Douglas Caddy

A report in the Sunday Times suggests that Robert Gates is very much against a war with Iran. It was also claimed that several senior US generals will resign if the war goes ahead. I can't help but wonder if the drop in the world's stock markets on Tuesday was not the result of Vice President Cheney's current trip around the world, visiting Japan, Australia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc. Was the purpose of his trip to alert the leaders of these countries that the U.S. and Israel in the near future will attack Iran? If so, then the word leaked out after his visits to these countries and the insiders around the world moved quickly to sell stocks in their justifiable worry that such an attack will be an international calamity drastically affecting every human on planet Earth.

Au contraire, Myra. Hunt was true blue CIA. He went to court to deny his involvement in the Kennedy assassination. For him to belatedly acknowledge that other CIA officers may have been involved, and for him to acknowledge that one of his and the agency's biggest "succcesses", Operation Success in Guatemala, was in the long run a disaster, is quite a confession. As a result, I suspect future historians will put quite a bit of weight on Hunt's final words. February 27, 2007 In the Name of Empire: Dirty Tricks, Sabotage and Propaganda Howard Hunt and the National Memory System By JEFF NYGAARD www.counterpunch.org http://www.counterpunch.org/nygaard02272007.html E. Howard Hunt died on January 23rd. Hunt was famous for his role in the Watergate burglaries that brought an end to the presidency of Richard Nixon in 1974. Although this is what he is famous for, it is not the most important thing to know about this man. The London Guardian led off their obituary of Hunt with these words: "The infamous part that the espionage agent E. Howard Hunt played in the 1972 Watergate burglary-which eventually brought down President Nixon-earned him 33 months in prison. Yet Hunt, who has died aged 88, spent a career in clandestine activities so nefarious that he was lucky not to have spent much longer behind bars." I don't think Hunt was "lucky" at all. It's far more serious than that. Let's have a look at how he is remembered in the "National Memory System" and the political/intellectual culture it serves. National Public Radio ran an obituary for Hunt on the day of this passing, and it began with these words:"E. Howard Hunt, one of the key figures who organized the Watergate break in, has died at the age of 88. He was a long time CIA operative. He helped plan both a coup in Guatemala in 1954 and later the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Howard Hunt served 33 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy for his role in the Watergate burglary." And that's the last we hear from NPR about either Guatemala or Cuba, or any of the rest of Hunt's long career in the CIA. NPR chose to devote its entire segment to an interview with reporter Bob Woodward, who "broke the Watergate story in the Washington Post" in 1973. So, we see what's important-and not important-to NPR. The New York Times did a little better in their lengthy obituary the next day. They said of Hunt that "His field was political warfare: dirty tricks, sabotage and propaganda." And, although most of their story was also about Watergate, they did devote one full paragraph to Guatemala. Here it is: "In 1954, Mr. Hunt helped plan the covert operation that overthrew the elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz. ''What we wanted to do was to have a terror campaign,' Mr. Hunt said in a CNN documentary on the cold war, 'to terrify Arbenz particularly, to terrify his troops.' Though the operation succeeded, it ushered in 40 years of military repression in Guatemala." Two sentences later the Times adds that "Not until 1960 was Mr. Hunt involved in an operation that changed history." Remember that this obituary was being written in the winter of 2007, at a time when the United States is officially engaged in a "War on Terror," and supposedly trying to "spread democracy" around the world. The conventional thinking has it that this is what the U.S., as a Beacon of Democracy, has always done. Yet when a prominent government official dies, the fact that he was engaged in an official U.S. terror campaign for the purpose of overthrowing a democratically-elected government-and one that "succeeded"-merits a single paragraph in the nation's newspaper of record. Indeed, it is implied that such behavior did not even "change history." The operation that DID "change history," according to the Times, was the secret campaign, ordered by Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, "to alter or abolish the revolutionary government of Fidel Castro in Cuba." The Times tells us that "Mr. Hunt's assignment was to create a provisional Cuban government that would be ready to take power once the CIA's cadre of Cuban shock troops invaded the island." This was the infamous Bay of Pigs operation (Code Name: "Operation Zapata"), which used the same cast of (U.S.) characters as the Guatemala campaign 6 years earlier. The Guatemala campaign was codenamed "PB Success," and Zapata was expected to meet with the same "success." It did not, of course, with the result that, as the Times put it, the careers of Hunt and the others "who planned and executed the Bay of Pigs debacle in April 1961 were damaged or destroyed, as was the CIA's reputation for derring-do." The Oxford English Dictionary defines "derring-do" as "daring action or feats; heroic courage." Now, if it is true that the CIA's reputation among the general population in 1960 was for "derring-do," rather than for terror and subversion of democracy, it can only be because United Statesians were then, as they are now, sensationally ignorant of what the CIA had actually been doing in the previous 14 years. A Tiny Bit of the CIA's History The CIA was formed in 1947. In the 14 years from then until its reputation for "derring-do" was cemented in the public mind, the CIA engaged in all of the following tactics in various places around the world: * Creation and management of CIA schools, where military and police were trained in all sorts of things, including torture techniques; * Infiltration and manipulation of selected groups, such as political parties, youth groups, unions, and much more; * Manipulation of media, up to and including direct ownership of media outlets in other countries; * Economic pressure, exerted through US government agencies, private U.S. corporations, and international financial institutions, and; * The "dirty tricks, sabotage and propaganda" that the Times told us was E. Howard Hunt's "field." The targets of CIA operations in the years 1947 to 1960, using all of the tactics listed above, included: China, Italy, Greece, the Philippines, Korea, Albania, Germany, Iran, Costa Rica, Syria, Indonesia, British Guiana, the Soviet Union, Italy, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Haiti, Algeria, Ecuador, The Congo, Peru, and the Dominican Republic. What Lessons Can Be Learned from These Obituaries? This sordid history continued in the following years, with E. Howard Hunt playing his small but important role, until Hunt was tried and convicted-and spent 33 months in federal prison-for burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping aimed at the Democratic National Committee. Yet he received no prison time, was never charged, apparently received no negative consequences whatsoever, for his well-documented roles in various campaigns of terror and subversion of democracy. The lesson: Violations against the property of powerful people in the United States have consequences, while much more serious violations against the lives (and governments!) of less-powerful people in other countries do not. Here's another, related lesson: Terror campaigns that overthrow democracies do not "change history." But an operation that damages the careers of powerful government officials and/or damages the (bizarre and distorted) reputation of the agency that runs the campaigns that overthrow those democracies? Now, THAT changes "history." Now, here's our Lesson Number Three: Citizens in the U.S. must not be allowed to know much about covert operations and the casts of characters that carry them out because, if we did, we might all begin to see patterns over time, and might begin to understand a little better what is really involved in constructing and maintaining a global empire. The targets of these "covert" operations certainly know what is involved. Indeed, the combination of their knowledge of U.S. behavior and our own ignorance goes a long way in explaining the bewilderment revealed in the oft-posed question that came to life on September 11, 2001: "Why do they hate us?" As we consider the nature of the distorted National Memory System that is revealed by the obituaries of E. Howard Hunt and others--the obituaries following the December 7th death of Jeane Kirkpatrick offer similar insights into that System--some important questions come to mind: Who are the E. Howard Hunts of today, the men and women who are carrying out the "dirty tricks, sabotage and propaganda" that violate the values of most of the good people in whose name they are supposedly being carried out? Which journalists are following the activities of the covert operatives of today? Which news organizations are publishing these details of empire? "Late in life," the Times tells us, Mr. Hunt "said he had no regrets, beyond the Bay of Pigs." Which is, no doubt, why the London Guardian calls him "lucky." But it's not luck. Our job of people of conscience in the United States is to see if we can create a culture where the E. Howard Hunts of the world not only feel regrets for their careers of terror and democracy-destruction, but are brought to justice for them. Jeff Nygaard is a writer and activist in Minneapolis, Minnesota who publishes a free email newsletter on politics, media, and culture called Nygaard Notes, found at www.nygaardnotes.org http://www.counterpunch.org/nygaard02272007.html

Au contraire, Myra. Hunt was true blue CIA. He went to court to deny his involvement in the Kennedy assassination. For him to belatedly acknowledge that other CIA officers may have been involved, and for him to acknowledge that one of his and the agency's biggest "succcesses", Operation Success in Guatemala, was in the long run a disaster, is quite a confession. As a result, I suspect future historians will put quite a bit of weight on Hunt's final words. The second half of Hunt's book, which deals with events immediately preceding the Watergate break-in, the scandal itself and its aftermath, provides little new information that is already not known. There is ample evidence in the public record that Hunt attempted to persuade Liddy and McCord not to go back into the Democratic National Committee headquarters the final time. However, he lacked the will to back out of the operation on his own, apparently because he was enraptured with having direct access to the White House where he had his own office in the Executive Office Building. He is scathing in his assessment of McCord, whom he blames for the debacle of the final break-in. He is even more scathing of Thomas Gregory, a young GOP operative who had infiltrated the campaigns of several Democratic candidates for the presidency. Gregory had the common sense to sever his ties to Hunt and Liddy in the weeks preceding the final break-in. Hunt several times calls Gregory a “Gutless Wonder,” when in fact Gregory was merely a college student who got caught up in the mess because of family ties to Robert Bennett. Gregory today must be thanking his lucky stars that he had the intellectual fortitude to take the step of backing out when he did. Hunt is also extremely critical of Nixon, whom he terms the conspirator in chief. Hunt’s final chapter, which is concerned with post 9/11 events, finds him taking both sides of the issue of whether personal liberty in the U.S. should be sacrificed in Bush’s war against terrorism. Some final observations: The book is co-authored by Greg Aunapu, whose skillful writing is evident. However, based on my own personal knowledge, much of the book is vintage Hunt, who in his final years of ill health undoubtedly needed Aunapu’s assistance. As to David Hunt’s cryptic hint in a forum member’s posting about a forthcoming book on the Kennedy assassination in an exploitive vein akin to “Daddy Dearest,” it should be noted that Hunt on a number of occasions remarks on how Watergate drastically affected his family members. He writes in his introduction that “It isn’t going to be easy to relive my life by writing this book. As a result of Watergate, my wife was killed in a plane crash, during a flight she would never have been on if the failed Watergate operation had been aborted as I had requested a number of times. My children were left almost as orphans for three years while I was on my ‘government sponsored vacation,’ doing hard labor along with murderers. My two oldest daughters blame me for the catastrophe of their lives, while my two older sons had difficulties before straightening out their lives in recent years.” David Hunt, during his father’s incarceration, in fact was raised in the Miami family of Manual Artime, a Cuban-American who was a long-time friend of Hunt.

I purchased a copy of the book, American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond, at Barnes&Noble yesterday and am half-way through reading its 340 pages. This brief overview is of the first half. I hope to finish reading the second half in the next day or so. Based on what I have read so far, I would say that the volume is most-worthwhile. Its contents bring new revelations about Hunt’s unusual life as well as reinforcing impressions of the man previously gained from the mass media. Members of the forum who are adamantly critical of Hunt will find that Watergate aside, he was a patriot who had an extremely fascinating career as an international spy, always intent on advancing America’s national interests. There are some errors in the book. One that jumps out on page one is the author uses the name Howard Felt instead of Mark Felt in discussing Deep Throat. Hunt died in January, so he may not have had the opportunity to proof-read the book's galleys before publication. Here are a few brief highlights gleaned from the book’s first half: (1) Hunt in his early years was awarded simultaneously both a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rhodes Scholarship. He chose the former. (2) He joined the OSS under the sponsorship of Wild Bill Donovan, a family friend. (3) After the ousting of Leftist Jacob Arbenz as president of Guatemala, “thousand of files were confiscated (but) no direct link between Arbenz and the Soviets ever emerged...Most important, the fallout resulted in a lasting legacy of anti-American bias throughout Latin America, most significantly in Cuba, Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela.” Furthermore, this led to “decades of iron-fisted military rule, under which one hundred thousand mostly impoverished Guatemalans died.” (4) “So there are now three CIA agents who have been named in connection with Oswald – David Phillips, Cord Meyer and Bill Harvey – all with the means, motive, opportunity and some connection to kill Kennedy.” (5) “If LBJ had anything to do with the [Kennedy assassination] operation, he would have used Bill Harvey, because he was available and corrupt.” (6) Much of what Hunt worked on for a number of years for the CIA “was exposed in revelations about Operation Mockingbird...” (7) Hunt was not an admirer of Angleton. “Some people have suggested that maybe Angleton was a double agent like Philby [who trained him], but I don’t think so.” (8) LBJ ordered the CIA, who in turn ordered Hunt, to infiltrate the Goldwater campaign to gather information that could be used by LBJ against his opponent in the 1964 presidential campaign. (9) Hunt incorrectly asserts that I was an employee of the Robert Mullen Company, handling the General Foods Corporation account. In fact, however, I was never an employee of the Mullen Company but instead of General Food Corporation, which had assigned me to work out of the Mullen Company. He writes that I “resigned [from the Mullen Company] to take up law (remember his name as it will come up later), whereupon Mullen announced that he was selling the company to Robert Bennett, son of the Republican senator from Utah.” The second half of the book, which I shall briefly review soon, is devoted to chapters concerning activities leading up to Watergate, Watergate itself, and post-Watergate events.

Israel seeks all clear for Iran air strike The Telegraph in London By Con Coughlin in Tel Aviv Last Updated: 3:33pm GMT 24/02/2007 Israel is negotiating with the United States for permission to fly over Iraq as part of a plan to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, The Daily Telegraph can reveal. To conduct surgical air strikes against Iran's nuclear programme, Israeli war planes would need to fly across Iraq. But to do so the Israeli military authorities in Tel Aviv need permission from the Pentagon. A senior Israeli defence official said negotiations were now underway between the two countries for the US-led coalition in Iraq to provide an "air corridor" in the event of the Israeli government deciding on unilateral military action to prevent Teheran developing nuclear weapons. "We are planning for every eventuality, and sorting out issues such as these are crucially important," said the official, who asked not to be named. "The only way to do this is to fly through US-controlled air space. If we don't sort these issues out now we could have a situation where American and Israeli war planes start shooting at each other." As Iran continues to defy UN demands to stop producing material which could be used to build a nuclear bomb, Israel's military establishment is moving on to a war footing, with preparations now well under way for the Jewish state to launch air strikes against Teheran if diplomatic efforts fail to resolve the crisis. The pace of military planning in Israel has accelerated markedly since the start of this year after Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, provided a stark intelligence assessment that Iran, given the current rate of progress being made on its uranium enrichment programme, could have enough fissile material for a nuclear warhead by 2009. Last week Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, announced that he had persuaded Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad for the past six years and one of Israel's leading experts on Iran's nuclear programme, to defer his retirement until at least the end of next year. Mr Olmert has also given overall control of the military aspects of the Iran issue to Eliezer Shkedi, the head of the Israeli Air Force and a former F-16 fighter pilot. The international community will increase the pressure on Iran when senior officials from the five permanent of the United Nations Security Council and Germany meet at an emergency summit to be held in London on Monday. Iran ignored a UN deadline of last Wednesday to halt uranium enrichment. Officials will discuss arms controls and whether to cut back on the $25 billion-worth of export credits which are used by European companies to trade with Iran. A high-ranking British source said: "There is a debate within the six countries on sanctions and economic measures." British officials insist that this "incremental" approach of tightening the pressure on Iran is starting to turn opinion within Iran. One source said: "We are on the right track. There is time for diplomacy to take effect."

Oklahoma bombing update from the radio show www.coastocoastam.com of February 21, 2007: Alex Jones discussed the recent Salt Lake Tribune story which reports Terry Nichols' comments about Timothy McVeigh. Nichols claims that McVeigh had help from a high-ranking FBI official in the Oklahoma City bombing plot. Alex Jones believes that Nichols may be telling the truth, because he is putting himself in danger by making such allegations. To get to the bottom of it, radio program host George Noory suggested that the two of them travel to the prison where Nichols is held and conduct an interview with him together. http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2007/02/21.html#recap

Affidavit: McVeigh had high-level help According to Oklahoma bombing conspirator, ranking officials were involved in the attack By Pamela Manson The Salt Lake Tribune Article Last Updated: 02/21/2007 01:03:43 AM MST Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols says a high-ranking FBI official "apparently" was directing Timothy McVeigh in the plot to blow up a government building and might have changed the original target of the attack, according to a new affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Utah. The official and other conspirators are being protected by the federal government "in a cover-up to escape its responsibility for the loss of life in Oklahoma," Nichols claims in a Feb. 9 affidavit. Documents that supposedly help back up his allegations have been sealed to protect information in them, such as Social Security numbers and dates of birth. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Utah had no comment on the allegations. The FBI and Justice Department in Washington, D.C., also declined comment. Nichols does not say what motive the government would have to be involved in the bombing. The affidavit was filed in a lawsuit brought by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue, who believes his brother's death in a federal prison was linked to the Oklahoma City bombing. The suit, which seeks documents from the FBI under the federal Freedom of Information Act, alleges that authorities mistook Kenneth Trentadue for a bombing conspirator and that guards killed him in an interrogation that got out of hand. Trentadue's death a few months after the April 19, 1995, bombing was ruled a suicide after several investigations. The government has adamantly denied any wrongdoing in the death. In his affidavit, Nichols says he wants to bring closure to the survivors and families of the attack on the Alfred B. Murrah Federal Building, which took 168 lives. He alleges he wrote then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2004, offering to help identify all parties who played a role in the bombing but never got a reply. Nichols is serving a life sentence at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colo. McVeigh, who carried out the bombing, was executed in 2001. McVeigh and Nichols were the only defendants indicted in the bombing. However, Nichols alleges others were involved. McVeigh told him he was recruited for undercover missions while serving in the military, according to Nichols. He says he learned sometime in 1995 that there had been a change in bombing target and that McVeigh was upset by that. "There, in what I believe was an accidental slip of the tongue, McVeigh revealed the identity of a high-ranking FBI official who was apparently directing McVeigh in the bomb plot," Nichols says in the affidavit. Nichols also says that McVeigh threatened him and his family to force him to rob Roger Moore, an Arkansas gun dealer, of weapons and explosives. He later learned the robbery was staged so Moore, who was in on the phony heist, could deny any knowledge of the bombing plot if the stolen items were traced back to him, Nichols claims. He adds that Moore allegedly told his attorney that he would not be prosecuted in connection with the bombing because he was a "protected witness." Moore could not be reached for comment Tuesday. In addition, Nichols says McVeigh must have had help building the bomb. The device he and McVeigh built the day before the bombing did not resemble the one that ultimately was used, Nichols says, and "displayed a level of expertise and sophistication" that neither man had. http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_5271117

February 21, 2007 Op-Ed Contributor The New York Times Single Bullet, Single Gunman By GERALD POSNER THE ability to use advanced forensics and minuscule traces of DNA to solve crimes, even cold cases decades old, has turned many Americans into armchair sleuths seeking to “solve” the unexpected deaths of people like Princess Diana and Anna Nicole Smith. But sometimes, old-fashioned evidence is as useful in solving puzzles as anything under a nuclear microscope. Last weekend, a never-before-seen home movie was made public showing President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade just before his assassination. An amateur photographer, George Jefferies, took the footage and held onto it for more than 40 years before casually mentioning it to his son-in-law, who persuaded him to donate it to the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas. The silent 8-millimeter color film was of interest to most people simply because it showed perhaps the clearest close-up of Jacqueline Kennedy taken that morning. But to assassination researchers, the footage definitively resolves one of the case’s enduring controversies: that the bullet wound on Kennedy’s back, as documented and photographed during the autopsy, did not match up with the location of the bullet hole on the back of his suit jacket and shirt. The discrepancy has given conspiracy theorists fodder to argue that the autopsy photos had been retouched and the report fabricated. This is more than an academic debate among ballistics buffs. It is critical because if the bullet did enter where shown on the autopsy photos, the trajectory lines up correctly for the famous “single bullet” theory — the Warren Commission hypothesis that one bullet inflicted wounds to both Kennedy and Gov. John Connally of Texas. However, if the hole in the clothing was the accurate mark of where the bullet entered, it would have been too low for a single bullet to have inflicted all the wounds, and would provide evidence of a second assassin. For years, those of us who concluded that the single-bullet theory was sound, still had to speculate that Kennedy’s suit had bunched up during the ride, causing the hole to be lower in the fabric than one would expect. Because the holes in the shirt and jacket align perfectly, if the jacket was elevated when the shot struck, the shirt also had to have been raised. Some previously published photos taken at the pivotal moment showed Kennedy’s jacket slightly pushed up, but nothing was definitive. Meanwhile, conspiracy theorists have done everything to disprove that the jacket was bunched. Some used grainy photos or film clips to measure minute distances between Kennedy’s hairline and his shirt, what they dubbed the “hair-to-in-shoot distance.” The new film has finally resolved the issue. At the end of the clip, as the camera focuses on the backs of the president and first lady, Kennedy’s suit is significantly bunched up, with several layers creased together. Only 90 seconds before Lee Harvey Oswald fired the first shot, Kennedy’s suit jacket was precisely in the position to misrepresent the bullet’s entry point. While the film solves one mystery, it leaves another open: estimates are that at least 150,000 people lined the Dallas motorcade route that fateful day, so there must be many other films and photographs out there that have never come to light. Those who have them should bear in mind that even the most innocuous-seeming artifacts, like the Jefferies tape, can sometimes put enduring controversies to rest. As Gary Mack, the curator of the Sixth Floor Museum said the other day, “The bottom line is, don’t throw anything away.” Gerald Posner is the author of “Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of J.F.K.”

US 'Iran attack plans' revealed BBC News Feb. 19, 2007 US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure, the BBC has learned. It is understood that any such attack - if ordered - would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres. The US insists it is not planning to attack, and is trying to persuade Tehran to stop uranium enrichment. The UN has urged Iran to stop the programme or face economic sanctions. But diplomatic sources have told the BBC that as a fallback plan, senior officials at Central Command in Florida have already selected their target sets inside Iran. That list includes Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Facilities at Isfahan, Arak and Bushehr are also on the target list, the sources say. Two triggers BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies. Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran. Long range B2 stealth bombers would drop so-called "bunker-busting" bombs in an effort to penetrate the Natanz site, which is buried some 25m (27 yards) underground. The BBC's Tehran correspondent France Harrison says the news that there are now two possible triggers for an attack is a concern to Iranians. Authorities insist there is no cause for alarm but ordinary people are now becoming a little worried, she says. Deadline Earlier this month US officials said they had evidence Iran was providing weapons to Iraqi Shia militias. At the time, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the accusations were "excuses to prolong the stay" of US forces in Iraq. Middle East analysts have recently voiced their fears of catastrophic consequences for any such US attack on Iran. Britain's previous ambassador to Tehran, Sir Richard Dalton, told the BBC it would backfire badly by probably encouraging the Iranian government to develop a nuclear weapon in the long term. Last year Iran resumed uranium enrichment - a process that can make fuel for power stations or, if greatly enriched, material for a nuclear bomb. Tehran insists its programme is for civil use only, but Western countries suspect Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons. The UN Security Council has called on Iran to suspend its enrichment of uranium by 21 February. If it does not, and if the International Atomic Energy Agency confirms this, the resolution says that further economic sanctions will be considered. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/midd...ast/6376639.stm Published: 2007/02/19 23:26:26 GMT

Few persons have as much knowledge about Watergate as that possessed by Mr. Colodny. His active participation in the Forum would enhance its reputation tremendously as a major source for research on the subject. I hope you can persuade him to join.

You just can't help yourself, can you? Caddy posts some info about an upcoming book which some may find of interest, and you decide to smear him and imply he's spreading CIA disinfo... Nowhere does he say that Hunt is to be trusted as the last word on anything. Nowhere does he even imply as much... One would think you'd be excited about Hunt's book. More material for you to sift through and find discrepancies... February 18, 2007 Essay Literary Agent By RACHEL DONADIO The New York Times Book Review When E. Howard Hunt died last month at 88, he was remembered as the longtime Central Intelligence Agency officer who helped organize the botched Bay of Pigs invasion and served jail time for orchestrating the Watergate break-in. Less well known is that Hunt was once a promising literary writer. Like so many in the first wave of C.I.A. men, Hunt, a Brown graduate, worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, then headed to Europe in 1948, where he traveled in the Paris-Vienna orbit of other literary-minded Ivy Leaguers working in government jobs, some covertly. He spent much of the ’50s in Latin America, and left the agency in 1970, having been sidelined in the ’60s after the Bay of Pigs mission went awry. But before all that, while still in his 20s, Hunt published short stories in The New Yorker and Cosmopolitan, then a showcase for serious fiction. Not exactly on a par with Nabokov and Cheever, whose work was appearing in The New Yorker at the same time, Hunt instead imitated the hard-boiled Hemingwayesque style in vogue in those years. “I thought of the North Atlantic, where I’d rolled around on a tin can for almost a year,” he wrote in “Departure,” a story about soldiers waiting to be sent home from the South Pacific, published in December 1943. “That had been tough, too, but there was always Boston or New York or Norfolk at one end of the line and Reykjavik or Londonderry at the other. At least they were places. Towns, cities, villages with people and pubs and stores and shops and girls who looked like girls you’d seen before.” Hunt’s first novel, “East of Farewell,” published in 1942, when he was 23, was also a fictionalized account of his time on convoy duty in the North Atlantic. Hunt recalled his surprise when the prestigious publisher Knopf agreed to take it on. “Amazingly to me, the work was quickly accepted,” Hunt wrote in his memoir, “American Spy,” which is scheduled to appear in March. “Reviews were all I could have hoped for, but I couldn’t compete with the real-life war blaring in the newspaper headlines and newsreels. Sales were not good enough to escalate me to full-time author.” The New York Times reviewer called “East of Farewell” a “crashing start for a new writer.” Critics weren’t so fond of Hunt’s fourth novel, “Bimini Run” (1949), a love triangle set in the Caribbean. The Times found it “lifeless and unexciting,” but it sold 150,000 copies and Warner Brothers bought it for $35,000, a fortune at the time. In 1946, Hunt had been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and had gone to Mexico to write a novel, “Stranger in Town,” which sold well in paperback. That year, two other up-and-coming writers were denied the same fellowship. “The only thing Truman Capote and I have in common was Howard Hunt beat us out for a Guggenheim,” Gore Vidal recalled in an interview. “That sort of summed up my view of prizes and foundation work; they would instinctively go to the one who was least deserving.” In 1948, Hunt went to Paris to work for the Marshall Plan, ostensibly distributing aid through the Economic Cooperation Administration. There, Hunt crossed paths with another former O.S.S. man, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. In his 2000 memoir, “A Life in the Twentieth Century,” Schlesinger recalled that Hunt had “attracted attention” in the E.C.A. “as a certified published novelist.” “I did not much like him; he seemed on the sneaky side,” Schlesinger wrote. In a recent telephone interview, Schlesinger said he hadn’t read any of Hunt’s books, but reiterated that he found him “a sneaky character.” In his 1974 memoir, “Undercover,” Hunt was similarly dismissive of Schlesinger, seeing him as part of “the E.C.A.’s ambivalent attitude toward Communism.” Indeed, Hunt’s hard-line views increasingly put him at odds with the more genteel anti-Communist liberalism prevalent within the C.I.A. in those years. It was a stance he shared with William F. Buckley Jr., who joined the C.I.A. after graduating from Yale and worked undercover for Hunt in Mexico City, one of the first agency men posted there in the early years of the cold war. Beyond politics, the two men also shared a taste for good food and wine, often dining at what Hunt said was “then the only good French restaurant in Mexico City.” In an interview, Buckley recalled that Hunt was remarkably prolific. “He did have a reputation for simply holing up on a Wednesday morning and then finishing the book by the weekend,” Buckley said. “But he never discussed it. That was a completely discrete operation.” Back in Washington after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Hunt wrote increasingly pulpy, glamorous espionage fantasies, far removed from the drudgery of his actual duties. In a column last month, Buckley recalled that Allen Dulles, then head of the agency, told Hunt — who wrote more than 70 novels — that he could continue to publish his fiction without clearance, as long as he used a pseudonym. (Hunt’s noms de plume included John Baxter, Robert Dietrich and David St. John.) “Hunt handed me his latest book, ‘Catch Me in Zanzibar,’ by Gordon Davis,” Buckley wrote. “I leafed through it and found printed on the last page, ‘You have just finished another novel by Howard Hunt.’ I thought this hilarious. So did Howard. The reaction of Allen Dulles is not recorded.” It was Hunt’s time working for the C.I.A. in South America — when he helped overthrow the leftist president Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954 and later became station chief in Montevideo, Uruguay — that caught the attention of Norman Mailer, who included a fictionalized portrait of Hunt in “Harlot’s Ghost,” his 1991 novel about the C.I.A. In one scene, Mailer describes a dinner at an agency safe house in Key Biscayne. “I used to engage the place occasionally during the pre-Pigs period, but Howard occupies it now, and demonstrates for me that there are amenities to agency life,” the narrator says. “We had a corkeroo of a repast, polished off with a Château Yquem, served up — I only learn of their existence at this late date — by two contract agency caterers, who shop for special occasions, chef it forth in haute cuisine, and serve it themselves.” “I found him fascinating,” Mailer said of Hunt in a recent interview. “Not in a large way but as a man of middle rank in intelligence. He was so full of virtues and vices and airs and vanities that I thought he made a marvelous character.” Vidal called Hunt’s prose “overheated, slightly dizzy.” In a comprehensive analysis of Hunt’s work published in The New York Review of Books in 1973, Vidal introduced the eccentric theory that Hunt might have written the diary that was found in the car of Arthur H. Bremer, the unemployed busboy who in 1972 attempted to assassinate Gov. George Wallace of Alabama. “I was fairly convinced after reading the diaries very carefully when they finally came out that he must have had a hand in them,” Vidal said recently. “I’m still convinced of it. There are similarities in the style.” Vidal’s essay appeared in the heat of the Watergate scandal. No longer with the C.I.A. — he later said he quit the agency because it “was infested with Democrats,” although by then his C.I.A. career had pretty much run aground — Hunt was working in public relations and still writing novels when he got a call from another Brown alumnus, Charles Colson, then special counsel to President Nixon. Colson recruited Hunt to help wiretap the Democratic National Committee headquarters and organize the break-in. When the scandal broke, Buckley offered Hunt the services of his personal attorney for his Watergate trial. But in his column, he offered a scathing assessment of his former boss. “Hunt had lived outside the law in the service first of his country, subsequently of President Nixon,” he wrote. Hunt had invented himself through his novels, but even in the largest sense, his fictions were at odds with the truth. In the end, Buckley wrote, “Hunt, the dramatist, didn’t understand that political realities at the highest level transcend the working realities of spy life.” Rachel Donadio is a writer and editor at the Book Review.

February 18, 2007 Essay Literary Agent By RACHEL DONADIO The New York Times Book Review When E. Howard Hunt died last month at 88, he was remembered as the longtime Central Intelligence Agency officer who helped organize the botched Bay of Pigs invasion and served jail time for orchestrating the Watergate break-in. Less well known is that Hunt was once a promising literary writer. Like so many in the first wave of C.I.A. men, Hunt, a Brown graduate, worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, then headed to Europe in 1948, where he traveled in the Paris-Vienna orbit of other literary-minded Ivy Leaguers working in government jobs, some covertly. He spent much of the ’50s in Latin America, and left the agency in 1970, having been sidelined in the ’60s after the Bay of Pigs mission went awry. But before all that, while still in his 20s, Hunt published short stories in The New Yorker and Cosmopolitan, then a showcase for serious fiction. Not exactly on a par with Nabokov and Cheever, whose work was appearing in The New Yorker at the same time, Hunt instead imitated the hard-boiled Hemingwayesque style in vogue in those years. “I thought of the North Atlantic, where I’d rolled around on a tin can for almost a year,” he wrote in “Departure,” a story about soldiers waiting to be sent home from the South Pacific, published in December 1943. “That had been tough, too, but there was always Boston or New York or Norfolk at one end of the line and Reykjavik or Londonderry at the other. At least they were places. Towns, cities, villages with people and pubs and stores and shops and girls who looked like girls you’d seen before.” Hunt’s first novel, “East of Farewell,” published in 1942, when he was 23, was also a fictionalized account of his time on convoy duty in the North Atlantic. Hunt recalled his surprise when the prestigious publisher Knopf agreed to take it on. “Amazingly to me, the work was quickly accepted,” Hunt wrote in his memoir, “American Spy,” which is scheduled to appear in March. “Reviews were all I could have hoped for, but I couldn’t compete with the real-life war blaring in the newspaper headlines and newsreels. Sales were not good enough to escalate me to full-time author.” The New York Times reviewer called “East of Farewell” a “crashing start for a new writer.” Critics weren’t so fond of Hunt’s fourth novel, “Bimini Run” (1949), a love triangle set in the Caribbean. The Times found it “lifeless and unexciting,” but it sold 150,000 copies and Warner Brothers bought it for $35,000, a fortune at the time. In 1946, Hunt had been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and had gone to Mexico to write a novel, “Stranger in Town,” which sold well in paperback. That year, two other up-and-coming writers were denied the same fellowship. “The only thing Truman Capote and I have in common was Howard Hunt beat us out for a Guggenheim,” Gore Vidal recalled in an interview. “That sort of summed up my view of prizes and foundation work; they would instinctively go to the one who was least deserving.” In 1948, Hunt went to Paris to work for the Marshall Plan, ostensibly distributing aid through the Economic Cooperation Administration. There, Hunt crossed paths with another former O.S.S. man, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. In his 2000 memoir, “A Life in the Twentieth Century,” Schlesinger recalled that Hunt had “attracted attention” in the E.C.A. “as a certified published novelist.” “I did not much like him; he seemed on the sneaky side,” Schlesinger wrote. In a recent telephone interview, Schlesinger said he hadn’t read any of Hunt’s books, but reiterated that he found him “a sneaky character.” In his 1974 memoir, “Undercover,” Hunt was similarly dismissive of Schlesinger, seeing him as part of “the E.C.A.’s ambivalent attitude toward Communism.” Indeed, Hunt’s hard-line views increasingly put him at odds with the more genteel anti-Communist liberalism prevalent within the C.I.A. in those years. It was a stance he shared with William F. Buckley Jr., who joined the C.I.A. after graduating from Yale and worked undercover for Hunt in Mexico City, one of the first agency men posted there in the early years of the cold war. Beyond politics, the two men also shared a taste for good food and wine, often dining at what Hunt said was “then the only good French restaurant in Mexico City.” In an interview, Buckley recalled that Hunt was remarkably prolific. “He did have a reputation for simply holing up on a Wednesday morning and then finishing the book by the weekend,” Buckley said. “But he never discussed it. That was a completely discrete operation.” Back in Washington after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Hunt wrote increasingly pulpy, glamorous espionage fantasies, far removed from the drudgery of his actual duties. In a column last month, Buckley recalled that Allen Dulles, then head of the agency, told Hunt — who wrote more than 70 novels — that he could continue to publish his fiction without clearance, as long as he used a pseudonym. (Hunt’s noms de plume included John Baxter, Robert Dietrich and David St. John.) “Hunt handed me his latest book, ‘Catch Me in Zanzibar,’ by Gordon Davis,” Buckley wrote. “I leafed through it and found printed on the last page, ‘You have just finished another novel by Howard Hunt.’ I thought this hilarious. So did Howard. The reaction of Allen Dulles is not recorded.” It was Hunt’s time working for the C.I.A. in South America — when he helped overthrow the leftist president Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954 and later became station chief in Montevideo, Uruguay — that caught the attention of Norman Mailer, who included a fictionalized portrait of Hunt in “Harlot’s Ghost,” his 1991 novel about the C.I.A. In one scene, Mailer describes a dinner at an agency safe house in Key Biscayne. “I used to engage the place occasionally during the pre-Pigs period, but Howard occupies it now, and demonstrates for me that there are amenities to agency life,” the narrator says. “We had a corkeroo of a repast, polished off with a Château Yquem, served up — I only learn of their existence at this late date — by two contract agency caterers, who shop for special occasions, chef it forth in haute cuisine, and serve it themselves.” “I found him fascinating,” Mailer said of Hunt in a recent interview. “Not in a large way but as a man of middle rank in intelligence. He was so full of virtues and vices and airs and vanities that I thought he made a marvelous character.” Vidal called Hunt’s prose “overheated, slightly dizzy.” In a comprehensive analysis of Hunt’s work published in The New York Review of Books in 1973, Vidal introduced the eccentric theory that Hunt might have written the diary that was found in the car of Arthur H. Bremer, the unemployed busboy who in 1972 attempted to assassinate Gov. George Wallace of Alabama. “I was fairly convinced after reading the diaries very carefully when they finally came out that he must have had a hand in them,” Vidal said recently. “I’m still convinced of it. There are similarities in the style.” Vidal’s essay appeared in the heat of the Watergate scandal. No longer with the C.I.A. — he later said he quit the agency because it “was infested with Democrats,” although by then his C.I.A. career had pretty much run aground — Hunt was working in public relations and still writing novels when he got a call from another Brown alumnus, Charles Colson, then special counsel to President Nixon. Colson recruited Hunt to help wiretap the Democratic National Committee headquarters and organize the break-in. When the scandal broke, Buckley offered Hunt the services of his personal attorney for his Watergate trial. But in his column, he offered a scathing assessment of his former boss. “Hunt had lived outside the law in the service first of his country, subsequently of President Nixon,” he wrote. Hunt had invented himself through his novels, but even in the largest sense, his fictions were at odds with the truth. In the end, Buckley wrote, “Hunt, the dramatist, didn’t understand that political realities at the highest level transcend the working realities of spy life.” Rachel Donadio is a writer and editor at the Book Review.

Pat Speer has opined in this manner concerning your relationship with the totally amoral convicted felon, self-confessed forger, perjurer, and CIA founding member (but I repeat myself) E. Howard Hunt: "Mr. Caddy, in order to keep Hunt's involvement secret, probably lied to a newspaper about a phone call from Barker's wife... . It seemed obvious to me...that Caddy had lied... ." —Pat Speer Is Pat Speer correct in what he says? Ashton Gray For what it's worth, I don't believe a lawyer is under any obligation to tell a newspaper the truth about his client. Is Mr. Gray aware of any such obligation? If my memory is correct, and this is the dispute you have with Caddy--that he told two different stories about who hired him--is there any reason to believe this was more than business as usual for a Washington lawyer? I mean, a lawyer wouldn't last a minute in Washington if he felt obliged to announce who'd hired him every time he was asked, now would he? My concern is that, by framing your question with such a harsh description of Hunt, you seek not to ask a question of Mr. Caddy, but to insult him. This is what led to our earlier disagreements. I apologize if my expressions of concern feel like an intrusion into your line of questioning. But you don't really think Mr. Caddy will respond to your question, now do you? I, for one, would be surprised. Hunt's book as offered by Amazon.com, available Feb. 23rd: American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond (Hardcover) by 1. E. Howard Hunt (Author), Greg Aunapu (Author) List Price: $25.95 Price: $17.13 Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Career spy, Watergate conspirator and prolific suspense novelist Hunt (Guilty Knowledge) collaborated with journalist Aunapu (Without a Trace) on this breezy, unrepentant memoir. Hunt (who died recently at 88) recalls the highlights of a long career, from WWII service with the fabled Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—predecessor of the CIA—to a career with the agency itself and a stint as a consultant to the Nixon White House. As a White House operative, Hunt specialized in dirty tricks and break-ins—including the Democratic National Committee's headquarters—and served 33 months in federal prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. He claims to have been a magnet for women, especially models, and shamelessly drops the names of the rich and powerful. He also played a key role in the disastrous Bay of Pigs operation. As for his role in Watergate, he blames his "bulldog loyalty" and concedes only that he and his fellow conspirators did "the wrong things for the right reasons." In a postscript, Hunt urges reforming the beleaguered CIA in the image of the wartime OSS and its "daring amateurs." Hunt's nostalgic memoir breaks scant new ground in an already crowded field. (Apr.) Book Description Startling revelations from the OSS, the CIA, and the Nixon White house Think you know everything there is to know about the OSS, the Cold War, the CIA, and Watergate? Think again. In American Spy, one of the key figures in postwar international and political espionage tells all. Former OSS and CIA operative and White House staffer E. Howard Hunt takes you into the covert designs of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon: His involvement in the CIA coup in Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and more His work with CIA officials such as Allen Dulles and Richard Helms His friendship with William F. Buckley Jr., whom Hunt brought into the CIA The amazing steps the CIA took to manipulate the media in America and abroadThe motives behind the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office Why the White House "plumbers" were formed and what they accomplished The truth behind Operation Gemstone, a series of planned black ops activities against Nixon's political enemies A minute-by-minute account of the Watergate break-in Previously unreleased details of the post-Watergate cover-up Complete with documentation from audiotape transcripts, handwritten notes, and official documents, American Spy is must reading for anyone who is fascinated by real-life spy tales, high-stakes politics, and, of course, Watergate. From the Inside Flap For three decades, E. Howard Hunt served his nation, first in the U.S. Navy, then in the OSS and CIA, before being hired by President Nixon's staff, for whom he helped plan the infamous Watergate break-in. Now he reveals what he could only hint at in his seventy-plus spy novels: his role in some of the best known and least understood events in the postwar era. And he does so without spin or excuses. From his early days as an OSS operative in China during World War II, through his decades as a covert cold warrior with the CIA, and on to his fateful years in the Nixon White House, Hunt vividly describes the rigorous training, meticulous planning, and artful deceit that are the meat and potatoes of the espionage game. He offers startling revelations about the CIA's 1954 coup in Guatemala, the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, the agency's covert domestic propaganda campaign, and much more. He also discusses the 1971 break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, reveals his motives for participating in Watergate, even though he thought it was a mistake, and explains why his wife was carrying $10,000 in cash when she died in a plane crash en route to Chicago in 1972. He also reveals that because his daughter failed to follow his directions and dispose of incriminating evidence, he was later able to use these materials and become the star witness against the heads of the Watergate conspiracy. In the post-Watergate years, Hunt became the focus of numerous conspiracy theories suggesting that he: participated in the JFK assassination; wrote the book by George Wallace's would-be assassin; knew the secret "alternative" motive for breaking into the DNC headquarters. Hunt debunks a number of these accusations and defends himself vigorously against the rest. Based on audiotape transcripts, interviews, handwritten memos, and documents that Hunt has kept over the years, American Spy takes you behind the scenes to meet all of the Watergate conspirators as you've never seen them before. Destined to provoke many new controversies as it puts others to rest, it is the most memorable memoir you'll read this year. From the Back Cover Startling revelations from the OSS, the CIA, and the Nixon White house Think you know everything there is to know about the OSS, the Cold War, the CIA, and Watergate? Think again. In American Spy, one of the key figures in postwar international and political espionage tells all. Former OSS and CIA operative and White House staffer E. Howard Hunt takes you into the covert designs of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon: His involvement in the CIA coup in Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and more His work with CIA officials such as Allen Dulles and Richard Helms His friendship with William F. Buckley Jr., whom Hunt brought into the CIA The amazing steps the CIA took to manipulate the media in America and abroad The motives behind the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office Why the White House "plumbers" were formed and what they accomplished The truth behind Operation Gemstone, a series of planned black ops activities against Nixon's political enemies A minute-by-minute account of the Watergate break-in Previously unreleased details of the post-Watergate cover-up Complete with documentation from audiotape transcripts, handwritten notes, and official documents, American Spy is must reading for anyone who is fascinated by real-life spy tales, high-stakes politics, and, of course, Watergate. About the Author White House "plumber" E. HOWARD HUNT served as a covert operative for the CIA from 1950 until the 1970s, and participated in many of the agency's most secret missions, both abroad and in the United States. He is also the author of more than seventy spy novels. GREG AUNAPU is a nationally respected journalist, who worked as a freelancer for Time and People magazines for ten years, and has reported for many national news organizations. He is coauthor of two previous books, most recently, Without a Trace.

Hunt's book as offered by Amazon.com, available Feb. 23rd: American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond (Hardcover) by 1. E. Howard Hunt (Author), Greg Aunapu (Author) List Price: $25.95 Price: $17.13 Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Career spy, Watergate conspirator and prolific suspense novelist Hunt (Guilty Knowledge) collaborated with journalist Aunapu (Without a Trace) on this breezy, unrepentant memoir. Hunt (who died recently at 88) recalls the highlights of a long career, from WWII service with the fabled Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—predecessor of the CIA—to a career with the agency itself and a stint as a consultant to the Nixon White House. As a White House operative, Hunt specialized in dirty tricks and break-ins—including the Democratic National Committee's headquarters—and served 33 months in federal prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. He claims to have been a magnet for women, especially models, and shamelessly drops the names of the rich and powerful. He also played a key role in the disastrous Bay of Pigs operation. As for his role in Watergate, he blames his "bulldog loyalty" and concedes only that he and his fellow conspirators did "the wrong things for the right reasons." In a postscript, Hunt urges reforming the beleaguered CIA in the image of the wartime OSS and its "daring amateurs." Hunt's nostalgic memoir breaks scant new ground in an already crowded field. (Apr.) Book Description Startling revelations from the OSS, the CIA, and the Nixon White house Think you know everything there is to know about the OSS, the Cold War, the CIA, and Watergate? Think again. In American Spy, one of the key figures in postwar international and political espionage tells all. Former OSS and CIA operative and White House staffer E. Howard Hunt takes you into the covert designs of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon: His involvement in the CIA coup in Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and more His work with CIA officials such as Allen Dulles and Richard Helms His friendship with William F. Buckley Jr., whom Hunt brought into the CIA The amazing steps the CIA took to manipulate the media in America and abroadThe motives behind the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office Why the White House "plumbers" were formed and what they accomplished The truth behind Operation Gemstone, a series of planned black ops activities against Nixon's political enemies A minute-by-minute account of the Watergate break-in Previously unreleased details of the post-Watergate cover-up Complete with documentation from audiotape transcripts, handwritten notes, and official documents, American Spy is must reading for anyone who is fascinated by real-life spy tales, high-stakes politics, and, of course, Watergate. From the Inside Flap For three decades, E. Howard Hunt served his nation, first in the U.S. Navy, then in the OSS and CIA, before being hired by President Nixon's staff, for whom he helped plan the infamous Watergate break-in. Now he reveals what he could only hint at in his seventy-plus spy novels: his role in some of the best known and least understood events in the postwar era. And he does so without spin or excuses. From his early days as an OSS operative in China during World War II, through his decades as a covert cold warrior with the CIA, and on to his fateful years in the Nixon White House, Hunt vividly describes the rigorous training, meticulous planning, and artful deceit that are the meat and potatoes of the espionage game. He offers startling revelations about the CIA's 1954 coup in Guatemala, the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, the agency's covert domestic propaganda campaign, and much more. He also discusses the 1971 break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, reveals his motives for participating in Watergate, even though he thought it was a mistake, and explains why his wife was carrying $10,000 in cash when she died in a plane crash en route to Chicago in 1972. He also reveals that because his daughter failed to follow his directions and dispose of incriminating evidence, he was later able to use these materials and become the star witness against the heads of the Watergate conspiracy. In the post-Watergate years, Hunt became the focus of numerous conspiracy theories suggesting that he: participated in the JFK assassination; wrote the book by George Wallace's would-be assassin; knew the secret "alternative" motive for breaking into the DNC headquarters. Hunt debunks a number of these accusations and defends himself vigorously against the rest. Based on audiotape transcripts, interviews, handwritten memos, and documents that Hunt has kept over the years, American Spy takes you behind the scenes to meet all of the Watergate conspirators as you've never seen them before. Destined to provoke many new controversies as it puts others to rest, it is the most memorable memoir you'll read this year. From the Back Cover Startling revelations from the OSS, the CIA, and the Nixon White house Think you know everything there is to know about the OSS, the Cold War, the CIA, and Watergate? Think again. In American Spy, one of the key figures in postwar international and political espionage tells all. Former OSS and CIA operative and White House staffer E. Howard Hunt takes you into the covert designs of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon: His involvement in the CIA coup in Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and more His work with CIA officials such as Allen Dulles and Richard Helms His friendship with William F. Buckley Jr., whom Hunt brought into the CIA The amazing steps the CIA took to manipulate the media in America and abroad The motives behind the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office Why the White House "plumbers" were formed and what they accomplished The truth behind Operation Gemstone, a series of planned black ops activities against Nixon's political enemies A minute-by-minute account of the Watergate break-in Previously unreleased details of the post-Watergate cover-up Complete with documentation from audiotape transcripts, handwritten notes, and official documents, American Spy is must reading for anyone who is fascinated by real-life spy tales, high-stakes politics, and, of course, Watergate. About the Author White House "plumber" E. HOWARD HUNT served as a covert operative for the CIA from 1950 until the 1970s, and participated in many of the agency's most secret missions, both abroad and in the United States. He is also the author of more than seventy spy novels. GREG AUNAPU is a nationally respected journalist, who worked as a freelancer for Time and People magazines for ten years, and has reported for many national news organizations. He is coauthor of two previous books, most recently, Without a Trace.

I received in the mail today a recent public statement issued by Howard Phillips, Chairman of the Conservative Caucus, which has its national headquarters in Vienna, Virginia. Howie was a member of the initial board of Directors of Young American for Freedom, having been elected to that position at the organizing meeting held at Great Elm, the family home of William F. Buckley, in Sharon, Connecticut in 1960. At the time of his election as a director, Howie was president of the student council at Harvard University. Although Jewish, he was anti-Zionist, being a member of the World Council of Judaism, The title of Howie’s document received today is “E. Howard Hunt Was An American Patriot Who Dedicated His Life To Serving His Country.” The opening paragraphs of the document are as follows: “The late Howard Hunt, who died earlier this month, was an American patriot whom I was privileged to know during the time he served on the staff of President Nixon’s White House Counsel, Chuck Colson. “When he and Gordon Liddy were arrested following the Watergate break-in, his attorney was my friend, Douglas Caddy, the founder and first National Director of Young Americans for Freedom. “Hunt frequently called to pick my brain concerning Federal funding of pro-Communist Left-Wing activists in the context of Lyndon Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ programs. “At the time, I was the White House’s Office of Economic Opportunity ‘Watch Dog” and Special Assistant to then OEO Director Frank Carlucci who made decisions to fund many of these Marxist activities. “Hunt was, at one point, associated with the Mullen Company, a CIA asset, headed by future U.S. Senator Robert Bennett.” Appended to these opening paragraphs in Howie’s public statement is an article on Hunt’s death published by the New York Post on January 14, 2007 (page 7). The Post’s article reads as follows: “...In a new memoir, ‘American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate & Beyond,’ due out in April, Hunt, 88, writes: ‘Having Kennedy liquidated, thus elevating himself to the presidency without having to work for it himself, could have been a very tempting and logical move on Johnson’s part. “‘LBJ had the money and the connections to manipulate the scenario in Dallas and is on record as having convinced JFK to make the appearance in the first place. He further tried unsuccessfully to engineer the passengers of each vehicle, trying to get his good buddy, Gov. [John] Connally, to ride with him instead of in JFK’s car – where...he would have been out of danger.’ “Hunt says Johnson also had easy access to CIA man William Harvey, who’d been demoted when he tired to have Fidel Castro poisoned in defiance of orders to drop covert operations against Cuba. Harvey was ‘a ruthless man who was not satisfied with his position in the CIA and its government salary,’ Hunt writes. “‘He definitely had dreams of becoming [CIA Director] and LBJ could do that for him if he were president....[LBJ} would have used Harvey because he was available and corrupt.’”

I received in the mail today a recent public statement issued by Howard Phillips, Chairman of the Conservative Caucus, which has its national headquarters in Vienna, Virginia. Howie was a member of the initial board of Directors of Young American for Freedom, having been elected to that position at the organizing meeting held at Great Elm, the family home of William F. Buckley, in Sharon, Connecticut in 1960. At the time of his election as a director, Howie was president of the student council at Harvard University. Although Jewish, he was anti-Zionist, being a member of the World Council of Judaism, The title of Howie’s document received today is “E. Howard Hunt Was An American Patriot Who Dedicated His Life To Serving His Country.” The opening paragraphs of the document are as follows: “The late Howard Hunt, who died earlier this month, was an American patriot whom I was privileged to know during the time he served on the staff of President Nixon’s White House Counsel, Chuck Colson. “When he and Gordon Liddy were arrested following the Watergate break-in, his attorney was my friend, Douglas Caddy, the founder and first National Director of Young Americans for Freedom. “Hunt frequently called to pick my brain concerning Federal funding of pro-Communist Left-Wing activists in the context of Lyndon Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ programs. “At the time, I was the White House’s Office of Economic Opportunity ‘Watch Dog” and Special Assistant to then OEO Director Frank Carlucci who made decisions to fund many of these Marxist activities. “Hunt was, at one point, associated with the Mullen Company, a CIA asset, headed by future U.S. Senator Robert Bennett.” Appended to these opening paragraphs in Howie’s public statement is an article on Hunt’s death published by the New York Post on January 14, 2007 (page 7). The Post’s article reads as follows: “...In a new memoir, ‘American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate & Beyond,’ due out in April, Hunt, 88, writes: ‘Having Kennedy liquidated, thus elevating himself to the presidency without having to work for it himself, could have been a very tempting and logical move on Johnson’s part. “‘LBJ had the money and the connections to manipulate the scenario in Dallas and is on record as having convinced JFK to make the appearance in the first place. He further tried unsuccessfully to engineer the passengers of each vehicle, trying to get his good buddy, Gov. [John] Connally, to ride with him instead of in JFK’s car – where...he would have been out of danger.’ “Hunt says Johnson also had easy access to CIA man William Harvey, who’d been demoted when he tired to have Fidel Castro poisoned in defiance of orders to drop covert operations against Cuba. Harvey was ‘a ruthless man who was not satisfied with his position in the CIA and its government salary,’ Hunt writes. “‘He definitely had dreams of becoming [CIA Director] and LBJ could do that for him if he were president....[LBJ} would have used Harvey because he was available and corrupt.’”

The National Student Committee for the Loyalty Oath, organized in 1959, was the initial cornerstone in the building of the mass Conservative Movement in the U.S. The strategic goal of David Franke and myself was to attract like-minded students around the country in an attempt to show that Conservatism was the wave of the future. When the Student Committee was launched I was still an undergraduate in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. A number of national publications published articles about the group, inevitably linking my name as a student to Georgetown University. As a result mail from interested persons was sent to me c/o the University. This mail was opened up without my permission by the Jesuit Vice President of the University, who was hostile to conservatives. He courteously noted with his initials that he had read my mail before it was presented to me. However, this activity suddenly ceased when he opened an envelop from Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, who was chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee. Senator Bridges’ letter enclosed a copy of the Congressional Record in which he praised our Student Committee. Apparently even a Jesuit had second thoughts about opening the private mail sent by a member of the U.S. Senate. The Student Committee led to the creation of Youth for Goldwater in early 1960 and later that fall to the founding the Young Americans for Freedom. The best history of the era is chronicled by M. Stanton Evans’ book, Revolt on the Campus, published by the Henry Regnery Company in 1962. The Conservative Movement of the 1960's bore no resemblance to what passes as the Conservative Movement of today.

Ashton: I think the questions you posed were germane and on point, but I do agree with Pat Speer that the manner in which they were asked was almost designed to cause umbrage to those to whom they were posed. I was unsurprised that Mr. Caddy declined to answer, but was rather taken aback by the retaliatory moves he made to have you turfed from the Forum. However, that's really neither here nor there..... I believe we may face three distinct possibilities: 1) It struck me at the time that Mr. Caddy may have felt constrained from responding with "Hunt lied" for reasons of attorney-client privilege. Now that Hunt is dead, perhaps Mr. Caddy no longer feels honour-bound to observe such a formality, assuming that Hunt was his client. 2) However, if Mr. Caddy were in fact retained to represent the Plumber cadre by CIA - as you are not alone in suspecting - then he may well be constrained from replying for the duration of his time on Earth, or until his [hypothesized] client [CIA] ceases to exist. 3) Then again, Mr. Caddy may just be an honourable man who has no intention of breaching attorney-client privilege, even if released from that secrecy oath by Hunt's demise. If that is the case, we shall never know whether he was/is motivated by 2) or 3). If Mr. Caddy has been released from his privilege oath by Hunt's death, I would greatly welcome his contributions in determining who retained him, and why there is so great a disconnect between the various stories told about this. Personally, I take your posts with the great dollop of humour which I suspect you intend, and sincerely hope that you continue posting your thoughts, irrespective of whether you are right or wrong about this or that hypothesis in any given case. I do find it odd that those who claim to welcome fresh perspectives and new "outside the box" thoughts in this ancient case are unwilling to entertain just that when you present it. Important new discoveries will not be made by simply retracing the same old ground on the same old paths. The Advocate magazine two years ago published a manuscript by me that recounted in great depth my role as an attorney in Watergate. An excerpt of its opening paragraphs, along with a link to the manuscript, appear below: Did gay bashing by the prosecutors cause the Watergate cover-up? Attorney Douglas Caddy's exclusive interview with The Advocate detailed the connection between homophobia and the Watergate cover-up. Now read his full account, in his own words, with supporting documents. By Douglas Caddy, original attorney for the Watergate Seven An Advocate.com exclusive posted, August 1, 2005 http://www.advocate.com/special_feature_ektid19186.asp ______________________________ Below is a link to the article in The Advocate by Mike Hudson, followed by the article itself, which introduced my manuscript: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_...16/ai_n15396922 Our "deep throat": Gay lawyer Douglas Caddy was the original lawyer for the Watergate burglars - and was, he says, targeted by the government for dirty tricks. Did the scandal grow in part from homophobia? By Mike Hudson At the end of May the world learned the solution to the biggest mystery of the Watergate scandal: Deep Throat, the anonymous tipster who leaked information to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, was Mark Felt--the number 2 guy at the FBI. The news prompted attorney Douglas Caddy, who is gay, to make his own revelations. The first lawyer to represent the Watergate burglars, Caddy believes the homophobia that led to his own harsh treatment by investigators may have escalated the cover-up that ended up driving Richard Nixon from office in August 1974. Even to political junkies, Caddy's name might not ring a bell. But he is portrayed in the classic 1976 film All the President's Men. Early on, Woodward, played by Robert Redford, walks into a courtroom for the arraignment of the five men accused of burglarizing the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in D.C.'s Watergate office complex and sits behind a mysterious well-dressed lawyer. The lawyer is anxious to avoid the reporter's repeated questions about how the burglars had obtained legal counsel without making any telephone calls since their arrest. Called Markham in the movie, in real life that lawyer was Caddy--counsel for the five men arrested during the Watergate break-in and for two better-known Watergate players: E. Howard Hunt, the ex-CIA man who supervised the break-in, and G. Gordon Liddy. "It was just as dramatic in real life as it was in the movie," Caddy tolls The Advocate with a nostalgic sigh during a phone interview from his home in Texas. "I had a hunch, a feeling of how big this could be. And I wasn't all that excited about being in the middle of it." It was June 17, 1972, and Caddy was a relatively naive 34-year-old corporate lawyer. Now a 67-year-old attorney in private practice in Houston, with five books under his belt, Caddy feels wiser for the experience but hasn't recovered from the bitter taste it left. In the film, Caddy/Markham marks the first appearance of the dark forces aligning against Woodward, the heroic reporter who, with his reporting partner Carl Bernstein, helped break open the conspiracy surrounding the break-in. But in real life, Caddy says, the situation was much more complex. The forces working against Woodward and Bernstein turned even more heavily against him because he was an openly gay man. Caddy's role in the saga began with an unlikely phone call around 3 A.M. that night from Hunt, the former CIA operative who was working from a White House office in the adjacent Old Executive Office Building. Hunt and Caddy had developed a professional relationship after meeting at a public relations firm and struck up a friendship over their shared political views. Caddy had been an early national director of Young Americans for Freedom, a young conservatives group founded in part by William F. Buckley, and had recently done volunteer work for the Committee to Reelect the President, or CREEP. He'd also done some of Hunt's legal work, such as drawing up wills or other routine matters. That night--just hours after D.C. police arrested five men for breaking into the DNC offices--Hunt told Caddy he needed to talk. The pair met at Caddy's house, and the full scope of Hunt's troubles became clear. Soon after, Liddy, one of the masterminds of the break-in, retained Caddy as his lawyer on Hunt's advice. It was also through Hunt that Caddy served briefly as counsel for the five arrested burglars. Having no experience in criminal law, Caddy enlisted the help of a criminal attorney to speak for the accused burglars. Because of this, he didn't argue before the court for any of the seven. But the question Woodward wanted answered, both in the film and in real life, turned out to be the same question government investigators soon wanted answered: Who got the burglars their legal counsel? The answer would have implicated Hunt--and by extension, the White House--in the break-in. But Caddy wouldn't talk. Eleven days after the burglary, U.S. district court judge John Sirica, who handled the case, slapped Caddy with a subpoena, compelling him to testify to a grand jury against Hunt and Liddy. Caddy refused, claiming attorney-client privilege, and was later found in contempt of court. "Never in the history of the American legal system has attorney-client privilege been disregarded so flagrantly," Caddy says. He adds with certainty, "The abuse of me was gay bashing." (In the end his right to refuse to testify against his clients was upheld by an appeals court.) "The judge and the prosecutors had different agendas, but they thought they could push me around," Caddy says, referring to Sirica, whom he says was seeking the national spotlight, and assistant U.S. attorney Earl Silbert, whom he says was attempting to protect the Nixon administration. "They thought that since I was a gay man, I could be manipulated and that I wouldn't fight, but they were wrong." (Sirica died in 1992; Silbert remains in private practice today.) With the heat on Caddy, the seven Watergate conspirators soon cut ties with him a decision that may have escalated the cover-up. The seven came to be represented by lawyer William O. Bittman, who would eventually confess to handling hush-money bribes given to the break-in suspects from sources tied to Nixon's reelection campaign. Caddy says he had steadfastly turned down offers of hush money for his clients, an assertion supported by testimony in at least one Watergate-related trial. History proved Caddy's the wiser decision, since tracking the money from CREEP to the burglars was one of the main triggers that brought the Administration's dirty tricks and domestic espionage schemes to light. Caddy also suggests that Sirica's harsh treatment encouraged Hunt and Liddy to proceed with the cover-up, fearing they--like Caddy--would not get a fair hearing. He cites Hunt's memoir, which notes, "If Sirica was treating Caddy ... so summarily, and Caddy was completely uninvolved in Watergate--then those of us who were involved could expect neither fairness nor understanding from him." Caddy believes he was targeted for dirty tricks of a different sort because he was gay. While he was always careful about his dealings within the very closeted gay population in Washington--a place where double mirrors and undercover agents were the norm at gay bars--Caddy believes the FBI and Washington police attempted to set him up with a gay lure. That assertion appears to be borne out by an 1977 Advocate interview with Earl Robert "Butch" Merritt Jr., a gay FBI informant. D.C. police "asked if [Merritt] knew one of the Watergate attorneys," the article reported. Merritt did not name Caddy but recounted that police "said [the lawyer] was gay [and] asked if I could get to know him ... 'to find out all you can about his private life.'" Merritt declined the assignment several times, he told The Advocate. Merritt's story is also reported in Jim Hougan's 1984 Watergate book, Secret Agenda. The FBI denies the charge, saying in a letter to Caddy that a lack of documents in its files shows the agency had never investigated him. Caddy also claims he testified in the first month of the case about attempts to provide hush money to his clients--testimony that was, he says, deliberately deleted from court records in order to hide the connections between the burglars and the president's men. Would the history of Watergate--a story broken by reporters told by Deep Throat to "follow the money--have been significantly changed had Caddy remained the burglars' attorney? "It's hard to say what would have happened if I remained as counsel, but I had already turned [hush money] down," he says. "There's a chance it would never have gotten to the point it did." The age of the case makes it hard to verify the details of Caddy's account. Calls to Woodward were not returned, while the FBI and the Department of Justice both declined to comment on the actions of prior administrations. Caddy's experiences changed his entire outlook on government. He spent years reviewing court cases for a legal research firm and saw corruption in "9% to 10%" of them. He claims corruption of the judicial system has reached a new high with the appointment of Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzalez and the hunt for terror suspects in full swing. "As the saying goes, I wouldn't say I left the conservative party, I'd say it left me," Caddy says. "There are elements of this government that are neo-fascist, and I feel comfortable saying that." He hopes future generations can benefit from his writings by opening their eyes to the complexity of the forces at play in the government. And of course, he hopes to inspire others to stand up for themselves if they are victims of heavy-handed tactics. "There's a lot of this going on to this day," he says. Caddy's smoking gun In the preparation of this article, Watergate attorney Douglas Caddy provided The Advocate dozens of pages of documentation, including court orders, letters from Hunt and Liddy, and other records and recollections. The magazine is now preparing to make Caddy's papers available via our online edition, www.advocate.com. After August 1 click on ISSUE LINKS to find Caddy's complete archive.

I share your concern. If anyone doubts the social consequences of societal breakdown, they need only consider what happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when bands of armed thugs roamed, pillaged and looted New Orleans. That was certainly not a pretty sight, but it illustrates the advisability of being sufficiently armed to protect one's family and, if necessary, to hunt. I recommend the following as a good primer for disaster preparedness: http://www.theothersideofkim.com/index.php/lists/10115/ You will have to do a copy and paste to access the sight, because I don't know how to post a link. Christopher: I clicked on the link that you posted and the primer came right up. It is excellent. I have printed it out for handy reference. Below is a timely article that highlights the imminent danger that the world faces: The US and Israel The Real Failed States By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS www.counterpunch.org Feb. 5, 2007 http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02052007.html Growing references by the US and Israel to the Muslim Middle East as a collection of failed states are part of the propaganda campaign to strip legitimacy from Muslim states and set them up for attack. These accusations spring from the hubris of many Israelis, who see themselves as "God's Chosen People," a guarantee of immunity instead of a call to responsibility, and many Americans, who regard their country as "a city upon a hill" that is "the light of the world." But do the US and Israel fit the profile of successful states, or are they failed states themselves? A compelling case can be made that the US and Israel are failed states. Israel allegedly is a democracy, but it is controlled by a minority of Zionist zealots who commit atrocities against Palestinians in order to provoke terrorist acts that are then used to perpetuate the right-wing's hold on political power. Israel has perfected blowback as a tool of political control. The Israeli state relies entirely on coercion and has no diplomacy. It stands isolated in the world except for the US, which sustains Israel's existence with money, military weapons, and the US veto in the United Nations. Israel survives on life support from the US. A state that cannot exist without outside support is a failed state. What about the United States? The US is an even greater failure. Its existence is not dependent on life support from outside. The US has failed in another way. Not only has the state failed, but the society as well. The past six years have seen the rise of dictatorial power in the executive and the collapse of the separation of powers mandated by the US Constitution. The president has declared himself to be "The Decider." The power to decide includes the meaning and intent of laws passed by Congress and whether the laws apply to the executive. President Bush has openly acknowledged that he disobeyed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and unlawfully spied on Americans without warrants. Bush and his Attorney General could not make it more clear that their position is that Bush is above the law. It is also Bush's position that he is above the Constitution. Bush and his Attorney General maintain that as commander-in-chief in "the war on terror," the executive has the power to decide the applicability of civil liberties guaranteed in the Constitution. The US Department of Justice (sic) has taken the position that this decision is an executive decision alone beyond the authority of the judiciary and the legislature. An enfeebled and eviscerated Congress has acquiesced in the growth of executive power, even legislating unconstitutional executive powers into law. The Decider has grabbed the power to arrest people on accusation alone and to detain them indefinitely without charges or evidence. He has obtained the right to torture those whom he arrests. The Geneva Conventions do not apply to the US president, declares the Regime. Bush has obtained the right to commit people to death in military tribunals on the basis of hearsay and secret evidence alone. The Bush Regime has succeeded in moving the American state off the basis on which the Founding Fathers set it. The Bush Regime led the American people to war in Iraq based entirely on lies and deception. This is a known and undisputed fact. Congress has done nothing whatsoever about this monstrous crime and impeachable offense. Under the Nuremberg standard, unprovoked aggression is a war crime. The US established this standard. Bush has violated it with impunity. Bush and his Attorney General assert Bush's power to attack Iran independently of a Congressional declaration of war or any form of congressional approval. Bush claims that his power to attack Iran is merely an extension of his present power to conduct war in Iraq, a power seized on the basis of lies and deception. Congress has taken no action to disabuse Bush of his presumption. Bush's preparations for attacking Iran are highly visible. The entire world can see the preparations and expects the attack. Congress is mute in the face of a catastrophic widening of a war to which a large majority of the American people are now opposed. In national elections three months ago the American people used democracy in an unsuccessful attempt to restrain the Bush Regime from its warmongering ways by defeating the Republican Party and giving control of both houses of Congress to Democrats. Instead of acting, the Democrats have postured. Indeed, some have joined Bush in his warmongering. Hillary Clinton, regarded as the frontrunner for the Democratic Presidential nomination, recently declared at an affair hosted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a leading instigator of war with Iran, that Iran is a danger to the US and a great threat to Israel. Hillary's claims are preposterous. Israel has large numbers of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Iran has none. Iran has no ability to harm the US and would have no motive except for the Bush Regime's gratuitous provocations. A state in which a leading contender for the presidential nomination can make utterly absurd claims and suffer no consequence is a failed state. The United States is a failed state, because in the US it is not possible for leadership to emerge. Politics is controlled by powerful interest groups, such as AIPAC, the military-industrial complex, transnational corporations, and "security" agencies that are accumulating vast amounts of unaccountable power. The American people spoke in November and it means nothing whatsoever. The people are enfeebled because the media no longer has independence. The US media serves as propagandist for the state. It cannot be otherwise in a highly concentrated media run not by journalists but by advertising executives protecting stock values that derive from federal broadcast licenses granted by the state. Like the three monkeys, Congress sees no evil, the media speaks no evil, and the people hear no evil. In the US "news" consists of the government's propaganda. "News" in America is exactly like the "news" in George Orwell's 1984. The US is a failed state, because it is not true to any of the principles upon which it was established. All over the world today, America is seen as a rogue state, a hegemonic evil, and as the greatest threat to peace and stability. In its new identify, America is the total opposite of the Founding Fathers intention. There is no greater failure than that. Academics differentiate between failed states and rogue states. The US and Israel meet both criteria. The US and Israel lead the world in aggressive military actions and in killings of civilian populations. Both countries meet the main indicators of failed states as published in Foreign Policy's 2005 Failed States Index. The leading indicators of failed states are inequality (not merely poverty), "criminalization or delegitimization of the state, which occurs when state institutions are regarded as corrupt, illegal, or ineffective," and "demographic factors, especially population pressures stemming from refugees" and "internally displaced populations." All economic indicators show that income and wealth inequality is rapidly increasing in the US. The growth in inequality is the result of the state's policy that favors shareholders and corporate executives at the expense of American workers. The income differences between Israelis and ghettoized Palestinians are huge. Trials and investigations of leading political figures in the US and Israel are an ongoing occurrence. Currently, the former chief-of-staff of the vice president of the US is on trial for lying to the FBI in an attempt to obstruct an investigation into the Bush Regime's illegal disclosure of an undercover CIA operative. The accused claims he is the fall guy for higher ups. In Israel the president of the country is accused of rape and faces indictment. Both the US and Israel routinely ignore international law and are accused of committing war crimes by human rights organizations. The US Congress stands revealed as totally ineffective and unwilling to constrain the executive. The American people have learned that they cannot change the government's policies through elections. By fomenting the demise of the civil liberties that they are sworn to uphold, President Bush and Attorney General Gonzales have delegitimized the American state, turning it into an instrument of oppression. Israel's policies in the West Bank have displaced a million Palestinians, forcing them to be refugees from their own land. Jordan is filled with Palestinian refugees, and Palestinian existence in the West Bank is being increasingly confined to ghettos cut off from farm land, schools, medical care and from other Palestinians. President Jimmy Carter has described Israeli-occupied Palestine as "apartheid." For decades in the face of public opposition the US government has encouraged massive legal and illegal immigration of diverse peoples whose failure to assimilate is balkanizing the US population. Economic refugees from Mexico are changing the culture and allegiance of entire sections of the American southwest, and racial animosities are on the rise. In a recent interview, Noam Chomsky defined one characteristic of a failed state as a "democratic deficit, that is, a substantial gap between public policy and public opinion." We see this gap in Bush's decision to escalate the war in Iraq despite the opposition of 70% of the American public. What does democracy mean if elected leaders ignore public opinion? Another characteristic of failed states is the failure to protect their own citizens. Israel's aggressive policies against Palestinians provoke terror attacks on Israeli citizens. These attacks are then used to justify more oppression of Palestinians, which leads to more terror. Bush's military aggression in the MIddle East is the main cause of any terror threats that Americans now face. Another characteristic of a failed state is the departure of citizens. Many Israelis, seeing no future for Israel in the government's hostility to Arabs, are leaving Israel. Among Israelis themselves, the legitimacy of the Israeli state is so endangered that the Knesset has just passed a law to revoke the citizenship of "unpatriotic" Israelis. In the US a large percentage of the population has lost confidence in the government's veracity. Polls show that 40% of Americans do not believe the government's story that the 9/11 attacks were the work of Arab terrorists. Many believe the attack was a "false flag" operation carried out by elements in the Bush Regime in order to create public acceptance for its planned invasions in the Middle East. A state that cannot tolerate moral conscience in its soldiers is a failed state. The failure of the American state can be seen it its prosecution of Lt. Ehren Watada. Watada comes from a family with a military heritage. His response to the 9/11 attack was to join the military. Diagnosed with asthma, he failed his physical, but persevered and ended up with an officer's commission. Watada's problem is that he can recognize a war crime even when it is committed by a might-makes-right state. The Abu Ghraib prison tortures and the evidence that Bush deceived Americans about weapons of mass destruction caused Watada to realize that he was on the wrong side of the Nuremberg Principles, the UN Charter, and the US military code, which says American soldiers have an obligation to disobey unlawful orders. He signed up to serve his country, not to kill people for illegal and immoral reasons. Watada refused to deploy to Iraq. He is being tried for refusing deployment and for suggesting that President Bush deceived Americans. By now every attentive American knows that Bush deceived them, and our greatest patriots have said so. Watada is on trial for suggesting what everyone knows to be true. He is not being tried for veracity. He is being tried for speaking the truth. Failure to deploy is a more understandable charge. There is no army if soldiers do not follow orders. However, as the US established at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, following orders is not an excuse for participating in war crimes. At the Nazi war crimes trials, it was the US that insisted that soldiers were responsible for using judgment about the legality of their orders. That is what Lt. Watada did. His trial will not broach the subject of whether his judgment was correct. The evidence against him will merely be that he did not deploy. By trying Lt. Watada the US government is insisting that American troops are not responsible for judging the legality of their orders, only for following them. The standard applied to WW II Germans is too high to be applied to Americans. In a draft army Watada's refusal to accept illegal orders could be used by conscripted cannon fodder to derail the state's intended aggression. However, in a voluntary army in which soldiers seek to serve, permitting Lt. Watada to have his conscience does not imperil the command structure. Others less thoughtful and less aware will carry forth the state's enterprise. The case against Israel and the US does not preclude some Muslim states from also meeting the criteria for failure. However, Iraq, an artificial creation of Western colonial powers, was driven into failure and civil war by American aggression. Iran, a nation with a 5,000 year history, is certainly not a failed state. The main failed states in the Middle East are those that are US puppets. They represent American hegemony, not the interests of their people. What the US and Israel are attempting to do is to turn the entire Muslim Middle East into failed states, that is, into puppet regimes. By extending their hegemony in the Middle East, the US and Israel hope to prolong their own failed existence. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Audio clip on JFK Jr.'s plane released Feb, 6, 2007 AP Almost eight years after John F. Kennedy Jr. died in a plane crash off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, federal officials released a brief audio clip Tuesday of a conversation between a concerned airport intern and a Federal Aviation Administration dispatcher related to the fatal flight. A transcript of the conversation between Adam Budd, a 21-year-old college student employed at the Martha's Vineyard Airport, and the call center at the FAA's Automated Flight Service Station in Bridgeport, Conn., already was made public and widely reported four days after the July 16, 1999, crash. The audio released on Tuesday by the Department of Transportation in Washington was the result of a federal Freedom of Information Act request filed by broadcasters after the crash. A portion of it was aired on Boston's WFXT-TV. Budd, who generally performed clerical tasks, is recorded in a hushed tone, his voice slightly quaking as he asks if the FAA can track Kennedy's plane. "Well, who are you?" an unidentified FAA dispatcher asked. "I'm with airport operations," Budd said, failing to identify which airport until asked by the dispatcher. He then said: "Actually, Kennedy Jr.'s on board. He's uh, they want to know, uh, where he is." When the operator told him he wouldn't give the information over the phone, Budd backed off. "OK, well, if it's too much trouble, it's ... I'll just have 'em wait. ... It's not a big deal," he said, according to the 1999 transcript. Budd's call came in at 10:05 p.m., four hours before a search and rescue mission was scrambled after a family friend made a more forceful call to the Coast Guard. Kennedy, the 38-year-old son and namesake of America's 35th president, was flying with his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, 33, and his sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette, 34, when his six-seat, single-engine Piper Saratoga crashed seven miles south of his Martha's Vineyard home. All three were killed. A report of the National Transportation Safety Board blamed pilot error for the crash, saying Kennedy, who had been flying for 15 months, was not skilled enough for low-visibility nighttime flying and became disoriented in the hazy sky.

neutral shmootral, when there is a nuclear exchange and/or general warfare even if conventional and oil prices go to $200/ba and food and all things made from oil or transported get expensive and scarce there will be no neutrals.... Doug, I think a horror scenario like you posit and worse are all too possible. Iran has enough firepower and pride to sink many of our aircraftcarriers, down many of our jets, bomb the hell out of Isreal and American installations in Iraq, bomb and disable many oil installations Middle East-wide... ...and all hell could break out in the entire Middle East and spread to most other places in full or limited ways.....no one would be immune after some weeks. I would trust few to act wisely at this perilous time and there would be no time for cooling off perhaps...... ....well they wanted the end times and perhaps they will learn the meaning of what that really means...no rapture...only death, destruction and MUCH suffering worldwide. China’s Dire Prediction By Arnaud de Borchgrave THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published February 4, 2007 China is making geopolitical hay while the sun isn't shining for America. Chinese leaders have seen President Bush's approval ratings continue a downward slide all over the world, according to the BBC's latest universal survey. More important, previous public opinion polls showed China with a better image than America in friendly European countries -- with the notable exception of Poland. The rest of the world has watched the defection of some of Mr. Bush's congressional supporters. China's topsiders have heard from their close ally Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf -- "a major non-NATO ally" -- that he doesn't think the U.S. can avoid what the world will perceive as a defeat in Iraq. And perception trumps reality the world over. The global newspaper Financial Times wrote, "As authority drains from Mr. Bush, so Washington is losing its capacity to determine outcomes elsewhere. Iran is the principal beneficiary." A defector from Mr. Musharraf's camp has informed U.S. authorities the Pakistani leader's "agonizing reappraisal" about Afghanistan's future stems from his perception the U.S. cannot pull a victory rabbit out of the Iraqi hat. Hence, his perception that neither the U.S. nor NATO can muster what it takes to complete their mission in Afghanistan. Hence, in turn, Mr. Musharraf's decision to authorize his all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency to assist the bid of Taliban "moderates" to retake power in Kabul. ISI greatly assisted the original victory of Taliban in 1996. Assessing the American scene as conveyed by CNN, FOX, BBC and Al Jazeera, Chinese leaders can be forgiven if they have concluded the American Century -- the 20th -- may not be renewed in the 21st. While the American body politic has been almost totally immersed in and absorbed by Iraq and Afghanistan, China's Hu Jintao's current trip to Africa is the third to the continent by a top Chinese leader in a year. Last November, China demonstrated its growing global clout by inviting 48 African heads of state and government to a summit in Beijing where they were wined and dined in a style unmatched by their former French, British and Portuguese colonial masters. China has been buying up their production of raw materials years in advance. Pledges have been made to double aid to Africa to $5 billion, train 15,000 professionals and grant 4,000 scholarships. Vertiginous double-digit yearly growth for the fourth consecutive year has put China on track to leapfrog Germany as the world's third-largest economy. Its foreign currency reserves are accumulating at the rate of $30 million per hour and recently topped the $1 trillion mark -- about 70 percent of that in U.S. paper. It is outspending Japan on technology R&D. China is preening with self-confidence. As Ford posts a record $12.7 billion loss, China's "Chery" (which started with machines and engine technology purchased from Ford Europe for $25 million), in alliance with China's "Visionary Vehicles," is getting ready to invade the U.S. market with five different models in 2008, all designed by Pininfarina (known for Ferrari and Lamborghini designs). The Las Vegas Sands Casino, with 800 gaming tables, is now the world's largest -- not in Nevada but in Macau, China. To offset America's enormous strategic military superiority, the Chinese military concluded in the 1990s that information warfare -- or cyberwarfare -- could give China an "asymmetric" advantage over the United States. In 1998, the PLA newspaper Jiefangjun Bao said priority should be given "to learning how to launch an electronic attack on an enemy... to ensure electromagnetic control in an area and at a time favorable to us." How to take down the computer-driven sinews of a modern industrialized state quickly became a top priority for the major powers and Israel. Since then the U.S. has more than matched China's arsenal of cyberweapons -- from ultra-sophisticated logic bombs, to Trojan horses, worms, viruses and denial-of-service decoys. The 1990-91 Desert Shield and Desert Storm and the 2003 invasion of Iraq (when 50 military-specific satellites and numerous commercial birds were used) showed the Chinese how utterly dependent the U.S. had become on "satcoms." In 1998, the failure of a single satellite disabled 80 percent of the pagers in the U.S. Unmanned aircraft like the Predator achieve pinpoint bombing accuracy over the Pak-Afghan border while flown by a pilot/bombardier in a simulated cockpit thousands of miles away in Washington. Signals from Global Positioning System's satellites guide precision weapons to their targets in the same role as a rifle gunsight. Modern battlespace's eyes and ears are in orbit and vulnerable. The space equivalents of bullets and shells -- kinetic energy weapons -- to destroy or damage a target in space is the next phase of modern warfare. The 2001 Congress-mandated Commission to Assess U.S. National Security Space Management said the U.S. "is an attractive candidate for a space Pearl Harbor -- or a surprise attack on U.S. space assets aimed at crippling U.S. war-fighting and other capabilities." Chinese strategists view U.S. dependence on space as an asymmetric vulnerability while Chinese scientists are known to be working on ASAT (anti-satellite weapons, such as kinetic kill vehicles). On Jan. 11, China decided it was time to demonstrate the fragility of the U.S. military dependence on communications satellites. Without warning, China fired a missile aimed at one of its own aging communications satellites. With pinpoint accuracy, the missile pulverized the Feng Yun 1-C 500 miles above Earth, scattering thousands of tiny fragments that could easily puncture the metal skin of other satellites in orbit. The former Soviet Union did it first in 1971, followed by the U.S. in 1985, before Congress banned further tests lest they imperiled one of the several hundred satellites, many from other nations. Space as a sanctuary free from armed conflict will most probably end over the next 20 years. Speaking in flawless English at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, one-star Gen. Yao Yunzhu, who directs China's Asia-Pacific Office at the Academy of Military Science in Beijing, predicted: "Outer space is going to be weaponized in our lifetime." She is 52. If there's going to be "a space superpower," she said, "it will have company" -- China. And Beijing said China was now ready to talk turkey about an international treaty to curb the weaponization of space. But the U.S. wasn't. In fact, the administration suspended plans agreed to at a summit meeting last April to develop plans for the joint exploration of the moon. Following disengagement from Iraq, U.S. defense priorities are likely to remain focused on combating terrorism while Europe's defense agenda becomes increasingly unsupportive of U.S. policies. China is eyeing an emerging geopolitical vacuum with interest. And it has no intention to play the game of nations by U.S. rules. Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.

As Adlai Stevenson once said: "In America anyone can be President. That's the chance we take."

neutral shmootral, when there is a nuclear exchange and/or general warfare even if conventional and oil prices go to $200/ba and food and all things made from oil or transported get expensive and scarce there will be no neutrals.... Doug, I think a horror scenario like you posit and worse are all too possible. Iran has enough firepower and pride to sink many of our aircraftcarriers, down many of our jets, bomb the hell out of Isreal and American installations in Iraq, bomb and disable many oil installations Middle East-wide... ...and all hell could break out in the entire Middle East and spread to most other places in full or limited ways.....no one would be immune after some weeks. I would trust few to act wisely at this perilous time and there would be no time for cooling off perhaps...... ....well they wanted the end times and perhaps they will learn the meaning of what that really means...no rapture...only death, destruction and MUCH suffering worldwide. China’s Mystery Satellites U.S. Gauges Beijing’s ASAT Strategy By VAGO MURADIAN Defense News.Com February 2, 2007 http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2526188&C=asia As worldwide attention focuses on China’s first successful anti-satellite missile test, U.S. officials are questioning why some Chinese spacecraft are in orbits that bring them close to key U.S. satellites, according to military sources. The big question is the scale and progress of the Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) program, including whether the Chinese spacecraft are benign or time bombs that can someday be used to threaten the space assets on which the U.S. military and economy depend for everything from reconnaissance and dropping bombs to logistics, communications and navigation. The Chinese spacecraft don’t appear to be conducting any particular mission. Rather, “there is a menu of missions that could be performed that we are not yet clear about,” said one source. “These things aren’t being sent up there to be space rocks.” A 50-page report submitted Jan. 19 to Congress cites evidence that China is considering a covert anti-satellite network that could debilitate the United States in wartime. For more than a decade, U.S. officials have warily eyed China’s growth as a space power, particularly its interest in developing anti-satellite systems to counter an overwhelming American superiority in space. Interest peaked after a ground-based missile destroyed an obsolete Chinese weather satellite on Jan. 11. At least one previous test ended in failure, and perhaps two, sources said. Chinese officials issued assurances that the test should not be seen as threatening. The White House publicly confirmed the test as part of a coordinated effort with close allies — Australia, Britain, Canada and Japan among them — to drive home to Beijing that its anti-satellite activities have global repercussions. China’s direct-ascent anti-satellite missile is the latest test to prove counter-space capabilities. Last year, senior U.S. officials said China had attempted to use lasers to blind American satellites. By international convention, a physical attack on a nation’s satellites is considered an act of war. Tracking Spacecraft The United States uses a vast array of orbiting and ground-based systems to track spacecraft and determine their purpose. But two programs are seen as key for the future military space force; the XSS-11 and its complementary effort dubbed Angels, both by Lockheed Martin. Both aim to develop a range of capabilities that the Air Force sees as critical, including highly maneuverable spacecraft that can closely scrutinize what’s in space. XSS-11 flew in 2005 and its public mission was to demonstrate the ability to maneuver on orbit and autonomously rendezvous with orbiting satellites. Critics say that such a maneuverable spacecraft could be used to ram enemy spacecraft or attack them with weapons. The XSS-11 flight, however, brought back information that prompted top U.S. military commanders in January 2006 said they needed a better understanding of what’s in space that could jeopardize U.S. defense and economic interests. They also said they needed a more “operationally responsive” space system and the ability to quickly launch military satellites into space to replace those destroyed in an attack. Assessing China’s Strategy The Jan. 19 report, authored by Pentagon China consultant Michael Pillsbury for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, is based on the writings of more than 20 Chinese military strategists, particularly three colonels at Beijing’s National Defense University between 2001 and 2005. The commission is a congressionally chartered bipartisan panel that advises lawmakers on the strategic U.S.-China security and business relationship. Pillsbury declined to discuss whether China has already launched into orbit elements of a covert space fleet, but stressed that Beijing’s military strategists appear focused on designing a broad set of anti-satellite capabilities. "We have three books and several dozen articles from China that go back 10 years, all of which advocate all types of anti-satellite weapons and they have a consistent theme — they have to be deployed covertly so that in a crisis with America, China can shoot down some satellites as a deterrent message,” Pillsbury said. “These documents advocate multiple approaches to preemptive strikes on satellites from plasma clouds, pellets, directed-energy weapons, orbiting spacecraft and attacking ground stations with special forces,” he said. China, Pillsbury said, is convinced the United States is weaponizing space and Beijing has concluded it must develop a like capability, while simultaneously pressing for an international space weapon ban. “What’s interesting is that no matter how hard you try, you don’t find anything in Chinese writings that argues the opposite, that if you attack U.S. military satellites you will have World War III on your hands, which is why it’s better to initiate a space weapons dialogue and never have a crisis in the first place,” Pillsbury said. A Chinese military official said he could not comment on the matter. But Theresa Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense Information in Washington, said it is difficult to determine whether the authors quoted by Pillsbury represent fringe or mainstream military thought. “The hard part of dissecting China is that we know so little of who’s who and we can’t necessarily tell as outside analysts which are credible sources,” she said. “It would be dangerous to either underestimate or overestimate Chinese capabilities, but you have to be more aware of overestimation because you don’t want to be in a situation where you panic.” Weapons in Space China in 2002 called on the United States to send a delegation to Geneva to negotiate a space weapons ban. But Washington refused because Beijing rejected verification measures and defined space weapons as including missile defense components. The Outer Space Treaty, which the United States signed in 1967, prohibited nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction in space. But American officials say that while they are committed to the peaceful use of space, they will not be party to an agreement that could hamstring their ability to defend space assets. The U.S. Congress barred the Air Force from building anti-satellite missiles in 1986, after an Air Force F-15 fighter launched a missile that destroyed an orbiting U.S. satellite. The Soviet Union also flexed its anti-satellite capabilities in the 1980s. And now China has joined the club. Asked about the new Chinese anti-satellite threat, Lt. Col. Michael Pierson, a spokesman for the U.S. Air Force Space Command, declined comment. “As a matter of principle, we do not discuss specific vulnerabilities, threats, responses or steps to mitigate,” he said. “In broad terms, the U.S. has an inherent right of self defense and we take all threats to our sovereign space systems seriously. We monitor activities that threaten our right to use space peacefully and take appropriate steps to defend our systems against current and future threats.” Part of the problem, Pierson said, is the sheer number of operational and long-defunct spacecraft orbiting Earth. “In 1957, there was one man-made object in space. Today, we are tracking more than 14,000 man-made objects in space. So, the environment has changed,” Pierson said. And better awareness of what’s exactly in space and why has become a major initiative for the Air Force since the release of a 2000 report by the blue ribbon Space Commission panel that declared that America was vulnerable to a “space Pearl Harbor.” The panel was chaired by Donald Rumsfeld, who would become defense secretary months later and spearhead changes to the military space organization, including subsuming the U.S. Space Command into the U.S. Strategic Command to ensure a single management point for strategic space. Operationally Responsive Space To focus attention on the issue, however, Rumsfeld asked Art Cebrowski to head the Pentagon’s new Office of Force Transformation, which made operationally responsive space a priority. Cebrowski tirelessly argued that the current space infrastructure needed to be re-engineered. First, he argued, it takes too long to build military satellites and the rockets needed to place them into orbit. To ensure a failsafe space network critical to a new brand of networked warfare, he said, the United States must be able to loft satellites quickly into orbit to replace those that could be destroyed by an enemy. Publicly, Cebrowski never named China as a potential foe, but Beijing’s interest in anti-satellite systems was a key factor in his strategic thinking. To that end, Cebrowski’s office launched a series of programs, chief among them the development of small “tactical satellites” or Tac-Sats. The first of a series of such small, innovative and relatively inexpensive spacecraft by the Naval Research Laboratory, TACSAT-1 was to have been launched last year, but has been delayed because teething problems with the all-new, low-cost booster by SpaceX. The satellite and rocket together were planned to cost about $15 million. The Air Force plans to spend about $300 million over the coming five years on a host of programs to face space threats, most of which would be directed to stockpiling launchers like the Minotaur rocket by Orbital Sciences which launched TACSAT-2 in December from Wallops Island, Va. “Pearl Harbor was said for effect and may have been overstated, but we need to get serious about protecting the assets in space, not just the spacecraft, but the nodes and ground stations that contribute to that,” said Lance Lord, a retired Air Force general who until 2006 headed the service’s space command. “To underscore the importance of space situational awareness we reordered our priorities to space surveillance, defensive counter space and last, offensive counter space.” Defense in Depth “Defensive counterspace is key. You have to have defense in depth so that if you lose one spacecraft or a space-borne capability, you can reroute in a self-healing system to avoid single-point vulnerabilities. In terms of the overall system, it’s relatively robust, but not as good as it needs to be.” Space, like the sea, is open to all nations for peaceful and select military applications like reconnaissance, surveillance, communications and weather forecasting, and with that openness comes challenges, Lord said. “You have an inherent right of self defense in the commons of space and if someone is using space against you, you can take a variety of actions to defend yourself,” he said. “That is even more important now that the Chinese have proven that they are technically capable of large projects and want to be a full player in the environment and we have to appreciate how that plays into their doctrine.” Knocking out the U.S. space network, or even big pieces of it, however, would be difficult. For example, the U.S. satellites that monitor the globe for missile launches — the Defense Support Program spacecraft — are in geosynchronous orbit some 24,000 miles high, while the GPS constellation orbits the Earth at a medium altitude of some 12,000 miles. Both are too high and redundant to easily incapacitate, analysts said. More vulnerable are the series of giant Keyhole optical and Lacrosse radar reconnaissance satellites that are in low earth orbit several hundred miles high. “These are big satellites and there aren’t many of them up there are and they aren’t immediately replaceable if lost,” said Barry Watts, the former head of the Pentagon’s Program Analysis & Evaluation office who is now with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. “We’re very focused on Iraq and things like armored Humvees, and they’re important, but you have to keep you eye on the space ball because almost everything we do depends on it.” • E-mail: vmuradian@defensenews.com

BIGGEST BOOK YET ON JFK'S KILLING By CINDY ADAMS New York Post February 2, 2007 -- PROSECUTOR on the Charles Man son murder trial, Vincent Bugliosi, a name from headlines past, was DA in L.A. eight years. He also wrote award-winning crime books like "Helter Skelter," "Till Death Do Us Part" and "Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder." He's at it again. Not prosecuting. Writing. Bugliosi's just written a 1,600-page, 1,500,000-word book. The thing's larger than most coffee tables. Start it in junior high, you'll finish as a senior citizen. The title: "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy." So, why? He's setting the record straight forever and always. The man takes apart every single theory ever perpetrated. He follows the Oswald line, Ruby line, conspiracy line, every line ever even sniffed at. Following each to its nth degree with every twist around every corner behind every tree down every alley inside every crevice, he's five years late delivering the manuscript. This book's like a train hurtling through a tunnel because his ultimate conclusion? The final revelation? There ain't no revelation. It was what it was. It wasn't more than it was. A nut killed the president of the United States, and that's it, period. Bugliosi originally wanted this in separate volumes but that was - pardon the expression - shot down because readers usually buy only one. While no human alive will stick through to the end, it'll sell to every library, archive, historical society, etc. Publisher Random House, price $50, pub. date May 19.

neutral shmootral, when there is a nuclear exchange and/or general warfare even if conventional and oil prices go to $200/ba and food and all things made from oil or transported get expensive and scarce there will be no neutrals.... Doug, I think a horror scenario like you posit and worse are all too possible. Iran has enough firepower and pride to sink many of our aircraftcarriers, down many of our jets, bomb the hell out of Isreal and American installations in Iraq, bomb and disable many oil installations Middle East-wide... ...and all hell could break out in the entire Middle East and spread to most other places in full or limited ways.....no one would be immune after some weeks. I would trust few to act wisely at this perilous time and there would be no time for cooling off perhaps...... ....well they wanted the end times and perhaps they will learn the meaning of what that really means...no rapture...only death, destruction and MUCH suffering worldwide. Report: US plans strike against Iran Staff, THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 31, 2007 The US was drawing up plans to attack sites where Iran is believed to be enriching uranium before President George W. Bush's candidacy comes to an end, the UK-based Times reported on Wednesday. According to the Times, the Bush government has been inviting defense consultants and Middle East experts to the White House and Pentagon for tactical advice. The Pentagon was reported to be considering ways for the US to destroy nuclear facilities such as Iran's main centrifuge plant at Natanz, despite the fact that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney hoped that diplomatic efforts to restrain Iran would succeed. Senior Pentagon planners recently advised the White House, however, that they did not yet have accurate intelligence as to the whereabouts of all Iran's nuclear enrichment sites. Iran's nuclear program has been generating world-wide tension in recent months, despite claims by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the research is for peaceful means. The UN has threatened to put sanctions on Iran if they do not abandon the program. According to analyst Shmuel Bar of the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, an American strike would only trigger the Iranian regime's primordial survival impulse. This would almost certainly result in a full-scale Iranian assault on Kuwaiti and Saudi oil fields, in an attempt to exact a price that would dissuade the West from carrying its assault to the point of regime change, he told The Jerusalem Post. In addition, there is a 'real danger' that the Iranian regime could instigate labor strikes among the Shi'ites of southern Iraq, said Dr. Ian Bremer, president of the risk consultancy firm, Eurasia Group. This could drop oil production from over a million barrels per day, 'even to zero for short periods of time,' he warned. Furthermore, as several analysts pointed out, any strike that was not dramatic enough to bring down the regime and discredit Ahmadinejad outright would trigger a surge of popular support for Ahmadinejad's faction in the regime, giving him a decisive advantage in the complex power struggles that characterize Iranian politics. According to the Times report, despite speculations and divided opinions, the favored US scenario is to attack the Iranian nuclear plant with a small number of ground attack aircraft flying out of the British dependency of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The British would however have to approve the use of the American base there for an attack and would be asked to play a supporting role by providing air-to-air re-fuelling or sending out surveillance aircraft, ships and submarines. The British Foreign Office has insisted that a diplomatic solution is still possible.