Wanna know why the rich keep getting richer? Hint: CIA and Secret Government work for them.

[Octafish]

The following, written before 1999, details the history and hidden operations of the Class War:



The Origins of the Overclass

By Steve Kangas
Liberal Resurgent

The wealthy have always used many methods to accumulate wealth, but it was not until the mid-1970s that these methods coalesced into a superbly organized, cohesive and efficient machine. After 1975, it became greater than the sum of its parts, a smooth flowing organization of advocacy groups, lobbyists, think tanks, conservative foundations, and PR firms that hurtled the richest 1 percent into the stratosphere.

The origins of this machine, interestingly enough, can be traced back to the CIA. This is not to say the machine is a formal CIA operation, complete with code name and signed documents. (Although such evidence may yet surface — and previously unthinkable domestic operations such as MK-ULTRA, CHAOS and MOCKINGBIRD show this to be a distinct possibility.) But what we do know already indicts the CIA strongly enough. Its principle creators were Irving Kristol, Paul Weyrich, William Simon, Richard Mellon Scaife, Frank Shakespeare, William F. Buckley, Jr., the Rockefeller family, and more. Almost all the machine's creators had CIA backgrounds.

During the 1970s, these men would take the propaganda and operational techniques they had learned in the Cold War and apply them to the Class War. Therefore it is no surprise that the American version of the machine bears an uncanny resemblance to the foreign versions designed to fight communism. The CIA's expert and comprehensive organization of the business class would succeed beyond their wildest dreams. In 1975, the richest 1 percent owned 22 percent of America’s wealth. By 1992, they would nearly double that, to 42 percent — the highest level of inequality in the 20th century.

How did this alliance start? The CIA has always recruited the nation’s elite: millionaire businessmen, Wall Street brokers, members of the national news media, and Ivy League scholars. During World War II, General "Wild Bill" Donovan became chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. Donovan recruited so exclusively from the nation’s rich and powerful that members eventually came to joke that "OSS" stood for "Oh, so social!"

Another early elite was Allen Dulles, who served as Director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961. Dulles was a senior partner at the Wall Street firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, which represented the Rockefeller empire and other mammoth trusts, corporations and cartels. He was also a board member of the J. Henry Schroeder Bank, with offices in Wall Street, London, Zurich and Hamburg. His financial interests across the world would become a conflict of interest when he became head of the CIA. Like Donavan, he would recruit exclusively from society’s elite.

CONTINUED...

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-overclass.html

What we've learned since then only reinforces Kangas: The 1-percent (especially the the 1-percent of 1-percent) use their ever-increasing wealth to condition, command and control the 99-percent of We the People.

PS: Steve Kangas died of a gunshot wound to the head outside the offices of Richard Mellon Scaife in Pittsburgh in 1999. His death was ruled a suicide. Tragic, especially considering that he was connecting the dots between the rabid right and the assault on President Clinton, mass media, Big Finance, etc. online and in a big way.

[Dreamer Tatum]

1. you mean it ISN'T chemtrails? nt

[sharp_stick]

4. Oh No It's The Chemtrails

man. The CIA is using the money they get from the Bilderbergers to covertly finance the conversion of every airliner into a spraying device.

It's the only logical conclusion man, the only one...

on

[Octafish]

14. Thanks for reminding me. Clarence Thomas at Bohemian Grove...

Justice Thomas reported a wealth of gifts

In the last six years he has accepted free items valued at $42,200, the most on the high court.

December 31, 2004|Richard A. Serrano and David G. Savage | Times Staff Writers

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts since joining the high court, including $1,200 worth of tires, valuable historical items and a $5,000 personal check to help pay a relative's education expenses.

SNIP...

He also took a free trip aboard a private jet to the exclusive Bohemian Grove club in Northern California -- arranged by a wealthy Texas real estate investor who helped run an advocacy group that filed briefs with the Supreme Court.

Those and other gifts were disclosed by Thomas under a 1978 federal ethics law that requires high-ranking government officials, including the nine Supreme Court justices, to file a report each year that lists gifts, money and other items they have received.

Thomas has reported accepting much more valuable gifts than his Supreme Court colleagues over the last six years, according to their disclosure forms on file at the court.

CONTINUED...

http://articles.latimes.com/2004/dec/31/nation/na-gifts31

Wanna bet that's just the tip of the iceberg, those gifts, huh?

[stonecutter357]

36. HARP. FTW!

[Octafish]

10. What a telling and sad reaction, yours. Reminds me of Steve Inskeep...

Tired Of Inequality? One Economist Says It'll Only Get Worse

by NPR STAFF
September 12, 2013 3:05 AM

Economist Tyler Cowen has some advice for what to do about America's income inequality: Get used to it. In his latest book, Average Is Over, Cowen lays out his prediction for where the U.S. economy is heading, like it or not:

"I think we'll see a thinning out of the middle class," he tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. "We'll see a lot of individuals rising up to much greater wealth. And we'll also see more individuals clustering in a kind of lower-middle class existence."

It's a radical change from the America of 40 or 50 years ago. Cowen believes the wealthy will become more numerous, and even more powerful. The elderly will hold on to their benefits ... the young, not so much. Millions of people who might have expected a middle class existence may have to aspire to something else.

SNIP...

Some people, he predicts, may just have to find a new definition of happiness that costs less money. Cowen says this widening is the result of a shifting economy. Computers will play a larger role and people who can work with computers can make a lot. He also predicts that everyone will be ruthlessly graded — every slice of their lives, monitored, tracked and recorded.

CONTINUED with link to the audio...

http://www.npr.org/2013/09/12/221425582/tired-of-inequality-one-economist-says-itll-only-get-worse

[Rex]

2. Excellent read, thank you Octafish!

Some seem intent on keeping the dots from being connected.

[Octafish]

11. It's like a knee-jerk.

Many interesting examples in the responses:

Who was responsible for the JFK conspiracy theories?

Most importantly: You are most welcome, Rex.

[Rex]

12. Keep swinging the hammer!

Time will always be on our side.

[Octafish]

16. 50 Years

Here's my last hurrah, Brother. I can't afford to go, but I can't afford not to:

Passing the Torch

Pittsburgh.

[Rex]

17. I so want to be there.

I read about that, going to be some brilliant minds there would love to hear in person.

[Octafish]

19. I'll report on DU.

I might set up a Twitter, but I don't know...

I do promise to report in full.

[Rex]

20. Thanks, I cannot wait to read it!

Should be an interesting time.

[leveymg]

3. This is an important work. Prescott Bush was part of the Dulles-Thyssen Schroeder/UBC bank cabal

Funny how many authors and journalists who touched that Third-Reich Rail got suicided. Add Kangas to that list.

[Hydra]

6. It's sort of an open secret the deeper you dig into the shadow gov't

Nazis brought into the fold to "Fight Communism" after WWII, Eugenics in California exported and then come back home, propaganda and even mind control...

All crystallized around a group of people who should have been charged with treason and locked away forever...but who walk free, given accolades and adulation.

And as you said, underneath it all...don't ask the wrong questions about what they do.

[leveymg]

7. With the 2nd Gen Fascists like Poppy dying off, they don't have to work as hard to cover it up.

WW2 and the Cold War seem like ancient history now. But, we live in the wreckage of the world they created. The sun is setting on the American Republic and the Empire is crumbling. What has any value that's left is being carved up and auctioned off at a steep discount.

Sad, really.

[Octafish]

18. The Bush Family Nazi Connections

by William Bowles
ThirdWorldTraveler

EXCERPT...

"George Walker, GW's great-grandfather, also set up the takeover of the Hamburg-America Line, a cover for I.G. Farben's Nazi espionage unit in the United States. In Germany, I.G. Farben was most famous for putting the gas in gas chambers; it was the producer of Zyklon B and other gasses used on victims of the Holocaust. The Bush family was not unaware of the nature of their investment partners. They hired Allen Dulles, the future head of the CIA, to hide the funds they were making from Nazi investments and the funds they were sending to Nazi Germany, rather than divest."

SNIP...

"On October 20, 1942, the US Alien Property Custodian, under the "Trading With the Enemy Act," seized the shares of the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), of which Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder. The largest shareholder was E. Roland Harriman. (Bush was also the managing partner of Brown Brothers Harriman, a leading Wall Street investment firm.)

"The UBC was established to send American capital to Germany to finance the reorganization of its industry under the Nazis. Their leading German partner was the notorious Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, who wrote a book admitting much of this called "I Paid Hitler."

"Among the companies financed was the Silesian-American Corporation, which was also managed by Prescott Bush, and by his father-in-law George Herbert Walker, who supplied Dub-a-Ya with his name. The company was vital in supplying coal to the Nazi war industry. It too was seized as a Nazi-front on November 17, 1942. The largest company Bush's UBC helped finance was the German Steel Trust, responsible for between one-third and one-half of Nazi iron and explosives.

"Prescott Bush was also a director of the Harriman Fifteen Corporation, (this one owned largely by Roland's brother, Averell Harriman), which owned about a third of the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, the rest owned by Friedrich Flick, (a member of Himmler's "Circle of Friends" who donated to the S.S.)."

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Bush_Gang/BushFamily_NaziConnections.html

Seeing how Corporate McPravda and Akkkademia don't cover the story, it's up to DU...

[hootinholler]

5. They are a little more open about it these days

[Octafish]

22. Exposing the Financial Core of the Transnational Capitalist Class

By Peter Phillips and Brady Osborne

Introduction

In this study, we decided to identify in detail the people on the boards of directors of the top ten asset management firms and the top ten most centralized corporations in the world. Because of overlaps, there is a total of thirteen firms, which collectively have 161 directors on their boards. We think that this group of 161 individuals represents the financial core of the world’s transnational capitalist class. They collectively manage $23.91 trillion in funds and operate in nearly every country in the world. They are the center of the financial capital that powers the global economic system. Western governments and international policy bodies work in the interests of this financial core to protect the free flow of capital investment anywhere in the world.

A Brief History of Research on the
American Power Elite

A long tradition of sociological research documents the existence of a dominant ruling class in the United States, whose members set policy and determine national political priorities. The American ruling class is complex and competitive, and perpetuates itself through interacting families of high social standing with similar lifestyles, corporate affiliations, and memberships in elite social clubs and private schools.1

SNIP...

The Transnational Capitalist Class

Capitalist power elites exist around the world. The globalization of trade and capital brings the world’s elites into increasingly interconnected relationships—to the point that sociologists have begun to theorize the development of a transnational capitalist class (TCC). In one of the pathbreaking works in this field, The Transnational Capitalist Class (2000), Leslie Sklair argued that globalization elevated transnational corporations (TNC) to more influential international roles, with the result that nation-states became less significant than international agreements developed through the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other international institutions.8 Emerging from these multinational corporations was a transnational capitalist class, whose loyalties and interests, while still rooted in their corporations, was increasingly international in scope. Sklair wrote:

The transnational capitalist class can be analytically divided into four main fractions: (i) owners and controllers of TNCs and their local affiliates; (ii) globalizing bureaucrats and politicians; (iii) globalizing professionals; (iv) consumerist elites (merchants and media). . . . It is also important to note, of course, that the TCC and each of its fractions are not always entirely united on every issue. Nevertheless, together, leading personnel in these groups constitute a global power elite, dominant class or inner circle in the sense that these terms have been used to characterize the dominant class structures of specific countries.9

William Robinson followed in 2004 with his book, A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World.10 Robinson claimed that 500 years of capitalism had led to a global epochal shift in which all human activity is transformed into capital. In this view, the world had become a single market, which privatized social relationships. He saw the TCC as increasingly sharing similar lifestyles, patterns of higher education, and consumption. The global circulation of capital is at the core of an international bourgeoisie, who operate in oligopolist clusters around the world. These clusters of elites form strategic transnational alliances through mergers and acquisitions with the goal of increased concentration of wealth and capital. The process creates a polyarchy of hegemonic elites. The concentration of wealth and power at this level tends to over-accumulate, leading to speculative investments and wars. The TCC makes efforts to correct and protect its interests through global organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the G20, World Social Forum, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, Bank for International Settlements, and other transnational associations. Robinson claimed that, within this system, nation-states become little more than population containment zones, and the real power lies with the decision makers who control global capital.11

Deeper inside the transnational capitalist class is what David Rothkopf calls the “superclass.” In his 2008 book, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making, Rothkopf argued that the superclass constitutes 6,000 to 7,000 people, or 0.0001 percent of the world’s population.12 They are the Davos-attending, Gulfstream/private jet–flying, money-incrusted, megacorporation-interlocked, policy-building elites of the world, people at the absolute peak of the global power pyramid. They are 94 percent male, predominantly white, and mostly from North America and Europe. Rothkopf reported that these are the people setting the agendas at the G8, G20, NATO, the World Bank, and the WTO. They are from the highest levels of finance capital, transnational corporations, the government, the military, the academy, nongovernmental organizations, spiritual leaders, and other shadow elites. (Shadow elites include, for instance, the deep politics of national security organizations in connection with international drug cartels, who extract 8,000 tons of opium from US war zones annually, then launder $500 billion through transnational banks, half of which are US-based.)13

CONTINUED...

http://www.projectcensored.org/exposing-financial-core-transnational-%E2%80%A8capitalist-class/

At the rate things are changing, this information soon will be classified and those who know and distribute it will be considered criminals and enemies of the state.

[leveymg]

32. The overall pcture and analysis here haven't changed much since The Power Elite (C.Wright Mills,56)

But, one wouldn't expect a fundamental transformation in only one or two generations, except the globalization of money and influence, the (partial) end of the Cold War blocs, and the rise of a more multi-polar, truly transnational financial and trading regime.

The biggest change has been the evisceration of the once privileged American middle-class and the accompanying decline of public power and concerns by government that has gone along with an upward and outward shift in incomes. The American economy has truly been looted, and its markets and finances are now really just thinly-disguised Ponzi schemes and bubbles sustained by constant infusions of discounted federal funds. I think the previous generation would simply marvel at the loss of all ethics and scope of the looting and wholesale transfer abroad of assets.

[rhett o rick]

8. Conspiracies are part of our lives. It only makes sense that the wealthy would conspire

to maintain and increase their wealth. And I see no way out for the 99%.

[Octafish]

25. WikiLeaks' Stratfor dump lifts lid on intelligence-industrial complex

WikiLeaks' latest release, of hacked emails from Stratfor, shines light on the murky world of private intelligence-gathering

Pratap Chatterjee
theguardian.com, Tuesday 28 February 2012

What price bad intelligence? Some 5m internal emails from Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based company that brands itself as a "global intelligence" provider, were recently obtained by Anonymous, the hacker collective, and are being released in batches by WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing website, starting Monday.

The most striking revelation from the latest disclosure is not simply the military-industrial complex that conspires to spy on citizens, activists and trouble-causers, but the extremely low quality of the information available to the highest bidder. Clients of the company include Dow Chemical, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, as well as US government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Marines.

Analysts working on the Middle East for the company appeared to be very poorly informed, with no more experience than a semester of studying abroad, according to journalists who have studied the documents. "They used Google translate to read al-Akbar news articles," says an incredulous Jamal Ghosn, associate editor of that newspaper in Beirut, Lebanon. "This is a guaranteed way for good intelligence to be lost in translation."

Mike Bonnano of the Yes Men, a group of international pranksters who impersonate corporate executives and government leaders to highlight environmental and social abuses, was astonished to discover that his group was being tracked by Stratfor, which was apparently making money selling a list of his public-speaking engagements.

"They [are] making it sound better to clients simply so that they can make money," says Bonnano, after reviewing the material provided to him by WikiLeaks. "We're not talking about good intelligence, we're talking about a lot of information because more information means more money. That does not mean that it's smart."

Bonnano gave another example: Stratfor allegedly sent a memo to Dow Chemical summarising a public blogpost on the use of an environmentally-friendly washing machine used by activists campaigning against the 1984 lethal gas leak from Union Carbide's plant in Bhopal, India, which killed over 2,259 people instantly and an estimated 25,000 over the next few years.

Stratfor is not the first company to be caught selling low-quality "intelligence" to government agencies and multinational corporations. Aaron Barr, then CEO of HB Gary Federal, a Sacramento, California-based company that sells similar services, boasted in 2010 that he could extract information about hackers like Anonymous from social media. In early February 2011, the company website was hacked to reveal the company was selling very inaccurate information about WikiLeaks.

What is more disturbing is that the information revealed about HBGary Federal and Stratfor suggests both companies were also seeking to profit by disrupting journalists and activist groups. HBGary Federal documents suggest that they were marketing a campaign for Bank of America to attack Glenn Greenwald of Salon and for the US Chamber of Commerce to attack the Washington, DC-based thinktank, the Center for American Progress (full disclosure: I do consulting work for the CAP). (There is no evidence Bank of America or the US Chamber of Commerce responded to the alleged offer of these services.)

Likewise, Stratfor has been actively following anti-Union Carbide activist groups like the Bhopal Medical Appeal, a tiny, Brighton, England-based non-profit, which worked with the Yes Men in July 2009 to stage a protest outside the Dow office in Staines in the UK. The newly-released emails suggest that the Dow shut down its offices on that occasion to avoid the protesters, after receiving a Stratfor report.

CONTINUED...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/28/wikileaks-intelligence-industrial-complex

About conspiracy:

"One of the things that is interesting about reading conspiracy theory is that much of what folks think is conspiracy is really many people acting in concert to make or protect their money." -- Catherine Austin Fitts.

A big shot in Poppy's crew, Fitts got fed up with the corruption at the highest levels of government, business and finance. She's doing all she can to document corruption on Wall Street and Washington and helping those who give a damn do something about it. Her Narcodollars for Beginners deserves a Pulitzer.

[rhett o rick]

38. When you have a group of people with the same goals, they will act in concert to further

those goals. The ruling class has a goal of increasing their wealth and when they work in concert toward that goal it's a conspiracy. I believe it's a class conspiracy. It's not personal, they just believe they deserve our wealth.

[BelgianMadCow]

46. Pratap Chatterjee

has a post out today, "The Data Hackers".
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175757/

But there is a second kind of data company of which most people are unaware: high-tech outfits that simply help themselves to our information in order to allow U.S. government agencies to dig into our past and present. Some of this is legal, since most of us have signed away the rights to our own information on digital forms that few ever bother to read, but much of it is, to put the matter politely, questionable.

This second category is made up of professional surveillance companies. They generally work for or sell their products to the government -- in other words, they are paid with our tax dollars -- but we have no control over them. Harris Corporation provides technology to the FBI to track, via our mobile phones, where we go; Glimmerglass builds tools that the U.S. intelligence community can use to intercept our overseas calls; and companies like James Bimen Associates design software to hack into our computers.

[denverbill]

9. That pretty much sums up my evaluation of the US as it stands today.

The one disagreement I might have with his article is that the Republicans failure to impeach Clinton was somehow a victory for the 99% against the 1%. Clinton did as much for the 1% as any President in our history when he signed NAFTA. And the people who were out to get Clinton we the same people who were outraged that Nixon was forced to resign in disgrace. And Nixon, according to the article, was anti-CIA and actually helped the workers. That would imply that the people who were mad Nixon was kicked out were actually the ones supporting the 99%. Just some incongruity there.

However, there is little doubt in my mind that the overarching goal of the CIA and the elites is the protection of capitalism at any cost. It's why Chavez/Maduro is a 'dictator', and why communist Cuba is bad and ostensibly communist China and Vietnam are good.

[Octafish]

41. With you 100-percent and in Solidarity, denverbill. Guess who profited from all the jobs offshoring?

The Bush family: Middle Kingdom rainmakers

By Zach Coleman

HONG KONG - George Herbert Walker Bush arrived in Beijing 30 years ago as the official United States representative to China with one goal above all else: expanding his buddy list.

"My hyper-adrenaline, political instincts tell me that the fun of this job is going to be to try to make more contacts," he wrote in his first diary entry. "And it is my hope that I will be able to meet the next generation of China's leaders - whomever they may be. Yet everyone tells me that that is impossible."

Bush Sr, already a champion networker, wasn't to be denied. In a final triumph at the end of his stay, Deng Xiaoping, then vice premier, threw a farewell lunch for Bush Sr and his wife.

"You are our old friends," said Deng, according to a Chinese government website. "You are welcome to come back anytime in the future."

Bush Sr and his relatives have turned that open invitation into a family franchise over the years, setting themselves up as gatekeepers between lucrative business opportunities created by the opening up of China's economy and the US corporate and political establishment. If Iraq is the place where the Bush men fight once they leave the oil fields of Texas, China is where they have made money.

CONTINUED (GOOGLE cache …may soon be gone)…

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FE21Ad01.html

I wondered why President Clinton failed to investigate the crimes of Poppy Bush until I saw how quickly a guy can become wealthy after office. It pays to get along.

[Uncle Joe]

13. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Octafish.

[Octafish]

42. Ever wonder why the FBI doesn't go after the Banksters?

The Incredible Con the Banksters Pulled on the FBI

By William K. Black, J.D., Ph.D.
OpEdNews Op Eds 8/18/2013 at 09:33:47

EXCERPT...

(M)any economists still seem not to understand that a combination of circumstances in the 1980s made it very easy to loot a financial institution with little risk of prosecution. Once this is clear, it becomes obvious that high-risk strategies that would pay off only in some states of the world were only for the timid. Why abuse the system to pursue a gamble that might pay off when you can exploit a sure thing with little risk of prosecution? (1993: 4-5).

In criminology jargon, the death of criminal referrals has created an intensely criminogenic environment which creates incentives so perverse that accounting control fraud can become epidemic.

The central puzzle is how the largest epidemics of elite white-collar crime in history, frauds that drove the ongoing financial crisis and made the Wall Street banksters wealthy beyond their most avaricious dreams, resulted in not a single conviction of those elite frauds. The FBI report allows us to figure out some of the key missing puzzle pieces that explain this tragic mystery.

This article (and the next) focus on the brilliant con that the mortgage lending industry was able to pull on the FBI because the banking regulatory agencies and the SEC failed to provide the FBI with the expertise and investigative findings of fraud essential for the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors to succeed in investigating and prosecuting the officers controlling complex frauds. Three key facts are essential for the public to understand the FBI's total dependence on criminal referrals from the banking regulatory agencies. First, "control frauds" cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime -- combined. "Accounting control frauds" must gut their underwriting process and internal controls in order to make massive amounts of bad loans. That is equivalent to hanging a sign on the front door inviting thieves to rob the bank with impunity.

SNIP...

So we return to the question this column addresses -- how could the DOJ make zero criminal prosecutions of the elite banksters that caused this crisis through the twin epidemics of accounting control fraud by lenders (appraisal fraud and fraudulent "liar's" loans)? The FBI Report shows (indirectly) that the answer is an exceptionally effective con run by the mortgage industry on the FBI. The con could have never succeeded had the banking regulators not ceased making criminal referrals and providing their expertise to the FBI and DOJ on accounting control fraud schemes. The OTS was supposed to regulate Countrywide, Washington Mutual (WaMu), and IndyMac -- three of the most notorious fraudulent lenders in the world. The OTS made zero criminal referrals in this crisis -- which was over 70 times worse than the S&L debacle in terms of losses and fraud.

CONTINUED...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Incredible-Con-the-Ban-by-William-K-Black--130818-359.html

It's clear the S&L ripoff was a practice run, comparing how the rich got away with ripping off trillions in 2008. Now, is it any wonder the FBI goes after Assange, Manning, Snowden and those who oppose the "Money trumps peace" business-as-usual crowd?

PS: You are most welcome, Uncle Joe! Thank you for giving a damn.

[grantcart]

15. Interesting background on the author.

http://old.post-gazette.com/regionstate/19990419kangas6.asp

[munster69]

21. Very scary

plus private prisons.

[snooper2]

23. You ever start your fundraiser to go to the JFK conspiracy conference at that fundie college?

[Octafish]

26. I was wondering who would bring it up.

You want to contribute?

[snooper2]

39. not really, i was wondering how much support you would get for your endeavor though

Give it a shot! You've got a fan base here!

[OnyxCollie]

24. K&R. nt

[Enthusiast]

27. I knew it..............nt

[Coyotl]

28. Reagan's campaign manager becomes head of the CIA!

Kinda says it all!

[leveymg]

35. Not really unprecedented. Poppy was head of the RNC under Nixon before he became CIA chief. John

Foster Dulles was head of the RNC during the late 1930s at the time he headed Sullivan & Cromwell with his brother Allan, who went on to be the first CIA Director. They were effectively Hitler's American lawyers.

[starroute]

37. Nixon's role in all of this is often overlooked

I've seen conflicting stories about how he was first picked to run for Congress and have never been sure of the truth. But one thing that's clear is that after he lost the 1960 election, he became central to a nexus that included the China Lobby (which pulled the first October Surprise for him in 1968), the Mob, the Cuban exile community, and a few other unsavory elements. His White House was full of creepy CIA figures like E. Howard Hunt and the pattern of disrespect for democratic norms that he brought into the presidency has haunted us ever since.

[navarth]

29. well-researched as always, thanks for not letting anybody forget.

kicking.

[Cleita]

30. K&R

[99th_Monkey]

31. Very informative * K&R * Thanks for posting this. ~nt~

[bobthedrummer]

33. K&R

I was going to ask a simple question about what people as diverse as Philip Merril, William Colby, Danny Casolaro had in common with Steve Kangas, Admiral Jeremy Boorda, Vince Foster, Chandra Levy, Marilyn Monroe (to name but a few) alas, time pressure and my lack of computer skills prevented it.

Thanks for starting this thread my friend.

[dotymed]

34. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Is a great book that spells all of this out. How the CIA recruit (and often invent their credentials) business men/women to "make offers that other countries can't resist."

[G_j]

48. great book

[BelgianMadCow]

49. Interview video

[Jackpine Radical]

40. Kicque.

& Obligatory R, of course.

[PETRUS]

43. kick

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

44. K&R. This or something like it is what is behind all the injustice.

[Scuba]

45. Good read. Recced.

[BelgianMadCow]

47. Here's another arm of the 0.0001% enforcement mechanism: IMF & World Bank

have you seen top level World Bank whistleblower Karen Tudes?