Don Bohning Writes of Simkin's Leftist Motivated Inaccuracues

[Guest Tom Scully]

Since June, 2008, Don Bohning has written two similar pieces. I've edited them to emphasize his criticism of his perception of John Simkin's

political orientation and Bohning's accusations that Simkin, and apparently, other forum members, post inaccurate and misleading information

consistent with Bohning's perception of what constitutes leftist political ideology. I also included Bohning's descriptions of former CIA agents, Wilson and Goss:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=14262

The Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies (Volume 16 – Number 2 – Fall 2008)

Distorting History by Don Bohning

It has long been said that newspapers provide "the first rough draft of history." If that's the case, then the "worst draft of history" can often be found on the Internet. While some websites are reliable and valuable research tools, others can be tendentious advocates for a point of view, twisting or ignoring information that does not support that point of view.

One need look no further for the latter than two websites based in Great Britain, run by John Simkin, a former member of a militant leftwing organization, the politics of which are now rejected by the mainstream British Labor Party.

The two sites, http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ and a related, but badly misnamed, website called the Education Forum, are obviously more interested in promoting a political agenda than providing facts. Focusing on a purported conspiracy in the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, they are riddled with factual errors...

...Unfortunately for the sake of history, the only sources Simkin references - undocumented as they may be - are those that bolster his political agenda. Contrary and documented views, as I have personally discovered, are ignored....

...Apart from Operation 40, Simkin's website contains various individual biographies, all containing factual errors of people often linked by conspiracy buffs to the Kennedy assassination, among them Goss, Carl Jenkins and Rafael Quintero.

There are 15 pages devoted to Goss, including a two page opening biography and the rest an accumulation of excerpts from mostly obscure sources that generally echo Simkin's own radical views.....

....As inaccurate and misinformed as the Simkin website is on Goss, it pales in comparison to the fantasies he has manufactured when it comes to Rafael Quintero, whom I got to know quite well in researching my book. As with Goss and others, after providing a short biography of his "victim," Simkin follows it with several pages of background information excerpted from publicly available material, but only that which supports his own political agenda......

...Again, distorting the facts, the Simkin website says in 1976 Quintero was recruited by rogue CIA agent Edwin Wilson to assassinate a Libyan dissident in Egypt and that he (Quintero) recruited Rafael and Raul Villaverde - two Cuban exile brothers - to help. That much is true, but the rest of what the Simkin website offers in its brief paragraph on the subject is an obvious attempt to link the Libyan assassination plot to the February 21, 1976 assassination in Washington, D.C., of Orlando Letelier, a prominent Chilean dissident. There was no connection between the two. From the Simkin website: "Four days before the assassination of Orlando Letelier, the Villaverde brothers returned to the United States. On 21st September, the day that Letelier was killed, Wilson phoned Quintero in Miami to call off the operation."

The real facts - which Simkin chooses to ignore - are that at the time Wilson approached Quintero, both had been working for Task Force 157, a maritime spy operation run by U.S. Naval intelligence. Wilson had been Quintero's case officer. The man Wilson wanted assassinated was not named, although Quintero believed it to be Carlos Ramirez Sanchez, better known as "The Jackal," an international hit man. Quintero also believed he was working for the U.S. government. Quintero and the Villaverde brothers flew to Geneva, where they met Wilson and Frank Terpil, a rouge CIA agent and arms dealer who eventually found sanctuary in Cuba.

In Geneva, Quintero and the Villaverde brothers were told the target was a Libyan dissident, who Wilson wanted eliminated on behalf of Libyan strongman Muamar Quaddafi, to whom Wilson had provided arms. After a heated argument, and discovering that the assassination was not a U.S. government operation, Quintero and the Villaverde brothers returned to the United States. Quintero then reported the incident to Clines, his former case officer. Wilson was eventually convicted and sentenced to prison. There was never any evidence that Quintero or the Villaverde brothers had anything to do with Letelier's assassination or that the two events were in any way related. (23)....

.....Unfortunately, the distortions of history cited above regarding individuals and events I am familiar with, are probably only a small fraction to be found, not only on Simkin's websites, but on a vast number of others. The tragedy is that Simkin, and others like him who are interested only in promoting their own political point of view and ignoring any evidence that might contradict it, are doing a great disservice to the historical record. More serious researchers need to be aware of such charlatans.

Don Bohning, a former Latin America editor at The Miami Herald, is author of The Castro Obsession: US Covert Operations Against Cuba 1959-1965. Potomac Books, Washington, DC, 2005.

http://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2008/06/simkin.html

11 June 2008

Indoctrination U

In the guise of education, John Simkin’s website delivers agitprop.

By Don Bohning

...As for Simkin, he presents himself as a history teacher and prolific author of books about a diverse number of subjects—which he is, although his short books are mostly self-published.[3]

An innocent student who stumbles onto Spartacus Educational would probably think the Google description is apt, and be impressed by Simkin’s credentials. It takes a little digging to figure out Simkin is much more interested in indoctrination than education, in keeping with his unreconstructed left-wing views. Simkin exemplifies the kind of militant socialists, once peculiar to the Labour Party, who were all but run out of that party by former Prime Minister Tony Blair.....

.. Goss, of course, actually was a CIA officer from 1962 to 1972, and worked for a 2-3 months in the Miami station during the Cuban missile crisis, primarily as a photo-interpreter. Several years after he left the agency he became a Republican congressman from Florida. He served eight terms before resigning from Congress, and his chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee, to serve as CIA director from 2004 to 2006.

Goss was provided with a copy of the photograph featured on Simkin’s website. In a telephone interview, Goss not only said that he had “never heard of Operation 40,” but declared, with some vehemence, that the “Goss” identified in the photo is “categorically, decisively, and completely . . . not me.”[22] Simkin’s website biography of Goss contains other errors, but to point them out would belabor the obvious.

Spartacus Educational is not dedicated to spreading accurate historical knowledge, but diffusing John Simkin’s tired ideology.....

Don Bohning, a former Latin America editor at The Miami Herald, is author of The Castro Obsession, Potomac Books, 2005.

Don Bohning neglected, in both pieces, to reveal to readers that he was secretly employed and dispatched by the CIA:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...st&p=166211

Bohning makes his blame filled references to "left wing views", so similar to the description in this recent commentary:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/200...ions/index.html

Karl Rove on torture prosecutions:

It is now clear that the Obama White House didn't think before it tried to appease the hard left of the Democratic Party.

Gloria Borger on Karl Rove:

When Rove speaks, the political class pays attention -- usually with good reason.

Chuck Todd on Obama's concession that the DOJ decides whether to prosecute:

There does seem to be a little bit of a reaction to how this was received on the left. . . frankly this feels like a political food fight now. . .. The hard left, the hard right, fighting over this in the blogosphere.

Chris Matthews on the same topic:

This whole torture debate is likely to tell us a lot about the kind of president Barack Obama intends to be. Will he buckle to the left, the netroots, and pursue an investigation into torture having said he didn't want to? Or will he go post-partisan and leave the past to the historians?

(1) Any policy that Beltway elites dislike is demonized as coming from "the Left" or -- in this case (following Karl Rove) -- the "hard Left." Media stars recite that claim regardless of how widely accepted the belief is in American public opinion and regardless of whether there is anything "leftist" about the view in question. For years, withdrawing from Iraq was demonized as the view of the "left" even though large majorities of Americans favored it.

Identically, roughly 40% of Americans favor criminal prosecutions for Bush officials -- even before release of the OLC memos -- and large majorities favor investigations generally. The premise of those who advocate prosecutions is the definitively non-ideological view that political elites should be treated exactly like ordinary Americans when they break the law and commit serious crimes. Individuals such as Gen. Antonio Taguba, Gen. Barry McCaffrey and former CIA officer Robert Baer advocate investigations and/or prosecutions of Bush officials. But no matter: the Beltway opposes the idea, and it is therefore dismissed by media stars as coming from the "Hard Left."

Don Bohning, a self professed champion of accuracy and a critic of left oriented ideologically driven distortion, described Edwin P Wilson as a "rogue CIA agent", "convicted of his crimes". Bohning does not tell us that powerful CIA counsel and managers, along with officials of the DOJ, were found to have framed

Wilson and kept their crimes secret while Wilson rotted in federal prison for 22 years:

Reports from 2000 to 2003 were that the OPR at the DOJ would investigate this official misconduct in the prosecution and conviction of Edwin Wilson:

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22...ed=us&hl=en

Under the Bush regime, the Office of Professional Responsibility stopped reporting ANYTHING after 2005, and the OPR buried the Wilson investigation:

http://www.usdoj.gov/opr/reports.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_P._Wilson

Edwin P. Wilson (born 1928) was a former CIA officer who was convicted of illegally selling weapons to Libya. It was later found that the United States Department of Justice and the CIA had covered up evidence in the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_P._Wilson#Legal_defense

Legal defense

Wilson's defence to the Libyan charges was that he was working at the behest of the CIA. The CIA gave the DOJ an affidavit stating that after his retirement he had not been employed directly or indirectly by the agency. The CIA later informed the DOJ that it should not use the affidavit at trial, but the prosecutor Ted Greenberg decided to use it anyway.

While in prison, Wilson campaigned vigorously for his innocence and repeatedly filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the government. Eventually he found information linked to the memo and hired a new lawyer. His lawyer was David Adler, a former CIA agent who had clearance to view classified documents. Adler spent long hours poring through thousands of files and eventually found eighty incidents where Wilson met on a professional basis with the CIA and proof that the CIA had indirectly used Wilson after his retirement. A federal judge ruled that the prosecution had acted improperly. In October 2003, Wilson's conviction on the explosives charge was thrown out. Wilson was released from prison on Sept. 14, 2004, after being incarcerated for 27 years.

[edit] Civil Action

Wilson filed a civil suit against seven former federal prosecutors, two of whom are now federal judges, and a past executive director of the CIA. On 29 March 2007, U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal dismissed his case on the ground that all eight had immunity covering their actions.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciad...d_Wilson_1.html

Ed Wilson's Revenge

The Biggest CIA Scandal in History Has Its Feet in the Starting Blocks in a Houston Court House

January 2000

by Michael C. Ruppert

...............The Briggs Declaration

Charles A. Briggs was, on February 3, 1983, the third highest-ranking official at the Central Intelligence Agency. He was one of few men at CIA who could break through the compartments and search anywhere for records. He was the man to solve the problem in Houston. In Langley, Virginia, at 2:23 P.M., Houston time (according to a government teletype), Charles Briggs signed a declaration stating that on November 8th of 1982 he had authorized a search of all records of the CIA "for any material that in any way pertains to Edwin P. Wilson or the various allegations concerning his activities after 28 February 1971, when he resigned from the CIA."

Paragraph 4 of the Briggs Declaration states, "According to CIA records, with one exception while he was employed by Naval Intelligence in 1972, Mr. Edwin P. Wilson was not asked or requested, directly or indirectly, to perform or provide any services, directly or indirectly, for CIA."

At 2:30 P.M., Houston time, CIA General Counsel Stanley Sporkin certified the affidavit and affixed the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency to it. It was also notarized by a notary public licensed in Fairfax County, Virginia. Harold Fahringer, one of Wilson's attorneys was served with a copy of the affidavit at 3:55 P.M. Houston time - presumably in Houston. According to a partially declassified CIA memorandum, included in Wilson's filings, dated March 15, 1983 (40 days after Wilson's conviction), on the day and evening of February 3, 1983 "CIA attorneys stated to Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) Ted Greenberg that the Briggs affidavit should not be admitted into evidence as then written, and requested that Greenberg not introduce the affidavit.

"The signers of the affidavit further state that CIA General Counsel Stanley Sporkin stated that, at minimum, the word 'indirectly' should be removed from paragraph four of the Briggs affidavit.

The signers of the document further state in the document that AUSA Greenberg decided against complying with the CIA attorneys' requests described above."

Apparently, through the evening of February 3rd, the phone lines between Langley and Houston were smoking. FTW has interviewed a number of people close to the trial and none indicate that Ted Greenberg left Houston to retrieve the declaration. Stanley Sporkin knew that the affidavit was incorrect and so did a great many people at CIA. The Houston time apparently indicates that a copy was telexed to Wilson's lawyer and another copy was placed in the master DoJ case files in Houston. Larry Barcella has "no recollection" of being involved in those phone conversations. No phone logs listing participants in them have, as yet, been disclosed.....

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:jQg0JE...=clnk&gl=us

(page 15)

The court has identified about two dozen government lawyers who actively participated in the original non-disclosure to the defense, the false rebuttal testimony, and the refusal to correct it.

Governmental regularity—due process—requires personal and institutional

integrity. CIA attorneys told Assistant U.S. Attorney Ted Greenberg that the Briggs affidavit should not be used as evidence, as then written, and asked him not introduce it. He did.

CIA General Counsel Stanley Sporkin advised that, at minimum,the word

“indirectly” should be removed from paragraph four. Deliberately, knowing the

facts, Greenberg ignored the CIA attorneys' requests and used it. (Wilson Mot. to

Vacate, Ex. 98 ¶¶ 3-5.)

Although it admits that it presented false evidence at Wilson’s trial and

now lists solicitations and services he performed post-termination, the

governmentsaysthat Wilson has not proved that the prosecutors knew that it wasfalse. Persistence in this contention reveals that consistency is valued higher thanfidelity at the Department of Justice.

First, the government says that the prosecutors meant “taskings related to

the gathering of intelligence” where Briggs’s affidavit reads, “asked or requested directly or indirectly to perform or provide services.” (Gov't Answer at 54.)...

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost...e+Of+Arms+Deale

Inquiry In Case Of Arms Dealer; Justice to Probe Conduct of Prosecution

Nov 1, 2003

A federal judge in Houston this week overturned [Edwin P. Wilson]'s conviction for illegally selling explosives to Libya in the years after he left the agency, writing that the government "knowingly used false evidence" in Wilson's trial and his appeal. Justice Department and CIA lawyers concealed the fact that Wilson did work for the agency after he left its official employ, said U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes.

Hughes cited the government's decision to use at trial an affidavit from the CIA's executive director, Charles A. Briggs, showing that Wilson did not work for the agency "directly" or "indirectly" after leaving his job in 1971. Hughes found that the CIA had more than 80 contacts with Wilson in ensuing years and used him to gain intelligence about Libya, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The affidavit, Hughes wrote, was "nothing but a lie."

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Investigat...8779&page=1

When Justice Runs Amok

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

Published: April 27, 2005

There's nothing visually fancy about "The Traitor: The Edwin Wilson Story," tonight on ABC's "Nightline."

...During his trial Mr. Wilson admitted that he sold weapons and 20 tons of plastic explosives, but he said he was working for the C.I.A. at the time. In response, a high-ranking C.I.A. official produced an affidavit saying that Mr. Wilson "was not asked or requested" to "perform or provide any services, directly or indirectly, for C.I.A.," and Mr. Wilson was convicted.

While in prison - when he wasn't pacing and doing push-ups, which he says he did for hours in his cell to keep his sanity - Mr. Wilson requested government documents under the Freedom of Information Act. Finally, after 14 years, he came across what he needed: a memo called "Duty to Disclose Possibly False Testimony," in which Justice Department officials considered that the affidavit was bogus. At the top of the memo someone had written: "The affidavit is inaccurate."

David Adler, Mr. Wilson's lawyer, suggests on camera that the document had been released by the government inadvertently.

Saying "the government knowingly used false evidence against him," a federal judge, Lynn Hughes, overturned Mr. Wilson's conviction last Sept. 14. In his first interview since his release from prison seven months ago, Mr. Wilson laughs desolately at how he was once demonized as the most dangerous man in America.

The judge also wrote in his ruling: "In the course of American justice, one would have to work hard to conceive of a more fundamentally unfair process ... than the fabrication of false data by the government, under oath by a government official, presented knowingly by the prosecutor in the courtroom with the express approval of his superiors in Washington."

And the documentary goes so far as to allow Mr. Adler to assert that the erroneous conviction made the careers of Mr. Wilson's prosecutors.

Stanley Sporkin, who was the C.I.A. general counsel at the time, was appointed a federal judge, as were Steven Trott and D. Lowell Jensen, Justice Department officials involved in the case. Larry Barcella, another prosecutor, went on to investigate government corruption as an independent counsel. Mr. Greenberg is currently a senior counsel at the World Bank.

Each of these résumé statements is accompanied by an accusatory close-up of the man in question. What to think about them is left to the viewer. Likewise, the viewer is left with serious questions about the Wilson case, which is far from resolved at the end of the program. Consider just one: If Edwin Wilson was working for the C.I.A. when he sold weapons to Libya, why was the C.I.A. overseeing the sale of weapons to Libya? Despite the open questions, this is a simple, confident, low-dazzle documentary with no fear - a reason to watch "Nightline."......

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout...1139812,00.html

Monday, Dec. 12, 2005

A Rogue's Revenge

Disavowed by the CIA and jailed for 22 years, an ex-spy now wants someone to pay

By ADAM ZAGORIN

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/309675_spy30.html

Last updated March 29, 2007 11:21 p.m. PT

Ex-spy dealt setback in fight to clear name

A notorious former spy living in the Seattle area was dealt a blow Thursday in his efforts to show he was unfairly labeled a traitor, though he will keep fighting to clear his name.

A judge in Houston dismissed Edwin Wilson's lawsuit against seven former federal prosecutors -- including two who are now federal judges -- and a former executive director of the CIA. U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal found that even if the officials' behavior was improper when Wilson was sent to prison in the early 1980s, all eight legally have immunity from Wilson's claims of wrongdoing.

"I'm not giving up at all. I'm going all-out to win this thing," Wilson, 78, said Thursday. "This is just a minor setback."....

None of the above described crimes and abuses by CIA and DOJ against CIA, were committed by "leftists". They tend to create an impression that the Reagan administration, in office when Wilson was abused via trial and conviction, and the Bush administration, during which he sought investigation and justice, were periods of right oriented political domination, associated with lawlessness in the DOJ, executive branck, and at CIA......

Excerpts of news reports during the 2001 to 2009 period, dominated by right oriented political ideology in the house from 2001 tp 2007, the senate from 2003 to 2007, and in the executive branch from 2001 to 2009:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/20...use-cover_x.htm

Posted 5/2/2004 11:38 PM Updated 5/6/2004 12:04 PM

Turmoil mounts over abuse of Iraqi prisoners

By Bill Nichols and Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration scrambled Sunday to contain a burgeoning controversy over mistreatment and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops in Iraq.

...It was also learned that the CIA is investigating whether agency personnel played any role in the abuse.

A 53-page internal Army report obtained by The New Yorker magazine paints a more widespread pattern of abuse and contends that Iraqi detainees were subjected to "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. The magazine reports that the probe also found that U.S. military police at the prison, all reservists, were urged by Army military intelligence officers and CIA agents to "set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation." (Related item: More from The New Yorker)

Myers said he has not read the report prepared by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba and could not comment on the New Yorker account of its contents, written by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.

The human rights group Amnesty International said Sunday it had discovered a "pattern of torture" of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. and coalition troops. It called for an independent investigation, as did a leading group of Sunni Muslim clerics in Iraq.....

...A man who said he spent time in Abu Ghraib under both Saddam and the Americans told the Associated Press he preferred the dictator's torture to humiliation at the hands of the Americans. "They were trying ... to break our pride," Dhia al-Shweiri said.

A U.S. intelligence official with direct knowledge of the case said the CIA's inspector general has had two separate investigations underway for several months to learn whether the intelligence agency was involved in the abuse.

The official, who spoke only on the condition he not be identified, said CIA investigators are working with the Army to probe the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, including one who died. The official said the military was in charge of prisoner interrogations, but there were CIA personnel present "periodically."

"This is a really ugly story, and it can't be good for the situation in Iraq," the official said.

Maj. Gen. George Fay, the former deputy commander of the Army Intelligence and Security Command, is heading up the Pentagon review of the incidents.

Amnesty International questioned whether an investigation conducted by the military could be credible and said it had continued to receive allegations of mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi facilities as recently as the past month.

Hersh wrote that Taguba's report covers a period from October 2003 to December 2003, during which rampant abuse of Iraqi prisoners included the sexual assault of an Iraqi detainee with a chemical light stick or a broomstick.

The article said a separate report last November by Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, the Army's top law enforcement officer, found that military intelligence officers had not pressured military police to mistreat prisoners. Taguba, Hersh wrote, disagreed and found that prisoners were beaten and threatened with rape, electrocution and dog attacks to coerce them to talk, according to witnesses cited in the report.

The report allegedly put substantial blame on both military intelligence officers and private contractors working as translators. Hersh wrote that much of the abuse was sexual in nature, with detainees kept naked and compelled to perform actual and simulated sex acts — an act of degradation that has particular resonance in the Arab world, where Islamic law strongly condemns nudity and homosexuality...

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06...25fa_fact_hersh

The General’s Report

How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties.

by Seymour M. Hersh

June 25, 2007

...If there was a redeeming aspect to the affair, it was in the thoroughness and the passion of the Army’s initial investigation. The inquiry had begun in January, and was led by General Taguba, who was stationed in Kuwait at the time. Taguba filed his report in March. In it he found:

Numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees . . . systemic and illegal abuse.

Taguba was met at the door of the conference room by an old friend, Lieutenant General Bantz J. Craddock, who was Rumsfeld’s senior military assistant. Craddock’s daughter had been a babysitter for Taguba’s two children when the officers served together years earlier at Fort Stewart, Georgia. But that afternoon, Taguba recalled, “Craddock just said, very coldly, ‘Wait here.’ ” In a series of interviews early this year, the first he has given, Taguba told me that he understood when he began the inquiry that it could damage his career; early on, a senior general in Iraq had pointed out to him that the abused detainees were “only Iraqis.” Even so, he was not prepared for the greeting he received when he was finally ushered in.

“Here . . . comes . . . that famous General Taguba—of the Taguba report!” Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice. The meeting was attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.); and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials. Taguba, describing the moment nearly three years later, said, sadly, “I thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting.”

In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance about Abu Ghraib. “Could you tell us what happened?” Wolfowitz asked. Someone else asked, “Is it abuse or torture?” At that point, Taguba recalled, “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet.”...

...At best, Taguba said, “Rumsfeld was in denial.” Taguba had submitted more than a dozen copies of his report through several channels at the Pentagon and to the Central Command headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, which ran the war in Iraq. By the time he walked into Rumsfeld’s conference room, he had spent weeks briefing senior military leaders on the report, but he received no indication that any of them, with the exception of General Schoomaker, had actually read it. (Schoomaker later sent Taguba a note praising his honesty and leadership.) When Taguba urged one lieutenant general to look at the photographs, he rebuffed him, saying, “I don’t want to get involved by looking, because what do you do with that information, once you know what they show?”

Taguba also knew that senior officials in Rumsfeld’s office and elsewhere in the Pentagon had been given a graphic account of the pictures from Abu Ghraib, and told of their potential strategic significance, within days of the first complaint. ...

...Taguba said, “You didn’t need to ‘see’ anything—just take the secure e-mail traffic at face value.”

I learned from Taguba that the first wave of materials included descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees. Several of these images, including one of an Iraqi woman detainee baring her breasts, have since surfaced; others have not. (Taguba’s report noted that photographs and videos were being held by the C.I.D. because of ongoing criminal investigations and their “extremely sensitive nature.”) ...

Page=2

....“And, as a result, somebody just sent a secret report to the press, and there they are,” Rumsfeld said.

Taguba, watching the hearings, was appalled. He believed that Rumsfeld’s testimony was simply not true. “The photographs were available to him—if he wanted to see them,” Taguba said. Rumsfeld’s lack of knowledge was hard to credit. Taguba later wondered if perhaps Cambone had the photographs and kept them from Rumsfeld because he was reluctant to give his notoriously difficult boss bad news. But Taguba also recalled thinking, “Rumsfeld is very perceptive and has a mind like a steel trap. There’s no way he’s suffering from C.R.S.—Can’t Remember S**t. He’s trying to acquit himself, and a lot of people are lying to protect themselves.” It distressed Taguba that Rumsfeld was accompanied in his Senate and House appearances by senior military officers who concurred with his denials.

“The whole idea that Rumsfeld projects—‘We’re here to protect the nation from terrorism’—is an oxymoron,” Taguba said. “He and his aides have abused their offices and have no idea of the values and high standards that are expected of them. And they’ve dragged a lot of officers with them.”

Considering that the CIA is a clandestine service, it is amazing that there is so much available detail available related to interrogation and disappearing of young children of suspects who are themselves described as tortured and held secretly and indefinitely, especially during such a relatively few years time span:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/75524/output/print

The Road To September 11

It Was A Long Time Coming. For A Decade, America's Been Fighting A Losing Secret War Against Terror. A Newsweek Investigation Into The Missed Clues And Missteps In A Manhunt That Is Far From Over

NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Oct 1, 2001

....In part, that may be because the government of the United States helped create it. In the 1980s, the CIA secretly backed the mujahedin, the Islamic freedom fighters rebelling against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Arming and training the "Mooj" was one of the most successful covert actions ever mounted by the CIA. It turned the tide against the Soviet invaders. But there is a word used by old CIA hands to describe covert actions that backfire: "blowback." In the coming weeks, if and when American Special Forces helicopters try to land in the mountains of Afghanistan to flush out bin Laden, they risk being shot down by Stinger surface-to-air missiles provided to the Afghan rebels by the CIA. Such an awful case of blowback would be a mere coda to a long and twisted tragedy of unanticipated consequences. The tale begins more than 10 years ago, when the veterans of the Mooj's holy war against the Soviets began arriving in the United States--many with passports arranged by the CIA.

Bonded by combat, full of religious zeal, the diaspora of young Arab men willing to die for Allah congregated at the Al-Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., a dreary inner-city building that doubled as a recruiting post for the CIA seeking to steer fresh troops to the mujahedin. The dominant figures at the center in the late '80s were a gloomy New York City engineer named El Sayyid Nosair, who took Prozac for his blues, and his sidekick, Mahmud Abouhalima, who had been a human minesweeper in the Afghan war (his only tool was a thin reed, which he used as a crude probe). The new immigrants were filled not with gratitude toward their new nation, but by implacable hatred toward America, symbol of Western modernity that threatened to engulf Muslim fundamentalism in a tide of blue jeans and Hollywood videos. Half a world away, people who understood the ferocity of Islamic extremism could see the coming storm. In the late '80s, Pakistan's then head of state, Benazir Bhutto, told the first President George Bush, "You are creating a Frankenstein." But the warnings never quite filtered down to the cops and G-men on the streets of New York....

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?...i#a0901siddiqui

Late September 2001-March 2003: US Intelligence Fails to Catch Apparent Al-Qaeda Sleeper Agent with Ties to Saudi Embassy, KSM, and CIA Charity Front

In 1993, the Al-Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn, New York, disbanded after media reports revealed that it had ties to all of the 1993 WTC bombers as well as the CIA (see 1986-1993), but it quickly reappeared in Boston under the new name Care International. Counterterrorism expert Steven Emerson had warned the government of the name change since 1993 (see April 1993-Mid-2003). But apparently US investigators only start looking closely at Care International shortly after 9/11, when the FBI interviews several current and former employees. [Wall Street Journal, 11/21/2001] Around the same time, the Fleet National Bank in Boston files a “suspicious-activity report” (SARS) with the US Treasury Department about wire transfers from the Saudi Embassy in Washington to Aafia Siddiqui, a long-time member of the Al-Kifah Refugee Center and then Care International, and her husband Dr. Mohammed Amjad Khan. Fleet National Bank investigators discover that one account used by the Boston-area couple shows repeated on-line credit card purchases from stores that “specialize in high-tech military equipment and apparel.” Khan purchased body armor, night-vision goggles, and military manuals, and then sent them to Pakistan. The bank also investigates two transfers totaling $70,000 sent on the same day from the Saudi Armed Forces Account used by the Saudi Embassy at the Riggs Bank in Washington to two Saudi nationals living in Boston. One of the Saudis involved in the transfers lists the same Boston apartment number as Siddiqui’s. The bank then notices that Siddiqui regularly gives money to the Benevolence International Foundation, which will soon be shut down for al-alleged Qaeda ties. They also discover her connection to Al-Kifah. The bank then notices Siddiqui making an $8,000 international wire transfer on December 21, 2001, to Habib Bank Ltd., “a big Pakistani financial institution that has long been scrutinized by US intelligence officials monitoring terrorist money flows.” [Newsweek, 4/7/2003] In April or May 2002, the FBI questions Siddiqui and Khan for the first time and asks them about their purchases. [boston Globe, 9/22/2006] But the two don’t seem dangerous, as Siddiqui is a neuroscientist who received a PhD and studied at MIT, while Khan is a medical doctor. Plus they have two young children and Siddiqui is pregnant. There are no reports of US intelligence tracking them or watch listing them. Their whole family moves to Pakistan on June 26, 2002, but then Siddiqui and Khan get divorced soon thereafter. Siddiqui comes back to the US briefly by herself from December 25, 2002, to January 2, 2003. On March 1, 2003, Pakistan announces that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) has been captured (see March 1, 2003). Some days later, Siddiqui drives away from a family house in Pakistan and disappears. Some later media reports will claim that she is soon arrested by Pakistani agents but other reports will deny it. Reportedly, KSM quickly confesses and mentions her name as an al-Qaeda sleeper agent, working as a “fixer” for other operatives coming to the US. On March 18, the FBI puts out a worldwide alert for Siddiqui and her ex-husband Khan, but Khan has completely disappeared as well. Siddiqui will be arrested in Afghanistan in 2008 (see July 17, 2008). [Vanity Fair, 3/2005] The CIA will later report that Ali Abdul Aziz Ali (a.k.a. Ammar al-Baluchi), a nephew of KSM and a reputed financier of the 9/11 attacks, married Siddiqui not long before her disappearance. Furthermore, in 2002 he ordered Siddiqui to help get travel documents for Majid Kahn (no relation to Siddiqui’s first husband), who intended to blow up gas stations and bridges or poison reservoirs in the US. It will also be alleged that Siddiqui bought diamonds in Africa for al-Qaeda in the months before 9/11. [boston Globe, 9/22/2006] The Saudi Embassy will later claim that the wire transfers connected to Siddiqui were for medical assistance only and the embassy had no reason to believe at the time that anyone involved had any connection to militant activity. [Newsweek, 4/7/2003] Although Siddiqui seems to have ties with two key figures in the 9/11 plot and was living in Boston the entire time some 9/11 hijackers stayed there, there are no known links between her and any of the hijackers.....

http://web.archive.org/web/20070416115222/...03/19137-1.html

Woman Sought By FBI Reportedly Arrested In Pakistan

Neurologist Questioned By FBI For Alleged Al-Qaida Links

UPDATED: 12:57 p.m. CST April 3, 2003

U.S. intelligence officials are reportedly interrogating a Pakistani woman alleged to have moved funds and assisted with logistics planning for al-Qaida.

According to the Press Trust of India in an article published on its Web site Thursday, the woman has been identified as 31-year-old Aafia Siddiqui, who was being sought by U.S. officials last week along with two other men, including one whose last known address was in Miramar, Fla.

According to the PTI, Siddiqui was arrested in Karachi recently after returning from an overseas trip last month. The service quoted reports in the Boston Globe and Oklahama (TV) News Channel's Web site.

The FBI had issued a worldwide alert for Siddiqui, already said this ... a housewife and mother of three who holds a doctorate in neurological science and degrees from Braindeis University and M.I.T. ) Siddiqui reportedly lived in Boston with her husband for several years.

NBC News reported last week that senior U.S. officials that Siddiqui may be a so-called "fixer" for al-Qaida and not an actual member. According to those reports, Siddiqui may have been used by the organization move money and provide other logistical support. One official said, "The Intel indicates that she is tied to some very radical individuals in Pakistan." .....There was no word if her children, aged 6, 3 and 9 months, were with her.....

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/who...aafia_siddiqui/

Who's Afraid of Aafia Siddiqui?

She went to MIT and Brandeis, married a Brigham and Women's physician, made her home in Boston, cared for her children, and raised money for charities. Aafia Siddiqui was a normal woman living a normal American life. Until the FBI called her a terror

By Katherine Ozment

Originally published in Boston magazine, October 2004

...It was still dark on the morning of March 1, 2003, when Pakistani authorities arrested Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a known September 11 mastermind, at a Karachi safe house. The arrest made news around the world. It also presaged the extraordinary vanishing act of Aafia Siddiqui and her three small children.

"Apparently Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave up Aafia's name as being a major Al Qaeda operative," says Sharp. Asked how he could possibly have known her name if she were innocent of the FBI's claims against her, Sharp says Siddiqui's identity was likely stolen. "Aafia was, I think, probably a pretty naive and trusting person," Sharp says, "and my guess is it would be pretty easy for somebody who wanted to steal an identity to just steal it."

Because of the secretive nature of the interrogation, we may never know what, if anything, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said about Siddiqui. About a month after his capture in the spring of 2003, however, she disappeared. The last her mother remembers, Siddiqui was piling herself and her kids, then seven, five, and six months old, into a taxi headed to the train station, the first step of what she said was her planned trip to visit an uncle in Islamabad. Her mother said goodbye to her daughter and grandchildren -- and hasn't seen them since.

What happened to Aafia Siddiqui and her children that day is anyone's guess. Siddiqui's mother, Ismet, claims that a few days after Siddiqui's disappearance, a man on a motorcycle arrived at her house in a leather suit and helmet and told her Aafia was being held and that she should keep quiet if she ever wanted to see her daughter and grandchildren again. ...

http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/2008/08/...aafia-siddiqui/

August 14th, 2008

The case of Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui

Posted by: Sanjeev Miglani

Tags: Pakistan: Now or Never, Afghanistan, al Qaeda, Amnesty, CIA, Ghazni

Five years after she vanished from her parents’ home in Karachi along with her three children, Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui appeared in a New York court last week accused of trying to kill U.S. officers in Afghanistan

Accounts of her arrest and the shooting incident differ.

Siddiqui, 36, was arrested outside the governor’s office in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province on July 17 after police searched her handbag and found documents on making explosives, excerpts from the book “Anarchist’s Arsenal” and descriptions of New York City landmarks, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

The next day when U.S. soldiers and FBI agents went to question the U.S.-trained neuroscientist, she attacked them, the Justice Department said in a statement. She fired two shots using the rifle of one of the U.S.. army officers but nobody was hit. The officer then fired back at her, using his service pistol and at least one shot hit her, the Justice Department said.

Afghan police in Ghazni however, told a different story, according to a report filed by Reuters. Afghan police said officers searched Siddiqui after reports of her suspicious behaviour and found maps of Ghazni, including one of the governor’s house, and arrested her along with a teenage boy.

U.S. troops requested the woman be handed over to them, but the police refused, a senior Ghazni police officer said.

U.S. soldiers then proceeded to disarm the Afghan police at which point Siddiqui approached the Americans complaining of mistreatment by the police. The U.S. troops, the officer said, “thinking that she had explosives and would attack them as a suicide bomber, shot her and and took her”. The boy remained in police custody.

Whatever the circumstance, Siddiqui was then flown to New York where she appeared in a wheelchair, looking frail and, according to her lawyers, in urgent need of medical attention.

The case bears recounting, not just because Siddiqui is a MIT educated mother of three, but because it has roused strong passions especially in Pakistan.

Since the time of her disappearance in 2003 human rights groups have alleged Siddiqui had been taken into secret custody, one of thousands of Pakistanis who had disappeared in the U.S.-led war on al Qaeda and Taliban. They said they believed she was in Bagram, the U.S. air base in Afghanistan....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7544008.stm

Mystery of Siddiqui disappearance

Wednesday, 6 August 2008 09:06 UK

By Syed Shoaib Hasan

BBC News, Islamabad

Aafia Siddiqui, whom the US accuses of al-Qaeda links, vanished in Karachi with her three children on 30 March 2003.

The next day it was reported in local newspapers that a woman had been taken into custody on terrorism charges.

Initially, confirmation came from a Pakistan interior ministry spokesman.

But a couple of days later, both the Pakistan government and the FBI publicly denied having anything to do with her disappearance.

Two days after Aafia Siddiqui went missing, "a man wearing a motor-bike helmet" arrived at the Siddiqui home in Karachi, her mother told the BBC.

"He did not take off the helmet, but told me that if I ever wanted to see my daughter and grandchildren again, I should keep quiet," Ms Siddiqui's mother told me over the phone in 2003.

The mother also related the affair to other newspapers.

But the government continued to deny having anything to do with her daughter's disappearance....

....She added that every time she had met US officials, they had said they had never formally accused Aafia Siddiqui of being a terrorist.

Ex-security officials also point out that if Ms Siddiqui was detained for being a terror suspect, her ex-husband, who is free, should have been too.

Why, then, would Aafia Siddiqui have been arrested and kept in secret confinement for so long?

The answer may lie in her relationship with the family of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Aafia Siddiqui is said to have married Ali Abd'al Aziz Ali, one of his nephews following her divorce.

Although her family denies this, the BBC has been able to confirm it from security sources and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's family.

It is an open secret in Karachi, that any member of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's family deemed to be "a 1% threat to US security" is in American custody.

That may be the only "crime" that Aafia Siddiqui has committed.

In the eyes of US and Pakistani security officials, it was apparently too big to ignore.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/...aeda-chief.html

CIA holds young sons of captured al-Qa'eda chief

By Olga Craig

Last Updated: 1:26am GMT 09/03/2003

Two young sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11

attacks, are being used by the CIA to force their father to talk.

Yousef al-Khalid, nine, and his brother, Abed al-Khalid, seven, were taken into custody in

Pakistan last September when intelligence officers raided a flat in Karachi where their father

had been hiding.

He fled just hours before the raid but his two young sons, along with another senior al-Qa'eda

member, were found cowering behind a wardrobe in the apartment.

The boys have been held by the Pakistani

authorities but this weekend they were flown

to America where they will be questioned

about their father.

Last night CIA interrogators confirmed that

the boys were staying at a secret address

where they were being encouraged to talk

about their father's activities.

"We are handling them with kid gloves. After

all, they are only little children," said one

official, "but we need to know as much about

their father's recent activities as possible. We

have child psychologists on hand at all times

and they are given the best of care."

Their father, Mohammed, 37, is being

interrogated at the Bagram US military base in Afghanistan. He is being held in solitary

confinement and subjected to "stress and duress"-style interrogation techniques.....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/...--and-fast.html

'They will do what is needed to get the information - and fast'

The Americans have denied that they are using torture on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed but they have many other ways of making al-Qa'eda's No 3 talk, reports Olga Craig

By Olga Craig

Last Updated: 1:41AM GMT 09 Mar 2003

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/04/...s-in-one-month/

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Was Waterboarded 183 Times in One Month

...Note, the information comes from the CIA IG report which, in the case of Abu Zubaydah, is based on having viewed the torture tapes as well as other materials. So this is presumably a number that was once backed up by video evidence.

The same OLC memo passage explains how the CIA might manage to waterboard these men so many times in one month each (though even with these chilling numbers, the CIA's math doesn't add up).

...where authorized, it may be used for two "sessions" per day of up to two hours. During a session, water may be applied up to six times for ten seconds or longer (but never more than 40 seconds). In a 24-hour period, a detainee may be subjected to up to twelve minutes of water appliaction. See id. at 42. Additionally, the waterboard may be used on as many as five days during a 30-day approval period.

So: two two-hour sessions a day, with six applications of the waterboard each = 12 applications in a day. Though to get up to the permitted 12 minutes of waterboarding in a day (with each use of the waterboard limited to 40 seconds), you'd need 18 applications in a day. Assuming you use the larger 18 applications in one 24-hour period, and do 18 applications on five days within a month, you've waterboarded 90 times--still just half of what they did to KSM.....

....The IG Report noted that in some cases the waterboard was used with far greater frequency than initially indicated, see IG Report at 5, 44, 46, 103-04, and also that it was used in a different manner. See id. at 37 ("[T]he waterboard technique ... was different from the technique described in the DoJ opinion and used in the SERE training. The difference was the manner in which the detainee's breathing was obstructed. At the SERE school and in the DoJ opinion, the subject's airflow is disrupted by the firm application of a damp cloth over the air passages; the interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth in a controlled manner. By contrast, the Agency Interrogator ... applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee's mouth and nose. One of the psychologists/interrogators acknowledged that the Agency's use of the technique is different from that used in SERE training because it is "for real--and is more poignant and convincing.") [my emphasis]

Two children of Aafia Siddiqu and the two sons of Sheikh khalid Mohammed are described by press sources throughout the world as "missing" since 2003.

It does not appear that "leftists" have anything to do with these unlawful detentions......

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/washingt...amp;oref=slogin

Career C.I.A. Figure Is at Eye of Scandal

By MARK MAZZETTI

Published: May 12, 2006

WASHINGTON, May 11 — In a scandal featuring a cast of characters with nicknames like Nine Fingers and Duke, a former C.I.A. undercover operative called Dusty has become a center of attention.

...Mr. Foggo has not been formally charged with any misconduct, and his lawyer says his client has done nothing wrong. But apart from investigations by the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. inspector general, Mr. Foggo's appointment to the No. 3 post provided a window on what many at the agency saw as erratic management by Mr. Goss.

The arrival of Mr. Goss in September 2004 led to immediate clashes between senior career officers and the Congressional staff members that Mr. Goss brought with him, some of whom had previously served at the agency. Mr. Goss's chief of staff, Patrick Murray, and the other top aides came to be known derisively as the Gosslings.

The man Mr. Goss first selected to become the C.I.A.'s executive director, Michael V. Kostiw, had to turn down the job when it surfaced in the news media that he had resigned from the agency in the 1980's after being caught shoplifting bacon.

It was finger-pointing over who leaked word of Mr. Kostiw's shoplifting arrest that led to the resignation of several top officials in the agency's clandestine service. Among those who left were Stephen R. Kappes, the deputy director of operations, and his deputy, Michael Sulick. Mr. Kappes is expected to return as the agency's No. 2 if Gen. Michael V. Hayden is confirmed as the new director.

Days before Mr. Goss submitted his resignation, the C.I.A. director asked Mr. Foggo to step down as executive director, according to one intelligence official who was granted anonymity to speak freely about the circumstances of Mr. Foggo's departure. The official said that Mr. Goss had concluded that the inquires into Mr. Foggo's activities had become a distraction and had the potential to damage the agency's reputation.

Mr. Foggo, 51, has admitted attending poker parties throughout the 1990's that Mr. Wilkes held in a suite at the Watergate Hotel in Washington. The parties were primarily attended by C.I.A. officials and congressmen, and Mr. Cunningham, a California Republican, occasionally attended. Several news media accounts have reported that prostitutes frequented the parties.

But Charlie Wilson — the former Texas congressman who helped engineer the C.I.A. mission to arm Afghan rebels in the 1980's — said he attended two of Mr. Wilkes's poker parties, in 1994 and 1999, and that they usually ended by midnight and that he never saw prostitutes at the parties.

Mr. Wilson said that the gatherings were small affairs of seven or eight card players that always had ample supplies of Scotch, beer and Dominican cigars. "The only thing that took place there that was out of order was cigar smoking on a nonsmoking floor," Mr. Wilson said.

Mr. Foggo was one of many C.I.A. officials close to Mr. Wilkes. In May 2000, Mr. Wilkes paid Brant G. Bassett, a retired German-speaking C.I.A. official known as Nine Fingers, a $5,000 fee to travel to Germany for five days as a consultant on a business deal that Mr. Wilkes was negotiating with a German software engineer, according to a former agency official aware of the arrangement. The official was granted anonymity to speak about the business deal.

Documents revealing the $5,000 payment to Mr. Bassett from Mr. Wilkes first appeared on the Internet on Tuesday. ....

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/...wilkes/2009/02/

Foggo Sentenced To Over Three Years In Prison

By Zachary Roth - February 26, 2009, 2:33PM

The Associated Press reports that Dusty Foggo, the former CIA number 3 who pleaded guilty to steering contracts to his friend the defense contractor Brent Wilkes, has been sentenced to 37 months in prison -- just what prosecutors were recommending.

Foggo received tens of thousands of dollars worth of lavish gifts and vacations, in exchange for helping Wilkes get no-bid contracts, according to prosecutors.

Wilkes has pleaded guilty to bribing then-GOP congressman Duke Cunningham.

Yesterday, we reported on a treasure trove of court documents released in the case, which shed light on Foggo's scheme.

Goss: Not My Fault -- Foggo Assured Me He Was Clean!

By Zachary Roth - February 25, 2009, 3:31PM

Later, Goss continues:

"Had I known at the time that I was considering Mr. Foggo to be my Executive Director that he had engaged in the conduct he has admitted in his Plea Agreement and Statement of Facts, I absolutely would not have selected him to be my Executive Director nor would I have approved him for the Employee Performance Award that he received in August 2005."

Former Counter-Intel Chief "Flabbergasted" By Goss's Choice Of Foggo For Number 3 Post

By Zachary Roth - February 25, 2009, 2:55PM

Imagine the results if the officials described above were not only "hard right" extremists, but also not programmed to think they were "good Americans"?

Much more on the political corruptions of Wilkes, Foggo, and Goss in my next post. I see no threat, impact, or damage to the security of US and western European nations from activities influenced by "leftist" political ideologies, but the record is one of law breaking, crimes against the peace and against humanity, and other acts of official misconduct that are numerous and grave enough to justify serious consideration to disbanding the CIA and disqualifying those with extreme right political views from running for office or employment as lawyers, police, soldiers, intelligence agents, or anywhere else where they can do damage similar to what is documented above.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Bohnings use of the phrase "extreme left of the Democratic Pary" isn't even oxy. Its just moronic. Has he been sleeping or reporting for the last fifteen years. The only thing the "left" members of the party do is act as lightening rods to periodically distract people when it has become clear that 90% of the population disaprove of the leaderships Bush-enableing instead of the usual 70% The entire party is far to the right of Nixon, if your look at what they actuall do and enable, as opposed to what they are forced to say perhaps once every three years. See Murtha Now supports the Surge et al.finitum.... By forgetting two months ago YOU TOO CAN BECOME A TOP BELTWAY JOURNALIST!

[Guest Tom Scully]

Nathaniel,

Bohning described what John Simkin's "website delivers" as "agitprop". It seems like a veiled comparison to "bolshevik" propagandists.

I think Karl Rove was misquoted by Reuters. I am pretty sure he said;

It is now clear that the Obama White House didn't think before it tried to appease the hard left of the Democrat Party.

You can see the extreme partisanship manifested, from GW Bush on down, by observing that, in lockstep, they have trained themselves to describe what they

perceive as the "opposing" political party, also oriented to the right of center, as "democrat", instead of democratic party, leaders, convention, etc.

We need to confront and expose the institutionalized right slanted political philosophy portrayed in the press and other media, described as "mainstream"....see the writing of Don Bohning as an example. It's effects on our government policy and our state of security seems to be the greatest threat today to the english speaking world:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2235449/posts

To: reaganaut1

It is not healthy for the President

to be on the bad side of the CIA.

22 posted on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 4:05:51 PM by Jo Nuvark (Those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who curse Israel will be cursed. Gen 12:3)

http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AM...10932007en.html

.....Detention of family members of detainees, including children

In some cases family members—including children—of detainees who have been held in the U.S. Secret Detention Program, have been apprehended, detained and/or subjected to coercive treatment. Family members may be apprehended separately or at the same time as the individual sought. One apparent object of such treatment has been to obtain information about the detainee. Some of these family members have been subsequently released, but in other cases their fate and whereabouts remain unknown.

In September 2002, Yusuf al-Khalid (then nine years old) and Abed al-Khalid (then seven years old) were reportedly apprehended by Pakistani security forces during an attempted capture of their father, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was successfully apprehended several months later, and the U.S. government has acknowledged that he was in the U.S. Secret Detention Program. He is presently held at Guantánamo Bay.

In an April 16, 2007 statement, Ali Khan (father of Majid Khan, a detainee who the U.S. government has acknowledged was in the U.S. Secret Detention Program and is presently held at Guantánamo Bay) indicated that Yusef and Abed al-Khalid had been held in the same location in which Majid Khan and Majid’s brother Mohammed were detained in March/April 2003. Mohammed was detained by Pakistani officials for approximately one month after his apprehension on March 5, 2003 (see below). Ali Khan’s statement indicates that:

Also according to Mohammed, he and Majid were detained in the same place where two of Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s young children, ages about 6 and 8, were held. The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs, and were denied food and water by other guards. They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.(13)

After Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s arrest in March 2003, Yusuf and Abed Al Khalid were reportedly transferred out of Pakistan in U.S. custody. The children were allegedly being sent for questioning about their father’s activities and to be used by the United States as leverage to force their father to co-operate with the United States. A press report on March 10, 2003 confirmed that CIA interrogators had detained the children and that one official explained that:

"We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children...but we need to know as much about their father's recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care."(14)

In the transcript of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal, he indicates knowledge that his children were apprehended and abused: "They arrested my kids intentionally. They are kids. They been arrested for four months they had been abused."(15)

On March 5, 2003, Majid Khan, was apprehended in Karachi, Pakistan, along with his brother Mohammed, his brother’s wife and their one month-old daughter. They were all taken to an unknown location. Majid Khan’s sister-in-law and her daughter were detained for one week, and as mentioned above, Mohammed Khan was detained by Pakistani officials for approximately one month.

On March 28, 2003, Aafia Siddiqui (see page 16) was reportedly apprehended in Karachi, Pakistan along with her three children (then aged seven years, five years and six months).......

http://www.amnesty.ca/take_action/actions/...sappearance.php

Pakistan: children among victims of enforced disappearance

Updated: 19 March 2009

After Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's arrest in March 2003, Yusuf and Abed Al Khalid were reportedly transferred out of Pakistan to US custody -- allegedly for questioning about their father's activities and to be used as leverage to force their father to co-operate. A Sunday Telegraph (UK) article in March 2003 alleged that CIA interrogators had detained the children and that one official explained that: "We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children...but we need to know as much about their father's recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care." In the transcript of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Combatant Status Review Tribunal in March 2007, he indicates knowledge that his children were apprehended and abused: "They arrested my kids intentionally. They are kids. They been arrested for four months[,] they had been abused." Their whereabouts remain unknown....

[Guest Tom Scully]

Do reports of the CIA's involvement in the disappearance of children, as supported from the amnesty.org excerpts posted just above these comments in the preceding post, rise to an even greater level of concern because, parallel to the time when two children, still reported as unaccounted for, were first reported to be in the custody of the CIA, officials at the highest levels of both the UK and US government were justifying their plans for war based in part by repeatedly citing Amnesty International reporting of Saddam's human rights violations?

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/05/31/amnest.../#comment-29097

By Faiz Shakir on May 31st, 2005

.....But in the past, when it was convenient to the Administration, they did not hesitate to cite Amnesty to make its case. And nowhere did the Administration need more help than in selling the Iraq war. Secretary Rumsfeld repeatedly turned to Amnesty to highlight the repressive nature of Saddam's regime. On March 27, 2003, Rumsfeld said:

We know that it's a repressive regime...Anyone who has read Amnesty International or any of the human rights organizations about how the regime of Saddam Hussein treats his people...

The next day, Rumsfeld even cited his "careful reading" of Amnesty:

...t seems to me a careful reading of Amnesty International or the record of Saddam Hussein, having used chemical weapons on his own people as well as his neighbors, and the viciousness of that regime, which is well known and documented by human rights organizations, ought not to be surprised.

And on April 1, 2003, Rumsfeld said once again:

f you read the various human rights groups and Amnesty International's description of what they know has gone on, it's not a happy picture.

So the rule here appears to be: Amnesty is a legitimate source for human rights violations of other countries, but is an unreliable and irresponsible source for reporting on the U.S.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2002/1...r-jones-daily-0

Mother Jones Daily

Tue December 3, 2002 12:00 AM PST

....Torturing the Truth?

Accusing the Iraqi regime of systematic human rights abuses, the British government has released a detailed dossier claiming that Saddam Hussein has employed torture, rape, and terror to remain in power. And Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says that record is yet another reason to crack down on Baghdad.

Not so fast, says Amnesty International, one of the primary sources for the information included in Straw's dossier.

Attacking the dossier as a "cold and calculated manipulation" of the work of human rights activists, the group blasted London for its selective evaluation of rights abuses.

"'Let us not forget that these same governments turned a blind eye to Amnesty International's reports of widespread human rights violations in Iraq before the Gulf war,' the group's secretary general, Irene Khan, said.

'They remained silent when thousands of unarmed Kurdish civilians were killed in Halabja in 1988.'"....

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/14/opinion/...conscience.html

Opinion

The Selective Conscience

By BILL KELLER

Published: Saturday, December 14, 2002

....What does any of this have to do with whether we go to war?

That question causes no end of anguish among the people who labor to expose abuses in places like Iraq. Officials at Amnesty International, long a prime source of these repellant accounts, grow indignant when they hear their exposés repeated by George Bush or Tony Blair, men whose motives they regard as impure.

''This selective attention to human rights is nothing but a cold and calculated manipulation of the work of human rights activists,'' declared Irene Kahn, the secretary general of Amnesty, among whose worldwide membership humanism coexists with a considerable pacifism.

This high-minded quandary reached a sort of apotheosis in a Time magazine interview with Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector turned antiwar crusader. Mr. Ritter, one of the few outsiders to have visited a notorious children's prison in Iraq, was asked what he had seen. ''Actually I'm not going to describe what I saw there,'' he said, ''because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I'm waging peace.'' Ah.....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/...ch-on-Iraq.html

Prime Minister's speech on Iraq

Last Updated: 12:27AM BST 11 Sep 2002

.....Uniquely Saddam has used these weapons against his own people, the Iraqi Kurds. Scores of towns and villages were attacked. Iraqi military officials dressed in full protection gear were used to witness the attacks and visited later to assess the damage. Wounded civilians were normally shot on the scene.

In one attack alone, on the city of Halabja, it is estimated that 5,000 were murdered and 9,000 wounded in this way. All in all in the north around 100,000 Kurds died, according to Amnesty International....

....A foreign journalist said to me the other day: "I don't understand it Mr Blair. You're very Left on Africa and Kyoto but you're very Right on weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. It doesn't make sense."

But it does. The key characteristic of today's world is interdependence. Your problem becomes my problem. They have to be tackled collectively.....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpol..._iraq091202.htm

Text: A DECADE OF DECEPTION AND DEFIANCE

washingtonpost.com

Thursday, Sept. 12, 2002

Following is the full text of a White House release on Iraq that "provides specific examples of how Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has systematically and continually violated 16 United Nations Security Council resolutions over the past decade." Document provided courtesy of the White House.

Preface

A Decade of Deception and Defiance serves as a background paper for President George W. Bush's September 12th speech to the United Nations General Assembly. This document provides specific examples of how Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has systematically and continually violated 16 United Nations Security Council resolutions over the past decade. This document is not designed to catalogue all of the violations of UN resolutions or other abuses of Saddam Hussein's regime over the years. ....

http://web.archive.org/web/20020913224515/...9/20020912.html

For Immediate Release

Office of the Press Secretary

September 12, 2002

A Decade of Deception and Defiance

PDF Version of A Decade of Deception and Defiance PDF Format

http://web.archive.org/web/20020924011146/.../iraqdecade.pdf

...VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

(Page 11)

Human rights organizations and opposition groups continued to receive reports of women who suffered

from severe psychological trauma after being raped by Iraqi personnel while in custody.13

(Page 12)

Amnesty International reported that, in October 2000, the Iraqi Government executed dozens of women

accused of prostitution.17

(Page 13)

In August 2001 Amnesty International released a report entitled Iraq -- Systematic Torture of Political

Prisoners, which detailed the systematic and routine use of torture against suspected political

opponents and, occasionally, other prisoners. Amnesty International also reports “Detainees have also

been threatened with bringing in a female relative, especially the wife or the mother, and raping her in

front of the detainee. Some of these threats have been carried out.”24

(Page 14)

DISAPPEARANCES

§ Amnesty International reported that Iraq has the world’s worst record for numbers of persons who have

disappeared or remain unaccounted for. 33

(Page 19)

SADDAM HUSSEIN’S REFUSAL TO ACCOUNT FOR GULF WAR PRISONERS

In August 2001, Amnesty International reported that Saddam Hussein has the world's worst record for

numbers of persons who have disappeared and remain unaccounted for. 55

I guess my question relates to how Don Bohning can write with such certainty that John Simkin's and his forum members' credibility is compromised by their left oriented political ideologically driven agenda. I am going to expose the farce that is Bohning's assertion that responses to questions he attributes to former CIA agent and former DCI, Porter Goss, are more credible than John Simkin's posted research, in a post in the

Porter Goss and the CIA thread.

[William Kelly]

Simple minded people who characterize themselves or others as right wing or left wing, conservative or liberal, or even think in terms of being a democrat or republican, can't comprehend the true significance of political assassinations, coups, torture and terrorism.

The world can't be or shouldn't be viewed as a war between democrats and republicans, or liberals and conservatives, as partisan strategian Carl Rove would have everyone thinking, if he could.

Don Bohning, like Chuck Thompson (of SHNS) and Bill O'Reilly (Fox), can't think outside the conservative-liberal box, but that doesn't mean we have to.

Why submit to the way they look at the world, knowing that it's part of the problem?

It's easy for people like Bohning, Thompson and O'Reilly to label people like Simpkin, Phil Agee, Dan Sheehan and Oswald as "leftist," and O'bama a liberal democrat, but how can you describe the assassination in bi-partisan terms?

Those some of us suspect as being behind the Dealey Plaza operation - David Atlee Phillips, Des FitzGerald, Califano, Cord Meyer, and Halpern - were looked upon as being the "liberal" part of the CIA, voting for JFK, pals with RFK, and covert operators in the network that killed JFK.

Yet, it is Halpern, who was with Des Fitz at the time JFK was killed, who called for the CIA to be dissolved, dismantled and covert action banned by law, as his statements to the Church Committee clearly show:

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...mp;relPageId=64

Mr. HALPERIN. Mr. Chairman, my view is really very simple. I believe that the United States should no longer maintain the career service for the purpose of conducting covert operations or covert intelligence collection by human beings. I also believe that the United States should outlaw as a matter of national policy the conduct of covert operations, and I think this prohibition should be in a law similar to the assassination statute that the committee has already proposed...."

But the CIA ain't going anywhere, so ranting and raving about CIA child abductors is not going to change things.

There is a shot, however unlikely, that those living witnesses - Califano, Ayers, Goss, et al., will one day be sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help them God, and then asked the pertinent questions about JMWAVE, the Elliot Key commandos and Dealy Plaza.

Their opinions on whether the CIA should exist or not, aren't relevant anymore.

Bill Kelly

Edited April 25, 2009 by William Kelly

[William Kelly]

I was wondering why the CIA would, despite the ability to withhold records that refer to sources and methods, allowed the release of the documents that prove Don Bohning was a CIA asset, giving his code name and other details, yet continue to withhold records on others?

Why did they blow his cover?

Was he, like Oswald, in the words of Sun Tzu, an expendable agent?

I'd like to ask him that question, but I guess he's been scared away, though he's promised to write another article on Simkin and the forum.

It took quite a while after the publication of the last article for it to reach us, so I hope someone is keeping tabs on DB so we get to read his next article on a more timely basis.

I'd like to hear some thoughts on whether or not the CIA blew his cove on purpose or not.

BK

[John Simkin]

I was wondering why the CIA would, despite the ability to withhold records that refer to sources and methods, allowed the release of the documents that prove Don Bohning was a CIA asset, giving his code name and other details, yet continue to withhold records on others?

Why did they blow his cover?

Sometimes the CIA do release documents that they should have kept secret. I imagine that is more to do with the "cock-up" theory rather than any conspiracy. For example, I suspect they did not realize that they had released documents that showed that Frank Sturgis worked for the CIA.

[Guest Tom Scully]

I was wondering why the CIA would, despite the ability to withhold records that refer to sources and methods, allowed the release of the documents that prove Don Bohning was a CIA asset, giving his code name and other details, yet continue to withhold records on others?

Why did they blow his cover?

Was he, like Oswald, in the words of Sun Tzu, an expendable agent?

I'd like to ask him that question, but I guess he's been scared away, though he's promised to write another article on Simkin and the forum.

It took quite a while after the publication of the last article for it to reach us, so I hope someone is keeping tabs on DB so we get to read his next article on a more timely basis.

I'd like to hear some thoughts on whether or not the CIA blew his cove on purpose or not.

BK

Bill,

I cannot pretend to know what men with a political point of view like Don Bohning and Porter Goss could be thinking, to justify their apparently similar world view, but by what bits we know by the impression conveyed from their words and deeds, Bohning, Goss, and the CIA as an organization are probably "beyond the pale, versus what you, and surely, I would consider reasonable; anywhere near approaching a non-partisan civic mindedness.

I watch the protests in Iran and it influences my curiousity about Porter Goss's expensive property ending up in the hands (without a record of an actual sale...) of two partisans who attempted to manipulate the vote in the 2004 election.....

A piece of Porter Goss's palatial "held in trust", oceanfront home ends up deeded to a right wing voter fraud propagandist, after Goss deeded it to a "trust":

From the link at the last entry of this comprehensive timeline of the activities of the man rewarded in late 2004,

with a portion of Porter Goss's Sanibel Island home.....)

....The good news: The complaints about references made to GOP vote-suppressor Thor Hearne's now-defunct front group, American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), have resulted in the New York Times dropping the reference to ACVR from yesterday's (May 12, 2008) front-page article, to which we referred yesterday, with no small amount of disgust.

The bad news: The Times didn't bother to note their error (at least not in this online version of the story) as one would expect, as per transparent, journalistic ethics. More disturbingly, nor did they bother to note Hearne's continuing paid-partisan position as the GOP's top "voter fraud" scammer-in-chief, pushing for disenfranchising Photo ID laws around the country, his role in writing the very laws he's quoted discussing, his discredited and debunked ACVR group or their participation revealed at the heart of the U.S. Attorney Purge which pushed out Republican attorneys for not pursuing non-existent cases of "voter fraud" with enough fervor, or even his post as the national general counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. who mislead Congressional members during hearings on these matters in 2005.....

The Lee County, FL land records are freely available online for public inspection. That accessibility changes, one week from

today, when Lee County will begin charging more than $100 for access per three months period:

http://www.gulfreturns.com/2005/11/casa-yucca-sanibel.html

Casa Yucca Sanibel - Gulf Returns

Casa Yucca, the former Sanibel home of CIA Director Porter Goss, is listed for $18.9M. This is currently the highest asking price for a home in SW Florida. ...

http://www.leeclerk.org/OR/showdetails.asp...&ref=search

23 $0.00 AMETHYST REVOCABLE TRUST GOSS PORTER J + MARY R 7/31/1997 Deed O 2851 1380 PAR IN GL3,SEC28-46S-22E 4213979

http://www.leeclerk.org/OR/showdetails.asp...&ref=search

30 $0.00 AMETHYST TRUST HEARNE MARK F THOR II TRUSTEE 12/27/2004 Deed O 4537 3330 PAR IN GL3,28-46S-22E,SANIBEL 6578553

Description of the Goss property in Sanibel, FL

http://www.trulia.com/property/36198627-38...anibel-FL-33957

Link to deed putting the property in trust in 1997, a conveyance to a trust is not a sale:

http://www.leeclerk.org/OR/showdetails.asp...&ref=search

Goss's 1996 Congressional disclosure firm. listing his 3869 W. Gulf Dr., Sanibel, FL address for the last time:

http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/pfd1996/H8FL13037_96.pdf

Description of the current trustees, Ms. Andrews and Mr. Hearne:

http://www.leepa.org/Scripts/PropertyQuery...olioID=10023546

Sourcewatch background on voter fraud propagandist and agitator, MArk "Thor" Hearne:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title...._(Thor)_Hearne

Swift Boat Vets and POWs for Truth - Political 527 Group, Swift Boat Vets and POWs for ... Mark Andrews Chesterfield, MO 63005, self/ret, $500, 10/20/2004- ...

http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/527...ruth.asp?rpg=75

(Sourcewatch) http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Susan_Arceneaux

Susan Arceneaux, a resident of Fairfax, Virginia, is a well-connected member of the Republican Party: Arceneaux is a “long time aide of Dick Armey, a former Congressman from Texas and a close friend of Bush Jr. Arceneaux also is tied in with a number of other Republican groups close to Bush Jr. NY Times 8/24/04).” [1]

Her known roles, both past and present, include the following:

Administrative contact for Political Compliance Services Inc., according to its WHOIS database entry [2]. Note that her involvement with PCS is not given anywhere on its website.

Treasurer of the Majority Leader’s Fund [3]

A listed contact for FreedomWorks [they’re the ones running Ari Fleischer’s “Freedoms Watch”]

The custodian of records for David Horowitz’s defunct 527 committee, PoliticalWar.com Inc. [5] [6]

A contributor to the New Birth of Freedom PAC, according to IRS records posted by Center for Public Integrity

An employee of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Arceneaux helped to set it up, and is given as the contact person on its post office box. [7][8]

“The group described Ms. Arceneaux’s role, also, as ‘compliance.’ … Records also list Ms. Arceneaux as treasurer of the Majority Leader’s Fund, a political action committee affiliated with the former House majority leader, Dick Armey of Texas, which like the Swift Boat Veterans received significant financing from Bob Perry, a Texan who has long supported Mr. Bush.” [9]

Arceneaux’s involvement in SBVT did not become known until late August 2004, at the height of the controversy generated by the group’s attack on presidential candidate John Kerry

http://news.muckety.com/2008/03/11/the-cas...sing-money/1102

....Ward was on the NRCC payroll until last August. He then became an independent contractor doing the treasurer’s job through his firm, C.J. Ward & Company, LLC. That connection to the RNCC was severed earlier this year.

Ward has resigned from Political Compliance Services. He founded the firm in 2001 with Susan Arceneaux, who was an aide to former Rep. Dick Armey, R-Texas.

According to a 2004 New York Times story, Arceneaux was a contact for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that ran ads opposed to Democratic Sen. John Kerry’s presidential bid.

Ward’s possible misdeeds at the NRCC have become campaign fodder for the potential opponents of Reynolds, who was chairman at the RNCC during the time the money may have gone missing.

“Does Tom Reynolds ever accept responsibility for his poor leadership, or does he just pass the buck?” asked a spokesman for Jonathan Powers, a Democrat seeking to run against Reynolds.

Reynolds said in a statement said he assumed that audits were being conducted at the NRCC while he was there and that the committee may have been the victim of “an elaborate scheme.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8031204051.html

NRCC Treasurer Under Scrutiny Was Thought of as 'Gold Standard'

By Paul Kane

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, March 13, 2008; A01

In the tiny world of people who keep the books for Washington's multitude of political committees, Christopher J. Ward was considered the Republican "gold standard," in the words of a former co-worker -- one of the few people with so much expertise in election law that everyone wanted Ward's services.

The quiet workaholic is listed as treasurer for 83 GOP fundraising committees over the past eight years, according to Federal Election Commission records. In the past five years alone, he oversaw the accounting for committees that raised more than $400 million, $368 million of it at the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to a Washington Post review of those records.

But in late January, Ward, 39, was dismissed as the NRCC announced that it had found financial "irregularities" that "may include fraud." The FBI is investigating what appears to be "a significant amount of money" missing from the House Republican fundraising arm, according to a law enforcement official.

Now the dozens of GOP lawmakers who had clamored for Ward's help are apprehensively poring over his work along with FBI investigators, trying to learn more about the finances he oversaw.....

After the July. 1997 real estate transaction deeding his Florida residence to Amethyst Revocable Trust, Porter Goss filed all subsequent required disclosure forms, as a congressman, and later as the DCI, listing a Sanible, FL PO Box No. as his address.

On the 1997 and 2004 deeds, Amethyst Trust is listed with an address identical to that of prominent anti gambling crusader and supporter of Swift Boater sabotage of John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, Mark B. Andrews. Andrews wife, Patricia E., is listed as the trustee who Goss put his expensive home parcel in trust with.

In 2004, with no record of any actual sale of Goss's home subsequent to Goss's 1997 trust transaction, Amethyst Trust, under the signature of trustee Patricia E. Andrews, transferred a portion of Goss's property held in trust to former 2004 national Bush/Cheney campaign treasurer, "Thor" Hearne, an extreme political partisan who created a fake voting fraud "research" and "investigation" organization, a false flag operation inventing a fake voter fraud controversy, for the planned purpose of preventing as many potential voters predicted to vote against republican candidates, from voting at all....

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=new+yor...;fp=itFkAGfC3t0

#

The Myth of Voter Fraud - New York Times

May 13, 2008 ... Requiring voters to prove their citizenship is not based on any evidence of voter fraud, but rather on Republicans' electoral calculations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/opinion/13tue1.html - Similar

#

In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud - New York Times

Apr 12, 2007 ... The Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/new...currentPage=all

Florida Faces Election Fracas

Jacob Ogles 06.14.04

Thousands of eligible Florida voters may be removed from the rolls in this year's election because of a faulty database aimed at convicted felons. Despite protests from critics and nervous election supervisors, the state will continue with plans to implement the system.

Convicted felons are not allowed to vote in Florida unless granted clemency, but before 2000 there was little enforcement of the law. That year, then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris hired DBT Online to provide a database of felons to be purged from the rolls. But the list contained the names of many people who should not have lost their voting rights. Many supervisors refused to use the list, but others did.

After George Bush won the state by a mere 537 votes, and with it the presidency, the felon list became a subject of national controversy and numerous lawsuits. A study by the Palm Beach Post showed more than 1,100 voters had been wrongfully turned away from the polls.

Florida Department of State officials promise the new database, assembled entirely by public entities with state records, will be more accurate with added precautions. County election supervisors in all 67 counties will be responsible for verifying every name as a convicted felon, and those stripped of rights must be notified before the elections so they may challenge the finding. .....

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/15/Columns/...are_scatt.shtml

The excuses are scattered amid ruins of voter list plan

By HOWARD TROXLER, Times Columnist

Published July 15, 2004

My question is, did my friends in Gov. Jeb Bush's administration intentionally try to look so goofy over this list of 47,000 names of potential purgees from Florida's voter rolls?

Was there a sale on rubber red noses and floppy shoes down at the Clown Emporium? Was this a plot to keep us all laughing while Karl Rove sneaks into the basement and steals the voting machines?

No sir, no ma'am. They do not get to stand there week after week, all self-righteous, declaring that anybody who questions their list is a fool - they do not get to do it, and then, when the whole ridiculous thing collapses, blithely declare, "Never mind," and walk away whistling like it was ancient history.....

http://web.archive.org/web/20040811125300/...bdb0e300e7.html

Jeb's defiance makes case for automatic clemency

Palm Beach Post Editorial

Thursday, July 29, 2004

Gov. Bush is attacking the judiciary with way more than the usual Republican rhetoric. This time, he's resorted to outright defiance.

The governor couldn't have picked a more revealing way to display his anti-court venom than by spurning the July 14 opinion of the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee. The court told the state that it must help felons fill out a form needed to win back the right to vote after serving prison time. Rather than follow the court's dictate, Gov. Bush eliminated the form.

That's the kind of inexcusable defiance that makes Florida the focal point for national anxiety over the upcoming presidential election. Secretary of State Glenda Hood, who was appointed by Gov. Bush and reports to him, already has gone too far in defending an indefensible list of nearly 48,000 ex-felons who may or may not have been banned from voting. Fueling the conspiracy theories that Ms. Hood says are groundless, nearly half the names on the list belonged to African-Americans, who tend to vote for Democrats. Fewer than 100 belonged to Hispanics, who vote more often for Republicans than blacks do. Both parties are making strong appeals to Hispanic voters......

Remember how close the vote was (less than 500 votes....) in Florida in the 2000 presidential election? Consider that Iranians took to the streets protesting the integrity of a vote count that involves more than a 10 million vote margin for the designate winner:

http://web.archive.org/web/20030805062509/...da/d923085a.htm

State contracts with company founded by man linked to smuggling

Sunday, August 3, 2003

Associated Press

....Asher's first company, DBT Online Inc, bought him out for $147 million in 1999 after the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration suspended its contracts over Asher's past and concerns that the company could potentially monitor targets of investigations. ......

http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2002-10-31.../felon-follies/

....Felon Follies

A problem that marred the 2000 ballot is back

By Ted B. Kissell

Published: October 31, 2002

One of the most intriguing mysteries of the whole Election 2000 debacle is this: How many Florida voters improperly lost their voting rights because of a statewide effort to scrub felons from voter rolls? This question was at the heart of a post-election lawsuit filed against the Department of State and others. The lead plaintiff, the NAACP, brought the class-action suit because more than half of those on the scrub list were black.

The good news is, all of those lawsuits are now settled. <h3>The private company contracted to perform the purge, Atlanta-based ChoicePoint (which in 2001 merged with the original contractor, West Palm Beach's Database Technologies, or DBT) has agreed to more closely scrutinize the names on the lists it sent out before November 2000 and identify those voters who should never have been removed in the first place. The supervisors of elections who wrongfully removed these voters from the rolls will then reinstate them.

The bad news? This unknown number of nonfelons (dozens? hundreds? thousands?) won't be back on the rolls in time to vote Tuesday. Some of them might already have been reinstated, and those who show up at the polls can cast a provisional ballot. But the original wrong -- the improper removal of their franchise -- has yet to be righted.

Edited June 23, 2009 by Tom Scully

[William Kelly]

I was wondering why the CIA would, despite the ability to withhold records that refer to sources and methods, allowed the release of the documents that prove Don Bohning was a CIA asset, giving his code name and other details, yet continue to withhold records on others?

Why did they blow his cover?

Sometimes the CIA do release documents that they should have kept secret. I imagine that is more to do with the "cock-up" theory rather than any conspiracy. For example, I suspect they did not realize that they had released documents that showed that Frank Sturgis worked for the CIA.

I don't think they released the Frank Sturgis and Don Bohning documents by accident.

They are fighting relentlessly to keep other records from being released because they would expose sources and methods, yet they released the documents that reveal Don Bohning to be one of their covert assets in a very strategic position.

Why?

What does he think about the CIA revealing their relationship?

And I hear Scully re: Porter Goss, but all of these reports that Tom posts re: Porter Goss, Ed Wilson, et al., just make me dizzy. Why can't we just stick with Don Bohning?

He claims to be writing another article about the Ed Forum and Simkin and the JFK assassination, and I think we should focus on that, and while Goss and Wilson are certainly important case studies, they have their own threads going.

What does Don Bohning think about the CIA blowing his cover?

And why did they do it when they didn't have to?

Bill Kelly

[Guest Tom Scully]

......And I hear Scully re: Porter Goss, but all of these reports that Tom posts re: Porter Goss, Ed Wilson, et al., just make me dizzy. Why can't we just stick with Don Bohning?

He claims to be writing another article about the Ed Forum and Simkin and the JFK assassination, and I think we should focus on that, and while Goss and Wilson are certainly important case studies, they have their own threads going.

What does Don Bohning think about the CIA blowing his cover?

And why did they do it when they didn't have to?

Bill Kelly

Bill,

This is the title of this thread:

Don Bohning Writes of Simkin's Leftist Motivated Inaccuracues, vs. Consequences of Bohning's & CIA Political Ideology

These are Porter Goss's words, from an Op-Ed piece he authored, which you posted, here:

Security Before Politics

By Porter J. Goss

Saturday, April 25, 2009

....I am speaking out now because I feel our government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national security and trying to gain partisan political advantage....

....Circuses are not new in Washington, and I can see preparations being made for tents from the Capitol straight down Pennsylvania Avenue. The CIA has been pulled into the center ring before. The result this time will be the same: a hollowed-out service of diminished capabilities. ...

....There is only one person who can shut down this dangerous show: President Obama.....

....."Name, rank and serial number" does not apply to non-state actors but is, regrettably, the only question this administration wants us to ask....

....Trading security for partisan political popularity will ensure that our secrets are not secret and that our intelligence is destined to fail us.....

I am sorry if you object to what I am doing in reaction to the right wing extremism of Don Bohning, Porter Goss, and at the CIA as a political leaning that shapes (clouds) the way that organization does "business", but they both have the advantage of hurling their political extremist invectives at the public from behind the curtain of the clandestine organization that shields the "professional" pasts of both of them.

The rest of us, you, me, John Simkin, etc., do not have that advantage. I am attempting to use the slim body of factual information at my disposal to present another side to anyone interested enough to read this.

John Simkin's political background, and Obama's leadership are not THE PROBLEM. In the example of Obama, he opts for the path of least resistance, politically, which he and his advisors perceive is achieved by embracing and or covering up most of the policies and abuses of the prior administration, i.e., yet another presidency mostly operating far to the right of the political center.

Clearly, the problem is that Bohning and Goss, by their rhetoric and by what we know of their backgrounds and associations, are poster children for what was and is wrong with having an extreme right, political influence dominate the mindset of the Washington, DC establishment and it's government and news gathering and distributing media institutions.

This mindset and the extreme political POV that shape it, kept JFK in a box, just as we see them sealing Obama up.

Maybe you can understand my point better if I reduce it to this; the opposite of most of what Bohning, Goss, and the Washington establishment embrace and support, as components of what ends up as their political POV, is probably much closer to the truth, and thus, if "the truth" was ever spoken and made a requirement in shaping a reformation of establishment practice, would be far and away more beneficial to the US and to the rest of the world.

If you regard the cover up of the assassination of JFK as a component of a much larger part of politics as usual, you might agree that there is continuity of relationships and agendas from telltale signs like Trubee Davis, son of the JP Morgan partner deeply involved in financing the military operations of both sides in WWI, organizing the Yale squadron of US military combat pilots in 1916. with his best friend, Robert Lovett, Davis's landing his amphibious plane on the Hudson in 1930 to attend the wedding of John McCloy; Gerald Ford's founding, with R. Douglas Stuart of the America First Committee in 1940, culminating in later events like the creation and initial staffing of CIA, and the appointments to and conduct and reporting of the Warren Commission.

The latest chapter in the continuity of establishment relationships and agendas is the "king making" of Lester Crown, resulting in the election of Obama, a president who so far has demonstrated that the protection of, instead of the accountability of the establishment and it's institutions will be his most important achievements as our president, even as his rhetoric has been to the contrary. The common thread I see in this history is the dominance of IMPLEMENTED, far right of center, political notions.

Do you think, for example, Bill, that it is an accident of fate that the US leads the world in the number of incarcerated persons per capita, or in the number of state sanctioned executions per capita, in ODC's? Wouldn't it be expected that the first black president and black US attorney general would be voicing concerns about these two subjects and statistics? I'd expect to hear something on these subjects from one or both of them, but I am not. Just some food for thought, because the crux of it all, to me, is an underlying concern that we do not recognize how RIGHT (leaning) we are.

Edited June 25, 2009 by Tom Scully

[William Kelly]

......And I hear Scully re: Porter Goss, but all of these reports that Tom posts re: Porter Goss, Ed Wilson, et al., just make me dizzy. Why can't we just stick with Don Bohning?

He claims to be writing another article about the Ed Forum and Simkin and the JFK assassination, and I think we should focus on that, and while Goss and Wilson are certainly important case studies, they have their own threads going.

What does Don Bohning think about the CIA blowing his cover?

And why did they do it when they didn't have to?

Bill Kelly

Bill,

This is the title of this thread:

Don Bohning Writes of Simkin's Leftist Motivated Inaccuracues, vs. Consequences of Bohning's & CIA Political Ideology

Yea, and it's a really silly title, as I looked for another thread on Bohning to post my question because I didn't think he would respond to something on the "consequences of his & CIA political Ideology," but I couldn't find the right one.

I guess I'll have to start another thread on the CIA blowing Don Bohning's cover to get a good answer without all the right wing ideology crap you insist on throwing in.

I think Porter Goss is dangerous and their right win ideolog out of date too, but the title of the thread concerns Don Bohning and his critique of Simpkin and this forum, and that's what I'm trying to deal with here, and not Porter Goss and your misguided ideologies.

I'll start another thread on this topic soon, and let you and Porter rally on about your ideologies, however misguided they are.

Carry on......

BK

These are Porter Goss's words, from an Op-Ed piece he authored, which you posted, here:

Security Before Politics

By Porter J. Goss

Saturday, April 25, 2009

....I am speaking out now because I feel our government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national security and trying to gain partisan political advantage....

....Circuses are not new in Washington, and I can see preparations being made for tents from the Capitol straight down Pennsylvania Avenue. The CIA has been pulled into the center ring before. The result this time will be the same: a hollowed-out service of diminished capabilities. ...

....There is only one person who can shut down this dangerous show: President Obama.....

....."Name, rank and serial number" does not apply to non-state actors but is, regrettably, the only question this administration wants us to ask....

....Trading security for partisan political popularity will ensure that our secrets are not secret and that our intelligence is destined to fail us.....

I am sorry if you object to what I am doing in reaction to the right wing extremism of Don Bohning, Porter Goss, and at the CIA as a political leaning that shapes (clouds) the way that organization does "business", but they both have the advantage of hurling their political extremist invectives at the public from behind the curtain of the clandestine organization that shields the "professional" pasts of both of them.

HOW ARE THEY DOING THIS FROM BEHIND THE CURTAIN THAT SHIELDS THE PROFESSIONAL PASTS OF BOTH OF THEM? WE'VE IDENTIFIED PG AS A FORMER JMWAVE PLAYER AND BOHNING A CIA ASSET IN THE SAME ARENA?

The rest of us, you, me, John Simkin, etc., do not have that advantage. I am attempting to use the slim body of factual information at my disposal to present another side to anyone interested enough to read this.

BUT THEY'RE NOT GOING TO READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU CONTINUE TO HARANGUE ABOUT IT

John Simkin's political background, and Obama's leadership are not THE PROBLEM. In the example of Obama, he opts for the path of least resistance, politically, which he and his advisors perceive is achieved by embracing and or covering up most of the policies and abuses of the prior administration, i.e., yet another presidency mostly operating far to the right of the political center.

SO OBAMA IS COVERING UP FOR BUSH AND IS NOW A SECRET RIGHT WING BIGOT?

Clearly, the problem is that Bohning and Goss, by their rhetoric and by what we know of their backgrounds and associations, are poster children for what was and is wrong with having an extreme right, political influence dominate the mindset of the Washington, DC establishment and it's government and news gathering and distributing media institutions.

AND THEY'RE OUT OF POWER AND A NEW ADMINISTRATION AND MIND SET IS IN.

This mindset and the extreme political POV that shape it, kept JFK in a box, just as we see them sealing Obama up.

IT'S WAY TOO EARLY TO PUT OBAMA IN JFK'S BOX

Maybe you can understand my point better if I reduce it to this; the opposite of most of what Bohning, Goss, and the Washington establishment embrace and support, as components of what ends up as their political POV, is probably much closer to the truth, and thus, if "the truth" was ever spoken and made a requirement in shaping a reformation of establishment practice, would be far and away more beneficial to the US and to the rest of the world.

YOU WANT TO SHAPE AND REFORM ESTABLISHMENT PRACTICE BY CALLING BOHINING, GOSS AND OMBAMA RIGHT WING BIGGOTS?

If you regard the cover up of the assassination of JFK as a component of a much larger part of politics as usual, you might agree that there is continuity of relationships and agendas from telltale signs like Trubee Davis, son of the JP Morgan partner deeply involved in financing the military operations of both sides in WWI, organizing the Yale squadron of US military combat pilots in 1916. with his best friend, Robert Lovett, Davis's landing his amphibious plane on the Hudson in 1930 to attend the wedding of John McCloy; Gerald Ford's founding, with R. Douglas Stuart of the America First Committee in 1940, culminating in later events like the creation and initial staffing of CIA, and the appointments to and conduct and reporting of the Warren Commission.

NOW YOU'VE LOST MORE THAN HALF ANYBODY WHO BOTHERED TO READ THIS FAR. DO YOU THINK PEOPLE WILL NO GOOGLE TRUBEE DAVIS? I DON'T THINK SO.

The latest chapter in the continuity of establishment relationships and agendas is the "king making" of Lester Crown, resulting in the election of Obama, a president who so far has demonstrated that the protection of, instead of the accountability of the establishment and it's institutions will be his most important achievements as our president, even as his rhetoric has been to the contrary. The common thread I see in this history is the dominance of IMPLEMENTED, far right of center, political notions.

IT'S WAY TOO EARLY TO START TALKING ABOUT OBAMA'S ACHIVEVEMENTS AS PRESIDENT, BUT THE DOMINANCE OF THE FAR RIGHT OF CENTER IS OVER, IF THAT'S THE WAY YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT. I PREFER TO SEE IT AS THE RETURN TO PRAGMATISM.

Do you think, for example, Bill, that it is an accident of fate that the US leads the world in the number of incarcerated persons per capita, or in the number of state sanctioned executions per capita, in ODC's? Wouldn't it be expected that the first black president and black US attorney general would be voicing concerns about these two subjects and statistics? I'd expect to hear something on these subjects from one or both of them, but I am not. Just some food for thought, because the crux of it all, to me, is an underlying concern that we do not recognize how RIGHT (leaning) we are.

YEA, THERE ARE TOO MANY PEOPLE IN PRISON WHO DON'T BELONG THERE, AND I'M SURE OBAMA AND HIS NEW AG WILL GET AROUND TO LETTING SOME OF THEM OUT EVENTUALLY, BUT WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH THE TOPIC OF THIS THREAD AGAIN - DON BOHNING, THE CIA AND HIS ATTACKS ON THIS FORUM?

TOM, YOU CAN RAIL ABOUT GOSS AND THE CIA AND THEIR IDEOLOGY, AND I'LL START ANOTHER THREAD ON DON BOHNING AND WHY THE CIA BLEW HIS COVER.

BK