Steven Gaal

http://www.informati...n.com/?id=43076 MSM (Colby's great love) may not give best insight into DHS actions. The militarization of local police is a threat to Americans' right to live without fear of military-style intervention in their daily lives,**** WHY ?? WHY ?? Why is this happening ?? I think my explanation is as sound as any.

You obviously suffer from Goebbels in Oz Syndrome // end Colby "Rancid Baloneyking" LOL and you whine about the nasty tone our threads take. // end COLBY GEE Who said strawmanking ?? (Gaal) Goebbels ?? Odd to me its a whine FROM Brazil I hear. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ======================================== Washington's Blog Posted on March 3, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog Americans Are Acting Like Slowly Boiling Frogs In the classic history of Nazi Germany, They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer writes: “What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it. “This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. The German citizens were boiling frogs … the water heating up so gradually that they didn’t realize they had to jump out of the pot to safety. Because the exact same thing is happening to Americans (fear of terror makes people stupid no matter what country they live in), let’s remember exactly what we’ve lost in recent years … First Amendment The 1st Amendment protects speech, religion, assembly and the press: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. However, the government is arresting those speaking out … and violently crushing peaceful assemblies which attempt to petition the government for redress. A federal judge found that the law allowing indefinite detention of Americans without due process has a “chilling effect” on free speech. And see this and this. There are also enacted laws allowing the secret service to arrest anyone protesting near the president or other designated folks (that might explain incidents like this). The threat of being labeled a terrorist for exercising our First Amendment rights certainly violates the First Amendment. The government is using laws to crush dissent, and it’s gotten so bad that even U.S. Supreme Court justices are sayingthat we are descending into tyranny. For example, the following actions may get an American citizen living on U.S. soil labeled as a “suspected terrorist” today: Being young (if you live near a battle zone, you are fair game; and see this) Using social media Reporting or doing journalism Speaking out against government policies Protesting anything (such as participating in the “Occupy” movement) Questioning war (even though war reduces our national security; and see this) Criticizing the government’s targeting of innocent civilians with drones (although killing innocent civilians with drones is one of the main things which increases terrorism. And see this) Asking questions about pollution (even at a public Congressional hearing?) Paying cash at an Internet cafe Asking questions about Wall Street shenanigans Holding gold Creating alternative currencies Stocking up on more than 7 days of food (even though all Mormons are taught to stockpile food, and most Hawaiians store up on extra food) Having bumper stickers saying things like “Know Your Rights Or Lose Them” Investigating factory farming Infringing a copyright Taking pictures or videos Talking to police officers Wearing a hoodie Driving a van Writing on a piece of paper (Not having a Facebook account may soon be added) And holding the following beliefs may also be considered grounds for suspected terrorism: Being frustrated with “mainstream ideologies” Valuing online privacy Supporting Ron Paul or being a libertarian Liking Being a Being anti-tax, anti-regulation or for the gold standard Being “reverent of individual liberty” Being “anti-nuclear” “Believe in conspiracy theories” “A belief that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack” “Impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists)” “Insert religion into the political sphere” “Those who seek to politicize religion” “Supported political movements for autonomy” Being “anti-abortion” Being “anti-Catholic” Being “anti-global” “Suspicious of centralized federal authority” “Fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation)” “A belief in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in … survivalism” Opposing genetically engineered food Opposing surveillance Of course, Muslims are more or less subject to a separate system of justice in America. And 1st Amendment rights are especially chilled when power has become so concentrated that the same agency which spies on all Americans also decides who should be assassinated. Second Amendment The 2nd Amendment states: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Gun control and gun rights advocates obviously have very different views about whether guns are a force for violence or for good. But even a top liberal Constitutional law expert reluctantly admits that the right to own a gun is as important a Constitutional right as freedom of speech or religion: Like many academics, I was happy to blissfully ignore the Second Amendment. It did not fit neatly into my socially liberal agenda. *** It is hard to read the Second Amendment and not honestly conclude that the Framers intended gun ownership to be an individual right. It is true that the amendment begins with a reference to militias: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Accordingly, it is argued, this amendment protects the right of the militia to bear arms, not the individual. Yet, if true, the Second Amendment would be effectively declared a defunct provision. The National Guard is not a true militia in the sense of the Second Amendment and, since the District and others believe governments can ban guns entirely, the Second Amendment would be read out of existence. *** More important, the mere reference to a purpose of the Second Amendment does not alter the fact that an individual right is created. The right of the people to keep and bear arms is stated in the same way as the right to free speech or free press. The statement of a purpose was intended to reaffirm the power of the states and the people against the central government. At the time, many feared the federal government and its national army. Gun ownership was viewed as a deterrent against abuse by the government, which would be less likely to mess with a well-armed populace. Considering the Framers and their own traditions of hunting and self-defense, it is clear that they would have viewed such ownership as an individual right — consistent with the plain meaning of the amendment. None of this is easy for someone raised to believe that the Second Amendment was the dividing line between the enlightenment and the dark ages of American culture. Yet, it is time to honestly reconsider this amendment and admit that … here’s the really hard part … the NRA may have been right. This does not mean that Charlton Heston is the new Rosa Parks or that no restrictions can be placed on gun ownership. But it does appear that gun ownership was made a protected right by the Framers and, while we might not celebrate it, it is time that we recognize it. The gun control debate – including which weapons and magazines are banned – is still in flux … Third Amendment The 3rd Amendment prohibits the government forcing people to house soldiers: No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. Hey … we’re still honoring one of the Amendments! Score one for We the People! Painting by Anthony Freda: www.AnthonyFreda.com. Fourth Amendment The 4th Amendment prevents unlawful search and seizure: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. But the government is flying drones over the American homeland to spy on us. Senator Rand Paul correctly notes: The domestic use of drones to spy on Americans clearly violates the Fourth Amendment and limits our rights to personal privacy. Paul introduced a bill to “protect individual privacy against unwarranted governmental intrusion through the use of unmanned aerial vehicles commonly called drones.” Emptywheel notes in a post entitled “The OTHER Assault on the Fourth Amendment in the NDAA? Drones at Your Airport?”: *** As the map above makes clear–taken from this 2010 report–DOD [the Department of Defense] plans to have drones all over the country by 2015. Many police departments are also using drones to spy on us. As the Hill reported: At least 13 state and local police agencies around the country have used drones in the field or in training, according to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an industry trade group. The Federal Aviation Administration has predicted that by the end of the decade, 30,000 commercial and government drones could be flying over U.S. skies. *** “Drones should only be used if subject to a powerful framework that regulates their use in order to avoid abuse and invasions of privacy,” Chris Calabrese, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said during a congressional forum in Texas last month. He argued police should only fly drones over private property if they have a warrant, information collected with drones should be promptly destroyed when it’s no longer needed and domestic drones should not carry any weapons. He argued that drones pose a more serious threat to privacy than helicopters because they are cheaper to use and can hover in the sky for longer periods of time. A congressional report earlier this year predicted that drones could soon be equipped with technologies to identify faces or track people based on their height, age, gender and skin color. Even without drones, Americans are the most spied on people in world history: The American government is collecting and storing virtually every phone call, purchases, email, text message, internet searches, social media communications, health information, employment history, travel and student records, and virtually all other information of every American. [And see this.] Some also claim that the government is also using facial recognition software and surveillance cameras to track where everyone is going. Moreover, cell towers track where your phone is at any moment, and the major cell carriers, including Verizon and AT&T, responded to at least 1.3 million law enforcement requests for cell phone locations and other data in 2011. (And – given that your smartphone routinely sends your location information back to Apple or Google – it would be child’s play for the government to track your location that way.) Your iPhone, or other brand of smartphone is spying on virtually everything you do (ProPublica notes: “That’s No Phone. That’s My Tracker“). As the top spy chief at the U.S. National Security Agency explained this week, the American government is collecting some 100 billion 1,000-character emails per day, and 20 trillion communications of all types per year. He says that the government has collected all of the communications of congressional leaders, generals and everyone else in the U.S. for the last 10 years. He further explains that he set up the NSA’s system so that all of the information would automatically be encrypted, so that the government had to obtain a search warrant based upon probably cause before a particular suspect’s communications could be decrypted. [He specifically did this to comply with the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure.] But the NSA now collects all data in an unencrypted form, so that no probable cause is needed to view any citizen’s information. He says that it is actually cheaper and easier to store the data in an encrypted format: so the government’s current system is being done for political – not practical – purposes. He says that if anyone gets on the government’s “enemies list”, then the stored information will be used to target them. Specifically, he notes that if the government decides it doesn’t like someone, it analyzes all of the data it has collected on that person and his or her associates over the last 10 years to build a case against him. Wired reports: Transit authorities in cities across the country are quietly installing microphone-enabled surveillance systems on public buses that would give them the ability to record and store private conversations…. The systems are being installed in San Francisco, Baltimore, and other cities with funding from the Department of Homeland Security in some cases …. The IP audio-video systems can be accessed remotely via a built-in web server (.pdf), and can be combined with GPS data to track the movement of buses and passengers throughout the city. *** The systems use cables or WiFi to pair audio conversations with camera images in order to produce synchronous recordings. Audio and video can be monitored in real-time, but are also stored onboard in blackbox-like devices, generally for 30 days, for later retrieval. Four to six cameras with mics are generally installed throughout a bus, including one near the driver and one on the exterior of the bus. *** Privacy and security expert Ashkan Soltani told the Daily that the audio could easily be coupled with facial recognition systems or audio recognition technology to identify passengers caught on the recordings. RT notes: Street lights that can spy installed in some American cities America welcomes a new brand of smart street lightning systems: energy-efficient, long-lasting, complete with LED screens to show ads. They can also spy on citizens in a way George Orwell would not have imagined in his worst nightmare. ­With a price tag of $3,000+ apiece, according to an ABC report, the street lights are now being rolled out in Detroit, Chicago and Pittsburgh, and may soon mushroom all across the country. Part of the Intellistreets systems made by the company Illuminating Concepts, they have a number of “homeland security applications” attached. Each has a microprocessor “essentially similar to an iPhone,” capable of wireless communication. Each can capture images and count people for the police through a digital camera, record conversations of passers-by and even give voice commands thanks to a built-in speaker. Ron Harwood, president and founder of Illuminating Concepts, says he eyed the creation of such a system after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Hurricane Katrina disaster. He is “working with Homeland Security” to deliver his dream of making people “more informed and safer.” Fox news notes that the government is insisting that “black boxes” be installed in cars to track your location. The TSA has moved way past airports, trains and sports stadiums, and is deploying mobile scanners to spy on people all over the place. This means that traveling within the United States is no longer a private affair. (And they’re probably bluffing, but the Department of Homeland Security claims they will soon be able to know your adrenaline level, what you ate for breakfast and what you’re thinking … from 164 feet away.) And Verizon has applied for a patent that would allow your television to track what you are doing, who you are with, what objects you’re holding, and what type of mood you’re in. Given Verizon and other major carriers responded to at least 1.3 million law enforcement requests for cell phone locations and other data in 2011, such information would not be kept private. (And some folks could be spying on you through your tv using existing technology.) Of course, widespread spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here. And see this). So the whole “post-9/11 reality” argument falls flat. And the spying isn’t being done to keep us safe … but to crush dissent and to smear people who uncover unflattering this about the government … and to help the too big to fail businesses compete against smaller businesses (and here). In addition, the ACLU published a map in 2006 showing that nearly two-thirds of the American public – 197.4 million people – live within a “constitution-free zone” within 100 miles of land and coastal borders: The ACLU explained: Normally under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the American people are not generally subject to random and arbitrary stops and searches. The border, however, has always been an exception. There, the longstanding view is that the normal rules do not apply. For example the authorities do not need a warrant or probable cause to conduct a “routine search.” But what is “the border”? According to the government, it is a 100-mile wide strip that wraps around the “external boundary” of the United States. As a result of this claimed authority, individuals who are far away from the border, American citizens traveling from one place in America to another, are being stopped and harassed in ways that our Constitution does not permit. Border Patrol has been setting up checkpoints inland — on highways in states such as California, Texas and Arizona, and at ferry terminals in Washington State. Typically, the agents ask drivers and passengers about their citizenship. Unfortunately, our courts so far have permitted these kinds of checkpoints – legally speaking, they are “administrative” stops that are permitted only for the specific purpose of protecting the nation’s borders. They cannot become general drug-search or other law enforcement efforts. However, these stops by Border Patrol agents are not remaining confined to that border security purpose. On the roads of California and elsewhere in the nation – places far removed from the actual border – agents are stopping, interrogating, and searching Americans on an everyday basis with absolutely no suspicion of wrongdoing. The bottom line is that the extraordinary authorities that the government possesses at the border are spilling into regular American streets. Computer World reports today: Border agents don’t need probable cause and they don’t need a stinking warrant since they don’t need to prove any reasonable suspicion first. Nor, sadly, do two out of three people have First Amendment protection; it is as if DHS has voided those Constitutional amendments and protections they provide to nearly 200 million Americans. *** Don’t be silly by thinking this means only if you are physically trying to cross the international border. As we saw when discussing the DEA using license plate readers and data-mining to track Americans movements, the U.S. “border” stretches out 100 miles beyond the true border. Godfather Politics added: But wait, it gets even better! If you live anywhere in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey or Rhode Island, DHS says the search zones encompass the entire state. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have a “longstanding constitutional and statutory authority permitting suspicionless and warrantless searches of merchandise at the border and its functional equivalent.” This applies to electronic devices, according to the recent CLCR “Border Searches of Electronic Devices” executive summary [PDF]: Fourth Amendment The overall authority to conduct border searches without suspicion or warrant is clear and longstanding, and courts have not treated searches of electronic devices any differently than searches of other objects. We conclude that CBP’s and ICE’s current border search policies comply with the Fourth Amendment. We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits. However, we do think that recording more information about why searches are performed would help managers and leadership supervise the use of border search authority, and this is what we recommended; CBP has agreed and has implemented this change beginning in FY2012. First Amendment Some critics argue that a heightened level of suspicion should be required before officers search laptop computers in order to avoid chilling First Amendment rights. However, we conclude that the laptop border searches allowed under the ICE and CBP Directives do not violate travelers’ First Amendment rights. The ACLU said, Wait one darn minute! Hello, what happened to the Constitution? Where is the rest of CLCR report on the “policy of combing through and sometimes confiscating travelers’ laptops, cell phones, and other electronic devices—even when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing?” DHS maintains it is not violating our constitutional rights, so the ACLU said: If it’s true that our rights are safe and that DHS is doing all the things it needs to do to safeguard them, then why won’t it show us the results of its assessment? And why would it be legitimate to keep a report about the impact of a policy on the public’s rights hidden from the very public being affected? *** As ChristianPost wrote, “Your constitutional rights have been repealed in ten states. No, this isn’t a joke. It is not exaggeration or hyperbole. If you are in ten states in the United States, your some of your rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights have been made null and void.” The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the entire DHS report about suspicionless and warrantless “border” searches of electronic devices. ACLU attorney Catherine Crump said “We hope to establish that the Department of Homeland Security can’t simply assert that its practices are legitimate without showing us the evidence, and to make it clear that the government’s own analyses of how our fundamental rights apply to new technologies should be openly accessible to the public for review and debate.” Meanwhile, the EFF has tips to protect yourself and your devices against border searches. If you think you know all about it, then you might try testing your knowledge with a defending privacy at the U.S. border quiz. Wired pointed out in 2008 that the courts have routinely upheld such constitution-free zones: Federal agents at the border do not need any reason to search through travelers’ laptops, cell phones or digital cameras for evidence of crimes, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, extending the government’s power to look through belongings like suitcases at the border to electronics. *** The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, finding that the so-called border exception to the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches applied not just to suitcases and papers, but also to electronics. *** Travelers should be aware that anything on their mobile devices can be searched by government agents, who may also seize the devices and keep them for weeks or months. When in doubt, think about whether online storage or encryption might be tools you should use to prevent the feds from rummaging through your journal, your company’s confidential business plans or naked pictures of you and your-of-age partner in adult fun. Fifth Amendment The 5th Amendment addresses due process of law, eminent domain, double jeopardy and grand jury: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. But the American government has shredded the 5th Amendment by subjecting us to indefinite detention and taking away our due process rights. The government claims the right to assassinate or indefinitely detain any American citizen on U.S. citizen without any due process. And see this. As such, the government is certainly depriving people of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. There are additional corruptions of 5th Amendment rights – such as property being taken for private purposes. The percentage of prosecutions in which a defendant is denied a grand jury is difficult to gauge, as there is so much secrecy surrounding many terrorism trials. Protection against being tried twice for the same crime after being found innocent (“double jeopardy”) seems to be intact. Sixth Amendment The 6th Amendment guarantees the right to hear the criminal charges levied against us and to be able to confront the witnesses who have testified against us, as well as speedy criminal trials, and a public defender for those who cannot hire an attorney: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. Subjecting people to indefinite detention or assassinationobviously violates the 6th Amendment right to a jury trial. In both cases, the defendants is “disposed of” without ever receiving a trial … and often without ever hearing the charges against them. More and more commonly, the government prosecutes cases based upon “secret evidence” that they don’t show to the defendant … or sometimes even the judge hearing the case. The government uses “secret evidence” to spy on Americans, prosecute leaking or terrorism charges (even against U.S. soldiers) and even assassinate people. And see this and this. Secret witnesses are being used in some cases. And sometimes lawyers are not even allowed to read their own briefs. Indeed, even the laws themselves are now starting to be kept secret. And it’s about to get a lot worse. True – when defendants are afforded a jury trial – they are provided with assistance of counsel. However, the austerity caused by redistribution of wealth to the super-elite is causing severe budget cuts to the courts and the public defenders’ offices nationwide. Moreover, there are two systems of justice in America … one for the big banks and other fatcats, and one for everyone else. The government made it official policy not to prosecute fraud, even though fraud is the main business model adopted by Wall Street. Indeed, the largest insider trading scandal of all time, illegal raiding of customer accounts and blatant financing of drug cartels and terrorists have all been committed recently without any real criminal prosecution or jail time. On the other hand, government prosecutors are using the legal system to crush dissent and to silence whistleblowers. And some of the nation’s most powerful judges have lost their independence … and are in bed with the powers-that-be. Seventh Amendment The 7th Amendment guarantees trial by jury in federal court for civil cases: In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. As far as we know, this right is still being respected. However – as noted above – the austerity caused by redistribution of wealth to the super-elite is causing severe budget cuts to the courts, resulting in the wheels of justice slowing down considerably. Painting by Anthony Freda: www.AnthonyFreda.com Eighth Amendment The 8th Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Indefinite detention and assassination are obviously cruel and unusual punishment. The widespread system of torture carried out in the last 10 years – with the help of other countries – violates the 8th Amendment. Many want to bring it back … or at least justify its past use. While Justice Scalia disingenuously argues that torture does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment because it is meant to produce information – not punish – he’s wrong. It’s not only cruel and unusual … it is technically a form of terrorism. And government whistleblowers are being cruelly and unusually punished with unduly harsh sentences meant to intimidate anyone else from speaking out. They are literally being treated as terrorists. Ninth Amendment The 9th Amendment provides that people have other rights, even if they aren’t specifically listed in the Constitution: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. We can debate what our inherent rights as human beings are. I believe they include the right to a level playing field, and access to safe food and water. You may disagree. But everyone agrees that the government should not actively encourage fraud and manipulation. However, the government – through its malignant, symbiotic relation with big corporations – is interfering with our aspirations for economic freedom, safe food and water (instead of arsenic-laden, genetically engineered junk), freedom from undue health hazards such as irradiation due to government support of archaic nuclear power designs, and a level playing field (as opposed to our crony capitalist system in which the little guy has no shot due to redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the super-elite, and government support of white collar criminals). By working hand-in-glove with giant corporations to defraud us into paying for a lower quality of life, the government is trampling our basic rights as human beings. Tenth Amendment The 10th Amendment provides that powers not specifically given to the Federal government are reserved to the states or individual: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Two of the central principles of America’s Founding Fathers are: (1) The government is created and empowered with the consent of the people and (2) Separation of powers Today, most Americans believe that the government is threatening – rather than protecting – freedom … and that it is no longer acting with the “consent of the governed”. And the federal government is trampling the separation of powers by stepping on the toes of the states and the people. For example, former head S&L prosecutor Bill Black – now a professor of law and economics – notes: The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the resident examiners and regional staff of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency [both] competed to weaken federal regulation and aggressively used the preemption doctrine to try to prevent state investigations of and actions against fraudulent mortgage lenders. Indeed, the federal government is doing everything it can to stick its nose into every aspect of our lives … and act like Big Brother.

ideological brothers Rahman / MB .....guess Colby thinks they all look alike ...maybe Colby will say he has a Muslim friend. The 1st sentence is in Gaalish which I don't speak, Rahman wasn't MB either. // end Colby Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi demands Obama free World ... sheikyermami.com/.../muslim-brotherhood-president-morsi-demands...Cached You +1'd this publicly. UndoJan 10, 2013 – Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi demands Obama free World Trade Center bomber on his first state visit. by sheikyermami on January 10, ...

THINK BACKWARDS . DEA THINKS HILLIARD PART OF LARGE DRUG IMPORTATION. HILLIARD AMBITIUOUS/GREEDY. YOU CALLED MY SPECULATION HIGHLY IMAGINATIVE. Du Bain part of deep covert operations HILLIARD SOLD HIS PRIMARY ECONOMIC BASE TO Du Bain TO RETIRE TO FLORIDA. BUT HE DIDNT RETIRE THIS ONE TIME INTERACTION WAS A RECRUITMENT EVENT OF Du Bain FOR HILLIARD. Du Bain had business with HILLIARD Du Bain friend of Henry Kissinger Adnan Khashoggi had business with Henry Kissinger ############################### Dekkers in business with HILLIARD FROM THE DU *****************o0o**************** Edited on Mon Jun-19-06 08:57 AM by DrDebug Florida Air and Krause Dekkers bragged in an interview that he wanted to start Florida Air as well and Dale Krause would become the general manager with a staff of 160 employees (1). This never happened of course. Dale Krause had several airlines known as Krause Aviation, KRS Aviation and Venice Jet. During the hearing of Dekkers, he was asked about the Warrior (N555HA) from Huffman Aviation which Mohammed Atta and Alshehhi abandoned in Miami on December 24, 2000. (2) Currently that airplane is registered to Krause Avaition. Britannia and Caribe Air are interesting as well. They keep on changing companies, airplanes. It is one huge pile of planes going back and forth among the same players under different names. The continuous saga of Khashoggi Hopsicker says that N900SA a.k.a. Cocaine One was once owned by Genesis Aviation. Can't find a verification, however it was owned by Ramy El-Batrawi (4), who was running Genesis Intermedia for Khashoggi as well. 1. http://tampabay.bizj...mpabay/conte... 4. http://www.sunbiz.or...=DETFIL&n1=P... #################################### Myron DuBain in business with Adnan Khashoggi 2012, Sander Hicks, 'Slingshot to the Juggernaut', p. 85: "In the mid-2000s, when we were still friends, Battuello often bragged that she was a financial researcher who had been trained inside a “CIA bank.” She had cut her teeth at the United California Ban (UCB), right after former CIA director John McCone served as chairman. “UCB had been on the brink of collapse, under the weight of highly irregular loans,” Battuello told me then. UCB had been known as John McCone’s “piggy bank,” and, with businessman Myron DuBain on the board, it allegedly “attempted to recover monies looted and missing” by Saudi arms dealers, like Adnan Khashoggi and former CIA personnel." ######################################## AZIMA IN BUSINESS WITH HILLIARD #################################### AZIMA WORKS WITH OLIVER NORTH IN COVERT INTELL OPERATIONS. Azima, an Iranian whose family was close to the Shah, owns a cargo airline in Miami and Kansas City, Global International Air, which was part of Oliver North's logistical network, shipping arms—including 23 tons of TOW missiles to Iran—to the Ayatollah, as well as other Iran Contra swag left behind by El-Batrawi’s cargo airline. Azima's relationship with the CIA goes back to the 1970's. He supplied air and logistical support to EATSCO (Egyptian American Transport and Services Corporation) a company owned by former CIA agents Thomas Clines, Theodore Shackley, and Richard Secord, which was prominently involved in the activities of former CIA agent Edwin Wilson. ######################################### Adnan Khashoggi works with Oliver North in deep covert intell operations. Search Results Teflon? The Iran-Contra Scandal (Morgana's Observatory) www.dreamscape.com/morgana/reagan.htmCached - Similar You +1'd this publicly. Undo Why Oliver North is no hero -- the facts, only the facts. ... secretary Fawn Hall, Iranian businessman Albert Hakim, and Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi. Adnan Khashoggi Made Deposits Into Oliver North's Slush Fund At ... news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1454&dat...id...sjid... You +1'd this publicly. Undo Adnan Khashoggi made deposits into Oliver North's slush fund at the bank. used by former White House aide Oliver North to set up for covert operations, they ... KHASHOGGI, ADNAN M - The New York Times www.nytimes.com › Times Topics › People › N › North, Oliver L.Cached You +1'd this publicly. Undo Commentary and archival information about Oliver L. North from The New York ... Your search for KHASHOGGI, ADNAN M in Oliver L. North returned 2 articles ... Why Was Richard Perle Meeting With Adnan Khashoggi? rense.com/general35/whwy.htmCached You +1'd this publicly. Undo Meeting With Adnan Khashoggi? ... During the Reagan Administration, Khashoggi was one of the middlemen between Oliver North, in the White House, and the ... The Body Politic, by Gary Dobry www.american-buddha.com/lit.bodypolitic.htmCached You +1'd this publicly. Undo Seymour Hersch reminds us that Adnan Khashoggi was a middlemen between Oliver North and the mullahs in Iran and that Khashoggi claimed to have lost ... Adnan Khashoggi www.historycommons.org › EntitiesCached - Similar You +1'd this publicly. Undo Adnan Khashoggi was a participant or observer in the following events: ... Entity Tags: Oliver North, Carter administration, Adnan Khashoggi, David Kimche, ... Khashoggi as Oliver North, Wargames and Rummie on Sept 10 journals.democraticunderground.com › Discuss › Journals › DrDebugCached You +1'd this publicly. Undo Jun 19, 2006 – Main post: http://journals.demo...rground.com/... I can't help wondering whether Adnan Khashoggi is the Oliver North in this story. ############################## QUI BONO 911 ??????

Bridging the Psychological Gap 911blogger Posted by jay howard on Thu, 03/07/2013 - 10:34am This is an entry from my personal blog: murderformoney.wordpress.com. (Do not be alarmed, it is not entirely dedicated to 9/11, however, that was my impetus). After reading Phil Mole's article in http://www.skeptic.c...eptic/06-09-11/ , I felt compelled to fill in the gaps of Mole's piece. Skeptics and Conspiracies There is no consensus among skeptics, except by accident. And typically for different reasons. Skeptics are my people. I understand them. A real skeptic is not afraid to question authority, nor does a skeptic oppose an idea because it originates from an authority. Skeptics are professional doubters–not inclined to a supposition until reasons can substantiate it. It is the analysis of these reasons that sets critical thinkers apart from the advertising-prone masses. Which is why it pains me to see skeptics defending the official narrative of the WTC collapses without turning a critical eye on the details at its core. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of “truther” theories concerning the various aspects, and let me be clear: several non-official theories are far more outlandish than the official story. For instance: The “No Planes” theory The Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) theory Any theory that denies the existence of Islamic terrorists hijacking planes Any theory invoking “remote controlled” airplanes There are more nonsense “truther” theories as well, but the point is clear: all theories must be judged on their merits against objective standards. The problem is that once a single “truther” theory is demonstrated to be false, that becomes ammunition to shoot down all “truther” theories, thus vindicating the official theory by default. This is called “ground clearing” and it does little to buoy the official theory, only to distract from actual analysis of the official theory. The WTC7 collapse is, by far, the most powerful prima facie evidence against the official theory–pointing not to any particular conclusion, but most poignantly to the fact that something about the dynamics of the collapse of building 7 is not being understood or explained correctly by the experts commissioned to do so. For many skeptics of the official theory, the video of WTC7 collapsing at around 5:20 pm that day was the wake-up call to investigate further. Yes, WTC1 and 2 looked strangely energetic and not simply a “collapse,” but we could always chalk that up our collective lack of context of the scale of the destruction. WTC7, however, was never hit by a plane. It suffered falling debris from the north tower and fires on several floors, but as yet, there has been no good explanation for why the internal structure gave way–nor especially how it failed in the particular way it did: as if it had all supporting structures severed simultaneously. (That’s 58 perimeter columns and 25 core columns failing on several floors at precise intervals such that the building fell at free fall speed for some amount of time greater than 0 seconds.) There is simply not a clear explanation of how even a multi-story fire, even over several hours could induce that type of failure. And yet, there are skeptics who in good faith, attempt to dismantle any suspicion surrounding the WTC7 collapse. The article published in Skeptic Magazine (9/11/2006) by author Phil Mole (the conspiracist in me laughs) attempts to close the door on any doubts surrounding any government involvement of any aspect of the attacks that day. Initially, Mole asks us to doubt the similarities between conventional controlled demolition (CD) and the collapses of WTC 1 & 2. He makes a case for structural damage as root cause of the collapses based on the disparity between CD and the WTC collapses and anticipates the response to his argument: A conspiracy theorist may counter that the buildings were rigged to begin falling from the top down, but what are the chances that those planning such a complicated demolition would be able to predict the exact location the planes would impact the towers, and prepare the towers to begin falling precisely there? The chances of predicting which floor the planes would hit is without argument so unlikely as to be impossible. Even if someone went through the trouble to wire the buildings, hope the aircraft get hijacked without incident, etc. how could they know which floor the planes would hit? But this is a lazy case for dismissal. It’s lazy because it assumes two things which aren’t very likely: The planners were unable to predict that issue and plan for it, and Technology does not exist to easily overcome this: Remote control: A remote control detonator is much like a wire command detonator except without the wire. Its done by radio signal. The range of the transmitter and the number of frequencies it is capable of working on varies according to price. The receivers can be set to any frequency the owner wishes. Radio detonation devices have been around for decades. Combined with emulation software, in the hands of a professional, they can play Beethoven on a structure. The ability to detonate from any given floor would be a requirement of this operation. What fool would leave that to chance? One thing can be postulated with confidence: if there was an actual plot to facilitate the destruction of the towers we can be sure it would be perpetrated by professionals. Mole’s case for dismissal is hardly serious. But Mole’s just warming up. The first plane struck the North Tower (Building 1) between the 94th to 98th floors and hit it head on, burrowing almost directly toward the core of the building. The second airplane struck the South Tower between the 78th and 84th floors, but sliced in at an angle, severely damaging the entire northeast corner of the building.4 Compared with the North Tower, the South Tower sustained damage that was both less evenly distributed and significantly lower on the building’s frame, requiring the weakened point to support more upper building weight than the corresponding crash site on the North Tower. This explains both the tilt of the building as it fell toward the weakened corner, and the fact that the South Tower fell first despite being struck after the North Tower was struck. Here Mole speaks anecdotally to explain the 58 minute collapse of WTC 2–the last hit but the first to fall. And admittedly, 58 minutes seems a short amount of time. But so is the 102 minutes it took for Building 1 to fall. And even the 8 hours it took for WTC 7 to fall seems exceedingly fast and violent compared to the damage done. But this is just a feeling. The point remains: comparing the fall times of these buildings as “slow,” “medium” and “fast” does little to clarify the official explanation, nor, more importantly, does it help to clarify the mechanisms that actually caused the collapses. Secondly, Mole employs an “is-ought” argument for nature of the destruction witnessed. This is indicative of an uniquisitive thought process that essentially says “well, of course it happened that way!” Even though the South Tower was the second building hit and was hit at an incidental angle compared to the North Tower, Mole makes a perceptional argument, saying in essence, “intuition does not serve us well in this situation because the South Tower, although hit later and less directly than the North Tower, was a more catastrophic blow by virtue of the asymmetrical damage–not in spite of it as would seem more in line with basic physics.” As in much of the NIST literature regarding the collapses, the theoretical cart is put before the forensic horse. After giving birth to that turd of a non-argument, Mole moves on to the issue of the fire temperatures upon which so much hinges: … most agree that the temperature probably reached 1,000° Fahrenheit and possibly higher than 1,800° F. Flames of this temperature would be far short of the approximately 2800° F needed to melt steel, but they would have been sufficient to severely reduce the structural integrity of the metal. My emphasis. This central tenet of the official story acknowledges that the only fuel sources in the WTC complex at the time in any real volume were hydrocarbon sources, wood, paper and plastics ignited by kerosene. With this acknowledgment comes the additional requirement that the fires be hot enough to cause the massive and violent structural damage we all witnessed that day. To this end, supporters of the official theory have made much use of misunderstanding the difference between gas temperature and material temperature. Mole is no exception: Even if we assume temperatures of no higher than 1,000° F during the fire, we would still have more than enough reasons to expect damage severe enough to result in eventual collapse. Temperature of what? After reading this, I cannot help but picture Mole in a wide-collar, polyester suit and a fake-ass smile waving a brochure for a “once in a lifetime opportunity”. No thanks, Phil. First and foremost, what temperatures is Mole referring to? Gas? Surfaces? It is poor science to say the least, to conflate the maximum temperature of a heat source with the maximum temperature of a material that may or may not have been exposed to that source. This point is so basic, I feel like making it explicit will insult your intelligence. Yet, Mole writes his piece with authority, as if his word puts the issue to bed once and for all. Office fire simulations conducted by Underwriters Laboratories under the direction of NIST found that temperatures went above 1000F for only a few of the tests, and when it did, it could not sustain it for much more than 8 or 10 minutes. They used a variety of materials but through the course of testing found that the surrogate material combinations of wood, paper, plastic and hydrocarbon fuels were irrelevant to the outcome of the tests: a little over 1000F for about 10 minutes was simply as hot as they were going to get. The one factor which affected the outcome most was material arrangement. Several simulations broke down the furniture and various surrogates into piles. Not surprisingly, the heat curve went higher, but for a shorter amount of time than the undisturbed, more fuel-scattered tests. The results support Eagar and Musso’s original estimates of a maximum gas temperature of about 1100F, but with the added knowledge that these temperatures could not have been sustained for more than about 10 or maybe 20 minutes at most. Furthermore, NIST acknowledges early on that of all the steel they sampled (which amounted to approximately 1% of all the steel) the hottest exposure temperatures they could document were about 250C or just under 500F. Yet it seems Mole, as well as NIST, must presume the existence of higher temperature-exposed steel despite the fact that the only steel in the official record found to have gotten hotter was the mysteriously melted steel reported in the FEMA/BPAT Appendix C report: Evidence of a high temperature corrosion attack on the steel, including oxidation and sulfidation with subsequent intergranular melting, was readily visible in the near surface microstructure. It is unclear why supporters of the official conspiracy theory are so incurious about these samples. Given that one sample is definitely from WTC 7 and the other sample is either from WTC 1 or 2, this cannot be dismissed as an isolated event. Given that there are first-hand account of molten steel, these samples seem to fall into the category of corroborative evidence for such. Unsurprisingly, Mole is neither willing to mention the FEMA/BPAT study nor take the accounts of eye witnesses seriously: … the sources in question are informal observations of “steel” at Ground Zero, not laboratory results. To many people, any grayish metal looks sufficiently like steel to call it “steel” when speaking informally. To actually establish that the substance in question is steel, we need analytical laboratory results using atomic absorption (AA) or another suitable test. It seems far more likely that the metal seen by the contractors was aluminum, a component of the WTC structural material that melts at a much lower temperature than steel and can look superficially similar to it. My emphasis. But we do NOT need to take anyone’s word for the melted steel recovered by the FEMA/BPAT team, yet there is not even an acknowledgment of its existence by Mole. Why not? And how “superficial” is the similarity of molten steel to molten aluminum? And so, with a couple of passing comments, Mole washes his hands of any and all considerations of molten steel or iron. So, I have to ask Phil Mole: Why didn’t you consider all the evidence surrounding molten steel and iron when you were dismissing the non-official accounts of what happened to the WTC complex? Why didn’t you consider the FEMA/BPAT report or the USGS report which contained evidence of extremely high temperature reactions? Why not take into account all the evidence before making a judgment in regard to the legitimacy of non-official theories of the collapses? Until you make yourself clear, we can only assume. I am not the first to respond to this, as it has been more than 2 years since the article first appeared in Skeptic Magazine, however, my objective was to make these issues accessible in a quasi-Socratic method, that is, by allowing the reader to make up his own mind when presented with unpolished facts.

True enough but that "someone" would be a paranoid conspiracy kook. This is not at all different from a truther contacting someone tied to their 9/11 research, unlike many truthers I didn't misrepresent myself and/or harass the person I contacted. ++++++++++++++++++++++ AH heres the rub, you probably didnt investigate your informant enough to find if he has the proverbial AXE to grind. Ross stole his girlfriend in college conflict of interest: fellow works for USG (NIST,DOD,DOD subcontractor,Saudi's,ect) intellectual jealousy jealous Ross has higher paying job

And yet the ACLU gave no indication it feels civil war is likely to occur and none of the incidents involved state let alone federal agencies // END COLBY +++++++++++++++++++ COLBY'S KNOWLEDGE BASE OF THE ACLU IS BELOW MINIMAL #########################' ACLU requests documents on police use of military-grade equipment March 6, 2013 11:24 pm Read more: http://www.post-gaze.../#ixzz2Mynwvy2n ------------------------o0o---------------------------- The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday requested documents from police departments across the country in what leaders described as an effort to learn when American police are using federally subsidized, military-grade equipment generally used in a war zone. The group sent 255 requests in 23 states asking for data on SWAT team call-outs and use, if any, of GPS tracking devices, drones and select other equipment. Locally, the Pennsylvania ACLU office requested records from the state police, Allegheny County SWAT, Beaver County Emergency Services Unit and the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, among others. Alexandra Morgan-Kurtz, the attorney who completed the paperwork for the state ACLU office, said she sent the requests to local agencies that she knew had a SWAT team. "At this point, we're mostly just gathering information," she said. "The more information we have, the more we can suggest better policy changes." Ms. Morgan-Kurtz said she expects to get at least some of the documents she requested under the Pennsylvania Right-to-Know Law and hopes to have more information in about a month. She said she is especially interested to see how the Pittsburgh police department has been using the Long Range Acoustic Device, a sophisticated speaker system capable of sending out a recorded message that can be heard a quarter-mile away. The LRAD, used here during the G-20 Summit a little more than three years ago, has been used on open seas against pirates and to disperse crowds of bar patrons on the South Side. Reggie Shuford, executive director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said in a statement: "Pennsylvanians deserve to know the extent to which our local police are using military weapons and tactics for everyday policing. The militarization of local police is a threat to Americans' right to live without fear of military-style intervention in their daily lives,**** and we need to make sure these resources and tactics are deployed only with rigorous oversight and strong legal protections." Representatives for local agencies reached on Wednesday declined to comment. Read more: http://www.post-gaze.../#ixzz2Myo76GHc ######################## QUI ?? QUI ??? military-style intervention in their daily lives,**** ANSWER CIVIL UNREST POSSIBLE. DHS preparing for possible civil war ?? =================== Seems Colby never saw question mark in thread title. (spelling corection edit)

The USG denied their was a larger conspiracy, the exact opposite of what they would have done if they were trying to do what you allege. The bombing in no way advanced the EoZ/PTB/NWO/MIC/MIBH agenda. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo !! Things got out of hand in the Kahane assassination (USG) didnt want that . The WTC FEB BOMBING WASNT A SUCESS AND IM SURE THE CIA STARTED THINKING OF ALTRERNATIVES. He was still used later: Abdul-Rahman will be involved in the follow up “Landmarks” plot (see June 24, 1993) before finally being arrested later in 1993. It will later be alleged that he was protected by the CIA. In 1995, the New York Times will comment that the link between Abdul-Rahman and the CIA “is a tie that remains muddy.” [New York Times, 10/2/1995] .......... the fuse had been lit. THE 'great satan' had been dealt a blow. THE MB network has ye old word of mouth capabilities in the streets/mosques. LOL Colby seems to have NEVER heard of the term 'ARAB STREETS'. US government pronouncements are not the end all be all of Middle East information since establishment sources are considered tainted. FUNNY YOU DIDNT CONTINUE THE QUOTATION YOU USED SINCE IT WOULD WEAKEN YOUR ARGUMENTS. Nevertheless, some in the D.A.’s office believe that until the Ryder van exploded underneath New York’s tallest building, the sheikh and his men were being protected by the CIA. Morgenthau reportedly believes the CIA brought the sheikh to Brooklyn in the first place…. As far as can be determined, no American agency is investigating leads suggesting foreign-government involvement in the New York terror conspiracy. For example,Saudi intelligence has contributed to Sheikh Rahman’s legal-defence fund, according to Mohammed al-Khilewi, the former first secretary to the Saudi mission at the U.N. ++++++++++++++++++++++ HUMM.......SAUDI INTELL GOLLY THATS 9 1 .?? ....gee whats that last number ????...????

Have you actually seen the video? I ask because you repeatedly post stuff you haven't looked at. If not why should anyone else watch it? If so what in it supports your case? ++++++++++++++++++++++ 23:00 If it wasnt for activists SOPA would have removed much internet freedom.

Obfuscation king Colby's arguments aside, USA internet censorship a real issue. Its not just China !! YouTube's age-restriction censorship of my TSA Help Wanted animation is a clear example of oppression against artistic expression and a dark mirror of the kind of free speech blackouts that regularly occur in Communist China. "TSA Help Wanted" is clearly being censored not because of its content (it contains no profanity and shows no actual nudity) but because it is critical of the government. =============================== 'Political' takedown requests increase in US Posted June 18, 2012 - 06:32by Emma Woollacott Google's released data on the governments aiming to censor internet content, and says it's seen a worrying rise in the number of such requests from Western democracies. In the second half of last year, for example, Spanish regulators asked for the removal of 270 search results that linked to blogs and newspaper articles referencing individuals and public figures, including mayors and public prosecutors. One example that's more entertaining than chilling came from the Canadian authorities. They called for the removal of a YouTube video showing a man urinating on his passport and flushing it down the toilet. Google let the video stand. "When we started releasing this data in 2010, we also added annotations with some of the more interesting stories behind the numbers. We noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it’s not," says senior policy analyst Dorothy Chou. "This is the fifth data set that we’ve released. And just like every other time before, we’ve been asked to take down political speech. It’s alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect — Western democracies not typically associated with censorship." Google also received a number of requests from US law enforcement agencies. One concerned a blog post alleged to defame a law enforcement official in a personal capacity; another a series of 1,400 YouTube videos that were claimed to constitute harassment. Earlier in the year, a law enforcement agency asked for the removal of YouTube videos showing alleged piolice brutality. In all these cases, Google refused to comply. The US asked for the greatest number of takedowns, followed by India. All in all, there were more than twice as many content removal requests from the US as in the previous reporting period - 6,321, of which 93 percent were complied with in full or in part. The report is here. ######################### CIA IS GOOD CIA IS GOOD CIA IS GOOD CIA IS GOOD CIA ......ECT ECT (COLBY THOUGHTS) ========================================================================================= Strawman King I will donate $10,000 to your church if you can cite when I've indicated the CIA was a benevolent organization.//end Colby ######################### Rancid BALONEYKING (right back atya) You believe CIA not part of DRUG trade. I believe they facilitate assets big time. I believe POST # 3 and POST # 4 contain accurate material. YOU do not. http://educationforu...showtopic=20001 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ If you have no acknowledgement of a problem ,you cant correct it.

Profiting From Genocide: The World Bank's Bloody History in Guatemala Friday, 08 March 2013 00:00 =========================================== http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/14823-profiting-from-genocide-the-world-banks-bloody-history-in-guatemala

ACLU Conducting Full Scale Report on Police Militarization =========================== By JG Vibes theintelhub.com March 7, 2013 While they do definitely have their shortcomings and their roots in the state, the ACLU is many times one of the only mainstream organizations to recognize police brutality and the horrors of war. Now in a new report they are calling attention to a problem that involves both of these realms, and that is the militarization of American police forces. They posted the following statement to their website along with a graphic that said “Towns Don’t Need Tanks”: American neighborhoods are increasingly being policed by cops armed with the weapons and tactics of war. Federal funding in the billions of dollars has allowed state and local police departments to gain access to weapons and tactics created for overseas combat theaters – and yet very little is known about exactly how many police departments have military weapons and training, how militarized the police have become, and how extensively federal money is incentivizing this trend. It’s time to understand the true scope of the militarization of policing in America and the impact it is having in our neighborhoods. On March 6th, ACLU affiliates in 23 states filed over 255 public records requests with law enforcement agencies and National Guard offices to determine the extent to which federal funding and support has fueled the militarization of state and local police departments. Stay tuned as this project develops. This report will likely just be scratching the surface, but since police brutality is such an out in the open, everyday occurrence they may be able to gather enough evidence to change some minds.

If Oswald Was an Intelligence Agent of Some Sort, How Was He Manipulated Into Being a Patsy? ANSWER BY 15 and a half there is something already off in SS# of LHO. LHO subject to photographic homosexual blackmail. Its the early 1950s......put yourself into that time frame and think how/what would you respond as a teenager to such pressure. ############################################################### To Jake Rubenstein, c/o The Carousel Club William Weston October 2001 On October 31, 1976, a government agent greeted a gray-haired gentleman who, on his own initiative, came into the FBI office in Memphis, Tennessee. He had a secret about the Kennedy assassination, he said, and he wanted to disclose it. [1] The distinguished-looking visitor did not appear to be the type who would know something about the world of spies, pimps, drug dealers, con artists, and other disreputable denizens inhabiting the murky milieu of assassination intrigue. Daniel T. McGown, by anyone's standards, was a pillar of the community, a successful businessman with an honorable career in a prestigious profession. Born in 1908 in Brownwood, Texas, his family moved to Memphis prior to his graduation from high school. After receiving a degree from the School of Architecture at Georgia Tech, he went to work for Schulz & Norton, an architectural and engineering firm in Memphis. In 1941, he married Irma Lee Beasley, a daughter from one of Tennesee's more respectable families. During the course of their marriage, the couple had two children. In 1948, he started his own architectural firm, which over the years grew and prospered. He became president of the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects and was a member of the Calvary Episcopal Church. [2] Family man, businessman, church member, community server, Mr. McGown lived a life that was largely indistinguishable from thousands of other men of his class who lived around the country. However, in that fateful year of 1963, a strange twist of fate had placed within his hands a hitherto unknown secret regarding a connection between Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. The incident occurred during a business trip to Texas in March 1963. McGown had flown to Austin, in order to check over the plans for a new building that was to be constructed on the campus of the University of Texas. When he had completed his survey, he rented a car and drove north to the city of Brownwood, where he spent a day with some relatives. He then drove to Fort Worth, where he visited his first cousin, a prominent attorney in that city. Late in the evening, he used his cousin's telephone to call his wife Irma. He wished her a happy birthday and said that he would see her the next day, when his plane arrived in Memphis. Irma's birthday was March 28. McGown left his cousin's house and drove east to Dallas. It was almost midnight when he checked in at the Adolphus Hotel on Commerce Street. After getting settled into his room, he felt like having a nightcap before going to bed. He left his room, went down the elevator to the lobby, and went outside. The brightly lit sign of the Carousel Club beckoned from across the street. He walked over to the club entrance door and opened it. Behind the door was a staircase, leading up to the second floor. When he reached the top of the stairs, he was stopped by a heavy-set man. The club was closing up, the man said, who then complained about city regulations that prevented him from keeping the place open after midnight. [3] Rebuffed by the manager of the club, McGown went back to his room. The following morning, McGown decided to do a little sightseeing, since he had a few hours to kill before his plane departed from Dallas. As he was walking down Commerce Street, he paused at the Carousel Club. Near the entrance was a showcase display featuring pictures of female performers. As he was gazing at the pictures, another man who was walking down the street crowded into the entryway to look at them too. It was an awkward moment for McGown as he tried to make room for the other man while at the same time trying to keep a favorable point of view for himself. Presently, the other man turned to leave. As he did so, he brushed by an overstuffed mailbox that hung on the entrance door. A few large pieces of mail, two magazines, and three letters spilled on the ground. The man continued on his way without stopping. McGown proceeded to pick up the envelopes and magazines and stuff them back into the box. He noticed that the three letters were written by women and were addressed to "Jake Rubenstein, c/o The Carousel Club." Rubenstein must have been the heavy-set man whom McGown met the previous night. He was probably also the one who hired women to be performers in the club. Perhaps the senders of the three letters were prospective applicants for employment. McGown looked at the envelopes again. Two of the women lived in Fort Worth, and one lived in Dallas. The name on the Dallas letter caught his attention, for he happened to have a friend who had the same last name. [4] After making a mental note of the address, he put the letters back in the box with the rest of the mail. The woman he was planning to visit was "Lee Oswald." Using a city map as a guide, McGown drove toward Miss Oswald's place. As he was approaching her street, he looked at the houses in the neighborhood. Expecting to see lower class housing, he was surprised to find upper middle class or upper class residences. McGown wondered about this. Why would anyone living in such an area have any dealings with a strip joint? When he arrived at his destination, he stopped the car and looked at it. It was a two-story apartment building, constructed in the cheap, boxy style that was becoming the prevailing fashion at that time. It had an outside stairway that led up to a balcony walk on the second floor. It was a new building, perhaps two or three years old at the most. For the convenience of the postman, there was a mailbox with individual compartments that stood facing the street next to the curb. In order to find the unit that Miss Oswald was renting, McGown got out of his car and looked over the names of the tenants posted on the compartment doors. When he found Oswald's name, he realized that he had made a mistake. The middle name of Lee Harvey Oswald showed that this person was not a woman. Without further ado, McGown got back into his car and drove away. Eight months later, when the names of Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby were being broadcasted on radio and television, the details of this episode came vividly back to his memory. Should he tell the authorities what he knew, or should he not? His reputation might suffer if this embarrassing incident ever became widely known. He hoped that the authorities would find out about Oswald's connection to Jack Ruby without his help. When the Warren Report was published, he bought a copy and read it from cover to cover. There was nothing in it to indicate that the government knew what he knew. Furthermore he read that the commission could find no "credible evidence" of an association between Oswald and Ruby. After the death of Jack Ruby in January 1967, McGown wondered if he was the only one left who still had the "credible evidence" that eluded the Warren Commission. Finally, nine years later, he told his wife about it. She encouraged him to go to the FBI. After all, his story might make a difference in the new, upcoming investigation into the JFK assassination that Congress was preparing to launch. Such were the circumstances that led Daniel T. McGown to the local office of the FBI in 1976. The FBI of course wanted to know where the apartment was. McGown could not remember its exact location, but he drew a diagram depicting the apartment in relation to the mailbox out front, as well as in relation to a nearby apartment that faced another street. He remembered that the address had four digits and sounded something like "Diceland." A Dallas city map showed that there were was no street with the name of "Diceland," but there were two with the name of "Diceman." One was Diceman Drive, and the other was Diceman Avenue. Dallas FBI agent Robert Gemberling drove out to Diceman Drive to see if there were any apartments matching McGown's diagram and description. Diceman Drive had single-family houses but no apartments. A few inquiries among the residents showed that no apartment had ever existed on that street. Next stop was Diceman Avenue. Gemberling looked from one end of the avenue to the other, and the only dwellings that he could see were single-family homes - with one exception. At the point where Diceman ran into Cedar Crest Boulevard was a two-story building made of brick. It was the Cedar Crest Heights Apartment. It had a second floor balcony walk with an iron railing just as McGown described it. Next to the curb was a large mailbox with sixteen key-locked compartments with tenant nametags. Adjacent to the building was another apartment facing Birdsong Street. The apartment at 1106 Diceman Avenue must be the place that McGown had visited in 1963. There was no other possibility. Still, Gemberling was not satisfied. He noticed that all the buildings in the neighborhood were rundown, dilapidated, and occupied entirely by lower-class blacks. This was not the upper class neighborhood that McGown claimed to have seen. Gemberling looked for the manager. He found him at a nearby office at 2514 Birdsong Avenue. The manager told him that the apartment was owned by a company called General Rental. It was built around 1959 or 1960, and it was the only apartment that had ever been on that street. The mailbox seen out front had been there since the apartment was first constructed. So far these extra details provided additional confirmation for McGown's story. Gemberling wanted to see the tenant records for 1963, but the manager told them that they no longer existed. They were destroyed with all the other tenant records in a fire that occurred in April 1968. Gemberling asked the manager if he knew anything about Oswald living in the apartment in 1963. Although the manager acknowledged that he had only been working for General Rental since 1969, he was nevertheless positive that Oswald could not have lived in the apartment in 1963. In an all-black neighborhood, people would have certainly remembered Oswald as the only white man living among them, and such was not the case. Apparently the manager's statement was enough to convince Gemberling that the 1106 Diceman lead was a dead end. No further inquiries were made, as far as the available records show. (There are however some "postponed in full" documents from the Memphis office of the FBI regarding a "Daniel McGowen" that are now in the National Archives.) To find out more about the apartment, I checked the 1963 Dallas criss-cross directory and found a former tenant by the name of Orlean Dorsey. I located Dorsey in Lufkin, Texas and called him up. Contrary to what the General Rental manager told Gemberling, Dorsey, who is black, said it was not an all-black apartment in 1963. Both white and black people lived there. Furthermore, the apartment was indeed located in a prestigious area. About a mile south of the apartment was the Lakeview Golf Course, where Dorsey worked as a landscape and maintenance man. Among the celebrities who played golf there were such baseball legends as Mickey Mantle and "Dizzy" Dean. At that time, the golf course was racially segregated. Whites played there during the day and blacks played at night. Not just anyone could live at the Cedar Crest Apartment. A prospective tenant had to have a very good background and excellent references. Dorsey was able to get his unit because he knew the manager, a black named Denny Blair, who often played golf at Lakeview. Blair was an employee of Bailey Rental, a white-owned company that had title to the Diceman apartment. (Bailey Rental was later renamed General Rental.) The Cedar Crest Apartment was an expensive place to live. It took all of Dorsey's wages to pay the rent. He was making $1.25 per hour and the rent was about $210 per month. The only way he could afford to live there was by working a lot of overtime on the weekends. By way of comparison, Oswald was making $1.35 per hour at Jaggers Chiles Stovall during the month of March 1963, and he was paying $72.68 a month for a one-bedroom flat at the Neely Street house. [5] Dorsey and his family moved into the apartment in November 1962. Because of his long working hours and because he was going to plumbing school at the same time, he did not get to know the other tenants. His wife and children also did not do much socializing. Thus he was unable to confirm or deny whether Oswald lived there. Dorsey and his family moved to another apartment in October 1963. The transition from an affluent, mainly white neighborhood to black lower class ghetto occurred during the mid-1960's, according to Dorsey who would come back to visit his former apartment from time to time. The quality of the building and the surrounding area deteriorated as a result of vandalism and neglect. When I called the General Rental office in 1995, I found out that the apartment was still owned by the Bailey family. I also learned that rent was only $50 per week - a real bargain for anyone brave enough to live there. Did Oswald live at the Cedar Crest Apartment? Considering the high cost of rent in 1963, it is unlikely he would have chosen to live there. A more reasonable possibility is that he used the address simply to receive his mail. As a man astute in the ways of intelligence, he no doubt realized that a mailbox at the post office was under surveillance. A second mailbox in another area would be highly useful for receiving mail from more sensitive sources. This line of reasoning is supported by the fact that most of the units at 1106 Diceman were listed as "vacant" in the criss-cross directories of 1962 and 1963. In 1962 only five of the sixteen units available were occupied. This ratio dropped to only four occupied units the following year. An apartment manager with a 75% vacancy rate might let someone temporarily use an unused mailbox for a small fee. It is interesting to note that on March 29, the day that McGown was at the Diceman apartment, Oswald was seen at a barbershop in Sparta, Wisconsin. Oswald told John Abbott, the barber, that he got his money by blackmailing a Texas nightclub operator, for whom he had previously worked. Each time he made a contact with this man, he would get fifty dollars. The money he obtained would be used to cover his travelling expenses. (He never gave the name of the nightclub operator.) Perhaps the Oswald letter that McGown saw was another demand for more money. McGown's story lends credence to the story of a connection between Ruby and Oswald in the May 17 edition of the National Enquirer. It said: "After a sniper shot at but missed General Walker in Dallas, April 10, 1963, Dallas police suspected that Oswald was the sniper and Ruby was the payoff man. The cops were set to arrest the pair. But they never got the chance, because of heavy pressure brought to bear by the Justice Dept. and so Oswald and Ruby were to remain free." The article also said that a top secret document, signed by a high official of the Justice Dept., was sent in April 1963 to Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry requesting the police not to arrest Oswald and Ruby. This document was reportedly in the hands of the Warren Commission. Given the potentially explosive implications of the above story, it is no wonder that the Warren Commission chose to discount all witnesses to a connection between Oswald and Ruby, including Wilburn Litchfield, Joe Franklin, and Bill DeMar. McGown's story is not only important in rehabilitating the credibility of these undeservedly maligned witnesses, but it also provides a glimpse into the covert ways by which Oswald and Ruby communicated with one another. ENDNOTES 1. Sources for this article were FBI reports in Memphis and Dallas. Also referred to were ten pages of McGown's hand-written account that was photocopied by the FBI. 2. Engagement announcement, Sept. 14, 1941; wedding announcement, Dec. 3, 1941, and obituary of Daniel T. McGown, March 5, 1985, in the Memphis newspaper, The Commercial Appeal. 3. According to Jack Ruby's bartender, Andrew Armstrong, clean up started at midnight on weeknights and at 1:00 am on Saturday and Sunday. All bottles and glasses had to be cleared off the tables by 12:15. If a vice squad police officer saw anyone drinking after 12:15, he could slap a five-day suspension on the club (Vol. 13 of the Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, p. 325). 4. Actually the friend's surname had a slightly different spelling. Felix Oswalt, a member of the Board of Education in Memphis, was the friend McGown was talking about. 5. Warren Report, p. 743. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A professional man is traveling alone and sees an opportunity to meet strippers. Eight months later, when the names of Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby were being broadcasted on radio and television, the details of this episode came vividly back to his memory. Should he tell the authorities what he knew, or should he not? His reputation might suffer if this embarrassing incident ever became widely known. He hoped that the authorities would find out about Oswald's connection to Jack Ruby without his help. When the Warren Report was published, he bought a copy and read it from cover to cover. There was nothing in it to indicate that the government knew what he knew. Furthermore he read that the commission could find no "credible evidence" of an association between Oswald and Ruby. After the death of Jack Ruby in January 1967, McGown wondered if he was the only one left who still had the "credible evidence" that eluded the Warren Commission. Finally, nine years later, he told his wife about it. She encouraged him to go to the FBI. After all, his story might make a difference in the new, upcoming investigation into the JFK assassination that Congress was preparing to launch. Such were the circumstances that led Daniel T. McGown to the local office of the FBI in 1976. ********************************************** PAUSE AND REFLECT PAUSE AND REFLECT PAUSE AND REFLECT ............... What would motivate a professional married man to contact the FBI and say he ," improperly looked at US Mail and wanted to 'hunt' down a stripper." ???? Would /could this not hurt his career ?? (YUP) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Answer ZERO.

Video Proof: DHS Preps For Civil War, Economic Collapse, Both! Monday, January 7, 2013 20:59 (Before It's News) Is the Department of Homeland Security REALLY preparing for civil war in America? If not civil war, then are they in preparation for an economic collapse? One thing is quite sure, something is terribly wrong in this land when both Fox News and the Drudge Report have headlines declaring that civil war is close. As a long time anti-war activist, I am vehemently opposed to civil war in America and war anywhere. What's so civil about war anyways? Susanne Posel Occupy Corporatism January 7, 2013 Those with nothing to lose the 47% of Americans on social or subsidy programs are expected to be the ones to take to the streets and riot at the beginning of the 2nd American civil war. Manufactured poverty has become the standard under the Communist-in-Chief, Barack Obama. This breaks the will of the populace as they are unable to feed their families as the economy suffers while the growth of the government continues. Social norms now dictate that a government handout is nothing to be ashamed of. And the road to serfdom is being paved. Those able and willing to fight against the “change” that has “come to America” thanks to Obama would be the target of most of the violence. In many documents published by the US government and globalist think-tanks, explanation of effective urban combat has been discussed and plotted. One such document is entitled “Combined Arms Operations in Urban Terrain", dating back to 2002. GlobalEconomicNews Published on Jan 7, 2013

Pipe Dreams: the CIA, Drugs, and the Media by Daniel Brandt and Steve Badrich From NameBase NewsLine, No. 16, January-March 1997 Like some Russian high official come to treat with Chechen rebels, CIA Director John Deutch arrived in force -- by heavily-armed motorcade, and with helicopter cover. SWAT teams swarmed over the building that was Deutch's destination. But on November 15, 1996, Deutch's destination was in fact only the auditorium of Locke High School in the beleaguered South Central neighborhood of Los Angeles: for a U.S. public servant, not officially enemy territory at all. Still, the citizens who showed up to hear and question Deutch were searched with a metal detector in return for the privilege. And privilege it was. The post-Cold-War world had become so threatening to the CIA that Deutch was taking the unprecedented step of showing up in public -- of walking, in fact, directly into a popular firestorm. That evening, Deutch emphatically claimed that the CIA had no involvement whatsoever with the crack-cocaine epidemic that is battering South Central. It was a message Deutch's audience wasn't buying. This event and its aftermath are well worth reflecting upon. Unfortunately, the defense of Deutch and his agency by major U.S. media has proved far less illuminating than the narrow and ahistorical way these same media have defined and framed the relevant issues. The ability of well-paid media people to vaporize the known history of the CIA, to turn this history into a non-issue, is scary -- scarier, almost, than the long, lamentable, but extremely well-documented story of CIA involvement with drug traffickers on four continents. This essay will attempt to say something, yet again, both about the major media and about some of the many mind-bending episodes, already on the public record, of CIA-drug-trafficker complicity. The CIA's latest trials on this issue began in August 1996 with the now-notorious series on crack cocaine in the San Jose Mercury News. In this series, reporter Gary Webb made the case that the CIA, through the actions of several drug-dealing Nicaraguan contras it had funded, was involved in the introduction of crack into Los Angeles during the 1980s. Parallel stories have appeared in provincial papers before, and been ignored. But San Jose isn't in Silicon Valley for nothing; the Mercury News boosted Webb's stories with its state-of-the-art website, and a popular firestorm ensued. Soon Maxine Waters of the Congressional Black Caucus was calling for an investigation, and the Senate Intelligence Committee had scheduled hearings. Belatedly, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times all recognized that, this time around, they couldn't ignore the story. But instead of investigating the CIA, they investigated their fellow journalists at the Mercury News. Quoting each other's stories to strengthen their common case, editorialists, reporters, and columnists from all three papers attacked Webb's reporting -- or what they claimed Webb had reported -- as well as his ethics, his talk-show appearances, his book proposal, his movie deal, his editors, and even a graphic on his newspaper's website. Gary Webb, after all, is neither a Washingtonian nor a New Yorker. There was nothing casual or accidental about this bashing. The L.A. Times had 25 reporters on the story. The Post refused to print a reasoned letter from Mercury News editor Jerry Ceppos defending the series, even after Ceppos provided a requested revision. Perhaps the low point of this campaign was a story by Tim Golden of the New York Times, which explained that African-Americans are more susceptible than their fellow citizens to conspiracy theories and paranoia. But it's not necessarily paranoid to note what crack has done to our cities, or that the U.S. prison population has tripled over the past 14 years, or that California now spends more on prisons than it does on colleges and universities. And as the Mercury News noted: in 1993, snorters of powdered cocaine drew an average sentence of three months, whereas crack smokers got an average of three years. And 83 percent of those sent to prison for crack trafficking were African-American. If present trends were to continue for another 14 years, a majority of African-American males between the ages of 18 and 40 would be locked up. Deutch's audience at Locke High, furthermore, had a more appropriate response than the Washington Post did to Deutch's promise that the CIA would investigate itself: hoots and howls. After all, the last internal CIA report on contras and drugs, completed in 1988, is still secret. "I don't know why [Rep. Julian] Dixon is saluting Deutch's courage for coming here today," someone from the audience complained at the floor microphone, "when everybody knows this building's got hundreds of pigs in it. There's pigs behind those curtains, there's pigs on top of the roof. We're not going to get no justice here today -- we're going to need a revolution." And it's the major media, rather than the folks who turned out at Locke High, that are guilty of what amounts to suppression of evidence on this issue. Consider media treatment of Jack Blum, former special counsel to John Kerry's Senate subcommittee that investigated the CIA-contra-drug connection. If senators will listen to anyone who can speak authoritatively on this issue, it's Blum. On October 23, 1996, Blum told the Senate Intelligence Committee that although the CIA had not itself sold crack in the inner city, it had "ignored the drug problem and subverted law enforcement to prevent embarrassment and to reward our allies in the contra war.... A careful review of covert operations in the Caribbean and South and Central America shows a forty-year connection between crime and covert operations that has repeatedly blown back on the United States.... I would hope that this inquiry goes beyond the narrow questions posed in the San Jose Mercury News story." Blum's statement reviewed the same history of CIA complicity with drug traffickers that will be touched on in this essay: CIA ties to the Mafia during World War II; its role in Burma in the 1950s; in Laos in the 1960s; in Argentina and Bolivia in the 1970s; and in Central America and Afghanistan in the 1980s. But Blum's 3,700 words of historical perspective raised the specter of exactly the kind of inquiry that the major media don't want. ABC's Peter Jennings crunched Blum's reflections down to a single sound bite, perversely out of context, in which Blum absolved the CIA of directly selling drugs in Los Angeles. The two sentences on CNN's U.S. News Story Page on their website were equally shameless: "Jack Blum, a former Senate investigator who looked into the matter during the 1980s, defended the CIA. 'No members of the staff of the CIA ... (were) in the cocaine business,' he said." In fairness we may note that the media were only following the government's lead on this issue. CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz lacks subpoena power and must produce a declassified report; for additional powers, he must petition Congress. But Congressional "oversight" over the CIA is unfortunately just that. The House Intelligence Committee is now chaired by Porter Goss (R-FL), a former CIA operations officer who still hangs out with Agency friends. Its Senate counterpart is under Arlen Specter (R-PA), whose major contribution to investigative history to date is the Warren Commission's "magic bullet" theory. Put simply, neither the major media nor Congress has the will, perhaps not even the power, to pursue the real history of CIA activity. Maxine Waters (D-CA) fears that the investigations now in train will fade away unless public pressure is maintained. To this end, Waters plans teach-ins on California campuses this spring. A fourth contra-crack investigation is being conducted by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich, a former narcotics prosecutor. But even though Bromwich's intentions seem good, he can subpoena only Justice Department documents, and cannot compel witnesses to testify. Jack Blum is surely right to want to pursue all CIA-drugs investigations within the framework of the larger history of the CIA -- even though one must surely question Blum's assumption that established agencies are capable of doing this. Since the 1960s, evidence of corruption and official lies has periodically made it onto the public record, but the worse the news, the more intense official resistance has become. What follows, nevertheless, is a quick sketch of what all such investigators -- and the public -- ought to have firmly in mind. A variety of sources have been assembled here into a rough chronological narrative. But the scope of this narrative is so great that only major chapters in the CIA's long association with drugs can be mentioned. Still, as a big picture, it's better than nothing -- which is what official sources and investigations, and well-heeled publishers and producers, threaten to give us. Back in 1936, Lucky Luciano, the boss of Mafia drug and prostitution rackets in New York City, was finally convicted as a result of Thomas Dewey's prosecution, and sentenced to thirty to fifty years. But in 1942 the Office of Naval Intelligence asked Meyer Lansky to seek Luciano's assistance in getting New York waterfront workers to watch out for enemy agents and activity. Soon Luciano's friends in Sicily, who had been severely repressed by Mussolini, were helping with the American invasion there. In 1946 the ONI appealed to Luciano's parole board. He was released from prison and deported to Italy -- where he built up a heroin syndicate. The immediate postwar problem in places like Italy and France, from the point of view of both the CIA and entrenched interests such as the Mafia, was that many Communists had been anti-fascist Resistance fighters, and as such were attractive to voters. The Marshall Plan aimed not merely to rebuild a war-torn Europe; it aimed to rebuild Europe in such a way that no Communists could ever win an election. To this end, the CIA played a major role in administering Marshall Plan aid. In Italy the CIA spent money to deny the 1948 elections to the Communists. By 1950 the Mafia again controlled Sicily. The CIA was also paying the Corsican Mafia in Marseilles to undermine Communist influence with striking workers. These Mafia syndicates were sufficiently well-protected that in 1951 they opened their first heroin lab. By 1965 there were two dozen labs in Marseilles, which together exported nearly five tons of heroin to the U.S. during that year.[1] Heroin trafficking shifted in the 1960s and 1970s from the Turkey-Marseilles connection to the Asian connection. For decades until the 1950s, the opium trade was sanctioned by colonial administrations in Asia. By the early 1960s, the mountain areas of Southeast Asia -- the Golden Triangle region -- produced most of the world's opium. Northeastern Burma was particularly productive. In the case of Burma, production before 1945 was insignificant -- as a province of India under the British, most of the opium traded in Burma was produced in India. But in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Forces retreated from Mao's army to the mountains of northeast Burma. The CIA helped maintain these troops, and sponsored two invasions of China. During their stay in Burma, the Nationalist Chinese exacted opium quotas from Burma's peasants; failure to pay was punished by the cutting off of fingers, hands, and feet. By the time the Nationalists fled in 1961, Burma had gone from producing about seven tons of opium per year to producing as much as a thousand tons, or about sixty percent of the world's production.[2] In French-occupied Indochina, meanwhile, the Corsican syndicates were operating the opium trade out of Saigon under the protection of French military intelligence. When France withdrew in 1955, the U.S. inherited France's colonial politics and infrastructure. The U.S. worked with the same peoples -- the Hmong in Laos -- that the French had used. And again, the American Mafia was involved through their Corsican contacts. From Tampa, Florida, Santo Trafficante ran the Marseilles connection in Cuba during the 1950s. In 1968 he visited Saigon to meet with Corsican syndicate leaders. After 1970, Asian heroin began showing up in the U.S. After the Cuban revolution, Trafficante's Mafia foot soldiers were mainly Cuban exiles.[3] In a 1982 interview, former CIA commando leader Grayston Lynch described what had once been the largest CIA station in the world, located south of Miami from 1961-1964. This station issued orders to 400 case officers and 2,000 exiles, dispersed in "safe houses" from Miami to Tampa. Lynch concedes that after the CIA cut off support, many of these exiles, trained in covert operations and smuggling, turned to narcotics trafficking.[4] Given that the CIA had worked with Trafficante to assassinate Castro in 1961,[5] the agency lacked sufficient ethical intelligence to worry that these Trafficante-associated exiles might pose a criminal problem. They were considered merely a "disposal problem," an institutional nuisance. At the time all of these events were unfolding, they were secret history, unavailable in books and newspapers. Then one day in 1970, the poet Allen Ginsberg stumbled onto the CIA-heroin connection while sorting his files of clippings. He noticed that when sorted chronologically, U.S. advances into the opium-producing areas of the Golden Triangle were followed, a few months later, by clippings that reported a rise in heroin overdose deaths in American cities. The alternative press fleshed out Ginsberg's insight, and the May 1971 Ramparts magazine featured a cover story on South Vietnam's "Marshal Ky: The Biggest Pusher in the World." The major media ignored everything until Sen. Ernest Gruening, a maverick from Alaska, opened hearings. At that point the Washington Post and NBC News "discovered" this story, but soon buried it. Only the alternative press kept it alive.[6] South Vietnam was completely corrupted by a heroin trade whose immediate origin was in Laos. The Hmong culture in Laos provided 30,000 men for the CIA's secret Laotian army under General Vang Pao. But in the process, opium production took over Hmong culture; the Hmong grew only enough rice for subsistence. To support the Hmong economy, the CIA's Air America transported raw opium out of the Laotian hills to the labs. At this point the CIA begged off, and let the syndicates and South Vietnamese officials take care of distribution. Double UOGlobe no.4 heroin, produced at a Laotian lab owned by Gen. Ouane Rattikone, became particularly famous. By mid-1971, Army medical officers estimated that fifteen percent of American GIs were addicted. Veterans of Vietnam and Laos with intelligence connections, men such as Theodore Shackley (former chief of the Miami station), his deputy Thomas Clines, Richard Secord, Oliver North, and Felix Rodriguez, later became familiar names during the Iran-contra scandal of the 1980s. More obscure was one Michael Hand, who had been a CIA contract agent in Laos. In 1973, Hand and his partner Frank Nugan established the Nugan Hand Bank in Sydney. A slew of top-level retirees from the CIA and U.S. military intelligence were associated with this bank; William Colby served as its attorney. Nugan Hand collapsed spectacularly in 1980. After three major investigations, Australian officials concluded that the bank had been primarily involved in laundering money for arms and drug traffickers.[7] Apparently the CIA's infamous "disposal problem" -- what to do with those nasty, well-trained former assets -- extends to its top-level former executives and administrators. Then there is the horrible tale of Afghanistan. Heroin there was also a well-kept secret, at least until the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Then the Washington Post was free to "discover" that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the CIA's favorite guerrilla leader, had commanders under him who worked with Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency to run heroin labs in southwest Pakistan. "Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, U.S. narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against Soviet influence there.... In 1989, Afghanistan was second only to Burma as a producer of opium, growing 650 tons, nearly all of which was intended for heroin manufacturing, a State Department report said."[8] When Allen Ginsberg was sorting his clippings about heroin, his discovery of a correlation with CIA activity in the Golden Triangle must have seemed dismaying enough, almost unbelievable. Fortunately for Ginsberg, a proponent of LSD, he had no evidence that the CIA may have also been behind the expansion of LSD distribution within the counterculture. But such evidence later came to light. Ginsberg, like most of the counterculture, saw LSD as a liberating experience. The drug was nonaddictive, although it could be dangerous in the case of an overdose. A safe dosage, however, was entirely an individual phenomenon, and could not even be objectively established. And it soon became clear that LSD dramatically amplified tendencies that were already present in the individual and the immediate environment. The exact dosage that might have seemed liberating in 1967 might have been debilitating when ingested by the same individual in 1969, a banner year for agents provocateurs and bad vibes. In 1975, the Rockefeller Commission reported that the CIA had been testing LSD since the 1950s -- only to discover that the drug's effects were too unpredictable to make it a reliable tool for mind control. Still, given what the CIA knew about LSD at this early date, it doesn't seem inconceivable that the CIA may have hoped that greater availability of the powerful drug would undermine the political effectiveness of the student movement and counterculture. Evidence of the possible strategic use of LSD emerged in 1979, when Italian magistrate Giorgio Floridia issued a report on the case of Ronald Stark, who had been arrested in Bologna for drug trafficking in 1975. The magistrate ordered Stark's release on the grounds that he had been working for U.S. intelligence since 1960. From 1969-1974, Stark was a major producer of LSD, with factories first in Paris, then in Belgium and California, and a pipeline into the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the world's largest distributor. Floridia cited Stark's frequent prison visits from Wendy M. Hansen at the U.S. consulate in Florence, "Dear Ron" letters from Charles C. Adams at the U.S. embassy in London, addressed to Stark's LSD lab in Brussels (these were seized by Italian police after his arrest), and his links with Philip B. Taylor III at the U.S. consulate in Rome. (Taylor is now in Sao Paulo, Brazil.) According to Floridia, Stark had done secret work for the Defense Department from 1960 to 1962, and had received "periodic payments to him from Fort Lee, known to be the site of a CIA office." On his release, Stark was ordered to report in to Italian police twice a week. But within days, Stark had left the country. Bologna police believe that Stark was secretly flown from a NATO air base in Pisa or Vicenza. In 1984 an Italian parliamentary commission issued a report on domestic terrorism that included a section on Ronald Stark. They concluded that Stark was an adventurer who was used by the CIA, but were unable to determine when the association began. In 1982, Stark was arrested in Holland. Charges were dropped the following year, and Stark was deported to a San Francisco jail, where pending federal charges were dropped by the Justice Department. When Italy requested extradition in 1984, U.S. officials sent a death certificate indicating that Stark had died of a heart attack. Way back in 1969, Stark first approached the Brotherhood, wowing them with a kilogram of pure LSD (more than they had ever seen), and claiming that he had a new, efficient production method. Stark's lab in France was already a going concern, and the Brotherhood agreed to distribute his product. When Stark shut down this lab in 1971 and opened a better one in Brussels, he boasted that he had done so because of a timely tip from the CIA. In all, Stark made 20 kilograms of LSD, enough for 50 million doses. Most of it was sold in the U.S. There's no proof that Stark was anything more than an adventurer and an opportunist. But Carl Oglesby, former national president of Students for a Democratic Society, sums up the Stark phenomenon as follows: What we have to contemplate nevertheless is the possibility that the great American acid trip, no matter how distinctive of the rebellion of the 1960s it came to appear, was in fact the result of a despicable government conspiracy.... If U.S. intelligence bodies collaborated in an effort to drug an entire generation of Americans, then the reason they did so was to disorient it, sedate it and de-politicize it.[9] Currently it's cocaine in the form of crack that's a major problem in the inner cities of America. Coca leaf is grown on the high Andean plateaus of Bolivia and Peru, and until 1980 it was generally refined in Colombia. After the Bolivian "cocaine coup," refinement of coca paste into cocaine became more of a local affair, while Peru and Paraguay also increased their production. New smuggling routes were established, and new strains of coca were bred that could thrive in the lowlands of the Amazon basin. Cocaine soon glutted the market. Prices dropped dramatically during the first half of the 1980s, which saw the appearance of crack -- a condensed, rock-like substance that can be produced by cooking cocaine with water and baking soda on a kitchen stove. Crack is smoked rather than snorted, a process which absorbs more of the drug into the body with less effort. The 1980 cocaine coup in Bolivia was arranged by the Argentine military, which in 1976 seized power in Argentina and proceeded to "disappear" about 11,000 of the country's own citizens. Michael Levine, who was the DEA's country attache to Argentina and Uruguay in 1980, discovered that the high-level Argentine military officers he was trying to bust for trafficking were well-connected in Bolivia, and that the entire bunch were protected by the CIA. Some of the bloodiest coup-makers in Bolivia were recruited by Klaus Barbie, a fugitive Nazi war criminal and long-time CIA asset.[10] Confirmation of the CIA's role came from testimony taken by the Kerry subcommittee in a closed hearing on July 23, 1987. Leandro Sanchez Reisse was assigned by the Argentine military to set up a money laundering front in Florida in 1977. He said that these fronts ran operations for and with the CIA, including weapons shipments to Argentine personnel in Central America. In 1980, funds from a major Bolivian trafficker were funneled to the Argentine military, which then sent ambulances loaded with weapons to Bolivia. These were used in the 1980 coup engineered by Luis Arce Gomez and Luis Garcia Meza, both of whom were connected to traffickers.[11] The CIA, claiming that the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were sending arms to guerrillas in El Salvador, paid Argentina to provide military training to contras in Central America. This arrangement ended in 1982, when the military government in Argentina lost power after the Falklands debacle. Within several years, however, the contra war developed into a major CIA operation involving Cuban exiles from Miami; former Nicaraguan guardsmen who fled during the 1979 revolution and regrouped in Honduras; and assorted CIA adventurers with drug- and arms-trafficking connections. Celerino Castillo fought in Vietnam from 1971-1972, where he saw the effects of drugs on U.S. troops. By 1975 he was a Texas cop, later a detective working drug cases. In 1980, Castillo joined the DEA and worked the streets of New York. He worked in Peru in 1984-1985, and Guatemala from 1985-1990. While stationed in Guatemala, Castillo was the DEA agent in charge of anti-drug operations in El Salvador from 1985-1987. During this period, he discovered that Oliver North's contras were running cocaine from El Salvador's Ilopango airport. Castillo did his best to bust them, but soon learned that the traffickers were protected by the CIA. "By the end of 1988," he writes, "I realized how hopelessly tangled DEA, the CIA, and every other U.S. entity in Central America had become with the criminals. The connections boggled my mind."[12] Feeling his life was in danger, Castillo got out in a hurry in 1990. The DEA, meanwhile, was increasing the pressure with an internal investigation of Castillo. His career was over and he resigned. Lawrence Walsh's office extensively debriefed Castillo, but when Walsh released his massive report in 1993, the narcotics connection was nowhere to be found. The combined House and Senate Iran-contra hearings in 1987 also ignored the drug issue. Instead, investigators granted immunity to Oliver North. John Kerry's subcommittee, the "Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations," began its investigations in 1987, held hearings in 1988 and 1989, and issued a 144-page report on April 13, 1989.[13] At one point, the subcommittee took testimony from the head of the Honduran DEA office, who described how it was closed down in June 1983, at a time when the CIA station was doubling in size. Honduras was a major transit station for cocaine, thanks to their corrupt military. It was clear to the CIA and Pentagon that the contra effort required the support of Honduras, and that the price for this support was to overlook the cocaine traffic. "I watched the CIA protect drug traffickers throughout my career as a DEA agent," says Michael Levine. "I have put thousands of Americans away for tens of thousands of years for conspiracy with less evidence than is available against Ollie North and CIA people."[14] Tom Cash, a former top DEA official in Miami, agrees: "When you have those types of political upheavals and foreign policy considerations of the President to start with, and at the same time have a drug prosecution to contend with, drugs are going to be second. It is something we grappled with on a daily basis."[15] One could, arguably, defend the mainstream press for refusing to follow up on stories as improbable, and characters as fringey, as some of those we've considered here: an iconoclast poet like Ginsberg, a shapeshifter like Stark, a low-level Serpico like Castillo. But the real indictment of the major media on the CIA-drugs question is their inability to follow up on obvious leads occurring in major stories taking place under floodlights in their own backyard. Consider the case of Oliver North, known associate of drug traffickers. Oliver North's conviction for three felonies (lying, cheating, and stealing) was reversed in 1990 because his case was muddied by the Congressional grant of immunity. This meant that he could run for office, and in 1994 he was nearly elected to the U.S. Senate. North's infamous notebooks, however, may yet return to haunt him. Ten months after the Kerry subcommittee subpoenaed these notebooks, they still lacked clean, unexpurgated copies. Nevertheless, these notebooks contain dozens of references to contra drug trafficking. In an e-mail message about General Jose Bueso Rosa from Honduras, who was involved in a conspiracy to import 345 kilos of cocaine into Florida, North noted that U.S. officials would "cabal quietly to look at options: pardon, clemency, deportation, reduced sentence." Even after Panama's Manuel Noriega was exposed in the U.S. press as a drug runner, North met with him because Noriega wanted help to "clean up his image." In exchange, Noriega offered North some helpful anti-Sandinista sabotage. Or consider the decision by the Post and other major media to throw away a truly sensational story: the official declaration by Costa Rica, Central America's one shining light of democracy, that it considered a number of major U.S. officials to be drug traffickers, and as such was barring them from entering the country. The list here is nothing short of amazing: Oliver North himself, retired air-force major general Richard Secord, Reagan's former national security advisor John Poindexter, former U.S. Ambassador Lewis Tambs, and former CIA station chief Joseph Fernandez. On July 22, 1989, the Associated Press ran this story, but they were virtually alone; some major media buried this story, and the rest resolutely ignored it. When asked why, Post reporter Walter Pincus gave a revealing response: "Just because a congressional commission in Costa Rica says something, doesn't mean it's true."[16] (Before he joined the Post in the 1960s, Pincus traveled abroad on a CIA subsidy to spy on student leaders from other countries.[17] Unsurprisingly, Pincus was out in front of the pack of reporters that attacked the recent Mercury News story.) When the major media turn aside from stories so sensational, and so easy to pursue, it's unlikely to be an accident. And given that stories so high-profile go nowhere, it's not surprising that the same thing happens to countless lower-profile stories that lack immediately-recognizable American names. Space prevents giving even a "bullet" version of many stories that could be adduced here, but consider the following items, at least: Medellin trafficker Carlos Lehder testified at Noriega's 1991 trial that the Medellin cartel gave $10 million to the contras. FBI informant Wanda Palacio told the Kerry subcommittee that she saw cocaine being loaded onto pilot Wallace Sawyer's plane in Barranquilla, Colombia in 1985. (Sawyer and his Southern Air Transport L382, carrying guns this time, were shot down over Nicaragua one year later. The flight logs from the plane, recovered by the Sandinistas, substantiated Palacio's story.) George Morales, a major cocaine trafficker, offered planes and cash to the contras; when contra leader Adolfo Chamorro checked with the CIA, they said Morales was fine and to go ahead with the deal. Ramon Milian Rodriguez, the chief accountant for the Medellin cartel, testified to the Kerry subcommittee that he transferred money to the contras and laundered more than $3 million for the CIA, even after his indictment on drug charges in 1983. In what was known as the Frogman Case, the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco, Joseph Russoniello, returned $36,000 to an arrested cocaine dealer after contra leaders stipulated that the money was earmarked for weapons. The Justice Department foiled Kerry's attempts to investigate this. (Russoniello, by the way, is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.) Recently a Venezuelan, Gen. Ramon Guillen Davila, was indicted in Miami for smuggling tons of cocaine. This is the only instance in which the CIA has acknowledged responsibility for drugs being imported into the U.S. One CIA officer resigned and another was recalled to Washington, but no CIA officials have been charged. Or consider the blatant attempt by the Washington Post and its corporate sibling Newsweek to bury the inconvenient results of Congressional investigations into CIA complicity with drug traffickers, and then smear the investigators. On July 22, 1987, the Post ran an article whose headline seemed perfectly clear: "Hill Panel Finds No Evidence Linking Contras to Drug Smuggling." But Charles Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, wrote to the Post and complained, "Your headline says we drew one conclusion, while in fact we reached quite a different one." Rangel's letter ended up buried in the Congressional Record (August 6, 1987), because the Post refused to publish it. Two years later, when the Kerry subcommittee report was released, the Post buried it on a back page, and devoted most of the short article to Republican criticisms of Kerry. Newsweek called Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff." When our major media behave more irresponsibly than Congress, and frequently only a few members of Congress deserve our support, it's easy to see that we have a problem. The 1980s were a repeat performance of the 1970s, when the stakes were larger. At that time it was a question of organized assassinations and secret wars of aggression. Both Congress and the media were interested, at least initially. But our media establishment took one look into the abyss and decided that investigative journalism was not so profitable after all. Without the support of the media, Congress quickly lost interest.[18] Is it even necessary to write a conclusion to this tragic but also farcical story? Confronting his outraged fellow citizens in South Central, CIA Director John Deutch thought he was offering a reasonable extenuation when he remarked at one point: "Our case officers deal with bad people, very bad people." But a moment's thought reveals the utter vacuity of this remark. The Cold War is over. For the young, even its memory is fading away. What should fade away now are the rationalizations that once led men like Deutch to justify cutting deals with tinhorn dictators and smack dealers. Unfortunately, as Deutch's audience knew, the evil these men did lives after them -- on the streets of South Central, and all over our unhappy global village. It's still going on. Why can't our press report it? +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1. Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (Brooklyn NY: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991), pp. 29-63. This book is an expanded edition of Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). 2. David Barsamian, "The Politics of Drugs: An Interview with Alfred McCoy," Z Magazine, January 1991, pp. 64-74. 3. Henrik Krueger, The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence, and International Fascism (Boston: South End Press, 1980), pp. 142-43. 4. Gary Moore, "The exiles who turned to drugs," St. Petersburg Times, 30 May 1982, pp. 1-A, 14-A. 5. Central Intelligence Agency, Report on Plots to Assassinate Fidel Castro, 25 April 1967, pp. 19-20, 25-31. 6. Chip Berlet, "How the Muckrakers Saved America," Alternative Media, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1979), pp. 5-7. 7. Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987), 424 pages; McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, pp. 461-78. 8. James Rupert and Steve Coll, "U.S. Declines to Probe Afghan Drug Trade," Washington Post, 13 May 1990, pp. A1, A29. 9. Carl Oglesby, "The Acid Test and How It Failed," The National Reporter, Fall 1988, p. 10. The information on Ronald Stark comes from three sources: Jonathan Marshall, "The Strange Career of Ronald Hadley Stark," Intelligence/Parapolitics, November 1984, pp. 15-18; Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties Rebellion (New York: Grove Press, 1985), pp. 248-51, 279-82, 286-87; Philip Willan, Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy (London: Constable and Company, 1991), pp. 308-16. 10. Michael Levine, The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993), 472 pages. 11. David Corn, "The CIA and the Cocaine Coup," The Nation, 7 October 1991, p. 404-6. 12. Celerino Castillo III and Dave Harmon, Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras and the Drug War (Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press -- Sundial, 1994), p. 208. 13. The most comprehensive discussion of the details in this report can be found in Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 279 pages. 14. Geraldo Rivera Show, CNBC-TV, 9 October 1996, with guests Jack Blum, Michael Levine, and Maxine Waters. 15. Warren Richey, "CIA Under Pressure to Divulge Info on Contras," Christian Science Monitor, 20 September 1996, p. 3. 16. "Censored News: Oliver North & Co. Banned from Costa Rica," Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, Extra!, October/November 1989, pp. 1, 5. See FAIR's website < http://www.fair.org/fair > for more about major media and the CIA-cocaine story. 17. Walter Pincus, "How I Traveled Abroad On CIA Subsidy," San Jose Mercury, 18 February 1967, p. 14. 18. Kathryn S. Olmsted, Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI (Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 255 pages. For references to more information on this topic, search for the proper names found in this essay by using NameBase from our home page, a cumulative name index of 600 investigative books, plus 23 years of assorted clippings. NameBase book reviews

The CIA and Drugs Just say "Why not?" by William Blum "In my 30-year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA." Dennis Dayle, former chief of an elite DEA enforcement unit.{1} On August 18, 1996, the San Jose Mercury initiated an extended series of articles about the CIA connection to the crack epidemic in Los Angeles. Though the CIA and influential media like The Washington Post , The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times went out of their way to belittle the significance of the articles, the basic ingredients of the story were not really new -- the CIA's Contra army, fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua, turning to smuggling cocaine into the U.S., under CIA protection, to raise money for their military and personal use. What was unique about the articles was (A) they appeared in a "respectable" daily newspaper and not an "alternative" publication, which could have and would have been completely ignored by the powers that be; and ( they followed the cocaine into Los Angeles' inner city, into the hands of the Crips and the Bloods, at the time that street-level drug users were figuring out how to make cocaine affordable: by changing the costly white powder into powerful little nuggets of crack that could be smoked cheaply. The Contra dealers, principally Oscar Danilo Blandon and his boss Juan Norwin Meneses, both from the Nicaraguan privileged class, operated out of the San Francisco Bay Area and sold tons of cocaine -- a drug that was virtually unobtainable in black neighborhoods before -- to Los Angeles street gangs. They then funneled millions in drug profits to the Contra cause, while helping to fuel a disastrous crack explosion in L.A. and other cities, and enabling the gangs to buy automatic weapons, sometimes from Blandon himself. The principal objection raised by the establishment critics to this scenario was that, even if correct, it didn't prove that the CIA was complicit, or even had any knowledge of it. However, to arrive at this conclusion, they had to ignore things like the following from the SJM series: a) Cocaine flights from Central America landed with impunity in various spots in the United States, including a U.S. Air Force base in Texas. In 1985, a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent assigned to El Salvador reported to headquarters the details on cocaine flights from El Salvador to the U.S. The DEA did nothing but force him out of the agency{2}. When Blandon was finally arrested in October 1986, after congress resumed funding for the Contras, and he admitted to crimes that have sent others away for life, the Justice Department turned him loose on unsupervised probation after only 28 months behind bars and has paid him more than $166,000 since. c) According to a legal motion filed in a 1990 police corruption trial: In the 1986 raid on Blandon's money-launderer, the police carted away numerous documents purportedly linking the U.S. government to cocaine trafficking and money-laundering on behalf of the Contras. CIA personnel appeared at the sheriff's department within 48 hours of the raid and removed the seized files from the evidence room. This motion drew media coverage in 1990 but, at the request of the Justice Department, a federal judge issued a gag order barring any discussion of the matter. d) Blandon subsequently became a full-time informant for the DEA. When he testified in 1996 as a prosecution witness, the federal prosecutors obtained a court order preventing defense lawyers from delving into Blandon's ties to the CIA. e) Though Meneses is listed in the DEA's computers as a major international drug smuggler and was implicated in 45 separate federal investigations since 1974, he lived openly and conspicuously in California until 1989 and never spent a day in a U.S. prison. The DEA, U.S. Customs, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement have complained that a number of the probes of Meneses were stymied by the CIA or unnamed "national security" interests. f) The U.S. Attorney in San Francisco gave back to an arrested Nicaraguan drug dealer the $36,000 found in his possession. The money was returned after two Contra leaders sent letters to the court swearing that the drug dealer had been given the cash to buy supplies "for the reinstatement of democracy in Nicaragua". The letters were hurriedly sealed after prosecutors invoked the Classified Information Procedures Act, a law designed to keep national security secrets from leaking out during trials. When a U.S. Senate subcommittee later inquired of the Justice Department the reason for this unusual turn of events, they ran into a wall of secrecy. "The Justice Department flipped out to prevent us from getting access to people, records -- finding anything out about it," recalled Jack Blum, former chief counsel to the Senate subcommittee that investigated allegations of Contra cocaine trafficking. "It was one of the most frustrating exercises that I can ever recall." A Brief History of CIA Involvement in Drug Trafficking 1947 to 1951, France CIA arms, money, and disinformation enabled Corsican criminal syndicates in Marseille to wrestle control of labor unions from the Communist Party. The Corsicans gained political influence and control over the docks -- ideal conditions for cementing a long-term partnership with mafia drug distributors, which turned Marseille into the postwar heroin capital of the Western world. Marseille's first heroin laboratories were opened in 1951, only months after the Corsicans took over the waterfront.{3} Early 1950s, Southeast Asia The Nationalist Chinese army, organized by the CIA to wage war against Communist China, became the opium barons of The Golden Triangle (parts of Burma, Thailand and Laos), the world's largest source of opium and heroin. Air America, the CIA's principal airline proprietary, flew the drugs all over Southeast Asia.{4} 1950s to early 1970s, Indochina During U.S. military involvement in Laos and other parts of Indochina, Air America flew opium and heroin throughout the area. Many GI's in Vietnam became addicts. A laboratory built at CIA headquarters in northern Laos was used to refine heroin. After a decade of American military intervention, Southeast Asia had become the source of 70 percent of the world's illicit opium and the major supplier of raw materials for America's booming heroin market.{5} 1973-80, Australia The Nugan Hand Bank of Sydney was a CIA bank in all but name. Among its officers were a network of US generals, admirals and CIA men, including former CIA Director William Colby, who was also one of its lawyers. With branches in Saudi Arabia, Europe, Southeast Asia, South America and the U.S., Nugan Hand Bank financed drug trafficking, money laundering and international arms dealings. In 1980, amidst several mysterious deaths, the bank collapsed, $50 million in debt.{6} 1970s and 1980s, Panama For more than a decade, Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega was a highly paid CIA asset and collaborator, despite knowledge by U.S. drug authorities as early as 1971 that the general was heavily involved in drug trafficking and money laundering. Noriega facilitated "guns-for-drugs" flights for the Contras, providing protection and pilots, as well as safe havens for drug cartel officials, and discreet banking facilities. U.S. officials, including then-CIA Director William Webster and several DEA officers, sent Noriega letters of praise for efforts to thwart drug trafficking (albeit only against competitors of his Medellin Cartel patrons). When a confluence of circumstances led to Noriega's political luck running out, the Bush administration was reluctantly obliged to turn against him, invading Panama in December 1989, kidnapping the general, and falsely ascribing the invasion to the war on drugs. Ironically, drug trafficking through Panama was not abated after the US invasion.{7} 1980s, Central America Obsessed with overthrowing the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, Reagan administration officials tolerated drug trafficking as long as the traffickers gave support to the Contras. In 1989, the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations (the Kerry committee) concluded a three-year investigation by stating: "There was substantial evidence of drug smuggling through the war zones on the part of individual Contras, Contra suppliers, Contra pilots, mercenaries who worked with the Contras, and Contra supporters throughout the region. ... U.S. officials involved in Central America failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war efforts against Nicaragua. ... In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter. ... Senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems."{8} In Costa Rica, which served as the "Southern Front" for the Contras (Honduras being the Northern Front), there were several different CIA-Contra networks involved in drug trafficking, including that of CIA operative John Hull, whose farms along Costa Rica's border with Nicaragua were the main staging area for the Contras. Hull and other CIA-connected Contra supporters and pilots teamed up with George Morales, a major Miami-based Colombian drug trafficker who later admitted to giving $3 million in cash and several planes to Contra leaders.{9} In 1989, after the Costa Rica government indicted Hull for drug trafficking, a DEA-hired plane clandestinely and illegally flew him to Miami, via Haiti. The US repeatedly thwarted Costa Rican efforts to extradite Hull back to Costa Rica to stand trial.{10} Another Costa Rican-based drug ring involved a group of Cuban Americans whom the CIA had hired as military trainers for the Contras. Many had long been involved with the CIA and drug trafficking. They used Contra planes and a Costa Rican-based shrimpcompany, which laundered money for the CIA, to move cocaine to the U.S.{11} Costa Rica was not the only route. Other way stations along the cocaine highway -- and closely associated with the CIA -- were the Guatemalan military intelligence service,which harbored many drug traffickers, and Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador, a key component of the U.S. military intervention against the country's guerrillas.{12} The Contras provided both protection and infrastructure (planes, pilots, airstrips, warehouses, front companies and banks) to these CIA-linked drug networks. At least four transport companies under investigation for drug trafficking received US government contracts to carry non-lethal supplies to the Contras.{13} Southern Air Transport, "formerly" CIA-owned, and later under Pentagon contract, was involved in the drug running as well.{14} Cocaine-laden planes flew to Florida, Texas, Louisiana and other locations, including several military bases. Designated as "Contra Craft," these shipments were not to be inspected. When some authority wasn't clued in and made an arrest, powerful strings were pulled on behalf of dropping the case, acquittal, reduced sentence, or deportation.{15} 1980s to early 1990s, Afghanistan CIA-supported Moujahedeen rebels engaged heavily in drug trafficking while fighting against the Soviet-supported government and its plans to reform the very backward Afghan society. The Agency's principal client was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the leading druglords and leading heroin refiner. CIA-supplied trucks and mules, which had carried arms into Afghanistan, were used to transport opium to laboratories along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The output provided up to one half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe. US officials admitted in 1990 that they had failed to investigate or take action against the drug operation because of a desire not to offend their Pakistani and Afghan allies.{16} In 1993, an official of the DEA called Afghanistan the new Colombia of the drug world.{17} Mid-1980s to early 1990s, Haiti While working to keep key Haitian military and political leaders in power, the CIA turned a blind eye to their clients' drug trafficking. In 1986, the Agency added some more names to its payroll by creating a new Haitian organization, the National Intelligence Service (SIN). SIN was purportedly created to fight the cocaine trade, though SIN officers themselves engaged in the trafficking, a trade aided and abetted by some of the Haitian military and political leaders.{18} NOTES 1. Peter Dale Scott & Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, Berkeley: U. of CA Press, 1991, pp. x-xi. 2. Celerino Castillo, Powder Burns: Cocaine, Contras and the Drug War, Mosaic Press, 1994, passim. 3. Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, New York: Harper & Row, 1972, chapter 2. 4. Christopher Robbins, Air America, New York: Avon Books, 1985, chapter 9; McCoy, passim 5. McCoy, chapter 7; Robbins, p. 128 and chapter 9 6. Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money and the CIA, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1987, passim; William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995, p. 420, note 33. 7. a) Scott & Marshall, passim John Dinges, Our Man in Panama, New York: Random House, 1991, passim c) Murray Waas, "Cocaine and the White House Connection", Los Angeles Weekly, Sept. 30-Oct. 6 and Oct. 7-13, 1988, passim d) National Security Archive Documentation Packet: "The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations" (Washington, D.C.), passim 8. "Kerry Report": Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, a Report of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, 1989, pp. 2, 36, 41 9. Martha Honey, Hostile Acts: U.S. Policy in Costa Rica in the 1980s, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994. 10. Martha Honey and David Myers, "U.S. Probing Drug Agent's Activities in Costa Rica," San Francisco Chronicle, August 14, 1991. 11. Honey, Hostile Acts. 12. Frank Smyth, "In Guatemala, The DEA Fights the CIA", New Republic, June 5, 1995; Martha Honey, "Cocaine's Certified Public Accountant," two-part series, The Source, August and September, 1994; Blum, p. 239. 13. Kerry report, passim. 14. Scott & Marshall, pp. 17-18 15. Scott & Marshall, passim; Waas, passim; NSA, passim. 16. Blum, p. 351; Tim Weiner, Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget, New York: Warner Books, 1990, pp. 151-2 17. Los Angeles Times, Aug. 22, 1993 18. New York Times, Nov. 14, 1993; The Nation, Oct. 3, 1994, p. 346 Written by William Blum, author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II; email:bblum6@aol.com

As for the the video clip YT has content rules which deem that videos like the dumb one made by Adams which include partial nudity and talk of "masturbation" be deemed adult only. Presumably all he has to do is tone it down a bit. // end COLBY YOUR characterization OF THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT MASTURBATION IS DISHONEST USA censorship on the rise as YouTube censors video critical of government; Fox News pulls Judge Napolitano's Freedom Watch Learn more: http://www.naturalne...l#ixzz2MsCci7YT (NaturalNews) What was arguably the very best liberty-oriented political show on cable television has been pulled by Fox News. Judge Andrew Napolitano's Freedom Watch is being cancelled, according to a Fox News press release ( http://www.prisonplanet.com/fox-business-news-axes-freedom-watch.html).Judge Napolitano is a liberty-loving truth-teller who openly talked about the dangers of the NDAA, warrant-less searches, the truth about the Federal Reserve and many other topics that aren't normally covered in the hoax media (mainstream media). Apparently, his show was striking too close to the truth, and Fox News axed it. A massive viewer outcry has already resulted in a tidal wave of emails being sent to Fox News in protest of the show cancellation. The explosion of protest against the show's cancellation has been so large that Judge Napolitano has now appealed to his fans to hold off and stop sending emails. In a message on his FaceBook page, he writes: "It will be far more productive for my work at Fox and the work of my friends and colleagues here -- many of whom share our values -- if the email traffic to Fox toned down considerably. I will continue to voice the message of freedom in many more Fox venues, and you will hear that message, and we will do our best to alert you in advance of those venues and the times that I will be on them; and we will post those alerts right here on this site. PLEASE BE SURE TO WATCH THE FINAL FreedomWatch SHOW ON MONDAY FEBRUARY 13TH, ON FOX BUSINESS AT 8:00 PM, EASTERN TIME. You have been very strong in your views and generous in your comments about the show, but now is the time to relax and lay low and prepare for the future. God bless each of you." (http://www.facebook.com/JudgeNapolitano) Google / YouTube censors the Health Ranger's TSA animation video At the same time Judge Napolitano's show is being pulled, YouTube has censored my satire TSA animation video by placing an age restriction on it, preventing the video from ever going super-viral. This hilarious video, entitled, "TSA Help Wanted," dares to expose the total perversion and idiocy of the criminal TSA thugs who molest little children and elderly women at the airport. The video depicts actual crimes that are routinely committed by TSA agents every day across America. You can still watch the video on our own NaturalNews video network at: http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=979D7B9F44BA6EAE0DF65B3DE6E4EE33 As an active member of the online artistic community, I am well known for writing songs and posting music videos (www.Amethios.com), posting comedy skit videos ( ), publishing poetry (http://www.naturalnews.com/034764_imprison_us_all_poem_Mike_Adams.htm...), and posting educational and informative animations such as the Fluoride Deception ( ).YouTube's age-restriction censorship of my TSA Help Wanted animation is a clear example of oppression against artistic expression and a dark mirror of the kind of free speech blackouts that regularly occur in Communist China. "TSA Help Wanted" is clearly being censored not because of its content (it contains no profanity and shows no actual nudity) but because it is critical of the government. This is precisely the sort of "political censorship" practiced in Red China as a way to silence criticism of the corrupt government and protect the political elite. Alex Jones comments on YouTube censorship of TSA video Late last week, Alex Jones (www.InfoWars.com) placed my TSA Help Wanted video on his InfoWars YouTube channel. He knew the video was extremely powerful and had the potential to be seen by millions, exposing the criminal pervert behavior of the TSA. Within mere hours, Google / YouTube had slapped an age restriction on the video in the Alex Jones Channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/thealexjoneschannel). In response, Alex expressed his outrage at the censorship, saying: "This video was so incredible that Mike Adams put out. Adams had a masterful video making fun of the thuggish behavior, and how these bullies get off on abusing people. It was devastating. It was a perfect 10, five stars. It's titled 'TSA Help Wanted.' And they've blocked it for the general public to see, claiming that it is vulgar, when it just shows photos and video of what TSA does to our children and wives and husbands and everybody else. So they're censoring what you can see, and it's all part of their selective enforcement." ( )He goes on to say: "This is the video the TSA doesn't want you to see. Because they don't like being made fun of. These authoritarian thugs want to be taken seriously, they want to scare you, but they don't want to be laughed at. And they're scared at this master work that Mike Adams the Health Ranger has put out. I even told my guys, we're gonna post that and they're gonna take it down, it's just too powerful, and they did, because they are scared of the truth." Alex posted another commentary video about the censorship at: It's okay to molest children, but you can't expose molesting children The message in the censorship of this TSA video is clear: It's okay to molest little children and elderly women at the airport, but it's not okay to expose the fact that this molestation is happening. That's "inappropriate." It's okay for TSA agents to plant bags of cocaine in your luggage, but it's not okay to expose TSA agents planting bags of cocaine in your luggage. That's "inappropriate." It's okay for TSA agents to steal your portable electronics and profit by selling them on eBay, but it's not okay to expose TSA agents stealing your electronics. That's "inflammatory." It's okay for Janet Napolitano to brainwash Americans into spying on each other like a band of paranoid sniveling maniacs, but it's not okay to expose the secret police agenda of the Department of Motherland Security. That's a "conspiracy theory." Do you see how this works? Google, YouTube and the hoax media all want you to believe it's perfectly fine for TSA agents to stick their fingers in your anus or vagina, to fondle your scrotum, to cause elderly people to leak urine all over themselves, to demean you and sexually molest you. But god forbid anyone who actually exposes that this is going on -- they're kooks! Conspiracy theorists! Maybe even terrorists! Anyone critical of the government is obviously a total whack job, right? Because as all North Koreans know, their government is their God! And we should all bow down and worship the United States federal government like a bunch of groveling swine, right? That's the new police state Amerika. Anyone with actual knowledge of reality is banned, censored and marginalized. Only those who go along with total criminality, total child sex molestations, and total police state domination of all freedoms are left alone by the tyrannical government and the dominant corporations that filter information to brainwash the public. Real information is under attack SOPA was the government's attempt to take down all websites critical of the government itself (http://www.naturalnews.com/034695_SOPA_free_speech_health_freedom.htm...). It would have removed NaturalNews.com, InfoWars.com and many other websites from the internet, "cleansing" the internet of all truthful information and leaving only government-approved lies and disinformation in its wake. ACTA is the next attempt to censor the internet and remove all truth-telling websites: http://www.naturalnews.com/034802_ACTA_counterfeiting_piracy.html This is all being done under the excuse of "fighting piracy" or fighting the "war on terror" (which has been completely fabricated to sell more fear). What's clear from all this is that the information controllers of the world (technology companies, the hoax media, governments, etc.) are all tightening their grip in an all-out effort to erase the truth from the internet, leaving only official lies and disinformation in its place. If it all sounds like the Ministry of Truth from 1984, that's because it is. We are now living in an age of total revisionist reality, where the real world is now called a "conspiracy theory" and only the fake hoax world is socially acceptable as being real. In the fake hoax delusional reality sold by the media and the government, terrorism is a constant threat to your safety (it isn't), aspartame is totally safe to consume (it isn't), vaccines are actually GOOD for you (they aren't), nutritional supplements are worthless (huh?), psychiatric drugs make you happy (they don't), and the government is here to save you (gee, really?) Red China USA More and more, Amerika is coming to resemble Red China in its total censorship of the truth. And that's no surprise, given that U.S. technology companies actually helped build China's "great wall of censorship." Try to search the history of Tiananmen Square in a search engine in China, and any results mentioning the student revolt and near-revolution that took place there are wiped out of existence. Real history is a "conspiracy theory" in China, and increasingly so in the USA. Actual facts are associated with "terrorism" or "questioning the government." Anyone who is critical of the government is automatically labeled a possible terrorist. This is true in Communist China, and it's increasingly true in the USA now, too. People who live in reality are called "nut jobs," in other words, while people who believe in all the mass media delusions are categorized as "normal." Help us fight this censorship. Spread the word about this censored TSA video (which also happens to be ROFLMAO funny...) http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=979D7B9F44BA6EAE0DF65B3DE6E4EE33 Feel free to download it, copy it, and post it to your own video account on YouTube or elsewhere. This video is available under the "creative commons" license, so it's free to share as long as you credit the source (NaturalNews.com). Help us fight tyranny and censorship on the 'web. Without freedom of expression, we are doomed to suffer under a system of total lies and disinformation on the web. If you want to stay free, you must stay informed. Help protect the First Amendment, and spread the word on this censorship story. Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/034954_censorship_YouTube_Fox_News.html#ixzz2MsCci7YT

The Fight for the Future: The Internet, Censorship, Surveillance, and You

The chaces that he could have escaped were minimal yet he left all sorts of stuff linking him to Rahman in his apt? //end Colby CAUSE HE WS PROTECTED FROM ABOVE ...... According to other sources familiar with the case, the FBI told District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau that Nosair was a lone gunman, not part of a broader conspiracy; the prosecution took this position at trial and lost, only convicting Nosair of gun charges. Morgenthau speculated the CIA may have encouraged the FBI not to pursue any other leads, these sources say. ‘The FBI lied to me,’ Morgenthau has told colleagues. ‘They’re supposed to untangle terrorist connections, but they can’t be trusted to do the job.’ Three years later, on the day the FBI arrested four Arabs for the World Trade Centre bombing, saying it had all of the suspects, Morgenthau’s ears pricked up. He didn’t believe the four were ‘self-starters,’ and speculated that there was probably a larger network as well as a foreign sponsor. He also had a hunch that the suspects would lead back to Sheikh Abdel Rahman. But he worried that the dots might not be connected because the U.S. government was protecting the sheikh for his help in Afghanistan. *** Nevertheless, some in the D.A.’s office believe that until the Ryder van exploded underneath New York’s tallest building, the sheikh and his men were being protected by the CIA. Morgenthau reportedly believes the CIA brought the sheikh to Brooklyn in the first place…. As far as can be determined, no American agency is investigating leads suggesting foreign-government involvement in the New York terror conspiracy. For example,Saudi intelligence has contributed to Sheikh Rahman’s legal-defence fund, according to Mohammed al-Khilewi, the former first secretary to the Saudi mission at the U.N. ++++++++++ THEN CAST ASIDE ,mission accomplished,the war on terror to replace cold war had begun. The absurd argument has been made that how could the CIA work so closely with Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, then imprison him ?? ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ (AS I SAID IN THIS THREAD POST #11 below) The sheikh, who continued to agitate against the Egyptian government while his followers carried on a campaign of lethal bombings, was imprisoned for three months in 1985, for one month in 1986, and for four months in 1989. He finally left his homeland in 1990, saying, "It was too much for me." (Too much heat in Egypt for him. BUT DOD/MIC thought he was perfect detonator to start terrorism in US , for later world wide so-called terror WAR $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$) +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ THE detenator cast aside AKA PANAMA, IE ASSETS can be thrown away.

The problem is your (GAAL) one dimensional brain is incapable of anything beyond black and white thinking,// end COLBY ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ CIA IS GOOD CIA IS GOOD CIA IS GOOD CIA IS GOOD CIA ......ECT ECT (COLBY THOUGHTS) ========================================================================================= Syrian rebels use a child to behead a prisoner http://humanrightsin...ead-a-prisoner/ ===================== http://www.liveleak....=b27_1330298574 Summary Public Execution By Hanging Conducted By Free Syrian Army Part of channel(s): Syria (current event), C-A-T-000p (promoted) A man accused of being a "shabiha" conscript of President Assad is shown hanging, while armed factions aligned to the "Free Syrian Army" hold their weapons up and say God is with them. This is in Idlib province, Kafr Takharim. Meanwhile, the call to jihad against the Syrian government is being spread on the streets of the west. In several cities including London, radicals can be seen calling for jihad against all of the Syrian, Afghan and Somali governments. While they receive protection of police in order to express their views freely. So Obama and Cameron today need jihad? Yesterday it was not allowed in Iraq next door?! Today, Syrians voted to change the constitution in an historic event that allows multi-party rule and limits the term held by any president to two terms only. This is a major reform, promised by Assad who said credibly that reforms need time to implement, and today he lives up to that promise in not a long time. This is way ahead of hypocritical Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States calling for democracy and freedom in Syria at the point of a gun. Tunisia by contrast, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, has stated that it is against any foreign intervention and arming of rebels in Syria, and sees the only way out for them to be political dialogue rather than war. What are the rebels and vandals going to achieve by shunning the political process and preferring the use of violence and weapons? Are they going to overthrow Bashar Al-Assad and then say they are going to allow multi-party rule and limit the term of the president?! Isn't that stupid, when Bashar Al-Assad is giving that to them? Or do they just enjoy being killed? It is surely the right of the government to impose security on any rebel held area that shuns the political process and dialogue. The rebels are only trading the blood of the civilians trapped in those areas and making life for them into a living hell. ======================

WHATS THAT LYRIC,"The song remains the same" ? Nope its the scream remains the same. A portion of mankind loves to torture ....... PROJECT CENSORED 1987 9. TORTURE IN EL SALVADOR: THE CENSORED REPORT FROM MARIONA PRISON In late 1986, a 165-page report was smuggled out of the Mariona men's prison in El Salvador. The report was compiled by five imprisoned members of the Human Rights Commission of El Salvador (CDHES). The report documents the "routine" and "systematic" use of at least 40 kinds of torture on political prisoners. The report made three main points: first, torture is systematic, not random; second, the methods of torture are becoming more clever; and finally, U.S. servicemen often act as supervisors. What is new to torture in El Salvador, according to the study, is that the use of torture, together with the continued (although diminished) use of death-squad kidnappings of the "disappeared," are all a systematic part of the U.S. counterinsurgency program there. The Marin Interfaith Task Force, from Mill Valley, California, assembled the smuggled report from Mariona prison into a document titled "Torture in El Salvador." Starting in September, 1986, the Task Force has tried to generate media interest in the story. Suzanne Bristol of the task force, said the group sent the report to the nation's major newspapers, including THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE BOSTON GLOBE, and the LOS ANGELES TIMES, as well as to the wire services. By February, 1987, when Alexander Cockburn wrote his article for THE NATION, UPI had run a Spanish-language story and the report had received coverage on Spanish-language radio, in Mexican periodicals and in Europe. Follow-up calls to the above papers produced nothing, except for two letters in December from Art Seidenbaum of the LOS ANGELES TIMES, who first wrote "You send plenty of homework," and later wrote "We really have ... no staff for making a 1500-word article out of a large series of reports." As Cockburn noted, it was "during this period, on November 22, Secretary of State George Shultz asked Congress to approve nearly $7 million in police aid for El Salvador in 1987, providing the necessary certification that the government of El Salvador had 'made significant progress during the six-month period preceding this determination in eliminating any human rights violations, including torture, incommunicado detention ..."' Apparently only one newspaper gave the actual report substantial coverage. The SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER ran two excellent articles by free lance journalist Ron Ridenhour, who quoted State Department spokesman James Callahan saying that the CDHES, the only Salvadoran human rights group recognized by the United Nations, is a communist "front organization." (It was Ridenhour's charges that led to the revelations about the Army's massacre of civilians in My Lai.) On October 26, 1987, assassins, probably belonging to the Salvadoran security forces, murdered Herbert Ernesto Anaya, head of the Salvadoran Human Rights Commission and the last survivor of that commission's eight founders. Anaya also was one of the five original researchers and authors of the smuggled report from the Mariona men's prison. SOURCES: THE NATION, 2/21/87, "After the Press Bus Left," pp 206-207, and THE NATION, 11/14/87, "The Press and the Plan," pp 546-547, both by Alexander Cockburn; SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, 11/14/86, "In prison, Salvador rights panel works on," by Ron Ridenhour, p A-8; Marin Interfaith Task Force on Central America, 7/2/87 letter and various documents, by Liz Erringer. ######################################################################### From El Salvador to Iraq: Washington's man behind brutal police squads In 2004, with the war in Iraq going from bad to worse, the US drafted in a veteran of Central America's dirty wars to help set up a new force to fight the insurgency. The result: secret detention centres, torture and a spiral into sectarian carnage The Guardian, Wednesday 6 March 2013 11.16 EST ============================================================= Special investigation From El Salvador to Iraq: Washington's man behind brutal police squads In 2004, with the war in Iraq going from bad to worse, the US drafted in a veteran of Central America's dirty wars to help set up a new force to fight the insurgency. The result: secret detention centres, torture and a spiral into sectarian carnage <img id="comScoreTracker" />Link to video: James Steele: America's mystery man in Iraq An exclusive golf course backs onto a spacious two-storey house. A coiled green garden hose lies on the lawn. The grey-slatted wooden shutters are closed. And, like the other deserted luxury houses in this gated community near Bryan, Texas, nothing moves. Retired Colonel Jim Steele, whose military decorations include the Silver Star, the Defence Distinguished Service Medal, four Legions of Merit, three Bronze Stars and the Purple Heart, is not at home. Nor is he at his office headquarters in Geneva, where he is listed as the chief executive officer of Buchanan Renewables, an energy company. Similar efforts to track him down at his company's office in Monrovia are futile. Messages are left. He doesn't call back. For over a year the Guardian has been trying to contact Steele, 68, to ask him about his role during the Iraq war as US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld's personal envoy to Iraq's Special Police Commandos: a fearsome paramilitary force that ran a secret network of detention centres across the country – where those suspected of rebelling against the US-led invasion were tortured for information. On the 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion the allegations of American links to the units that eventually accelerated Iraq's descent into civil war cast the US occupation in a new and even more controversial light. The investigation was sparked over a year ago by millions of classified US military documents dumped onto the internet and their mysterious references to US soldiers ordered to ignore torture. Private Bradley Manning, 25, is facing a 20-year sentence, accused of leaking military secrets. Steele's contribution was pivotal. He was the covert US figure behind the intelligence gathering of the new commando units. The aim: to halt a nascent Sunni insurgency in its tracks by extracting information from detainees. It was a role made for Steele. The veteran had made his name in El Salvador almost 20 years earlier as head of a US group of special forces advisers who were training and funding the Salvadoran military to fight the FNLM guerrilla insurgency. These government units developed a fearsome international reputation for their death squad activities. Steele's own biography describes his work there as the "training of the best counterinsurgency force" in El Salvador. Of his El Salvador experience in 1986, Steele told Dr Max Manwaring, the author of El Salvador at War: An Oral History: "When I arrived here there was a tendency to focus on technical indicators … but in an insurgency the focus has to be on human aspects. That means getting people to talk to you." But the arming of one side of the conflict by the US hastened the country's descent into a civil war in which 75,000 people died and 1 million out of a population of 6 million became refugees. Celerino Castillo, a Senior Drug Enforcement Administration special agent who worked alongside Steele in El Salvador, says: "I first heard about Colonel James Steele going to Iraq and I said they're going to implement what is known as the Salvadoran Option in Iraq and that's exactly what happened. And I was devastated because I knew the atrocities that were going to occur in Iraq which we knew had occurred in El Salvador." It was in El Salvador that Steele first came in to close contact with the man who would eventually command US operations in Iraq: David Petraeus. Then a young major, Petraeus visited El Salvador in 1986 and reportedly even stayed with Steele at his house. But while Petraeus headed for the top, Steele's career hit an unexpected buffer when he was embroiled in the Iran-Contra affair. A helicopter pilot, who also had a licence to fly jets, he ran the airport from where the American advisers illegally ran guns to right-wing Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua. While the congressional inquiry that followed put an end to Steele's military ambitions, it won him the admiration of then congressman Dick Cheney who sat on the committee and admired Steele's efforts fighting leftists in both Nicaragua and El Salvador. In late 1989 Cheney was in charge of the US invasion of Panama to overthrow their once favoured son, General Manuel Noriega. Cheney picked Steele to take charge of organising a new police force in Panama and be the chief liaison between the new government and the US military. Todd Greentree, who worked in the US embassy in El Salvador and knew Steele, was not surprised at the way he resurfaced in other conflict zones. "It's not called 'dirty war' for nothing; so it's no surprise to see individuals who are associated and sort of know the ins-and-outs of that kind of war, reappear at different points in these conflicts," he says. A generation later, and half the world away, America's war in Iraq was going from bad to worse. It was 2004 – the neo-cons had dismantled the Ba'athist party apparatus, and that had fostered anarchy. A mainly Sunni uprising was gaining ground and causing major problems in Fallujah and Mosul. There was a violent backlash against the US occupation that was claiming over 50 American lives a month by 2004. The US Army was facing an unconventional, guerrilla insurgency in a country it knew little about. There was already talk in Washington DC of using the Salvador option in Iraq and the man who would spearhead that strategy was already in place. Soon after the invasion in March 2003 Jim Steele was in Baghdad as one of the White House's most important "consultants", sending back reports to Rumsfeld. His memos were so valued that Rumsfeld passed them on to George Bush and Cheney. Rumsfeld spoke of him in glowing terms. "We had discussion with General Petraeus yesterday and I had a briefing today from a man named Steele who's been out there working with the security forces and been doing a wonderful job as a civilian as a matter of fact." In June 2004 Petraeus arrived in Baghdad with the brief to train a new Iraqi police force with an emphasis on counterinsurgency. Steele and serving US colonel James Coffman introduced Petraeus to a small hardened group of police commandos, many of them among the toughest survivors of the old regime, including General Adnan Thabit, sentenced to death for a failed plot against Saddam but saved by the US invasion. Thabit, selected by the Americans to run the Special Police Commandos, developed a close relationship with the new advisers. "They became my friends. My advisers, James Steele and Colonel Coffman, were all from special forces, so I benefited from their experience … but the main person I used to contact was David Petraeus." <img id="comScoreTracker" />Link to video: Iraq's Special Police Commandos chief Adnan Thabit: 'The Americans knew about everything I did' With Steele and Coffman as his point men, Petraeus began pouring money from a multimillion dollar fund into what would become the Special Police Commandos. According to the US Government Accounts Office, they received a share of an $8.2bn (£5.4bn) fund paid for by the US taxpayer. The exact amount they received is classified. With Petraeus's almost unlimited access to money and weapons, and Steele's field expertise in counterinsurgency the stage was set for the commandos to emerge as a terrifying force. One more element would complete the picture. The US had barred members of the violent Shia militias like the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army from joining the security forces, but by the summer of 2004 they had lifted the ban. Shia militia members from all over the country arrived in Baghdad "by the lorry-load" to join the new commandos. These men were eager to fight the Sunnis: many sought revenge for decades of Sunni-supported, brutal Saddam rule, and a chance to hit back at the violent insurgents and the indiscriminate terror of al-Qaida. Petraeus and Steele would unleash this local force on the Sunni population as well as the insurgents and their supporters and anyone else who was unlucky enough to get in the way. It was classic counterinsurgency. It was also letting a lethal, sectarian genie out of the bottle. The consequences for Iraqi society would be catastrophic. At the height of the civil war two years later 3,000 bodies a month were turning up on the streets of Iraq — many of them innocent civilians of sectarian war. But it was the actions of the commandos inside the detention centres that raises the most troubling questions for their American masters. Desperate for information, the commandos set up a network of secret detention centres where insurgents could be brought and information extracted from them. The commandos used the most brutal methods to make detainees talk. There is no evidence that Steele or Coffman took part in these torture sessions, but General Muntadher al Samari, a former general in the Iraqi army, who worked after the invasion with the US to rebuild the police force, claims that they knew exactly what was going on and were supplying the commandos with lists of people they wanted brought in. He says he tried to stop the torture, but failed and fled the country. "We were having lunch. Col Steele, Col Coffman, and the door opened and Captain Jabr was there torturing a prisoner. He [the victim] was hanging upside down and Steele got up and just closed the door, he didn't say anything – it was just normal for him." He says there were 13 to 14 secret prisons in Baghdad under the control of the interior ministry and used by the Special Police Commandos. He alleges that Steele and Coffman had access to all these prisons and that he visited one in Baghdad with both men. "They were secret, never declared. But the American top brass and the Iraqi leadership knew all about these prisons. The things that went on there: drilling, murder, torture. The ugliest sort of torture I've ever seen." <img id="comScoreTracker" />Link to video: Iraqi general Muntadher al-Samari: 'He was hanging upside down. Steele didn't react' According to one soldier with the 69th Armoured Regiment who was deployed in Samarra in 2005 but who doesn't want to be identified: "It was like the Nazis … like the Gestapo basically. They [the commandos] would essentially torture anybody that they had good reason to suspect, knew something, or was part of the insurgency … or supporting it, and people knew about that." The Guardian interviewed six torture victims as part of this investigation. One, a man who says he was held for 20 days, said: "There was no sleep. From the sunset, the torture would start on me and on the other prisoners. "They wanted confessions. They'd say: 'Confess to what have you done.' When you say: 'I have done nothing. Shall I confess about something I have not done?', they said: 'Yes, this is our way. The Americans told us to bring as many detainees as possible in order to keep them frightened.' "I did not confess about anything, although I was tortured and [they] took off my toenails." Neil Smith, a 20-year-old medic who was based in Samarra, remembers what low ranking US soldiers in the canteen said. "What was pretty widely known in our battalion, definitely in our platoon, was that they were pretty violent with their interrogations. That they would beat people, shock them with electrical shock, stab them, I don't know what else ... it sounds like pretty awful things. If you sent a guy there he was going to get tortured and perhaps raped or whatever, humiliated and brutalised by the special commandos in order for them to get whatever information they wanted." He now lives in Detroit and is a born-again Christian. He spoke to the Guardian because he said he now considered it his religious duty to speak out about what he saw. "I don't think folks back home in America had any idea what American soldiers were involved in over there, the torture and all kinds of stuff." Through Facebook, Twitter and social media the Guardian managed to make contact with three soldiers who confirmed they were handing over detainees to be tortured by the special commandos, but none except Smith were prepared to go on camera. "If somebody gets arrested and we hand them over to MoI they're going to get their balls hooked, electrocuted or they're going to get beaten or raped up the ass with a coke bottle or something like that," one said. He left the army in September 2006. Now 28, he works with refugees from the Arab world in Detroit teaching recent arrivals, including Iraqis, English. "I suppose it is my way of saying sorry," he said. When the Guardian/BBC Arabic posed questions to Petraeus about torture and his relationship with Steele it received in reply a statement from an official close to the general saying, "General (Ret) Petraeus's record, which includes instructions to his own soldiers … reflects his clear opposition to any form of torture." "Colonel (Ret) Steele was one of thousands of advisers to Iraqi units, working in the area of the Iraqi police. There was no set frequency for Colonel Steele's meetings with General Petraeus, although General Petraeus did see him on a number of occasions during the establishment and initial deployments of the special police, in which Colonel Steele played a significant role." But Peter Maass, then reporting for the New York Times, and who has interviewed both men, remembers the relationship differently: "I talked to both of them about each other and it was very clear that they were very close to each other in terms of their command relationship and also in terms of their ideas and ideology of what needed to be done. Everybody knew that he was Petraeus's man. Even Steele defined himself as Petraeus's man." Maass and photographer Gilles Peress gained a unique audience with Steele at a library-turned-detention-centre in Samarra. "What I heard is prisoners screaming all night long," Peress said. "You know at which point you had a young US captain telling his soldiers, don't, just don't come near this." <img id="comScoreTracker" />Link to video: 'We were interviewing James Steele in Iraq and I saw blood everywhere' Two men from Samarra who were imprisoned at the library spoke to the Guardian investigation team. "We'd be tied to a spit or we'd be hung from the ceiling by our hands and our shoulders would be dislocated," one told us. The second said: "They electrocuted me. They hung me up from the ceiling. They were pulling at my ears with pliers, stamping on my head, asking me about my wife, saying they would bring her here." According to Maass in an interview for the investigation: "The interrogation centre was the only place in the mini green zone in Samarra that I was not allowed to visit. However, one day, Jim Steele said to me, 'hey, they've just captured a Saudi jihadi. Would you like to interview him?' "I'm taken not into the main area, the kind of main hall – although out the corner of my eye I can see that there were a lot of prisoners in there with their hands tied behind their backs – I was taken to a side office where the Saudi was brought in, and there was actually blood dripping down the side of this desk in the office. Peress picks up the story: "We were in a room in the library interviewing Steele and I look around and I see blood everywhere, you know. He (Steele) hears the scream from the other guy who's being tortured as we speak, there's the blood stains in the corner of the desk in front of him." Maass says: "And while this interview was going on with this Saudi with Jim Steele also in the room, there were these terrible screams, somebody shouting Allah Allah Allah. But it wasn't kind of religious ecstasy or something like that, these were screams of pain and terror." One of the torture survivors remembers how Adnan Thabit "came into the library and he told Captain Dorade and Captain Ali, go easy on the prisoners. Don't dislocate their shoulders. This was because people were having to undergo surgery when they were released from the library." General Muntadher fled after two close colleagues were killed after they were summoned to the ministry, their bodies found on a rubbish tip. He got out of Iraq and went to Jordan. In less than a month, he says, Steele contacted him. Steele was anxious to meet and suggested he come to the luxury Sheraton hotel in Amman where Steele was staying. They met in the lobby at 8pm and Steele kept him talking for nearly two hours. "He was asking me about the prisons. I was surprised by the questions and I reminded him that these were the same prisons where we both used to work. I reminded him of the incident where he had opened the door and Colonel Jabr was torturing one of the prisoners and how he didn't do anything. Steele said: 'But I remember that I told the officer off'. So I said to him: 'No, you didn't — you didn't tell the officer off. You didn't even tell General Adnan Thabit that this officer was committing human rights abuses against these prisoners'. And he was silent. He didn't comment or answer. I was surprised by this." According to General Muntadher: "He wanted to know specifically: did I have any information about him, James Steele? Did I have evidence against him? Photographs, documents: things which proved he committed things in Iraq; things he was worried I might reveal. This was the purpose of his visit. "I am prepared to go to the international court and stand in front of them and swear that high-ranking officials such as James Steele witnessed crimes against human rights in Iraq. They didn't stop it happening and they didn't punish the perpetrators." <img id="comScoreTracker" />Link to video: James Steele in Iraq: only known video footage Steele, the man, remains an enigma. He left Iraq in September 2005 and has since pursued energy interests, joining the group of companies of Texas oilman Robert Mosbacher. Until now he has stayed where he likes to be – far from the media spotlight. Were it not for Bradley Manning's leaking of millions of US military logs to Wikileaks, which lifted the lid on alleged abuses by the US in Iraq, there he may well have remained. Footage and images of him are rare. One video clip just 12 seconds long features in the hour-long TV investigation into his work. It captures Steele, then a 58-year-old veteran in Iraq, hesitating, looking uncomfortable when he spots a passing camera. He draws back from the lens, watching warily out of the side of his eye and then pulls himself out of sight.

FOUND THIS ON NET RE ISSUE Published on Mar 4, 2013 Internment camps for political dissidents in the U.S. aren't a conspiracy theory. The Department of Defense document entitled "INTERNMENT AND RESETTLEMENT OPERATIONS" or FM 3-39.40 proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt. Download link for FM 3-39.40: http://info.publicintelligence.net/US... Army hiring for these internment camps: http://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-job... ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The absurd argument has been made that how could the CIA work so closely with Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, then imprison him ?? +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Panama The U.S. military invasion of Panama after which dictator Manuel Noriega was captured. In 1989, the United States invaded Panama as part of Operation Just Cause, which involved 25,000 American troops. Gen. Manuel Noriega, head of government of Panama, had been giving military assistance to Contra groups in Nicaragua at the request of the U.S.—which, in exchange, allowed him to continue his drug-trafficking activities—which they had known about since the 1960s.[24][25] When the DEA tried to indict Noriega in 1971, the CIA prevented them from doing so.[24] The CIA, which was then directed by future president George H. W. Bush, provided Noriega with hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as payment for his work in Latin America.[24] However, when CIA pilot Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua by the Sandinistas, documents aboard the plane revealed many of the CIA's activities in Latin America, and the CIA's connections with Noriega became a public relations "liability" for the U.S. government, which finally allowed the DEA to indict him for drug trafficking, after decades of allowing his drug operations to proceed unchecked.[24] Operation Just Cause, whose ostensible purpose was to capture Noriega, pushed the former Panamanian leader into the Papal Nuncio where he surrendered to U.S. authorities. His trial took place in Miami, where he was sentenced to 45 years in prison.[24] Noriega's prison sentence was reduced from 30 years to 17 years for good behavior.[26] After serving 17 years in detention and imprisonment, his prison sentence ended on September 9, 2007.[27] He was held under U.S. custody before being extradited to French custody where he was sentenced to 7 years for laundering money from Colombian drug cartels.[28]

1993 World Trade Center Bombing globalresearch 9/5/12 New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau believed that the intelligence services could and should have stopped the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, but they were preoccupied with other issues cover. As well-known investigative journalist Robert I. Friedman wrote in New York Magazine in 1995: Shiekh Omar Abdel Rahman commands an almost deified adoration and respect in certain Islamic circles. It was his 1980 fatwa – religious decree – condemning Anwar Sadat for making peace with Israel that is widely believed to be responsible for Sadat’s assassination a year later. (Rahman was subsequently tried but acquitted.) *** The CIA paid to send Abdel Rahman to Peshawar ‘to preach to the Afghans about the necessity of unity to overthrow the Kabul regime,’ according to Professor Rubin. By all accounts, Rahman was brilliant at inspiring the faithful. As a reward for his services, the CIA gave the sheikh a one-year visa to the United States in May, 1990 – even though he was on a State Department terrorism watch list that should have barred him from the country. After a public outcry in the wake of the World Trade Centre bombing, a State Department representative discovered that Rahman had, in fact, received four United States visas dating back to December 15, 1986. All were given to him by CIA agents acting as consular officers at American embassies in Khartoum and Cairo. The CIA officers claimed they didn’t know the sheikh was one of the most notorious political figures in the Middle East and a militant on the State Department’s list of undesirables. The agent in Khartoum said that when the sheikh walked in the computers were down and the Sudanese clerk didn’t bother to check the microfiche file. Says one top New York investigator: ‘Left with the choice between pleading stupidity or else admitting deceit, the CIA went with stupidity.’ *** The sheikh arrived in Brooklyn at a fortuitous time for the CIA. In the wake of the Soviet Union’s retreat from Afghanistan, Congress had slashed the amount of covert aid going to the mujaheddin. The international network of Arab-financed support groups became even more vital to the CIA, including the string of jihad offices that had been set up across America with the help of Saudi and American intelligence. To drum up support, the agency paved the way for veterans of the Afghan conflict to visit the centres and tell their inspirational war stories; in return, the centres collected millions of dollars for the rebels at a time when they needed it most. There were jihad offices in Jersey City, Atlanta and Dallas, but the most important was the one in Brooklyn, called Alkifah – Arabic for ‘the struggle.’ That storefront became the de facto headquarters of the sheikh. *** On November 5, 1990, Rabbi Meir Kahane, an ultra-right-wing Zionist militant, was shot in the throat with a .357 magnum in a Manhattan hotel; El-Sayyid Nosair was gunned down by an off-duty postal inspector outside the hotel, and the murder weapon was found a few feet from his hand. A subsequent search of Nosair’s Cliffside Park, New Jersey home turned up forty boxes of evidence – evidence that, had the D.A.’s office and the FBI looked at it more carefully, would have revealed an active terrorist conspiracy about to boil over in New York. *** In addition to discovering thousands of rounds of ammunition and hit lists with the names of New York judges and prosecutors, investigators found amongst the Nosair evidence classified U.S. military-training manuals. *** Also found amongst Nosair’s effects were several documents, letters and notebooks in Arabic, which when eventually translated would point to e terror conspiracy against the United States. The D.A.’s office shipped these, along with the other evidence, to the FBI’s office at 26 Federal Plaza. ‘We gave all this stuff to the bureau, thinking that they were well equipped,’ says one source close to the D.A.’s office. ‘After the World Trade Centre, we discovered they never translated the material.’ According to other sources familiar with the case, the FBI told District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau that Nosair was a lone gunman, not part of a broader conspiracy; the prosecution took this position at trial and lost, only convicting Nosair of gun charges. Morgenthau speculated the CIA may have encouraged the FBI not to pursue any other leads, these sources say. ‘The FBI lied to me,’ Morgenthau has told colleagues. ‘They’re supposed to untangle terrorist connections, but they can’t be trusted to do the job.’ Three years later, on the day the FBI arrested four Arabs for the World Trade Centre bombing, saying it had all of the suspects, Morgenthau’s ears pricked up. He didn’t believe the four were ‘self-starters,’ and speculated that there was probably a larger network as well as a foreign sponsor. He also had a hunch that the suspects would lead back to Sheikh Abdel Rahman. But he worried that the dots might not be connected because the U.S. government was protecting the sheikh for his help in Afghanistan. *** Nevertheless, some in the D.A.’s office believe that until the Ryder van exploded underneath New York’s tallest building, the sheikh and his men were being protected by the CIA. Morgenthau reportedly believes the CIA brought the sheikh to Brooklyn in the first place…. As far as can be determined, no American agency is investigating leads suggesting foreign-government involvement in the New York terror conspiracy. For example,Saudi intelligence has contributed to Sheikh Rahman’s legal-defence fund, according to Mohammed al-Khilewi, the former first secretary to the Saudi mission at the U.N. Friedman notes that intelligence agents had possession of notes which should have linked all of these terrorists, but failed to connect the dots prior to 1993. CNN ran a special report in 1994 called “Terror Nation? U.S. Creation?“, which noted – as summarized by Congressman Peter Deutsch: Some Afghan groups that have had close affiliation with Pakistani Intelligence are believed to have been involved in the [1993] New York World Trade Center bombings. *** Pro-Western afghan officials … officially warned the U.S. government about Hekmatyar no fewer than four times. The last warning delivered just days before the [1993] Trade Center attack.” Speaking to former CIA Director Robert Gates, about Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Peter Arnett reports, “The Pakistanis showered Gulbuddin Hekmatyar with U.S. provided weapons and sang his praises to the CIA. They had close ties with Hakmatyar going back to the mid-1970′s.” This is interesting because it is widely-acknowledged that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was enthusiastically backed by the U.S. For example, U.S. News and World Report says: [He was] once among America’s most valued allies. In the 1980s, the CIA funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and ammunition to help them battle the Soviet Army during its occupation of Afghanistan. Hekmatyar, then widely considered by Washington to be a reliable anti-Soviet rebel, was even flown to the United States by the CIA in 1985. As the New York Times, and others reported, an FBI informant involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center begged the FBI to substitute fake bomb power for real explosives, but his FBI handler somehow let real explosives be used.

The US-Al Qaeda Alliance: Bosnia, Kosovo and Now Libya. Washington’s On-Going Collusion with Terrorists By Prof Peter Dale Scott Global Research, July 29, 2011 The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 31 No 1, August 1, 2011 29 July 2011 ======================= Twice in the last two decades, significant cuts in U.S. and western military spending were foreseen: first after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But both times military spending soon increased, and among the factors contributing to the increase were America’s interventions in new areas: the Balkans in the 1990s, and Libya today.1 Hidden from public view in both cases was the extent to which al-Qaeda was a covert U.S. ally in both interventions, rather than its foe. U.S. interventions in the Balkans and then Libya were presented by the compliant U.S. and allied mainstream media as humanitarian. Indeed, some Washington interventionists may have sincerely believed this. But deeper motivations – from oil to geostrategic priorities – were also at work in both instances. In virtually all the wars since 1989, America and Islamist factions have been battling to determine who will control the heartlands of Eurasia in the post-Soviet era. In some countries – Somalia in 1993, Afghanistan in 2001 – the conflict has been straightforward, with each side using the other’s excesses as an excuse for intervention. But there have been other interventions in which Americans have used al-Qaeda as a resource to increase their influence, for example Azerbaijan in 1993. There a pro-Moscow president was ousted after large numbers of Arab and other foreign mujahedin veterans were secretly imported from Afghanistan, on an airline hastily organized by three former veterans of the CIA’s airline Air America. (The three, all once detailed from the Pentagon to the CIA, were Richard Secord, Harry Aderholt, and Ed Dearborn.)2 This was an ad hoc marriage of convenience: the mujahedin got to defend Muslims against Russian influence in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, while the Americans got a new president who opened up the oilfields of Baku to western oil companies. The pattern of U.S. collaboration with Muslim fundamentalists against more secular enemies is not new. It dates back to at least 1953, when the CIA recruited right-wing mullahs to overthrow Prime Minister Mossadeq in Iran, and also began to cooperate with the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.3 But in Libya in 2011 we see a more complex marriage of convenience between US and al-Qaeda elements: one which repeats a pattern seen in Bosnia in 1992-95, and Kosovo in 1997-98. In those countries America responded to a local conflict in the name of a humanitarian intervention to restrain the side committing atrocities. But in all three cases both sides committed atrocities, and American intervention in fact favored the side allied with al-Qaeda. The cause of intervention was fostered in all three cases by blatant manipulation and falsification of the facts. What a historian has noted of the Bosnian conflict was true also of Kosovo and is being echoed today in Libya: though attacks were “perpetrated by Serbs and Muslims alike,” the pattern in western media was “that killings of Muslims were newsworthy, while the deaths of non-Muslims were not.”4 Reports of mass rapes in the thousands proved to be wildly exaggerated: a French journalist “uncovered only four women willing to back up the story.”5 Meanwhile in 1994 the French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy (BHL) traveled to Bosnia and fervently endorsed the case for intervention in Bosnia; in 2011 February BHL traveled to Benghazi and reprised his interventionist role for Libya.6 In all of the countries mentioned above, furthermore, there are signs that some American and/or western intelligence groups were collaborating with al-Qaeda elements from the outset of conflict, before the atrocities cited as a reason for intervention.. This suggests that there were deeper reasons for America’s interventions including the desire of western oil companies to exploit the petroleum reserves of Libya (as in Iraq) without having to deal with a troublesome and powerful strong man, or their desire to create a strategic oil pipeline across the Balkans (in Kosovo).7 That the U.S. would support al-Qaeda in terrorist atrocities runs wholly counter to impressions created by the U.S. media. Yet this on-going unholy alliance resurrects and builds on the alliance underlying Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1978-79 strategy of provocation in Afghanistan, at a time when he was President Carter’s National Security Adviser. In those years Brzezinski did not hesitate to play the terrorist card against the Soviet Union: he reinforced the efforts of the SAVAK (the Shah of Iran’s intelligence service) to work with the Islamist antecedents of al-Qaeda to destabilize Afghanistan, in a way which soon led to a Soviet invasion of that country.8 At the time, as he later boasted, Brzezinski told Carter, “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.”9 CIA Director William Casey continued this strategy of using terrorists against the USSR in Afghanistan. At first the CIA channeled aid through the Pakistani ISI (Interservices Intelligence Service) to their client Afghan extremists like Gulbeddin Hekmatyar (today one of America’s enemies in Afghanistan). But in 1986, “Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI initiative to recruit radical Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan Mujaheddin.”10 CIA aid now reached their support Office of Services in Peshawar, headed by a Palestinian, Abdullah Azzam, and by Osama bin Laden. The al-Kifah Center, a U.S. recruitment office for their so-called Arab-Afghan foreign legion (the future al Qaeda), was set up in the al-Farook mosque in Brooklyn.11 It is important to recall Brzezinski’s and Casey’s use of terrorists today. For in Libya, as earlier in Kosovo and Bosnia, there are alarming signs that America has continued to underwrite Islamist terrorism as a means to dismantle socialist or quasi-socialist nations not previously in its orbit: first the USSR, then Yugoslavia, today Libya. As I have written elsewhere, Gaddafi was using the wealth of Libya, the only Mediterranean nation still armed by Russia and independent of the NATO orbit, to impose more and more difficult terms for western oil companies, and to make the whole of Africa more independent of Europe and America.12 Support for the mujahedin included collusion in law-breaking, at a heavy cost. In the second part of this essay, I will show how government protection of key figures in the Brooklyn al-Kifah Center left some of them free, even after they were known to have committed crimes, to engage in further terrorist acts in the United States — such as the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. The U.S.-al-Qaeda Alliance in Libya The NATO intervention in Libya has been presented as a humanitarian campaign. But it is not: both factions have been committing atrocities. Thanks in part to the efforts of the well-connected p.r. firm the Harbour Group, working on behalf of the Benghazi opposition’s National Transitional Council [NTC], Americans have heard many more press accounts of atrocities by pro-Gaddafi forces in Libya than by the Benghazi opposition.13 But in fact, as the London Daily Telegraph reported, Under rebel control, Benghazi residents are terrorized, many “too frightened to drive through the dark streets at night, fearing a shakedown or worse at the proliferating checkpoints.” Moreover, about 1.5 million black African migrant workers feel trapped under suspicion of supporting the wrong side. Numbers of them have been attacked, some hunted down, dragged from apartments, beaten and killed. So-called “revolutionaries” and “freedom fighters” are, in fact, rampaging gunmen committing atrocities airbrushed from mainstream reports, unwilling to reveal the new Libya if Gaddafi is deposed.14 Thomas Mountain concurs that “Since the rebellion in Benghazi broke out several hundred Sudanese, Somali, Ethiopian and Eritrean guest workers have been robbed and murdered by racist rebel militias, a fact well hidden by the international media.”15 Such reports have continued. Recently, Human Rights Watch accused the rebels of killing Gaddafi supporters who were just civilians and looting, burning and ransacking pro-Gaddafi supporters’ houses and areas.16 Americans and Europeans are still less likely to learn from their media that among the groups in the Benghazi transitional coalition, certainly the most battle-seasoned, are veterans of the Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG). The importance of the LIFG contingent in the TNC has been downplayed in a recent issue of the International Business Times: The LIFG is a radical Islamic group which has been fighting small scale guerrilla warfare against Gaddafi for almost a decade. Much of the LIFG leadership came from soldiers who fought against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, as part of the Mujahedeen. Since the beginning of the uprising reports said that some of the LIFG has joined the TNC rebel movement on the ground, and many accused the fighters of having links to Al-Qaeda, which the LIFG has since denied. Previously however, the LIFG had stated that its ultimate goal is to install an Islamic state inside Libya, which given the fact that many of its fighters are now on the side of the TNC is quite worrying. However as the LIFG is reported to have a fighting force of no more than a few thousand men, it is believed it will not be able to cause much trouble within the opposition.17 It remains to be seen whether a victorious TNC would be able to contain the Islamist aspirations of the ruthless jihadist veterans in their ranks. There are those who fear that, from their years of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, the battle-hardened LIFG, although probably not dominant in the Benghazi coalition today, will come to enjoy more influence if Benghazi ever gets to distribute the spoils of victory. In February 2004, then-Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that “one of the most immediate threats [to U.S. security in Iraq] is from smaller international Sunni extremist groups that have benefited from al-Qaida links. They include … the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.”18 In 2007 a West Point study reported on “the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’s (LIFG) increasingly cooperative relationship with al-Qaeda, which culminated in the LIFG officially joining al-Qaeda on November 3, 2007.”19 Although Britain and the US were well aware of the West Point assessment of the hard-core LIFG in the Benghazi TNC coalition, their special forces nevertheless secretly backed the Benghazi TNC, even before the launch of NATO air support: The bombing of the country came as it was revealed that hundreds of British special forces troops have been deployed deep inside Libya targeting Colonel Gaddafi’s forces – and more are on standby…. In total it is understood that just under 250 UK special forces soldiers and their support have been in Libya since before the launch of air strikes to enforce the no-fly zone against Gaddafi’s forces.20 There are also reports that U.S. Special Forces were also sent into Libya on February 23 and 24, 2011, almost a month before the commencement of NATO bombing.21 UK support for the fundamentalist LIFG was in fact at least a decade old: Fierce clashes between [Qadhafi's] security forces and Islamist guerrillas erupted in Benghazi in September 1995, leaving dozens killed on both sides. After weeks of intense fighting, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) formally declared its existence in a communiqué calling Qadhafi’s government “an apostate regime that has blasphemed against the faith of God Almighty” and declaring its overthrow to be “the foremost duty after faith in God.” This and future LIFG communiqués were issued by Libyan Afghans who had been granted political asylum in Britain…. The involvement of the British government in the LIFG campaign against Qadhafi remains the subject of immense controversy. LIFG’s next big operation, a failed attempt to assassinate Qadhafi in February 1996 that killed several of his bodyguards, was later said to have been financed by British intelligence to the tune of $160,000, according to ex-MI5 officer David Shayler.22 David Shayler’s detailed account has been challenged, but many other sources reveal that UK support for Libyan jihadists long antedates the present conflict.23 Even more ominous for the future than the nationalistic LIFG may be the fighters from the more internationalist Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) who have seized the opportunity presented by the war to enter the conflict, and equip themselves from Gaddafi’s looted armories.24 AQIM presents a special concern because of recent reports that, like other al Qaeda associates from Afghanistan to Kosovo, it is increasingly financed by payoffs from regional drug traffickers.25 In short, the NATO campaign in Libya is in support of a coalition in which the future status of present and former al-Qaeda allies is likely to be strengthened.26 And western forces have been secretly supporting them from the outset. The U.S.-al-Qaeda Alliance in Bosnia Similarly, Clinton’s interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo were presented as humanitarian. But both sides had committed atrocities in those conflicts; Like the western media, Washington downplayed the Muslim atrocities because of its other interests. Most Americans are aware that Clinton dispatched U.S. forces to Bosnia to enforce the Dayton peace accords after a well-publicized Serbian atrocity: the massacre of thousands of Muslims at Srebrenica. Thanks to a vigorous campaign by the p.r. firm Ruder Finn, Americans heard a great deal about the Srebrenica massacre, but far less about the beheadings and other atrocities by Muslims that preceded and helped account for it. A major reason for the Serb attack on Srebrenica was to deal with the armed attacks mounted from that base on nearby villages: “intelligence sources said it was that harassment which precipitated the Serb attack on the 1,500 Muslim defenders inside the enclave.”27 General Philippe Morillon, commander of the UN troops in Bosnia from 1992 to 1993, testified to the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) that Muslim forces based in Srebrenica had “engaged in attacks during Orthodox holidays and destroyed villages, massacring all the inhabitants. This created a degree of hatred that was quite extraordinary in the region”28 According to Prof. John Schindler, Between May and December 1992, Muslim forces repeatedly attacked Serb villages around Srebrenica, killing and torturing civilians; some were mutilated and burned alive. Even pro-Sarajevo accounts concede that Muslim forces in Srebrenica…murdered over 1,300 Serbs…and had “ethnically cleansed a vast area.29 Former U.S. ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith later admitted in an interview that the U.S. administration was aware of “small numbers of atrocities” being committed by the foreign mujahedin in Bosnia, but dismissed the atrocities as “in the scheme of things not a big issue.”30 Other sources reveal that Washington gave a tacit green light to Croatia’s arming and augmentation of the Muslim presence in Srebrenica.31 Soon C-130 Hercules planes. some but not all of them Iranian, were dropping arms to the Muslims, in violation of the international arms embargo which the U.S. officially respected. More Arab-Afghan mujahedin arrived as well. Many of the airdrops and some of the mujahedin were at Tuzla, 70 kilometers from Srebrenica.32 According to The Spectator (London), the Pentagon was using other countries such as Turkey and Iran in this flow of arms and warriors: From 1992 to 1995, the Pentagon assisted with the movement of thousands of Mujahideen and other Islamic elements from Central Asia into Europe, to fight alongside Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs. …. As part of the Dutch government’s inquiry into the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995, Professor Cees Wiebes of Amsterdam University compiled a report entitled ‘Intelligence and the War in Bosnia’, published in April 2002. In it he details the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamic groups from the Middle East, and their efforts to assist Bosnia’s Muslims. By 1993, there was a vast amount of weapons-smuggling through Croatia to the Muslims, organised by ‘clandestine agencies’ of the USA, Turkey and Iran, in association with a range of Islamic groups that included Afghan Mujahideen and the pro-Iranian Hezbollah. Arms bought by Iran and Turkey with the financial backing of Saudi Arabia were airlifted from the Middle East to Bosnia — airlifts with which, Wiebes points out, the USA was ‘very closely involved’.33 Cees Wiebes’ detailed account, based on years of research, documents both the case for American responsibility and the vigorous American denials of it: At 17.45 on 10 February 1995, the Norwegian Captain Ivan Moldestad, a Norwegian helicopter detachment (NorAir) pilot, stood in the doorway of his temporary accommodation just outside Tuzla. It was dark, and suddenly he heard the sound of the propellers of an approaching transport aircraft; it was unmistakably a four engine Hercules C-130. Moldestad noticed that the Hercules was being escorted by two jet fighters, but could not tell their precise type in the darkness. There were other sightings of this secretive night-time flight to Tuzla Air Base (TAB). A sentry who was on guard duty outside the Norwegian medical UN unit in Tuzla also heard and saw the lights of the Hercules and the accompanying jet fighters. Other UN observers, making use of night vision equipment, also saw the cargo aircraft and the fighter planes concerned. The reports were immediately forwarded to the NATO Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) in Vicenza and the UNPF Deny Flight Cell in Naples. When Moldestad phoned Vicenza, he was told that there was nothing in the air that night, and that he must be mistaken. When Moldestad persisted, the connection was broken. The secretive C-130 cargo aircraft flights and night-time arms drops on Tuzla caused great agitation within UNPROFOR and the international community in February and March 1995. When asked, a British general responded with great certainty to the question of the origin of the secret supplies via TAB: ‘They were American arms deliveries. No doubt about that. And American private companies were involved in these deliveries.’ This was no surprising answer, because this general had access to intelligence gathered by a unit of the British Special Air Services (SAS) in Tuzla. The aircraft had come within range of this unit’s special night vision equipment, and the British saw them land. It was a confirmation that a clandestine American operation had taken place in which arms, ammunition and military communication equipment were supplied to the ABiH. These night-time operations led to much consternation within the UN and NATO, and were the subject of countless speculations.34 Wiebes reports the possibility that the C-130s, some of which were said to have taken off from a US Air Force base in Germany, were actually controlled by Turkish authorities.35 But U.S. involvement was detected in the elaborate cover-up, from the fact that US AWACS aircraft, which should have provided a record of the secret flights, were either withdrawn from duty at the relevant times, or manned with US crews.36 A summary of Wiebes’ exhaustive report was published in the Guardian: The Dutch report reveals how the Pentagon formed a secret alliance with Islamist groups in an Iran-Contra-style operation. US, Turkish and Iranian intelligence groups worked with the Islamists in what the Dutch report calls the “Croatian pipeline”. Arms bought by Iran and Turkey and financed by Saudi Arabia were flown into Croatia initially by the official Iranian airline, Iran Air, and later in a fleet of black C-130 Hercules aircraft. The report says that mojahedin fighters were also flown in, and that the US was “very closely involved” in the operation which was in flagrant breach of the embargo. British secret services obtained documents proving that Iran also arranged deliveries of arms directly to Bosnia, it says. The operation was promoted by the Pentagon, rather than the CIA, which was cautious about using Islamist groups as a conduit for arms, and about breaching the embargo. When the CIA tried to place its own people on the ground in Bosnia, the agents were threatened by the mojahedin fighters and the Iranians who were training them. The UN relied on American intelligence to monitor the embargo, a dependency which allowed Washington to manipulate it at will.37 Meanwhile the Al-Kifah Center in Brooklyn, which in the 1980s had supported the “Arab-Afghans” fighting in Afghanistan, turned its attentions to Bosnia. Al-Kifah’s English-language newsletter Al-Hussam (The Sword) also began publishing regular updates on jihad action in Bosnia….Under the control of the minions of Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman, the newsletter aggressively incited sympathetic Muslims to join the jihad in Bosnia and Afghanistan themselves….The Al-Kifah Bosnian branch office in Zagreb, Croatia, housed in a modern, two-story building, was evidently in close communication with the organizational headquarters in New York. The deputy director of the Zagreb office, Hassan Hakim, admitted to receiving all orders and funding directly from the main United States office of Al-Kifah on Atlantic Avenue controlled by Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman.38 One of the trainers at al-Kifah, Rodney Hampton-El, assisted in this support program, recruiting warriors from U.S. Army bases like Fort Belvoir, and also training them to be fighters in New Jersey.39 In 1995 Hampton-El was tried and convicted for his role (along with al-Kifah leader Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman) in the plot to blow up New York landmarks. At the trial Hampton-El testified how he was personally given thousands of dollars for this project by Saudi Crown Prince Faisal in the Washington Saudi Embassy.40 About this time, Ayman al-Zawahiri, today the leader of al Qaeda, came to America to raise funds in Silicon Valley, where he was hosted by Ali Mohamed, a U.S. double agent and veteran of U.S. Army Special Forces who had been the top trainer at the Al-Kifah mosque.41 Almost certainly al-Zawahiri’s fund-raising was in support of the mujahedin in Bosnia, reportedly his chief concern at the time. (“The Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal reported that, in 1993, Mr. bin Laden had appointed Sheik Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, to direct his operations in the Balkans.”)42 Wiebes’ detailed report and the news stories based on it corroborated earlier charges made in 1997 by Sir Alfred Sherman, top adviser to Margaret Thatcher and co-founder of the influential rightwing nationalist Centre for Policy Studies, that “The U.S. encouraged and facilitated the dispatch of arms to the Moslems via Iran and Eastern Europe — a fact which was denied in Washington at the time in face of overwhelming evidence.”43 This was part of his case that The war in Bosnia was America’s war in every sense of the word. The US administration helped start it, kept it going, and prevented its early end. Indeed all the indications are that it intends to continue the war in the near future, as soon as its Moslem proteges are fully armed and trained. Specifically, Sherman charged that in 1992 Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger had instructed Warren Zimmerman, U.S. Ambassador in Belgrade, to persuade Bosnian President Izetbegovic to renege on his agreement to preserve Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian unity, and instead accept American aid for an independent Bosnian state.44 The U.S.-al-Qaeda Alliance in Kosovo This raises the disturbing question: were some Americans willing to ignore the atrocities of the al-Kifah mujahideen in Bosnia in exchange for mujahideen assistance in NATO’s successive wars dismantling Yugoslavia, the last surviving socialist republic in Europe? One thing is clear: Sir Alfred Sherman’s prediction in 1997 that America “intends to continue the war in the near future” soon proved accurate, when in 1999 American support for al-Qaeda’s allies in Kosovo, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), led to a controversial NATO bombing campaign. As was widely reported at the time, the KLA was supported both by the networks of bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, and also by the traffic in Afghan heroin: Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden — who is wanted in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 persons, including 12 Americans.45 According to former DEA agent Michael Levine, the decision of Clinton to back the KLA dismayed his DEA contacts who knew it to be a major drug-trafficking organization.46 As Ralf Mutschke of Interpol testified to Congress, In 1998, the U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Usama bin Laden. Another link to bin Laden is the fact that the brother of a leader in an Egyptian Djihad organization and also a military commander of Usama bin Laden, was leading an elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict. [This is almost certainly Zaiman or Mohammed al-Zawahiri, one of the brothers of Ayman al-Zawahiri.] In 1998, the KLA was described as a key player in the drugs for arms business in 1998, “helping to transport 2 billion USD worth of drugs annually into Western Europe”. The KLA and other Albanian groups seem to utilize a sophisticated network of accounts and companies to process funds. In 1998, Germany froze two bank accounts belonging to the “United Kosova” organization after it had been discovered that several hundred thousand dollars had been deposited into those accounts by a convicted Kosovar Albanian drug trafficker.47 According to the London Sunday Times, the KLA’s background did not deter the US from training and strengthening it: American intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia. The disclosure angered some European diplomats, who said this had undermined moves for a political solution to the conflict between Serbs and Albanians. Central Intelligence Agency officers were ceasefire monitors in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, developing ties with the KLA and giving American military training manuals and field advice on fighting the Yugoslav army and Serbian police. When the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which co-ordinated the monitoring, left Kosovo a week before airstrikes began a year ago, many of its satellite telephones and global positioning systems were secretly handed to the KLA, ensuring that guerrilla commanders could stay in touch with Nato and Washington. Several KLA leaders had the mobile phone number of General Wesley Clark, the Nato commander.48 According to former U.S. Army Captain David Hackworth, later Newsweek’s contributing editor for defense, former US military officers in the private U.S. military contractor MPRI (Military Professional Resources Incorporated) not only trained KLA personnel, but even fought alongside them.49 This reinforced earlier reports that MPRI personnel had also been involved in training Croatians at the time of the illicit Croatian arms pipeline to Bosnia.50 After Kosovo, Sherman repeated his warnings against “expanding American hegemony”, exercised through NATO with varying degrees of partnership and subordination of other players. …. The process commenced with the deliberate break-up of Yugoslavia, led by Germany and acquiesced in by the other European Union members and the United States (1991). It progressed with sanctions against Serbia for attempting to help the western Serbs (1992). In Bosnia America’s early involvement sparked off civil war (the Zimmerman Visit to Izetbegovic, in the aftermath of the Lisbon Agreement), and it eventually matured into the bombing campaign of 1999 and the occupation of Kosovo.51 Others suspected that America’s involvement was motivated by its desire to see a new Trans-Balkan pipeline and a new U.S. military base in the Balkans to defend it. Although such critics were initially ridiculed, both predictions soon proved true. The U.S.-registered AMBO corporation, headed by former BP executive Ted Ferguson, began construction of a pipeline from Albania to Macedonia in 2007.52 And nearby is a semi-permanent U.S. Army base, Camp Bondsteel, that can hold up to 7000 soldiers. In 2007, President George W. Bush created a new United States Africa Command, U.S. AFRICOM. But its HQ at present is in Stuttgart, Germany. This has led to speculation on the Internet that America has its eyes on Libya’s international airport, which the U.S. Air Force had operated as Wheelus Air Force Base until its ouster in 1970. II. From the First WTC Bombing to 9/11: The Domestic U.S. Fallout from Collusion with Terrorists The fact that Americans have had repeated recourse to al-Qaeda Islamists as assets in their expansive projects does not constitute proof that there is any long-term systematic strategy to do so, still less that there is a secret alliance. I believe rather that America is suffering from a malignant condition of military power run amok – power which, like a malignant cancer, tends to reproduce itself at times in ways counterproductive to larger goals. Those who are appointed to manage this vast power become inured to using any available assets, in order to sustain a sociodynamic of global intervention that they are, ironically, powerless to challenge or turn around. The few dissenters who try to do so are predictably sidelined or even ejected from the heights of power, as not being “on the team.” Those in Washington who decided to assist terrorists and drug traffickers seem not to have considered such “externalities” as the domestic consequences from official dealings with criminal terrorist networks that are global in scope. Yet the consequences were and are real, for the Islamist terrorists that were protected by the US in their subversion of order in Kosovo and other countries were soon being protected inside the US as well. As former DEA agent Michael Levine reported of the KLA-linked drug networks, “These guys have a network that’s active on the streets of this country…. They’re the worst elements of society that you can imagine, and now, according to my sources in drug enforcement, they’re politically protected.”53 In other words, Kosovars were now enjoying the de facto protection in their U.S. drug trafficking that had earlier been enjoyed by the CIA’s Chinese, Cuban, Italian, Thai, and other ethnic assets dating from the 1940s.54 Mother Jones reported in 2000, after the NATO bombing in support of the KLA that Afghan heroin, much of it distributed by Kosovar Albanians, now accounted for almost 20 percent of the heroin seized in America — nearly double the percentage taken four years earlier.55 Meanwhile in Europe, it was estimated that “Kosovo Albanians control 40% of Europe’s heroin.”56 In addition there is a near universal consensus that the outcome of the war in Bosnia left al-Qaeda’s jihadists much more strongly entrenched in the Balkans than they had been earlier. In the words of Professor John Schindler, Bosnia, “the most pro-Western society in the umma [Muslim world],” was “converted into a Jihadistan through domestic deceit, violent conflict, and misguided international intervention.”57 It is too soon to predict with confidence what will be the domestic fallout or “blowback” from NATO’s empowerment of Islamists by creating chaos in Libya. But the domestic consequences of similar U.S. interventions in the past are indisputable, and have contributed to major acts of terrorism in this country. American protection for the Al-Kifah mujahedin support base in Brooklyn led to interference in domestic U.S. law enforcement. This enabled mujahedin recruits at al-Kifah to plot and/or engage in a number of domestic and foreign terrorist attacks on America. These attacks include the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the so-called “New York landmarks plot” of 1995, and the Embassy attacks of 1998 in Kenya and Tanzania. Involved in all of these events were terrorists who should have been rounded up earlier because of crimes already committed, but were allowed to stay free. Central to all of these attacks was the role of Ali Mohamed, the former U.S. Special Forces double agent at al-Kifah, and his trainees. Ali Mohamed, despite being on a State Department Watch List, had come to America around 1984, on what an FBI consultant has called “a visa program controlled by the CIA.”58 So did the “blind Sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman, the leader of al-Kifah; Rahman was issued two visas, one of them “by a CIA officer working undercover in the consular section of the American embassy in Sudan.”59 Ali Mohamed trained al-Kifah recruits in guerrilla tactics near Brooklyn. This operation was considered so sensitive that the New York police and the FBI later protected two of the recruits from arrest, when they murdered the Jewish extremist Meir Kahane. Instead, the New York Police called the third assassin (El Sayyid Nosair) a “lone deranged gunman,” and released the other two (Mahmoud Abouhalima and Mohammed Salameh) from detention. This enabled Abouhalima and Salameh, along with another Ali Mohamed trainee (Nidal Ayyad) to take part three years later in the first (1993) bombing of the World Trade Center.60 Prosecutors protected Ali Mohamed again in the 1994-95 “Landmarks” trial, when Omar Abdul Rahman and some of Mohamed’s trainees were convicted of conspiring to blow up New York buildings. In that case the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, named Ali Mohamed as an unindicted co-conspirator, yet allowed him to remain free. When the defense issued a subpoena for Mohamed to appear in court, the prosecutor intervened to avoid Mohamed’s having to testify.61 Ali Mohamed was well aware of his protected status, and used it in early 1993 to obtain his release when detained by the RCMP at Vancouver Airport. As this episode has so ignored in the US press, I will quote the account of it in Canada’s premier newspaper, the Toronto Globe and Mail: The RCMP had their hands on one of the key insiders of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network, but he was released after he had Mounties call his handler at the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Ali Mohamed, a Californian of Egyptian origin who is believed to be the highest ranking al-Qaeda member to have landed in Canada, was working with U.S. counterterrorist agents, playing a double or triple game, when he was questioned in 1993. Mr. Mohamed now is in a U.S. prison. “The people of the RCMP told me by midnight that I can go now,” Mr. Mohamed — who confessed in the United States to being a close bin Laden associate — wrote at the time in an affidavit shown Wednesday to The Globe and Mail. The incident happened after customs agents at Vancouver International Airport detained Essam Marzouk, an Egyptian who had arrived from Damascus via Frankfurt, after they found him carrying two forged Saudi passports. Mr. Mohamed, who was waiting to pick him up at the airport, inquired of the police about his friend’s detention. That made the RCMP curious about Mr. Mohamed, but he dispelled their suspicions by telling them he was a collaborator with the FBI.62 The Globe and Mail story makes it clear that in 1993 Mohamed already had a handler at the FBI, to whom the RCMP deferred. Patrick Fitzgerald, in his statement to the 9/11 Commission, gave a quite different story: that Mohamed, after returning from Nairobi in 1994, applied for a job “as an FBI translator.”63 The difference is vital: because the FBI told the RCMP to release Mohamed, he was then able to travel to Nairobi and plan for bombing the U.S. Embassy there. According to author Peter Lance, by 2007 Fitzgerald had enough evidence to arrest and indict Mohamed, but did not. Instead he interviewed Mohamed in California, along with an FBI agent, Jack Cloonan. After the interview Fitzgerald chose not to arrest Mohamed, but instead to tap his phone and bug his computer. Lance asks a very relevant question: did Fitzgerald fear that ”any indictment of al Qaeda’s chief spy would rip the lid off years of gross negligence by three of America’s top intelligence agencies”?64 One month after the Embassy bombings, Ali Mohamed was finally arrested, on September 10, 1998. Yet when Fitzgerald handed down thirteen indictments two months later, Mohamed’s name was not among them. Instead Fitzgerald again allowed him to avoid cross-examination in court by accepting a plea bargain, the terms of which are still partly unknown. Specifically we do not know the term of Mohamed’s sentence: that page of his court appearance transcript (p. 17) is filed under seal.65 As part of the plea bargain, Mohamed told the court that at the personal request of bin Laden, he did surveillance on the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, “took pictures, drew diagrams, and wrote a report” which he personally delivered to bin Laden in the Sudan.66 Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor who negotiated the plea bargain, testified at length about Mohamed to the 9/11 Commission, who concluded in their Report (p. 68) that Mohamed “led” the embassy bombing operation. Ironically, the Embassy bombing is the official reason today why Zawahiri (like bin Laden before him) is wanted by the FBI, with a $25 million bounty on his head. But the American public has been denied the right to learn about Ali Mohamed’s involvement in other terrorist events. Particularly relevant would be his involvement in 9/11. As his FBI handler Cloonan later reported, Mohamed explained to him that he personally trained the accused hijackers in how to seize planes: He [had] conducted training for al Qaeda on how to hijack a plane. He ran practical exercises in Pakistan and he said, “This is how you get a box cutter on board. You take the knife, you remove the blade and you wrap it in [word blacked out] and put it in your carry-on luggage.” They’d read the FAA regulations. They knew four inches wouldn’t go through. “This is how you position yourself,” he said. “I taught people how to sit in first class. You sit here and some sit here.” He wrote the whole thing out.67 Conclusion At present America is in the midst of an unprecedented budget crisis, brought on in large part by its multiple wars. Nevertheless it is also on the point of several further interventions: in Yemen, Somalia, possibly Syria or Iran (where the CIA is said to be in contact with the drug-trafficking al-Qaeda offshoot Jundallah),68 and most assuredly in Libya. Only the American public can stop them. But in order for the people to rise up and cry Stop! there must first be a better understanding of the dark alliances underlying America’s alleged humanitarian interventions. This awareness may increase when Americans finally realize that there is domestic blowback from assisting terrorists as well. The long elaborate dance between Mohamed and his Justice Department overseers makes it clear that the handling of terrorists for corrupt purposes corrupts the handlers as well as the terrorists. Eventually both the handlers and the handled become in effect co-conspirators, with secrets about their collusion both parties need to conceal. Until the public takes notice, that concealment of collusion will continue. And as long as it continues, we will continue to be denied the truth about what collusions underlay 9/11. Worse, we are likely to see more terrorist attacks, at home as well as abroad, along with more illegal, costly, and unnecessary wars. Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Drugs Oil and War, The Road to 9/11, and The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War. His most recent book is American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection and the Road to Afghanistan. His website, which contains a wealth of his writings, is here. Peter Dale Scott is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) Articles on related subjects • Tim Shorrock, Reading the Egyptian Revolution Through the Lens of US Policy in South Korea Circa 1980: Revelations in US Declassified Documents • Peter Dale Scott, Rape in Libya: America’s recent major wars have all been accompanied by memorable falsehoods • Peter Dale Scott, The Libyan War, American Power and the Decline of the Petrodollar System • Peter Dale Scott, Who are the Libyan Freedom Fighters and Their Patrons? • Herbert P. Bix, The Middle East Revolutions in Historical Perspective: Egypt, Occupied Palestine, and the United States Notes 1 Cf. Telegraph (London), “Defence Cuts in Doubt over Libya, Says Military Adviser,“ April 7, 2011, “The Libyan crisis has raised doubts about the Coalition’s defence review and could force ministers to reverse cuts including the scrapping of Britain’s Harrier jump jets, a senior military adviser has said,” (link). 2 Scott, The Road to 9/11, 163-65. 3 Scott, The Road to 9/11, 44-45; citing Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game, 109-11; Saïd Aburish, A Brutal Friendship, 60-61; Miles Copeland, The Game Player, 149-54. Cf. Ian Johnson, “Washington’s Secret History with the Muslim Brotherhood,” New York Review of Books, February 5, 2011. 4 John R. Schindler, Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa’ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad, 71, 81. According to Schindler, “CNN repeatedly showed images of ‘dead Muslims’ killed by Serbs that were actually Serbs murdered by Muslims” (92). 5 Schindler, Unholy Terror, 91. 6 Schindler, Unholy Terror, 179-80; Christian Science Monitor, March 28, 2011. In 1994 BHL presented Bosnian leader Izetbegovich to French President Mitterand; in 2011 BHL arranged for three Benghazi leaders to meet French President Sarkozy. Cf. “Libyan rebels will recognise Israel, Bernard-Henri Lévy tells Netanyahu,” Radio France Internationale, June 2, 2011, “Libya’s rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) is ready to recognise Israel, according to French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who says he has passed the message on to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” (link). 7 For Big Oil’s complaints with Gaddafi, see Peter Dale Scott, “The Libyan War, American Power and the Decline of the Petrodollar System”, Asian-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, April 27, 2011. 8 Scott, Road to 9/11, 77; citing Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal (New York: Oxford University Press, 16), 16. 9 Scott, Road to 9/11, 72-75; quoting from “Les Révélations d’un Ancien Conseilleur de Carter: ‘Oui, la CIA est Entrée en Afghanistan avant les Russes…’” Le Nouvel Observateur [Paris], January 15-21, 1998: “B[rzezinski]: [On Jul 3, 1979] I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.… Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists? B: What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?” 10 Ahmed Rashid, Taliban, 129. According to the Spanish author Robert Montoya, the idea originated in the elite Safari Club that had been created by French intelligence chief Alexandre de Marenches in 1976, bringing together other intelligence chiefs such as General Akhtar Abdur Rahman of ISI in Pakistan and Kamal Adham of Saudi Arabia (Roberto Montoya, El Mundo [Madrid], February 16, 2003). 11 Scott, Road to 9/11, 139-40; citing Steven Emerson, American Jihad, 131-32. 12 Peter Dale Scott, “The Libyan War, American Power and the Decline of the Petrodollar System”, Asian-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, April 27, 2011. 13 “PR firm helps Libyan rebels to campaign for support from US,” The Hill.com, April 12, 2011. 14 Rob Crilly, Daily Telegraph (London), March 23, 2011; quoted in Stephen Lendman, “Planned Regime Change in Libya,” SteveLendmanBlog, March 28, 2011. Cf. Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2011. 15 Morris Herman, “Rebel Militias Include the Human Traffickers of Benghazi,” Foreign Policy Journal, July 28, 2011, quoting Thomas C. Mountain. 16 Anissa Haddadi, “Does the Transitional Council Really Represent Libyan Democracy and Opposition to Gaddafi?” International Business Times, July 20, 2011. 17 Haddadi, “Does the Transitional Council Really Represent Libyan Democracy and Opposition to Gaddafi?” International Business Times, July 20, 2011. 18 Center for Defense Information, “In the Spotlight: The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG),” January 18, 2005. That the LIFG is pursuing its own goals may explain the rebel seizure of anti-air force missiles from captured Gaddafi armories: these missiles, useless against Gaddafi (who no longer has an air force) are apparently being shipped out of Libya for sale or use elsewhere (New York Times, July 15, 2011). 19 December 2007 West Point Study, quoted in Webster Tarpley, “The CIA’s Libya Rebels: The Same Terrorists who Killed US, NATO Troops in Iraq,” Tarpley.net, March 24, 2011. 20 Daily Mail (London), March 25, 2001, link; cited in Lendman; “Planned Regime Change in Libya.” 21 Akhtar Jamal, “US UK, French forces land in Libya,” Pakistan Observer, February 2011. 22 Gary Gambill, “The Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), Jamestown Foundation,” Terrorism Monitor, May 5, 2005; citing Al-Hayat (London), 20 October 1995 [“communiqué”]; “The Shayler affair: The spooks, the Colonel and the jailed whistle-blower,” The Observer (London), 9 August 1998; Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié, Ben Laden: La Verite interdite (Bin Ladin: The Forbidden Truth). Cf. also Annie Machon, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5, MI6 And the Shayler Affair (Book Guild Publishing, 2005) [shayler]. 23 E.g. Washington Post, October 7, 2001: “Over the years, some dissidents suspected by foreign governments of involvement in terrorist acts have been protected by the British government for one reason or another from deportation or extradition…. In the past, terrorism experts say, Britain benefited significantly from its willingness to extend at least conditional hospitality to a wide range of Arab dissidents and opposition figures …. Mustafa Alani, a terrorism expert at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies, a London think tank, said [Anas] al-Liby was probably left in legal limbo by the British government, allowing him to be used or discarded as circumstances permitted.” 24 “Sahelian Concern Deepens over Libya, AQIM,” Sahel Blog, May 2, 2011. According to the Los Angeles Times, AQIM vowed on February 24, 2011 to “do whatever we can” to help the rebel cause. (Ken Dilanian, “US Finds no Firm Al Qaeda Presence in Libya Rebellion,” Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2011). Cf. “Libya rebels not anti-West, but Qaeda a worry-group,” Reuters, March 29, 2011; “The Evolving Threat of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” Strategic Forum, National Defense University; CNN World, February 25, 2011. 25 Andre Lesage, “The Evolving Threat of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” Strategic Forum, National Defense University; CNN World, February 25, 2011, 6. Cf. “Rogue planes flying drugs across Atlantic; Al-Qaeda Links;,” National Post, January 14, 2014; “Latin drug lords find allies in African Islamists,” Washington Times, November 17, 2009. 26 A story in the New York Times (“Exiled Islamists Watch Rebellion Unfold at Home,” July 19, 2011) reports that KIFG members of the TNC “have renounced Al Qaeda.” But it supplies no independent evidence that their politics have changed. 27 Michael Evans, “Muslim soldiers ‘failed to defend town from Serbs,’” Times (London), July 14, 1995. 28 Richard Palmer. “What Really Happened in Bosnia,” theTrumpet.com, July 12, 2011. 29 Schindler, Unholy Terror, 87; quoting from Jan Willem Honig and Norbert Both, Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime, 79. 30 John Rosenthal, “The Other Crimes of Bosnia,” BigPeace.com, June 2, 2011; summarizing interview of Galbraith by J.M. Berger, “Exclusive: U.S. Policy on Bosnia.Arms Trafficking.” 31 Schindler, Unholy Terror, 182-83; “Exclusive: U.S. Policy on Bosnia Arms Trafficking”; Cees Wiebes, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992 1995 (Munster: LIT Verlag, 2003), 166-69. 32 “Allies and Lies,” BBC OnLine, June 22, 2001; Wiebes, Intelligence and the War, 183. Also present at Tuzla was an American who introduced himself as “Major Guy Sands,” and who claimed to have been a ten-year veteran of the Vietnam War. Cf. a Swedish report from Tuzla, of an American there who made no secret of his Special Forces background (Brendan O’Shea, Crisis at Bihac: Bosnia’s Bloody Battlefield [stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1998], p. 159). For reports of foreign mujahedin in or near Tuzla, see Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe, 74, 155, 164. 33 Brendan O’Neill, “How We Trained al-Qa’eda,” Spectator (London), September 13, 2003. 34 Wiebes, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia, 177. 35 Wiebes, Intelligence and the War, 187, 196; citing Cameron Spence, All Necessary Measures, 99-104. 36 Wiebes, Intelligence and the War, 184, 197. 37 “US used Islamists to arm Bosnians,” Guardian, April 22, 2002. Contrast the very different claim by Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies, 140: “The U.S. also blocked Iranian and al Qaeda influence in the country [bosnia].” 38 Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe, 39-41; citing Steve Coll and Steve LeVine, “Global Network Provides Money, Haven,” Washington Post, August 3, 1993. Cf. Schindler, Unholy Terror, 121-22. 39 Scott, Road to 9/11, 149-50; Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe, 45, 73-75. 40 Scott, Road to 9/11, 149. 41 Lawrence Wright: “Zawahiri decided to look for money in the world center of venture capitalism-Silicon Valley. He had been to America once before, in 1989, when he paid a recruiting visit to the mujahideen’s Services Bureau branch office in Brooklyn. According to the F.B.I., he returned in the spring of 1993, this time to Santa Clara, California, where he was greeted by Ali Mohamed, the double agent.” For more about Ali Mohamed, and specifically how the FBI once told the RCMP not to detain him (this freeing Mohamed to plan the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya), see Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11, 147-60. 42 Ottawa Citizen, December 15, 2001. 43 Sir Alfred Sherman, Speech at International Conference, America’s Intervention in the Balkans, February 28-March 2, 1997. html 44 Cf. Schindler, Unholy Terror, 74: Izetbegovic “decided to scrap the initiative, with the apparent encouragement of Warren Zimmermann [sic].” (Cf. 109-10). Zimmerman has denied that he so persuaded Izetbegovic, writing in a letter to the New York Times “that he had urged Izetbegovic to ‘stick by his commitments,’” (Steven L. Burg and Paul Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 114). 45 Washington Times, May 4, 1999. Frank Viviano, “Drugs Paying for Conflict in Europe,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 10, 1994: “Narcotics smuggling has become a prime source of financing for civil wars already under way — or rapidly brewing — in southern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, according to a report issued here this week. “The report, by the Paris-based Observatoire Geopolitique des Drogues, or Geopolitical Observatory of Drugs, identifies belligerents in the former Yugoslav republics and Turkey as key players in the region’s accelerating drugs-for-arms traffic. “Albanian nationalists in ethnically tense Macedonia and the Serbian province of Kosovo have built a vast heroin network, leading from the opium fields of Pakistan to black-market arms dealers in Switzerland, which transports up to $2 billion worth of the drug annually into the heart of Europe, the report says. More than 500 Kosovo or Macedonian Albanians are in prison in Switzerland for drug- or arms-trafficking offenses, and more than 1,000 others are under indictment.” 46 Michael Levine, New American, May 24, 1999; quoted in Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, The War on Truth, 41. 47 Ralf Mutschke, testimony to Committee on the Judiciary, December 13, 2000. 48 Sunday Times (London), March 12, 2000: “Agim Ceku, the KLA commander in the latter stages of the conflict, had established American contacts through his work in the Croatian army, which had been modernised with the help of Military Professional Resources Inc, an American company specialising in military training and procurement. This company’s personnel were in Kosovo, along with others from a similar company, Dyncorps [sic], that helped in the American-backed programme for the Bosnian army.” 49 David Hackworth, “Wanted: Guns for Hire,” Hackworth.com, July 9, 2001. Cf. James R. Davis, Fortune’s Warriors: Private Armies and the New World Order, 112; P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors, 219. 50 Wiebes, Intelligence and the war in Bosnia 1992 – 1995, 190; Observer, November 5, 1995. J.M. Berger reports from declassified documents that MPRI’s contract with Bosnia was arranged via a private company headed by neocon Richard Perle: “Controversial neocon philosopher Richard Perle led an obscure nongovernmental organization tasked with hiring a private company to run the U.S. State Department’s “Train and Equip” program in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1996. Perle’s group, the “Acquisition Support Institute,” hired Military Professional Resources Inc., essentially a professional mercenary company nearly as controversial as Perle himself. It’s not at all clear what or whom is responsible for the Institute, or why a “non-governmental, non-profit organization” would be responsible for selecting the recipient of a massive State Department contract on one of the most sensitive issues of the day. Equipped with a collection of retired military officers, MPRI set itself up as a virtual extension of the U.S. government in both Croatia and Bosnia, as documented in an extensive set of Freedom of Information Act documents I will be publishing over the next several weeks. MPRI operatives were given the run of the country — receiving payments and arms from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Muslim countries, which underwrote operations to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. In many cases, these payments were brokered directly by the State Department. In some instances, funds and arms were routed into Bosnia without State’s explicit approval but often with its knowledge, as documented in the newly declassified records. Unauthorized assistance appears to have come from Pakistan, UAE and Turkey, among others.” (Richard Perle, MPRI and Bosnian Arms Shipments,” Intelwire, February 7, 2007). 51 Sir Alfred Sherman, “The Empire for the New Millenium?” The Centre for Peace in Balkans, May 22, 2000. 52 Cf. the cynical comments of the Swiss analytical group Zeit-Fragen: (Current Concerns, “Where’s the 8th Corridor?” September/October 2001): “By creating a trouble spot in Kosovo the USA is able to control Albania and with it the planned AMBO pipeline…. The USA is showing a conspicuous interest in controlling these strategic transport corridor links in the Balkans. They prohibited a project scheduled to be constructed through Serbia, and they offered Rumania 100 million dollars to move the route of the planned SEEL pipeline (South Eastern European Line) further north, to Hungary. The Italian firm ENI had planned this pipeline project using existing pipeline infrastructure in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia. The USA bombarded the Yugoslavian section of this infrastructure with remarkable doggedness.” 53 Michael Levine, New American, May 24, 1999; quoted in Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, The War on Truth, 41. 54 For details, see Scott, American War Machine, 84, 123, 151, etc.; Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 167. 55 Peter Klebnikov, “Heroin Heroes,” Mother Jones, January/February 2000. Clinton at the same time mounted a vigorous campaign against Colombian heroin, increasing the demand for Afghan heroin. As Klebnikov noted, “some White House officials fear Kosovar heroin could replace the Colombian supply. ‘Even if we were to eliminate all the heroin production in Colombia, by no means do we think there would be no more heroin coming into the United States,’ says Bob Agresti of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. ‘Look at the numbers. Colombia accounts for only six percent of the world’s heroin. Southwest Asia produces 75 percent.’” 56 Patrick Graham, “Drug Wars: Kosovo’s New Battle,” National Post, April 13, 2000. 57 Schindler, Unholy Terror, 324. Cf. Cristopher Deliso, The Coming Balkan Caliphate (New York: Praeger, 2007). 58 Scott, Road to 9/11, 152-53; citing Paul L. Williams, Al Qaeda, 117; Boston Globe, February 3, 1995, “Figure Cited in Terrorism Case Said to Enter U.S. with CIA Help.” 59 Bergen, Holy War, Inc., 67; cf. Williams, Al Qaeda, 117. 60 Scott, Road to 9/11, 154-56, 160. Cf. Robert L. Friedman, “The CIA and the Sheikh,” Village Voice, March 30, 1993: “As Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, put it: “One of the big problems here is that many suspects in the World Trade Center bombing were associated with the Mujahadeen. And there are components of our government that are absolutely disinterested in following that path because it leads back to people we supported in the Afghan war.” 61 Scott, Road to 9/11, 156-57; citing J.M. Berger, Ali Mohamed: An Intelwire Sourcebook, 235-36. 62 Estanislao Oziewicz and Tu Thanh Ha, “Canada freed top al-Qaeda operative,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), November 22, 2001. A Lexis-Nexis search for “Ali Mohamed” + Vancouver yields no relevant entries. 63 Patrick Fitzgerald, Testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Twelfth Public Hearing, June 16, 2004. 64 Peter Lance, Triple Cross, 274-77. 65 United States District Court, Southern District of New York, “United States of America v. Ali Mohamed,” S (7) 98 Cr. 1023, October 20, 2000, link, 17; in J.M. Berger, Ali Mohamed, 294. 66 United States District Court, Southern District of New York, “United States of America v. Ali Mohamed,” S(7) 98 Cr. 1023, 27; in Berger, Ali Mohamed, 304. 67 FBI agent Jack Cloonan, summarizing a post-9/11 interview with Ali Mohamed, in William F. Jasper, “Unleashing a Terrorist,” New American, November 26, 2007. Cf. Lance, Triple Cross, 382. 68 Paul Joseph Watson, “U.S. Attacks Iran Via CIA-Funded Jundullah Terror Group,” NOW Observer, October 20, 2009.