told The Intercept. “It’s better to treat children involved in these cases as human beings who need to have their parents involved in changing their behavior, rather than viewing them purely as monsters who need to be put in jail forever.”

 

More families of Sandy Hook victims, FBI agent sue Infowars’ Alex Jones

May 23, 2018

by Dave Colling

AP

Six more families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre victims sued right-wing radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for alleged defamation Wednesday for claiming the shooting was a hoax and the relatives are paid actors.

An FBI agent who responded to the shooting joined the families as a plaintiff in the lawsuit filed in Bridgeport Superior Court in Connecticut. The families of two other victims filed similar defamation lawsuits against Jones last month in Travis County, Texas, where his media company, Infowars, is based.

A gunman killed 20 first-graders and six educators at the Newtown, Connecticut, school on Dec. 14, 2012. The families say Jones’ comments have tormented them and subjected them to harassment and death threats by his followers.

“He knew his claims were false but he made them anyway to further a simple but pathetic goal: to make money by tearing away at the families’ pain,” said Josh Koskoff, a lawyer for the families. “This lawsuit seeks to hold Alex Jones and his financial network accountable for those disgraceful actions.”

Jones did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Wednesday.

The lawsuit seeks monetary and punitive damages, attorney fees and other costs. It does not say exactly how much money the families are seeking.

After the first two lawsuits were filed last month, Jones responded in a YouTube video, saying that the families are being used by the Democratic Party and the news media and that he believes Sandy Hook “really happened.” He also invited parents who lost their children to his show to have a “real discussion” about guns, and said believes the lawsuits will be thrown out.

The plaintiffs include the parents of four children killed at the school — Daniel Barden, Dylan Hockley, Ben Wheeler and Avielle Richman. Also suing are relatives of two slain educators — school Principal Dawn Hochsprung and first-grade teacher Victoria Soto. FBI agent William Aldenberg, one of the first responders to the scene, also is a plaintiff.

Also named as defendants is Wolfgang Halbig, who the families say is a frequent guest on Jones’ show who also questions whether the school shooting actually happened.

Halbig, 71, a former police officer who lives in Sorrento, Florida, said Wednesday that he does believe people died in the shooting, but authorities have refused to answer his questions. He said police won’t give him a copy of radio transmissions from a state police helicopter that responded to the shooting, won’t say why paramedics and emergency medical technicians weren’t allowed in the school and won’t say who pronounced the deaths of all the children.

In separate lawsuits filed last month in Texas, the parents of slain children Jesse Lewis and Noah Pozner sued Jones seeking more than $1 million in damages for alleged defamation.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday cites actions by Jones’ followers.

It mentions Edgar Maddison, a North Carolina man sentenced to prison for shooting up a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant in 2016, believing a conspiracy theory that prominent Democrats were harboring child sex slaves there. The lawsuit says Maddison had watched an Infowars video about the “pizzagate” conspiracy theory.

The lawsuit also cites the case of a Florida woman, Lucy Richards, who believed the shooting was a hoax and was sentenced to prison last year for threatening the father of one of the slain children.

 

U.S. warns citizens in China after ‘abnormal’ sound injures consulate worker

May 23, 2018

by Michael Martina

Reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) – An American citizen working at the U.S. consulate in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou has reported suffering from “abnormal” sounds and pressure leading to a mild brain injury, the U.S. embassy said on Wednesday.

The embassy, which issued a health alert to Americans living in China, said it could not link the case to health issues suffered by U.S. government staff in Cuba dating back to late 2016.

However, later on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told lawmakers that the “sonic attack” in China was “medically similar” to the incidents in Cuba.

The unnamed American citizen assigned to the consulate in Guangzhou had reported a variety of “physical symptoms” dating from late 2017 to April this year, the U.S. embassy in Beijing said in an email.

The worker was sent to the United States for further evaluation. “The clinical findings of this evaluation matched mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI),” the embassy said.

The State Department was taking the incident very seriously and working to determine the cause and impact, the embassy said. Pompeo said that medical teams were heading to Guangzhou to investigate the incident.

The State Department added the Chinese government told the embassy it is also investigating and taking appropriate measures.

“We cannot at this time connect it with what happened in Havana, but we are investigating all possibilities,” a U.S. embassy official told Reuters.

China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. government on Wednesday issued a health alert to Americans in China, warning them about the incident it described as “subtle and vague, but abnormal, sensations of sound and pressure”.

“While in China, if you experience any unusual acute auditory or sensory phenomena accompanied by unusual sounds or piercing noises, do not attempt to locate their source. Instead, move to a location where the sounds are not present,” the emailed alert said.

The U.S. government in October expelled 15 Cuban diplomats from the United States for what it said was Cuba’s failure to protect staff at the U.S. embassy in Havana from mysterious health incidents at one point thought to possibly have been acoustic “attacks”.

Staff there reported symptoms including hearing loss, dizziness, fatigue and cognitive issues, though Cuban officials dismissed the idea of acoustic strikes as “science fiction” and accused Washington of slander.

The cause of those incidents remains unresolved.

The Canadian government in April said it would remove families of diplomats posted to Cuba after Canadian personnel there in 2017 also reported similar health symptoms.

Reporting by Michael Martina; Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Editing by Darren Schuettler and Susan Thomas

 

U.S. diplomats in Cuba have unusual brain syndrome, but there’s no proof they were attacked, study says

February 15, 2018

by Richard Stone

Science

U.S. diplomats who fell ill in Cuba are victims of a new neurological syndrome, according to brain researchers at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). But the team was unable to shed light on the malady’s mysterious cause, which the U.S. Department of State has characterized as a “health attack.”

From late 2016 through August 2017, as many as 24 U.S. citizens affiliated with the U.S. Embassy in Havana reported symptoms ranging from vertigo and sleeplessness to cognitive impairment. Many described hearing loud or disconcerting sounds before the onset of symptoms, or pressure sensations in their ears akin to the baffling that occurs in a moving car with the windows cracked open. “They felt something weird going on,” and when they moved away from the perceived exposure, some of “the symptoms abated,” says Douglas Smith, director of UPenn’s Center for Brain Injury and Repair. The State Department called in the UPenn group after initial examinations of diplomats at the University of Miami in Florida revealed persistent and inexplicable symptoms. The UPenn team’s report on the diplomats’ health appears in today’s issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The coincidence of the diplomats’ impairment and the auditory phenomena fueled speculation they were victims of a “sonic attack.” Last summer, citing what it saw as Cuba’s inability to protect U.S. diplomats, the State Department pulled most of its personnel out of Cuba and expelled from the United States a corresponding number of Cuban diplomats. The Cuban government has denied knowledge of an attack and has cooperated with the U.S. investigation, which is being spearheaded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In December 2017, a panel of Cuban scientists evaluating limited medical information and sound recordings provided by U.S. investigators concluded that the likeliest explanation of the disparate symptoms in most of the diplomats is mass psychogenic illness—a conclusion shared by some U.S. neuroscientists. The Cuban experts also found that the frequency of a grating sound in the recordings they analyzed matched the chirping of the Jamaican field cricket.

Smith says it’s “premature” to conclude that the diplomats were attacked. But he and his colleagues believe an as-yet-unidentified exposure triggered a “constellation” of neurological symptoms consistent with a concussion—or as Smith puts it, “a concussion without an impact.”

Although what happens to the concussed brain remains murky, researchers say the brain’s network of connections often appears perturbed, perhaps because of temporary damage to the axons that connect nerve cells. A concussion’s symptoms include slower mental processing speeds and memory loss, says Smith, whose team noted such deficits in 17 of the 21 patients they studied. “It’s not that any patient can’t do a given task, but it requires way more effort,” co-author Randel Swanson, a brain injury rehabilitation specialist at UPenn, stated in an accompanying news article in JAMA. The U.S. personnel, the UPenn team concludes in the new paper, “appeared to have sustained injury to widespread brain networks without an associated history of head trauma.”

MRI scans of the U.S. personnel were largely normal, apart from three individuals with nonspecific abnormalities in their white matter—the axons that link nerve cells—that appear to be unrelated to the new syndrome, Smith says. The clear scans are not surprising, he says, because standard MRIs generally don’t reveal signs of a concussion. Rather, damage to the brain’s connections is picked up by a finer-grained MRI technique, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The UPenn team is planning to conduct DTI scans of the diplomats. Any connectivity damage should still be visible, Smith says, because DTI scans can pick up such abnormalities months or even years after a concussion.

The UPenn investigators discount psychogenic illness as an explanation. The U.S. personnel “weren’t all together,” Smith says, so his team believes some patients developed symptoms without knowledge that others were affected. And the deficits in eye movement and balance they measured in some diplomats are objective evidence of damage, Smith adds. “You couldn’t fake those tests.”

Others are not ready to dismiss psychogenic illness as a factor. In an accompanying editorial in JAMA, Christopher Muth, a neurologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois, and Steven Lewis, a neurologist at Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, Pennsylvania, point out that the UPenn team evaluated the diplomats on average 203 days after onset of symptoms. Therefore “it remains unclear whether individuals who developed symptoms were aware of the previous reports of others.” Cuban panel member Mitchell Valdés-Sosa, director of the Cuban Neurosciences Center in Havana, emphasizes that the panel “did not deny that some of the diplomats are ill … nor do we believe that mass psychogenic illness is the only explanation.” Rather, he says, psychogenic illness “could act as an amplifier causing more individuals to feel ill, and could explain many of the subjective complaints.” Valdés-Sosa also asserts that many of the reported symptoms could be attributable to pre-existing conditions.

In their editorial, Muth and Lewis conclude that “a unifying explanation for the symptoms … remains elusive.” Valdés-Sosa concurs on that point—as does the UPenn team.

But Smith and his colleagues are convinced that the cases are a cluster, and are working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to further probe what they maintain is a new condition. One urgent task, Smith says, is defining the syndrome’s criteria. That will be important for evaluating any future cases, including U.S. civilians who visited Cuba and have since contacted the UPenn team claiming to have suffered similar symptoms.

 

The Family: The Octopus of God

May 23, 2018

by Christian Jürs

In an age when dissatisfaction with systems of governance is becoming a daily norm, the public has become more and more interested in conspiracy theories that purport to expose various misdeeds of governance and its various organs and purported accomplices.

We have seen an enormous body of revisionist literature arise, dealing with the assassination of President Kennedy, and as that topic slid down and away from public interest, another issue rose to prominence speculation and fictive writing. This was the September 11, 2001 attack by Saudi terrorists on various targets in the United State.

Invented stories about “robot aircraft,”  “’Nano thermite’ controlled explosions,” and other theories, many verging on the lunatic, sprang up and proliferated. While most of these entertainments were the product of inventive minds and eagerly accepted by a public that felt betrayed by their government and the upper levels of the national economic structure, a number of stories were very obviously clever insertions of deliberate disinformation from the very same power elite.

One of the recurring themes of the conspiracy claques is that of the existence of a secret society, or organization, that is somehow able to exert powerful but behind-the-scenes control over all aspects of governance. One of the favorites has been the Illuminati. This was originally a German association, formed in 1776 by one Adam Weishaupt, a Freemason and law professor at the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria.

The original Illuminati, then called the Order of Perfectibilists, and later became a secret society dedicated to the overthrow of both established governments and religions, specifically the Catholics. Eventually, Weishaubt made enough noise that the Bavarian Elector, Karl Theodor, outlawed them and forced Weishaupt to move to Gotha where he finished his life by writing books and abstaining from anti-establishment activities.

Weishaupt’s disbanded organization has become the inspiration for several generations of conspiracy inventors and because Weishaupt spoke of a single world government, ruled by men of honor and intellect (obviously impossible in any age), the conspiracy people have talked about a New World Order which might be satisfying and even desired but would be impossible of execution. To this mythic entity is ascribed all manner of manipulations and plottings

In addition to the Illuminati, fiction theorists have also targeted the Rothschild banking house and the Bilderburger banker’s association as being the controlling forces behind all the governments of the world. In the United States, one can add the Council on Foreign Relations, the fraternal Skull and Bones society, the Federal Reserve and a legion of quite harmless associations to the conspiracy mix.

In the background, however, only dimly seen and then only by established intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies, exists a very genuine, and very dangerous, secret organization that wields far more actual power than any of the imaginary creations of the Internet..

This is a power group, posing as a religious organization, and who, with its various associated sub-groups, pose a critical threat to the American democratic system., It is a Washington-based organization known as both ‘The Fellowship’, and ‘The Family’. This group, and its allies, the Dominionists and the Neo-Templars, basically control the American Congress, the Department of State, and have “very important” connections at the top levels of the Central Intelligence Agency.and the American military. The Family’s goal, according to one secret internal document, is to create a “hidden structure” of “national and international world leaders bound together relationally by a mutual love for God and the family.” The first hallmark of this theocratic clandestine organisation is their unquestioning reliance on the Bible in all matters, to the complete exclusion of any other authority, secular or otherwise  The second is their insistence on a faith in Christ as one’s personal Lord and Savior, again, to the exclusion of any other entity.

The Fellowship’s known participants include ranking United States government officials, both elected and appointed, corporate executives, heads of religious and humanitarian aid organizations,  ambassadors and high ranking politicians from across the world. Many United States Senators and Congressmen have publicly acknowledged working with the Fellowship or are documented as having done so and work together to pass or influence legislation.

This organization fetishizes power by comparing Jesus to “Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Bin Laden” as examples of leaders who change the world through the strength of the covenants they had forged with their “brothers.”The agenda of the Fellowship becomes much clearer when it is realized that Fellowship leader Douglas Coe preaches a personal commitment to Jesus Christ very and specifically comparable to the blind devotion that Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Chairman Mao, and Pol Pot demanded from their followers. In one videotaped lecture series in 1989, Coe said:

“Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler were three men. Think of the immense power these three men had…But they bound themselves together in an agreement…Two years before they moved into Poland, these three men had…systematically a plan drawn out…to annihilate the entire Polish population and destroy by numbers every single house…every single building in Warsaw and then to start on the rest of Poland.” Coe added that it worked; they killed six and a half million “Polish people.”

Though he calls Nazis “these enemies of ours,” he compares their commitment to Jesus’ demands: “Jesus said, ‘You have to put me before other people. And you have to put me before yourself.’ Hitler, that was the demand to be in the Nazi party. You have to put the Nazi party and its objectives ahead of your own life and ahead of other people.”

Coe also compared Jesus’s teachings to the Red Guard during the Chinese Cultural Revolution

. Fellowship members are taught the leadership lessons of Hitler, Lenin and Mao and that their genocide allegations  wasn’t an issue for them, it was the strength that they emulated that was of vitasl importance.

The Fellowship is associated with an organization called ‘C Street’, which has drawn national attention for its connections to the extra-marital affairs of Senator John Ensign and Governor Mark Sanford.

Prominent evangelical Christians have described the organization as one of the most, or the most, politically well-connected ministries in the world.

American lawmakers have mentioned The Fellowship more than any other organization when asked to name a ministry with the most influence on their faith.

In 1977, four years after he had converted to Christianity, Fellowship member and convicted Watergate conspirator Charles Colson described the group as a “veritable underground of Christ’s men all through the U.S. government.”

Senate Prayer Group member, Senator Sam Brownback has described group members’ method of operation: “Typically, one person grows desirous of pursuing an action”—-a piece of legislation, a diplomatic strategy—-“and the others pull in behind.” Indeed, Brownback has often joined with fellow Family members in pursuing legislation. For example, in 1999 he joined together with fellow Family members, Senators Strom Thurmond and Don Nickles to demand a criminal investigation of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and in 2005 Brownback joined with Fellowship member Sen. Tom Coburn to promote the Houses of Worship Act.

The Reverend Robert Schenck, founder of the Washington, D.C. ministry Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, described the Family’s influence as “off the charts” in comparison with other fundamentalist groups, specifically compared to Focus on the Family, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, Traditional Values Coalition, and Prison Fellowship. (These last two are associated with the Family: Traditional Values Coalition uses their C Street House and Prison Fellowship was founded by Charles Colson.) “the mystique of The Fellowship” has helped it “gain entree into almost impossible places in the capital.”

This organization has been described as one of the most politically well-connected ministries in the United States. The Fellowship shuns publicity and its members share a vow of secrecy. The Fellowship’s leader Douglas Coe and others have explained the organization’s desire for secrecy by citing biblical admonitions against public displays of good works, insisting they would not be able to tackle “diplomatically sensitive missions” if they drew public attention.

 

Among the Persians

Iranians want to be friends with Americans but Israel hates the idea

May 22, 2018

Philip Giraldi

The Unz Review

I have just spent a week in Mashad and Tehran Iran, speaking at an international conference on the future of Jerusalem as well as other related issues while also meeting with a broad range of Iranians, including journalists, students and government officials. The conference was organized by a non-government organization called New Horizon. It was the sixth such conference, intended to bring together speakers from a number of countries to discuss issues involving Middle Eastern security and identity issues.

To be sure, Iran, threatened as it is from all sides, has certain aspects of a security state. And as what is essentially a partial democracy run along religious lines, it has very clear limits on what constitutes acceptable behavior. But I think the representatives of the thirty or so countries who attended the congress would agree that there was no attempt made to limit free speech or guide discussions. The only attempt to censor the conference and its content has been, I would note, the blocking of sponsor New Horizon’s website on Google and presumably elsewhere in the Zionist/U.S. dominated social media and information-searching world. Indeed, the only coordinated activity that might have been noted at the conference itself was the loud hissing noise that accompanied any mention of the name John Bolton.

Indeed, there was clear criticism of the nature of the Iranian government openly expressed at the conference as well as very heated exchanges on a number of issues surrounding Jewish identity, Israel, the Palestinians, the status of Jerusalem and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Agreement (JCPOA) on the Iranian nuclear program. Privately, many Iranians we encountered were quite free in expressing their dislike of the religious leadership and their desire for dramatic change. It should be noted that such comments were not provoked by anything that any of us said. We were indeed being careful not to offend the host country or to get the organizers in trouble, perhaps more cautious than we had to be.

One might also mention that the timing of the conference and associated activities was particularly appropriate as it came on the heels of the President Donald Trump’s abandonment of the JCPOA and the slaughter of Palestinian protesters by the Israeli Army in Gaza. We watched in amazement on live television coverage as the snipers shot dead 58 unarmed Arabs and wounded two thousand more. A baby that was in an area far outside of the area where the shooting was taking place died after being suffocated by the clouds of teargas being used by the Israelis. It was ghastly and it was disgusting. Predictably the Israeli shills in both the U.S. and from Israel itself made the victim the guilty party, arguing that the child should never have been so close to the “fighting” there in Gaza in the first place.

And for those who are concerned that the Israeli Army might even run out of bullets, rest assured that all appropriate steps are being taken. Knesset member Avi Dichter reassured the audience on live television the army “has enough bullets for everyone. If every man, woman and child in Gaza gathers at the gate, in other words, there is a bullet for every one of them. They can all be killed, no problem.”

I have been invited to Iran before, but as an ex-CIA it was complicated for me to get a visa to make the journey. In this case, however, the hard work and networking of the conference sponsors prevailed, making it possible for me and some friends formerly working for the Pentagon to speak and also participate in the numerous panels. We were an instant hit among the attendees and also for the Iranian public, being featured in the local and national media and interviewed over and over again.

To be sure, some will say that we were little more than useful idiots, invited to disparage the United States and provide aid and comfort to its enemies, but that would assume there was any effort to enforce uniformity in the speeches and comments, which, as I have already noted, was not the case. There was, indeed, a theme of the conference, which was essentially that the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem was a new catastrophe delivered by Washington on the backs of the long suffering Palestinian people, virtually guaranteeing that a Palestinian state will never be allowed to develop. And U.S. uncritical support of Israel and its fascistic leader Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is, of course, the root cause of the problem, something that was discussed in some depth.

I will not make any attempt to describe the speeches and speakers at the conference as I am sure that such material will be surfacing independently through the alternative media over the next few days, but I would like to share some impressions as well as some particularly well-made points that emerged about the current and, unfortunately, burgeoning conflict in the Middle East.

Many at the conference came away convinced that the White House’s rejection of JCPOA was a watershed moment. The anger in Europe clearly being expressed in their national media last week reflects an understanding that the United States is no longer interested in cooperating with anyone to reduce the risk of war. If European nations act in support of their rhetoric there will be an increase in efforts to distance themselves from Washington. This will include mechanisms to work around American sanctions, to include buying Iranian oil with Euros instead of dollars and selling to Iran in ways that avoid U.S. banks as conduits. The eventual result, which will undoubtedly be supported by China and Russia, would mean a flight from dollars as the world reserve currency. The reduced acceptability of the dollar in turn would mean that the Federal Reserve will be unable to continue to print fiat money to support U.S. interventions, with severe repercussions for the American economy.

And the participants at the conference would likely agree that the United States government has no credibility, by which I mean NONE. It is not particularly a Trump issue but rather a Trump-Obama-Bush problem that has been festering ever since 9/11 if not before. We conference participants watched the slaying of the Palestinians and, by split screen, also witnessed how someone named Raj Shah at the White House told reporters at a press briefing that “The responsibility for these tragic deaths rests squarely with Hamas. Hamas is intentionally and cynically provoking this response” as “a gruesome and unfortunate propaganda attempt.” Sure didn’t look like that, Raj.

And meanwhile over at the United Nations, the irrepressible so-called American Ambassador Nikki Haley vetoed a Russian proposal seeking an investigation into the carnage, explaining that that Hamas, aided of course by Iran, was to blame for the violence. “I ask my colleagues here in the Security Council: who among us would accept this type of activity on your border? No one would. No country in this chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has.” She then walked out when Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian Permanent Representative to the United Nations began to speak.

Combining the words “Israel” and “restraint” in one sentence just might be a breakthrough moment for the hard charging Nikki, but one hopes for another breakthrough on her part in the ability to see dead Palestinian children as real human beings rather than just as targets for Israeli sharpshooters. Indeed, Haley might must consider that there are a lot of human beings floating around who are perfectly decent individuals finding themselves just a bit tired of being stamped on by the United States and its mad dog Israel.

The biggest lesson I learned in Iran was that in spite of all the years of abuse, Iranians still like and respect Americans. I heard over and over again expressions of that fact from ordinary people and sophisticates alike. They would love to have a good relationship and an American Embassy run by proper diplomats who are willing to talk and listen. The only problem is that the United States doesn’t do that anymore. For that reason, the Iranians expressing their liking for the U.S. did have one problem. They can’t stand what the U.S. government is doing all over the world. Well, neither can I and I told them so, as did the twenty or so other Americans present at the conference. I also told them that, unfortunately, the door to Washington is controlled by Israel, which has been doing an expert job at defaming Iran for the past thirty years. The door won’t open anytime soon.

And as sometimes what is expected does not take place, I have to report that I was not harassed by the U.S. authorities when I returned home. Other American conference participants who had long involvement in the peace movement had told harrowing stories of being hounded by the federal government every time they left the country and returned. In my case, I had been headlined in the Iranian and Middle Eastern media during the whole time of the conference and surely was picked up through the intensive USGOV monitoring of all things going on in Iran. I had fully expected to be approached by two thugs with badges on arrival, but they didn’t show up. Maybe next time.

 

Israeli military shot over 500 Palestinians in the head during Gaza protests

May 22, 2018

Mondoweiss

Health Ministry: ‘Israeli army killed 112 Palestinians, injured 13,190 since March 30th’

IMEMC 21 May — Dr. Ashraf al-Qedra, the spokesperson of the Palestinian Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip, has reported Sunday that Israeli soldiers have killed 112 Palestinians, and injured 13,190 since the Great Return March protests started on the Palestinian Land Day, March 30th, 2018. Dr. al-Qedra said that the soldiers killed 13 Palestinian children, and injured 2096 others, in addition to wounding 1029 women. He added that 332 of the wounded Palestinians suffered life-threatening injuries, 3,422 suffered moderate wounds, 9,436 suffered mild injuries, and 5,572 suffered the effects of teargas inhalation. Dr. al-Qedra said that:

502 Palestinians were shot in the head and neck.

283 were shot in the chest and back.

225 were shot in the abdomen and pelvis.

938 were shot in the arm.

325 were shot in the leg.

1,117 suffered various cuts and bruises to several parts of their bodies.

He also said that 27 of the wounded Palestinians suffered amputations in their legs, one in his arm, and four others had some fingers severed by Israeli fire. Dr. al-Qedra added that the soldiers also shot and killed one medic, and injured 323 others with live fire and gas bombs, in addition to causing damage to 37 ambulances.

 

The Pearl Harbor Attack: Secret Hitler Conference

May 23, 2018

by Christian Jürs

On November 28, 1941, at 11:45 AM, Adolf Hitler attended a State Funeral in the new Chancellery in Berlin for Colonel Werner Mölders, the Luftwaffe ace who had died in a plane crash. On the same day, the German Foreign Minister, von Ribbentrop, had requested the Japanese Ambassador, General Baron Oshima to see him at the Ministry on a matter of some importance. The Ministry subsequently called the Ambassador and advised him that the Foreign Minister was in an important conference at the Chancellery and wished to speak with him as soon as the conference was concluded.

This conference, which began at four in the afternoon and ran through, with a dinner break, until ten that evening, had been called by Hitler in light of important information he had received and was attended by the leadership of the Third Reich, including Göring, Goebbels, Bormann, Himmler and others.

No stenographer was present but Bormann, in his role as Hitler’s secretary, took notes which are reproduced here.

Reichskanzelei 28. November 1941

Bo/Fü (Bormann/ Führer)

Geheime Reichssache (Secret State Matters)

(Translation of original in German archives)

Documentary Record

At the request of the Führer, a conference was held today in the Chancellery commencing at 1600 and continuing, with a pause for dinner, until 2200. Present were the Reichsmarschall (Göring), the Foreign Minister (von Ribbentrop), Grand Admiral Raeder, the Field Marshals Keitel and Milch, the State Ministers Dr. Goebbels, Rosenberg, Dr. Lammers, the Reichsführer-SS (Himmler),  SS-Gruppenführer Müller as Deputy for SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich, Minister of State Dr. Meißner and myself (Reichsleiter Bormann).

The Führer opened the conference by personally thanking the Reichsführer as well as the Reichspost Minister Ohnesorge for obtaining under most difficult technical conditions, vital intelligence information that reflected strongly on the policies he was now formulating for the prosecution of the war in the east.

We had received information from the former Japanese Foreign Minister, Matsouka during his visit to Berlin earlier that Japan would move north and finish off the ongoing affair with the Soviets. The point of attack would be their important naval base at Vladivostok to prevent a Russian attack on them if they chose to move south against the British and Dutch.

With Barbarossa, it now became important that the Japanese move against Stalin’s rear and draw off as many troops as they could. This would, of course, greatly assist our major drive against Moscow.

The removal of Matsuoka as Foreign Minister and his replacement by Togo was, it must be admitted, a disappointment but one that had to be accepted. Oshima has repeatedly told me that an attack against Russia was not abandoned but over the intervening months, the extreme economic pressure the Americans have applied to the Japanese threatened the very existence of her Empire and specifically the oil embargo pinched off any future operational ability of her navy.

This was on the one hand a very clever move on the part of Roosevelt because it now became imperative that Japan must either surrender to his crude demands and in effect dismantle her military forces or if they wished to survive as a nation, they must secure the vital oil. We have Romania as our other source but Japan only had the United States and some oil from the Dutch. We now know that Roosevelt ensnared the Dutch into his web and got them to also deny oil to the Japanese.

The Führer continued that the results of his pressure were entirely premature and have resulted in the Japanese deciding on war against the United States, Britain and the Dutch. There is also the consideration that Roosevelt was acting thusly to aid his friend Stalin in his fight with us and we know also that the British are not pleased with the course of events. On the one hand the British are able to keep Stalin in the field against us, secure the assistance of the rich United States in the same war but on the other hand, they will certainly lose all their colonial control in the East Asian area and this is an area that is vital for them to hold on to.

The Großadmiral reminded the Führer that captured British documents indicated that Churchill was entirely unable to defend these areas and only recently has decided to send two British battleships and an aircraft carrier to the British base at Singapore as a deterrent to Japanese moves.

The Führer responds that the might of the Japanese navy, and here he enumerated a list of the naval units under their command, was so great that this gesture was doomed to failure from the very beginning. But the most important facts now in hand indicate that without a doubt, the Japanese will certainly attack both the Americans and British in the Pacific within ten days from today. The information comes from the highest sources and is absolutely reliable.

The Reichsführer quickly confirms this but states that no further information can be given due to its sensitivity.

The Führer continues that this is a momentous matter and in fact it represents to him a significant turning point in the history of the war. Britain will certainly lose her holdings in the Pacific and the United States will have to fight against the Japanese from a very long distance.

The Großadmiral then asks about the American naval units available against Japan to which the Führer replies that the Japanese plan of action is to attack both American and British military and naval units where they are found, either in harbor, on land or at sea. It is impossible for him to go any further with this matter. Now there must be a discussion of how this new factor must be used by Germany against her enemies. The German army will certainly destroy the Russian forces in Moscow and will sweep Stalin east of the Urals where he will be so far removed from Reichs territory that it will be impossible for him to launch any counterattacks.

As for the Americans, if their military units in the Pacific are neutralized at the beginning, they will have a long time before they can launch an attack against the Japanese who, if they are successful, will have not only enough oil to fuel their navy but the very important issue of space on their side.

The Foreign Minister states that the Japanese Ambassador has an appointment with him this day but this has been postponed because of the unexpected conference and the Führer requests the Foreign Minister to closely question the Ambassador as soon as he is able about any knowledge he might have about these plans but under no circumstances to indicate that we have any news of them. The Ambassador is very friendly to Germany and he might well prove to be cooperative in this matter. In any case, we will privately declare to him that in the event Japan should become involved in a war with the United States, Germany certainly will join Japan. Be sure to point out to him that we are already at war with Roosevelt and a declaration of war on our part will only allow us to openly attack their illegal convoys and perhaps find a method of shutting off the use of the Panama Canal which would effectively prevent the US naval units from moving from one coast to the other without a very long and dangerous trip around the tip of South America. I will speak to the Ambassador about this if and when the attack happens and perhaps we can coordinate such an attack on this vital constriction point.

The Reichsmarschall brings up the matter of the Japanese air forces and wonders if they can obtain bases in the Pacific would they be able to effectively bomb the United States. To this the Führer replies that Japanese bombers do not have the range to fly from the nearest US islands of Hawaii against the mainland and return. Such attacks would have to be launched from aircraft carriers but before this could be done, the Japanese must first wipe out American naval units in the Pacific and including bases in Hawaii and on the western American coastline.

Here the Führer addresses the Großadmiral on the subject of aircraft carriers and states that in a short time it will be possible to see how effective a carrier force might be and that it is his present opinion that work ought to progress on the one carrier and conversion plans should be continued for other units. The Japanese have a number of large carriers, more than the Americans and certainly the airplanes to launch a serious air attack on American military targets on the North American continent.

Whether or not the Japanese are prepared to do this or merely destroy US and British military power and stand fast behind the boundaries of their Empire is not at this time known. He again presses the Foreign Minister to attempt to ascertain from Oshima any information on this matter.

The Großadmiral indicates that the more British naval units that can be lured to the Pacific the better because then they would be unable to defend the convoys without which England will quickly collapse.

The Führer reminds him that the Navy has obtained the proof that Churchill will be unable to defend that area by himself and his information, which is entirely reliable, is that the movement of the battleships and carrier to Singapore is one that he had to fight to get from the British naval command and he is not likely to get any more ships without a bigger fight with his commanders than he is now having with Rommel.

Minister Goebbels suggests that play be made with the use by Churchill of colonial troops, especially from Australia and New Zealand, in Africa where as is known, they have suffered heavy causalities. A case could surely be made through the usual channels which he did not want to discuss here but which might convince the colonials to demand the return of their troops to defend their own country.

The Führer is in entire agreement with this.

Field Marshal Keitel comments that if this can be done in a timely way and is successful, these troops might be caught by the Japanese and destroyed before they could be returned to Africa.

The Führer responds that ten days is certainly not enough time to accomplish this, something the Field Marshal should recognize but he supports the Minister’s suggestion because it will certainly create dissension between the colonies and Churchill’s government. He does not see how a determined Japanese military assault on the southern areas cannot help but succeed and if this is the case, the United States will not be able to secure any bases close enough to Japan to threaten her. He also discusses his projected plan to provide Mussolini the equivalent of a Fliegerkorps for use in the campaign in Africa. These aircraft will be taken from the eastern front where they are no longer needed due to the wholesale destruction of the Soviet air force.

The Reichsmarschall then asks the Führer if he will declare war simultaneously with the Japanese but is told that since Germany is officially unaware of this move on the part of Japan, he can only pretend ignorance but at the same time can prepare both the declaration and the required speech to the Reichstag and the German people.

It is stressed here that this information is considered to be secret to the highest degree and under no circumstances will it leave the security of these four walls. He tasks both the Reichsführer and Gruppenführer Müller of the Gestapo to exercise the closest scrutiny of all communications and report any slips to him at once. He also informs the Reichsmarschall that his own Research Offices are to watch for this but without being told any specifics. They can be told that the situation in the Far East is particularly sensitive and they must be on the lookout for absolutely any information that relates to this. The Führer also discusses the discovery of a Russian spy ring in Japan with connections to the highest government levels that was uncovered by Standartenführer Meisinger acting under the orders of Gruppenführer Müller. He comments to the Foreign Minister that the leader of this ring, a German journalist, had close connections with the Ambassador in Japan and the Foreign Minister replied that there was still some question about whether the man was acting for Germany or Russia and had, in any case, supplied the Ambassador very valuable secret information about high level Japanese cabinet decisions in the past. The Führer remarked that the fact that the spy had been born in Russia with a Russian mother should certainly have aroused suspicions in the Foreign Ministry and that Meisinger had certainly performed a very valuable service. He also requested that the information from this source be very carefully checked for its accuracy and insisted that such sources ought, at the very least, be confirmed by an outside agency.

The Führer secures an oath from all the parties participating that this prohibition will be honored.

The subject then turns to the situation of the army before Moscow. The onset of the winter is not unexpected and if the capture of the city does not appear possible, it is his belief that the army might have to go into winter quarters.

Field Marshal Keitel says that he has received numerous such comments from field commanders who also complain that there is not enough cold weather clothing available for the men. A quick end to the campaign was expected but the Balkan incident threw off the timetable.

The Führer replied that if anyone was aware of this, he certainly was and everything was being done now to alleviate the condition. If the troops had to dig in, they had best prepare heavy defensive positions but still always keep in mind that the aim is to smash the center of Stalin’s empire and not merely keep warm through the winter. Reinforcements must then be built up for what he feels should be a final assault on Moscow. Leningrad and Stalingrad are certainly important goals but Moscow is the primary one and that should always be kept in mind.

There is a general discussion about the undeclared war between Germany and the United States and its consequences.

The Führer responds that Roosevelt had done everything he could to provoke Germany to attack him and this is something he himself would not allow to happen. He spoke about the objections of the Großadmiral in the past about this but while he certainly was in agreement with him about illegal attacks by the neutral America against Germany, he would not be tricked by Roosevelt, whom he considered a mentally defective individual who had no knowledge of anything except his own cunning domestic manipulations and was certain that the judgment of history would condemn this maniac to oblivion as another Caligula. Churchill was another defective who has destroyed his precious Empire with his actions and the next generation will curse him because they will have been reduced to beggars. It is certainly time for Japan to take her rightful place as one of the great world powers and her abusive treatment by Roosevelt has never ceased to astonish him

Then followed a lengthy discussion with the Reichsmarschall about not only the future plans of the Luftwaffe but of the strengthening of the Reichs air defenses against aerial attack.

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