Anthony Thorne

Though I still don't have a minute to dig into the Cheney issue as much as I'd like to, as the subject warrants a lot of discussion, I thought in the same topic these advance blurbs for Peter's book were quite worthwhile.

.............

"Scott's brilliantly perceptive account of the underpinnings of American governmental authority should be made required reading. The book vividly depicts the political forces that have pushed this country toward an abyss, threatening constitutional democracy at home and world peace abroad. Its central message can be understood as an urgent wake-up call to everyone concerned with the future of America."--Richard Falk, author of The Great Terror War

"Peter Dale Scott is one of that tiny and select company of the most brilliantly creative and provocative political-historical writers of the last half century. The Road to 9/11 further secures his distinction as truth-teller and prophet. He shows us here with painful yet hopeful clarity the central issue of our time--America's coming to terms with its behavior in the modern world. As in his past work, Scott's gift is not only recognition and wisdom, but also redemption and rescue we simply cannot do without."--Roger Morris, former NSC staffer

"The Road to 9/11 is vintage Peter Dale Scott. Scott does not undertake conventional political analysis; instead, he engages in a kind of poetics, crafting the dark poetry of the deep state, of parapolitics, and of shadow government. As with his earlier work Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Scott has no theory of responsibility and does not name the guilty. Rather, he maps out an alien terrain, surveying the topography of a political shadow land, in which covert political deviancy emerges as the norm. After reading Scott, we can no longer continue with our consensus-driven belief that our so-called 'liberal' order renders impossible the triumph of the politically irrational."--Eric Wilson, Senior Lecturer of Public International Law, Monash University, and co-editor of Government of the Shadows

"Peter Dale Scott exposes a shadow world of oil, terrorism, drug trade and arms deals, of covert financing and parallel security structures-from the Cold War to today. He shows how such parallel forces of the United States have been able to dominate the agenda of the George W. Bush Administration, and that statements and actions made by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld before, during and after September 11, 2001, present evidence for an American 'deep state' and for the so-called 'Continuity of Government' in parallel to the regular 'public state' ruled by law. Scott's brilliant work not only reveals the overwhelming importance of these parallel forces but also presents elements of a strategy for restraining their influence to win back the 'public state', the American democracy."--Ola Tunander, International Peace Research Institute, Oslo

"A powerful study of the historic origins of the terrorist strikes of September 11, this book offers an indispensable guide to the gluttonous cast of characters who, since Watergate and the fall of Nixon, fashioned an ever more reckless American empire. By exposing the corrupt U.S. 'deep state'-transfer of public authority to America's wealthy and to the nation's unaccountable secret intelligence agencies-Peter Dale Scott's The Road to 9/11 illuminates the path toward a more democratic and inclusive republic."--David MacGregor, King's University College at the University of Western Ontario

"The Road to 9/11 provides an illuminating and disturbing history of the American government since World War II. Scott's account suggests that the 9/11 attacks were a culmination of long-term trends that threaten the very existence of American democracy, and also that there has been a massive cover-up of 9/11 itself. This book, which combines extensive research, perceptive analysis, and a fascinating narrative, will surely be considered Scott's magnum opus."--David Ray Griffin, author of Debunking 9/11 Debunking

"'The America we knew and loved. Can it be saved?' That question opens this book, and getting to the answer called for the honed intellect of a scholar and the sensitivity of a poet. Peter Dale Scott has both, in spades, and here gives us much, much more than a book about 9/11. In a time of fear, he speaks for sanity and freedom."--Anthony Summers, author of The Arrogance of Power

I've noticed a few times dismissive mainsteam articles mentioning '30 or 40' people gathering circa the COPA events, and cynically mentioning 'Elvis impersonators' and Roswell alien types mingling among the crowd, as if the people attending were giddily celebrating fringe elements of cult Americana rather than mourning the mainstream media's snide elephant-in-the-room blind spot dismissal of a brutal right-wing coup. I fully believe that the coming 6 to 12 months will represent a turning point in America's (and much of the rest oif the world's) conception and awareness of its own conspiracy laden history, and the sporadic bursts of activity by the mainstream press and US government - i.e Bush's whiny outburst against conspiracies at Ford's funeral - are an attempt to head this off at the pass. Without going off topic in this thread, I believe the 9/11 truth movement has woken many newcomers up to the notion of domestic political conspiracy, and these same people are turning their attention towards reassessing the other major conspiracies of the past 40 years. I fully expect an increase in efforts to associate 'conspiracy theorists' with toxic subject matter such as Holocaust denial or internet-based muslim terrorism sometime over the coming year to plant a guilt-by-association response among the remaining folk who haven't yet fully absorbed the ramifications of the JFK and 9/11 events, and to prevent people from contemplating these issues with an open mind.

Off topic but while I'm writing, apologies to John and co for me not yet putting a photo up alongside my profile, I will take care of this over the next couple of weeks.

The Xymphora blog had a post on this last year (reprinted here below) plus a bunch of links, showing Xymph's overall analysis of the event for what it's worth. Back when I first read this, I noticed on a couple of other forums that an Australian researcher had kept the Sydney Morning Herald (or was it The Australian) news article cuttings that covered the original story. As I said to some friends back then, I'm not surprised we rarely hear about this incident as it kind of 'gives the game away' regarding covert assassination threats from the spook monolith power networks being used to send a clear, easily decipherable warning to Carter. It's not in the links below but another forum post I read at the time quoted Carter as mentioning to Billy Graham(?) at a meeting around this period that he had 'lost control of his government'. It would be nice to hear a horse's mouth discussion someday from various high-profile Democratic leaders exactly what they thought of Bushco and The Secret Team's covert-and-not-so-covert strongarming of the government. I'm sure they'd have a few stories to tell.

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Xymphora - Monday, January 23, 2006

Lee Harvey Osvaldo

On May 5, 1979, Raymond Lee Harvey was arrested by the Secret Service while he awaited the arrival of Jimmy Carter at a Cinco de Mayo Mexican festival at the Los Angeles Civic Center Mall. Shortly thereafter, they arrested Osvaldo Espinoza Ortiz, who had been standing nearby. Raymond Lee Harvey had been carrying a revolver and blank cartridges. His story, later confirmed by Osvaldo Espinoza Ortiz, was that they had been part of a plot involving two Mexican men who had been staying at the nearby Alan Hotel, and who were going to shoot Carter. Shooting the blanks was supposed to create a distraction for the real assassins. When police checked the hotel they found an empty shotgun case and three rounds of live ammunition in a room rented by a Mexican man who had checked out on the day of Carter's visit.

Although the authorities had what appears to be a confession backed up by some hard evidence at the hotel, charges were apparently dismissed on the basis of insufficient evidence. 'Raymond Lee Harvey' plus 'Osvaldo Espinoza Ortiz' equals 'Lee Harvey Osvaldo', which is close enough to send Carter a message. He appears to have received the message:

On July 3, 1979, he signed a directive authorizing secret aid to Islamic opponents of the government in Afghanistan. This eventually led to the war in Afghanistan in which Islamic insurgents from Saudi Arabia managed to defeat the Soviets. Bin Laden rose to prominence in this war, and the basis of al Qaeda was established.

On July 15, 1979, Carter gave his famous 'malaise' speech which was used by the Republicans to defeat him.

After months of resistance, on October 20, 1979 Carter gave in to much pressure (going back to April 1979), particularly from Kissinger, and allowed the Shah of Iran into the United States for medical treatment. Coupled with the inexplicable failure to evacuate the American embassy in Tehran, this decision led directly to the hostage crisis.

We have to wonder how many of Carter's bad decisions, all of which had major consequences benefiting the extreme right in American politics and which continue to resonate in American politics today, were made as a result of the implied threat made by 'Lee Harvey Osvaldo', who, we have to assume based on the fact that nothing appears to have been done about the matter, was working for some official agency of the American government.

LISTINGS OF CRONKITE STORY ON ATTEMPTED CARTER ASSASSINATION, PLUS LATER DISMISSAL OF CHARGES AGAINST 'RAYMOND LEE HARVEY'

http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1979-...-11-CBS-10.html

http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1979-...5-29-CBS-7.html

CARTER'S JULY 1979 DIRECTIVE AUTHORIZING SECRET AID TO AFGHAN REBELS

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Afghanis...IA_Taliban.html

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0301x.asp

CARTER ADMITS THE SHAH INTO THE U.S

http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives...herty_shah.html

Peter Dale Scott has reportedly revamped his talk a little at the latest 9/11 conference in Vancouver this week, adding material on Watergate and blending that in to his 'JFK and 9/11' discussion. There's reportedly Google video of it at the following link but I'm at work and haven't had a chance to watch it yet. Like William Kelly above I feel there is more to discuss on this point but I'll put my two cents in shortly when I get a spare moment.

Latest PDS talk with others:

http://www.911blogger.com/node/9572

Spot on, Myra. Note too that Talbot's book currently having a bigger impact than Bug's with the general public (based on Amazon and similar bookseller lists) is possibly due to many, many people having just witnessed first-hand the consequences of the 'me first/screw everyone else' attitude in political life pushed to its ultimate conclusion in recent years, and probably feeling that perhaps enough is enough. I'd link this back to Bush Sr's snappy denunciation of those pesky conspiracy theorists at Ford's funeral, given that much of the public has had evidence of conspiracy upon government conspiracy rammed down their throats for the past several years, but with the mainstream media still shrugging and grinning like Alfred E.Newman and doing little to counter it. The message of Bug's book is, go back to sleep, America. Talbot's book is an urge for everyone to wake up. I suspect Talbot's book will have the greatest impact for those very reasons. Loved your Amazon review, BTW.

Following Larry Hancock's SOMEONE WOULD HAVE TALKED and Talbot's BROTHERS, does anyone know of any other forthcoming (and worthwhile) books about the JFK assassination in the works that we can look forward to? The only one even vaguely related to the interests on this board that I know about is John Kelin's PRAISE FROM A FUTURE GENERATION, (listed on Jim DiEugenio's Probe website), which apparently sheds light on the early efforts of Sylvia Meagher, Mark Lane and others. Do any of the heavy-hitters on this board have books in the works? Are any other scholars out there hard at work on new volumes that will help our efforts?

One personal favourite of mine from the past year or two was Gerald McKnight's BREACH OF TRUST. Large-format, heavily researched, hard to refute and very effective at pummeling the Warren Commission with the latest and greatest evidence. Is anyone aware of any other good books on the horizon?

Just to note, I received my copy of the book today down here in Melbourne and it is outstanding so far. I think BROTHERS will be a great gift to the assassination research community as it will bring the events home for many new readers and make them emotionally relevant to those whose eyes have been previously averted. I'll also note that Talbot's lengthy bibliography will be a useful one for readers who wish to dig in further, as it features nearly all the books that I'd recommend to newcomers, right up to some very recent releases. I'll be mentioning these points and others in my eventual Amazon review.

David's interview from FRESH AIR was a good one, and I'd imagine that most people who heard it would have been made quite curious to read the book and learn more. The transcript is below.

As a note, Bugliosi's book is currently at #33 on the Amazon nonfiction bestseller list (though we all know it should be in the fiction category alongside Harry Potter). David's book is in the top 10.

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Dave Davies: This is Fresh Air. I’m Dave Davies, senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News, sitting in for Terry Gross. Few subjects in American history have been as relentlessly scrutinized as the Kennedy assassination, but a new book by my guest, journalist David Talbot, looks at the question of whether Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy in Dallas from a unique perspective - that of the President’s brother, Robert Kennedy. Talbot says it’s clear Bobby Kennedy never believed Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in Dallas, and Talbot’s book argues his suspicions were well founded. It focuses on the Kennedy brother’s partnership in the White House, and contends they were constantly undermined and threatened by forces in the military, the CIA, the Mafia and the Cuban exile community. The administration was, Talbot argues, a government at war with itself. David Talbot worked for years as a writer and editor in several publications, and is the founder of the online magazine, Salon.com. His new book is BROTHERS – THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE KENNEDY YEARS.

David Talbot, welcome back to Fresh Air. You open this book with an account of Bobby Kennedy’s movements and reaction in November 1963 to his brother’s shooting in Dallas. Did Bobby Kennedy have an immediate belief or theory about who had killed President Kennedy?

David Talbot: Yes, literally immediately. That afternoon he happened to be at his home in Virginia, Hickory Hill, the old Civil War estate where he and his family lived, and it was J. Edgar Hoover of all people who phoned him that day - his arch-enemy, the head of the FBI - to tell him that his brother had been shot, and then soon after that his brother had died. Bobby immediately, we know from the phone calls and conversations he’s having that day from his home, immediately suspects that Lee Harvey Oswald is not the complete story, and he immediately is looking into the shadowy war against Castro that is being run by the CIA, (and has enlisted gangsters in its attempts to kill Castro), as the source of the plot against his own brother.

DD: Well then, of course, Bobby had made a lot of enemies in the underworld for many years by investigating the mob and the teamsters union. Did he do anything to investigate the crime, Bobby Kennedy?

DT: He did, and this is the great drama of the story that I tell, because publicly what Bobby is saying, of course, is that he accepts the official version of Dallas, the Warren Report, but privately it’s a very different story. Privately, he’s a man on fire to get to the bottom of the story from that afternoon on, and he’s looking himself into various leads, he’s using surrogates, a former FBI agent named Walter Sheridan, who was his right-hand investigator, a number of people on his staff who he trusted, to pursue every lead, and literally he goes from New Orleans, to Chicago, to Dallas, to Mexico, to Moscow either himself or using these surrogates, these aides to pursue every lead that he can.

DD: You mentioned that he dispatched someone to Moscow. What was that all about?

DT: Well, that’s a remarkable story. This is the week after the assassination of President Kennedy. He goes to a close family friend named William Walton. Now, Walton is a very interesting character in his own right. He was a Time magazine war correspondent during World War II, knew the eldest Kennedy brother, Joe Kennedy, before his death in the war. He’d gotten to know Jack Kennedy as a young congressman and Jackie Kennedy in Georgetown before they moved into the White House, and he was used as a confidential emissary and a political operative by the Kennedy family for a number of years. He’d been due to go to Moscow a week after the assassination as part of JFK’s efforts towards détente with the Soviet Union. He was going to lead an artistic exchange mission to Moscow. He thought the mission would be cancelled after Dallas, but Bobby and Jackie Kennedy both go to Walton and say no, go ahead with this mission and take a confidential message from us, the Kennedy family, to the Soviet government. He does that, and he meets with a Soviet agent named Georgei Bulshakov, who both Jack and Bobby had come to trust while he was an agent in Washington. They used him as a back channel courier to Khrushchev in the Kremlin, and Walton has dinner with Bulshakov in Moscow and he tells them a remarkable thing. He says, “We don’t blame you, the Soviets, for the assassination”, even though Oswald is being portrayed in the press at that point as a Communist agent. “We know that it was a domestic high level political conspiracy that killed the President, and Bobby Kennedy intends to run for President at some point, and when he does, if he succeeds, he will resume the policies of President Kennedy’s – of détente towards the Soviet Union.” Well I find this a stunning story, because this is the height of the Cold War, and at this point it indicates that Bobby Kennedy and the family are placing more trust in the Soviet government than in their own government.

DD: Publicly he endorsed the findings of the Warren Commission, that Oswald acted alone, right?

DT: That’s right.

DD: And I was struck by one fascinating detail you discovered, that Kenny O’Donnell, who was the special assistant to President Kennedy (who was actually played by Kevin Costner in the movie THIRTEEN DAYS), he was in the motorcade in Dallas, and felt strongly that President Kennedy took shots from in front, from the Grassy Knoll, not from behind where Oswald’s sniper’s perch was, but Bobby Kennedy instructed him to lie to the Warren Commission.

DT: Well, that’s what I suspect. It’s a very revealing story. As you say, Kenny O’Donnell is riding 10 feet behind the President’s limousine in Dallas with another White House aide named Dave Powers, who’s a part of the Kennedy’s so called ‘Irish Mafia’ - very loyal aides - and both of these men, Kenny O’Donnell and Dave Powers had been World War II veterans. They knew the sound of gunfire, and they distinctly heard gunfire, they later said, (and they told the FBI this, and they told Bobby Kennedy this), both from the Grassy Knoll area, as well as from behind, as you say the Texas Book depository. Well, of course, that immediately indicates there was a conspiracy if you have two sharpshooters. But, Kenny O’Donnell, I think, was prepared to tell the truth to the Warren Commission, as Dave Powers was, but I do believe it was not just the FBI who hold him that he didn’t want to go there – which they [the FBI] did – but it was probably Bobby, because I think Kenny O’Donnell was so loyal to Bobby that he would have taken orders only from him, and at this point Bobby Kennedy has determined he has no power, no official power, even though he’s still Attorney General, to pursue this crime. The new President, Lyndon Johnson, loathes him. The head of the FBI, which is taking the lead in the investigation into the assassination, J. Edgar Hoover, also has a poisonous relationship with Bobby Kennedy. His power to investigate the crime begins to evaporate from the moment his brother dies. He knows that he has to wait and bide his time, which is what he tells people, he tells his family that weekend in the White House, a very dramatic scene where he begins to confide in family members who are gathering for the funeral of the President. “This is what’s happened, it’s a high level plot, it involves elements of the Government, but we can’t do anything until we get back to the White House, until we have the machinery of the Federal Government to investigate this”.

DD: Let me just go back to that. You’re saying that Bobby Kennedy, you know for a fact that he told members of his family the weekend after the assassination that this was a conspiracy. How do we know that?

DT: We know this from people who were in the White House that weekend, including Peter Lawford, who was the President’s brother-in-law. Peter Lawford is dead, I interviewed a close friend of his who reported this to me, and we know from other people that Bobby is saying the same thing during that period.

DD: Well, I want to talk about some of the events in the Kennedy Administration that gave rise to the suspicions about the assassination. President Kennedy faced a huge test, a disaster early on, and that was the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. This was of course, for those too young to recall, a CIA-backed invasion of Cuban exiles who were going to overthrow Castro, which quickly turned into a disaster when the invasion force was pinned down on a Cuban beach, and there was enormous pressure from within the Cuban community and the military on Kennedy to bring US military forces into the conflict, in effect to join in an invasion of the island. He resisted, and refused, and of course the invasion force was taken captive and the whole thing was a big fiasco. What was the effect of Kennedy’s reputation among the military and intelligence services? How was it affected by the Bay of Pigs disaster?

DT: Well, I think it’s at this point in the Kennedy administration, and it’s quite early on, it’s only a matter of a few months into the administration in April 1961, it’s at this point when I believe the government cracked, that you essentially have a government at war with itself from that point on because Kennedy’s own national security apparatus now decides that Kennedy is weak and can’t be trusted. They had thought, as you say, that he would have gone in and reinforced the belegured Cuban exiles pinned down on the beaches, that he would have brought massive US military power to bear, and indeed, I believe they knew that the invasion itself, the initial invasion would be a fiasco, and they thought they would be able to sandbag Kennedy into sending in the full might of the US military. Kennedy came to that same conclusion himself and he was enraged. He vowed to shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds, while the head of the CIA, Allen Dulles, the legendary spymaster and others began muttering darkly among themselves and the military that Kennedy was in over his head, he couldn’t be trusted, he wasn’t the leader that America needed.

DD: Well, let’s talk about some of these ranking officials in the military. You know, in 2007 it’s a little hard to recall kind of the intensity of that Cold War period, the threat of nuclear war hanging over the nation. Were there military leaders who seriously wanted to provoke a new nuclear confrontation with the Soviets?

DT: Yes there were, in particular the head of the Airforce, General Curtis Lemay. He was a World War II hero. Robert McNamara, Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense, had worked under him in Japan during the war, and Curtis Lemay did indeed feel that the country not only could, but should launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. The United States at that point had overwhelming nuclear superiority, and he felt if you’re going to fight a nuclear war with the Soviets - and he felt it was inevitable - that you should fight it sooner, rather than later when the Soviets would begin to catch up with the United States. In fact he had this debate with Defense Secretary McNamara. He felt that you could win a nuclear war if you had more nuclear weapons than your enemy at the end of the holocaust, whereas McNamara argued that you had to take into account the casualties, and of course the devastation that would ensue.

DD: You also write that a lot of the military structure, not just Curtis Lemay, but a lot of people in the military held really hard-line anti-Communist views, and openly criticized the President as an appeaser. I mean, this is sort of shocking for those of us who are used to thinking of the military as being under civilian control. It was a different world then.

DT: A very different world. The US military was very politicized, there were political rallies, anti-Communist rallies held in a number of places throughout the country in which active duty military officers would participate. General Edwin Walker, who was a very respected military commander in West Germany at the time, distributed John Birch far-right material to his troops in the ranks. He advised them how to vote in American elections, and he considered all liberal democratic candidates Socialists, and treasonous. This man finally was forced out of the military, and became an arch-enemy of the Kennedy’s, and campaigned against the Kennedy’s all around the country. But the mutinous atmosphere within the American military became so alarming to JFK himself, that at one point he approached a friend in Hollywood, John Frankenheimer, the director, and he urged him to make a movie version of the best-selling novel SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, which of course was about an attempted military coup in Washington. He does this, I believe, not only as a warning shot across his General’s bow, but also to try and awaken the American people to the threat, the growing threat against democracy at that point.

DD: Did Kennedy truly believe a military coup was possible?

DT: I believe he was concerned about it. You know, it’s remarkable when you see transcripts of conversations in the White House, and of course he had a taping system so we have some of these conversations verbatim, and conversations he had with close friends, how often the subject of assassination or coup, the violent specter of the end of his own Presidency would come up in these conversations. I don’t believe…

DD: Give us an example.

DT: Well, one day he’s sailing with an old friend, Paul Fay, who he’d appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and Fay has been reading SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, the book, and brings it up and says “Do you think something like that could ever happen here, Jack?” And JFK, instead of just dismissing it out of hand, says “Well, you know if there were a shock to the system”, something like the Bay of Pigs, “..people in the military might begin to wonder about the President, particularly if the President’s young and untested..”, which of course JFK was, “..then if there’s another shock after that, and maybe possibly a third one, yes, there might be elements within the military..” he tells his friend, “..that would move against the White House at that point out of a sense of national duty.” I believe he felt… JFK had very finely tuned political radar. He’d picked up on these tremors within his own government, and I believe in conversations like this, he is expressing those concerns.

DD: So, what you have is a situation where you have this hotbed of angry anti-Castro Cubans in South Florida who regard Kennedy as a traitor for not supporting them at the Bay of Pigs, you have CIA operatives, rogues who were doing things without the knowledge of the government, in league with the Mafia, who have their own reasons to hate Kennedy. So, you have three forces that are angry enough at President Kennedy to give rise to suspicion, once President Kennedy is assassinated, that they might have been behind it, and there are lots of fascinating connections we can’t go into here among a lot of the players. But, I have to ask you one thing, you know, mob historians who followed the Mafia, one of the things that they tell us is that they generally want to operate and make their money, and over the years they’ve historically not killed cops or prosecutors. That was off limits. What makes us believe that they would actually order a hit on a President?

DT: Well, let me just say, you know, very emphatically, I don’t believe the Mafia were the ultimate intellectual architects behind this crime, behind the assassination of President Kennedy, and nor did, I believe, Bobby feel that way. He was looking more at the CIA and elements of his own government. But I do believe the Mafia played a role, and I do believe Bobby Kennedy thought that as well. You know, within 24hrs of Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub operator who shot Lee Harvey Oswald down on national television, within 24hrs of that shocking crime, Bobby has investigators looking into who Jack Ruby is, and they report back to him immediately that he’s not just a patriotic American who felt terrible about what had happened to the President, and was shooting Oswald out of his sense of grief. This is a man who was basically a low-level Mafia errand boy, and Bobby Kennedy knew this. Bobby Kennedy tells his Press Secretary years later, Frank Mankiewiz, “When I saw the phone records of all the people Jack Ruby was calling before Dallas, before the assassination, it looked like my witness list for the Senate Rackets Committee.” So, Bobby’s putting together how the Mafia played a role in it, but my sense is that he believed it was a high-level political plot that had utilised the Mafia in some way to carry out certain roles within the operation.

DD: You know, most, if not all of the players who would have first-hand information about the assassination are now dead. Is there fresh source material that’s still hidden, that might be mined for new clues about the assassination?

DT: Yes there is, and it began actually in the 1970’s with the Church Committee investigation into the CIA, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations later in the 70’s. Many of the areas that Bobby Kennedy was looking into were stirred up again by these investigations. The CIA’s war on Castro, the gangsters, militant exiles, and a number of the people who played a role in those investigations, who came under suspicion, we could learn more about today. As a result of a bill that was passed in 1992 because of the Oliver Stone film JFK, thousands of government documents were released, but the CIA continues to sit on many of these documents, and in fact they’re going to court this Summer against a Washington Post reporter named Jeff Morley, who’s played a heroic role in trying to get to the bottom of the case. He’s trying to get the agency to release records on some of these men, in particular a man named George Joannides, who we now know was tied to Lee Harvey Oswald in the early 60’s before the assassination.

DD: Joannides was a CIA man, right?

DT: That’s right. Joannides was the CIA official in charge of a Cuban student exile group that was tangling with Oswald, and had some mysterious interaction with him. We know that another CIA official, David Phillips, before he died, intimated that he was one of the CIA’s handlers for Lee Harvey Oswald. So, it goes on and on. Howard Hunt, who recently died, the legendary Watergate burglar who was, again, part of the CIA’s war on Castro, he revealed to his eldest son before he died that he was asked to come to a meeting at a CIA safe house in Miami where the plot to kill the President was discussed. There’s a lot of curious things about this, and there’s no good reason for them to continue to sit on this, this is American history and Americans have a right to their history, and I hope that they finally see that these documents should be released.

DD: Well, David Talbot, thanks so much for speaking with us.

DT: Thank you Dave.

NATO'S Secret Armies author Daniele Ganser is actually one of the contributors to 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out Volume 1 - his piece in there on Gladio and the stay behind networks is a good one.

Coincidentally, Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, author of THE WAR ON TRUTH and THE LONDON BOMBINGS, had a long, detailed entry on his blog from a week ago about the strategy of tension. It's quite worthwhile. In the interest of archiving the information, I've reposted it here:

................................

THE STRATEGY OF TENSION by Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed

We are at War against International Terrorism, defending our Values and our Civilization.

Western anti-terror legislation does not allow the state to be considered in any way culpable for terrorist activities. As far as our elected representatives are concerned, terrorism is a problem of loosely associated groups of reactionary fanatics “attacking our freedoms”. The assumption, never explicitly stated for then it would be revealed, and easily and permanently ridiculed, is that the state is innocent, immune to indulging in such barbaric practices. Written into the rule of law itself, this assumption posits the state as a paternal Fuhrer, a God figure whom we must all entrust our lives and liberties to.

Yet whichever way you look at it, international terrorism has its origins in the state itself. There are many ways of understanding this, but perhaps the most pertinent for our purposes is contemporary history. We don’t need to go very far back either. Only twenty odd years, to the era of the Cold War, when we were also getting Trigger-Happy trying to defend the “Free World” from the “Evil Empire” of International Communism, as Ronald Reagan put it so aptly.

The “strategy of tension” denotes a highly secretive series of interconnected covert operations conducted jointly by the CIA and MI6 largely in Western Europe during the this period. Well-documented by several respected historians, confirmed by official inquiries, and corroborated by former intelligence officials, the “strategy of tension” is one of those unsavoury moments in contemporary history that we don’t learn about in school, or even university.

My favourite book on the subject, and the most authoritative in my view, is Dr. Daniele Ganser’s NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe (2004). Published in the UK as part of the “Contemporary Security Studies” series of London-based academic press Routledge, Ganser’s study is the first major historical work to bring the “strategy of tension” into the mainstream of scholarship.

During the Cold War, indeed through to the late 1980s, the United States, United Kingdom, and Western European governments and secret services, participated in a sophisticated NATO-backed operation to engineer terrorist attacks inside Western Europe, to be blamed on the Soviet Union. The objective was to galvanize public opinion against leftwing policies and parties, and ultimately to mobilize popular support for purportedly anti-Soviet policies at home and abroad – most of which were really designed to legitimize brutal military interventions against nationalist independence movements in the “Third World”.

Ganser was a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, before he moved to Basel University to teach history. Citing the transcripts of European parliamentary inquiries; the few secret documents that have been declassified; interviews with government, military and intelligence officials; and so on, Ganser shows how intimately the British were involved.

In fact, it wasn’t even an American idea – it was very much ours. The strategy of tension began on the order of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who in July 1940 called for the establishment of a secret army to “set Europe ablaze by assisting resistance movements and carrying out subversive operations in enemy held territory.” (p. 40) By 4th October 1945, the British Chiefs of Staff and the Special Operations branch of MI6 directed the creation of what Ganser describes as a “skeleton network” capable of expansion either in war or to service clandestine operations abroad: “Priority was given in carrying out these tasks to countries likely to be overrun in the earliest stages of any conflict with the Soviet Union, but not as yet under Soviet domination.” (p. 41) In the ensuing years, Col. Gubbins’ Special Operations branch of MI6 cooperated closely with Frank Wisner’s CIA covert action department Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) on White House orders, and in turn coordinated US and UK Special Forces, to establish stay-behind secret armies across western Europe. (p. 42)

Among the documents Ganser brings to attention is the classified Field Manual 30-31, with appendices FM 30-31A and FM 30-31B, authored by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to train thousands of stay-behind officers around the world. The field manual was published in the 1987 parliamentary report of the Italian parliamentary investigation into the terrorist activities of “P2”, the CIA-MI6 sponsored Italian anti-communist network. As Ganser observes: “FM 30-31 instructs the secret soldiers to carry out acts of violence in times of peace and then blame them on the Communist enemy in order to create a situation of fear and alertness. Alternatively, the secret soldiers are instructed to infiltrate the left-wing movements and then urge them to use violence.” In the manual’s own words:

“There may be times when Host Country Governments show passivity or indecision in the face of Communist subversion and according to the interpretation of the US secret services do not react with sufficient effectiveness… US army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger. To reach this aim US army intelligence should seek to penetrate the insurgency by means of agents on special assignment, with the task of forming special action groups among the most radical elements of the insurgency… In case it has not been possible to successfully infiltrate such agents into the leadership of the rebels it can be useful to instrumentalise extreme leftist organizations for one’s own ends in order to achieve the above described targets… These special operations must remain strictly secret. Only those persons which are acting against the revolutionary uprising shall know of the involvement of the US Army…” (p. 234-297)

The existence of this secret operation exploded into public controversy when in August 1990 upon the admissions in parliament by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, the existence of ‘Gladio’ was exposed as a secret sub-section of Italian military-intelligence services, responsible for domestic bombings blamed on Italian Communists. Ganser documents in intricate detail how a subversive network created by elements of western intelligence services – particularly that of the US and UK - orchestrated devastating waves of terrorist attacks blamed on the Soviet Union, not only in Italy, but also in Spain, Germany, France, Turkey, Greece, i.e. throughout western Europe. Despite a number of European parliamentary inquiries; an European Union resolution on the Gladio phenomenon; NATO’s close-doors admissions to European ambassadors; confirmations of the international operation from senior CIA officials; and other damning documentary evidence; NATO, the CIA and MI6 have together consistently declined to release their secret files on the matter.

The Strategy of Tension simply isn’t part of our historical consciousness. Very few historians of the Cold War are fully conversant with it, let alone academics working in international relations and political science. This is despite the fact that it played an instrumental role in physically constructing a threat, projected into the USSR, which did not ultimately exist. Ipso facto, the Strategy of Tension belongs to the waste-bin of history.

The immense fear and chaos generated by the impact of the Operation Gladio phenomenon throughout western Europe was instrumental in legitimizing the interventionist policies of the Anglo-American alliance in the South, throughout the Cold War period. Although the Soviet Union was supposed to be the real threat and source of terror, and thus the ultimate object of the over 70 military interventions conducted since 1945 [see William Blum’s Killing Hope (London: Zed, 1995)] the Soviet threat was in fact actively exaggerated ideologically – and even physically constructed through clandestine operations – to mobilize the comprehensive militarization of western societies. This does not mean that many government officials did not believe their own propaganda. But we now know that there was a secretive sub-section of the Western intelligence community, known only to very few members of elected governments, that was involved in this.

The number of people who were killed across the “Third World” as a consequence of this militarization process is shocking, its implications genuinely difficult to absorb. According to Dr. J. W. Smith, a US development economist who runs the Institute for Economic Democracy in Arizona, in our glorious self-evidently noble fight to defend the “Free World” from imminent Soviet attacks, invasions, and general inconceivably irrational hell-bent pure evilness, Western states:

“… were responsible for violently killing 12 to 15 million people since WW II and causing the death of hundreds of millions more as their economies were destroyed or those countries were denied the right to restructure to care for their people. Unknown as it is, and recognizing that this has been standard practice throughout colonialism, that is the record of the Western imperial centers of capital from 1945 to 1990” [smith, Economic Democracy: The Political Struggle of the 21st Century (2003)]

12 to 15 million people from 1945 to 1990.

I have to repeat these figures to myself to absorb their implications.

Repeat these figures to yourself.

Six million Jews in the Second World War, and now 12 to 15 million innocents in the post-WWII period. The former in the name of German lebensraum. The latter in the name of the free market.

Yet as a society, as a Civilization, we are oblivious, utterly blind, to our historic complicity in the systematic destruction of "Other" societies who fail to conform to our (deluded) self-image of universal prosperity.

It is a blindness with which we remain afflicted.

Consider Blair’s rendition of the “War on Terror” in early 2007, as “a clash not between civilizations”, but rather “about civilization.” The War on Terror is therefore a continuation of “the age-old battle between progress and reaction, between those who embrace the modern world and those who reject its existence.”

And what is this "progress", this "modernity" that should be embraced? The "progress" that slaughtered millions of men, women and children across continents, in Nicaragua, El Salvador, in Somalia, Rwanda, in Kenya, Malaya, in Oman, Iraq, etc. etc. (in no particular order and with significant omissions)?

If this is modernity then I must be a backward, semi-feudal ignoramus. Along with most of the population of the entire world. But then, who cares what the world says? Bush, Blair, and their enlightened ilk are no doubt the modern civilized ones. As long as they do what they think is right. Right???

I (like others here I guess) have ordered it and look forward to reading it. I'm hoping that when Talbot answers questions in a specific thread at some future date a lot of us will have tackled it and we can get a really solid Q&A session happening. I'll be curious to see how Talbot fares with his national media tour. Will mainstream journalists be pushing the "Gee, do you REALLY think there was a conspiracy?" angle, or will it be accepted as a given? I'm guessing that a few high-profile outlets will be skittish about completely endorsing the theory, whilst writers from other smaller publications and media outlets will have more common sense and won't feel the pressure to conform to the usual nonsensical mainstream position on this. I've noticed this happening with discussion here and there on 9/11 and will watch to see if Talbot's book follows the same path.

I'd recommend that interested parties from this board register with Amazon (if they haven't already) and post specific errors and factual mistakes in the review section under Bugliosi's book, along with appropriate 1-star negative ratings (the system won't let us go to zero), with an emphasis on clearly describing the book's errors. Brian's rebuttals above with page numbers listed are excellent examples of the sort of thing that would be useful. The usual no-conspiracy-here-folks idiots appproving Bugliosi's work won't have as much traction if their fawning posts are balanced out by clear-cut pieces describing the work's factual errors and omissions. Once a review is there, it's there forever and can work wonders in informing newcomers and decreasing interest in the book.

As an aside, I checked the recent pre-order sales of this and Talbot's BROTHERS and Talbot's book was outselling Bugliosi's by a massive margin.

Accomplished researcher Peter Dale Scott's new book THE ROAD TO 9/11: WEALTH, EMPIRE AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICA is now up for pre-order at Amazon, and linked below. I have been waiting for this book for a while and am happy to see that it now has a direct publication date.

From the Amazon listing:

"This is an ambitious, meticulous examination of how U.S. foreign policy since the 1960s has led to partial or total cover-ups of past domestic criminal acts, including, perhaps, the catastrophe of 9/11. Peter Dale Scott, whose previous books have investigated CIA involvement in southeast Asia, the drug wars, and the Kennedy assassination, here probes how the policies of presidents since Nixon have augmented the tangled bases for the 2001 terrorist attack. Scott shows how America's expansion into the world since World War II has led to momentous secret decision making at high levels. He demonstrates how these decisions by small cliques are responsive to the agendas of private wealth at the expense of the public, of the democratic state, and of civil society. He shows how, in implementing these agendas, U.S. intelligence agencies have become involved with terrorist groups they once backed and helped create, including al Qaeda."

The book is due out on September 11th.

http://www.amazon.com/Road-11-Wealth-Empir...0180&sr=1-4

Sid, as a quick aside, some documentarians from Adelaide that I spoke to a few months back told me that a number of local Qantas pilots here in Australia also have substantial issues with the official story, and had a good grasp of the issues involved.

Len, thanks for your thoughtful and detailed response.

Your comments about other items causing explosive sounds matches what I recall you writing previously, so I've probably misinterpreted you to an extent.

I also think the firefighters clip is authentic but can agree with your suggestion that the possibility for change or alteration is there. Why anyone would do this though is less clear to me, not so much with people perhaps trying to achieve certain aims in falsifying footage but with the likelihood that they would get caught out (i.e "I'm the guy in the clip, and I never said that" etc). Still I do take your point.

what do you think about the BBC’s “early” report that 7 WTC had collapsed?

As I lean towards the conspiratorial viewpoint with 9/11 I generally feel it's an indication of the 'official story' getting out there just a little too early. With that though, I can also agree with someone (probably yourself and or others) who might say that it's not rock hard definitive proof as there are other alternative explanations. Following the reading (books and websites) that I've done over the past four years there's little that will drag me back away from a conspiratorial reading of 9/11, though I can see that various points are open to debate or dispute. For what it's worth, I found a site recently that explained the 'fat Osama' pic often shown as being a result of a dodgy PAL>NTSC transfer. The same piece though then went on to suggest indicators of conspiracy due to other suspicious elements with the tape, i.e dates taken and some mainstream articles disputing parts of the official story that accompanied it.

The best books I have read on 9/11 are the David Ray Griffin volumes, Webster Tarpley's 9/11 SYNTHETIC TERROR and Jim Marrs' TERROR CONSPIRACY, the latter two being great reads with just a touch of problematic or skewered analysis that falls short of being something I can 100% support. I'm curious to read Peter Dale Scott's forthcoming book on the subject as he largely seems to avoid too much discussion of physical/technical anomalies and gets into discrepancies with timeframes and closer readings of testimonies instead.

Regarding the Rosie O'Donnell hands-up for conspiracy, I like her and am interested in seeing how she does or doesn't push things over the coming weeks. Her site though links to the 9/11 Scholars site run by Jim Fetzer, which most of the 9/11 researchers that I respect seem to be stepping away from (i.e with Fetzer's pushing of painfully nutty theories involving lasers, if I haven't misconstrued him).

A few pages back (or it may be on the Loose Change page) you dismissed the idea that folks had heard, seen or witnessed explosions going off in the buildings before they fell. The YouTube piece has many more quick-shot testimonies from folks who all heard or saw basically the same thing, and suggesting that they all misheard, were duped, were in shock so didn't know what they were hearing or whatever, seems not to tackle the sway of the overall evidence. The higher number of similar testimonies shown here seems fairly persuasive. The very first shot of the clip has folks reacting to a loud explosion about 10 seconds in, and - probably most compelling to me - there are a few clips shown new to me where firefighters are clearly shown telling people to get away from the WTC as there are 'bombs in the buildings'. A guy on the street asks the firefighters to repeat what they just said, and they repeat it. I can't tell from your post whether you watched the piece or not (as I said, it's only 10 minutes long) but I'd be interested in hearing what the argument is against the idea that the firefighters knew what they were talking about, or why they would have said such a thing in the first place. If you've responded to that already elsewhere in another thread just let me know where and I'll read it if you've already covered those arguments. I disagree with most of your comments about 9/11 but you do put in a lot of work responding so if you've covered the firefighter remarks already just let me know. I think the clip is worth watching though if you haven't seen the exact footage I'm referring to.

A new 9/11 video with a heck of a lot of footage I hadn't seen before (and a music score which I could probably do without). It only goes for 10 minutes but is well worth a watch. Any comments anyone? The dozens of people shown here all seem pretty clear about what they saw and heard.

I'm mildly surprised to note that, based on Len's post just above, I agree with most everything he says about those other various conspiracy theories (though I haven't seen how dismissive he is of JFK conspiracy theories in general) - I just disagree with him on 9/11. I haven't yet dived back in to the Loose Change thread where I left several questions of his dangling... Just as a quick comment, author Abid Ullah Jan (who interviewed Bin Laden prior to 9/11) said that Bin Laden mentioned to him in August 2001 or thereabouts that "..something was coming..", but couldn't or wouldn't elaborate beyond that. Ullah Jan has mentioned in a recent book that he felt Atta was the back-and-forth guy between the ISI and Bin Laden, that Atta ringleadered the various hijackers/patsies (take your pick depending on which side you fall regarding this), and that Bin Laden didn't have much more 'advance knowledge' than we did. This is possible if you take the Webster Tarpley/Sander Hicks/etc view of OBL as a convenient dupe and patsy, less so if you take the view that OBL craftily engineered the whole thing via his laptop in a cave in Afghanistan. Even if you buy the official story completely, Ullah Jan does have some interesting observations about the issue in his books.

Myra, I generally agree with your speculation about the timing of all this, along with the nudge-nudge references to those pesky conspiracy theorists (and GHWB's similar comments at Ford's funeral) and wouldn't be surprised if this and the Bug's book is part of a collective effort. Whether you buy the allegations or not (I do, others here and elsewhere don't), the attention given to 9/11 conspiracy theories recently has raised the general awareness of US covert activity, coups and the whole deep politics/secret team thug agenda higher than it's been for a long while, especially amongst younger people. I noticed last year's November anniversary received a lot less media attention than usual, as far as I could tell. The cracks are appearing and the guilty are squirming, hence the latest big lone nut propaganda push.

Unsurprisingly, the syndicated AP story on this pushes the lone nut angle.

The film ends with some footage the next day outside the Texas School Book Depository, the building from which assassin Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fatal shots. The museum is located on the floor where Oswald set up his sniper's perch.

AP pushes hard to rewrite history, what a surprise...

Carol Marshall (which I think is a pseudonym) has a long manuscript online about the Casolaro case called THE LAST CIRCLE. It covers his death and a lot of other related events, plus (in a fairly curious manner) eventually drags the JFK assassination and related personnel into the picture as well. It's quite a lengthy read - a printout I made of the whole thing was something like 80 pages in Microsoft Word. Michael Ruppert mentions Marshall and THE LAST CIRCLE in his CROSSING THE RUBICON book, stating that some of his researchers felt the book was 'excellent' and 'very accurate', but I'm not fully convinced - a lot of its claims are hard to verify, and there's a particular section re the JFK assassination (where some covert types reportedly show someone a revealing 'film' of the killing, and it's not the Zapruder film) which will probably make you scratch your head. It seems to make the case that Casolaro crossed over into the whole drugs/Iran Contra/covert operations world by accident - essentially, his investigation of one conspiracy (which Marshall outlines, though the details are hazy to me) stumbled across another. The whole thing is readable at the link below, with subsequent chapters linked at the bottom of the page.

http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/last_circle/1.htm

This is seemingly out a couple of weeks early.

http://www.amazon.com/Zenith-Secret-Inside...1030750-1918555

It looks like an intruiging read, but be sure to bring your Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass along -

All told in print so tiny as to scare the editors of the Condensed Oxford English Dictionary. (Why? So the publisher wouldn't have to go to press with a 400-page book?)

The typeface is unusually small, but I did not have trouble reading the print myself.

Now for the bad news. The typeface on this book is actually the size of most footnotes in other books, because it was printed in China (don't ask). I hope that Vox Pop will be able to do a second edition or sell the rights to a a mainstream publisher and printer before my eyes give out.

I will take the plunge after Sylvia Meagher's ACCESSORIES AFTER THE FACT and the recent Peter Dale Scott reprint.

I remember gathering up a number of articles about the Casolaro death after reading one of those SPY magazine pieces on it. Just based on the surface info it looked like murder - Casolaro was squeamish, hated pain and didn't like getting a cut, so it's unlikely he'd choose lengthy arm slices to kill himself - and I remember there were a lot of articles around online at one point, including a sardonic piece listing the number of journalists who had died, suicided or fallen out of high buildings while investigating it, seemingly par for the course with this sort of stuff. Peter Dale Scott noted in a poem/article a year or two ago how Casolaro had made a note to go meet him in the days before his death. That's interesting, but perhaps it's a good thing that Scott wasn't dragged into it.

I didn't get as much time over the weekend as I'd hoped, but I'll tackle questions as I get the time.

Please provide a citation for your claim about the people who knew Atta…For the benefit of those of us who don’t have the book perhaps you could outline what they said and tell us how it casts doubt on the belief that he carried out the attacks for OBL.

My original mention of Atta was “..folks who knew Atta in Florida are advised by the FBI to keep their mouths shut...” – this after you basically suggested that the ‘confessional culture’ in the US would allow anyone with a juicy story at variance with the official one to get airtime or attention. This description of those ‘people that knew Atta’ comes from page 36 of THE BIG WEDDING, in the midst of Sander Hicks’ profile of BARRY AND THE BOYS author Daniel Hopsicker – Hopsicker eventually wrote a Florida-specific investigation into the background of the 9/11 attackers titled WELCOME TO TERRORLAND.

"Like many other witnesses who knew Atta, Keller says she has been harassed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Of course, Keller was never called as a witness by the 9/11 Commission. Everything she says about the man contradicts the official story. The FBI says that Atta left the area of Venice, Florida at the end of 2000, but just by digging through the local papers, Hopsicker points out that they lied: Atta lived with Amanda Keller in the Sandpiper Apartments, across the street from the Venice airport, in April 2001.

The FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have paid a visit to anyone who knew Atta and might challenge the official story. Atta’s and Amanda’s neighbour told Hopsicker, “At first, right after the attack, they told me I must have been mistaken, in my identification. Or they would insinuate that I was lying. Finally, they stopped trying to get me to change my story, and just stopped by once a week to make sure I hadn’t talked to anyone.” Amanda was eventually pressured into claiming that the Atta she knew and slept with was a different Mohamed Atta.”

As far as how Hicks’ book ‘casts doubt on the belief that he [Atta] carried out the attacks for OBL’, I’ll just quote the book directly – this isn’t a piece by piece breakdown of the evidence Hicks uses to make his case, just a summary of his general argument.

“The official story from the FBI is that Atta was a fundamentalist Muslim who hated America and led the 9/11 attacks. In real life, however, Atta seemed to be something of an Egyptian double agent who fell in love with an American ex-stripper and did a lot of coke.

Hopsicker’s Keller interviews, on video and in the book, report that Atta already had a full pilot’s license when he came to Florida. He was a very Westernized playboy, going on three-day cocaine and booze binges in Key West with Amanda Keller. Bizarre behavior for a jihadist who allegedly wrote in his diary just before 9/11 that his corpse was not to be touched by female hands.”

Hicks then devotes his next chapter (“The Enigma of Atta, and the Precedent of Double-Agent Egyptians”) to that same topic, going through the 9/11 Commission Report and using mainstream articles that contradict it (along with interviews he conducted with Peter Dale Scott and TRIPLE CROSS author Peter Lance) to make his case. More later, if anyone is still interested.

All good questions Len, I have some specific answers for you but it'll have to wait till this Sat/Sun.

Just curious as to whether anyone had any thoughts, positive or negative, on the current batch of reprinted JFK assassination books from the Mary Ferrell Foundation press. The books are ACCESSORIES AFTER THE FACT by Sylvia Meagher, Peter Dale Scott's DEEP POLITICS 2, several by Harold Weisberg and some government reports (HSCA and others). What would folks recommend from here?

Here's the full list -

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/MFF_Store