Paul Rigby
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How can Chomsky's characterisation of JFK's relationship with the Agency be considered "fundamentally correct"... when he omits such "minor" details as the post-Bay of Pigs removal of Dulles, Bissell and Cabell - three of the most senior CIA figures - the transfer of responsibility for covert-ops of any size to the Joint Chiefs, and the restatement of Ambassadorial primacy overseas? And that's just within a small period of 1961.
For those reading this thread who are unfamiliar with the three National Security Action Memoranda in question, 55-57, there's a fascinating, if somewhat discursive, discussion of them at the link below:
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/ch...0on%20NSAM%2055
Understanding The Secret Team, Part III: Fletcher Prouty interviewed
As a necessary follow-up to this assault on CIA prerogatives, McNamara brought the Defense Intelligence Agency into being. The resultant, and inevitable, bureaucratic struggle between the two organisations was described at some length, albeit exclusively from the CIA's point of view, by Stewart Alsop, an old Agency mouthpiece, in the Saturday Evening Post, a similarly notorious CIA mouthpiece, in its edition of July 27, 1963: "CIA: The battle for secret power" (pp.17-21). It contained this early assurance, "Nowadays the CIA is back on top of the heap" (p.18), which sat ill with the subsequent admission that "the DIA has no choice but to concentrate on the political-strategic intelligence which is the CIA's chief function" (p.21) and the bald statement that "13 issues had arisen at last report between DIA and CIA" (ditto). These were anything but trivial matters: They ranged from who controlled liaison with, for example, MI6, and "the CIA-created national photo interpretation centre" (ditto).
The CIA was under serious institutional pressure with Kennedy alive and in the White House.
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On the opening to the Left in Italy, for example, he had some limited success, which doubtless partly explains why Harvey turns up in Italy after enraging RFK with his footsie with the Mafia over Cuba.
Care to elaborate?
With pleasure:
June 12-13, 1961:
“The Italian PM Fanfani visited the White House “as a result of the initiative within the White House staff which deliberately bypassed the professional diplomats in the State Department, distrustful of the Italian statesman’s professed willingness to collaborate with the Italian socialists and other parties of the left of center…the Italian government had signed a three-year trade agreement with the Soviets just before Fanfani left for the US.”Robert Slusser. The Berlin Crisis of 1961: Soviet-American Relations and the Struggle for Power in the Kremlin (John Hopkins U.P., 1973), p.24
It took until February 1962, when Aldo Moro, the secretary of the Christian Democrats, swung his claque behind Fanfani’s proposal to dissolve the government and create a new coalition – including Social Democrats and Republicans – for Kennedy’s apertura a sinistra to bear fruit.Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, Vol XIII, 1961-62, p.18622A.
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Please cite the passages that would lead one to think these things.Nothing could be further from the truth. CIA sought to overthrow Diem in November 1960. Attempts to assassinate him began no later than 1957. Kennedy backed Diem's peace moves with Hanoi.
Citations?
There is a really outstanding thread on this forum going by the name of "'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Viet Nam." Within it, you'll find many goodies, not least the articles and citations pertaining to them, which cover all three claims advanced above. Once you've found them, intellectual scruple will, of course, compel you to acknowledge as much.
It speaks volumes for the racism and intellectual dishonesty of Chomsky that he won't let his readers see and read South Vietnamese sources who attest to both CIA involvement in the paratroopers' putsch of November 1960, and/or Kennedy's backing of Diem's negotiations with Hanoi.Please cite these sources and provide evidence Chomsky was aware of them.I take it you're aware of Chomsky's obsession with the NYT? Good, now take another look at the thread cited above and let me know what you find. A hint: we're talking a late October 1963 piece.
On the broader point, and given Chomsky's repeated posturings to the effect history is written by the winners, why is there nothing from the Diem camp in Chomsky's work? After all, no one was better placed to comment on who and what was trying to overthrow them, not least because they retained a very extensive and effective intelligence gathering network almost to the bitter end.
So where is the material from these sources, and on what grounds is it entirely ignored by Chomsky?
Paul there is no such basis for such an assumption - PR- "who/what has been funding Chomsky's research since the 1950s? If you can't tell us, the presumption must be that his funding's ultimate sources remain much as before." - I assume this means you have no evidence he has received CIA funding in either of our lifetimes?Len translated: I don't know who funds Chomsky, and I'm not going to find out. You have only precedent, which means less than my insistence that you have no proof.
Actually, Len, and this may come as a surprise, the reason we don't have publicly available chapter and verse on the sources of Chomsky's funding is because he is an ongoing operation. If he wasn't, it would be out there.
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In the passage he quotes he does not mention the fact that Dulles was removed but he does mention the man he replaced him with. As Chomsky says, John McCone “revitalized the intelligence process.” This does not make Chomsky dishonest. As I said earlier, Chomsky, is clearly not aware of how JFK changed his views on the CIA after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
There are several problems here.
First, Kennedy sought major reform of the CIA post-Bay of Pigs – well over a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Second, the removal of Dulles et al was part of a package of measures: you continue to ignore the other two elements, to wit, the stripping of CIA control of covert ops of any significance (a hugely controversial move, as Prouty, among others, has documented, in his case, from a vantage point of considerable credibility, whatever his motivation); and the reassertion of the primacy of US ambassadors. The entire package is utterly irreconcilable with the view that Kennedy held the CIA in anything approaching trust or respect.
Third, McCone was not Kennedy’s first choice – that honour went to Fowler Hamilton* – and was thus the product of considerable jockeying and pressure.
Fourth, what is the evidence for your contention, following Chomsky, that McCone “revitalized the intelligence process”? Have you checked the cited sources for Chomsky’s assertion? If not, I suggest a quick look. It’s instructive.
Fifth, given the availability of considerable, consistent evidence, much of it contemporaneous, of Kennedy’s war with the CIA, Chomsky’s scholarship and ethics are simply unacceptable.
* AP, "Retirement of CIA Chief Announced," Washington Post, (Tuesday), 1 August 1961, p.A2: Salinger yesterday announced retirement of Allen Dulles, claiming retirement in November 1961 had been Dulles' intention when accepted JFK's offer to stay on. Salinger declined to answer questions concerning Fowler Hamilton. Hamilton, according to forthcoming issue of Newsweek (August 7), due to succeed Dulles in October "after several months of working with Dulles".
It should be pointed out that the CIA wanted JFK as president in 1960. They thought he was a more reliable Cold War warrior than Nixon. That is why Richard Bissell briefed JFK about the proposed CIA action in Cuba. This enabled JFK to portray Nixon as soft on communism concerning Castro during the election. Nixon, who knew about the Bay of Pigs Project was unable to answer these points about Cuba for reasons of "national security".Again, problems.
There is no reliable evidence that “the CIA wanted JFK as president in 1960.” Bissell’s claim to have briefed Kennedy “about the proposed CIA action in Cuba” is powerfully contested, manifestly self-serving, and almost certainly a lie.
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Of course I was only commenting on what Chomsky said, rather than what he did not say.
So, then, let me press you on the issue: Is it your view that any account of Kennedy's relations with the CIA can be called honest which omits his removal of Dulles et al, the stripping of Agency responsibility for covert ops of magnitude, and the reassertion of ambassadorial primacy?
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Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me that any major difference between LBJ and JFK on foreign policy were theoretical he MIGHT have made peace with Cuba he MIGHT have pulled out of Vietnam (though RFK said the opposite). As to domestic policy LBJ was more progressive than his predecessor.
I think it could be, just, at a stretch, because he was murdered before he could see all of his initiatives come to fruition. On the opening to the Left in Italy, for example, he had some limited success, which doubtless partly explains why Harvey turns up in Italy after enraging RFK with his footsie with the Mafia over Cuba.
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So Paul can you show that any of Chomsky's "errors" were lies as opposed to honest mistakes? Any evidence that he had ties to CIA AFTER the 1950's when he merely worked on a project they funded. Far more recently truthers like Barrett and Jones received funding or grants from the State Department and DoE.
"Late, but in earnest," as the Salisbury motto has it, eh, Len?
Yes, I can: Chomsky lies principally by omission.
Vast areas of inconvenient knowledge are systematically plunged down the memory hole by MIT's answer to Orwell's Goldstein. Example: To read Rethinking Camelot one would think that attempts to assassinate and remove Diem began in 1963; were motivated by a desire to terminate peace negotiations between Hanoi and Saigon; and were the sole responsibility of JFK.* Nothing could be further from the truth. CIA sought to overthrow Diem in November 1960. Attempts to assassinate him began no later than 1957. Kennedy backed Diem's peace moves with Hanoi.
It speaks volumes for the racism and intellectual dishonesty of Chomsky that he won't let his readers see and read South Vietnamese sources who attest to both CIA involvement in the paratroopers' putsch of November 1960, and/or Kennedy's backing of Diem's negotiations with Hanoi.
And while your in full flood on the source of funding - nice touch that, by the way, on the subject of Barrett and Jones - who/what has been funding Chomsky's research since the 1950s? If you can't tell us, the presumption must be that his funding's ultimate sources remain much as before.
* Of course, Chomsky can't even hold this line with any conviction in Rethinking Camelot. At one point in its erratic, preposterous progress, he informs the reader that "Kennedy left decisions on Vietnam largely in the hands of his advisers" (London: Verso, pbk, 1993, p.116). Compare and contrast with the rest of the book:
“Kennedy escalated” (p.2); “John F. Kennedy’s escalation” (p.23); “Kennedy’s escalation” (p.27); “Kennedy…escalated the war” (p.37); “JFK raised the level of US attack” (p.43); “As he prepared to escalate the war…in late 1961” (p.46); “Kennedy’s 1961-62 escalation” (p.51); “his 1961-1962 escalation” (p.67).Just in case his less nimble readers missed the point, the Gnome served up a variation on the theme. Subtlety, as is clear, really isn't his strongpoint:
”Kennedy’s war” (p.2); “Kennedy’s war” (p.36); “Kennedy’s war” (p.39); “Kennedy’s war” (p.52); “Kennedy’s war” (p.53); “Kennedy’s war” (p.69); “Kennedy’s war” (p.73); “Kennedy’s war” (p.81); “Kennedy’s war” (p.86); “Kennedy’s war” (p.105).Still not got it? Chomsky had a third variant on the same basic slogan:
”Kennedy…his aggression” (p.15); “Kennedy moved on to armed attack” (p.25); “JFK’s aggression” (p.32); “JFK’s aggression” (p.35); “Kennedy’s aggression” (p.52); “Kennedy’s aggression” (p.63); “JFK’s 1961-1962 aggression” (p.66); “JFK’s aggression” (p.115).Impressively sophisticated stuff: If you can’t convince ‘em with the quality of your argument or evidence, beat ‘em into submission by mindless repetition.
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Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture (London: Verso, 1993), p.144
Another common belief is that JFK was so incensed over the failure of the CIA at the Bay of Pigs that he vowed to smash it to bits, sowing the seeds for right-wing hatreds. Again, there are problems. As historians of the Agency have pointed out, it was Lyndon Johnson who treated the CIA “with contempt,” while JFK’s distress over the Bay of Pigs “in no way undermined his firm faith in the principle of covert operations, and in the CIA’s mission to carry them out.” JFK promised to “redouble his efforts” and to “improve” covert operations. He fired the CIA’s harshest critic (Chester Bowles) and appointed as Director the respected John McCone, who “revitalized the intelligence process,” though persistent failures kept the Agency from returning to the “golden age.” Nevertheless, the CIA was “re-established…in White House favor” and became a “significant voice in policy making” under Kennedy, particularly in 1963, “as covert actions multiplied in Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and Africa” (including new instructions in June 1963 to increase covert operations against Castro). Under JFK, the CIA Director became “a principal participant in the administration, on a par with the Secretary of State or of Defense.” The enthusiasm of the Kennedy brothers for counterinsurgency and covert operations is, of course, notorious.
Chomsky’s passage on JFK and the CIA is fundamentally correct. However, we now know that JFK did deeply distrust the CIA and was involved in exploring secret negotiations with the Cuban government in 1963.How can Chomsky's characterisation of JFK's relationship with the Agency be considered "fundamentally correct," John, when he omits such "minor" details as the post-Bay of Pigs removal of Dulles, Bissell and Cabell - three of the most senior CIA figures - the transfer of responsibility for covert-ops of any size to the Joint Chiefs, and the restatement of Ambassadorial primacy overseas? And that's just within a small period of 1961.
Secondly, why were you and others on the left so unaware of what was written in papers such as The Times and the New Statesman? Here's an 1961 example from the former. JFK's war with the CIA began long before 1963:
From Our Washington Correspondent, “Drawing the Teeth of the C.I.A.,” The Times, Wednesday, 20 December 1961, p.11The Central Intelligence Agency has moved into its large and handsome new headquarters on the other side of the Potomac river, suitably signposted for the convenience of visiting spies and curious reporters, and apparently with its clandestine powers little diminished. Its mysterious Mr. Bender, who is often said to have organised the Cuban invasion, is still employed, and the replacement of the former director, Mr. Allen Dulles, by Mr. John McCone, a chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission in the last Administration, is the only obvious price the agency has paid for the adventure it conceived and directed so disastrously.
Soon after the fiasco there were many demands that the agency be broken up, or at least reorganized, and the Congress is yet to have its last word. It is unlikely to be persuasive; the Defence Department has meanwhile combined the Service intelligence organization in one agency on the grounds of efficiency and economy, and the Administration is obviously in a mood to consolidate rather than sanction the creation of a number of small and perhaps conflicting civilian agencies. If the report of General Maxwell Taylor’s committee is accepted, however, responsibility for para-military operations will pass from the C.I.A. to the Defence Department, which already has a group somewhere in the Pentagon known as the department of dirty tricks.
PAST OPERATIONS
This is not an unimportant recommendation, although a second Cuban invasion is not at present contemplated. It is unlikely that the much-publicized special service troops of the Army will now be dropped over jungles and paddyfields to polish off communist conspirators, save the beautiful princess from a fate worse than death, and establish a local branch of the National Association of Manufacturers – although readers of the American press must be forgiven if they entertain such an enchanting notion. But it should mean that any hard-pressed country such as South Vietnam will in future deal with the departments of State and Defence, and not with a faceless intelligence agent.
The fact remains that para-military operations is a term difficult to define, and other cover operations will continue to be directed by the C.I.A. The memory of past operations conducted by the agency agitates many people. For instance, it has claimed credit for the ousting of Dr. Moussadek, the former Prime Minister of Iran, and for the coup d’état in Guatemala that got rid of the President, Dr. Arbenz, and made the country safe for the United Fruit Company.
Logistic support was provided for Chinese Nationalist troops in Burma, although they were pillaging large areas of a friendly country, and the disastrous counter-revolution in Laos against Prince Souvanna Phouma was engineered. It will perhaps no longer be in a position to direct raids against the Chinese mainland, as it did from the offshore islands, but some agents may believe that they can meddle in the political life of western European countries.
It can be seen why critics in and out of Congress are rather dissatisfied with what is known of plans for the agency’s future. The reappointment of Dr. James Killian as chairman of the President’s Board of Foreign Intelligence Consultants has not reassured them, if only because he occupied the post under General Eisenhower when the agency was notably free of control. Senator Eugene McCarthy has revived an earlier proposal that a congressional joint committee supervise its operations. This will almost certainly prove unacceptable, but it underlines the widespread apprehension here.
FEAR AND SUSPICION
Is it still justified? Part of the answer is provided by the brief catalogue above of the agency’s battle honours, but generally speaking the fears can be divided under two headings. First, there is the belief that it is wrongly organized, that it should not be responsible for both the gathering and evaluation of intelligence, especially overt political intelligence. This, the critics claim with some reason, should be the responsibility of the State Department. It is further believed that the agency should not undertake covert operations upon intelligence it has gathered and evaluated, and for objectives that the agency itself chooses to regard as important.
Under the second heading can be listed objections that are subjective to the extent that they rest upon suspicion fostered by previous activities. On the whole, it is believed that the agency, perhaps because of the stringent security regulations for its staff, is oriented too far to the right. Some people seem to regard it as an official John Birch Society.
The result, it is believed, is that its intelligence reports are unbalanced, and its covert operations designed to support right-wing and often dictatorial regimes overseas without considering the long-term political consequences. A prime example quoted is the Cuban adventure, when liberal elements were firmly excluded , and some indeed detained in a hidden camp until the invasion failed, and Batista supporters were encouraged.
POLITICAL BACKGROUND
In spited of these well-documented stupidities, this belief must be treated with reserve, but the criticism combines in a general charge that the C.I.A. is free to influence foreign policy to a degree that no other western government would tolerate, and to involve the country in adventures both unnecessary and dangerous.
If due allowance is made for over-colourful reports of the agency’s activities, which it helped to circulate, and for the ignorance and apprehension that must surely surround any secret organization, enough it left to disturb the most sophisticated. Yet President Kennedy, who is determined to exercise his authority without departmental usurpation, does not seem over-agitated. He is furthermore cautious, his approach to foreign affairs is enlightened, and his liberal intentions, at least by American standards, have long been evident.
The President is also interested in history, and this perhaps explains why he considers the charges no longer well-founded. Certainly the short history of the agency should be viewed against the political background of the time.
The Central Intelligence Agency was established as the successor to the war-time Office of Strategic Services and the short-lived Central Intelligence Group. Under the National Security Act it was given the three functions of coordinating the work of other intelligence units; performing such other functions relating to the national security as the National Security Council may direct; and acting, through its director, as chief advisor and consultant on intelligence matters to the President and the National Security Council.
The definitions were vague, and some of its first recruits came from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which in the war years had been much involved in the tracking down of communist as well as German agents. A few of these men later became the bully boys of right-wing organizations. Mr. Allen Dulles had experience of intelligence work, but more significant he was the brother of the messianic Secretary of State, the late Mr. John Foster Dulles. They worked as a close-knit team to the exclusion of the Department of State and other government bodies involved in the making of foreign and defence policy, and under a complaisant President.
PRESIDENT’S RULE
They also worked together in an emotional atmosphere made more tense by witch hunts and the charges of treachery at home and abroad. Communism was improperly understood; the idea that a revolutionary party may in certain circumstances win a popular following was violently rejected. It was not surprising, also given the widespread ignorance of foreign affairs and intelligence work, and the suspicion of permanent foreign service officers, that the C.I.A. developed as it did – the private army of the Dulles brothers.
Today in Washington the situation is very different. President Kennedy is not only determined to rule, but is committed to strengthening the State Department. Communism remains the personification of evil, but it is better understood. Aid is furnished to under-developed countries, but they are urged to carry out land reform, adopt centralized economic planning, and introduce the income tax. At the administrative level, the National Security Council has been down-graded, and the task form system ensures that no policy is initiated without the President’s knowledge and reference to appropriate departments.
The old ogre known as the Central Intelligence Agency was in fact killed the moment President Kennedy’s administration
began to function as he wanted it to function. For many Mr. McCone may remain an undesirable choice, the agency not as efficient as others, and much of its staff unsuitable. Only time will show and make improvements possible, but in the unlikely possibility that crew-cut cloak-and-dagger men are once again let loose on an unsuspecting world President Kennedy will be really responsible.
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You're one step removed from the actual source, Paul, if the following is to be believed:But this project was actually funded NOT by the military, but by the CIA and
NSA. From a prior post, ³Manovich on Chomsky's CIA Ties,² which observes
that Chomsky, who worked on the program, took some of the ideas he helped
develop for the CIA and NSA to his work on ³mechanical translation,² a
full-fledged intelligence program directed against the Soviet Union:
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv....m/msg95382.html
I couldn't get your link to work, Greg, but the following seems to cover the same ground:
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJu...911sep2002.html
Subject: Proof of Chomsky's CIA Past
10 Sep 2002
More on the great hero Chomsky an expert in "artificial intelligence" if I ever saw one. He was ushered into MIT by the JASON group, another DoD top secret advisory group. No wonder he supported Deutch to head the CIA and never talks about assassination conspiracies. Lately he has said that the idea that the government had any foreknowledge of 9/11 is preposterous. Couldn't it have been a-priori like language is? Somewhere deep inside there must have been a suspicion someone might get angry and respond.Subject: Fwd: Proof of Chomsky's CIA Past
Date: Sun, 01 Sep 2002 14:35:06 +0000
From: beatrice w
I was unaware of the details in Chomsky's background as specified below. It helps to explain alot. I never understood why Chomsky's ideas were so readily accepted in academic, linguistic circles. They always seemed highly dubious, circumspect and controversial to me. Altho I haven't read his material in linguistics, I have heard him speak on the subject a few times, and, I've heard his ideas discussed by others in the context of language acquisition, etc. It always appeared to me that he was a-historical, anti-materialist, and completely inapplicable to the historical, contextual realities of language development, history, acquisition, promulgation, etc. Yet, nobody every seemed to question his almost Kantian approach, a seemingly "idealist," universalist, a-priori, innate category, or, categories which appeared to have no applicability in reality. I could say more, but, will leave it at that.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Alex Constantine
To: Mike Ruppert
Subject: Proof of Chomsky's CIA Past
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 16:47:38 -0700
From the WBAI People message board: "The text you posted does not say Chomsky worked for the CIA" - Anonymous
It is well known that during the 1950s, the CIA funnelled finances for its classified research projects through the military. It is also well known, as reported in Barsky¹s biography of Noam Chomsky, that the budding MIT linguist worked on a "machine translation" project at MIT funded ostensibly by the Pentagon, but as will be shown, in fact by the CIA and NSA.
"Ironically," the project was the very sort of intelligence activity Chomsky has criticized publicly:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From the Barsky bio: www.alexconstantine.50megs.com [Noam Chomsky, A Life of Dissent, by Robert Barsky, MIT Press, 1998]
"Chomsky was made an assistant professor [at MIT] and assigned, ironically, to a MACHINE TRANSLATION PROJECT of the type he had often criticized. The project was directed by Victor Yngve and was being conducted at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, which was subsidized by the U.S. military."--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But this project was actually funded NOT by the military, but by the CIA and NSA. From a prior post, "Manovich on Chomsky's CIA Ties," which observes that Chomsky, who worked on the program, took some of the ideas he helped develop for the CIA and NSA to his work on "mechanical translation," a full-fledged intelligence program directed against the Soviet Union:
"... The idea of computer vision became possible and the economic means to realize this idea became available only with the shift from industrial to post-industrial society after World War II. The attention turned from the automation of the body to the automation of the mind, from physical to mental labor. This new concern with the automation of mental functions such as vision, hearing, reasoning, problem solving is exemplified by the very names of the two new fields that emerged during the 1950s and 1960s -- artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology. The latter gradually replacing behaviorism, the dominant psychology of the "Fordism" era. The emergence of the field of computer vision is a part of this cognitive revolution, a revolution which was financed by the military escalation of the Cold War. This connection is solidified in the very term "artificial intelligence" which may refer simultaneously to two meanings of "intelligence": reason, the ability to learn or understand, and information concerning an enemy or a possible enemy or an area. Artificial intelligence: artificial reason to analyze collected information, collected intelligence. In the 1950s, faced with the enormous task of gathering and analyzing written, photographic, and radar information about the enemy, the CIA and the NSA (National Security Agency) began to fund the first artificial intelligence projects. One of the earliest projects was a Program for Mechanical Translation, initiated in the early 1950s in the attempt to automate the monitoring of Soviet communications and media. The work on mechanical translation was probably the major cause of many subsequent developments in modern linguistics, its move towards formalization; it can be discerned in Noam Chomsky's early theory which, by postulating the existence of language universals in the domain of grammar, implied that translation between arbitrary human languages could be automated." Alex Constantine
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You're one step removed from the actual source, Paul, if the following is to be believed:But this project was actually funded NOT by the military, but by the CIA and
NSA. From a prior post, ³Manovich on Chomsky's CIA Ties,² which observes
that Chomsky, who worked on the program, took some of the ideas he helped
develop for the CIA and NSA to his work on ³mechanical translation,² a
full-fledged intelligence program directed against the Soviet Union:
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv....m/msg95382.html
Ta, Greg, appreciated: I rather suspected as much, but couldn't find a source to extend the link to CIA.
Further contributions to improving my knowledge of the perp welcome.
Paul
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Paul if you have anything more than insults, quotes taken out of context and tortured logic to support your theory don't be shy.We've been over this before previously haven't we?IIRC your main objection to the book is that it correctly points out that JFK escalated the US presence in Vietnam.
I am undone by your genius, Len, I confess. There really isn't any reasonable or rational ground for insisting Chomsky the dissident is the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Then again, perhaps not...
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Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture (London: Verso, 1993), p.144Another common belief is that JFK was so incensed over the failure of the CIA at the Bay of Pigs that he vowed to smash it to bits, sowing the seeds for right-wing hatreds. Again, there are problems. As historians of the Agency have pointed out, it was Lyndon Johnson who treated the CIA “with contempt,” while JFK’s distress over the Bay of Pigs “in no way undermined his firm faith in the principle of covert operations, and in the CIA’s mission to carry them out.” JFK promised to “redouble his efforts” and to “improve” covert operations. He fired the CIA’s harshest critic (Chester Bowles) and appointed as Director the respected John McCone, who “revitalized the intelligence process,” though persistent failures kept the Agency from returning to the “golden age.” Nevertheless, the CIA was “re-established…in White House favor” and became a “significant voice in policy making” under Kennedy, particularly in 1963, “as covert actions multiplied in Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and Africa” (including new instructions in June 1963 to increase covert operations against Castro). Under JFK, the CIA Director became “a principal participant in the administration, on a par with the Secretary of State or of Defense.” The enthusiasm of the Kennedy brothers for counterinsurgency and covert operations is, of course, notorious.
From any other source, such crudely tendentious nonsense would have been the subject of mockery, and ripped to shreds. In fear-filled America, however, the book Rethinking Camelot scarce elicited a protest.
Who funded the Gnome of MIT's research?
Roy Lisker, “Is Language a ‘Language’ Language? On the Analytic Systems of Noam Chomsky and Heinrich Schenker,” Steamshovel Press, #5, (Summer 1992), p.71:
“The celebrated radical activist Noam Chomsky initially obtained his research monies (and for all I know still does) from the US Army Signal Corps, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Office of Naval Research. These enormous humanitarian foundations were interested in uncovering grammatical flaws applicable to all languages because this might save time and effort in the design of computer software for language translation. That might help them to know what our enemies were up to so we could murder them first.” -
Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture (London: Verso, 1993), p.144
Another common belief is that JFK was so incensed over the failure of the CIA at the Bay of Pigs that he vowed to smash it to bits, sowing the seeds for right-wing hatreds. Again, there are problems. As historians of the Agency have pointed out, it was Lyndon Johnson who treated the CIA “with contempt,” while JFK’s distress over the Bay of Pigs “in no way undermined his firm faith in the principle of covert operations, and in the CIA’s mission to carry them out.” JFK promised to “redouble his efforts” and to “improve” covert operations. He fired the CIA’s harshest critic (Chester Bowles) and appointed as Director the respected John McCone, who “revitalized the intelligence process,” though persistent failures kept the Agency from returning to the “golden age.” Nevertheless, the CIA was “re-established…in White House favor” and became a “significant voice in policy making” under Kennedy, particularly in 1963, “as covert actions multiplied in Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and Africa” (including new instructions in June 1963 to increase covert operations against Castro). Under JFK, the CIA Director became “a principal participant in the administration, on a par with the Secretary of State or of Defense.” The enthusiasm of the Kennedy brothers for counterinsurgency and covert operations is, of course, notorious.From any other source, such crudely tendentious nonsense would have been the subject of mockery, and ripped to shreds. In fear-filled America, however, the book Rethinking Camelot scarce elicited a protest.
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Translation from P.Rigbese
“I can’t refute what you wrote, claiming that Chomsky having mixed feelings about a Kibbutz was evidence he is a CIA asset was absurd.
Psst! Len, read Rethinking Camelot before making a complete arse of yourself - it's such a crude piece of CIA hackwork. Do you really want to waste time defending the incompetent?
Oops, I'd forgotten, pace 9/11 - that's your job.
Ignore the above, read it, and then let's eviscerate its author's reputation.
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To make a long story short he acknowledged that his feelings were contradictory. Is your view of everything so simplistic that you’ve never had mixed emotions about anything? A person, place or thing that you like/love or certain occasions but hate/dislike on others or ones that you simultaneously like some aspects of but dislike others. When foreigners who live in Brazil get together we almost inevitably bitch a bit about things we don’t like here but few of us are planning on returning to our homelands anytime soon.
Len, baby, that's pitiful. Have another go. Please.
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Chomsky is only a "discredited CIA hack” in the minds of a few ‘truther’ extremists. He must be doing something right because he’s hated equally by them and the NeoCons.
A small dose of triangulation. I thank you for it. By way of repaying that generous donation to the fund of human wisdom, a couple of examples of the CIA hack in action:
The Pentagon Papers, as characterised in Rethinking Camelot (London: Verso, 1993):
Line the first: They’re great and you can trust them…
“The record of internal deliberations, in particular, has been available far beyond the norm since the release of two editions of the Pentagon Papers…While history never permits anything like definitive conclusions, in this case, the richness of the record, and its consistency, permit some unusually confident judgments, in my opinion” (p.32).
Line the second: Er, they’re not, and you can’t…
“This critically important document is grossly falsified by the Pentagon Papers historians, and has largely disappeared from history” (p.41).
A small bonus while we’re on this subject:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/us/17inquire.html?_r=2
C.I.A. Is Still Cagey About Oswald Mystery
Chomsky’s logic, example 2:
The kibbutzim I visited in 1953, as characterised in James Peck’s The Chomsky Reader (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1992):
Line the first: Freethinker’s paradise
“a functioning and very successful libertarian commune,” that he “liked…very much in many ways”, so much so that he “came close to returning there to live” (p.10)
Line the second: A Stalinist hell-hole
“…the ideological conformity was appalling. I don’t know if I could have survived long in that environment because I was very strongly opposed to the Leninist ideology, as well as the general conformism…” (p.10).
Truthers are one of the biggest impediments to real dissent.How would you know? You've never offered a piece of meaningful dissent in your life.
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http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Chomsky...091025-639.html
October 25, 2009 at 13:40:56Chomsky Gets Top Pentagon "Honor"
By Sherwood Ross
The Pentagon has paid anti-war activist Noam Chomsky the highest honor any totalitarian entity can bestow upon an author: they've banned his book “Interventions” at Guantanamo Bay prison.
They won't say precisely why they “honored” Chomsky, but Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt told the Miami Herald that “Interventions”(City Lights Books) might negatively “impact on (Gitmo's) good order and discipline.”
The Pentagon, of course, insists on “good order and discipline” running its prison camp. Chomsky likes order, too. What he objects to is the Pentagon spreading disorder globally.
Instead of thanking the Pentagon for his “honor,” Chomsky, is said to be angry. The Herald quotes him as saying, “This happens sometimes in totalitarian regimes.”
Indeed! Nazi newsreels show Hitler's brown shirts igniting huge bonfires in German streets into which they pitched banned books. Hitler banned over 4,000 books ranging from anti-war novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque to Jack London's “The Call of The Wild.”
And just as Communist Russia wouldn't let its citizens read “The First Circle” and “Cancer Ward” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, comrades in the Pentagon refused to allow Gitmo prisoner Hamza al Bahlul to read Chomsky's “Interventions,” sent him by a defense lawyer.
The Pentagon's ban mimics Iran's campaign to kill British novelist Salman Rushdie for his 1988 epic “The Satanic Verses.” Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeni indicted Rushdie as “blasphemous against Islam.” The Pentagon, according to The Herald, won't authorize a book that is “anti-American, anti-Semitic, (or) anti-Western.” Note the similarities of the Pentagon's objections and the Ayatollah's. Kissin' cousins, maybe? Some might suspect its Pentagon censorship that's “anti-American.”
Censorship of Chomsky is not unique. The Pentagon has long pressured Hollywood to show the military in a favorable light. It also bans photographers from war zones if they snap pictures of slain U.S. troops. “I took pictures of something they didn't like, and they removed me (from Iraq),” complained photographer Zoriah Miller who, like Chomsky, may also be said to be angry. “Deciding what I can and cannot document, I don't see a clearer definition of censorship,” he said.
Back to Chomsky: What has he written the Pentagon doesn't want Gitmo prisoners to read? Perhaps it's where he quotes President Bush's remark “the United States---alone---has the right to carry out ‘preventive war'"using military force to eliminate a perceived threat"” Chomsky adds this is the “supreme crime” condemned at Nuremberg.
If the Pentagon is upset over “Interventions” they'll be really ticked at Chomsky's “Imperial Ambitions(Metropolitan Books).” In that book, he writes about how the Pentagon's troops burst into Falluja General Hospital, (November, 2004) on asinine grounds it was “a center of propaganda against allied forces,” and kicked the patients out of their beds and handcuffed them and their doctors to the floor, which Chomsky rightly branded “a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.”
The Pentagon might also oppose Chomsky for accusing them of genocide: “If civilians managed to flee Falluja, they were allowed out---except for men. Men of roughly military age were turned back. That's what happened in Srebrenica in 1995. The only difference is the United States bombed the Iraqis out of the city, they didn't truck them out. Women and children were allowed to leave; men were stopped, if they were found, and sent back. They were supposed to be killed. That's universally called genocide, when the Serbs do it. When we do it, it's liberation.”
Banning Chomsky will only call attention to his incisive depictions of Pentagon war crimes. While the Pentagon may worry Chomsky's work might get Muslim prisoners angry, maybe it should be concerned that Chomsky's comments such as the following on the Military-Industrial Complex might yet arouse bamboozled and disgusted U.S. taxpayers:
“Empires are costly. Running Iraq is not cheap. Somebody's paying. Somebody's paying the corporations that destroyed Iraq and the corporations that are rebuilding it. In both cases, they're getting paid by the U.S. taxpayer. Those are gifts from U.S. taxpayers to U.S. corporations"..first you destroy Iraq, then you rebuild it. It's a transfer of wealth from the general population to narrow sectors of the population.” Like the Pentagon, which will reap $664 billion next year.
Time to replace the Pentagon with the Peace Corps.
Time, more like, to replace Chomsky with a real dissident.
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The Washington Daily News, Wednesday, October 2, 1963, p.3
'SPOOKS' MAKE LIFE MISERABLE FOR AMBASSADOR LODGE
'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Viet Nam
By Richard Starnes
SAIGON, Oct.2 - The story of the Central Intelligence Agency's role in South Viet Nam is a dismal chronicle of bureaucratic arrogance, obstinate disregard of orders, and unrestrained thirst for power.
Twice the CIA flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, according to a high United States source here.
In one of these instances the CIA frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought with him from Washington because the agency disagreed with it.
This led to a dramatic confrontation between Mr. Lodge and John Richardson, chief of the huge CIA apparatus here. Mr. Lodge failed to move Mr. Richardson, and the dispute was bucked back to Washington. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and CIA Chief John A. McCone were unable to resolve the conflict, and the matter is now reported to be awaiting settlement by President Kennedy.
It is one of the developments expected to be covered in Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's report to Mr. Kennedy.
Others Critical, Too
Other American agencies here are incredibly bitter about the CIA.
"If the United States ever experiences a 'Seven Days in May' it will come from the CIA, and not from the Pentagon," one U.S. official commented caustically.
("Seven Days in May" is a fictional account of an attempted military coup to take over the U.S. Government.)
CIA "spooks" (a universal term for secret agents here) have penetrated every branch of the American community in Saigon, until non-spook Americans here almost seem to be suffering a CIA psychosis.
An American field officer with a distinguished combat career speaks angrily about "that man at headquarters in Saigon wearing a colonel's uniform." He means the man is a CIA agent, and he can't understand what he is doing at U.S. military headquarters here, unless it is spying on other Americans.
Another American officer, talking about the CIA, acidly commented: "You'd think they'd have learned something from Cuba but apparently they didn't."
Few Know CIA Strength
Few people other than Mr. Richardson and his close aides know the actual CIA strength here, but a widely used figure is 600. Many are clandestine agents known only to a few of their fellow spooks.
Even Mr. Richardson is a man about whom it is difficult to learn much in Saigon. He is said to be a former OSS officer, and to have served with distinction in the CIA in the Philippines.
A surprising number of the spooks are known to be involved in their ghostly trade and some make no secret of it.
"There are a number of spooks in the U.S. Information Service, in the U.S. Operations mission, in every aspect of American official and commercial life here, " one official - presumably a non-spook - said.
"They represent a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone," he added.
Coupled with the ubiquitous secret police of Ngo Dinh Nhu, a surfeit of spooks has given Saigon an oppressive police state atmosphere.
The Nhu-Richardson relationship is a subject of lively speculation. The CIA continues to pay the special forces which conducted brutal raids on Buddhist temples last Aug. 21, altho in fairness it should be pointed out that the CIA is paying these goons for the war against communist guerillas, not Buddhist bonzes (priests).
Hand Over Millions
Nevertheless, on the first of every month, the CIA dutifully hands over a quarter million American dollars to pay these special forces.
Whatever else it buys, it doesn't buy any solid information on what the special forces are up to. The Aug. 21 raids caught top U.S. officials here and in Washington flat-footed.
Nhu ordered the special forces to crush the Buddhist priests, but the CIA wasn't let in on the secret. (Some CIA button men now say they warned their superiors what was coming up, but in any event the warning of harsh repression was never passed to top officials here or in Washington.)
Consequently, Washington reacted unsurely to the crisis. Top officials here and at home were outraged at the news the CIA was paying the temple raiders, but the CIA continued the payments.
It may not be a direct subsidy for a religious war against the country's Buddhist majority, but it comes close to that.
And for every State Department aide here who will tell you, "Dammit, the CIA is supposed to gather information, not make policy, but policy-making is what they're doing here," there are military officers who scream over the way the spooks dabble in military operations.
A Typical Example
For example, highly trained trail watchers are an important part of the effort to end Viet Cong infiltration from across the Laos and Cambodia borders. But if the trailer watchers spot incoming Viet Congs, they report it to the CIA in Saigon, and in the fullness of time, the spooks may tell the military.
One very high American official here, a man who has spent much of his life in the service of democracy, likened the CIA's growth to a malignancy, and added he was not sure even the White House could control it any longer.
Unquestionably Mr. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor both got an earful from people who are beginning to fear the CIA is becoming a Third Force co-equal with President Diem's regime and the U.S. Government - and answerable to neither.
There is naturally the highest interest here as to whether Mr. McNamara will persuade Mr. Kennedy something ought to be done about it.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15752
The JFK Assassination: New York Times Acknowledges CIA Deceptionsby Peter Dale Scott
The New York Times, on October 17, published a page-one story by Scott Shane about the CIA’s defiance of a court order to release documents pertaining to the John F. Kennedy assassination, in its so-called Joannides file. George Joannides was the CIA case officer for a Cuban exile group that made headlines in 1963 by its public engagements with Lee Harvey Oswald, just a few weeks before Oswald allegedly killed Kennedy. For over six years a former Washington Post reporter, Jefferson Morley, has been suing the CIA for the release of these documents. [1]
Sometimes the way that a news item is reported can be more newsworthy than the item itself. A notorious example was the 1971 publication of the Pentagon Papers (documents far too detailed for most people to read) on the front page of the New York Times.
The October 17 New York Times story was another such example. It revealed, perhaps for the first time in any major U.S. newspaper, that the CIA has been deceiving the public about its own relationship to the JFK assassination.
"On the Kennedy assassination, the deceptions began in 1964 with the Warren Commission. The C.I.A. hid its schemes to kill Fidel Castro and its ties to the anti-Castro Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil, or Cuban Student Directorate, which received $50,000 a month in C.I.A. support during 1963.
In August 1963, Oswald visited a New Orleans shop owned by a directorate official, feigning sympathy with the group’s goal of ousting Mr. Castro. A few days later, directorate members found Oswald handing out pro-Castro pamphlets and got into a brawl with him. Later that month, he debated the anti-Castro Cubans on a local radio station."
That the October 17 story was published at all is astonishing. According to Lexis Nexis, there have only been two earlier references to the CIA Joannides documents controversy in any major U.S. newspaper: a brief squib in the New York Daily News in 2003 announcing the launching of the case, and a letter to the New York Times in 2007 (of which the lead author was Jeff Morley) complaining about the Times’ rave review of a book claiming that Oswald was a lone assassin.
(The review had said inter alia that “''Conspiracy theorists'' should be ''ridiculed, even shunned ... marginalized the way we've marginalized smokers.'' The letter pointed out in response that those suspecting conspiracy included Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Robert Kennedy, and J. Edgar Hoover.)
The New York Times has systematically regulated the release of any facts about the Kennedy assassination, ever since November 25, 1963, when it first declared Oswald, the day after his death, to have been the “assassin” of JFK. A notorious example was the deletion, between the early and the final edition of a Times issue, of a paragraph in a review of a book about the JFK assassination, making the obvious point that “MYSTERIES PERSIST.” [2]
Apparently there was similar jockeying over the positioning of the Scott Shane story. In some east coast editions it ran on page eleven, with a trivializing introductory squib, "Food for Conspiracy Theorists." In the California edition, headlined “C.I.A. Is Still Cagey About Oswald Mystery,” it was on page one above the fold.
One can assume that the Times decision to run the story was a momentous one not made casually. The same can probably be said of another recent remarkable editorial decision, to publish Tom Friedman’s op-ed on September 29 about the “very dangerous” climate now in America, “the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.”
Friedman did not mention JFK at all, and his most specific reference was to a recent poll on Facebook asking respondents, “Should Obama be killed?” [3] Four days later the Wall Street Journal expressed similar concern, adding to the “poll on Facebook asking whether the president should be assassinated, a column on a conservative Web site suggesting a military coup is in the works.” [4]
Friedman’s column broke a code of silence about the threats to Obama that had been in place ever since two redneck white supremacists (Shawn Adolf and Tharin Gartrell) were arrested in August 2008 for a plot to assassinate Obama with scoped bolt-action rifles. Andrew Gumbel’s story about them ran in the London Independent on November 16, 2008; of the fifteen related news stories in Lexis Nexis, only one, a brief one, is from a U.S. paper.
It is possible to take at face value the concern expressed by Friedman in his column. The Boston Globe, a New York Times affiliate, reported on October 18 that “The unprecedented number of death threats against President Obama, a rise in racist hate groups, and a new wave of antigovernment fervor threaten to overwhelm the US Secret Service.” [5]
But there may have been a higher level of concern in the normally pro-war Wall Street Journal’s reference to a military coup. Such talk on a conservative web site is hardly newsworthy. More alarming is the report by Robert Dreyfuss in the October 29 Rolling Stone that Obama is currently facing an ultimatum from the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs: either provide General McChrystal with the 40,000 additional troops he has publicly demanded, or “face a full-scale mutiny by his generals….The president, it seems, is battling two insurgencies: one in Afghanistan and one cooked up by his own generals.”[6]
One can only guess at what led the New York Times to publish a story about CIA obstinacy over documents about the JFK assassination. One explanation would be the similarities between the painful choices that Obama now faces in Afghanistan – to escalate, maintain a losing status quo, or begin to withdraw – and the same equally painful choices that Kennedy in 1963 faced in Vietnam. [7] More and more books in recent years have asked if some disgruntled hawks in the CIA and Pentagon did not participate in the assassination which led to a wider Vietnam War. [8]
Six weeks before Kennedy’s murder, the Washington News published an extraordinary attack on the CIA’s “bureaucratic arrogance” and "obstinate disregard of orders…. “If the United States ever experiences a `Seven Days in May’ it will come from the CIA…” one U.S. official commented caustically. (“Seven Days in May” is a fictional account of an attempted military coup to take over the U.S. Government.)" [9]
The story was actually a misleading one, but it was a symptom of the high-level rifts and infighting that were becoming explosive over Vietnam inside the Kennedy administration. The New York Times story about the CIA on October 17 can also be seen as a symptom of rifts and infighting. One must hope that the country has matured enough since 1963 to avoid a similarly bloody denouement.
Notes
1. “C.I.A. Is Cagey About '63 Files Tied to Oswald,” New York Times, October 17, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/us/17inquire.html.
2. Jerry Policoff, The Media and the Murder of John Kennedy,” in Peter Dale Scott, Paul L. Hoch, and Russell Stetler, The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond (New York: Random House/Vintage, 1976), 268.
3. Friedman, in decrying attacks on presidential legitimacy, recalled that “The right impeached Bill Clinton and hounded him from Day 1 with the bogus Whitewater “scandal.” It is worth recalling also that the public outcry about Whitewater was encouraged initially by a series of stories by Jeff Gerth, since largely discredited, in the New York Times. See Gene Lyons, “Fool for Scandal: How the New York Times Got Whitewater Wrong,” Harper’s, October 1994.
4. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125452861657560895.html.
5. Bryan Bender, “Secret Service strained as leaders face more threats Report questions its role in financial investigations,” Boston Globe, October 18, 2009, http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washingt...e_more_threats/.
6. Robert Dreyfuss, “The Generals’ Revolt: As Obama rethinks America’s failed strategy in Afghanistan, he faces two insurgencies: the Taliban and the Pentagon.” Rolling Stone, October 29, 41. Several other articles entitled “The Generals’ Revolt” have been published since 2003, including at least two earlier this year and a number in 2006, when retired generals’ pushed successfully for the removal of Rumsfeld over his handling of the Vietnam War.
7. Gareth Porter, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 266.
8. See for example James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008).
9. Washington Daily News, October 2, 1963; discussed in Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War (Ipswich, MA: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2008), 286.
Peter Dale Scott is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Peter Dale Scott
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I think there is a line which can be crossed between conspiricism and psychosis. The psychotic or someone experiencing a psychotic episode will by definition be unable to distinguish between reality and their imagination - they will passionately believe things that are not true.
There is a sustaining'heat' which surrounds groups of psychotics fuelled by a community validation which sustains their delusions.This goes some way to explain their desire to inhabit groups where 'non believers' are excluded. I think you've found an example of this phenomenon there Evan.
Argument and reason are no help to psychotics instead what is required is proper professional help.
"Psychosis" - and all that other anti-conspiratorial psychobabble - just where did Andy come up with that, I wondered?
Ah yes, Charlie Krauthammer, apologist for mass murder and torture:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15201
The Mysterious Collapse of WTC Seven
Why NIST’s Final 9/11 Report is Unscientific and False
by Prof. David Ray Griffin
57. I am referring to the fact that Van Jones, who had been an Obama administration advisor on “green jobs,” felt compelled to resign due to the uproar evoked by the revelation that he had signed a petition questioning the official account of 9/11. The view that this act made him unworthy was perhaps articulated most clearly by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer. After dismissing as irrelevant the other reasons that had been given for demanding Jones’s resignation, Krauthammer wrote:
“He's gone for one reason and one reason only. You can't sign a petition demanding ... investigations of the charge that the Bush administration deliberately allowed Sept. 11, 2001 – i.e., collaborated in the worst massacre ever perpetrated on American soil – and be permitted in polite society, let alone have a high-level job in the White House. Unlike the other stuff ... , this is no trivial matter. It's beyond radicalism, beyond partisanship. It takes us into the realm of political psychosis, a malignant paranoia that, unlike the Marxist posturing, is not amusing. It's dangerous....You can no more have a truther in the White House than you can have a Holocaust denier – a person who creates a hallucinatory alternative reality in the service of a fathomless malice”(Charles Krauthammer , “The Van Jones Matter,” Washington Post, September 11, 2009 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/conten...9091003408.html
Andy Walker, the neocon plagiarist and transmission belt. What a shock.
Then again, perhaps not.
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Perhaps we could arrange an interview with Barbara and settle the issue once and for all?
Anyway, here's Griffin on the subject - so much for hubby's account!
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...va&aid=8514
Ted Olson's Report of Phone Calls from Barbara Olson on 9/11: Three Official Denialsby David Ray Griffin
Global Research, April 1, 2008
Late in the day on 9/11, CNN put out a story that began: “Barbara Olson, a conservative commentator and attorney, alerted her husband, Solicitor General Ted Olson, that the plane she was on was being hijacked Tuesday morning, Ted Olson told CNN.” According to this story, Olson reported that his wife had “called him twice on a cell phone from American Airlines Flight 77,” saying that “all passengers and flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by armed hijackers. The only weapons she mentioned were knives and cardboard cutters.”2
Ted Olson’s report was very important. It provided the only evidence that American 77, which was said to have struck the Pentagon, had still been aloft after it had disappeared from FAA radar around 9:00 AM (there had been reports, after this disappearance, that an airliner had crashed on the Ohio-Kentucky border). Also, Barbara Olson had been a very well-known commentator on CNN. The report that she died in a plane that had been hijacked by Arab Muslims was an important factor in getting the nation’s support for the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” Ted Olson’s report was important in still another way, being the sole source of the widely accepted idea that the hijackers had box cutters.3
However, although Ted Olson’s report of phone calls from his wife has been a central pillar of the official account of 9/11, this report has been completely undermined.
Olson’s Self-Contradictions
Olson began this process of undermining by means of self-contradictions. He first told CNN, as we have seen, that his wife had “called him twice on a cell phone.” But he contradicted this claim on September 14, telling Hannity and Colmes that she had reached him by calling the Department of Justice collect. Therefore, she must have been using the “airplane phone,” he surmised, because “she somehow didn’t have access to her credit cards.”4 However, this version of Olson’s story, besides contradicting his first version, was even self-contradictory, because a credit card is needed to activate a passenger-seat phone.
Later that same day, moreover, Olson told Larry King Live that the second call from his wife suddenly went dead because “the signals from cell phones coming from airplanes don’t work that well.”5 After that return to his first version, he finally settled on the second version, saying that his wife had called collect and hence must have used “the phone in the passengers’ seats” because she did not have her purse.6
By finally settling on this story, Olson avoided a technological pitfall. Given the cell phone system employed in 2001, high-altitude cell phone calls from airliners were impossible, or at least virtually so (Olson’s statement that “the signals from cell phones coming from airplanes don’t work that well” was a considerable understatement). The technology to enable cell phone calls from high-altitude airline flights was not created until 2004.7
However, Olson’s second story, besides being self-contradictory, was contradicted by American Airlines.
American Airlines Contradicts Olson’s Second Version
A 9/11 researcher, knowing that AA Flight 77 was a Boeing 757, noticed that AA’s website indicated that its 757s do not have passenger-seat phones. After he wrote to ask if that had been the case on September 11, 2001, an AA customer service representative replied: “That is correct; we do not have phones on our Boeing 757. The passengers on flight 77 used their own personal cellular phones to make out calls during the terrorist attack.”8
In response to this revelation, defenders of the official story might reply that Ted Olson was evidently right the first time: she had used her cell phone. However, besides the fact that this scenario is rendered unlikely by the cell phone technology employed in 2001, it has also been contradicted by the FBI.
Olson’s Story Contradicted by the FBI
The most serious official contradiction of Ted Olson’s story came in 2006 at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker. The evidence presented to this trial by the FBI included a report on phone calls from all four 9/11 flights. In its report on American Flight 77, the FBI report attributed only one call to Barbara Olson and it was an “unconnected call,” which (of course) lasted “0 seconds.”9 According to the FBI, therefore, Ted Olson did not receive a single call from his wife using either a cell phone or an onboard phone.
Back on 9/11, the FBI itself had interviewed Olson. A report of that interview indicates that Olson told the FBI agents that his wife had called him twice from Flight 77.10 And yet the FBI’s report on calls from Flight 77, presented in 2006, indicated that no such calls occurred.
This was an amazing development: The FBI is part of the Department of Justice, and yet its report undermined the well-publicized claim of the DOJ’s former solicitor general that he had received two calls from his wife on 9/11.
Olson’s Story Also Rejected by Pentagon Historians
Ted Olson’s story has also been quietly rejected by the historians who wrote Pentagon 9/11, a treatment of the Pentagon attack put out by the Department of Defense.11
According to Olson, his wife had said that “all passengers and flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by armed hijackers.”12 This is an inherently implausible scenario. We are supposed to believe that 60-some people, including the two pilots, were held at bay by three or four men (one or two of the hijackers would have been in the cockpit) with knives and boxcutters. This scenario becomes even more absurd when we realize that the alleged hijackers were all small, unathletic men (the 9/11 Commission pointed out that even “[t]he so-called muscle hijackers actually were not physically imposing, as the majority of them were between 5’5” and 5’7” in height and slender in build”13), and that the pilot, Charles “Chic” Burlingame, was a weightlifter and a boxer, who was described as “really tough” by one of his erstwhile opponents.14 Also, the idea that Burlingame would have turned over the plane to hijackers was rejected by his brother, who said: “I don't know what happened in that cockpit, but I'm sure that they would have had to incapacitate him or kill him because he would have done anything to prevent the kind of tragedy that befell that airplane.”15
The Pentagon historians, in any case, did not accept the Olson story, according to which Burlingame and his co-pilot did give up their plane and were in the back with the passengers and other crew members. They instead wrote that “the attackers either incapacitated or murdered the two pilots.”16
Conclusion
This rejection of Ted Olson’s story by American Airlines, the Pentagon, and especially the FBI is a development of utmost importance. Without the alleged calls from Barbara Olson, there is no evidence that Flight 77 returned to Washington. Also, if Ted Olson’s claim was false, then there are only two possibilities: Either he lied or he was duped by someone using voice-morphing technology to pretend to be his wife.17 In either case, the official story about the calls from Barbara Olson was based on deception. And if that part of the official account of 9/11 was based on deception, should we not suspect that other parts were as well?
The fact that Ted Olson’s report has been contradicted by other defenders of the official story about 9/11 provides grounds for demanding a new investigation of 9/11. This internal contradiction is, moreover, only one of 25 such contradictions discussed in my most recent book, 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press.
NOTES
1 This essay is based on Chapter 8 (“Did Ted Olson Receive Calls from Barbara Olson?”) of David Ray Griffin, 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008).2 Tim O’Brien, “Wife of Solicitor General Alerted Him of Hijacking from Plane,” CNN, September 11, 2001 (http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.olson).
3 This was pointed out in The 9/11 Commission Report, 8.
4 Hannity & Colmes, Fox News, September 14, 2001 (http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2001/foxnews091401.html).
5 “America’s New War: Recovering from Tragedy,” Larry King Live, CNN, September 14, 2001 (http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/14/lkl.00.html).
6 In his “Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture,” delivered November 16, 2001
(http://www.fed-soc.org/resources/id.63/default.asp),
Olson said that she “somehow managed . . . to use a telephone in the airplane to call.” He laid out this version of his story more fully in an interview reported in Toby Harnden, “She Asked Me How to Stop the Plane,” Daily Telegraph, March 5, 2002 (http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2002/telegraph030502.html).
7 I discussed the technical difficulties of making cell phone calls from airliners in 2001 in Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2007), 87-88, 292-97.
8 See the submission of 17 February 2006 by “the Paradroid” on the Politik Forum (http://forum.politik.de/forum/archive/index.php/t-133356-p-24.html). It is quoted in David Ray Griffin, 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008), 75.
9 United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Exhibit Number P200054 (http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/flights/P200054.html). These documents can be more easily viewed in “Detailed Account of Phone Calls from September 11th Flights”
(http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/evidence/calldetail.html).
10 FBI, “Interview with Theodore Olsen [sic],” “9/11 Commission, FBI Source Documents, Chronological, September 11,” 2001Intelfiles.com, March 14, 2008,
(http://intelfiles.egoplex.com:80/2008/03/911-commission-fbi-source-documents.html).
11 Alfred Goldberg et al., Pentagon 9/11 (Washington DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2007).
12 O’Brien, “Wife of Solicitor General Alerted Him of Hijacking from Plane.”
13 9/11 Commission Staff Statement 16
(http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/staff_statement_16.pdf).
14 Shoestring, “The Flight 77 Murder Mystery: Who Really Killed Charles Burlingame?” Shoestring911, February 2, 2008 (http://shoestring911.blogspot.com/2008/02/flight-77-murder-mystery-who-really.html).
15 “In Memoriam: Charles ‘Chic’ Burlingame, 1949-2001,” USS Saratoga Museum foundation (available at http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/planes/a...emembered.html).
16 Alfred Goldberg et al., Pentagon 9/11 (Washington DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2007), 12.
17 Of these two possibilities, the idea that Ted Olson was duped should be seriously entertained only if there are records proving that the Department of Justice received two collect calls, ostensibly from Barbara Olson, that morning. Evidently no such records have been produced.
This article is based on Chapter 8 of Dr. Griffin's new book, "9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press," (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008).
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A truly compelling analysis of the sickness which underpins belief in the OCT. And a first, I believe, for this forum: A contributor dismisses himself as "psychotic." Impressive honesty.
Congratulations Paul you are as 'daft' as your picture suggests
Quick Len, Evan - or even, God forbid, Craig - tell him who Olson is! Readers might get the impression Andy really doesn't have a clue about any of this stuff.
Are you suggesting a conspiracy? (adopts whacked out wide eyed credulous look made popular by certain avatars)
OK, fellow Baldie, enough dissing of complex notions like..."conspiracy." Here's how the 9/11 victim fakery fits in with another small plot, this one revolving round the loose change of fixing the 2000 US election. The seemless move from one plot to another is unsurprising:
http://forum.911movement.org/index.php?sho...=4569&st=60
Montana, the pusposeful mis-matching of similar names is how the 2000 presidential election was fixed in Florida. this method was used to exclude thousands of black voters. The fixers took names of some blacks and accidently/purposely confused the mames with other blacks with criminal records from other sates as a means to exclude legit black voters from voting. This methos served an additional purpose. It makes the exclusion of legit black voters look like a honest "accident" or a "computer glitch" thus providing plausible deniability to investigators. The entite Florida election fraud was outlined in Greg Palast's documentary, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy".Proof of voter fraud in the USA - from the horse's mouth
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/apr2001/flor-a09.shtml
Florida's legacy of voter disenfranchisement
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A truly compelling analysis of the sickness which underpins belief in the OCT. And a first, I believe, for this forum: A contributor dismisses himself as "psychotic." Impressive honesty.
Congratulations Paul you are as 'daft' as your picture suggests
Writes man with dickey-bow and cheesy smile. But what substance in your reply (yet again) - you have, I take it, heard of Barbara Olson?
Quick Len, Evan - or even, God forbid, Craig - tell him who Olson is! Readers might get the impression Andy really doesn't have a clue about any of this stuff.
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I think there is a line which can be crossed between conspiricism and psychosis. The psychotic or someone experiencing a psychotic episode will by definition be unable to distinguish between reality and their imagination - they will passionately believe things that are not true.
There is a sustaining'heat' which surrounds groups of psychotics fuelled by a community validation which sustains their delusions.This goes some way to explain their desire to inhabit groups where 'non believers' are excluded. I think you've found an example of this phenomenon there Evan.
Argument and reason are no help to psychotics instead what is required is proper professional help.
A truly compelling analysis of the sickness which underpins belief in the OCT. And a first, I believe, for this forum: A contributor dismisses himself as "psychotic." Impressive honesty.
More seriously, if, as appears to have been established by the FBI, her husband lied about the duration and content of her phone calls, which part of the Barbara Olson narrative are we to accept, and on what basis?
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Simon Dee died yesterday. He was a famous BBC Talk Show host between 1967 and 1970. He was then offered a salary of £100,000 to move to ITV to host “The Simon Dee Show”. In one of his first shows he interviewed the cinema’s new James Bond, George Lazenby. During the interview Lazenby gave the names of American senators who he believed to have been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This was a live interview and it created great controversy. However, Lazenby and Dee were not sued by the named men. What did happen was that both men’s high-profile careers came to an end. Dee’s contract was cancelled and Lazenby never appeared in another Bond movie.
Dee found it impossible to find work. In 1974 he blamed the CIA for his predicament. “It was perfectly obvious that the CIA, who controlled our media and still do, would be on my case.”
The details of Lazenby interview cannot be found on the web. Does anyone know who he named as those responsible for the assassination?
John,
here's what I've found. I can cannot vouch for any of it, so take it on board or not...
1. The shows were live - and as a result, very little of Dee's work can be found today.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/pob18.html
The Simon Dee ShowRecorded: Saturday, 07/Feb/1970
Transmitted by: London Weekend Television, Colour, Sunday 08/Feb/1970 (11:25pm-12:15am)
A guest appearance on the 4th edition of Dee's new Sunday night talk-show series for London Weekend Television (Dee had previously worked for the BBC). John and Yoko also brought along Michael 'X' for the ride, but sadly this TV appearance almost certainly no longer exists in visual form (the image - left - is just a photograph snapped during the interview). The James Bond actor George Lazenby was Dee's opening guest and it was alleged that he had been high on LSD during his interview which he turned into a discussion about the questions surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy a little over 6 years earlier, Dee's employer's were said to have been furious at what had been broadcast (it was not live) and the incident is chiefly blamed for Dee's swift demise after the series ended in the summer. Having already burned his bridges with the BBC, Dee had nowhere else to go and one of Britain's most popular TV personalities of the late 1960's was never to be seen on TV again.
Can't be too many instances in that period, surely, of a British talkshow host permitting discussion, however stoned (or spiked) the initiator, of the Dallas coup; getting fired for it; and then commenting publicly on the power over British broadcasting exercised by the CIA? Three very good reasons for the end of a career, it would seem.
Chomsky's lies about JFK and the CIA
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
For the broader perspective on Chomsky's role as a wedge between the US Left and conspiracy researchers, the following remains the outstanding piece in the field: