Private Emails Reveal Ex-Clinton Aide’s Secret Spy Network

[Octafish]

Emails disclosed by a hacker show a close family friend was funneling intelligence about the crisis in Libya directly to the Secretary of State’s private account starting before the Benghazi attack.

by Jeff Gerth, ProPublica, and Sam Biddle, Gawker
March 27, 2015, 3:45 p.m.

Starting weeks before Islamic militants attacked the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, longtime Clinton family confidante Sidney Blumenthal supplied intelligence to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered by a secret network that included a former CIA clandestine service officer, according to hacked emails from Blumenthal’s account.

The emails, which were posted on the internet in 2013, also show that Blumenthal and another close Clinton associate discussed contracting with a retired Army special operations commander to put operatives on the ground near the Libya-Tunisia border while Libya’s civil war raged in 2011.

Blumenthal’s emails to Clinton, which were directed to her private email account, include at least a dozen detailed reports on events on the deteriorating political and security climate in Libya as well as events in other nations. They came to light after a hacker broke into Blumenthal’s account and have taken on new significance in light of the disclosure that she conducted State Department and personal business exclusively over an email server that she controlled and kept secret from State Department officials and which only recently was discovered by congressional investigators.

The contents of that account are now being sought by a congressional inquiry into the Benghazi attacks. Clinton has handed over more than 30,000 pages of her emails to the State Department, after unilaterally deciding which ones involved government business; the State Department has so far handed almost 900 pages of those over to the committee. A Clinton spokesman told Gawker and ProPublica (which are collaborating on this story) that she has turned over all the emails Blumenthal sent to Clinton.

SNIP...

The memos cover a wide array of subjects in extreme detail, from German Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s conversations with her finance minister about French president Francois Hollande–marked “THIS INFORMATION COMES FROM AN EXTREMELY SENSITIVE SOURCE”—to the composition of the newly elected South Korean president’s transition team. At least 10 of the memos deal in whole or in part with internal Libyan politics and the government’s fight against militants, including the status of the Libyan oil industry and the prospects for Western companies to participate.

CONTINUED...

http://www.propublica.org/article/private-emails-reveal-ex-clinton-aides-secret-spy-network

FTR: Pro Publica "is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest." Their mission is to "expose abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing."

[Cooley Hurd]

1. How neocon of her...

[Octafish]

4. Word.

From ISP's RightWeb:

Our woman in Ukraine, Victoria Nuland, is married to PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan

Robert Kagan's brother is Frederick Kagan

Frederick Kagan's spouse is Kimberly Kagan

Brilliant people, big ideas, etc. The thing is, that's a lot of PNAC. And the PNAC approach to international relations means more wars without end for profits without cease, among other things detrimental to democracy, peace and justice.

[OKNancy]

2. Someone already posted this yesterday

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026427031

[merrily]

3. good. that means I can rec it twice.

[Octafish]

6. Pro Publica found that corruption touched CIA’s covert operations.

Before I posted the OP, I found this from a few years back:



Above is a never-before-published picture of the wine locker at the Capital Grille that defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes shared with Kyle Dusty Foggo when Foggo was the executive director of the CIA and illegally steering contracts to Wilkes. Wilkes paid for many expensive meals for Foggo at the restaurant. (Photo by Jerry Kammer)

No sacrifice is too great when it comes to defending dinner. I mean, democracy.

Corruption Touched CIA’s Covert Operations

by Marcus Stern
ProPublica, Feb. 25, 2009, 12 a.m.

Paramilitary agents for the CIA’s super-secret Special Activities Division, or SAD, perform raids, ambushes, abductions and other difficult chores overseas, including infiltrating countries to “light up” targets from the ground for air-to-ground missile strikes. This week the government acknowledged for the first time that some of SAD’s sensitive air operations were swept up in a fraud conspiracy that reached the highest levels of the CIA and cost the government $40 million.

That information was contained in a series of court filings released in advance of the long-awaited sentencing of Kyle Dustin “Dusty” Foggo, the disgraced former No. 3 official at the CIA.

One remarkable affidavit came from a leader of SAD, a branch of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, which handles covert actions. It indicates that Foggo forced SAD to use a shell company set up by defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes to handle its sensitive air operations, even though Wilkes and his company had no experience in clandestine aviation operations.

SNIP...

The documents also argue that Wilkes and Foggo tried to incorporate the military’s need for armored vehicles into an array of contracts that involved not only the CIA’s sensitive air operations but also water for troops in Iraq. Wilkes’ and Foggo’s deals—during which they hid their long, personal friendship from other government officials—included markups of up to 60 percent on the goods and services they sold the CIA.

CONTINUED...

http://www.propublica.org/article/corruption-touched-cias-covert-operations

True patriots, these guardians of the free market, Capitalism's Invisible Army.

[questionseverything]

13. carol lam was the us attorney that busted up that bunch

the day after she raided foggo's cia office, she was fired

wilkes first gov't contract was with cheney for "office furniture"

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4297

[Octafish]

14. Once I hoped Carol Lam would be nominated to the Federal bench.

She was wondering about corrupt Military Industrial Complex between the Pentagon and Congress and the Bush White House and all manner of stuff when given the ziggy by Karl Rove and his poodle Alberto Gonzalez.

Was Carol Lam Targeting The White House Prior To Her Firing

By Faiz Shakir on Mar 19, 2007 at 1:52 pm

Referring to the Bush administration’s purge of former San Diego-based U.S. attorney Carol Lam, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) questioned recently on the Senate floor whether she was let go because she was “about to investigate other people who were politically powerful.”

The media reports this morning that among Lam’s politically powerful targets were former CIA official Kyle “Dusty” Foggo and then-House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA). But there is evidence to believe that the White House may also have been on Lam’s target list. Here are the connections:

– Washington D.C. defense contractor Mitchell Wade pled guilty last February to paying then-California Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham more than $1 million in bribes.

– Wade’s company MZM Inc. received its first federal contract from the White House. The contract, which ran from July 15 to August 15, 2002, stipulated that Wade be paid $140,000 to “provide office furniture and computers for Vice President Dick Cheney.”

– Two weeks later, on August 30, 2002, Wade purchased a yacht for $140,000 for Duke Cunningham. The boat’s name was later changed to the “Duke-Stir.” Said one party to the sale: “I knew then that somebody was going to go to jail for that…Duke looked at the boat, and Wade bought it — all in one day. Then they got on the boat and floated away.”

– According to Cunningham’s sentencing memorandum, the purchase price of the boat had been negotiated through a third-party earlier that summer, around the same time the White House contract was signed.

CONTINUED w/LINKS...

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2007/03/19/11209/carol-lam-white-house/

Things like the prosecution of traitors and warmongers are exactly what I look for in a prosecutor, judge, attorney general and president no matter what party.

[questionseverything]

20. i had hoped for a special prosecutor spot for her

but clearly i was naive

kick & rec for ur op

[sabrina 1]

27. We were all very naive back then. We actually thought the crooks could be prosecuted and

brought to justice once the Bush gang were out of office. And that the good guys, like Lam, would be placed in positions of enough power to finally go after them.

Seems like a very long time ago now. I liked it better when I had hope.

[hootinholler]

36. Can I share some of my hope with you then?

Seems like love, when I give it away, I get more

I still hope I will see many prosecuted for many things.

[questionseverything]

37. padilla is an American citizen held and tortured for nearly 5 years

before charges were brought


comey was in on that and he got promoted

i liked it better when i had hope too

[hootinholler]

22. I know you remember the whole thing stank to high heaven

So, back to sunny SoCal, and Carol, possibly fired as punishment for Cunningham, who leads to the WH. Right before she left she delivered indictments of Foggo and Wilkes, and possibly turned over to the LA office A case regarding Rep. Jerry Lewis (an unfortunate but perhaps apt name) who has already lawyered up at Gibson Dunn, a big LA firm.

That case would have landed on the desk of Debra Wong Yang, the United States Attorney for the Central District of California in Los Angeles. Now, Ol Debbie there, I don't think was on the enemies list, but, she did leave the office for private practice at (you might have guessed it) Gibson Dunn. She allegedly got a tidy signing bonus to the tune of $1.5 Mil.

Justice in SoCal was a mess after the neocons got done with it.

[questionseverything]

33. i did not know about that piece of the puzzle

ty for the info

[hootinholler]

35. You're very welcome

Bush justice at its finest.

There are supporting links and other incidents in the journal entry.

The thing I don't understand is why Obama didn't clean house at Justice.

[Major Hogwash]

49. " . . . in advance of the long-awaited sentencing of Kyle Dustin “Dusty” Foggo, . . ."

How much time did he get?
I can't remember.

Is he out already?

[Octafish]

5. Thanks.

I'm not going to self-delete, though, because the story helps explain how things have reached the stage where we are at today: wars without end for profits without cease.

[grasswire]

8. many of us didn't see yesterday's story, likely

I didn't. So thanks for posting.

[Octafish]

9. You are most welcome, grasswire.

I hate to be redundant, but some stories are too important to miss. For instance:

Gawker published it this year. They do suggest that she interacted with Blumenthal using the account after she stepped down. “H: got your message a few days ago,” reads the subject line of one email from Blumenthal to Clinton on February 8, 2013; “H: fyi, will continue to send relevant intel,” reads another. -- http://www.propublica.org/article/private-emails-reveal-ex-clinton-aides-secret-spy-network

While it may the natural order in Wall Street on the Potomac, what may or may not be advancing the interests of the state and one's self at the same time needs public scrutiny.

[rhett o rick]

12. I hadn't seen the other post. Thanks for posting. nm

[Octafish]

16. Clinton benefitted from email double-standard, says former US ambassador

Scott Gration was fired in part due to ‘lack of adherence’ over email

Senate leader McConnell questions security of personal email use

Tom McCarthy in New York
The Guardian, Sunday 8 March 2015 11.17 EDT

A former ambassador to Kenya who was fired when Hillary Clinton was in charge of the State Department on Sunday accused Clinton of benefitting from a double-standard when it came to using personal email for official business.

Scott Gration, a former air force general who flew hundreds of sorties over Iraq, spoke to CNN from Kenya about his disappointment at losing his “dream job” as ambassador, saying: “As I look back, it does seem a bit unfair.

SNIP...

Gration, as head of the US embassy in Kenya, chafed at rules barring him from using his Google email account, according to an internal State report which listed his “lack of adherence” to the ban as one of multiple reasons for his firing.

“I wasn’t flouting (the rule) … but I did raise some serious questions about the use of commercial accounts, because I thought they were helpful to me in my duties as ambassador to Kenya,” Gration said.

The State report makes it clear that Gration’s personal email was one small piece of larger problems with his leadership of the Nairobi embassy. The report also called Gration “divisive and ineffective” and said: “The ambassador has lost the respect and confidence of the staff to lead the mission.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/08/clinton-double-standard-on-email-scott-gration

PS: You are most welcome, rhett o rick! I feel bad posting anything that can hurt a fellow Democrat, but the truth should not do that.

[Ichingcarpenter]

17. YOU peel the onion to get to the truth and expose the connections

great thread don't delete.....

[Octafish]

34. ''The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society...

and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings." -- President John F. Kennedy

Lance was formally precluded from engaging in financial transactions while director of OMB. However, according to later SEC charges, Lance continued to meet with General Olmstead regarding the sale of FGB, and put Olmstead in touch with William G. Middendorf, a former secretary of the Navy who ultimately decided to take over FGB. Lance met with both Olmstead and Middendorf at the Washington Metropolitan Club about the proposed sale while director of OMB.(12). As of April 1977, Middendorf and a group of twenty investors purchased Olmstead's interests in FGB, and Middendorf was installed as the chairman of the bank. But the takeover group, including former ambassador to Iran Joseph Farland, Arkansas banker Jackson Stephens, and Occidental Petroleum chairman Armand Hammer, swiftly began to disintegrate. By November, 1977 the shareholders had split, with Stephens heading a group opposed to Middendorf -- even as the Federal Reserve ordered Olmstead and his group to end their dual relationship to both International Bank and FGB by January 31, 1978.(13)

Remember BCCI.

One of the leading legal practices in Arkansas, The Rose Law Firm often represented Mr. Jackson Stephens.

[woo me with science]

7. Important articles should be posted as many times as possible,

so that as many people can see them as possible.

[Major Hogwash]

50. Some members of DU use the ignore feature.

So, they don't see threads started by those people.

[Faux pas]

10. Kickin'

[Octafish]

11. Unbelievable story about how Amb. Scott Gration lost his POST for using secondary email account.

Seems the bosses didn't like not knowing what the guy was saying and to whom he was saying it to, and hearing it from.

The Ambassador who worked from a Nairobi bathroom to avoid State Dept. IT

If you think Clinton's e-mail scandal is unbelievable, you haven't heard about Scott Gration.

by Sean Gallagher
Ars Technica, Mar 8, 2015

The current scandal roiling over the use of a private e-mail server by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is just the latest in a series of scandals surrounding government e-mails. And it’s not the first public airing of problems with the State Department’s IT operations—and executives’ efforts to bypass or work around them. At least she didn’t set up an office in a restroom just to bypass State Department network restrictions and do everything over Gmail.

However, another Obama administration appointee—the former ambassador to Kenya—did do that, essentially refusing to use any of the Nairobi embassy’s internal IT. He worked out of a bathroom because it was the only place in the embassy where he could use an unsecured network and his personal computer, using Gmail to conduct official business. And he did all this during a time when Chinese hackers were penetrating the personal Gmail inboxes of a number of US diplomats.

Why would such high-profile members of the administration’s foreign policy team so flagrantly bypass federal and agency regulations to use their own personal e-mail to conduct business? Was it that they had something they wanted to keep out of State’s servers and away from Congressional oversight? Was it that State’s IT was so bad that they needed to take matters into their own hands? Or was it because the department’s IT staff wasn’t responsive enough to what they saw as their personal needs, and they decided to show just how take-charge they were by ignoring all those stuffy policies?

The answer is probably a little bit of all of the above. But in the case of former ambassador Scott Gration, the evidence points heavily toward someone who wanted to work outside the system because he just couldn’t stand it.

Take this IT and flush it

Shortly after his arrival in Nairobi, Gration “broadcast his lack of confidence in the information management staff” of the Embassy, the State Department Office of the Inspector General noted in an inspection report on the embassy that precipitated Gration’s resignation:

Because the information management office could not change the Department’s policy for handling Sensitive But Unclassified material, he assumed charge of the mission’s information management operations. He ordered a commercial Internet connection installed in his embassy office bathroom so he could work there on a laptop not connected to the Department email system. He drafted and distributed a mission policy authorizing himself and other mission personnel to use commercial email for daily communication of official government business. During the inspection, the Ambassador continued to use commercial email for official government business.

CONTINUED...

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/03/the-ambassador-who-worked-from-nairobi-bathroom-to-avoid-state-dept-it/

IT, or it, shows it's getting harder and harder to know who to trust -- just the opposite of how, um, things should be.

[zeemike]

18. All the intrigues of a Royal Court.

Which is what our Republic was created to avoid...but they're back.

[sabrina 1]

31. Yes, it certainly is more like a Royal Court at those levels, than a Democratic system. And the

people have been returned to peasant status, with no say in anything. The 'legal system' doesn't apply to the Royals, unless they screw up somehow, causing embarrassment for the Royals.

The FFs would probably turn over in their graves if they paid a visit to today's 'America'. Though to be fair, they did warn against this if the people did not remain vigilant.

[erronis]

29. Great bit of info - mirrors what corp staff do. We can always ask the NSA WayBackMachine

To supply any missing information.

Just ask nicely.

- Hey NSA
--- silence (that means they are listening)

- How's it going out there in Utah?
--- single click (you really have their attention now)

- Could you send me the last 12 years voice, email, video, contact metadata that involves HRC?
--- three clicks (yes, should be in your inbox in 8 minutes.)

[Octafish]

54. Great writing, yours!

And it ain't fiction: Every word is true.

Thank you very much.

[Wella]

15. Excellent information, Octafish

As horrifying as it actually is.

[Octafish]

30. It IS horrifying. It also IS the People's business.

America’s real secret revealed: Clinton, Petraeus & how elites protect their legacies

When whistleblowers reveal secrets, it's a national crisis. When "leaders" leave them exposed, here's what's afoot

MARCY WHEELER
Salon.com, March 5, 2015

EXCERPT...

The cavalier treatment of the nation’s secrets by two people who have been steeped in the need to protect such secrets for decades — and have applauded the prosecution of others like Chelsea Manning and John Kiriakou who have leaked information – might suggest the secrets were never so sensitive after all. Maybe this system of secrecy is all just an excuse to prosecute whistleblowers and other annoying national security employees? Maybe this secrecy just serves to keep citizens in the dark about what our government is doing in their name?

And while both of those may, to some degree, be the case, that’s not all that’s going on.

Clinton’s State department business and Petraeus’ conversations with the President actually are sensitive — to say nothing of the covert officers’ identities Petraeus could have exposed. That’s why Clinton and Petraeus’ behavior is so telling — because Petraeus’ Black Books, at least, were filled with precisely the kinds of secrets that must be guarded to prevent people from being killed (we don’t yet know how sensitive the communications Clinton had via email).

Clinton’s State department business and Petraeus’ conversations with the President actually are sensitive — to say nothing of the covert officers’ identities Petraeus could have exposed. That’s why Clinton and Petraeus’ behavior is so telling — because Petraeus’ Black Books, at least, were filled with precisely the kinds of secrets that must be guarded to prevent people from being killed (we don’t yet know how sensitive the communications Clinton had via email).

SNIP...

But the system is also broken because it has been permitted to become a tool the powerful use to control their own image (and thereby accrue more power). After the years-long witch hunts under her spouse’s Presidency, Clinton might be forgiven for wanting to maintain complete control over her own communications (except for that whole bit about democratic accountability). But she is of course doing it to serve her own Presidential aspirations. Likewise, Petraeus has, at times, contemplated a Presidential run. Nor is he the first person to keep a CYA record of some of the most sensitive discussions he engaged in; Alberto Gonzales did the same, but got caught and investigated by DOJ’s Inspector General for having done so. And as these indiscretions have become known, both figures have had veritable PR machines in places to respond – either to defend or to engage in embarrassing tributes.

CONTINUED...

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/05/americas_real_secret_revealed_clinton_petraeus_how_elites_protect_their_legacies/

Thank you for the kind words, Wella. Secret government is un-democratic government.

[Cryptoad]

19. Snake oil for sale,,,,,, get it while it last,,,,, get ur snake oil!

[leftofcool]

28. OMG A secret spy network. Snake oil the plus version.

[Cryptoad]

38. Seems now that

Larry Summers has been identified as the Grand Kahonna Spymaster of the ring.....

[Octafish]

40. He's a start. Ask Phil Gramm who he knows.

http://financialservicesinc.ubs.com/revitalizingamerica/SenatorPhilGramm.html

Wealth Management, wink wink.

[rhett o rick]

52. Are you and cryptoad a tag-team? What with your cute quips? I understand,

it's easier than actually saying something of substance.

[Octafish]

32. Want to know who's REALLY into snake oil?

Larry Summers: Goldman Sacked

By Greg Palast
Reader Supported News, September 16, 2013

Joseph Stiglitz couldn't believe his ears. Here they were in the White House, with President Bill Clinton asking the chiefs of the US Treasury for guidance on the life and death of America's economy, when the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers turns to his boss, Secretary Robert Rubin, and says, "What would Goldman think of that?"

Huh?

Then, at another meeting, Summers said it again: What would Goldman think?

A shocked Stiglitz, then Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, told me he'd turned to Summers, and asked if Summers thought it appropriate to decide US economic policy based on "what Goldman thought." As opposed to say, the facts, or say, the needs of the American public, you know, all that stuff that we heard in Cabinet meetings on The West Wing.

Summers looked at Stiglitz like Stiglitz was some kind of naive fool who'd read too many civics books.

CONTINUED...

http://www.gregpalast.com/larry-summers-goldman-sacked/

[OnyxCollie]

21. K&R.

[Octafish]

41. Why secrecy is undemocratic...

Phil Gramm: From US Senator to UBS Banker

EXCERPT...

Prologue: As a Republican U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Phil Gramm introduced the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, deregulating banks in 1999. Three years later after leaving office in 2002 Senator Phil Gramm served as Vice Chairman and a member of the Swiss banking giant UBS AG. In May 2009 the company completed the acquisition of the bailed-out AIG Financial Products Corp., including AIG’s rights to the DJAIG Commodity index. Current Market Cap: $71 billion. Phil Gramm was also John McCain’s presidential senior economic adviser in 2008. Economist Paul Krugman named Phil Gramm as #2 man of the economic crisis. Alan Greenspan was #1. (Personally, I would have also named Goldman Sachs CEO and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson as #3.)

-- http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com/2011/04/phil-gramm-from-us-senator-to-ubs.html?m=1

[mylye2222]

23. K&R.

How revealing.....

[Octafish]

42. Secret Government is un-democratic.

1.) No public oversight

2.) No public accountability

3.) Secret Agendas

4.) Secret Privilege

5.) Secret Enemies

When government power is exercised in secret, there's no telling who benefits, who pays, what it costs, nor what it means for the nation and its citizens.

[stonecutter357]

24. Clickbait.

[cali]

39. meaning what? I find your bravado.... sad

[Dreamer Tatum]

25. But...but...but...HILLARY. nt

[Octafish]

44. Set-Up City: CIA and Secret Government largely a creation of the GOP

Which is, come to mention it, who most benefits from CIA Secret Government.

From Stephen Kinzer's The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulls, and Their Secret World War

(Allen Dulles's) ability to press his case (for the establishment of the CIA) improved sharply after the 1946 congressional elections, in which Republicans took control of both houses for the first time in sixteen years. The new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Arthur Vandenberg, named one of Allen's old OSS comrades, Lawrence Houston, to his staff. Houston had directed many covert operations and shared Allen's love of them. Together they drafted a bill that would create a National Security Council to advise the president on foreign policy, and a Central Intelligence Agency authorized to collect information and to act on it. "Wild Bill" Donovan, the widely admired former OSS director, lobbied for the bill in Congress but found some members reluctant. Several wanted State Department, not a secret new agencey, to oversee covert operations, but their case was weakened when Secretary of State Marshall announced that he did not want his department to be involved in such operations. The bill made its way through Congress in a matter of weeks. on July 26, 1947, Truman signed it into law.

[font color="green"]"There were strong objections to having a single agency with the authority both to collect secret intelligence and to process and evaluate it for the President," according to one history. "The objections were overruled, and CIA became a unique organization among Western intelligence services, which uniformly keep their secret operations separate from their overall intelligence activities."

The new National Security Act contained a tantalizing clause worded to allow endlessly elastic interpretation. It authorized the CIA to perform not only duties spelled out by law, but also "such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may from time to time direct." This gave it the legal right to take any action, anywhere in the world, as long as the president approved.[/font color]

"The fear generated by competition with a nation like the USSR, which had elevated control of every aspect of society to a science, encouraged the belief in the United States that it desparately needed military might and counterespionage by agencies that could outdo the Soviet spymasters," the historian Robert Dallek has written. "Dean Acheson (who would succeed Marshall as secretary of state) had the 'gravest forebodings' about the CDIA, and 'warned the President atht neither he nor the National Security Council nor anyone else would be in a poistition to know what it was doing or to control it.' But to resist the agency's creation seemed close to treason."

--Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulls, and Their Secret World War, pp. 88

The Dulles Brothers played a major role in getting us into Vietnam and bringing the BFEE -- the Buy-Partisan/War Party/Money Party -- to power for much of the 20th and 21st century.

Kirkus Reviews via Amazon:

A joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into an unseen war that decisively shaped today’s world

During the 1950s, when the Cold War was at its peak, two immensely powerful brothers led the United States into a series of foreign adventures whose effects are still shaking the world.

John Foster Dulles was secretary of state while his brother, Allen Dulles, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In this book, Stephen Kinzer places their extraordinary lives against the background of American culture and history. He uses the framework of biography to ask: Why does the United States behave as it does in the world?

The Brothers explores hidden forces that shape the national psyche, from religious piety to Western movies—many of which are about a noble gunman who cleans up a lawless town by killing bad guys. This is how the Dulles brothers saw themselves, and how many Americans still see their country’s role in the world.

Propelled by a quintessentially American set of fears and delusions, the Dulles brothers launched violent campaigns against foreign leaders they saw as threats to the United States. These campaigns helped push countries from Guatemala to the Congo into long spirals of violence, led the United States into the Vietnam War, and laid the foundation for decades of hostility between the United States and countries from Cuba to Iran.

The story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America. It illuminates and helps explain the modern history of the United States and the world.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013

Terry Gross interviews Kinzer on the book:

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

It's true that some see ''red'' whenever the name ''Clinton'' appears. They answer to people with agendas we can only guess at, more than a few who have interests in politics and finance, as well as matters of wars without end for profits without cease. They are as un-democratic as can be.

[peacebird]

26. Thanks for posting this, I was offline all weekend and had not seen it....

[Octafish]

45. You are most welcome, peacebird!

Ms. Clinton has been targeted by the Right for a heck of a long time. The email thing may or may not be a reaction to their efforts to get political dirt, as well as find privileged information. That said, rather than dismantle the NSA America Spyathon, she got mad when it was mentioned.

In part two of our exclusive interview, Amy Goodman goes inside Ecuador’s Embassy in London to speak with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. Assange has been living in the embassy for more than two years under political asylum. He faces investigations in both Sweden and the United States, where a secret grand jury is investigating WikiLeaks for its role in publishing a trove of leaked documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as State Department cables. Assange responds to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent comments that National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden should return home to face trial. "It’s the advice of all our lawyers that he should not return to the United States. He’d be extremely foolish to do so," Assange says. "It’s not possible to have a fair trial, because the U.S. government has a precedent of applying state secret privilege to prevent the defense from using material that is classified in their favor."

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/9/wikileaks_julian_assange_responds_to_hillary

The Secret Government story hurts to read, but it's something democrats should know sooner rather than later. I'm done with the wars without end for profits without cease. No matter the cause, we need to take another path and that requires enlighed, open, Democratic leadership.

[fadedrose]

43. I read the link and concentrated real hard

to get the meaning of what it said, but there are too many people involved doing secret things that may or may not be illegal.

I could use somebody to read it and put in a couple of paragraphs what it's trying to say, then I could go back and read it without optimism or suspicion.

I do grasp that whatever H did as Sec. of State, was her business and it doesn't seem to be that the President was part of her email group, especially when H asked for Blumenthal to be her State attorney and the Barach administration declined because Blumenthal was especially nasty during the campaign (2008). Also, something about the Clinton's income tax - NY State . campaign atty, Loretta Lynch (the same up for AG?) was told by H that if she made ? public she would never work in politics again...didn't quite understand.

I need help. There's too much to absorb.


Off-topic - Article mentions Tyson Poultry -I won't buy it. They inject so much briny broth into it that if you salt your chicken, it's too salty. I guess it needs a lot of salt to kill germs from whatever....

[Octafish]

46. The emails indicate someone was running a Private Intel Operation...

...It may or may not parallel that of US Department of State.

My main beef is that Secret Government is unaccountable to the People and no one knows the true costs, profits or beneficiaries.

[H2O Man]

47. recommended.

Thank you for this. It is as disturbing, as it is important.

I'm re-reading parts of it, and will have more to say soon.

[JEB]

48. K&R for the original post and subsequent informative posts and links.

[jonno99]

51. K&R - thanks for posting...

[Divernan]

53. Additional incriminating emails will follow HRC throughout her campaigns.

They'll keep popping up to the surface/voters' attention just like those globs of oil in the Gulf.

[Blue_Tires]

55. Someone hacks Blumenthal's account

and this is the biggest story to come out of his e-mails?