Douglas Caddy

http://crooksandliars.com/gordonskene/e-howard-hunt-and-william-f-buckley-19

Mark Lane interviewed by William F. Buckley, Jr. on December 1, 1966

Published on Mar 22, 2013 by Justin Lozoff ... in politics. In his own words, the soon to be President-elect records verbal notes, presumably for a future book. The dictabelt tape recordings were never intended for public consumption, it's just JFK thinking aloud to himself. 3 minutes were shaved off of mispronunciations, errors in speaking, "ah's", long pauses, etc. The only downside to that is that you can't hear the wheels in his head turning as much, which is interesting. *For HD click on 480p & expand screen, for an intimate experience.

You can listen to Robert Merritt and the NY Times reporter, Michael Powell, being interviewed today on The Power Hour in hours 2 and 3 below. Merritt claimed that only 18 percent of "Watergate Exposed" was his writing. He said that the rest were "lies" fabricated by me. Moderator Joyce Riley cut him off quickly about this. He also declared that 100 of the 200 pieces of candy that he distributed to the anti-war protesters in the early 1970s at their parade in Washington resulted in many people dying from the poison placed in the candy and many of these protesters permanently losing their minds due to the chemicals placed in the candy. He said that he only recently had thought about the havoc by him that occurred on those involved. http://archives2014.gcnlive.com/Archives2014/jul14/PowerHour/0717142.mp3 http://archives2014.gcnlive.com/Archives2014/jul14/PowerHour/0717143.mp3 http://jimhougan.com/wordpress/?p=230

THURSDAY - JULY 17, 2014: EXCLUSIVE POWER HOUR INTERVIEW: Former confidential informant ROBERT MERRITT, and New York Times Reporter MICHAEL POWELL will be sharing information on the secret life of working for the government. Learn more about Michael's exclusive interview with Robert Merritt in his latest article: Takeover of Kenmore Hotel: Informer Recalls His Complicity. ** This is a Power Hour exclusive interview and the only place you will hear details from Robert Merritt and Michael Powell's interview. This will also be the last radio interview ever that Robert Merritt will be giving. The show can be listened to over the Internet. http://www.thepowerhour.com/schedule.htm

Rupert Murdoch Is Trying To Buy Time Warner For A Huge Price http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/16/rupert-murdoch-time-warner-merger_n_5590787.html

James: This is extremely good news indeed. For the sake of transparency, could you provide forum members with the names of those who comprise your group that has valiantly stepped forward and saved this valuable resource? Many thanks in this regard. Doug

The August 2014 issue of Vanity Fair came in the mail today. I immediately read the eagerly-awaited article, “Nixon Unbound”, by Douglas Brinkley and Luke A. Nichter. Their article is adapted from their new book being published this month, The Nixon Tapes, which draws up 3,700 hours of Nixon White House tapes. The bulk of the tapes in Vanity Fair are devoted to Nixon and his inner circle discussing global affairs. Frequently the discussion is between Nixon and his national-security adviser, Henry Kissinger. Kissinger comes off as the classic ass-kisser. He almost invariably agrees with any foreign policy opinion expressed by Nixon. If he strays off the reservation in these discussions, he quickly retreats from his own opinion and loses no time in embracing Nixon’s. The Vanity Fair article runs from pages 68 to 76. There are no great bombshells revealed in the article. For example, Nixon’s opinions on homosexuality and gays have been broadcast before, so there is nothing new here. I look forward to reading the authors’ new book that will be in the bookstores by month’s end. Undoubtedly there will be insightful and valuable material in the book that is not covered in Vanity Fair. As an aside, I am writing an article based on Nixon’s and John Ehrlichman’s discussions in the Oval Office on June 21, 1972, and July 19, 1972, about me. These discussions can be found in Prof. Stanley Kutler’s book, Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes, published in 1997. My article will make a new and major revelation about Watergate, based on the Nixon-Ehrlichman Oval Office discussions. http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/07/nixon-secret-white-house-audio-tapes

If you do this, the NSA will spy on you http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/07/if-you-do-nsa-will-spy-you/88054/

Trove of KGB Secrets Smuggled Out of Russia by Defector in 1992, Made Public http://time.com/2960752/soviet-defectors-kgb-secrets-public-russia-communism/

JFK: HOW THE MEDIA ASSASSINATED THE REAL STORY By Robert Hennelly and Jerry Policoff Published 2002 http://www.assassinationresearch.com/v1n2/mediaassassination.html

Mort Sahl on the 50th Anniversary of the JFK Assassination Published June 5, 2014

INTERVIEW with GAYLE NIX by ROBERT WILSON A Gary Revel Investigative News Web Site July 7, 2014 New York, New York http://garyrevel.com/jfk/gaylenix.html Gayle Nix- Jackson’s new book "Orville Nix: The Missing Assassination Film" (Semper Ad Meliora Publishing, 2014), details the story of her grandfather Orville Nix and how he came to record the assassination of JFK.

Ex-CIA employee seeks release of hidden, secret documents http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-employees-quest-to-release-information-destroyed-my-entire-career/2014/07/04/e95f7802-0209-11e4-8572-4b1b969b6322_story.html?hpid=z1 http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/world/list-of-documents-the-cia-was-sued-to-release/1079/?hpid=z2

Andy Coulson jailed for 18 months for conspiracy to hack phones Sentencing of former News of the World executives over phone hacking shows no one is above the law, says David Cameron • Sentencing remarks of Mr Justice Saunders (pdf) http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jul/04/andy-coulson-jailed-phone-hacking By Lisa O'Carroll theguardian.com, Friday 4 July 2014 06.32 EDT The disgraced former No 10 spin doctor Andy Coulson has been jailed for 18 months for plotting to hack phones while he was in charge of the News of the World. The 46-year-old was found guilty last week of conspiring to intercept voicemails at the now-defunct Sunday tabloid following an eight-month trial at the Old Bailey. The offence carries a maximum sentence of two years' imprisonment, but Coulson received a discount of several months for his previous good character. He could be out in less than nine months because, as a non-violent offender, he is required to serve just half his sentence. Mr Justice Saunders told the court the evidence heard in the trial revealed that Coulson clearly thought it was necessary to use phone hacking to maintain the News of the World's "competitive edge". He said the paper's delay in telling police about hacking the voicemail of the missing Surrey schoolgirl Milly Dowler in 2002 showed the motivation was to "take credit for finding her" and sell the maximum number of newspapers. Saunders described that delay as "unforgiveable". The judge said: "Mr Coulson has to take the major share for the blame of phone hacking at the News of the World. He knew about it, he encouraged it when he should have stopped it." The judge said there was "insufficient evidence to conclude that he started phone hacking at the News of the World" but there was "ample evidence that it increased enormously while he was editor". Dressed in the grey suit and white shirt combination he has frequently worn during the trial, Coulson arrived with his QC, Timothy Langdale, in a London taxi and pushed through the scrum of photographers to enter the court. Coulson's wife Eloise was not present. One of his legal team took his small black holdall to the dock where large suitcases belonging to the other defendants who are also being sentenced sat. He will be taken to HM Belmarsh prison near Woolwich at lunchtime where he will be assessed before being sent to an open prison in a few days. The high-security prison is home to terrorists and other category A prisoners, but has a separate wing dealing with local offenders sentenced at the Old Bailey, which is where Coulson and his co-defendants will go. David Cameron, who employed Coulson as his director of communications after he left the News of the World, said the jail sentence showed that "no-one is above the law". Asked about the outcome on a visit to Scotland, the prime minister said: "Well, what it says is that it is right that justice should be done and no one is above the law, which is what I have always said." The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said the case amounted to a verdict on Cameron's judgment. "My thoughts today are with the victims of phone hacking, the victims of Andy Coulson's behaviour," he said. "I think it's right that justice has been done. "I think, once again, it throws up very serious questions about David Cameron's judgment in bringing a criminal into the heart of Downing Street despite repeated warnings. This is a verdict on Andy Coulson's criminal behaviour but it is also a verdict on David Cameron's judgment." Three former news editors of the paper – all of whom pleaded guilty to taking part in a conspiracy to intercept voicemail messages of royals, celebrities, politicians, sports stars and victims of crime between 2000 and 2006 – were also sentenced. Greg Miskiw, 64, who hired the private investigator-turned phone hacker Glenn Mulcaire to work for the paper in 2001, was jailed for six months. Neville Thurlbeck, 52, the paper's former chief reporter and news editor who conspired to hack the phone of former home secretary David Blunkett, also got six months. James Weatherup, 58, who joined the paper in 2004 and admitted tasking Mulcaire to hack phones, was handed a 12-month suspended sentence. The paper's former specialist hacker, Glenn Mulcaire, 43, a footballer-turned-investigator who had been jailed for hacking the phones of royal aides in 2007, was also sentenced. He had pleaded guilty to a second set of charges last year, including the hacking of Milly's phone. Coulson, Miskiw and Thurlbeck looked emotionless during their sentencing and the public gallery was silent. Weatherup and Mulcaire were able to walk free from court. Three court security staff sat in the dock with the defendants for the first time, escorting Coulson and his two former colleagues after the judge ordered them to be "taken down". Saunders rejected the argument offered by Mulcaire's lawyers in mitigation that he thought he was helping the police by hacking her phone. But he was allowed home after he recieved a six-month sentence that was suspended for 12 months. Saunders said: "Mr Mulcaire, you are truly the lucky one", telling him it would be "wrong" to send him back to prison as he had already served time in 2007 for phone hacking. He added that it was not his fault that the authorities did not conduct a full investigation and undercover the full extent of hacking at the time. The judge also said: "All the journalists in the dock are distinguished. There was no need for hacking. Their achievements now count for nothing". Saunders gave the maximum one third discount to Thurlbeck, who had hacked David Blunkett's phone, and Miskiw, the executive who hired Mulcaire, because they had pleaded guilty early. He said the previous good character of Thurlbeck, Miskiw and Weatherup counted for very little. "They were able to get away with this criminal conduct for so long because of the respect in which they were held as senior journalists," Saunders said. He said all three had expressed remorse for what they had done but he felt it "had the appearance of regret for the consequences … of getting caught". The sentencing of the five comes three years to the day since the Guardian revealed that someone acting on behalf of the News of the World had hacked Milly's phone in 2002. During the trial, Coulson denied being party to hacking or knowing that Milly's phone had been hacked by Mulcaire. However, he admitted listening to the hacked messages Blunkett left on a married woman's phone – an admission that is likely to have been central to the jury's decision to find him guilty. He also said he did not know at the time that hacking was a crime and that if he knew any of his staff were involved in the unlawful activity he would have viewed it as "intrusive" and "lazy journalism". Hacking was made an offence under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which was drawn up to govern law enforcement agencies' use of surveillance. The prosecution said that Coulson and the news editors had "utterly corrupted" the News of the World and turned it into a "thoroughly criminal enterprise". Crown prosecutor Andrew Edis QC said the phone-hacking victims of the now-defunct Sunday tabloid "read like a Who's Who of Britain in the first five years of this century". After sentencing, the court returned to the issue of the £750,000 costs the crown is seeking to claw back from those convicted. All five face financial ruin if costs are awarded against them in what the judge described as a "unique" case, which will be heard later this year. Prosecutor Andrew Edis said it was still not clear if Coulson's costs would be indemnified against costs. Jonathan Laidlaw, QC for Rebekah Brooks said if she were to give a detailed breakdown of the costs it would take her three months. Seven of the 11 jurors returned to see Coulson sentenced.

Takeover of Kenmore Hotel: Informer Recalls His Complicity JULY 2, 2014 The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/03/nyregion/takeover-of-kenmore-hotel-informer-recalls-his-complicity.html?_r=0 [Photo: Earl Robert Merritt seen last week. He was an informer known as Tony when the government seized the Kenmore Hotel in 1994. Credit Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times] By MICHAEL POWELL It was as if the Fifth Infantry Division had come marching down East 23rd Street. Late in the morning of June 8, 1994, police officers, federal marshals and F.B.I. agents invaded one of New York City’s grand temples of dysfunction: the 22-story, 641-room ulcer known as the Kenmore Hotel. They ran into the lobby, which stank of mildew and urine. They ran up the stairs, as crack vials crackled beneath their feet. They battered down doors and rousted residents in that vast rabbit warren. They arrested 18 tenants on charges of drug dealing; the tenants sat, dazed, in handcuffs on the sidewalk. The takeover of the Kenmore was at the time the largest federal forfeiture to fight drug dealing in American history. “The Kenmore Hotel has been permeated by violence and become a virtual supermarket of crack cocaine,” Mary Jo White, then the United States attorney in Manhattan, told reporters. Gov. Mario M. Cuomo visited the scene and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani held an all-points press conference. Why not? It was liberation. The hotel, a warren of 641 rooms on East 23rd Street in Manhattan, was notorious for drug dealing. Credit John Sotomayor/The New York Times There is another, more unsettling version. Two police informers now claim that the conquest of the Kenmore was a dirty victory, another chapter in an era in which the police and prosecutors fought a blood tide of homicides, crack and heroin, and too often took disturbing liberties. We love to congratulate ourselves on New York’s global reputation as a safe, even pasteurized metropolis. The informer’s tale suggests that the trail the city traveled had more disquieting byways than we realized. A confidential informer, a man whose career in snitching for the police and federal agencies extends back to the Watergate era, said the assault on the Kenmore was constructed of illegalities. This informer, Earl Robert Merritt, described how he had worked with narcotics officers — before and after the takeover — to frame more than 150 Kenmore residents as dealers. “I planted drugs, I planted guns, I made false reports,” Mr. Merritt said. “I was given a list — little stars by the list of tenants who I was supposed to set up.” “I helped send hundreds of people out in handcuffs,” he added, “and I’d say 80 percent were innocent.” Mr. Merritt, 70, who hobbles about with wrecked hips and two black canes, was an informer for nearly 40 years, according to federal and police records. The Manhattan district attorney confirmed that he had worked at the Kenmore; two officers said he was an excellent informer. He named dozens of people he said he had set up. Some served prison terms, records show. After the takeover of the Kenmore, he said, he undermined its tenants’ association, again at the direction of federal agents. Mr. Merritt took his accusations to the Manhattan district attorney last year. He said an assistant prosecutor in the mid-1990s had directed him to swear falsely that he had witnessed certain crimes. A public-corruption prosecutor interviewed Mr. Merritt and pulled court files. “Senior prosecutors have done extensive interviews with this informant, and followed several potential leads, but to date have not found provable allegations,” a law enforcement official familiar with Mr. Merritt’s allegations said. “But the file is open, and if more information comes to light it will certainly be taken seriously.” The district attorney’s investigation appears to have been confined to pulling court files. In eight months of interviewing dozens of people connected with the Kenmore, including former tenants, those arrested and police officers, I did not find one who had been questioned anew. Mr. Merritt’s charges can be difficult to verify. Many former Kenmore tenants — impoverished, haunted by addictions and bouncing along the river bottom of life — have disappeared from the public record. By his own account, those whom Mr. Merritt fingered as drug dealers and illegally set up ran the gamut, from actual dealers to low-level drug users with mental health issues to tenant leaders who angered him or federal and city agents but were not dealing drugs at all. Five people — two former tenants, a caseworker, a former lawyer and another police informer — confirmed Mr. Merritt’s core accusations. Three of the five spoke on the record. “He’d tell us a tenant was going to be arrested and the next day, out they went, out in handcuffs,” the former caseworker said. “They wanted to clean the place out, and they gave him lists, and he’d be swearing to God people were drug dealers.” I reached Dominick Crispino, the former lawyer and tenant — who has since been disbarred and done time for larceny. “We kept saying Merritt was a tool of the government and told the courts he was setting people up,” he said. “If he’s coming clean, you can count on every word. He was one of the smartest people I ever tangled with.” A quick-witted fellow with owlish eyes, Mr. Merritt lived in an ethical netherworld. He was a crack addict, and in the 1980s had been convicted of felony fraud and became a fugitive. (A judge later tossed out the conviction.) In long interviews at his apartment off Fordham Road in the Bronx, however, Mr. Merritt rarely contradicted himself. Court records confirmed his mastery of details. He insisted that I portray him as deeply flawed. “You cannot paint me with a halo on my head,” he said. “I’m a nasty son of a bitch.” Three law enforcement agents described Mr. Merritt as a cunning informer. If there was a hero at the Kenmore Hotel, it was Scott Kimmins, a tall patrolman known to lawbreakers as Stretch. Before the federal takeover, he walked the hotel stairs alone. He rousted and arrested dealers and comforted marooned innocents. He came to know Mr. Merritt, who accused him of no illegalities. “He was on the money, for the most part,” noted Mr. Kimmins, now operations director for the Flatiron 23rd Street Business Improvement District. “He’d mention a room, and sure enough, you’d see drug activity.” Mr. Kimmins emphasized that he did not know the narcotics officers or their relationship with Mr. Merritt. He saw no need for illegal subterfuges. “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “You could be deaf and dumb and make a bust there.” He said Mr. Merritt loved to tell tall tales of his supposed connections to intelligence agencies and Watergate. But as it happened, those tales were true. Federal records confirm that Mr. Merritt worked with the Washington police and the F.B.I. to infiltrate left-wing groups in Washington in the early 1970s; that his police handler apprehended the Watergate burglars; and that he was interviewed by investigators for the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. Told of this, Mr. Kimmins chuckled ruefully. Years ago, he noted, he assumed the charges against the police officers accused of abusing Abner Louima were absurd. Those accusations, too, proved true. “I don’t believe Tony,” he said. “But I’ve been surprised before.” Mr. Merritt offers his own caution: “A confidential informant is a very powerful character. We don’t need a badge or gun. And we ruin lives.” THE KENMORE HOTEL had a seedy literary pedigree. It was a Gramercy Park refuge for Dashiell Hammett; Nathanael West worked as a night manager. Its decline was baroque. In 1985, Tran Dinh Truong, a shipping magnate who prospered mysteriously during the Vietnam War, arrived in the United States with suitcases full of gold bars. He bought the Kenmore as a tax shelter, and ran it with no regard for safety. He filled the place with ex-convicts, prostitutes and addicts. He hired security guards who waved in anyone for a few dollars. Mr. Merritt, a moth to that flame, got a job. “My main job was to hand out cash envelopes to the building and elevator inspectors,” Mr. Merritt said. “The only thing they inspected was their envelopes.” Conditions inside grew hideous. An 86-year-old was murdered in the communal bathroom. A woman was strangled in her room. For residents of Gramercy Park, an embattled middle-class pocket, the hotel visited miseries from burglaries to drug dealing. By the early 1990s, federal officials had set their eyes on Mr. Truong and his wayward hotel. Narcotics officers and federal agents made more than 100 arrests and, records show, they relied on an informer: Mr. Merritt. He is gifted at ingratiating himself. He could laugh with a dealer, buy vials of crack and smoke it. Then he would point out that man for the police. “If I didn’t like you, or the police wanted you gone, you were gone,” he said. It was as if he was inhaling chutzpah. “It was too outrageous for even dealers to think he’d come right back the next day,” the former caseworker said. Robert Chaney also worked there as a confidential informer. As pressure increased, narcotics officers plotted. “They would get really upset when they busted into a room and found nothing there,” he said. “They gave him drugs and maybe a gun and he’d plant it.” Asked about this, Mr. Merritt nodded. “They would tell me which rooms to target, and I would slip crack behind a mattress or under the sink.” Detectives taught him to set small fires, he said. Firefighters would batter down doors; the police would find crack and guns. He got $50 per arrest, and $100 every time he testified to a judge. Prosecutors guaranteed Mr. Merritt that he would not have to testify in public. They had suspects over a barrel: Serve six months in jail and leave the hotel — or we’ll imprison you for 20 years. SEEN from the remove of a safer city, those dark years now reveal signs of a dirty war. Too often, swaggering detectives and prosecutors eager for any victory broke rules and framed people. And confidential informers were given enormous latitude to set up people. Eugene O’Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, was a beat officer before he became a prosecutor. The occupational hazard in dealing with informers, he said, was that “your ears are open to what you want to hear.” It was perilously easy, Mr. O’Donnell said, for an officer working with an informer to think nothing of setting up a hapless character with minor convictions. “It dovetails with the problem of false convictions,” he said. “The real danger is that we get your rap sheet, and we see a track record of minor drug abuse, and no one loses sleep over your conviction. The ends justify the means.” Mr. Merritt described being driven to the Manhattan district attorney’s office on a rainy evening. A prosecutor was typing statements for him, which he was going to swear to before a judge. “Read this carefully and don’t stray from the statement,” the prosecutor told him, he said. “You’re going to have to swear to this. Do you have a problem, Tony?” He said he looked at the prosecutor and asked: “So you want me to commit perjury?” “I don’t want to hear that,” the prosecutor replied, according to Mr. Merritt. After the takeover, Mr. Merritt said, federal marshals and the police told him to disrupt the tenants’ association. He and Mr. Chaney tore down notices and interrupted meetings and shrieked. An officer, he said, told him to vandalize Mr. Crispino’s car. “He was very skilled and very scary; he could get you arrested in about five minutes,” said Sal Martinez, a tenant leader. “I complained and a federal agent yelled at me: ‘Merritt is working for us. Don’t get in our way.’ ” There is no doubt the Kenmore is a safer, better-run place. Social services are provided; security is insistent. Maybe we’ll never know if more than 100 New Yorkers got walked out in cuffs and convicted on the basis of planted evidence and false testimony. Or perhaps the ends justified the means, and it’s a door better left closed. Except that similar raids occurred at other single-room-occupancy hotels throughout the city. Mr. Merritt worked as a confidential informer at a couple of those, too. This story, you see, may not end on East 23rd Street. “This is not just a Kenmore story,” Mr. Merritt said. “This was happening everywhere.” Email: powellm@nytimes.com Twitter: @powellnyt A version of this article appears in print on July 3, 2014, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Takeover of Hotel: Informer Recalls His Complicity.

http://takimag.com/article/the_weasels_of_watergate_phil_stanfords_white_house_call_girl_sterzinger/print#axzz36JJZeqDK http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/2013/09/RIR-130927.php

Andy Coulson to Face Retrial in Royal Phone Hacking Case By KATRIN BENNHOLDJUNE 30, 2014 The New York Times LONDON — Prosecutors said Monday that they would seek a retrial for Andy Coulson, a former spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron who once edited Rupert Murdoch’s best-selling tabloid in Britain, on charges of illegally acquiring royal telephone directories from police officers. A court in London was told of the plans by the prosecutor, Andrew Edis, after a jury failed to reach a verdict on bribery charges last week and found Mr. Coulson guilty of only one charge, a conspiracy to hack into mobile phones during his time at the helm of The News of the World, a Sunday paper that is now defunct. The paper’s former royals editor, Clive Goodman, will also be retried on the same charges; Mr. Goodman has already pleaded guilty to a separate charge of phone hacking that occurred in 2006. Mr. Coulson, who resigned from Mr. Cameron’s office in 2011, faces up to two years in prison for the hacking verdict. The judge is expected to sentence him on Friday, along with three other former colleagues at The News of the World, who pleaded guilty before the trial. A fourth colleague who has admitted to phone hacking will be sentenced in late July. Prosecutors have argued that as deputy editor from 2000 to 2003 and then as editor from 2003 to 2007, Mr. Coulson condoned phone hacking on a “systemic” scale. They allege that he condoned the paying of bribes for the royal phone books, and then used them to intercept the voice mail messages of aides to the royal family. The police say thousands of phones were targeted. On Monday, Mr. Edis described the list of phone hacking victims as “a Who’s Who to Britain for the first five years of the century,” noting that “what occurred was the routine invasion of privacy and that has the capacity to do serious harm.” After Mr. Coulson’s conviction last week, Mr. Cameron publicly apologized for hiring him and called it “the wrong decision.” The News of the World was closed by Mr. Murdoch’s British newspaper holding company, News International, now renamed News UK, in July 2011 after it emerged that a private investigator employed by the tabloid had intercepted voice mail messages left on the mobile phone of a kidnapped teenager in 2002 who was later found dead. Rebekah Brooks, who was Mr. Coulson’s boss between 2000 and 2003, was acquitted of all charges last week.

Howard H. Baker Jr., ‘Great Conciliator’ of Senate, Dies at 88 By DAVID STOUTJUNE 26, 2014 The New York Times Howard H. Baker Jr., a soft-spoken Tennessee lawyer who served three terms in the Senate and became known as “the great conciliator” in his eight years as the chamber’s Republican leader, died on Thursday at his home in Huntsville, Tenn. He was 88. His death was announced on the Senate floor by the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who called him “one of the Senate’s most towering figures.” Further details were not immediately available. Mr. Baker found his greatest fame in the summer of 1973, when he was the ranking Republican on the special Senate committee that investigated wrongdoing of the Nixon White House in the Watergate affair. In televised hearings that riveted the nation, he repeatedly asked the question on the minds of millions of Americans: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” The question, or variations on it, became a national catchphrase. Mr. Baker’s public career included four years as ambassador to Japan, a year as White House chief of staff and two tries for the presidency. But he will be remembered as, quintessentially, a man of the Senate, ideally suited to that patience-trying institution because of his lawyer’s mind, equanimity and knack for fashioning compromises. “He’s like the Tennessee River,” his stepmother, Irene Bailey Baker, once said. “He flows right down the middle.” Mr. Baker was a senator from January 1967 to January 1985. He was the minority leader from 1977 to 1981, then majority leader after his party took over the Senate in the 1980 elections. As majority leader, a post he held for four years, he helped pass President Ronald Reagan’s first-term tax cuts. Mr. Baker described his political philosophy as “moderate to moderate conservative.” As a member of the public works committee, he helped draft the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Water Pollution Control Act amendments of 1972. But Mr. Baker said his biggest contribution to the environment was the creation of the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, a 125,000-acre national park that overlaps Tennessee and Kentucky and protects the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. The park was created by Congress in 1974. Mr. Baker and Senator John Sherman Cooper, Republican of Kentucky, were the main Senate backers of the park. “I’ll be remembered longer for Big South Fork than anything else,” Mr. Baker told a television interviewer late in his life. Mr. Baker opposed school busing for integration as “a grievous piece of mischief,” yet he supported fair-housing and voting-rights legislation. He championed fiscal conservatism but favored big Pentagon budgets. Friendly and unfailingly courteous, Mr. Baker was popular with lawmakers in both parties. He was a negotiator with seemingly bottomless energy and patience, and he was not above herding feuding partisans into a room and keeping them there until they came to an agreement, often one that he had helped write. Mr. Baker’s first Senate campaign ended in defeat. In 1964, he ran to fill the unexpired term of Senator Estes Kefauver, who had died the previous summer. He tried to distance himself from the presidential campaign of Senator Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona, yet he himself ran on stances more conservative than those he would embrace later — promising to fight federal interference in local education and civil rights issues, for instance. “I was a young man in his first race, which was a tumultuous campaign,” he said later in explaining his platform. Mr. Baker lost to the more liberal Ross Bass, but he attracted more votes than any previous Tennessee Republican in a statewide election. Two years later, he ran for the Senate again, against Gov. Frank G. Clement, who had beaten Mr. Bass in the Democratic primary. This time, he took more moderate stances, supporting fair-housing laws, for example. Mr. Baker was endorsed by some newspapers that Mr. Clement had alienated. And Richard M. Nixon, who was trying to make friends as he positioned himself to run for president in 1968, campaigned across Tennessee on Mr. Baker’s behalf. Mr. Baker cut into the traditionally Democratic vote, especially among blacks and young people, and won with 56 percent of the overall vote. He became the first Republican to win a Senate election in Tennessee. As a newcomer to the Senate, he pushed for loosening the shackles of the seniority system to give new legislators more influence. In so doing, he defied not only Senate tradition but also his own powerful father-in-law, Senator Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois, the Republican minority leader. After Mr. Dirksen died in 1969, Mr. Baker ran to succeed him as party leader. He lost to Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, who had nearly a decade’s more seniority. Undiscouraged, Mr. Baker challenged Mr. Scott two years later and lost again, albeit by a smaller margin. When the Senate voted unanimously to form a bipartisan committee to investigate the Watergate burglary and other wrongdoing during the presidential campaign of 1972, Mr. Scott insisted that Mr. Baker be the panel’s ranking Republican on the grounds that every senator in their party had recommended him. There was also talk that Mr. Scott was happy to put Mr. Baker in a spot that was potentially embarrassing, given his past friendship with Mr. Nixon, as punishment for having challenged him. In any event, Mr. Baker’s performance on the Watergate committee made him a figure of national prominence, as his calm, lawyerly manner complemented the folksiness of the committee chairman, Senator Sam J. Ervin Jr., Democrat of North Carolina. Before the 1976 election, Mr. Baker hoped that President Gerald R. Ford would pick him for his running mate. Instead, Mr. Ford selected Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, a far more partisan and sharp-tongued campaigner. (Unlike Mr. Dole, Mr. Baker never seemed consumed by politics. He liked tennis and golf and was an avid photographer.) In 1980, Mr. Baker made a brief run for the presidency, finishing third in the New Hampshire primary, behind Mr. Reagan and George Bush. When it became clear that Mr. Reagan would win the nomination, Mr. Baker let it be known that he would like to be the vice-presidential candidate. But Republican conservatives blocked him. The same qualities that had made him such an effective legislator — the willingness to break with party ideology and work with the opposition — made him unpopular with the party’s ascendant right wing. Mr. Baker had supported civil rights legislation, the Equal Rights Amendment and the treaty ceding the Panama Canal to Panama, much to the annoyance of conservatives.

Scotland Yard want to interview Rupert Murdoch about crime at his UK papers Exclusive: Detectives contacted media mogul last year but agreed with lawyers to wait until end of phone-hacking trial By Nick Davies The Guardian, Tuesday 24 June 2014 14.31 EDT http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/24/scotland-yard-want-interview-rupert-murdoch-phone-hacking Rupert Murdoch has been officially informed by Scotland Yard that detectives want to interview him as a suspect as part of their inquiry into allegations of crime at his British newspapers. It is understood that detectives first contacted Murdoch last year to arrange to question him but agreed to a request from his lawyers to wait until the phone-hacking trial was finished. The interview is expected to take place in the near future in the UK and will be conducted "under caution", the legal warning given to suspects. His son James, who was the executive chairman of News International in the UK, may also be questioned. News of the police move comes after an Old Bailey jury found Murdoch's former News of the World editor Andy Coulson guilty of conspiring to hack phones, but acquitted his former UK chief executive Rebekah Brooks on all charges. The verdict on Coulson also means that Murdoch's UK company is now threatened with a possible corporate charge, while the media owner also faces the prospect of a dozen more criminal trials involving his journalists as well as hundreds more legal actions in the high court from the alleged victims of phone hacking by the News of the World. Also, the verdict revives troubling questions for the prime minister about his links with Murdoch and his hiring of Andy Coulson. Questions are likely to focus on why Cameron employed Coulson without making effective checks and whether Cameron gave misleading evidence on oath about this at the Leveson inquiry. The eight-month trial heard copious evidence of the scale of crime at the News of the World. This also included handwritten notes kept by Glenn Mulcaire, which suggested that during the five years he worked under contract for the News of the World, he had targeted some 5,500 people. Jurors were also shown internal emails discussing cash payments for police working in the royal palaces. The Guardian understands that a senior Murdoch journalist and two of those who pleaded guilty before the trial, Mulcaire and Neville Thurlbeck, had discussions with police about giving evidence for the prosecution but that in all three cases the negotiations failed. Murdoch's former UK chairman, Les Hinton, was also interviewed under caution for three hours in September 2012 as detectives pursued evidence into what happened at the highest reaches of Murdoch's UK company. The verdict on Coulson increases the possibility that Murdoch's UK company, News UK (formerly News International) could be charged as a corporation, which in turn could potentially lead to the prosecution of members of the UK company's former board of directors, potentially including Rupert and James Murdoch. Such a prosecution can occur only if the "controlling minds" of the company are found to be guilty of a crime. Following Tuesday's verdicts, the Met police Operation Weeting is expected to submit a new file of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service. If the former UK company were convicted of conspiring to intercept communications, the members of its board of directors – including Rupert and James Murdoch – could then be prosecuted personally under section 79 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa). This makes directors liable for prosecution if their company breaches Ripa as a result of their consent, connivance or neglect. Murdoch already faces a volley of threats in the English criminal and civil courts. Eleven more trials are due to take place at the Old Bailey involving a total of 20 current or former journalists from the Sun and the News of the World, who are accused variously of making illegal payments to public officials, conspiring to intercept voicemail and accessing data on stolen mobile phones. The journalists have denied the charges. In Scotland, Coulson and two other News of the World journalists face trials variously on charges of perjury, phone hacking and breach of data protection laws. They too, have denied the charges. Eleven other current or former Murdoch employees are waiting to discover whether they will be prosecuted for phone hacking, email hacking or perversion of the course of justice. Police have arrested or interviewed under a caution a total of 210 people, including 101 journalists from six national newspapers. In the high court, Murdoch is mired in civil litigation. His UK company has already settled and paid damages to some 718 victims of phone hacking by Mulcaire – an average of nearly three for every week he was contracted to the News of the World. Now News UK faces a new round of litigation from victims of Dan Evans, a showbusiness writer who also specialised in hacking phones for the News of the World. Evans has been co-operating with police and, according to one source, detectives recently have been approaching up to 90 people a week to warn them that they were targeted by Evans with a possible final total of some 1,600 victims. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/24/phone-hacking-trial-verdicts-good-bad-vindicated

John: My source that Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers had a homosexual relationship while members of the Communist Party came from Marvin Liebman, a homosexual who was also a member of the Communist Party and who is mentioned in the Spartacus biography of me. Liebman told me it was well known that the two men engaged in oral sex, with Hiss being passive and Chambers being the active person. President Clinton engaged in oral sex with Monica Lewinsky inside the White House and later maintained that he "did not have sex with that woman" because oral sex in his opinion was not real sex. I shall leave the matter at that.

Nixon wanted to nominate Senator Howard Baker to the U.S. Supreme Court. but Baker thought the pay was too meager. So America got the odious Rehnquist instead. http://books.google.com/books?id=zkBC5CnRcUkC&pg=PA232&lpg=PA232&dq=Rehnquist%2C+Howard+Baker&source=bl&ots=cBRqgbfso0&sig=Ap2cfLY5RwmeDtFH_HIHab52Cnk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OTinU5LABZKosATE2IHwCQ&ved=0CCgQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Rehnquist%2C%20Howard%20Baker&f=false

DHS says FBI “Possibly Funded” Terrorist Group http://my.firedoglake.com/valtin/2013/02/20/dhs-says-fbi-possibly-funded-terrorist-group/#.U6dSc386TII.facebook By: Jeff Kaye Wednesday February 20, 2013 11:40 pm It was most surprising to come across the following entry at the website for the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses for Terrorism (known by the acronym START), which is run by the Department of Homeland Security out of the University of Maryland. According to DHS, START is one of their “centers of excellence,” an academic center sponsored by the DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate. The webpage concerns the “Terrorist Organization Profile” for the Secret Army Organization, a right-wing terrorist group in the early 1970s, a group START writes was “possibly funded by the FBI.” According to START, “The Secret Army Organization (SAO), a right-wing militant group based in San Diego, was active from 1969 to 1972. They targeted individuals and groups who spoke out against the Vietnam War, especially those who organized public demonstrations and distributed anti-war literature.” Indeed, if we could turn the clock back to June 1975, we would read an article in the New York Times, “A.C.L.U. Says F.B.I. Funded ‘Army’ to Terrorize Antiwar Protesters.” According to the Times, the ACLU compiled a 5,000 page report on the SAO, a group of former Minutemen and other right-wingers and violent home-grown fascists, for the benefit of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “alleging the Federal Bureau of Intelligence recruited a band of right-wing terrorists and supplied them with money and weapons to attack young antiwar demonstrators.” But that’s not all, the SAO engaged in bombing and attempted assassination, and guess whose house the weapons turned up in? But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s let the DHS’s “Center of Excellence” inform us of this important episode in our history, which came, by the way, after the FBI claimed they had stopped their Cointelpro program of disruption of the Left. Assassination Attempt, FBI Agent Hides the Weapon From START’s SAO webpage: The report also stated that the SAO planned to kidnap and murder protestors of the 1972 Republican National Convention, which was to be held in San Diego before being relocated to Miami Beach. An assassination attempt of Dr. Peter Bohmer, professor at San Diego State University, and Paula Tharp, reporter for the San Diego Street Journal, brought about the arrests of several SAO members who later acknowledge an FBI connection. During the investigation, the gun used in the assassination attempt was found in the home of FBI agent Steven Christiansen, who was subsequently identified as a SAO contact. In 1973, Godfrey, testifying as an FBI informant, claimed he received up to $20,000 in weapons and a $250 per month income from the FBI to recruit new SAO members and provide information to agents. He also testified to the criminal acts of several SAO operatives, including fellow leader Jerry Lynn Davis. Official statements from the FBI claimed no involvement with the SAO, and no agents were prosecuted. The story of the SAO is a forgotten piece of contemporary history that is directly relevant to a number of current issues, including the prosecution of the bogus “war on terror,” and the FBI’s role in it; the debates about government participation in and legalization of assassination of its own citizens; and government surveillance of and attacks upon dissent in this country. It also could be considered a prime example of the historical amnesia that plagues our times, an amnesia hastened by disinterest by the major media, cheered on by government agencies none too interested in accountability for government overreach or even criminality. Links to the President According to the Ann Arbor Sun at the time, the ACLU tagged the SAO as “an interagency apparatus organized ‘at the direction of Richard M. Nixon.’” Reportedly the link to Nixon came via Watergate burglar White House “plumbers” operative Donald Segretti, who affidavits claimed had given funds and military hardware to SAO to disrupt the 1972 GOP convention in San Diego. (The convention was subsequently moved to Miami Beach.) But it was the FBI who seems to have been operationally in charge. From the Sun: “SAO operative Jerry Lynn Davis, who once participated in the CIA’s Bay of Pigs invasion, revealed that [admitted FBI informant Howard Barry] Godfrey had regularly supplied the SAO with money and weapons on behalf of the FBI.” A newspaper office was attacked. A car firebombed. Informants infiltrated, while meetings were monitored. There were plans to poison the punch at antiwar meetings. A theater was bombed. Bulletins were published on “how to make booby traps, how to use ammonium nitrate in high explosives,” And then, there was the assassination plot, or rather plots, as the SAO bungled one assassination attempt after another to kill a left-wing professor at San Diego State . How It Went Down, and the Cover-up A 1973 article by Richard Popkin at Ramparts described the threats and the attack, when an SAO hitman with a FBI-paid driver tried to kill an American college professor on January 6, 1972, solely because of his political views and activism. But first, we should realize this was not the first of the assassination plans. An Associated Press article at the time described another failed plot that had yet another FBI informant, Gilbert Romero, and a San Diego undercover cop kidnapping Peter Bohmer and taking him to Tijuana, and setting him up to be killed by Mexican police. The New York Times wrote that the ACLU report included testimony from a FBI informant, John Raspberry, who said in the winter of 1971-72, the FBI approached him to kill Bohmer. For some reason, the attack never took place. According to Popkin, Godfrey “was assigned to [FBI] agent Steve Christianson, to whom he reported verbally every day, Godfrey was to work on the militant right wing, and was paid two hundred fifty dollars per month by the FBI.” Popkin continued, “Apparently, Godfrey himself was among the more dangerous elements in the SAO, and [FBI] agent Christianson among the more dangerous eminences grises of the operation…. Godfrey admitted that he had driven the car from which another SAO member, George Hoover, had fired into Bohmer’s house, wounding Paula Tharp. Subsequently, he had taken the weapon to Christianson, who had hidden it for six months. (This was evidently insufficient grounds for the FBI to take disciplinary action against agent Christianson. He continued as Godfrey’s contact until the bombing of the Guild Theatre, at which point he was removed by L. Patrick Gray himself…)” The START page on SAO commented dryly on the aftermath of the botched assassination. “The SAO became inactive after the assassination case drew much public attention to the group’s operations,” DHS’s Center for Excellence reports. “The testimony of Godfrey against SAO members resulted in prison terms for a significant portion of the San Diego group. Of course, if the SAO was actually FBI-run, the notoriety drawn to the case would have been the impetus to dissolve the group.” No kidding? Bohmer’s Story I think it’s appropriate to give the last words here to Peter Bohmer himself, who survived the attack and while he lost his job at San Diego State, the victim of a witchhunt, went on to join the faculty at Evergreen at Evergreen State College in Washington. A few words about CoIntelpro before I come back to my story. It is short for counterintelligence program. Cointlepro was/is a program coordinated by the FBI to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize” individuals and groups…. Although Cointelpro officially ended in 1971, it has continued although in a somewhat less extreme form without the name up to September 11th 2001. Since then we are going backwards towards more police powers, infiltration and framing of activists…. Although no group I worked in San Diego planned or carried out any violent actions, and many groups were purely educational; 20 people I knew in these groups turned out to be police or FBI agents or informers, many worked for both. They worked hard to cause divisions among individuals and groups. Some but not all were provocateurs…. the FBI visited my employer, SDSU to get me fired, they visited landlords where I lived to get us evicted. They opened my mail, and monitored my checking accounts. We got anonymous phone calls about people being agents who I am sure weren’t…. FBI sponsored groups did firebombings, slashed tires of my cars, continual death threats, put out a wanted poster on me distributed in San Diego in 1971. The Secret Army Organization or (SAO) a group financed from FBI funds and led by an FBI informant, shot into a collective I lived in with the bullet permanently injuring a member of the collective, Paula Tharp in January 1972. Howard Barry Godfrey, a well-paid FBI informant and head of the Secret Army Organization (SAO) admitted almost a year later in court to driving the car the night of the shooting but claimed another SAO member did the actual shooting. After the shooting into my house, other FBI agents in San Diego covered up the crime and hid the evidence such as the gun used in the shooting. The head of the FBI in LA, working with SD FBI, at this time was Richard W. Held who has been involved in the cases against many activists and political prisoners such as Judi Bari, Leonard Peltier and Geronimo Pratt. After the shooting, threats and harassment continued. After the Secret Army Organization began threatening liberals as well as radicals and bombed a pornography theater where some police were present, the San Diego police demanded that the FBI reveal their informants in the SAO and the SAO were arrested in the summer of 1972 on numerous charges. Government lawyers hired by the FBI claimed various privileges such as not having to reveal much of the behavior because of security concerns. The full FBI involvement in this attempted murder didn’t come out although one FBI agent was forced to resign. Godfrey, the FBI informant and provocateur in the Secret Army Organization (SAO) didn’t go to prison although two other members of the SAO did. Amnesia? As I read this many thoughts come to mind: about the Occupy protests last year, the monitoring of antiwar and peace groups, arrests of activists at the political conventions, the legitimization of state assassination by President Obama, the consolidation of ever-greater power in the hands of the FBI. What came to mind for you? Will this important episode from history simply drop back into the abyss of forgotten American memories? I’d like to know what happened to that ACLU report and what action (if any) the Senate Intelligence Committee took on it. I intend to find out.

Here is the CIA’s review of “The Haunted Wood”: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol50no2/html_files/BK_Soviet_Espionage_8.htm Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers had a homosexual relationship while both were active agents of the Soviet Union. Both men made every attempt to keep this secret but without a doubt it was an overriding behind-the-scene factor in the entire controversy that arose later after Chambers made his allegations about Hiss being a communist. Chambers served for years on the editorial board of The National Review and when finally the tales of his trolling the streets of Baltimore in search of anonymous homosexual encounters became public, William F. Buckley expressed his astonishment. I once read that Nixon wondered about a Hiss-Chambers sexual relationship in the midst of the uproar about the Pumpkin Papers. Alice Widener, an ardent anti-communist who infiltrated the Communist Party USA as Alice Berezowky, widow of the prominent orchestra conductor from Russia, and who reported her findings about the Party directly to J. Edgar Hoover at times, maintained that Senator Joseph McCarthy had his faults but that “everything would have much worse for the survival of America had he not engaged in what became known as McCarthyism.” I once told a retired FBI agent, a true patriot whose career for the FBI dealt with the communist movement in this country, of Alice Widener’s observation, and he remarked, “I thought I was the only one who believed this.”

America’s “Deep State”: From the JFK Assassination to 9/11 Interview with Prof. Peter Dale Scott June 20, 2014 http://www.globalresearch.ca/americas-deep-state-from-the-jfk-assassination-to-911/5387835