Wizard of Wiki Betrayed by a Corporate Whore

This is really important stuff.  It exposes how evil the forces are, that there is NO moral code they live by.  They'd shoot their own child in the head if it got what was necessary.  EVIL!
Assange Accuser Worked with US-Funded, CIA-Tied Anti-Castro Group

By: Kirk James Murphy, M.D. Saturday December 4, 2010 9:20 pm

Yesterday Alexander Cockburn reminded us of the news Israel Shamir and Paul Bennett broke at Counterpunch in September.   Julian Assange’s chief accuser in Sweden has a significant history of work with anti-Castro groups, at least one of which is US funded and openly supported by a former CIA agent convicted in the mass murder of seventy three Cubans on an airliner he was involved in blowing up.

Anna Ardin (the official complainant) is often described by the media as a “leftist”. She has ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She published her anti-Castro diatribes (see here and here) in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba. From Oslo, Professor Michael Seltzer points out that this periodical is the product of a well-financed anti-Castro organization in Sweden. He further notes that the group is connected with Union Liberal Cubana led by Carlos Alberto Montaner whose CIA ties were exposed here.
[...]  In Cuba she interacted with the feminist anti-Castro group Las damas de blanco (the Ladies in White). This group receives US government funds and the convicted anti-communist terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is a friend and supporter.  Wikipedia quotes Hebe de Bonafini, president of the Argentine Madres de Plaza de Mayo as saying that “the so-called Ladies in White defend the terrorism of the United States.”
 [...]  Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles (born February 15, 1928) (nicknamed Bambi by some Cuban exiles)[1] is a Cuban-born Venezuelan anti-communist extremist. A former Central Intelligence Agency agent,[2] Posada has been convicted in absentia of involvement in various terrorist attacks and plots in the Americas, including: involvement in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed seventy-three people;[3][4] admitted involvement in a string of bombings in 1997 targeting fashionable Cuban hotels and nightspots;[5][6][7] involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion; [and] involvement in the Iran-Contra affair…
Luis Posada Carilles is so evil that even the Bush administration wanted him behind bars:
Who is Julian Assange’s chief accuser in Sweden?  She’s a gender equity officer at Uppsula University – who chose to associate with a US funded group openly supported by a convicted terrorist and mass murderer.  She just happens to have her work published by a very well funded group connected with Union Liberal Cubana – whose leader, Carlos Alberto Montaner, in turn just happened to pop up on right wing Colombian TV a few hours after the right-wing coup in Honduras. Where he joined the leader of the failed coup in Ecuador to savage Correa, the target of the coup.  Montnaner also just happened to vociferously support the violent coup in Honduras, and chose to show up to sing the praises of the Honduran junta. [...]
[...]  Rape is a hideous crime.  Yet in Assange’s case his alleged victim – the gender equity officer at Uppsula University – chose to throw a party for her alleged assailant – after they’d had the sex that even Swedish prosecutors concede was consensual.  Barrister Caitlin again:

[The] phenomena of social networking through the internet and mobile phones constrains Swedish authorities from augmenting the evidence against Assange because it would look even less credible in the face of tweets by Anna Ardin and SMS texts by Sofia Wilén boasting of their respective conquests after the “crimes”.
In the case of Ardin it is clear that she has thrown a party in Assange’s honour at her flat after the “crime” and tweeted to her followers that she is with the “the world’s coolest smartest people, it’s amazing!”. Go on the internet and see for yourself. That Ardin has sought unsuccessfully to delete these exculpatory tweets from the public record should be a matter of grave concern. That she has published on the internet a guide on how to get revenge on cheating boyfriends ever graver. The exact content of Wilén’s mobile phone texts is not yet known but their bragging and exculpatory character has been confirmed by Swedish prosecutors. Neither Wilén’s nor Ardin’s texts complain of rape.

Small world, isn’t it?  Julian Assange is the human face of Wikileaks – the organization that’s enabled whistle-blowers to reveal hideous war crimes and expose much of America’s foreign policy to the world.

He just happens to meet a Swedish woman who just happens to have been publishing her work in a well-funded anti-Castro group that just happens to have links with a group led by a man at least one journalist describes as an agent of the CIA: the violent secret arm of America’s foreign policy.
And she just happens to have been expelled from Cuba, which just happens to be the global symbol of successful defiance of American foreign policy.
And – despite her work in Sweden upholding the human right of gender equity – in Cuba she just happens to end up associating with a group openly supported by an admitted CIA agent who himself committed mass murder when he actively participated in the terrorist bombing of a jetliner carrying a Cuban sports team…an act that was of a piece with America’s secret foreign policy of violent attacks against Cuban state interests.
And now she just happens – after admittedly consensual sex – to have gone to Swedish authorities to report the sex ended without a condom…which just happens to be the pretext for Interpol to issue a “Red Notice” informing the world’s police forces of charges against Julian Assange.
Who just happens to be the man America’s political class – the people who run America’s foreign policy – have been trying to silence.  And who happens to be the man some of them have been calling to have murdered.
With a lust for vengeance like that, one could be forgiven for concluding they’ve just happened to have taken a page from Anna’s revenge manual.


http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2010/12/04/assanges-chief-accuser-has-her-own-history-with-us-funded-anti-castro-groups-one-of-which-has-cia-ties/

Barack Obama's Strange Mentors

OMG--I really wish this wasn't so because it gonna send us waaaaay back down the rabbit hole!  SDS is even implicated!!!
Promoted to Headline (H3) on 12/22/09:
Obama worked for the CIA
For OpEdNews: Josh Mitteldorf - Writer
from an article at Online Journal
Wayne Madsen Reports has obtained additional details on Business International Corporation (BIC), the CIA front company where President Obama spent a year working after graduating from Columbia University in 1983.
BIC used journalists as non-official cover (NOC) agents around the world. The firm published weekly and fortnightly newsletters for business executives, including Business International, Business Europe, Business Latin America, and Business Asia.
On February 24, 2009, WMR reported: "For one year, Obama worked as a researcher in BIC's financial services division where he wrote for two BIC publications,Financing Foreign Operations and Business International Money Report, a weekly newsletter.
"An informed source has told WMR that Obama's tuition debt at Columbia was paid off by BIC. In addition, WMR has learned that when Obama lived in Indonesia with his mother and his adoptive father Lolo Soetoro, the 20-year-old Obama, who was known as "Barry Soetoro,' traveled to Pakistan in 1981 and was hosted by the family of Muhammadmian Soomro, a Pakistani Sindhi who became acting president of Pakistan after the resignation of General Pervez Musharraf on August 18, 2008."[...]
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Obama-worked-for-the-CIA-by-Josh-Mitteldorf-091222-13.html

Here's a bit more on BIC from Wikpedia:

Founded in 1953 by Eldridge Haynes and his son, Elliott Haynes, BIC initially focused on American companies and started out with a weekly newsletter (called Business International) and a group of key corporate clients. Offices were established overseas, including major regional operations based out of Vienna (East Europe and the USSR) and Hong Kong (Asia-Pacific), and single-country offices (e.g., Rome, Tokyo).
BI eventually became the premier information source on global business with research, advisory functions, conferences and government roundtables in addition to its publications. It was headquartered in New York City, with major offices in Geneva, London, Vienna, Hong Kong and Tokyo, and a network of correspondents across the globe.
In his book The Strawberry Statement, former student protester James Kunen reports a description of Business International by an unnamed Students for a Democratic Society conference attendee in 1968. The attendee, referred to by Kunen as 'the kid', claimed the company offered to finance SDS demonstrations in Chicago. Business International is described as 'the left wing of the ruling class' and as desiring a Gene McCarthy presidency.^[1]

Airbridge Denial Program: Murder in the Andean Skys

Report says CIA withheld info from White House
Fri Nov 21
The CIA withheld information from the White House, Justice Department and Congress about the 2001 shooting down of a plane over Peru carrying an American missionary family, part of a years long cover-up of lethal violations in U.S. drug-interdiction procedures, according to a classified internal CIA report.
Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, [my bold] the senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, called for a criminal investigation and said Congress would hold hearings on the matter in the new year.
[...] The CIA inspector general’s report dated Aug. 25, excerpts of which were released Thursday, said the agency hid from Congress, the National Security Council and Justice Department the results of multiple internal investigations that documented “sustained and significant” violations of White House-sanctioned aircraft intercept procedures. The procedures were created to prevent the shooting down of innocent aircraft over the Amazon jungle like the April 2001 downing of the missionaries’ aircraft.
“The plane, following the Amazon River in its westward journey in daylight, was tracked by a CIA aircraft as a suspected narcotrafficker and was fired on by the Peruvian Air Force. A Michigan woman and her infant daughter were killed and the American pilot was seriously wounded. The woman’s husband and son survived.
“Within hours, CIA officers began to characterize the shootdown as a one-time mistake in an otherwise well-run program. In fact, this was not the case,” the report says.
Missionary Veronica "Ronnie" Bowers, 35, and her seven-month-old adopted daughter, Charity, were both killed when their single-engine plane was riddled with bullets before ditching into the Amazon River. [They were working for the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism]

A report released by the State Department in 2001 said the CIA aircraft initially identified the plane but then grew concerned that it was an innocent flight. But it was too late — given language problems and established procedures — to prevent the Peruvian fighter from firing.
According to the report, many aircraft [my bold] were shot down by Peruvian fighter aircraft within two to three minutes of being spotted “without being properly identified, without being given the required warnings to land and without being given time to respond to such warnings as were given to land.”
The Peruvian fighter jets often did not give targeted aircraft any visible signals they had been intercepted before they were shot down. [my bold] [This means “suspects” are tried, convicted and murdered in cold blood thout benefit of a hearing, in a New York minute] Nevertheless, between 1995 and 2001 the CIA "incorrectly reported that the program complied with the laws and policies governing it."
The IG report said Peruvians and Americans participating in the counternarcotics program explained that they violated the procedures because they thought them too time-consuming and worried they "might have resulted in the escape of the target aircraft."
"Violations of required procedures occurred in every shoot-down the CIA took part in" [my bold] for the six years of the CIA's Airbridge Denial Program with Peru, Hoekstra said.
The number of shoot-downs was not made public.
The report says the CIA specifically withheld information from then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Rice asked the CIA on several occasions who had approved the change in procedures.
The investigation "found no evidence that any Agency officer ever responded to her request for information, despite the fact that certain senior agency managers were aware of the agency's own findings that the (program) had not fully complied with presidential requirements," the report states.
It also suggests the cover-up was sanctioned by the agency's top attorney. [my bold]
The CIA's Office of General Counsel advised agency managers to avoid producing written reports [my bold] about the incident "to avoid both criminal charges against agency officers and civil liability," the report says.
The classified version of the report identified personnel by name who, Hoekstra said, misled Congress and obstructed the Justice Department investigation into whether criminal charges should have been filed in the case. Justice ultimately decided against filing charges.
[...] CIA Director Michael Hayden has made no decisions regarding the IG's recommendations, but has asked a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, to advise him, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal CIA matters. Myers, a former fighter pilot, is an expert in air interdiction operations.
CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield pledged the agency's full cooperation. He said the CIA will consider all of the facts to determine the way forward.
"This situation obviously calls for careful deliberations that will result in sound, fair decisions," Mansfield said.
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20081121/US.Missionaries.Shootdown/

The Transnational Institute has studied and reported on this issue and I strongly urge interested readers to click on the link below to read the full report. Following is the final paragraph of their conclusion:

[...] Government repression, increasingly militarized, thus finds itself before an "enemy" ever more disperse, far flung, and socially variegated. In sum, they find themselves criminalizing poverty and in confrontation with ever larger sectors of society, a recipe for social disaster and greater, more generalized violence. In countries with weak democracies and/or increasing levels of social violence and repression, these "side effects" of the US's drug war "remedy" may prove more detrimental than the narco-trafficking disease.
http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?page=reports_drugs_drugwar

Pakistan War Launched on 9/11

It's just a matter of time before the mainstream media start to use the words "Pakistan War." Just like Afghanistan and Iraq, we will be busy with our lives and yet feel a vague discomfort. Someday I hope we become conscious of the suffering of innocent people, and put an end to it.
September 11, 2008
BUSH SAID TO GIVE ORDERS ALLOWING RAIDS IN PAKISTAN
By ERIC SCHMITT AND MARK MAZZETTI
President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.
The classified orders signal a watershed [my bold] for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to challenge the militants' increasingly secure base in Pakistan's tribal areas.
American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission.
''The situation in the tribal areas is not tolerable,'' said a senior American official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the missions. ''We have to be more assertive. Orders have been issued.''
[...] Pakistan's top army officer said Wednesday that his forces would not tolerate American incursions [my bold] like the one that took place last week and that the army would defend the country's sovereignty ''at all costs.''
It is unclear precisely what legal authorities the United States has invoked to conduct even limited ground raids in a friendly country. A second senior American official said that the Pakistani government had privately assented to the general concept of limited ground assaults by Special Operations forces against significant militant targets, but that it did not approve each mission.
The official did not say which members of the government gave their approval.
[…] Details about last week's commando operation have emerged that indicate the mission was more intrusive [my bold] than had previously been known.
According to two American officials briefed on the raid, it involved more than two dozen members of the Navy Seals who spent several hours on the ground and killed about two dozen suspected Qaeda fighters in what now appeared to have been a planned attack against militants who had been conducting attacks against an American forward operating base across the border in Afghanistan.
Supported by an AC-130 gunship, the Special Operations forces were whisked away by helicopters after completing the mission.
[…] Pakistan's government has asserted that last week's raid achieved little except killing civilians and stoking anti-Americanism in the tribal areas.
''Unilateral action by the American forces does not help the war against terror because it only enrages public opinion,'' said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, during a speech on Friday. ''In this particular incident, nothing was gained by the action of the troops.''
As an alternative to American ground operations, some Pakistani officials have made clear that they prefer the C.I.A.'s Predator aircraft, operating from the skies, as a method of killing Qaeda operatives. The C.I.A. for the most part has coordinated with Pakistan's government before and after it has launched missiles from the drone. On Monday, a Predator strike in North Waziristan killed several Arab Qaeda operatives.
[…] Spokesmen for the White House, the Defense Department and the C.I.A. declined to comment on Wednesday about the new orders. Some senior Congressional officials have received briefings on the new authorities. A spokeswoman for Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who leads the Armed Services Committee, declined to comment.
[…] The commando raid last week and an increasing number of recent missile strikes are part of a more aggressive overall American campaign in the border region aimed at intensifying attacks on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the waning months of the Bush administration, [my bold] with less than two months to go before November elections.
State Department officials, as well as some within the National Security Council, have expressed concern about any Special Operations missions that could be carried out without the approval of the American ambassador in Islamabad.
The months-long delay in approving ground missions created intense frustration inside the military's Special Operations community, which believed that the Bush administration was holding back as the Qaeda safe haven inside Pakistan became more secure for militants.
The stepped-up campaign inside Pakistan comes at a time when American-Pakistani relations have been fraying, and when anger is increasing within American intelligence agencies about ties between Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, known as the ISI, and militants in the tribal areas.
Analysts at the C.I.A. and other American spy and security agencies believe not only that the bombing of India's embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in July by militants was aided by ISI operatives, but also that the highest levels of Pakistan's security apparatus -- including the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani -- had knowledge of the plot.
''It's very difficult to imagine he was not aware,'' a senior American official said of General Kayani. […]
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E7DD163EF932A2575AC0A96E9C8B63&fta=y

CIA Lies for War (Again)

How far would you go to protect your boss? We all have experienced times of dubious truth, but this isn't about someone missing a meeting or document. It appears this former CIA operative has been "Sibelized," and like Sibel Edmonds, (see previous posts by clicking on her name in the tags below) refuses to be abused for the benefit of the warlords.
INTELLIGENCE ON NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Ex-Agent Says CIA Ignored Iran Facts
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff, Writer Tuesday, 7/1/08
A former CIA operative who says he tried to warn the agency about faulty intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs now contends that CIA officials also ignored evidence that Iran had suspended work on a nuclear bomb.
The onetime undercover agent, who has been barred by the CIA from using his real name, filed a motion in federal court late Friday asking the government to declassify legal documents describing what he says was a deliberate suppression of findings on Iran that were contrary to agency views at the time.
The former operative alleged in a 2004 lawsuit that the CIA fired him after he repeatedly clashed with senior managers over his attempts to file reports that challenged the conventional wisdom about weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. Key details of his claim have not been made public because they describe events the CIA deems secret.
The consensus view on Iran's nuclear program shifted dramatically last December with the release of a landmark intelligence report that concluded that Iran halted work on nuclear weapons design in 2003. The publication of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran undermined the CIA's rationale for censoring the former officer's lawsuit, said his attorney, Roy Krieger.
"On five occasions he was ordered to either falsify his reporting on WMD in the Near East, or not to file his reports at all," Krieger said in an interview.
[...] In the months after the conflict, the operative became the target of two internal investigations, one of them alleging an improper sexual relationship with a female informant, and the other alleging financial improprieties. Krieger said his client cooperated with investigators in both cases and the allegations of wrongdoing were never substantiated. Krieger contends in court documents that the investigations were a "pretext to discredit."
Krieger maintains that his client is being further punished by the agency's decision prohibiting him from fully regaining his identity. "He is not even allowed to attend court hearings about his own case," Krieger said.
CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano declined to comment on the specifics of the case but flatly rejected the allegation that the agency had suppressed reports. "It would be wrong to suggest that agency managers direct their officers to falsify the intelligence they collect or to suppress it for political reasons," he said. "That's not our policy. That's not what we're about." [really?]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/30/AR2008063001940.html?hpid=sec-nation

Nuclear Bomb Blueprints Destroyed with Atomic Precision, Like a Swiss Watch

Swiss President Pascal Couchepin

Yes, Dorothy, money can buy you anything. Even weapons of mass destruction from a "cultured" civilization.
Nuclear bomb blueprints for sale on world black market, experts fear
· Warning as Swiss destroy documents to prevent leak
· Copies may remain with data smuggling network
Nuclear bomb blueprints and manuals on how to manufacture weapons-grade uranium for warheads are feared to be circulating on the international black market, according to investigators tracking the world's most infamous nuclear smuggling racket.
Alarm about the sale of nuclear know-how follows the disclosure that the Swiss government, allegedly acting under US pressure, secretly destroyed tens of thousands of documents from a massive nuclear smuggling investigation.
The information was seized from the home and computers of Urs Tinner, a 43-year-old Swiss engineer who has been in custody for almost four years as a key suspect in the nuclear smuggling ring run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani metallurgist who in 2004 admitted leaking nuclear secrets and is under house arrest in Islamabad.
The Khan network trafficked nuclear materials, equipment and knowhow to at least three countries: Iran, Libya, and North Korea.
President Pascal Couchepin stunned his Swiss compatriots last week by announcing that the Tinner files, believed to number around 30,000 documents, had been shredded. The extraordinary move, prompting demands for a parliamentary inquiry, was warranted to prevent the documents "getting into the hands of a terrorist organisation or an unauthorised state", according to Couchepin.
However, there are widespread fears this has already happened or still could. "We know that copies were made," said Mark Fitzpatrick, an expert on the illicit networks at the British-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS). "Both US intelligence and the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog] had been pursuing this with great urgency and diligence. But what happened to the other copies that [Tinner] made? It is worrisome that there are other plans floating around somewhere out there."
[...] "It's amazing these people had so much information, incredibly sensitive stuff on nuclear weaponisation and gas centrifuges," said David Albright, a Washington-based former UN weapons inspector. "I'm sure the US got a copy. But who else got the documents? Can you believe these two, the brothers [Marco Tinner is also in custody] were the only ones who got the stuff?"
[...] In his first interview since 2004 with the western media this week, Khan told the Guardian that the Swiss case proved that anyone seeking a nuclear bomb could easily obtain the wherewithal in the west.
He pledged he would never assist western or UN authorities and asserted that his "confession" of February 2004 was coerced by the Pakistani regime.
While the Swiss government maintains the treasure trove of nuclear intelligence was destroyed for reasons of national security, the Americans may have been involved because Tinner is believed to have also been working for the CIA. [my bold] [Future reports will probably confirm the truth of this assertion.] Albright said Tinner was recruited by the American agency from 1999-2000.
"The Swiss were doing other people's dirty work," said an international official familiar with the investigation into the Khan network. "The allegation is that Urs was on the CIA payroll for a very large sum of money."
[...] The documents unearthed in the Tinner investigation were so "explosive", said the government in Bern, that it was obliged to destroy them as a non-nuclear state that is a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
President Couchepin said: "There were detailed construction plans for nuclear weapons, for gas ultracentrifuges to enrich weapons-grade uranium as well as for guided missile delivery systems."
Had the evidence been presented in court, compromising and embarrassing information about the CIA's activities with the Khan network could have surfaced, say experts and officials. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/31/nuclear.internationalcrime

BushCo's Insolence Reaches New Heights!

This is even better than the "lost" emails! The little boys just can't get their act together, and fully intend to bully the world into accepting their incompetence. I hope the end is near!

Knee-Jerk Redaction?
Posted by Rachel Myers, ACLU
May 28th, 2008, at 12:27 pm

After CIA Director Michael Hayden publicly admitted that the CIA has, in fact, waterboarded detainees, the agency could no longer cling to its last excuses for covering up the use of the very word “waterboarding” in CIA records. As a result, yesterday we obtained several heavily redacted documents in response to an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by the ACLU and other organizations seeking documents related to the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody overseas.
While the documents do, in fact, reveal the word “waterboarding” or some variation, they leave pretty much everything else to the imagination. The pages that haven’t been completely withheld (many of them contain the words “Denied in Full” instead of any actual content) have the clandestine blacked-out look that’s become a sort of trademark of this administration. This is my favorite:

One of the documents is a heavily redacted version of a report (PDF) by the CIA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) on its review of the CIA’s interrogation and detention program. The report includes information about an as-yet-undisclosed Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion from August 2002. Interestingly, this opinion appears to be the same OLC memo authorizing specific interrogations methods for use by the CIA that is being withheld by the CIA as a classified document in the ACLU’s FOIA litigation — but the OIG report refers to this document as “unclassified.”
The CIA continues to withhold many more documents that should not be secret. The incomplete response to the ACLU’s demand for records reflects a complete disregard for the right of the American public to know when and how often the government has employed illegal interrogation methods.
http://blog.aclu.org/2008/05/28/knee-jerk-redaction/

FEMA, Continuity of Government and 8 Million Americans on Main Core

How can a democracy thrive with a massive apparatus of spying technology deployed against every act of political expression, private or public?

So ends The Last Roundup, Christopher Ketcham's report on massive domestic surveillance, and it is the very question to ask your candidate. Did you know that FEMA was originally devised to provide survival of the federal government, not the people, after a nuclear strike? That’s just one interesting fact among many important items you need to know. I skipped over Mr. Ketcham’s synopsis of the Card/Gonzales Ghoul Trip to John Ashcroft’s hospital bed, presuming most readers know about this infamous night. There’s so much information here it was hard to carve out the essentials, but I hope you will read the entire article. Remember: Just because paranoia is in the mind of the beholder, they probably are out to get us!
The Last Roundup
Is the government compiling a secret list of citizens to detain under martial law?
By Christopher Ketcham
[...] Few Americans—professional journalists included—know anything about so-called Continuity of Government (COG) programs, so it's no surprise that the president's passing reference received almost no attention. COG resides in a nebulous legal realm, encompassing national emergency plans that would trigger the takeover of the country by extra-constitutional forces—and effectively suspend the republic. In short, it's a road map for martial law.
[...] According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.
Of course, federal law is somewhat vague as to what might constitute a "national emergency." Executive orders issued over the past three decades define it as a "natural disaster, military attack, [or] technological or other emergency," while Department of Defense documents include eventualities like "riots, acts of violence, insurrections, unlawful obstructions or assemblages, [and] disorder prejudicial to public law and order." According to one news report, even "national opposition to U.S. military invasion abroad" could be a trigger.
[...] Interestingly, plans drawn up during the Reagan administration suggest this parallel government would be ruling under authority given by law to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, home of the same hapless bunch that recently proved themselves unable to distribute water to desperate hurricane victims. The agency's incompetence in tackling natural disasters is less surprising when one considers that, since its inception in the 1970s, much of its focus has been on planning for the survival of the federal government in the wake of a decapitating nuclear strike.
Under law, during a national emergency, FEMA and its parent organization, the Department of Homeland Security, would be empowered to seize private and public property, all forms of transport, and all food supplies. The agency could dispatch military commanders to run state and local governments, and it could order the arrest of citizens without a warrant, holding them without trial for as long as the acting government deems necessary. From the comfortable perspective of peaceful times, such behavior by the government may seem far-fetched. But it was not so very long ago that FDR ordered 120,000 Japanese Americans—everyone from infants to the elderly—be held in detention camps for the duration of World War II. This is widely regarded as a shameful moment in U.S. history, a lesson learned. But a long trail of federal documents indicates that the possibility of large-scale detention has never quite been abandoned by federal authorities. Around the time of the 1968 race riots, for instance, a paper drawn up at the U.S. Army War College detailed plans for rounding up millions of "militants" and "American negroes," who were to be held at "assembly centers or relocation camps." In the late 1980s, the Austin American-Statesman and other publications reported the existence of 10 detention camp sites on military facilities nationwide, where hundreds of thousands of people could be held in the event of domestic political upheaval. More such facilities were commissioned in 2006, when Kellogg Brown & Root—then a subsidiary of Halliburton—was handed a $385 million contract to establish "temporary detention and processing capabilities" for the Department of Homeland Security. The contract is short on details, stating only that the facilities would be used for "an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs." Just what those "new programs" might be is not specified.
[...] Another well-informed source—a former military operative regularly briefed by members of the intelligence community—says this particular program has roots going back at least to the 1980s and was set up with help from the Defense Intelligence Agency. He has been told that the program utilizes software that makes predictive judgments of targets' behavior and tracks their circle of associations with "social network analysis" and artificial intelligence modeling tools.
"The more data you have on a particular target, the better [the software] can predict what the target will do, where the target will go, who it will turn to for help," he says. "Main Core is the table of contents for all the illegal information that the U.S. government has [compiled] on specific targets." An intelligence expert who has been briefed by high-level contacts in the Department of Homeland Security confirms that a database of this sort exists, but adds that "it is less a mega-database than a way to search numerous other agency databases at the same time."
[...] The following information seems to be fair game for collection without a warrant: the e-mail addresses you send to and receive from, and the subject lines of those messages; the phone numbers you dial, the numbers that dial in to your line, and the durations of the calls; the Internet sites you visit and the keywords in your Web searches; the destinations of the airline tickets you buy; the amounts and locations of your ATM withdrawals; and the goods and services you purchase on credit cards. All of this information is archived on government supercomputers and, according to sources, also fed into the Main Core database.
Main Core also allegedly draws on four smaller databases that, in turn, cull from federal, state, and local "intelligence" reports; print and broadcast media; financial records; "commercial databases"; and unidentified "private sector entities." Additional information comes from a database known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, which generates watch lists from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for use by airlines, law enforcement, and border posts. According to the Washington Post, the Terrorist Identities list has quadrupled in size between 2003 and 2007 to include about 435,000 names. The FBI's Terrorist Screening Center border crossing list, which listed 755,000 persons as of fall 2007, grows by 200,000 names a year. A former NSA officer tells Radar that the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, using an electronic-funds transfer surveillance program, also contributes data to Main Core, as does a Pentagon program that was created in 2002 to monitor antiwar protesters and environmental activists such as Greenpeace.
[Following are several paragraphs discussing Oliver North's surveillance program REX 84, "for suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government to FEMA and military commanders, as well as Texas congressman Jack Brooks’ unsuccessful attempt to find out what North was up to during the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings.]
[...] In July 2007 and again last August, Representative Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon and a senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee, sought access to the "classified annexes" of the Bush administration's Continuity of Government program. DeFazio's interest was prompted by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20 (also known as NSPD-51), issued in May 2007, which reserves for the executive branch the sole authority to decide what constitutes a national emergency and to determine when the emergency is over. DeFazio found this unnerving.
But he and other leaders of the Homeland Security Committee, including Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, were denied a review of the Continuity of Government classified annexes. To this day, their calls for disclosure have been ignored by the White House. In a press release issued last August, DeFazio went public with his concerns that the NSPD-51 Continuity of Government plans are "extra-constitutional or unconstitutional." Around the same time, he told the Oregonian: "Maybe the people who think there's a conspiracy out there are right."
More troubling, in 2002, Congress authorized funding for the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, which, according to Washington Post military intelligence expert William Arkin, "allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control."
[...] Meanwhile, the mystery of James Comey's testimony has disappeared in the morass of election year coverage. None of the leading presidential candidates have been asked the questions that are so profoundly pertinent to the future of the country: As president, will you continue aggressive domestic surveillance programs in the vein of the Bush administration? Will you release the COG blueprints that Representatives DeFazio and Thompson were not allowed to read? What does it suggest about the state of the nation that the U.S. is now ranked by worldwide civil liberties groups as an "endemic surveillance society," alongside repressive regimes such as China and Russia? How can a democracy thrive with a massive apparatus of spying technology deployed against every act of political expression, private or public? (Radar put these questions to spokespeople for the McCain, Obama, and Clinton campaigns, but at press time had yet to receive any responses.) [...]
http://www.radaronline.com/from-the-magazine/2008/05/government_surveillance_homeland_security_main_core_01-print.php

Cuban American Exiles Celebrate CIA Terrorist

Luis Posada Carriles, a terror suspect abroad, enjoys a 'coming-out' in Miami
A dinner with 500 fellow Cuban exiles honors the militant and former CIA operative, now 80 and still wanted in Venezuela on terrorism charges.
By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, May 7, 2008
MIAMI -- [...] the man being honored by 500 fellow Cuban Americans at a sold-out gala was Luis Posada Carriles, the former CIA operative wanted in Venezuela on terrorism charges and under a deportation order for illegally entering the United States three years ago.
Posada, 80, has mostly kept a low profile since his release from a Texas prison a year ago and a federal judge's dismissal of the only U.S. charges against him -- making false statements to immigration officials.
But recent events like the Friday dinner and an exhibition and sale of his paintings last fall show that the man who spent his life trying to topple the communist government of Fidel Castro has returned to the social forefront of this city's exile community.
"We are coming to the end of a terrible stage. The end of our struggle is near," Posada told the crowd of supporters in evening dress, referring to Castro's failing health.
Venezuela's ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, condemned the celebration of Posada as a mockery of justice and evidence of a Bush administration double standard in fighting terrorism.
"This is outrageous, particularly because he kept talking about violence," Alvarez said of Posada. "He said that the whole thing now is 'to sharpen our machetes' " for a confrontation with leftist regimes in Latin America.
The U.S. government has never given Venezuela a formal answer to its 3-year-old request for extradition of Posada, despite a treaty providing for such cooperation that has been in effect since 1922, the ambassador said.
Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan citizen, is alleged to have masterminded the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 on which all 73 on board were killed, including a youth fencing team returning from a tournament in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. He is also suspected of plotting a series of hotel bombings in Havana in the late 1990s, one of which killed an Italian tourist.
He has boasted of his many attempts to kill Castro and has allegedly been involved in, according to court documents, "some of the most infamous events of 20th century Central American politics."
Posada was serving time in a Panama prison for a 2000 assassination attempt on Castro when outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso pardoned him and three accomplices in August 2004 in what some observers saw as a favor to President Bush to rally the Cuban-dominated Florida vote for his reelection.
[...] As Venezuela, Cuba and human rights groups clamored for Posada's extradition for trial on the plane-bombing charges, federal authorities here arrested him in May 2005 for illegal entry. A federal judge in Texas ordered him deported, but another judge prohibited his being sent to Venezuela, heeding claims by Posada's lawyers that he could face torture or execution there.
None of a half-dozen friendly countries contacted by the State Department would agree to take Posada.
[...] Analysts speculate that the U.S. government has dodged calls for prosecution of Posada for fear he would disclose details of CIA involvement in coups, assassination plots and scandals, including the Iran-Contra Affair.
Peter Kornbluh, head of the Cuba Documentation Project at George Washington University's National Security Archive, has compiled declassified CIA and FBI documents on Posada that show he remained in close touch with Washington handlers throughout his covert service.
"The spectacle of a wanted international terrorist being publicly feted as a hero in Miami makes a mockery of the Bush administration's commitment to wage a war on terrorism," he said of Posada's coming-out party.
Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.) convened a congressional hearing in November on the administration's handling of the Posada case, arguing that there was "compelling evidence" implicating Posada in the plane bombing.
Delahunt said Tuesday that "there doesn't seem to be much enthusiasm" under the current administration for prosecuting Posada, but that he would push again for legal action against Posada after the fall election. "To have Posada honored in such a way sends a terrible statement to the rest of the world," the congressman said of the tribute.
Posada, still under a supervision order with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, entered the banquet to a standing ovation, his face beaming and minus the scar from a 1990 attack by gunmen in Guatemala. […]
carol.williams@latimes.com http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-posada7-2008may07,0,1699509.story

Correa Casts Out US Military

Seems like the right move on his part. The president really should be "in the loop" about matters of international espionage with one's generalissimos and neighbors. But this story has been brewing for a while. See my previous post on April 10, 2008: Ecuador’s Prez Charges Disloyalty in Defence Dept./CIA Collusion for more.
Ecuador's leader purges military and moves to expel American base
By Simon Romero, Published: April 21, 2008
MANTA, Ecuador: Chafing at ties between American intelligence agencies and Ecuadorean military officials, President Rafael Correa is purging the armed forces of top commanders and pressing ahead with plans to cast out more than 100 American military personnel from an air base here in this coastal city.
Correa — who this month dismissed his defense minister, army chief of intelligence and commanders of the army, air force and joint chiefs — said that Ecuador's intelligence systems were "totally infiltrated and subjugated to the CIA." He accused senior military officials of sharing intelligence with Colombia, the Bush administration's top ally in Latin America.
[...] Still, tensions persist over his clash with top generals, which emerged after Colombian forces raided a Colombian rebel camp in Ecuador last month. The raid against the rebel group, the Marxist-inspired Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, put Ecuador and its ally Venezuela on edge with Colombia. Twenty-five people were killed, including Franklin Aisalla, an Ecuadorean operative for the group, known as the FARC.
The face-off between Ecuador and Colombia ended at a summit in the Dominican Republic, but it has begun again over revelations that Ecuadorean intelligence officials had been tracking Aisalla, information that was shared not with the president, but apparently with Colombian forces and their American military advisers.
The leak became evident when video and photo images surfaced in Colombia and Ecuador showing Aisalla meeting with FARC commanders.
[...] In a rebuke of senior military officials, Correa named as defense minister his personal secretary, Javier Ponce, who was an outspoken critic of the armed forces in his previous careers as a poet and an editorial writer at some of Ecuador's largest newspapers.
[...] Unlike the armed forces of most other countries in Latin America, Ecuador's military has retained substantial economic might since a military junta transferred power to a civilian government in the 1970s.
[...] Correa has not challenged these financial interests. But he and his political supporters are moving forward with efforts to shift the military away from its traditional reliance on training and assistance from the United States and toward strengthening ties with the armed forces of other South American countries.
The first indication of his plans to shift the country's focus was his promise to end the American presence at the Manta base once the United States' lease expired in 2009.
[...] Meanwhile, the assertions that American intelligence agencies were exerting too much influence in Ecuador have raised concerns among Correa's critics in Ecuador that he could take a radical turn like that of Chávez in Venezuela. Correa has been relatively moderate in his policies so far during his presidency.
For now, at least, the last word on the issue may rest with Ponce, the rumpled poet thrust into the public eye as Correa's new defense minister.
In an interview in Quito, Ponce, 59, mentioned the moderately leftist governments of Brazil and Chile as potential partners for increased military cooperation, subtly suggesting a reluctance to depend heavily on Venezuelan aid, as countries like Bolivia have done. But he was also clear about relying far less on the United States.
"We must get past our legacy of relying too much on military relations with the United States, with President Bush showing little regard for national borders or sovereignty," Ponce said. "The risk of remaining too close to such a partner is one of ideological contagion."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/21/america/21ecuador.php

Michael Scheuer Shares His Hubris

Although the headline might lead you to believe Mr. Scheuer has become a humanist, the rest of the article shows he is no apologist but simply trying to distance himself from the most outrageous activities that occurred under his watch. I used to think this author of Imperial Hubris was motivated by a clear-eyed understanding of what lines our nation should not cross. Perhaps we have different ideas (and ideals) regarding how deeply the foundation for a moral and ethical civilization must be to create a government of the people, by the people and for the people. But think for yourself, and read on:
'Extraordinary-rendition' procedure unreliable, says CIA vet who created it
COLIN FREEZE
From Monday's Globe and Mail
April 14, 2008 at 4:27 AM EDT
DURHAM, N.C. — The creator of the CIA's "extraordinary-rendition" program says he has always distrusted interrogation intelligence flowing from the controversial practice, given that the admissions it produced were usually "very tainted" by foreign agencies who jailed suspects at the behest of the United States.
Michael Scheuer, an outspoken anti-terrorism crusader, took part in a Duke University law-school panel on Friday. There, experts debated the future of the highly controversial snatch, jail and interrogate program that he created, and whether it should survive beyond the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, which has often justified rendition as an intelligence gold mine.
In Canada, rendition has become synonymous with the process that resulted in Ottawa's Maher Arar spending a year in a Syrian jail, where he was beaten with electric cables during the first phases of his captivity. Canadian officials have apologized to the telecommunications engineer and compensated him with $10-million (U.S.), upholding that he was wrongly smeared in intelligence exchanges emanating from Canada, prior to the U.S. decision to render him.
[...] In addition to Mr. Arar's case in Canada, high-profile renditions controversies have arisen in Germany and Italy. Mr. Scheuer made a point of saying he would personally put the German suspect back on a rendition plane, but did not say the same that about the other two cases. The program he conceived was restricted to targeting only the highest level terrorism suspects, he said.
Questioned about the Arar affair, Mr. Scheuer asserted that that rendition was not technically a CIA job, but rather an FBI initiative, by agents working in cahoots with unspecified agencies north of the border.
That prompted a response from Canadian lawyer Ron Atkey, who was in attendance to give a speech about the years he spent inside the Arar Commission battling government secrecy to reveal what Canada knew about the CIA rendition program.
Mr. Atkey pointed out Canadian agencies were found to have had no foreknowledge of the U.S. decision to put Mr. Arar on a Gulfstream jet and fly him to the Middle East, after his 2002 arrest in a New York airport.
"The biggest piece of baloney," Mr. Scheuer said. "They [the Canadians] were totally surprised like Captain Renault in Casablanca," he quipped. [my bold]
The allusion referred to a scene in the 1942 film, where a duplicitous French gendarme shuts down an illegal casino operation in Morocco - saying "I'm shocked, shocked to find out that gambling is going on in here!" even as he is handed a big win from the roulette wheel.
Mr. Scheuer went on to describe certain U.S. newspaper reporters as "scurrilous" traitors for revealing details of the rendition program.[...]
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080414.wrendition14/BNStory/International/home

Wikipedia on Mr. Scheuer: [...] is a former CIA employee. In his 22-year career, he served as the Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station (aka "Alec Station"), from 1996 to 1999, the Osama bin Laden tracking unit at the Counterterrorist Center. He then worked again as Special Advisor to the Chief of the bin Laden unit from September 2001 to November 2004.
Scheuer resigned in 2004. He is currently a news analyst for CBS News and a terrorism analyst for the Jamestown Foundation's online publication Global Terrorism Analysis.^[1] He also makes radio and television appearances and teaches a graduate-level course on Al-Qaeda at Georgetown University. He also participates in conferences on terrorism and national security issues, such as the New America Foundation's December 2004 conference, "Al Qaeda 2.0: Transnational Terrorism After 9/11."

Ecuador’s Prez Charges Disloyalty in Defence Dept./CIA Collusion

Ecquador's President, Rafael Correa

CIA said to control Ecuador's military intelligence
By Jeanneth Valdivieso, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
QUITO, Ecuador - Ecuador's defence minister has resigned amid allegations the country's military intelligence is controlled by the CIA.
No official reason has been given for the resignation of Defence Minister Wellington Sandoval.
However his departure was confirmed Wednesday by Deputy Defence Minister Miguel Carvajal.
The announcement came a day after the military high command requested a meeting with President Rafael Correa to discuss his demand that Ecuador's intelligence services be investigated for disloyalty.
Correa became outraged after learning in the media that Ecuador's military intelligence apparently advised Colombian officials - and not him - about an Ecuadorian man's contacts with Colombian rebels. [my bold]
The man was killed in a cross-border raid March 1 that also killed a key rebel leader and 23 others in a camp maintained by the rebels inside Ecuador. The attack led both Ecuador and Venezuela to break diplomatic relations with Colombia, Washington's closest ally in South America.
Correa said he had to learn about the contacts from media reports, and his government launched a civilian investigation into alleged foreign influence in Ecuador's military intelligence services.
Correa's attacks apparently provoked discontent in military circles. [...]

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2008/04/09/5238291-ap.html

Right ON, Presidente!

Rendition is Terrorism

EU capitals ignore Brussels' questions about rendition flights
19.03.2008 - 17:09 CET By Renata Goldirova

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission is set to criticise EU governments for failing to reply to a questionnaire, which, among other issues, aimed at shedding more light on CIA activities in Europe. So far, only Finland, Luxembourg, Poland and Spain responded to Brussels' call for clarity.
[...] The EU's executive body sent the questionnaire to all EU capitals on 15 December, with a 15 March deadline. The move followed a report from the European Parliament alleging that the US routinely flies terror suspects via Europe to overseas prison camps where some of them face torture.

[...] But EU states are traditionally reluctant to share security information, with the commission currently having "no legal power" to force them to do so. "The best we can do is to apply political pressure," the spokesperson said, adding that the situation will change once the EU's new treaty comes to force next year and a significant proportion of the justice and home affairs dossier will no longer be under the exclusive power of national governments.
http://euobserver.com/9/25851/?rk=1

Just Testing? We're All Guinea Pigs Now

Heather Wokusch and Wray Forrest have done our country a great service by putting this topic out there for all of us to study. They reveal that our worst fears are all true: the government is using citizens here and abroad, as "test subjects" in life-threatening situations without being given information about the risks being taken. The content of this unusually long post is of critical importance to us all. I have tried to pick some of the most urgent elements out of the original, very detailed article, with the hope you will click the links and read the whole story, with [my bold] throughout:
Breaking the Nuremberg Code: The US Military’s Human-Testing Program Returns
by Heather Wokusch | March 5, 2008 - 11:28pm
The Pentagon is slated to release a suspected toxicant in Crystal City, Virginia this week, ostensibly to test air sensors.
There is a tricky clause in Chapter 32/Title 50 of the United States Code (the aggregation of US general and permanent laws). Specifically, Section 1520a lists the following cases in which the Secretary of Defense can conduct a chemical or biological agent test or experiment on humans if informed consent has been obtained:
(1) Any peaceful purpose that is related to a medical, therapeutic, pharmaceutical, agricultural, industrial, or research activity.
(2) Any purpose that is directly related to protection against toxic chemicals or biological weapons and agents.
(3) Any law enforcement purpose, including any purpose related to riot control.
In other words, there are many circumstances under which the Secretary of Defense can test chemical or biological agents on human beings, but at least informed consent has to be obtained in advance.
Or does it. Section 1515, another part of Chapter 32, is entitled "Suspension; Presidential authorization" and says: After November 19, 1969, the operation of this chapter, or any portion thereof, may be suspended by the President during the period of any war declared by Congress and during the period of any national emergency declared by Congress or by the President.
Essentially, if the President or Congress decides that we are at war then the Secretary of Defense does not need anybody´s consent to test chemical or biological agents on human beings. Gives one pause during these days of a perpetual "war on terror."
[...Wray C. Forrest] became one of roughly 6,720 soldiers used as Edgewood Arsenal test subjects between 1950-1975.
Forrest was given a new identity at Edgewood: Research Subject #6692. He says, "That was the number assigned to me … similar to the numbers assigned to the Jews in the concentration/death camps in Germany during WWII."
The US military tested heart drugs on Forrest, which he says were administered by IV and various types of injections. Forrest was also exposed to "contaminated drinking water, food, and various ground contaminates that permeate Edgewood Arsenal. BZ [a chemical incapacitating agent], napalm, mustard agents, and any number of other contaminates in the ground and drinking water there, from previous testing done there by the military."
A total of 254 different chemicals were researched on soldiers at Edgewood, and Forrest notes, "We were never informed as to exactly what we were being given. We also did not sign any informed consent prior to the testing. This was a direct violation of the Geneva Convention rules for the use of humans in chemical and drug experiments/research."
The Edgewood Arsenal facility played a role in WWII human subject testing as well. Roughly 4,000 US soldiers were used as human guinea pigs in chemical research which often took place in gas chambers. US Navy member Nat Schnurman, for example, was sent to an Edgewood gas chamber six times one week in 1942. As The Detroit Free Press reported: "On his last visit, a blend of mustard gas and lewisite was piped in. ”> Schnurman was overcome with toxins, vomited into his mask and begged for release. The request was denied. His next memory is of coming to on a snowbank outside the chamber."
[...] Dubbed "Urban Shield: Crystal City Urban Transport Study," the operation will test the effectiveness of the city’s chemical sensors, and according to The Examiner newspaper, ”> "the data will help the Pentagon and Arlington shape their lockdown policies for chemical and biological attacks or accidents." Lockdown policies.
According to a Pentagon press release from late February 2008, the study "will involve releasing a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and inert tracer gas that poses ”> no health or safety hazards to people or the environment."
But it’s not quite that simple. ”> Sulfur hexafluoride is a suspected respiratory toxicant ; as such, exposure in certain amounts may be harmful for those with asthma, emphysema and other respiratory issues. It also is a suspected neurotoxicant, with potential untold consequences for the nervous systems of those vulnerable.
That part is left out of the Pentagon’s press release. [my bold]
[...] Yet repeated phone calls to the Pentagon yesterday yielded no results. The Force Protection Agency seemed unaware of the upcoming test and the press office was of no help either. No one could - or would - answer basic questions such as how many people could be exposed in the open-air test, if any attempt had been made to brief citizens on potential health risks or if there would be any medical follow-up provided.
[...] The Bush administration has quietly channeled tens of billions of dollars into chemical and biological weapons. Bush’s 2007 budget, for example, earmarked almost $2 billion for biodefense research and development via the National Institutes of Health alone.
[...] Since the R&D is top secret and oversight limited, the public is rarely aware of escalating dangers. As of August 2007, for example, biological weapons laboratories across the country had reported 36 lost shipments and accidents for that year, almost double the number for all of 2004.
In addition to challenging international non-proliferation agreements and risking a global arms race, the Bush administration’s surge in chemical and biological weapons spending raises questions over what deadly weapons may have been tested on populations abroad. And what may be tested domestically, with or without the public’s consent.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/13265
Heather Wokusch is the author of The Progressives’ Handbook: Get the Facts and Make a Difference Now series and can be reached at ”> www.heatherwokusch.com . Wray Forrest and other veterans have put together a DVD on "how our Federal Government treated its troops at not only Edgewood Arsenal, but also at other military installations in the United States of America." For a free copy, send a blank DVD+R and self-addressed postage paid DVD Envelope to: EDGEWOOD RESEARCH VETERAN, 3910 Patrick Drive Apt 14, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80916.
Heather Wokusch is the author of The Progressives' Handbook: Get the Facts and Make a Difference Now, which went to #1 on Amazon's political activism charts in December 2007.
In searching for photos for this post I came upon yet another expose of the Edgewood Arsenal from a 2007 article in Wired:
Army's Hallucinogenic Weapons Unveiled
By Sharon Weinberger, April 06, 2007
[...] Advocates of using chemical agents in nonlethal warfare are increasing, making now a good time to start reviewing the historical record. A recently published book on the Army's infamous "Edgewood Experiments" involving hallucinogenic agents like LSD may help shed more light on the debate. The infamous CIA work, MK ULTRA, is often considered synonymous with all government LSD experimentation. But the historical record is far more complex.
This may be the first and last time in my life that I call a self-published book a "must read," but psychiatrist James Ketchum's Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten is an usual case. As Steve Aftergood of Secrecy News has already pointed out, this book "is a candid, not entirely flattering, sometimes morbidly amusing account of a little-documented aspect of Army research." Ketchum's book is also discussed in an article published today in USA Today, which provides a brief description of the work Ketchum was involved in:
Army doctors gave soldier volunteers synthetic marijuana, LSD and two dozen other psychoactive drugs during experiments aimed at developing chemical weapons that could incapacitate enemy soldiers, a psychiatrist who performed the research says in a new memoir.
The program, which ran at the Army's Edgewood, Md., arsenal from 1955 until about 1972, concluded that counterculture staples such as acid and pot were either too unpredictable or too mellow to be useful as weapons, psychiatrist James Ketchum said in an interview.
The program did yield one hallucinogenic weapon: softball-size artillery rounds that were filled with powdered quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ, a deliriant of the belladonnoid family that had placed some research subjects in a sleeplike state and left them impaired for days.
Ketchum says the BZ bombs were stockpiled at an Army arsenal in Arkansas but never deployed. They were later destroyed.
The Army acknowledged the program's existence in 1975. Follow-up studies by the Army in 1978 and the National Academy of Sciences in 1981 found that volunteers suffered no long-term effects.
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/04/the_secrets_of_.html

Is Bill Kristol an Idiot?

This article about a C-SPAN interview is a real hoot and not to be missed! There’s an update on this subject today on Jonathan Schwartz’ site: http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/
Tomgram: posted February 14, 2008 2:58 pm
Jonathan Schwarz, Bill Kristol's Obscure Masterpiece The Lost Kristol Tapes
What the New York Times Bought
By Jonathan Schwarz
[...] I'm talking about Kristol's two-hour appearance on C-Span's Washington Journal on March 28, 2003, just nine days after the President launched his invasion of Iraq.
[...] Opposite Kristol on the segment was Daniel Ellsberg, famed for leaking the Pentagon Papers in the Vietnam era. Their discussion jumped back and forth across 40 years of U.S.-Iraqi relations, and is easiest to understand if rearranged chronologically.
[...] To start with, Ellsberg made the reasonable point that Iraqis might not view the invading Americans as "liberators," since the U.S. had been instrumental in Saddam Hussein's rise to power: Here's how he put it:
"ELLSBERG: People in Iraq... perceive Hussein as a dictator... But as a dictator the Americans chose for them.
"KRISTOL: That's just not true. We've had mistakes in our Iraq policy. It's just ludicrous -- we didn't choose Hussein. We didn't put him in power.
[...] Ellsberg here is referring to U.S. support for a 1963 coup involving the Ba'athist party, for which Saddam was already a prominent enforcer -- and then another coup in 1968 when the Ba'athists consolidated control, after which Saddam became the power behind the nominal president. According to one of the 1963 plotters, "We came to power on a CIA train." (Beyond providing lists of communists and leftists to be murdered, the U.S. also gave the new regime napalm to help them put down a Kurdish uprising we'd previously encouraged.) James Crichtfield, then head of the CIA in the Middle East, said, "We really had the t's crossed on what was happening" This turned out not to be quite right, since factional infighting among top Iraqis required the second plot five years later for which, explained key participant Abd al-Razzaq al-Nayyif, "you must [also] look to Washington."
Yet it appears clear on video that Kristol is genuinely startled by what Ellsberg was saying.
[...] Later, when the discussion gets closer to the present. Kristol's demeanor changes. He appears to be better informed and therefore shifts to straightforward lies:
"ELLSBERG: Why did we support Saddam as recently as when you were in the administration? And the answer is--
"KRISTOL: We didn't support Saddam when I was in the administration.
[...] This is preposterously false. First of all, Kristol worked in the Reagan administration as Education Secretary William Bennett's chief of staff -- when the U.S. famously supported Saddam's war against Iran with loans, munitions, intelligence, and diplomatic protection for his use of chemical weapons. After George H.W. Bush was elected in 1988, Kristol moved to the same position in Vice President Quayle's office. During the transition, Bush's advisors examined the country's Iraq policy and wrote a memo explaining to the incoming President the choice he faced. In a nutshell, this was "to decide whether to treat Iraq as a distasteful dictatorship to be shunned when possible, or to recognize Iraq's present and potential power in the region and accord it relatively high priority. We strongly urge the latter view."
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174894

Brewster Jennings, Valerie & Sibel

From The Sunday Times + my bold:
Insight: Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert, Joe Lauria in Washington, January 27, 2008
Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe

[...] Her [Sibel Edmonds] latest claims relate to a number of intercepted recordings believed to have been made between the summer and autumn of 2001. At that time, foreign agents were actively attempting to acquire the West’s nuclear secrets and technology.
[...] Plame, then 38, was the glamorous wife of a former US ambassador, Joe Wilson. Despite she […] often claim[ing] to be an oil consultant. In fact she was a career CIA agent who was part of a small team investigating the same procurement network that the State Department official is alleged to have aided.
Brewster Jennings was one of a number of covert enterprises set up to infiltrate the nuclear ring. It is is believed to have been based in Boston and consisted of little more than a name, a telephone number and a post office box address.
[...] One group of Turkish agents who had come to America on the pretext of researching alternative energy sources was introduced to Brewster Jennings through the Washington-based American Turkish Council (ATC), a lobby group that aids commercial ties between the countries. Edmonds says the Turks believed Brewster Jennings to be energy consultants and were planning to hire them.
But she said: “He [the State Department official] found out about the arrangement . . . and he contacted one of the foreign targets and said . . . you need to stay away from Brewster Jennings because they are a cover for the government.
[...] In the meantime, the role of Plame and Brewster Jennings became public knowledge in 2003. Plame’s husband, Wilson, wrote a report that undermined claims by President George W Bush that Saddam Hussein’s regime had attempted to buy uranium in Niger – a key justification
[...] Phillip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, said: “It’s pretty clear Plame was targeting the Turks. If indeed that [State Department] official was working with the Turks to violate US law on nuclear exports, it would have been in his interest to alert them to the fact that this woman’s company was affiliated to the CIA. I don’t know if that’s treason legally but many people would consider it to be.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3257725.ece

Of course we've got this news via Lukery at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak!
http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/2008/01/uk-times-brewster-jennings-outed-by.html