The CIA's Family Jewels

[Guest David Guyatt]

Prior to reading the articles, one might assume it has something to do with measuring magnetic fields. The 'cryogenic' implies a supercooling which makes for efficiency. The articles seem to refer to cryogenic magnetometers as a means of isolating rock samples from the earths magnetic field and measuring to a fine degre the rock's magnetic properties.

Applying this to humans in a usual CMM seems impossible because of the scale. However if one looks up Dr Will. Reich, a contemporary of Jung and Freud and looks at the FDA treatment of Reich and his 'Orgone accumulator' which was an attempt to isolate a human from all electromagnetic waves, and marries that with the shielding properties of a CMM it's possible someone was doing some experiments on an advanced type of 'Orgone accumulator'. Reich was not approved of by the US establishment as he had a rather radical outlook upon mental health and sexuality. However, while he died in prison as a result of FDA actions and his laboratory and equipment destroyed and his notes presumably taken, there may have been a thread in the MKULTRA program that saw a reason to continue and expand on the isolation component of his work. Particularly(from memory) as Reich spent some time in the USSR.

ie the use of the term 'cryogenic magnetometer' may just be a description wrongly used of an adapted component of such an isolation experiment?

I wonder if this somehow connects to the developed electro-magnetic technology that is able to remotely read human thoughts (remote technological thought inference)?

David

[Mark Johansson]

Mark: "The Swedish peace activists weren't paranoid. Now it is verified that the American intelligence agency, CIA, infiltrated the Swedish Vietnam movement. - Stockholm was a nest for agents, says Tore Forsberg, former chief of Säpo's counter espionage."

Mark, I don't know how old you are, but growing up in Sweden in the late sixties and early seventies, one could not miss that one had, in Olof Palme, a very respected and loved elected leader who was a thorn in the US military expeditions.

Palme marched with Ho.

Americans who deserted were welcome and given freedom to stay.

He supported Castro and Cuban Sovereignty.

I remember an influx of vietnamese kids in school. (First time I saw people with truly black hair.)

MLK was very respected.

re the Civil Right's fighting going on and the Anti War movement, I remember reading stories in the paper of rightwingers in the USA torching Saabs and Volvos.

We had bomb shelter practice and regular air raid warning tests. As a neutral country that supported all countries right to fight for their sovereignty and to have the strength to do so, and Swedens particular support and involvement in the U.N. (see Congo for example) certainly makes the notions of CIA infiltration and the later Contra connections re the Palme murder easy to assimilate.

My speculations aren’t based on anything, but I think that the Palme murder is not as advanced as we try to make it. Most of the Swedes know that Palme leaned towards the communist way, but I don’t think he was such threat for the CIA, in order to be killed. We are a coward country, and we wouldn’t associate with communist countries that would jeopardize our safety.

I strongly believe that Pettersson, unaware, should intimidate, what he believed was Sigge Cedergren, and shot Palme of pure surprise and shock.

One must remember, Lisbeth Palme has always maintained that Pettersson was the assailant.

Johansson

[John Dolva]

Mark, Palme stood for the UN, the non aligned movement, and sovereignty, and in equality in military strength that would allow for a real defensive posture for any nation. IE anti-superpower dominance. As well as nuclear disarmament.

Sweden must have changed for you to say it's 'cowardly'. It's certainly polite and into peace. Something like over two hundred years since being at war. AFAIK it has a very modern well trained independent defensive armed force, and a significant participator in UN peace keeping. It often takes stands on issues that superpowers would have otherwise.

Palme in fact took an equally strong anti communist alliance as his anti US alliance. Neutral. No ones football.

He was however pro sovereignty with regards to weaker nations which often meant supporting nations fighting for independence like Vietnam and Cuba, as well as supporting the ANC struggle in South Africa, support for the Kurds, a free Namibia, the Congo, and one can see that as a pro communist stance or a pro independence stance. A social democrat he certainly was, and his party a part of the second international, as many western solcial democratic parties were/are.

At the same time he let the USSR know in no uncertain terms that Sweden stood ready to defend it's neutrality from any show of force from there. AFAIK during the height of the cold war the Swedish Saab Viggen was the most advanced short range fighter in the world by far, and a superiority in armament and training is an ongoing policy.

Please correct me if this is no longer so.

Edited July 2, 2007 by John Dolva

[Mark Johansson]

Mark, Palme stood for the UN, the non aligned movement, and sovereignty, and in equality in military strength that would allow for a real defensive posture for any nation. IE anti-superpower dominance. As well as nuclear disarmament.

Sweden must have changed for you to say it's 'cowardly'. It's certainly polite and into peace. Something like over two hundred years since being at war. AFAIK it has a very modern well trained independent defensive armed force, and a significant participator in UN peace keeping. It often takes stands on issues that superpowers would have otherwise.

Palme in fact took an equally strong anti communist alliance as his anti US alliance. Neutral. No ones football.

He was however pro sovereignty with regards to weaker nations which often meant supporting nations fighting for independence like Vietnam and Cuba, as well as supporting the ANC struggle in South Africa, support for the Kurds, a free Namibia, the Congo, and one can see that as a pro communist stance or a pro independence stance. A social democrat he certainly was, and his party a part of the second international, as many western solcial democratic parties were/are.

At the same time he let the USSR know in no uncertain terms that Sweden stood ready to defend it's neutrality from any show of force from there. AFAIK during the height of the cold war the Swedish Saab Viggen was the most advanced short range fighter in the world by far, and a superiority in armament and training is an ongoing policy.

Please correct me if this is no longer so.

John,

Everything you’re saying is correct, don’t get me wrong. It’s just feels too complex that the CIA would terminate a leader in a small country like Sweden, since we don’t make any noise. Who knows, maybe he was a bigger threat than I expected.

I would categorize Palme’s murder with Anna Lind’s, killed by a psychopath who had no clue what they were doing. But, who am I to say who did it, I’m just speculating.

As to a cowardly country, we let the Nazis through Sweden to Finland, while the king saluted them. Thus, prevent us from getting mixed up in the war, although disgrace us. I wouldn’t have let them into our country in the first place. Hey, that’s just me.

Johansson

[John Dolva]

True, that would be a shameful event.

At the same time, from Denmark, Norway, and Finland, and other countries, Jews found refuge.

Raoul Wallenberg: Set up neutral "Swedish Zones" in Hungary. Handed out very large numbers of papers making Jews Swedish subjects.

"Raoul Wallenberg belongs — or belonged — to one of the most famous families in Sweden, the large Wallenberg family. It is a family that has contributed to Sweden bankers, diplomats and politicians during several generations. Raoul's father, Raoul Oscar Wallenberg, was an officer in the navy, and cousin to Jacob and Marcus Wallenberg, two of Sweden's most famous bankers and industrialists. Raoul was born August 4, 1912, three months after his father's death. His mother, Maj Wising Wallenberg, remarried Fredrik von Dardel in 1918."

"The marching Jews could be counted in the thousands along never-ending rows of starving and tortured people. Raoul Wallenberg was in place all the time to hand out protective passes, food and medicine. He threatened and he bribed until he managed to free those with Swedish passes."

"When Eichmann's killers transported the Jews in full trains, Wallenberg intensified his rescue efforts. He even climbed the train wagons, stood on the tracks, ran along the wagon roofs, and stuck bunches of protective passes down to the people inside. The German soldiers were ordered to open fire, but were so impressed by Wallenberg's courage that they deliberately aimed too high. Wallenberg could jump down unharmed and demand that the Jews with passes should leave the train together with him."

"The second week of January 1945 Raoul Wallenberg found out that Eichmann planned a total massacre in the largest ghetto. The only one who could stop it was general August Schmidthuber who was commander-in-chief for the German troops in Hungary.

Wallenberg's ally Szalay was sent to deliver a note to Schmidthuber explaining that Raoul Wallenberg would make sure that the general would be held personally responsible for the massacre and that he would be hanged as a war criminal after the war. The massacre was stopped at the last minute thanks to Wallenberg's action."

"According to Per Anger, Wallenberg's friend and colleague, Wallenberg must be honored with saving at least 100,000 Jews.

...

Whether Raoul Wallenberg is alive or not is uncertain. The Russians claim that he died in Russian captivity on July 17, 1947. A number of testimonies indicate, however, that he was alive and that he still could be alive."

As far as Palmes murder goes, who knows?

A look at Oliver North/Contras/Bofors/Italian Intelligence paints a different picture. If true it removed a possible major stumbling block to Reagans 'freedom fighters' in Nicaragua (Contras, freedom fighters: Goebblerish for Terrorists.)

Edited July 2, 2007 by John Dolva

[Guest David Guyatt]

My speculations aren’t based on anything, but I think that the Palme murder is not as advanced as we try to make it.

Johansson

No disrespect intended, but I disagree entirely.

There was South African involvement. SA intelligence, as corrupt and vicious as it was, used to be an ideal arms length contractor for this sort of thing. I have reasonably extensive files on things South African. The man who would know is General (or was it Brigadier? I can't remember off hand ) Mossie Myburgh who I seem to recall was effectionaley known as "The Sweeper" for reasons that are obvious.

But the name I have is who was responsible, is Craig Williamson of Longreach (Pty) Ltd. He was an old friend of one the guys I was chasing for years, Riian Stander, who claimed that Williamson (also an ex NIA spook) planned the murder. Williamson denied this (he would wouldn't he) but has confirmed that Stander worked for Longreach. Stander worked for lots of business fronts, in fact.

Also, I was told by a former CIA/DIA operative that the truth about Palme's assassination would never come out (there was a Swedish journalist at the time seeking info on the subject). This gentlemen knew of what he spoke, in my view.

David

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Here is a good article by James Carrol of Times owned Boston Globe. He wrote a very good book called House of War. It uses the construction of the Pentagon as a metaphor for the creation of the Military-Industrial-Complex. He is the son of the first head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/30/2242/

[John Simkin]

Here is a good article by James Carrol of Times owned Boston Globe. He wrote a very good book called House of War. It uses the construction of the Pentagon as a metaphor for the creation of the Military-Industrial-Complex. He is the son of the first head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/30/2242/

Thank you for the link. The article includes this passage:

This vision was immediately embodied in covert initiatives in the Middle East (Iran), Southeast Asia (Vietnam), and Latin America (Guatemala) that haunt the United States to this day. A vast, hidden apparatus was put in place, and a most effective alliance was quickly established with its exact equivalent behind the Iron Curtain. The world of Cold War espionage was commonly called a house of mirrors, but the real mirror imaging was of one side’s secret establishment by the other’s. The CIA and the KGB, precisely in their “clever . . . sophisticated” combat, sustained the conditions in which both could thrive. Each acted as the avant-garde of a burgeoning military establishment.

But that last Doolittle recommendation was never implemented — getting the American people to understand and support “this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.” Instead, the CIA’s culture of secrecy was programmed to hide as much from the US public as from any foreign entity, on the theory that the public would not tolerate unethical and illegal activity. That is why one of the Cold War era abuses revealed last week involved assaults on American journalism — the absurdly dubbed Operation Mockingbird. (The Times cited a document naming my father, General Joseph Carroll, as one of its perpetrators, but that is another story.)

The irony, of course, is that the CIA, which has almost always been wrong about America’s enemies, has been proven wrong, in the end, about the American public. When the national security establishment’s most heinous acts are laid bare — whether through the Church Committee Hearings in the 1970s or in the release of the “family jewels” last week — the revelations are greeted with a national yawn. The monstrous military establishment, which intelligence crimes protect, is not questioned.

Why are the congressional switchboards not jammed with angry phone calls of dishonored Americans? Except for an ineffectual, if passionate, minority of objectors, the people of the United States handle the knowledge of past and present crimes committed in their name quite nicely, thank you. Ah, but there’s the darkest secret of all.

[Sid Walker]

Fidel's take on the Family Jewels...

The Killing Machine by Fidel Castro Ruz

June 30, 2007

(published in Cuba on Sunday, July 1, 2007. Translation by Prensa Latina)

Sunday is a good day to read something that would appear to be science fiction.

It was announced that the CIA would be declassifying hundreds of pages on illegal actions that included plans to eliminate the leaders of foreign governments. Suddenly the publication is halted and it is delayed one day. No coherent explanation was given. Perhaps someone in the White House looked over the material.

The first package of declassified documents goes by the name of "The Family Jewels"; it consists of 702 pages on illegal CIA actions between 1959 and 1973. About 100 pages of this part have been deleted. It deals with actions that were not authorized by any law, plots to assassinate other leaders, experiments with drugs on human beings to control their minds, spying on civil activists and journalists, among other similar activities that were expressly prohibited.

The documents began to be gathered together 14 years after the first of the events took place, when then CIA director, James Schlesinger became alarmed about what the press was writing, especially all the articles by Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein published in The Washington Post, already mentioned in the "Manifesto to the People of Cuba". The agency was being accused of promoting spying in the Watergate Hotel with the participation of its former agents Howard Hunt and James McCord.

In May 1973, the Director of the CIA was demanding that "all the main operative officials of this agency must immediately inform me on any ongoing or past activity that might be outside of the constituting charter of this agency". Schlesinger, later appointed Head of the Pentagon, had been replaced by William Colby. Colby was referring to the documents as "skeletons hiding in a closet". New press revelations forced Colby to admit the existence of the reports to interim President Gerald Ford in 1975. The New York Times was denouncing agency penetration of antiwar groups. The law that created the CIA prevented it from spying inside the United States.

That "was just the tip of the iceberg", said then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Kissinger himself warned that "blood would flow" if other actions were known, and he immediately added: "For example, that Robert Kennedy personally controlled the operation for the assassination of Fidel Castro". The President's brother was then Attorney General of the United States. He was later murdered as he was running for President in the 1968 elections, which facilitated Nixon's election for lack of a strong candidate. The most dramatic thing about the case is that apparently he had reached the conviction that Jack Kennedy had been victim of a conspiracy. Thorough investigators, after analyzing the wounds, the caliber of the shots and other circumstances surrounding the death of the President, reached the conclusion that there had been at least three shooters. Solitary Oswald, used as an instrument, could not have been the only shooter. I found that rather striking. Excuse me for saying this but fate turned me into a shooting instructor with a telescopic sight for all the Granma expeditionaries. I spent months practicing and teaching, every day; even though the target is a stationary one it disappears from view with each shot and so you need to look for it all over again in fractions of a second.

Oswald wanted to come through Cuba on his trip to the USSR. He had already been there before. Someone sent him to ask for a visa in our country's embassy in Mexico but nobody knew him there so he wasn't authorized. They wanted to get us implicated in the conspiracy. Later, Jack Ruby, – a man openly linked to the Mafia – unable to deal with so much pain and sadness, as he said, assassinated him, of all places, in a precinct full police agents.

Subsequently, in international functions or on visits to Cuba, on more than one occasion I met with the aggrieved Kennedy relatives, who would greet me respectfully. The former president's son, who was a very small child when his father was killed, visited Cuba 34 years later. We met and I invited him to dinner.

The young man, in the prime of his life, and well brought up, tragically died in an airplane accident on a stormy night as he was flying to Martha's Vineyard with his wife. I never touched on the thorny issue with any of those relatives. In contrast, I pointed out that if the president-elect had then been Nixon instead of Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs disaster we would have been attacked by the land and sea forces escorting the mercenary expedition, and both countries would have paid a high toll in human lives. Nixon would not have limited himself to saying that victory has many fathers and defeat is an orphan. For the record, Kennedy was never too enthusiastic about the Bay of Pigs adventure; he was led there by Eisenhower's military reputation and the recklessness of his ambitious vice-president.

I remember that, exactly on the day and minute he was assassinated, I was speaking in a peaceful spot outside of the capital with French journalist Jean Daniel. He told me that he was bringing a message from President Kennedy. He said to me that in essence he had told him: "You are going to see Castro. I would like to know what he thinks about the terrible danger we just experienced of a thermonuclear war. I want to see you again as soon as you get back." "Kennedy was very active; he seemed to be a political machine", he added, and we were not able to continue talking as someone rushed in with the news of what had just happened. We turned on the radio. What Kennedy thought was now pointless.

Certainly I lived with that danger. Cuba was both the weakest part and the one that would take the first strike, but we did not agree with the concessions that were made to the United States. I have already spoken of this before.

Kennedy had emerged from the crisis with greater authority. He came to recognize the enormous sacrifices of human lives and material wealth made by the Soviet people in the struggle against fascism. The worst of the relations between the United States and Cuba had not yet occurred by April 1961. When he hadn't resigned himself to the outcome of the Bay of Pigs, along came the Missile Crisis. The blockade, economic asphyxiation, pirate attacks and assassination plots multiplied. But the assassination plots and other bloody occurrences began under the administration of Eisenhower and Nixon.

After the Missile Crisis we would have not refused to talk with Kennedy, nor would we have ceased being revolutionaries and radical in our struggle for socialism. Cuba would have never severed relations with the USSR as it had been asked to do. Perhaps if the American leaders had been aware of what a war could be using weapons of mass destruction they would have ended the Cold War earlier and differently. At least that’s how we felt then, when there was still no talk of global warming, broken imbalances, the enormous consumption of hydrocarbons and the sophisticated weaponry created by technology, as I have already said to the youth of Cuba. We would have had much more time to reach, through science and conscience, what we are today forced to realize in haste.

President Ford decided to appoint a Commission to investigate the Central Intelligence Agency. "We do not want to destroy the CIA but to preserve it", he said.

As a result of the Commission's investigations that were led by Senator Frank Church, President Ford signed an executive order which expressly prohibited the participation of American officials in the assassinations of foreign leaders.

The documents published now disclose information about the CIA-Mafia links for my assassination.

Details are also revealed about Operation Chaos, carrying on from 1969 for at least seven years, for which the CIA created a special squadron with the mission to infiltrate pacifist groups and to investigate "the international activities of radicals and black militants". The Agency compiled more than 300,000 names of American citizens and organizations and extensive files on 7,200 persons.

According to The New York Times, President Johnson was convinced that the American anti-War movement was controlled and funded by Communist governments and he ordered the CIA to produce evidence.

The documents recognize, furthermore, that the CIA spied on various journalists like Jack Anderson, performers such as Jane Fonda and John Lennon, and the student movements at Columbia University. It also searched homes and carried out tests on American citizens to determine the reactions of human beings to certain drugs.

In a memorandum sent to Colby in 1973, Walter Elder who had been executive assistant to John McCone, CIA Director in the early 1970s, gives information about discussions in the CIA headquarters that were taped and transcribed: "I know that whoever worked in the offices of the director were worried about the fact that these conversations in the office and on the phone were transcribed. During the McCone years there were microphones in his regular offices, the inner office, the dining room, the office in the East building, and in the study of his home on White Haven Street. I don't know if anyone is ready to talk about this, but the information tends to be leaked, and certainly the Agency is vulnerable in this case".

The secret transcripts of the CIA directors could contain a great number of "jewels". The National Security Archive is already requesting these transcripts.

A memo clarifies that the CIA had a project called OFTEN which would collect "information about dangerous drugs in American companies", until the program was terminated in the fall of 1972. In another memo there are reports that manufacturers of commercial drugs "had passed" drugs to the CIA which had been "refused due to adverse secondary effects".

As part of the MKULTRA program, the CIA had given LSD and other psycho-active drugs to people without their knowledge. According to another document in the archive, Sydney Gottlieb, a psychiatrist and head of chemistry of the Agency Mind Control Program, is supposedly the person responsible for having made available the poison that was going to be used in the assassination attempt on Patrice Lumumba.

CIA employees assigned to MHCHAOS – the operation that carried out surveillance on American opposition to the war in Vietnam and other political dissidents – expressed "a high level of resentment" for having been ordered to carry out such missions.

Nonetheless, there is a series of interesting matters revealed in these documents, such as the high level at which the decisions for actions against our country were taken.

The technique used today by the CIA to avoid giving any details is not the unpleasant crossed out bits but the blank spaces, coming from the use of computers.

For The New York Times, large censored sections reveal that the CIA still cannot expose all the skeletons in its closets, and many activities developed in operations abroad, checked over years ago by journalists, congressional investigators and a presidential commission, are not in the documents.

Howard Osborn, then CIA Director of Security, makes a summary of the "jewels" compiled by his office. He lists eight cases – including the recruiting of the gangster Johnny Roselli for the coup against Fidel Castro – but they crossed out the document that is in the number 1 place on Osborn’s initial list: two and a half pages.

"The No. 1 Jewel of the CIA Security Offices must be very good, especially since the second one is the list for the program concerning the assassination of Castro by Roselli," said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive who requested the declassification of "The Family Jewels" 15 years ago under the Freedom of Information Act.

It is notable that the administration which has declassified the least information in the history of the United States, and which has even started a process of reclassifying information that was previously declassified, now makes the decision to make these revelations.

I believe that such an action could be an attempt to present an image of transparency when the government is at an all time low rate of acceptance and popularity, and to show that those methods belong to another era and are no longer in use. When he announced the decision, General Hayden, current CIA Director, said: "The documents offer a look at very different times and at a very different Agency."

Needless to say that everything described here is still being done, only in a more brutal manner and all around the planet, including a growing number of illegal actions within the very United States.

The New York Times wrote that intelligence experts consulted expressed that the revelation of the documents is an attempt to distract attention from recent controversies and scandals plaguing the CIA and an Administration that is living through some of its worst moments of unpopularity.

The declassification could also be an attempt at showing, in the early stages of the electoral process that the Democratic administrations were as bad, or worse, than Mr. Bush's.

In pages 11 to 15 of the Memo for the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, we can read:

"In August 1960, Mr. Richard M. Bissell approached Colonel Sheffield Edwards with the objective of determining whether the Security Office had agents who could help in a confidential mission that required gangster-style action. The target of the mission was Fidel Castro.

"Given the extreme confidentiality of the mission, the project was known only to a small group of people. The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was informed and he gave it his approval. Colonel J. C. King, Head of the Western Hemisphere Division, was also informed, but all the details were deliberately concealed from officials of Operation JMWAVE. Even though some officials of Communications (Commo) and the Technical Services Division (TSD) took part in initial planning phases, they were not aware of the mission's purpose.

"Robert A. Maheu was contacted, he was informed in general terms about the project, and he was asked to evaluate whether he could get access to gangster-type elements as a first step for achieving the desired goal.

"Mr. Maheu informed that he had met with a certain Johnny Roselli on several occasions while he was visiting Las Vegas. He had only met him informally through clients, but he had been told that he was a member of the upper echelons of the 'syndicate' and that he was controlling all the ice machines on the Strip. In Maheu's opinion, if Roselli was in effect a member of the Clan, he undoubtedly had connections that would lead to the gambling racket in Cuba.

"Maheu was asked to get close to Roselli, who knew that Maheu was a public relations executive looking after national and foreign accounts, and tell him that recently he had been contracted by a client who represented several international business companies, which were suffering enormous financial losses in Cuba due to Castro. They were convinced that the elimination of Castro would be a solution to their problem and they were ready to pay $ 150,000 for a successful outcome. Roselli had to be made perfectly aware of the fact that the U.S. government knew nothing, nor could it know anything, about this operation.

"This was presented to Roselli on September 14, 1960 in the Hilton Plaza Hotel of New York City. His initial reaction was to avoid getting involved but after Maheu's persuasive efforts he agreed to present the idea to a friend, Sam Gold, who knew "some Cubans". Roselli made it clear that he didn't want any money for his part in all this, and he believed that Sam would do likewise. Neither of these people was ever paid with Agency money.

"During the week of September 25, Maheu was introduced to Sam who was living at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. It was not until several weeks after meeting Sam and Joe – who was introduced as courier operating between Havana and Miami – that he saw photos of these two individuals in the Sunday section of Parade. They were identified as Momo Salvatore Giancana and Santos Trafficante, respectively. Both were on the Attorney General's list of the ten most wanted. The former was described as the boss of the Cosa Nostra in Chicago and Al Capone's heir, and the latter was the boss of Cuban operations of the Cosa Nostra. Maheu immediately called this office upon learning this information.

"After analyzing the possible methods to carry out this mission, Sam suggested that they not resort to firearms but that, if they could get hold of some kind of deadly pill, something to be put into Castro's food or drink, this would be a much more effective operation. Sam indicated that he had a possible candidate in the person of Juan Orta, a Cuban official who had been receiving bribery payments in the gambling racket, and who still had access to Castro and was in a financial bind.

"The TSD (Technical Services Division) was requested to produce 6 highly lethal pills.

"Joe delivered the pills to Orta. After several weeks of attempts, Orta appears to have chickened out and he asked to be taken off the mission. He suggested another candidate who made several unsuccessful."

Everything that was said in the numerous paragraphs above is in quotes. Observe well, dear readers, the methods that were already being used by the United States to rule the world.

I remember that during the early years of the Revolution, in the offices of the National Institute for Agrarian Reform, there was a man working there with me whose name was Orta, who had been linked to the anti-Batista political forces. He was a respectful and serious man. But, it could only be him. The decades have gone by and I see his name once more in the CIA report. I can't lay my hands on information to immediately prove what happened to him. Accept my apologies if I involuntarily have offended a relative or a descendent, whether the person I have mentioned is guilty or not.

The empire has created a veritable killing machine that is made up not only of the CIA and its methods. Bush has established powerful and expensive intelligence and security super-structures, and he has transformed all the air, sea and land forces into instruments of world power that take war, injustice, hunger and death to any part of the globe, in order to educate its inhabitants in the exercise of democracy and freedom. The American people are gradually waking up to this reality.

"You cannot fool all of the people all of the time", said Lincoln.

Edited July 4, 2007 by Sid Walker

[Guest David Guyatt]

I genunely believe that if all the secretsbof the CIA were to be revealed, Washington would implode, such would be the resulting damage. That is why I also think the so called "Family Jewels" are made of paste and hung out to glitter and tempt but the real diamonds remain concealed in the safe.

David

[Michael Hogan]

I genunely believe that if all the secrets of the CIA were to be revealed, Washington would implode, such would be the resulting damage. That is why I also think the so called "Family Jewels" are made of paste and hung out to glitter and tempt but the real diamonds remain concealed in the safe.

I think it's likely many of the largest and most mysterious diamonds were never in the safe in the first place. They've long vanished; buried irretrievably in the graves alongside the men who created and coveted them.

[Guest David Guyatt]

I genunely believe that if all the secrets of the CIA were to be revealed, Washington would implode, such would be the resulting damage. That is why I also think the so called "Family Jewels" are made of paste and hung out to glitter and tempt but the real diamonds remain concealed in the safe.

I think it's likely many of the largest and most mysterious diamonds were never in the safe in the first place. They've long vanished; buried irretrievably in the graves alongside the men who created and coveted them.

Perhaps Michael, but I've long believed that there is a extra secret wing of the CIA archives that I once called the "Erle Cocke Jr Memorial Lost Records Centre", named after the deceased General Erle Cocke of Nugan Hand bank fame. When I FOIA's the CIA for records on Cocke, who very clearly was extremely close to the CIA -- I was told that he "belonged to the same church" as two others I was investigating. This was an allusion to "Christians in Africa" or just "Christians" for short. In fact Cocke admitted closeness in an extensive affidavit I published that he made shortly before his death about Project Hammer. But the good old boys just wrote back saying that "no records responsive to your request could be found". Well, if your eyes are squeezed wide shut behind a pair of tropical sunglasses in a pitch black room at midnight without the aid of a flashlight then you're damn sure not to find anything.

[John Simkin]

I genunely believe that if all the secrets of the CIA were to be revealed, Washington would implode, such would be the resulting damage. That is why I also think the so called "Family Jewels" are made of paste and hung out to glitter and tempt but the real diamonds remain concealed in the safe.

I think it's likely many of the largest and most mysterious diamonds were never in the safe in the first place. They've long vanished; buried irretrievably in the graves alongside the men who created and coveted them.

One possibility is that the CIA/FBI archive contains false documents. My nightmare is that the CIA/FBI documents are eventually released and they will appear to show that Oswald was working for Castro/KGB.

[John Simkin]

Interesting comment in the Castro article:

In a memorandum sent to Colby in 1973, Walter Elder who had been executive assistant to John McCone, CIA Director in the early 1970s, gives information about discussions in the CIA headquarters that were taped and transcribed: "I know that whoever worked in the offices of the director were worried about the fact that these conversations in the office and on the phone were transcribed. During the McCone years there were microphones in his regular offices, the inner office, the dining room, the office in the East building, and in the study of his home on White Haven Street. I don't know if anyone is ready to talk about this, but the information tends to be leaked, and certainly the Agency is vulnerable in this case". The secret transcripts of the CIA directors could contain a great number of "jewels". The National Security Archive is already requesting these transcripts.

[Tim Gratz]

Fidel wrote:

"The irony, of course, is that the CIA, which has almost always been wrong about America's enemies, has been proven wrong, in the end, about the American public. When the national security establishment's most heinous acts are laid bare — whether through the Church Committee Hearings in the 1970s or in the release of the "family jewels" last week — the revelations are greeted with a national yawn. The monstrous military establishment, which intelligence crimes protect, is not questioned." [Emphasis supplied.]

Well certainly one reason for the yawn could be that there seems to be little if anything new in the documents that did not come out in the Church Committee hearings thirty years ago. It all seems like pretty old news.

It is interesting however that the documents do not (unless I missed it) relate to assassination attempts other than those involving the Mafia. For instance, what abouit the 1960 attempt with Mario Tauler Sague? Or the 1961 attempt in which a fugitive was found on the Odios' estate? How many of these attempts were sponsored or assisted by the CIA?

Edited July 5, 2007 by Tim Gratz