Know your BFEE: Judge Laurence Silberman, Go-To Guy of the Military Industrial Complex

[Octafish]

If you’ve read Ayn Rand, you might recognize Judge Laurence H. Silberman as the Fountainhead for the American Police State. In her novel by that name, the lead character personifies architectural genius who radiates the inspiration that drives the individual to succeed past superhuman heights.

If you haven’t read Ayn Rand's novel, nor ever heard of the former senior federal appellate judge (Thanks, Ronnie!) and ambassador to Yugoslavia (Thanks, Jerry!), in addition to being in good company, you’re not alone. Judge Silberman’s flown under the media radar, as in scrutiny, for decades.

Those interested in the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy, the part of being well-informed and aware of what the government does in their name and with their money, especially, will want to know what the media leave out of “history as it happens.” The reason is what Michelle Goldberg and Salon.com found: “Whenever there's a vast right-wing conspiracy, Judge Laurence Silberman keeps turning up.” They are not kidding.



Judge Silberman made headlines this week with an Opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal. He was shocked to discover that AP reporter Ron Fournier had the temerity to express out loud and in public that George W. Bush lied the United States of America into war with Iraq.

How disgusting is that? Not as disgusting as what Judge Silberman believes, evidently.

Didn't the AP review the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Silberman asked? Didn't Fournier hear CIA director George Tenet "famously" tell the president that the notion (Democratic word) or proposition (Republican word) that Iraq possessed WMD was “a slam dunk"? It’s a good bet a lot of WSJ readers and their employees have been phoning, texting, emailing and stalking Mr. Fournier this week to ask.

The Dangerous Lie That ‘Bush Lied’

Some journalists still peddle this canard as if it were fact. This is defamatory and could end up hurting the country.

By LAURENCE H. SILBERMAN
Wall Street Journal, Opinion, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2015

In recent weeks, I have heard former Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier on Fox News twice asserting, quite offhandedly, that President George W. Bush “lied us into war in Iraq.”

I found this shocking....

SNIP…

The charge is dangerous because it can take on the air of historical fact—with potentially dire consequences. I am reminded of a similarly baseless accusation that helped the Nazis come to power in Germany: that the German army had not really lost World War I, that the soldiers instead had been “stabbed in the back” by politicians.

Sometime in the future, perhaps long after most of us are gone, an American president may need to rely publicly on intelligence reports to support military action. It would be tragic if, at such a critical moment, the president’s credibility were undermined by memories of a false charge peddled by the likes of Ron Fournier.

Mr. Silberman, a senior federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, was co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/laurence-h-silberman-the-dangerous-lie-that-bush-lied-1423437950

[font color="purple"]Judge Silberman wants you to believe that even thinking "Bush lied" is tantamount to the treason that gave rise to Hitler and the NAZIs.[/font color] Now that is Rovian: Blame your opponent for what you're actually doing. And if you believe the truth, you're not just a liar or a conspiracy nut, you're a traitor.

So, when Judge Silberman compares people who call George W Bush out on his lies leading America into war, "NAZIs," it shows he knows of what he speaks. He was there for the BFEE -- the Bush Family Evil Empire, the War Party, the banksters and warmongers and traitors who go by the motto "Money trumps peace," the undemocratically, if not self-appointed, guardians of the Military Industrial Complex.

Details on the Judge's walk on the Dark Side from Michelle Goldberg, the author of "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism" and Salon.com:

The partisan “mastermind” in charge of Bush’s intel probe

Whenever there's a vast right-wing conspiracy, Judge Laurence Silberman keeps turning up.

MICHELLE GOLDBERG
Salon.com, TUESDAY, FEB 10, 2004 03:06 PM EST

Judge Laurence Silberman, George Bush’s nominee to co-chair the commission investigating U.S. intelligence on Iraq, knows quite a bit about the murky intersection between facts and ideology. The senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington has been near the febrile center of the largest political scandals of the past two decades, from the rumored “October surprise” of 1980 and the Iran-contra trials to the character assassination of Anita Hill and the impeachment of President Clinton. Whenever right-wing conspiracies swing into action, Silberman is there.

A veteran of the Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan administrations who is close to Vice President Dick Cheney, Silberman has a reputation as a fierce ideologue who doesn’t let his judicial responsibilities get in the way of his Republican activism. David Brock, the repentant former right-wing journalist and Silberman protégé, describes his former mentor as “an extreme partisan” who seems to relish “the political wars.” Kevin Phillips, the former Nixon staffer who authored the recent “The Bush Dynasty,” said on NPR on Monday, “In the past, Silberman has been more involved with coverups in the Middle East than with any attempts to unravel them.” Ralph Neas, president of the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way, calls him “the most partisan and most political federal judge in the country” and says his appointment is “stunning and disgraceful.”

Silberman’s panel, which is supposed to investigate U.S. intelligence on Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Afghanistan, won’t report its findings until March 2005, long after the presidential election. Silberman will be balanced on it by other more moderate or more independent figures, including co-chair Charles Robb, a former Democratic senator and Virginia governor; Republican Sen. John McCain; and Judge Patricia Wald, Silberman’s colleague on D.C. Circuit Court, a woman he is said to hate.

Yet Silberman’s place at the head of the commission has already raised doubts about its credibility, given that Silberman has often behaved as if his paramount role as a federal judge is to protect Republicans, persecute Democrats and slander anyone who disagrees.

SNIP...

After working for Reagan’s election, Silberman was rewarded with an appointment to the D.C. Court of Appeals, the second most powerful court in the country. After the Iran-contra scandal, he was part of a three-judge panel that voted 2-to-1 to reverse Oliver North’s felony conviction. Voting with him was David Sentelle, a protégé of Jesse Helms who according to Brock named his daughter “Reagan” after the president who put him on the bench.

In his book “Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up,” Iran-contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, a Republican who served as deputy attorney general during the Dwight Eisenhower administration, described Silberman as “aggressively hostile” during oral arguments. Walsh wrote that he regretted not moving to disqualify him.

The year after he ruled North innocent, Silberman joined in the right-wing campaign to defame Anita Hill, who had accused Clarence Thomas, George H.W. Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court, of sexual harassment. It was during the attack on Hill that the Silbermans took Brock under their wing.

Brock met Silberman through his wife, Ricky Silberman, who had worked under Thomas at the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission and served as a source for a story Brock wrote about Thomas’ confirmation hearings.

In 1992, after Thomas had been confirmed, Brock began researching “The Real Anita Hill,” a savage assault on Hill’s character that Brock later apologized for. Laurence Silberman was a source for the book, feeding Brock gossip. “Judge Silberman speculated that Hill was a lesbian, ‘acting out,’” Brock wrote in “Blinded by the Right.” “Besides, Silberman confided, Thomas would never have asked Hill for a date: Did I know she had bad breath?”

Brock’s Anita Hill book portrayed Judge Patricia Wald, Silberman’s colleague on the D.C. Circuit Court, as a “conspirator in the campaign against Thomas,” as he wrote in “Blinded by the Right.” “Of course it was none other than Judge Silberman who gave me the false information on his colleague Pat Wald, whom he hated with a passion,” Brock wrote.

CONTINUED...

http://www.salon.com/2004/02/10/silberman/

Silberman was present to help Bush Jr Team steal Florida in 2000 in the form of 5-4 Clarence Thomas, whose Supreme Court nomination he helped steer past Anita Hill and the many people who said exactly what kind of crook the guy is. Silberman was present and accounted for helping Poppy Bush and Company escape justice during the Iran Contra Affair, as documented by Judge Lawrence Walsh. From the federal bench, he helped secure the NSA domestic spying op and made the torture at Abu Ghraib legal-like via his protégé John Yoo. So, it's almost understandable how he now wants to stop any talk by JOURNALISTS that Baby Doc Bush lied America into war on Iraq.



The guy symbolizes everything that's happened to destroy democracy and justice in America since 1980. Then “former Ambassador Silberman” participated in "the October Surprise" as an emissary of the Reagan camp in discussions with Iranian representatives at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington DC.

Here's what Robert Parry observed on Judge Silberman, in its entirety, thanks to DU's special arrangement with the author:

Neocon Judge's History of Cover-ups

Laurence Silberman, a U.S. Appeals Court judge and a longtime neoconservative operative – part of what the Iran-Contra special prosecutor called “the strategic reserves” for convicted Reagan administration operatives in the 1980s – is back playing a similar role for the Bush-43 administration.

by Robert Parry
ConsortiumNews.com, September 23, 2009

On Sept. 11, the eighth anniversary of the terror attacks on New York and Washington, Silberman issued a 2-to-1 opinion dismissing a lawsuit against the private security firm, CACI International, brought by Iraqi victims of torture and other abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

Silberman declared that CACI was immune from prosecution because its employees were responding to U.S. military commands. The immunity ruling blocked legal efforts by 212 Iraqis, who suffered directly at Abu Ghraib or were the widows of men who died, to exact some accountability from CACI employees who allegedly assisted in the torture of prisoners.

"During wartime, where a private service contractor is integrated into combatant activities over which the military retains command authority, a tort claim arising out of the contractor's engagement in such activities shall be preempted," Silberman wrote.

[font color="red"]But Silberman is not a dispassionate judge when it comes to the crimes of Republicans committed to advance the neocon cause.

In the 1980s, Silberman played behind-the-scenes roles in helping Ronald Reagan gain the White House; he helped formulate hard-line intelligence policies; he encouraged right-wing media attacks on liberals; and he protected the flanks of Reagan’s operatives who were caught breaking the law.

Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, a Republican himself, counted Silberman as one of "a powerful band of Republican (judicial) appointees (who) waited like the strategic reserves of an embattled army," determined to prevent any judgments against Reagan’s operatives who broke the law in the arms-for-hostage scandal.

In his 1997 memoir, Firewall, Walsh depicted Silberman as a leader of that partisan band, even recalling how Silberman had berated Judge George MacKinnon, also a Republican, who led the panel which had picked Walsh to be the special prosecutor.

"At a D.C. circuit conference, he (Silberman) had gotten into a shouting match about independent counsel with Judge George MacKinnon," Walsh wrote. "Silberman not only had hostile views but seemed to hold them in anger."

In 1990, after Walsh had secured a difficult conviction of former White House aide Oliver North for offenses stemming from the Iran-Contra scandal, Silberman teamed up with another right-wing judge, David Sentelle, to overturn North’s conviction in a sudden outburst of sympathy for defendant rights.[/font color]

Trashing Anita Hill

Less publicly, in 1991, Silberman also went to bat for the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas, working with right-wing operatives to destroy the reputation of Anita Hill, a former Thomas employee who testified about his crude sexual harassment.

Author David Brock, then a well-paid right-wing hatchet man who published what he later admitted were scurrilous attacks on Hill, described the support and encouragement he received from Silberman and Silberman’s wife, Ricky. Even after Thomas had won Senate confirmation, Silberman still was pushing attack lines against Hill, Brock wrote in his book, Blinded by the Right.

While George H.W. Bush’s White House slipped Brock a psychiatric opinion that Hill suffered from “erotomania,” Silberman met with Brock to suggest even more colorful criticism of Hill.

“Silberman speculated that Hill was a lesbian ‘acting out’,” Brock wrote. “Besides, Silberman confided, Thomas would never have asked Hill for dates: She had bad breath.”

After Brock published a book-length assault on Hill, called The Real Anita Hill, the Silbermans and other prominent conservatives joined a celebration at the Embassy Row Ritz-Carlton, Brock wrote, noting that also in attendance was Judge Sentelle.

But Silberman’s anything-goes approach to promoting – and protecting – right-wing control of the government dated back even further, to his key role as a foreign-policy and intelligence adviser to Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign.

During Campaign 1980, Silberman was a senior figure in what was then a fast-rising neoconservative faction that saw Reagan’s victory – and the defeat of President Jimmy Carter – as vital to expand U.S. military power, to confront the Soviet Union aggressively and to relieve pressure on Israel for a peace deal with the Palestinians.

More than a decade later, congressional investigators discovered that Silberman was assigned to secretive Reagan campaign operations collecting intelligence on what President Carter was doing to secure the release of 52 American hostages then held in Iran.

On April 20, 1980, the Reagan campaign created a group of foreign policy experts known as the Iran Working Group. The operation was run by Richard Allen, Fred Ikle and Silberman, the congressional investigators discovered.

After Reagan’s nomination in July, his campaign merged with that of his vice presidential running mate, George H.W. Bush, who had enlisted many ex-CIA officers who were loyal to Bush as a former CIA director.

October Surprise Obsession

The general election campaign assembled a strategy team, known as the “October Surprise Group,” which was ordered to prepare for “any last-minute foreign policy or defense-related event, including the release of the hostages, that might favorably impact President Carter in the November election,” according to a House Task Force that in 1992 investigated allegations of Republican interference in Carter’s hostage negotiations.

“Originally referred to as the ‘Gang of Ten,’” the Task Force report said the “October Surprise Group” consisted of Allen, Ikle, Charles M. Kupperman, Thomas H. Moorer, Eugene V. Rostow, William R. Van Cleave, John R. Lehman Jr., Robert G. Neumann, Seymour Weiss – and Silberman.

While that reference made it into the Task Force’s final report in January 1993, another part was deleted, which said: “According to members of the ‘October Surprise’ group, the following individuals also participated in meetings although they were not considered ‘members’ of the group: Michael Ledeen, Richard Stillwell, William Middendorf, Richard Perle, General Louis Walt and Admiral James Holloway.”

Deleted from the final report also was a section of the draft describing how the ex-CIA personnel who had worked for Bush’s campaign became the nucleus of the Republican intelligence operation that monitored Carter’s Iran-hostage negotiations for the Reagan-Bush team.

“The Reagan-Bush campaign maintained a 24-hour Operations Center, which monitored press wires and reports, gave daily press briefings and maintained telephone and telefax contact with the candidate’s plane,” the draft report read. “Many of the staff members were former CIA employees who had previously worked on the Bush campaign or were otherwise loyal to George Bush.” (I discovered the unpublished portions of Task Force’s report when I gain access to its files in late 1994.)

Another deletion involved a Sept. 16, 1980, meeting ordered by Reagan’s campaign director William Casey, who had become obsessed over the possibility of Carter pulling off an October Surprise release of the hostages.

On that date, Casey met with senior campaign officials Edwin Meese, Bill Timmons and Richard Allen about the “Persian Gulf Project,” according to an unpublished section of the House Task Force report and Allen’s notes. Two other participants at the meeting, according to Allen’s notes, were Michael Ledeen and Noel Koch.

That same day, Iran’s acting foreign minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh was quoted as citing Republican interference on the hostages. “Reagan, supported by [former Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger and others, has no intention of resolving the problem,” Ghotbzadeh said. “They will do everything in their power to block it.”

Exactly what the Reagan-Bush “October Surprise” team did remains something of a historical mystery.

About two dozen witnesses – including former Iranian officials and international intelligence figures – have claimed the Republican contacts undercut Carter’s hostage negotiations, though others insist that the initiatives were simply ways to gather information about Carter’s desperate bid to free the hostages before the election. (For the most thorough account of the “October Surprise” case, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.)

The L’Enfant Plaza Mystery

One of the many unanswered questions about the October Surprise mystery revolved around a meeting involving Laurence Silberman and an Iranian emissary at the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington in September or early October 1980.

Years later, an Iranian arms dealer named Houshang Lavi claimed to be the emissary who met with Silberman, Allen and Robert McFarlane, who was then an aide to Sen. John Tower, R-Texas. Lavi said the meeting on Oct. 2 dealt with the possibility of trading arms to Iran for release of the hostages – and was arranged by Silberman.

Silberman, Allen and McFarlane acknowledged that a meeting happened, but they insisted they had no recollection of the emissary’s name nor who he was.

In 1990, I interviewed a testy Richard Allen about the meeting for a PBS Frontline documentary. Allen said he reluctantly went to the meeting, which he said was proposed by McFarlane. Allen said he took along Silberman as a witness.

“So Larry Silberman and I got on the subway and we went down to the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel where I met McFarlane and there were many people milling about. We sat at a table in the lobby. It was around the lunch hour. I was introduced to this very obscure character whose name I cannot recall. …

“The individual who was either an Egyptian or an Iranian or could have been an Iranian living in Egypt – and his idea was that he had the capacity to intervene, to deliver the hostages to the Reagan forces. Now, I took that at first to mean that he was able to deliver the hostages to Ronald Reagan, candidate for the presidency of the United States, which was absolutely lunatic. And I said so. I believe I said, or Larry did, ‘we have one President at a time. That’s the way it is.’

“So this fellow continued with his conversation. I was incredulous that McFarlane would have ever brought a guy like this or placed any credibility in a guy like this. Just absolutely incredulous, and so was Larry Silberman. This meeting lasted maybe 20 minutes, 25 minutes. So that’s it. There’s no need to continue this meeting. …

“Larry and I walked out. And I remember Larry saying, ‘Boy, you better write a memorandum about this. This is really spaceship stuff.’ And it, of course, set my opinion very firmly about Bud McFarlane for having brought this person to me in the first place.”

‘Swarthy’ Emissary

Allen described the emissary as “stocky and swarthy, dark-complected,” but otherwise “non-descript.” Allen added that the man looked like a “person from somewhere on the Mediterranean littoral. How about that?”

Allen said this Egyptian or Iranian “must have given a name at the time, must have.” But Allen couldn’t recall it. He also said he made no effort to check out the man’s position or background before agreeing to the meeting.

“Did you ask McFarlane, who is this guy?” I asked Allen.

“I don’t recall having asked him, no,” Allen responded.

“I guess I don’t understand why you wouldn’t say, ‘Is this guy an Iranian, is he someone you’ve known for a while?’” I pressed.

“Well, gee, I’m sorry that you don’t understand,” Allen lashed back. “I really feel badly for you. It’s really too bad you don’t understand. But that’s your problem, not mine.”

“But wouldn’t you normally ask that kind of background question?”

“Not necessarily,” Allen said. “McFarlane wanted me to meet a guy and this guy was going to talk about the hostages. I met plenty of people during that period of time who wanted to talk to me about the hostages. … This was no different from anybody else I would meet on this subject.”

“It obviously turned out to be different from most people you’ve met on the subject,” I interjected.

“”Oh, it turned out to be because this guy is the centerpiece of some sort of great conspiracy web that has been spun,” Allen snapped.

“Well, were there many people who offered to deliver the hostages to Ronald Reagan?” I asked.

“No, this one was particularly different, but I didn’t know that before I went to the meeting, you understand.”

“Did you ask McFarlane what on earth this guy was going to propose?”

“I don’t think I did in advance, no.”

What also was unusual about this meeting was what Allen and Silberman did not do afterwards. Though Allen said that he and Silberman recognized the sensitivity of the approach, neither of Reagan’s foreign policy advisers contacted the Carter administration or reported the offer to law enforcement.

Defying Logic

It also defied logic that seasoned operatives like Allen and Silberman would have agreed to a meeting with an emissary from a hostile power without having done some due-diligence about who the person was and what his bona fides were.

Iranian arms dealer Lavi later claimed to be the mysterious emissary. And government documents revealed that Lavi made a similar approach to the independent presidential campaign of John Anderson, although Anderson’s campaign – unlike Allen and Silberman – promptly informed the CIA and State Department.

For his part, Silberman denied any substantive discussion with the mysterious emissary but refused to discuss the meeting in any detail. He did insist that he was out of town on Oct. 2, the date cited by Lavi, but Silberman wouldn’t provide a list of dates when he was in Washington during the fall of 1980.

Though purportedly having arranged the meeting, McFarlare also insisted that he couldn’t recall the identity of the emissary.

Later, when a Senate panel conducted a brief inquiry into whether the Republicans interfered with Carter’s hostage negotiations, a truculent Allen testified – and brought along a memo that he claimed represented his contemporaneous recollections of the L’Enfant Plaza meeting.

However, the memo, dated Sept. 10, 1980, flatly contradicted the previous accounts from Allen, Silberman and McFarlane. It described a meeting arranged by Mike Butler, another Tower aide, with McFarlane only joining in later as the pair told Allen about a meeting they had had with a Mr. A.A. Mohammed, a Malaysian who operated out of Singapore.

“This afternoon, by mutual agreement, I met with Messrs. Mohammed, Butler and McFarlane. I also took Larry Silberman along to the meeting,” Allen wrote in the memo.

According to the memo, Mohammed presented a scheme for returning the Shah of Iran’s son to the country as “a figurehead monarch” which would be accompanied by a release of the U.S. hostages. Though skeptical of the plan, “both Larry and I indicated that we would be pleased to hear whatever additional news Mr. Mohammed might be able to turn up, and I suggested that that information be communicated via a secure channel,” the memo read.

Nearly every important detail was different both in how the meeting was arranged and its contents. Gone was the proposal to release the hostages to candidate Reagan, gone was the abrupt cutoff, gone was the Iranian or Egyptian – some guy from the “Mediterranean littoral” – replaced by a Malaysian businessman whose comments were welcomed along with future contacts “via a secure channel.” The memo didn’t even mention the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel, nor was McFarlane the organizer.

A reasonable conclusion might be that Allen’s memo was about an entirely different meeting, which would suggest that Republican contacts with Iranian emissaries were more numerous than previously admitted and that Silberman was more of a regular player.

Also, Silberman, McFarlane and Butler – when questioned by the House Task Force investigating the issue in 1992 – disputed Allen’s new version of the L’Enfant Plaza tale. They claimed no recollection of the A.A. Mohammed discussion.

Nevertheless, the House Task Force, in its determination to turn the page on the complex October Surprise issue, accepted Allen’s memo as the final answer to the L’Enfant Plaza question and pressed ahead with a broader rejection of any wrongdoing by Republicans – even though that required concealing a host of incriminating documents. [See Secrecy & Privilege.]

Tantalizing Clue

The House Task Force also turned a blind eye to another tantalizing clue related to the L’Enfant Plaza mystery. Lavi’s lawyer, former CIA counsel Mitchell Rogovin, provided me a page of his notes from that time period.

Rogovin, who was an adviser to the John Anderson campaign, wrote on his calendar entry for Sept. 29, 1980, a summary of Lavi’s plan to trade weapons for the hostages. After that, Rogovin recorded a telephone contact with senior CIA official John McMahon to discuss Lavi’s plan and to schedule a face-to-face meeting with a CIA representative on Oct. 2.

The next entry, however, was stunning. It read, “Larry Silberman – still very nervous/will recommend … against us this P.M. I said $250,000 – he said why even bother.”

When I called Rogovin about this notation, he said it related to a loan that the Anderson campaign was seeking from Crocker National Bank where Silberman served as legal counsel. The note meant that Silberman was planning to advise the bank officers against the loan, Rogovin said.

I asked Rogovin if he might have mentioned Lavi’s hostage plan to Silberman, who was in the curious position of being a senior Reagan adviser and weighing in on a loan to an independent campaign that was viewed as siphoning off votes from Carter. (Crocker did extend a line of credit to Anderson.)

“There was no discussion of the Lavi proposal,” Rogovin insisted. But Rogovin acknowledged that Silberman was a friend from the Ford administration where both men had worked on intelligence issues, Rogovin from the CIA and Silberman at the Justice Department. Later, Rogovin and Silberman became next-door neighbors and bought a boat together.

In a normal investigation, such coincidences would strain credulity, especially given Lavi’s claim that he took part in a meeting with Republicans at the L’Enfant Plaza on Oct. 2, the same day that he talked with a CIA representative. Lavi also claimed that Silberman had arranged the meeting, which would make sense given Rogovin’s personal ties to Silberman.

However, as on a host of other compelling leads, the House Task Force chose to look the other way.

Reagan’s Victory

On Nov. 4, 1980, with Carter unable to free the hostages and Americans humiliated by the year-long ordeal with Iran, Ronald Reagan won the presidency in a landslide.

For his loyal service in the campaign, the neoconservative Silberman was put in charge of the transition team’s intelligence section. The team prepared a report attacking the CIA’s analytical division for noting growing weaknesses in the Soviet Union, a position despised by the neocons because it undercut their case for a costly expansion of the Pentagon’s budget.

Silberman’s transition team accused the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence of “an abject failure” to foresee a supposedly massive Soviet buildup of strategic weapons and “the wholesale failure” to comprehend the sophistication of Soviet propaganda.

“These failures are of such enormity,” the transition report said, “that they cannot help but suggest to any objective observer that the agency itself is compromised to an unprecedented extent and that its paralysis is attributable to causes more sinister than incompetence.”

In other words, Silberman’s transition team was implying that CIA analysts who didn’t toe the neoconservative line must be Soviet agents. Even anti-Soviet hardliners like the CIA’s Robert Gates recognized the impact that the incoming administration’s hostility had on the CIA analysts.

“That the Reaganites saw their arrival as a hostile takeover was apparent in the most extraordinary transition period of my career,” Gates wrote in his memoir, From the Shadows. “The reaction inside the Agency to this litany of failure and incompetence” from the transition team “was a mix of resentment and anger, dread and personal insecurity.”

Amid rumors that the transition team wanted to purge several hundred top analysts, career officials feared for their jobs, especially those considered responsible for assessing the Soviet Union as a declining power rapidly falling behind the West in technology and economics.

According to some intelligence sources, Silberman expected to get the job of CIA director and flew into a rage when Reagan gave the job to his campaign director William Casey, who also was tied to the October Surprise operations. (The U.S. hostages in Iran were released immediately upon Ronald Reagan taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, 1981.)

Silberman’s consolation prize was to be named a judge on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, where he helped frustrate the Iran-Contra investigation by overturning Oliver North’s conviction in 1990 and to this day is a defender of the neocons’ foreign policy -- as witnessed by his Sept. 11, 2009, ruling blocking civil lawsuits against U.S. government contractors implicated in torturing Iraqis.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

To comment at Consortiumblog, click here. (To make a blog comment about this or other stories, you can use your normal e-mail address and password. Ignore the prompt for a Google account.) To comment to us by e-mail, click here. To donate so we can continue reporting and publishing stories like the one you just read, click here.


SOURCE w.links: https://consortiumnews.com/2009/092209.html

The BFEE was infuriated by reporting that exposed their criminality. Can’t have that come out, especially if one is part of the Secret Government doing all that illegal stuff. So, they found a reporter who was more in tune with their thinking, one Steven Emerson.

After promptly printing the same crapola in every rightwing rag that would touch it, Emerson managed to smear Robert Parry, Capt. Gary Sick, USN (ret.), Barbara Honegger and a whole bunch more good people who told the truth about what we now know was way past happenstance and coincidence and in the realm of enemy action cough Secret Government.

Like an amateur, though, Emerson didn’t count on Parry holding the trump card in the Journalism game. It’s called the truth.

October Reprisals

Investigators of alleged Iran deal face smears, legal threats

By John Canham-Clyne
FAIR.org, Nov. 1, 1993

The debate over the "October Surprise" has embroiled some of the country's most prominent journalists--none more deeply then Robert Parry and Steve Emerson. In the latest skirmish, Emerson has threatened to sue Parry--and Parry has produced documents showing that Emerson made false statements in his efforts to discredit Parry's reporting.

As previously reported in Extra!, Emerson for nearly two years has vigorously tried to debunk the "October Surprise," the allegation that the 1980 Reagan campaign cut a deal with Iran to keep U.S. hostages until after the election. Following publication of a House Foreign Affairs Committee Task Force report on the allegations, Emerson picked up the assault in an 8-page article for the inaugural issue (3/93) of the American Journalism Review (formerly Washington Journalism Review).

Assuming the role of media critic, Emerson covered much the same ground he had covered in an earlier New Republic article (11/18/91) and several Wall Street Journal op-eds. Essentially, Emerson repeated the Task Force's (and his own) conclusion that all the sources for the October Surprise are "fabricators."

Like his earlier work, Emerson's AJR piece was filled with personal slams against Parry, former Carter administration official Gary Sick and reporters Craig Unger and Martin Killian. In AJR, Emerson used a quote from former CIA officer and Village Voice reporter Frank Snepp to accuse Parry and Killian of "massaging sources to manufacture information." In the Wall Street Journal (1/14/93), Emerson even suggested that Congress confiscate the earnings from Sick's book October Surprise, to help defray the cost of the Task Force investigation.

According to Bob Parry and the Secret Service, however, it is Emerson who manufactures information.

SNIP...

Emerson has made similarly undocumented attacks on the work of Gary Sick. When Sick wrote to the New Republic (12/31/91) to complain that Emerson and Jesse Furman attacked his book without reading it, even though it was due to be published the next week, he was mocked in response: "As for telling the truth, we have counted at least 300 flat assertions that are factually incorrect (in Sick's book)." Sick's repeated requests to both Emerson and to the New Republic to produce this list have been met with silence.

SNIP...

But consider if Emerson applied the standards he uses for October Surprise sources to himself. What would he say about someone who proffered false information, threatened to sue someone who challenged that information, and when presented with incontrovertible proof, refused to apologize, instead resorting to further smears?

CONTINUED...

http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/october-reprisals/

Still, those who know me realize I don’t think everyone named “Bush” is in the BFEE, nor is every crony benefitting from the BFEE “all-bad.” Same holds for Judge Silberman. He is a complicated fellow who does what he does out of patriotism, it is said by his those who know him personally. What I’m questioning are his associations with people who trample the Constitution (called “Traitors” by Adlai Stevenson, Jr.) and actions on behalf of the Military Industrial Complex.

Here’s why I say Silberman’s not all bad: He was called on to read through J Edgar Hoover’s secret and confidential files after the FBI director went to become part of the Great Fingerprint File in the Sky. His verdict? Take the Hoov's name off the FBI Headquarters building:

Removing J. Edgar's Name

By Robert Novak
December 1, 2005

WASHINGTON -- On Halloween night, crusty conservative Judge Laurence H. Silberman had a scary tale to tell fellow right-wingers gathered for dinner at Washington's University Club. He told in more detail than ever before how J. Edgar Hoover as FBI director "allowed -- even offered -- the Bureau to be used by presidents for nakedly political purposes." He called for the director's name to be removed from the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington.

"In my view," Silberman said, "it is as if the Defense Department were named for Aaron Burr. Liberals and conservatives should unite to support legislation to accomplish this repudiation of a very sad chapter in American history." That concluded his speech, but it was not followed by overwhelming applause. Nor was there volunteered support for his mission.

SNIP…

Instructed by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 to report on secret files kept by Hoover (who died in 1972), Silberman told the Irregulars: "It was the single worst experience of my long governmental service." He said Hoover ordered special agents to report "privately to him any bits of dirt on political figures such as Martin Luther King and their families." Silberman said Hoover used this as "subtle blackmail to ensure his and the Bureau's power," adding: "I intend to take to my grave nasty bits of information on various political figures -- some still active."

Even worse than "dirt collection," Silberman continued, was Hoover's offering of Bureau files to presidents. He exempted only Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower from this use of FBI files, but said, "Lyndon Johnson was the most demanding."

SNIP…

During the 1968 campaign, Silberman said Johnson ordered FBI surveillance on Republican vice presidential candidate Spiro Agnew, not about the bribery that eventually drove him out of office but to check whether he was in contact with South Vietnam's government. He said LBJ also used the FBI to spy on Democrats, including his aide Richard Goodwin, whom he inherited from President John F. Kennedy but suspected was too close to Robert F. Kennedy.

"I think it would be appropriate to introduce all new [FBI] recruits to the nature of the secret and confidential files of J. Edgar Hoover," Silberman concluded. "And in that connection this country -- and the Bureau -- would be well served if Hoover's name was removed from the Bureau's building."

CONTINUED…

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-12_1_05_RN.html

It’s almost understandable to see why Silberman is mad at those odd people like me who say “Bush lied America into war.” He’s good at the “Inventing Reality” game and thinks others are, too. But, we’re not. We really are angry because we can think for ourselves. And we can remember, no matter how much rot Corporate McPravda spews out via the airwaves or prints by the forestfull.

One important bit of "Lost History" that I remember quite vividly is that while Donald Regan, David Stockman, James Baker, Ed Meese and their chums were shepherding Trickle Down through Congress; Silberman, Richard “Diamonds” Allen, Bill Casey, and George Herbert Walker Bush were busy working behind the scenes to get America going whole-hog into a new Cold War with the USSR, picking up Brzezinski’s Holy War on the Soviets occupying Afghanistan and taking coughing up Ronnie Regan and Edwdard Teller's Star Wars program.



The Team-B (cough Cap Weinberger cough Robert Gates) approach was so good at it and the assorted requisite bribery of Congress (cough Duke Cunningham), corruption of the military procurement process (cough for whistleblower Bunnatine Greenhouse), and seret government agencies (cough Dusty Foggo) that it’s become accepted belief that the only way for America’s economy to prosper is through war (cough Tyler Cowen).

Mainstream media and the tee vee show punditry were not amused, however. So, the American people and those who care about Justice and Democracy and the Republic were left in the dark. And that’s exactly where Silberman and the War Party want us.

Happy Valentine's, DU!

[WillyT]

1. Happy Days...

[Octafish]

4. D'oh! October Surprise debunker Steven Emerson is same guy who said Manchester UK is Arab-Only.

Forgot to include that in the OP:

No apology for being sick of apologies

The culture of mob rule via social media is starting to irk Birmingham Post columnist Jon Griffin

BY JON GRIFFIN
Birmingham (UK) Post, Jaun. 15, 2015

It was a week of craven apologies - and a sobering reminder at a bleak time of year just how apologetic we have become as a society.

It was down to Rupert Murdoch's Fox News over in America to provide a touch of genuine slapstick to enliven the desolate January gloom. A self-proclaimed expert on terrorism called Steven Emerson became famous for at least 15 minutes or so here in the UK with an outlandish claim that Birmingham was a Muslim-only city where non-Muslims "don't go in".

It wasn't quite up there with the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times' allegations back in the 1980s that Hitler's diaries had been found in an East German hayloft. They were quickly exposed as fake and Rupe brushed it off as simply being part of the "entertainment" business. Makes a change from having a few phone-hackers on the payroll, I suppose.

I don't suppose the world's most powerful media tycoon will have lost too much sleep over Mr Emerson's Muslim claims either. In an apology which would have made Uriah Heep blush, Fox's terrorism guru said he had made an "egregious" error.

"I have clearly made a terrible error for which I am deeply sorry," he said. "My comments about Birmingham were totally in error, and I am issuing an apology and correction on my website immediately for having made this comment about the beautiful city of Birmingham... (steady on Steve, I was walking along the streets of Small Heath only last week, and there were beggars on the pavement).

The Emerson affair had clearly warranted an apology, especially for those viewers who rely on Fox News for their daily enlightenment. And it at least provided a good local talking point to take our minds off the weather, the merits of undertaking "Dry January", the hideous roadworks currently plaguing that "beautiful" Birmingham landscape and other such diverting matters.

CONTINUED...

http://www.birminghampost.co.uk/business/business-opinion/no-apology-being-sick-apologies-8452806

Glad to see the spin de-spun as Corporate McPravda have hailed the the guy as an "expert on terrorism" since the mid-90s. Unlike telling the truth, drumming up fear and hatred is quite lucrative.

[Octafish]

22. Shoulda made this easy to follow. ONE FIGURE CONNECTS BFEE TREASONS FROM 1980 TO PRESENT DAY.

LAURENCE SILBERMAN: October Surprise through Iran-Contra to packed SCROTUS tO Ken Starr to Florida 2000 to Abu Ghraib to "Bush Lied" is tantamount to Hitler.

I missed a few, but they're detailed in the thread and a few places not mentioned in polite company scattered across what remains of democracy.

[leveymg]

2. Is it just me, or did motives and hat colors seem a lot clearer back then?

Oldies but goodies. Keep em rollin'.

[Octafish]

5. That's the Thing.

Dulles Brothers helped overthrow democracy in Guatemala, Iran, Congo, "French Indochina"... to protect democracy -- really their cronies' abilities to make a killing off the System.

Meet 'The Brothers' Who Shaped U.S. Policy, Inside And Out

NPR Staff, OCTOBER 16, 201312:33 PM ET

In 1953, for the first and only time in history, two brothers were appointed to head the overt and covert sides of American foreign policy. President Dwight Eisenhower appointed John Foster Dulles secretary of state, and Allen Dulles director of the CIA.

Journalist Stephen Kinzer says the Dulles brothers shaped America's standoff with the Soviet Union, led the U.S. into war in Vietnam, and helped topple governments they thought unfriendly to American interests in Guatemala, Iran, the Congo and Indonesia. In his new book, The Brothers, Kinzer says the Dulles' actions "helped set off some of the world's most profound long-term crises."

John Dulles died in 1959. President Kennedy replaced Allen Dulles after the covert operation he recommended to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba ended disastrously in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

Kinzer tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that the Dulles' shared background and ideology played out in their policy decisions: "They had this view of the world that was implanted in them from a very young age," Kinzer says. "That there's good and evil, and it's the obligation of the good people to go out into the world and destroy the evil ones."

CONTINUED...

http://www.npr.org/2013/10/16/234752747/meet-the-brothers-who-shaped-u-s-policy-inside-and-out

Some things one doesn't have to write: You've probably read the book already. One thing is for sure: It's really good to read you, leveymg.

[hootinholler]

19. Funny thing about the man who would not stay fired

IIRC Johnson gave him his job back.

[Octafish]

21. Funny that...and how he forgot to mention that his CIA had hired MAFIA to kill Castro in 1960.

From the Water is Wet as all Wetwork Department:

If things had gone according to plan, Nixon would've been president during the Bay of Pigs and would've sent in the Marines, along with the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard, making Allen Dulles and Meyer Lansky and all their rich and corrupt friends very, very happy.

AUG 1960: Richard Bissell meets with Colonel Sheffield Edwards, director of the CIA's Office of Security, and discusses with him ways to eliminate or assassinate Fidel Castro. Edwards proposes that the job be done by assassins hand-picked by the American underworld, specifically syndicate interests who have been driven out of their Havana gambling casinos by the Castro regime. Bissell gives Edwards the go-ahead to proceed. Between August 1960, and April 1961, the CIA with the help of the Mafia pursues a series of plots to poison or shot Castro. The CIA’s own internal report on these efforts states that these plots "were viewed by at least some of the participants as being merely one aspect of the over-all active effort to overthrow the regime that culminated in the Bay of Pigs." (CIA, Inspector General's Report on Efforts to Assassinate Fidel Castro, p. 3, 14)

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/chron.html

Details on the actual sit-down, which to an amateur democratic detective interested in justice would seem like a lead worth pursuing:

Ever wonder about the sanity of America's leaders? Take a close look at perhaps the most bizarre plot in U.S. intelligence history

By Bryan Smith
Chicago Magazine
November 2007
(page 4 of 6)

EXCERPT...

By September 1960, the project was proceeding apace. Roselli would report directly to Maheu. The first step was a meeting in New York. There, at the Plaza Hotel, Maheu introduced Roselli to O'Connell. The agent wanted to cover up the participation of the CIA, so he pretended to be a man named Jim Olds who represented a group of wealthy industrialists eager to get rid of Castro so they could get back in business.

"We may know some people," Roselli said. Several weeks later, they all met at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. For years, the luxurious facility had served as the unofficial headquarters for Mafioso leaders seeking a base close to their gambling interests in Cuba. Now, it would be the staging area for the assassination plots.

At a meeting in one of the suites, Roselli introduced Maheu to two men: Sam Gold and a man Roselli referred to as Joe, who could serve as a courier to Cuba. By this time, Roselli was on to O'Connell. "I'm not kidding," Roselli told the agent one day. "I know who you work for. But I'm not going to ask you to confirm it."

Roselli may have figured out that he was dealing with the CIA, but neither Maheu nor O'Connell realized the rank of mobsters with whom they were dealing. That changed when Maheu picked up a copy of the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, which carried an article laying out the FBI's ten most wanted criminals. Leading the list was Sam Giancana, a.k.a. "Mooney," a.k.a. "Momo," a.k.a. "Sam the Cigar," a Chicago godfather who was one of the most feared dons in the country—and the man who called himself Sam Gold. "Joe" was also on the list. His real name, however, was Santos Trafficante—the outfit's Florida and Cuba chieftain.

Maheu alerted O'Connell. "My God, look what we're involved with," Maheu said. O'Connell told his superiors. Questioned later before the 1975 U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (later nicknamed the Church Committee after its chairman, Frank Church, the Democratic senator from Idaho), O'Connell was asked whether there had ever been any discussion about asking two men on the FBI's most wanted list to carry out a hit on a foreign leader.

"Not with me there wasn't," O'Connell answered.

"And obviously no one said stop—and you went ahead."

"Yes."

"Did it bother you at all?"

"No," O'Connell answered, "it didn't."

CONTINUED...

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2007/How-the-CIA-Enlisted-the-Chicago-Mob-to-Put-a-Hit-on-Castro/index.php?cparticle=4&siarticle=3

Yet, for some reason, the CIA continues to the present day to imply that it was Kennedy who did that.

Spies: Ex-CIA Agent In Raleigh Says Castro Knew About JFK Assassination Ahead Of Time

Former CIA agent and author Brian Latell in Raleigh

By The Raleigh Telegram

RALEIGH – A noted former Central Intelligence Agency officer, author, and scholar who is intimately knowledgeable about Cuba and Fidel Castro, says he believes there is evidence that Castro’s government knew about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 ahead of time.

SNIP...

Robert Kennedy, as the Attorney General of the United States, was in charge of the operation, said Latell. Despite the United States’ best efforts, the operation was nonetheless penetrated by Cuban intelligence agents, said Latell.

Latell said there were two serious assassination attempts by the United States against Castro that even used members of the mafia to help, but both of them were obviously unsuccessful.

He also said that there was a plot by the United States to have Castro jabbed with a pen containing a syringe filled with a very effective poison. Latell said that he believes the experienced assassin who worked for Castro who originally agreed to the plan may have been a double agent. After meeting with a personal representative of Robert Kennedy in Paris, the man knew that the plan to assassinate Castro came from the highest levels of the government, including John F. and Robert Kennedy.

The plan was never carried out, as the man later defected to the United States, but with so many double agents working for Castro also pledging allegiance to the CIA, Latell said it was likely that the information got back to Havana that the Kennedy brothers endorsed that plot with the pen.

CONTINUED...

http://raleightelegram.com/201209123311

Yet, the Mighty Wurlitzer cough Shenon plays the false tune that Kennedy was the guy who wanted Castro dead.

What the Warren Commission Didn’t Know

A member of the panel that investigated JFK’s death now worries he was a victim of a “massive cover-up.”

By PHILIP SHENON
February 02, 2015

EXCERPT...

Slawson feels betrayed by several senior government officials, especially at the CIA, whom he says he trusted in 1964 to tell the truth. He is most angry with one man—then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who assured the commission during the investigation that he knew of no evidence of a conspiracy in his brother’s death. It is now clear, as I and others have reported, that Robert Kennedy withheld vital information from the investigation: While he publicly supported the commission’s findings, Kennedy’s family and friends have confirmed in recent years that he was in fact harshly critical of the commission and believed that the investigation had missed evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy.

“What a bastard,” Slawson says today of Robert Kennedy. “This is a man I once had admiration for.”

Slawson theorizes that that attorney general and the CIA worked together to hide information about Oswald’s Mexico trip from the commission because they feared that the investigation might stumble onto the fact that JFK’s administration had been trying, for years, sometimes with the help of the Mafia, to assassinate Castro. Mexico had been a staging area for the Castro plots. Public disclosure of the plots, Slawson says, could have derailed, if not destroyed, Robert Kennedy’s political career; he had led his brother’s secret war against Castro and, as declassified documents would later show, was well aware of the Mafia’s involvement in the CIA’s often harebrained schemes to murder the Cuban dictator. “You can’t distinguish between Bobby and the CIA on this,” Slawson says. “They were working hand in glove to hide information from us.”

Although there is nothing in the public record to show that Robert Kennedy had specific evidence of a foreign conspiracy in his brother’s death, I agree with Slawson that RFK and senior CIA officials threw the commission off the trail of witnesses and evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy, especially in Mexico. Slawson also now suspects—but admits again that he cannot prove—that Chief Justice Earl Warren, who led the commission that bore his name, was an unwitting participant in the cover-up, agreeing with the CIA or RFK to make sure that the commission did not pursue certain evidence. Warren, he suspects, was given few details about why the commission’s investigation had to be limited. “He was probably just told that vital national interests” were at stake—that certain lines of investigation in Mexico had to be curtained because they might inadvertently reveal sensitive U.S. spy operations.

That might explain what Slawson saw as Warren’s most baffling decision during the investigation—his refusal to allow Slawson to interview a young Mexican woman who worked in the Cuban consulate in Mexico and who dealt face-to-face with Oswald on his visa application; declassified CIA records would later suggest that Oswald had a brief affair with the woman, who was herself a committed Socialist, and that she had introduced him to a network of other Castro supporters in Mexico. “It was a different time,” Slawson says. “We were more naïve. Warren would have believed what he was told.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/warren-commission-jfk-investigators-114812_Page2.html#.VN982vnF-UV

Why would CIA not want the Warren Commission, and the American public to which it reported, know the truth about its illegal assassination program?

[Scuba]

3. Our nation may never recover from the BFEE.

[Octafish]

9. I've often thought that, but found that more people understand than I'd imagined.

Through family and business, I've made friends with lots of people from right wing and conservative circles. They ALL hate the direction the country's taken since Nov. 22, 1963. Eyes as big as saucers, when I show them this -- old hat to you, Scuba, news to them:

George Herbert Walker Bush told the FBI he was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

We know this because that is what George Herbert Walker Bush told the FBI.

We also know, from the same FBI report, that Poppy heard someone threaten to kill President Kennedy.

So, why did Bush wait until AFTER JFK was assassinated to come foward with the warning?

Here's the document:



Here's a transcript of the text:

TO: SAC, HOUSTON DATE: 11-22-63

FROM: SA GRAHAM W. KITCHEL

SUBJECT: UNKNOWN SUBJECT;
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY

At 1:45 p.m. Mr. GEORGE H. W. BUSH, President of the Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company, Houston, Texas, residence 5525 Briar, Houston, telephonically furnished the following information to writer by long distance telephone call from Tyler, Texas.

BUSH stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent weeks, the day and source unknown. He stated that one JAMES PARROTT has been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston.

BUSH stated that PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in political matters in this area. He stated that he felt Mrs. FAWLEY, telephone number SU 2-5239, or ARLINE SMITH, telephone number JA 9-9194 of the Harris County Republican Party Headquarters would be able to furnish additional information regarding the identity of PARROTT.

BUSH stated that he was proceeding to Dallas, Texas, would remain in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel and return to his residence on 11-23-63. His office telephone number is CA 2-0395.

# # #

Here's background:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbushG.htm

Another FBI memo, from a week later, was unearthed just prior to the 1988 election. In it, "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" was debriefed by J Edgar Hoover himself about the Pro- and Anti-Castro Cuban communities in Miami. 1988 Presidential Candidate Vice President ex-DCI ex-China legation head George Bush said "It wasn't me." Surprisingly and contrary to longstanding policy, the agency even released the name of another "George Bush" who worked at CIA for six months or so. That guy was surprised to find reporters on his doorstep and told them he was a photo analyst on loan from another government department and he never was debriefed by J Edgar Hoover, let alone for the anything to with the assassination of President Kennedy.



Here's a transcript of the above:

Date: November 29, 1963

To: Director
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of State

From: John Edgar Hoover, Director

Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
NOVEMBER 22, 1963

Our Miami, Florida, Office on November 23, 1963, advised that the Office of Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in Miami advised that the Department of State feels some misguided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba, believing that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy might herald a change in U. S. policy, which is not true.

Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and, even among those who did not entirely agree with the President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the President's death represents a great loss not only to the U. S. but to all of Latin America. These sources know of no plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.

An informant who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami has advised that these individuals are afraid that the assassination of the President may result in strong repressive measures being taken against them and, although pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.

The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W. T. Forsyth of this Bureau.

# # #

I do remember that GHWB was head of the CIA when the Church Committee was looking into the CIA assassination programs. He made things all friendly-like and turned what had been a serious hunt for truth under previous DCI Colby into another dog-and-pony show.

And the Church Committee represents the last time our elected representatives worked to reign in the Secret Government agencies. That was 1975.

So. We wonder why America is in the shape it's in? Austerity for the majority and a state of permanent war, where "money trumps peace."

And what can rid of these accursed minions of Secret Government and Just-Us Justice? The Truth.

PS: Thank you for caring and seeing the true picture, Scuba. While I'm confident the United States will get there: I'm getting old and don't have time to wait for the Tub o' Truth to fill, drop by drop. Thats why I recommend we go with the Enrico Fermi system: Make enough points and shoot them at the mass of uranium, er, humanity. When those who know reaches criticality, the chain reaction begins and soon everyone knows The Truth. That's where DU comes in.

[Scuba]

10. "When those who know reaches criticality, the chain reaction begins ..."

When those who know reaches criticality, the chain reaction begins and soon everyone knows The Truth.

Yep, through DU and other mechanisms, the truth will finally reach enough minds to result in change. Hope it's toward justice and with little bloodshed.

[G_j]

6. K&R!

[Octafish]

12. Silberman got BFEE off the hook for Iran-Contra TREASON.

Last edited Mon Sep 21, 2015, 11:41 AM - Edit history (2)

History from the socialist POV, among the few to bother recording it accurately:

Who is Laurence Silberman?

The right-wing political career of judge in Secret Service decision

By Martin McLaughlin
wsws.org, 18 July 1998

The judge who declared that Clinton was "at war with the US government" is a long-time political operative in the right-wing of the Republican Party. In 1980 Silberman served as a Reagan campaign aide carrying out some of the most delicate and politically sensitive assignments. He was dubbed the Reagan-Bush campaign's "ambassador to Iran" for his behind-the-scenes contacts with the Khomeini regime.

The Republican campaign was seeking to determine whether Khomeini intended to release any American hostages, held in the US embassy in Tehran, before the election. By some accounts, Reagan and Bush sought to forestall any such "October surprise," which would presumably have aided the Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter, and Silberman conveyed their sentiments to the Iranians.

Silberman's reward was a nomination to the Court of Appeals for Washington DC, the most political and powerful circuit court because it handles most cases involving the federal government. His most important decision on the Court of Appeals came in the case of Lt. Col. Oliver North, the principal figure in the Iran-Contra affair. Silberman and fellow justice David Sentelle, a former aide to arch-right-wing Republican Senator Jesse Helms, voided the convictions of both North and Admiral John Poindexter in 1990. Their intervention played a key role in sabotaging the investigation by Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh.

SNIP...

The Iran-Contra investigation was being blocked by the Bush administration, which refused to permit classified CIA documents to be turned over to North and other defendants, citing "national security." This was a transparent maneuver to hamstring the prosecution, in which the White House encouraged North, Poindexter & Co. to seek the documents and then instructed the CIA to refuse them, in order to create an appealable issue.

As Walsh pointed out later (in "Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conpsiracy and Cover-up,&quot his book on the Iran-Contra coverup, the judiciary itself played a key political role. He wrote: "a powerful band of Republican appointees waited like the strategic reserves of an embattled army. The final evaluation of the immunity Congress had granted Oliver North and John Poindexter would be the work of yet another political force--a force cloaked in the black robes of those dedicated to defining and preserving the rule of law. Although the judiciary is theroretically a neutral arm of government and judges are expected to eschew partisan poltics, the underlying political nature of all government institutions was evident when a three-judge panel from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reviewed Oliver North's conviction in 1990."

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1998/07/silb-j18.html

America wouldn't need DU if the corporate owned press had integrity, but that would require news organizations pledge allegiance to the truth instead of the dollar.

[madokie]

7. Thank you

Thats the purpose I come here, to learn and keep abreast of what the fuck is going on and for your efforts in helping do that I Thank You

[Octafish]

13. Amazing how they think no one will notice the apparatus.

Into the abyss Frank Church warned us about goes the United States of America:

Return to Nixonland

How the NSA slipped its leash under Bush and Obama.

BY LISA GRAVES
In These Times, OCTOBER 17, 2013

The documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published by the Guardian and other outlets confirm what privacy advocates have been saying for years: The government has secretly turned its most powerful weapons of foreign intelligence surveillance inward on millions of Americans.

How can an ordinary citizen cut through the brush—with the avalanche of complicated, classified materials released, the flurry of political finger-pointing, and the various denials and narrowly crafted dodges? Welcome to a guided tour of the National Security Agency (NSA) scandal. We’ll explore how we got here and what Nixon’s got to do with it.

SNIP...

Thus the protections in the FISA statute that at first appear to be shields against spying on Americans, appear upon closer inspection to operate as swords.

Where’s the Fourth Amendment?

Three rulings issued by FISA judges hand-picked by the Chief Justice have narrowly construed people’s Fourth Amendment rights when it comes to two core issues: the rules for content and data acquired by the NSA.

The Bush administration set the stage for its evasion of the Fourth Amendment in 2002, when it asked for a ruling from the FISA Court of Review (FISCR), which oversees FISC, in a case involving a Patriot Act provision changing the purpose of FISA surveil- lance. Judge Silberman (who testified against FISA in 1978) and two other judges heard government arguments— arguments originally concocted by Yoo. Silberman acted like an advocate from the bench, arguing that the Constitution does not require a warrant before the government can acquire the content of Americans’ communications.

The FISCR ruling opined that the constitutional test for searches in intel- ligence cases was “reasonableness,” not a warrant, and “the key to the reason- ableness of any search is the exterior threat.” In 2008, an unnamed “Internet Service Provider” (ISP) challenged “directives” issued after FISA Amendments Act as unconstitutional, but the FISCR ruled that the Constitution did not require a warrant based on probable cause to demand content of communications. In balancing whether a search order was “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment, the court ruled that national security is of the “highest order of magnitude.”

In the most recent decision issued by the FISC, a lower court judge ruled that the NSA could acquire Americans’ call records en masse because Americans have “no reasonable expectation of privacy” in their phone or Internet data— a claim based on a Supreme Court decision from 1979 that most Americans have never heard of.

In that obscure case, Smith v. Maryland, a robbery suspect named Michael Lee Smith sued the state after police obtained his call records from his phone company without a search warrant. The Supreme Court, dominated by four new Nixon appointees, ruled that Smith had no constitutional expectation of privacy in information about himself conveyed to a third party, such as the phone company. (Justices Thurgood Marshall, Potter Stewart and William J. Brennan, Jr. dissented, noting that using a telephone does not carry with it an assumption that this information will be released to others, let alone the government.)

CONTINUED...

http://inthesetimes.com/article/15737/return_to_nixonland_nsa_spying

Gee. That nice NPR reporter never asks John Roberts about any of that.

PS: You are most welcome, madokie! Thank you for caring and understanding that this history isn't ancient, it's what the world we're living in is made of.

[CanSocDem]

8. Despite your assurances...

...that Silberman is merely "complicated", I am truly astounded to now know all he was involved with. Guys like this are way more dangerous than some bought and paid for POTUS.

Thanks for the education.


k&r

[Octafish]

14. It's like a book written by Eric Duckman: ''War, Peace, Crime, Punishment and The Idiot''

It'd be a really, really big book, like a "Who's Who of War Inc." While imperfect in execution and substandard in style, it is factual with all the dots and stuff available for peer review.

Laurence Silberman: the Right Man or the Right's Man?

People for the American Way

Is retired federal judge Laurence Silberman the right person to co-chair the Iraq intelligence commission? Those who know him—including onetime Nixon aide and respected author Kevin Phillips, former independent counsel and Eisenhower deputy attorney general Lawrence Walsh, and reformed right-wing hit man David Brock—raise serious concerns about Silberman’s past activities, his temperament, his judgement and his unyielding commitment to right-wing orthodoxy. After reviewing this criticism, along with Silberman’s own statements, it becomes clear that Silberman is ill suited for a role on the intelligence commission.

“October Surprise”

Both Phillips and Walsh allege that Silberman was involved in the Reagan campaign’s purported efforts to delay the release of American hostages in Iran until after the 1980 presidential elections.

In a commentary on National Public Radio, Phillips notes:

“Silberman has been more involved with cover-ups in the Middle East than with any attempts to unravel them (including) the October surprise episode in 1980 in which the Republicans were later accused of colluding with the revolutionary government of Iran to keep 52 American hostages confined in Iran so that they could not be freed by the Jimmy Carter administration in time to influence the 1980 presidential election….(I)n 1980 as part of that year's Republican campaign, he attended at least one of the October surprise meetings where an Iranian representative discussed what Iran would want in exchange for keeping the hostages.”

Walsh’s book, Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up, provides a similar account:

“...Silberman had been on the fringe of the negotiations to avoid the possibility of an 'October surprise'--the pre-election release of the U.S. embassy staff held captive by Iranian radicals. He and Robert McFarlane had represented Reagan in at least one meeting with a person who claimed to have influence with Iranians who might affect the timing of the release of the hostages. Among some career officers in the State Department, he was jokingly referred to as 'our ambassador to Khomeini.'”

SNIP...

Silberman and Oliver North

Walsh, the independent counsel who investigated the Reagan administration’s involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, found that his staff could not get a fair hearing from Silberman. According to Walsh, when the counsel’s office tried to make the case against Iran-Contra conspirator Lt. Col. Oliver North in one argument, Silberman cut them off at every turn:

“Silberman’s bias had been so intrusive that it had almost prevented (Gerard Lynch, who represented the independent counsel's office) from presenting a coherent argument…. (R)arely had (Lynch) reached the fourth sentence in any answer before Silberman interrupted him--not seeking clarification but simply badgering him to make some concession. At times, the judge's sole purpose seemed to have been diversion and obstruction....(Silberman’s interrogation) had been an overbearing effort to coerce a concession if not just to block a fair statement of our position. His performance had been ugly."

Walsh even considered reporting Silberman for judicial misconduct. Ultimately, North’s conviction was overturned by the court on procedural grounds in a 2-1 decision, with Silberman in the majority.

CONTINUED...

http://www.pfaw.org/press-releases/2004/02/laurence-silberman-the-right-man-or-the-rights-man

What's weird is how few lawyers know the story, let alone the average Joe. It's been my experience, of those I've met who do know, they're the Republican. Thanks for knowing and wanting to know, CanSocDem. As for my lawyer chums, I've got a pal who knows a guy...

[summerschild]

11. Octafish is amazing.

Thanks!
and K&R!

[Octafish]

17. How Corporate McPravda Torpedoed Treason

This Silberman story was too important to miss and those who know it needed to get discredited. Like a metaphor for democracy, the "journalist" who helped sink the October Surprise story by destroying Robert Parry in print by smear also managed to torpedo the good works of Capt. Gary Sick, USN (ret.):

GARY SICK’S BALD-FACED LIES

The October Surprise hoax is laid to rest -- at least outside the Clinton Administration.

By Steven Emerson
The American Spectator, March 1993

The "October Surprise" episode -- based on the assertion that Reagan campaign aides sought to delay the release of American hostages in Iran in 1980 -- represents one of the most scandalous political hoaxes this century. And on January 13, 1993, following that morning's release of the exhaustive House report that categorically disproved it, the man who did most to legitimize the fraud was nowhere to be found. Carter Administration national security aide Gary Sick left a message on his New York answering machine that he would have no comment until he'd had a chance to read the report.

That in itself was surprising, for Sick had spent two years making himself readily available to reporters, talk shows, and op-ed pages. From "Donahue" to "Nightline," from the New York Times to the Associated Press, he flooded the news pages and airwaves to defend his account of what he called the Reagan campaign's "political coup." He had been quick to disparage his critics. He accused Frank Snepp, the ex–CIA official turned freelance journalist who exposed Sick's sources as fabricators, of being still connected to the CIA. He and his Random House editors, Steve Wasserman and Peter Osnos, accused me of being part of a "Zionist" or "Israeli" campaign to discredit him.

When his facts were challenged, Sick would jump into the fray. In May 1992, when CNN reported that secret 1980 wiretaps showed that a Paris meeting Sick alleged William Casey attended could not have taken place, Sick immediately told an AP reporter that Casey could have traveled to and from Paris on the Concorde. In November 1992, when a Senate report called the October Surprise unfounded, Sick showed up just hours later on television, claiming the report showed that a new "cover-up" was underway. Sick said he would await the outcome of the House investigation. Sick's partner in crime, the New York Times editorialists -- who endorsed the conspiracy from the day they put it on the opinion page -- leaped to his defense, saying "a fuller, fairer understanding may have to await a parallel House inquiry."

For Sick, however, the day of the House report's release was a day of reckoning. Ever since he first began making the charges publicly, he had been careful to cloak his accusations in the mantle of wanting to assure justice and fairness. "If [the October Surprise] did not happen," he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in November 1991, then "we owe it to Mr. Casey and others to clear any suspicion from their name." In a separate interview, Sick promised to apologize to President Bush if the charges were disproved.

SNIP...

On January 24, eleven days after the report was issued, Sick finally surfaced, returning once again to the scene of the crime -- the New York Times op-ed page. Instead of acknowledging that his charges had been proved to be utterly false and that he had been duped -- it would have been a bit much for him to confess to having fabricated them -- Sick contended that in fact the House report "does not lay those claims [that Casey met in Madrid secretly with Iranians to delay the release of American hostages] to rest." And he went on in his op-ed piece to engage in the same blatant mendacity that had characterized his allegations from the very beginning. (That the New York Times collaborated in this deception is another story for another time.) In alleging the continued existence of a Casey conspiracy, Sick betrayed his dishonesty. He wrote: "The Committee's own evidence places [Casey] at the [Bohemian] Grove" on the weekend of August 1-3 rather than on July 26-27, thus keeping alive the possibility that Casey was actually meeting with the Iranians m Madrid. But that is a lie: the committee's evidence -- including diaries, telephone call records, credit card receipts, eyewitness accounts, and photographs -- showed that Casey "attended the Bohemian Grove on the weekend of July 25-27, and that he was not there on the weekend of August 1-3." Sick refused even to acknowledge that every single source he cited in his book had been discredited as a liar. If there were still any doubts that Sick has become detached from reality, one had only to read his concluding statement that he was "gratified that my research prompted these investigations." For Sick had effectively accused the late William Casey, George Bush, Robert McFarlane, Laurence Silberman, Richard Allen, and several others of treason. He had triggered a $5.4-million investigation and unleashed a collection of wholesale liars on newspapers and broadcasts throughout the world. It boggled the mind that the instigator of a McCarthyite witchhunt could profess himself "gratified" with the result.

CONTINUED...

http://spectator.org/articles/34632/gary-sicks-bald-faced-lies

Once printed, Corporate McPravda picked up the story and repeated it ad infinitum until October Surprise and those who talked about became nothing more than "Conspiracy Kooks."

Gary Sick is a true patriot and an American hero. Without Sick standing up to Poppy Bush, and Ted Shackley's chums in the corrupt portions of CIA and Safari Club, we wouldn't see it mentioned at all. Even then, we don't see it anywhere on Corporate Owned News. We do see the wars for profit drone on and on.

PS: Thank you, summerschild. Your kindness really means the world to me.

[Rex]

15. It is hard reading Atlas Shrugged - so poorly written.

A Handmaidens Tale succeeds in all the places where Atlas Shrugged fails.

[Octafish]

16. Cheney and Rumsfeld's 'Close Friend' Throws Out Suit Against Alleged Abu Ghraib Torturers

Top o' the heap, those Objectivist-type conservatives.



Cheney and Rumsfeld's 'Close Friend' Throws Out Suit Against Alleged Abu Ghraib Torturers

byJeremy Scahill
CommonDreams, Tuesday, September 15, 2009

On September 11, the US appeals court for the District of Columbia announced in a 2-1 decision that it was throwing out a lawsuit against CACI International and L-3 Communications Titan unit, which are being sued by Iraqi civilians for their alleged role in the torture and abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison. The companies provided interrogators at the prison at the height of the abuses there. The suit alleges that employees of the companies conspired with U.S. Army reservist Charles Graner, who was convicted of prisoner abuse on January 14, 2005 and is currently serving 10 years at Fort Leavenworth, and others to torture prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Several of the plaintiffs are Iraqis whose torture was depicted in graphic photos revealed over the past several years.

The judge who wrote the majority opinion, Laurence H. Silberman, said: "During wartime, where a private service contractor is integrated into combatant activities over which the military retains command authority, a tort claim arising out of the contractor's engagement in such activities shall be preempted."

The decision was swiftly celebrated by the private security industry. "The court's decision today is an important step toward resolving all legal matters regarding the company's mission and duties in Iraq," Jody Brown, executive vice president for public relations at CACI, said in a statement. "We have said from day one that these lawsuits are completely without merit and designed to pursue a political agenda."

"This is big, and this is the kind of good news the contracting community needs," wrote one security contractor on his blog. "Precedents like this are what we need for further protection in the future for similar cases."

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2009/09/15/cheney-and-rumsfelds-close-friend-throws-out-suit-against-alleged-abu-ghraib

"But if I am eliminated there won't be any way of knowing. Consequently a whole new form of government is going to take over this country, and I know I won't live to see you another time. My life is in danger here. Do I sound screwy?" -- Jack Ruby, testimony to Warren Commission

The people Jack Ruby said were behind Dallas are running the show. Thank you for standing up to them, Rex.

[wildbilln864]

18. and a big K & R & bookmarking for later! n/t

[Octafish]

20. Who is Laurence Silberman (from WSWS.org when Clinton was president)

Who is Laurence Silberman?

The right-wing political career of judge in Secret Service decision

By Martin McLaughlin
18 July 1998

The judge who declared that Clinton was "at war with the US government" is a long-time political operative in the right-wing of the Republican Party. In 1980 Silberman served as a Reagan campaign aide carrying out some of the most delicate and politically sensitive assignments. He was dubbed the Reagan-Bush campaign's "ambassador to Iran" for his behind-the-scenes contacts with the Khomeini regime.

The Republican campaign was seeking to determine whether Khomeini intended to release any American hostages, held in the US embassy in Tehran, before the election. By some accounts, Reagan and Bush sought to forestall any such "October surprise," which would presumably have aided the Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter, and Silberman conveyed their sentiments to the Iranians.

Silberman's reward was a nomination to the Court of Appeals for Washington DC, the most political and powerful circuit court because it handles most cases involving the federal government. His most important decision on the Court of Appeals came in the case of Lt. Col. Oliver North, the principal figure in the Iran-Contra affair. Silberman and fellow justice David Sentelle, a former aide to arch-right-wing Republican Senator Jesse Helms, voided the convictions of both North and Admiral John Poindexter in 1990. Their intervention played a key role in sabotaging the investigation by Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh.

Silberman's close ally Sentelle was largely responsible for the 1994 decision to remove Whitewater prosecutor Robert Fiske and replace him with the more conservative and highly partisan Republican Kenneth Starr as Independent Counsel. Sentelle chaired the three judge panel which removed Fiske and appointed Starr in his place. The other two members of the panel were retired judges who normally follow the direction of chairman. When Silberman declares that Starr alone represents the US government, he is silent on how the right-wing judge--a former colleague of Silberman's on the Circuit Court bench--came to be chosen.

It is important, given Silberman's fervent defense of the powers of Starr today, to contrast his position ten years ago on Lawrence Walsh. Unlike Starr, the Iran-Contra prosecutor was investigating real White House crimes: an illegal war against Nicaragua in which tens of thousands died, illegal arms shipments to Iran, and the establishment of a secret and unaccountable paramilitary force to conduct military and intelligence operations, behind the backs of Congress and the American people.

The Iran-Contra investigation was being blocked by the Bush administration, which refused to permit classified CIA documents to be turned over to North and other defendants, citing "national security." This was a transparent maneuver to hamstring the prosecution, in which the White House encouraged North, Poindexter & Co. to seek the documents and then instructed the CIA to refuse them, in order to create an appealable issue.

CONTINUED: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1998/07/silb-j18.html

PS: Sorry to make this so ridiculously tangled, wildbilln864. I have not had the time to make it, as Pascal wrote, short.

[Octafish]

23. Simplified Version

In 1980, Laurence Silberman, then a lawyer in private practice and a former US Ambassador to Yugoslavia, on behalf of the Reagan-Bush campaign, met with a man who claimed to represent the government of Iran. After the election, Silberman was appointed to a powerful federal appellate circuit, from which he advanced right-wing causes, such as overturning Oliver North's Iran-Contra convictions and empowering one Kenneth Starr. Among Silberman's proteges are Clarence Thomas and John Yoo. In the present day, Judge Silberman compares journalists who say "Bush lied America into war on Iraq" to the liars who gave rise to Hitler and the Third Reich.

There's more, much more. And the complex story missing from current coverage exemplifies what sorry state American journalism is in.