PLAME INDICTMENT #20-High Crime & Misdemeanors-Tip of Iceberg-Edmonds-Khan

[Pallas180]

" COVER- UP OF TREASON" COLOR FLYER FOR DISTRIBUTION


COVER UP OF TREASON -color flyer to distribute everywhere, I fyou are going to the RNC convention, it would be a good place to pass it
out, BY THE THOUSANDS. :)

. Just click on the URL below and print it out


http://s93118771.onlinehome.us/DU/letter.pd


About this flyer and why we have made it: We, you and I, are THE grass-roots democratic power.

It's your country. You and we have to help ourselves by this movement against non stop war on other countries, on our jobs,on
our standard of living, and most of all the war on our liberties and
the Constitution.

Our primary job is to continue to educate the public, pressure Congress through our letters, faxes and phone calls, register voters, and increase participation in those treasures defined by the Bill of Rights.

While thousands of us on the internet truly know the danger this country is on the verge of, millions who are not on the internet have no idea of the neo-con/PNAC One World Government and destruction
of our Freedoms through the Patriot Act.

Here's an easy way to work to spread the message about the Plame Indictments, Sibel Edmonds' and the High Crimes and Misdemeanors committed by elected officials and their appointees in this administraton:

Become ACTIVELY involved in educating the American public without drawing attention to yourself. You can spread the word of our Government's deception and betrayal from one citizen to another without any personal exposure.

Here's how: Make ten or more copies of these "letters" and leave them in a public place where someone else will find it and read it. Ideal locations for maximum exposure include book stores, copy shops, libraries and train stations. Buses, taxis, laundromats, and check-out lines at the grocery store. Hair salons, rest rooms, gas stations and convenience stores. Anywhere you happen to be will work just fine. Do this every week from now until November.

You can just happen to leave this flyer everywhere you
visit (just cut and paste into "Word" and print or print directly in color from URL above ) and you'll know you've done your part to help protect America from the most destructive force that has ever occupied our government.

GO FOR IT !

with thanks to DU'er Dist22Dem for this magnificent professionally
printed color flyer

[Pallas180]

1. AMERICAN JUDAS- SELLING THE SECURITY OF AMERICA-30 PIECES OF SILVER

AMERICAN JUDAS-
SELLING THE SECURITY OF AMERICA & THE WORLD FOR 30 PIECES OF SILVER

AMERICAN JUDAS-

SELLING THE SECURITY OF AMERICA & THE WORLD FOR 30 PIECES OF SILVER

By Robert Paulsen- Compiled From the Research by the "Think-Tank" Posters on “The Plame Indictment Threads” at Democraticunderground.com

1st Edition Abridged (Unabridged version available on General Discussion and Editorial Forums at DU)


A. Introduction

This paper is intended as a supplement to The Waterman Paper and an exploration into Goal #3: Why Cheney Exposed Plame. It involves researching possible connections between businesses connected to Vice President Dick Cheney that may be associated with the sale of WMD components to countries in the Middle East and Asia.

In addition to reviewing known information regarding the “leaking” of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity and the nature of her work, there will be an overview of A.Q. Khan’s network of nuclear proliferation, a listing of compromising positions involving financial ties in Cheney’s past and finally an exploration into possible links connecting Cheney to nuclear proliferation markets for profit.

B. Valerie Plame’s “Sting Operation”

On July 14,2003, Robert Novak exposed Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent in his syndicated column. He sourced his story to two senior White House officials.(http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0602/p08s02-comv.html ) It is important to understand that, as Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson says, “Compromising the officer means compromising a career, a network, and every person with who the officer might have ever worked. Slips of the tongue cost people their lives.”(The Politics of Truth by Joseph Wilson, p. 13.)

What was the nature of this career, this network that was compromised? Joe Klein hints at the broad outlines of this nature. “Furthermore, there is intense anger over the White House’s revealing the identity of Plame, who may have been active in a sting operation involving the trafficking of WMD components.”(http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,11010 ... )

According to Wayne Madsen, the cover company that Plame was connected with was a CIA firm called Brewster, Jennings & Associates. “Active since 1994, Brewster-Jennings was instrumental in tracking the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and had agents or correspondents in a number of countries…Sensitive CIA operations that were compromised by the leak included companies, government officials, and individuals associated with the nuclear smuggling network of Pakistan’s chief nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.”(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/062504_grand_ ... )
Yet in spite of, or perhaps as a result of, the compromises resulting from the leak, the CIA helped expose Khan’s network, according to Newsweek.. It involves a CIA investigation into a company in Malaysia called Scomi connected with an A.Q. Khan “middleman” named Bukhari Sayed Abu Tahir. Last August, the company's name was found stamped in bold letters on five crates of centrifuge parts seized en route to Libya. Since then Scomi has been at the center of an international detective story that has uncovered an astonishing global nuclear-weapons "black market." All of it leads back to Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who fathered the underground network. In pursuit of both profits and a kind of Islamic nuclear parity, Khan passed on equipment and know-how to Iran and Libya, and made offers to Iraq and most recently Syria, officials say. Khan also helped North Korea's covert program.(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4270904 )

Could Cheney have had a financial relationship with the Nuclear Walmart, which would have provided a motive for exposing Plame’s operation? We shall explore this in sections D and E of this paper. First it is important to understand what is currently known about A.Q. Khan’s network before we uncover Cheney’s connection with it. The purpose of this examination is not intended as a comprehensive index of the network, but as an exploration into some of the more sinister elements of the network that led to relationships not only among state sponsors of terrorism, but to relationships with terrorist organizations themselves.

C. A.Q. Khan’s Nuclear Walmart

Nuclear experts are aghast at the size of the network, which extends from Switzerland to Japan to Dubai. Over 30 years, Khan put together what Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, called "a veritable Wal-Mart" for nuclear-weapons buyers, a not-so-secret netherworld where proliferation meshed with globalization. Khan even held nuclear-related symposiums. "The horse is out of the barn. At this point, we can't stop the technology from spreading," says former Clinton official Gary Samore. One senior U.S. official told NEWSWEEK that Khan's role in destabilizing the 21st century will "loom up there" with Hitler's and Stalin's impact in the 20th. Even so, most of the A.Q. Khan network's key operatives will likely escape punishment, officials concede.(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4270904 )

Who were some of the people and organizations connected with A.Q. Khan?

1. B.S.A. Tahir - The recent investigations into the clandestine nuclear proliferation activities of A.Q.Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistan atom bomb, have revealed that Bukhary Seyed Abu Tahir, a Sri Lankan Tamil Muslim of Indian origin, married in Malysia and with business interests in Kuala Lumpur and Dubai, was one of the external kingpins of Pakistan's clandestine nuclear procurement network. In a speech at the National Defence University of Washington DC in February last, President Bush had described this Sri Lankan Tamil-speaking Muslim as the "chief financial officer and money-launderer" of A.Q.Khan's clandestine operations.(http://www.saag.org/papers11/paper1026.html ) As chief financial officer, B.S.A. Tahir played an important role in his connection with a Malaysian company called Scomi that will be explored in greater detail in section E of this paper.

2. Lashkar-e-Toiba - or LET is a terrorist group of Pakistan, consisting of Pakistani, Afghan and Arab cadres, headed by Pakistani office-bearers, with its headquarters at Muridke near Lahore. Its annual conventions at Muridke are attended, amongst others, by serving and retired officers of the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, by serving and retired scientists of the Pakistani nuclear and missile establishment and by political leaders.

Amongst those, who regularly attend its annual conventions, are Lt. Gen. (retd) Hamid Gul and Lt.Gen.(retd) Javed Nasir, both former Directors-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),Dr. Abdul Qadir Khan, the self-styled father of the Pakistani atom bomb, Dr.Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the former scientist of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission who was recently detained by the Pakistani authorities under US pressure for being in contact with bin Laden and Mohd.Rafique Tarar, former President of Pakistan.(http://www.saag.org/papers4/paper381.html )

3. Osama bin Laden – The following is an excerpt from an investigation by the Kashmir Herald into several of A.Q. Khan’s travels to Africa.

The uranium enriched at KRL, Kahuta, used to come from Africa, mainly Niger. This partly explains the frequent travels of A.Q.Khan to Africa. From the accounts given by the Pakistani author, two intriguing questions arise:

Why did Khan consider it necessary to visit the site of a factory in Sudan, which became the target of US Cruise missile attacks after the explosions outside the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam by Al Qaeda in August 1998? The Americans had alleged at that time that this factory belonged to Osama bin Laden and was producing chemicals for weaponisation purposes. Denying this, the Sudanese authorities had claimed that it was producing anti-malaria drugs.
Why was he visiting frequently Timbuktu, which has apparently no importance from the nuclear point of view? Pakistani officials have alleged that he had illegally constructed a hotel there ( Hotel La Colombe?) in the name of his wife. If he was going there to supervise the construction of the hotel, he should have been accompanied by experts in building construction and the hotel industry. No such person accompanied him. He was always accompanied by scientists and Army officers associated with KRL and Tahir Mian, who was helping him in the procurement of centrifuges.

It is reliably learnt from well-placed observers that it also came out during the recent interrogation of the associates of Khan in Pakistan's nuclear establishment that after Osama bin Laden shifted from Khartoum to Afghanistan in 1996, Dr.Khan was also looking after bin Laden's extensive investments in the mining industry in many African countries and that the money invested in the Timbuktu hotel had come from these investments of bin Laden. The Pakistani authorities have reportedly suppressed this information and not shared it with the US.(http://www.kashmirherald.com/featuredarticle/khanandbin ... )

This investigation has yielded some amazing information. In addition to widespread government cooperation with the network that has not been reported to the US, A.Q. Khan obtained uranium from Africa, mainly from Niger, where Valerie Plame’s husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, discovered the evidence that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium there was a forgery. Most frightening is the extent of Khan’s relationship with bin Laden, apparently trusted enough to look after bin Laden’s investments in Africa. Only time will tell how much bin Laden profited, both in monetary terms and in expanding al Qaeda’s WMD potential, from the generosity of Khan’s nuclear Walmart.

4. Unnamed U.S. Firm - More than 20 firms - including at least one American company - have supplied rogue nations seeking nuclear arms, marking the first time a U.S. company has been linked to the black market network. .(http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=r ... )

What American company would possibly have had the means and the motive to risk potentially treasonous activity by profiting off black market nuclear proliferation to terrorist organizations and their state sponsors? In the next two sections, an examination into the motives of why Dick Cheney, through his association with Halliburton, would have wanted a sting operation focused on A.Q. Khan’s nuclear Walmart terminated will be conducted, as well as an exploration into how the profits from such a treacherous enterprise could possibly have been laundered.

D. Compromising Positions in Cheney's Past

1. Cheney helped cover-up Pakistani nuclear proliferation in 1989 so US could sell country fighter jets. - When Pakistan's clandestine program involving its top nuclear scientist selling rogue nations, such as Iran and North Korea, blueprints for building an atomic bomb was uncovered last month, the world's leaders waited, with baited breath to see what type of punishment George W. Bush would inflict upon Pakistan's President Pervez Musharaff. Bush has, after all, spent his entire term in office talking tough about countries and dictators that conceal weapons of mass destruction and even tougher on individuals who supply rogue nations and terrorists with the means to build WMD. For all intents and purposes, Pakistan and Musharraf fit that description.

Remember, Bush accused Iraq of harboring a cache of WMD, which was the primary reason he gave for the United States launching a preemptive strike on that country a year ago, and also claimed that Iraq may have given its WMD to al-Qaeda terrorists and/or Syria, weapons that, Bush said, could be used to attack the U.S. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and top members of the administration reacted with shock when they found out that Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, spent the past 15 years selling outlaw nations nuclear technology and equipment. So it was sort of a surprise when Bush, upon finding out about Khan's proliferation of nuclear technology, let Pakistan off with a slap on the wrist. But it was all an act. In fact, it was actually a coverup designed to shield Cheney because he knew about the proliferation for more than a decade and did nothing to stop it.(emphasis added)

Like the terrorist attacks on 9-11, the Bush administration had mountains of evidence on Pakistan's sales of nuclear technology and equipment to nations vilified by the U.S. nations that are considered much more of a threat than Iraq but turned a blind eye to the threat and allowed it to happen. In 1989, the year Khan first started selling nuclear secrets on the black-market; Richard Barlow, a young intelligence analyst working for the Pentagon prepared a shocking report for Cheney, who was then secretary of defense under the Bush I administration: Pakistan built an atomic bomb and was selling its nuclear equipment to countries the U.S. said was sponsoring terrorism. But Barlow's findings, as reported in a January 2002 story in Mother Jones magazine, were "politically inconvenient."

"A finding that Pakistan possessed a nuclear bomb would have triggered a congressionally mandated cutoff of aid to the country, a key ally in the CIA's efforts to support Afghan rebels fighting a pro-Soviet government. It also would have killed a $1.4-billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Islamabad," Mother Jones reported. Ironically, Pakistan, critics say, was let off the hook last month so the U.S. could use its borders to hunt for al-Qaeda leader and alleged 9-11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. Cheney dismissed Barlow's report because he desperately wanted to sell Pakistan the F-16 fighter planes. Several months later, a Pentagon official was told by Cheney to downplay Pakistan's nuclear capabilities when he testified on the threat before Congress. Barlow complained to his bosses at the Pentagon and was fired. (http://www.pakistan-facts.com/article.php/2004031621042 ... )
"This was not a failure of intelligence," Barlow told Mother Jones. "The intelligence was in the system."(http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/031004Leop ... )

In a New Yorker article published on March 29, 1993, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh quoted Barlow as saying that some high-ranking members inside the CIA and the Pentagon lied to Congress about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal so as not to sacrifice the sale of the F-16 fighter planes to Islamabad, which was secretly equipped to deliver nuclear weapons. Pakistan's nuclear capabilities and had become so grave by the spring of 1990 that then CIA deputy director Richard Kerr said the Pakistani nuclear threat was worse than the Cuban Missile crisis in the 1960s.(http://www.newyorker.com/archive/content/?040119fr_arch ... )

In addition to these three sources that corroborate the fact that Cheney knew about A.Q. Khan’s network and rather than report it, chose to profit through sales to Pakistan of fighter jets that could deliver nuclear weapons, Cheney was caught on another case of nuclear proliferation.

2. Halliburton fined $1.2 million in 1995 for selling dual-use nuclear equipment to Libya. - Halliburton came under fire in the early '90s for supplying Libya and Iraq with oil drilling equipment which could be used to detonate nuclear weapons. Halliburton Logging Services, a former subsidiary, was charged with shipping six pulse neutron generators through Italy to Libya. In 1995, the company pled guilty to criminal charges that it violated the U.S. ban on exports to Libya. Halliburton was fined $1.2 million and will pay $2.61 million in civil penalties.

During his chairmanship of Halliburton, Cheney criticized U.S. sanctions against "rogue" nations such as Iran and Libya in a 1998 speech. According to a July 26, 2000, Washington Post story, Cheney complained the sanctions "are nearly always motivated by domestic political pressure, the need for Congress to appeal to some domestic constituency." (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/article ... )

3. Existing Halliburton ties to Vice President Dick Cheney – Cheney neglected to mention that he was still due approximately $500,000 in deferred compensation from Halliburton and could potentially profit from his 433,333 shares of unexercised Halliburton stock options.(House of Bush House of Saud by Craig Unger, p. 225.)

Since Halliburton continues to engage in business practices with state sponsors of terrorism and Cheney continues to profit from it, all that is left to do is, in the words of Deep Throat, “Follow the money.” The proceeding section uses circumstantial evidence to show a relationship between several individuals and companies through which the unnamed US firm in Khan’s nuclear Walmart, presumably Halliburton, profited from nuclear proliferation.

E. Links in the Chain Connecting Cheney with Nuclear Proliferation

1. B.S.A. Tahir – Remember this man from Section C? This associate of A.Q. Khan who was identified by President Bush in a speech as the nuclear Walmart’s "chief financial officer and money launderer."(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4270904 ) BSA TAHIR, a SRI LANKAN businessman based in DUBAI was a trusted and close confidante of A. Q. Khan and was actively involved in supplying centrifuge components for Libya's uranium-enrichment program. BSA TAHIR, who was involved in the business of SCOMI PRECISION ENGINEERING SDN BHD (SCOPE). He used the company to produce components for the centrifuge unit for the uranium enrichment program. Furthermore, the supply of components by middlemen was carried out in a discreet manner and involved suppliers from other countries to blur the sources of the components. Some of the suppliers were believed to be aware that these components could be for uranium enrichment centrifuges. (http://icssa.org/Nuclear_Malaysia.htm )

Which companies could possibly have been connected with the suppliers that helped blur the source of the components? Amazingly, a connection between Scomi and Halliburton can be established with only one other company serving as a buffer between the two: Cognis.

a. Cognis – Service specialist Scomi Group Bhd, is offering multinational oil and gas companies a special fluid to make offshore drilling friendlier to the sea and its inhabitants. Scomi, together with German chemicals specialist, Cognis Gmbh, offers ester-based drilling fluid derived from palm kernel oil. The agreement is between Scomi’s wholly-owned Kota Minerals & Chemicals Sdn Bhd (KMC) and Cognis’ 50%-owned unit, Cognis Oleochemicals (M) Sdn Bhd.(http://www.mida.gov.my/beta/news/view_news.php?id=398 )

Sounds like a perfectly benign, perhaps even altruistic enterprise. How is this company connected with Halliburton? It’s through collaboration with one of Halliburton’s subsidiary companies.

b. Baroid – The drilling fluids containing esters based on renewable natural resources are developed by Cognis in collaboration with Baroid, the drilling fluids service company within the Halliburton Energy Services Group.(http://bbriefings.com/cdps/cditem.cfm?NID=252&CID=10&CF ... )

To reiterate the serpentine link:
A.Q. Khan's financial officer (money launderer) was B.S.A. Tahir. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4270904 )
Tahir used Scomi to produce components for the centrifuge unit for the uranium enrichment program. (http://icssa.org/Nuclear_Malaysia.htm )
Scomi, through its company KMC, worked with Cognis Oleochemicals. (http://www.mida.gov.my/beta/news/view_news.php?id=398 )
Cognis is connected with Baroid (part of the Halliburton Group). (http://bbriefings.com/cdps/cditem.cfm?NID=252&CID=10&CF ... )

But the extent of Halliburton/Cheney profiting from nuclear proliferation does not stop there. And Cheney is not the only member of the Bush administration to profit from it.

2. Donald Rumsfeld - Rumsfeld was on ABB board during deal with North Korea.
The Swiss-based ABB on Friday told swissinfo that Rumsfeld was involved with the company in early 2000, when it netted a $200 million (SFr270million) contract with Pyongyang. The ABB contract was to deliver equipment and services for two nuclear power stations at Kumho, on North Korea’s east coast. Rumsfeld – who is one of the Bush administration’s most strident “hardliners” on North Korea – was a member of ABB’s board between 1990 and February 2001, when he left to take up his current post. Wolfram Eberhardt, a spokesman for ABB, told swissinfo that Rumsfeld “was at nearly all the board meetings” during his decade-long involvement with the company.(http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=10 ... ) It’s bad enough for Rumsfeld to profit off selling nuclear equipment to North Korea. But it doesn’t end there, the organizations involved in this transaction link back to Halliburton once again.

a. KEDO - ABB, which was already building eight nuclear reactors in South Korea, had an inside track on the $4 billion U.S.-sponsored North Korea project. The firm was told "our participation is essential," recalls Frank Murray, project manager for the reactors. (He plays the same role now at Westinghouse, which was acquired by Britain's BNFL in 1999, a year before it also bought ABB's nuclear power business.) The North Korean reactors are being primarily funded by South Korean and Japanese export-import banks and supervised by KEDO, a consortium based in New York. "It was not a matter of favoritism," says Desaix Anderson, who ran KEDO from 1997 to 2001. "It was just a practical matter."(www.worldmessenger.20m.com/news4.html )

b. KNOC - The KEDO (Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization) is the official Korean government energy corporation. By reading their 2001 energy development summary one can make out all the myriad countries that contribute to KEDO. North Korea lacks necessary production facilities to drill and test for its oil. It is reaching out to many firms and countries to help them while the government attempts to develop some oil fields with as much capital as it can muster. A Singapore firm recently announced (August 29, 2002) significant oil and gas reserves in North Korea. Additionally, Halliburton has partnered with KNOC to develop offshore drilling platforms in South Korea.(www.rmfdevelopment.com/political/NorthKoreaOil.htm )

Yet another serpentine link through which money could be laundered into the willing hands of Halliburton.
Rumsfeld-ABB (http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=10 ... )
ABB-KEDO (www.worldmessenger.20m.com/news4.html )
KEDO-KNOC-Halliburton (www.rmfdevelopment.com/political/NorthKoreaOil.htm )

But were these links completely separate, or is it possible that there were any other companies besides Halliburton involved with both links of possible proliferation profits? One company not previously mentioned has relationships with companies on both links.

3. Goldman Sachs – a lucrative investment firm that is listed quite prominently as one of the main investors in Cognis on their website.(http://www.cognis.com/framescout.html?/company/company .... ) Also there is a link with Donald Rumsfeld to two organizations, Bilderberg and ABB through the chairman of Goldman Sachs, General Peter Sutherland from Ireland. Some of the Western world's leading financiers and foreign policy strategists attend Bilderberg. Rumsfeld is an active Bilderberger. So is General Peter Sutherland from Ireland, a former European Union commissioner and chairman of Goldman Sachs and of BP. Rumsfeld and Sutherland served together in 2000 on the board of the Swedish/Swiss energy company ABB. ( http://www.fact-index.com/b/bi/bilderberg_group.html )


These links are not in and of themselves direct proof of the laundering of nuclear proliferation profits. But they are proof of a relationship between these companies sharing common goals, through which individuals involved in nuclear proliferation, and there were many in these companies, could operate their network covertly.

F. Conclusions and Recommendations – To conclude, this paper asserts that Dick Cheney is directly responsible for the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name that resulted in sabotaging her CIA career and her cover company, Brewster, Jennings & Associates. CIA operations that were compromised by the leak were associated with A.Q. Khan’s network of nuclear smuggling. Khan’s network, vast enough to be dubbed by IAEA chief Mohamed El Baradei a “nuclear Walmart”, was examined here for the connections it has with terrorist organizations and state sponsors, as well as areas in which the CIA could have been following their activities.

It proves conclusively that Dick Cheney knew about A.Q. Khan’s nuclear Walmart as early as 1989, and chose not to expose the network but to profit from it, which gives him the strongest motive to blow Valerie Plame’s cover. State sponsors of terror that were proven recipients of Cheney’s nuclear proliferation include Pakistan, Libya and possibly Iran. The links between Khan and Cheney involved suppliers from other countries designed to blur the source of the components, but research concludes individuals affiliated with collaborative companies such as Cognis and their investor Goldman Sachs would be the most obvious links in the chain. Such links also exist in the case of Donald Rumsfeld profiting through ABB’s $200 million sale of nuclear equipment to North Korea, which would prove that Halliburton profited from this example of nuclear proliferation as well.

The main recommendation to all who read this is to spread the word. Anyone who reads this who is in a position to investigate this matter further, whether as an activist, investigative reporter or government official, should do so with care and thoroughness. The names and organizations listed in the paper should, with a proper investigation, lead to more damaging evidence that will help solve the crime and establish justice. That is perhaps the most important aspect of this case to remember, that regardless of the prestige and power connected with the parties involved, this is a criminal investigation. It is hoped that no matter what your political persuasion is, that as a law abiding citizen, you stand with us in condemnation of the exposure of Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent as a highly criminal act, and join us in the pursuit of justice for the perpetrators.

[Pallas180]

2. HENRY KISSINGER ON HOW TO MANIPULATE AMERICANS' PANIC

HENRY KISSINGER ON HOW TO MANIPULATE AMERICANS' PANIC



"Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los

Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is

especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from

beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very

existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with

world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every

man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario,

individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee

of their well being granted to them by their world government."

Henry Kissinger, Speaking at Evian, France, May 21, 1992. Bilderberg

meeting.

[Pallas180]

3. PREVIOUS 19 PLAME THREADS IN PDF & URL

Thu Aug-12-04 11:42 PM
Response to Reply #4

6. PREVIOUS 18 PLAME THREADS IN PDF WORD FORMAT

Edited on Thu Aug-12-04 11:52 PM by Pallas180
PREVIOUS 16 PLAME THREADS IN PDF WORD FORMAT


Plame PDFs 1-16 can be found here,
http://s93118771.onlinehome.us/DU/PlameIndictments.html


Plame Indictments Thread # 17 here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...


Plame Indictments Thread # 18 here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

Plame Indictments Thrad #19 here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2206963&mesg_id=2206963

[Pallas180]

4. MEDIA LIST SET TO GO FOR EMAILING

MEDIA LIST all set up for e mailing


list of other media contacts, here's some for you.

[e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail],
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[e-mail], [e-mail],
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[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail],
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[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail]



other individual reporters or news outlets can be found at
Drudgereport.com

(sorry, it's the pits but the news contacts are nicely listed for
us. )



Individual Reporters & Newspaper List

forgive me, it's on the drudge rag site, but it's useful

http://www.drudgereport.com /

[Pallas180]

5. DIRECTORY TO CONTACT ANYONE IN CONGRESS

DIRECTORY TO CONTACT ANYONE IN CONGRESS


www.congress.org - for a directory to ANYBODY on the Hill, AND their

local/regional offices.

[Pallas180]

6. TOLL FREE PHONE # TO CONGRESS

Toll Free Phone # To Congress 1 800 839 5276


use it and let them know you want judicial hearings and
criminal charges brought against these people who have
been committing treason against the US for more than 20
years while inside the government.

[Pallas180]

7. SIBEL EDMONDS SPEAKS AROUND ASHCROFT GAG ORDER

Sibel Edmonds began working for the FBI shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, translating top-secret documents pertaining to suspected terrorists. She was fired in the spring of 2002 after reporting her concerns about sabotage, intimidation, corruption and incompetence to superiors. She first gained wide public attention in October of that year when she appeared on 60 Minutes on CBS and charged that the FBI, State Department, and Pentagon had been infiltrated by Turkish individuals suspected of ties to terrorism. On October 18, 2002, at the request of FBI Director Robert Mueller, Attorney General Ashcroft imposed a gag order on Ms. Edmonds, citing possible damage to diplomatic relations or national security. Edmonds is a key witness in a pending class-action suit filed by 9/11 families against the government. The following interview, conducted this past weekend for almost three hours by telephone, reveals sordid new details about U.S. intelligence practices.

Christopher Deliso: Sibel, first of all, thanks very much for speaking with us today. I'm delighted to have this chance to speak with someone of your experience and bravery in the face of governmental opposition and intimidation.

Sibel Edmonds: Well thanks very much for having me.

CD: Despite your media prominence, I don't think readers know so much about you. So can you tell us a bit about yourself? Are you from Turkey? Or just of Turkish descent?

SE: No, I am from Turkey originally.

CD: But you speak excellent English – and with an American accent too. That's why I thought maybe you were just of Turkish descent. So, how long were you in Turkey before coming to the U.S.?

SE: I had a pretty interesting upbringing. I was actually born in Iran, where I lived until I was two and a half. Then I lived in Turkey till I was 5, then back in Iran till I was 11. And then in Turkey again until I was 18.

CD: That's quite a lot of moving. Why did you come and go so much?

SE: My father is Azerbaijani. He was a doctor during the Shah regime. After the revolution, they kept useful foreigners like him. During the Iran-Iraq war, he was taken to the front lines, and we weren't allowed to leave the country.

CD: Wow! And when did you come to America?

SE: Actually, I came as a student in 1988. My idea was to study for three or four years and then go back to Turkey. But I guess you can't plan life in advance – in my third year I met my future husband and ended up staying.

CD: What drew you to eventually work for the FBI?

SE: Well, I actually studied criminal justice with a major in psychology at George Washington University. When I was finishing in 1997-98, I decided to apply for any kind of a job that would give me hands-on experience in criminal justice. I worked for the Alexandria Juvenile Court, working with kids from a deprived background or who had been sexually abused or involved with drugs, etc. At that time I also thought I would apply with the FBI for a similar, hands-on job.

CD: As a linguist?

SE: No, actually I just applied for a general position. It was only after they'd seen all my qualifications and background that they said they were interested in my linguistic abilities.

CD: Now I know you speak Turkish – but what else?

SE: Because of my time in Iran, I also know Farsi. And Azerbaijani.

CD: Which is fairly close to Turkish.

SE: Yes, a Turkic language.

CD: So what did you do next? The FBI?

SE: Well, no, the process actually took a very long time. There was the linguistic proficiency test, forms to fill out, urine and blood samples and polygraph tests – the whole works. Then they said they'd need to do background checks, which would take anywhere from nine to 15 months, and finally they would call me to let me know about my application. And that was the last I heard from them for two or three years.

CD: Huh? What happened?

SE: Well I just went on with my life. I did other things. Sheerly out of curiosity, one day in January or February of 2001 I called the FBI up to see what had happened. They put me on hold, checked certain things, then came back on the line, and apologized profusely. Apparently, my application – along with 150 others – had been lost or had disappeared during the past couple years.

CD: Maybe that should have been a warning right there about their incompetence. So the files just disappeared from FBI headquarters?

SE: Actually, it was not headquarters we're talking about, it was the Tyson's Corner office where I'd taken the exam. Apparently they had moved within the same office complex, and maybe the files were lost then. Anyway, they were very apologetic and nice about it.

CD: So you had to apply all over again?

SE: No, they found some information about me remaining on one of their computers. And they promised they would speed up the background check process. But I told them, "look, I can't work for you now," because after all, my life had moved on at that point. Nevertheless they said they would get back to me later.

And so on September 14, 2001, I got a call asking how soon I could start work in their Washington field office. At the time I got their call, I was studying full-time and also working a part-time job. But in the wake of 9/11, with the government on television almost begging for qualified personnel, it was almost like – like duty calling, you know? So I went and met with them. When I explained my situation and other responsibilities they tried to be very flexible, saying I could work whatever hours I wanted, nights, weekends, whatever. That's how desperate they were for qualified translators. I got a job as a "contract" translator, which allowed more flexibility than if they hired me full-time.

CD: And you worked for them until March 2002, when you were fired for being a whistleblower, correct?

SE: Yes.

CD: And how did they handle that? Did you get some notice, or reason for your dismissal?

SE: No. I was literally thrown out of the building. They even didn't give me time to take all my family photos and personal items from my desk. I'm 5 foot 4 and 100 pounds, and you had all these big burly guys forcibly taking me out of the building. It was absurd.

CD: Did they threaten you in any way?

SE: Yes. This guy, one of my superiors, tried to act tough and threatened me that if I said anything to the press, the congress or even a lawyer, "the next time I see you will be in jail." I replied, "well, I maybe in jail, but I won't be the one behind bars."

CD: Wow. That's pretty brave.

SE: This is why one of the top guys, I am not sure whether it was the same guy, later called me a "nightmare."

CD: After they threw you out on the street, did they keep up the pressure?

SE: It was the worst at the beginning but then they saw they could do nothing. Right before the 60 Minutes interview, for example, they threatened that I would go to jail if I talked to the media, a senator or attorney. But that was all hot air.

The strangest thing was when the Turkish government issued an arrest warrant for my middle sister. I have the translated version, allegedly she was to be arrested for "high-level national security matters." Come on! My middle sister worked for KLM Airlines. She didn't even read newspapers – the most apolitical person I know.

Working Conditions in the FBI Translation Department

CD: So what hours did you end up working?

SE: I usually worked about four days a week, generally from 5 to 11 p.m. Basically 20 to 25 hours a week.

CD: Can you describe what your working conditions were like? For example, what was your office like? How many people were you working with?

SE: The FBI's Washington translation center is located about three blocks from headquarters, and is the largest and most important one of its kind in the country. They don't have centers like that in the L.A. or New York offices, for example. So this gigantic department is basically a connected room containing 200 to 250 translators, all working side by side, at very close quarters.

CD: What, in government-issue cubicles?

SE: Not even – maybe half cubicles. I mean, your shoulders were touching those of the translator next to you. It was that tight.

CD: What languages were covered in this office?

SE: Oh, a lot of languages. Certain departments had 25 to 30 translators. Some only had two. It was based on the perceived importance of the language in question.

CD: So you were put in to translate documents related to the war on terror, from Turkish into English, right?

SE: Yes, Turkish and the other two languages I spoke. For one of these I was the first formal person for one of them that they had, but I can't say which one.

Now the FBI has two kinds of translators – "linguists" and "monitors." The first are more highly qualified, can do the whole range of translating whether it be from documents, audio, verbatim, detainee interviews, etc. The latter, because their proficiency levels were lower in either English or the target language, and because they had obtained lower scores in one of the two exams, had a more limited role. For example, they weren't allowed to do verbatim translations, but more like summaries.

CD: Something like a general overview of a document, to judge whether it would require a closer look by someone better qualified?

SE: Exactly. A summary that a more qualified linguist could then translate verbatim if it contained important information.

CD: So you were in the first category, a full linguist?

SE: For Turkish and Azerbaijani I was, yes. But since I hadn't been practicing Farsi for practically 25 years, I was just allowed to be a monitor in that language. I passed all the FBI exams in written Farsi, but not all for speaking. So I didn't do, say, live interviews.

CD: Whom did you work with? Only fellow translators, or did you work with special agents from the field?

SE: Most of our immediate supervisors were former translators who became bureaucrats. They handled things like time sheets, insurance, and making travel arrangements for us when we would have to travel. But yes, I did work on a daily basis with special agents.

CD: From where? Washington or other places too?

SE: Well, the one special agent I worked with most frequently was from the local office, but also there were agents from FBI offices all over the country. They flooded us with urgent translation requests, especially dealing with assignments and investigations begun before 9/11, and connected with 9/11, but that had been neglected before. Close to 75 percent of my assignments then had to do with pre-9/11 intelligence.

CD: Did you get called out for special assignments in other cities?

SE: Yes, I went to other cities, for example to perform translations for detainees who did not speak English. Let's say an agent in Chicago has a detainee suspected of terrorist involvement, they need to know if he should be kept or released. If he doesn't speak much English it can be hard to know. So you need translators.

The Critical Importance of Translators

CD: People have disparaged the job and position as being "low-level." But from this, it sounds like very important work. Did you ever feel the agents were depending on you?

SE: Well, just think about it: if they don't know the language, they are not in a position to make decisions. You are. You're going through thousands of pieces of evidence, and have to decide which ones to do verbatim, which ones to summarize, which ones to throw away as being irrelevant. I mean, a transcript about someone's sex life is not particularly useful. But there might be important clues hidden in some at first glance not very interesting text. So the translator has to sift out what's important, before the analysts and agents even see it.

CD: So you're saying that you would see all of the raw data first, and then decide what to do with it and who would see it?

SE: Correct.

CD: And that they don't have any way of knowing if you're telling the truth or giving them the right translation?

SE: Correct.

CD: So more or less, the agents are at the mercy of the translator?

SE: Correct. While the FBI's internal procedures say that a second translator should always take a look at every text, to prevent any faulty translations from occurring, that never happens.

CD: Really? Why not?

SE: Well, a lot of the translators would find that offensive, you know, the idea that someone might think they're not good enough and need to be babysat in their translating. It could end up in a fistfight.

The whole place is like that. It's like the Twilight Zone in there – you have to keep the Pakistani translators on one side of the room and the Indians on the other, or they will come to blows. You have to keep the Hebrew translators separated from the Arabic ones, and so on. It's so unprofessional it's ridiculous. Most of the time people spend trying to dig up dirt on one another. Really.

CD: From this, I gather that most of the FBI's translators are foreign-born?

SE: As far as I saw, yes, everyone was a naturalized citizen. And I understand that some of these guys had only been in the country for, like, four or five years. So they can't have been able to do really detailed background checks on all of them.

CD: But back to your working relationship with the field agents. Did you have to do anything else to bring them up to speed on the situation in question, or just translate the documents?

SE: For the record, I have to say that most of these agents were really, really good and they did their best despite all the nonsense and bureaucratic obstructions. But they can't be expected to be really successful if they don't have the right background. There was this one guy I worked with, he had formerly done the drug beat in L.A. and then was transferred to counter-intelligence. He was a great agent, but since he didn't have the right political and cultural background, he couldn't understand the translated texts in their proper context. And you also have to be up-to-date . So I had to give him little notes explaining what it all meant.

CD: That does not sound very auspicious.

SE: It's so funny. You would think that that was supposed to be the job of the analysts. That the information would go first from the translators then to the analysts for color commentary, then finally to the agents to be acted on.

But no. You translate it, give it to the agent and if he decides it's important, he will send it to the analysts – maybe seven or eight days later!

CD: That said, what was the general modus operandi of your translations department? I mean, what percent of translators were both translating well and keeping their agents as informed as you were?

SE: A very few translators worked like I did – basically, the few people who actually cared. But also, note that the majority of agents didn't even realize they needed to understand more than the raw translated text to know what they should do next. So, a lot of times very important information was overlooked, simply because no one recognized its significance.

CD: Aside from these frustrations and letdowns, were there any cases in which you felt some of your work produced a clearly positive result through the actions of those you informed?

SE: Yes. Certain investigations I contributed to as a translator were successfully concluded by our agents. On one occasion, the intelligence agency of a certain foreign country sent a commendation letter to the agent I was partnered with, because they had taken an action based on information he had provided them – information which ultimately derived from me.

Incompetence, Corruption and Cover-ups: The Kevin Taskasen Affair

CD: In your October 25 2002 interview with 60 Minutes, "Lost in Translation," you charged the FBI with incompetence and greed – and also of allowing infiltration by foreign intelligence outfits. Some of these charges have also been substantiated by other sources, both congressional and from inside the bureau. For example, there's the Guantanamo Bay Turkish-English translator who actually didn't know either language very well, Kevin Taskasen, I believe? And he worked with you at some point?

SE: Correct.

CD: And also, your bosses told you to work more slowly, in some cases not at all, so that the department's seemingly huge workload would mean more funding the next year, right?

SE: Correct.

CD: Can you provide any more details on these subjects?

SE: Well, as for Kevin – he was this poor little guy who was very nice, his only fault as a translator being that he, well, didn't speak English.

CD: Really! Where was he from? How did he get that job, anyway?


SE: Kevin was from Turkey. He had met an American woman there, married her, and moved to America. But his lower-elementary-school-level English was only enough to get him a job as a busboy/dishwasher in a restaurant.

However, his wife worked in the languages testing center at FBI headquarters in Washington. Hers was the office that takes in the applications of aspiring translators and schedule language proficiency tests.

CD: So in other words, she used her connections to get him a job in the FBI, even though he wasn't qualified?

SE: Correct. There was an Arabic language supervisor in our department, who had about seven or eight family members under his wing, working away in the Arabic language section even though several of them weren't qualified, hadn't passed the proficiency test in either English or Arabic…

CD: So they made a bargain?

SE: Yes, he had made a deal with this woman, Kevin's wife. She had approved all of his extended family members to work for the FBI translations center, and so she then asked to do the same with her poor husband. And I can't really blame him at all, he was just a nice guy who dreamed of opening his own restaurant. But that's not likely to happen when you're working as a busboy for $6.50 an hour.

CD: How much do they pay in the translating department that he was hired to?

SE: The average is $40 an hour.

CD: So basically, what you had was a nudge-nudge wink-wink thing going on between the woman in the application office and the head honcho in the translation center.

SE: Correct. In light of what she'd done for him, the deal was that he would turn a blind eye to her poor husband's incompetence for 3 years. He agreed and in October 2001 it started. Again, I can't blame Kevin. He would be coming to me every five minutes asking, "What does this word mean?" He was really trying, but he was struggling because he just didn't know English well enough. So I ended up having to do his work for him too.

CD: How long did this go on for? Did you alert your supervisors?

SE: Yes. I went to them and asked, "what is he doing here?" But nothing was done and only a few months later, in February of 2002, he was given a TDY – to translate the testimony of Turkic-speaking detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

When told of this assignment, Kevin stood in front of all the other translators. He was crying, and said, "I can't do it, I just can't." I told him to go to the boss – and just say no, if he didn't feel capable. But he didn't.

CD: Come on! One would think that for the marquis interrogation center in the war on terror, the government would send only the best and brightest. Why did they even think of sending him?

SE: Aside from sending Kevin, the FBI had only two options, neither of them good for them. They could send me, as I was the only qualified Turkish linguist, but this raised a red flag considering that I had already started to make a fuss about how the game was being played. Their other choice was to humbly ask the NSA or DIA or another agency to borrow a Turkish-language translator. But they couldn't do this because there is all this intra-agency competition. None of them would ever let it look like their people weren't as good as the other agencies'. So it was partly a matter of pride.

CD: Do you know what happened to Kevin in Guantanamo?

SE: He didn't come back till mid-April <2002>. But surely while there he had heard information he wasn't able to convey properly in English. Maybe clues about 9/11, or about future terrorist attacks in the works. Or maybe information proving that some detainees had been wrongfully imprisoned.

That's another thing. What if a military detainee is on trial? You have to, you simply have to double-check the translations that are being used as evidence against the detainee. After all, you might be sending someone to his death based on faulty evidence! But all too often, they just put the stamp of approval on anything that says "FBI translation," because that is supposed to indicate automatically a certain unassailable level of quality.

CD: After coming back, and after the story broke proving he wasn't a qualified translator, what happened then? Did he get fired?

SE: No. After all that, he is back in Washington D.C., and is the head of the Turkish department in the FBI translations center. As far as I know, he is the only Turkish-speaking translator there now. Even after all this.

CD: Good God! One translator – and an incompetent one at that! Isn't that a national security liability?

SE: Yes, but you have to look at it from their perspective. What if they let him go, and he starts talking about what he knows? Either way, it's about control. If they fire someone, they might either corroborate my story, or even release documents that could prove damning for the FBI … it works out to be more of a liability for them to fire someone than to keep them in the office, where they can continue to compromise our national security.

Criminal Infiltration: The Mysterious "Semi-Legitimate Organizations"

CD: In a fascinating recent interview with Breakfornews.com, you say that with the synoptic view you acquired at the FBI, the "picture" of non-state organized crime linked with state institutions becomes "crystal clear." For the benefit of our readers, let me just re-quote one of your statements:

"ou have network of people who obtain certain information and they take it out and sell it to … whomever would be the highest bidder. Then you have people who would be bringing into the country narcotics from the East, and their connections. is only then that you really see the big picture."

At several points you state that such organized crime networks employ "semi-legitimate organizations" as their point of interface with governments and the "legit" world. Can you explain exactly what you mean?

SE: These are organizations that might have a legitimate front – say as a business, or a cultural center or something. And we've also heard a lot about Islamic charities as fronts for terrorist organizations, but the range is much broader and even, simpler.

CD: For example?

SE: You might have an organization supposed to be promoting the cultural affairs of a certain country within another country. Hypothetically, say, an Uzbek folklore society based in Germany. The stated purpose would be to hold folklore-related activities – and they might even do that – but the real activities taking place behind the scenes are criminal.

CD: Such as?

SE: Everything – from drugs to money laundering to arms sales. And yes, there are certain convergences with all these activities and international terrorism.

CD: So with these organizations we're talking about a lot of money –

SE: Huge, just massive. They don't deal with 1 million or 5 million dollars, but with hundreds of millions.

CD: From your previous testimony and the examples I want to bring up next, it would seem that organized crime with terrorist links is really holding the reins inside powerful governments, even the American one. No?

SE: That may be, but I don't know. I didn't get high enough up on the ladder to find out. With all of this suspicious and unprecedented "state secrets" obstructionism from Ashcroft, it might seem that way, but I don't have any direct information.

CD: But what do think, within departments such as the Pentagon and the State Department. Do you suspect certain high officials may be profiting from terrorist-linked organized crime?

SE: I can't say anything specific with regards to these departments, because I didn't work for them. But as for the politicians, what I can say is that when you start talking about huge amounts of money, certain elected officials become automatically involved. And there are different kinds of campaign contributions – legal and illegal, declared and undeclared.

CD: Could this apparent toleration of dangerous criminal groups in the midst possibly be interpreted to mean that American policy is driven by the "ends justify the means" philosophy?

SE: But how are the ends possibly met by such activities? To this day, I just can't see how. What is happening does not benefit 99.9 percent of Americans – just a very small elite.

I'm no expert, but from what I have personally seen I can say that our national security is being compromised every day, because important investigations are being stopped, and potentially important clues are being overlooked. It's absolutely incredible that even after 9/11, certain individuals, foreign businessmen and others, among others, are still escaping scrutiny.

Okay, perhaps talking about the pre-9/11 world they could get away with saying "we didn't know," but to continue doing so – I mean, what if we are attacked by nuclear or chemical weapons, what will be their next excuse? That "we didn't know" it could happen? Come on! I can prove they are lying, because they know.

The Jan Dickerson Affair: A Brief History

CD: Right. So let's discuss your specific experiences of criminal infiltration in the FBI, for example when one of your co-workers, Jan Dickerson, and her husband tried to recruit you into a criminal network that had infiltrated high levels of the U.S. government.

SE: Alright, sure.

CD: As I understand it, Jan Dickerson was also trying to protect one criminal associate – a Turkish-speaking suspect of an FBI investigation – by blocking translations referring to him. Yes?

SE: Correct.

CD: And this was an official working out of the Turkish Embassy in Washington –

SE: No, that part is not correct. I cannot talk about the position or the job of this person –

CD: But in the other media stories about your case, he was identified as –

SE: Yes, I know. The term "official" was used in the senators' memos from their meetings with the FBI, and so then when cited by the media it became automatically assumed that he was government – but since this individual has never been named, I can only describe him as working on behalf of a "semi-legitimate" organization.

CD: Okay, so tell us about Jan Dickerson, and that experience.

SE: Well, I have to be somewhat general about this, but based on unclassified sources alone you can get a pretty good idea. Melek Can Dickerson was a Turkish woman –

CD: Originally from Turkey, like you?

SE: Yes, from Turkey, and she met her husband there, Douglas – Major Douglas Dickerson, that is. He was in the U.S. Air Force, stationed in Ankara. They met in 1991 and stayed in Turkey till 1994 or 1995. Then they went to Germany, where he was stationed after, for two or three years. And then they came to the U.S. in 1999.

CD: But first, regarding Turkey: do you know what Dickerson's function was there in the USAF?

SE: He was involved with weapons procurement for various Central Asian and Middle Eastern governments from the United States.

CD: Yo! Do you mean he was procuring weapons on an intra-governmental basis, or something else?

SE: Yes, from the U.S. government for these other governments. I assume it was all legal and part of his job.

CD: Okay, but in the process he could have built up contacts and connections with various unsavory characters in regional governments and in the arms trade –

SE: He could have, but I don't know.

CD: Anyway, what kind of countries are we talking about here?

SE: Oh… I don't know all of them exactly, but I guess these would be countries like Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan –

CD: All of our favorites –

SE: Yes, right, countries like these and some Middle Eastern countries.

CD: And what about after Turkey? When they went to Germany?

SE: Well, he was stationed there, and while in Germany, Jan Dickerson started working for this semi-legitimate organization whose members, much later, were being investigated by the FBI, when I was working there.

CD: Fascinating, And this criminal group that the Dickersons were involved in, what kind of countries did it have connections with and where were its members from?

SE: Oh, that varied. Members came from all over; when you're dealing with those huge amounts of money you get people from everywhere.

CD: Americans?

SE: Of course. But also from Europe, Central Asia, etc. And this organization had branches throughout these places, in the U.S., Germany, and several other countries.

The Fateful Visit

CD: Now let's fast-forward to November 2001, when Jan Dickerson joined you at the FBI. What were her duties?

SE: She was a "monitor," the second type of translator, because she didn't have the scores on one of her two language proficiency exams. As a monitor she was supposed to make general summary translations, not verbatim.

CD: Did you have any idea at the time about her suspect allegiances?

SE: I had no idea at first. It was only after some suspicious behavior and then her and her husband's unannounced visit to our house that everything became clear.

One day in December <2001>, my husband and I were at our home in Alexandria, Va., when the doorbell rang. It was Jan and Doug Dickerson. They also lived in Alexandria, so I didn't think of it as suspicious at first. I think the point for her was to introduce her husband to mine. We invited them in for coffee, and –

CD: She started trying to recruit you for their illegal activities?

SE: No, actually she herself did not. It was the husband who started talking about this semi-legitimate organization: "Hey, have you ever heard of this group?" he said, casually mentioning this organization to my husband. He replied, "Yeah, I know about them." And I started sweating, because I knew this organization was under FBI investigation, and I was by law not allowed to discuss anything about it with my husband.

CD: But, for your husband to have heard of it, it had to have been a group that was well known to the public as something fairly innocuous, right?

SE: Yes, as I said, a legitimate front. And Dickerson asked my husband if he'd ever thought of joining the organization.

CD: So there was something socially desirable about belonging in this group?

SE: Correct. And so my husband was kind of surprised, you know, because this wasn't the sort of group just anyone could belong to. "But I thought you had to be such and such a person, with such and such connections and references to get in," my husband was saying.

And then Major Douglas Dickerson smiled and pointed at me. "All you have to do is tell them where your wife works and what she does, and they will let you in like that," he said . They wanted to sell me for the information I could provide, basically.

CD: What did you take this to mean? You would have to hand over classified FBI information –

SE: Correct. The information I could give these people would be worth a lot of money.

CD: And what would you get out of it?

SE: Well, money, and we could leave the country, you know, live a very comfortable life wherever we wanted. We would never have to work again, they promised.

CD: So what did you do then, with him propositioning your husband right in front of you?

SE: I tried to change the subject, because anything I might say on the subject would have been against the law, considering the ongoing investigation.

CD: When you went back to work, did you bring the matter up?

SE: I reported it two days later to my direct supervisor, a former Arabic translator. He told me he would file it immediately with the security department. This was in December 2001. When nothing happened, I pursued the matter with a special agent who had also been getting suspicious about some of Jan Dickerson's translations. When we finally got through to the security department, they said they'd never been notified in the first place about my complaint. I have all of the dated documents, emails, etc., still to prove it.

CD: Did Dickerson's protection of the suspects, and their larger infiltration of the American security apparatus, did these things have a deleterious effect on bureau investigations?

SE: As a result of their penetration, certain people who had been detained were released – people who had valuable information. And other targets of this investigation, key people, were allowed to flee the country, right up through January and February of 2002.

CD: These were foreign nationals based in the United States?

SE: Correct.

CD: Did you have any awareness of this exodus?

SE: I reported some of the suspects' names higher up as I came across them in our investigation. And you know what? Within two weeks, they had all left the country. Just vanished.

The Great Escape

CD: So what happened after? As far as I know, Jan Dickerson has quit the FBI and re-located to Belgium. Was she forced out when your story broke? Did she flee? And is her husband still in the Air Force?

SE: I assume that at the time of that conversation in our house, in December 2001, Douglas Dickerson was in the USAF because finally in August of the next year, the USAF held a formal investigation and confirmed this. This was a major violation of his high-level security clearance. By law he is required to report it if his wife or family members are involved with illegal activities.

Mysteriously enough, only two weeks after the formal Air Force investigation began, they both left the country, on September 9, 2002.

CD: Why did the government just let them escape?

SE: Well, after my case began in June 2002, the judge subpoenaed them and ordered the DOJ not to let them leave the country. But the Air Force gave them a free pass – by sending Major Dickerson off to Belgium to work something with NATO, a minimum two-year assignment.

CD: With NATO? Doing what?

SE: I don't know exactly, just that it was with NATO. So before leaving, a pretty angry Doug Dickerson had to make a declaration under oath that if he was requested by the court at any time he would return, and the FBI would pay for his flight.

CD: So there is still a chance that they will face justice someday?

SE: Well, we discovered that the Dickerson's also had bank accounts in several countries, some of which didn't have the appropriate extradition treaties with the U.S. … so I don't think so, no, I don't think it's likely. They're gone.

But the really outrageous thing is that, for the whole month we were subpoenaing them, starting in June 2002, Jan Dickerson was still working away in the FBI translations department, with her top-security clearance. This even though the FBI had simultaneously admitted to a congressional committee that not only had Jan Dickerson worked for this suspect organization in the past, but that she had maintained ongoing relationships with at least two individuals under investigation.

But How Could She Have Been Hired?

CD: Why was she allowed to stay, and keep her security clearance? Were they trying to protect someone higher up?

SE: I don't know. Is it possible? Yes. But I just don't know.

But at the unclassified meeting between the senators and FBI being held then, the former were in utter disbelief when the FBI admitted Jan Dickerson had been working for this semi-legitimate organization since long before she joined the bureau. "But how!?" asked the senators. You know what their answer was? "Well, she didn't write down any previous employers on her application."

CD: What? None?

SE: Correct. She didn't just neglect to mention that job, aside from others she put down. She just left the whole box blank! As if she had never worked a day in her life!

CD: And the FBI hired her? You can't even get a job in a bar without listing previous employers!

SE: Look, it took me a year and a half to get my background check performed. And that after filling out the complete application – at the bottom of which it states that failure to fill out the form correctly will result in a cash fine and jail term for perjury. A federal crime. So based on that alone, even aside from her other activities, Jan Dickerson should have been prosecuted!

CD: But instead she was hired – and kept on even after things heated up. There's something very, very suspicious about all this, especially considering the way Kevin Taskasen was hired. Do you believe another official on the inside, part of that crime ring, brought her in?

SE: I recently met with a reliable source who confirmed that Melek Can Dickerson was hired and granted TSC without having to go through a background check/investigation, and that in light of Hanssen the bureau is doing all it can to keep it quiet. Still, I have plenty of unanswered questions: why? By whom?

CD: That indeed seems to be the underlying question here. Did the FBI have anything else to say under this senatorial scrutiny?

SE: They made the quite pertinent point that she had failed to disclose her previous associations with the suspect organization. A shocked senator said, "If you gave her top security clearance, how could she not have been made to disclose ?"

You know how they replied? "A lack of good training" was behind Dickerson's failure to properly disclose her various relationships.

CD: That's incredible. What was the reaction from the senators?

SE: They were persistent, mentioning that beyond that, hadn't she blocked pertinent information ? The FBI replied, "Oh, well, we've confirmed this in two or three cases."

Actually, there were hundreds of cases from November 2001 to February 2002 in which she obstructed investigations with her translations – or lack thereof.

CD: Right, how exactly would she do this?

SE: Well, as a monitor, she was supposed to give general translations – or not – and if not the document could be marked "not pertinent," and basically never be seen again.

In those few months, she managed to mark every file that mentioned this, these targets, as "not pertinent." Hundreds of files. Finally, this special agent working on the case got suspicious, and he tasked me with re-translating all of these documents.

CD: So how did that go? Did you find any damning information?

SE: Oh, yes. There was content that directly linked the suspects with the group under investigation.

CD: How many documents did you translate?

SE: Out of the pile of hundreds, I only got to 17 pieces before I was suddenly terminated.

CD: Can you tell us how long the FBI had been investigating these targets by the time you started working for them?

SE: A long time. There's really no time limit with the big criminal and counter-intelligence investigations, versus the counter-terrorism ones. These are investigations we'd never do anything about –

CD: Why?

SE: Because it would hurt certain foreign relations abroad, of course … and they don't want that. So even after 3,000 people lost their lives on 9/11, those behind these very lucrative illegal activities get a free pass. And they refuse to continue important investigations because of certain diplomatic relations that 99.9 percent of Americans gain no benefits from.

How the FBI Seduces Dissenters

CD: Sibel, I know you made a lot of complaints about several other examples of corruption and incompetence beyond the ones we have time to discuss. Can you just explain a little about how your superiors received your complaints?

SE: Sure. They used what we call the "hooking" procedure. When I first reported some of these translations failures and stalling tactics in December 2001 to my superiors, my mid-level manager said to me, "Now, Sibel, I understand you've been taking on a lot of coursework at your university. Why not take advantage of our workplace opportunities?"

When I asked him what he meant, this boss suggested that I could "bring my school bag" to work on Saturdays and Sundays, and just study. No work. I wouldn't even have to turn on my computer. He told me that I should then put myself down as having worked all those hours on the time sheet, so that, you know, I would be making something like $700 in a weekend – specifically for not working!

CD: Incredible.

SE: And this is what they say when you file a complaint.

CD: So is that the extent of how they tried to appease you and forestall complaints, or do you have other examples?

SE: That's funny, there is another really amazing example. They would come to me and say, "Sibel, we understand you've been going back to Turkey a couple of times a year to visit family. Before you go the next time, just let us know. We'll make it a TDY" . And all I'd have to do is stop off in some liaison office in Ankara a couple times, make my little appearance, and suddenly all my flights, hotels and expenses would be paid for by the FBI. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

CD: An offer you couldn't refuse, huh? I imagine most people in your position would take it.

SE: Oh, so many people will go for it … but if you do, then they can use it against you. Maybe discover irregularities in your expenses at some later date, "forged" documents, or else just hold it over your head. They love to do things like that to hold you in their power.

On another occasion when I complained about working conditions and practices, they actually offered to hire and train me as SA, special agent! I still have a copy of that offer. I said, "I'm not here to ask for a promotion, I'm trying to make a complaint!" Then they would just change the topic. They would go to any length possible to avoid accountability.

The Current Situation: Ashcroft's Obstructionism and a Legal Battle

CD: Sibel, I know you are eager to speak about the lawsuit you have filed against the Department of Justice, and John Ashcroft's questionable use of the "State Secrets Act" to place a gag order on you. Can you give us some background on this legal battle, and the current state of play?

SE: My case originally began in June of 2002, when I filed a First Amendment and Privacy lawsuit against the Department of Justice. In two unclassified meetings in June and July, eight people from two senators met with three FBI officials, including Margaret Gullota, who is still in charge of the FBI languages department. At these meetings, the FBI admitted that all of my charges were accurate. The memos taken down by Senators Grassley and Leahy, two very senior senators, confirmed this. That's very damning for .

CD: I understand that Ashcroft's current restrictive tactics have revolved around this concept of classified versus unclassified meetings. Can you please distinguish precisely what is meant by each term?


SE: A classified meeting must be held in a secure room known as a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility), you know, a room swept for bugs, checked for wiretaps, and everyone in there has to have top security clearance. But this wasn't the case in June and July 2002. They didn't follow any of these procedures in the meetings with the senators, because they were never requested to be classified by the FBI in the first place. So now all they can say is, "Whoops, those meetings should have been classified," and thus try to classify them after the fact.

CD: So how has the case gotten to this point? Has there been no progress at all?

SE: From the beginning, there has been zero activity. Four times I was given a hearing date, and four times it was cancelled without explanation.

However, the big law firm Motley Rice subpoenaed me in April of this year, as part of their lawsuit on behalf of family members of the 9/11 victims. Motley Rice wanted copies of all the memos those senators had written during that unclassified meetings in 2002. But as soon as they even listed some of the questions they were planning to ask me, it was suddenly "state secrets" time.

John Ashcroft – you can expect anything from that man – has now broken the law in trying to silence me. I have been speaking out for over two years, but only now is he saying "everything about Sibel Edmonds is classified." It's ridiculous.

CD: But by demanding all the information be dug up and reburied, isn't the DOJ actually bringing more attention to your cause?

SE: Exactly! That's just what it has done. These people are shooting themselves in the foot.

So, returning to the subpoena, I was scheduled to appear on April 27. Two days before, the DOJ started kicking and screaming to hold an emergency proceeding. This was the first time (on April 26) that I had the privilege of going before the judge President Bush had appointed, Reggie Walton. He was not the first judge who had been appointed to the case. Their tactic was to pass it around from judge to judge to make sure the case would never begin. Judge Walton has now sat on it for two years.

CD: But didn't the intervention of Motley Rice help at all? Did Judge Walton make a new hearing date for you?

SE: Well, on June 24 they filed an appeal. But, oh, my case is so messy and complicated. Judge Walton then set a hearing date for June 14, but of course he cancelled it two days later. Now he has said, and I can be verbally exact: "Tentatively, we will have a hearing on July 9, 2004." But it's not going to happen. They're going to drag this thing out. The judge has liberty to sit on it as long as he wants.

CD: But can't you file an appeal or complaint or anything to expedite the process?

SE: Well, yes you can file a complaint, but some in the legal community caution that this can actually backfire because the judge tends to grow more and more antagonistic if you do so.

CD: So basically, you have had no progress on this case.

Is the Tide Turning?

SE: Correct. We have had no progress. Except, now others are joining up. For the past two weeks, we have had new support from the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) and Citizen Watch.


CD: What have they been doing?

SE: The Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) has declared that Attorney General Ashcroft violated their regulations when he put the gag order on me and ordered everything to be re-classified. There are three criteria that need to be met for a gag order to take effect: one, that the order must come from the head of the Department of Justice; two, that the information in question must be reasonably recoverable; and three, that the head of the DOJ first obtain the official approval of the ISOO.

However, only the first of these criteria was met – Ashcroft did indeed give the order. But the second criterion was obviously impossible – so many websites, newspapers and TV had long ago published all of the material relating to my case. It was and is everywhere. There is nothing "reasonably recoverable" about it.

And as for the third criteria, let alone not get permission, Ashcroft didn't even bother to notify the ISOO that he was re-classifying the information related to me. He showed contempt for the regulations by going around them.

CD: So in other words, the Attorney General's actions were completely illegal?

SE: Correct. Because these three criteria were not met, the DOJ has actually violated its own rules!

CD: Do you have the support of any congressmen? I know that Senators Grassley and Leahy, in particular, have stepped up to bat for you.

SE: Well it's very interesting, even though this issue is starting to get major media interest, like the recent articles in The New Republic and New York Times, these two senators are still complying with an order from Ashcroft that is completely illegal.

CD: How exactly?

SE: They have removed texts from their official websites detailing the unclassified meeting they had with the FBI in 2002. We found out when the New York Times printed a leaked memo, on May 19 or 20, that senators were ordered the information had been re-classified.

CD: You have expressed a desire for "one brave senator" to take up your cause. But what can they actually do, if the DOJ and judges rule in favor of classification?

SE: You know what they can do? Any senator or congressman can tell the press everything I have to say.

CD: Really? Doesn't that violate whatever the restrictions are the DOJ is putting on you?

SE: I'm authorized under law to testify in secret, in a secure room before a congressman. But if that congressman believes that national security overrides secrecy, he can put my testimony out there. That's what happened with Daniel Ellsberg. Senator Gravel poured out everything he had said before the congress because it was in the interests of the country. These people like John Ashcroft are actually endangering our national security by destroying civil liberties with such things as the Patriot Act. They are just cowards. They lack guts.

CD: So, have you given up on the elected officials to stick up for you?

SE: No, I haven't given up. I hope that there is at least one person in the congress who will convey my testimony in public. But I'm really starting to believe that the best way to do it is through the press. I recently briefed Congress Waxman (CA), again gave him all the information, but nothing so far. I went back into the SCIF, a black hole into which all information disappears and never comes out. Boy, if only those walls could talk.

CD: Have you ever thought of Representative Ron Paul of Texas? He strikes me as someone who would be sympathetic to your plight.

SE: I know of him, and I have heard that an activist person has been sending his office all the details of my case, but I have not received any request from them.

CD: Is that the way it has to work?

SE: Yes, I have to receive an official request first in order to be interviewed.

FBI Reforms: Still on Hold

CD: Even though you haven't been working for the FBI for over two years, can you give us any updates on the present state of affairs there? Have your revelations shaken things up at all, regarding the way they do business?

SE: From the few contacts I still have, 'cause most of them have been cowed into silence by now, nothing has changed.

CD: Haven't they even attempted any reforms in the translations department?

SE: No.

CD: You said that poor Kevin Taskasen remains the only Turkish-language "translator" there. Given the vast importance of the Turkic languages in today's most important national security issues, why does the FBI put such a low priority on finding good Turkish translators?

SE: That I don't know. But I agree with you, it really doesn't make sense.

Future Plans and Final Thoughts

CD: Do you think you were naïve about what it would be like, working for the FBI in the post-9/11 world?

SE: The amount of sh*t you get exposed to on the inside strips you of any innocence you may have had. In an analogy, take the war on drugs. They say they're fighting drugs and keeping America safe by attacking the low-level dealers and addicts on the street – but leaving the big-time, well-connected dealers alone. That is just disgusting.

CD: What are you planning to do next in your life?

SE: I will start a Ph.D. in January, either in the subject of public policy with relation to transparency, or else conflict resolution analysis, regarding Central Asia and Turkey.

CD: Would you work for government again, after what you've been through?

SE: I'd rather be a watchdog – you know, someone who would push Congress to follow their duties and exercise some oversight. It's really incredible, when I asked a congressman's staff whether they have oversight, they say, "Well … we do, but we don't." When I asked what that meant, he said, "Well, we can make a statement, but the DOJ doesn't listen to us." Then don't say you have it, if you don't!

CD: Have you any plans to write a book about your experiences someday?

SE: Well, maybe someday, but not until all of these legal battles are finished and everything is done. But these past two years I've been staying away from anything that can even remotely be seen as cashing in – the old "oh, she's out to make a profit from this" type of accusation. It's very frustrating for the government that they haven't been able to smear my name.

CD: Aha!

SE: Yes, that's one of the first things they try. To dig up dirt. They have their own ways of doing it – to look into your background, check any arrest record, if you've lied somewhere, etc. But they haven't been able to do that in my case and it is very frustrating for them.

CD: If you win the suit, what will happen next? Will you speak openly about everything you know?

SE: Well, just winning the suit is not enough. As long as the Justice Department considers this information related to my case a "state secret," they will use everything they can to quash it. Even if the judge rules and says no state secrets privileges can be granted, the DOJ will still buy time by appealing. So this will most likely be a long and difficult battle.

CD: If your full testimony is heard by the public, who or what agencies are going to be in the biggest trouble?

SE: Well, as for agencies I guess the DOJ, FBI, State Department. But in a way these agencies get some kind of immunity when you charge them like this … I hate to see how a lot of agents get stigmatized in this. Most of the field agents I met in the FBI were good, honest and hardworking individuals. They were trying to do their best, but up against this ingrown bureaucracy – this is where you have the problem, as will as with certain elected officials.

CD: What are they so afraid of?

SE: They're afraid of information, of the truth coming out, and accountability – the whole accountability issue that will arise. But it's not as complicated as it might seem. If they were to allow the whole picture to emerge, it would just boil down to a whole lot of money and illegal activities.

CD: Hmm, well I know you can't name names, but can you tell me if any specific officials will suffer if your testimony comes out?

SE: Yes. Certain elected officials will stand trial and go to prison.

[Pallas180]

8. THINK TANK INVESTIGATION OF SIBEL EDMONDS' WORDS

Okay, Let's focus again: Sibel Edmonds

Whether you are solving a question or writing a story, the questions
you ask are: Who, What, When, Where, Why.

The Why of Plame has brought us also to Sibel Edmonds.

In the same way we found the answers to Plame on the internet through googling and finding published responsbile sources, we should be able to find answers and secrets involving Edmonds' "forbidden information.

Except - in the Edmonds matter we know Why - we are searching for Who?, What?, and Where?

Our clues to what she may have discovered (which caused her to be fired and threatened not to talk to the media or any senators and prompted FBI Director Mueller to have DOJ Ashcroft place a gag order on her) are in Sibel Edmonds' own words are in two interviews here,

It is important to read this interview.


http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=2917


Somewhere in the fact that Sibel Edmonds was a translator of the Iranian Farsi language and the Turkish language and the Turkic language of Azerbaijani, are our clues to Who? and What? and even Where? .

What are the answers to Who and What and Where she is referring?


Here are other Edmonds quotes,

“There are certain points... where you have your drug related activities combined with money laundering and information laundering, converging with your terrorist activities.” Sibel Edmonds, former FBI translator


WHAT DOES THAT MEAN AND WHO IS SHE REFERRING TO ?



"The 9/11 terror plot intersected with the activities of a drug trafficking network of international scope, in ways that form a "crystal clear" picture of what was going on.” --Sibel Edmonds.


"You have a network of people who obtain certain information and they take it out and sell it to … whomever would be the highest bidder. Then you have people who would be bringing into the country narcotics from the East, and their connections. It is only then that you really see the big picture. The post-9/11 ntelligence 'failures' included the willful quashing by the government, of investigations tracing these criminal networks.-- Sibel Edmonds, former FBI translator



WHAT DOES THAT MEAN AND WHO IS SHE REFERRING TO ?


“The real activities taking place behind the scenes are criminal… Everything from drugs to money laundering to arms sales. And yes, there are certain convergences (between) these activities and international terrorism." -Sibel Edmonds

“After almost three years the American people still do not know that thousands of lives can be jeopardized under the unspoken policy of ‘ protecting certain foreign business relations.” —Sibel Edmonds


WHO IS SHE REFERRING TO ?

[Pallas180]

9. THE GOALS OF THE NEO-CON PNAC CABAL

WHAT THE NEO-CON-PNAC ADMINISTRATION IS UP TO:


http://truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archiv ...

February 2003


Blood Money
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Thursday 27 February 2003

"In the counsels of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military Industrial Complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."
- President Dwight Eisenhower, January 1961.

George W. Bush gave a speech Wednesday night before the Godfather of conservative Washington think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute. In his speech, Bush quantified his coming war with Iraq as part of a larger struggle to bring pro-western governments into power in the Middle East. Couched in hopeful language describing peace and freedom for all, the speech was in fact the closest articulation of the actual plan for Iraq that has yet been heard from the administration.

In a previous truthout article from February 21, the ideological connections between an extremist right-wing Washington think tank and the foreign policy aspirations of the Bush administration were detailed.

The Project for a New American Century, or PNAC, is a group founded in 1997 that has been agitating since its inception for a war with Iraq. PNAC was the driving force behind the drafting and passage of the Iraqi Liberation Act, a bill that painted a veneer of legality over the ultimate designs behind such a conflict. The names of every prominent PNAC member were on a letter delivered to President Clinton in 1998 which castigated him for not implementing the Act by driving troops into Baghdad.

PNAC has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to a Hussein opposition group called the Iraqi National Congress, and to Iraq's heir-apparent, Ahmed Chalabi, despite the fact that Chalabi was sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court to 22 years in prison on 31 counts of bank fraud. Chalabi and the INC have, over the years, gathered support for their cause by promising oil contracts to anyone that would help to put them in power in Iraq.

Most recently, PNAC created a new group called The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Staffed entirely by PNAC members, The Committee has set out to "educate" Americans via cable news connections about the need for war in Iraq. This group met recently with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice regarding the ways and means of this education.

Who is PNAC? Its members include:

* Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the PNAC founders, who served as Secretary of Defense for Bush Sr.;

* I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's top national security assistant;

* Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, also a founding member, along with four of his chief aides including;

* Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, arguably the ideological father of the group;

* Eliot Abrams, prominent member of Bush's National Security Council, who was pardoned by Bush Sr. in the Iran/Contra scandal;

* John Bolton, who serves as Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security in the Bush administration;

* Richard Perle, former Reagan administration official and present chairman of the powerful Defense Policy Board;

* Randy Scheunemann, President of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, who was Trent Lott's national security aide and who served as an advisor to Rumsfeld on Iraq in 2001;

* Bruce Jackson, Chairman of PNAC, a position he took after serving for years as vice president of weapons manufacturer Lockheed-Martin, and who also headed the Republican Party Platform subcommittee for National Security and Foreign Policy during the 2000 campaign. His section of the 2000 GOP Platform explicitly called for the removal of Saddam Hussein;

* William Kristol, noted conservative writer for the Weekly Standard, a magazine owned along with the Fox News Network by conservative media mogul Ruppert Murdoch.

The Project for the New American Century seeks to establish what they call 'Pax Americana' across the globe. Essentially, their goal is to transform America, the sole remaining superpower, into a planetary empire by force of arms. A report released by PNAC in September of 2000 entitled 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' codifies this plan, which requires a massive increase in defense spending and the fighting of several major theater wars in order to establish American dominance. The first has been achieved in Bush's new budget plan, which calls for the exact dollar amount to be spent on defense that was requested by PNAC in 2000. Arrangements are underway for the fighting of the wars.

The men from PNAC are in a perfect position to see their foreign policy schemes, hatched in 1997, brought into reality. They control the White House, the Pentagon and Defense Department, by way of this the armed forces and intelligence communities, and have at their feet a Republican-dominated Congress that will rubber-stamp virtually everything on their wish list.

The first step towards the establishment of this Pax Americana is, and has always been, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of an American protectorate in Iraq. The purpose of this is threefold: 1) To acquire control of the oilheads so as to fund the entire enterprise; 2) To fire a warning shot across the bows of every leader in the Middle East; 3) To establish in Iraq a military staging area for the eventual invasion and overthrow of several Middle Eastern regimes, including some that are allies of the United States.

Another PNAC signatory, author Norman Podhoretz, quantified this aspect of the grand plan in the September 2002 issue of his journal, 'Commentary'. In it, Podhoretz notes that the regimes, "that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced, are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil. At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as 'friends' of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of his henchmen." At bottom, for Podhoretz, this action is about "the long-overdue internal reform and modernization of Islam."

This casts Bush's speech to AEI on Wednesday in a completely different light.

Weapons of mass destruction are a smokescreen. Paeans to the idea of Iraqi liberation and democratization are cynical in their inception. At the end of the day, this is not even about oil. The drive behind this war is ideological in nature, a crusade to 'reform' the religion of Islam as it exists in both government and society within the Middle East. Once this is accomplished, the road to empire will be open, ten lanes wide and steppin' out over the line.

At the end of the day, however, ideology is only good for bull sessions in the board room and the bar. Something has to grease the skids, to make the whole thing worthwhile to those involved, and entice those outside the loop to get into the game.

Thus, the payout.

It is well known by now that Dick Cheney, before becoming Vice President, served as chairman and chief executive of the Dallas-based petroleum corporation Halliburton. During his tenure, according to oil industry executives and United Nations records, Halliburton did a brisk $73 million in business with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. While working face-to-face with Hussein, Cheney and Halliburton were also moving into position to capitalize upon Hussein's removal from power. In October of 1995, the same month Cheney was made CEO of Halliburton, that company announced a deal that would put it first in line should war break out in Iraq. Their job: To take control of burning oil wells, put out the fires, and prepare them for service.

Another corporation that stands to do well by a war in Iraq is Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. Ostensibly, Brown & Root is in the construction business, and thus has won a share of the $900 million government contract for the rebuilding of post-war Iraqi bridges, roads and other basic infrastructure. This is but the tip of the financial iceberg, as the oil wells will also have to be repaired after parent-company Halliburton puts out the fires.

More ominously is Brown & Root's stock in trade: the building of permanent American military bases. There are twelve permanent U.S. bases in Kosovo today, all built and maintained by Brown & Root for a multi-billion dollar profit. If anyone should wonder why the administration has not offered an exit strategy to the Iraq war plans, the presence of Brown & Root should answer them succinctly. We do not plan on exiting. In all likelihood, Brown & Root is in Iraq to build permanent bases there, from which attacks upon other Middle Eastern nations can be staged and managed.

Again, this casts Bush's speech on Wednesday in a new light.

Being at the center of the action is nothing new for Halliburton and Brown & Root. The two companies have worked closely with governments in Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Burma, Croatia, Haiti, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Somalia during the worst chapters in those nation's histories. Many environmental and human rights groups claim that Cheney, Halliburton and Brown & Root were, in fact, centrally involved in these fiascos. More recently, Brown & Root was contracted by the Defense Department to build cells for detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The bill for that one project came to $300 million.

Cheney became involved with PNAC officially in 1997, while still profiting from deals between Halliburton and Hussein. One year later, Cheney and PNAC began actively and publicly agitating for war on Iraq. They have not stopped to this very day.

Another company with a vested interest in both war on Iraq and massively increased defense spending is the Carlyle Group. Carlyle, a private global investment firm with more than $12.5 billion in capital under management, was formed in 1987. Its interests are spread across 164 companies, including telecommunications firms and defense contractors. It is staffed at the highest levels by former members of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations. Former President George H. W. Bush is himself employed by Carlyle as a senior advisor, as is long-time Bush family advisor and former Secretary of State James Baker III.

One company acquired by Carlyle is United Defense, a weapons manufacturer based in Arlington, VA. United Defense provides the Defense Department with combat vehicle systems, fire support, combat support vehicle systems, weapons delivery systems, amphibious assault vehicles, combat support services and naval armaments. Specifically, United Defense manufactures the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the M113 armored personnel carrier, the M88A2 Recovery Vehicle, the Grizzly, the M9 ACE, the Composite Armored Vehicle, the M6 Linebacker, the M7 BFIST, the Armored Gun System, the M4 Command and Control Vehicle, the Battle Command Vehicle, the Paladin, the Crusader, and Electric Gun/Pulse Power weapons technology.

In other words, everything a growing Defense Department, a war in Iraq, and a burgeoning American military empire needs.

Ironically, one group that won't profit from Carlyle's involvement in American military buildup is the family of Osama bin Laden. The bin Laden family fortune was amassed by Mohammed bin Laden, father of Osama, who built a multi-billion dollar construction empire through contracts with the Saudi government. The Saudi BinLaden Group, as this company is called, was heavily invested in Carlyle for years. Specifically, they were invested in Carlyle's Partners II Fund, which includes in that portfolio United Defense and other weapons manufacturers.

This relationship was described in a September 27, 2001 article in the Wall Street Journal entitled 'Bin Laden Family Could Profit From Jump in Defense Spending Due to Ties to US Bank.' The 'bank' in question was the Carlyle Group. A follow-up article published by the Journal on September 28 entitled ' Bin Laden Family Has Intricate Ties With Washington - Saudi Clan Has Had Access To Influential Republicans ' further describes the relationship. In October of 2001, Saudi BinLaden and Carlyle severed their relationship by mutual agreement. The timing is auspicious.

There are a number of depths to be plumbed in all of this. The Bush administration has claimed all along that this war with Iraq is about Saddam Hussein's connections to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, though through it all they have roundly failed to establish any basis for either accusation. On Wednesday, Bush went further to claim that the war is about liberating the Iraqi people and bringing democracy to the Middle East. This ignores cultural realities on the ground in Iraq and throughout the region that, salted with decades of deep mistrust for American motives, make such a democracy movement brought at the point of the sword utterly impossible to achieve.

This movement, cloaked in democracy, is in fact a PNAC-inspired push for an American global empire. It behooves Americans to understand that there is a great difference between being the citizen of a constitutional democracy and being a citizen of an empire. The establishment of an empire requires some significant sacrifices.

Essential social, medical, educational and retirement services will have to be gutted so that those funds can be directed towards a necessary military buildup. Actions taken abroad to establish the preeminence of American power, most specifically in the Middle East, will bring a torrent of terrorist attacks to the home front. Such attacks will bring about the final suspension of constitutional rights and the rule of habeas corpus, as we will find ourselves under martial law. In the end, however, this may be inevitable. An empire cannot function with the slow, cumbersome machine of a constitutional democracy on its back. Empires must be ruled with speed and ruthlessness, in a manner utterly antithetical to the way in which America has been governed for 227 years.

And yes, of course, a great many people will die.

It would be one thing if all of this was based purely on the ideology of our leaders. It is another thing altogether to consider the incredible profit motive behind it all. The President, his father, the Vice President, a whole host of powerful government officials, along with stockholders and executives from Halliburton and Carlyle, stand to make a mint off this war. Long-time corporate sponsors from the defense, construction and petroleum industries will likewise profit enormously.

Critics of the Bush administration like to bandy about the word "fascist" when speaking of George. The image that word conjures is of Nazi stormtroopers marching in unison towards Hitler's Final Solution. This does not at all fit. It is better, in this matter, to view the Bush administration through the eyes of Benito Mussolini. Mussolini, dubbed 'the father of Fascism,' defined the word in a far more pertinent fashion. "Fascism," said Mussolini, "should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."

Boycott the French, the Germans, and the other 114 nations who stand against this Iraq war all you wish. France and Germany do not oppose Bush because they are cowards, or because they enjoy the existence of Saddam Hussein. France and Germany stand against the Bush administration because they intend to stop this Pax Americana in its tracks if they can. They have seen militant fascism up close and personal before, and wish never to see it again.

Would that we Americans could be so wise.

-------

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times bestselling author of two books - "War On Iraq" (with Scott Ritter) available now from Context Books, and "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available in May 2003 from Pluto Press. He teaches high school in Boston, MA.

Scott Lowery contributed research to this report.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

© : t r u t h o u t 2004

[Pallas180]

10. CHENEY,BUSH,WOLFOWITZ Letters of Un-Principles

Pallas180 (1000+ posts) Tue Aug-10-04 06:15 PM
Response to Reply #14

15. JEB BUSH, CHENEY, RUMSFELD LETTERS OF UNPRINCIPLES



http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples ...



June 3, 1997

American foreign and defense policy is adrift. Conservatives have criticized the incoherent policies of the Clinton Administration. They have also resisted isolationist impulses from within their own ranks. But conservatives have not confidently advanced a strategic vision of America's role in the world. They have not set forth guiding principles for American foreign policy. They have allowed differences over tactics to obscure potential agreement on strategic objectives. And they have not fought for a defense budget that would maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century.

We aim to change this. We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership.


As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world's preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?


We are in danger of squandering the opportunity and failing the challenge. We are living off the capital -- both the military investments and the foreign policy achievements -- built up by past administrations. Cuts in foreign affairs and defense spending, inattention to the tools of statecraft, and inconstant leadership are making it increasingly difficult to sustain American influence around the world. And the promise of short-term commercial benefits threatens to override strategic considerations. As a consequence, we are jeopardizing the nation's ability to meet present threats and to deal with potentially greater challenges that lie ahead.

We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration's success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities.


Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership or the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.

Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:

• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global
responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;


• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;


• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;


• we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.

Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.

Elliott Abrams Gary Bauer William J. Bennett Jeb Bush

Dick Cheney Eliot A. Cohen Midge Decter Paula Dobriansky Steve Forbes

Aaron Friedberg Francis Fukuyama Frank Gaffney Fred C. Ikle

Donald Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad I. Lewis Libby Norman Podhoretz

Dan Quayle Peter W. Rodman Stephen P. Rosen Henry S. Rowen

Donald Rumsfeld Vin Weber George Weigel Paul Wolfowitz



Some we now know are in the cabal government, some have been disgraced
and some like Schneider (poll reporter on CNN) are a surprise:
____________________________________________________________________

here's the letter where they tried to get Big Dawg to attack Iraq:


http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm



January 26, 1998



The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC


Dear Mr. President:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.

The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.


Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.


Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

Sincerely,

Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitage William J. Bennett

Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky

Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad

William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W. Rodman

Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber

[Pallas180]

12. THEORY OF THE WHY-PLAME>CHENEY>HALLIBURTON >ILLEGAL WMD TRADE

A THEORY ON THE WHY - Plame -> Cheney->Halliburton

On my way home today, as I thought about the why the outing of Valerie Plame was necessary, I was so engrossed I drove 4 exits past my exit.

Here's what we know:

1) Valerie Plame was "active in a sting operation involving the trafficking of Weapons of Mass Destruction components"" when her identity was exposed by the White House. It also said" Only a high-ranking official could have had access to the knowledge" that Valerie Plame was a covert CIA agent.

2) Vice President Cheney since 1995 as CEO of Halliburton was fined 1.2 milion dollars for illegal sales of components to Libya which could be used for nuclear purposes. Shortly before becoming Vice President he bitterly assailed US policy against selling such components to Syrria and Iran, which apparently hurt Halliburton's bottom line.

3) There is an investigation of Vice President Cheney in other countries for illegal bribery and various other offenses connected to Halliburton as well as paying amounts to secret Swiss bank accounts

4)The Atomic Energy Commission has said a North American company is one of 20 being investigated for black market sales of WMD materials.

Here's the theory:

Valerie Plame was stopped in her tracks and the biggest treasonous taboo of revealing a CIA sting operation was done because she/it was coming close to discovering even more serious violations of the laws against trading nuclear materials with certain countries by our own Vice President and the Hallibuton company he has awarded billions of US taxpayer dollars to in non-bid contracts after he became VP.

Recently Libya was accused of having WMD components and the US threat
ened to invade unless Quaddaffi gave the WMD components to the US.
Bush 2 was seen on TV this week inspecting the cases of returned materials from Iraq triumphantly. The fact that Quaddafi received these illegal shipments of components from Cheney/Halliburton was not
mentioned in the victory video.

Dick Cheney, even after the Senate Intel Committee, The Atomic Commission and numerous other agencies have said no WMD exist in Iraq,
insists Iraq has WMD even in the last week.

Why? Because Dick Cheney knows he, through an offshore Halliburton company with a PO Box, at some time in the past sold Saddam Hussein WMD or components of WMD. In the same way "they" under Bush 1 adminstration sold Hussein lethal gas which he used, and then attacked him for using it saying he was a threat to the community.

Why do Cheney and Bush insist they must attack Syrria and Iran as the next step in making the world safe and that Syrria and Iran have
WMD? Cheney-Halliburton know that Syrria and Iran have WMD components because Cheney illegally sold the WMD components to Syrria and Iran.

Why did Bush Cheney know that North Korea had WMD and where did they gget the components?

Why were Pakistan and India able to test and develop nuclear weapons undetected by the CIA's "big eye in the sky" or any agency's seismic
discovery? And where did India and Pakistan purchase the components
for WMD which were illegal for any company to sell them?

What was Valerie Plame investigating?


good spooks vs the bad spooks in the FBI and CIA becomes very confusing to most, I think.



Not to add confusion to my "theory " above, but I also thought:

When Saudi Arabia asked Junior and Company to get out of Saudi Arabia
afer we had built a monstrous and expensive base armed with the newest weaponry - one might call it a home base -why would they do that, when they had wanted US to protect them and their oil fields for years???

The reason given for asking us to vacate was to calm the anti-American element. Hmmm. But if they needed our protection from that very element, WHY would they ask their protector to leave.
BECAUSE they "likely" also received WMD from certain parties.

So now, we can guess, the entire Middle East is armed with illegal components of WMD...supplied by whom?hmmm

And I agree with you ROBERTPAULSEN- it's a great racket. Supply them
with the components, collect payment. Shuttle back and forth between
private employment and government employment, selling WMD for your company's bottom line while a private CEO, earning large bonuses and
deferred "payment" plus increased stock option value, go back into government, create a war on those countries who have the WMD you have sold them, then you have created a situation where your company and the other companies you hold stock in, or which belong to your other associates, can supply the army with munitions, destroy the country you have sold WMD to, and then the very same companies who supplied the munitions for destruction, go in and rebuild the country.


So. Now how many times have you profiteered?
1) illegal selling of WMD
2) earn bonus, increase value of stock options
3) Supply Army Munitions on no bid contracts
4) Rebuild the country on no bid contracts

[Pallas180]

13. DEFINITION OF CORPORATISM

finally a word from Mussolini:


"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it

is a merger of State and corporate power."

Benito Mussolini, 1883-1945, Fascist dictator of Italy

[Pallas180]

14. US MILITARY PLAN "NORTHWOODS"- A PLAN TO ATTACK US CITIZENS

THE US MILITARY "NORTHWOODS" PLAN TO ATTACK US CITIZENS
JUST TO MAKE US MORE MALLEABLE AND WILLING TO GO TO WAR, A PLAN ORIGINALLY HATCHED IN THE 1960'S - BUT APPARENTLY STILL AS ALIVE
TODAY AS HENRY KISSINGER:

NORTHWOODS -The original US MILITARY plan to attack US CITIZENS
to get Americans to support war.

JFK STOPPED THE PLAN AND FIRED GENERAL LEMNITZER.bUT AS WE ALL KNOW
OLD SOLDIERS NEVER DIE, THEY JUST WAIT FOR THE NEXT AGREEABLE ADMINISTRATION TO PUT THEIR PLAN IN ACTION - EVEN IF CONGRESS SAYS "no". Admiral Poindexter can attest to that.



126. Here ORIGINAL NORTHWOOD DOCUMENTS-our Military plan to attack US citizens to make American citizens angry enough to support war......

I THINK WE SHOULD MAIL/ FAX THIS TO EVERY CONGRESS PERSON AND SAY WE KNOW! WE KNOW! AND YOU'D BETTER REMOVE THIS ADMINISTRATION OR YOU WILL BE OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE AND DESERVE JAIL TERMS FOR TREASON ALONG WITH THE WHITE HOUSE.


http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs ...

picture of Lemnitzer


Operation Northwoods: The Pentagon’s Secret Plot to Murder US Citizens to Provoke a War September 13, 2002

General Lyman L. Lemnitzer. Credit: NATO.

On May 1, 2001, ABC News broadcast a chilling revelation: “In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in US cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.”
http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/dailynews/jointc ...

The Pentagon’s secret “Operation Northwoods” proposed that the US assassinate Cuban émigrés, hijack planes, sink ships, and stage an incident of violent terrorism in US cities. The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer.

The Pentagon’s top brass were even willing to murder US troops, if that’s what it took to stampede the country into a war. "We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," they wrote, noting with cold logic that, "casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

The Joint Chiefs even saw the potential death of astronaut John Glenn as an opportunity to falsely provoke a war with Cuba. If Glenn’s rocket failed to make it safely into orbit, the Pentagon was prepared to falsely accuse Cuba of shooting down Glenn’s space capsule.

An analysis of Operation Northwood is contained in James Bamford’s new book, Body of Secrets (Doubleday) discloses that the plans were approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and presented to President Kennedy's Defense Secretary Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962. Lemnitzer argued that Operation Northwoods should be run by the military but McNamara apparently had second thoughts. The civilians in the White House overruled the soldiers in the Pentagon and the plan was rejected. All copies of the memorandum were ordered destroyed. The existence of the plot remained undisclosed for nearly 40 years.

"Although no one in Congress could have known at the time," Bamford writes, "Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge." Bamford characterized the Joint Chiefs’ plot as, perhaps “the most corrupt plan ever created by the US government." But even after Lemnitzer retired, Bamford charges, the Joint Chiefs continued to plan similar "pretext" operations at least through 1963.

The documents only saw the light of day after the popular success of Oliver Stone’s 1992 blockbuster film JFK about the Kennedy assassination. Congress passed a law to increase public access to government records related to the assassination. In the process of combing through reams of declassified papers, a single surviving copy of the 15-page memo on Operation Northwoods was discovered.

Particularly disturbing — especially in the aftermath of the many unanswered questions surrounding the September 11 terrorist attack — is the Pentagon’s elaborate plan to falsely trigger a war by staging the fake destruction of a civilian commercial jetliner.

The document is reprinted below in its entirety. A PDF version of the actual 15-page document is available at the website of George Washington University’s National Security Archive project: <www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430 >



The first page of the 15-page Operation Northwoods terror plot. Credit: The National Security Archives/George Washington University <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv />.
TOP SECRET SPECIAL HANDLING NOFORN (declassified 2000)
The Joint Chiefs of Staff Washington DC Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense

SUBJECT: Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)

JCS to Secretary of War Robert McNamara March 13, 1962

The Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered the attatched memorandum for the chief of Operations, Cuba Project, which responds to a request by that office for brief but precise description of pretexts which would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba.


The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend that the proposed memorandum be forwarded as a preliminary submission suitable for planning purproses. It is assumed that there will be similar submissions from other agencies and that these inputs will be used as a basis for developing a time-phased plan. Individual projects can then be considered on a case-by-case basis.


Further, it is assumed that a single agency will be given the primary responsibility for developing military and para-military aspects of the basic plan. It is recommended that this responsibility for both overt and covert military operations be assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
For the Joint Chiefs of Staff signed: L.L. Limnitzer Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

Note by the Secretaries to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Northwoods

Footnoted memorandums:
"Operation Mongoose"
"Instances to Provoke Military Actions in Cuba"
RECOMMENDATIONS:
This paper NOT be forwarded to commanders of specified or unified commands.

This paper NOT be forwarded to US officers assigned to NATO activities.

This paper NOT be forwarded to the Chairman, US Delegation, United Nations Military Staff Committee.

Such a plan would enable a logical buildup of incidents to be combined with other seemingly unrelated events to camoflage the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness and irresponsibility on a large scale, directed at other countries in addition to the United States. The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances.
1. A series of well-coordinated incidents will be planned to take place to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.

2. Incidents to establish a credible attack:
1. Start rumors (many). Use clandestine radio. 2. Land friendly Cubans in uniform "over-the-fence" to stage attack on the base. 3. Capture Cuban (friendly) sabateurs inside the base. 4. Start riots near the entrance to the base (friendly Cubans). 5. Blow up ammunition inside the base; start fires. 6. Burn aircraft on airbase (sabatage) . 7. Lob morter shells from outsidethe base to inside the base. Some damage to installation. 8. Capture assault teams. 9. Capture militia group which storms the base. 10. Sabotage ship in harbor; large fires -- napthalene . 11. Sink ship near harbor entrance. Conduct funerals for mock-victims.

(b) United States would respond by executing offensive operations.
3. A "Remember the Maine" incident could be arranged in several forms:
We could blow up a US ship and blame Cuba.

We could blow up a drone (unmannded) vessel anywhere in the Cuban waters. The presense of Cuban planes or ships merely investigating the intent of the vessel could be fairly compelling evidence that the ship was taken under attack. The US could follow with an air/sea rescue operation covered by US fighters to "evacuate" remaining members of the non-existant crew. Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.
4. We could develop a Communist Cuba terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Flordia cities and even in Washington. The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cubans in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few bombs in carefully chosen spots. The arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating cuban involvement.

5. A "Cuban-based, Castro-supported" filibuster could be simulated against a neighboring Caribbean nation. These efforts can be magnified with additional ones contrived for exposure. "Cuban" B-26 or C-46 type aircraft could make cane-burning raids at night. Soviet Bloc incidiaries could be found. This could be coupled with "Cuban" messages to the Communist underground and "Cuban" shipments of arms which would be found, or intercepted, on the beach.

6. Use of MIG-type aircraft by US pilots could provide additional provocation. Harassment of civil air, attacks on surface shipping, and destruction of US military drone aircraft by MIG type palnes would be useful. An F-86 properly painted would convince air passengers that they saw a Cuban MIG, especially if the pilot of the transport were to announce that fact.

7. Hijacking attampts against US civil air and surface craft should be encouraged.

8. It is possible to create an incident which would demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civilian airliner from the United States.
An aircraft at Eglin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and the passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone.

Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rondevous. From the rondevous point the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly to an auxiliary airfield at Eglin AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. Meanwhile the drone aircraft will continue to fly the filed flight plan. The drone will be transmitting on the international distress frequency "MAY DAY" message stating it is under attack by Cuban MIG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by the destruction of aircraft which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow IACO radio stations to tell the US what has happened to the aircraft instead of the US trying to "sell" the incident.
9. It is possible to create an incident that will make it appear that Communist Cuban MIGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack.
On one such flight, a pre-briefed pilot would fly Tail-end Charlie. While near the Cuban island this pilot would broadcast that he had been jumped by MIGs and was going down. This pilot would then fly at extremely low altitude and land at a secure base, an Eglin auxiliary. The aircraft would be met by the proper people, quickly stored and given a new tail number. The pilot who performed the mission under an alias would resume his proper identity. The pilot and aircraft would then have disappeared.

A submarine or small craft would distribute F-101 parts, parachute, etc. The pilots retuning to Homestead would have a true story as far as they knew. Search ships and aircraft could be dispatched and parts of aircraft found.

It is understood that the Department of State is also preparing suggested courses of action to develope justification for US military intervention in Cuba.

[Pallas180]

15. DU THINK-TANKERS - pls carry over important posts from prior threads

Dear DU'ers & Think Tank - pls add previous posts you want on this thread now...

thanks

and you're welcome.

Pallas

:hi:

:toast:
to all who have worked and researched and posted their findings for all to share. What an education in government!

[Pallas180]

16. CALIMARY'S 5 STAR ACTIVIST LIST - CONTACT EDITORS, MEDIA ETC

THE FIVE-STAR ACTIVISTS' RESOURCE THREAD, UPDATED 7/9/04

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=106&topic_id=8816&mesg_id=8816

[Pallas180]

172. GEORGE ORWELL 1984

"... it does not matter if the war is not real. For when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, but it is meant to be continuous.'" (George Orwell, 1984)


"A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance, this new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or east Asia but to keep the very structure of society in tact."

[nolabels]

18. Quotes from the imfamous Henry Kissinger

The Latest Kissinger Outrage
Why is a proven liar and wanted man in charge of the 9/11 investigation?
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2002, at 3:36 PM PT

(snip)
Moreover, on Sept. 10, 2001, a civil suit was filed in a Washington, D.C., federal court, charging Kissinger with murder. The suit, brought by the survivors of Gen. Rene Schneider of Chile, asserts that Kissinger gave the order for the elimination of this constitutional officer of a democratic country because he refused to endorse plans for a military coup. Every single document in the prosecution case is a U.S.-government declassified paper. And the target of this devastating lawsuit is being invited to review the shortcomings of the "intelligence community"?


In late 2001, the Brazilian government canceled an invitation for Kissinger to speak in Sao Paulo because it could no longer guarantee his immunity. Earlier this year, a London court agreed to hear an application for Kissinger's imprisonment on war crimes charges while he was briefly in the United Kingdom. It is known that there are many countries to which he cannot travel at all, and it is also known that he takes legal advice before traveling anywhere. Does the Bush administration feel proud of appointing a man who is wanted in so many places, and wanted furthermore for his association with terrorism and crimes against humanity? Or does it hope to limit the scope of the inquiry to those areas where Kissinger has clients?

There is a tendency, some of it paranoid and disreputable, for the citizens of other countries and cultures to regard President Bush's "war on terror" as opportunist and even as contrived. I myself don't take any stock in such propaganda. But can Congress and the media be expected to swallow the appointment of a proven coverup artist, a discredited historian, a busted liar, and a man who is wanted in many jurisdictions for the vilest of offenses? The shame of this, and the open contempt for the families of our victims, ought to be the cause of a storm of protest.
(snip)
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2074678

The author of that article just hasn't read enough yet would be my guess, but I did like his notes.

Kissinger & BCCI spells BUSH & 9-11
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=377323

Is Henry Kissinger a war criminal, fascist or just misunderstood
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=345935

[Pallas180]

20. Thanks NOLABELS, hard to tell if that's about Kissinger or Goss :)

It's also an outrage that dimson would want to appoint a "cover-up"
artist like Goss who has blocked every investigation of 9-11 as a
Senator, to the post of Director of all Agencies or Director of CIA.

Thread 19 has quite a bit about Goss' past illegal activity.

Funny - in DC you can do massive white collar crime and nobody peeps.

We need to get those people out of Congress.

And the free phone number and contact info to Congress is up above.

[nolabels]

21. Thanks for the reply

I didn't even know about Goss's cover up stuff, thanks for pointing that out. Guess I will need to do some more reading myself

Porter Goss: fox in the hen house

Porter Goss? NO WAY!

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by One Citizen

On Tuesday, President George Bush nominated Porter Goss, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

Before confirmation, Congress should fire these questions at Porter Goss at his upcoming CIA chief hearings.

Would Porter Goss swear to commit full CIA resources for the purpose of prosecuting the person(s) responsible for leaking the fact that Valerie Plame was a CIA undercover agent to the press? That leak is known to have badly undercut each and every CIA field agent's confidence that they could freely report intelligence without fear of reprisal from the Bush Administration. Since this is one National Security issue where George "Slam Dunk" Tenet let us all down, will Goss commit to repairing the damage?

Why didn't he use his position as Chairman to the House Intelligence Oversight Committee to demand that the White House clear up this serious national security breach? And why hasn't he used his chairman's position to "shake up" the CIA after they utterly let us down on 911?

Florida Governor Jeb Bush obviously had foreknowledge of the 911 terrorist attacks when he put his Florida National Guard was on full standby alert for his brother's visit to Florida on 911. Will Goss publicly reveal how brother Jeb knew and why the rest of us didn't?
(snip)
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread72636/pg1

The site is a little cheesy, but just to prove this stuff is filtering out Kick

[nolabels]

22. This other article from that other Goss thread is also interesting

Thanks scarletwoman

Billmon at the Whiskey Bar has a good piece on Goss:
http://billmon.org/archives/001630.html

(snip)
In an article for Counterpunch last month, McGovern took a hard look at Goss's record of obsequious service to his political masters, particularly in his handling of Congress's "investigation" into the events leading to 9/11 - a whitewash so obvious it ended up spurring, rather than quashing, demands for an independent commission:

When folks started talking about the need for a genuinely independent commission, though, Cheney acquiesced in the establishment of the congressional joint committee as the lesser evil and took reassurance from the fact that Goss could be counted on to keep the lid on and, when necessary, run rings around co-chair Sen. Bob Graham, (D-FL).

Porter Goss performed that task brilliantly, giving clear priority to providing political protection for the president. Goss acquiesced when the White House and CIA refused to allow the joint committee to report out any information on what President Bush had been told before 9/11, ostensibly because it was "classified" ...

As a result, completely absent from the committee's report was any mention of the President's Daily Brief of Aug. 6, 2001, which bore the title "Bin Laden determined to strike in US," even though the press had already reported the title and the gist of that damning piece of evidence.
(snip)

[Pallas180]

40. On the morning of 9-11, Porter Goss

was having breakfast with the Pakistani General who had ordered $100,000 sent to Mohammed Atta - the ringleader of the 9-11 hijackers.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO206A.html


Mysterious 9-11 Breakfast Meeting on Capitol Hill
On the morning of September 11, General Mahmoud Ahmad, the alleged "money-man" behind the 9-11 hijackers was at a breakfast meeting on Capitol Hill hosted by Senator Bob Graham (Democrat) and Representative Porter Goss, respectively chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. Also present at this meeting was Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S. Maleeha Lodhi. The report confirms that other members of the Senate and House Intelligence committees were present.

"When the news came, the two Florida lawmakers who lead the House and Senate intelligence committees were having breakfast with the head of the Pakistani intelligence service. Rep. Porter Goss, R-Sanibel, Sen. Bob Graham and other members of the House Intelligence Committee were talking about terrorism issues with the Pakistani official when a member of Goss' staff handed a note to Goss, who handed it to Graham. "We were talking about terrorism, specifically terrorism generated from Afghanistan," Graham said.

(...)

Mahmood Ahmed, director general of Pakistan's intelligence service, was "very empathetic, sympathetic to the people of the United States," Graham said.

Goss could not be reached Tuesday. He was whisked away with much of the House leadership to an undisclosed "secure location." Graham, meanwhile, participated in late-afternoon briefings with top officials from the CIA and FBI." 15

While trivialising the importance of the 9-11 breakfast meeting, The Miami Herald (16 September 2001) confirms that General Ahmad also met Secretary of State Colin Powell in the wake of the 9-11 attacks.

"Graham said the Pakistani intelligence official with whom he met, a top general in the government, was forced to stay all week in Washington because of the shutdown of air traffic "He was marooned here, and I think that gave Secretary of State Powell and others in the administration a chance to really talk with him," Graham said. 16

With the exception of the Florida press (and Salon.com, 14 September), not a word was mentioned in the US media's September coverage of 9-11 concerning this mysterious breakfast reunion.


Eight months later on the 18th of May, two days after the "BUSH KNEW" headline hit the tabloids, the Washington Post published an article on Porter Goss, entitled: "A Cloak But No Dagger; An Ex-Spy Says He Seeks Solutions, Not Scapegoats for 9/11". Focussing on his career as a CIA agent, the article largely served to underscore the integrity and commitment of Porter Goss to waging a "war on terrorism". Yet in an isolated paragraph, the article acknowledged the mysterious 9-11 breakfast meeting with ISI Chief Mahmoud Ahmad, while also confirming that "Ahmad :ran a spy agency notoriously close to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban":

"Now the main question facing Goss, as he helps steer a joint House-Senate investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks, is why nobody in the far-flung intelligence bureaucracy -- 13 agencies spending billions of dollars -- paid attention to the enemy among us. Until it was too late.

Goss says he is looking for solutions, not scapegoats. "A lot of nonsense," he calls this week's uproar about a CIA briefing that alerted President Bush, five weeks before Sept. 11, that Osama bin Laden's associates might be planning airline hijackings.

"None of this is news, but it's all part of the finger-pointing," Goss declared yesterday in a rare display of pique. "It's foolishness."

(...) Goss has repeatedly refused to blame an "intelligence failure" for the terror attacks. As a 10-year veteran of the CIA's clandestine operations wing, Goss prefers to praise the agency's "fine work."

(...)

On the morning of Sept. 11, Goss and Graham were having breakfast with a Pakistani general named Mahmud Ahmed -- the soon-to-be-sacked head of Pakistan's intelligence service. Ahmed ran a spy agency notoriously close to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. 17

While the Washington Post acknowledges the links between ISI Chief Mahmoud Ahmad and Osama bin Laden, it fails to dwell on the more important question:

What was Mahmoud doing on Capitol Hill on the morning of September 11, together with Rep. Porter Goss and Senator Bob Graham and other members of the Senate and House intelligence committees?

Neither does it acknowledge the fact, amply documented by media reports that "the money-man" behind the hijackers had been entrusted by the Pakistani government to discuss the precise terms of Pakistan's "collaboration" in the "war on terrorism" in meetings held at the State department on the 12th and 13th of September.

When the "Foreknowledge" issue hit the street on May 16th, "Chairman Porter Goss said an existing congressional inquiry has so far found 'no smoking gun' that would warrant another inquiry." 18 This statement points to an obvious "cover-up".

The Investigation and Public Hearings on "Intelligence Failures"
In a bitter irony, Rep. Porter Goss and Senator Bob Graham, --the men who hosted the mysterious September 11 breakfast meeting with the alleged "hijacker's high commander" (to use the FBI's expression), had been put in charge of the investigation and public hearings on so-called "intelligence failures".

Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney had expressed anger on a so-called "leak" emanating from the intelligence committees regarding

"the disclosure of National Security Agency intercepts of messages in Arabic on the eve of the attacks. The messages (...) were in two separate conversations on Sept. 10 and contained the phrases 'Tomorrow is zero hour' and 'The match is about to begin.' The messages were not translated until Sept. 12" 19

[Pallas180]

42. More On Porter Goss and Cheney

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/mcgovern.php?articleid=2944

July 7, 2004
Porter Goss: Cheney Cat's Paw by Ray McGovern


There is, thankfully, a remnant of CIA professionals who still put objective analysis above political correctness and career advancement. Just when they thought there were no indignities left for them to suffer, they are shuddering again at press reports that Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) may soon be their new boss.

That possibility conjures up a painful flashback for those of us who served as CIA analysts when Richard Nixon was president. Chalk it up to our naiveté, but we were taken aback when swashbuckling James Schlesinger, who followed Richard Helms as CIA director, announced on arrival, "I am here to see that you guys don't screw Richard Nixon!" To underscore his point, Schlesinger told us he would be reporting directly to White House political adviser Bob Haldeman (Nixon's Karl Rove) and not to National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger.

No doubt Goss would be more discreet in showing his hand, but his appointment as director would be the ultimate in politicization. He has long shown himself to be under the spell of Vice President Dick Cheney, and would likely report primarily to him and to White House political adviser Karl Rove rather than to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Goss would almost certainly follow lame-duck director George Tenet's practice of reading to the president in the morning and become an integral part of the "White House team." The team-membership phenomenon is particularly disquieting.

If the failure-prone experience of the past few years has told us anything, it is that being a "team member" in good standing is the kiss of death for the CIA director's primary role of "telling it like it is" to the president and his senior advisers. It was a painful moment of truth when former Speaker Newt Gingrich – like Cheney, a frequent visitor to CIA headquarters – told the press that Tenet was "so grateful to the president that he would do anything for him."

The Whore of Babylon

One need look no farther than what has become known as a latter-day Whore of Babylon – the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of Oct. 1, 2002, the very title of which betrayed a politically correct, but substantively wrong, conclusion: "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction." And bear in mind that it was only several months after President Bush decided to attack Iraq that Tenet commissioned that estimate. Not unreasonably, Congress was wondering about the views of the intelligence community, and the White House wanted congressional acquiescence in the war it had decided to launch.

No problem. "Slam-dunk" Tenet, following White House instructions, ensured that the estimate was cooked to the recipe of Cheney's tart speech of Aug. 26, 2002. "We know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons," Cheney said, and the estimate Tenet signed gave belated endorsement – with "high confidence," no less – to that lie.

The intelligence process, of course, was not the only thing undermined. So was the Constitution. Various drafts of that NIE, reinforced with heavy doses of "mushroom-cloud" rhetoric, were used to deceive congressmen and senators into ceding to the executive their prerogative to declare war – the all-important prerogative that the framers of the Constitution took great care to reserve exclusively to our elected representatives in Congress.

What was actually happening was clear to intelligence analysts, active and retired. We Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity were not the only ones to expose it – as clearly and as often as the domesticated U.S. media would allow.

But what about CIA alumnus Porter Goss, then in his sixth year as chairman of the House intelligence oversight committee? Republican party loyalist first and foremost, Goss chose to give an entirely new meaning to "oversight." Even when it became clear that the "mushroom cloud" reporting was based mostly on a forgery, he just sat back and watched it all happen. Like Br'er Fox, he didn't say nothin'.

From Sycophant Tenet to Professional Politician

This is what CIA would get with Porter Goss at the helm. Appointing Goss would administer the coup de grâce to intelligence analysts trying to survive while still speaking truth without fear or favor. The only saving grace for them would be the likelihood that they would be spared "multiple visits" by Cheney to the inner sanctum where it used to be possible to produce unvarnished analysis without vice presidents and other policy makers looking over their shoulders to ensure they "had thought of everything." Goss, who has a long history of subservience to Cheney, could be counted upon to play the Cheney/Gingrich/et al. role himself.

Don't Throw Me in That Briar Patch

Last month when Tenet was let go, administration officials indicated that a permanent replacement would not be named until after the election. They indicated they wanted to avoid washing the dirty linen of intelligence once again in public. Evidently, they had not yet checked with Karl Rove.

The Democrats warn smugly that an attempt by the administration to confirm a new CIA director could become an embarrassing referendum on CIA's recent performance, but they miss the point entirely – and show, once again, that they can't hold a candle to Rove for political cleverness. The name of the administration's game is to blame Iraq on intelligence failures, and Goss already did so last week in what amounted to his first campaign speech for the job of director. Consider court historian Bob Woodward's book, Plan of Attack, which Condoleezza Rice and other officials have promoted. Rice has publicly confirmed Woodward's story about Tenet misleading the president by claiming the evidence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was a "slam dunk."

While there is ample evidence of ineptitude on Tenet's part, his obsequious ejaculation in this now-famous vignette obscures the fact that President Bush had unleashed the dogs of war well before checking to see if there was any credible intelligence to justify doing so.

As the election nears, it serves the administration quite well to keep the focus on intelligence shortcomings and to make it appear that the president was misled – on weapons of mass destruction, for example. And Porter Goss is precisely the right person to cooperate in this effort. I can imagine Rove laughing up his sleeve last week at word that the Democrats are urging Senate minority leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) to prepare for extensive confirmation hearings this fall. (In my mind's eye I can see Rove musing, "Bring 'em on!")

The Senate Intelligence Committee Report

The report due out this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating intelligence performance regarding the long-sought-after Iraqi weapons of mass destruction is said to be scathing in its criticism of CIA. No problem. This too will help keep the focus where the White House wants it – the more so since committee chair and Republican stalwart Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) can be counted on to do whatever Cheney and Rove tell him to do. It was not until Roberts was instructed to give Tenet the cold shoulder that the latter began to see the handwriting on the wall.

As for Porter Goss, he was happy to let the Senate intelligence committee take the lead in investigating intelligence performance on key issues like weapons of mass destruction and, before he decided to promote his candidacy for director, he generally chose to keep his committee's head (and his own) down. With good reason. The myriad shortcomings in intelligence work appeared on his somnolent watch; by any reasonable standard, he bears some responsibility for impaired oversight – not only on Iraq, but on 9/11 as well.

The 9/11 Commission Report

Republicans handpicked by Cheney also dominate the 9/11 Commission, which is supposed to issue its report by July 26. Although commission chair Thomas Kean and vice-chair Lee Hamilton have sought to appear nonpartisan, they have already caved in to White House pressure to alter the findings of commission staff.

At stake was no less an issue than whether the vice president usurped Bush's power as commander-in-chief in ordering the shoot-down of suspicious airliners on Sept. 11, 2001. The staff found no hard evidence to support Cheney's claim that he called Bush and got his authorization. According to Newsweek, "some staffers flat out didn't believe a call ever took place," and an early staff draft reflected deep skepticism.

The White House lobbied vigorously to change the offending passage, with spokesman Dan Bartlett insisting, "We didn't think it was written in a way that clearly reflected the accounting the president and vice president had given to the commission." Kean and Hamilton backed down and removed some of the offending language. "The report was watered down," one staffer admitted to Newsweek.

Watch for more watering down. By now Kean and Hamilton have doubtless been warned by the White House that if the highly controversial staff report that there is "no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States" is allowed to stand, this would place further strain on the legal underpinnings of the war on Iraq. On March 19, 2003, the day the war began, President Bush sent a letter to Congress in which he said that the war was permitted under legislation authorizing force against those who "planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."

Kean is already backing off. A few days after the release of the staff report he emphasized repeatedly that it is only an "interim report." He added that not only is it "not finished," but also the commissioners themselves have not been involved in it so far.

Democrat Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste does not see it this way. As Kean was talking to ABC's This Week, Ben-Veniste told NBC's Tim Russert, "There was no Iraqi involvement in 9/11. That's what our commission found. That's what our staff, which includes former high-ranking CIA officials, who know what to look for (found)."

Ah, but what about the additional information that Cheney says he "probably" has? Kean was quick to note that the final report will include whatever "new information" becomes available. In other words, there are already ample signs that the Republican commissioners will continue to succeed in watering down findings critical of the administration, while highlighting those critical of intelligence performance.

Goss on 9/11

With respect to the various investigations into 9/11, Goss was thrust into the limelight by Cheney, who initially opposed any investigation at all. In February 2002, Cheney went so far as to warn that if Congress decided to go ahead with an investigation, administration officials might not show up to testify. When folks started talking about the need for a genuinely independent commission, though, Cheney acquiesced in the establishment of the congressional joint committee as the lesser evil and took reassurance from the fact that Goss could be counted on to keep the lid on – and, when necessary, run rings around co-chair Sen. Bob Graham, (D-Fla.).

Porter Goss performed that task brilliantly, giving clear priority to providing political protection for the president. Goss acquiesced when the White House and CIA refused to allow the joint committee to report out any information on what President Bush had been told before 9/11 – ostensibly because it was "classified." This gave rise to thinly disguised, but eloquently expressed, chagrin on the part of the committee staff director, who clearly had expected stronger backing in her negotiations with White House officials.

As a result, completely absent from the committee's report was any mention of the President's Daily Brief of Aug. 6, 2001, which bore the title "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.," even though the press had already reported the title and the gist of that damning piece of evidence. Small wonder that the families of 9/11 victims were outraged and pressed even harder for an independent investigation.

And a First for a Congressional Committee

The most notable (and bizarre) achievement of the joint committee was inviting the FBI to investigate members of Congress. In June 2002, Cheney called Goss and Graham to chastise them for a media leak of sensitive information from intercepted communications. A CNN report had attributed the leak to "two congressional sources," and Cheney was livid.

Goss admitted to being "chagrined" over Cheney's call. He and Graham promptly bypassed normal congressional procedures and went directly to Attorney General John Ashcroft, asking him to investigate the leak. Little thought apparently was given to the separation of powers between the executive and congressional branches, or the fact that Congress has its own capability for such investigations.

Next thing you know, the FBI is crawling all over Capitol Hill, questioning members of the joint committee that is investigating the FBI, CIA, et al., and asking members of Congress to submit to lie-detector tests. Shaking his head, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) noted the ludicrousness of allowing the FBI to build dossiers on lawmakers who are supposed to be investigating the FBI. He and others joined those pushing for the creation of an independent 9/11 commission.

That Goss and Graham could be so easily intimidated by Cheney speaks volumes.

Bottom Line

West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee is right in saying, "We need a director who is not only knowledgeable and capable but unquestionably independent." And politicians need not apply. Rockefeller would rule out "any politician from either party." But who pays attention to minority members these days – ranking or non-ranking?

Rockefeller might add, if only for the record, that another prerequisite for a director of the CIA is prior experience managing a large, complex organization. Tenet had none; neither does Goss.

There seems a better than even chance the Bush administration will nominate Goss, and use the nomination hearings as yet another forum at which to blame the Iraq debacle on faulty intelligence. And, as a bonus for Bush, if there is time before the election, it would seem a safe bet that Goss will be able to bring to heel recalcitrant analysts who are still "fighting the problem," still staring in disbelief at the given wisdom (given, apparently, only to the Pentagon and White House) that Iraq and al-Qaeda were in bed with each other. Nor should anyone rule out the possibility that Goss will see to it that "weapons of mass destruction" are found – perhaps as an October surprise.


Truthout.org originally posted a shorter version of this article.

[Pallas180]

43. Porter Goss - Prime Suspect by Carol Brouillet

This was written for the general public, and may be reposted or printed by anyone, as I hope the basic information, becomes common knowledge and breaks through the Media Gatekeepers into the public realm.


Prime Suspect of the Largest Mass Murder in U.S. Nominated to Head C.I.A. by Carol Brouillet, Fourth of July, 2004


If there were honest, investigative newspapers in the U.S., this would be the appropriate headline, however in our Orwellian world, there is scant critical information published regarding the dubious history, associations, behavior of someone who should be under criminal investigation, rather than nominated to head the largest covert operations center in the world.
We are indebted to Michel Chossudovsky, a Canadian researcher, author, professor, for first drawing attention to “the Big Lies surrounding the events of 9/11- including the role of Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Pakistan’s ISI, the CIA, top U.S. Government Officials" (see-Chossudovsky's latest article). Chossudovsky’s research and articles inspired me to organize a march/delegation to demand a Congressional Investigation of 9/11 in January 2002. That is when Bush and Cheney asked Daschle to limit the investigations and have them overseen by the C.I.A., and the very men who we thought should be investigated for their own role in 9/11- Congressman Porter Goss and Senator Bob Graham.

The Senate/House Joint Intelligence Oversight Committee which Goss and Graham headed oversaw the "official Inquiry into 9/11" whose mandate was to reinforce the 19 fanatic hijackers narrative and the myth that 9/11 was the result of an intelligence failure, to justify the construction of Homeland Security and the Global Security State.


Once C.I.A.- Always C.I.A.
Examining the history of Porter Goss makes me wonder “Just how many politicians are on the C.I.A. payroll? (How did he manage to accumulate $53 million on his salary?) Did Goss actually use his dark C.I.A. past or connections to win elections? How many people would knowingly vote for a C.I.A. operative who had a hand in dirty tricks in Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Western Europe, who first worked for Army Intelligence? Looking at his pro-Bush, pro-Cheney record and his advocacy in Haiti, South America<1> and his work towards increasing the budget/power of the C.I.A.- especially the elevation of the Director to a cabinet post to become an Intelligence Czar with control over a $40,000,000 budget, concerns me. He believes in “political assassinations,”<2> exemplified by Operation Phoenix which killed thousands in Vietnam, and the Death squads so pervasive amongst U.S. trained military juntas installed in Central and Latin America.

Nevermind his close relationship with the “Money Man” behind 9/11 (the term was coined by the F.B.I.), the Head of Pakistani Intelligence, Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad who had $100,000 wired to Mohamed Atta, alleged ringleader/pilot behind the September 11th attacks. Surely one must wonder about this relationship, and why the U.S. quietly urged the retirement of Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad when this information was revealed to the press. However, the official Inquiry and the official 9/11 Commission avoided asking any questions that might thoroughly incriminate them and the White House personally in the attacks.

The Project for a New American Century’s damning documents state that

“A transformation strategy that solely pursued capabilities for projecting force from the United States, for example, and sacrificed forward basing and presence, would be at odds with larger American policy goals and would trouble American allies.

Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor.”

As the first Pearl Harbor gave rise to the need for and justification for the C.I.A. (whose mission is ironically to prevent another Pearl Harbor), so 9/11 is the foundation for the construction of a global American Empire which reserves the right to criminalize and kill all opposition to its rule.

A deep, critical examination of history reveals that Roosevelt wanted, provoked, and allowed the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor, to gain support for the U.S.’s entry into World War II; a deep, critical examination of 9/11 reveals striking parallels to other historical events where a government has actually dropped defenses and assisted an “attack” to terrify a population into sacrificing their liberties, and supporting unjust wars against other nations (Think Reichstag Fire). Who was behind Patriot I and Patriot II? Porter Goss… The chosen protégé of Senator Bob Graham who shares the same agenda.

Goss also spearheaded the Congressional Oath of Secrecy Proposal in 1987.<3> He was aware that the U.S. had procured Global Hawk technologies (unmanned aircraft flown remotely) by April, 2000, according to the General Accounting Office.

According to Al Martin, in 1983 Goss was involved in Iran-Contra profiteering with Jeb and Neil Bush’s Destin Country Club development fraud – a fraud out of which he made about $3 million illegally. He then became involved with Carlos Cardoen and Swissco Management, and the fraud that Swissco Management committed, not only in Florida, but throughout the United States, in those so-called illicit 'tax-swap deals,' which Senator Bob Graham of Florida also profited in.

"You could compare it to the crime family where the soldier rises from the street to become the capo, which has taken the hits over the years for his superiors in the organization," Martin continues. "Of course, unlike an organized crime family, the difference between the Bushonian Cabal and your average, run-of-the-mill organized crime family is that the Cabal controls, not only the entire nation, but influences policy throughout the planet. They are above all laws and impervious to any action.” <4>

More ominous is the concern that the Bush Cabal is scared and just might try to pull another 9/11<5> to further their dark agenda and nullify even a remote hope for an election. The psychological operations are underway, scaring the country into bracing itself for the next attack. In true fascist fashion, a new coalition of corporate/government/media leaders have launched a website that boldly asserts- “The America Prepared Campaign …utilizes the expertise and energy of national leaders in emergency preparedness, media, marketing, government, and business to support.. the work already begun by the Department of Homeland Security Ready Campaign … to give Americans useful recommendations for preparing… for a terrorist attack.”<6>

Goss has warned publicly that the F.B.I. isn’t capable of preventing more attacks, and has alluded to the value of the Madrid attacks to promote a more favorable climate for the international cooperation against “terrorist threats.” Just who benefits from these threats and attacks, besides arms dealers, the transnational elite, and the architects of the “global security state”? Certainly not your average American, nor the vast majority of people worldwide, but Goss is most likely not terribly concerned about them.

According to the Washington Post staff writer, Richard Leiby,<7> Goss grew up in Waterbury, Conn. and wasn't working class. He attended Hotchkiss prep school and Yale, where he joined the Army ROTC. He trained as a military intelligence officer after graduation, and by 1962 he was working at the CIA. A health crisis precipitated a career change from a clandestine field agent in Western Europe to a weekly newspaper publisher working with a bunch of “ex-spooks.” Graham crossed party lines to push him into “public service” which quickly elevated him into Congress and to chair the powerful House Intelligence Oversight Committee.

He initially opposed an Inquiry into 9/11, until he thought it had a chance of averting a real commission. According to Sen. Richard Shelby<8>, his threats to expose the Inquiry as a sham and throw his weight into the support of an outside Commission drove Graham and Goss to expand the narrow perimeters of the initial Inquiry. When the Inquiry failed to contain the victims' families outrage, the official Commission came into play; now the families are denouncing the Commission as a “Cover-Up Commission” rife with conflicts of interest that has failed utterly to address key questions raised by the victims' families.<9> (Noting the failure of the official investigations to even look for the truth about 9/11, we organized The San Francisco International Inquiry into 9/11, Phase One in March 2004.)

Global outrage over the first candidate to head the so called “Independent Commision into 9/11”- Henry Kissinger, as well as Kissinger’s reluctance to reveal his financial ties, prompted him to resign. There should be a similar outrage over the suggestion that- Porter Goss, who should be thoroughly investigated for his own role in the 9/11 attacks- should be elevated to a position of extreme power that transcends that of the Presidency. Tenet “served Clinton and Bush;” the funding for the muhajadeen began under Carter; Presidents come and go, but the consolidation of military and corporate power march on relentlessly serving the necrophiliac elite who believe that if they can’t own or control something; they have the right to kill it. Only the raising of consciousness of the vast global majority, who respect life, truth, justice and desire peace, freedom, and a future for all, can, through their civic outrage- world opinion, put a halt to the utter criminalization of the state, by casting the spotlight on Bush, the Cover-Up Commission, and the proposed “Intelligence Czar”- Porter Goss. Outrage over Porter Goss's nomination would be a good place to start.


Footnotes:
<1> http://www.republicanmainstreet.org/showandtell_bios.as... Republican Main Street Partnership, Porter Goss profile

<2> http://www.lazarusunbound.com/bunker_romelandsecurity.h... the bunker mentality Romeland Security and Political Assassinations, by Michael Bunker

<3> http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1995_cr/h951219-intell.... - TIMELY INTELLIGENCE: IMPORTANT AS EVER IN THE POST-COLD-WAR ERA -- HON. HENRY J. HYDE (Extension of Remarks - December 19, 1995)

<4> http://www.almartinraw.com /

<5> http://www.deceptiondollar.com/news/WGTarpleyArticle.ht... Rogue Bush Backers Prepare Super 9/11 False Flag Terror Attacks, Webster Griffin Tarpley, June 6, 2004

<6} http://www.americaprepared.org/who.html
<7> http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=artic... ¬Found=true, A Cloak But No Dagger- An Ex-Spy Says He Seeks Solutions, Not Scapegoats for 9/11, By Richard Leiby, Washington Post Staff Writer, Saturday, May 18, 2002; Page C01

<8> http://www.sptimes.com/2002/10/27/Worldandnation/Shelby... Shelby’s Doubts Drove Inquiry, Mary Jacoby, Times Staff Writer, St. Petersburg Times, October 27, 2002

<9> http://911independentcommission.org / Family Steering Committee

[Stephanie]

11. Okay, while this thread is still accessible

{i.e., not 250 posts) I am going to print it out and read it and try to figure out what you people have been talking about. :)

[Pallas180]

17. Hi Stephanie. Great. If you look at American Judas & Theory of Why above

we think you'll get it without going through 250 posts...but there is
a lotta lotta info in all the threads that can't be miniaturized into
one report.


And don't forget to print our COVER UP OF TREASON flyer.

That's also a good one to understand what's going on.

Enjoy! and let us know what you think after you've done some reading here.

:hi:

[Pallas180]

19. FROM ROBERT PAULSEN : 9-11 TIME LINES

robertpaulsen (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-16-04 08:45 PM
Response to Reply #273

280. These 9/11 timelines should help us in our research.


This might help as a reference guide for when we want to follow a particular lead.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project=...

And here's Michael Ruppert's timeline:

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/02_11_02_lucy...


"In past ages, a war, almost by definiton, was something that sooner or later came to an end, usually in unmistakable victory or defeat. But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer needed. The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharoahs or the Caesars could not be." -Orwell's 1984 or Bush's 2004?

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[H2O Man]

25. Interesting question.

"A conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words!" - John Lennon

[Me.]

26. I Just Received A Note From Joseph Wilson

The nicest thing was that it was handwritten. I sent him a letter, through his publisher, weeks ago, telling him about the Plame thread and included the Waterman Paper. I'm sure he won't mind me sharing the contents.

Dear , Thank you so much for your letter. Valerie and I are much comforted by the support of our fellow Americans as we endure an ongoing Republican smear campaign. Please keep those letters going to the media! Sincerely, Joseph C. Wilson IV

[coeur_de_lion]

28. That is terrific, Me.

Isn't it nice to know he is paying attention?

[Me.]

36. It is Nice To Know That he is Paying Attention

It also serves as a reminder that in times like this, when the appearance is that nothing is happening, that this is precisely the moment to re-focus and keep those letters going out. I would guess that his recent appearance on CNN was an effort to help keep the story in the forefront. I think I will send another slew asking why doesn't Bush tell his people to release the journalists.

[coeur_de_lion]

48. hope he is grateful for all that you do for him and his wife!

[merh]

32. I would have to frame that!

It was nice that he personally responded to you.

[RebelYell]

52. How nice! The man has class. n/t

[Tellurian]

136. How Wonderful.... (I'm sorry, I almost missed your post Me..)

of him to respond with a hand written note. Whenever I've heard him speaking at an interview, he always comes across as a genuine, humane individual.

I agree with merh.. his hand written note is a historical document, definitely frameworthy...

Bravo!

[coeur_de_lion]

27. from the Declaration of Independence

"But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."

Why, I do believe our rights have been violated.

[Name removed]

35. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[H2O Man]

49. Pallas180:

One of my favorite Lennon posters was "WAR IS OVER if you want it." I'm not complaining that you didn't do enough with the H2O paper, etc. And I'm not mad or upset .... not at all. Not even a little.

I posted a paper on 9-11: "Sometime in NYC." It's on GD. I know that more people on here will disagree with it, which is fine. That doesn't concern me.

My goal is simply to get people involved in a grass-roots level effort to elect Kerry, defeat the Goss nomination, and enjoy the Plame indictments, trials, and convictions.

[Name removed]

87. Deleted message

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[Pallas180]

88. H20 your post here indicates that our research is a waste of time

It's astounding that you would post this:

H2O Man (1000+ posts) Tue Aug-17-04 05:26 PM
Response to Original message

57. For those interested:


I posted a paper on 9-11, "Sometime in NYC: Bush, bin Laden, & 9-11" elsewhere on General Discussion.

I wrote it to try to end a wasted effort to "solve" 9-11 and "prove" the Bush Administration participated in the attack. My paper is not intended in any way to show the administration as anything less than criminal.

Anyhow, I'm more interested in people continueing to write to the media and elected officials on the Plame grand jury, and the Goss controversy.

[H2O Man]

90. yep.....

I think that the effort to connect the administration alone to the 9-11 attack, without considering UBL, has been worse than a waste of time. I think it has been divisive. And I take responsibility for having played a role in that. Perhaps it would have been better to have quietly faded away ..... but instead I started with the suggestion that people research for 6 days a week, and take one day each week to examine the research. And things went downhill from there, at least from my point of view.

[H2O Man]

89. Pallas:

I've seen this post, or a variation, a couple times. If I have given you the impression that I do not appreciate your good and hard work, than I am sorry. Because that isn't how I feel .... or think ... at all. I think you are a good and sincere person.... and that you do a lot of valuable work. And, even if we part ways at this time, nothing will change my opinion in that area. Taurus folks are very stubborn, you know, and once they decide they like someone, no force on earth can change it. However, it is apparent that at this time, there are very different schools of thought on some issues here. And different people are heading in different directions. But that doesn't change the fun and important things that have been accomplished on here. Behave yourself, and who knows, we may cross paths again in the future .... life is full of surprises.

[Pallas180]

92. H20, I wish you well, however

attacking, online, opinions which dont agree with yours I have always thought is below your ethical and moral level.

I wish success on the new Plame threads you have started, however
Your post

"I wrote it to try to end a wasted effort to "solve" 9-11 and "prove" the Bush Administration participated in the attack. My paper is not intended in any way to show the administration as anything less than criminal."

is particularly egregious and unnecessary.

It's obvious that the researchers here including myself and many others around the world don't think that effort is wasted.

I was particularly impressed with your subtleties in your OBL paper
here:

"Some members of the Plame "think tank" have concluded that they have conclusive proof that the Bush Administration was actively involved in the 9-11 attacks on the United States"

That statement is blatantly untrue; we're still researching and trying to connect dots, and have not come to a conclusion - yet.

And this line, you could have entitled "the commie-pinkos" - "leftist political groups - far left wing"

"theory that enjoys wide-spread popularity among the far-left wing of the democratic party, as well as associated leftist political groups."

I'm sure you'll be successful in whatever your agenda is H20, but you
know as well as I do that whatever your goal is, it can be accomplished without "the politics of destruction", personal or in trying to destroy other threads.


"Don't lose time in conflict;
lose no time in doubt -
time can never be recovered
and if you miss an opportunity
it may take many lives
before another comes
your way again."

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh


Pallas
Namaste.

[Name removed]

71. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[H2O Man]

73. I think that maybe this

has played out. Maybe we've served the purpose that we started with. Maybe people are not able to work together as a whole, and we'll just fragment. Maybe that's best.

Listen: I wrote a paper on bin Laden and 9-11, and RP finds it "incredibly disingenious" that I do not include Sibel Edmonds in the paper .... although she is not a significant factor in any examination of Usama bin Laden. RP, who I like and respect, is perhaps responding to my saying that a study of 9-11 that does not include bin Laden would be marked "incomplete" in any introductory college course in political science. Likewise, a paper on bin Laden that focuses on Sibel Edmonds would be returned.

There are a few books ... by Ouspensky and other writings based on Gurdjieff .... that have to do with the evolution of individuals, and as parts of groups. Everything organic, from atoms to solar systems, either evolves or decays .... I'm paraphrasing, so this isn't exact, but it's close to what I remember: Most people do not realize that humanity neither evolves or progresses mechanically. Because if human progress (or human evolution) were ever to come, they can only come as a result of conscious efforts.... and never, as the good Hurricane used to explain to me when I was young, as the result of unconscious or mechanical actions. He said that no mechanical evolution is possible for human beings..... for the evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness, and one's consciousness can never evolve unconsciously. The evolution of man is the evolution of his will, and man's will cannot evolve unwillingly .... and hence the resistance to change, and the rejection of a new way of thinking. And that fits the group that once worked as a unit here. There was a mechanical process: google-google-google .... accumulate, accumulate, accumulate ..... but not to contemplate in a different manner. And perhaps the error indeed does lie with me, because I had believed that with some guidance and prodding .... it would be capable of growing beyond what it initially did ..... but that can never take away from having accomplished the initial goal ...... Yet, getting back to Mr. O ..... that which cannot evolve consciously, degenerates by a natural process, and is destroyed .... which, of course, we can often see much easier "out there" in America, rather than in a loose-knit group of friends here ..... but like a machine, we've broken down, and perhaps it will be best to salvage parts .... on a more positive note, if we're not able to handle shifting from one level to another with grace, it seems likely that those on the other side of the political debate -- at least at our level -- are likely to be more effective. (grin)

[coeur_de_lion]

74. People can work together, and people have worked together,

successfully, on this issue. The problem arises when one person wants to control all of the content in other people's posts, and is vindictive toward group members.

We have identified this person. You might remember that I told you it only takes one spoiler to ruin a good effort. That is what you've just witnessed.

A spoiled 50-something person behaving like a 17-year-old. I don't know what resolution there can possibly be. But apologies from this person would be the most appropriate and effective means to peacefully coexist. Is that gonna happen? Not bloody likely.

[H2O Man]

75. I remember way, way back.....

and being older than any of you, I'm able to remember further back .... probably before some here were even born .... and we were discussing "doing" something. And one friend said they thought we'd do something big and important.

My goal was to do something small and important. I thought having 100 people write letters was a fine goal. I said that if we weren't able to get 100 DUers to send letters, we weren't going to be able to do anything bigger than 100 letters.

We probably have individuals who have wrote 50 letters. But I don't think we came close to 100 people writing letters. So I thought that we shouold recognize we had a little group.

I don't think that all the problems that we have encountered are caused by any one person. And I am not asking anyone on here to apologize to me, byany means. Instead, I'd say this has been an interesting experiment into the human spirit, which was done in an un-natural labratory. I see it as a positive thing.

[coeur_de_lion]

77. I am sticking with my opinion

And I do want an apology. I deserve one, because my confidence was betrayed for vindictive reasons. I don't like vindictive people. And that is what ruined this for *me.* I can't speak for you of course. And why should I even try to do that? You're eloquent enough to speak for yourself!

I think we did accomplish your small goal, and we did the best we could to spread the word about Plame all over the internet. 100 letters were written, easily, and probably much more than that. That is important, and all of the folks who participated in that effort are to be congratulated. It takes guts to put your name on a letter about a controversial issue and mail it out to elected officials.

The basic goal of the group was accomplished several threads ago. What might have been nice would have been to continue discussing various philosophies, as we did in the beginning. The Plame case has all the elements of a good spy novel, and lots of room to open up serious discussions about how humans interact with one another within that genre. But when you are always busy running this or that conspiracy theory up the flagpole there is no time to discuss rational ideas or philosophy. Some conspiracy theories have merit, some don't, and only time will tell us if any of them are real or not. What I think is a pity is that the sharing of ideas was lost at some point. It became the sharing of lots conspiracy theories and the constant search for new evidence to back them up. Once one theory was explored it was on to the next one. Very little discussion of the human element in any of it. This is of course only my opinion.

What attracted me to the threads in the first place was the ability to get my questions answered in an intelligent way, by yourself and others involved. That, and the sharing of ideas with smart people like yourself. That has kinda gone by the wayside. But we can always continue it in other threads, no?

You can consider this post to be my thank you to you, and all the other posters on this thread, for helping me to understand this issue better. I learned a lot! I hope to continue learning -- I'm an excellent student!

[Kimber Scott]

86. All of these deleted messages make me wonder. Seems like a black

marker has been taken to the thread. Why is this thread being censored? Just curious.

[Pallas180]

93. sorry Kimberly, DU does not allow personal attacks by poster to poster .

It's a shame, but sometimes it happens before things get back on track.

[coeur_de_lion]

97. Kimber, the posts were deleted because

I let my temper get the better of me. Everything I said in my posts was the truth, but I wasn't nice or tactful about it. Call it my Irish temper, bull-in-a-china-shop approach.

I have taken offense to a particular member of these threads, who likes to initiate DU email campaigns against those who disagree. It is one thing to start an email campaign against me; I am a mere student on the threads and I'm here to learn, not to teach. But this person was targeting someone whom I respect a great deal. It was wrong and I said so, and didn't mince words or sugar coat anything I said.

You don't have to get mixed up in it. Just enjoy the threads for what they are.

[Kimber Scott]

111. Thanks. I didn't intend to get mixed up in it. It just seemed weird to

have so many deleted messages. I'm glad you calmed down. I get pretty emotional myself, sometimes.

[Name removed]

123. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

149. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[merh]

85. Can we get the letter writing campaign geared towards sending

letters to members of congress about our concerns relative to the Goss appointment?

If Goss is appointed, I fear that:

**The Plame investigation will be curtailed, if not totally derailed and shut down.

**The investigation into the prison tortures will be shut down.

**The Edmund investigation will be shut down.

From the reports of many on these threads, the letter writing campaigns have had positive effects. We can't stop now, the Plame investigation is the primary subject of these threads and if Goss is over the CIA, his control of the agency will have negative repurcussion on the efforts of Fitzgerald. (imho)

How do we get this back on track? :shrug:

[Pallas180]

94. Mehr, if you write a draft of a "Goss" letter, the rest of us will

help by adding to it or editing. That's what we've done in the past
with each other...and you're right, we need to get back to business.

Thanks for the post.

[merh]

102. Possible letter to members of congress.

Dear _____________:

I write this letter as a concerned citizen of the United States of America. Our president has named a man to be director of the CIA who, by his own admission, is not qualified to hold the post. "I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified...". Mr. Goss made this admission when interviewed and the link to the video of this recorded interview is http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/goss.php.

How disconcerting it is to have the president nominate a man that is lacking technical skills that are necessary to perform his duties and to administer his office and the agency. We live in a technical society and it has been reported that the terrorists that threaten our nation are technically savvy. They use the internet and their various computer skills to communicate and plot against our nation, yet the man nominated to the post of CIA, in his own words, lacks the skills necessary to function as an agent of the CIA. “And I certainly don't have the technical skills, uh, as my children remind me every day: ‘Dad you got to get better on your computer.”

This is preposterous. Mr. Goss has been in the Senate long enough to have learned how to effectively operate a computer, but instead he basks in his ignorance and apparently allows others to perform for him. If he were to submit an application to the CIA for the position as an agent or an officer worker he would not be interviewed for the position because he lacks the necessary computer skills, yet this is the man our president wants to head the CIA? How does a man who is happy to remain ignorant of technology "lead the agency through the challenges and threats of the dangerous new century"?

The Acting Director of the CIA, John E. McLaughlin, is more than competent to continue as the director of the CIA. The failure to affirm Mr. Goss' appointment will not result in our nation being left with an unqualified person overseeing the post. As Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Mr. McLaughlin assisted Director George J. Tenet in overseeing the operational, analytic, scientific, and technical activities of the Intelligence Community. He is not technically challenged and he is more qualified than Mr. Goss to serve the nation, which after all, is the ultimate goal of the position.

Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has publicly opined that Goss was not right for the job (prior to the appointment). Senator Roberts specifically advised "My only message to the White House is if they do this, make it an extraordinary person that will get bipartisan support." He added, “We do not want a partisan fight right before the election.” The appointment of Goss is partisan. Mr. Goss objected to the 9/11 commission investigation; has said that he does not believe the investigation into the outing of a covert CIA agent is necessary or legitimate; has publicly opposed the investigation into the prison tortures in Iraq (and elsewhere); and, has openly opposed any investigation into the claims of Ms. Edmund. How can he be the director of our intelligence community when he has no concerns relative to the safety and behavior of our intelligence agents, let alone the nations security and the abuses of power that weaken our reputation and render us vulnerable?

In closing, I simply wish to remind you that it was Mr. Goss that said he lacked the necessary skills and experience to be a CIA agent, let alone the director of the CIA. To quote Mr. Goss, “Uh, so, the things that you need to have, I don't have."

With the greatest of concern and sincerity, I am,

__________________
Name



=========================================
For your reference please see the list of quotes from others that oppose the Peter Goss nomination.

"This is the worst appointment that's ever been made to the office of Director of Central Intelligence, because that's an office that needs to be kept above partisan politics."
Retired Admiral Stansfield Turner

"There's one thing Goss really didn't do for the past several years—he didn't chair the House Intelligence Committee, in spite of what his resumé claims. Instead, he did the dead man's float."
Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson

"Goss has never been very distinguished, but he's protected. He's a Bush loyalist and has been in the forefront of those who have tried to place the major blame for the 9-11 attacks on the Agency." Former CIA counter-terrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro

"This whole appointment is a cheap political trick,"
"One of the recommendations of the <9-11> Commission is that no political appointee be made Director. But this is so clearly political. If Goss isn't a political appointee, than I don't know what is." "This will do nothing but cause more disarray at Langley," Judith Yaphe, former CIA analyst

"I strongly urge the President to look for an individual with unimpeachable, nonpartisan national-security credentials and the stature and independence to bring about much-needed reform of our intelligence agencies." Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W. Va), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee

[Pallas180]

105. MERH - THAT IS AN EXCELLENT ON TARGET LETTER -for anyone

to use to send to the Senators and Congress people and to the media.

For sure nothing needs to be edited.

Would you mind of some people used parts and added their own parts to
it?

Thanks
Pallas

[merh]

106. I hope folks use it as they see fit. Revise and add to it as needed.

Everyone should feel free to edit and use this letter in any way they deem fit. Let's just get the message out - the dems cannot let this man be the director of the CIA.

Thanks.

[robertpaulsen]

115. Thank you very much, merh. Very proactive, very encouraging!

I can't think of any way to improve on this. I especially thought adding the quotes at the end was particularly impressive looking. Great job, merh! I'll definitely be mailing this out. We've got to get the dems on our side in this matter! Goss would be the worst head of the CIA since Devil Dulles himself.

[merh]

116. Thank you! We just need to get the word out that

Goss is not acceptable and the opposition to Goss is not partisan, it is practical (and in line with the guy's own opinion of himself!)

[robertpaulsen]

120. That's the funniest part!

I sincerely hope that Michael Moore puts that interview in a section of deleted scenes on the DVD of Fahrenheit 9/11. Hopefully, the DVD will come out before Goss' confirmation is put to a vote. It would be great if F9/11 is responsible for keeping dimson AND Goss out of power.

[Tellurian]

138. Great Letter, Merh...

I will be blizzard faxing to my Senators and Reps tomorrow am..

thanks, for the astute notations!

excellent!

[merh]

141. Thanks, I hope as many people as possible use this letter or a

rendition of the letter with their own revisions to alert congress and the media that the Goss appointment is wrong for our nation.

Snail mail, faxes, e-mails - let us be heard.

:hi: :bounce:

[robertpaulsen]

65. Sorry for my personal silence. I'm answering a question from thread 18.

robertpaulsen (1000+ posts) Thu Aug-12-04 11:06 PM
Response to Reply #260

273. H20, not to marginalize, but what about Sibel Edmonds?


Don't you think her testimony is proof that the government is trying to cover up their involvement in 9/11, and that this involvement ties in with narcotic and arms trafficking in the Middle East, the latter part which involves Plame?

I don't think it matters whether this involvement was negligence or complicity (or both), either way it is criminal and if the motive is to protect the same network Plame was trying to expose with her sting operation, then it very relevant to the work we've been focused on.

I respect your right not to involve yourself in this matter, but your contributions would be sorely missed by me. You helped everyone here focus on the question: Why? So I wonder why does the DOJ gag Sibel Edmonds? Who benefits?


H2O Man (1000+ posts) Thu Aug-12-04 11:45 PM
Response to Reply #273

277. Sure.

Edited on Thu Aug-12-04 11:47 PM by H2O Man
Sibel Edmonds is a serious topic. As a matter of fact, it provides a great vehicle for making people think. And that is of great value.

Listen: in terms of politics, or culture, you need to look at human nature. And I know you do. I'm speaking in general. All people who have been able to motivate the public have understood this simple rule (which you won't find written in any book) .... and that is this: before you can possibly hope to get people to act differently, you must first get them to think differently.

That means you have to give them a NEW WAY to view things. And isn't that exactly what occured on the first Plame thread? I'm not giving myself a pat on my humbly bowed head, because I am the first to recognize -- as I stated then -- that I was using Man X's lesson. But, by asking "Why?" .... didn't it open up an entirely new way of thinking about Plame? And once your eyes are opened to that .... what happens?

And this is the way it has been, in terms of human nature, throughout history. Think in terms of Isaiah saying "You have heard; now see all this: and will you not declare it? From this time forth I make you hear new things, hidden things, which you have not known." (48:6) And what is he saying? That by creating a new way to see things, people will then behave in a new way. And that, my friend, is the revolutionary thinking that concerns me. We need a human evolution: to see things in a NEW WAY, and to behave in a new way.

But tell me: what will -- because of human nature alone -- the reaction of people be to anyone who says "we can prove that the bush administration was involved in 9-11 in an effort to set up the invasion of Afghanistan and especially Iraq"? Will it change the way people think? Or will it allow people to discount everything else that has been done on here?

But that's for everyone else to decide. I don't think of that as a serious topic. I will not participate in it. But that doesn't mean that I'm cutting out completely. My focus remains Plame, the grand jury, and publicity for that topic. Perhaps we have taken it as far as we can on this format. That's not a bad thing at all; rather, it's a job well done.



My response:

When you respond with "Sure", I believe you are answering affirmatively that Edmonds testimony proves government involvement in the events related to September ll have been covered up, and that this involvement ties in with narcotic and arms trafficking in the Middle East, the latter part which involves Plame. If that is correct, then taking this thread in that direction should not be a problem, until we get to the point that you describe when we go public and spread the word about the discovered truth. At that point, we must do as you say, get people to think differently. I don't see how we can attempt to before that point.

But to answer your question that I highlighted, I have to give some historical perspective to what we are attempting to do here. Granted, my perspective is that of a 31 year old idealist who has read a few books here and there. But maybe you can corroborate: back in 1966, two years after the Warren Commission released their infamous Report, it was viewed at the time, from what I know, as thorough, complete, and above all, the truth. From Anthony Lewis' instant endorsement in the New York Times on down, the media pretty much reached a consensus that Oswald acted alone and Ruby acted alone, case closed. But that year, two books came out that directly challenged this assumption, Whitewash by Harold Weisberg and Rush to Judgement by Mark Lane. What happened? As far as I know, there was not an immediate shift in public opinion to believe that our government was complicit in the crime. But by documenting their research with proven facts, it allowed people the opportunity to think differently about something they thought they knew before, which allowed for a gradual shift over time.

Now to answer your specific question:
But tell me: what will -- because of human nature alone -- the reaction of people be to anyone who says "we can prove that the bush administration was involved in 9-11 in an effort to set up the invasion of Afghanistan and especially Iraq"? Will it change the way people think? Or will it allow people to discount everything else that has been done on here?

What will their reaction be? If you're referring to mainstream FAUX-fed America, probably shock. If this occurs before the Plame indictments, probably disbelief. But that's why we're attempting to connect their involvement in 9/11 WITH the Plame indictments. If the work that we've accomplished here can help contribute to increasing public awareness of Cheney's complicity in the outing of Valerie Plame, we can certainly do the same regarding the truth about 9/11. Don't get put off by labels like MIHOP, LIHOP, "complicit" or "connected". Either way you cut it, be it negligence or manipulation, it was criminal and we need to investigate it with the hope that just as we exposed Cheney in our research compiled in American Judas, we will do the same concerning the misadministration and 9/11.

Will it change the way people think? Just like the JFK assassination, it won't happen overnight. But it most certainly won't happen if we drop the ball and not use the investigative skills that many of the Plame thread posters obviously possess to find a connection between what Edmonds knows and what Plame's "sting operation" was all about. You have counseled many of us, including me, on the virtue of patience. Given time, and proof, we can gradually shift public opinion to support the documented truth.

Will it allow people to discount everything else that has been done on here? Hell no! The people who read our research with an open mind and become convinced that Cheney had the greatest motive for outing Plame will probably take the next jump and ask: Are the "arms sales" that Sibel Edmonds refers to connected with the same A.Q. Khan network Cheney profited from? We're not putting the cart before the horse here. This is a natural extension of our current investigation. It's still the Plame thread, just a new chapter.

If someone is familiar with the work we've done here, I'm not concerned about them freaking out over an investigation into misadministration involvement in 9/11. That includes you, H2O Man. I read your paper on Bush, bin Laden and 9/11. You make an accurate point that any investigation into 9/11 must include an examination of bin Laden. But for you to write an entire paper about Bush's involvement with 9/11 without a single mention of Sibel Edmonds is incredibly disingenuous. That was just my initial reaction to reading your paper. To your credit, points 1 through 5 in your paper are essential for anyone investigating 9/11. But reading point 6 made me think that you don't want to investigate anymore; you've reached your conclusions. As far as points 7 through 9 are concerned, it's all part of the 9/11 timeline. I encourage you to read cooperativeresearch's timeline for thoroughness. Point 10 made a point that confused me. You say, "In the summer of 2001, we know that the relaxed and vacationing president got a report that predicted that bin Laden was planning to strike within the United States. There has been some public confusion as to why President Bush seemed undisturbed by this information. As this paper makes clear, it was because he was aware of a plan being put in motion to have a bombing campaign in Afghanistan, and to invade Iraq. And that is why he was so unconcerned." While I agree Bush planned to invade Iraq, bombing Afghanistan, from what I remember in Against All Enemies, was Clinton's plan, not Bush. Rather than follow through with that plan, I recall Richard Clarke saying Bush sat on it for the entire 9 months he was in office until 9/11. You reiterate this in point 11. But the part of point 11 that irked me was section H. To repeat: H- "Usama bin Laden believed that his strike would do more than prevent the attack on Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. He believed that he was ordained to destroy the Evil Empire. He believed he would destroy the American economy, and damage the military to a degree that would make a US response impossible." How could you possibly think he believed this after all the research you did? He is trying to ignite a holy war! You mentioned this in point 8 of your paper. That's his reason for 9/11! And it's Bush's Dominionist Theology justification as well! Why no mention of that in your study of Bush, or completely omitting the PNAC from your paper? If your intention with this paper was to convince me that Bush was not complicit in 9/11, you've got a long way to go.

Then again, the rest of us at the Plame Indictment threads have a long way to go as well. As far as 9/11 is concerned, I think you know without me having to tell you that we're still at the tip of the iceberg. I'd appreciate your reconsideration, but if you've made up your mind not to join our investigation, so be it. But for the rest of us who refuse to believe 9/11 is a case closed where misadministration involvement is concerned, we've got a lot of researching to do. Whatever you decide, I wish you the best.

Peace to you,
RP

[H2O Man]

68. Hi, RP!

Three quick answers: (1) I don't know how many people believed the Warren Commission early on. I only know one person who did. He believed it to the day he died. I'll say that I don't believe the 9-11 Commission is the whole truth, or even the majority of it. You may be confused if you think I've said I did. I don't think that it's a big factor.

(2) On Sibel Edmonds: I simply don't know what she knows, but I haven't seen anything from her that implies that the bush administration was complicite in the attacks on 9-11. Have people lied to cover up their incompetence? Very likely. I'm watching people from "Voices From 9-11" on C-SPAN 2 as I type this: the relatives on here are talking about incompetence. Perhaps you know something from Sibel that I am unaware of. However, because I have not covered every person connected with a the case after 9-11 in a review of bin Laden, though it may strike you as "incredibly disingenious," has more to do with my examining bin Laden and events going up to 9-11.

(3) Was bin Laden trying to ignite a holy war? That was my entire point. I'm surprised that you could possibly have missed that. The reason people start holy wars is to win. He thought he could win.

In closing, you'll note that I said Michael Moore's movie "F 9-11" is the closest thing to the truth. Closer than the 9-11 Commission. But have you noticed that he isn't saying "Bush did it?" His film clip of a stunned president reading a billy goat book isn't his way of saying, "Bush HAD TO have done it!" Instead, it shows that Bush is an incompetent fool.

[kohodog]

79. H20, Hi!

But isn't it too early to know who will win? Bin Ladin is still around and 911 was an early move in a nasty chess game (Kennedy was an earlier move).

With responses like Bush and the neocons to 911 and to the situation in Iraq, our country may be headed down the wrong road as Black Elk saw (although in a different context). The holy war may have started and I hope it's not Armageddon.

As to these threads, I hope we get back to basics but it may be too late. Perhaps we need to start another thread taht will continue for a while with the goal of getting letters out to the media and congressfolk to bring Bushco down. The Plame threads have been fantastic and while losing focus from time to time, they have provided a call to action that has had some impact. Some of us have started different threads with varying success (mine tend to drop like stones), buy this is a continuing forum that has brought real action and real results. I think we need to have another one going before we abandon this one. The object is still to get letters out, eh?

Thread 21 should be a back to basics thread imho.

[H2O Man]

81. They are fools....

and it's unfortunate that innocent people suffer and die because of their stupidity. But their stupidity is a result of the mixing up of docrine .... they try to apply higher knowledge to their own lower level .... and the result can ONLY be destruction. History has so many examples of this. ..... and that is the base definition of "holy war" .... but the enlightened people who have taught about "holy war" have made clear that it is something that happens within individuals. It's much like when the Master told his friends that a man has no greater love than giving his life for his friends .... while it does mean what it says literally, such as the soldier who dives on the grenade .... it also has a much deeper psychological meaning. But all sacred texts are written in a manner to convey the meanings to people at thelevel they are at .... and men like bush and bin laden are both at a low moral level.

[robertpaulsen]

112. It's all a question of focus.

Addressing the answers in your post:

1. I'm glad to know you don't believe the 9/11 Commission is the whole truth or majority. I didn't think you did, and I don't recall saying that I thought you did, so no confusion there.

2. "I haven't seen anything from her that implies that the bush administration was complicite in the attacks on 9-11." - Again, I'll redirect you to a point I made in my post: Don't get put off by labels like MIHOP, LIHOP, "complicit" or "connected". Either way you cut it, be it negligence or manipulation, it was criminal and we need to investigate it with the hope that just as we exposed Cheney in our research compiled in American Judas, we will do the same concerning the misadministration and 9/11.

"Perhaps you know something from Sibel that I am unaware of." I don't think I do. I'm not going to feign access to inside information, everything she says that implies complicity is all on the internet. But that's the nature of implications, it's all about how you perceive it. You don't think it's there, I do. But nobody has ever claimed they proved it here. If you weren't being disingenuous when you omitted Sibel Edmonds, you certainly were when you claimed posters on the Plame thread had done so in your paper. If I'm wrong, I'm sorry, but I really found the tone of your paper condescending, especially point 6 which seemed designed to denigrate the work that I and others like me are trying to accomplish. If we thought we had the proof, we wouldn't bother with an investigation. We would consider it a waste of time, just like you do.

3. "Was bin Laden trying to ignite a holy war? That was my entire point. I'm surprised that you could possibly have missed that. The reason people start holy wars is to win. He thought he could win." - No, I didn't miss your point. You missed my point that your conclusion that 9/11 would "damage the military to a degree that would make a US response impossible" contradicts your conclusion that he was trying to ignite a holy war. How can you have a holy war if there is no response to your attack?! Not only was I pointing out your contradiction, but what I see as a ridiculous assertion. Do you really believe bin Laden was stupid enough to believe "that his strike would...prevent the attack on Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq"? That instead of igniting a war, he would end it with 9/11 being the decisive blow? Maybe I'm totally misreading what you're saying, but I fail to find the logic of your conclusions.


I thought about your paper in it's entirety, and I would have to say my biggest problem with it, aside from my perception of the tone, is the focus. You made the focus very clear in the title: Sometime In New York City: Bush, bin Laden, and 9-11. Why did you choose to focus on Bush? Nobody on this thread, hell, on this WEBSITE believes that Bush the pResident is anything other than Cheney's puppet! Nobody questions his idiocy or incompetency. Why not focus on the dictator who actually directs the foreign policy in this country? Why is it so easy for you to believe the misadministration is guilty of complicity in an international arms smuggling network that brought nuclear components to terrorist organizations and the countries that harbor them, but so difficult to believe they could possibly be complicit in helping to crash 4 planes in their own country and cover it up? Why is one exploration worthy and the other a waste of time?

[H2O Man]

117. RP

I read your note, and had thought of answering some of the points you raised, but that merely continues what is not necessary. Despite the tone of the past couple of notes, I will say that your American Judas was a wonderful paper, and something you should be proud of. I think it was a fantastic piece of work. Because I'm not impressed with the 9-11 business will never take away from my admiration of that good work.

On the "holy war" issue .... I think you don't get it. But I don't feel any need to try to explain it. What is very clear to one person may not be very clear to another. I said that to say this: another person who you get along with e-mailed me and said (s)he felt bad that there was hostility between us. I explained that I don't feel hostility towards you, and am confident that although you are in your early 30s today, that in the future .... perhaps 20 years from now .... at some point something will click. It won't be anything important, and it won't alter your life. But you'll perhaps think, "aha, that's what that old fool was talking about."

And perhaps not. But either way, I only have favorable thoughts about you. And I have certainly thought that it was possible that the power elite in our country had a big role in 9-11. I've studied it, and came away with a very different opinion.

I'd like to think that in the screen-play, this is where I reach out to shake hands before we part ways. Because I do like you, and admire much of the work you've done.

[robertpaulsen]

119. I think I can appreciate where you're coming from.

I don't feel hostile towards you, just disappointed and a little saddened that in this matter we must agree to disagree, rather than join in the hunt together as we did regarding Cheney's complicity in Plame's outing. It sure was a lot of fun, and I feel this hunt will be just as much fun for anyone who enters with an open mind. That includes me. I have my own ideas, but if my research proves that I am wrong, believe me, I will be the first to admit it.

I respect that you have studied 9/11, the possible role our country played in it, and the opinion that you have. I still feel that your research in the matter has only reached the tip of the iceberg, but I don't pretend that I have gone much deeper. I won't belabor that point.

If we must part, I smile as I shake your hand. I appreciate your compliments where American Judas is concerned, but remember that I wrote it as a supplement to the Waterman Paper. Remember that, and remember those who loved it. There is a lot of things in your current paper that I value, despite my mixed review. But you have reached a conclusion, while many of us here are still searching for answers. Again, peace to you.

RP

[never cry wolf]

130. Hey, I haven't added anything to these threads for a while, but...

I have been trying to keep up a bit. As I was digging in to number XX and got to this point I feel I have somethings to add.

First, I am distressed at the discordance but feel that at a certain point after so many have put so much time and effort into it, each individual would naturally take a certain possession of this wonderful effort. After essentially solving the question of "why," and a few threads on follow-up of that discovery, the issue seems to have evolved into "what's next?"

Most agreed to stop the concentration on the investigation and start in on the grassroots "get the word out." Once that was nominally accomplished once again the question naturally came up, "what's next?"

Here is the divergence. With all the wonderful effort by all, no one wanted to drop it, but where to go? Some to continue to push the grassroots get the word out issue, some to continue the investigation and dig deeper. Both have great merit and both need to be done. However, IMHO, they need not be done together.

A continued effort to get the word out on the Plame threads is important, but keep in mind, they are the Plame threads and should concentrate on that.

A new, similar, parallel set of Plame like threads concentrating on 9-11 and maybe the crimes of the BFEE in general, and at some point tying it all up together is a noble effort to undertake as well, though for the future. (The unified BFFE theory?) You will NEVER be able to make the general public swallow MIHOP, much less LIHOP in the 10+ weeks until election. We must choose our battles. That may be a winner someday and if somehow bunnypants frauds his way to another term, I personally am all over it, but it will do more harm than good in the next few months.

I agree that tying them together in some sort of combined theory at this point would diminish the potential power of the Plame information as it relates to the general, uninformed, CNN watching public. They may buy a nice spy outing story, but they are in no way ready for MIHOP or LIHOP and forwarding that notion as a part of the Plame treason would just stain any chance it may have of getting legs.

Let's keep our eyes on the prize, Plame can hurt them NOW. It's all over the news peripherally, with the subpoena of reporters you can bet every journalist is talking about it. It's getting out to Mr. and Mrs. Sheeple, they are slowly awakening that and saying "wha the fuck? Who is this Plame lady anyway?" Once we change the WH, and hopefully at least the senate, we can have some REAL investigations. THAT is job ONE!

For the heck of it I googled "LIHOP." Not very far down on the first page I came across this response by Will Pitt to a criticism that a Truthout article on 9-11 was not hard hitting enough:

William Rivers Pitt Replies to Criticism

This is a reply to Keith Lampe's Shame on You, William Rivers Pitt!!!!
There are two replies to this below and a note on LIHOP vs MIHOP.

"It happened, and it will never be forgotten, but we have reached a place where fear and obeisance can no longer be tolerated."

What does that mean to you? Can you not in any way connect those words to the work you espouse?

Consider, also, that this wasn't written for you, or for anyone on your list. I repeat: THIS WAS NOT WRITTEN FOR YOU. There are millions of people who would sooner slit their own throats than accept anything having to do with LIHOP . The point of this article was a goad to them to begin reconsidering what they believe to be truth. That's not easy; Christ, if you think 9/11 is the only thing Americans are deluding themselves about, you don't know much abut Americans. This country has a black belt in ignoring unpleasant facts.

As much work as the real 9/11 investigators have done, as much data as they've found, all that has not even made dent one in the mindset of a vast, vast majority of Americans. You're asking them to swallow it all in one gigantic gulp. They'll never do it. Not until they overcome the programming they've been bombarded with for three years (thirteen years, thirty years, three hundred years) and do a little thinking for themselves.

So this was for them, not you. Remember one last thing: Moore's movie comes out in nine days. Most of the people who will see it never knew that Bush sat in that goddam classroom while the world collapsed around his ears. That, and everything else in this film, is going to kick them right in the temple. Then, perhaps, LIHOP becomes something they'll hear.

Maybe they'll read this before they go in. Maybe it'll cook in their thoughts for the next few days, and then they go see the film, and then ...

I got this email below a few minutes before I got yours. This is who I was writing to. If you don't think reaching people in this way is important, you are worse than a waste to the cause. You are a detriment, an anchor.

http://www.serendipity.li/wot/wrp_replies.htm

In closing, I want to thank all of you who have done so much here, you are all heroes and patriots. You have done important work and there is more to be done.

On edit: long posts tend to have more mistakes, wish I had more time to clarify a bit more but... Also, all the above is only my 2 cents. I am very respectful of all the opinions here!

[H2O Man]

132. Interesting post

Always good to hear your opinion. Thanks.

[never cry wolf]

134. Maybe it is time to part ways

That does not mean people are not of common goals. I am an architect and when a project begins everyone works towards a common goal. The client's needs are investigated and a program is developed. The architect designs a solution to the problem, a plan that does what the client needs that meets codes and practicality in concept.

Then the specialists move in. The civil engineer works out the site and utility constraints, the environmental and landscaping, the structural engineer starts in on the bones, the mechanical engineer starts in on the lungs and plumbing, the electrical engineer starts in on the nerves and communication and the interior designer starts in on some of the inter-relationships and the appearance.

Each and all working diligently to provide their common client the best design, from their perspective. However, during the process, after each has the ideal solution to their particular part of the puzzle, there is the problem of meshing all the solutions into a coherent whole. This requires each to compromise somewhat.

The mechanical engineer wants to use rooftop units located to suit a reduction in ductwork. But they are visible, and local codes require screening so the architect moves them to a less obnoxiously visible location, which the structural engineer has to account for in their weight and the snow drift load from the screens and everyone has their own professional opinion as to the best compromise. This is just a small example, but in any endeavor, the human dynamics work the same.

Everyone here has done their part, and for such a defining of roles (sorta) to occur on a public mesage board is amazing to me. Parting of ways and conflicts are inevitable, that in no way means that the structure you all built does not have a solid foundation, nor that you cannot work together again on future projects.

One thing I have learned, learned in design studio and even more in the real world is that the problem solving process is endless, designing can always be refined and another POV looked at, possible solutions are endless. There comes a time to call it a day and say this is a well thought out and reasonable way to proceed and the incremental refinements are not really gaining anything substantial. Time to stop designing and build the damn thing. (In the real world, unless you're a STarchitect, design time is EXTREMELY limited by budget and time constraints.)

Anyway, the foundation is well built, and in this case may serve a multiple purpose for all who want to use it in whatever way they seem fit. There is a program written that can branch off into LIHOP, MIHOP, BFEE as well as to continue to expose the criminal treason of outing a deep undercover NOK CIA agent working to keep americans safe. It is the latter of these purposes that may resonate with the sheeples in time for the election, but they are all valuable. That is not to say that if any branch off, they cannot have valuable contributions to the other branches.

I, again, offer my thanks and appreciation to the many valuable contributors!

on edit: I may have majored in architecture, after my father, my mom was an english major. I am not her peer, but was endlessly hounded as a youth to try.

[Pallas180]

137. STEVIET, I'd say your mother made a strong impression on

you and your communicative abilities.

Please, write a letter or paper for me anytime.

Many many thanks again for your wisdom.

Pallas

[never cry wolf]

142. Thank you for the compliment

She is a sweet and compassionate woman but would go ballistic if she read what I wrote. Unfortunately she is a ditto head, totally beyond recovery. We do not discuss politics anymore. She is highly intelligent but also totally brainwashed, kinda fundy but not to the point of creationism.

It never ceases to amaze me because she instilled most of my compassionate values, yet will spout off that I don't support the troops over a lunch.

Some things are beyond understanding.

:shrug:

[Pallas180]

145. STEVIET - LOL - I can relate ! n/t

:hi:

[Me.]

173. Wonderfully Put Steviet

It does sadden me to see things come to such a pass, but as others have pointed out, maybe this is a natural progression. Pallas, RP, Shraby and others, what I am picking up from what you are doing is joy and excitement. Clearly you should be taking Joseph Campbell’s advice and following your bliss. My calling is different. It has been and remains Plame. For me that is truly, even before H20’s words drew me in, the tip of the iceberg. I will continue to send, as I can, messages to media urging them to get their act together.

As for lihop/mihop I haven’t made up my mind yet. My current theory is that events could have been set in place, either knowingly or unknowingly, that could make it happen. But that could have been as long ago as 20/10/5 years, and then, everyone sat back to see what/when it would happen. Kind of like, not having a schedule, but still knowing, that at some point, there would be a train coming down the track and removing the guards. Or setting a stick of dynamite on the ground near a match factory and hiding in the bushes (no pun intended) to see what will happen. When I see clips of * sitting in the classroom, and that look on his face, I could read it as dumbfounded. I can honestly see him thinking something like, “WOW, I can’t believe it actually happened, they were right!”

What I think I do know is that, as others have said, the world is not ready for hardcore lihop/mihop. When I try to talk about it to the people I know and those around me, their eyes glaze over. And these are New Yorkers! Plame they get, and that brings forth a response.

I will still be checking in from time to time and assume I will be welcome. This election will solve nothing really, it will be a finger in the dyke against the next rising tide of imperial hubris, unless ALL secrets are exposed. And if the efforts of everyone here and elsewhere continue, there will, I believe, come a day when we WILL be able to trust our government. Everyone will still be needed, and who knows, during that time maybe we will all find the path to being a cohesive group again.

[coeur_de_lion]

133. Well said, Steviet n/t

[Pallas180]

135. STEVIET, Thank you - something to think about & Will Pitt did

write that before Fahrenheit came out.

After that movie and with the publicity we helped get Plame and Edmonds which I have just watched on tvfor the second time in two nights, maybe Americans will be softened up for LIHOP if not MIHOP.

And we agree, what has occurred here as RP has said is very disappointing -leaving several of us with the feeling that we have been used for some unknown agenda, even perhaps a political operative's agenda, and a sense of betrayal.

Impolitic items posted such as labeling the researchers on this thread as "far left wing", continuing posted untruths, and other childish personal attacks and behavior in an obvious effort to disrupt and discredit the research here, while no one here has attempted to do the same on the "split-aways" thread has made any joining together of effort now or again in the future not only undesirable but unimaginable.

You've written a very thoughtful message and it is much appreciated .
One of the things you may notice that many threads ago, the title
of these threads, without objection from anyone, changed to
Plame Indictments - High Crimes & Misdemeanors -
and then even after that, with no objection it was changed to add

Plame Indictments-High Crimes & Misdemeanors - The Tip Of The Iceberg

This was done for three reasons:

1)As we began to look for why the administration was attacking Plame,
we began to discover other matters such as Cheney's double dealing nuclear components which could be considered High Crimes & Misdemeanors, impeachable treasonable offenses.

2) As the promised date of one of the posters who said Indictments would come down on July 14 as if he had inside information, came and went - and they didn't, people began demanding where were the indictments he "promised" and there was no further news, or very little leaking out of Grand Jury (in fact, nothing should have been leaking out of Grand Jury).

3) Finally, Cheney led to Plame and Plame coincided with Edmonds who spoke of illegal trafficing also and said " high elected officials would go to trial for treason" if all were known. That is when Edmonds- and Khan were added, becasue if anyone was reading the threads they could see the connections - and the trail of treason which we are researching to find if there are dots to the 9-11 connections.

We have done our work on Plame, and I'm sure you have too. The letters have been sent and the flyers offered for copying. Do we continue beating a dead horse?

Because a Grand Jury is sitting on the Plame matter, it's doubtful that the media want to touch it right now and be further embroiled in subpoenas. Beating a dead horse does not make the horse any more alive :)

Meanwhile our work on badgering the media and congress about Edmonds has paid off. And I think "that badgering" about Edmonds to have the gag order rescinded would be another chink in the Ashcroft legal wall around the misadministration. If she has information which would
lead to the trial of "elected officials", we and all of America need to hear it.

I have nothing invested in having them tried for treason on the Plame
matter as some do. I'd be just as happy if we could get them tried for treason on Edmonds, wouldn't you?

Thank you for your kind words Steviet.

Pallas

[never cry wolf]

139. Maybe it's a matter of semantics

I consider myself pretty much an outsider to these threads. I have posted but after like thread 4 I went on vacation and missed alot and have not been able to completely catch up. I cannot disagree with your post above, nor with waterman's position (I am disregarding any personal sniping, which I missed most of on these threads and was not privy to in private mail.)

Maybe if the continuation threads read simply "High Crimes & Misdemeanors - The Tip Of The Iceberg" and leave out Plame, they will more accurately reflect the direction they have taken.

This is not to say that in any way I wish them to stop nor that there may not be so much more to discover, but if you intend to attempt to uncover all the tentacles of the octopus, it will be far afield of simply Plame. Actually an octopus only has 8 tentacles, the BFEE has hundreds, of which l'affaire Plame sheds light on many, but is only a small one in and of itself.

I do not know H2O Man's real thoughts on LIHOP/MIHOP or 9-11, but I do agree with him that they will NOT play in Peoria at this point in time, even after F911. I am personally LIHOP strong or MIHOP light, but I know many peeps who are liberals who have still never even heard of Plame, much less Sibel Edmonds.

The election is a bit over 10 weeks away and the name Plame is in the news because it's the media who's getting the heat from Fitzgerald. This issue, as a stand alone, can do great damage to the BFEE. IMHO it's about our best best of landing a KO punch to the reeling goop before Nov. 2. Tying it to anything else for public consumption at this time only dilutes and discredits that potential impact.

on edit: more of that ingluish shit agin.

[Pallas180]

143. STEVIET - that makes sense

Truthfully though, from what I've read, Fitzgerald's assignment is
very limited -and can be further limited by his immediate Justice Dept. Supervisor (I assume if he gets too close)- therefore the grandiose hopes of bringing down this administration through Plame now seems infinitismal to nil.

[never cry wolf]

146. I agree, but don't underestimate Fitz.

He is a bulldog but he is limited. However, if a clear case of treason is an uphill battle, L/MIHOP is out of the question at this time.

It IS important to dig into. If Kerry wins and we get maybe one of the houses of the legislature, there will be plenty of crime to investigate. If not, we need to hit hard on ALL fronts.

Again, I am not advocating slowing on one approach over another. Let the iceberg float to where it will, but the only way 911 will harm the BFEE before the election is as presented in F911, nothing more. I feel that although Plame is a lesser crime it has a much better chance of getting some resonance in the short term.

I have serious doubts that the truth of 911 will EVER come out to the masses, ala JFK, Northwoods, Gulf of Tonkin, Iran/Contra, etc., etc. I bet 80% of murikans think Oswald acted alone, if they think about it at all, and would not even recognize the others. Plame is a crime, cover-ups and obstruction of justice are crimes, high admin officials can be indited, hopefully before 11/2. Spreading the word on this will do much more damage at this time than talking M/Lihop.

[Pallas180]

147. STEVIET agreed again. I have received an e mail

suggesting we change the title to :

"Beating A Dead Horse Plame Thread" - ROFL - but that's my "off" sense of humor.


you said:

"I have serious doubts that the truth of 911 will EVER come out to the masses, ala JFK, Northwoods, Gulf of Tonkin, Iran/Contra, etc., etc. I bet 80% of murikans think Oswald acted alone, if they think about it at all, and would not even recognize the others. Plame is a crime, cover-ups and obstruction of justice are crimes, high admin officials can be indited, hopefully before 11/2. Spreading the word on this will do much more damage at this time than talking M/Lihop."

I agree. The truth of 9 11 may not come out for years - but it will come out - and it has to start somewhere.

I really doubt indictments will come out before November 2 and there
is a strong question of whether they will come out at all or if they
do whether they will be anything but lower level never heard-of people.

The "split aways" are asking people to send letters on Plame. And I hope they do.

I can't disagree with the e mail I received today from one of the people who has worked very hard on compiling the information on these threads:

" I think we had a great group of people googling their ass off for _______ He picked up his toys and went home. Plame is done for now, just journalists fighting subpoenas. I have doubts whether anything will come of it in time for the election, or ever. "

As far as I'm concerned I've done much more than could be expected of one person and I'm through with sending out any more letters on
Plame. I've moved on to other letters,flyers, and calls to be made.

Steviet, everything you say is mature and reasonable and interesting.
You have a point. It's just that we have done the job, as your designers and architects have,there's a time to complete it and as things have shaken out in the last two days, it's time for us to move on to research other High Crimes & Misdemeanors.

You are a pleasure to read.

Thanks again.

[Name removed]

161. Deleted message

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[merh]

165. Thank you for your posts.

:hi: :thumbsup:

[Name removed]

144. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

148. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[merh]

166. So the thread is destroyed because some on it will not

grow up. How sad. There are other Plame threads out there. Time to move on.

PS: that looks like a beagle to me - you would think if you are going to be obnoxious you could at least be correct in your depiction.

[coeur_de_lion]

167. La F.B.I., ne t'a pas encore trouvé?

[coeur_de_lion]

169. Chien qui aboie ne mord pas

[Name removed]

163. Deleted message

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[merh]

168. Love all of your posts and sorry that some of the best have

been deleted. I may be slow in being able to translate (thank god for goggle) but I have been successful and all I can say is

:yourock:

[AgadorSparticus]

154. nicely stated. thanks for posting this.

you made a light bulb go off in my head. it never occurred to me that mihop/lihop theories could be an albatross around the plame case.

[Pallas180]

69. RP & DU'ers who sent letters to Congress, Grassley & called, CONGRATS

WE GOT THROUGH!!!

I know I sent faxes to Grassley and Rockefeller on the Senate Intel committee and every single anchor at CNN and MSNBC and I'm pretty
sure lots of other DU'ers did too with the free ACLU fax and the numbers above.

SUCCESS!

CNN Paula Zahn just had a show on Mike German (spelling) and Sibel
Edmonds and how the FBI was treating whistleblowers.

Senator Grassley, head of the Senate Select Intel said their information was very important and whistleblowers needed protection because that was the only way they could find out what was really going on.

Then Kallman (spelling) the former FBI Chief Agent of NY got on and said there are always misfits and malcontents and their letters really dont mean anything, even if Senator Grassley meant well..

He sounded very unconvincing....while Grassley sounded very sincere.

I wouldn't want to be on the other end of Grassley's fury when he
views Kallman's condescension.

BUT THE POINT IS - YOU, YOU PEOPLE GOT THE ATTENTION OF MEDIA ON
SIBEL EDMONDS.

Now all the other media that received our letters will take another look - and possibly do stories on it.

And maybe it's time to send another letter about what Sibel Edmonds is
talking about....the treason of officials in high places.

Go for it!!

Congratulations Guys. You people are phenomenal!

:toast:

:bounce:

[kohodog]

70. Who'd have thunk it! Time for more letters!!!

Paula Zhan of all people. Not a bad job either, but she ended with the debunker!

I do think these threads are making a wee bit of noise.

But we need to keep the pressure up. Our old letters are, well, old. It's time for a new campaign. With what we've learned I think we can post some new suggestions to keep interest alive.

These, i think, should focus again on Plame because that's still the clearest way to charges and also bad publicty.

We also need to write to keep Goss out, although if Kerry wins he won't be around long But i don't want him to get his foot in the door.

So haw about it? A new round of letters??

[Pallas180]

72. The ball is rolling! tomorrow Norville Msnbc doing Whistleblowers -Edmond

has got their attention.....

and if there is a demand for Edmonds testimony to be opened up - as
the New Jersey 911 wives want, Edmonds has said it will lead to charges
of Treason against the highest elected officials.

The Treason letter at the top, has Plame and Edmonds for anyone who
wants to use it.

[RebelYell]

76. Remember the knee pads???

It had to be the kneepads. I got a return receipt today. CNN signed for them. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I'm going to follow up with an email to Paula, to see if they fit.

/sarcasm off

Great news!

[Pallas180]

83. LOL - I do. And am laughing out loud REB -Bad, Bad, but funny!

no wonder the interview on Edmonds and the other whistleblower got
on CNN.......how many more sets of knee pads do you have?????

ROFL :)


:hi:

[Name removed]

82. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[merh]

30. Have you just now noticed this?

Be careful, you will be branded a "disruptor". I realized this around the 3rd or 4th thread.

Dissent is not allowed. Please do not dissent here!

[Name removed]

46. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[RebelYell]

33. It's a conspiracy, I tell ya!

I think she was waiting for another paper from H20???

[Name removed]

47. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[RebelYell]

50. I must have missed something between the lines

I didn't intend to get in the middle of anything or cause any trouble.

Pallas is a friend, and I apologize if I caused any of the problems here.

[H2O Man]

53. Uuuhhmmmmm......

a couple people have noted that I'm not pleasant to disagree with .... and while I think I could prove them wrong (grin) ..... let's not go there ..... instead, I'd be willing to accept all blame for all the trouble .... as long as we get re-focused on grass-roots democracy.

Though I'm NOT interested in a group hug, we should probably sing "Give Peace A Chance" in 4-part harmony, and then get back to work!

[coeur_de_lion]

59. Don't worry about it! You didn't cause any trouble

[H2O Man]

60. Well, in that case

I'm sorry I didn't, and I'll try not to do it again.

[coeur_de_lion]

62. you demon! I meant Rebel Yell

Somebody has their Irish up today. Smart alec leprechaun running around the place.

[H2O Man]

64. Well, in that case.....

I'm even sorrier.

[Name removed]

151. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TacticalPeek]

23. Another subpoena for Judith Miller, and for NYT. The hits keep coming.

'NY Times' Gets 2 More Subpoenas in Plame Case

By Joe Strupp

Published: August 17, 2004 10:24 AM EST

NEW YORK The New York Times has received two more subpoenas from prosecutors investigating who leaked the identity of former CIA officer Valerie Plame to the press, E&P has learned.

The subpoenas, one for reporter Judith Miller and one for the Times, seek documents and other records related to the paper's reporting on Plame. Miller received a previous subpoena on Aug. 11 compelling her to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the case. The two latest subpoenas arrived over the weekend.

"We now have a total of three subpoenas," Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said today. "We will either have to comply or file a motion to quash by Aug. 20. The Times will move to quash."

more
http://209.11.49.220/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000613371


edit: I mean subpoena, not indictment. Not yet, anyway.

[Me.]

80. Seems That Something's Up There

Doesn't it?

[Tellurian]

29. Kitty, I found a domestic flow chart of the Bush Crime family..

you might be interested in for cross reference.

http://www.stewwebb.com/Bush%20Crime%20Family%20Flow%20Chart.HTML

[PfcHammer]

78. Yeah I came across that one a few weeks ago.

Ours isn't too shabby if I say so myself ! :D

http://s93118771.onlinehome.us/DU/Plame/PlameFlowchart.htm

[merh]

31. Article on Goss - if we want the Plame indictments to happen

we have to stop his appointment to office. The grass root efforts that have been used on these threads need to be utlized to appeal to the dems on the nominating committees not to authorize Goss' approval.

This is more important than any issue right now. Goss must not be made the head of the CIA. If he is the Plame investigation and the prison scandals and our rights will be hindered and harmed.

This article appears in the August 20, 2004 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Senate Must Not Capitulate
To Blackmail on Goss Nomination
by Edward Spannaus

Were the Senate to go along with the Administration's provocative nomination of Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) for CIA Director, it would mark a cowardly capituation to the stonewalling of any investigation of the crimes of Vice President Dick Cheney and his cronies in the Bush Administration. The Administration's obstruction has been aided greatly by the Republican leadership of key Congressional oversight committees, and in this, no one has exceeded the role played by Porter Goss, as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Goss has blocked any investigation of three critical subject-areas clearly falling within his jurisdiction:

* The fabrication of intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs, under pressure from Cheney and other Administration officials, in order to justify the invasion of Iraq;

* The illegal disclosure by White House officials, of the identity of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame, in an effort to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who had debunked the fable that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium "yellowcake" ore from Niger; and

(snip)

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/3133goss_cia.html

=======================
This article goes on to express the desire that the Dems not give in and agree to the nomination of Goss. It refers to several retired CIA agents that feel that Goss is the wrong man for the job.

"The reaction to Goss's nomination has been especially strong among a number of retired CIA officials. Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner, who was DCI in the late 1970s, called the nomination "a bad day for the CIA," and charged that Goss was chosen simply "to help George Bush win votes in Florida." "This is the worst appointment that's ever been made to the office of Director of Central Intelligence, because that's an office that needs to be kept above partisan politics," Turner said."

[buycitgo]

34. he's right, of course, but the STENCH of LaRouche's name

will remove any credibility, unfortunately

and don't think I'm blowing smoke

he SWINDLED almost 8 grand from my MOM a long time ago, as part of the scheme that got him sent to prison

I talked several times to federal prosecutors, who wanted to send my mom to Boston for the trial, but she had emphysema. they were almost as insistent as the LAROUCHIES who called me AFTER she died, to try to get MORE money from her

so, please, excuse me if I don't like seeing those links, even though I agree with much of the content

[Pallas180]

37. Buycitgo - sorry that happened to your family; it's also good to know

about for others who might be taken in...

thanks for posting that.

[merh]

38. I apologize if this link offends you and I am sorry for you

and your mom for what LaRouche did. He will get his in the end, it is not that this was LaRouche's article that caused me to post this, but the comments contained in the article by the retired CIA folks.

The Dems do not need to let Goss have a pass, if he is made head of CIA then all the investigations into this admin's corruption and crimes will be "swept under the rug".

I posted an article from a different point of view with legitimate concerns and quotes.

Ashwipe and his minions are persecuting a close friend of mine, he has no credibility with me, I can't stand his words, his photos, or to even read his name, yet I don't take offense when those things are posted here, it is a matter of choice to let it bug me or to simply ignore it. You don't have to believe that LaRouche is credible.

Again, I apologize that this has offended you.

[buycitgo]

39. not offended at all.....just brought back nasty memory

I've read a BUNCH of that Bush book by Chaitkin

I agree with a lot of what EIR has to say, but I will NEVER trust them, even when agreeing with them

I also TOTALLY agree with the thrust of this article, with the following caveat: CIA operatives who feel the way they do with its direction will, I hope, continue their covert efforts to get the truth out, irrespective of leadership. I don't think the grunts there cared for Tenet anymore than they will for whomever is appointed by the chimp

Ray McGovern, in an interview along with Sibel Edmonds, called Tenet just a politician, and had very low regard for him. He said the last decent CIA head was Stansfield Turner, cause he TRIED to shake things up, and make the CIA an HONEST information gathering/analysis organization, not a POLICY implementation wing of the president

[merh]

41. If the CIA does not cooperate with Fitzgerald then the

Plame outing can not be prosecuted. Think about it. The crime is to out a covert agent. The defense is that the agent was not really covert, that everyone knew she was CIA. If the CIA takes the stand that Plame was not covert and it was public knowledge that she was CIA, then the prosecution is down the tubes. The head of the CIA makes a very big difference.

Again, I will try to limit any Laroach posts, I don't like the creep either, it is just that the contents of this article are so on point and it does look like the dems will roll over and let Goss slither in.

:scared: That scares the hell out of me.

[nolabels]

44. "The crime is to out a covert agent" is just the key that opened the door

The use of public office to do harm to others for personal reasons was the trust that was broken. But the kind of things it opened the door for in this investigation is what the deal is.

These guys liked to of thought they could open Pandora's box and just let a couple ghouls out, but now they can't figure out how to get closed again. Nothing to be scared of because even if they do get it closed, it will probably open up again twice as fast and be even more nasty.



Have patience

[merh]

45. I love this post, thank you. It is good to be reminded that

patience is not only a virtue, but is necessary.

(I also love your little ghoul.)

Appointing Goss is an attempt to close Pandora's box. I just hate that anyone, dems and repugs, are even considering the Goss nomination as a valid selection. Pat Roberts the repuk chair of the intelligence committee has said he isn't qualified, Goss said he isn't qualified, what more do they need?

Thanks again. I will try to be more patient. :thumbsup:

[Me.]

51. What Are We?

Two? Or has a strand of that old Democratic disease come back? You know the one, where we divide and conquer each other so the rethugs don't have to. People! We have a country to save here. Everyone come back. Such a beautiful job has been done here for the very best of reasons. Let's all agree where we do and agree to disagree where we don't, but do it all respectfully.

Flame retardant coat on so fire away.

[H2O Man]

54. Sounds good.

Let's do it.

[merh]

55. I don't understand why you posted this to my post to

nolabels. I was just thanking nolabels for the reminder that patience is necessary. It is hard to be patient when so much is riding on the truth. I am freaked that Goss may get the job and shut down the investigation. That is what this thread was originally about the Plame investigation, not the veins of suspicion that is has become.

The letter writing campaign from several threads back needs to be resurrected to try to keep Goss' nomination from being approved. (imho)

If you are concerned with the other comment, then post there. Having been shunned and ridiculed for posting dissenting thoughts in the early threads, I simply asked the question about notice. Nothing more.

If I have offended you, I apologize.

[Me.]

56. You Have In No Way Offended Me.

It was a bad strategy on my part. I wanted to put my post on the bottom so it would be more "current". It is I who should apologize to you. Especially as I agree with you most strongly about patience, Goss and the letter writing campaign. Please excuse my "fox paw".

[merh]

57. LOL -- Fox paw, that is funny ...

No problem, no apology necessary. I am just trying to be very cautious with my posts, I don't want to offend anyone.
:hi:

"fox paw", I may borrow that, if you don't mind! :thumbsup:

[Me.]

58. Borrow Away Merh!

Glad we're ok.

[Sophree]

61. It scared me, too.

But I'm glad I'm not the only one.

I haven't really been keeping up on DU, but I've tried to read as much of these Plame threads as I can.

My question is- WHY are the Dems laying down on this one???

We are all FUCKED if Goss is appointed. No one will be held accountable. Isn't the CIA pissed about the leaks? Won't THEY be pissed if Goss is appointed and the whole thing just goes down the memory hole? Or are there too many fascists there who are aligned with the Busheviks and couldn't care less about the safety of their fellow spooks, not to mention the safety of the country?

I'm reading "Imperial Hubris" and the author all but directly accuses the White House of outright treason. While I have a few beefs with him, especially for ignoring LIHOP, I hope there are more like "Anonymous."

[merh]

63. I HAVE to believe that there are more in the CIA like Anonymous

than there are the evil that promote the * agenda. If I didn't believe that I couldn't sleep at night.

I can't say why the dems are going to give Goss the pass, it makes no sense. I have read that they intend to grill him during the nomination hearings and that he will be bullied, but beyond that the nomination is a done deal.

Rethugs and dems alike should fear a man like Goss as head of the CIA. I hope we can get a letter writing campaign going. We have to try to stop it. We just have to!

[Me.]

67. Strategy

On the part of the dems, or fear. They are worried that if there is an attack and they have opposed putting in a CIA head. they will be blamed. However, what everyone seems to forget is that the position isn't vacant. Unless I'm mistaken and John McLaughlin has left. Maybe they're counting on Kerry winning, which would also get rid of him. Kerry would want his own man and can have him. Would Wilson be qualified for that post?

Also, I believe that H20 said at one point that the CIA was basically divided into the the conservative hardliners and the progressives. Although I can't understand why any of them would condone betraying a NOC and the years of work and effort that went into the operation. Also, don't they all have to look at the star that has been added to the wall every day when they come in?

[merh]

91. Strategy is to stall the appointment process, to bring

every son of a gun the Gross ever worked with to testify, to have long drawn out nomination hearings, to be precise and meticulous. This is too vital a position to just give it to the repukes.

Gross's words speak volumes and are enough to diffuse partisan attacks. He is not qualified.

(On edit: I know the name is Goss - I just thing he is gross!)

[H2O Man]

95. This is a process

that can potentially be carried out by a small number of elected officials. It has to start with a couple people opposing the nomination, and slowing the process. Then the "stop Goss" effort gains momentum. We need to identify the politicians most likely to not only say theu oppose Goss, but take action to stop him. I'm thinking Ted Kennedy is our best bet, but am willing to listen to any other suggestions.

[robertpaulsen]

66. Recap of thread 19 research on Dawood Ibrahim.

robertpaulsen (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-16-04 08:38 PM
Response to Reply #198

256. Pallas, I found the bin Laden/Tanzania gemstone link! And Dawood Ibrahim!


This occurred in the aftermath of 9/11:

Scores Held in EA Crackdown on Terror
A JOINT REPORT
THE EASTAFRICAN
WITH THE search for terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden's links in East Africa intensifying, investigators in Uganda are holding seven Pakistanis and one Zambian, while arrests have also been reported in Tanzania.

Kenyan police too have been searching for terrorist suspects, but no arrests had been reported by Saturday.

Senior security sources in Kampala involved in the investigations into bin Laden's activities, especially after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, told The EastAfrican that the suspects were arrested at Entebbe Airport and were being held in Kampala. The investigators are also looking for some Ugandan suspects.

Sources said that most of the arrests in Tanzania were made in Dar es Salaam, with a few in Morogoro, Mwanza and Arusha, particularly in connection with businesses allegedly linked to bin Laden.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is said to have increased its support to various security operations in the region. The arrests are part of a much larger operation, it was learnt.

Ugandan investigators said they had intensified their surveillance of key installations, including tall buildings in Kampala and the international airport at Entebbe. Foreign embassies in Kampala have been put on full alert. The investigators have also been monitoring the activities of non-governmental Muslim organisations.

In particular, investigators are said to be interested in a radical sect whose main mosques in Kampala are on Old Katwe Road and near Nakasero market. The sect is an offshoot of the Tabliq sect.

Earlier, attention had been focused on the radical Tabliq sect itself, some of whose members were arrested in connection with urban terrorism and insurgency in western Uganda two years ago.

Last week's arrests were spearheaded by Uganda's Joint Anti-Terrorism Taskforce (JATT), which brings together several security agencies, including the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, the Internal Security Organisation, the External Security Organisation, the Special Branch and the Criminal Investigations Department of the police force.

Among the top suspects being sought is a Ugandan dissident, Sheikh Jamil Mukulu, who has lived in exile for half a decade. He is believed by Ugandan intelligence to be the main link to bin Laden's Al Qaeda network in East Africa. Uganda has reportedly sought help from security agencies in neighbouring countries to track down Sheikh Mukulu and his network.

The suspects arrested at Entebbe last week were reportedly travelling from Rwanda and were passing through Kampala before proceeding to Europe. Further investigations in Rwanda are going on, sources added.

It was not immediately clear if the arrests were also related to travel warnings issued to Americans in Rwanda on September 19, which stated that insurgents were active in northern Rwanda and could harm them. But the FBI was said to be 'watching the situation' with Rwandan security closely.

While the Pakistanis arrested claimed they were businessmen interested in the tea sector, suspicion was raised by the fact that two of them had earlier claimed to be from the United Arab Emirates. It was also realised from their passports that the suspects were travelling out of Pakistan for the first time.

Sources said some local businessmen had also been questioned. Investigators are searching for possible links between those detained, terrorists and other business people in the country, apparently targeting those of Arab origin.

"We have been interrogating the eight suspects for three days. We are holding them until we conclude the interrogation," said a security source on Friday.

The FBI and Uganda believe that terrorists who have been detonating bombs in Kampala since 1998 were trained in Pakistan using a network in Sudan.

Earlier last week, security agents went to the offices of the registrar of companies for the files of a company called Taba Investments, which was suspected to be fronting for bin Laden in the region. As investigations continued, The EastAfrican learnt on Friday that the company was actually called Taaba Investments and was unlikely to be connected to bin Laden.

JATT officials said they would continue to monitor individuals and groups linked to past terrorist attacks in Uganda.
In Tanzania, police and agents of America's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have arrested and interrogated a number of people in connection with terrorism acts committed in USA, but police declined to give details of the arrests. A police officer in Zanzibar however said he had 25 names of suspected followers of bin Laden belonging to the opposition Civic United Front (CUF) party.

The Isles police commissioner, Mr Khalid Iddi, said in Dar es Salaam that police were questioning the 25 CUF members. He said those arrested include a retired army officer involved in training CUF youths allegedly to destabilise Zanzibar. Police suspect that he received funding from an organisation in Yemen to conduct terrorist activities in Tanzania. Zanzibar is believed to be one of the areas with many of bin Laden's accomplices in East Africa, through his Yemeni connections.

A number of trading companies in Tanzania are being investigated by state organs and the FBI in connection with bin Laden's business interests.

In Tanzania, bin Laden is suspected to have interests in trading, farming and gemstone dealing, especially in diamonds, tanzanite and gold. The Tanzania police has given the FBI a list of some 60 names, but no nationalities have been revealed.

The EastAfrican has learnt that at least three major oil companies in Dar es Salaam which have trading connections in Sudan, Yemen, Qatar, Iran, Somalia and Saudi Arabia are under investigation. There are over 30 oil-marketing companies in Tanzania, many with links to the Middle East.

Several more companies with major partners in Pakistan, Indonesia and India are also being investigated. They are suspected of having business links with Arab and Asian trading companies close to bin Laden. The companies are in general trade, farming and gemstones.

Police did not reveal the names of companies and individuals being investigated, but a source said "many companies have been interrogated and more will be interrogated." They have not announced any arrest of suspected terrorists or accomplices or linked directly to Osama's gruesome terrorist actions in the USA or elsewhere.

In Mwanza, a Lebanese man involved in the gemstones business was on September 24 arrested and interrogated. Mwanza is the centre for the diamond and gold black market. The man was found with three passports — from Lebanon, Pakistan and the UK. His passports were impounded, but he was released and ordered to remain in the country until investigators cleared him.

Tanzania is among the countries believed to harbour fundamentalist supporters of bin Laden. It is believed that bin Laden's followers from his Sudanese cell are based in Morogoro town, with other cells in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar.

Police in Dar are also investigating companies that have links with the most wanted drug dealer in India, Dawood Ibrahim, who is alleged to have associations with bin Laden. Members of the local Asian community say Dawood has business partners in Dar. In 1996, he sneaked into Tanzania but left when state organs started hunting him down.

Sources said that Tanzania police and FBI agents are also investigating remittances of money into Tanzania from Iran, Pakistan, India and Somalia to establish the authenticity of the transfers and the nature of the business deals involved. It is suspected that some businessmen are involved in money laundering.

Police investigations are going on at the Coast and in Mwanza, Tanga, Lindi and Mtwara regions, where many investors from Iran, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan have acquired land for farming and established Islamic schools.

Many businessmen from those countries have been on the black list of the Immigration department and under close surveillance.

Some foreigners suspected of having links with terrorist networks are alleged to have entered Tanzania as donors, particularly for building mosques in Dar es Salaam. A number of Islamic agencies and political parties with an Islamic orientation have been earmarked for interrogation, the police source said.

Sources in Arusha say a businessman of Asian origin has been interrogated at length in connection with the September 11 incidents in the US. He is alleged to have left the US two days before the hijackings and travelled to Arusha.

The Tanzania police spokesman, Mr Aden Mwamunyange, was unavailable for comment last week and was said to be attending meetings with other senior police officers on security matters, including the ongoing scrutiny of the terrorism suspects.

http://www.nationaudio.com/News/EastAfrican/08102001/Regional/Regional2.html

So, now we have some more leads. Let's look into Sheikh Jamil Mukulu and Civic United Front to see what we can find.


robertpaulsen (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-16-04 12:43 AM
Response to Original message

194. A name to remember in our research: Dawood Ibrahim.


DAWOOD IBRAHIM: The Global Terrorist
by B.Raman

Shortly after the commission of the terrorist strikes in the US on September 11, 2001, US President George Bush signed Executive Order (EO) No.13224 on September23, 2001, declaring a national emergency to deal with terrorist threats to the USA.He said in his EO: " I also find that because of the pervasiveness and expansiveness of the financial foundation of foreign terrorists, financial sanctions may be appropriate for those foreign persons that support or otherwise associate with these foreign terrorists. I also find that a need exists for further consultation and cooperation with, and sharing of information by, United States and foreign financial institutions as an additional tool to enable the United States to combat the financing of terrorism."

2.The annual report on the Patterns of Global Terrorism during 2001 submitted to the US Congress in May, 2002, by Gen.(retd) Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, described the significance of this EO as follows: "EO 13224 enables the US Government to block designees' assets in any financial institution in the US or held by any US person. It also expands US Government authority to permit the designation of individuals and organisations that provide support or financial or other services to or associate with, designated terrorists. EO 13224 designations allowed the US Government, as well as coalition partners acting in concert, to block tens of millions of dollars intended to bankroll the murderous activities of Al Qaida and other terrorist groups."

3.Under this EO, the US Government has so far designated 322 individuals of different nationalities and organizations as terrorists and terrorist supporters and frozen over $136.8 million in terrorist assets by acting in concert with other member-nations of the UN.Apart from terrorist organisations such as the Al Qaeda, the Jemaah Islamiya, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) etc which have been so designated under this EO, a number of individual terrorists wanted for acts of terrorism in different countries have also been so designated. Important amongst them are Osama bin Laden, his No 2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri and other leaders of the Al Qaeda.

4. While the US Government has designated the HUM, the LET and the JEM as Foreign Terrorist Organisations, none of their leaders has so far been designated as global terrorists. The only individuals living openly in Pakistan who had been brought under the purview of this EO till October 15, 2003, were Sultan Bashir-ud-din.Mahmood, Abdul Majeed and Mahammed Tufail, who were suspected of trying to help bin Laden in the clandestine acquisition of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). They were so designated on December 20, 2001, and their bank accounts, wherever found, were ordered to be frozen.

5. Dawood Ibrahim, the mafia leader- cum- terrorist living in Pakistan since the 1990s, became yet another individual terrorist leader living in Pakistan to be brought under the purview of this EO on October 16, 2003, when the US Department of Treasury announced that it was designating him as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 13224 and that it would be requesting the UN to so list him as well. The designation would freeze any assets belonging to Dawood within the U.S. and prohibit transactions with U.S. nationals. The UN listing will require that all UN Membe-States take similar actions.

6."This designation signals our commitment to identifying and attacking the financial ties between the criminal underworld and terrorism,” stated Juan Zarate, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes. “We are calling on the international community to stop the flow of dirty money that kills. For the Ibrahim syndicate, the business of terrorism forms part of their larger criminal enterprise, which must be dismantled."

7. A press release of the US Department said: "Dawood Ibrahim, an Indian crime lord, has found common cause with Al Qaida, sharing his smuggling routes with the terror syndicate and funding attacks by Islamic extremists aimed at destabilizing the Indian government. He is wanted in India for the 1993 Bombay Exchange bombings and is known to have financed the activities of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (Army of the Righteous), a group designated by the United States in October 2001 and banned by the Pakistani Government -- who also froze their assets -- in January 2002. "

8. A fact sheet attached to the press release said: "Ibrahim's syndicate is involved in large-scale shipments of narcotics in the UK and Western Europe. The syndicate's smuggling routes from South Asia, the Middle East and Africa are shared with Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network. Successful routes established over recent years by Ibrahim's syndicate have been subsequently utilised by bin Laden. A financial arrangement was reportedly brokered to facilitate the latter's usage of these routes. In the late 1990s, Ibrahim travelled in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban."

9. It added: "Ibrahim's syndicate has consistently aimed to destabilise the Indian Government through inciting riots, acts of terrorism and civil disobedience. He is currently wanted by India for the March 12,1993, Bombay Exchange bombings, which killed hundreds of Indians and injured over a thousand more."

10. It also said: "Information from as recent as Fall 2002, indicates that Ibrahim has financially supported Islamic militant groups working against India, such as Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LET). For example, this information indicates that Ibrahim has been helping finance increasing attacks in Gujarat by LET. "

11. The statement and the attached fact sheet do not say how the US Government came to know of Dawood's links with the Al Qaeda, bin Laden and the LET. However, it needs to be noted that last week the US Government also designated the Al Akhtar Trust, a supposedly charity organisation based in Pakistan founded by the JEM, for purposes of freezing its accounts under this EO. It described the Al Akhtar Trust as the successor organisation to the Al Rashid Trust, which had earlier been brought under the purview of this EO.

12. The Treasury Department statement indicated that it suspected the Al Akhtar Trust of funding jihadi terrorist activities not only in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also in Iraq. Since February last, I have been drawing attention to reports that the HUM and the LET have been sending small numbers of their cadres to Iraq to participate in a jihad against the US troops there and that the LET has been collecting funds in Pakistan for assisting the families of its "martyrs" in Iraq.The statement reveals that the JEM has also been indulging in activities in support of the jihad in Iraq through the Al Akhtar Trust.

13.The fact sheet attached by the US Treasury Department to the order relating to the Trust says as follows at two places: "During a custodial interview in early 2003, a senior Al Qaida detainee related that AL AKHTAR TRUST and Al-Rashid Trust were the primary relief agencies that Al Qaida used to move supplies into Qandahar, Afghanistan. " Again it says: "During a custodial interview in mid-April 2003, a senior Al Qaida detainee stated that Al-Rashid Trust and Al AKHTAR TRUST provided donations to Al Qaida."

14. The USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officers in Pakistan had got hold of two senior Al Qaeda operatives during this period---Khalid Sheikh Mohammad,who is suspected to be the mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the USA and who was caught in Rawalpindi in March last, and Walid bin Attash, the principal Al Qaeda suspect in the case relating to the bombing of the US naval ship USS Cole in Aden in October, 2000, who was caught in Karachi in April last.

15. The interrogation of Walid bin Attash by the FBI had not yet started by mid-April. It would, therefore, be reasonable to infer that the action against the Al Akhtar Trust was probably based on information provided by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. Since the action against Dawood followed two days after the action against the Trust, there is a strong possibility that the information obtained during the same interrogation about his links with the Al Qaeda triggered off the action of the Treasury Department.

16.What next? The designation of Dawood as a global terrorist does not automatically freeze his bank accounts and the accounts of the organisations with which he is associated. It only directs all banks and other financial institutions in the US to identify such accounts and freeze them. How effective is the follow-up action depends on how effective is the identification of the accounts.

17. The Treasury Department order does not give all the aliases of Dawood. It names him as Dawood Ibrahim, also known as Dawood Ebrahim, also known as Sheikh Dawood Hassan. Only all accounts held in these names will be affected by this order. If he has been holding accounts under other names, those would not be affected till identified to be his.

18. The UN Security Council, in its capacity as the monitor of the implementation of its Resolution No.1373 calling for action against terrorism by member-nations, would now be moved by the US to issue instructions to all member-nations, including Pakistan, to freeze the accounts of Dawood held under these three names.

19. Whenever such instructions were issued by the UNSC in the past, the Government of Pakistan circumvented them by alerting organisations and individual terrorist leaders named by the EO and the UN about the impending freezing of their accounts, thereby enabling them to withdraw the bulk of the balance to their credit or transfer it to other accounts under different names.

20.This has been repeatedly happening since January last year. As a result, when the accounts were finally frozen, they were found to contain paltry amounts.

21.The last one year has also seen a tremendous increase in the remittance of funds from overseas bank accounts to accounts in Pakistan. The total remittances during this period were estimated at US $ four billion. The Pakistani authorities attributed this increase to the fact that Pakistanis living abroad have started using normal banking channels for their remittances due to fears that the use of the informal hawala channels as in the past might attract the suspicion of the FBI. Even if this explanation is true, it could account for the transfer of only about US $ 1.5 billion from overseas accounts to accounts in Pakistan.

22. Following suspicion that the steep increase in the remittances flowing into Pakistan might be due to the transfer of the money held overseas by the so-called Saudi charity organisations associated with terrorism to accounts in Pakistan and the use of new accounts in Pakistan by organisations based in Saudi Arabia for funding terrorism, the FBI is reported to be closely monitoring all remittances of over US $ 1,000 to accounts in Pakistan. The Washington correspondent of the "News", the Pakistani daily newspaper, has reported (October 1, 2003) that the Pakistani authorities have agreed to a request from the US to report to the FBI details of all such remittances.

23. The action taken by the Pakistani authorities against all suspected bank accounts in Pakistan continues to be an eye-wash. On June 14,2003, Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan's Finance Minister, placed on the table of the National Assembly a statement giving details of the accounts frozen by the authorities. In the statement figured three accounts in Peshawar banks held in the name of bin Laden and one in the name of his No.2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri (name of the branch not given). Of the three accounts of bin Laden, two were joint accounts held by him along with others and one was an account only in his name. The three bin Laden accounts, according to the statement, had balances of only US $ 306, US $ 342 and US $ 1585 and the account of Al-Zawahiri had a balance of US $ five only.

24.. The statement contained a remark that the account of Al-Zawahiri had remained dormant since 1993. There were no such remarks in respect of the accounts of bin Laden. Hence, they are presumed to have been active. The statement remained silent as to what were the various deposits made in the accounts and withdrawn or transferred from them before they were frozen, who were the beneficiaries etc.

25. According to the same statement, the HUM had three accounts with balances of US $ 62, US $ 48 and US $ 35. The JEM had one account with US $ 14.

26.Over the years, Pakistan, its military dictator Gen.Pervez Musharraf and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have fine-tuned the art of hoodwinking international community and particularly the US Administration-- whether it be in respect of its clandestine WMD assistance to North Korea and Iran, its sponsorship of cross-border terrorism into India and Afghanistan or evasion of action under the UNSCR No.1373 against terrorists and other organisations.

27. Unless India takes advantage of the slight opening provided by the US designation of Dawood as a global terrorist and acts proactively and aggressively through the UN monitoring mechanism and through bilateral channels to ensure that Pakistan does not again wriggle out of its obligations under the UNSC Resolution 1373, we will find history repeating itself.

28. In my paper No.515 of September 1, 2002, ( "INDIA'S NATIONAL SECURITY MANAGEMENT & 9/11") available at www.saag.org, I wrote as follows: "After 9/11, the purely legalistic approach to the question of blocking terrorist funding has given way to a more pragmatic approach, with actions now being taken by the international community against suspected terrorist accounts even on the basis of strong suspicion instead of waiting, as in the past, till legally sustainable evidence was forthcoming. This should have been taken advantage of by us by moving for the freezing of the bank accounts of Dawood Ibrahim and other members of his mafia group wherever they are held--whether in Pakistan, the UAE, South Africa, Nepal, Thailand or elsewhere. Our plea for action could have been justified on the basis of the strong evidence at our disposal regarding their involvement in the Mumbai blasts of March,1993."

29. In a paper (available at www.saag.org ) presented at a panel discussion on Terrorism in the Indian sub-continent , organized by the US-India Political Action Committee and the US-India Institute for Strategic Policy at Washington DC on July 16, 2003, I had stated as follows: " About 400 survivors of the 500-strong hardcore of Al Qaeda had crossed over into Pakistan from Afghanistan giving a slip to the US security forces in the beginning of last year. Of these, about 75 are estimated to have since moved over to Yemen and Saudi Arabia and 30 are estimated to have crossed over into Iran via Pakistan’s Balochistan. Of the remaining, about 75 took shelter in Karachi and 220 in Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Balochistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). Of the 75, who took shelter in Karachi, about 50 are still holed up in various hide-outs there with the assistance of their Pakistani sympathizers and the mafia gang led by Dawood Ibrahim, who is wanted by the Indian authorities for prosecution in connection with the Mumbai (Bombay) blasts of March,1993, a precursor of mass-casualty or catastrophic terrorism."

30. India should act on the US order and move against Pakistan before it is too late.

31. Annexed is an extract from a paper on terrorism and transnational crime presented by me at a meeting of a working group on this subject held in Shanghai, China, in May last year. "Herald", the monthly journal of the prestigious "Dawn" group, has since come out (August,2003) with more details on the presence of Dawood in Pakistan and his activities there.

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and, Convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-Mail: [e-mail] )

ANNEXURE

THE DAWOOD IBRAHIM GANG

Before March 1993, the Dawood Ibrahim group, which indulges in large-scale smuggling, money-laundering and other criminal activities, was operating from Dubai. In March 1993, this group organised at the instance of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan a series of explosions directed at important economic targets in Mumbai---such as the local stock exchange, which is the biggest in India, a local hotel for tourists run by the Air India etc.

Subsequent investigation brought out that the perpetrators of these acts of terrorism, all Indian nationals, had been recruited, at the instance of the ISI, by Dawood Ibrahim in Mumbai, taken to Pakistan via Dubai for training in the use of arms and ammunition and explosives and then sent back to Mumbai via Dubai. The Pakistani Consulate in Dubai issued them plain paper visas so that their passports did not carry any entries of their visit to Pakistan for training. However, Indian investigators managed to get xerox copies of the passenger manifests of the flights by which they went to Pakistan via Dubai for training. After they returned to Mumbai from Pakistan after the training, the explosives and other arms and ammunition required by them for organising the terrorist attacks were sent by the ISI by boat with the help of Dawood Ibrahim and clandestinely landed on the Western coast of India.

After carrying out the explosions, the perpetrators escaped to Pakistan, some via Dubai and some via Kathmandu, and were given sanctuary in Karachi by the ISI. When the Govt. of India took up with the Dubai authorities the question of the involvement of Dawood Ibrahim, the Dubai authorities pressured him to leave their territory. He took shelter in Karachi and has been living there since then along with some of the perpetrators, who have been given Pakistani passports under different names. Repeated requests by the Govt. of India to Islamabad for arresting and extraditing/deporting them to India have been turned down by Pakistan, which denies their presence in Pakistani territory. Red-cornered notices of the INTERPOL for their arrest have not been honoured by Pakistan.

This matter was again taken up by the Govt. of India with President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan when he visited India in July last. He denied their presence in Pakistani territory. Subsequently, "Newsline", a presitigious Pakistani monthly, in its issue for September, 2001, carried a detailed article on their presence and activities in Karachi. The Pakistani media reported that the journalist who wrote this article (Ghulam Hasnain) was detained and harassed by the Pakistani authorities.

The article stated as follows:" Dawood Ibrahim and his team, Mumbai's notorious underworld clan, including his right hand man Chota Shakeel and Jamal Memon, are on India's most wanted list for a series of bomb blasts in Mumbai and other criminal activities. After the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, the gang have made Karachi their new home and operating base. Living under fake names and IDs (identities), and given protection by government agencies, they have built up their underworld operations in Karachi employing local talent like Shoaib and Bholoo.

" In Pakistan, Dawood managed to establish another huge empire, comprising both legitimate and illegitimate businesses. In fact, the last few years have witnessed Dawood emerge as the don of Karachi. Dawood and his men have made heavy investments in prime properties in Karachi and Islamabad and are major players in the Karachi bourse and in the parallel credit system business--hundi. Dawood is also said to have rescued Pakistan's Central Bank, which was in crisis at one point, by providing a huge dollar loan. His businesses include gold and drug smuggling. The gang is also allegedly heavily involved in (cricket) match-fixing. "

The article added: " Not only have the Pakistani authorities turned a blind eye to the gang's activities within Pakistan, but many in the corridors of power have partaken of Dawood's hospitality.....He is said to have the protection of assorted intelligence agencies. In fact, Dawood and his men move around the city guarded by heavy escorts of armed men in civies believed to be personnel of a top Pakistani security agency. A number of Government undercover agents, who came into contact with Dawood because of their official duties, are now, in fact, working for him. Nearly all the men, who surround him for security reasons, are either retired or serving officers, claims an MQM (Muttahida Qaumi Movement) activist."

The article further said: " According to informed sources, Dawood is Pakistan's number one espionage operative. His men in Mumbai help him get whatever information he needs for Pakistan. Rumour has it that sometimes his men in Karachi accompany Pakistani intelligence agents to the airports to scan arriving passengers and identify RAW (Indian external intelligence) agents." (End of citation from the article)

Though the laws of Pakistan do not provide for "economic citizenships", the Pakistan Government informally provides them to international criminals and terrorists, who maintain a minimum dollar deposit in Pakistani banks and help the Government. Dawood Ibrahim, who had reportedly lent money to Pakistan in the past for the clandestine procurement of missiles and connected technology from China and North Korea, has been given informal "economic citizenship" in order to protect him from the arms of the Indian law and provided with a Pakistani passport under a different name .

After the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001, the Govt. of India has given to Pakistan a list of 20 terrorists, wanted for trial in India, who have been given sanctuary in Pakistan. The list includes the names of Dawood Ibrahim and other members of his mafia group wanted for trial in connection with the explosions in Mumbai in March 1993 and other crimes. Pakistan continues to take up the stand that they are not in its territory.

It is alleged that Dawood Ibrahim played an active role in organising the recent referendum campaign of Musharraf in Karachi and in bringing voters to the polling booths in trucks to vote for Musharraf. ( End of extract)

http://www.saag.org/papers9/paper818.html

Remember that Dawood Ibrahim is listed in the unabridged American Judas as a connection between ISI and BCCI:

Right from its inception, the clandestine nuclear and missile projects in Pakistan were treated as a top secret intel op of the ISI to ensure deniability. All payments to the foreign suppliers were made not from the accounts of the Govt of Pakistan, but from private accounts in the BCCI, which collapsed in 1991, and other Dubai and Geneva based banks. These accounts were opened by the Gokul brothers of Geneva, one of whom was jailed for cheating in the UK after the collapse of the BCCI; Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan’s present Finance Minister, who was working in the Gulf for the Citibank in the 1990s; Dawood Ibrahim, the mafia leader who was designated by the US as an intl terrorist in Oct; Dubai-based Pakistani smugglers, and AQ Khan and other trusted Pakistani scientists.

http://www.kashmirherald.com/featuredarticle/nuclearjihad.html

Ibrahim is right in the thick of the action that Sibel Edmonds spoke of.

robertpaulsen (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-16-04 02:16 AM
Response to Reply #194

196. Ibrahim's response to AQ Khan probe: plastic surgery.


Dawood Ibrahim, who is reportedly living in the VIP area of Islamabad under heavy security comparable to senior most generals and ISI chief, has been undergoing plastic surgery to alter his looks ever since October last year when the US declared that he was linked to the money-laundering of Al-Qaeda funds, according to Pak sources based in London.

Khan probe forces Dawood to alter looks surgically

The US Treasury Department has found that he was funnelling funds for Al-Qaeda, Taliban and other terrorist organisations including Lashkar-e-Taiba. It also found that Dawood had struck a deal with Osama bin Laden to use his wide network to acquire funds from various charitable organisations.

The Treasury Department with the approval of the UN declared Dawood, in mid-October last year as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist".

"Just like in the case of Dr Khan, most in authority in Islamabad thus cannot afford to let Dawood out of the country and made to talk. He has surely been used by the ISI in Afghanistan or has at least enjoyed its benevolence."

Dawood would have also realised that the Americans could ask for fuller inquiry and his interrogation. Islamabad would have then been unable to resist the American pressure as it could that of India's and get away by stating that he was not in Pakistan. An altered appearance could help in again iterating that he had left the country.

This is why the sources said there has been utter secrecy over the surgery. "The rumours have nevertheless persisted although there is no way to confirm."

According to reports he was last seen quite a few months ago at a wedding but since then he has not been spotted in public.

But, according to recent reports Dawood has been more worried for his safety since the start last November of investigations into Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan's selling of nuclear weapons technology and his nexus with the underworld for acquiring N-material and laundering his ill-gotten wealth.

"The report that Dr Khan was in critical condition after a sudden heart attack or even the amended report that he was in very bad health must have made the ever suspicious Dawood even more concerned."

There is one report that like Dr Khan who possibly sent out of Pakistan through his daughter Dina, documents and a taped statement incriminating General including President Musharraf in his proliferation activities to ensure his own safety, Dawood has done the same. He has kept papers with his trusted men outside Pakistan.

The name of Dawood has not so far been mentioned as one of the underworld links of Dr Khan but the fact that Dubai was the main channel for leaking the N-technology and for sending out and receiving material surfaced quite early in the investigations about Dr Khan's activities.

Dawood's network in Dubai is well-known and it is now being said that his set-up with its wide-reach and large number of trusted operatives "came in handy" for the surreptitious proliferation and money-laundering. "It could have possibly won him passage to Pakistan through Dr Khan and his sympathisers in power."

Dawood was, it is alleged, part of the group of people linked with Dr Khan's proliferation and money-laundering activities. It included one known as bullion king, a major player in the Pak Stock and Exchange, a big gold dealer in Dubai and two army officers, a colonel and a major, both of whom were conduits for transfer of N-technology to Libya.

The recent exposure of a Malaysian company that shipped a cargo of N-material to Dubai and specially the arrest of a Pak businessman Aizaz Jafri, alleged to be the frontman for Dr Khan could have alarmed Dawood more. Jafri was the middleman for Khan in the international black market network in the nuclear materials set up by the disgraced scientist.

The chains of hotels and restaurants owned fully or partially by Dr Khan were also managed by Jafri. Notably, Jafri made frequent trips to Dubai when Dawood was there. Intelligence agrees, that Dawood could fear exposure from persons like Jafri and several other businessmen who have been arrested. Worse his links in the ISI would fear too the likelihood of suspicion falling on him, for that would expose them.

Dawood is currently under 24-hour security, albeit for his own safety just like Dr Khan. He would very much wish he disappears with changed appearance rather than be caught in the Khan storm, particularly after hearing that the scientist's health has suddenly deteriorated.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/2004/Feb/17/5983_574935,00430005.htm

Let's see if there's any more dirt we can dig up on this AQ Khan front man I was previously unaware of, Aizaz Jafri.

robertpaulsen (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-16-04 06:53 PM
Response to Reply #203

244. Thanks Pallas! I found the link to Scomi: Peter Griffin!


Reading more on Dawood Ibrahim and his alliance with AQ Khan frontman Aizaz Jafri, I found this little gem:

The spotlight , it is feared in certain quarters, could at some stage fall on him. Every investigation has led to Dubai. British and French Intelligence officers seized computers from the home of a British businessman named as a central suspect in the network supplying Libya, Iran and North Korea with nuclear equipment. The Guardian revealed that Peter Griffin and his son Paul spoke from Dubai where they have an office denying all involvement. But the fact to note is that they too have an office in Dubai.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/2004/Feb/13/5983_571703,00430005.htm

And what Malaysian company is Griffin connected with?

The Malaysian investigations:
BSA TAHIR, a SRI LANKAN businessman based in DUBAI was a trusted and close
confidante of A. Q. Khan and was actively involved in supplying centrifuge
components for Libya's uranium-enrichment program. BSA TAHIR, who was
involved in the business of SCOMI PRECISION ENGINEERING SDN BHD (SCOPE). He
used the company to produce components for the centrifuge unit for the
uranium enrichment program. However, investigations have revealed that the
components, on their own, cannot form a complete centrifuge unit. In this
context, it has to be noted that SCOPE is a subsidiary of SCOMI GROUP BHD,
i.e. a company involved in the petroleum services industry. As a subsidiary,
SCOPE is also involved in precision engineering services, which involves the
production of components for a variety of equipments including parts for
cars, petroleum and gas. This makes evident that SCOPE could not be labeled
as a company directly involved in nuclear proliferation.

Furthermore, the supply of components by middlemen was carried out in a
discreet manner and involved suppliers from other countries to blur the
sources of the components. Some of the suppliers were believed to be aware
that these components could be for uranium enrichment centrifuges. Generally
these suppliers mostly from Europe were those who had dealings with the
nuclear expert since the 1980s, at a time when PAKISTAN was developing its
nuclear technology. There were a number of individuals and companies which
supplied the components but were unaware of the implications because some of
the components were similar to components used in oil drilling, water
treatment and equipment for several other general use.

D. UNITED KINGDOM
PETER GRIFFIN, a citizen of UNITED KINGDOM who has business interests in
DUBAI and currently residing in FRANCE. Alleged to have supplied the layout
plan for the Machine Shop 1001 as a workshop to enable LIBYA to produce
centrifuge; About 2001/2002, PETER GRIFFIN is alleged to have supplied a lathe machine
to LIBYA for the Machine Shop 1001 Project. After that PETER GRIFFIN arranged
to send 7 to 8 LIBYAN technicians to SPAIN, twice, to attend courses on how to
operate the machine. At the same time, PETER GRIFFIN is also said to have
supplied an ITALIAN - made furnace to LIBYA for the workshop. Usually, lathe machines
are used to make cylindrical objects, while the furnace is essential in the
process of heating and refining during the manufacture of certain components;

http://icssa.org/Nuclear_Malaysia.htm

How about that? I think we're making progress on this trail! Now, how can we link this cast of nefarious characters with the 9/11 principals?

Pallas180 (1000+ posts) Tue Aug-17-04 02:10 AM
Response to Reply #244

291. RP - BINGO - how bout linking Peter to


one of Halliburton companies in England or otherwise?


My response to Pallas: I'll look for it!

[Pallas180]

84. A poster sent me this Astonishing Article:

It's either someone who has read everything we've written on the threads and encapsulated it with absolute clarity, or whose mind followed exactly the same path, but it's fantastic, and reprinting is allowed:

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/011004Hasty/011004hasty.html

Commentary

Paranoid shift

By Michael Hasty Online Journal Contributing Writer

January 10, 2004—Just before his death, James Jesus Angleton, the legendary chief of counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency, was a bitter man. He felt betrayed by the people he had worked for all his life. In the end, he had come to realize that they were never really interested in American ideals of "freedom" and "democracy." They really only wanted "absolute power."

Angleton told author Joseph Trento that the reason he had gotten the counterintelligence job in the first place was by agreeing not to submit "sixty of Allen Dulles' closest friends" to a polygraph test concerning their business deals with the Nazis. In his end-of-life despair, Angleton assumed that he would see all his old companions again "in hell."

The transformation of James Jesus Angleton from an enthusiastic, Ivy League cold warrior, to a bitter old man, is an extreme example of a phenomenon I call a "paranoid shift." I recognize the phenomenon, because something similar happened to me.

Although I don't remember ever meeting James Jesus Angleton, I worked at the CIA myself as a low-level clerk as a teenager in the '60s. This was at the same time I was beginning to question the government's actions in Vietnam. In fact, my personal "paranoid shift" probably began with the disillusionment I felt when I realized that the story of American foreign policy was, at the very least, more complicated and darker than I had hitherto been led to believe.

But for most of the next 30 years, even though I was a radical, I nevertheless held faith in the basic integrity of a system where power ultimately resided in the people, and whereby if enough people got together and voted, real and fundamental change could happen.

What constitutes my personal paranoid shift is that I no longer believe this to be necessarily true.

In his book, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower," William Blum warns of how the media will make anything that smacks of "conspiracy theory" an immediate "object of ridicule." This prevents the media from ever having to investigate the many strange interconnections among the ruling class—for example, the relationship between the boards of directors of media giants, and the energy, banking and defense industries. These unmentionable topics are usually treated with what Blum calls "the media's most effective tool—silence." But in case somebody's asking questions, all you have to do is say, "conspiracy theory," and any allegation instantly becomes too frivolous to merit serious attention.

On the other hand, since my paranoid shift, whenever I hear the words "conspiracy theory" (which seems more often, lately) it usually means someone is getting too close to the truth.

Take September 11—which I identify as the date my paranoia actually shifted, though I didn't know it at the time.

Unless I'm paranoid, it doesn't make any sense at all that George W. Bush, commander-in-chief, sat in a second-grade classroom for 20 minutes after he was informed that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center, listening to children read a story about a goat. Nor does it make sense that the Number 2 man, Dick Cheney—even knowing that "the commander" was on a mission in Florida—nevertheless sat at his desk in the White House, watching TV, until the Secret Service dragged him out by the armpits.

Unless I'm paranoid, it makes no sense that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sat at his desk until Flight 77 hit the Pentagon—well over an hour after the military had learned about the multiple hijacking in progress. It also makes no sense that the brand-new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sat in a Senate office for two hours while the 9/11 attacks took place, after leaving explicit instructions that he not be disturbed—which he wasn't.

In other words, while the 9/11 attacks were occurring, the entire top of the chain of command of the most powerful military in the world sat at various desks, inert. Why weren't they in the "Situation Room?" Don't any of them ever watch "West Wing?"

In a sane world, this would be an object of major scandal. But here on this side of the paranoid shift, it's business as usual.

Years, even decades before 9/11, plans had been drawn up for American forces to take control of the oil interests of the Middle East, for various imperialist reasons. And these plans were only contingent upon "a catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor," to gain the majority support of the American public to set the plans into motion. When the opportunity presented itself, the guards looked the other way . . . and presto, the path to global domination was open.

Simple, as long as the media played along. And there is voluminous evidence that the media play along. Number one on Project Censored's annual list of underreported stories in 2002 was the Project for a New American Century (now the infrastructure of the Bush Regime), whose report, published in 2000, contains the above "Pearl Harbor" quote.

Why is it so hard to believe serious people who have repeatedly warned us that powerful ruling elites are out to dominate "the masses?" Did we think Dwight Eisenhower was exaggerating when he warned of the extreme "danger" to democracy of "the military industrial complex?" Was Barry Goldwater just being a quaint old-fashioned John Bircher when he said that the Trilateral Commission was "David Rockefeller's latest scheme to take over the world, by taking over the government of the United States?" Were Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt or Joseph Kennedy just being class traitors when they talked about a small group of wealthy elites who operate as a hidden government behind the government? Especially after he died so mysteriously, why shouldn't we believe the late CIA Director William Colby, who bragged about how the CIA "owns everyone of any major significance in the major media?"

Why can't we believe James Jesus Angleton—a man staring eternal judgment in the face—when he says that the founders of the Cold War national security state were only interested in "absolute power?" Especially when the descendant of a very good friend of Allen Dulles now holds power in the White House.

Prescott Bush, the late, aristocratic senator from Connecticut, and grandfather of George W Bush, was not only a good friend of Allen Dulles, CIA director, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and international business lawyer. He was also a client of Dulles' law firm. As such, he was the beneficiary of Dulles' miraculous ability to scrub the story of Bush's treasonous investments in the Third Reich out of the news media, where it might have interfered with Bush's political career . . . not to mention the presidential careers of his son and grandson.

Recently declassified US government documents, unearthed last October by investigative journalist John Buchanan at the New Hampshire Gazette, reveal that Prescott Bush's involvement in financing and arming the Nazis was more extensive than previously known. Not only was Bush managing director of the Union Banking Corporation, the American branch of Hitler's chief financier's banking network; but among the other companies where Bush was a director—and which were seized by the American government in 1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Act—were a shipping line which imported German spies; an energy company that supplied the Luftwaffe with high-ethyl fuel; and a steel company that employed Jewish slave labor from the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Like all the other Bush scandals that have been swept under the rug in the privatized censorship of the corporate media, these revelations have been largely ignored, with the exception of a single article in the Associated Press. And there are those, even on the left, who question the current relevance of this information.

But Prescott Bush's dealings with the Nazis do more than illustrate a family pattern of genteel treason and war profiteering—from George Senior's sale of TOW missiles to Iran at the same time he was selling biological and chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein, to Junior's zany misadventures in crony capitalism in present-day Iraq.

More disturbing by far are the many eerie parallels between Adolph Hitler and George W. Bush:

A conservative, authoritarian style, with public appearances in military uniform (which no previous American president has ever done while in office). Government by secrecy, propaganda and deception. Open assaults on labor unions and workers' rights. Preemptive war and militant nationalism. Contempt for international law and treaties. Suspiciously convenient "terrorist" attacks, to justify a police state and the suspension of liberties. A carefully manufactured image of "The Leader," who's still just a "regular guy" and a "moderate." "Freedom" as the rationale for every action. Fantasy economic growth, based on unprecedented budget deficits and massive military spending.

And a cold, pragmatic ideology of fascism—including the violent suppression of dissent and other human rights; the use of torture, assassination and concentration camps; and most important, Benito Mussolini's preferred definition of "fascism" as "corporatism, because it binds together the interests of corporations and the state."

By their fruits, you shall know them.

What perplexes me most is probably the same question that plagues most paranoiacs: why don't other people see these connections?

Oh, sure, there may be millions of us, lurking at websites like Online Journal, From the Wilderness, Center for Cooperative Research, and the Center for Research on Globalization, checking out right-wing conspiracists and the galaxy of 9/11 sites, and reading columnists like Chris Floyd at the Moscow Times, and Maureen Farrell at Buzzflash. But we know we are only a furtive minority, the human remnant among the pod people in the live-action, 21st-century version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

And being paranoid, we have to figure out, with an answer that fits into our system, why more people don't see the connections we do. Fortunately, there are a number of possible explanations.

First on the list would have to be what Marshal McLuhan called the "cave art of the electronic age:" advertising. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Karl Rove, gave credit for most of his ideas on how to manipulate mass opinion to American commercial advertising, and to the then-new science of "public relations." But the public relations universe available to the corporate empire that rules the world today makes the Goebbels operation look primitive. The precision of communications technology and graphics; the century of research on human psychology and emotion; and the uniquely centralized control of triumphant post-Cold War monopoly capitalism, have combined to the point where "the manufacture of consent" can be set on automatic pilot.

A second major reason people won't make the paranoid shift is that they are too fundamentally decent. They can't believe that the elected leaders of our country, the people they've been taught through 12 years of public school to admire and trust, are capable of sending young American soldiers to their deaths and slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians, just to satisfy their greed—especially when they're so rich in the first place. Besides, America is good, and the media are liberal and overly critical.

Third, people don't want to look like fools. Being a "conspiracy theorist" is like being a creationist. The educated opinion of eminent experts on every TV and radio network is that any discussion of "oil" being a motivation for the US invasion of Iraq is just out of bounds, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a "conspiracy theorist." We can trust the integrity of our 'no-bid" contracting in Iraq, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a "conspiracy theorist." Of course, people sometimes make mistakes, but our military and intelligence community did the best they could on and before September 11, and anybody who thinks otherwise is a "conspiracy theorist."

Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin of JFK, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a "conspiracy theorist."

Perhaps the biggest hidden reason people don't make the paranoid shift is that knowledge brings responsibility. If we acknowledge that an inner circle of ruling elites controls the world's most powerful military and intelligence system; controls the international banking system; controls the most effective and far-reaching propaganda network in history; controls all three branches of government in the world's only superpower; and controls the technology that counts the people's votes, we might be then forced to conclude that we don't live in a particularly democratic system. And then voting and making contributions and trying to stay informed wouldn't be enough. Because then the duty of citizenship would go beyond serving as a loyal opposition, to serving as a "loyal resistance"—like the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, except that in this case the resistance to fascism would be on the side of the national ideals, rather than the government; and a violent insurgency would not only play into the empire's hands, it would be doomed from the start.

Forming a nonviolent resistance movement, on the other hand, might mean forsaking some middle class comfort, and it would doubtless require a lot of work. It would mean educating ourselves and others about the nature of the truly apocalyptic beast we face. It would mean organizing at the most basic neighborhood level, face to face. (We cannot put our trust in the empire's technology.) It would mean reaching across turf lines and transcending single-issue politics, forming coalitions and sharing data and names and strategies, and applying energy at every level of government, local to global. It would also probably mean civil disobedience, at a time when the Bush regime is starting to classify that action as "terrorism." In the end, it may mean organizing a progressive confederacy to govern ourselves, just as our revolutionary founders formed the Continental Congress. It would mean being wise as serpents, and gentle as doves.

It would be a lot of work. It would also require critical mass. A paradigm shift.

But as a paranoid, I'm ready to join the resistance. And the main reason is I no longer think that the "conspiracy" is much of a "theory."

That the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy was "probably" the result of "a conspiracy," and that 70 percent of Americans agree with this conclusion, is not a "theory." It's fact.

That the Bay of Pigs fiasco, "Operation Zapata," was organized by members of Skull and Bones, the ghoulish and powerful secret society at Yale University whose membership also included Prescott, George Herbert Walker and George W Bush; that two of the ships that carried the Cuban counterrevolutionaries to their appointment with absurdity were named the "Barbara" and the "Houston"—George HW Bush's city of residence at the time—and that the oil company Bush owned, then operating in the Caribbean area, was named "Zapata," is not "theory." It's fact.

That George Bush was the CIA director who kept the names of what were estimated to be hundreds of American journalists, considered to be CIA "assets," from the Church Committee, the US Senate Intelligence Committe chaired by Senator Frank Church that investigated the CIA in the 1970s; that a 1971 University of Michigan study concluded that, in America, the more TV you watched, the less you knew; and that a recent survey by international scholars found that Americans were the most "ignorant" of world affairs out of all the populations they studied, is not a "theory." It's fact.

That the Council on Foreign Relations has a history of influence on official US government foreign policy; that the protection of US supplies of Middle East oil has been a central element of American foreign policy since the Second World War; and that global oil production has been in decline since its peak year, 2000, is not "theory." It's fact.

That, in the early 1970s, the newly-formed Trilateral Commission published a report which recommended that, in order for "globalization" to succeed, American manufacturing jobs had to be exported, and American wages had to decline, which is exactly what happened over the next three decades; and that, during that same period, the richest one percent of Americans doubled their share of the national wealth, is not "theory." It's fact.

That, beyond their quasi-public role as agents of the US Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Banks are profit-making corporations, whose beneficiaries include some of America's wealthiest families; and that the United States has a virtual controlling interest in the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, the three dominant global financial institutions, is not a "theory." It's fact.

That—whether it's heroin from Southeast Asia in the '60s and '70s, or cocaine from Central America and heroin from Afghanistan in the '80s, or cocaine from Colombia in the '90s, or heroin from Afghanistan today—no major CIA covert operation has ever lacked a drug smuggling component, and that the CIA has hired Nazis, fascists, drug dealers, arms smugglers, mass murderers, perverts, sadists, terrorists and the Mafia, is not "theory." It's fact.

That the international oil industry is the dominant player in the global economy; that the Bush family has a decades-long business relationship with the Saudi royal family, Saudi oil money, and the family of Osama bin Laden; that, as president, both George Bushes have favored the interests of oil companies over the public interest; that both George Bushes have personally profited financially from Middle East oil; and that American oil companies doubled their records for quarterly profits in the months just preceding the invasion of Iraq, is not "theory." It's fact.

That the 2000 presidential election was deliberately stolen; that the pro-Bush/anti-Gore bias in the corporate media had spiked markedly in the last three weeks of the campaign; that corporate media were then virtually silent about the Florida recount; and that the Bush 2000 team had planned to challenge the legitimacy of the election if George W had won the popular, but lost the electoral vote—exactly what happened to Gore—is not "theory." It's fact.

That the intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was deceptively "cooked" by the Bush administration; that anybody paying attention to people like former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, knew before the invasion that the weapons were a hoax; and that American forces in Iraq today are applying the same brutal counterinsurgency tactics pioneered in Central America in the 1980s, under the direct supervision of then-Vice President George HW Bush, is not a "theory." It's fact.

That "Rebuilding America's Defenses," the Project for a New American Century's 2000 report, and "The Grand Chessboard," a book published a few years earlier by Trilateral Commission co-founder Zbigniew Brzezinski, both recommended a more robust and imperial US military presence in the oil basin of the Middle East and the Caspian region; and that both also suggested that American public support for this energy crusade would depend on public response to a new "Pearl Harbor," is not "theory." It's fact.

That, in the 1960s, the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously approved a plan called "Operation Northwoods," to stage terrorist attacks on American soil that could be used to justify an invasion of Cuba; and that there is currently an office in the Pentagon whose function is to instigate terrorist attacks that could be used to justify future strategically-desired military responses, is not a "theory." It's fact.

That neither the accusation by former British Environmental Minister Michael Meacher, Tony Blair's longest-serving cabinet minister, that George W Bush allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen to justify an oil war in the Middle East; nor the RICO lawsuit filed by 9/11 widow Ellen Mariani against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the Council on Foreign Relations (among others), on the grounds that they conspired to let the attacks happen to cash in on the ensuing war profiteering, has captured the slightest attention from American corporate media is not a "theory." It's fact.

That the FBI has completely exonerated—though never identified—the speculators who purchased, a few days before the attacks (through a bank whose previous director is now the CIA executive director), an unusual number of "put" options, and who made millions betting that the stocks in American and United Airlines would crash, is not a "theory." It's fact.

That the US intelligence community received numerous warnings, from multiple sources, throughout the summer of 2001, that a major terrorist attack on American interests was imminent; that, according to the chair of the "independent" 9/11 commission, the attacks "could have and should have been prevented," and according to a Senate Intelligence Committee member, "All the dots were connected;" that the White House has verified George W Bush's personal knowledge, as of August 6, 2001, that these terrorist attacks might be domestic and might involve hijacked airliners; that, in the summer of 2001, at the insistence of the American Secret Service, anti-aircraft ordnance was installed around the city of Genoa, Italy, to defend against a possible terrorist suicide attack, by aircraft, against George W Bush, who was attending the economic summit there; and that George W Bush has nevertheless regaled audiences with his first thought upon seeing the "first" plane hit the World Trade Center, which was: "What a terrible pilot," is not "theory." It's fact.

That, on the morning of September 11, 2001: standard procedures and policies at the nation's air defense and aviation bureaucracies were ignored, and communications were delayed; the black boxes of the planes that hit the WTC were destroyed, but hijacker Mohammed Atta's passport was found in pristine condition; high-ranking Pentagon officers had cancelled their commercial flight plans for that morning; George H.W. Bush was meeting in Washington with representatives of Osama bin Laden's family, and other investors in the world's largest private equity firm, the Carlyle Group; the CIA was conducting a previously-scheduled mock exercise of an airliner hitting the Pentagon; the chairs of both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees were having breakfast with the chief of Pakistan's intelligence agency, who resigned a week later on suspicion of involvement in the 9/11 attacks; and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States sat in a second grade classroom for 20 minutes after hearing that a second plane had struck the towers, listening to children read a story about a goat, is not "theoretical." These are facts.

That the Bush administration has desperately fought every attempt to independently investigate the events of 9/11, is not a "theory."

Nor, finally, is it in any way a "theory" that the one, single name that can be directly linked to the Third Reich, the US military industrial complex, Skull and Bones, Eastern Establishment good ol' boys, the Illuminati, Big Texas Oil, the Bay of Pigs, the Miami Cubans, the Mafia, the FBI, the JFK assassination, the New World Order, Watergate, the Republican National Committee, Eastern European fascists, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the United Nations, CIA headquarters, the October Surprise, the Iran/Contra scandal, Inslaw, the Christic Institute, Manuel Noriega, drug-running "freedom fighters" and death squads, Iraqgate, Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction, the blood of innocents, the savings and loan crash, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the "Octopus," the "Enterprise," the Afghan mujaheddin, the War on Drugs, Mena (Arkansas), Whitewater, Sun Myung Moon, the Carlyle Group, Osama bin Laden and the Saudi royal family, David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States, is: George Herbert Walker Bush.

"Theory?" To the contrary.

It is a well-documented, tragic and—especially if you're paranoid—terrifying fact.

Michael Hasty is a writer, activist, musician, carpenter and farmer. His award-winning column, "Thinking Locally," appeared for seven years in the Hampshire Review, West Virginia's oldest newspaper. His writing has also appeared in the Highlands Voice, the Washington Peace Letter, the Takoma Park Newsletter, the German magazine Generational Justice, and the Washington Post; and at the websites Common Dreams and Democrats.com. In January 1989, he was the media spokesperson for the counter-inaugural coalition at George Bush's Counter-Inaugural Banquet, which fed hundreds of DC's homeless in front of Union Station, where the official inaugural dinner was being held.

Permission to reprint is granted, provided it includes this autobiographical note, and credit for first publication to Online Journal.

[Zan_of_Texas]

96. Had read that before,

but I find the more I know, the better I'm able to absorb the big picture, and the little stuff that it's composed of.

Stuff I thought was totally off the wall or incomprehensible two years ago now makes sense.

If the date January 2004 is correct on the article, he couldn't have possible read all the Plame threads.

[Pallas180]

99. Thanks Zan. I hasdn't noted the date. We're doing all the work

that he has already done. :)

I just think the clarity of the entire paper is overwhelming and
fantastic.

[Pallas180]

100. IKE, GOLDWATER, ROOSEVELT, KENNEDY, & CIA COLBY

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/011004Hasty/011004hasty.html

From Hasty's Paper:

"Why is it so hard to believe serious people who have repeatedly warned us that powerful ruling elites are out to dominate "the masses?" Did we think Dwight Eisenhower was exaggerating when he warned of the extreme "danger" to democracy of "the military industrial complex?" Was Barry Goldwater just being a quaint old-fashioned John Bircher when he said that the Trilateral Commission was "David Rockefeller's latest scheme to take over the world, by taking over the government of the United States?" Were Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt or Joseph Kennedy just being class traitors when they talked about a small group of wealthy elites who operate as a hidden government behind the government? Especially after he died so mysteriously, why shouldn't we believe the late CIA Director William Colby, who bragged about how the CIA "owns everyone of any major significance in the major media?"

[Pallas180]

107. THE INNER CIRCLE OF RULING ELITES & WHAT THEY CONTROL

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/011004Hasty/011004hasty.html


Perhaps the biggest hidden reason people don't make the shift to understanding what their government has done is that knowledge brings responsibility.

If we acknowledge that an inner circle of ruling elites controls the world's most powerful military and intelligence system; controls the international banking system; controls the most effective and far-reaching propaganda network in history; controls all three branches of government in the world's only superpower; and controls the technology that counts the people's votes, we might be then forced to conclude that we don't live in a particularly democratic system.

And then voting and making contributions and trying to stay informed wouldn't be enough. Because then the duty of citizenship would go beyond serving as a loyal opposition, to serving as a "loyal resistance"—like the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, except that in this case the resistance to fascism would be on the side of the national ideals, rather than the government; and a violent insurgency would not only play into the empire's hands, it would be doomed from the start.


Forming a nonviolent resistance movement, on the other hand, might mean forsaking some middle class comfort, and it would doubtless require a lot of work.

It would mean educating ourselves and others about the nature of the truly apocalyptic beast we face. It would mean organizing at the most basic neighborhood level, face to face. (We cannot put our trust in the empire's technology.) It would mean reaching across turf lines and transcending single-issue politics, forming coalitions and sharing data and names and strategies, and applying energy at every level of government, local to global.

It would also probably mean civil disobedience, at a time when the Bush regime is starting to classify that action as "terrorism." In the end, it may mean organizing a progressive confederacy to govern ourselves, just as our revolutionary founders formed the Continental Congress. It would mean being wise as serpents, and gentle as doves.

[robertpaulsen]

118. A NEW PEARL HARBOR

Years, even decades before 9/11, plans had been drawn up for American forces to take control of the oil interests of the Middle East, for various imperialist reasons. And these plans were only contingent upon "a catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor," to gain the majority support of the American public to set the plans into motion. When the opportunity presented itself, the guards looked the other way . . . and presto, the path to global domination was open.

Simple, as long as the media played along. And there is voluminous evidence that the media play along. Number one on Project Censored's annual list of underreported stories in 2002 was the Project for a New American Century (now the infrastructure of the Bush Regime), whose report, published in 2000, contains the above "Pearl Harbor" quote.

snip

That "Rebuilding America's Defenses," the Project for a New American Century's 2000 report, and "The Grand Chessboard," a book published a few years earlier by Trilateral Commission co-founder Zbigniew Brzezinski, both recommended a more robust and imperial US military presence in the oil basin of the Middle East and the Caspian region; and that both also suggested that American public support for this energy crusade would depend on public response to a new "Pearl Harbor," is not "theory." It's fact.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/011004Hasty/011004hasty.html

[Pallas180]

125. BUSH FAMILY PATTERN OF GENTEEL TREASON & PROFITEERING

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/011004Hasty/011004hasty.html

(dying CIA agent) Angleton told author Joseph Trento that the reason he had gotten the counterintelligence job in the first place was by agreeing not to submit "sixty of Allen Dulles' closest friends" to a polygraph test concerning their business deals with the Nazis.

"Why can't we believe (dying CIA agent) James Jesus Angleton—a man staring eternal judgment in the face—when he says that the founders of the Cold War national security state were only interested in "absolute power?" Especially when the descendant of a very good friend of Allen Dulles now holds power in the White House.

Prescott Bush, the late, aristocratic senator from Connecticut, and grandfather of George W Bush, was not only a good friend of Allen Dulles, CIA director, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and international business lawyer. He was also a client of Dulles' law firm. As such, he was the beneficiary of Dulles' miraculous ability to scrub the story of Bush's treasonous investments in the Third Reich out of the news media, where it might have interfered with Bush's political career . . . not to mention the presidential careers of his son and grandson.

Recently declassified US government documents, unearthed last October by investigative journalist John Buchanan at the New Hampshire Gazette, reveal that Prescott Bush's involvement in financing and arming the Nazis was more extensive than previously known. Not only was Bush managing director of the Union Banking Corporation, the American branch of Hitler's chief financier's banking network; but among the other companies where Bush was a director—and which were seized by the American government in 1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Act—were a shipping line which imported German spies; an energy company that supplied the Luftwaffe with high-ethyl fuel; and a steel company that employed Jewish slave labor from the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Like all the other Bush scandals that have been swept under the rug in the privatized censorship of the corporate media, these revelations have been largely ignored, with the exception of a single article in the Associated Press. And there are those, even on the left, who question the current relevance of this information.

But Prescott Bush's dealings with the Nazis do more than illustrate a family pattern of genteel treason and war profiteering—from George Senior's sale of TOW missiles to Iran at the same time he was selling biological and chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein, to Junior's zany misadventures in crony capitalism in present-day Iraq.

[robertpaulsen]

101. I couldn't have said it better myself. Pallas, you found a diamond here!

I remember when the Plame threads were first starting out, one poster praised the strength of the thread at around the second or third thread, and I'm paraphrasing here, as using the Plame outing as a focal point for creating a unified BFEE theory. This article doesn't use the Plame thread as a focal point, but as a unified BFEE theory, I admire Michael Hasty for his factual documentation of why his theory doesn't really involve much theorizing, just connecting the friggin' dots!

These dots can be connected here to the Plame exposure much easier with the help of this article. Thanks Pallas! Another gem that belongs on every thread.

[Pallas180]

104. OK RP - you got it - every thread - would you

think that we could post pertinent parts of this "documentation" as
paragraphs here in different posts?

I'm so impressed. We're running around all over the internet looking
for this information...and voila - he's got it all....

Of course he doesn't have the connections of the companies leading back to Halliburton and Cheney and black market sell, make war,
sell armaments, make profits, make bonuses....but we could always send
him our stuff too. Is that alright with you RP?

We probably should put in links which he hasn't done in his paper, for verfification.

That's one thing we do very very well. We verify our information and
theory for everyone to see.

[robertpaulsen]

113. Absolutely! I'll see if he has an e-mail contact there.

I'm sure he'd love American Judas and so many other great posts here at the Plame thread. Send away!

[RebelYell]

103. We got the article from Minstrel Boy, who.....

....has a blog!

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/

I've just listened to his interview by Fintan Dunne from:

http://www.breakfornews.com

Thanks, Minstrel Boy, and Pallas, for posting that link here.

[Pallas180]

108. One of the things we need to continue to try to do is tie Goss

an old time buddy of the "cabal" and CIA, (who was blind to 24 helicopters disappearing in his back yard and the drug trafficing in
his back yard and Atta and hijackers taking flying lessons in his back
yard) and who met with the hijackers' money man two weeks before and
also on the morning of the WTC 9 11 Pearl Harbor day - back into the cabal and 911.

And I suspect that is why dimson wants him as head of all intel agencies. Just as Goss did with 911 investigations, he'll cover
any trails for the cabal.

We need to find his old trails that may not be covered.

Google anyone?

[RebelYell]

110. Goss and the Pollard case

Very good article, mentioning Goss, Edmonds, Pollard, et al

~~~~~~~~

"There's something else that Pollard gave Israel, which may clue us into why Porter Goss, George Tenent and Casper Weinberger are so reluctant to see him released. It seems, according to an article that appeared in the June 2003 issue of Moment magazine, that Pollard gave Israel the 1984 list of Arab intelligence agents, including Osama Bin Laden.

According to the author, Attorney John Loftus, former prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice, "Pollard's file shows that, contrary to what Congress was told, US intelligence knew perfectly well that they were laundering money through Saudi Arabia to fund known terrorists in their drive to oust the Russians from Afghanistan. To protect themselves from charges of negligence, senior members of US intelligence covered up the Saudi-Al-Qaeda connection right up to 9/11."

Here's what Goss, the man who had breakfast on 9/11 with the hijackers' paymaster, had to say about Pollard: "He is one of the worst traitors in our nation's history. There is absolutely no reason to let this guy out of jail. None."

I believe that what lawmakers Goss, Graham, Kyle and every other president and advisor since Carter dread is the possibility of a disclosure of the money trail. It would be a supreme shame and heads would definitely roll."

~~~~~~~~

Much more here:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=4056

From Part I of the article:

~~~~~~~~

"If Porter Goss, who was intimately involved in the intelligence community during America's years of historic foreign policy blunders, becomes head of the CIA, then America, the American Jewish community and Israel has a lot to be concerned about. He will more than likely continue to court Pakistan, Egypt and the Saudis, rather than expose the depths of negligence and take corrective measures - it's just too embarrassing to do otherwise."

Much more here:
http://www.israelnn.com/article.php3?id=4051

[robertpaulsen]

114. Thanks for the link, Reb!

I've always enjoyed Minstrel Boy's posts. I'm sure he's been lurking here when he can, though I haven't seen him post in several threads. But sometimes it's hard to keep up with all the info that comes out here, so its good to keep people updated.

[Name removed]

150. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[coeur_de_lion]

98. there is another thread on the "Plame indictments" here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2208623

For those of you who are interested.

[Pallas180]

109. MEHR SUGGESTED LETTER TO CONGRESS RE; GOSS

with thanks to Mehr who says use all or any part of this letter to
stop Goss' confirmation.

Both the republicans and democrats need to receive this, because the
dems alone dont have enough votes to stop it.




Dear _____________:

I write this letter as a concerned citizen of the United States of America. Our president has named a man to be director of the CIA who, by his own admission, is not qualified to hold the post. "I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified...". Mr. Goss made this admission when interviewed and the link to the video of this recorded interview is http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/goss.php .

How disconcerting it is to have the president nominate a man that is lacking technical skills that are necessary to perform his duties and to administer his office and the agency. We live in a technical society and it has been reported that the terrorists that threaten our nation are technically savvy. They use the internet and their various computer skills to communicate and plot against our nation, yet the man nominated to the post of CIA, in his own words, lacks the skills necessary to function as an agent of the CIA. “And I certainly don't have the technical skills, uh, as my children remind me every day: ‘Dad you got to get better on your computer.”

This is preposterous. Mr. Goss has been in the Senate long enough to have learned how to effectively operate a computer, but instead he basks in his ignorance and apparently allows others to perform for him. If he were to submit an application to the CIA for the position as an agent or an officer worker he would not be interviewed for the position because he lacks the necessary computer skills, yet this is the man our president wants to head the CIA? How does a man who is happy to remain ignorant of technology "lead the agency through the challenges and threats of the dangerous new century"?

The Acting Director of the CIA, John E. McLaughlin, is more than competent to continue as the director of the CIA. The failure to affirm Mr. Goss' appointment will not result in our nation being left with an unqualified person overseeing the post. As Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Mr. McLaughlin assisted Director George J. Tenet in overseeing the operational, analytic, scientific, and technical activities of the Intelligence Community. He is not technically challenged and he is more qualified than Mr. Goss to serve the nation, which after all, is the ultimate goal of the position.

Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has publicly opined that Goss was not right for the job (prior to the appointment). Senator Roberts specifically advised "My only message to the White House is if they do this, make it an extraordinary person that will get bipartisan support." He added, “We do not want a partisan fight right before the election.” The appointment of Goss is partisan. Mr. Goss objected to the 9/11 commission investigation; has said that he does not believe the investigation into the outing of a covert CIA agent is necessary or legitimate; has publicly opposed the investigation into the prison tortures in Iraq (and elsewhere); and, has openly opposed any investigation into the claims of Ms. Edmund. How can he be the director of our intelligence community when he has no concerns relative to the safety and behavior of our intelligence agents, let alone the nations security and the abuses of power that weaken our reputation and render us vulnerable?

In closing, I simply wish to remind you that it was Mr. Goss that said he lacked the necessary skills and experience to be a CIA agent, let alone the director of the CIA. To quote Mr. Goss, “Uh, so, the things that you need to have, I don't have."

With the greatest of concern and sincerity, I am,

__________________
Name

=========================================
For your reference please see the list of quotes from others that oppose the Peter Goss nomination.

"This is the worst appointment that's ever been made to the office of Director of Central Intelligence, because that's an office that needs to be kept above partisan politics."
Retired Admiral Stansfield Turner

"There's one thing Goss really didn't do for the past several years—he didn't chair the House Intelligence Committee, in spite of what his resumé claims. Instead, he did the dead man's float."
Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson

"Goss has never been very distinguished, but he's protected. He's a Bush loyalist and has been in the forefront of those who have tried to place the major blame for the 9-11 attacks on the Agency." Former CIA counter-terrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro

"This whole appointment is a cheap political trick,"
"One of the recommendations of the <9-11> Commission is that no political appointee be made Director. But this is so clearly political. If Goss isn't a political appointee, than I don't know what is." "This will do nothing but cause more disarray at Langley," Judith Yaphe, former CIA analyst

"I strongly urge the President to look for an individual with unimpeachable, nonpartisan national-security credentials and the stature and independence to bring about much-needed reform of our intelligence agencies." Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W. Va), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee



As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities. Voltaire

[robertpaulsen]

121. WHOA! Who the hell is Partha Roy Burman?! Link from Ibrahim to Atta!

That's right, I'm back on the trail connecting Plame's "sting operation" and Edmond's "arm sales". Look what I found. Has anyone seen this before?

Atta got Barman ransom money?
Author: Omer Farooq/Hyderabad
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: September 7, 2002
A senior official in Andhra Pradesh Police has said that the Dawood Ibrahim gang had routed a huge amount of ransom money to New York through Dubai and Pakistan and it was used by Mohammed Atta, the leader of the September 11 terrorist operation in the United States.

Inspector General of Police (Intelligence) A Shivshankar in a presentation to the State-level police officers said that Dawood Ibrahim gang had extorted a ransom Rs 3 crore from the family of Kolkata-based businessman Partha Roy Burman for his release and the money was sent to Dubai through the hawala channel.

Later, the money reached Pakistan where Dawood Ibrahim has taken shelter, and finally Atta reeived it, said Shivshankar, referring to the series of investigations taken by different agencies into the kidnap of the Kolkata businessman. Mohammed Atta, Americans say, led the 19 people team which attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The police official, speaking in the presence of the Chief Minister N Chandra Babu Naidu and the State Home Minister T Devender Goud said that Dawood's gang used Hyderabad as the safe heaven for this entire operation. Partha Roy Burman, the chairman of The khadims Group, was kidnapped by the D-company from Kolkata on June 25 last year and was brought to Hyderabad, Sivashankar said.

It was in Hyderabad that the family paid Rs 3 crore to the gang and Burman was released. The transaction came to light after four people including a Dawood Ibrahim aide Abdul Kareem alias Kareem Dollar were arrested in Hyderabad in August last.

http://www.hvk.org/articles/0902/76.html

Wow! We've got a direct link from Dawood Ibrahim to the 9/11 ringleader! Does anyone know anything about this Partha Roy Burman? I'll see what I can find.

edited to correct spelling.

[robertpaulsen]

122. Burman is director of the Khadim group.

Here's the aftermath:

Kidnapped Khadim director returns








Our Bureau

KOLKATA, Aug. 2

MR Partha Roy Burman, the 44-year-old director of the Khadim group, returned home on Thursday after nine days in captivity.

Mr Roy Burman, who received bullet injuries during the kidnapping, was admitted to a city nursing home soon after his return. He returned in a taxi, according to sources.

Mr Roy Burman was forcibly taken out of his car in broad daylight on July 25 from near a Khadim warehouse within the city. It could not be immediately ascertained whether any ransom was paid to free Mr Roy Burman as family members remained tightlipped.

Beyond arresting Mr Roy Burman's driver and a local crime lord, and conjecturing that inter-State gangs might have been involved in the abduction, the State police machinery could apparently do little in this case.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/businessline/2001/08/03/stories/1403183s.htm

Who is the Khadim group? Who do they do business with? Stay tuned!

[robertpaulsen]

124. More on the abduction.

U.S. agency helped track abductors


KOLKATA, AUG. 19. A U.S. agency and Interpol have helped the Indian police track down ISI-backed underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's gang members responsible for abducting shoe magnate and realtor, Mr. Partha Sarathi Roy Burman, official sources have said.

Indian authorities sought the help of the U.S. agency to track down a mobile phone call from Dubai to Mr. Burman's residence here demanding a huge ransom for his release, the sources said.

They said the Indian police made a request to the U.S. agency through Interpol, which has been helping India in a number of international cases. With the help of the U.S. agency, police were finally able to trace the Dubai caller, identified as Shafique alias Shaheed, right-hand man of Karachi-based Dawood Ibrahim. ``It is now clear that Dawood Ibrahim and his gang have been working for Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence and using its roaming call facilities to carry out subversive activities in India,'' the sources said.

Already four such agents have been arrested from Hyderabad and one from Uttar Pradesh. Also, four agents have been arrested in Kolkata, the sources said.

``The breakthrough in the Roy Burman abduction case was largely possible due to the help of Interpol and the U.S. agency. Such cooperation will help us prevent subversive activities by the ISI and terrorist groups backed by Osama bin Laden,'' they pointed out. The sources said following the Roy Burman case breakthrough, it would be possible to resolve some other cases of abductions and subversive activities in the country.

The four ISI agents, arrested from Hyderabad, had confessed that Mr. Burman's family had paid Rs. 3 crores as ransom, which was sent to Shafique in Dubai through hawala.

``One of the arrested, Abdur Karim, said to be the leader of the Hyderabad gang, collected the money from Mr. Roy Burman's family on behalf of Shafique,'' the sources said.

Detectives had already begun operations in Bangalore, Mumbai and Uttar Pradesh to track down the other agents and gang members.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/08/20/stories/0220000k.htm

Which US agency? Who is Abdur Karim connected with? Same bat-time, same bat-channel!

[robertpaulsen]

126. Here's a long-shot.

2004 Board of Directors
ED RAPP, CHAIRMAN KER Associates [e-mail]
LARRY BROUSSARD Pipeline Infrastructure Consultants, Inc. [e-mail]
CHARLENE BURMAN Halliburton/Bariod [e-mail]
ROBERT CASSELMAN Apache Corporation [e-mail]
CHERYL DOMENGEAUX-BUTCHER Hager Machine & Tool, Inc. [e-mail]
PHIL FLEMING Sandalwood Oil & Gas, Inc. [e-mail]
PERRY HARRIS Halliburton Energy Services
[e-mail]
SHERI HORNE Blue Dolphin Energy
[e-mail]
BOBBY HOWELL Weatherford (Retired)
[e-mail]
JAMES JACKSON Halliburton Energy Services [e-mail]
JOE JOHNSON Cameron [e-mail]
SUSAN LEACH Apache Corporaton
[e-mail]
TOM LEARY Challenger Minerals Inc. [e-mail]
FRED LENTJES Consultant
[e-mail]
ROBERT PUTCH Baker Oil Tools [e-mail]
JOHN ZARNOWIECKI Schlumberger [e-mail]

http://www.hottournament.com/bod.htm

Any chance Partha and Charlene are related? Go ahead and laugh. Taking a wild half-court toss can be fun sometimes.

[RebelYell]

127. It seems like all roads lead to 9/11

Nice job, RP.

[robertpaulsen]

128. Thanks Reb!

I'm having trouble finding any decent information about the Khadim Group of Companies. They don't have a website and as far as I can see operate on slave labor, so they try to remain low profile. Except for kidnappings, of course.

[Pallas180]

129. RP, REB Khadim

jsut a quick google - on the run


Khadim Information Services
Khadim Information Services. A Software Solutions Company. ... Copyright ©
1998-2003 Khadim Information Services Last updated on: May 2, 2004.
khadimhussain.com/ - 7k - Cached - Similar pages

Egypt: The Temple and Mines at Serabit el-Khadem In the Sinai
... The Temple. The temple at Serabit el-Khadim, though really only scattered
ruins, is one of the few phraonic monuments we know of in the Sinai. ...
www.touregypt.net/featurestories/serabit.htm - 15k - Cached - Similar pages

Egypt: The Temple of Sarabit al-Khadim in South Sinai, Egypt
The Temple of Sarabit al-Khadim. Location: South Sinai, Egypt. How
to get there: From outside Egypt Many international flights now ...
www.touregypt.net/sarabit.htm - 3k - Cached - Similar pages
< More results from www.touregypt.net >


sounds like the name Khadim is something Egyptian

Is there an Egyptian google?

:hi:

[Pallas180]

131. Sibel Edmonds on NOW MSNBC

.

[Pallas180]

140. Sibel Edmonds on Deborah Norville Msnbc said

1) documents and information were intentionally blocked or mishandled.

2) After her immediate Supervisor did nothing, she reported it to Asst. FBI director Dale Watson and then to Director Mueller.

3) When they did nothing she went to the Justice Dept Inspector General

4) The Turkish translator put aside documents containing names of people with whom he was familiar

5) the translation area was holding back documents so they could say they had a big backlog and could ask for more budget money. She would
work on a document one day, and the next day find her work erased on the same document so that it would have to be done over.

6)the translation department showed no sense of urgency even though
the FBI field agents were desperate for translated information.

7)none of her allegations were disproved

8)FB officials confirmed all her allegations but the information is being classified retroactively (even though some in Congress have
heard it)

9) None of the issues she brought up have been addressed (fixed) by the agency.

10)Unqualified translators still in charge of the "chatter"

11) (durn) she stated in answer to a question that something was in the Farsi language (I missed what - is there a transcript anywhere?)

I think we have a right to know what was told to Congress and was not
classified until it was going to be an embarrassment or worse to the
government.

And that's what our letters to every Congresscritter should be about.

[shraby]

152. I've just been catching up on

all yer chatter. I once said that I thought that Plame, Sibel Edmonds and 9/11 were all pieces of the same puzzle. We took Plame first and connected Plame to Pakistan and A.Q. Kahn and connected Kahn to Cheney and then Rumsfeld to nukes in N. Korea, all part of wmd's. I think Edmonds will lead us to 9/11 of which Pakistan plays a big part in. I think 9/11 should be the last of our investigation because so much has already been done on it, and if we come in from the back side of it and have it connected to the other two (Plame and Edmonds) it will be a much fuller picture on the "why".

I have to go back and read the last two long posts RP and I think Pallas added and assimilate them into my noggin. I sincerely hope everyone stays onboard because the more brains working the better chance we have of cracking this nut.

To H20, I understand the way bin Laden looks at things and long-term to us is not the same as long-term is to his people. They mean it when they say they are still upset about the Crusades, the same as the Palestinians are still upset about the Jews taking their tribal lands. If we were suddenly thrown into the 22nd Century, they would still be upset about those same things. They NEVER forget a slight, it becomes a part of who and what they are.

[shraby]

153. This is all I could find on

Abdur Karim, and it's an Amin Abdur Karim....so far.

In 1994, a federal grand jury indicted two members of Al-Amin's mosque
for illegally shipping nearly 1,000 fireams to a New York Muslim gang
engaged in criminal activities. The two men-Amin Abdur Karim and Jibri Abdur
Rahman-owned a West End trading company next door to Al-Amin's Community
Grocery. A federal jury in Atlanta in 1995 convicted Karim of shipping
pistols across state lines to illegal gun brokers and both men of
failing to keep proper records of gun purchases and sales. But investigators
were never able to link Al-Amin to the illegal gun-running operation.

<http://www.mindspring.com/~altafb/arrestoldalamin.html>

[shraby]

155. More on Dawood Ibrahim and an Abdul Kareem

BANGALORE, FEBRUARY 29: Is there any connection between the Pakistan intelligence agency ISI and the multi-crore fake stamp paper racket, which shook the country’s economy?

Though various agencies probing the racket are yet to say anything on it, the BJP is out with its judgment. It says prime accused Abdul Kareem Lala Telgi was trained by ISI and had connections with Pakistan-based underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.

The BJP state unit has taken the Internet route while campaigning through its newly-launched website www.bjpkarnataka.org. The BJP is attacking the state’s Congress government on issues like the stamp scam and and farmers suicides.

One section, ‘Stamp Paper Racket’, provides scam details to browsers. ‘‘Dawood Ibrahim, the underworld criminal connected with the Mumbai serial bomb blasts, is the originator of the fake stamp paper scam. The Pakistani spy organisation, ISI, supports this,’’ the site reads.

The site also has the full text of the report of the polygraph test conducted on accused Wazir Saliq. It gives full credit to the party leaders for exposing the alleged nexus between the scam and Congress leaders in the state.

The site has also given importance to highlight the government’s failure to take steps to check farmers’ suicides in the state due to three consecutive droughts.

It has details on the Vajpayee Government’s achievements, list of the party’s national council members, state office-bearers and state election committee members. The site, on its home page, has a photo of BJP state chief Ananth Kumar and B.S.Yediyurappa welcoming former Chief Secretary A.Ravindra to the party fold.

However, some sections, like BJP Samachar, Links, Press Releases and others are still ‘‘under construction’’ and more revelations can be expected

<http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=42080>

[shraby]

156. State Bank of India involved with Atta money

September 11 attack planners received money via Hyderabad, Gulf.


Hydrabad --A 30 million rupees (about $600,000) ransom was paid for the release of an Indian businessman found its way to the mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, police claimed in Hyderabad. The ransom was routed through illegal "hawala" channels via the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, Pakistan and the Gulf to Muhammad Atta, who planned the attacks on the World Trade Center and who piloted one of the two planes that slammed into the twin towers. The startling revelation was made at a meeting of senior police officials called by Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu to discuss the law and order situation in the state. Pointing to the linkages between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and terrorist groups in India, Inspector General of Police Shiv Shankar said the ransom paid for the release of Partha Roy Burman, a top businessman in Calcutta, in June last year eventually found its way to the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks. Abdul Kareem, also known as Kareem Dollar, was the Hyderabad conduit for transferring the funds, Shiv Shankar maintained. He had allegedly passed on the money to a man named Shafiq in the Gulf who was a member of the Dawood Ibrahim gang that had kidnapped Burman. Earlier KM had reported that the State Bank of India's Gulf branches were used to fund Al Quida terrorist Network and that the US authorities stopped clearing dollar cheques issued from the Gulf branches of SBI. -keralamonitor.com

<http://www.keralamonitor.com/omanairnew.html>

More on the State Bank of India from a cease and desist order from the SEC.

2. SBI, the largest commercial bank in India, was incorporated under the State Bank of India Act of 1955 and is headquartered in Mumbai, India. In the United States, SBI has offices and conducts business in New York City ("SBI New York"), and in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and San Jose.

<http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/33-8036.htm>

[shraby]

157. From RebelYell Perle, Feith & Turkey connection

This needed to be brought forward from thread #19., post #104

I'll research Trireme & IAI when I have time. Khashoggi is an arms dealer going back to Iran Contra.

~~~~~~~~

"Perle resigned on March 27, 2003 as chairman of the Defense Policy Board after disclosures that his business dealings included a meeting with two Saudis, one an arms dealer, and a contract for $750,000 to advise telecommunications firm Global Crossings Ltd. that was seeking Defense Department permission to be sold to Chinese investors.

In a New Yorker article, Seymour Hersch reported that Perle faced conflict of interest between his work on the board and his private business dealings. He reported that Perle is “a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P.” He also reported that Perle attended a luncheon meeting on January 3, 2004 with two Saudis, Adnan Khashoggi and industrialist Harle Zuhair, who told Hersch that the agenda included an item “to pave the way for Zuhair to put together a group of ten Saudi businessmen who would invest ten million dollars each in Trireme.” (New Yorker, March 17, 2003, pages 76-81.)

Perle resigned as Assistant Secretary of Defense in 1987, before the end of the Cold War, and went to Turkey and negotiated an $800,000 contract for International Advisors Inc. (IAI), a company which he initiated. He recruited Douglas Feith, his special assistant at Defense, to head IAI.

Perle became a consultant to IAI and received $48,000 annually from 1989 to 1994. IAI registered as a foreign agent with the Justice Department. IAI received $800,000 from Turkey in 1989 and then received $600,000 annually from 1990 to 1994."

~~~~~~~~

<http://www.hellenicnews.com/readnews.html?newsid=2134&lang=US>


This too from #19, post #108:

Feith currently serves as the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, the third ranking civilian position at the Pentagon. Formerly, he served on the White House National Security staff during Ronald Reagan's first term in office. Richard Allen was Feith's boss at that time. During Reagan's second term in office, Feith was part of Richard Perle's Pentagon team.

It is related that in 1989, Feith registered International Advisors, Inc. (IAI) as a foreign agent that would represent the government of Turkey. Official documents state that one purpose of IAI's work would be to "promote the objective of U.S.-Turkey defense industrial cooperation." The IAI was described in both the United States and Turkey as the brainchild of Richard N. Perle.

However, one report states that official documents filed with the U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, Foreign Agents Registration Unit, show Douglas Feith as not only the CEO of IAI but also its only stockholder. Moreover, reports filed by IAI seminannually during 1989-1994 show Perle as the single highest paid consultant to the group ($48,000 per year). Feith earned $60,000 per year and his law firm, Feith and Zell, was the recipient from IAI of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In 1992, Feith joined with Perle and other neo-cons opposing President George H.W. Bush's stern policy on Israel in forming the Committee on U.S. Interests in the Middle East.

Feith and Perle reportedly teamed up once again as consultants for Bosnia. They both worked for and advised the Bosnians during the Dayton peace talks. They were not, however, registered then as foreign agents with the Deparment of Justice.

<http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Douglas_Feith>

And this from #19, post #105. International Advisors Inc.

Paul Wolfowitz

Wolfowitz has committed major mistakes of policy and judgment
regarding Turkey to the serious detriment of
U.S. interests. Wolfowitz's remarks on Turkey have contained false and
misleading statements with serious errors of fact and omission of
Orwellian proportions.

On July 14, 2002, Wolfowitz in a CNN Turkey interview stated:

`I think a real test of whether a country is a democracy is how it
treats its minorities. And actually it's one of the things that
impress (sic) me about Turkish history-the way Turkey treats its own
minorities.'

(snip)

Also on July 14, 2002, in a speech at the Conrad Hotel, Istanbul,
Wolfowitz referred to Turkey:

`as a staunch NATO ally through forty years of Cold Warâ=80¦.Itis the
great good fortune of the United States, of NATO, the West, indeed the
world, that occupying this most important crossroads we have one of
our strongest, most reliable and most self-reliant allies.'

This is another false and misleading statement by Wolfowitz with
serious errors of fact and omission. The record shows that during the
Cold War, Turkey brushed aside U.S. interests on many occasions and
deliberately gave substantial assistance to the Soviet military. See
Exhibit 2 of the September 4, 2002 letter which sets forth examples of
Turkey's unreliability as an ally and refutes the assertion of Turkey
as a self-reliant ally. Turkey's vote on March 1, 2003 refusing to
allow U.S. troops to use bases in Turkey to open a second front
against the Saddam Hussein dictatorship is a dramatic example of
Turkey's unreliability as an ally. Wolfowitz's effusive comments in
his July 14, 2002 speech regarding Ataturk may play well in Turkey,
but the rest of the world is familiar with Ataturkas a brutal dictator
and mass killer of Armenians, Greeks and Kurds. John Gunther in his
book, Inside Europe refers in his opening sentence to Ataturk as
â=80=9CThe blond, blue-eyed combination of patriot and psychopath who
is dictator of Turkey.' (1938 edition p. 378.) See Exhibit 3 of the
September 4, 2002 letter for the details of Ataturk's mass killings of
Armenians, Greeks and Kurds. Ataturk and Turkey are hardly the models,
as suggested by Wolfowitz, for Afghanistan and other Muslim nations to
follow to achieve democracy.

(more)

<http://www.armeniandiaspora.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-7147.html>

[shraby]

158. Trireme Partners LP

Trireme Partners LP is a limited partnership venture capital company that invests in technology, goods, and services related to homeland security and defense.

Company chairman is Richard N. Perle while Henry Kissingeris a member of its advisory board. Trireme Partners LP was registered in Delaware in November 2001, two months after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Boeing is one of the investors in Trireme.<1>

The name "Trireme" is taken from a Greek warship with three banks of rowers.

Trireme also has Hollinger's Conrad Black on the board of directors, and was set up by Perle's Defense Policy Board pal Gerald Hillman (CDT, Cambridge Display Technologies), which Hollinger also invested highly in. <2>

An early version of the a similar company with the same players called Argo Century was circulated as a prospectus to investors, It was incorporated in Delaware prior to the September 11th attacks. It was renamed Trireme and retooled to focus more on homeland security after the attacks.

Asked about Hersh's article when appearing on CNN, Perle defended his dual roles. "I don't believe that a company would gain from a war. On the contrary, I believe that the successful removal of Saddam Hussein, and I've said this over and over again, will diminish the threat of terrorism. And what he's talking about is investments in homeland defense, which I think are vital and are necessary," he said. <3>

Perele then went on to the attact. "Look, Sy Hersh is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist, frankly," he said. "A terrorist?," CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked. "Because he's widely irresponsible ... Because he sets out to do damage and he will do it by whatever innuendo, whatever distortion he can -- look, he hasn't written a serious piece since My ai", he said.

<http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Trireme_Partners_LP>

more on Trireme
<http://www.warstories.cc/organization/?organizationId=8017>

more on Trireme by Seymour Hersh Issue of 2003-03-17 New Yorker

LUNCH WITH THE CHAIRMAN

At the peak of his deal-making activities, in the nineteen-seventies, the Saudi-born businessman Adnan Khashoggi brokered billions of dollars in arms and aircraft sales for the Saudi royal family, earning hundreds of millions in commissions and fees. Though never convicted of wrongdoing, he was repeatedly involved in disputes with federal prosecutors and with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and in recent years he has been in litigation in Thailand and Los Angeles, among other places, concerning allegations of stock manipulation and fraud. During the Reagan Administration, Khashoggi was one of the middlemen between Oliver North, in the White House, and the mullahs in Iran in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Khashoggi subsequently claimed that he lost ten million dollars that he had put up to obtain embargoed weapons for Iran which were to be bartered (with Presidential approval) for American hostages. The scandals of those times seemed to feed off each other: a congressional investigation revealed that Khashoggi had borrowed much of the money for the weapons from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (B.C.C.I.), whose collapse, in 1991, defrauded thousands of depositors and led to years of inquiry and litigation.

Khashoggi is still brokering. In January of this year, he arranged a private lunch, in France, to bring together Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East, and Richard N. Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, who is one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq.

The Defense Policy Board is a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of highly respected former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. Its members, who serve without pay, include former national-security advisers, Secretaries of Defense, and heads of the C.I.A. The board meets several times a year at the Pentagon to review and assess the country’s strategic defense policies.

Perle is also a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., which was registered in November, 2001, in Delaware. Trireme’s main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Khashoggi last November, is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

(more)
<http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/030317fa_fact>

[shraby]

159. Autonomy Corporation

More of Hersh's article
(snip)
Perle’s association with Trireme was not his first exposure to the link between high finance and high-level politics. He was born in New York City, graduated from the University of Southern California in 1964, and spent a decade in Senate-staff jobs before leaving government in 1980, to work for a military-consulting firm. The next year, he was back in government, as Assistant Secretary of Defense. In 1983, he was the subject of a New York Times investigation into an allegation that he recommended that the Army buy weapons from an Israeli company from whose owners he had, two years earlier, accepted a fifty-thousand-dollar fee. Perle later acknowledged that he had accepted the fee, but vigorously denied any wrongdoing. He had not recused himself in the matter, he explained, because the fee was for work he had done before he took the Defense Department job. He added, “The ultimate issue, of course, was a question of procurement, and I am not a procurement officer.” He was never officially accused of any ethical violations in the matter. Perle served in the Pentagon until 1987 and then became deeply involved in the lobbying and business worlds. Among other corporate commitments, he now serves as a director of a company doing business with the federal government: the Autonomy Corporation, a British firm that recently won a major federal contract in homeland security. When I asked him about that contract, Perle told me that there was no possible conflict, because the contract was obtained through competitive bidding, and “I never talked to anybody about it.”



I googled Autonomy Corporation and clicked on "individuals". This gentleman came up in the "A's":
Dr. Masood Ahmad(Government Superior Science College,Peshawar,PAKISTAN)

Here is an article with him in it.

LAHORE: The Centre for Advanced Studies in Physics (CASP) at Government College University (GCU) has installed a 100-Kilo Electron Volt (KEV) accelerator for research in nuclear physics.

The accelerator has been prepared in collaboration with the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH). “It is a multi-dimensional project in nano technology,” said Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) Member of Physical Sciences Dr Masood Ahmad at the inauguration of the accelerator here on Tuesday.

Dr Ahmed said that Dr Ashfaq Ahmad, Dr Pervaiz Butt, Dr Samar Mubarakmand and himself provided support necessary to initiate a new series of charged particle related research. He said the PAEC was committed to modernising technology and now the CASP laboratory was well equipped with the addition of the accelerator. “It will improve the training quality of GCU students,” he added.

He said the PAEC, in collaboration with the Higher Education Commission, had recently become a member of the Synchrotron Light for Experimental Sciences and Applications in the Middle East. “It is a 2.5 KEV light source, which will have applications in physics, chemistry, material science and biology,” he said.
{more}
<http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_14-1-2004_pg7_18>

[Pallas180]

170. So that's how they imported the nuke components-Dr Samar Mubarakmand

through a University - shipments made to universities for "research"

In attempting to move the spotlight from Khan as the father of the Pak nukes and his network of blackmarket sales of nuke materials,
they presented Mubarakmand as the "real" scientist responsible - we
discovered that on the last thread but didn't have the connection to
the University (whose full name I didn't get).

"Mysterious 9-11 Breakfast Meeting on Capitol Hill
On the morning of September 11, General Mahmoud Ahmad, the alleged "money-man" behind the 9-11 hijackers was at a breakfast meeting on Capitol Hill hosted by Senator Bob Graham (Democrat) and Representative Porter Goss, respectively chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. Also present at this meeting was Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S. Maleeha Lodhi. The report confirms that other members of the Senate and House Intelligence committees were present.

(In countries other than the USA, it is common to call a college graduate Doctor so & so. this doesn't mean Ahmad had a doctorate in
Science)

[Pallas180]

171. OBL's first denial

of responsibility for teh WTC bothers me.

Could it be that it was ISI and the Sauds behind it?-since they have
been visiting each other - and they might have realized junior's plans
based on the PNAC papers and the other papers:

"Rebuilding America's Defenses," the Project for a New American Century's 2000 report, and "The Grand Chessboard," a book published a few years earlier by Trilateral Commission co-founder Zbigniew Brzezinski"

and the pro-Israeli personnel the administration placed in its cabinet
and government appointees?

[RebelYell]

164. Here's more.....

~~~~~~~~

Michel Chossudovsky discloses that Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, confirms that it was the US and not the Soviet Union that triggered the Soviet- Afghan war:

"According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention." (Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Le Nouvel Observateur, 15-21 November 1998)

When asked if he regrets having supported Islamic fundamentalism and giving arms and advice to terrorists, Brzezinski responds: "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war? "

Well, only history will tell, Mr. Brzezinski.

~~~~~~~~

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=4056

[Moderator]

174. Locking

It has been decided that both sides
need a break from this topic. If
any one person would like to start
a thread regarding this topic, he/
she may do so but there will be
no more continuation threads....
no parts 1, 2, 3 etc. Each
thread will stand alone.
Unfortunately this has to be done
because some people can not get along
and there were too many personal attacks
as well.

Thank you for understanding.


DU Moderator