Douglas Caddy

Gordon Thomas to be on coasttocoastam tonight http://www.coasttocoastam.com/ Watch the video interview of him in the link below. Mr. Thomas claims Mossad has carried out 100 assassinations since it was created. He says the recent assassination in Dubai was carried out with their knowing that security cameras there would record their activity because Mossad wanted to plant fear in the public arena. http://www.gordonthomas-author.com/Welcome.html

Bill Clinton on Violence and Government A Lethal Hypocrisy By JAMES BOVARD April 20, 2010 www.counterpunch.org http://www.counterpunch.org/ Yesterday, on the fifteenth anniversary of the attack on the federal office building in Oklahoma City, former President Bill Clinton had an op-ed today in the New York Times headlined: “Violence is Unacceptable in a Democracy.” The article settles any doubts about whether Clinton was one of the most talented demagogues of modern times. Casting a net of collective guilt over much of the 48 contiguous states, Clinton announced that the 1995 bombing was the fault of people who believed “that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them.” People who distrusted government helped echo ideas which somehow persuaded “deeply alienated and disconnected Americans” to carry out the attack. In other words, people who harshly criticize the government are guilty of - or at least complicit in - mass murder. It would be difficult to contrive a storyline to better exonerate all government actions. We still know far too little about the actual facts of the Oklahoma City bombing. We do know that the perpetrators were guilty of a heinous crime and deserved the harshest punishment. But that is a topic for a different day. Clinton declared that “we do not have the right to resort to violence — or the threat of violence — when we don’t get our way. “ Unless you’re the government. The four million Americans arrested for marijuana violations during Clinton’s reign were victims of government violence and government threats of violence. The “fact” that Clinton never inhaled did not prevent the drug war from ravaging far more lives during his time in office. The number of people arrested for drug offenses rose by 73% between 1992 and 1997. The Clinton administration bankrolled the militarization of local police, sowing the seeds for a scourge of no-knock raids at wrong addresses and a massive increase in efforts to intimidate average citizens in big cities around the country. During Clinton’s reign, the IRS seized over 12 million bank accounts, put liens on over 9 million people’s homes and land, directly confiscated more than 100,000 people’s houses, cars, or real property, and imposed over 100 million penalties on people for allegedly not paying sufficient taxes, paying taxes late, etc. The IRS knew that millions of citizens were assessed taxes and penalties that they did not owe. A 1997 audit of the IRS's Arkansas-Oklahoma district found that a third of the property seizures carried out violated federal law or IRS regulations. Former IRS district chief David Patnoe observed in 1998: “More tax is collected by fear and intimidation than by the law.” The Clinton administration fought tooth and nail against a law Congress passed in 1998 to curtail IRS depredations against innocent Americans. Clinton’s op-ed mentions, almost as an aside, that the Oklahoma City bombing occurred on the second anniversary of the final assault at Waco. In 1995, Clinton denounced the Branch Davidians as “murderers” for their response to the 1993 Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms attack on their home. Clinton used that label even though a Texas jury found no such guilt - and even though the BATF apparently shot first and did not have a proper warrant for its no-knock, military-style raid. Clinton was commander-in-chief when the FBI 54-ton tanks smashed into the Davidians’ home, collapsing 25% of the ramshackle building on top of residents before a fire commenced that left 80 people dead. His administration did almost everything it could to cover up the details of federal action at Waco, spurring the widespread distrust which Clinton later denounced. The federal raid in April 2000 to seize six year old Elian Gonzalez was Clinton-style non-violence at its best. The late-night surprise attack went as planned - nabbing the boy and leaving shattered doors, a broken bed, roughed-up Cuban-Americans and two NBC cameramen on the ground, writhing in pain from stomach-kicks or rifle-butts to the head. But a photographer caught the image of a souped-up Border Patrol agent pointing his submachine gun toward the terrified boy. Clinton administration officials rushed to explain why the raid was practically a demonstration of Gandhi’s teachings in action. A few hours after the raid, Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder asserted that the boy "was not taken at the point of a gun." When challenged about the machine-gun photograph, Holder explained: "They were armed agents who went in there who acted very sensitively." Attorney General Janet Reno stressed that the photo showed that agent's "finger was not on the trigger." Two days later, Reno declared, "One of the things that is so very important is that the force was not used. It was a show of force that prevented people from getting hurt." By Reno's standard, any bank robbery in which no one gets shot is merely a nonviolent exchange of bags of money. White House spokesman Joe Lockhart, responding to a question about the use of excessive force, stressed that the agents "drove up [to the Gonzalez house] in white mini-vans" - as if the vehicle’s color proved they were on a mission of mercy. Clinton’s Iraq policy relied on systemic violence. The U.S. was the lead country in enforcing and perpetuating the blockade on Iraq that resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dying. U.S. planes carried out hundreds of bombing runs on Iraq, and volleys of American cruise missiles slammed his country during his reign. Bill Clinton has often acted like his 78-day bombing assault on Serbia in 1999 was his finest hour. The State Department was referring to the Kosovo Liberation Army as a terrorist group until 1997. After Clinton decided to attack Serbia, the KLA officially became freedom fighters. The fact that both Serbs and ethnic Albanians were up to their elbows in atrocities was simply brushed aside or denied. After surviving a Senate impeachment trial, Clinton was hellbent on starring in an old-time morality play. Clinton’s bombing campaign killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Serb civilians. From intentionally bombing a television station, Belgrade neighborhoods, power stations, bridges (regardless of the number of people on them at the time), to “accidentally” bombing a bus (killing 47 people), a passenger train, marketplaces, hospitals, apartment buildings, and the Chinese embassy, the rules of engagement for U.S. bombers guaranteed that many innocent people would be killed. In his anniversary op-ed, Clinton declared that “without the law there is no freedom.” But the law did not stop, or even slow, Clinton from raining death on Belgrade. Clinton brazenly violated the War Powers Act, the 1973 law which required the president to get authorization from Congress for committing U.S. troops to any combat situation that lasted more than 60 days. The House of Representatives refused to endorse Clinton’s warring. But, on Serbia and many other issues, Clinton acted as if his moral mission exempted him from all restraints, legal and otherwise. Clinton warned that “there is a big difference between criticizing a policy or a politician and demonizing the government that guarantees our freedoms and the public servants who enforce our laws.” And who is to judge when criticizing turns into demonizing? The politicians themselves? Or perhaps the Department of Homeland Security, with its reports on the perils of “extremists” who believe in the Constitution and civil liberties? And then there is always the FBI, which views practically anyone who thinks Washington is full of crap as a dangerous extremist. And what of the “public servants” who violate citizens’ rights, unjustifiably shoot or Taser them, fabricate evidence against them, or otherwise make their lives hell? What of the congressmen who vote in favor of laws that authorize torture or suspend habeas corpus? What of Justice Department lawyers who craft briefs proving why the president is a Czar? Fifteen years after the Oklahoma City bombing, we must also remember the danger from politicians who place government above the law and above the people. James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, Terrorism and Tyranny, and other books.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/feature...?printable=true After reading Gore Vidal's detailed article in the link above, it is interesting to contrast it to former President Clinton's essay in today's New York Times, reprinted below: What We Learned in Oklahoma City By BILL CLINTON April 19, 2010 The New York Times FIFTEEN years ago today, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City claimed the lives of 168 men, women and children. It was, until 9/11, the worst terrorist attack in United States history. But what emerged in its aftermath — the compassion, caring and love that countless Americans from all walks of life extended to the victims and their families — was a powerful testament to the best of America. And its lessons are as important now as they were then. Most of the people killed that day were employees of the federal government. They were men and women who had devoted their careers to helping the elderly and disabled, supporting our veterans and enforcing our laws. They were good neighbors and good friends. One of them, a Secret Service agent named Al Whicher, a husband and father of three, had been on my presidential security detail. Nineteen children also lost their lives. Those who survived endured terrible pain and loss. Thankfully, many of them took the advice of a woman who knew how they felt. A mother of three children whose husband had been killed on Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 told them, “The loss you feel must not paralyze your own lives. Instead, you must try to pay tribute to your loved ones by continuing to do all the things they left undone, thus ensuring they did not die in vain.” We are all grateful that so many of the attack’s survivors have done exactly that. We must also never forget the courageous and loving response of the people and leaders of Oklahoma City and the state of Oklahoma, as well as the firefighters and others who came from all across America to help them. In the wake of the bombing, Oklahoma City prompted Congress to approve most of the proposals I submitted to develop a stronger and more systematic approach to defending our nation and its citizens against terrorism, an effort that continues today, as we saw with President Obama’s impressive international summit meeting last week to secure all sources of nuclear material that can be made into bombs. Finally, we should never forget what drove the bombers, and how they justified their actions to themselves. They took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated in the months and years before the bombing by an increasingly vocal minority: the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them. On that April 19, the second anniversary of the assault of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, deeply alienated and disconnected Americans decided murder was a blow for liberty. Americans have more freedom and broader rights than citizens of almost any other nation in the world, including the capacity to criticize their government and their elected officials. But we do not have the right to resort to violence — or the threat of violence — when we don’t get our way. Our founders constructed a system of government so that reason could prevail over fear. Oklahoma City proved once again that without the law there is no freedom. Criticism is part of the lifeblood of democracy. No one is right all the time. But we should remember that there is a big difference between criticizing a policy or a politician and demonizing the government that guarantees our freedoms and the public servants who enforce our laws. We are again dealing with difficulties in a contentious, partisan time. We are more connected than ever before, more able to spread our ideas and beliefs, our anger and fears. As we exercise the right to advocate our views, and as we animate our supporters, we must all assume responsibility for our words and actions before they enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged. Civic virtue can include harsh criticism, protest, even civil disobedience. But not violence or its advocacy. That is the bright line that protects our freedom. It has held for a long time, since President George Washington called out 13,000 troops in response to the Whiskey Rebellion. Fifteen years ago, the line was crossed in Oklahoma City. In the current climate, with so many threats against the president, members of Congress and other public servants, we owe it to the victims of Oklahoma City, and those who survived and responded so bravely, not to cross it again. Bill Clinton, the founder of the William J. Clinton Foundation, was the 42nd president of the United States.

The following is a report on Ed Haslam's interview last night that appears on the coasttocoastam.com website today: Appearing for the full four hours, former advertising executive Ed Haslam discussed how his investigation of the 1964 murder of a cancer researcher led him to a story which connects a massive contamination of the polio vaccine to our current cancer epidemic and even the JFK assassination. "When you look at the story, each piece fits in with each other piece, very cleanly and very logically," Haslam observed, "it's only when you stand back and look at it, that it looks as strange as it does." While researching the mysterious death of Dr. Mary Sherman, Haslam discovered that polio vaccines created in the 1950's had been tainted with a cancer-causing virus. This contamination, he said, was detected after half of the doses, a staggering 100 million vaccines, had been administered to an unwitting public. Allegedly, the creators of the vaccine were afraid to admit the error and subsequently distributed the remaining half of the "medicine" as well. Having studied data on cancer diagnoses, Haslam noted that a "massive epidemic" of soft tissue cancers "erupts in the years following the polio vaccines." Making matters worse, he said, the cancer-causing virus could be transmitted sexually and has even appeared in grandchildren of people who received the compromised vaccine. Realizing their grave mistake, Haslam said, those "in the know" about the widespread inoculation tried to develop a vaccine against it by mutating the virus using a particle accelerator. According to his research, it was during this process that they discovered that the radiation caused the virus to become even more aggressive. It was at that point, Haslam said, the project shifted over to weaponizing the cancer-causing virus. Eventually, the weaponized virus was so powerful that it would kill a human in 28 days. He claimed that this number was derived from a clandestine test of the virus on inmates from a Louisiana prison. The end result was a potent weapon that was virtually untraceable. Making the story even more bizarre, many of the players in the cancer-causing virus story have connections to the JFK assassination. For instance, one of the researchers in the weaponization project had Lee Harvey Oswald as her bodyguard and handler. Additionally, one of the bases of operation for these studies was the home of longtime Kennedy assassination suspect David Ferrie. And, bringing the tale back to where it all started, on the very day that the Warren Commission began their investigation of the JFK assassination, Dr. Mary Sherman was murdered. Website(s): • doctormarysmonkey.com People throw terms around without fully knowing what they mean. A linear particle accelerator is better known as an atom smasher. They are over a mile long and cost millions of dollars. The suggestion that Dr. Mary Sherman had one in her house is more absurd than Ferrie, Oswald and Baker raising mice for getting viruses to test with the atom smasher. Excuse me for injecting facts into this discussion. Jack I lived in New Orleans from 1954-56, which was when I was graduated from Alcee Fortier High School there. My parents' residence on Webster Street just off St. Charles Avenue was in close proximity to where the subsequent events described in Ed Haslam's book occurred. New Orleans has limited land space because it is surrounded by water on three sides -- the Mississippi River and a large lake. I am wondering where a 5 million volt electrical facility could have been built that would have supplied the electricity to the accelerator. It certainly would have physically been impressive. If my memory serves me correctly, Ed Haslam in his interview stated that President Nixon declared his War On Cancer one week after being elected in 1968 because he then had knowledge of the events later described in Doctor Mary's Monkey. But his declaration actually was issued in 1971. I may have misheard, however.

Best Assassination movies By: Joe Holleman: Life Sherpa St. Louis Today April 16, 2010 http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/yakk...hit-man-movies/ Sometimes, a lot of times, the best ideas come from readers. About a week ago, a reader wrote to the Life Sherpa: “While watching a movie this weekend with my husband, I began to wonder why so many movies have been made about assassins. What is the appeal of assassin movies? Maybe you can make a Top Ten list …” Well, sure, why not? To make it a bit more challenging, I made a few rules. First, the movie could not simply be a hit-man movie, there had to be a specific assassination plot. Second, the word “assassination” is defined the killing of a public figure, so we’re not talking about whacking a mobster or private citizen. Finally, the assassination had to be the central plot device, so excellent biopics that culminate in assassinations, like “Malcolm X” and “All the King’s Men” (1949 version), were not considered. With all that behind us, the list lies ahead of us: When Chevy was funny 10. Foul Play (1978): Why not start out this serious subject with a comedy. Chevy Chase is a San Francisco detective and Goldie Hawn is a librarian who gets caught up in a plot to kill the Pope. Dudley Moore is hilarious as a symphony conductor with some unusual sexual inclinations. 9. The Parallax View (1974): Warren Beatty plays a newspaper reporter who becomes suspicious after a woman who says she has information about a senator’s assassination ends up committing suicide (maybe). His probing leads to his discovery of a shadowy company. Good performances from Beatty and Hume Cronyn. Chairman of the Hit 8. Blow Out (1981): OK, the assassination of the governor/presidential candidate happens right away, but the follow-up investigation by sound engineer John Travolta, who was collecting stock sounds and inadvertently captures the killing on tape, is a top-notch thriller from Brian DePalma. 7. Suddenly (1954): This little-seen film stars Frank Sinatra as psychotic hit man John Baron, who takes a family hostage in a small California town, as he waits for the president to arrive for a nearby fishing trip. One of Sinatra’s better performances. (His best is coming up.) 6. JFK (1991): There are holes in this movie that are big enough to drive a truck through, with room to spare on the sides. But Oliver Stone’s over-the-top celluloid rant about the Kennedy assassination is filled with strong performances, especially from Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Oldman and Kevin Costner as D.A. Jim Garrison. 5. The Bourne Identity (2002): Let’s not forget that this excellent film begins with the botched attempt by programmed killer Jason Bourne to kill former African dictator Wombosi. After being shot several times during the attempt, Bourne returns to Europe to find out his true identity. Good book, good movie 4. Day of the Jackal (1973): Based on a popular book by Frederick Forsyth, Edward Fox stars as “The Jackal,” a professional killer who attempts to kill French president Charles de Gaulle. An excellent film with a relatively unknown cast, it was directed by Fred Zinnemann, who also helmed “High Noon” and “Man For All Seasons.” 3. In the Line of Fire (1993): Clint Eastwood stars in this gripping tale of an aging Secret Service agent who has to thwart a plot to kill the president, even though his colleagues think he’s too old. John Malkovich shines as the brilliant and disturbed killer who baits Eastwood along the way. 2. Taxi Driver (1976): Robert De Niro’s frightening performance as disillusioned cabbie Travis Bickle carries Martin Scorsese’s unflinching look at the growing violence in American society. After being turned down by the U.S. senator’s comely aide (Cybil Shepherd) and a child prostitute (Jodie Foster), Bickle decides to assassinate the senator. 1. The Manchurian Candidate (1962): Some brilliant direction from John Frankenheimer and excellent performances from Sinatra as a tortured Army officer, Angela Lansbury as an evil mother and Laurence Harvey as a damaged pawn in an assassination plot. the Denzel Washington remake was good, but not in the same league as this original. Here is the solitaire scene from “The Manchurian Candidate”: [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K_xrgeQfOI" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

The following is a report on Ed Haslam's interview last night that appears on the coasttocoastam.com website today: Appearing for the full four hours, former advertising executive Ed Haslam discussed how his investigation of the 1964 murder of a cancer researcher led him to a story which connects a massive contamination of the polio vaccine to our current cancer epidemic and even the JFK assassination. "When you look at the story, each piece fits in with each other piece, very cleanly and very logically," Haslam observed, "it's only when you stand back and look at it, that it looks as strange as it does." While researching the mysterious death of Dr. Mary Sherman, Haslam discovered that polio vaccines created in the 1950's had been tainted with a cancer-causing virus. This contamination, he said, was detected after half of the doses, a staggering 100 million vaccines, had been administered to an unwitting public. Allegedly, the creators of the vaccine were afraid to admit the error and subsequently distributed the remaining half of the "medicine" as well. Having studied data on cancer diagnoses, Haslam noted that a "massive epidemic" of soft tissue cancers "erupts in the years following the polio vaccines." Making matters worse, he said, the cancer-causing virus could be transmitted sexually and has even appeared in grandchildren of people who received the compromised vaccine. Realizing their grave mistake, Haslam said, those "in the know" about the widespread inoculation tried to develop a vaccine against it by mutating the virus using a particle accelerator. According to his research, it was during this process that they discovered that the radiation caused the virus to become even more aggressive. It was at that point, Haslam said, the project shifted over to weaponizing the cancer-causing virus. Eventually, the weaponized virus was so powerful that it would kill a human in 28 days. He claimed that this number was derived from a clandestine test of the virus on inmates from a Louisiana prison. The end result was a potent weapon that was virtually untraceable. Making the story even more bizarre, many of the players in the cancer-causing virus story have connections to the JFK assassination. For instance, one of the researchers in the weaponization project had Lee Harvey Oswald as her bodyguard and handler. Additionally, one of the bases of operation for these studies was the home of longtime Kennedy assassination suspect David Ferrie. And, bringing the tale back to where it all started, on the very day that the Warren Commission began their investigation of the JFK assassination, Dr. Mary Sherman was murdered. Website(s): • doctormarysmonkey.com

Watergate's Strange Bedfellows Community infiltrator Butch Merritt joins gay Watergate attorney Douglas Caddy for timely Watergate expose by Will O'Bryan Published on April 15, 2010, 3:28am MetroWeekly (Washington, D.C.) http://www.metroweekly.com/news/?ak=5089 June 2010 will mark not a milestone, but an anniversary nonetheless, of the Watergate break-in that forever altered the landscape of American politics, if not the whole of the American psyche. Apple pie turned to "dirty tricks" 38 years ago, June 17, 1972. Earl Robert Merritt Jr., aka Butch Merritt, says he knew about it beforehand. If it's true that Carl Shoffler of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department recruited Merritt to spy on D.C.'s gay community and others, as Merritt claims -- along with crates of corroborating, though highly redacted, documents, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act -- that's not hard to believe. After all, Shoffler, who died in 1996, is the detective who arrested the agents who broke into the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate. Closeted at the time, Douglas Caddy has since come out as gay. Merritt says he was asked to assassinate Caddy during that infamous period in D.C. Today, Merritt, disabled and married to a woman in New York, and Caddy, retired and living in Houston, are working together. The fruit of their labor is Watergate Exposed: A Confidential Informant Tells How the Watergate Burglars Were Set-Up and Reveals Other Government Dirty Secrets "by Robert Merritt as told to Douglas Caddy, original attorney for the Watergate Seven." As the pair market their manuscript, Merritt says he's certain there are federal agents working behind the scenes to block publication of the book, which puts blame for the Watergate break-in not at the feet of the Nixon administration, but with U.S. intelligence agencies acting independently. "My phones are wiretapped," Merritt says, adding that allies have told him they've seen a Department of Justice memo regarding his manuscript. "I still have a lot of friends in the Police Department here [in New York City]. One of them put his job on the line to tell me. Doug sent me a video camera to start recording myself as insurance, proof that I am who I say I am and that this is a true story. It's going to be explosive when it comes out." Caddy has also sent a letter to Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond (R-Mo.), vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, seeking an investigation "into the heretofore undisclosed role of Intelligence Agencies and their Agents in the origins of Watergate." Caddy says he has yet to receive a response to his March 20 letter. Regardless, he's confident the book will be published within six months. "We have enough interest from various parties," he says. "I think it's just a matter of time." Minus an investigation, Caddy says he's still confident that Watergate Exposed could by itself help curtail what he calls an ongoing "threat to our constitutional liberties" by intelligence agencies. As for Merritt, who told a portion of his story to Metro Weekly in 2008, he says he's not even certain he'll survive to see his book published. "What can you do about death? I believe in predestination," says Merritt. "I'm just excited that finally the truth is going to come out. So many people have been injured by my life. This is sort of like my mea culpa to a lot of people, especially the gay community." Read Merritt's 2008 Metro Weekly interview, "Inside Man." [Found at the bottom of the link below] http://www.metroweekly.com/news/?ak=5089

I don't know but if I can find out I shall post an answer.

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/upcoming

Spies Like Us Spy vs. spy intrigue between the CIA and Israel, centered around the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv BY YOSSI MELMAN AND DAN RAVIV | 7:00 am Apr 8, 2010 http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics.../spies-like-us/ Portions of this article were subject to deletions by the Israeli Military Censor. The United States Embassy in Tel Aviv, in a prime beachfront location at 71 HaYarkon Street, is six stories tall, not including the mysteries on its roof. Israeli intelligence operatives and journalists have for many years suspected that atop the embassy and perhaps in its basement are sophisticated surveillance systems that keep a close electronic eye on the Jewish state. Certainly, as is standard in most any U.S. Embassy, there is a suite of offices comprising the CIA station, its staffers given diplomatic titles such as “second secretary.” No attempt is made to hide their identity from Israeli authorities because this host government is considered friendly. Friendship between nations, especially in the volatile Middle East, is not naïve. The Mossad and other Israeli security agencies, as well as top politicians, assume that the United States routinely listens to their phone conversations, copies fax messages, and intercepts email messages—data known in the spy business as comint (communications intelligence)—and also gathers sigint (signals intelligence), which involves analyzing data transmitted on various wavelengths by Israeli military units, aviation manufacturers, space launch sites, labs suspected of doing nuclear work: any defense-related facility that puts out signals. This assumption is strengthened by the fact that more than 20 years ago, embassy officials approached Israeli authorities with a request to rent office space in the Mandarin Hotel, on the beach north of Tel Aviv. Permission was denied, because that location is on a precise east-west line barely a mile from Mossad headquarters (inland at the Gelilot highway intersection) and a bit farther from the equally secretive military intelligence codebreaking and high-tech surveillance Unit 8200. If Israeli counterintelligence—the spy-catchers at Shin Bet (the domestic security service known to Israelis as Shabak)—really wanted to check the roof or the basement on HaYarkon Street, perhaps they could break in to the building. In 1954, U.S. security officials at the embassy found microphones concealed in the ambassador’s office. In 1956, bugs were found attached to two telephones in the home of an American military attaché. Shin Bet also made crude attempts to use women and money to seduce the U.S. Marines who guarded the embassy. However, in the view of top Israeli intelligence insiders, the mystery of the roof—even though they have noticed that some antennae and equipment are covered—is closer to an urban espionage myth. The United States can easily park signals-intercepting ships in the Mediterranean near the Israeli coast; the U.S. National Security Agency controls plenty of spy-in-the-sky satellites and can watch and listen to most anything on the NSA’s agenda. Indeed, there is no doubt the Americans regularly listen in to the private communications of the Israeli government and military. Hebrew linguists are trained and sought after by the NSA. The clearest case of such U.S. spying on Israel came to light in 1967, when the U.S. Navy’s ship Liberty was attacked by Israel’s air force during the Six Day War. Thirty-four American sailors were killed, and many of the survivors say their mission was to gather comint and sigint about Israeli and Egyptian military moves and plans. Most of them think the attack was intentional, to blind and deafen that particular NSA intelligence operation, but Israel firmly denies it. Being in the business of collecting information, intelligence agencies know very well that everyone does it, friend or foe. Certainly the CIA station, based in the embassy, busies itself with clipping newspapers, harvesting web articles, recording radio and TV broadcasts, talking with Israelis, analyzing the results, and reading between the lines. Yet our image of espionage usually means running agents: recruiting people to betray their country for money or other motives. “In my 21 years in the agency, I never saw any official request for us to go recruit Israeli citizens,” says Robert Baer, a longtime case officer in the Near East Division of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. “They don’t have to,” said a former head of the Mossad who asked not to be identified by name. “They can get—and probably do get—whatever they want, because we Israelis don’t know how to keep secrets. We are talkative, and the CIA has great access to all levels of the Israeli government.” *** While the CIA and Israel’s intelligence community have enjoyed close liaison in recent decades, cooperation has not always been the norm. From its founding in 1948 as a socialist country led by immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe, the State of Israel was perceived by the CIA as part of the hostile Soviet sphere of influence. In 1951, David Ben Gurion toured the United States, met with General Walter Bedell Smith, Truman’s director of central intelligence, and convinced U.S. intelligence to give Israel a try. A highly personal relationship between the intelligence communities was forged, and James Jesus Angleton, who would become legendary for his obsessively suspicious counter-spy campaigns, was put in charge of the U.S. side. Israeli intelligence assigned Amos Manor and Teddy Kollek, who later would enjoy decades as mayor of Jerusalem, as his counterparts. “It wasn’t easy to persuade the anti-communist Angleton that we could be friends,” Manor told us before his death two and a half years ago. “Even I was suspected by him, that I was a Soviet spy.” Manor, an Auschwitz survivor, had emigrated to Israel from Romania, which became a communist country after World War II. Over sleepless nights at Manor’s apartment on Pinsker Street in Tel Aviv, the Israeli did his best to keep up with Angleton at whiskey-sipping and chatting about the world. The two men became close friends, laying the foundation for CIA-Mossad intelligence cooperation as Manor proved to Angleton that what had been considered an Israeli disadvantage could be turned into a great advantage: Israel’s population of immigrants from the Soviet Union and its East European satellites made the country an indispensible source about everything that interested the CIA at the height of the Cold War, from the cost of potatoes behind the Iron Curtain to plans for new aircraft and ships there. The great turning point was the secret speech in Moscow in 1956 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denouncing Stalin’s crimes. A Jewish journalist in Poland procured the much-sought-after text and gave it to Israeli intelligence in Warsaw. It was quickly delivered to the CIA. Still, while cooperating in anti-Soviet operations, the two countries had some conflicting interests. Desperate to have a qualitative military edge over its Arab neighbors, Israel ordered agents to steal U.S. technology. From the 1960s until the late 1980s, American law enforcement busted several conspiracies run by Israelis to procure defense and high-tech secrets and even components for Israel’s suspected nuclear arsenal. This clandestine work was not done by the Mossad but by military officers and by a small Defense Ministry unit known as Lakam (Lishka le-Kishrei Mada, the “science liaison bureau”), which also ran Jonathan Pollard [1], who is now serving a life sentence for espionage. In the late 1950s, the prime target of American suspicion in Israel was the Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona, which was constructed by the French as part of a secret deal linked with the Israeli-French-British invasion of Suez, Egypt, in 1956 that took President Dwight Eisenhower by surprise and greatly angered him. The CIA was assigned to find out what the Israelis were up to in the Negev Desert. The station chief in Tel Aviv in the 1960s, John Hadden, told us he would make a point of driving as close as he could to the nuclear reactor and occasionally stopped his car to collect soil samples for radioactive analysis. Shin Bet was obviously tailing him, and an Israeli helicopter once landed near his automobile to stop it. Security personnel demanded to see identification, and after flashing his U.S. diplomatic passport Hadden drove off, with little doubt there were big doings at Dimona. When Americans were permitted to enter the Dimona facility as part of a deal with President John F. Kennedy, “it cost us a hell of a lot of money to arrange it so their inspectors wouldn’t find out what was going on,” the late Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban told us, as quoted in our book Friends In Deed. False walls were erected, doorways and elevators were hidden, and dummy installations were built to show to the visitors, who found no evidence of the weapons program secreted underground. [sentence deleted by the Israeli Military Censor.] Nuclear gamesmanship did not spoil the progress of friendly connections between the two intelligence communities. John Hadden set the pattern for all future CIA station chiefs in Tel Aviv by spending most of his time in open liaison activities, cultivating ties with Israeli officials in all fields. Hadden remembers attending a diplomatic dinner in 1963, when he was well aware that Israel, then an austere nation, saw Americans as hard-drinking and garrulous. Usually keeping his CIA-taught language skills to himself, he heard the hostess say hopefully to an Israeli colonel that if Hadden kept imbibing perhaps he would talk too much. The puckish spy smiled and surprised his hosts with his decent Hebrew: “Nichnas yayin, yotzeh sod!” which means “Wine goes in, a secret comes out!” The next two decades would see gradual growth in mutual confidence, as U.S. interests in the Middle East increasingly matched Israel’s concern with Arab radicalism and Palestinian terrorism. Yet in 1985, when Jonathan Pollard was arrested at the gates of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, by coincidence the CIA was assessing a “walk in”: an Israeli officer, Major Yossi Amit, who had served in a secretive military intelligence unit. As far as we know, Major Amit was the closest the CIA got to recruiting an Israeli as an agent. In his hometown of Haifa, Amit met a U.S. Navy officer who introduced him to the CIA. Amit offered his services as an experienced case officer who had run Syrian and Lebanese networks. He flew to Germany and spent time with CIA operatives and a psychologist, who used a polygraph and other tests to judge his credibility. This evaluation was handled well away from the CIA’s Tel Aviv station, though a counter-terrorism officer stationed in Tel Aviv was part of the team in Germany. Amit claims that he did not intend to betray or spy on Israel, but he might have been willing to help the CIA in various Arab countries. He was arrested by Israeli authorities, tried in secret, and served seven years in prison. *** In the 1990s, with an Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations brokered by the United States, the CIA’s involvement in the region leapt forward. The Tel Aviv station was enlarged and given duties far beyond liaison with counterparts in the Mossad. The CIA’s new assignment was to turn Yasser Arafat’s secret police and commando units into a professional entity that would be pro-peace, pro-American, and in effect agents of influence for the CIA. George Tenet, as deputy CIA director before getting the agency’s top job, was given the task in 1996. As Tenet wrote in his memoirs, At the Center of the Storm, he was reluctant, but it was an order from President Bill Clinton and he understood: “Security was the key. You can talk about sovereignty, borders, elections, territory, and the rest all day long; but unless the two sides feel safe, nothing else matters.” The agency launched into this mission by staying, at first, within the confines of its longtime expertise: meeting with security chiefs, arranging trips for Arafat’s secret police to be re-trained in the United States, providing surveillance equipment aimed at countering the rise of Hamas radicalism, and coordinating all this with Israel’s Shin Bet and military. The CIA station chief in Tel Aviv from 1995 to 1999 was Stan Moskowitz, a 40-year agency veteran who kept trying to mediate the inevitable disputes. Mossad officials did not like him, not because of his role in the peace process, but because they felt that—perhaps because he was a Bronx-born Jew trying to overcompensate—he kept himself at a frosty distance from the Israelis. This view is reflected in the memoirs of a Canadian-born Mossad operative using the pseudonym Michael Ross. In his book The Volunteer, Ross describes Moskowitz as “a self-important Beltway climber who drove around Tel Aviv in the back seat of a white Mercedes sedan.” A former Mossad station chief in Washington who knew Moskowitz as a CIA research director before he moved to Israel had already noticed that Moskowitz had problems with the Jewish state. “Unlike other CIA officials who readily agreed to meet me, he was always very reluctant to do so,” says the Israeli, who asked not to be named. After some years, Mossad men say, they came to nickname Moskowitz “the anti-Semite.” Though the title was exaggerated, annoyance with Moskowitz helps explain why an Israeli newspaper broke the unwritten rule of not naming the CIA station chief, when it wrote of Moskowitz in an article about the negotiating sessions with the Palestinians. Moskowitz died in 2006, a year after retiring. *** A Palestinian uprising, the second Intifada in early 2001, found the CIA sucked into a new and more urgent role in mediating the volatile negotiating process that had blown up at Camp David in the summer of 2000. Meeting with presidents, kings, and prime ministers is nothing strange to CIA station chiefs around the world, but negotiating with them in a prolonged process was entirely different—especially when the stakes included an escalating wave of suicide bombings and Israeli retaliations. President George W. Bush, new to his job, assigned George Tenet to stay at the CIA and focus on that mission. “Tenet was even more reluctant this time,” says a former Mossad chief who prefers to remain anonymous. “But he obeyed the orders.” A different perspective comes from Reuel Marc Gerecht, a clandestine CIA officer in the Middle East in the 1990s: “Some in the agency relished the limelight,” he says. “Others thought it was a mistake. Tenet relished it, obviously.” Tenet’s point man in Tel Aviv was Jeff O’Connell, the station chief who replaced Moskowitz. The Mossad had more respect for O’Connell, first because he did not have what they perceived as the conflicts of being Jewish. Second, before moving to Tel Aviv, O’Connell had been stationed in Amman, Jordan. The Mossad was highly familiar with how the CIA had cultivated intimate relations with King Hussein’s intelligence services, to the point that the Mossad was envious—thinking the CIA was even friendlier with the Jordanians than with Israel. It was a thinly veiled secret that Hussein himself had been on the CIA’s payroll in the 1960s. One tool for O’Connell was his fluency in Arabic. He would gather Jibril Rajoub and Mohammed Dahlan, the two security chiefs of Arafat’s forces, with Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter and his deputy, Ofer Dekel. O’Connell’s Arabic seemed to be even better than Dekel’s, and the five men would exchange pleasantries and even jokes, yet overall the American seemed amicable and cooperative with both sides. Dahlan has nothing but praise for the CIA and then-director Tenet. Acting friendly is a routine and shallow part of espionage tradecraft. Their business in this case was deadly serious: finding some mechanisms to help save the Oslo peace process. They were carrying out their political masters’ orders, and O’Connell seemed almost desperate, though businesslike, in the quest to stop the fabric of negotiations from entirely unraveling. Occasionally the head of the Mossad, Efraim Halevy, would take part, so as to protect the foreign espionage agency’s traditional turf as liaison with the CIA. And in 2002, O’Connell helped to end the Palestinian siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem [2], by mediating with Israel’s army and Shin Bet. Around the same time, a former CIA operative claims, the agency had a smaller station working within the United States Consulate in Jerusalem, which is responsible for official American activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Melissa Boyle Mahle, topping off a 14-year undercover career that included recruiting agents throughout the Middle East, deployed her experience and her Arabic in a new post-Oslo liaison relationship with the Palestinians. It is believed that she cultivated agents and informants, who were paid for giving the United States information and analysis. From the point of view of Israeli security personnel, Mahle was a minor player, and they doubted that she was making any reliable headway in the volatile West Bank and Gaza. Mahle was forced to leave [3] the CIA in 2002 for what she calls “an operational mistake” that she cannot talk about; one published account says she did not tell her superiors some personal details of contacts with agents. (She declined to comment for this article.) The uprising continued. Peace efforts collapsed. O’Connell’s successor was Deborah Morris. Aside from the obvious breakthrough of being the first woman to be station chief in Tel Aviv, Morris failed to make much of an impression on her Mossad contacts. Thomas Powers, writing about the CIA in The New York Review of Books [4], said some in the agency groused about her promotion at one point to deputy Near East chief in the Directorate of Operations, complaining that Morris had never run an agent and “she doesn’t know what the Khyber Pass looks like but she’s supposed to be directing operations.” The CIA station in Tel Aviv was heavily involved in attempts, after Yasser Arafat’s death in 2004, to keep his Fatah faction in charge in the Gaza Strip. The Bush Administration and the Palestinian Authority, now led by Mahmoud Abbas, seemed to fail to see that Hamas would win the Gaza elections of 2006. Though official motivations remain unclear, many Gazans believe that the CIA was ordered to help Abbas stage a coup d’etat in that narrow and destitute seaside strip. Whatever those efforts were, they backfired. Hamas gunmen were the winners, and Gaza continues to be an infectious splinter spoiling peace efforts. *** With the fade-out of negotiations, the CIA returned to its traditional role, far from the limelight, while the CIA’s cooperation with the Mossad intensified as the Bush Administration launched its War on Terror after Sept. 11. The Tel Aviv station was enlarged yet again, with more than 10 staffers representing the major departments at the headquarters in Langley, Virginia: operations (meaning covert action), research, counter-terrorism, and counter-proliferation, with its focus on Iran’s nuclear work. It is a mark of the respect that Mossad officials have for the incumbent station chief that they refuse to give his name or describe him, beyond this: He is “very professional” and “businesslike.” More significant for what will happen in the Middle East in the near future is this observation: that the American is very close to Mossad director Meir Dagan (who has had his post for an unusually long period, nearly eight years) and together they have brought U.S.-Israel intelligence cooperation into new areas—and, frankly, to new heights. Israeli methods that had been condemned worldwide are now embraced by the CIA. Infiltrating extremist organizations, recruiting agents by applying pressure in every conceivable way, tough interrogation and imprisonment, and targeted assassinations had been hallmarks of Israel’s battle against Palestinian and other Arab terrorists; now the United States wanted to score similar successes against al-Qaeda and its associated jihadist groups. U.S. and Israeli officials, while refusing to confirm details of any joint operations, suggest they have been involved in clandestine missions aimed at a shared target: Iran’s nuclear program. [Two sentences deleted by the Israeli Military Censor.] These efforts build on some scattered but significant successes even before Sept. 11. Information from Israeli intelligence had been instrumental in joint Mossad, CIA, and FBI missions that thwarted Hezbollah and al-Qaeda plots as far afield as the Midwest and Azerbaijan. A Lebanese immigrant in Dearborn, Michigan, automotive engineer Fawzi Mustapha Assi, was arrested in 1998 for allegedly trying to provide Hezbollah with $120,000 of electronics gear. Well-informed Israelis say a Mossad case officer was sent to CIA headquarters in Langley, to coordinate the flow of information that the FBI could use for the bust. To the chagrin of the Mossad, Assi fled to Lebanon after an American court released him on $100,000 bond. That same year, covert CIA officers teamed up with Mossad field personnel in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. Israel, focusing on Iran’s support for terrorist organizations, had eavesdropped on plans for a meeting between an Iranian intelligence man and three Egyptian jihadists who were linked to the planning of the al-Qaeda bombings that devastated the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Mossad shared the information with the CIA, and both agencies sent operatives to work with the Azeri security services, who arrested the men. *** “Israel runs circles around the CIA when it comes to Gaza and the West Bank,” ex-operative Robert Baer says about collecting and analyzing raw intelligence. “There’s virtually nothing we can offer Israel about the Palestinians.” On the other hand, the CIA does not depend on the Mossad for its global war against al-Qaeda. The Americans have better sources for that in the Middle East, including the Egyptian and Jordanian security services. Gerecht, a former CIA officer, says the agency appreciates its relationship with the Mossad, “but the Israelis value it more than the Americans do.” Baer feels that “the Israelis think we’re dummies.” Not true. The fact is that Israeli intelligence people speak with high respect of their American colleagues’ brainpower, professionalism, and devotion to their work. The Israelis also give the CIA credit for “not stealing agents—unlike the British MI6.” If the CIA works on recruiting an Arab, for instance, as a paid informant but finds out the Israelis are already running him, they will either back off or come to the Mossad to ask for permission to share the agent. In all of this history—including decades of converting suspicion to cooperation—has the CIA merely been executing each president’s policies or pursuing the agency’s own view of the Middle East? This is a sensitive subject. Critics contend that the CIA is always pushing an agenda based on convoluted distortions, disrespecting human rights and cynically pursuing American strength at all costs. However, though perhaps with some minor exceptions, the CIA seems to be a loyal organization that adheres to lines set by its political masters in Washington. It wasn’t the CIA’s fault or intention that its mediation efforts exploded into a new Palestinian intifada. And when Israel started its secret nuclear program, the CIA pursued all the clues because the White House ordered it to. “The agency is not a remote calculating machine,” says Gerecht. “It has its passions, and depending on the issue those passions can be deployed. Senior officials in that bureaucracy often have strong views and like those views to be considered.” But, he adds, “The agency is not much different from any other major foreign policy national security institution, such as the State Department or the Pentagon. Depending on the issue and the place, the CIA can have input in creation of policy, and it is staffed with human beings who want to have input.” According to Gerecht, CIA staffers tend to see the Middle East through an Arabist prism—“about where State was, around 20 years ago.” He says that if you were to visit the office of a typical station chief in the Near East Division, you would likely find autographed pictures of the late King Hussein or some senior official in an Arab intelligence service, but hardly anything indicating a sentimental attachment to anything or anyone Israeli. This is only natural, considering that there are many Arab nations, leaders, and CIA stations, and only one Israel. Gerecht contends that “the common theme is that they’d want the U.S. to coerce Israel more in the peace process,” a view that he feels comes from contacts with “elites in places like Beirut, Cairo, and Damascus.” The truth, however, is that almost everyone in the United States government would like to see a stable Middle East. And if that means concessions by Israel, though not at the expense of its security, it is not exclusively the CIA that would work enthusiastically for that outcome. Yossi Melman, who covers intelligence and military affairs for Haaretz [5], and Dan Raviv, a CBS News correspondent, are co-authors of books including Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel’s Intelligence Community, The Imperfect Spies, and Friends In Deed: Inside the U.S.-Israel Alliance. ________________________________________ Article printed from Tablet Magazine: http://www.tabletmag.com URL to article: http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics.../spies-like-us/ URLs in this post: [1] Jonathan Pollard: http://www.jonathanpollard.org/ [2] Palestinian siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/liveo...line_061402.htm [3] forced to leave: http://www.tabletmag.com//www.pbs.org/kcet...0222_mahle.html [4] writing about the CIA in The New York Review of Books: http://www.tabletmag.com//www.nybooks.com/articles/15109 [5] Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/

[Legal Letterhead] March 20, 2010 Senator Christopher S. (Kit) Bond 274 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510 Dear Senator Bond: I am writing you in your capacity as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee to provide you with information about illegal and unconstitutional activities of the Intelligence Community as disclosed in a new book of which I am co-author. The book is “Watergate Exposed: A Confidential Informant Tells How the Watergate Burglars Were Set-Up and Reveals Other Government Dirty Secrets, by Robert Merritt as told to Douglas Caddy, Original Attorney for the Watergate Seven.” The primary purpose of this public letter is to request that the Senate Intelligence Committee open an investigation into the heretofore undisclosed role of Intelligence Agencies and their Agents in the origins of Watergate. It is also to request that based upon the information that would be gathered by the Committee pursuant the inquiry that the investigation be expanded to include the numerous illegal and unconstitutional activities engaged in by these Agencies today that infringe upon the basic liberties of the American public. By way of background, in 1970 Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Detective Carl Shoffler enrolled Merritt as a Confidential Informant for the police. Shoffler was a Military Intelligence Agent assigned to the Washington Police Department. On June 1, 1972, Merritt provided information gained from a highly unusual source to Shoffler about the planned Watergate break-in two weeks before event, which occurred on June 17, 1972. That same evening, June 1, 1972, Shoffler brought two Intelligence Agents to Merritt’s apartment so that he could brief them on what he had learned about the planned break-in at Watergate. Shoffler later made the arrests on June 17, 1972, and became famous for doing so, when in fact, based on the advance information provided him by Merritt, he set up the burglars by means of wiretap triangulation. Upon Shoffler’s recommendation, the FBI in 1971 enrolled Merritt as a CI. He worked principally with two FBI agents: Bill Tucker and Terry O’Connor. Agents Tucker and O’Connor, upon the instruction of FBI Associate Director Mark Felt, visited Merritt on June 3, 1972, to inquire about rumors they had heard that Merritt knew of a planned break-in at Watergate. They visited him two days after the scandal broke on June 17, 1972, to inquire again what he knew. I am enclosing documents with this letter that support the allegations made above and those that follow. Under the direction of Officer Shoffler and FBI Agents Tucker and O’Connor, Merritt as a CI engaged in activities that blatantly violated the law and the rights of individual citizens. A partial list of these actions includes: 1) Planting drugs on innocent persons and having them arrested 2) Planting wiretap bugs in the offices and vehicles of targeted individuals 3) Breaking into the offices of targeted individuals and organizations to steal files 4) Having sex with 70 targeted individuals and five targeted Washington, D.C. police officers 5) Stealing mail and signed petitions from targeted organizations 6) Cutting the wires to loud speakers at public rallies 7) Spreading false rumors 8) Targeting Members of Congress based on gossip 9) Distributing blue-striped capsules that caused nausea to demonstrators What makes Merritt’s disclosures so unusual is that this is the first time a Confidential Informant has revealed publicly the grossly unconstitutional activities that he engaged in under the direction of government agencies. The U.S. Department of Justice recently distributed a memorandum to Intelligence Agencies directing that all efforts be made to hinder publication of “Watergate Exposed.” The reason the Department did this is because it is gravely concerned that Merritt’s revelations about the illegal activities of Intelligence Agencies in the period immediately before and after Watergate would open the window onto the illegal and unconstitutional activities engaged in by the Intelligence Community today, which are even more serious than those in the 1970’s. Were the American people fully aware of these present illegal activities they would be outraged at the wholesale shredding of the Bill of Rights. An important aspect of what is going on at the present time is the cost to the American taxpayer and its impact on the budget’s deficit. What are the legal and budgetary justifications for these agencies conducting domestic intelligence? Robert Merritt and I are willing to provide the Committee a copy of our book manuscript, “Watergate Exposed,” for use by the Committee in determining whether it wishes to pursue an investigation into the abuses by the Intelligence Community. We only ask that the Committee provide us a Confidentiality Agreement governing use of the manuscript so as not to undercut sales of the book upon its publication. Also, both Robert Merritt and I stand ready to provide testimony to the Committee if that is desired. I am enclosing with this letter a few of the hundreds of relevant documents in our possession. These include my preface to “Watergate Exposed”, a chapter from the book titled, “A Series of Missed Opportunities: There Would Have Been No Watergate”, a section from the book titled, “Who Was Mark Felt?”, the book’s Table of Contents, Jack Anderson’s column of Oct. 23, 1975, The Daily Rag of October 5-12, 1973, a Watergate Special Prosecution Force report on Merritt dated Nov. 20, 1973, an article from The New York Times of July 14, 1972 titled “Lawyer Held in Contempt in Democratic Raid Inquiry” and an op-ed article by me titled “What if Judge Sirica Were With Us Today?” from the Wall Street Journal of March 24, 1998. Please contact me or Robert Merritt should you need additional information to reach a decision whether to pursue this matter. Sincerely yours, Douglas Caddy Attorney-at-Law Houston, Texas

Undercover Feds on Social Networking Sites Raise Questions • By Kim Zetter • March 16, 2010 | http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/u...ds-on-facebook/ The next time someone tries to “friend” you on Facebook, it may turn out to be an undercover fed looking to examine your private messages and photos, or surveil your friends and family. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has obtained an internal Justice Department document that describes what law enforcement is doing on social networking sites. The 33-page document shows that law enforcement agents from local police to the FBI and Secret Service have been logging on to MySpace and other sites undercover to communicate with suspects, read private postings and view photos and videos that are restricted to a user’s friends. The document also describes techniques for verifying alibis — such as checking messages posted by a suspect on Twitter disclosing his whereabouts at the time a crime was committed — and uncovering information that might point to illegal activity, such as photos depicting a suspect with expensive jewelry, a new car or even a weapon. The document says evidence from social networking sites can: • Reveal personal communications • Establish motives and personal relationships • Provide location information • Prove and disprove alibis • Establish crime or criminal enterprise The investigative techniques were part of a slide presentation titled “Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites” (.pdf) given last year by John Lynch, deputy chief of the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property division to describe how valuable social networking sites can be to give law enforcement access to non-public information. The cops can also map social relationships and networks, among other things. The document does not include guidance or cautionary notes on how to conduct an investigation responsibly using these services, though it acknowledges the problematic nature of using an assumed identity to open an account with a social networking site. “Can failure to follow [terms of service] render access unauthorized?” the document asks. “If agents violate terms of service, is that ‘otherwise illegal activity’?” Agents who create fake accounts to communicate with suspects under an assumed identity could create a conundrum for the Justice Department, which prosecuted Lori Drew in 2008 for essentially doing the same thing. Drew was charged with computer fraud and abuse for violating MySpace’s terms of service when she conspired with two others to create a fake MySpace account under the identity of a teenage boy in order to communicate with a teenage girl named Megan Meyer. The account was used to bully Meyer, who then committed suicide. Drew was found guilty of three misdemeanors by a Los Angeles jury, but the judge eventually overturned the convictions on grounds that the federal law was constitutionally vague. Facebook’s terms of service prohibit users from providing false personal information to the site, as does MySpace. In the offline world, agents involved in an investigation can’t impersonate a suspect’s spouse, child, parent or best friend, the Associated Press notes. But online they can. “This new situation presents a need for careful oversight so that law enforcement does not use social networking to intrude on some of our most personal relationships,” said Marc Zwillinger, a former federal prosecutor told the news outlet. The document also discusses the value to prosecutors of using social networking sites to obtain information on the background of defense witnesses, though it cautions that the same sites could be “potential pitfalls” in that defense attorneys could also use them to background prosecution witnesses. Another document obtained by EFF is a syllabus for a training course for employees of the Internal Revenue Service describing the use of social networking sites and Google Street View to investigate taxpayers. (.pdf) The syllabus notes, however, that IRS employees are prohibited from using deception or fake online accounts to obtain information about taxpayers and generally limits employees to using publicly available information. “In civil matters, employees cannot misrepresent their identities, even on the Internet,” the document states. “You cannot obtain information from websites by registering using fictitious identities.” Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/u.../#ixzz0iXULo667

Doug, does Merritt have any idea WHO would be behind these threats? Near as I can figure, no one in Washington today would be endangered by Merritt's claim he was Shoffler's lover, etc. Now there might be some individuals fearful of Merritt outing them as homosexuals... But I just don't see government agencies at this point really caring what Merritt has to say... What am I missing? Pat, the whole matter is puzzling. We do know that when Merritt four years ago requested from the FBI his file under FOIA that he received a phone call from a Department of Justice lawyer. The lawyer urgently asked Merritt not to request his file because national security issues were at stake, even though the events covered took place 35 to 40 years ago. The lawyer said that once Merritt got his file under the Freedom of Information Act, anyone else could apply and get the same file. As it worked out, the FBI withheld 772 pages from Merritt's file once he got it, stating 553 times that the missing pages were exempt on the basis of national security. The recent U.S. Dept. of Justice directive to government agencies asking that efforts be made to hinder publication of Merritt's book has been seen by two individuals on separate occasions, both sources being of the highest authority and credibility. It may be that Merritt knows something extremely important to the government but that he does not recognize it as being so. This would be something the government does not want out publicly.

The role of Mark Felt in the origins of Watergate has never fully been revealed. That story will be told here in two parts. The first consists of biographical material on Felt that appears in Wikipedia. The second consists of revelations about Felt’s role in Watergate as recounted by Robert Merritt in his book, “Watergate Exposed: A Confidential Informant Tells How the Watergate Burglars Were Set-Up and Reveals Other Government Dirty Tricks, by Robert Merritt as told to Douglas Caddy, Original Attorney for the Watergate Seven.” EXCERPTS FROM WIKIPEDIA: William Mark Felt, Sr. (August 17, 1913-December 18, 2008). On July 1, 1971, Felt was promoted by [J. Edgar] Hoover to Deputy Associate Director, assisting Associate Director Clyde A. Tolson. Hoover’s right-hand man for decades, Tolson was in failing health and no longer able to attend to his duties. Hoover died in his sleep and was found on the morning of May 2, 1972. Tolson was nominally in charge until the next day when Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray III as acting FBI director. Tolson submitted his resignation, which Gray accepted. Felt took Tolson’s post as Associate Director, the number-two job in the bureau. In his memoir, Felt expressed mixed feelings about Gray…His frequent absences, combined with Gray’s hospitalization and recuperation from November 20, 1972 to January 2, 1973, meant that Felt was effectively in charge for much of his final year at the Bureau. Bob Woodward wrote “Gray got to be director of the FBI and Felt did the work.” Felt wrote in his memoir: “The record amply demonstrates that President Nixon made Pat Gray the Acting Director of the FBI because he wanted a politician in J. Edgar Hoover’s position who would convert the Bureau into an adjunct of the White House machine.” As Associate Director, Felt saw everything compiled on Watergate before it went to Gray. The agent in charge, Charles Nuzum, sent his findings to Investigative Division head Robert Gebhardt, who then passed the information on to Felt. From the day of the break-in, June 17, 1972, until the FBI investigation was mostly completed in June 1973, Felt was the key control point for FBI information. He had been among the first to learn of the investigation, being informed at 7:00 on the morning of June 17. Robert Kessler, who had spoken to former Bureau agents, reported that throughout the investigation they “were amazed to see material in Woodward and Bernstein’s stories lifted almost verbatim from their reports of interviews a few days or weeks earlier.” Despite initial suspicions that other agents, including Angelo Lano, had been speaking to the Post, in a taped conversation on October 19, 1972, [H.R.] Haldeman told the President that he had sources, which he declined to name, confirming Felt was speaking to the press. “You can’t say anything about this because it will screw up our source but there’s a real concern. Mitchell in the only one who knows about this and he feels strongly that we better not do anything because…if we move on him, he’ll go out and unload everything. He knows everything that’s to be known in the FBI. He has access to absolutely everything.” On another White House tape, from May 11, 1973, Nixon and White House Chief of Staff Alexander M. Haig spoke of Felt leaking material to The New York Times. Nixon said, “he’s a bad guy, you see,” and that William Sullivan had told him Felt’s ambition was to be director of the Bureau. Felt retired from the Bureau on June 22, 1973, ending a thirty-one-year career. In the early 1970’s, Felt oversaw Operation COINTELPRO during the turbulent period in the FBI’s history. The FBI was pursuing radicals in the Weather Underground who had planted bombs at the Capitol and the Pentagon and the State Department. Felt, along with Edward S. Miller, authorized FBI agents to break into homes secretly in 1972 and 1973, without a search warrant, on nine separate occasions. These kinds of FBI burglaries were known as “black bag jobs.” The break-ins occurred at five addresses in New York and New Jersey, at the homes of relatives and acquaintances of Weather Underground members, and did not lead to the capture of any fugitives. The use of “black bag jobs” by the FBI was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in the Plamondon case, 407 U.S. 297 (1972). The Attorney General in the new Carter administration, Griffin B. Bell, investigated, and on April 10, 1978, a federal grand jury charged Felt, Miller and Gray with conspiracy to violate the constitutional rights of American citizens by searching their homes without warrants, though Gray’s case did not go to trial and was dropped by the government for lack of evidence on December 11, 1980. After eight postponements, the case against Felt and Miller went to trial in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on September 18, 1980. On October 29, former President Nixon appeared as a rebuttal witness for the defense, and testified that presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt had authorized the bureau to engage in break-ins while conducting foreign intelligence and counterespionage investigations. It was Nixon’s first courtroom appearance since his resignation in 1974. The jury returned guilty verdicts on November 6, 1980. Although the charge carried a maximum sentence of 10 years, Felt was fined $5,000. (Miller was fined $3,500). Felt and Miller appealed the verdict. In a phone call on January 30, 1981, Edwin Meese encouraged President Ronald Reagan to issue a pardon, and after encouragement from law enforcement officials and former bureau agents, he did so. The pardon was given on March 26, but was not announced to the public until April 15. (The delay was partly because Reagan was shot on March 30). Vanity Fair magazine revealed Felt was Deep Throat on May 31, 2005 when it published an article (eventually appearing in the July issue of the magazine) on its website by John D. O’Connor, an attorney acting on Felt’s behalf, in which Felt said, “I’m the guy they used to call Deep Throat.” Speculation about Felt’s motives at the time of the scandal has varied widely…Some suggested it was revenge for Nixon choosing Gray to replace Hoover as FBI Director. Others suggest Felt acted out of institutional loyalty to the FBI. Political scientist George Friedman argued that, “The Washington Post created a morality play about an out-of-control government brought to heel by two young, enterprising journalists and a courageous newspaper. That simply wasn’t what happened. Instead, it was the FBI using The Washington Post to leak information to destroy the president, and The Washington Post willingly serving as the conduit for that information while withholding an essential dimension of the story by concealing Deep Throat’s identity.” [End of excerpts from Wikipedia] REVELATIONS BY ROBERT MERRITT: As previously disclosed in prior posts on the Watergate Topic of the Education Forum,Robert Merritt first learned from a highly unlikely source on June 1, 1972, of the Watergate break-in planned for Sunday, June 18, 1972. Merritt told Carl Shoffler that evening of June 1 around 6 P.M. when the latter returned to the apartment that they shared about what the highly unlikely source had related to him. Shoffler promptly ordered Merritt not to inform anyone else about the matter. Shoffler’s edict troubled Merritt, but he was adamant. He intoned, “Butch, leave it alone. Stay out of it. This is my police assignment.” Two days after Merritt told Shoffler of what he had learned, FBI Agents Bill Tucker and Terry O’Connor on June 3, 1972, appeared at the door of his apartment. They told him that they had picked up a rumor of a meeting that had been held in his apartment during which Merritt disclosed information about a planned break-in. They wanted more information. Merritt remembered Shoffler’s edict and refused to answer their questions. He was still mad at the agents for forbidding him to attend his mother’s funeral two months earlier and for their physical threats against him in Rock Creek Park. The same day of the FBI agents’ visit Shoffler moved out of their apartment and never stayed there again. He was now in the public limelight. After two years their intimate relationship was over. About two weeks later, two days after the arrests at Watergate on June 17, 1972, Agents Tucker and O’Connor again appeared at Merritt’s front door and this time vociferously demanded that he tell them anything I knew about the break-in. When he refused to cooperate, Agent Tucker warned Merritt that he “should remember what happened to someone who I knew,” and that “we’d hate to find you in the Potomac with cement over-shoes.” Merritt immediately interpreted this as an overt threat, especially in light of the recent disappearance from the face of the earth of the highly unlikely source who had told him of the planned break-in. From having worked in the past with Tucker he had reason to be deathly afraid of him. This was not true of O’Connor and had he shown up at the apartment alone or with a different agent Merritt would have told him everything he knew about the origins of Watergate. Who sent FBI agents Tucker and O’Connor to see Merritt about the planned break-in, the first visit being on June 3, 1972 (14 days before Watergate broke) and on June 19, 1972 (two days after the case broke)? From comments made to Merritt by Shoffler, he determined that it was Mark Felt. Shoffler and Felt shared common qualities. Merritt remembered that the day after Hoover died, Shoffler remarked to him that “Hoover was felled by Felt.” On a later occasion he told him that Felt was “the most evil, powerful person I have ever met.” He also described Felt as being “an extremely angry man,” referring to Felt’s being upset for not being named as FBI Director by President Nixon after Hoover’s death. So did Mark Felt know in advance of the planned break-in at Watergate? Let’s examine the evidence. Shoffler enlisted Merritt as a Confidential Informant in early 1970. In 1971, impressed with Merritt’s performance, the FBI enrolled him as one of its Confidential Informants. As described in a Watergate Special Prosecution Force memorandum of November 20, 1973: “Later in September [1971], Special Agents of the FBI Terry O’Conner or Bill Tucker came to Merritt’s apartment with Officer Shoffler. At this time they were trying to locate the residence of [redacted.] At this time Merritt mentioned his financial problem and O’Connor suggested that he come to work for the FBI. Shortly thereafter, Merritt was informed by Dixon Gildon that he had been terminated due to lack of funds [from the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police] and the next day he received a call from O’Connor asking Merritt to work for the FBI. Merritt’s assignment was to be the Institute for Policy Studies[iPS].” In another Watergate Special Prosecution Force memorandum dated November 27, 1973, a burglary at the IPS is described as follows, “After startling the girl at IPS, Merritt picked up one of the bags of mail and left with it…Merritt then called the Washington Field Office of the FBI to attempt to contact Tucker to see what he wanted to do with the mail. Tucker was not there and finally called Merritt back and asked Merritt to describe the mail and to open an envelope with a plane ticket in it. Merritt did this and xeroxed the ticket and envelope. Later Tucker picked up the mail and returned it to Merritt approximately two days later, telling him to return it to IPS…Merritt stated that from his examination of the material when it was returned to him by Tucker, he knew that at least the following material had been opened: the airline ticket of Arthur Waskow, the manuscript that had been delivered to Waskow had been unstapled and apparently xeroxed and restapled, there was a personal letter from Mexico to Waskow which Merritt later learned from Tucker the contents of the letter since Waskow was referred to as ‘comrad” in the letter…” Subsequently Merritt’s work for the FBI was expanded beyond IPS. In a FBI memorandum dated 11/1/71 released to Merritt under the Freedom of Information Act, it is stated: “On 10/29/71, [redacted, referring to Merritt] telephonically contacted the writer. Source stated that a friend [redacted] has offered to sell him some incendiary devices…The source described the devices as tubular in shape and about 21/2 inches to 3 inches in length. [Redacted] told the source that he could obtain dynamite, dynamite caps, fragmentation and smoke grenades, stink bombs, and another small type of incendiary device…The source was told by [redacted] that the incendiary devices and explosives are obtained from a [redacted] (LNU), who works with [redacted] at [redacted.] According to [redacted] obtained these items from [redacted] former member of NSWPP, who operates [redacted] in WDC. [Redacted] has told the source that [redacted] is a former member of NSWPP who quit the party because he believed that its members were not true Nazis.” Merritt a short time later purchased the incendiary devices and delivered them to the FBI. About a month later O’Connor and Tucker made a special visit to Merritt, stating that they carried a commendation to Merritt directly from FBI Director Hoover for his work in obtaining the explosives. Not long thereafter the FBI expanded Merritt’s CI work to include attempting to infiltrate the Weather Underground. Mark Felt directed the campaign against the Weather Underground, whose leaders were fugitives. He was later indicted for authorizing warrantless break-ins at the home of relatives of the fugitives. Jennifer Dohrn, appearing on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now on June 2, 2005, related that, “I remember when I was pregnant with my first born feeling extremely vulnerable because I was followed a great deal of the time, and then it was revealed when I received my Freedom of Information Act papers, over 200,000 documents, that there actually had been developed by Felt a plan to kidnap my son after I birthed in hopes of getting my sister to surrender…I was not asked to testify [at Felt’s trial in 1980], and it’s interesting that the concrete thing that he could be convicted of were burglaries against me and several other people, break-ins, which were documented and recorded. “ Merritt began to become disenchanted with the FBI in April 1972. The occasion that triggered his disillusionment was when O’Connor and Tucker forbade him to attend his mother’s funeral in West Virginia that month. They told him that his work in monitoring the Weather Underground superseded everything. Merritt finally was able to scrape enough funds together to defy the FBI ban and arrived just as his mother’s casket was about to be lowered into the ground. Thereafter, his resentment against the Bureau grew and festered. On May 2, 1972, Hoover died. At the moment of his death Merritt was sitting in a vehicle with O’Connor and Tucker at the bottom of the hill on which Hoover’s residence sat. When it came over the FBI radio that Hoover had died, the agents hurriedly gave Merritt some money to catch a taxi home. Then they raced up to Hoover’s home. After Hoover died, Nixon appointed Patrick Gray as the Acting Director of the FBI with Felt next in command. In reality, Felt actually ran the FBI. He continued to direct COINTELPRO against the Weather Underground. He employed Agents O’Connor and Tucker and Merritt in this cause. As previously recounted, O’Connor and Tucker visited Merritt on June 3, 1972, two days after he had told Shoffler about the Watergate break-in planned scheduled for June 18, 1972. O’Connor and Tucker wanted Merritt to tell them what he knew about the planned break-in. Felt sent O’Connor and Tucker to visit Merritt. So Felt knew of the planned break-in two weeks before it occurred. After it took place, he hypocritically directed the FBI investigation into the scandal. As Gordon Liddy once observed regarding Felt, “He’s certainly not a hero, because the law enforcement official who obtains knowledge of the commission of a crime and has evidence of it, and who did it and so forth, is ethically obliged to go to the grand jury and bring his evidence in there so an indictment can be obtained and justice can be done. He didn’t do that. Instead, he selectively leaked it to a single news source.” William F. Buckley, Jr. in his column of June 3, 2005, after Felt disclosed that he was Deep Throat, wrote, “Now Mr. Felt steps forward and says that it was he who in effect staged the end of the Nixon Administration. What he did, over a period of months, was to report to two industrious journalists at the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, everything that came to his attention through the fish-eye lens. Mr. Felt wanted to know everything about the traffic of dollars to and from the Committee to Reelect the President, and everything about the background and the activities of everyone associated with the White House, from the Attorney General down to the plumbers. “As evidence accumulated of wrongdoing and crime, he reported not to the director of the FBI (his immediate superior), not to the Justice Department, but to two journalists. Bob Woodward was thoughtful enough to have recorded, the day after he news about Felt broke, his first meeting with Deep Throat back in 1970, two years before the Watergate break-in. There they both were, waiting, in the West Wing of the White House, Woodward to deliver a message from the Chief of Naval Operations, the Assistant Director of the FBI on a mission of his own. ‘I could tell he was watching the situation very carefully. There was nothing overbearing about his attentiveness, but his eyes were darting about in a kind of gentlemanly surveillance. After a few minutes I introduced myself. ‘Lieutenant Bob Woodward,’ I said, carefully appending a deferential ‘sir.’ ‘Mark Felt,’ he said. “Mark Antony, meeting Brutus, deserved no greater headline in history.” Ironically, it may well be that Merritt's testimony in 1973 before the Senate Watergate Committee and the Watergate Special Prosecution Force about his illegal CI activities, including those against the Weather Underground, carried out under the direction of the FBI had the effect of opening up the criminal case that subsequently led to the indictment of Felt and Miller in 1978, five years later. [The above is an abbreviated version of a chapter in the forthcoming book “Watergate Exposed.]

U.S. Department of Justice memorandum orders hindering of Merritt’s “Watergate Exposed” book Two sources in different law enforcement agencies have informed Robert Merritt in the last few days that they have seen a recent U.S. Department of Justice memorandum that directs all efforts should be made to hinder the publication of Merritt’s book, "Watergate Exposed.” The memorandum was sent to federal Law enforcement agencies and to the New York Police Department Intelligence Division. One of these sources advised Merritt to post information about the memorandum on the Education Forum because of his concern for Merritt’s physical safety. This same source told Merritt that, as difficult as it is to believe, the Department of Justice now has its own assassination squad. It is common knowledge that the CIA has such a squad but this is the first time reference has been made to such a squad within the Department of Justice. [Although it is probably unrelated, two members of the assassination team that murdered the Hamas leader, Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, in Dubai on January 19 were tracked to the U.S. the day after the killing.] When Merritt informed his source that I was about to post on the Education Forum a new topic concerning Mark Felt’s key role in the origins of Watergate based on information provided by Merritt, the source, while encouraging that the posting be done as soon as possible, warned Merritt that this would dramatically increase the physical danger Merritt faces. Nevertheless, Merritt wants the Mark Felt posting be made within the next few days.

Was Carl Shoffler working for Interpol when he set-up the Watergate burglars? Carl Shoffler and Robert Merritt became roommates in 1970 after Shoffler recruited Merritt to become a Confidential Informant. Early in 1972, before Watergate broke, Shoffler accidently left a card from his wallet on a table in their apartment. Merritt picked it up and looked at it. Shoffler immediately grabbed it from his hand and told him he had no right to do so. Merritt responded that since they were lovers and worked together he did not see what the big deal about the card was. The card was from the Riggs National Bank in Washington, D.C. The name on it was Karl Maurice Schaffer. Shoffler subsequently told Merritt that in addition being a detective for the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police (and a Military Intelligence agent) he also worked for Interpol. His assignment for Interpol was to monitor the Intelligence Agencies of Israel and the United Arab Emirates. This work included not only gathering information about the agencies’ activities but also disseminating true and false information to those same agencies in a form of cointelpro. Merritt on a number of occasions accompanied Shoffler to the Riggs Bank where Shoffler withdrew large sums of cash using the card bearing the name of Karl Maurice Schaffer. About ten days after the Watergate case broke, Shoffler told Merritt that if it ever became known what he and Merritt had done in the previous two years while living and working together, their lives would be worth nothing and that there was no place in the world where they could hide and not be found. Merritt interpreted this to encompass their pre-Watergate illegal efforts to infiltrate and destroy New Left and Peace groups but also their knowledge of the planned Watergate break-in gained two weeks before the event took place and Shoffler’s secret relationship with Interpol. In light of Merritt’s claim that Shoffler worked for Interpol, the article below is of special interest: Missing American feared a victim of ‘dirty war’ By Guy Dinmore in Washington and Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran Financial Times (U.K.) April 13 2007 Just why Robert Levinson, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and now private investigator, should venture into Iran to meet a American fugitive wanted for murder in the US remains a mystery that the highest Bush administration authorities are trying to unravel. As the Financial Times revealed this week, Mr Levinson disappeared on March 8 after a six-hour meeting on the Iranian island of Kish with Dawud Salahuddin, an American who converted to Islam and was recruited by revolutionaries to assassinate an Iranian opposition activist near Washington in 1980. Friends of Mr Levinson are mystified that he took the risk of travelling for such a meeting. They fear he is the victim of a sting operation by Iranian secret services engaged in an escalating “dirty war” between the US and Iran, involving hostage-taking and covert cross- border operations. Mr Salahuddin, who fled to Iran after the 1980 murder and has at times expressed interest in returning to the US to face justice, told the FT in Tehran that he, too, feared Mr Levinson was an “innocent victim” of the clash between what he calls Iran’s paranoia about the US and Washington’s misguided foreign policy. Mr Salahuddin said they registered a room in the Maryam hotel before he, too, was detained that night but released the next day after his Iranian passport was checked. Mr Levinson has not been heard from since. Iran’s foreign ministry says it does not know where he is. The US believes he is in ¬detention. Although it was the first meeting of the two men, Mr Salahuddin and Mr Levinson had been in contact for some time and they share contacts. Mr Levinson is 59. His long career in and out of the FBI focused on counternarcotics and organised crime, mostly Russian. British American Tobacco told the FT it had employed Mr Levinson through Bishop International security consultancy to take on cigarette smuggling/counterfeiting work in South America. But BAT denied an assertion by Mr Salahuddin that Mr Levinson had been contracted to work for them in the Middle East. “Our discussions had nothing to do with money but operational procedures and how to approach the officials in Tehran [about cigarette smuggling],” Mr Salahuddin said. Over the years, Mr Salahuddin – who goes by the name of Hassan Abdulrahman in Iran, where he is married to an Iranian and works as an editor – developed an intense relationship over the telephone with Carl Shoffler, a legendary Washington DC police detective. Mr Shoffler, who died in 1996, followed the 1980 murder file and tried to persuade Mr Salahuddin to return to the US. Mr Salahuddin says he nearly did. In the meantime he helped Mr Shoffler liaise with an Iranian criminal investigator on tracking down drug smugglers bringing heroin from Afghanistan through Iran and on to the west. Mr Levinson shared those same interests. There is another theory for Mr Levinson’s journey to Kish – a possible media connection. In 2002, Ira Silverman, a former NBC chief investigative producer, went to Tehran to meet Mr Salahuddin and wrote about him in the New Yorker magazine. He noted that his capture “would be a triumph for law enforcement”, but also argued that “from an intelligence perspective” he would be “more useful left in place” because of his access to the inner circles in Iran . Mr Silverman was also a friend of Mr Levinson and Mr Shoffler. Acquaintances believe he introduced Mr Lev¬in¬son to the fugitive with a documen¬tary in mind. Mr Silverman declined to be interviewed for this article. A US official, who asked not to be named, said US authorities also suspected that Mr Levinson was on a media mission. He did not name Mr Silverman.

Mae Brussell's allegation is plain crazy. I never had an office that was used by the CIA and Howard Hughes. I was sent by my New York employer, General Food Corp., in 1969 to work out of the Mullen Company for a year before General Foods opened up its own lobbying offices in Washington, D.C. My employer kept from me the fact that it and the Mullen Company had enjoyed a longtime working relationship with the CIA. I later concluded that I was unwittingly used by General Foods, Mullen and the CIA to provide cover to their operations. But I never during this period had my own office. I helped to found YAF in 1960 with Gov. Charles Edison, William Buckely and Marvin Liebman. The above described General Foods/Mullen Company events took place from 1969-1971. Or is crazy Mae Brussell saying that YAF's office was used in 1960 by the CIA and Howard Hughes? In any event, such a wild, imprecise and stupid allegation by Mae Brussell cast doubt on anything emanating from that source. Thank you very much. I am inline with you. I too, see a few matters in that article and email, that do not check out from my POV. I think we both know how those things come about. Thank you, William, for your commentary directly above. I am most appreciative.

Mae Brussell's allegation is plain crazy. I never had an office that was used by the CIA and Howard Hughes. I was sent by my New York employer, General Food Corp., in 1969 to work out of the Mullen Company for a year before General Foods opened up its own lobbying offices in Washington, D.C. My employer kept from me the fact that it and the Mullen Company had enjoyed a longtime working relationship with the CIA. I later concluded that I was unwittingly used by General Foods, Mullen and the CIA to provide cover to their operations. But I never during this period had my own office. I helped to found YAF in 1960 with Gov. Charles Edison, William Buckely and Marvin Liebman. The above described General Foods/Mullen Company events took place from 1969-1971. Or is crazy Mae Brussell saying that YAF's office was used in 1960 by the CIA and Howard Hughes? In any event, such a wild, imprecise and stupid allegation by Mae Brussell cast doubt on anything emanating from that source.

As a subscriber to unknowncountry.com, I listened to the second interview of Doug Horne, which was conducted by Whitley Strieber. It was riveting. Horne added new information to that he had disclosed in Jim Marr’s interview of him. He made the following assertions: 1) Vice President Lyndon Johnson and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had foreknowledge of JFK’s assassination. He termed them “necessary enablers.” Their task was to oversee the cover-up following the murder in Dallas. The cover-up began within minutes of JFK’s death. 2) Both LBJ and Hoover were facing extinction in public life at the time of the assassination. LBJ was threatened by the Billie Sol Estes, TFX and Bobby Baker scandals. JFK was going to force Hoover to retire. LBJ and Hoover were agreeable to anything that would keep them in power. 3) Six bullets were fired in carrying out the assassination. 4) The assassination conspiracy was broad and included the Pentagon, CIA and national security establishment. Their goal was to make certain no thaw would occur in the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. JFK had taken steps that threatened their goal. He had to be eliminated. 5) There was a “victory” party at Clint Murchison’s mansion in Fort Worth the night before the assassination. Both LBJ and Hoover were present. Madeline Brown’s statement as to what LBJ told her at the party is accurate. Strieber, on his part, stressed that the missing manuscript that Dorothy Kilgallen was reading just prior to her death and which she entrusted to her assistant who also died mysteriously probably contained the story of what had actually happened. Strieber knew John Connally and heard him in the months following the assassination declare that “bullets were flying all over the place inside the limousine.”

Try clicking on the link below and then go to the top of the Unknowncountry.com website on the right side marked "Dreamland Radio." Click on that. I use Windows Media Player and have no difficulty in accessing the live interview there. http://www.unknowncountry.com

Reproduced from http://www.unknowncountry.com of Feb. 19, 2010: This Week on Dreamland: The Kennedy Assassination Doug Horne was the Chief Military Analyst for the Assassination Records Review Board that was delegated to study the Kennedy assassination by Congress in 1992. Here, Jim Marrs interviews him, and he says, quite frankly, "there was massive fraud in the evidence," and that the autopsy results released after the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital are false, and conceal an exit wound that prove the fact that he was struck by a bullet from the front, as well as the ones that hit him in the back of the head. This will be the most extraordinary interview about the Kennedy Assassination that you have ever heard. Listen as a man in a unique position to know the truth talks about how the real autopsy reports have been destroyed, and the available documents are forgeries. He outlines exactly how he discovered this, and creates an airtight case, and we have this message from Whitley Strieber: "Please, folks, do not let the Kennedy Assassination go. Listen to this and continue to demand that your representatives take action. The Review Board came about because of public pressure on Congress. Demand the truth!" To listen to the interview, click on the link below: http://www.unknowncountry.com/media

Is it all just a Ponzi scheme? By: Eric Sprott & David Franklin December 2009 Sprott Asset Management LP http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/fil...%20December.pdf In our May/June Markets at a Glance, "The Solution…is the Problem", we discussed how much debt the US government would need to issue in order to balance the budget for fiscal 2009. We calculated they would need to sell $2.041 trillion in new debt - or almost three times the new debt that was issued in fiscal 2008. As a thought experiment, we separated all the various US Treasury owners and asked our readers whether each group could afford to increase their 2009 treasury purchases by 200%. In the end, we surmised that most groups couldn’t, and prepared our readers for the worst. Almost seven months later, however, nothing particularly bad has happened on the US debt front. There have been no failed auctions, no sovereign defaults, no downgrades of debt and no significant increase in rates…not so much as a hiccup in the treasury market. Knowing what we discussed this past June, we have to ask how it all went so smoothly. After all – it was pretty obvious there wasn’t enough buying power to satisfy the auctions under ‘normal’ circumstances. In the latest Treasury Bulletin published in December 2009, ownership data reveals that the United States increased the public debt by $1.885 trillion dollars in fiscal 2009.1 So who bought all the new Treasury securities to finance the massive increase in expenditures? According to the same report, there were three distinct groups that bought more than they did in 2008. The first was "Foreign and International Buyers", who purchased $697.5 billion worth of Treasury securities in fiscal 2009 – representing about 23% more than their respective purchases in fiscal 2008. The second group was the Federal Reserve itself. According to its published balance sheet, it increased its treasury holdings by $286 billion in 2009, representing a 60% increase year-over-year.2 This increase appears to be a direct result of the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing program announced this past March. Most of the other identified buyers in the Treasury Bulletin were either net sellers or small buyers in 2009. While the Q4 data is not yet available, the Q1, Q2 and Q3 data suggests that the State and Local governments and US Savings Bonds groups will be net sellers of US Treasury securities in 2009, while pension funds, insurance companies and depository institutions only increased their purchases by a negligible amount. So who was the third large buyer? Drum roll please,... it was "Other Investors". After purchasing $90 billion in 2008, this group has purchased $510.1 billion of freshly minted treasury securities so far in the first three quarters of fiscal 2009. If you annualize this rate of purchase, they are on pace to buy $680 billion of US treasuries this year - or more than seven times what they purchased in 2008. This is undoubtedly the group that made the US deficit possible this year. But who are they? The Treasury Bulletin identifies "Other Investors" as consisting of Individuals, Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSE), Brokers and Dealers, Bank Personal Trusts and Estates, Corporate and Non-Corporate Businesses, Individuals and Other Investors. Hmmm. Do you think anyone in that group had almost $700 billion to invest in the US Treasury market in fiscal 2009? We didn’t either. To dig further, we turned to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors Flow of Funds Data which provides a detailed breakdown of the owners of Treasury Securities to Q3 2009.3 Within this grouping, the GSE’s were small buyers of a mere $5 billion this year;4 Broker and Dealers were sellers of almost $80 billion;5 Commercial Banking were buyers of approximately $80 billion;6 Corporate and Non-corporate Businesses, grouped together, were buyers of $11.6 billion, for a grand net purchase of $16.6 billion.7 So who really picked up the tab? To our surprise, the only group to actually substantially increase their purchases in 2009 is defined in the Federal Reserve Flow of Funds Report as the "Household Sector". This category of buyers bought $15 billion worth of treasuries in 2008, but by Q3 2009 had purchased a whopping $528.7 billion worth. At the end of Q3 this Household Sector category now owns more treasuries than the Federal Reserve itself.8 So to summarize, the majority buyers of Treasury securities in 2009 were: 1. Foreign and International buyers who purchased $697.5 billion. 2. The Federal Reserve who bought $286 billion. 3. The Household Sector who bought $528 billion to Q3 – which puts them on track purchase $704 billion for fiscal 2009. These three buying groups represent the lion’s share of the $1.885 trillion of debt that was issued by the US in fiscal 2009. We must admit that we were surprised to discover that "Households" had bought so many Treasuries in 2009. They bought 35 times more government debt than they did in 2008. Given the financial condition of the average household in 2009, this makes little sense to us. With unemployment and foreclosures skyrocketing, who could afford to increase treasury investments to such a large degree? For our more discerning readers, this enormous "Household" investment was made outside of Money Market Funds, Mutual Funds, ETF’s, Life Insurance Companies, Pension and Retirement funds and Closed-End Funds, which are all separate reporting categories.9 This leaves a very important question - who makes up this Household Sector? Amazingly, we discovered that the Household Sector is actually just a catch-all category. It represents the buyers left over who can’t be slotted into the other group headings. For most categories of financial assets and liabilities, the values for the Household Sector are calculated as residuals. That is, amounts held or owed by the other sectors are subtracted from known totals, and the remainders are assumed to be the amounts held or owed by the Household Sector. To quote directly from the Flow of Funds Guide, "For example, the amounts of Treasury securities held by all other sectors, obtained from asset data reported by the companies or institutions themselves, are subtracted from total Treasury securities outstanding, obtained from the Monthly Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays of the United States Government and the balance is assigned to the household sector." (Emphasis ours)10 So to answer the question - who is the Household Sector? They are a PHANTOM. They don’t exist. They merely serve to balance the ledger in the Federal Reserve’s Flow of Funds report. Our concern now is that this is all starting to resemble one giant Ponzi scheme. We all know that the Fed has been active in the market for T-bills. As you can see from Table A, under the auspices of Quantitative Easing, they bought almost 50% of the new Treasury issues in Q2 and almost 30% in Q3. It serves to remember that the whole point of selling new US Treasury bonds is to attract outside capital to finance deficits or to pay off existing debts that are maturing. We are now in a situation, however, where the Fed is printing dollars to buy Treasuries as a means of faking the Treasury’s ability to attract outside capital. If our research proves anything, it’s that the regular buyers of US debt are no longer buying, and it amazes us that the US can successfully issue a record number Treasuries in this environment without the slightest hiccup in the market. Perhaps the most striking example of the new demand dynamics for US Treasuries comes from Bill Gross, who is co-chief investment officer at PIMCO and arguably one of the world’s most powerful bond investors. Mr. Gross recently revealed that his bond fund has cut holdings of US government debt and boosted cash to the highest levels since 2008.11 Earlier this year he referred to the US as a "ponzi style economy" and recomended that investors front run Uncle Sam and other world governments into government debt instruments of all forms.12 The fact that he is now selling US treasuries is a foreboding sign. Foreign holders are also expressing concern over new Treasury purchases. In a recent discussion on the global role of the US dollar, Zhu Min, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, told an academic audience that "The world does not have so much money to buy more US Treasuries." He went on to say, "The United States cannot force foreign governments to increase their holdings of Treasuries… Double the holdings? It is definitely impossible."13 Judging from these statements, it seems clear that the US cannot expect foreigners to continue to support their debt growth in this new economic environment. As US consumers buy fewer foreign goods, there are less US dollars available for foreigners to purchase future Treasury securities. Foreigners are the largest source of external capital that can be clearly identified in US Treasury data. If their support wanes in 2010, the US will require significant domestic support to fund future debt issuances. Mr. Gross’s recent comments suggest that their domestic support may already be weakening. As we have seen so illustriously over the past year, all Ponzi schemes eventually fail under their own weight. The US debt scheme is no different. 2009 has been witness to spectacular government intervention in almost all levels of the economy. This support requires outside capital to facilitate, and relies heavily on the US government’s ability to raise money in the debt market. The fact that the Federal Reserve and US Treasury cannot identify the second largest buyer of treasury securities this year proves that the traditional buyers are not keeping pace with the US government’s deficit spending. It makes us wonder if it’s all just a Ponzi scheme. 1 Department of the Treasury (December 2009) Treasury Bulletin. Ownership of Federal Securities p48. Table OFS -2 – Estimated Ownership of U.S. Treasury Securities.. Retrieved on December 20, 2009 from: http://fms.treas.gov/bulletin/b2009_4.pdf 2 Federal Reserve Statistical Releases H.41. Release September 25, 2008 and Release September 24, 2009. Retrieved on December 20, 2009 from: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/Current/ 3 Federal Reserve Statistical Release Z.1 Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States (December 10, 2009) Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States Flows and Outstandings Third Quarter 2009. Table L.209 Treasury Securities pg.89. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Retrieved on December 20, 2009 from: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/Current/ 4 Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States Flows and Outstandings Third Quarter 2009. Table L.209 Treasury Securities pg.89, Line 29. 5 Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States Flows and Outstandings Third Quarter 2009. Table L.209 Treasury Securities pg.89, Line 31. 6 Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States Flows and Outstandings Third Quarter 2009. Table L.209 Treasury Securities pg.89, Line 13. 7 Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States Flows and Outstandings Third Quarter 2009. Table L.209 Treasury Securities pg.89, Line 8 and 9. 8 Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States Flows and Outstandings Third Quarter 2009. Table L.209 Treasury Securities pg.89. Line 12 Monetary Authority had a Treasury Securities balance of $769.2 billion and Line 5 the Household Sector held a balance of $801.6 billion 9 Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States Flows and Outstandings Third Quarter 2009. Table L.209 Treasury Securities pg.89, Lines 25, 26, 28, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27.. 10 Guide to the Flow of Funds Accounts, Volume 1, page 170. Retrieved on December 20, 2009 from: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/fofguide.pdf 11 Goodman, Wes. (December 17, 2009). Pimco’s Gross Boosts Cash to Most Since Lehman Failed. Business Week Retrieved on December 20, 2009 from: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/conte...1217_105749.htm 12 Gross, Bill (January 2009). Andrew Mellon vs. Bailout Nation. Investment Outlook. Retrieved on December 20, 2009 from: http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Mark...IO+Gross+Jan+09 +Andrew+Mellon+vs+Bailout+Nation.htm 13 Xin, Zhou and Jason Subler (December 18, 2009). Harder to buy US Treasuries. Shanghai Dialy. Retrieved on December 22, 2009 from: http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/20...icle_423054.htm Royal Bank Plaza, South Tower 200 Bay Street, Suite 2700, Toronto, ON M5J 2J1 www.sprott.com

"was elected President in 1992." I have edited my prior posting to reflect this omission. The Houston IRS District Director, who had attempted to cover up the illegal Bush fund, knew his days were limited once the Democrats captured the White House in 1992. So, with the blessing of the higher-ups in the IRS, he resigned.

The Truth About Flight 253 Has Been Revealed by Kurt Haskell www.lewrockwell.com February 2, 2010 Please note that in the article that follows, I am not claiming that the U.S. Government knew Mutallab had a bomb or intended to hurt anyone on Flight 253 when the U.S. Government let him board. THE SHARP DRESSED MAN WHO AIDED MUTALLAB ONTO FLIGHT 253 WAS A U.S. GOVERNMENT AGENT. Since our flight landed on Christmas Day, Lori and I have been doing everything in our power to uncover the truth about why we were almost blown up in the air over Detroit. The truth is now finally out after the publication of this Detroit News article. Let me quote from the article: "Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab's visa wasn't taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would've foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaeda threats against the United States. "Revocation action would've disclosed what they were doing," Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep the visa increased chances federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with, "rather than simply knocking out one solider in that effort."' Now it all becomes apparent. Let me detail everything we know about the "Sharp Dressed Man" (SDM). 1. While being held in Customs on Christmas Day, I first told the story of the SDM. 2. My story has never changed. 3. The FBI visited my office on December 29, 2009, and showed me a series of approximately 10 photographs. None were of the SDM. I asked the FBI if they brought the Amsterdam security video to help me identify the SDM, but they acted as though my request was ridiculous. The FBI asked me what accent the SDM spoke in and I indicated that he had an American accent similar to my own. I further indicated that he wore a tan suit without a tie, was Indian looking, around age 50, 6'0" tall and 250–260 lbs. I further indicated that I did not believe that he was an airline employee and that he was not on our flight. 4. During the first week of January, 2010, Dutch Military Police and the FBI indicated that over "200 Hours" of Amsterdam airport security video had been reviewed and it "Shows Nothing." 5. The mainstream media picked up the "Shows nothing" story, which slanders my story. After visiting my office twice for a flight 253 special, Dateline NBC and Chris Hanson indicated that my story was "Unsubstantiated rumor dispelled as myth" and our story did not air during the TV special. 6. On January 2, 2010, I receive a call from a flight 253 passenger who indicated to me that it may be in my best interest to stop talking publicly about the SDM because he believes I am "wrong" in what I saw. He did not make any claim that he saw the SDM boarding gate incident at all. This call was made out of the blue after he made a "revelation" of this event on January 1, 2010. I later discover that this caller has ties to the U.S. Government. 7. On January 20, 2010, current Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Michael E. Leiter, made a startling admission. Leiter indicated that: "I will tell you, that when people come to the country and they are on the watch list, it is because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another." 8. On January 22, 2010, CongressDaily reported that intelligence officials "have acknowledged the government knowingly allows foreigners whose names are on terrorist watch lists to enter the country in order to track their movement and activities." CongressDaily also reported, citing an unnamed "intelligence official" that Michael E. Leiter's statement on January 20, 2010, reflected government policy and told the publication, "in certain situations it's to our advantage to be able to track individuals who might be on a terrorist watch list because you can learn something from their activities and their contacts." 9. On January 22, 2010, ABC News published an article that showed a change of position in the government's official story. Please see this blog post for more information. The U.S. government provided no explanation for the reason my story was initially discounted. 10. The SDM could not be from Al Qaeda. When speaking at the counter in Amsterdam, the SDM said the following "He is from Sudan, we do this all the time." Who is "we"? If it is Al Qaeda, you surely don't make such a statement to an airport security official. 11. The SDM could not be from airport security. The SDM did not dress in any security uniform and did not appear to have any security badge. The SDM did not speak with a Dutch accent. The SDM dressed in a suit coat and pants. If the SDM was a higher up security official, he would not have to convince the ticket agent to let Mutallab on the plane without a valid passport. Instead, he would just order her to do it. 12. Could the SDM have been a U.S. Government official? He dressed in a suit and not a security uniform. Check. He indicated we do this all the time. Could "we" be the U.S. Government? Check. He spoke English with an American accent. Check. Would he need to convince the ticket agent that this was a normal procedure to allow boarding without a passport? Check. Would he have the ability to obtain such clearance? Check. Could he enter this security area even though he wasn't a passenger? Check. Would the ticket agent likely refer this request to a manager? Check. Would the U.S. Government not want this information public and try to hide it? Check. 13. The Amsterdam security video has not been released. A much more minor airport security violation occurred at the Newark New Jersey airport several days after the flight 253 incident. That video was released shortly thereafter. 14. Senators Levin and Stabenow, as well as Congressman Dingle, all refuse to discuss the matter with me. With the information we already knew and the admission from the above referenced Detroit News article, we have evidence and claims made by government officials that the U.S. Government wanted Mutallab to proceed into the U.S. in order to obtain information on other terrorists involved with him. Once we take this statement and add it to my eyewitness account of a "Sharp Dressed Man" escorting Mutallab through the boarding process and allowing him to board without a valid passport we can make the connection that the "Sharp Dressed Man" was a U.S. Government official/agent. The reasoning behind the following events now becomes very clear: 1. The reason Mutallab got through security despite the numerous warnings for months before our flight. 2. The reason why there have been so many lies from the U.S. Government attempting to discredit my eyewitness account. 3. The reason why the Amsterdam airport security video is being hidden from the public. 4. The reason why the government is proposing a "Failed to Connect the Dots" account of the failure. The truth is too damning. 5. The reason why Mr. Wolf of the Obama administration indicated on the Keith Olberman Show that the White House was investigating a possible "intentional act" from within the U.S. Government as the reason for the Christmas Day attack. 6. The explanation for the cameraman and why he hasn't been identified (Obviously, he was another U.S. Government agent) whose job was to film Mutallab for some governmental purpose. 7. The reason for the lax security after landing, which can be attributed to foreknowledge of the possible suspects involved. 8. The reason for the failure to search or secure the plane and passengers after landing, which can also be attributed to foreknowledge of the possible suspects involved. 9. The corporate media's attempt to bury my eyewitness account. 10. Carl Levin's, Debbie Stabenow's and John Dingle's intentional avoidance of my story and failure to return my calls/emails. 11. Janet Napolitano's statement that "The System Worked." From her point of view it probably did as this WAS PART OF THE SYSTEM! This article is the big center piece of the puzzle that has been missing and was needed to finish the entire puzzle. This appeared on Kurt Haskell's blog. February 2, 20

CIA moonlights in corporate world By: Eamon Javers February 1, 2010 12:57 AM EST www.politico.com http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uui...81EDA6D629BFA12 [This article is adapted from the author's forthcoming book, 'Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage.'] In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side — a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned. In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in “deception detection,” the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation. The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest Flight 253. But sources familiar with the CIA’s moonlighting policy defend it as a vital tool to prevent brain-drain at Langley, which has seen an exodus of highly trained, badly needed intelligence officers to the private sector, where they can easily double or even triple their government salaries. The policy gives agents a chance to earn more while still staying on the government payroll. A government official familiar with the policy insists it doesn’t impede the CIA’s work on critical national security investigations. This official said CIA officers who want to participate in it must first submit a detailed explanation of the type of work involved and get permission from higher-ups within the agency. “If any officer requests permission for outside employment, those requests are reviewed not just for legality, but for propriety,” CIA spokesman George Little told POLITICO. There is much about the policy that is unclear, including how many officers have availed themselves of it, how long it has been in place and what types of outside employment have been allowed. The CIA declined to provide additional details. Generally, federal employees across the vast government work force are allowed to moonlight in the private sector, but under tight guidelines, that can vary from agency to agency, according to the federal Office of Government Ethics. “In general, for most nonpolitical employees, they may engage in outside employment, but there are some restrictions,” said Elaine Newton, an attorney at the Office of Government Ethics. She explained that agencies throughout the federal government set their own policies on outside employment, and that they all typically require that the employment not represent a conflict of interest with the employee’s federal job and that the employee have written approval before taking on the work. But the close ties between active-duty and retired CIA officers at one consulting company show the degree to which CIA-style intelligence gathering techniques have been employed by hedge funds and financial institutions in the global economy. The firm is called Business Intelligence Advisors, and it is based in Boston. BIA was founded and is staffed by a number of retired CIA officers, and it specializes in the arcane field of “deception detection.” BIA’s clients have included Goldman Sachs and the enormous hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, according to spokesmen for both firms. BIA has employed active-duty CIA officers in the past, although BIA president Cheryl Cook said that has “not been the case with BIA for some time.” But the ties between BIA and the intelligence world run deep. The name itself was chosen as a play off CIA. And the presence of so many former CIA personnel on the payroll at BIA causes confusion as to whether the intelligence firm is actually an extension of the agency itself. As a result, BIA places a disclaimer in some of its corporate materials to clarify that it is not, in fact, controlled by Langley. BIA’s clients can put the company on a retainer for as much as $400,000 to $800,000 a year. And in return, they receive access to a variety of services, from deception detection to other programs that feature the CIA intelligence techniques. In one presentation in 2006, BIA personnel promised to teach managers at a leading hedge fund some of the CIA’s own foolproof techniques. The presenters that day at SAC Capital Advisors in Stamford, Conn., included two women with backgrounds in intelligence. One spent 20 years with the CIA, specializing in polygraph, interviewing, and deception detection. The other had more than 25 years of interrogation experience. In their intensity, they reminded one person in the room of Clarice Starling, the no-nonsense FBI agent played by Jodie Foster in the movie “The Silence of the Lambs”: “You could tell they knew exactly what they were doing.” The tactics that BIA officials such as these teach hedge fund clients are based in a program it calls “Tactical Behavior Assessment.”. Unlike polygraph machines, the TBA technique allows examiners to work without hooking up their subject to a series of wires. The subject never knows he’s being scrutinized. Polygraph machines work by measuring a person’s physical responses, such as heart rate, that indicate stress. Analysts using the machine need to sit with their subject for a long time. They have to establish a person’s physiological baseline, so they begin with a “control” conversation about neutral topics, before they can begin grilling the subject. Conducting an interview and doing a thorough analysis of polygraph results can take hours. TBA focuses on the verbal and nonverbal cues that people convey when they aren’t telling the truth. Psychologists familiar with the method say it works because human beings just aren’t hard-wired to lie well. Holding two opposing ideas in your brain at the same time — as you have to do in order to tell a lie — causes a phenomenon they term “cognitive dissonance,” which creates actual physical discomfort. And when people are uncomfortable, they squirm. They fidget ever so slightly, they pick lint off their clothes, they shift their bodily positions. Agents look for the physical indicators of lying. They watch for a person shifting anchor points. If the person is leaning forward on one elbow, does he switch to the other one? Interrogators watch for grooming gestures such as adjusting clothes, hair or eyeglasses. They look to see if the person picks at his fingernails or scratches himself. They watch for the person to clean his surroundings — does he straighten the paper clips on the table or line up the pens? If he does, he could be lying. To obtain verbal clues, agents listen for several kinds of statements. They’ll listen for qualifying answers, phrases that begin with words like “honestly,” “frankly” or “basically.” The agents will be listening for detour phrases like “as I said before ...” They’ll want to hear if the person invokes religion — “I swear to God” — or attacks the questioner: “How dare you ask me something like that?” Other red flags: Complaints —“How long is this going to take?” Selective memory —“To the best of my knowledge.” Overly courteous responses —“Yes, sir.” BIA doesn’t just offer training, though. For a fee, its officers do the analysis themselves. Often, BIA deploys its CIA-trained operatives to analyze quarterly corporate-earnings calls. Those conference calls are an important Wall Street ritual that serves as a direct line from the corporate boardroom to the trading floor. Companies use the calls to put the best spin on the events of the quarter and give investors a sense of the way ahead. Analysts for top-of-the-line investment houses use them to ask probing questions of senior management. And BIA uses them to figure out if the company may not be disclosing the truth — all with the help of the CIA-trained analysts. In one particular instance in August 2005, Hong Liang Lu, the chairman and CEO of a company called UTStarcom, walked through the numbers with a telephone audience of Wall Street investment bankers. With his slicked-back hair, rimless glasses and wide smile, Lu projected an image of intelligence and competence. And as he began the call, Lu couldn’t know that it also was being patched into a room thousands of miles away where interrogators trained in CIA-style techniques would analyze each inflection in Lu’s voice. The analysts were human lie detectors, working for BIA. They were trying to find out whether Lu was telling the whole truth about UTStarcom’s financial health. When they came to their conclusion, they’d report it to BIA’s client, an enormous hedge fund. The secret intelligence they produced would help the hedge fund decide whether to buy or sell UTStarcom stock. If the intelligence analysts did their jobs, the hedge fund would be far ahead of the rest of the market. The information they gleaned from this phone call could be worth millions of dollars. The company Hong Liang Lu ran sells broadband, wireless and hand-held Internet equipment and technology around the world. It had generated more than $700 million in revenue that quarter, and although it was still losing money, that performance was good enough to bring it close to profitability. The company thought the results were positive, and the CEO seemed optimistic. Investment analysts from Bank of America, Smith Barney, Deutsche Bank and other Wall Street powerhouses were the official participants in UTStarcom’s call. The analysts prepared their best questions to help them figure out the answer to one big question: Would UTStarcom emerge as a hot stock in the third quarter? After some opening remarks, Lu threw open the session to questions from the Wall Streeters. One of them, Mike Ounjian, a keen-eyed analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston, asked about potential problems he’d spotted with how the company’s income was being counted in the books, a process known as revenue recognition. There seemed to be a backlog in the recording, and Ounjian wanted to know why. If the problems were serious, they could affect the company’s financial results in the next quarter and might cause the stock price to dip. “Are there any issues related to recognizing revenues on these?” Ounjian asked. The voice of Michael Sophie, then the company’s interim chief financial officer, came over the phone line: “Yes, with the backlog, the vast majority of the wireless backlog is clearly PAS [an acronym for one of the company’s products, Personal Access System]. I think you saw the announcement at the end of June where we announced on the PAS infrastructure orders in China. And again, it’s just the timing of deployment and achieving final acceptance, we’ve also got some CDMA [an acronym for a type of mobile phone standard] to a lesser extent in the backlog. ... But Q3 is clearly a little more handset-oriented than we would typically run.” After analyzing the call, BIA’s employees supplied a 27-page confidential report to their client, and they singled out Sophie’s response to the question about revenue recognition for particular attention. They noted that Sophie qualified his response and referred back to another announcement from the end of June. BIA called that kind of conversational reference a “detour statement,” and its analysts were convinced that Sophie was trying to minimize the delays. “Mr. Sophie avoids commenting on any issues related to revenue recognition, and his overall behavior indicates that revenue recognition problems cannot be ruled out.” Overall, BIA’s team rated the second-quarter conference call as a “medium high level of concern”— the same rating they’d given UTStarcom’s call the quarter before. This time, though, the BIA team found more problems, which they listed in a box on the first page of their report: “Lacks Confidence,” “Underlying Concern,” “Avoids Providing Information.” In their conclusion, the BIA team said they’d found that the executives were worried about the timing of the company’s profitability date and the issue of revenue recognition. The report says: “Management’s behavior indicates that they will post poor third-quarter results, and it is also highly unlikely they will achieve profitability in the fourth quarter.” It might not seem like much, one take on whether the company will do well in the next six months. But to hedge-fund investors — who are looking for ways to make money off of falling stocks by selling short — that is valuable information indeed. BIA’s client had no way of telling whether the deception analysis report was accurate or not. It was the client’s job to take the report, combine it with other information known about UTStarcom and make a bet for or against the company. And there’s no evidence that UTStarcom officials weren’t being truthful during the call. With the benefit of hindsight, though, it’s possible to go back and check the record to find out what did happen to UTStarcom stock in the weeks after the call. It turns out that any investor who shorted UTStarcom at the time BIA submitted its report would have been in a position to reap substantial gains. Over the next month or so after the call of Aug. 2, UTStarcom’s stock price lost about $1 per share, a nice win for any short seller. But on Oct. 6, 2005, the company released its third-quarter results, shocking Nasdaq traders with numbers that were below the guidance executives had offered during the conference call. In October, UTStarcom said it expected total revenues of between $620 million and $640 million, compared with its previous target of $660 million to $680 million. The next morning, investors frantically sold their shares: more than 23 million transactions took place on Oct. 7, 2005. A day after the third-quarter results were released, the stock was down roughly an additional $2, closing at $5.64. It had been at $8.54 when the BIA team listened in on the conference call in August and flagged the potential problems with revenue recognition. And what reason did UTStarcom give for its poor third-quarter performance? It disclosed difficulties with revenue recognition.