Guest Tom Scully Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 (edited) Bill, The new perpetual anonymity rule is an exclusively UK phenomena. In the beginning of my last post, I linked to two articles detailing recent US special ops engagements, with participants of the equivalent status and training as SEALS, and the names of all casualties are published along with rank. The same is true of combat awards ceremonies. They\'re public. I go the extra mile of self-censorship, simply because I have found no public DOD announcement of my family member\'s name. I agree with you that part of the motivation of US \"special\" personnel to publicly out \"posers\" and to openly discuss their exploits and awards is because of the question of why do it, if nobody ever becomes aware of what many would regard as heroic acts. I found the new UK anonymity rule troubling, and I wonder how much of the influence to initiate it comes from irrational fear of the burgeoning muslim population in northern Europe. I would agree with your dismissal of Blackwater in an important role \"all of this\", except for the facts that Cofer Black came aboard after Fallujah, Blackwater is suspected of having a role in air transport related to rendition, they are training active duty JSOC personnel, while recruiting and hiring former ones, and former Pentagon IG Joseph Schmidtz was hired because he knows ways around legal and ethical limits and unlike Cofer Black, Schmidtz is legal counsel for the Prince holding corp. of which Blackwater is only one business of many.... The Council For National Policy (CNP) connection makes me link religious warfare. No republican candidate for president can be a winner without pre-screening and endorsement of CNP. The Bob Jones University influence on the CNP\'s formation and ideology is icing on the cake. http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/09/sb-...ater-1158094722September 12, 2006 · Revolving Door to Blackwater Causes Alarm at CIA By Ken Silverstein ....and, Bill... Just now, when I typed \"Krongard\" into my google browser search box, (I have the auto complete with popular search terms feature enabled.) the word \"Blackwater\" automatically appeared in the google browser box, next to the search term I had typed in, \"Krongard\": http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=k...gard&aqi=g4Blackwater and the Brothers Krongard: How Cookie Crumbled | Mother ... Accused of blocking an investigation into Blackwater, State Department IG Howard Krongard told Congress that his brother Buzzy has no ties ... www.motherjones.com/.../blackwater-and-brothers-krongard-how-cookie- crumbled - Cached - Similar \'Buzzy\' Krongard: Blackwater Beast or British Agent? | LaRouchePAC Before DLA Piper, \"Buzzy\" Krongard was a high CIA official during DIA George Tenet\'s tenure, and from that position, \"Buzzy\" Krongard launched Blackwater ... www.larouchepac.com/.../buzzy-krongard-blackwater-man-or-british-agent. html - Cached - Similar Think Progress » Krongard Confirms \'Ugly Rumor\': Brother Attended ... Henry Waxman (D-CA) revealed that Krongard\'s brother — former CIA Executive Director A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard — sits on Blackwater USA\'s board. ... thinkprogress.org/2007/11/14/krongard-blacwater-brother/ Krongard resigned from Balckwater\'s board because of the disclosure at a critical time for his brother, but it is another sign of an ongoing, ambitious initiative to blur the lines between public and private covert and special ops..... http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/10/...lackwater_bush/...Erik Prince, founder and CEO: How did Blackwater go from a small corporation training local SWAT teams to a seemingly inseparable part of U.S. operations in Iraq? Good timing, and the connections of its CEO, may be the answer. Prince, who founded Blackwater in 1996 but reportedly took a behind-the-scenes role in the company until after 9/11, has connections to the Republican Party in his blood. His late father, auto-parts magnate Edgar Prince, was instrumental in the creation of the Family Research Council, one of the right-wing Christian groups most influential with the George W. Bush administration. At his funeral in 1995, he was eulogized by two stalwarts of the Christian conservative movement, James Dobson and Gary Bauer. Edgar Prince\'s widow, Elsa, who remarried after her husband\'s death, has served on the boards of the FRC and another influential Christian-right organization, Dobson\'s Focus on the Family. She currently runs the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, where, according to IRS filings, her son Erik is a vice president. The foundation has given lavishly to some of the marquee names of the Christian right. Between July 2003 and July 2006, the foundation gave at least $670,000 to the FRC and $531,000 to Focus on the Family. Both Edgar and Elsa have been affiliated with the Council for National Policy, the secretive Christian conservative organization whose meetings have been attended by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer, and whose membership is rumored to include Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Dobson. The Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation gave the CNP $80,000 between July 2003 and July 2006. The former Betsy Prince -- Edgar and Elsa\'s daughter, Erik\'s sister -- married into the DeVos family, one of the country\'s biggest donors to Republican and conservative causes. (\"I know a little something about soft money, as my family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican Party,\" Betsy DeVos wrote in a 1997 Op-Ed in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.) She chaired the Michigan Republican Party from 1996 to 2000 and again from 2003 to 2005, and her husband, Dick, ran as the Republican candidate for Michigan governor in 2006. Erik Prince himself is no slouch when it comes to giving to Republicans and cultivating relationships with important conservatives. He and his first and second wives have donated roughly $300,000 to Republican candidates and political action committees. Through his Freiheit Foundation, he also gave $500,000 to Prison Fellowship Ministries, run by former Nixon official Charles Colson, in 2000. In the same year, he contributed $30,000 to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. During college, he interned in George H.W. Bush\'s White House, and also interned for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif. Rohrabacher and fellow California Republican Rep. John Doolittle have visited Blackwater\'s Moyock, N.C., compound, on a trip arranged by the Alexander Strategy Group, a lobbying firm founded by former aides of then House Majority Leader Tom Delay. ASG partner Paul Behrends is a longtime associate of Prince\'s. Prince\'s connections seem to have paid off for Blackwater. Robert Young Pelton, author of \"Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror,\" has reported that one of Blackwater\'s earliest contracts in the national arena was a no-bid $5.4 million deal to provide security guards in Afghanistan, which came after Prince made a call to then CIA executive director Buzzy Krongard. What\'s more, Harper\'s Ken Silverstein has reported that Prince has a security pass for CIA headquarters and \"meets with senior people\" inside the CIA. But Prince\'s most important benefactor was fellow conservative Roman Catholic convert L. Paul Bremer, former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American occupation government in Iraq.... http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/10/...ush/index1.html ...By 2005, Blackwater was earning $353 million annually from federal contracts. Blackwater\'s benefits from government largess haven\'t ended with Iraq. The company was recently one of five awarded a Department of Defense counter-narcoterrorism contract that could reportedly be worth as much as $15 billion. ..... .... According to an October 2005 article in Time magazine, Schmitz showed the White House the results of his staff\'s multiyear investigation into a contract in which the Air Force leased air-refueling tankers from Boeing for more than it would have cost to buy them, then agreed to redact the names of senior White House staffers involved in the decision before sending the final report to Congress. Schmitz informed his staff on Aug. 26, 2005, that he was leaving the Pentagon; in September of that year, he went to work for Blackwater. J. Cofer Black, vice chairman: Black spent most of his 28-year CIA career running covert operations in the Directorate of Operations, where he worked with Rob Richer (below). At the time of the 9/11 attacks, he was director of the CIA\'s Counterterrorism Center. There he was former CIA Director George Tenet\'s ace in the hole when it came to convincing Bush that the CIA should lead initial U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan after 9/11. Black is, according to published accounts, a man with a flair for the dramatic, the kind of briefer President Bush likes. In one briefing, according to several reports, Black told the president, \"When we\'re through with [terrorists in Afghanistan], they will have flies walking across their eyeballs.\" (Black also ordered CIA field officer Gary Schroen to bring back Osama bin Laden\'s head packed in dry ice so Black could show it to Bush.) Black\'s Afghanistan presentation earned him \"special access\" to the White House, the Washington Post\'s Dana Priest reported in December 2005...... Edited July 16, 2009 by Tom Scully Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A.J. Weberman Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 AJ Weberman wrote on my facebook page: "CIA was going after real enemies for a change. They should be given a free hand when it comes to Islamists." I replied "I imagine that was the same argument used by right-wingers when the target was left-wing leaders in the 1960s and 1970s". There is no catagorical imperative. Everything has to be taken on a case by case basis. Yes I would like to see Islamists leaders taken out, and that is what is happening with the drones in Pakistan. Are you against that form of assassination too John? You see I don't want to see real human beings as opposed to Koranbutts die in an WMD attack. We cannot let these maggots get their hands on chemical weapons such as nerve gas or biological weapons. The future of humanity depends on it, of all humanity even the Koranbutts. These nitwits could start an epidemic that could wipe out human life on this planet. I say once a cell like this is discovered torture the xxxx out the mother after they get an overdose of LSD then once the information is extracted shoot them summarily. Death to the Islamists pigs who threaten the hippy way of life and replace it with Shar'ia law. All power the good shooters. Hey I don't waste my time with the Kennedy assassination any longer at least as far as debating it with other researchers. I know what happened and unless you work within that framework don't waste my with Woody Harrelson stupidy etc. Hunt's deathbed confession, and St John's recollections of that day show that Hunt was in Dallas not at a Chinese grocery. Another book is coming out in which Frank's nephew says he was told to alibi Frank for that time when he was in Dallas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Simkin Posted July 17, 2009 Author Share Posted July 17, 2009 AJ Weberman wrote on my facebook page: "CIA was going after real enemies for a change. They should be given a free hand when it comes to Islamists." I replied "I imagine that was the same argument used by right-wingers when the target was left-wing leaders in the 1960s and 1970s". There is no catagorical imperative. Everything has to be taken on a case by case basis. Yes I would like to see Islamists leaders taken out, and that is what is happening with the drones in Pakistan. Are you against that form of assassination too John? Yes, I am. I believe everyone should have a fair trial. I don't agree with capital punishment, with or without a fair trial. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 (edited) I think the whole CIA Assassins story is to cover the fact that the Navy has had an ongoing successful assassination operation for decades. - BK http://www.examiner.com/x-2383-Honolulu-Ex...-with-documents http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgUhpBoFN9A On July 13, the New York Times ran a story about the CIA running an assassination squad using U.S military special forces against foreign terrorists without Congressional approval on the orders of former Vice President Dick Cheney. The Times story confirms claims by Seymour Hersh in March 2009 that an assassination squad had been created that reported directly to Cheney using special forces personnel. The covert CIA project was shut down by CIA Director Leon Panetta when he learned of it on June 23. Details of the project were passed on the next day to the U.S. Congress and led to furor over the reports. A statement by seven members of the House Intelligence Committee concerning the CIA misleading Congress was subsequently released. The covert CIA program allegedly began in 2001 soon after the 911 attacks. The unfolding revelations of CIA death squads using U.S. military special forces personnel coincides with the online release of video testimony of a former U.S. Navy SEAL who said he was recruited to perform 18 assassination assignments for the CIA. If true, the SEAL’s testimony reveals that covert assassinations predate the 911 attacks, and also targeted U.S. citizens. Curiously, the assassinations were related to covert projects Dick Cheney was allegedly involved in when he was Secretary of Defense for George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1993. Connor O’Ryan was a pseudonym used by Derek Hennessy who claims in video testimony recorded in 1991, that he performed covert missions for the CIA in the 1980s assassinating enemies of the United States. After joining the U.S. Navy in the early 1980s, O’Ryan/Hennessy claims he joined the elite SEALs and was eventually tasked to perform his covert assassination missions. He said that targets of the assassination hits even included U.S. citizens. He described his 18th and final mission as a sergeant for the U.S. Army Green Berets stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Budapest, Hungary. O’Ryan’s/Hennessy’s extraordinary claims were investigated over a ten year period by a retired Lt Colonel with the U.S. Air Force, Wendelle Stevens. During his investigation, Stevens was able to confirm Hennessy’s military I.D. and that he was assigned to the CIA performing covert missions. Concerned that O’Ryan/Hennessy may have been part of an intelligence operation to discredit him, Stevens did not release the initial results of his investigation until 2001. Video testimony of O’Ryan/Hennessy is included in a set of interviews conducted with Stevens currently being released on the internet. In the interviews, Steven’s discussed documents he had in his possession verifying Hennessy’s covert CIA missions. One document was apparently written on CIA letter head (see above graphic) with instructions for O/Ryan/Hennessy on his last mission. Steven’s read out the document’s contents as follows: “You are to report to the American Embassy in Budapest, Hungary. You will be received by S.A. Greywolf. As a unit you will proceed to terminate an ex S.A. David T. Johnson. According to Stevens, the document was O’Ryan’s/Hennessy’s final hit order one month before he left his final assignment at a secret facility in Nevada. Another document is O’Ryan’s/Hennessy’s W-2 salary statement that showed he was earning $74,000 for the CIA. Though only a sergeant he was earning the equivalent of a colonel’s salary at the time. Steven’s was able to confirm that the serial number and code word on the W-2 were active through an anonymous FBI source. On the video Stevens mistakenly refers to the salary statement as a W-4, but a copy of the W-2 is clearly shown (see slide show) . Combined with O’Ryan’s/Hennessy’s recorded video testimony, the documents, if genuine, would be smoking gun evidence that a CIA assassination squad using U.S. military personnel predated 2001 and even targeted U.S. citizens. To date, neither of the documents has been released to the public. Only video images are available. Independent document authentication still has to be conducted. The confirmation of the W-2 by an anonymous FBI contact of Stevens is powerful support for the legitimacy of O’Brian’s/Hennessy’s story. There is good reason, however, to be skeptical about the CIA hit order document’s legitimacy. It is difficult to accept that the CIA would be so explicit in putting on CIA stationary orders to terminate a serving U.S. military non-commissioned officer. One could reasonably argue that such orders, if put on paper, would be done in a more cryptic manner without the CIA logo. This would be consistent with an Assassination Directive that former CIA Director Allen Dulles allegedly drafted in 1961, and was later authorized by a group responsible for covert operations called Majestic-12. The alleged Dulles’ Assassination Directive used the cryptic phrase “it should be wet” as a code word for assassinations designed to protect Majestic-12 operations. If indeed there has been a CIA assassination program that predates 2001, it may originate from Dulles 1961 draft Assassination Directive. The directive was allegedly received by the chief of CIA counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton in 1961, and subsequently linked to the President Kennedy Assassination. If O’Connor/Hennessy did eliminate a serving Green Beret in Budapest in 1991 as he claims, then the authority for such an assassination may derive from Dulles’ 1961 draft Assassination Directive. If O’Ryan’s/Hennessy’s CIA hit order letter is a hoax, that raises an equally perplexing question. Why would Wendelle Stevens, a long time researcher of the UFO phenomenon, be targeted in an elaborate intelligence operation to discredit him with a contrived story about CIA assassins using elite military special forces personnel in 1991? O’Ryan/Hennessy spent an extended period hiding with Stevens and associates while allegedly on the run. During this time, a series of events occurred that persuaded those giving shelter to O’Ryan/Hennessy that he was genuinely being monitored and threatened to return voluntarily to his program. Eventually, O’Ryan/Hennessy disappeared and has never been heard of again. If O’Ryan’s/Hennessy’s testimony is even partially correct, as Stevens’ confirmation of his W-2 suggests, it would confirm the existence of an assassination team run by the CIA prior to 2001. His testimony reveals that even U.S. citizens were eliminated due to agendas of a highly classified covert operations run out of the CIA. O’Ryan/Hennessy himself apparently become a target when he shared his information with Stevens and this may have been related to his disappearance. For the last nine months of his military service during his final assassination missions, Hennessy was assigned to a covert facility in Nevada called S-4 to perform sentry duty for a highly classified covert project. It was there that he witnessed Dick Cheney arrive one day for an inspection for a project maintaining the secrecy of which was related to his earlier assassination missions. [Authors Note: I thank Lt Col Wendelle Stevens (USAF, ret.) and Rick Keefe for their assistance in confirming details of this article. The video is available online: Vol 1; Vol 2. More information about the video and its production is available at: http://ufohypotheses.com/] Transcript of YouTube Video interviews Wendell Stevens & Derek Hennessy Derek Hennessy: It’s a basic concept, everybody’s expendable. We can be written off very easily. Like hey, Special Forces. In Vietnam, Nicaragua, got shot, died there. Guys are going to accept that because they accept you are special forces now, and it’s a high risk job. Wendell Stevens: He was a strong, healthy young man, robust. He joined the Marines, and then stayed in the Marines, kept training up to SEAL status and then Black SEAL status, which is the highest ranking, or the highest training level a Marine can reach. He was a sergeant level when he was here, so he wasn’t a real high Marine rank, but when I found the W4 (sic 2) in his wallet while he was taking a shower, he was drawing $72,000 a year on a commission from the CIA, which is the equilvant of a colonel’s grade. He had sparse blonde hair, not really shaggy hair, stood very erect, he looked like a Marine, like a soldier, he had blue eyes. If you asked him a question he would answer, but he wasn’t very talkative. He had a tattoo on his right arm that he kept covered up. He got a mark for every special mission he carried out. Now to him a special mission was terminating an enemy to the United States government. They were characterized as an enemy, and they couldn’t go to trial because information might come out of a sensitive nature, and so they they terminated them instead. To me its murder. To him it was a mission. He was also living the life of an American assassin, and all the troops who were there, were apparently being used for the same purpose. Those assassinations were called special missions and they got a special bonus and a hash mark on his arm. These young men were selected when they were in their high teens, a very impressionable age. And they looked for people who were already patriotic, then they worked on their patriotism at boot camp until they became so patriotic they would weep when the flag goes up or down the flag pole. They were trained to take out America’s enemies. So for them to carry out one of these missions, all their leaders had to do was to characterized someone as a traitor, or as an enemy of the United States or a spy, and they would do it even if it was their brother, they would do it, or a close relative. Because they were trained to explisity believe their leader. Their leader could not error. So these missions were simply to terminate internal spies within the system. That’s what they thought they were doing, cleaning the system of traitors. He told me some interesting things about some of our special forces troops. Remember now, he was in a pay grade equal to a colonel in the CIA. He was carrying out special CIA missions. To him a CIA mission was something assigned to him by his superior that was in the best interests of the country. I found out in fact he was a government hit man who carried out his 18th mission when they gave him a physical and discovered, and probably introduced it. At that point he retained the hit order, and he gave me a copy of his last orders, which was to terminate another special forces, green beret sergeant in the US embassy in Budapest. He had just told me he didn’t have a mark for this. I didn’t see it. He got $5,000 bonus for every successful mission, and he had just finished his 18th By now I knew from seeing his papers that his missions were government executions. This is the hit order, his instructions to report to “the American Embassy in Budapest Hungry. You will be received by S. A. Greywolf. As a unit you wiill proceed to terminate S.A. Johnson. (See Photos) He was a green beret and a staff officer in the US Embassy. His partner was, they both put bullets in him, his partner was S.A. Greywolf. …When they were on missions like this they were not allowed to exchange names. He didn’t know who Greywolf was. He said on one mission he went with a Vatican hitman. I didn’t know the Vatican hitman. There was a helicopter crash in the S4 area. He told me that the government sacrificed the airplane in order to get six people from Area 51. Three of these workers were targets, the others were accidental victims. I asked him if he thought he would ever become vulnerable someplace along the way, and he said he thought that was happening now. He said the 18th mission was an American Army Green Beret Sergeant working at the US Embassy in Budapest. He was in level two of S4, when he found a note under his pillow after he had gone off ship, to report to his sergeant. His sergeant handed him an envelope and a car was waiting to drive to Las Vegas to the bus station. He knew from having done this before to look for a key taped to the back of a locker. He took the suit and clothes for business travel, put those clothes on and put his Marine clothes back in the locker and took a bus to Los Angeles and from there a plane to Budapest. Someone had already coordinated it. He was picked up at the airport by an embassy car driven by the intelligence officer from the Embassy in Budapest. He was driven to the Embassy where he was given Hungarian clothes, money, guns and bullets and a key to an apartment they had rented. He traveled under a false name from the facility to Budapest. Another name in Budapest. He was paired with another hit man from another place, and they were given a mug sheet of their target, front and side view of his face, where he lived, where he shopped, how he traveled going to and from work, everything they did. They were given three days. On the second day they executed him putting groceries in his car, coming from the supermarket with his two children in the car. This hurt him, but he had been characterized as a traitor who was selling secrets to the enemy. They are trained to take care of traitors to this country. He didn’t know the man. Didn’t know anything about him. He only believed his superiors that he is a spy, caught in the act, and he has to be eliminated, and they didn’t want to take the trouble of a trial because of all the exposure and that sort of thing. They just wanted it to stop. And this is how they stopped it. This was the 18th he had done. And he told me that many of the other people that he knew who were also intelligence officers at that facility, were also used the same way, carrying out important missions in the interests of the United States government. And the living facilities are to keep them there, to keep them from moving around in the public. Almost all of them are special forces troops, and that’s where they’re cool. If they’re carrying out hit operations for the government, it’s just like the Mafia, they take them some place where its cool, and any evidence leading to them is not going to go anywhere because you can’t find them. They’re safely stashed out there. There are others being used the same way. You know, this appalls me, that our United States government, with our tax payer money, are executing its own citizens without a trial, with out the benefit of the doubt, with no proof, with only the evidence supplied by their superiors, that could tell any story, and that’s frightening, that’s frightening. It didn’t bother him at all murdering people until the last one, the 18th one, when he went to Budapest, Hungry, and found out his target was a senior army master sergeant in the Green Berets, just like himself, and had a lot of ribbons and medals, and he was getting paid well. He was sent there to take him out. He was paired with another CIA agent, or another agent like himself, another special forces troop. And they were given Hungarian clothes and Hungarian weapons and ammunition to do it, mug shots of their hit, and where he lived, the routes he traveled, where he went to church, where he went to the grocery store, and everything. And they took him out together, one on each side of the car when he came out of the grocery store to put the groceries in the car. They hit him from both sides, with his kids in the car. They put seven or eight bullets in him. They pocketed their weapons, walked away and got in their car, they looked like anybody else there. They went back to the US Embassy, reported to the attaché who gave them the clothes, the guns and the money. The attaché gave them their travel clothes back, drove them to the airport and went home. That’s what a mission was. These guys were excempt because they were carrying out a special mission. And they really believed it. They didn’t feel bad about it because they believed they were (killing) traitors and they were enemies of the country. D. Hennessey: The pay we got was, I have always got demolition pay and jump pay, being with the team, but when we go on a cover op we get hazaradous duties pay. When we were with this detachment we got hazaradous duties pay. Which is…(unintelligible)… Still paid US Navy, G-6, petty officer first class pay rate, I got jump pay, if I make so many jumbs, …demolition pay because we’re demolition experts – UDT team, and hazaradous duties pay whenever we are on any kind of covert op in a country that the US government considers hostile – Nicaragua say. Edited July 19, 2009 by William Kelly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 AJ Weberman wrote on my facebook page: "CIA was going after real enemies for a change. They should be given a free hand when it comes to Islamists." I replied "I imagine that was the same argument used by right-wingers when the target was left-wing leaders in the 1960s and 1970s". There is no catagorical imperative. Everything has to be taken on a case by case basis. Yes I would like to see Islamists leaders taken out, and that is what is happening with the drones in Pakistan. Are you against that form of assassination too John? You see I don't want to see real human beings as opposed to Koranbutts die in an WMD attack. We cannot let these maggots get their hands on chemical weapons such as nerve gas or biological weapons. The future of humanity depends on it, of all humanity even the Koranbutts. These nitwits could start an epidemic that could wipe out human life on this planet. I say once a cell like this is discovered torture the xxxx out the mother after they get an overdose of LSD then once the information is extracted shoot them summarily. Death to the Islamists pigs who threaten the hippy way of life and replace it with Shar'ia law. All power the good shooters. Hey I don't waste my time with the Kennedy assassination any longer at least as far as debating it with other researchers. I know what happened and unless you work within that framework don't waste my with Woody Harrelson stupidy etc. Hunt's deathbed confession, and St John's recollections of that day show that Hunt was in Dallas not at a Chinese grocery. Another book is coming out in which Frank's nephew says he was told to alibi Frank for that time when he was in Dallas. A. J. You are someone I have thought highly of for your hard work and elucidation on the Dallas Magic Show. Your post above seems to indicate that what you learned of misdirection, false-flag operations, deception, outright-lies, disappearing evidence, faux investigations, etc. are lost on 9-11. 911 was to me a carbon-copy of Dallas and the 19+1+OBl are only the patsies - in place of LHO [or the two LHOs]. Saddened to see you saw so clearly the first and seem blinded to the second. Perhaps you'll come around. In any case, good to see you posting here. Peter, The question this thread addresses is not who was responsible for 9/11 but whether those deemed responsible should be executed without trial. AJ seems to say yes, JS says no. Certainly al Quada would execute Bush and Chaney or even Obama if given the opportunity. BK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tom Scully Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 (edited) ...Considering the recent reported history has me wondering if Blackwater has an integral role in this. .... Uhhhh.....BINGO! http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/us/20intel.html?_r=2August 20, 2009 C.I.A. Sought Blackwater’s Help in Plan to Kill Jihadists By MARK MAZZETTI WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials. Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects. The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A.’s director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting in June to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said. It is unclear whether the C.I.A. had planned to use the contractors to actually capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance in the program. American spy agencies have in recent years outsourced some highly controversial work, including the interrogation of prisoners. But government officials said that bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations. Officials said the C.I.A. did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune. Blackwater’s work on the program actually ended years before Mr. Panetta took over the agency, after senior C.I.A. officials themselves questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program. Blackwater, which has changed its name, most recently to Xe Services, and is based in North Carolina, in recent years has received millions of dollars in government contracts, growing so large that the Bush administration said it was a necessary part of its war operation in Iraq. It has also drawn controversy. Blackwater employees hired to guard American diplomats in Iraq were accused of using excessive force on several occasions, including shootings in Baghdad in 2007 in which 17 civilians were killed. Iraqi officials have since refused to give the company an operating license. Several current and former government officials interviewed for this article spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing details of a still classified program. Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, declined to provide details about the canceled program, but he said that Mr. Panetta’s decision on the assassination program was “clear and straightforward.” “Director Panetta thought this effort should be briefed to Congress, and he did so,” Mr. Gimigliano said. “He also knew it hadn’t been successful, so he ended it.” A Xe spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, also declined to give details of the program. But she praised Mr. Panetta for notifying Congress. “It is too easy to contract out work that you don’t want to accept responsibility for,” she said. The C.I.A. this summer conducted an internal review of the assassination program that recently was presented to the White House and the Congressional intelligence committees. The officials said that the review stated that Mr. Panetta’s predecessors did not believe that they needed to tell Congress because the program was not far enough developed. The House Intelligence Committee is investigating why lawmakers were never told about the program. According to current and former government officials, former Vice President Dick Cheney told C.I.A. officers in 2002 that the spy agency did not need to inform Congress because the agency already had legal authority to kill Qaeda leaders. One official familiar with the matter said that Mr. Panetta did not tell lawmakers that he believed that the C.I.A. had broken the law by withholding details about the program from Congress. Rather, the official said, Mr. Panetta said he believed that the program had moved beyond a planning stage and deserved Congressional scrutiny. “It’s wrong to think this counterterrorism program was confined to briefing slides or doodles on a cafeteria napkin,” the official said. “It went well beyond that.” Current and former government officials said that the C.I.A.’s efforts to use paramilitary hit teams to kill Qaeda operatives ran into logistical, legal and diplomatic hurdles almost from the outset. These efforts had been run by the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center, which runs operations against Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks. In 2002, Blackwater won a classified contract to provide security for the C.I.A. station in Kabul, Afghanistan, and the company maintains other classified contracts with the C.I.A., current and former officials said. Over the years, Blackwater has hired several former top C.I.A. officials, including Cofer Black, who ran the C.I.A. counterterrorism center immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks. C.I.A. operatives also regularly use the company’s training complex in North Carolina. The complex includes a shooting range used for sniper training. An executive order signed by President Gerald R. Ford in 1976 barred the C.I.A. from carrying out assassinations, a direct response to revelations that the C.I.A. had initiated assassination plots against Fidel Castro of Cuba and other foreign politicians. The Bush administration took the position that killing members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group that attacked the United States and has pledged to attack it again, was no different from killing enemy soldiers in battle, and that therefore the agency was not constrained by the assassination ban. But former intelligence officials said that employing private contractors to help hunt Qaeda operatives would pose significant legal and diplomatic risks, and they might not be protected in the same way government employees are. Some Congressional Democrats have hinted that the program was just one of many that the Bush administration hid from Congressional scrutiny and have used the episode as a justification to delve deeper into other Bush-era counterterrorism programs. But Republicans have criticized Mr. Panetta’s decision to cancel the program, saying he created a tempest in a teapot. “I think there was a little more drama and intrigue than was warranted,” said Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. Officials said that the C.I.A. program was devised partly as an alternative to missile strikes using drone aircraft, which have accidentally killed civilians and cannot be used in urban areas where some terrorists hide. Yet with most top Qaeda operatives believed to be hiding in the remote mountains of Pakistan, the drones have remained the C.I.A.’s weapon of choice. Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has embraced the drone campaign because it presents a less risky option than sending paramilitary teams into Pakistan. (Update: Joseph Finder attempts to defend himself on http://twitter.com/JoeFInder ) I have recommended the insightful, methodical analysis of Marcy Wheeler in previous posts on this forum...please read her take on the calculated attack on Panetta by some at CIA and probably Cheney, through media shill, Joseph Finder, here: The Errors of Telling of Leon Panetta’s ErrorBy: emptywheel Wednesday August 19, 2009 5:10 pm http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/08/...panettas-error/ By my count there are 27 paragraphs in the Daily Beast's breathless attempt to un-ring Leon Panetta's bell for him--to tell a story in which Panetta's revelation that the CIA had an assassination program it had not briefed Congress on was all a big misunderstanding. It takes novelist Joseph Finder, who wrote this story, until paragraph 23 to reveal the context of HPSCI's reaction to Panetta's briefing on the program that hadn't previously been briefed. More seriously, this controversy has given ammunition to congressional efforts to broaden CIA briefings. Instead of allowing the CIA to limit disclosure of the most sensitive, most highly classified stuff to just the “Gang of Eight”—the leaders of those committees and of the House and Senate—they want to require the CIA to brief the full membership of the intelligence committees. Somehow, Finder neglects to provide his readers that information where it chronologically makes sense--between the time Panetta briefed Congress on June 24 ... ....And if all that hasn't convinced you this story is a piece of xxxx, tell me who this sounds like. As one very former, very senior Bush administration official said to me in annoyance, “You know what? Let’s videotape them all. And when some important covert action gets torpedoed by the those guys on the intelligence committees and then we get hit again, let’s put those tapes up on YouTube for everyone to see who disarmed us. See what they think. It cuts both ways.” Whichever of the two people who hang around man-sized safes this is, his presence in the story surely doesn't recommend its truthfulness or judgment about legality. It's a nice tale this guy Finder has written. But there's zero reason to believe it--like the rest of his work--is anything but fiction. ....and here: Did I Say the Daily Beast Story Was BS?By: emptywheel Wednesday August 19, 2009 7:16 pm http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/08/...t-story-was-bs/ Because it was. They were trying to hide the fact that the company of their former ExecDir, Buzzy Krongard and Blackwater, is the gimmick behind the CIA's assassination program. The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials. Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not capture or kill any terrorist suspects. The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the new C.I.A. director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said. Only of course they didn't mention Buzzy Krongard, not once, in the whole article. Didn't mention that he left the CIA before he got this contract. (He was probably contracted by Dusty Foggo, but whatever.) .... Edited August 20, 2009 by Tom Scully Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tom Scully Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090831/scahill1Blackwater: CIA Assassins? By Jeremy Scahill August 20, 2009 "What we know now, if this is true, is that Blackwater was part of the highest level, the innermost circle strategizing and exercising strategy within the Bush administration," Schakowsky told The Nation. "Erik Prince operated at the highest and most secret level of the government. Clearly Prince was more trusted than the US Congress because Vice President Cheney made the decision not to brief Congress. This shows that there was absolutely no space whatsoever between the Bush administration and Blackwater.".... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090831/scahill1Blackwater: CIA Assassins? By Jeremy Scahill August 20, 2009 "What we know now, if this is true, is that Blackwater was part of the highest level, the innermost circle strategizing and exercising strategy within the Bush administration," Schakowsky told The Nation. "Erik Prince operated at the highest and most secret level of the government. Clearly Prince was more trusted than the US Congress because Vice President Cheney made the decision not to brief Congress. This shows that there was absolutely no space whatsoever between the Bush administration and Blackwater.".... If you're going to assassinate a President, you're not going to use a bunch of washed up Bay of Pigs mercinary Cuban Mafia Yahoos, and if you're going to assassinate Bin Laden you don't hire Blackwater - retired Navy SEAL contractors and celebrity security guards, you get the real Navy SEALS to do it. BK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Brancato Posted May 5, 2018 Share Posted May 5, 2018 What an interesting thread. I’m posting because I do t see the logic in Bill Kelly’s statement. I agree with him on his first comment though, which is if you’re going to assassinate a president you’re not going to use a bunch of washed up Bay of Pigs mercenary Cuban Mafia yahoos. But things have changed, and Blackwater is exactly who you would use now. Which brings me to my point. I think Bill Kelly and I might agree (I’m not speaking for him - perhaps he’ll sign on and contribute) that the JFK assassination was a military operation. But would real Navy Seals have been used at Dealey Plaza? Why wouldn’t the hit team be outsourced? interesting are the posts about Erik Prince, since he is still with us. I read somewhere that the reason Comey reopened the Clinton email controversy shortly before the election was that Prince was spreading the rumor in right wing media that Wiener’s emails contained very damaging info on Clinton, which turned out to be untrue. In a very real sense Prince helped Trump get elected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Clark Posted May 5, 2018 Share Posted May 5, 2018 33 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said: What an interesting thread. I’m posting because I do t see the logic in Bill Kelly’s statement. I agree with him on his first comment though, which is if you’re going to assassinate a president you’re not going to use a bunch of washed up Bay of Pigs mercenary Cuban Mafia yahoos. But things have changed, and Blackwater is exactly who you would use now. Which brings me to my point. I think Bill Kelly and I might agree (I’m not speaking for him - perhaps he’ll sign on and contribute) that the JFK assassination was a military operation. But would real Navy Seals have been used at Dealey Plaza? Why wouldn’t the hit team be outsourced? interesting are the posts about Erik Prince, since he is still with us. I read somewhere that the reason Comey reopened the Clinton email controversy shortly before the election was that Prince was spreading the rumor in right wing media that Wiener’s emails contained very damaging info on Clinton, which turned out to be untrue. In a very real sense Prince helped Trump get elected. This is not a criticism Paul..... I don't understand why you don't use the quote button. To make it clear what you are responding to is one reason to use it. But another reason to do so is that the quoted party will receive notification if that feature is enabled, in this case, Bill Kelly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Brancato Posted May 5, 2018 Share Posted May 5, 2018 Thanks - I should do that. I often use the quote button. But there is a lot about posting I don’t get, such as inserting a link, or quoting someone on one thread for use on a different thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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