Paul Rigby

I include this for no other reason than that it made me smile:

Cheney: Protests “Crazy,” Obama “A Train Wreck”

Posted on October 11th, 2011 11:50am by Glenn Hunter

http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2011/10/11/cheney-protesters-crazy-obama-a-train-wreck/

Former Vice President Dick Cheney may be thinner these days, outfitted with a permanent heart pump, and clad in two kinds of shoes due to a leg problem. But he’s still as bluntly outspoken as ever, taking aim at President Barack Obama, his old nemesis The New York Times, and the Occupy Wall Street movement during a Dallas visit flogging his new memoir, In My Time...

The Highland Park visit by Cheney–who was accompanied by his wife, Lynne–was arranged by mega-Realtors Allie Beth and Pierce Allman. Their Dallas company has the listing on the Gillon Avenue mansion (price: $9.65 million). It also handled the sale of the Cheneys’ $3 million house on Euclid when the Cheneys left for Washington D.C., to join the George W. Bush administration.

The same Pierce Allman?

Er, yes.

The interesting aspect of the Allman-Oswald encounter is this: Why or how on earth did not Allman recognize Oswald later once it became official that Oswald did the shooting, akin to Odio's reaction when seeing Oswald on the news?

Why, indeed?

In order not to derail this most excellent thread, I've started a new one on Allman. Sceptics welcome:The assassination reports of Pierce Allman WFAA-radio news

3) 1963: November 23

Interviewed by Secret Servicemen (see below, 5: “My memory was so vivid that during the interview with the Secret Service the next day, they asked me to recall the timed sequence, and I came out to six and a half seconds.”)

4) 1964: January 29

Interviewed by Secret Servicemen, CD 354, SS Rowley memorandum of 5 February 1964:

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do;jsessionid=DA0615661C7103CFBA17F9A42BD56900?docId=10755&relPageId=5

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/A%20Disk/Allman%20Pierce/Item%2003.pdf

"My memory was so vivid..." that he couldn't remember whether it was Oswald he met on the steps of the TSBD, or an alien.

Again, I am persuaded that this is an observer we can trust, but only because I have a side-line in used cars.

And what need for a late January 1964 interview with him when, according to Allman, he had been intensively debriefed - when his memory was "vivid," no less - by the same organisation (the Secret Service) the day after the assassination?

And where is that interview? Have I missed it?

Is this really a man in whom we should repose any trust?

1) 1963: November 22

Reporting from phone within TSBD, just a few minutes after assassination.

http://youtu.be/1tsR8PGx2ZE

2) 1963: November 22, circa 1350hrs & shortly after (with edit between his narratives?), CST

Interviewed just after the arrest of Oswald

http://youtu.be/JGGErAUc1x8

http://www.otrcat.com/john-kennedy-p-1453.html?products_id=1453

So, in his first broadcast report, Allman is unquestionably reliant upon the eyewitness testimony of others.

By his second - at least on my list - he is suddenly himself an eyewitness.

In order to facilitate this shift, Allman changes location from the corner of Houston & Elm, and locates himself instead on the "left" side of, presumably, Elm, whereupon he now remembers that the shooting "happened pretty much in front of me" at a distance of "10 feet".

Very convincing, I must say.

Much more consistent is his determination to establish the TSBD as the location of the marksman: in the first report, the listener is invited to ponder only "from which upper window" the shooting emanated, while in the second, we learn that the TSBD was the "logical place" from which to fire.

Not exactly antithetical to the pre-planned fiction, was he?

1) 1963: November 22

Reporting from phone within TSBD, just a few minutes after assassination.

http://youtu.be/1tsR8PGx2ZE

2) 1963: November 22, circa 1350hrs & shortly after (with edit between his narratives?), CST

Interviewed just after the arrest of Oswald

http://youtu.be/JGGErAUc1x8

http://www.otrcat.com/john-kennedy-p-1453.html?products_id=1453

3) 1963: November 23

Interviewed by Secret Servicemen (see below, 5: “My memory was so vivid that during the interview with the Secret Service the next day, they asked me to recall the timed sequence, and I came out to six and a half seconds.”)

4) 1964: January 29

Interviewed by Secret Servicemen, CD 354, SS Rowley memorandum of 5 February 1964:

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do;jsessionid=DA0615661C7103CFBA17F9A42BD56900?docId=10755&relPageId=5

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/A%20Disk/Allman%20Pierce/Item%2003.pdf

5) 1998: November

The Witnesses: What they saw then. Who they are now.

by Joe Nick Patoski

Partial transcript here:

http://www.texasmonthly.com/content/witnesses

Full here:

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/marsh/jfk-conspiracy/transcripts_1.html

TM: Next we have here Mr. Pierce Allman.... What was your position at WFAA radio?

Pierce: I was manager of programming and production.

TM: Could you tell me where you were November 22, 1963?

Pierce: Early in the morning I was back at the studio, watching the landing, and I was so struck by the natural political mastery of Mr. Kennedy and watching him as he arrived, how he worked the crowds, just had an innate sense to work them. I decided at the last minute to go over during the noon hour and catch the end of the parade. I asked a sales associate there at the station if he wanted to walk over. So, we walked over, ended up standing on the corner, directly opposite the School book depository building, and I'm standing right next to Mr. Brennan, the retired pipefitter or something who ended up giving a lot of testimony to the Warren Commission. It was a pretty good view of everything that happened. One unfortunate, ironic observation I made on the way over, I remember looking at all of the buildings and rooftops and windows, and thinking there's no way the Secret Service, or intelligence, or whoever it is, could cover all these parapets, and all of the openings, and as we neared the corner there, I remember turning over my shoulder to Terry walking with me and saying, 'If anyone were ever going to attempt an assassination, it seems like this would be the likely spot,' glancing up at all the open windows on the depository building and all of the open rooftops.... The only time I was really nervous during the weekend, was during the funeral cortege: very, very nervous, because had there been a conspiracy, that was the one time most of the leadership of the free world had been at one place at one time. And our early warning system was at best 90% efficient. All it would have taken was one airplane. That was...very much on my mind right after the incident. I was quite struck by the persona of Jackie and Jack. Mr. Kennedy had a wave...it wasn't a wave, it was sort of an acknowledgment, the guy looked great, just looked great. And so did Jackie. I don't remember John and Nellie that much. And the first shot, that loud explosion -- it wasn't a sharp, flat crack sound at all, the first shot. It didn't enter my mind at all that it was a shot. I thought, 'Now that was poor taste, this is firecrackers...' Then bam! the second one. And you realized indeed that it was shooting, then the third shot. My memory was so vivid that during the interview with the Secret Service the next day, they asked me to recall the timed sequence, and I came out to six and a half seconds. But on the second shot, I glanced up, my gaze stopped one floor below on the depository building, I saw the three guys looking out of the window, looking up. And I went back to the scene on the street and it was pretty obvious Kennedy had been hit. And, as the car drove off, a uniformed policeman came over and said, 'Everybody down.' On about the second shot, we all got down and of course popped back up as the car sped off. As the car sped off, that's when the Secret Service man from the back had vaulted over and pushed Jackie back in the seat, she was trying to come up, and that's when the body assumed that grotesque position we saw on the way to Parkland. Then I ran across the street, spoke to the Newmans and said, 'Stop!' And why we were running that direction, I couldn't tell you. It was just sort of a flow. I stopped and said, 'Are you ok?' He said, 'Yeah, but they got the president. They blew the side of his head in.' I remember thinking, 'I've got to get to a telephone.' But we continued up the little hill there -- I won't say 'knoll' -- the little hill...

Bill: That's all right.

Pierce Allman: And Bob Jackson from the Times-Herald was running behind me. And why we went up there, I don't know, except there was just sort of a movement up there. And then I turned around, ran back down the hill, ran up the sidewalk, went into the depository building, asked the guy where the phone was, went inside, got on the phone, called the station, and had trouble getting through. By the time I got through, said here's what happened, I was more concerned about the implications of what to say. I was fairly sure that...first of all, he was hit. You can't go on air and say the president's been killed. You don't know that. So you can't do that. And I realized you just can't do this. You can't go on the air and say the leader of the free world has just been cut down, you know, in Dallas, during the noonday parade. So I [don't] remember exactly. I heard the tape later, saying that he was hit. Witnesses reported he was hit, slumped forward, you know, and more later. Put the phone down, ran upstairs, then realized, whoop, need the phone, went back down, actually hung up one time, and then realized what I had done, and called back and said, 'Just leave the line open, strap on a tape.' A little later, they did bring, they brought Oswald...they brought the rifle down. A distinct impression: and that was, while I was on the phone, no one ever challenged me. No one ever said, 'Who are you? Who are you calling?' And no one took charge. See, at the time, what you really had was a local homicide. It wasn't against federal law to kill a president. But no one took charge. Lot of uniforms milling around, a lot of plainclothesmen milling around. No one ever said, 'Stop! Hit the wall!,' you know.... Nobody. So it was just this constant milling around. Finally, sometime later, you got back to the station before I did (nodding towards the Newmans) because it was sometime later when a gray-haired guy in a gray suit said [he wanted] to know who I was and what I was doing. And I identified myself and he suggested I wrap it up. I identified him later as Army intelligence. They said that was inaccurate, he might have been CIA or Secret Service, more likely. And when I tried to leave the building I couldn't because it was cordoned off. So I had to stay inside for a while. And when I went outside, [i saw] clusters of people around transistor radios, and I realized what was happening. And sure enough, by that time, what was it, 98% of the [television] sets in the United States were on. So it was birth, the advent of electronic journalism, for better or for worse.

TM: It sounds like once you saw what you saw, you were in newsman mode.

Pierce: Very much. I was really concerned, he was not pronounced dead until after.... In fact I didn't know he had been pronounced dead until I got back to the station, walked into the door, and I've forgotten who I talked to, Jay Watson, I think it was, was temporary PD [program director] on the TV side, and he said, 'Get into the studio.' I said, 'What's happened? How's the president?' He said, 'He's been declared dead.' I said, 'okay, that doesn't surprise me.' But I could not say that...the other thing that goes through your mind very honestly is, 'okay, you realize the president's been shot. Is that merely, if you'll allow that term, an assassination? Is it a coup? Is it a conspiracy?' And if you go on the air and say the president's been shot, who's listening, and what does that trigger?

TM: Are you thinking of all these things?

Pierce: Yeah, yeah, yes. This is going through [my] mind, the whole time I was writing and looking for a phone, and I'm thinking I need to call in. No. You can't say the president's dead, even though your emotions are saying, your eyes are saying, that it was a bad hit. You can't say that. You don't know it for a fact and the implications of saying that are staggering. So you really have to hold off of that. I don't think the conspiracy thing, it was prevalent in everyone's mind, especially after the, uh, you know, the Oswald incident [when he was killed]. The Secret Service when they came to see us a couple days later, they wanted to talk. They went through the timing, the sequence, where did you go, what did you say, what did you do, and they kept going through that. They wanted to know about hand gestures, the whole thing. And they said, 'Are you familiar with the testimony of Lee Harvey Oswald?' They said, 'He states that as he was leaving the depository building, a young man with a crew cut rushed up, identified himself as a newsman and asked him where the phone was.' And they said, 'Your sequence, your gestures, your...everything you've said corroborates exactly what he has said. Can you give us an identification?' I said, 'No.' And we went through this time after time. I said, 'Guys, this is going to be power of suggestion. All I can remember is White Male, and about this height, and the whole thing, not the dark hair, the gestures, and whatever.' At one time, somebody, I think it was the House Select Committee wanted to see if I would undergo hypnosis. I said, 'Sure, I'd do that.' I was fascinated. Anyway, I said, 'Are you saying that I asked Oswald where the phone was?' And they said, 'Yes,' and they wanted an identification. And I couldn't ID him, even after looking at the pictures, you know, later on.

TM: What do you think when you look back at all this? You're an eyewitness to history, this terrible event. Do you feel like time has given you any greater perspective on what you saw then, today? Or was it just coincidence?

Pierce: I think it was coincidence. But insofar as an event that you remember, an event that no one is ever prepared for, cataclysmic, traumatic in the classic sense of the term, changing a lot of things, very much a milestone for electronic journalism, probably for laws -- at that time, as I say, it was not against a federal law to kill a president -- made people think afresh, I think, about the mortality of the office, the line of succession. I think it brought some profound changes in Dallas. And it was something Dallas did not deal with until the 25th Anniversary and the creation of the Sixth Floor Museum. One of the interesting overriding impressions, one of the vivid memories I had is the guys from the BBC. By the time I got back to the station that night, Germans were there, Japanese, BBC, and you realize how small the world really is, and how fast communications were at that time, and of course, that pales beside now. The BBC asked me to assemble a crew for a special broadcast and I got together some folks, and afterwards, this is after the Oswald thing, they said [assumes Brit voice], 'You know, we were terribly shocked about Mr. Kennedy, but we weren't at all surprised you did away with Oswald.' I said, 'Beg your pardon?' They said, 'Oh, no no. We never expected him to come to trial.' I said, 'Why?' They said, 'You Texans are a violent lot. You carry guns, you don't discuss, you go shoot it out. We see it all the time on the telly at home. Wyatt Earp. Bat Masterson.' And I thought, wow, what represents us overseas, what is the image? After you travel for a while, I think even today, there is an association. There's no association with Tennessee and with Newman Luther King, or L.A. and Bobby Kennedy, but Dallas and JFK, I think, are inextricably intertwined forever, for eternity. And why it has bred the industry that it has is not totally beyond thinking since political assassinations seem to fascinate everyone. I'm rather convinced that Oswald did act alone. I think physically it can be done. The adrenaline is flowing, the motivation, I don't think we'll ever know. Unfortunately it may have died with Oswald.

6) Undated:

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/White%20Materials/White%20Assassination%20Clippings%20Folders/Chronology/Chron%20003.pdf

Transcript here, page 2:

BBC tape - The Day the President Died

Pierce Allman, a Dallas television executive (WFAA?) "strolled over to the curb on Elm Street which is just at the intersection of Elm and Houston, right across from the Texas School Book Depository."

On tape at 250': Pierce Allman, who was standing outside the Texas School Book Depository recalls a few hours later those few dramatic seconds.

"Then came this big, shiny Lincoln car with the resident and Mrs. Kennedy and I remarked again how different I thought she looked than the photographs which I had seen of her - I had never seen her in person. She was wearing a lovely pink suit. Well, she was on the left hand side of the car, the President was on the right. He was having trouble keeping his hair out of his eyes because of the breeze, travelling slowly, I'd say about 12 to 15 miles an hour, (this.is difficult to judge), and they turned the corner and as they came by me I broke into applause.

"And just after they went by me there was a big loud BOOM. It was a reverberating explosion. It was not a sharp, flat crack that one normally associates with a rifle and this is why it didn't even enter my mind at the time that it could be a shot. It was just a BOOM, a big, dull sounding explosion, rather like a shotgun fired in a concrete chamber that reverberates: No one sprang into action, there were mixed reactions, everyone was sort of looking around like I was, and then another very deliberate BOOM! And I looked and the President had slumped•- I thought at the time he was ducking - but now I know of course that he was slumping. He had slumped forward, his left arm was thrown up, Mrs. Kennedy's left hand was on his left arm. The Governor and Mrs. Connally were in the jump seats, the little seats behind the front seat, and the Governor was half-turned and it was the second shot that got him. The President - then there was another dull, one of these booms. These were deliberately spaced things, there was no haste, no panic, no automatic rapidity to them at all, just a Boom. Boom - BOOM!

A very dramatic thing, I can't forget, it at all, I keep hearing the shots. And on the third one the President then - instead of slumping forward it looked like he was, he - he jerked back or was thrown back a little bit. And Mrs. Kennedy then was halfway out of the seat and a Secret Service man - I presume he was - a Secret Service man was then over Mrs. Kennedy. And the car had stopped only momentarily and then immediately sped away at top speed. "And there was a couple on the other side of the street who were on the ground, and immediately after this happened a policeman came towards me, drawing his gun. It was after the third shot that everything erupted, and guns appeared from all directions but they were afraid to fire, naturally, because of the crowd and they didn't know where to fire, quite frankly. And a policeman threw me to the ground, said, 'Hit the dirt', and I got up, immediately, ran across the street because I thought this young couple had been hit, and I said, 'Are you all right?' And he was beating the ground with his fist, saying, 'My God, they shot him! They shot him!'"

Then all the Oswald accusers had to do was drive home the incongruity of a man alone and palely loitering in a lunchroom while everyone else was either outside or looking outside.

O WHAT can ail thee, patsy-without-arms,

Alone and palely loitering?

If you go through the whole timeline, you will see there are various contradictions, along with bits of testimony that are suspicious.

This all goes back to the original intent of this timeline. From the inception, it was never intended to be a theory or a comprehensive explanation on my part. I did not exclude certain witness testimony just because I myself did not believe it.

The intent was to organize witness testimony (including testimony that I do not believe) around certain events that I considered to be significant regarding the events that unfolded in the TSBD just before and just after the assassination. There was some interpretation on my part, especially in assigning times or time ranges to events, but I do have a reasonable argument for assigning every one of those time ranges. I remain open to new information and suggestions.

I have gathered new information since this timeline was first presented. Prayer man is a perfect example, but there are other events and testimony that need to be added.

And I am in the process of updating.

It is important to remember when looking at this timeline that its value lies in being a guide or a frame of reference. So when I do finish the update, it is still going to contain contradictions and some testimony I consider to be suspect.

It is up to the user put the pieces together when trying to interpret what actually happened.

A brief note of appreciation, Richard, for all your work in this thread. It's been exemplary. Thanks for it, and keep it coming.

Paul

ANT-WAR MOVEMENT

Part 1

by Sherman H. Skolnick 3/17/04

http://www.skolnicksreport.org/awm1.html

Short preface 3/17/2004.

After this preface there is re-typed, VERBATIM, my original investigation report of 1972. Since there is currently supposed Anti-Iraq War Movements, it is instructive to study prior such movements. Why? To determine, by example, if the leadership and direction they are taking secretly serves the purposes of the Aristoc racy. To do what? To aid the ultra-rich wind-down, if not extricate themselves, from a disastrous, bloody war policy by which they may finally be exposed as ruling WITHOUT OUR CONSENT, contrary to the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

As the Founder/Chairman of our investigation group, devoted to the public interest, I tried my best to alert the public to the fakers selected and installed by funding and orders of the American CIA, as the supposed "leaders" of the An ti-Viet Nam War activists, called by some, "The Peace Movement". They were clearly fake then. Are there such NOW?

View our website story, www.cloakanddgger.ca The Overthrow of the American Republic", Part 50, 3/16/2004, as to the efforts in the past to block us, threaten us falsely with arrest, and actually arrest me as the head of our group, for our efforts to confront CIA "peace movement" fakers, "The Chicago 7", Rennie Davis, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, and others.

After I beat state criminal charges of trespass, in confronting Rennie Davis during a live, not taped, television program, in 1972, to explain the specific CIA funding of him and his gang; I issued our report, 1972, on the suppose d "Peace Movement". I had beat the criminal charges by subpoenaing, as part of my defense, the CIA Station Chief in CHICAGO. By their charter, the CIA IS NOT SUPPOSED TO ENGAGE IN DOMESTIC OPERATIONS.

Afterwards, about 1973, in the presence of a tv reporter, I interviewed the CIA Station Chief in Chicago, outside his unmarked door in the Federal Building in Chicago.

Sherman H. Skolnick: "You are the CIA's Station Chief in Chicago, right?"

CIA Station Chief in Chicago: "Curious that you know that."

Skolnick: "Simple. The Wall Street Journal has your name on it, laying on this table in front of your receptionist's bullet-proof window, outside your unmarked door, here on the fifth floor of this Federal Building. I also noticed the red security bulb, mounted above your door, supposed to blink at the same time of triggering a silent alarm of the security patrol, if someone messes with your door. The bulb and such was installed by the CIA."

CIA Station Chief: "Well, we are limited to interviewing businessmen returning from the Soviet."

Skolnick: "I am handing you, in the presence of this tv reporter, a copy of our report about the 'Chicago 7', Rennie Davis, and the CIA, entitled 'Chicago 7' Are They For Real' ".original CIA Station Chief: "We have already examined a copy."

Skolnick: "Now is your chance to call me a xxxx or fault me. Is our report accurate?"

CIA Station Chief: "Yes, I do not challenge it."

What follows is a re-typing of our original 1972 report VERBATIM as then issued and circulated. Because of the length, it will be posted this way in parts.

"CHICAGO 7" Are They For Real?

by Sherman H. Skolnick, chairman, Citizen's Committee to Clean Up the Courts

Throughout history, governments seeking to perpetuate injustice, yet being foresighted enought to channel and contain dissent against their corrupt, repressive policies, use groups of people called "The King's Men". Such people get mon ey, power, and benefits from "The King" but he denies knowing them since they pretend to oppose him. At the present when the terms "radical" and "revolutionary" are bandied around, it is important to know who some of the alleged "radical revolutionaries " are, and to consider that some of the "Chicago 7" are "The King's Men".

Historically, it should be noted that the overthrow of the Russian Czar and the Russian Church establishment were delayed some 15 years by the premature activities of anti-czarist groups too weak to accomplish their goal, and duped and led on by Czarist agents posing as "revolutionaries". The anti-czarists were thus fooled into eating green bananas. Analysis only of well-polished rhetoric alone cannot help unmask a faker. Hard facts, compiled and analyzed point more quickly to p ut-ups playing the role of revolutionaries. Applied here will be the reasonable criteria of money, power, and benefits.

The "Chicago 7" consists of Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, David Dellinger, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner, John Froines, and Abbie Hoffman. [Previously called the "Chicago 8", to include Bobby Seale, not believed part of the put-up.] Also called the "Conspiracy" or the "Conspiracy 7".

With little if any publicity, Rennie Davis and four others who later became part of the "7", nailed down the Anti-Riot Law as constitutional by a law suit brought by them in October, 1968, and ending up May, 1969, in the Chicago -based U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit.

[Nat'l Mobilization, Rennie Davis, et al., vs. Foran, No. 17274, U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit. Clerk's office of which is 27th floor, Federal Building, 219 So. Dearborn, Chicago].

During the course of this almost secret suit, Rennie's side laid down and played dead in court. For example, according to court records, Rennie's side gave up a challenge to the part of the law dealing with police. Yet, in the street a nd on lecture platforms, Rennie is quick to mouth off "Off the Pigs!" Not so in court. The suit was brought and accepted as a class action, on behalf of all persons similarly situated who cross state lines and dissent against the government, thus bindin g upon potentially millions of people, none of whom were in court in the suit or even knew of the existence of the suit.

Known only to a handful, and unknown to the public, by the time the "Conspiracy" trial started, September, 1969, the Anti-Riot Law, thanks to Rennie, Tom Hayden, et al., had been made constitutional. During the summer of 1969, Rennie, et al., abandoned an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Thus, actually there were two "trials". (1) The unpublicized test case of the Anti-Riot Law, Oct., 1968 through May, 1969, and (2) the much publicized "Conspiracy" trial, Sept., 1969, through Februa ry, 1970. The public thinks the Anti-Riot Law is being challenged in the "Conspiracy" case. Not so. Under American Jurisprudence, a test of the law cannot be made twice in the same judicial circuit under the same or similar circumstances. The earlier al most secret case is legally binding, unless there is a showing the ruling was procured by fraud or collusion. Knowledgeable researchers of law suits where collusion is suspected, call such rulings "tombstone" cases, or R.I.P. case! s (Rest in Peace).

When Skolnick confronted Rennie and the others of the "7" in the hallway during recesses in the "Conspiracy" trial, one by one the "7" sought to wash their hands of the almost secret prior suit. Jerry Rubin, one of history's most skilled actors [his uncle Sid was in vaudeville: Look Magazine, 10/7/69,' p.20], pretended he did not know what Skolnick was talking about. Dellinger said he never heard of the earlier case; yet, he was a party-plaintiff, according to the court records. Abbie Hoffman made obscene jokes about it. A spokesman for Rennie informed Skolnick that Rennie had nothing to do with the case. Hardly a word of this ever saw print or got on air, yet 5 of the "7" were plaintiffs in the almost secret earlier case.

For some 14 months, starting September, 1969, to November, 1970, there was, with a few isolated exceptions, an almost total news black-out by the Establishment Press, and even, wonder of wonders, by most of the so-called "underground" papers, who spend the bulk of their column space on drugs and pornography, with little anti-establishment news. [it should be noted that the Czars had their "underground", czarist-owned newspapers also, with many with names when translated are the same as names of some familiar "underground" papers. Presently, some 60% of the "underground" papers have been quietly bought out by the Kinney Corp., on whose board sit several C.I.A. people].

With considerable labor, time, and energy, from January, 1968 (before Convention Week) to date, staff membes of the Citizen's Committee to Clean Up the Courts (called the Committee), as part of an on-going inquiry into court collusion, have unearthed mountains of factual data, tending to show the "7" case was a real conspiracy. The Committee believes, based on this data, that during the much-publicized "7" trial, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Jerry Rubin, and Abbie Hoffman, should have been more properly sitting at the Government prosecutor's table in the courtroom. Since the Committee does not have much, if any, inside information, we can never know for sure whether we are right. Only a confession or admission by any of the "7" could be more certain - such as the recent confessions of two West Coast agent-provocateur, Louis Tackwood and Eustacio Martinez, that they were posing as "radical revolutionaries".

1. Background and finances of the "Chicago 7". Unknown to the public, Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, and the others who became the "7", and persons connected with them in the National Mobilization to End the War in Viet Nam, were funded by federal money, channelled to them through pass-through organizations connected with the government. $192,000 in federal money and $85,000 from the Carnegie Foundation, acting as a conduit for the Central Intelligence Agency, were funnelled to Hayden, Davis, et al., through a front calling itself the Chicago Student Health Organization. To maintain the deep "cover" of this latter group, stories were planted in the press describing the group as being "communist" inspired or directed.

Another $193,313 was funnelled to the "7" from the federal Office of Economic Opportunity by way of or through subsidiaries of the Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, D.C., an alleged "liberal" think tank posing as a left-wing group, but acting as a conduit for the C.I.A. Other substantial funds came from the Roger Baldwin Foundation which has, nationwide, taken over the structure of the American Civil Liberties Union. The A.C.L.U., such as it was prior to 1967, no longer exists. The Roger Baldwin Foundation is funded by several pass-throughs, or conduits, for the C.I.A., among others being:

J.M. Kaplan Fund, Inc. [of New York]; New World Foundation; Aaron E. Norman Fund, Inc.

This is shown by a detailed analysis of I.R.S. form 990-A, filed by these foundations [one of the few public record tax returns]. Several persons acting for the C.I.A. sit on the Board of Overseers of the Roger Baldwin Foundation : Jacob M. Kaplan and John L. Saltonstall, among others.

As to Jacob M. Kaplan, see: New York Times Index, "U.S. Intelligence Agency", 1967. Several members of the Saltonstall family are involved with the C.I.A.: Senator Leverett Saltonstall (R., Mass.), sits with a very small number of people on the Senate C.I.A. sub-committee. Senator Saltonstall received warm praise in a rare public speech by the director of the C.I.A. Another Saltonstall family member posed as a "radical revolutionary" during 1968 Democratic Convention Week, although in fact a counter-insurgent. Saltonstall's brother is a high-ranking C.I.A. official; see, "The Espionage Establishment" by David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, 1967, Random House, pp. 160-161; also pp. 148n; 171, 173, 173n.

To assist those who later became known as the "7", the Roger Baldwin Foundation in Chicago operated a Democratic Convention Week Project. In a suit now pending in the U.S. District Court in Chicago, the defense of one of the defendants is funded by the Roger Baldwin Foundation. That defendant refused to answer questions about the pass-through funds channelled from the C.I.A. to the Roger Baldwin Foundation. See: Skolnick vs. 113th Military Intelligence Group, et al., No. 71 C 91, U.S. Dist. Court, N.D. Ill., E.D. [Defendant John M. O'Brien, while purportedly a military intelligence spy, is believed to be a double-agent for the C.I.A.]

2. Tom Hayden is one of the more quiet members of the "7". He is a brilliant counter-insurgent posing as a "radical revolutionary", operating under the deep "cover" and installed by the Kennedys in the early 1960s. Hayden has one of the highest security clearances in the U.S. He risked blowing his deep "cover" when he sat with highest government officials on the Senator Robert F. Kennedy funeral train. (See: Logistics of the Funeral" by Anthony Howard, Esquire Magazine, Nov., 1968, p.120.)

Both Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis nailed down their deep "cover" by taking up residence in depressed areas, and proceeding to agitate the community. Started in Newark, New Jersey, in the summer of 1964, Hayden's activities resulted, in part, in the disorders a few years later in Newark. All the while, oddly enough, Hayden had almost absolute police immunity.

Hayden in the spring of 1972 has taken up residence in San Diego, in preparation for the G.O.P. convention there. While others find it hard to get teaching positions, or are run out of their jobs for their politics (such as Angela Davis), Hayden suddenly gets two teaching positions convenient to his San Diego activities: one at Immaculate Heart College, and the other, at University of California, at Los Angeles.

3. Rennard C. Davis, "Rennie" Davis. Rennie's image as a "radical revolutionary" was firmly planted by his publicist and strategist, Don Rose, of 1340 East Madison Park, in Chicago's Hyde Park area. Not too long ago, Rose was an executive of the ultra-right wing, quasi-government organization, Public Administration Service, 1313 East 60th St., Chicago. P A S is connected with, and does work for, the U.S. War Department, Mutual Security Agency, and a C.I.A. subsidiary, the Agency for International Development. Among other things, P A S does work in putting together police training information. The funding for Don Rose's work comes, in part, from the C.I.A. pass-through, the Taconic Foundation of New York. Rose is al so the publicist for an umbrella group of so-called Civil Rights organizations, called the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice, NCCIJ, 1307 So. Wabash, Chicago. The recent head of that group, and the previous head! , were directly connected with, or officers or directors of urban-affairs type foundations and groups funded by the C.I.A. (See: Ramparts Magazine, June, 1969, p.17; Chicago Defender, 9/10/70, front page.)

One of the government functions of NCCIJ is to act as an early warning system regarding the black community and any bad reactions to injustices. NCCIJ compiles information on various civil rights groups and feeds that data to various federal agencies that need to be informed of possible rebellion in the black community. The Roger Baldwin Foundation's Ghetto Project in Chicago fulfils a similar purpose.

This is end of Part One of this report, as originally made and circulated in 1972. The items in parentheses and brackets are in the original. To be continued.

3/17/2004. A few notes as updates.

In the Chicago U.S. District Court, in my anti-spying case against the 113th Military Intelligence Group, I had a winning verdict. At the time countering cases like mine in the Justice Department was William Rehnquist. Soon after my winning verdict, Rehnquist was then appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court where he heard and ruled on a case like mine, destroying my winning verdict. REHNQUIST IS AN UNETHICAL SCOUNDREL. HE DID NOT DISQUALIFY HIMSELF DESPITE HIS PRIOR JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ROLE AS TO SUCH ANTI-SPY CASES LIKE MINE.

Prior to becoming First Lady in the Clinton Administration, Hillary Rodham Clinton was a Director of the CIA-funded New World Foundation. Hillary and Bill are a marriage of convenience, two incompatible sorts hooked together, as a follow up of their separate roles with the American C.I.A.

The Nation Magazine gets part of their funding from the mentioned CIA Foundations, like the J.M. Kaplan Fund of New York. Once in a while the magazine will run a heavily censored, watered down story, harmless in the extreme, about a purported overseas C.I.A. operation. They never seem to want to mention, however, dirty, bloody DOMESTIC U.S. operations of C.I.A. which do occur in violation of the spy agency's charter.

To track police chief Jesse Curry's evolving statements to reporters over the Friday and the Saturday about the first post-assassination sighting of Oswald is to track the evolution of the story itself.

The history of the cover-up is, at one level, a series of sustained and inter-connected assaults upon certain key chains of causality. Fraudulent chronologies – filmic, text-narrative, and the tabular - are, like denied or de-contextualised attributions, weapons to be wielded in the war against popular comprehension of what really happened and when.

Why transcript 1327C is a Fraud, post #5, 24 October 2007

Terrific work, Sean, for which many thanks.

As for Prayer Man's behaviour being no different from that of others near his location, that is true, at least up to a point. But it stops being true up to any point the instant he quits the spot in urgent quest of a coke.

For all we know, Sean, some or all of the others in the Geneva Hines group

also got cokes.

Can you prove they did not?

For all we know, Ray, some or all of the others in the Geneva Hine group

went upstairs

to have furtive group sex

in the second-floor toilets.

Can you prove they did not?

"Do not block the way of orgy,"

Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, Vol 1, para 135

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce

http://emuseum.jfk.org/view/objects/asitem/items@:32262

From the Sixth Floor Museum's website (source page linked above).....

Gary Mack said....

"On the way home with the film, Nix and his son realized that, since they had seen the new issue of LIFE magazine with Zapruder film frames of the assassination, their film might also be valuable. Somehow, Burt Reinhardt of United Press International Television News learned about Nix while in Dallas looking for films and made him an offer. LIFE magazine found Nix, too, and made a similar offer. Within a few days, Nix and his son traveled to New York where Reinhardt prevailed.

Burt Reinhardt bought the Nix film for UPITN. Over the years, UPITN licensed the film for a few documentaries and television broadcasts. At the time of purchase, Orville Nix asked Reinhardt if someday the family could have the film back in, perhaps, 25 years or so. Reinhardt said OK and they shook hands.

In 1991, Gayle Nix Jackson, the daughter of Orville Nix Jr. who had heard the story from her father, sought to do just that. Reinhardt had left UPITN long before and became one of the founders of the Cable News Network (CNN).

Gayle contacted the successor company to UPITN, Worldwide Television News (WTN), and they were intrigued enough to contact Reinhardt, who promptly confirmed the 1963 oral agreement. WTN ultimately returned all copies of the Nix film they could find to Gayle except for the 8mm original, which could not be located. Gayle provided documentation from the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations showing the original 8mm film, which had been borrowed during their investigation, was returned to UPITN and a signed receipt was included. Nevertheless, WTN never found the original film."

Good Lord, what an amazing coincidence - UPI Newsfilm managed to lose, or claimed to have lost, the original of the film attributed to Mary Muchmore.

To commemorate its fiftieth anniversary, the Columbia Journalism Review exhumed from its archives Maurice W. Schonfeld’s

The Shadow of a Gunman: An account of a twelve-year investigation of a Kennedy assassination film

The author, managing editor of UPI Newsfilm, the film service of United Press International, at the time President Kennedy was killed, had added a second Epilogue, dated 22 November 2011, to a piece originally published in the Review’s combined July-August 1975 issue. The update’s penultimate paragraph, containing a fascinating tit-bit which I’ve highlighted, ran as follows:

Originally, UPI Newsfilm had blown the Muchmore film up to 16mm, slow-moed it, stop-motioned it and delivered prints with scripts to all its clients. The original was turned over to the UPI still picture service, which sent frames from it to its clients. It later cut into the film to print other stills for inclusion in its best-selling book on the day of the assassination. The film was never fully restored.

This was compelling and, seemingly, due to the source, definitive: The original Muchmore had ceased to exist as a film no later than late-December 1963, and for many years after that, with the publication of the joint UPI-American Heritage Magazine commemorative work, Four Days: The Historical Record of the Death of President Kennedy, a work, it should be noted, of quite astonishing tedium.

It was also quite surprising, as according to the FBI in February 1964, based on conversations the previous day with senior people in UPI rather well-placed to know, the original was still intact, and residing happily in a New York bank vault - a full two months after being cut up.

Sometimes I really don’t know which is the more remarkable – those slippery media types, or the strange assassination films which passed through their hands.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=12216&p=253798

From the thread, Was Muchmore’s film shown on WNEW-TV, New York, on November 26, 1963?, post#245 (29 May 2012)

Thank heavens the explanation was such transparent nonsense.

If Oswald is indeed Prayer Man, and if things went down as I have been suggesting in this thread, then the injustice infllcted upon him by the 'investigating' authorities, with collusion from his bosses, was even more monstrous than we had imagined.

**

The first on-the-record reference to a second-floor lunchroom incident (as opposed to an uneventful pre-assassination visit up to the lunchroom to buy a coke by Oswald) does not come until the evening or night of November 22^nd, when Roy Truly is interviewed by the F.B.I.

The interview takes place at some point after – and as a result of - Oswald’s first interrogation, which concluded around 4:15 p.m.

We know this because Truly is asked in this interview to answer a disturbing allegation which Oswald has made:

Mr. TRULY advised that it is possible OSWALD did see him with a rifle in his hands within the past few days, as a Mr. WARREN CASTER, employed by Southwesterrn Publishing Co., which company has an office in the same building, had come to his office with two rifles, one a .22 rifle which CASTER said he had purchased for his son and the other a larger more high powered rifle which CASTER said he had purchased with which to go deer hunting, if he got a chance. Mr. TRULY examined the high powered rifle and raised it to his shoulder and sited [sic.] over it, then returned it to CASTER, and CASTER left with both rifles.

Mr. TRULY stated he does not own a rifle and has had no other rifle in his hands or in his possession in a long period of time.

Truly’s explanation was investigated and found to check out. But the rifle incident was not the only occasion for his name to come up in Oswald’s interrogation. Oswald had also evidently mentioned an incident involving Truly and a police officer.

Here is Truly’s response to that claim:

[…] He […] noticed a Dallas City Police officer wearing a motorcycle helmet and boots running toward the entrance of the depository building and he accompanied the officer into the front of the building. They saw no one there and he accompanied the officer immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building, where the officer noticed a door and stepped through the door, gun in hand, and observed OSWALD in a snack bar there, apparently alone. This snack bar has no windows or doors, facing the outside of the building, but is located almost in the center of the building. The officer pointed to OSWALD and asked if OSWALD was an employee of the company and he, TRULY, assured the officer that OSWALD was an employee. He and the officer then proceeded onto the roof of the building [...]

As far as I have been able to ascertain, the above text constitutes the very earliest reference anywhere to a second-floor lunchroom incident.

As we have already seen, it contains five words which, however seemingly innocuous, may well be of explosive significance:

…he accompanied the officer into the front of the building. They saw no one there and he accompanied the officer immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building…

“They saw no one there”… The fact that Truly is even pointing out this gratuitous fact can only indicate one thing: that he has been confronted with Oswald’s claim that it was precisely “there”, inside the front of the building on the first floor, that the officer and Truly met him. Truly’s disclaimer draws ironic attention to what it is disclaiming.

Whether Truly fed the F.B.I. the second-floor lunchroom version of events, or whether it was the F.B.I. who helped him get it straight, the upshot is the same: the lunchroom story appears to be a fabrication, a fiction designed for the sole purpose of eliminating Oswald’s all too real alibi for the President’s murder.

Great work, Sean, for which many thanks. Keep going.

It's worth recalling that there were two powerful additional incentives for the FBI to embark upon hasty revisions - the objective of which was simply to banish Oswald from the doorway of the TSBD almost irrespective of the problems this initial change brought with it - during the late afternoon of November 22:

1) the Parkland doctors' press conference on Kennedy, which insisted upon a shot (or shots) from the front;

2) and Altgens 6 (specifically, the identity of doorway man).

The second consideration above does not require the reader to accept the identification of the patsy as doorway man; merely, rather, to have the honesty to acknowledge what is plainly true from the FBI's own internal documentation - the question was, at that juncture, unresolved, at least to the Bureau's satisfaction.

The cover-up is, after all, a process, not an event, with many errors, early inadequacies, and/or improvisations, many of them subsequently abandoned.

Paul

http://www.globalresearch.ca/jfk-assassination-marked-the-end-of-the-american-republic/5346419

In general, democracy and intelligence services are antagonists; democracy depends on transparency and intelligence services on the opposite. So the democratic / congressional / governmental oversight is always a quite rotten compromise. The CIA’s camouflage from the beginning was that it is a service to gather intelligence – and centralize the intelligence gathering of the different other services – to keep the president informed. The main job of the CIA were and are covert operations, and because such operations depend on “plausible deniability,” it was usual from the beginning to inform the president – if at all – only minimally. Since the CIA’s “father” Allen Dulles was a Wall Street lawyer and his brother John Foster ran the foreign policy, covert operations were a family business done by the Dulles-Brothers and their clients on Wall Street. This is what JFK tried to finish and what marked him to death.

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/08/jfk-anniversary-what-if-kennedy-had-lived

James G. Blight & Janet M. Lang

While it was nice to see the cover of Dick’s noirish mystery – And When She Was Bad She Was Murdered (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1950), one of three he dashed off in the period to pay the bills – much the most apposite of his books in this context is his classic 1967 assault on the CIA and liberal illusion, Requiem In Utopia (NY: Trident Press). It’s one of the outstanding spy novels of the decade and I commend it to all.

Walter Pforzheimer, the Agency’s Historical Curator, in a memo lamenting the publication of Richard Starnes’ Requiem in Utopia, July 1967:

http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/5829/CIA-RDP80B01676R001600030024-8.pdf

Or here for many additional reviews of books of interest to Langley in the same year:

http://www.foia.cia.gov/search-results?search_api_views_fulltext=&field_collection=&page=23619

The Kennedy assassination cover-ups were & remain small beer to the Anglo-American elite. To gain a better perspective on the scale of their crimes, see Docherty & Macgregor's Hidden HIstory: The Secret Origins of the First World War (Mainstream, 2013) & Guido Preparata's Conjuring Hitler.

Guns Review

Official Journal of the The British Sporting Rifle Club

Vol 4 No 2 (February 1964), 65-66

Details and Doubts about the Assassination Gun

By Lieut.-Colonel A. Barker

Many of the details attendant on the tragic demise of John F. Kennedy have been obscured by the shock with which the world received the news that the President of the United States could be assassinated in his own country, in this day and age. Of those facts which have been revealed, it is difficult to reconcile the technicalities associated with shooting at a moving target, surrounded by security guards trained to react at the first sign of any hostile action against their ward, with an old hand-operated carbine fitted with a cheap telescopic sight.

On the basis of the information revealed in the Press, the following essay is an attempt to highlight some of the considerations which may be considered irreconcilable by those who know something of the world of small arms.

The first thing an assassin has to decide is whether he wishes to escape the consequences of his crime. If he does, then this excludes any method of closing on his victim and using a short range weapon. Stabbing, or shooting in the stomach with a pistol is out, since this means capture. Execution from a distance entails much more careful consideration. A warehouse is ideal since an upper storey window will provide a clear field of fire over the heads of the crowd.

Choosing the weapon

The next problem is the choice of weapon. The specification for this is that it should be capable of delivering a number of aimed shots quickly and accurately, and that the bullets themselves should be lethal. This suggests some form of automatic or semi-automatic weapon, which is known to have a high stopping power. It is possible to kill with a .22 weapon, or even an air gun, but such a killing is dependent on striking a vital organ and to ensure success a larger calibre weapon which will deliver a heavy, smashing projectile will be necessary. Whether it is preferable to deliver a large number of projectiles with lesser accuracy rather than one or two carefully aimed shots hinges on the problem of surprise, and the feasibility of concealing the firing point. If the guards react as quickly as they might be expected to react, the location of an automatic weapon will be determined very quickly, whereas the first report of rifle shot may not even cause a head to turn.

If, as result of this argument, it is decided to use a few, well-aimed highly lethal rounds, what is needed is a high-powered self-loading rifle. And, if the weapon is fitted with a telescopic sight, the system must be carefully zeroed at the anticipated range and thereafter preserved, almost in cotton wool in its fully assembled state, until the fateful hour. (Ideally the zeroing will be done as close to this time as possible.)

Having selected his weapon and found a suitable firing point, the next considerations are of the target. For the occasion, the victim is travelling in an open car across the assassin’s front at an approximate speed of 20 m.p.h. The minimum ground range is estimated to be not more than 100 yards. In ten seconds, if the speed of the car remains constant, it will have travelled another 100 yards; this will mean a slight increase in range, but of more importance for another shot there will have been a rather large change in the lateral angle.

In 30 seconds the car – still travelling at 20 m.p.h. – will have covered almost 300 yards; the range will have more than trebled and the aspect of the target will have changed considerably. There will be a lesser vulnerable area at which to shoot, and for the next shot a sighting correction must also be applied. Consideration might even have to be given to a change in the firing point.

£7 10s. carbine

Economic reasons may well decide the type of gun which our assassin is able to procure; its size may be influenced by the need for concealment. Unfortunately the requirements of an accurate and reliable weapon are at variance with both of these facts. Well-made and reliable guns are never cheap, accurate guns tend to have long barrels and are not easily disassembled. Good telescopic sights add to the cost, as does a semi-automatic mechanism. In the event, an ex-Italian army carbine, of a design perfected in 1891, which had been fitted with a cheap 4x telescopic sight was selected. Its cost ($19.95) was less than £7 10s.

Now, carbines are not the most suitable weapon for the requirements that have been discussed. Developed originally as a lighter version of the rifle, shorter and more handy, for use by mounted troops, such a weapon has most of the disadvantages of that from which it has been cut down; together with a few others. It uses the same ammunition as its big-brother rifle which, fired through a shorter barrel, produces greater flash and heavier recoil. Not that these effects are relevant to our problems of assassination; it is just that the adoption of modern self-loading rifles by the Services of most European countries has made such weapons virtually obsolete – hence presumably the disposal of the Mannlicher-Carcano with which the President’s assassin was able to equip himself.

Three shots apparently struck the car in which the President was travelling; the time taken to fire these shots is variously reported as 5.5 seconds, 8 seconds and 15 seconds. Even allowing for the fact that the Mannlicher bolt action is reasonably quick and easy to work, the added telescopic attachment undoubtedly would tend to hinder its quick manipulation when the gun was reloaded. Much play has been made of the assassin’s marksmanship capabilities and there is no doubt that it is possible for an expert to fire three rounds in 5.5 seconds with such a weapon. To do so demands constant and recent practice however, and it seems doubtful whether the man Oswald had any opportunity to keep his marksmanship up to scratch since he left the U.S. forces. It seems that there had been no such opportunity during his sojourn in Russia, since lack of shooting facilities was one of the things he complained about.

Remarkable accuracy

Nor was the President an easy target. The problems associated with a moving target and a depressed line of fire have already been mentioned (dependent on how long it took for the occupants of the car to realise what was happening and for the driver to accelerate out of range), together with the state of the gun and Oswald’s skill...so the accuracy of the shots seems remarkable.

The fatal shot was said to have been a 6.5 mm. round, which ballistic tests showed to have been fired from the Mannlicher-Carcano found in the Dallas warehouse. The carbine was easily traced to Oswald’s ownership and his fingerprints were on it. After his capture Oswald’s hands were subjected to a liquid paraffin test to determine whether he had filed a rifle, but as he had fired a pistol and killed a policeman immediately prior to his capture the validity of this test seems to be somewhat dubious.

Finally there is the question of the missing “charger” – the clip which holds the six rounds which are the magazine capacity of the weapon. In loading the gun the charger is discarded and might be expected to have been found near the firing position, or on Oswald’s person. It was never found. And if the carbine was loaded at the time of the shooting without a charger there can be no question of his being able to discharge three shots in even 15 seconds.

Like so many other enigmas, so much depends on the factor of time. But let us return briefly to the assassination planning. If one way to really make certain of an assassination is to have more than one shot, then surely it might be preferable to have more than one man shooting.

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00310

HARRY S. TRUMAN ON CIA COVERT OPERATIONS

Hayden B. Peake

The now defunct Washington Daily News, on 5 January 1964, carried an article by Richard Starnes, "Harry S. Fires Telling Broadside at the CIA," which is typical, though more strident in tone, of the early press reaction:

“The Central Intelligence Agency, a cloudy organism of uncertain purpose and appalling power, promises to have an uncomfortable time of it in the year just begun. Former President Truman, who hatched the coiling, mysterious creature, spoiled the holidays for the busy apologists of the CIA by firing a telling broadside in a copyrighted newspaper article. Mr. Truman is no great shucks as a writer, but there is nothing wrong with his thinking or his facts. He echoed the charge (early made here) that the monstrous spook apparatus had metastasized into policymaking and operational functions, neither of which was intended by the founders of the CIA ... in spite of the outraged howls of denial by the nominal head of the CIA, both charges are quite true.”

http://media.nara.gov/dc-metro/rg-263/6922330/Box-7-89-4/263-a1-27-box-7-89-4.pdf

How to identify CIA limited hangout op?

By Dr. Webster G. Tarpley and Press TV

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/06/18/snowden-cia-shill/

The operations of secret intelligence agencies aiming at the manipulation of public opinion generally involve a combination of cynical deception with the pathetic gullibility of the targeted populations.

There is ample reason to believe that the case of Edward Joseph Snowden fits into this pattern. We are likely dealing here with a limited hangout operation, in which carefully selected and falsified documents and other materials are deliberately revealed by an insider who pretends to be a fugitive rebelling against the excesses of some oppressive or dangerous government agency.

But the revelations turn out to have been prepared with a view to shaping the public consciousness in a way which is advantageous to the intelligence agency involved. At the same time, gullible young people can be duped into supporting a personality cult of the leaker, more commonly referred to as a “whistleblower.” A further variation on the theme can be the attempt of the sponsoring intelligence agency to introduce their chosen conduit, now posing as a defector, into the intelligence apparatus of a targeted foreign government. In this case, the leaker or whistleblower attains the status of a triple agent.

Any attempt to educate public opinion about the dynamics of limited hangout operations inevitably collides with the residue left in the minds of millions by recent successful examples of this technique. It will be hard for many to understand Snowden, precisely because they will insist on seeing him as the latest courageous example in a line of development which includes Daniel Ellsberg and Julian Assange, both still viewed by large swaths of naïve opinion as authentic challengers of oppressive government.

This is because the landmark limited hangout operation at the beginning of the current post-Cold War era was that of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon papers, which laid the groundwork for the CIA’s Watergate attack on the Nixon administration, and more broadly, on the office of the presidency itself. More recently, we have had the case of Assange and Wikileaks. Using these two cases primarily, we can develop a simple typology of the limited hangout operation which can be of significant value to those striving to avoid the role of useful idiots amidst the current cascade of whistleblowers and limited hangout artists.

In this analysis, we should also recall that limited hangouts have been around for a very long time. In 1620 Fra Paolo Sarpi, the dominant figure of the Venetian intelligence establishment of his time, advised the Venetian senate that the best way to defeat anti-Venetian propaganda was indirectly. He recommended the method of saying something good about a person or institution while pretending to say something bad. An example might be criticizing a bloody dictator for beating his dog – the real dimensions of his crimes are thus totally underplayed.

Limited hangout artists are instant media darlings

The most obvious characteristic of the limited hangout operative is that he or she immediately becomes the darling of the controlled corporate media. In the case of Daniel Ellsberg, his doctored set of Pentagon papers were published by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and eventually by a consortium totaling seventeen corporate newspapers. These press organs successfully argued the case for publication all the way to the United States Supreme Court, where they prevailed against the Nixon administration.

Needless to say, surviving critics of the Warren Commission, and more recent veterans of the 9/11 truth movement, and know very well that this is emphatically not the treatment reserved for messengers whose revelations are genuinely unwelcome to the Wall Street centered US ruling class. These latter are more likely to be slandered, vilified and dragged through the mud, or, even more likely, passed over in complete silence and blacked out. In extreme cases, they can be kidnapped, renditioned or liquidated.

Cass Sunstein present at the creation of Wikileaks

As for Assange and Wikileaks, the autumn 2010 document dump was farmed out in advance to five of the most prestigious press organs in the world, including the New York Times, the London Guardian, El Pais of Madrid, Der Spiegel of Hamburg, and Le Monde of Paris. This was the Assange media cartel, made up of papers previously specialized in discrediting 9/11 critics and doubters. But even before the document dumps had begun, Wikileaks had received a preemptive endorsement from none other than the notorious totalitarian Cass Sunstein, later an official of the Obama White House, and today married to Samantha Power, the author of the military coup that overthrew Mubarak and currently Obama’s pick for US ambassador to the United Nations. Sunstein is infamous for his thesis that government agencies should conduct covert operations using pseudo-independent agents of influence for the “cognitive infiltration of extremist groups” – meaning of those who reject in the establishment view of history and reality. Sunstein’s article entitled “Brave New WikiWorld” was published in the Washington Post of February 24, 2007, and touted the capabilities of Wikileaks for the destabilization of China. Perhaps the point of Ed Snowden’s presence in Hong Kong is to begin re-targeting these capabilities back towards the original anti-Chinese plan.

Snowden has already become a media celebrity of the first magnitude. His career was launched by the US left liberal Glenn Greenwald, now writing for the London Guardian, which expresses the viewpoints of the left wing of the British intelligence community. Thus, the current scandal is very much Made in England, and may benefit from inputs from the British GCHQ of Cheltenham, the Siamese twin of the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland. During the days of his media debut, it was not uncommon to see a controlled press organ like CNN dedicating one third of every broadcast hour of air time to the birth, life, and miracles of Ed Snowden.

Another suspicious and tell-tale endorsement for Snowden comes from the former State Department public diplomacy asset Norman Solomon. Interviewed on RT, Solomon warmly embraced the Snowden Project and assured his viewers that the NSA material dished up by the Hong Kong defector used reliable and authentic. Solomon was notorious ten years ago as a determined enemy of 9/11 truth, acting as a border guard in favor of the Bush administration/neocon theory of terrorism.

Limited hangouts contain little that is new

Another important feature of the limited hangout operation if that the revelations often contain nothing new, but rather repackage old wine in new bottles. In the case of Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers, very little was revealed which was not already well known to a reader of Le Monde or the dispatches of Agence France Presse. Only those whose understanding of world affairs had been filtered through the Associated Press, CBS News, the New York Times, and the Washington Post found any of Ellsberg’s material a surprise.

Of course, there was method in Ellsberg’s madness. The Pentagon papers allegedly derived from an internal review of the decision-making processes leading to the Vietnam War, conducted after 1967-68 under the supervision of Morton Halperin and Leslie Gelb. Ellsberg, then a young RAND Corporation analyst and militant warmonger, was associated with this work. Upon examination, we find that the Pentagon papers tend to cover up such CIA crimes as the mass murder mandated under Operation Phoenix, and the massive CIA drug running associated with the proprietary airline Air America. Rather, when atrocities are in question, the US Army generally receives the blame. Politicians in general, and President John F. Kennedy in particular, are portrayed in a sinister light – one might say demonized. No insights whatever into the Kennedy assassination are offered. This was a smelly concoction, and it was not altogether excluded that the radicalized elements of the Vietnam era might have carried the day in denouncing the entire package as a rather obvious fabrication. But a clique around Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn loudly intervened to praise the quality of the exposé and to lionize Ellsberg personally as a new culture hero for the Silent Generation. From that moment on, the careers of Chomsky and Zinn soared. Pentagon papers skeptics, like the satirical comedian Mort Sahl, a supporter of the Jim Garrison investigation in New Orleans and a critic of the Warren Commission, faced the marginalization of their careers.

Notice also that the careers of Morton Halperin and Leslie Gelb positively thrived after they entrusted the Pentagon papers to Ellsberg, who revealed them. Ellsberg was put on trial in 1973, but all charges were dismissed after several months because of prosecutorial misconduct. Assange lived like a lord for many months in the palatial country house of an admirer in the East of England, and is now holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He spent about 10 days in jail in December 2010.

Assange first won credibility for Wikileaks with some chum in the form of a shocking film showing a massacre perpetrated by US forces in Iraq with the aid of drones. The massacre itself and the number of victims were already well known, so Assange was adding only the graphic emotional impact of witnessing the atrocity firsthand.

Limited hangouts reveal nothing about big issues like JFK, 9/11

Over the past century, there are certain large-scale covert operations which cast a long historical shadow, determining to some extent the framework in which subsequent events occur. These include the Sarajevo assassinations of 1914, the assassination of Rasputin in late 1916, Mussolini’s 1922 march on Rome, Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933, the assassination of French Foreign Minister Barthou in 1934, the assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, in 1963 Kennedy assassination, and 9/11. A common feature of the limited hangout operations is that they offer almost no insights into these landmark events.

In the Pentagon Papers, the Kennedy assassination is virtually a nonexistent event about which we learn nothing. As already noted, the principal supporters of Ellsberg were figures like Chomsky, whose hostility to JFK and profound disinterest in critiques of the Warren Commission were well-known. As for Assange, he rejects any further clarification of 9/11. In July 2010, Assange told Matthew Bell of the Belfast Telegraph: “I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.” This is on top of Cass Sunstein’s demand for active covert measures to suppress and disrupt inquiries into operations like 9/11. Snowden’s key backers Glenn Greenwald and Norman Solomon have both compiled impressive records of evasion on 9/11 truth, with Greenwald specializing in the blowback theory.

The Damascus road conversions of limited hangout figures

Daniel Ellsberg started his career as a nuclear strategist of the Dr. Strangelove type working for the RAND Corporation. He worked in the Pentagon as an aide to US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. He then went to Vietnam, where he served as a State Department civilian assistant to CIA General Edward Lansdale. In 1967, he was back at RAND to begin the preparation of what would come to be known as the Pentagon papers. Ellsberg has claimed that his Damascus Road conversion from warmonger to peace angel occurred when he heard a speech from a prison-bound draft resister at Haverford College in August 1969. After a mental breakdown, Ellsberg began taking his classified documents to the office of Senator Edward Kennedy and ultimately to the New York Times. Persons who believe this fantastic story may be suffering from terminal gullibility.

In the case of Assange, it is harder to identify such a moment of conversion. Assange spent his childhood in the coils of MK Ultra, a complex of Anglo-American covert operations designed to investigate and implement mind control through the use of psychopharmaca and other means. Assange was a denizen of the Ann Hamilton-Byrne cult, in which little children that were subjected to aversive therapy involving LSD and other heavy-duty drugs. Assange spent his formative years as a wandering nomad with his mother incognito because of her involvement in a custody dispute. The deracinated Assange lived in 50 different towns and attended 37 different schools. By the age of 16, the young nihilist was active as a computer hacker using the screen name “Mendax,” meaning quite simply “The xxxx.” (Assange’s clone Snowden uses the more marketable codename of “Verax,” the truth teller.) Some of Assange’s first targets were Nortel and US Air Force offices in the Pentagon. Assange’s chief mentor became John Young of Cryptome, who in 2007 denounced Wikileaks as a CIA front.

Snowden’s story, as widely reported, goes like this: he dropped out of high school and also dropped out of a community college, but reportedly was nevertheless later able to command a salary of between $120,000 and $200,000 per year; he claims this is because he is a computer wizard. He enlisted in the US Army in May 2004, and allegedly hoped to join the special forces and contribute to the fight for freedom in Iraq. He then worked as a low-level security guard for the National Security Agency, and then went on to computer security at the CIA, including a posting under diplomatic cover in Switzerland. He moved on to work as a private contractor for the NSA at a US military base in Japan. His last official job was for the NSA at the Kunia Regional SIGINT Operations Center in Hawaii. In May 2013, he is alleged to have been granted medical leave from the NSA in Hawaii to get treatment for epilepsy. He fled to Hong Kong, and made his revelations with the help of Greenwald and a documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras. Snowden voted for the nominally anti-war, ultra-austerity “libertarian” presidential candidate Ron Paul, and gave several hundred dollars to Paul’s campaign.

Snowden, like Ellsberg, thus started off as a warmonger but later became more concerned with the excesses of the Leviathan state. Like Assange, he was psychologically predisposed to the world of computers and cybernetics. The Damascus Road shift from militarist to civil libertarian remains unexplained and highly suspicious.

Snowden is also remarkable for the precision of his timing. His first revelations, open secrets though they were, came on June 5, precisely today when the rebel fortress of Qusayr was liberated by the Syrian army and Hezbollah. At this point, the British and French governments were screaming at Obama that it was high time to attack Syria. The appearance of Snowden’s somewhat faded material in the London Guardian was the trigger for a firestorm of criticism against the Obama regime by the feckless US left liberals, who were thus unwittingly greasing the skids for a US slide into a general war in the Middle East. More recently, Snowden came forward with allegations that the US and the British had eavesdropped on participants in the meeting of the G-20 nations held in Britain four years ago. This obviously put Obama on the defensive just as Cameron and Hollande were twisting his arm to start the Syrian adventure. By attacking the British GCHQ at Cheltenham, Britain’s equivalent to the NSA, perhaps Snowden was also seeking to obfuscate the obvious British sponsorship of his revelations.

Stories about Anglo Americans spying on high profile guests are as old as the hills, and have included a British frogman who attempted an underwater investigation of the Soviet cruiser that brought party leader N. S. Khrushchev for a visit in the 1950s. Snowden has also accused the NSA of hacking targets in China — again, surely no surprise to experienced observers, but guaranteed to increase Sino-American tensions. As time passes, Snowden may emerge as more and more of a provocateur between Washington and Beijing.

Limited hangouts prepare large covert operations

Although, as we have seen, limited hangouts rarely illuminate the landmark covert operations which attempt to define an age, limited hangouts themselves do represent the preparation for future covert operations.

In the case of the Pentagon papers, this and other leaks during the Indo-Pakistani Tilt crisis were cited by Henry Kissinger in his demand that President Richard Nixon take countermeasures to restore the integrity of state secrets. Nixon foolishly authorized the creation of a White House anti-leak operation known as the Plumbers. The intelligence community made sure that the Plumbers operation was staffed by their own provocateurs, people who never were loyal to Nixon but rather took their orders from Langley. Here we find the already infamous CIA agent Howard Hunt, the CIA communications expert James McCord, and the FBI operative G. Gordon Liddy. These provocateurs took special pains to get arrested during an otherwise pointless break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the summer of 1972. Nixon could easily have disavowed the Plumbers and thrown this gaggle of agent provocateurs to the wolves, but he instead launched a cover up. Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, equipped with a top secret security clearance from the Office of Naval Intelligence, then began publicizing the story. The rest is history, and the lasting heritage has been a permanent weakening of the office of the presidency and the strengthening of the worst oligarchical tendencies.

Assange’s Wikileaks document dump triggered numerous destabilizations and coups d’état across the globe. Not one US, British, or Israeli covert operation or politician was seriously damaged by this material. The list of those impacted instead bears a striking resemblance to the CIA enemies’ list: the largest group of targets were Arab leaders slated for immediate ouster in the wave of “Arab Spring.” Here we find Ben Ali of Tunisia, Qaddafi of Libya, Mubarak of Egypt, Saleh of Yemen, and Assad of Syria. The US wanted to replace Maliki with Allawi as prime minister of Iraq, so the former was targeted, as was the increasingly independent Karzai of Afghanistan. Perennial targets of the CIA included Rodriguez Kirchner of Argentina, Berlusconi of Italy, and Putin of Russia. Berlusconi soon fell victim to a coup organized through the European Central Bank, while his friend Putin was able to stave off a feeble attempt at color revolution in early 2012. Mildly satiric jabs at figures like Merkel of Germany and Sarkozy of France were included primarily as camouflage.

Assange thus had a hand in preparing one of the largest destabilization campaigns mounted by Anglo-American intelligence since 1968, or perhaps even 1848.

If the Snowden operation can help coerce the vacillating and reluctant Obama to attack Syria, our new autistic hero may claim credit for starting a general war in the Middle East, and perhaps even more. If Snowden can further poison relations between United States and China, the world historical significance of his provocations will be doubly assured. But none of this can occur unless he finds vast legions of eager dupes ready to fall for his act. We hope he won’t.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

NSA scandal: the deepest secret of the Ed Snowden operation

Jon Rappoport

Activist Post

http://www.activistpost.com/2013/06/nsa-scandal-deepest-secret-of-ed.html

Everyone wants to see a hero.

When that hero emerges from the shadows and says all the right things, and when he exposes a monolithic monster, he’s irresistible.

However, that doesn’t automatically make him who he says he is.

That doesn’t automatically exempt him from doubts.

Because he’s doing the right thing, people quickly make him into a spokesman for their own hopes. If he’s finally blasting a hole in the dark enemy’s fortress, he has to be accepted at face value. He has to be elevated.

When dealing with the intelligence community and their spooks and methods, this can be a mistake. Deception is the currency of that community. Layers of motives and covert ops are business as usual.

In previous articles, I’ve raised a number of specific doubts about Ed Snowden.

Here I want to replay four statements Snowden made and examine them.

"When you see everything, you see them on a more frequent basis and you recognize that some of these things are actually abuses, and when you talk about them in a place like this [NSA]…over time that awareness of wrongdoing sorts of builds up and you feel compelled to talk about it, and the more you talk about it, the more you’re ignored, the more you’re told it’s not a problem…"

This statement describes Snowden, an analyst working at NSA, chatting regularly to colleagues about his growing doubts over the morality of NSA spying. This is quite hard to believe.

As Steve Kinney, writing at the Centre for Research on Globalisation points out, Snowden would have raised all sorts of red flags about himself.

If he hadn’t been fired outright, he certainly would have come under serious scrutiny, which, at the very least, would have reduced his ability to hack documents out of NSA’s most secret recesses.

And yet, Snowden, an analyst, claims he had access to “full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community and undercover assets all around the world, the locations of every station we have, what their missions are and so forth.”

Really?

That stretches doubt far beyond the point of credulity.

Both The Guardian and the Washington Post supposedly vetted Snowden carefully. I’d really like to see the results of that vetting.

“Rosters of everyone working at the NSA [and] the entire intelligence community…” That’s untold thousands of people. That’s referring to many separate agencies.

Snowden doesn’t stop there. He maintains the security of NSA is not just a sieve, it’s also thousands of separate hunting parties, undertaken at the whim of any analyst:

"Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector, anywhere… I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President…"

Sure. NSA just opens the door to their own analysts, who can, on their own hook, launch spying episodes on anyone in the US. Boom. No operational plans, no coordination. A free-for-all.

“Hey, dig this. Nancy Pelosi was just talking to her hairdresser. I’m going to follow up on her. Think I’ll spy on Nancy and her husband, see what they’re up to. I’ll file reports as I go along…”

“A guy at Los Alamos just wrote to his boss about a new weapons system. Want to see what they’re planning?”

Finally, Snowden claimed he could “shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon. But that’s not my intention.”

Not just spy on everybody in the US. Snowden asserts he could do that. But he could also make the entire spying apparatus of NSA (and even all other intelligence agencies?) go dark with a few hours of work—and he’d evade notice of his NSA bosses as he performed this herculean task.

No. Ridiculous. The very first thing an agency like NSA does is set up a labyrinth to prevent itself from being taken down.

Consider these four Snowden statements together, back up and think. These are propositions that cast the man into a deep pit of doubt.

Who is he?

What is his mission? Is that mission his own, or is he working for someone who wants to punch a hole in the NSA?

In another article, I’ve developed the hypothesis that Snowden is still actually operating for his former bosses at the CIA; people at the CIA, long engaged in a turf war with the NSA, are running him in this op.

Snowden didn’t steal anything from NSA. He couldn’t. People at the CIA could and did steal, and they handed him documents to use in his assigned op.

There are other possible explanations. None of them exonerates the NSA or what it is doing. Let’s be clear about that.

But how far would the CIA go in exposing the guts of the NSA? It’s clear that these intelligence agencies overlap in their efforts (crimes). Therefore, the CIA would be satisfied to smear the NSA without exposing too much.

If so, Snowden’s cache of documents won’t “go all the way.”

His documents won’t yield the longed-for holy grail, though Snowden implies he could unwrap it. I’m talking about the entire interlocking system of US and global surveillance and how it is built.

More than piecemeal exposures about PRISM, US hacks of China, and the G20 meeting in England, an account of the technical “architecture,” as John Young of Cryptome rightly calls it, would torpedo the underlying global Surveillance State.

If Snowden can do that, he hasn’t shown it so far. Right now, he’s put his work in the hands of several journalists, who will dole it out on their own inexplicable timetables.

Why make that move? Why hasn’t Snowden put up a dozen sites and laid everything he has on the line? Before those sites could be taken down, the material would have been copied and sent around the world thousands of times.

Snowden has already said he won’t endanger specific spies or operations that could actually prevent terrorists’ missions.

All right. Then give us everything else. Give us the whole shooting match. Let’s see how the watchers have built their edifice.

But so far, Snowden has shown himself to be a different kind of person, someone who makes claims that far exceed his reach.

Read his four statements again. The sub-text is:

I could complain, raise doubts, and criticize NSA openly at work. No one cared. It was a typical office you’d find in any company. It certainly wasn’t a super-controlled environment. Things were so loose, I could access the complete map of the entire NSA network. Names, places, operations. On a whim, any analyst could spy on anyone in the US. If I wanted to, I could shut down all of US intelligence in a few hours. Forget the popular image of NSA as a fortress with dozens of layers of protection. Forget the notion that I’d have to be granted elite privilege to all sorts of secret keys to get into the inner sanctum, or that, while navigating my way in, I’d be setting off alarm bells all over the place. It was a piece of cake.

Smear.

“NSA is an open book. A book written by idiots. It cost a trillion dollars, but anyone could waltz in there and read the whole thing. Use a thumb drive, and you can also walk out with the whole thing.”

If you set aside Snowden’s remarks about his motives, his morality, and his high mission, his explanation falls apart. It makes no sense.

His CIA handlers would now be telling him that. “Hey Ed, tone down the ‘child’s-play’ angle, okay? You’re making it sound too easy. Remember? You’re the ‘whiz kid genius.’ Yeah, we want to smear NSA, but it’s got to be credible. People have to think it took at least some ingenuity to access the most heavily protected data in the world. Get it?”

A common man of the people, serving the greater good, exposing ongoing crimes that threaten the very lifeblood of the Republic? Is Ed Snowden that hero?

Or is he an operator, an agent?

So far, he’s made himself seem like the agent.

Executives at the NSA are well aware of this. Sitting down with their counterparts at the CIA, they’d be getting an earful. CIA people would be saying:

“Of course Snowden is our boy. He worked for us in Geneva, and he’s working for us now. We told you, after 9/11, we didn’t like you clowns at NSA throwing all the blame on CIA for the Trade Center attacks. We didn’t like that at all. And in the intervening years, we haven’t liked you cutting us out of the spying game. We warned you. So now we’ve given you a taste of what we can do. We can do more. Either we play ball together, or we’ll put NSA in the dumper. Get it?”

Playing ball together. Harmonization.

A sharp reader has just pointed out to me that this is the op behind the op. The fallout from Snowden will be used as the reason for more and better global sharing of spying and surveillance data.

Separate Surveillance States, which already share mountains of data, will come together to coordinate their efforts in an even tighter Surveillance Planet.

The US NSA won’t be tolerated as the pompous king of the hill any longer. It will have to play well with others.

After all, Globalism means the whole globe.

And “we’re all in this together.”

“We” meaning the elites who want to track every move made by every person on Earth, 24/7, in order to predict and control in the new paradise, where the sun rises every day on …compliance.

That’s the takeaway from the Snowden affair. That’s why the secret surveillance/spying at the G20 meeting in England was exposed.

“Gentlemen, we’re all rational here at the table. This is ridiculous. We’re all spying on each other. This can’t go on. It’s counterproductive. We want to work together. So let’s do it. We all want the same thing. A planet under control. The way to achieve that goal is to cooperate. We’ll spy on those who need to be spied on: the population of the planet. We’ll do it together. The primary violator of cooperation is that cowboy outfit in America, the NSA. They have to be brought into line. They have to learn they’re only part of the Whole. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s path from security guard to security clearance

Edward Snowden dropped out of high school in the middle of 10th grade, yet won high-paying positions that came with overseas travel and access to some of the world’s most closely held secrets.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/06/16/nsa_leaker_edward_snowdens_path_from_security_guard_to_security_clearance.html

He dropped out of high school in the middle of 10th grade, yet won high-paying positions that came with overseas travel and access to some of the world’s most closely held secrets.

He had a vivacious, outgoing girlfriend and boasted online about his interest in nubile, beautiful women, even as he secluded himself in a nightscape of computer games, anime and close study of the Internet’s architecture.

Edward Snowden, the skinny kid from suburban Maryland who took it upon himself to expose — and, officials say, severely compromise — classified U.S. government surveillance programs, loved role-playing games, leaned libertarian, worked out hard and dabbled in modelling.

He relished the perks of his jobs with the CIA and some of the world’s most prestigious employers. Yet his girlfriend considered it a major accomplishment when she got him to leave the house for a hike.

Snowden, 29, emerged a week ago from his status as an anonymous source for stories in The Washington Post and the Guardian, announcing to the world that he was prepared to be prosecuted for breaking his pledge to keep classified materials secret. But as quickly as he popped up in a fancy Hong Kong hotel, he vanished again Monday. He could not be reached for comment for this story.

For years, Snowden has sought to keep his online activities hidden, posting under pseudonyms even as a teen and hanging out on anime, gaming and tech sites, chatting with fellow webheads about how to be on the Internet without being traced.

“I wouldn’t want God himself to know where I’ve been, you know?” he wrote in 2003 on a bulletin board for the technically inclined.

Halfway through 10th grade, during the 1998-1999 school year, Snowden dropped out of Arundel High School, where he had made little impression.

Three years later, his parents divorced. He dipped in and out of course work over the next dozen years and was eventually certified as a Microsoft Solutions Expert — a gateway to tech jobs. But Snowden felt stuck in those first years of adulthood.

In 2004, he enlisted in the Army Reserve as a Special Forces recruit but less than four months later he was discharged.

Snowden struggled through a period of joblessness, spending long nights playing computer games and chatting online.

In 2006, Snowden made a remarkable leap from security guard at the University of Maryland to security clearance. His new position with the CIA put him on the path to extensive travel, a six-figure income and extraordinary access to classified material.

How he managed that jump remains unclear.

Snowden’s girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, had no idea her beau was going to leak classified data, according to a friend.

Snowden said last week that his “sole motive is to inform the public as to that which was done in their name and that which is done against them.”

He now presents himself as a reasoned protester, a conscientious objector of sorts, but he has also shown flashes of anger and even contempt for some aspects of American society. “Go back to your meaningless consumerist life,” he wrote four years ago in a comment on a YouTube video that poked fun at the ritual of high school reunions.

My Creeping Concern that the NSA Leaker Edward Snowden is not who he Purports to be…

By Naomi Wolf

Global Research, June 15, 2013

NaomiWolf.org

http://www.globalresearch.ca/my-creeping-concern-that-the-nsa-leaker-edward-snowden-is-not-who-he-purports-to-be/5339161

I hate to do this but I feel obligated to share, as the story unfolds, my creeping concern that the NSA leaker is not who he purports to be, and that the motivations involved in the story may be more complex than they appear to be.

This is in no way to detract from the great courage of Glenn Greenwald in reporting the story, and the gutsiness of the Guardian in showcasing this kind of reporting, which is a service to America that US media is not performing at all.

It is just to raise some cautions as the story unfolds, and to raise some questions about how it is unfolding, based on my experience with high-level political messaging.

Some of Snowden’s emphases seem to serve an intelligence/police state objective, rather than to challenge them.

a) He is super-organized, for a whistleblower, in terms of what candidates, the White House, the State Dept. et al call ‘message discipline.’ He insisted on publishing a power point in the newspapers that ran his initial revelations. I gather that he arranged for a talented filmmaker to shoot the Greenwald interview. These two steps – which are evidence of great media training, really ‘PR 101′ – are virtually never done (to my great distress) by other whistleblowers, or by progressive activists involved in breaking news, or by real courageous people who are under stress and getting the word out. They are always done, though, by high-level political surrogates.

In the Greenwald video interview, I was concerned about the way Snowden conveys his message. He is not struggling for words, or thinking hard, as even bright, articulate whistleblowers under stress will do. Rather he appears to be transmitting whole paragraphs smoothly, without stumbling. To me this reads as someone who has learned his talking points – again the way that political campaigns train surrogates to transmit talking points.

c) He keeps saying things like, “If you are a journalist and they think you are the transmission point of this info, they will certainly kill you.” Or: “I fully expect to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.” He also keeps stressing what he will lose: his $200,000 salary, his girlfriend, his house in Hawaii. These are the kinds of messages that the police state would LIKE journalists to take away; a real whistleblower also does not put out potential legal penalties as options, and almost always by this point has a lawyer by his/her side who would PROHIBIT him/her from saying, ‘come get me under the Espionage Act.” Finally in my experience, real whistleblowers are completely focused on their act of public service and trying to manage the jeopardy to themselves and their loved ones; they don’t tend ever to call attention to their own self-sacrifice. That is why they are heroes, among other reasons. But a police state would like us all to think about everything we would lose by standing up against it.

d) It is actually in the Police State’s interest to let everyone know that everything you write or say everywhere is being surveilled, and that awful things happen to people who challenge this. Which is why I am not surprised that now he is on UK no-fly lists – I assume the end of this story is that we will all have a lesson in terrible things that happen to whistleblowers. That could be because he is a real guy who gets in trouble; but it would be as useful to the police state if he is a fake guy who gets in ‘trouble.’

e) In stories that intelligence services are advancing (I would call the prostitutes-with-the-secret-service such a story), there are great sexy or sex-related mediagenic visuals that keep being dropped in, to keep media focus on the issue. That very pretty pole-dancing Facebooking girlfriend who appeared for, well, no reason in the media coverage…and who keeps leaking commentary, so her picture can be recycled in the press…really, she happens to pole-dance? Dan Ellsberg’s wife was and is very beautiful and doubtless a good dancer but somehow she took a statelier role as his news story unfolded…

f) Snowden is in Hong Kong, which has close ties to the UK, which has done the US’s bidding with other famous leakers such as Assange. So really there are MANY other countries that he would be less likely to be handed over from…

g) Media reports said he had vanished at one point to ‘an undisclosed location’ or ‘a safe house.’ Come on. There is no such thing. Unless you are with the one organization that can still get off the surveillance grid, because that org created it.

h) I was at dinner last night to celebrate the brave and heroic Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Several of Assange’s also brave and talented legal team were there, and I remembered them from when I had met with Assange. These attorneys are present at every moment when Assange meets the press – when I met with him off the record last Fall in the Ecuadoran embassy, his counsel was present the whole time, listening and stepping in when necessary.

Seeing these diligent attentive free-speech attorneys for another whisleblower reinforced my growing anxiety: WHERE IS SNOWDEN’S LAWYER as the world’s media meet with him? A whistleblower talking to media has his/her counsel advising him/her at all times, if not actually being present at the interview, because anything he/she says can affect the legal danger the whistleblower may be in . It is very, very odd to me that a lawyer has not appeared, to my knowledge, to stand at Snowden’s side and keep him from further jeopardy in interviews.

Again I hate to cast any skepticism on what seems to be a great story of a brave spy coming in from the cold in the service of American freedom. And I would never raise such questions in public if I had not been told by a very senior official in the intelligence world that indeed, there are some news stories that they create and drive – even in America (where propagandizing Americans is now legal). But do consider that in Eastern Germany, for instance, it was the fear of a machine of surveillance that people believed watched them at all times – rather than the machine itself – that drove compliance and passivity. From the standpoint of the police state and its interests – why have a giant Big Brother apparatus spying on us at all times – unless we know about it?

The Aspen Flier - and legendary legover merchant - remains ever-vigilant in the face of that enormous threat to Western civilization otherwise known as, yes, the conspiracy theorist.

Still in America, the conspiracy theorists are back at work. They have found that the official social security death index, which lists all US deaths and is used as a precaution against identity theft, lists Adam Lanza has having died on 13 December last year, the day before he went into Sandy Hook school on a shooting spree that killed almost two dozen people. You and I might think this is a simple inputting mistake. Not if we were conspiracy theorists. Clearly the massacre was organised by the Obama administration to win support for stricter gun laws. Lanza was the fall guy and was killed before someone pretending to be him went the next day to the school … You can guess the rest. Just as George Bush arranged 9/11.

From this week's serving of any-old rope entitled: "Is the age of the billboard MP upon us?"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2013/jun/14/simon-hoggart-age-billboard-mp

Quite possibly, but then it's also the age of the straw-man mainstream journo.

THE STONE, June 14, 2013

The Real War on Reality

By PETER LUDLOW

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/the-real-war-on-reality/#more-145378

If there is one thing we can take away from the news of recent weeks it is this: the modern American surveillance state is not really the stuff of paranoid fantasies; it has arrived.

The revelations about the National Security Agency’s PRISM data collection program have raised awareness — and understandably, concern and fears — among American and those abroad, about the reach and power of secret intelligence gatherers operating behind the facades of government and business.

Surveillance and deception are not just fodder for the next “Matrix” movie, but a real sort of epistemic warfare.

But those revelations, captivating as they are, have been partial —they primarily focus on one government agency and on the surveillance end of intelligence work, purportedly done in the interest of national security. What has received less attention is the fact that most intelligence work today is not carried out by government agencies but by private intelligence firms and that much of that work involves another common aspect of intelligence work: deception. That is, it is involved not just with the concealment of reality, but with the manufacture of it.

The realm of secrecy and deception among shadowy yet powerful forces may sound like the province of investigative reporters, thriller novelists and Hollywood moviemakers — and it is — but it is also a matter for philosophers. More accurately, understanding deception and and how it can be exposed has been a principle project of philosophy for the last 2500 years. And it is a place where the work of journalists, philosophers and other truth-seekers can meet.

In one of the most referenced allegories in the Western intellectual tradition, Plato describes a group of individuals shackled inside a cave with a fire behind them. They are able to see only shadows cast upon a wall by the people walking behind them. They mistake shadows for reality. To see things as they truly are, they need to be unshackled and make their way outside the cave. Reporting on the world as it truly is outside the cave is one of the foundational duties of philosophers.

In a more contemporary sense, we should also think of the efforts to operate in total secrecy and engage in the creation of false impressions and realities as a problem area in epistemology — the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge. And philosophers interested in optimizing our knowledge should consider such surveillance and deception not just fodder for the next “Matrix” movie, but as real sort of epistemic warfare.

To get some perspective on the manipulative role that private intelligence agencies play in our society, it is worth examining information that has been revealed by some significant hacks in the past few years of previously secret data.

Important insight into the world these companies came from a 2010 hack by a group best known as LulzSec (at the time the group was called Internet Feds), which targeted the private intelligence firm HBGary Federal. That hack yielded 75,000 e-mails. It revealed, for example, that Bank of America approached the Department of Justice over concerns about information that WikiLeaks had about it. The Department of Justice in turn referred Bank of America to the lobbying firm Hunton and Willliams, which in turn connected the bank with a group of information security firms collectively known as Team Themis.

Team Themis (a group that included HBGary and the private intelligence and security firms Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and Endgame Systems) was effectively brought in to find a way to undermine the credibility of WikiLeaks and the journalist Glenn Greenwald (who recently broke the story of Edward Snowden’s leak of the N.S.A.’s Prism program), because of Greenwald’s support for WikiLeaks. Specifically, the plan called for actions to “sabotage or discredit the opposing organization” including a plan to submit fake documents and then call out the error. As for Greenwald, it was argued that he would cave “if pushed” because he would “choose professional preservation over cause.” That evidently wasn’t the case.

Team Themis also developed a proposal for the Chamber of Commerce to undermine the credibility of one of its critics, a group called Chamber Watch. The proposal called for first creating a “false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information,” giving it to a progressive group opposing the Chamber, and then subsequently exposing the document as a fake to “prove that U.S. Chamber Watch cannot be trusted with information and/or tell the truth.”

In addition, the group proposed creating a “fake insider persona” to infiltrate Chamber Watch. They would “create two fake insider personas, using one as leverage to discredit the other while confirming the legitimacy of the second.”

Psyops need not be conducted by nation states; they can be undertaken by anyone with the capabilities and the incentive to conduct them.

The hack also revealed evidence that Team Themis was developing a “persona management” system — a program, developed at the specific request of the United States Air Force, that allowed one user to control multiple online identities (“sock puppets”) for commenting in social media spaces, thus giving the appearance of grass roots support. The contract was eventually awarded to another private intelligence firm.

This may sound like nothing so much as a “Matrix”-like fantasy, but it is distinctly real, and resembles in some ways the employment of “Psyops” (psychological operations), which as most students of recent American history know, have been part of the nation’s military strategy for decades. The military’s “Unconventional Warfare Training Manual” defines Psyops as “planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.” In other words, it is sometimes more effective to deceive a population into a false reality than it is to impose its will with force or conventional weapons. Of course this could also apply to one’s own population if you chose to view it as an “enemy” whose “motives, reasoning, and behavior” needed to be controlled.

Psyops need not be conducted by nation states; they can be undertaken by anyone with the capabilities and the incentive to conduct them, and in the case of private intelligence contractors, there are both incentives (billions of dollars in contracts) and capabilities.

Several months after the hack of HBGary, a Chicago area activist and hacker named Jeremy Hammond successfully hacked into another private intelligence firm — Strategic Forcasting Inc., or Stratfor), and released approximately five million e-mails. This hack provided a remarkable insight into how the private security and intelligence companies view themselves vis a vis government security agencies like the C.I.A. In a 2004 e-mail to Stratfor employees, the firm’s founder and chairman George Friedman was downright dismissive of the C.I.A.’s capabilities relative to their own: “Everyone in Langley [the C.I.A.] knows that we do things they have never been able to do with a small fraction of their resources. They have always asked how we did it. We can now show them and maybe they can learn.”

The Stratfor e-mails provided us just one more narrow glimpse into the world of the private security firms, but the view was frightening. The leaked e-mails revealed surveillance activities to monitor protestors in Occupy Austin as well as Occupy’s relation to the environmental group Deep Green Resistance. Staffers discussed how one of their own men went undercover (“U/C”) and inquired about an Occupy Austin General Assembly meeting to gain insight into how the group operates.

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Stratfor was also involved in monitoring activists who were seeking reparations for victims of a chemical plant disaster in Bhopal, India, including a group called Bophal Medical Appeal. But the targets also included The Yes Men, a satirical group that had humiliated Dow Chemical with a fake news conference announcing reparations for the victims. Stratfor regularly copied several Dow officers on the minutia of activities by the two members of the Yes Men.

One intriguing e-mail revealed that the Coca-Cola company was asking Stratfor for intelligence on PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) with Stratfor vice president for Intelligence claiming that “The F.B.I. has a classified investigation on PETA operatives. I’ll see what I can uncover.” From this one could get the impression that the F.B.I. was in effect working as a private detective Stratfor and its corporate clients.

Stratfor also had a broad-ranging public relations campaign. The e-mails revealed numerous media companies on its payroll. While one motivation for the partnerships was presumably to have sources of intelligence, Stratfor worked hard to have soap boxes from which to project its interests. In one 2007 e-mail, it seemed that Stratfor was close to securing a regular show on NPR: “[the producer] agreed that she wants to not just get George or Stratfor on one time on NPR but help us figure the right way to have a relationship between ‘Morning Edition’ and Stratfor.”

On May 28 Jeremy Hammond pled guilty to the Stratfor hack, noting that even if he could successfully defend himself against the charges he was facing, the Department of Justice promised him that he would face the same charges in eight different districts and he would be shipped to all of them in turn. He would become a defendant for life. He had no choice but to plea to a deal in which he may be sentenced to 10 years in prison. But even as he made the plea he issued a statement, saying “I did this because I believe people have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors. I did what I believe is right.” (In a video interview conducted by Glenn Greenwald with Edward Snowden in Hong Kong this week, Snowden expressed a similar ethical stance regarding his actions.)

Given the scope and content of what Hammond’s hacks exposed, his supporters agree that what he did was right. In their view, the private intelligence industry is effectively engaged in Psyops against American public., engaging in “planned operations to convey selected information to [us] to influence [our] emotions, motives, objective reasoning and, ultimately, [our] behavior”? Or as the philosopher might put it, they are engaged in epistemic warfare.

The Greek word deployed by Plato in “The Cave” — aletheia — is typically translated as truth, but is more aptly translated as “disclosure” or “uncovering” — literally, “the state of not being hidden.” Martin Heidegger, in an essay on the allegory of the cave, suggested that the process of uncovering was actually a precondition for having truth. It would then follow that the goal of the truth-seeker is to help people in this disclosure — it is to defeat the illusory representations that prevent us from seeing the world the way it is. There is no propositional truth to be had until this first task is complete.

This is the key to understanding why hackers like Jeremy Hammond are held in such high regard by their supporters. They aren’t just fellow activists or fellow hackers — they are defending us from epistemic attack. Their actions help lift the hood that is periodically pulled over our eyes to blind us from the truth.

Peter Ludlow is a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University and is currently co-producing (with Vivien Weisman) a documentary on Hacktivist actions against private intelligence firms and the surveillance state.