TBR News October 24, 2011

Oct 24 2011

December 25, 272 AD

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

 

The Voice of the White House

 

            Washington, D.C. October 23, 2011: “Having breakfast today at the Cosmos Club on Massachusetts Ave., I sat next to a table with three CIA top people. One, I know personally and he is a Deputy Director. They were talking about Libya and Ghadaffi’s rather unpleasant killing. One said, very clearly. ‘Well, the raghead had to die. If they ever put him on trial, he could talk about his deals with us and there would be serious trouble.’ It is known very widely here that both the Army and, especially, the CIA, have people working with the Libyan rebels and shooting Ghadaffi would be child’s play for the latter. The President has told Panetta that he wants ‘no CIA screw-ups’ before the elections. Their murderous activity with drones aimed at Pakistani civilians is making more trouble and will have to slow way down or vanish, at least until after the elections. It is well known inside the Beltway that the CIA kills people the way sow’s piss. Quick and easy. The Army hates the CIA because the latter are creating terrible problems in Afghanistan/Pakistan by their murderous assaults on the civilian populations. They love to do these dirty deeds dressed in Army uniforms and operating out of Army bases. Repeated military requests to Obama to stop this and force the CIA to murder people from their own basses has met with firm denial from the President. We will all pay for this someday when a furious Muslim releases smallpox germs in downtown Miami. for revenge motives.”

 

 

The Green Book’s final chapter

October 22, 2011 

by Derek Henry Flood

Asia Times
            A violently shaking cell phone video shows a bloodied, balding man as Kalashnikov rounds soar through the air all around him. “Allahu akbar” his tormentors yell. One can nearly smell the gunpowder and feel the adrenalin of the National Transitional Council fighters.
            A bloodied Muammar al-Gaddafi struggles through his last moments on earth. The longest-serving ruler (42 years) in Africa’s post-colonial history was confirmed dead shortly thereafter.
            After overthrowing the Sanussi monarchy of King Idris on September 1, 1969, in a bloodless coup, Gaddafi carefully erected a personality cult that enshrined him as leader for life. In his transformation from an ambitious yet supposedly humble colonel in the Libyan armed forces to his confrontation with the United States and the United Kingdom in the1980s, he became the caricature of a Third World tyrant.
            The braided epaulets, hats worthy of a North Korean general and countless pairs of gaudy sunglasses became his trademark look. The “Brotherly Leader” as he often referred to himself projected terror in the West and throughout his beloved Africa. Comedians thought him a North African Liberace fit for endless lampooning and American president Ronald Reagan deemed him a “Mad Dog”.
            What all of this helped to do, though, was provide cover for the terror Gaddafi inflicted on the people of Libya for decades inside his hermetically sealed desert police state.
            The roots of Gaddafi’s undoing lay not in the fall of either Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia or Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Nor was it the slaughter of protesters that ignited the battle for the katiba (army barracks) that kicked off the February 17 revolution.
            Now appearing to be in its final formal stage, the demise of Gaddafi may be rooted in an event little-known outside of Libya. According to protesters Asia Times Online spoke with in Benghazi in mid-March, the catalyst for the end of Gaddafi’s rule began 15 years ago with the massacre of over an estimated 1,200 inmates at Tripoli’s Abu Salim prison.
            The Abu Salim massacre, as it became known, polarized Libyan society and created a fissure in the national psyche as never before. People milling about the exterior of Benghazi’s maqama (courthouse) poured over images of local “martyrs”, those men killed on June 29, 1996, after an uprising begun the previous day caused prison authorities to lose control of parts of the compound.
            The official line pedaled by Seif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, the then softer, friendlier face of the Gaddafi regime, which was silent on the incident for many years after it was alleged to have taken place, propagated that the Abu Salim incident was in fact carried out by hardcore jihadis belonging to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which sought to ultimately topple the regime.
            The Mad Dog’s most prominent, quotable son had become a “reformist” and sought to half-heartedly investigate Abu Salim, according to a Reuters report from September 2009.
            Some skeptics doubt the veracity of the Abu Salim claims made by victims’ relatives because even in revolutionary Libya, hard evidence of the massacre is scant at best. When a member of the regime did shed a sliver of light on the incident in a 2003 Human Rights Watch report, it was couched in the fashionable speak of the “war on terror” music-to-the-ears of Western governments: “Among the escapees were men who then fought with Islamist militant groups in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq.” [1] With so many top regime figures being killed rather than captured and tried, the truth about Abu Salim may never be known. Revenge, rather than truth and reconciliation, is the order of the day in revolutionary Libya.
            The raison d’etre behind the initial unrest may have become a footnote in the history of the very fast-paced Libyan conflict, but it should be remembered that the spark lay in the macabre warrens of Abu Salim on the other side of the Gulf of Sidra.
            A small group of feisty lawyers demonstrated for the release of a human-rights lawyer called Fathi Terbel, who had been arrested by the regime. Terbel represented Abu Salim families seeking information on the whereabouts of their sons, brothers and fathers. The lawyers in front of the maqama attracted hundreds of people on February 15. Within days, a regime inept at countering social media had lost control of the country’s second-largest city. Abu Salim occurred at the dawn of the Internet in the West and long before it reached Libya.
            The collective open wound, however, ceased to heal. Gaddafi’s response? Shutting off the online connection to all of Cyrenaica. It was the cyber-war that gave the rebels the edge. Soon, a satellite link from the United Arab Emirates turned the cold, dusty hallways of the maqama into a media center for journalists from all over the war – no minders needed.
            The regime in Tripoli hit back with dictatorship 1.0 tactics like dramatic, staged press conferences and taking foreign reporters on dog-and-pony show tours as if it was still 1986. Gaddafi rose to power in an era when constructing a tightly controlled mukhabarat (intelligence) state in the Arab world was an entirely realistic system of repressive governance.
            The technology that emanated from Silicon Valley to Scandinavia freed the vast human prison that was Libya while concomitantly isolating its calcifying leader. Libya’s first demonstrators were not calling for a parliamentary democracy in mid-February. They wanted answers about the victims of a poorly documented massacre that occurred a decade and a half earlier.
             Militarily, it was quite far-fetched that Libya’s sudden out-gunned rebels could overthrow the colonel’s regime. Sweeping early successes that appeared deceptively easy were met with fierce counter-attacks from air, land and sea.
            Asia Times Online witnessed the first rebel victory in the oil terminal port of Brega on March 2. Over-excited men fresh from the battle spoke of conquering Tripoli in short order. What stood in their way, aside from their much better equipped opponents, was Sirte, Gaddafi’s birthplace and where he was captured.
            The rebels deftly solicited help from the international community. An awkward coalition soon appeared at the eleventh hour with Benghazi on the edge of a siege. The intervention was framed in terms of globalist humanitarian speak that was immediately transparent.
             Whether it was driven by oil interests – France, stemming a potentially overwhelming human migration onto the European Union’s under policed southern tier, Italy – or competing for credibility in the Arab world, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the Libyan war became one of interests rather than ethics.
            Legitimacy was lent by a cavalcade of international actors. The United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Arab League all condemned Gaddafi when it was clear he could no longer be useful to their constituents.
            It was not long ago that Gaddafi was being praised for giving up his nascent weapons of mass destruction or sidling up to the administration of George W Bush in its disastrous “war on terror”.
            The Mad Dog of his father’s boss had become a partner in that “war”. Those with impatient recollections viewed the non-suicide bomber terrorism Gaddafi wreaked on the world as a quaint anachronism in light of Mohammed Atta crashing into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
            In this thinking, al-Qaeda members were entirely irrational “evildoers” who could never be negotiated with while an advocate of state terror like Gaddafi was a comparatively rational actor who could not only be dealt with but should be dealt with in a borderless, nebulous terror war with no end in sight.
            Gaddafi played good cop/bad cop masterfully, stoking conflicts around the world on and off for decades while also promoting himself as a peacemaker to said conflicts with perhaps the Muslim separatist conflict in the southern Philippines a prominent example.
            Despite all the imaginative talk of bringing the Libyan leader to the International Criminal Court in the Hague to be tried on the world stage – a theater Gaddafi played in all too well – it was mostly cover for a war designed to kill him.
            NATO repeatedly claimed through its engagement that its sole aim was the protection of Libyan civilians, but it became quickly evident that armed humanitarian interventionism had made NATO a belligerent in the conflict.
            Asia Times Online witnessed NATO fighter jets pounding Gaddafi loyalist positions on July 28 in a coordinated offensive with National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters replete with American intelligence officers who appeared to be providing real-time battlefield intelligence to their superiors.
            The United States had suddenly taken a side in a conflict that had a suicide bomber – normally considered the most abhorrent, incomprehensible form of Islamist terror – as one of its principal martyrs. The curious case of Madhi Ziu is little mentioned in the war.
            An employee of the Libyan state oil company purportedly blew himself up using a suicide car bomb to blast open the gates of Benghazi’s katiba, a key tactical success that NTC representatives said led to the fall of Benghazi.
            Dubbed the “Hero of Benghazi” and lionized on posters in eastern Libya, the West was now in league with a movement that held up a suicide bomber as someone worth emulating. Those who carried out suicide bombings were usually categorized as either unspeakable monsters or sexually frustrated brainwashed teenagers best liquidated before they could act.
            Contrary to the prevailing narrative about the motivations of suicide bombers, one editorial managed to describe Ziu not as a suicide bomber but as a committed man who carried out an “important act of self-martyrdom”. It is all a matter of perspective.
            It did not appear to be the type of humanitarianism advocated from the pouty lips of Angelina Jolie. Gaddafi was to die. That objective may have been danced around by NATO spokesmen and various government officials involved in the coalition, but the NTC men in battle were bound by the niceties of such Western legalisms.
            Each day as the war ground on, NTC fighters would scream, “We kill Gaddafi!” coupled with the requisite chants of “God is Greatest” while hot automatic rounds shredded the stiflingly hot air. Revenge for the crimes committed at the infamous Tripoli prison was on the docket and the sentence for Africa’s longest-serving dictator was an assured humiliating, very public death.
            The quixotic leader published his Green Book (actually a serial in three successive volumes), a sort of Arab-nationalist-socialist take on Chairman Mao Zse Tung’s Little Red Book.
            The Green Book espoused a desert egalitarianism with a “tribal ethos” aimed at eschewing both Western capitalism and Soviet communism with his “Third Universal Theory”, according to Libya historian Dirk Vandewalle of Dartmouth University. [2]
            The Green Book came off as a collection of semi-incoherent diatribes as opposed to a well-defined manifesto. One of the themes Gaddafi emphasized was the idea of atomized individual authority in a society heavily imbued with the tribal structure Gaddafi skillfully manipulated for over 40 years.
            The only individuals who retained any authority in Libya were Gaddafi and his sons. One if the initial locales wrecked during the fall of Benghazi was a building dedicated to propagating the Green Book. The book and its slogans painted up around the country had come to represent much of what the Libyan people resented about their perpetually unelected leader.
            Early on the morning of October 20, amid the ruins of Sirte, a fourth and final installment of the Green Book was written. Gaddafi was killed by jubilant rebels-cum-NTC government forces. The imagery of his last moments (and subsequent) corpse were broadcast to the world via Youtube and pan-Arab satellite television, captured on a mobile phone.
            The man who survived coup and assassination attempts and outlived his nemesis Ronald Reagan, could not survive in an era driven by social media backed by mobile technology that the rebel movement so calculatingly exploited.
             Gaddafi’s closed society was no more. Nor could Gaddafi outlast the lingering anguish from years of terrorizing the people of Libya. This pain permeating Libyan society stoked the pervasive rage that would finally kill the man who ruled Libya for 42 years.

Derek Henry Flood is a freelance journalist specializing in the Middle East and South and Central Asia and is the editor of the Jamestown Foundation’s Militant Leadership Monitor. He blogs at the-war-diaries.com. Follow Derek on Twiiter @DerekHenryFlood

Note
1. See Human Rights Watch, “Libya: June 1996 Killings at Abu Salim Prison,” 2003, available online at www.hrw.org/legacy/english/docs/2006/06/28/libya13636_txt.htm. 2. Dirk J Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp.97, 102-103.

‘Messengers of Death’:Are Drones Creating a New Global Arms Race?

October 21, 2011

by Andreas Lorenz, Juliane von Mittelstaedt and Gregor Peter Schmitz

Spiegel/DE

Plastic tanks and miniature models of fighter jets are on display in Steven Zaloga’s home office, and his bookshelves are overflowing with volumes about the history of war. War is Zaloga’s area of expertise, but even more than that, it’s his business. For 36 years, the historian has analyzed global trends in weapons. He currently works for the Teal Group, a renowned defense consulting firm in Fairfax, Virginia, a suburb of Washington.

Zaloga knows exactly how and where war can be profitable at any given point. And when he discusses which weapons have the best business prospects, he doesn’t spare a glance for his models of tanks and fighter jets. Those weapons belong in history books.

The future belongs to drones, remote-controlled unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with sensitive reconnaissance electronics and powerful precision weapons. Drones provide the kind of weapons system strategists have always wished for: They allow a military force to exert power while minimizing its own risks, and to carry out precise, deadly strikes, without sending its own soldiers into danger.

The additional fact that drones are comparatively cheap has made them a favorite with the United States, which has used drone strikes to execute over 2,300 people. Most of these attacks have been carried out as part of the hunt for Taliban members hiding in Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan, and those killed include American-born al-Qaida associate Anwar al-Awlaki, who was executed by one of the remote-controlled weapons without first having been convicted by a court.

A $94 Billion Market?

Zaloga points to a table showing Pentagon budget figures. In 2002, the US military spent around $550 million (€400 million) on drones. In 2011, the figure was nearly $5 billion.

Demand is growing around the world as well. “The Middle East will become an important market for drones,” Zaloga believes. “Oman, Saudi Arabia, Egypt. And then Asia, of course: Malaysia, India, Australia. And Europe: Turkey, Italy, Poland, for example.”

The analyst estimates global drone sales in the coming decade at $94 billion. Should it so choose, the US has a potential major export success on its hands. The only technological item possibly more popular is the iPhone. A new global ” drone arms race” is coming, the New York Times wrote.

So far, the US has limited exports of the futuristic technology in order to prevent any compromising of its own head start. The State Department oversees exports and the sale of armed drones is generally not permitted, with just a few exceptions for very close allies. But the technology “can’t easily be contained,” says consultant David Deptula, who until recently served as the Air Force general in charge of the drone program.

Less Complicated than Wrangling with Guantanamo

The US is carrying out drone strikes ever more frequently. Vice President Joe Biden, especially, has been an effective advocate for the weapons. It was Biden who urged his boss to end the war in Afghanistan and instead to combat the Taliban with drone strikes on their hideouts in Pakistan. Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama now sends out a missile-equipped drone an average of once every four days, while his predecessor, George W. Bush, did so only once every 47 days. Obama, it seems, has taken a liking to remote-controlled war, which delivers faster results and is less complicated than wrangling with Guantanamo.

The American fleet now stands at 230 drones. The Air Force trains more pilots for drone operations than for fighter jets, and last month acknowledged the existence of previously classified drone bases in Ethiopia, the Seychelles and Djibouti.

American manufacturers such as Northrop Grumman and General Atomics would like to start marketing their products to the rest of the world, and their representatives serve as cheerleaders urging more and more new drones. “Countries have an insatiable appetite for drones,” James Pitts, from defense contracting giant Northrop, told the Financial Times. Northrop representatives recently visited Japan, bringing along a 1:1 model of the enormous “Global Hawk” drone. The same drone, under the name ” Euro Hawk” will soon be stationed with the Bundeswehr, Germany’s Armed Forces, at its air base in Jagel in northern Germany.

A United Nations report lists over 40 countries that have bought remote-controlled aircraft, although most of these are used for aerial reconnaissance, the original purpose for which drones were designed. So far the only countries to carry out drone strikes, besides the US, are Israel and Great Britain.

This could change quickly, and interested buyers can select from an ever-increasing range of products. The American classic at the moment is still the “Predator,” a drone proven in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, capable of staying aloft for up to 36 hours and attacking its targets with “Hellfire” precision missiles.

But the Predator is on its way out and American arms manufacturers are at work on its successor, a model capable of carrying significantly more missiles, to be known as the “Avenger.” The “Reaper,” another attack drone, is also an enhanced version of the Predator.

Along with the attack drones, the US produces sophisticated surveillance drones such as the enormous “RQ-170-Sentinel,” also known as the “Beast of Kandahar.” This model was used prior to Osama Bin Laden’s execution for surveillance of his hideout, from high elevations and undetected by any radar system.

Israel Has Largest Number of Drones in Sky

The US isn’t the only country that will profit from the boom in drones. One of the most experienced manufacturers of the technology is Israel.

“Smile when you look up at the sky,” says Avi Bleser. “There’s always someone watching.” Bleser is director of marketing and sales at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), a company already hard at work supplying the world’s drones. IAI’s biggest client is Israel itself, a country with more drones in its skies than any other in the world. No other company has sold as many drones as IAI, and Israel is the world’s second largest exporter of drones, after the US. While other armies are just beginning to experiment with remote-controlled aircraft, the Israeli Air Force recently celebrated the 40-year anniversary of its first drones.

IAI runs a veritable city on the edge of Tel Aviv’s airport, outfitted with workshops, hangars, runways and a total of 17,000 employees. The company offers an entire range of UAVs, from micro-drones such as the “Mosquito,” which weighs just 250 grams (nine ounces), to the “Bird-Eye,” which two soldiers could carry in a backpack, to the “Panther,” transported by tanks and capable of flying up to 60 kilometers (37 miles) behind enemy lines and transmitting live images.

IAI’s most important product, however, is the “Heron.” Its latest version, the “Heron-TP,” weighs five metric tons (5.5 US tons) and can carry weapons. When the head of the Israeli Air Force presented the new Heron-TP fleet last year, he said the drones could also be used for “new missions.” Many took this as an indication that the Heron-TP was partly developed in order to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Heron drones are in constant use in Afghanistan, employed by Canada, Australia, Spain and the German Bundeswehr. The Heron has flown 5,000 hours for Germany alone just this year. And with the Bundeswehr’s leasing contract on its three Herons up for renewal soon, it might well replace the current models with the TP version.

Israel’s successful drone is omnipresent. The Heron flies in Libya, where France uses it for reconnaissance as part of NATO operations there. It performs surveillance on the Indian border in the Himalayas and provides the Turkish Air Force with target coordinates of training camps of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). It has customers in 30 countries, including India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and South Korea, as well as Brazil and Ecuador, as South America too stocks up on drones, particularly for use against drug smuggling.

Buyers are beating down the company’s door. “Once they start using drones, they can’t stop,” Bleser says, as he leads the way into a hall with several Herons in it. This is where the radar systems and cameras are installed. Bleser shows first the engines, made in Austria, then proudly points out the command center, a green, box-like facility half the size of a shipping container, with eight display screens in it. “You can even sit in your living room and control the drones from there,” he says.

UAVs make up 20 percent of IAI’s sales. With attack drones providing the “operational answer to any need,” Tommy Silberring, head of the company’s drone division, believes “every country wants to have drones.” In the picture he paints of the future, all aircraft will be unmanned — first cargo planes, then perhaps eventually commercial flights. “Automated systems are better than people,” he says. “Computers don’t get sick and they’re never in a bad mood.”

“The future of war will come in two stages,” Silberring continues. “First, warfare will be automated. Then, it will be able to operate on its own.” The command to fire, he believes, will no longer be given by a commander, but generated by an algorithm.

Part 2: Dangerous First Impressions from China

Beijing is also working aggressively to get into the global business of these silent killers, proudly advertising its own drones with names such as “Soaring Dragon” and “Dark Sword.”

Chinese arms manufacturers presented 25 new UAV models last year at the Zhuhai Air Show, Asia’s most important trade fair. Some of them seemed simply odd, for example a drone about the size of a duck meant to fly by beating its wings.

Others, though, made a dangerous first impression, for example the “WJ-600,” which can fire missiles and adjust its wings to match flight conditions. An animated demonstration video showed the WJ-600 attacking a group of American aircraft carriers.

Still, military experts believe Chinese drone technology is not yet as advanced as its American or Israeli competition. There is no question, though, that China’s engineers will be quick to catch up. With the US refusing to export any militarily applicable technology to China, the country buys whatever it can from around the world. Germany too has provided engines used in Chinese drones, one exhibitor at the Zhuhai Air Show revealed.

China’s largest manufacturer is the ASN Technology Group, whose “ASN-229A” model can fire missiles around 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles). Experts in other countries are convinced China is no longer simply imitating American technology, but has long since begun to work on inventions of its own.

‘We’re Looking To Fill the Gap’

Zhang Qiaoliang at Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute confidently informed the Washington Post, “The US is exporting hardly any armed drones, and we’re looking to fill that gap.”

These suppliers are also less picky than the US when it comes to their customers. Israel does trade with Russia and China is courting Pakistan. Consequently, American defense lobbying groups would love to see all of their country’s export restrictions removed. James Pitts at Northrop Grumman warns, “Unless something changes in US policy (UAVs) will be another area where in five years we will look back and say, ‘gee we missed the boat, the US missed the boat.”

Especially in lean economic times, drones seem like an ideal purchase. With the Pentagon expected to cut costs by $1 billion in the next decade and research budgets rapidly melting away, there’s hardly any money left for expensive new development projects such as fighter jets. A “Reaper” drone, on the other hand, costs just $10.5 million, 14 times less than an “F-22 Raptor” fighter jet.

Still, many military experts have mixed feelings about this development. David Ignatius, a Washington Post columnist who has also written successful, realistic thrillers about CIA work, has shown a great deal of sympathy for the Obama administration’s drone program and for the defense industry’s desire to export.

Will America Become Addicted to Drones?

But he dreads a world with a lot of fighter drones and few rules, and believes the US is setting a bad example with its remote-controlled executions. “How are we supposed to put up protest when Russia, for example, buys these aircraft to carry out targeted assassinations of alleged terrorists in Chechnya? Or Turkey to do the same with PKK representatives in Iraq? Or China with insurgents within the country?” Ignatius asks. He writes, “A world where drones are constantly buzzing overhead … risks being, even more, a world of lawlessness and chaos.”

Another detraction is that these precision weapons are not effective for use against large military forces. But they’re very well suited for so-called surgical strikes, even in high-population areas. This means civilians will suffer in future drone wars, as they already do in Pakistan.

Peter Bergen, an American expert on terrorism, has calculated that drones in Pakistan kill seven times as many low-level followers as top terrorists. According to estimates, 20 percent of those killed are civilians, despite the precision of the remote controls.

However, for Obama drones are the miracle weapons that will allow him to bomb his way to victory in the “War on Terror,” a victory his predecessor never achieved. America could become “addicted to drones,” Ignatius fears — and then be left wondering as both exports and competitors’ business take off.

American’s enemies, be they nations or terrorists, will eventually possess these weapons too. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has referred to his country’s first domestically built drone model as “messengers of death,” although experts doubt the drone’s capabilities.

“Our next great challenge is to deal with the fact that our enemies also have this technology at their disposal,” says Deptula, the former Air Force general.

Clear international conventions could help to regulate the use of drones, but the Obama administration is digging in behind legal guidelines established by George W. Bush, which say that those responsible for terrorists attacks may be hunted anywhere, in any manner, with the president deriving the right to use drones from the obligation for self-defense.

A Divide in Thinking

But even for some within the Obama administration, this justification has grown too thin to hold up to the current volume of drone strikes. This September saw an open disagreement between the US State Department, which wanted to allow drone strikes only to counter direct, imminent terrorist attacks, and hawks within the Pentagon, who wanted to keep all options open, everywhere.

Obama’s top anti-terrorism advisor, John Brennan, made a trip to Harvard University’s renowned Law School to deliver an address on the legal principles behind the war against terrorism, a speech that lent support to the hardliners. According to Brennan, drone strikes against terrorists are also allowed in regions such as Yemen or Somalia, which are not in a state of war as Afghanistan is, but where he says al-Qaida supporters hide out to plan further attacks on the US.

This line of argument has raised concerns even among some Republicans. Presidential candidate Ron Paul wondered whether it might lead to “a precedent of an American president assassinating people who he thinks are bad.” Other drone detractors talk of “extrajudicial murder.”

So far, the White House has consistently managed to turn a blind eye to the risks of the drone boom, for example the possibility that these weapons could be captured by terrorists. Just a few weeks ago, a 26-year-old man was arrested in Boston for allegedly planning to load model airplanes with explosives and fly them into the Pentagon. The US Army is already at work on deadly drones that soldiers would be able to carry in their packs. Such a model would be ideal for any terrorists who might manage to get their hands on it.

The Perils of Auto-Pilot War

Peter Singer, an expert on modern warfare at the Brookings Institution, isn’t surprised that what were originally unarmed aircraft have so quickly developed into successful and deadly weapons. The same has happened many times throughout history, he says, for example with airplanes. But Singer expresses surprise at how unprepared we are for a world with many drone-equipped nations — and for the new challenges particular to this technology.

Those challenges can’t be overlooked. Singer describes weapons experts who, like their Israeli counterparts, have long been working on sensors that would allow UAVs to seek out their own targets, not even needing to rely on human remote control.

Automatic homing has already had successful trial runs at a US Air Force base in Georgia, yet hardly anyone has examined the potential consequences of waging autopilot war. “Legal and ethical experts have a hard time countering this, because they simply can’t keep up with the pace of drone technology,” Singer says.

And once again, those opponents might be too late. The US administration plans to release the latest, updated version of its pre-approved list of arms exports soon. Lobbyists for the drone manufacturers hope this will make it easier for their clients to move their wares.

In Fairfax, Virginia, analyst Zaloga sits in front of his model tanks and planes, already excited for this next development. The restrictions on exports up to now had often been “extreme,” he says.

 

The FBI Announces Gangs Have Infiltrated Every Branch Of The Military

October. 22, 2011
by Robert Johnson |

Business Insider

 

The FBI has released a new gang assessment announcing that there are 1.4 million gang members in the US, a 40 percent increase since 2009, and that many of these members are getting inside the military (via Stars and Stripes).

The report says the military has seen members from 53 gangs and 100 regions in the U.S. enlist in every branch of the armed forces. Members of every major street gang, some prison gangs, and outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs) have been reported on both U.S. and international military installations.

From the report:

Through transfers and deployments, military-affiliated gang members expand their culture and operations to new regions nationwide and worldwide, undermining security and law enforcement efforts to combat crime. Gang members with military training pose a unique threat to law enforcement personnel because of their distinctive weapons and combat training skills and their ability to transfer these skills to fellow gang members.

The report notes that while gang members have been reported in every branch of service, they are concentrated in the U.S. Army, Army Reserves, and the Army National Guard.

Many street gang members join the military to escape the gang lifestyle or as an alternative to incarceration, but often revert back to their gang associations once they encounter other gang members in the military. Other gangs target the U.S. military and defense systems to expand their territory, facilitate criminal activity such as weapons and drug trafficking, or to receive weapons and combat training that they may transfer back to their gang. Incidents of weapons theft and trafficking may have a negative impact on public safety or pose a threat to law enforcement officials.

The FBI points out that many gangs, especially the bikers, actively recruit members with military training and advise young members with no criminal record to join the service for weapon access and combat experience.
 
 Elie Wiesel Is A Fraud!

October 22, 2011

by:Brother Nathanael Kapner

Perjury is a punishable crime in America carrying with it up to five years imprisonment and the disgrace that it brings upon the offender.
            In a recent California court case, Elie Wiesel, a self-styled eyewitness of the so called Holocaust, stated UNDER OATH that while at Auschwitz he was tattooed on his left arm with the number: A7713.
            Wiesel added that his father’s tattooed number was: A7712.
            But, according to a former prisoner at Auschwitz, Hungarian Jew Miklos Gruner, who was at the camp the same time claimed by Elie Wiesel, the number A7713 was assigned to a very different person, Gruner’s friend: a Lazar Wiesel, NOT Elie Wiesel.
            The first names “Elie” and “Lazar” are diminutives of the Hebrew name, Eleazar. Thus, Gruner contends, Elie Wiesel has committed a crass deception and imposture by pretending to be Gruner’s friend and former fellow prisoner, Lazar Wiesel.
            First of all, let’s take a close look at Elie Wiesel’s left arm. And while we’re at it, at his right arm as well. Evidently, no sign of an imprinted tattoo can be seen.
            Second, Gruner – who in his book “Identity Theft” sets out to prove that Elie Wiesel is a fraud – received a letter from the Auschwitz Museum in October of 2003, affirming that the number, A7713, claimed by Elie Wiesel as his, was indeed in fact assigned to Gruner’s friend, Lazar Wiesel, recorded as being born on September 4 1913, NOT September 30 1928, the birth date of Elie Wiesel.
            The Auschwitz Museum Letter also affirmed to Gruner that the number, A7712, which Elie Wiesel attributes to his father Shlomo, was actually given to Abraham Wiesel, Lazar’s older brother.
            In his book, Night, Elie Wiesel opens with the statement that upon arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau in June of 1944 when Wiesel was only 15, he saw before him: “Gigantic flames leaping up from a ditch into which Jewish babies were thrown.”
            Gruner calls this an outright lie, asserting in his book, Identity Theft: “I had never seen ditches with open fire where children were burning.”
            This was later verified in 1988 by American Federal Court expert in execution technology, Fred Leuchter, who reported that Auschwitz, being built upon a swamp with a high water table, made it impossible for bodies to be burned in ditches.
            In January of 1945, the Auschwitz prisoners, which included Miklos Gruner and his friend, Lazar Wiesel, were transferred to Buchenwald.
             Liberated by the Americans that spring, a photo was taken by a US soldier that was later entitled, “Crowded Bunks in the Prison Camp at Buchenwald.”
            Elie Wiesel has referred to this photo as proof of his internment, and has pointed to a man on the second row as being himself.
            Again, Gruner says “No!” noting that the man Wiesel claims to be himself was a man in his thirties and not a boy of 16, the age Elie Wiesel would have been at the time.
            Notice that the man has an aquiline nose and has full lips while the teenage Wiesel’s nose is obviously concave and his lips, thin.
            The thirty-year-old looking man also has a receding hair line while the hairline of Wiesel when a teen is well up to the base of his forehead.
            In 1986, Miklos Gruner was invited to meet Elie Wiesel in Stockholm. The Swedish hosts informed him that this was the same person he knew in the camps under the name Lazar Wiesel.
            Upon meeting Elie Wiesel, Gruner said afterward: “I was stunned to see a man I didn’t recognize at all – he was certainly not my friend and fellow prisoner.”
            Gruner also recalled that he was surprised that Wiesel could not speak Hungarian but spoke English with a strong French accent even though Elie Wiesel claims he grew up in Sighet, Hungary.
            Gruner and all the other evidence makes a strong case that the Nobel Prize Laureate Wiesel is nothing less than an impostor!

http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=664

Police brutality charges sweep across the US

From Naomi Wolf’s arrest in New York to shootings in Tucson and Florida, forces face allegations of abuse of power 

October 22, 2011

by Paul Harris

guardian.co.uk,

Officer Michael Daragjati had no idea that the FBI was listening to his phone calls. Otherwise he would probably not have described his arrest and detention of an innocent black New Yorker in the manner he did.

Daragjati boasted to a woman friend that, while on patrol in Staten Island, he had “fried another nigger”. It was “no big deal”, he added. The FBI, which had been investigating another matter, then tried to work out what had happened.

According to court documents released in New York, Daragjati and his partner had randomly stopped and frisked a black man who had become angry and asked for Daragjati’s name and badge number. Daragjati, 32, and with eight years on the force, had no reason to stop the man, and had found nothing illegal. But he arrested him and fabricated an account of him resisting arrest. The man, now referred to in papers only as John Doe because of fears for his safety, spent two nights in jail. He had merely been walking alone through the neighbourhood.

The shocking story has added to a growing sense that there are serious problems of indiscipline and law-breaking in US police forces. Last week the feminist author Naomi Wolf was arrested outside an awards ceremony in Manhattan. She had been advising Occupy Wall Street protesters of their rights to continue demonstrating outside the event. Instead, as she joined the protest, she was carted off to jail in her evening gown. That incident is only the most high-profile of many apparently illegal police actions around the protests. One senior officer, deputy inspector Anthony Bologna, created headlines worldwide when he pepper-sprayed young women behind a police barricade.

A report from the New York Civil Liberties Union recently looked at police use of Taser stun guns in the state, and revealed that in 60% of incidents where they were used, the incident did not meet the recommended criteria for such a weapon. Some cases involved people already handcuffed and 40% involved “at risk” subjects such as children, the elderly or mentally ill. “This disturbing pattern of misuse and abuse endangers lives,” said the NYCLU’s executive director, Donna Lieberman.

In Los Angeles, officers in the sheriff’s department are accused of physically abusing some prison inmates and having sex with others. An internal report, obtained by the Los Angeles Times, revealed allegations that included beating people visiting relatives in jail. In Pittsburgh, there is the case of Jordan Miles, a high-flying high-school student stopped by three plainclothes policemen. Miles, 18 at the time, was walking to his grandmother’s house and had no idea who the men were, as they did not identify themselves. He ran, but the officers caught him and beat him so badly that he ended up in hospital. He is undergoing neurological treatment for memory problems and has had to drop out of college.

            Yet it was Miles who was charged with aggravated assault – a case that a judge later threw out. His mother, Terez Miles, said: “We are no strangers to police brutality in the city of Pittsburgh, but what they did was terrible and then they lied about it.”

In Chicago, Jimmel Cannon, 13, was shot eight times by police who claimed that he had a BB gun in his hand. His family said that he had his hands in the air. In Tucson, Arizona, former marine Jose Guerena was killed by a Swat team on a drugs raid. They found nothing illegal, but Guerena was shot 23 times.

The list goes on. Miami is still dealing with the fallout of the fatal shooting of Raymond Herisse. He had been driving a car out of which police claimed gunshots came. However, it took three days before they produced a weapon. They also confiscated and destroyed the phones of people trying to record the incident.

“There is a widespread, continuing pattern of officers ordering people to stop taking photographs or video in public places, and harassing, detaining and arresting those who fail to comply,” said Chris Calabrese, of the American Civil Liberties Union. Campaigners say the spread of camera phones is why so many incidents of brutality are appearing.

In another recorded call, Daragjati complained to a friend: “I could throw somebody a beating, they catch me on camera, and I’m fired.” Some activists have taken that to heart. Diop Kamau, a former officer, runs the Florida-based Police Complaint Centre, which investigates allegations of police abuse nationwide. “Police are now facing an onslaught of scrutiny because everyone has a cellphone,” he said.

Kamau said that many police departments still had a culture of secrecy and many officers believed that there was little likelihood of punishment even if caught. “The police fill in the blanks. They say what happened and they will be believed,” he said.

One weakness is that there is no central organisation for the police, and local departments do not release data on complaints or allegations of abuse. “The problem is that there is an absence of research,” said Professor John Liederbach, an expert in American policing at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. As the list of complaints and incidents grows, that might be about to change.

 

With Goldman’s Foray Into Higher Education, A Predatory Pursuit Of Students And Revenues

 

October 23, 2011

by Chris Kirkham

HuffingtonPost

Education Management Corp. was already a swiftly growing player in the lucrative world of for-profit higher education, with annual revenues topping $1 billion, but it had its sights set on industry domination. So, five years ago, the Pittsburgh company’s executives agreed to sell its portfolio of more than 70 colleges to a trio of investment partnerships for $3.4 billion, securing the needed capital for an aggressive national expansion.

One of the new partners brought an outsized reputation for market savvy, deep pockets and a relentless pursuit of profits — the Wall Street goliath, Goldman Sachs.

After the deal closed and Goldman became a partner, employees soon noticed a drastic shift in culture. Longtime admissions managers were replaced, ushering in an era in which recruiters were endlessly hounded by supervisors about hitting weekly enrollment targets. The admissions staff nearly tripled, requiring expanded floor space to accommodate a sales force of more than 2,600 across the country.

Management handed down revamped telemarketing scripts designed to prey on poor and uneducated consumers, honing in on their past mistakes in life as a ploy to convince them that college would solve all their problems, according to conversations with more than a dozen current and former Education Management Corp. employees over the past two months.

“You’d probe to find a weakness,” said Brian Klein, a former admissions employee who worked for three years at Argosy University Online, one of four major colleges operated by EDMC. “You basically take all that failure and all those bad decisions, and you spin it around and put it right back in their face as guilt, to go to this shitty university and run up all of this debt.”

Just as the subprime mortgage bubble was giving way to a bust that would help trigger a devastating financial crisis, Goldman Sachs, a firm that had been at the center of Wall Street’s rampant mortgage speculation, found its way to a new area of explosive growth: In claiming what would eventually become a 41 percent stake in Education Management Corp., Goldman secured itself a means of tapping into the boom in for-profit higher education. The federal government was boosting aid to college students nationwide, just as a declining economy prompted millions of Americans to seek refuge in higher education, leading to dramatically expanding enrollments at many institutions.

But unlike in the mortgage markets, where some unwise or unlucky investor got saddled with the bad loans after the festivities ended and home prices fell, this new market in higher education boasted seemingly unlimited growth potential at virtually zero risk. The burden of college loan repayment falls entirely on students’ backs, shielding corporations from the consequences of default. The colleges essentially receive all their revenues upfront, primarily through federal government loans and grants for tuition, regardless of whether students are able to gain employment and pay back their loans.

Soon after the Goldman buyout, the newly private Education Management LLC embarked on its most ambitious period of growth — one that has recently brought it crosswise with federal prosecutors, who have accused the company of widespread fraud in its recruitment processes.

The timing for expansion had been ideal: With the help of current House Speaker John Boehner, Congress in February 2006 deregulated the world of online learning, opening a significant frontier to colleges seeking to expand their enrollments. A month after the online learning law took effect, in March, EDMC’s board of directors announced the acquisition by Goldman and its partners.

The company’s newly installed board, which included representatives from Goldman Sachs and the other private equity investors, sought a new team of executives to run the operations. They drew from the ranks of EDMC’s biggest competitor, the University of Phoenix. Chief among those new recruits was Todd S. Nelson, the longtime former chairman and chief executive of Phoenix’s parent company, the Apollo Group.

Under Nelson, the University of Phoenix had become the unquestionable star of the for-profit higher education world, boasting more than 300,000 students and revenues topping $2.4 billion in 2006 — triple the revenues from five years earlier. But he left abruptly in 2006, after signing a $9.8 million settlement with the Department of Education over allegations of widespread recruiting violations at the school — allegations that have now resurfaced at EDMC.

            Under Nelson’s new leadership, enrollment and profits at EDMC skyrocketed further. The number of online recruits in particular grew at an astronomical rate, increasing fivefold between 2006 and 2009, after deregulation allowed the company’s classrooms to become completely virtual. By late 2009 the company tapped Wall Street again, with an initial public offering that netted more than $330 million.

But a recent complaint from the U.S. Justice Department detailed a business bent on recruiting students at all costs, a description supported by the accounts of the employees interviewed by the Huffington Post. Hidden behind the upbeat earnings calls and bullish quarterly reports was a cutthroat sales culture that rewarded employees who regularly bent the truth and took advantage of underprivileged and unsuspecting consumers, employees said.

Goldman Sachs and Providence Equity Partners, the other major private equity player in the deal, declined to comment for this article.

According to a statement from EDMC, “the company’s focus on the student experience and success did not change after the 2006 transaction.” The statement noted that EDMC has doubled expenditures on capital improvements intended to benefit students in the five years after the private equity deal.

But employees recounted a distinct culture shift once the company went private under Goldman Sachs and the other private equity investors, as day-to-day operations warped from a commitment to students and their success into an environment laser-focused on hitting mandated enrollment targets. New recruits were viewed simply as a conduit for federal student assistance dollars, the employees said, and pressure mounted from management to enroll anyone at any cost.

Recruiters told people with felony criminal records that pursuing a criminal justice degree would allow them to achieve their dreams of joining the FBI — an impossible scenario, because the bureau is barred from hiring people who have been convicted of such offenses. They convinced students with no access to a computer or Internet that they could use the local library for classes, even though they would need to save files and download specific software to access coursework.

“It just got to the point where I felt like I was lying to these people on a regular basis,” said Patrick Flynn, a recruiter at EDMC’s South University online from 2006 through 2009, when he quit. “Honestly, I just felt dirty doing the things I was doing. It’s almost like they were trying to make me take advantage of people’s belief in what this education was going to get them, when I didn’t buy into it myself.”

EXPONENTIAL GROWTH

Education Management Corp. had grown from humble roots, getting on the map by purchasing the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in 1970. After EDMC went public the first time in 1996, the company expanded rapidly by acquiring other accredited colleges and trade schools — a common growth strategy in the for-profit higher education industry. Between 2001 and 2006, the company bought more than three dozen new colleges across the country, ranging from culinary schools to traditional four-year liberal arts colleges.

By the time Goldman and the seasoned team of University of Phoenix executives arrived in 2006 and 2007, EDMC was already a juggernaut. It owned more than 70 college campuses across the country and had doubled its revenues over the previous five years. During that timeframe, its student population tripled to more than 72,000 — larger than mammoth state universities such as Ohio State and the University of Texas.

But the Goldman investment promised to propel the company to even greater heights. Like many companies in 2006, Education Management Corp. was attracted to private equity as a way to realign the company and maximize future profits. Easy credit before the financial crisis made 2006 a record year for corporate buyouts.

“Taking the company private will provide us with patient capital and a long-term strategic horizon,” then-chief executive John “Jock” McKernan Jr., a former Maine governor and congressman who is married to Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), told investors on a conference call in 2006. “It will allow us to accelerate our strategies to expand our traditional and online program offerings and also give us an opportunity to enter additional new geographic markets.”

For the new investors, 2006 opened a particularly attractive opportunity to invest in higher education. After years of lobbying by the for-profit college industry, John Boehner, then the chairman of the House education committee, helped to eliminate a key provision that had moderated the growth of exclusively online universities.

The so-called 50 percent rule, which required half of all students to be at a ground campus in order for a school to be eligible for federal aid, had been put in place to discourage dubious distance education programs that offered subpar learning. Boehner helped to nix the rule in a budget agreement that took effect in early 2006, allowing schools to expand enrollments — and revenues — without having to invest in additional ground campuses. A spokesman for Boehner did not respond to requests for comment.

“When Goldman shows up at the party, they show up as the smartest guys in the room,” said Barmak Nassirian, who followed EDMC’s rise over the past decade as the associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. “2006 was the significant year, because that was the year that the smartest people figured out how easy it was going to be to grow geometrically. You’d have to be from Mars not to know that they were smelling an easy path to big bucks.”

The EDMC investment promised a window into the virtually risk-free world of government-guaranteed student lending, much in the way that Goldman’s acquisition of Litton Loan Servicing in 2007 gave the investment bank a channel into the once-fruitful subprime mortgage servicing business — a sector that has since been branded predatory.

Likewise, consumer and student advocacy groups have long argued that the incentives are skewed for corporations that rely on student loan money, as the most punitive burdens from the government fall on students. The government over the past decade has tightened restrictions on federal student loans, making them nearly impossible to discharge, even in bankruptcy.

“There’s been a transfer of risk,” said Deanne Loonin, director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project. “It’s less risky for the schools and much much more risky for the students, with no safety net.”

When the three private equity firms purchased all of EDMC’s outstanding stock in 2006, it came at a premium. The $3.4 billion transaction was priced at $43 per share, more than 25 percent higher than the company’s stock price over the prior six weeks.

The company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission at the time laid out some of the attractive aspects of investing in higher education: “Given the advanced payment of tuition and fees which is customary for the post-secondary education industry, our working capital is on average a source of cash,” the filings argued. The expansion of online programs also offered “an attractive avenue for growth that utilizes many of our existing education curricula while requiring less capital expenditures relative to campus-based expansion.”

Student enrollments at EDMC nearly doubled after 2006, and online-only enrollments grew swiftly

“At the time, the company had just an emerging online component, and we wanted to help the company invest in developing online programs,” said Jeffrey Leeds, a current EDMC board member and the president of Leeds Equity Partners, who said he came up with the original idea to take EDMC private and brought it to Goldman Sachs and Providence Equity Partners. “Quite simply, we are believers in the need for higher education to continue to innovate and change the model.”

Though the school had nearly 80,000 students by the time Goldman and the other private equity investors took over, only about 4,000 of those students were enrolled in online programs.

The company needed a new leader to expand the fledgling online operation.

They found one in Todd S. Nelson, a man who brought two decades of experience at the nation’s largest private college system, 2,000 miles away in Arizona.

PHOENIX RISING

Nelson began his career in the for-profit education sector in 1987, when he became the director of the University of Phoenix’s Utah campus. He swiftly rose through the ranks, becoming the Phoenix system’s executive vice president in 1989 and president of Phoenix’s parent company, the Apollo Group, in 1998. Three years later, he became chief executive of the company. And three years after that, in 2004, Nelson was named chairman of the board. It was the first time in the company’s 28-year history that someone other than John G. Sperling, the University of Phoenix’s eccentric founder, had served as chairman.

During Nelson’s term at the helm of the Apollo Group, the operation thrived, becoming the largest private higher education institution in the nation. Student enrollment grew from 71,000 to more than 200,000 between 1998 and 2003. Online enrollments rose tenfold, from 7,200 to 79,000, during the same period.

The company became a darling on Wall Street. Share prices rose from $10.57 in 1997 to more than $63 per share in 2003. Revenues jumped nearly fivefold from 1997 to 2003, topping $1.3 billion.

A 2002 corporate goal known as “5-5-5” summed up the Apollo Group’s aspirations for growth under Nelson: “Five Years, Five Million Students and Five Billion Dollars,” according to a Department of Education report on Phoenix from 2004.

But along the way, the company’s lightning-fast growth was attracting the attention of federal regulators at the Department of Education. In a report made public in 2004, the department described the University of Phoenix as a predatory machine, with a sales force that was singularly focused on maximizing enrollment numbers.

Recruiter salaries could range anywhere from $26,000 a year to $120,000. Managers enticed employees with brochures about the money they could make by enrolling the most students. One of the brochures had bullet points that read, “$$$ – No limit on income,” “Highest paid people in the world are salespeople” and “Top 20 % = Never worry about $$$.”

White boards displayed around the office tracked each recruiter’s performance, and managers sent daily barrages of emails questioning why enrollment targets weren’t being met.

High-performing recruiters could be eligible for the “Sperling Club Trip Awards,” named after the University of Phoenix founder, which were all-expenses-paid trips to destinations such as Universal Studios, Washington, D.C., or San Francisco.

Recruiters who failed to meet enrollment targets were humiliated and intimidated by managers, according to federal investigators. Low performers were moved to a glass-enclosed office known as the “red room,” according to the Department of Education report, where they were easily visible to the rest of the office. Managers “hovered” over recruiters in the red room and closely monitored their calls.

“Those who were sent to the red room were allowed no vacation time and were allowed no breaks other than those specifically set for those working there,” according to the report.

Among the most important findings in the University of Phoenix report were the consistent accounts from both recruiters and enrollment managers about how employees received raises. Central to the salary calculations was a performance chart known as “the matrix,” which clearly laid out how many students were needed to attain certain salary brackets.

Paying incentives to college admissions recruiters has been a problem plaguing the for-profit college industry for decades. Dating back to the early 1990s, Congress passed consumer protection rules that banned schools from creating any commission, bonus or other incentive payment “based directly or indirectly on success in securing enrollments or financial aid to any persons or entities engaged in any student recruiting or admission activities.”

But the Bush administration relaxed those rules in 2002, stating that it was not Congress’ intent to completely prohibit merit raises. At the time, the top Department of Education official overseeing higher education was Sally Stroup, who had previously worked as a lobbyist for the Apollo Group.

Under Stroup, the Department of Education added a series of “safe harbors” to the rules governing commissions, adding language that salaries could be adjusted twice a year as long as they were “not based solely on the number of students recruited, admitted, enrolled, or awarded financial aid.”

A spokeswoman for Stroup’s current employer, Scantron Corp., said she was unavailable for comment.

Numerous critics at the time argued that the addition of the word “solely” gave schools far too much leeway to entice their recruiters. A number of admissions salespeople and managers at the University of Phoenix told Department of Education investigators that enrollment numbers were the only performance measure anyone cared about.

The other criteria, such as “customer service,” “communication” and “judgment”, were simply “smoke and mirrors” and “smokescreens” meant as “a way to deceive the Department (of Education)”, according to recruiters interviewed in the report.

            Before the report was made public in September 2004, University of Phoenix had already agreed to a $9.8 million settlement with the government, in which the school admitted no wrongdoing. Nelson told the Arizona Republic at the time that the report was “very, very unfair.”

Even with that taint, Nelson’s tenure could be logged as a substantial success in terms of what he delivered to shareholders. Up against the company’s earnings, the federal settlement payout looked like small beer.

“Look at how much he brought in,” said Nassirian, of the Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. “Ten million dollars was less than they paid in bonuses that year. What they care about is return on investment. In the scheme of things, this is a successful executive.”

Nelson remained with the company until January 2006, when he abruptly resigned, sending shareholders into a panic that drove Apollo Group’s stock down nearly 20 percent from a few months before. The departure came after Apollo had to revise earnings projections downward in recent months, amid slowing student enrollment.

As a condition of his departure, Nelson could not work for a competing education company for a year.

FRESH LEADERSHIP, OLD SCRIPT

The year during which Nelson was forced to stay clear of the industry came with some consolation: He left with a generous $18 million severance package from the Apollo Group, according to a separation agreement filed with the Securitites and Exchange Commission.

In 2007, Fortune magazine named Nelson one of America’s 25 highest-paid men. His combined compensation and severance pay from the Apollo Group totaled $41.3 million, putting him just ahead of Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s president and chief executive.

A year after leaving the University of Phoenix, he reemerged to take the reins at Education Management Corp.

By early 2007, EDMC was already a substantially changed company compared to its pre-buyout days. Except for McKernan, the former Maine governor and congressman who had served as chief executive prior to Nelson, an entirely new board of directors was in place, including a representative from Goldman Sachs and two from Providence Equity Partners.

“EDMC was a large company, and Todd obviously had experience running a large company in the for-profit college space,” said Leeds, the current EDMC board member who headed one of the investment firms that bought out the company. “We thought, as we transitioned, that it made a lot of sense to bring in more talent. That’s what companies always do.”

After Nelson joined the company in February 2007, the board recruited more Apollo Group executives later that year, including Robert A. Carroll, the longtime chief information officer at Apollo, and Craig Swenson, who came on as senior vice president after working in the same capacity at University of Phoenix.

Soon after, according to employees, some of the very same practices documented at the University of Phoenix began to resurface on the sales floors of EDMC.

Managers erected dry-erase boards to publicly track enrollments. Admissions directors began sending emails at a furious pace, tracking enrollments daily and even hourly. Admissions directors circulated statistical reports to management tracking each recruiter’s enrollment statistics.

A November 2009 email from April Cumpston, a director of admissions at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh’s online division, obtained by The Huffington Post, gives a sense of the pressure to enroll students.

She wrote to her team: “We aren’t holding up our end of the bargain. We need to engage EVERYONE who picks up the phone and STOP SETTING APPOINTMENTS. Why are we letting them off of the phone? Are we making them push us off 3 TIMES?? We have proven that we can close the students we talk to but we need to talk to more students!!!!”

Employees who had worked at the company prior to Nelson’s arrival noticed a distinct shift once he came on board.

“It was an absolute feeding frenzy,” said Kathie Bittel, who worked as a recruiter at Argosy University the first year after the company went private under Goldman, when Nelson came on board. “They were on us every minute of the day. We had managers and directors who were just literally circling the pods, listening to every word that was spoken. I swear I thought they were going to wear out the carpeting.”

According to an account in a 2010 federal court filing, a former vice president for marketing and admissions operations who worked at EDMC from 1988 until 2010 noted that once the investors took over in 2006, “EDMC’s focus changed as the ‘new group managed it short term’ to consider its ‘financial interests.’ ”

The same witness also attested that EDMC’s new management, including Nelson, “criticized EDMC’s historical business practices, including that EDMC had ‘not grown fast enough,’ and was ‘too cautious’ and ‘not aggressive enough.’ ”

Jeff Abraham, a former vice president for marketing and admissions operations at EDMC during those years, matches the description of the confidential witness, according to his publicly accessible profile on the social networking site LinkedIn. Reached by email, Abraham would neither confirm nor deny that he was the confidential witness, though he said he has at various times spoken to “several attorneys representing different parties.”

The lawsuit — which was brought on behalf of EDMC shareholders who lost money when the company’s stock plummeted — was recently dismissed on narrow grounds: A federal judge ruled that plaintiffs had failed to prove that EDMC had deliberately misled shareholders about its internal operations.

Former employees described the pressure ramping up on the sales floor after Goldman and its partners entered the business, leading to an atmosphere where “no” was not an acceptable answer.

“When I first started working there, people legitimately felt like it was about the student,” said Flynn, the recruiter at South University who arrived in fall 2006, just a few months after the company went private and a few months before Nelson took over as chief executive. “If you had an explanation of why a student wouldn’t enroll right away, it was listened to. But then it became more about, ‘you need to get that person to enroll, and you need to overcome their objections.'”

Leeds, the current EDMC board member and original private equity investor, dismissed the suggestion that the culture changed at EDMC after the company went private and Nelson came on board.

“This notion that somehow private equity folks acquired the company and changed the culture and turned it into a boiler-room mentality is just nonsense,” Leeds said. “We’re people who take this stuff really seriously. We have two former secretaries of education on my board of advisers. Do you think they would be associated with people who would ever think about or be capable of creating a boiler room? It’s nuts.”

EDMC also disputed the idea that a change in ownership shifted any priorities for the company.

“The Company’s focus has always been on student success, including under Mr. Nelson’s leadership,” a spokeswoman said in a prepared statement. “Certainly, the Company does not condone unethical recruitment practices. If any such activity were brought to our attention of our organization, immediate corrective action (up to and including termination of violating employee) would be taken, as per our Code of Business Ethics and Conduct.”

But more than a dozen employees interviewed by The Huffington Post said the imperative to enroll students through whatever means available became a central focus of the sales culture at EDMC.

An internal instructional brochure for admissions officers, obtained by The Huffington Post, described typical excuses cited by admissions employees for failing to enroll a potential students and forbade them from accepting any of them.

“My student’s dog died, her cousin is graduating and she just got pregnant,” began a hypothetical excuse from one recruiter.

The instructional brochure instructed that director not to accept those reasons. “You are missing something!” the brochure declared, urging recruiters to press harder. “Build rapport, trust, and relationships with your student that they feel comfortable telling you concerns and why they are scared.”

Another script illustrated management’s desire for recruiters to employ relentless efforts to keep students on the phone for sales pitches, dismissing potential reasons why a conversation might not be convenient at that moment.

“I’m at work right now,” read one hypothetical response, with the recruiter instructed to reply, “I understand many of my students are working professionals. What type of work are you in?”

“I’m running out the door,” read another. The recruiter’s response: “I understand, I can appreciate that you are busy! What I wanted to do was find out what program you are looking for.”

A current admissions employee at South University online, who declined to be identified for fear of retribution, recalled a single mother who was worried about taking out student loans, since she was barely able to pay her utility bills. He figured she wasn’t prepared for classes, but his manager told him to turn the situation around on the recruit, asking if she always wanted to be struggling to make ends meet, and implying that a college degree could change things.

All admissions employees interviewed by The Huffington Post described the widely used method of “finding the pain” in prospective students, a tactic employees said was meant to exploit recruits’ past failures in careers or education.

A sales call handout obtained by The Huffington Post describes the first three steps when talking to a new sales lead: “1. Build em up! … 2. Break Em Down! Find the PAIN! … 3. Build em Up!”

Suzanne Lawrence, who worked in admissions at Argosy University online in 2009 and 2010, remembered recruiting a woman for online classes who had never used the Internet and had no email address. She thought the student wasn’t a good match, but she was instead instructed to help the woman set up a Gmail account and get enrolled.

“The scales are so tipped; these people have no way of possibly making a good decision,” Lawrence said. “It was like we were used car salesmen. We would basically psychologically manipulate people into doing this. My master’s was in clinical psychology, and it was like I was using my powers for evil.”

Even recruiters’ job titles were intended to be misleading, employees said. An entry-level admissions employee was known as an “assistant director of admissions,” a title that lent authority to someone trying to close a sales deal.

“Remember, they don’t know you’re in a call center,” said Klein, the former Argosy admissions adviser. “They think you’re at a college, up in an ivory tower, sitting back in a tweed vest with a pipe.”

An internal telemarketing script from 2009 obtained by The Huffington Post showed how EDMC recruiters employed dubious corporate titles to persuade students to immediately sign all documents necessary to enroll, not least the financial aid application paperwork.

Recruiters were instructed to create the illusion that they were in a position of power and discretion, telling prospective students they would not receive a “recommendation” if they delayed. In closing calls, the script instructed recruiters to say: “At this point you should understand my role as the Assistant Director of Admissions here at the school” — a title bestowed on thousands of admissions recruiters. “The school also gives me this position to ensure that you are admissible and to provide a recommendation to complete an application.”

Megan Williams, a recruiter at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh online from 2008 until this past summer, recalled the constant drive to enroll students and get financial aid immediately.

“They wanted the app that day,” Williams said. “If you’re building a relationship with a student, why do I have to close it today? If they want to go to school, they’re going to go to school. That was always my outlook. … That’s why I wasn’t making the ninety or a hundred thousand that everyone else was making.”

A current admissions employee at South University said the drive for numbers has created a recruiting staff that could care less about the well-being or success of the students who are enrolled.

“They’re wolves; they’re hunters,” said the current employee. “They have one objective: They’re there to make money and get students.”

The changes on the sales side led to major gains for the company. Within three years, EDMC’s recruiting force nearly tripled, from about 950 to more than 2,600.

In four years, the number of fully online students increased tenfold, from 4,600 students in 2006 to more than 42,000 students in 2010. Revenues increased from just over $1 billion in 2006 to $2.8 billion by 2011.

THE COSTS OF SUCCESS

But while the infusion of capital from Goldman and know-how from the former Apollo executives has proven beneficial to shareholders, students have fared less profitably: Student loan default rates have grown substantially at several of EDMC’s schools.

The most recent student loan default data, released this month, showed that the percentage of students defaulting within two years of leaving at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh nearly doubled, from 7.9 percent in 2008 to 15.4 percent in 2009. South University’s default rate increased from 7.9 percent to 13.5 percent between 2008 and 2009.

According to a JP Morgan Chase analyst report in 2010, EDMC’s schools have among the highest tuition of publicly traded corporations in higher education. Tuition at EDMC’s Art Institutes schools can average about $50,000 for an associate’s degree and between $77,000 to nearly $100,000 for a bachelor’s degree.

In August, the Justice Department and attorneys general from five states, including Florida, California and Illinois, alleged widespread fraud in EDMC’s recruiting model, arguing that admissions employees were compensated entirely based on the number of students enrolled.

EDMC’s employee compensation “matrix” did list other “quality factors,” such as business ethics, professionalism and job knowledge. But the complaint said that the “so-called ‘quality factors’ have no real impact on the manner in which EDMC’s compensation system is implemented” and amount to “window dressing.”

Lawyers for EDMC challenged the notion that the “quality factors” had no bearing on an employee’s salary. Bonnie Campbell, a former Iowa attorney general serving as a spokeswoman for EDMC’s legal team, pointed out that EDMC had two education law firms independently review the compensation plan to ensure it complied with the “safe harbors” in the law.

“It just cannot be legally said that EDMC relied solely on enrollment numbers, because they didn’t,” Campbell said. “It wasn’t even possible to arrive at an evaluation without a consideration of the quality factors.”

An updated copy of the matrix from 2010, which was developed after Nelson arrived and provided to The Huffington Post, shows a chart with the number of students on the left side, and corresponding salary ranges to the right, based on “quality factors” ranging from “unsatisfactory” to “outstanding.” The vast majority of the salary increases come from student enrollment numbers.

For example, a recruiter who enrolled a low number of students could only make up to $35,000, even with an “outstanding” quality rating. Yet someone who enrolled the highest range of students but received an “unsatisfactory” quality rating could receive a $73,000 salary; an “outstanding” rating would net the same employee a salary above $114,000.

Current and former employees all said that nothing else mattered aside from the number of students. The quality factors, including “job knowledge,” “professionalism” and “problem solving,” were merely categories that also were judged based on the number of students enrolled, they said.

“The numbers are honestly what it boils down to,” said a current employee at Art Institute of Pittsburgh, who spoke on the condition she not be identified for fear of losing her job. “They do have other components on paper: job knowledge, punctuality, blah blah blah. But those things are never brought up. I’ve never encountered any type of conversation where I need improvement in any of those other areas.”

Campbell said the company has had a “corporate compliance hotline” in place since 2004, where employees could report allegations of any misconduct, including violations of the compensation plan.

“I think it’s quite concerning that there are people who now come forward and say that they saw things going on that, by our guidelines, should have been reported at that time,” Campbell said.

EDMC responded to the government’s allegations in a harshly worded court briefing last week, petitioning for the case to be dismissed. “The government does not and cannot present any facts showing a company-wide sham to defraud the Government,” the brief read.

The brief goes on to say that the government was motivated by greed in bringing the case against EDMC — a company that derives more than 80 percent of its money from the federal government.

“The ‘hope of gain,’ unsupported by fact or law, does not permit the government to bring a massive, nationwide fraud claim as leverage with which to fill its coffers,” the brief read. “The Government should not be allowed to ignore its own law, its own conduct, its own exhibits, and the pleading rules of this Court to make a groundless grab for money to which it is not entitled under any theory.”

As federal scrutiny has intensified, EDMC’s management has revised many of the sales terms used in training sessions over the past year. For example, the term “pain” was changed to “consequence,” according to an internal EDMC document provided to The Huffington Post.

“We will not train or coach our staff to ‘dig for the pain’ or to manipulate the student’s previous misfortune,” the document reads. “Instead of dwelling on a past that the student can’t change, we train our admissions representatives to facilitate a conversation that considers the Consequence of moving forward without the education.”

Instead of “overcoming objections,” the new term is “resolving student concerns”; instead of making a “close” on a sales call, a recruiter is now “gaining commitment.”

The Justice Department lawsuit could have grave consequences for the future of EDMC. The false claims suit argues that because EDMC violated the recruiter compensation ban, the company unlawfully took funds from the federal government.

False claims suits can technically recover three times the amount of fraudulent claims made to the government. The complaint notes that EDMC has claimed $11 billion in federal money since 2003, meaning that if all $11 billion were found to be fraudulently claimed, the government could recover up to $33 billion, plus additional penalties of up to $11,000 for each government claim, according to the Justice Department.

In the brief filed in August, the Justice Department also called out Nelson specifically, saying he and other former Apollo Group executives should have known that the compensation system violated federal law given the past troubles at University of Phoenix.

“EDMC’s senior management knows that the compensation system EDMC implements violates the Incentive Compensation Ban,” the brief read. “EDMC knew that its misrepresentations regarding compliance with the Incentive Compensation Ban would result in the payment of federal funds and that a reasonable and foreseeable consequence of such misrepresentations was that such funds would be paid out.”

The company pointed out in a statement that the employee compensation practices referenced in the lawsuit were developed before Nelson arrived at the company.

The arm of Goldman Sachs that invested in EDMC is one of the investment bank’s private equity funds, meaning there are no requirements for the company to publicly state how much the investment has yielded over time. Goldman’s annual filings with the Securities and Exchange Commisison make no mention of EDMC.

Over the past year, Goldman’s stake in EDMC has increased from 33 percent to more than 41 percent. Together with Providence Equity Partners, the two firms control 80 percent of the company.

The Justice Department complaint does not specifically name Goldman or Providence as defendants, but their returns could be significantly affected were EDMC compelled to pay penalties and return prior revenues to the government.

But the track record of such false claims suits is spotty. Two former employees at University of Phoenix filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the University of Phoenix in 2003 that involved billions of federal student assistance dollars, but the case was eventually settled with an agreement to pay the federal government $67 million in 2009, which amounts to less than a third of its quarterly income. The Justice Department, however, did not intervene in that false claims case, as it has in the case against EDMC.

“The financial brilliance behind these schools is that unlike the mortgage industry, when this bubble bursts, these loans are guaranteed to these companies,” said Lawrence, the former Argosy University recruiter. “They’re backed by the government, so it’s not them that’s going to go under.”

Conversations with the Crow

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

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

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

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

Here is the ninety-ninth  chapter

 

Conversation No. 99

Date: Sunday, August 24, 1997

Commenced: 10:22 AM CST

Concluded: 10:35 AM CST

GD: Hello, Robert. What is new with you back there?

RTC: The usual make work projects. I wish I were younger sometimes.

GD: Well, if youth knew and age could, we would all be better off. By the way, I was reading an article about Aldrich Ames yesterday. I suppose that is a no-no with you.

RTC: I knew him slightly. An utterly useless fraud who had a nasty, demanding wife and who was kept on the rolls because his father had been with us.

GD: Well, the FBI got one up on you, didn’t it?
RTC: Does Kimmel brag about this to you?
GD: He was involved in the business. Why not let me be diplomatic?

RTC: How kind of you, Gregory.

GD: Would you like to get even with them?

RTC: How could I do that, pray tell?

GD: Well, a Russian friend told me about one of their top counter intelligence people who is working for them.

RTC: No. Are you sure about that?
HD: Well, my source was certain. They don’t know who it is and he said he was a pain in the ass to deal with.

RTC: Gregory, perhaps we could discuss this a little further. You won’t mention your source to me but what do you really know about this fellow? Do you have a name?
GD: Yes, I do, Robert. Now, if you pass this on to someone, for the Lord God’s sake, do not put my name into it. OK?

RTC: A given. The name?

GD: Yes. Ramon Garcia.

RTC: G-A-R-C-I-A?

GD: Yes, correct. I thought the FBI was a hotbed of racism but apparently not. I wrote it down later but I am sure. What will you do with it?
RTC: What do you think?
RTC: Pass it on. Revenge for Ames I suppose.

RTC: Did your source say how long this Garcia had been working for them?

GD: For about fifteen years.

RTC: Jesus. And his position…I mean if you have any idea…

GD: A big wig in counter intelligence.

RTC: Why would someone tell you?
GD: He knows I know Kimmel, whose name he is familiar with. I think his people are not happy with this Garcia and think he might be a double agent. I think he wanted me to pass this to Kimmel.

RTC: Will you?
GD: No, I don’t plan to. I know what would happen if I did. The first thing would be that they would open a case on me and start asking all my neighbors about me. They do that so I strongly recommend against ever telling anyone in law enforcement anything.

RTC: Not all law enforcement would start out investigating you.

GD: I’ve had it happen so I say nothing. Let the FBI find out about their own mole. It’s none of my business, Robert. I suppose it’s in your hands now. Oh, and by the way, you might be interested in knowing, as I have been told, that someone from the NSG, a sigint specialist, has been giving reams of material to the PRC.

RTC: That also of interest. Who are they and where are they located? At Meade?

GD: No, at Hanza in Japan.

RTC: Name?

GD: If you really want it, I will try to get it from my source.

RTC: Who is…?

GD: A former high level fellow who was pushed out of the Navy and is not overly stable. He was involved in the murder of Trujillo. Do you know of a Marine Colonel Cass?

RTC: Jesus Christ, yes, I do. Did this person tell you about that operation?
GD: In detail.

RTC: We can discuss this later. Would you be prepared to out your source?

GD: To you but not to Kimmel.

RTC: Screw Kimmel, but to me?
GD: Certainly but with the usual caveats.

RTC: Don’t worry. Could you get the name of the mole from your contact?
GD: If I could get him drunk it would be a piece of cake.

RTC: We may have to do that. Where is he now? I mean what part of the country from you?

GD: Norfolk.

RTC: Is he actually retired?
GD: Oh, yes and he has a lot of money as well. I didn’t think Naval officers had a lot of money.

RTC: He might have been peddling material too. Jesus, if he blabs about Cass or Trujillo, he’s going to have to hire a local high school kid to start his car in the morning. Unless he has an insured wife.

GD: No, he’s single.

RTC: What about outing him to me?

GD: All right, considering all the wonderful material you keep sending me, I owe you. I’ll send you a letter, mailed from some other place, with a name, address, former rank and current phone number. Soonest.

RTC: Thanks. And we won’t mention this to Kimmel either.

GD: No, I won’t. Not a word.

(Concluded at 10:35 AM CST)

Dramatis personae: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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