Douglas Caddy

As I've often said, books by the professional murderers and liars in the CIA have no credibility. I don't see how they can have any value to researchers, or to truth buffs.

They might, however, be useful to gardeners with compost piles.

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.

My friend, the Watergate conspirator

A personal account of Richard Nixon aide E. Howard Hunt.

By William F. Buckley Jr.

Columnist, author and TV host WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. is the founder of National Review. This is adapted from his forward to "American Spy," a new memoir by E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA operative.

March 4, 2007

Los Angeles Times

I MET E. HOWARD HUNT soon after arriving in Mexico City in 1951. I was a deep-cover agent for the CIA — deep-cover describing, I was given to understand, a category whose members were told to take extreme care not to permit any grounds for suspicion that one was in service to the CIA.

The rule was (perhaps it is different now) that on arriving at one's targeted post, one was informed which single human being in the city knew that you were in the CIA. That person would tell you what to do for the duration of your service in that city; he would answer such questions as you wished to put to him and would concern himself with all aspects of your duty life.

The man I was told to report to (by someone whose real name I did not know) was E. Howard Hunt. He ostensibly was working in the U.S. Embassy as a cultural affairs advisor, if I remember correctly. In any event, I met him in his office and found him greatly agreeable but also sternly concerned with duty. He would here and there give me special minor assignments, but I soon learned that my principal job was to translate from Spanish a huge and important book by defector Eudocio Ravines.

Ravines had been an important member of the Peruvian Communist Party in the '40s. He had brought forth a book called "The Road From Yenan," an autobiographical account of his exciting life in the service of the communist revolution and an extended account of the reasons for his defection.

It was a lazy assignment, in that we were not given a deadline, so the work slogged on during and after visits, averaging one every week, by Ravines to the house that I and my wife had occupied that used to be called San Angel Inn — post-revolution, Villa Obregon. (We lived and worked at Calero No. 91.) It is a part of Mexico City on the southern slopes, leading now to the university (which back then was in central Mexico City).

It was only a couple of weeks after our meeting that Howard introduced me to his wife, Dorothy, and their first-born child, Lisa. I learned that Howard had graduated from Brown University and was exercised by left-wing activity there, by the faculty, the administration and students. This made him especially interested in what I had to say about my alma mater. My book, "God and Man at Yale," was published in mid-October 1951, and I shook free for one week's leave to travel to New York to figure in the promotion.

I persevered in my friendship with the Hunt family. But in early spring of 1952, when the project with Ravines was pretty well completed, I called on Howard to tell him I had decided to quit the agency. I had yielded to the temptation to go into journalism.

Our friendship was firm, and Howard came several times to Stamford, Conn., where my wife and I camped down, and visited. I never knew — he was very discreet — what he was up to, but assumed, correctly, that he was continuing his work for the CIA. I was greatly moved by Dorothy's message to me that she and Howard were joining the Catholic communion, and they asked me to serve as godfather for their children.

Years passed without my seeing Howard. But then came the Watergate scandal — in which Howard was accused of masterminding the break-in at Democratic Party headquarters, among other things, and was ultimately convicted of burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping — and the dreadful accident over Midway Airport in Chicago that killed Dorothy in December 1972. I learned of this while watching television with my wife, and it was through television that I also learned that she had named me as personal representative of her estate in the event of her demise.

That terrible event came at a high point in the Watergate affair. Then I had a phone call from Howard, with whom I hadn't been in touch for several years. He asked to see me.

He startled me by telling me that he intended to disclose to me everything he knew about the Watergate affair, including much that (he said) had not yet been revealed to congressional investigators.

What especially arrested me was his saying that his dedication to the project had included a hypothetical agreement to contrive the assassination of syndicated muckraker Jack Anderson, if the high command at the Nixon White House thought this necessary. I also remember his keen surprise that the White House hadn't exercised itself to protect and free him and his collaborators arrested in connection with the Watergate enterprise. He simply could not understand this moral default.

It was left that I would take an interest, however remote, in his household of children, now that he was headed for jail. (Neither he nor Dorothy had any brothers or sisters.)

Howard served 33 months. I visited him once. I thought back on the sad contrast between Hunt, E.H., federal prisoner, and Hunt, E.H., special assistant to the U.S. ambassador in Mexico, and his going on to a number of glittering assignments but ultimately making that fateful wrong turn in the service of President Nixon, for which his suffering was prolonged and wretchedly protracted.

I prefer to remember him back in his days as a happy warrior, a productive novelist, an efficient administrator and a wonderful companion.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-...oll=la-opinion-

I would like to be clear about whats being claimed, are we now to believe that the BBC was in the know? If so, how many other media outlets were co-opted, before, during and after the fact. It must be a ponderous list of conspiritors.

The 911 Script and the Age of Terror

Wednesday February 28th, 2007

By Whitley Strieber

www.unknowncountry.com

I must admit that I have been deeply shocked by a story that appeared today on my website, to the effect that the BBC reported the collapse of WTC Building 7 23 minutes before it actually took place. Previously, the BBC claimed that it had lost all of its 9/11 coverage, but this video has now surfaced. I watched it myself, and sat there with my blood literally running cold as I saw their reporter saying that Building 7 had collapsed while it was still visible behind her, perfectly intact.

Now, why wasn't this just a simple mistake? CNN was reporting rumors that Building 7 might be about to collapse an hour before it happened.

But the BBC reporter is clearly seen reading from a teleprompter. Obviously, she was reading something written on it, and not making up what would have then seemed to be a wild tale. In other words, she was reading a script, and that script had been put up on her teleprompter early. Not only that, she was sitting in front of a live image of the still-intact Building 7.

Somebody wrote that script and did so while Building 7 was still standing. How could they know that it would collapse, even if it was unstable, even if there was a fire in the cellars?

No, the author of the script did not think the building had collapsed. He knew that it would, and the statement was read early as a miscue.

If the BBC had not lost the video of that entire day, it would be easier to believe that this was some sort of a mistake. But the idea that an organization like the BBC, which prides itself on the record it keeps, would lose an entire day of some of the most historic footage it has ever shot is just very difficult to believe. It seems more likely that there was something on that footage that they wanted to bury.

As, indeed, there was.

I have long since abandoned the US media as a lost cause. Thank God we have the internet, because the American press are just a bunch of whores, frankly. I spent 45 minutes yesterday with CNN Headline News today, looking for news of Iran. 31 of those minutes were spent on Anna Nicole Smith, and the rest was fluff.

Pravda did better during the height of the Soviet Union. At least it didn’t insult the intelligence of its readers, but only bored them with its obvious lies. The American media goes it one better, by ignoring the real news and running the silly stuff. And the papers that should be doing better, such as the New York Times, have been singing the "no conspiracy here" song since the days of the Kennedy assassination. Because of what appears to be an almost surrealistic belief that people cannot do bad things in concert, they missed Watergate. And they are missing 9/11 as well. They all are, and, in the end, they will be abandoned by the public because their silence and refusal to investigate are, in effect, lies spoken without words on behalf of what is coming to seem a devastating and widespread conspiracy against the lives of thousands of people, against western civilization and against human freedom at the deepest level.

At present, virtually every street in Britain is watched by video, and there is a bill on its way into parliament that will ban public photography. Can you imagine, not being able to take a picture outdoors? What madness is this, what evil insanity? But it's real, and it doesn't end in Britain. Last October, without debate and in the dead of the night, the president was given the power by language buried in the budget bill to use the military as a police force within the United States, and to nationalize the National Guard without consulting governors. In other words, the Posse Cometatus Act of 1878 and the Insurrection Act of 1807 were usurped without a single word of debate and without the least whisper from the American press.

To its credit, the New York Times did pick up on this story recently, reporting the event on February 19, many months after it happened. But why wait? These two acts are cornerstones of American freedom, but they have gone the way of habeas corpus, sacrificed to what now appears to be a self-generated war on terror, the purpose of which could not be more clear: it is not to protect us, it is to take away our freedom and turn this country into a dictatorship, and its little sisters the United Kingdom and Australia into the bargain.

And the scale of the thing is terrifying. If the BBC was reading a script, as it must have been, then they were all reading scripts, and not one reporter has come forward, not one editor, and there is not a breath of suggestion in the 9/11 Commission report that any such thing might have been happening.

And yet, one cannot forget that there was substantial trading in puts on the stock of insurance companies and airlines prior to 9/11, and that some of this trading was traced to individuals who had been associated with the CIA, as Jim Marrs reports in the Terror Conspiracy.

One also cannot forget that Condoleezza Rice testified before the 9/11 Commission that the National Security Council was blindsided by the attack, even as the 11 memos warning of it that the FAA sent to her while she was its chairman were classified until after the last presidential election.

How long can this go on? How much more can we stand? I find it utterly fantastic that conservatives are not outraged about the usurpation of Posse Cometatus and the Insurrection Act, and the attack on habeas corpus, not to mention the wholesale use of torture and atrocity as a matter of national policy.

The Bush presidency is a burnt-out rump, it would seem, reduced to this odd recent practice of sending its officials into harm’s way in the apparent hope that any misfortune befalling them will gain it some sympathy, even as the president prepares for the future by buying a large estate in Paraguay. (However, he might have done a little more research about that country before he bought, given that the Colorado Party, which has been in power since it was set up by Nazi sympathizers and German immigrants in 1947, is now facing a serious threat from Msgr. Fernando Lugo Méndez, a populist bishop who is likely to win the next general election.)

And then there is the terrifying prospect that another 9/11 will take place, but this time one so terrible that we will all desperately cleave to authority in the hope of preserving our lives, no matter who we think might be responsible. Anything less than a nuclear attack on one or more American cities would drive Bush from office, because it would reveal his entire anti-terrorism apparatus for the gimcrack sham that it is.

And when I say sham, I mean sham. Right now, they are just getting around to installing equipment that would detect nuclear weapons being brought, for example, into the Port of Los Angeles—equipment that should and could have been in place every American port six months after 9/11.

So it's perfectly possible that nuclear weapons are already in our cities, and have been there for years. As the Bush presidency winds down, the only real question is, will they be used to bring the American people to heel, or will he choose the Paraguay option?

I used to believe that the Administration let 9/11 happen so that it could have an excuse to attack Iraq and destroy our freedoms. Condoleeza Rice ignored the FAA warnings because she knew that an attack would transform an unpopular president into a beloved leader—which it did...for a time.

Given this latest piece of news, I think that anybody who seriously thinks that the whole event wasn't carefully planned and fed to us as a scripted "news event" needs to have their head examined. It was planned, period. Otherwise this reporter wouldn’t have been announcing one of the disasters before it happened. It's inescapable.

This gets me to a subject I have been visiting for years, the Valerie Plame affair. As I write this, a Washington jury is deciding the fate of Administration scapegoat Lewis Libby. If he is convicted, it will be for lying to a grand jury and to the FBI, not for the real crime, which was revealing the agent in the first place. And, presumably, that will be an end to the matter.

But, hold on, it might be something similar to Condi Rice’s ignoring those FAA memos. How, you may ask? This is how: Valerie Plame was a non-official cover, which is a CIA officer working abroad outside of the diplomatic context. She was an "energy consultant" for a front company called Brewster Jennings & Associates, which was allegedly involved in, among other places, Iran. Shortly after she was 'outed,' there were brief stories here and there in the media to the effect that US intelligence in Iran had been compromised. Of course, the moment the Iranians discovered that the Brewster Jennings employees in that country were actually US agents, they would all have been rounded up.

Given the extraordinary fact that 9/11 now appears almost certainly to have been pre-scripted and therefore planned, dare we ask the question: was Valerie Plame's name revealed IN ORDER TO destroy our intelligence apparatus in Iran?

This would put out our intelligence eyes in a very crucial respect. It would make it impossible for us to find the vents and air intakes of buried Iranian nuclear facilities, meaning that we cannot send conventional bunker buster bombs down those points of access. As Iran has buried and hardened its crucial facilities against any conventional attack except one that uses those weak points, we have been left helpless. There is only one type of weapon available to us that will certainly disrupt the centrifuges crucial to the manufacture of U-235. They must be shaken so hard that they break, and right now the only weapon in any western arsenal that will guarantee this without causing massive collateral damage is a neutron bomb.

So, if somebody has been spoiling for a nuclear war--dare I say in hopes of inducing the Rapture--then the destruction of US intelligence capabilities in Iran would be the best possible way to gain that result. And the leaking of Valerie Plame's name might have been what would get that job done.

Too conspiratorial, Mr. Reporter? Time to snort derision at the internet nut? YOU do your homework--but of course you won't, because you report to an editor who is telling you to turn up your nose, and if you fight back, you'll lose your job. And as for that editor--who calls the shots in his life?

Well, that's easy, because we're now down to about twenty high-level managers across the whole American press! The outrageous flaunting of the Sherman Anti-Trust act over the past few years has enabled this situation to be engineered.

So, do we have a free media? Of course not. And will they continue to march to the tune of higher powers? Certainly they will.

And the situation is dangerous right now. It is very dangerous. A few days ago the president of Iran announced that his country would not stop its nuclear weapons program. Middle Eastern elements threatened devastating retaliation if Iran is attacked.

If it is attacked, and the attack is nuclear, then I fear that we can expect a nuclear attack in the United States, from a bomb or bombs that have been put in place, or allowed to be put in place, by our nation's enemies, who, I believe, are shockingly close to home.

If you want to know what will happen after that—well, I suggest you read the script.

This is a little video I came up with using Screen Blaster Movie Maker. It is a montage of shots relating to 911 with an excerpt of Mahler's 1st symphony as background music. Just a pretty simple cut and paste job, but the images and subject go nicely with the music: urgent and alarming at first, then giving way to sadness. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsKOz_bh5qY

ps

As the video shows, I am one of the so-called "pod people".

I watch the video from beginning to end and found it extremely well done. I congratulate you on using the YouTube as a way of bringing this vital subject to a worldwide audience.

Thanks for posting that Doug. I agree that Bush will increase troop numbers in Iraq and that he will give Israel the go-ahead to bomb Iran. The timing of this is going to be very important. Bush will want to do it before Blair leaves office. It is also significant that Blair moved Jack Straw from the post of minister of defence. Straw had already made it clear that he was opposed to taking military action against Iran. When Blair made this decision in May, 2006, I posted on the forum that this was a sign that he was willing to go along with Bush over his military plans concerning Iran.

Interestingly, the reason why Clinton refused to sanction a US invasion of Iraq was his belief, that if he did so, the US would eventually become involved in a war with Iran. Ironically, this judgment was based on intelligence provided by the CIA.

Pentagon Whistle-Blower on the Coming War With Iran

http://www.truthdig.com/interview/item/200..._war_with_iran/

Posted on Feb 27, 2007

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (ret.), a veteran of the Pentagon with firsthand experience of the administration’s cherry-picking of intelligence, reveals why Bush thinks he can win a war with Iran, why few politicians are serious about withdrawal and why “when they call Iraq a success, they mean it.”

Listen: Download MP3 audio file (running time: 32:41 / 29.9 MB)

Transcript:

J

AMES HARRIS: This is TruthDig. James Harris sitting down with Josh Scheer, and on the phone we have a special guest. She is a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, formerly working for the Pentagon, The National Security Agency. Needless to say, she knows a lot about intel and a lot about what took place and what went on before we went into Iraq and what went on with that intel. Many questions have been asked in recent weeks, obviously in recent years about what we knew, what was fabricated, what was made up. On the phone we have somebody who has been vociferous in her effort to out the wrongdoings of people like Douglas Feith and people like Donald Rumsfeld. So, Karen Kwiatkowski, welcome to TruthDig.

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Thanks for having me.

JAMES HARRIS: It’s our pleasure. I want to start, not talking about Douglas Feith, but I want to get your opinion about Iraq. We know that British troops and Tony Blair have decided that they’re out. We’ve seen the commitment of other nations drop by 17 countries and our biggest partner, England, is now out. Why do you think they’re out and Bush is still in? Well we know why Bush is still in. Why now?

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: It is towards the end of Tony Blair’s long, long term of duty there as the Prime Minister. And the other thing is, the British very much oppose, in spite of the fact that there are some Murdoch newspapers in Great Britain, some conservative papers, pseudo conservative I should say, not truly conservative. Truly conservatives, true conservatives have opposed this venture form the beginning. But in spite of the small, loud pro-war faction in London, most people in Britain recognize this for what it is. They have some experience in this kind of thing with, both in Middle East, particularly in Iraq years ago when they left in dishonor. LAUGHS Another time when they tried to occupy Baghdad, years and years ago, and also their experience with terrorism and movements of independents or what have you with Ireland, much more recent memory for many of the people in Great Britain. I don’t think Britain’s economy can afford it. Certainly they see the writing on the all, why get, why not get out now while George Bush is still there than be stuck with, stuck holding the bag when a Democratic president takes over and pulls the troops out abruptly in 2008, 2009. So I think there’s many reasons why they’re doing it. Some people say it is, it is because of Tony Blair’s concern over his legacy. If he doesn’t bring the troops home, his legacy will be that he left Britain in a quagmire. They are in a quagmire now and maybe he doesn’t want to leave office with that being on his record. Mainly it’s the right thing to do, the people of Britain want those troops home. And I guess their government is listening. Unlike ours.

JAMES HARRIS: The highly speculative people have said they’re out because we’re going into Iran. You might’ve read the news…

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Well yeah, I don’t… I had not seen that connection made, but I certainly am alarmed at the daily signs that indeed this country is getting ready to instigate an attack on Iran. All the signs are there, the suggestions that Iranian bombs are killing American soldiers, that’s not true, but it’s certainly been made in, I think every American newspaper, the suggestion that Iran is somehow killing Americans. The suggestion that Iran has nuclear weapons, is imminently close to nuclear weapons. That is not true but that’s been, those claims are made, even by this Administration. The idea that we have two carrier battle groups currently in the region and in fact I just saw today, Admiral Walsh, one of the big guys in the Navy said that we’re very concerned about what Iran is doing even more so than Al Qaeda. So there, all the signs are there that we are being, we’re going to wake up one morning soon, very soon, and we will be at war with Iran. We will have bombed them in some sort of shock and awe campaign destroying many lives and setting back US relations even further than we’ve already done it with Iraq.

JOSH: I want to continue on Iran. You spent obviously many years in the military and you talk in those kind of terms that many people maybe not know about. Can we not just politically, and not just in the region, but can we support another war in another country? Right now we’re in Afghanistan, we’re in Iraq. Can we feasibly actually go into Iran, or is this going to be a shock and awe campaign?

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: You know, I think the, one of the big reasons that Bush and Cheney think they can do Iran is that they believe, what they’re hearing from the Air Force and the Navy, two of the three main branches of our military, the two that have been left out of the glory of Iraq, you see. And those guys want a piece of the action, and so they’re advertising to the Administration and publicly, I mean you can read it for yourself, the Air Force and the Navy have targets they believe they can overwhelmingly hit their targets, deep penetration, weapons, possibly nuclear weapons, I mean, nothing is off the table as Dick Cheney is off the table, Dick Cheney says “nothing is off the table.” And the delivery of these weapons, whether they’re conventional or nuclear will be naval and Air Force. They’ll be Navy from the sea and Air Force form long range bombers and some of the bases that we have around the… so I don’t think, certainly, I don’t know, I’m not in the Army, wasn’t in the Army, I was in the Air Force, I don’t think the Army could support any type of invasion of Iran and they wouldn’t’ want to. I’m sure that they’ve, they’ve had enough with Iraq and our reserves are in terrible condition. We’ve got huge problems in the Army and in the Reserve system. So I don’t think there’s any intention to go into Iran, but simply to destroy it and to create havoc and disruption and humanitarian crisis and topple perhaps the government of [Ahmadinejad]. We want to topple that government. Yeah, we’ll do it with bombs from a distance. I don’t know if you call that shock and awe, we’ve been advertising it for a long, long time. It will not be a surprise to the Iranians if we do it.

JAMES HARRIS: That was your former boss, the shock and awe campaign. I’m still shocked and I’m awed.

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: [laughs] He shocked and awed all of us.

JAMES HARRIS: As a means of understanding the level of deceit that you claim took place and I agree took place before the war. Because it, the things that are going on in and around Iran sound a lot like the things that went on in 2002…

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Sure do.

JAMES HARRIS: And I always note Scott Ritter, because I spoke to him, and I couldn’t believe that we didn’t take the advice of people like him that were saying that there’s nothing there, there’s nothing. Can you describe for us a typical day, if we went in around March, we’re approaching that anniversary, we went in around March of ‘03. What was it like in The Pentagon?

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Well, I worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and up until mid February I was in Near East South Asia, which is the office that owns the Office of Special Plans, they were our sister office. And so Iraq is one of the areas. And there’s a great degree of excitement, there’s a, we didn’t know when we would invade Iraq, and many people thought it would be in February, late February, early March and it actually was like I think march 23 is when we actually conducted that attack on Baghdad and that kind of thing. Most people in the Pentagon, there’s 23,000 people worked in the Pentagon. Most of those people were as in the dark as any of the Americans. They believed what they read in the papers, and what they read in the papers, particularly The New York Times and The Washington Post had been, for the most part, planted by The Administration. We know this now, the whole Congress knows this now, they’ve had a number of hearings publicly faltered, I think even the DODIG just recently faltered, Doug Feith and his whole organization for planting and mis-, providing misleading stories, many of which were later leaked on purpose to the press. A friendly press, of course, Judith Miller was not, was not hostile to the intentions of this administration. They wanted to go into Iraq, and they intended to go into Iraq. We did go into Iraq, and all that was really needed was to bring onboard the American people, and to bring onboard the Congress. But not necessarily to declare war. Congress has never been asked to declare war on Iraq. And they won’t be asked to declare war on Iran even though we will conduct that war. These guys had an agenda. In fact, one of the things that I did learn as a result of having my eyes opened in that final tour in the Pentagon is that neo-conservatives, their foreign policy is very activist, you could say that’s a nice way to say it, very activist, it’s very oriented towards the Untied States as a benevolent dictator, a benevolent guiding hand for the world, particularly the Middle East. And it’s very much a pro-Israel policy, and it’s a policy that says, we should be able to do whatever we want to do, if we see it in our interest. Now, Americans don’t see any value, most Americans, 75 percent of Americans want the troops home now. They don’t see any value to having our troops in Iraq. They didn’t see any value in that in 2002. But, they had a story sold to them, which was of course that Saddam Hussein somehow was involved with 9/11, had WMDs, and was a serious threat, an imminent threat, a grave threat to the United States.

JAMES HARRIS: For those people that think somehow that government officials, even though you work for the government, were complicit in this effort to move into Iraq. I want you to be clear, as a worker there, you were doing what you thought was right at the time. Is that a safe thing to say?

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: We were doing, I’ll tell ya, there’s two parts of how the story is sold, how the propaganda was put forth on the American people, and how it’s been put forth on them today in terms of Iran. You have political appointees in every government agency, and they switch out every time you get a new president, and that’s totally normal. Usually those, the numbers increase after every president, they always get a few more. So Bush was no different. He brought in a number of political appointees: Doug Feith, certainly Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. But also a number of political appointees at what you would call a lower level, like my level - Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel level. And they’re not military officers, they’re civilians. And they’re brought in, and this is where the propaganda was kind of put together, this is where the so-called alternative intelligence assessments were put together by the civilian appointees of the Bush Administration. Most of which, in fact, probably all of the Pentagon shared a neo-conservative world vision, which has a particular role for us, and that included the topping of Saddam Hussein, and it includes the toppling of the leadership in Tehran. These guys are the ones doing it, they’re doing it. They’re putting all the propaganda, they’re spreading stories, planting stuff in the media. They’re doing that to people in The Pentagon, the civil, the Civil Service core in The Pentagon, which is about half of them, and the other half which are uniformed military officers serving anywhere from three to four, five years, sometimes tours in The Pentagon. We’re looking at regular intel, we’re looking at the stuff the CIA and the DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency produces. And that stuff never said, that stuff never said Saddam Hussein had WMDs, had a delivery system, was a threat to the United States. It never said that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11 or that Saddam Hussein worked with Al Qaeda. That intelligence never said that.

JAMES HARRIS: Did they tell you to shut up?

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Absolutely! [Laughs] That’s a funny thing, and of course, here’s how it worked. Once the Office of Special Plans was set u formally, now they were informally set up prior to the fall of 2002, but formally they became an office with office space and that whole bit. And the first act to follow that setup of the Office of Special Plans, we had a staff meeting, and our boss, Bill Ludy, who was the boss of Special Plans technically, not in reality but on paper. And he announced to us that from now on, action officers, staff officers such as myself and all my peers, at least in that office, and I presume this went all the way through the rest of policy, but we were told that when we needed to fill in data, putting it in papers that we would send up, doing our job, as we did our daily job, we were no longer to look at CIA and DIA intelligence, we were simply to call the Office of Special Plans and they would send down to us talking points, which we would incorporate verbatim no deletions, no additions, no modifications into every paper that we did. And of course, that was very unusual and all the action officers are looking at each other like, well that’s interesting. We’re not to look at the intelligence any more, we’re simply to go to this group of political appointees and they will provide to us word for word what we should say about Iraq, about WMD and about terrorism. And this is exactly what our orders were. And there were people [Laughs] a couple of people, and I have to say, I was not one of these people who said, “you know, I’m not gonna do that, I’m not gonna do that because there’s something I don’t like about it, it’s incorrect in some way.” And they experimented with sending up papers that did not follow those instructions, and those papers were 100 percent of the time returned back for correction. So we weren’t allowed to put out anything except what Office of Special Plans was producing for us. And that was only partially based on intelligence, and partially based on a political agenda. So this is how they did it. And I’ll tell you what, civil servants and military people, we follow orders, okay. And we buy into it. And we don’t suspect that our leaders are nefarious, we don’t suspect that. They, they quite frankly have to go a long way to prove to us that they are nefarious. That’s how it worked, and I imagine it’s working much the same way there in terms of Iran.

JAMES HARRIS: Obviously you’ve been in the military for quite a while. Has this every happened to your knowledge in any other Pentagon, where a political appointees have the power to just control the…

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Sure, well sure, Vietnam is filled with examples. And Daniel Ellsberg’s information and his Pentagon paper that he released factual information that contradicted what political appointees at the top of the Pentagon were saying to Congress and saying to the American people. Yeah, this is typical of how it works. Now, having said that, most people who serve and wear the uniform or give a career of service to the military, whether civilian, civil service or military, we don’t think that our bosses will do that. We don’t think that our military will do that. But in fact history is full of examples of bald-faced lies being told to sell particular agendas. Often times those agendas include war making, certainly in Vietnam they did, under LBJ and a few other presidents. Look at the thing that Reagan did. I mean, I actually don’t dislike Reagan, he deployed very few troops overseas, but when he went in to that little island down there… what is the name of that island that he invaded, Grenada. [Laughs] Remember that? Remember the Invasion of Grenada.

JOSHUA SCHEER: All eight hours?

JAMES HARRIS: It was a short one.

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: I mean, God, shortly thereafter, come to find out, well actually, some of the stuff they said about the threat and the Cubans and all that wasn’t really true. So politicians and their politically appointed military leaders will lie, historically do lie when it has to do with making war, particularly making a war that they want. And what has happened in the Bush Administration is the war that they want was Iraq. And the war that they want is Iran, and the war that they want is Syria, okay? That’s the war they want. They don’t want Vietnam. I don’t know why, they don’t want Vietnam, they want these places, this is what the neo-conservatives are particularly interested in. So we have war. And they make up stories and we’re seeing the exact same thing in terms of Iran, which is quite alarming because it seems as if we can’t stop this, we can’t prevent this.

JOSH: You were talking about these political appointees and pushing us into war. Why haven’t people like Paul Wolfowitz, I mean these guys seem to feather their own nests.

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: [Laughs] That’s an understatement.

JOSH: They lead us into war, Mark Zell, Doug Feith’s partner was in bed with Chalabi. It falls apart and then it seems that these guys disappear into the woodwork. What happens?

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Well, a big part of what happens is these guys have top cover, the names of the top cover are Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. These guys like what Wolfowitz has done. And here’s the other thing. While we as American citizens do not like being lied to, particularly being lied to into a stupid quagmire that makes no sense. We don’t’ like being lied to. Congress doesn’t like being lied to. However, many in Congress, and certainly in this administration agree, and this is Democrats and Republicans, like the idea that we have gone into Iraq, we have built four mega bases, they are complete. Most of the money we gave to Halliburton was for construction and completion of these bases. We have probably, of the 150,000, 160,000 troops we have in Iraq probably 110,000 of those folks are associated with one of those four mega bases. Safely ensconced behind acres and acres of concrete. To operate there indefinitely, no matter what happens in Baghdad, no matter who takes over, no matter if the country splits into three pieces or it stays one. No matter what happens, we have those mega bases, and there’s many in Congress and certainly in this administration, Republican and Democrat alike that really like that. Part of the reason I think that we went into Iraq was to reestablish a stronger foothold than we had in Saudi Arabia, but also a more economical, a more flexible, in terms of who we want to hit. If you want to hit Syria, can you do it from Iraq? Of course you can. And now you can do it from bases that will support any type of airplane you want, any number of troops in barracks. I mean we can do things from Iraq. And this is what they wanted. So, yeah, we don’t like being lied to. But quite frankly, many people in the Congress, and certainly this administration, when they call Iraq a success, they mean it, and this is why.

We’re in Iraq to stay. And can we strike Iran from Iraq? Well, I don’t know if we’ll do that next week, but we can.

JAMES HARRIS: We’re there to stay in the sense that even, let’s say somebody takes office in await, do you think that we’re gonna be occupying those bases still?

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Absolutely! And we don’t even have status of forcive agreements with any legitimate government in Iraq to support those bases. They are illegal bases, okay. But yes, they’re gonna stay, absolutely, they’re gonna stay. And I’ll tell you, there are guys that have been with this administration for awhile, people, in fact one of the guys was an Air Force General that was involved with the Kurds ten years ago, he’s retired now, but he was actually the guy, his name escapes me for the moment, but he was Jerry Bremer’s predecessor (Jay Garner?) for a short period of time. And he was fired, and Bremer came in and took over in Baghdad as part of the reconstruction phase. This is in the Spring of 2003. And this guy gave an interview in Government Exec Magazine, February 2004, he said “we will be in Iraq, and the American people need to get with this program, we will be in Iraq like we were in the Philippines for anywhere from 20 to 30 more years. That’s the time frame that we’re looking at. And that is the life span of the bases that we’ve constructed there. Yeah, we are not leaving these bases, and a Democratic president, I don’t care who they are, will keep those basses there. They will justify them and they will use them and we love that. We love it. So it’s not about what the American people think is right or wrong, it’s not about if we got lied to, what matters is, they did what they wanted to do, and as bush says, and as Cheney says, “it’s quite the success.” And this is very frightening. Because none of this has ever been admitted to the American people, it’s only been hinted at by people that know. And of course the facts speak for themself. The facts are, we are in Iraq, we have the finest military installations in the world, the newest military installations in the world, and we’re not leaving them. We’re not turning them over to a Shiite government, we’re not turning them over to a Sunni government, we’re not turning them over to a Kurdish government. We’re not doing that. They are American bases. We’ve got our flag there. And this is kind of the way they used to do things, I guess back in the Middle Ages. Maybe the Dark Ages. A king decided he wanted to go do something, he went and did it. And this is George Bush. We call him an elected president. I mean, he’s operating much as kings have operated in the past.

JAMES HARRIS: You called him “the war pimp” in your essay. “He’s behaving,” as you put it, “a lot like a pimp would treat a prostitute, ‘you do like I tell you to do.’”

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: that’s right, and over the money. “Get back to work.” We’re using these, we use these bases, we use these people, the country, it matters not one whit to us.

JAMES HARRIS: With all we see in the news on a daily basis, is there any reason to hope? Every day I lose more and more sleep, about soldiers who are dying. You’re talking about being there another 30 years. How many more soldiers are going to be injured and killed? How much more money is this war going to cost?

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Well the money, yeah, sure, the money’s a problem. The number of soldiers being killed will probably actually reduce in many ways because we will withdraw to our bases and we will not interface with Iraqis who hate us. This idea of what they’re doing right now, this so called three-block program, let’s meet more Iraqis so they’ll like us, that’s totally for show. The more Iraqis meet us, the more they hate us. So I actually do think though, over time, fewer Americans will die, and look how easily, look how easily this country has accepted the loss of those 3,200 soldiers that have died. I think something like 90 women, maybe more have died, mothers [Laughs] mothers of children. They’ve died, and America has eaten it up, we have not complained one bit. They’re spread out over 50 states, hey, it’s no big deal. So I think we can certainly, as a country, accommodate future deaths and I think the death rate will drop. The problem is, it’s immoral, it’s illegal, it engenders hatred for Americans, contempt for Americans. It makes every American in the world a target for terrorism. It’s just plain wrong, it’s unconstitutional. I mean, there’s a lot of problems with it. Dead Americans, unfortunately doesn’t seem to be the problem for most of us, which is a shame. We don’t like looking at ugly people, I will say that. And we’re seeing a lot of folks come back pretty deformed, mentally and even more obviously physically, deformed from their experiences in Iraq. And I think that could, that might give, I hate to say give hope, but realize the real moral price that we’re paying for this, that that can help. But quite frankly, I have no hope of us leaving Iraq. I think the intention was for us to put bases there, to stay there, operate militarily from there. And I think that’s what we’re going to do, Democrat, Republican, Independent, I can’t imagine anybody but Ron Paul, if you elect Ron Paul as president, those bases will be closed down. Otherwise…

JAMES HARRIS: Or Dennis Kucinich.

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Or Kucinich, there you go, Kucinich would do it too. So these are the guys we are able to elect, but chances are, I hate to say, the machine is not behind these men. So yeah, we got a problem. Now is there anything optimistic? Yeah. I’m a God fearing Christian. God has the power. How He might express that, I don’t know. But yeah, can the average American do anything about it? I’m just not, I’m pretty not very, I’m not optimistic, I’m pessimistic that any single American can do much to prevent what seems to be going to happen here, attacking Iran and also this terrible thing we’ve done to Iraq which I think will continue to go on for many years. It will fester, fester for many years.

JAMES HARRIS: I’m one that believes the price of terrorism, I’m interested to get your perspective on this as one who watched us engage on this terrorist enemy, an enemy like we’d never seen before, at least from a military standpoint. I look at terrorism, and I see it tearing us apart. And in a lot of ways I look at it and say, we’ve already lost this war because we now have a president who’s bending the Constitution. We’re looking over our shoulders. We question our whereabouts. This whole thing that went on in Boston with the advertisement, “is it a bomb?” There’s always that question. Perhaps the goal of Osama, perhaps the goal of these people was to make us afraid, and they’ve succeeded at that. My question to you is, in your mind, what is the true price of terrorism been for you?

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: The military has been broken in most respects into the extent that it worked, it worked because it’s a mercenary force. We were so contracted out, we hired people that are beyond the law, that are not accountable to rules of war. And that’s how we function. So the whole military system, the idea of a defensive force, forget it, that’s done with. Constitution has been hurt by many presidents, but this president has done huge damage to understanding of the Constitution, its idea that it should restrain presidential power, that we should be conservative, small “c” conservative when we go out and engage in these adventures, the Congress has the right to declare war, we’ve ignored that for many decades. Just continued down that path. Te idea that the Bill of Rights is an option, the Bill of Rights is a set of suggestions has become almost mainstream belief. And this is terrible, this is a terrible thing. But I don’t think Osama Bin Laden did that. Terrorism is, obviously it has a political intent, but terrorism almost always, in fact I think in every case, when the political solutions are offered, when the politics change, when the people themselves change, terrorism stops. Terrorism to the extent that it is a crime, should’ve been treated like a crime, but instead we made it a war. Well there is no war with terror, terrorism is a tactic, you don’t make war against a tactic. So yeah, a lot of things have happened, I don’t think Osama had much to do with it, quite frankly, I think this administration, many of the people in Washington are quite comfortable with reduced freedoms for America and this is a good way to get those reduced freedoms, to basically break down and deconstruct the Bill of Rights and say, “well we didn’t mean that, we didn’t mean this.” It’s a problem. Our country has changed, and I think what people have to do now is kind of stand up and separate themselves from a government to the extent that they don’t agree with it and prepare themselves for real battle. Because we are gonna need to stand up very, I can use the word “vociferously,” I think that’s what we have to do, cause our own country is at risk, but not from terror, not from buildings being knocked down, that’s not what our country is at risk from, it’s at risk from our politics, from our abandonment of the Constitution, our devaluing of the Bill of Rights. We’ve lost our freedom. Osama probably couldn’t have dreamed that George Bush would help him out so much. I don’t think even that was his intention, I don’t think Osama could care less about our freedom, Osama’s issues have to do with Islam and the Holy land, Saudi Arabia, his issues are much more narrow than anything that he’s so called achieved. And I think George Bush has achieved this in a very weak and LAUGHS debased Congress has achieved this for this country. And so, it’s a big problem. I’m quite depressed about it. I don’t really have a solution or a remedy. I think we just need to wake up and see what’s being done, and then we need to decide if we want to be a part of it. It’s like that old thing, I’m not a child of the 60s, but you’re either working to fix the problem or you are the problem.

JAMES HARRIS: Why have the neo-cons been allowed, they’re not, to me, they don’t seem like the Republicans that I grew up with.

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: No, no, they’re not. And if you look at the history of neo-conservatism, it really traces its roots, well back to Trotsky, but if you go more recent, back to who was the guy, Senator from Boeing (Henry Jackson) they used to call him… big Democratic, 30 year Senator out of Washington State. And Richard Perle was on his staff, Wolfowitz I think was inspired by him. And he was a Democrat during the Cold War. And he was a pro, or I should say strongly anti-Communist democrat, kind of a strong defense democrat. And these guys migrated, particularly after Jimmy Carter, because Jimmy Carter, remember, what was he doing, he was trying to make peace. Remember that, somebody got a Peace Prize out of it, I don’t know what it was, some kind of approach between Arabs and Israelis, and Carter was part of that. And that alienated a great many of these folks who now we know as neo-conservatives because they have two things that they care about, one is strong defense, for whatever reason they like that, an activist foreign policy, and pro-Israel, no questions asked policy. So many of these conservative, pro-defense democrats, anti-Communist democrats abandoned the democratic party at the time of Jimmy Carter, particularly after the time of Jimmy Carter and his summit working on Middle East peace. And they came over to eth Republican party, and of course they came over with a great deal of money and a great deal of political influence and a great deal of voters. So now they’re in the Republican party, and absolutely, this happened, late 1970s. so it is not, these are not the Republicans that we grew up thinking about, but they are in the Republican party now. Of course the Republican party now isn’t anything like what I thought it was, it’s certainly no Goldwater party, it’s a party of big spending, it’s a party of corruption. What do you want me to say? They love big government, they haven’t seen a big government plan they didn’t write.

JAMES HARRIS: Henry “Scoop” Jackson was the guy you were looking for. As we continue to search for the truth, and that’s pretty much the motto of TruthDig, we don’t believe we have the answer, but we believe that we should at least be looking for the answers. So as we approach that truth around the issues that take place in Iraq and perhaps Iran, we think you might be a good friend to have close to the TruthDig family so we’d like to check in from time to time.

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Sure, I’d be delighted, it’s great fun talking. And hopefully maybe in a couple of months some of these negative things I think are going to happen, maybe they won’t happen.

JAMES HARRIS: Maybe we’ll all be proven wrong… whatever the case…

JOSH: I’m praying for it.

JAMES HARRIS: We’re both praying, even though Josh is not a religious man.

JOSH: Excuse me, I am a religious man.

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Maybe we’re in a foxhole together. You know what they say, there are no atheists in a foxhole, and I think in political sense, many true conservatives and classical liberals, people that love freedom, unlike George Bush, people that really love freedom, we are in a foxhole. We are threatened. And so we gotta call on every possible help we can get.

JOSH: I believe in God, I don’t believe in big religion, just like I don’t believe in big government.

JAMES HARRIS: There you go, we’re in a foxhole, so we’re on the same team.

So, [surprise! surprise!] we're funding al-Quaida groups.....as we have been since we instigated the group. The people running America now are the most dangerous group ever let loose on the planet and you are all watching the approaching storm that will finally set the Religious Wrong into paroxisms of hope for the 'end'. This is evil and insanity writ large and America seems to me to now be a pot of frogs to which the water has slowly been raised to near deadly temperatures and most didn't notice - nor jump [read do something to stop this ongoing madness!]

That the Dumbacrats could put Impeachment 'off the table' is an insult to democracy and justice, and shows where they are coming from as a whole. We are all going to pay for this and soon!.....very, very soon.

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.

As I've often said, books by the professional murderers and liars in the CIA have no credibility. I don't see how they can have any value to researchers, or to truth buffs.

They might, however, be useful to gardeners with compost piles.

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

As I've often said, books by the professional murderers and liars in the CIA have no credibility. I don't see how they can have any value to researchers, or to truth buffs.

They might, however, be useful to gardeners with compost piles.

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.

Tony Blair was interviewed on BBC radio on Thursday. He was asked several times about the possible attack on Iran. Blair was given ample opportunity to state that the British government would never bomb Iran. In fact, he was asked to use the words that Jack Straw used before he was sacked as foreign secretary. He refused.

It was also revealed by the Economist this week that Tony Blair was lobbying the Bush administration to get launching pads for US missile interceptors as part of the Bush administration's proposed "son of Star Wars" anti-ballistic defence scheme, based in Britain. A Downing Street spokeswoman said: "Discussions with the US have taken place at various levels. Decisions on additional support for the missile defence system are at a very early stage and no decisions have been taken as to whether any element of that system would be based in the UK or where they might be based in the UK. We welcome plans to place further missile defence assets in Europe."

Blair is also trying to force through a new Trident project before he leaves office. The man is clearly off his head. So far it seems that Gordon Brown supports these crazy policies. Hopefully, it will stop him from becoming prime-minister.

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."

So now Nichols claims that McVeigh told him (perhaps let slip out) that a high ranking FBI agent was directing the bombing. In the 12 years since the incident this is the first record of him saying such a thing. Though its exculpatory he said nothing during either trial even during sentencing phase even when he was facing the death penalty.

Smells like 100% unadulterated USDA approved grade AAA bull manure to me!

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.”

It's a chillingly plausible scenario, Douglas.

I posted a similar article from Robert Parry the other day but I can't seem to find it on the Forum. Anyway, here it is:

http://www.alternet.org/story/45852/

Parry suggests a plan has been hatched by Bush, Blair and Olmert for Israel to attack Syria and the Iranian nuclear sites, with America providing logistical support. The three leaders have had a round robin of meetings over the last two months.

The unholy haste in executing Saddam Hussein is highly suspicious, as Alexandrovna alludes to. I suspect it was an action designed to provoke a response from America's enemies in the region as a pretext for further action. I thought he was originally scheduled to be executed in late January, so there must be a reason for bringing it forward, since my faith in the good intentions of the US/Israel axis has long ago evaporated. I have read several articles suggesting that the US Administration refuses to rule out the possibility of utilising bunker-busting nuclear weapons in its campaign against Iran. Nothing can be ruled out, as I believe this US Administration, supported by unseen forces of apparently limitless evil, is the most dangerous in living memory.

The chess analogy is a good one. As in 2003, the Bush alliance may open with a few bold moves. However, as we have seen, their end game stinks. A baboon has more chance against Kasparov. The pawns in this game are us, of course, and the Bush regime is prone to gladly sacrificing pieces in order to achieve their unachievable goal--control of the entire Middle East.

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

In 1992 Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin published "Silent Coup: The Removal of Richard Nixon". In the book the authors claim that John Dean ordered the Watergate break-in because he knew that a call-girl ring was operating out of the Democratic headquarters. The authors also argued that Alexander Haig was not Deep Throat but was a key source for Bob Woodward, who had briefed Haig at the White House in 1969 and 1970.

In 1992 John Dean began legal action against Len Colodny and Gordon Liddy. Dean objected to information that appeared in books by Liddy (Will) and Colodny (Silent Coup) that claimed that Dean was the mastermind of the Watergate burglaries and the true target of the break-in was to destroy information implicating him and his wife in a prostitution ring. That case was settled in 1999 when State Farm Insurance Company paid Colodny $410,000.00 to allow Dean to dismiss the case without going to summary judgement. Dean also had to agree not to sue Colodny again and that was in the Court Order.

John Dean encouraged former DNC secretary Ida Well to sue Gordon Liddy on the same subject as his original suit in US District Court in Baltimore. In July, 2002, jurors reached a unanimous decision in favor of Liddy and the theory put forward in Silent Coup: The Removal of Richard Nixon.

You can read about the case here:

http://www.watergate.com/archives/baltimor...iddy02jul04.htm

What do members think about Silent Coup? I am in contact with Len. Would you be interested in him joining the forum to answer your questions?

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.

Mr. Caddy,

Of course I don't expect any substantive answer from you, and I realize that it's all about keeping up appearances at this point, but I have to ask anyway: don't you finid it rather unseemly that the best efforts from the biggest and best-funded intelligence agency in the entire world have become so boringly predictable and embarrassingly transparent as this desperation "Hunt: Redux" that you're in here flogging?

It's all so "Amateur Night at the Spy Games Cafe." It's just tacky. It's like some over-the-hill diva trying to croak "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in checkerboard muslin and curls with pancake make-up.

Despite our differences—which I wouldn't care to reduce—still, even I hate to see a career lawyer so boxed in late in his career and life that all he can do is run around finding book reviews to copy and paste into forums. It's such a go-fer function. It seems like a sort of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" legacy that's being forged right here before my very eyes.

Well, I guess CIA has to try to save face somehow, but I just wanted say that it's not playing very well in the third row. The sets are falling down, the footlights are popping, the tuba is out of tune, and the stage manager is in plain sight in the wings, tearing his hair out. It isn't that you aren't performing your clipping service part very efficiently. You are, and no one should try to take that away from you. And no one hopes more than I that you soon have lots of good reviews to copy and paste.

I'm just sorry to see that you're reduced at this point on your life to playing Musack on a falling elevator.

Ashton Gray

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.

I'll bet Nixon has already warned Satan, "That Hunt knows a hell of a lot of things."

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.

E. Howard Hunt...drew no distinction between orchestrating a black-bag job at a foreign embassy in Mexico City and wiretapping the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate complex. He was “totally self-absorbed, totally amoral...”

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.

I'll bet Nixon has already warned Satan, "That Hunt knows a hell of a lot of things."

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.

THE http://ajweberman.com website has been renovated and should be much more accessible now. Check it out and let me know what you think. To skip the tramp morphs go to

http://ajweberman.com/coupt5.htm

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 thought that it might be worth posting information about Douglas Caddy that I came accross in the book 'America's uncivil wars: The sixties era from Elvis to the fall of Richard Nixon' by Mark Hamilton Lyttle. The book is a core text for my course 'US politics and culture in the 60's'. We are studying the YAF at length.

Here is the reference to Douglas Caddy,

"Two young conservatives, Douglas Caddy and David Franke, saw the initiative as anther case of growing weakness in the face of the Communist menace. To them, the danger to freedom had never been greater. In a war for freedom, they believed that patriotic students should have no qualms about pledging their allegiance and that disloyal students had no right to receive public funding. The two joined together in the fall of 1959 to create the National Student Committee for the Loyalty Oath. The committee claimed that repeal would not only undermine internal security and embolden "the enemies of the American way of life,@ but would "promote the worldwide Communist conspiracy". Their expressed purpose was to defeat the repeal, but their larger goal was to organize conservative students."

John

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 thought that it might be worth posting information about Douglas Caddy that I came accross in the book 'America's uncivil wars: The sixties era from Elvis to the fall of Richard Nixon' by Mark Hamilton Lyttle. The book is a core text for my course 'US politics and culture in the 60's'. We are studying the YAF at length.

Here is the reference to Douglas Caddy,

"Two young conservatives, Douglas Caddy and David Franke, saw the initiative as anther case of growing weakness in the face of the Communist menace. To them, the danger to freedom had never been greater. In a war for freedom, they believed that patriotic students should have no qualms about pledging their allegiance and that disloyal students had no right to receive public funding. The two joined together in the fall of 1959 to create the National Student Committee for the Loyalty Oath. The committee claimed that repeal would not only undermine internal security and embolden "the enemies of the American way of life,@ but would "promote the worldwide Communist conspiracy". Their expressed purpose was to defeat the repeal, but their larger goal was to organize conservative students."

John

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.

I carefully studied the existing questions to and answers from Mr. Caddy and Mr. Baldwin before I asked any questions, and the questions I then asked had not been answered, could not be answered from the existing record, and the majority still have not been answered. Curiously, those unanswered questions go directly to severe conflicts in the record, which both Mr. Caddy and Mr. Baldwin have the means and knowledge to reconcile. They just won't, that's all. Why? Oh, well: only because of the incorrigible and irredeemable personal flaws of the questioner. At least to hear them, and you, tell it.

This is the Great Straw Man: asking someone who has unique percipient knowledge relevant questions going to material fact is not calling someone "a xxxx" just because it's clear that there are falsehoods in the record, and questions are being asked about those falsehoods and the source of those falsehoods. In the instant case, all Mr. Caddy had to do is say what you already have claimed as his elected or unelected mouthpiece: "Hunt lied." The question would have been answered. He did not. He would not.

Ashton Gray

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.

[/b]

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.

My country is neutral and has never invaded another nation so I have no need to take such measures.

John

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.