Nathaniel Heidenheimer

According to Kai Bird John McCloy went to Brazil right in the beginning of The Warren Commissions work, on behalf of one of Milbank Tweed's corporate cliants, the M.A. Hanna Mining Company. It struck me as itriguing that this was so important as to disrupt his work for the Warren Commission. (The Chairman, P550-551)

I think the medias failure to mediate is the main reason for conspiracy theories. You never see a leading researcher on mainstram media debating a leading researcher.

Instead you see people like the NYT columnist Frank Rich slander the entire movement, by claiming that

9/11 truthers believe that no planes hit the twin towers. Almost none of the 9/11 truthers belive this, but for MILLIONS OF PEOPLE THIS HALF A LINE IS ALL THEY WILL EVER READ AND THEY TAKE IT AS THE EXCUSE TO DISMISS IT. The mainstrem media engages in conscious disinformation strategies like this. They are the only ones with the circulation to creat a real ENLIGHTENMENT PUBLIC SPHERE IN WHICH BOTH SIDES MIGHT BE RATIONALLY DEBATED.

They chose not to do so.

Instad they slander, and this in turn inspires more scepticism from those who have read more than thier snide little left-gatekeeping snippet.

The media' failure do mediate a public discussion. This is the true cause of "conspiracy theory" Enough of the soviet stype psychologizing about those who don't swallow the governments propaganda.

Provide a citation for Rich saying or implying all or most "9/11 truthers believe that no planes hit the twin towers". Then prove that it was an intentional dection. What about all the times leaders of the " 'truth' movement" make mistakes like claiming the Pentagon has anti-aircraft batteries (Griffen, Messeyen) or that passengers can be heard planning to use the beverage cart to knock down the cockpit door on the flt. 93 CVR (Fetzer) or that the steel from the WTC was certified by UL to withstand 2000F for 6 hours (Fetzer and IIRC Griffen and Jones) the CEO of the company that handled security for the WTC was a cousin of GWB (Fetzer, Griffen et. al.)

Do you really think that Rich who has been one of Bush's most vocal critics "is in on it"?

DO you want to know why the MSM doesn't pay "inside jobbers" more attention? It's probably because they are journalists and NOT sci-fi writers. As it is they have gotten coverage on most MSM outlets often more than once.

As for Peters list mosts if not all of those are a) unproved or widely acknowledged.

In anycase none of them chage the fact that there is no credible evidence backing the MIHOP theory.

_______

Do you think that "Left Gatekeeping" is a myth Len?

If so I urge you read The CIA and Culture by Francis Stoner Saunders. It shows that the CIA is much more

likely to be in the liberal, left press ( in fact often writing the articles that will serve as the firewall between liberals and leftists) than in the right press. Please read the book. I find it convincing and before you dismiss it id like you to give it a try.

The above comment also answers your comments about Rich. can i prove scientifically that he deliberately did this. OF COURSE NOT. I dont own tv networks the way your narrators of reason do. But I have read a lot about disinformation theory and have studied media disinformation of the corporated media in severals cases extensively: the assassination of JFK, and the artivities of the Salvadoran Death squads, which were entirely organized by the U.S. With a lot of background research in corporate media disinformation, I am able to make that accusation about Rich. Anyone who reads the least amount of 9/11 knows that he cited a position of such marginality as typical of the movemnt as a whole. On the other hand COckburn and CHmpsky have no problem dismissing Kennedy assassination work without reading a single chapter, so maybe your right: rich probably didnt read a single line either. go on defending that type of utterly professional journalism that gave us tonkin Gulf and WMDs. Do you read as fast as you type?

i dont think rich said all or most. He didnt need to. THIS WAS THE ONLY SAMPLE OF 9/11 TRUTH THAT HE OFFERED HIS READERS. oh, and it wasn't a sample. The purpose was to give one more opportunity for those rational liberal readers of the NY times to shrug off 9/11 truthers as seething idiots, while they simpred off to NYU to quietly teach history to the upper class children and keep their jobs by seeming as normal as possible.

Maybe they did the same about the El Mozote massacre in 1982 when NYT printed reagans firm denials that more than 600 peasants were killed in ahlf hour by a US trained elite battlion of the Salvadoran army we wre funding to the tune of 82%. It would have been very comforting to belive our president and keep your job and go home and watch back to the future.

Then around 1991 they dug up the bodies. This was of course after the democratic congress had restored funding to those freedom lovers in the slavadoran army. Your trust in our corporate lapdogs is almost religiously charming.

Why dont you site some Popular Mechanics articles on El Mozote. That will turn what I type into "conspiracy theory" and we can all rest assured in the abilities of our professional journalists, who have turned the mind of a nation into aged lime jello.

len--

when you say that most of these theories are

"a) unproved" just what do you mean by proved? How do you define proved? Did the Warren Commission prove anything for you?

If four big networks seem to agree that North Vitnamese boats shot at an american desotryer,does this prove

it for you. Undoubtedly the network anchors in august of 64 were wearing nice suits. What if they were anchors for Pravda in nice suits? would this "prove" anything in your dense of the word?

Then there are courts of law.

In 2000 two juries in Memphis, were persuaded by William Pepper that james Earl Ray did not act alone. The NYT burried this story on page 17. We say we are a society that takes trials and the legal system seriously. I guess not. I guess these trials didn't "prove" anything BECAUSE OTHERWISE THE TIMES WOULD NOT HAVE BURRIED THEM ON PAGE 17

circular logic liscences for "responsible journalists" available at the Columbia University Turner Gannet building Wednesdays around tea time.

I think the medias failure to mediate is the main reason for conspiracy theories. You never see a leading researcher on mainstram media debating a leading researcher.

Instead you see people like the NYT columnist Frank Rich slander the entire movement, by claiming that

9/11 truthers believe that no planes hit the twin towers. Almost none of the 9/11 truthers belive this, but for MILLIONS OF PEOPLE THIS HALF A LINE IS ALL THEY WILL EVER READ AND THEY TAKE IT AS THE EXCUSE TO DISMISS IT. The mainstrem media engages in conscious disinformation strategies like this. They are the only ones with the circulation to creat a real ENLIGHTENMENT PUBLIC SPHERE IN WHICH BOTH SIDES MIGHT BE RATIONALLY DEBATED.

They chose not to do so.

Instad they slander, and this in turn inspires more scepticism from those who have read more than thier snide little left-gatekeeping snippet.

The media' failure do mediate a public discussion. This is the true cause of "conspiracy theory" Enough of the soviet stype psychologizing about those who don't swallow the governments propaganda.

I was also thinking about the amazingly forgotten anthrax incident.

Consider:

The only dem senator who fully opposed the Iraq invasion on principle died in a small plane crash. He was WITHOUT ANY QUESTION WHATSOEVER THE FURTHEST LEFT OF ALL 100 SENATORS (though this is not saying much)

The anthrax letters were delivered to two vital cogs in the legilative apparatus, the minority leader, and the judiciary leader of the minority party. These were the ones who could have really hindered the insane enabel

i mean patriot act.

Later, Bush gets both Leahy and the Daschel TO AGREE TO SUSPEND THE ANTHRAX INVESTIGATION SO THAT IT DOESNT HINDER THE WAR ON TERROR IN A PRIVATE WHITE HOUSE MEETING WITH BOTH SENS. HUH???

Do you mean to tell me Len, that you think the FBI cannot conduct an anthrax investigation that was DIRECTED AT THE FUNCTIONING OF AN ENTIRE BRANCH OF THE US gov while also doing the war on terror? Moreover what made them SEPARATE THE TWO?

Given the essential inactivity of the legislative branch--escept as a rubber stamp for the executive-- these events combine to be worthy of very prominant attention. Of course the fact that two citizens are raising the issue instead of two politicians or corporate journalists, means that this can all be dismissed as CONSPIRACY THEORY! How clean the windex mind here in oceana! ok, Len, your turn to type the words conspiracy theory.

John Newman in Oswald and the CIA, explores the possibility that the 201 file was opened only when someone within the Agency knew of Oswalds intention to return home. He suggests this knowledge may have

been obtained in December 1960, before Oswald had actually informed the U.S. embassy where he was in the USSR or of his intention to return to the U.S. From here Newman explores the possibility that the CIA had some means of communicating with Oswald while he was living in the USSR.

Newman explores the possibility that this contact may have been Leo Setyaev.

My understanding is that Angleton was in direct control of the 201 files. Is this correct? How might his use of these files have functioned within the overal framework of the assassination planning? Did these files play a role in allowing the agency to selectively let some other intelligence agencies have access to certain information, while preventing other agencies, or offices within agencies form similar access?

Was Angleton developing a group of potential patsies who had all been to the USSR and back, thereby doing the preliminary work that would eventually lead to another distinct reason for participation in the coverup: the prevention of a nuclear war with the USSR that Johnson was later to use on Earl Warren and Sen Russel?

Why would Angleton seek to keep this information separate from the Soviet Realities division of the CIA?

"the quick destruction of evidence (the steel debris. Shades of JFK's limo);"

A lot of the steel was taken quickly from the site, where mob-backed waste disposers derailed the steel on its way to the legitimate dump site and instead brought it ot their own chop shops to recycle and resell. Pretty sick, even for a wiseguy.

Scott that's interesting. Can you refer us to a link that discusses this?

One thing that the people who complain about the steel removal fail to take into account is that there wasn't a lot of spare space in the NYC area for thousands of cubic feet of debris.

Im wondering how this would sound as a reason for the destruction of evidence for any OTHER crime. It amazes me that people will accept this type of reasoning. I am beginning to think it is based on something like this quasi-conscious "reasoning": the tweedy professors and other possessors of high status knowledge are ducking this 9/11 wave, so I better too, or people will call me one of those UFO believing types at work and their middle class eyebrows will start doing the wave whenever I walk into the luchroom" The level of mental conformity in the face of such a blatantly fraudulent initial investigation of 9/11 is truly amazing-- what are we on, our fourth NORAD timeline now FOR AN EVENT THAT WAS USED TO INAUGURATE WORLD WAR THREE..... and still the tweedy left professors, comforted by thier nation Magazines, continued teaching gender theory in the films of the 1970s.

Hi this question is abstract and immesureable but meant to invoke fun.

Who do you think knew less about the activities of thier intelligence agencies:

A) a citizen of the USSR in 1950 concerning the activites of the KGB and NKVD(? I mean thier

"domestic one")

a citizen of the US in 2006 concerning the activities of the CIA.

In April 1961 Gen Edwin walker was fired from his post by President Kennedy. He was accused of encouraging far right wing elements within his command, and distributing JBS/KKK propaganda to the troops, he was, at this time, a member of both the JBS, and the KKK. Senators including Albert Gore ® suspected that Chief of staff Lemnitzer was was also involved with Walkers extremist right wing beliefs.

Nat, is this what you mean?

Stephen, I was familiar with the Walker stuff. What I had heard much less about was Ford and Lyman in 1975. It seems an interesting appointment made by a member of the Warren Commission at a time when there may have been some worry that legislative oversight of the CIA might finally prove to be something other than an oxymoron. Any signs that this appointment was related to the assassination?

I found this on SourceWatch. The last sentence interested me. I hadn't known about Lyman's work for

FORD'S 1975 COMMISION ON CIA ACTIVITIES WITHIN THE US

Interesting selection, made by an interestring selector, at an interesting time.

Anyone know more about this?

------------------

Prior to the Kennedy assassination, Lemnitzer had been implicated in an investigation into extreme right-wing and anti-communist/pro-Israel hardliner connections in the Defense Department which had already forced the resignation of several Pentagon officials, including one who'd been caught handing out John Birch Society literature while on assignment overseas. The conclusions called for further extensive investigation of Lemnitzer to determine just how far his connections ran, but these were never carried out. This has led some to suspect a DoD, rather than CIA, involvement in the death of JFK. Ironically (or not), in 1975 the retired General Lemnitzer was appointed by Gerald R. Ford to the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States.

Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Lyman_L._Lemnitzer"

MediaWiki

GNU Free Documentation License 1.2

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The culture of electoral democracy has particularly weakened the notion of politics. The idea that politics must necessarily take the form of a transparent, electoral and parliamentary democracy with eligible parties on the left and on the right, with a normal level of corruption instead of massacres, has perverted our sense of the stakes involved. One need not adhere to conspiracy theories in order to admit that oligarchic, and therefore antidemocratic, sovereignties and empires exist. Working to clearly define these phenomena is necessary for an effective reorganization of the left. The American program of "democracy for all" is all well and good, but it sounds like a missionary toasting at a cannibal banquet. The problem must be dealt with at its source. There can be no democracy without the victory of popular power over the oligarchy. (Alain Joxe)

--------------------

I agree with this paragraph and its been what ive been trying to internally type for some time now.

Elections in the United States have become the opposite of democracy.

By this I mean they serve to obscure the true nature of power and manufacture a false consenses that is not based on the realites of power. Take for example the recent STEALTH primary campaign of Hillary Rodham Bush. Her strategy was keep it off the airwaves because she new how mad the politically litterate base of her party was at her for shutting up for five years while the Executive Branch shed its legilative limb.

The true work of the Hillary campaign was done by the NYT. First they went after Lieberman, because they knew their DLC--right democratic line was becoming two transparent. Lieberman was the more blatent Bush enabler, but Clinton was the hinge, and played a much more important structural role in the party of the professional Bush enablers.

The NYT's idea was to sacrifice Lieberman to save Hillary. Sure enough, a week before the elction the times typed something to the effect of 'though hillary hasn't been exactly brave in foreign policy her record is very differnt from Lieberman' It then went on to type some fine print that Hillarys typsists typed in 2002 or 3. The main point of this fine print was that NO ONE IN OUR NATION EVER HEARD IT WHEN IT MATTERED, IE WHEN SOMEONE SPEAKING OUT CLEARLY MIGHT HAVE STOPPED THE PSYCHOTIC IRAQ INVASION.

So, in the realm of MEDIated politics, Hillary was not Lieberman- Light, she was Orthodox Lieberman, Orthodoxer than any true hustings could ever bear. It was she who cloaked Bushes extremism with the wholecloth of the party itself. Lieberman's function had been aberational flak-catcher, and his played his role in August.

50-60% of Americans are against the Iraq war now. They do not have a single senator articulating thier principles. Burke suggested that a representative not have to litterally represent the views of his constituents. Here in the US, we have trumped Ed: in our new theory of representation 1 senator out of a hundred can represent 40-60% of the population, and he can die in a small plane crash (Wellstone) as the wiser intonation of the general will are manifest in the new republic. Poli sci profs take note.

The net result? 60% might be for or against something passionately, but they will never get thier talking head on TV that is required to galvanize a general opinion into a clearly articulated policy option. This guy understands how American media- fascism works. Brown shirts not required, but definiately not excluded either.

Stephen along the lines of your connecting Lemnitzers role with the stay behinds (that later became involved in the domestic use of state-terror for political reasons) and his role with Operation Northwoods is this from

the Swiss historian Steven Ganser's essay "The Strategy of Tension in the Cold War Period" in the new David Ray Griffin Peter Dale Scott edited book 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals speak out":

Lemnitzer...had been one of the senior officers sent to negotiate the Italian surrender in 1943

and the german surrender in 1945. After fighting in Korea, he became , in 1960 chairman of the

JCS. Following the CIA's failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, leading generals in the Pentagon,

including Lemnitzer, argued that strategy of tension techniques should be used against the

US population in order to create a pretect for war....Operation Northwoods

I found the direct reference to strategy of tension stuff with Op Northwoods interesting. Any idea on who he worked with in Italy and Germany. What other Americans were working with him at the time?

I strongly recommend this essay by Ganser. It also mentions a french rightist by the name of

Yves Guerin-Serac who wrote about "Strategy of Tension" tactics. Does anyone know if he was involved in the

De Gaulle assassination attempts? Any known CIA connections to this guy. I think this strategy of tension history must be forcefully interjected into as many US websites as possible! This is no time to be bashfull about the Strategy of Tension.

I heard from very reliable sources that Amy Goodman has agreed to a debate between Dylan Avery Vs. the authors of the Pop. Mechanics articles. There may be others also involved, not sure.

Looks like the pressre campaign on DM may have finally paid off!

Also just whant to say that I hope they get into some of the dimplomatic, and FISA evidence, as I find it more compelling than some of the physical evidence.

This could be a big moment in the history of the 9/11 movement.

Jack-- just got my copy of the new book edited by Scott and Griffin. It looks very useful as an eye-opener, particularly those who have been effected by "left gatekeepers" like Alexander Cockburn (Cockburn wrote a new hit piece on 9/11 movement today for The Nation. Its 100% namecalling with no realdiscussion of the

evidence. I know Cockburn is also very uninformed, but whats interesting is his excellent book in defese of Gary Webb, who he might also have dismissed as a conspiracty theorist--See Whiteout, parts of which are excellent)

What immediately struck me is the books endorsement on the firts page. Thes included blurbs from

*Mark Crispin Miller NYU professor of Journalism

*Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst

*Rev. William Sloane Coffin

These are people who are allowed on Democracy Now, the left radio show that has been targeted by activists as left Gatekeeper #1. Of course they were not on discussing thier views on 9/11, but were discussing other subjects.

The fact that they have endorsed this new book, is interesting. Might this be used as a means of countering the left gatekeeping that we suspect is going on? (See Francis Stoner Saunders "The Cultural Cold War, for the

this history of this left gatekeeping if you think this is baseless speculation)

In other words might one type to a citizen you is fond of Amy Goodman something along the lines of "Amy doesn't find Ray McGovern a wacky conspiracy theorist when he's talking about OTHER topics. If you to some degree trust Ray, shouldn't you at least be open minded regarding a book he recommends" In other words use these names as catapults against the left-gatekeepers. Admittedly, it sounds a bit credentialist for my taste, but one has to fight back against the mindless namecalling that some academic types accept in lieu of rational discussion.

I seem to remember an interesting article in the 1990's from the Morning News that strongly leaned towards the view that LHO was part of a conspircacy.

Does anyone know of any such writers over the whole period. I realize CT T-shirts are not good for your career, so I mean it in a general way: Dallas journalists who wrote mass circulation articles that might be considered contrary to the official story, even though they might not scream about it.

One reason I ask is I am wondering about contradicitons between the Metro Section (local) and the National Section in the Paper. Is it possible that in the Dallas area, there were aspects of the Warren Commission that simply couldn't fly as well in Dallas as in other cites, BECAUSE IT TOO FLAGRANTLY CONTRADICTED WHAT THE

LOCAL REPORTERS KNEW?

e.g. The WC's claim that Ruby had little to do with organized crime might be harder to Swallow for anyone

who had ever wallowed in the Carousel Club.

The wartime commander in chief also had a wire over his shoulder

and a box taped to his back, evidently.

Kerry's running mate John Edwards appeared on the Tonight Show during the campaign, and Jay Leno showed a photo of Bush's back during the debate and asked Edwards about the evidence that Bush was wired. Instead of addressing the issue, Edwards cracked a lame, single-line joke about it (as I recall he said he thought the thing on Bush's back was "his battery") and the subject was dropped.

That's an example of how deeply fear has been established now in America. If you're a politician running for office and some especially sensitive thing about the ruling regime is mentioned at all, you'd best just laugh it off. (And of course lose the election.)

Ron, I was just thinking about the debate scandal today. How its been dropped and never even been picked up again, even on left sites like Counterpunch, and the obvious gatekeeper site Common Dreams.

Was this controversy ever resolved, or was it just dropped into memory hole?

Can you imagine how busy the media would be reminding us of it had John (I would have invaded Iraq, even had I known there were no weapons of mass destruction) kerry been miked for the debate?

Did Bush directly lie about this one, or did he even need to?

One more thing that makes me ABSOLUTELY STUNNED THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO THINK THAT THIS RIGHT WING FANATICISM IS ONLY ABOUT BUSH.

An important new book about the Indonesian Genocide of 1965-66 has just come out. I have just started reading it and I can't put it down. Here is what forum member Alfred W. McCloy blurbs

about PRETEXT FOR MASS MURDER: The September 30th Movement and the Suharto's Coup D'etat in

Indonesia by John Roosa, Univ. Wisconsin Press

"Rossa takes readers into that fascinating hyper-heated political atmosphere of Sukarno's Indonesia

when the society was rife with rumors and tensions. By moving carefully through the darkened past

his account shows how the bloodydenouement of October 1965 ws the um of these tensions--rival

military factions. maneuvers by special units within the Communist party, and the efforts of foreign

intelligence agencies to manipulate these divisions. Lucid, thoughtful. and engaging, this is a brilliant,

strikingly original analysis."

Its worth emphasizing that most of this book is about the original trigger incident, that might be deemed a

"false flag op" that triggered the genocide. Most scholars have stayed away from this topic for a variety of reasons so this is proving a unique book so far. more later (Its worth looking into, as some estimate the number of those killed in the CIA backed coup as between 600,000 and 1.25 million, yet how many stalinists....I mean Americans know that it ever happened, much less who paid for it?)

"

Any one see any connections to his role in the framing of Ed Wilson?

Paul-- thanks. Always good to read CONTEMPORARY accounts of the struggle between JFK and CIA.

Generally a brave article, but one question re the word "bumbling" in the same sentence as U-2 incident

and Bay of Pigs. As you know there are those who argue that both incidents were staged disasters used

by the CIA to force the Ike and JFK into a corner.

Do you agree with these interpretations of the U-2 and Bay of Pigs incidents?

Did Starnes have access to this interpreation?

Does anyone know of any connections that may have existed between C.D. Jackson and David Atlee Phillips?

Also, is there anything good to read on what C.D. was doing between 1956 and when he got control of the Z-film. I know he was working for Life, among other things, but DOING WHAT?

I would be gratefull if the other side might post a similarly concise reasoning as to why they think the film was not faked.

This is about as concise as it's gonna get:

Why the Zapruder Film is Authentic

Presented in Dallas on Friday, November 20, 1998

by Dr. Josiah Thompson

http://home.comcast.net/~ceoverfield/josiah.html

Maybe Rigby believes that Thompson, like Weisberg is a witting servant of the CIA.

I would be gratefull if the other side might post a similarly concise reasoning as to why they think the film was not faked.

This is about as concise as it's gonna get:

Why the Zapruder Film is Authentic

Presented in Dallas on Friday, November 20, 1998

by Dr. Josiah Thompson

http://home.comcast.net/~ceoverfield/josiah.html

Maybe Rigby believes that Thompson, like Weisberg is a witting servant of the CIA.

Tripple thanks for both of your general overviews, Mr. Hogan and Mr. Rigby.

Paul-- good writing. As a middle aged novice Id been looking for a point of entry into the Z-film contraversy, but every time I openened a thread I saw font that resembled no mans land when it wasn't christmastime, WWI.

I would be gratefull if the other side might post a similarly concise reasoning as to why they think the film was not faked. Then I will send both sides a quarter, and watch the font fly.

Only this time, ill have an 11% chance of following.

I know this is primarily a forum for researchers, but part of good research is getting it out there for wider audiences to understand. If Dick Russel had the same access to the public ear that Gerald Posner had, the world would be a different place.

Discovered this interesting critique of the way Hersh packaged Operation Phoenix for the gentle readers of the New Yorker. Doug Valentine, the author, makes clear the implications of this packaging in defining the limits of U.S. corporate media coverage of Iraq's U.S. created Death Squads.

From April 28, 2004 Counterpunch (online)

_________________

Curiously, this writer knows of one former CIA contract officer who, before joining the Titan Corporation, worked as a Phoenix Coordinator in Vietnam in 1967. This same individual served in 1974 as a congressional liaison officer for CIA officer Donald Gregg. As Vice-President George H. W. Bush's National Security Advisor, Gregg helped to create the CIA's Counter Terrorism Center under Duane Clarridge in 1986. Gregg had managed the Phoenix Program in III Corps in Vietnam in 1970.

This unstated connection to the Phoenix Program, which was a major factor in the May Lai Massacre, is also significant in understanding what Hersh wants us to infer from his articles on national security issues. Specifically, as Hersh informed us in a December 2003 article in The New Yorker (titled "MOVING TARGETS: Will the counter-insurgency plan in Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?"), the CIA had formed a new Special Forces group, designated Task Force 121, to neutralize Baathist insurgents, by capture or assassination. According to Hersh, many of the anonymous officials he interviewed for his article feared that the new operation, called "preëmptive manhunting" by one of them, had "the potential to turn into another Phoenix Program."

"Phoenix," Hersh went on to say, without mentioning the CIA, "was the code name for a counter-insurgency program that the U.S. adopted during the Vietnam War, in which Special Forces teams were sent out to capture or assassinate Vietnamese believed to be working with or sympathetic to the Vietcong. In choosing targets, the Americans relied on information supplied by South Vietnamese Army officers and village chiefs."

What Hersh omits from his description of Phoenix, is that the CIA officers who managed the program relied for their information not on "South Vietnamese Army officers and village chiefs," but on their own unilateral assassination squads, and a gulag archipelago of secret interrogation centers manned by members of the South Vietnamese secret police and contract CIA officers, like the individual who supplied the blacklist for the village of My Lai. Had Hersh included this most important piece of information, the public's attention would have been directed towards the CIA's interrogation practices, and the location and operations of its existing secret interrogation centers in Iraq. But the scandal at Abu Ghoryab, although then well known to insiders, would not have been a sensational scoop.

The Phoenix Program "got out of control," Hersh reported. "According to official South Vietnamese statistics, Phoenix claimed nearly forty-one thousand victims between 1968 and 1972; the U.S. counted more than twenty thousand in the same time span. Some of those assassinated had nothing to do with the war against America but were targeted because of private grievances. William E. Colby, the C.I.A. officer who took charge of the Phoenix Program in 1968 (he eventually became C.I.A. director), later acknowledged to Congress that "a lot of things were done that should not have been done."

Two things require our attention here. First, why has no one in the press, or Congress, devoted the same degree of attention to the CIA's death squads roaming around Iraq, as they have to the Abu Ghoryab scandal? We know from CNN's David Ensor that " An Iraqi prisoner who died in November while being interrogated by a CIA officer and contract translator arrived at Abu Ghraib (sic) prison with "broken ribs and breathing difficulties" after being arrested by Navy SEALs, U.S. officials said Thursday. Unnamed Pentagon officials were quoted Wednesday saying the man had been delivered to the prison in "good health."

We know from Hersh that Phoenix is policy in Iraq, and that it got out of control in Vietnam. We also know that Navy SEALs are one of CIA's primary unilateral facets of its Phoenix-style Program in Iraq but there's no accounting for the number of Iraqis killed, abducted or tortured through the Program. Why not? Why not reporting in it? Must we wait for some Navy SEL to be brought up on murder charges first?

The other thing that would be helpful to understand, in analyzing Hersh's reporting, is the nature of his relationship with William Colby. It is believed that they formed a rapport in 1974, while Colby was director of the CIA. At the time, Hersh had learned of the existence of documents connecting the CIA to Operation Chaos, which, under CIA Counter-Intelligence chief James Angleton, spied on tens of thousands of US citizens. As the story was about to break, Angleton offered to tell Hersh of other CIA misdeeds if he "would hold off on the (Chaos) story." According to historian John Prados, Hersh immediately warned Colby that Angleton "was off the reservation." What Colby said in response is unknown, but from that moment on, Hersh seemed to have entered into a quid-pro-quo with the upper echelons of the underground agency.

As Reeky used to say to Loocy, "You got a lot of 'splaining to do," Mr. Hersh.

_________________

for full article:

http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine05082004.html

By the way, John, any chance of your trying to get Valentine on the Forum? Ive read his books and found them very worthwhile.

Hi everyone.

I thought some might be interested in this article on "The hunt for Bin Laden" from Counterpunch. It should be noted that this website has been very dismissive of those questioning the official 9/11 conspiracy theory. Recently, however, it did post an article that was questioning the link between Neil Bush and securicom-- essentially along the lines of why dont they just release the records.

http://www.counterpunch.org/osseiran08212006.html

Reading Fonzi's The Last Investigation, it has Frank Sturgis requesting Marita Lorenz to drop off names of suspected fbi or cia investigatiors for him at Eastern Airlines in Miami.

Devid Ferrie was also a former pilot of Eastern Airlines.

Chris Simpon's book Blowback, on Operation Paperclip, claims that a very high official (president, CEO?) of

Eastern Airlines was recruited from post-war Germany, inspite of his having committed what might have amounted to war crimes on behalf of the Nazis.

After entering Easern in the Index I read in one of the threads that William Pawley's son was also an employee dealing with Latin American operations for Eastern.

Does anyone know of any other connections between the CIA and Eastern Airlines?

Is it possible to define what particular types of services the airline performed for the CIA, if you are convinced that an instituional relationship, in fact, existed?

Look again. Bailyn and Gordon Wood do write about the colonists "paranoia" in thinking the English parliament was out to get them. Hit the texts O glib, filmy one!

Thank you for the advice.

It is interesting how an organism can morph from one substratum to another, notwithstanding its middle class derivation. You don't have to be a clinical paranoid to grab a megaphone and rant in a public square, you don't even have to play one on TV, but it helps. It's all about the commitment one brings to the role, you see.

Mark-- any supplements for your snideness or is it organic?