Squeaky Frome

[Kathleen Collins]

I didn't see any thread on this. I'm surprised they're allowing Squeaky Frome, a Manson disciple, out of prison. She attempted to kill the President, whether we liked Ford or not, mainly to attract attention to herself. I thought people like that are kept behind bars. Is she not still dangerous? Why are they letting her out now?

Kathy C

[William Kelly]

I didn't see any thread on this. I'm surprised they're allowing Squeaky Frome, a Manson disciple, out of prison. She attempted to kill the President, whether we liked Ford or not, mainly to attract attention to herself. I thought people like that are kept behind bars. Is she not still dangerous? Why are they letting her out now?

Kathy C

Kathleen,

Thanks for calling attention to this situation, to which I might add, there seems to be a general international trend to releasing political prisoners - beginning with Bill Clinton going to North Korea to return with the "reporters" for the news org run by his former VP Al Gore, and then a Senator goes to Cambodia, or whatever they call it today, and brings back an American who broke into the residence of women opposition party who is under house arrest.

Now two coincidences don't count in my three time hit theory of beginning a file on any person or organization that appears more than twice in the normal course of research, but three times is an automatic flag, and three times is the hint of rising above the threshold of coincidence.

And then the remains of a Navy pilot shot down during the first Iraq war eighteen years ago are discovered in the desert, having been buried by wandering Bedouin tribesmen, and repatriated.

But we have yet to experience the complete repercussions of the release from a Scottish prison of Abdel Baset ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the convicted Pan Am 103 Lockerbie bomber, whose hero's welcome in Tripoli has changed the nature of the political game, and how it is played.

So you want to look into how the GET OUT OF JAIL card works today?

That's four, right - Korea, Cambodia, Iraq and Scotland - and...

Then there's Squeaky Frome, and John Hinkley wants out of St. Elisabeths, and they are bringing assault rifles to Town Meetings on health care, and the threats against the current president are up 300%, while the responsibility for protecting the president has shifted from the Secret Service in the Department of Treasury to the Department of Homeland Security.

What's the message?

Is there a trend here, or am I only imagining things?

Is there a new corrallation between political prisoners and the threat of political assassination?

And the best is yet to come.

In any case,

don't we live

in interesting times?

BK

Edited August 26, 2009 by William Kelly

[Guest Tom Scully]

I didn't see any thread on this. I'm surprised they're allowing Squeaky Frome, a Manson disciple, out of prison. She attempted to kill the President, whether we liked Ford or not, mainly to attract attention to herself. I thought people like that are kept behind bars. Is she not still dangerous? Why are they letting her out now?

Kathy C

Kathleen,

Ms. Frome didn't shoot anybody and was not in jail for any Manson related crimes at the time she attempted to shoot president ford. Her aborted assault occurred more than thirty years ago. Hinckley murdered law enforcement personnel, shot the president, and wounded others, more recently than Frome's crime. IMO, the crimes of the two, as far as the outcomes, are not even comparable, yet:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/16/...in5092406.shtml

WASHINGTON, June 16, 2009

Judge: Hinckley Can Drive, Take Long Trips

Man Who Tried To Kill President Reagan Not A Danger To Himself Or Others, Judge Rules

(AP) A federal judge says John Hinckley, the man who tried to kill President Ronald Reagan, can spend more time away from his psychiatric hospital and apply for a driver's license.

In a ruling issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman says Hinckley's health will probably improve with more freedom and that he wouldn't be a danger to himself or others.

The judge ruled that Hinckley can increase the length of his visits to his mother's hometown of Williamsburg, Va., from six nights at a time to nine. He'll also be able to do volunteer work and take driver's education.

Federal prosecutors had opposed increasing the length of time Hinckley is away from Washington's St. Elizabeths Hospital.

...and Bill,

This age of amnesty did not begin all that recently...Scooter Libby was sentenced to 30+ months after conviction of perjury and obstruction, and will never serve a day in prison, and Elliott Abrams:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Abrams

During investigation of the Iran-Contra Affair, the special prosecutor handling the case prepared multiple felony counts against Abrams but never indicted him.[20] Instead, Abrams entered into a plea agreement that ultimately led to a conviction without imprisonment on two misdemeanors of withholding information from Congress.[21] He was fined $50, placed on probation for two years, and assigned 100 hours of community service. Abrams was pardoned by President George H. W. Bush as he was leaving office following his loss in the 1992 U.S. presidential election.

[edit] Special Assistant to President Bush

President George W. Bush appointed Abrams to the post of Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations at the National Security Council on 25 June 2001.[22] Abrams was appointed Special Assistant to the President and the NSC's Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs on 2 December 2002.[23] Some human rights groups and commentators considered his White House appointment controversial due to his conviction in the Iran-Contra Affair investigation and his role in overseeing the Reagan administration's foreign policy in Latin America.[24][25]

....and one disgraced hack gets promoted to my household member's commander, and the another, gets the opposite, for committing the exact same actions in the same circumstances:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stan-goff/mc...i_b_204211.html

Posted: May 16, 2009 06:22 AM

McChrystal & Pelosi

by Stan Goff

....The real kicker is that Obama will probably support this guy; and this at the same time that Obama just placed himself between the ACLU and a bunch of torture photographs from places just like the ones that McChrystal developed and commanded in Iraq and Afghanistan......

....Gunfighting requires training the mind to compartmentalize, to focus on everyone as potential adversaries, to quickly check the hands of potential adversaries for lethal weapons, and to refelxively respond to the presence of weapons by rapidly shooting two rounds into the chest of the identified adversary, followed by one shot to the head if necessary... then immediately return to observing one's sector.

This kind of extreme, detached instrumentality is part of the psycho-cultural commons in Special Operations; and that's how McChrystal can -- and must -- be read. He can and will objectify-to-kill individuals and groups of human beings... on command. His brain is compartmentalized.

As an officer in the Army, he is part of the cannibal-culture of commissioned upward mobility. He'll not only seek out opportunities for slaughter as rungs in the ladder to success, he'll write memos that are the professional equivalent of shark repellent while his peers are being eaten.

Lieutenant General Philip Kensinger -- former Special Operations Command (SOCOM) commander -- got the symbolic punishment for the Pat Tillman cover-up-- a threat to reduce his rank before he retired which was quietly allowed to fade into no action at all. Kensinger survived. He's a consultant for the government now. But there is a credible rumor that his lawyer will oppose the nomination of Stanley McChrystal to head the Afghanistan theater of the US energy war.

Gunfighter. Shark-swimmer. Torture camp commander.

What cover-ups, like the Tillman case, and running torture camps have in common is that they are both manifestations of a culture of impunity -- "exemption from punishment or loss."

McChrystal ran Task Force 6-26, which became temporarily famous after the killing of Abu Masab al-Zarqawi, a boogyman figure cultivated by the US military and media complex. What made TF 6-26 infamous was their activity in Camp Nama, Iraq: torture. Massive, systematic, sustained torture, by special operators, under the supervision of Stanley McChrystal, this deceptively soft-spoken officer.

The camp in Baghdad was used almost exclusively for the torture of detainees. The torture went on before, during, and after the scandal at Abu Ghraib. Detainees were killed by their torturers, members of the most elite units in the US armed forces. Almost in celebration of the activity of the camp, placards were hung that said, "No Blood, No Foul," meaning if you don't make them bleed, you can't be charged with the crimes you are committing.

Impunity. McChrystal represents a culture of impunity.

Pelosi does, too. Be honest.

I keep coming back to that idea that culture, personhood, and nature are all reciprocally influenced. What kinds of persons will emerge from a culture of impunity, a culture of gunfighting, a culture of the most extreme kind of probative masculinity? (The big picture of Zarqawi, dead, that hung behind the Pentagon briefers after McChrystal's unit directed the airstrike that killed him, was a hunting trophy... male proof of conquest.).....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17877488/

General tried to warn Bush on Tillman

Memo shows suspicions on soldier’s death weeks before family was told

General warned about Tillman

March 30: A top general warned that the cause of Pat Tillman’s death could be friendly fire.

updated 3:17 p.m. ET, Wed., April 25, 2007

....In a memo sent to a four-star general a week after Tillman's April 22, 2004, death, then-Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned that it was "highly possible" the Army Ranger was killed by friendly fire. McChrystal made it clear his warning should be conveyed to President Bush....

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/0..._silver_me.html

.... The bottom line here: A Perfumed Prince with stars approved Tillman's Silver Star and its use as a Pentagon P.R. tool for the same sick reason the Pentagon brass anointed Pvt. Jessica Lynch, gave her medals she didn't earn and turned her into an instant Joan of Arc-like heroine.

The "Perfumed Prince" drawing Hackworth's ire, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal was asked by Sen. John McCain at the general's confirmation to be the top commander in Afghanistan, to explain Tillman's Silver Star and if he still supported his decision. McChrystal said he did and that the problem wasn't making the award but that the Army rushed the award-determination process for emotional reasons: it wanted to be able to give the award to Tillman's family at a memorial service.

Here's his exchange with McCain.

SEN. MCCAIN: The death by friendly fire of Corporal Tillman was a great tragedy, as we all know. And the pain of the loss of this American hero to his family was compounded by the misinformation that quickly spread about the circumstances of his death, some of which were included in the recommended citation for the award of the Silver Star Medal. It was forwarded by his commanding officer through you as the commanding general of the Joint Special Operations Command and approved by you on April 28th, 2004. Can you describe what happened in April with respect to the information about the circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death and why you forwarded the Silver Star recommendation in the form that it was in?

GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: Senator, I can. I appreciate the opportunity to do that. Corporal Tillman was killed on the 22nd of April. And in the days following, as with -- in the loss of any soldier, a number of things happened, administrative and just practical things that occurred. I particularly took part in two things. I arrived back into Afghanistan from a meeting in Qatar with General Abizaid on about the 23rd. And I was informed at that point that they suspected that

friendly fire might have been the cause of death, and they had initiated what we call a 15-6, or an investigation of that. And so we initially were waiting for the outcome of that initial review before we went forward with any conclusions. So it was a well-intended intent to get some level of truth before we went up.

At the same time, we looked at his potential award for valor. And any lost soldier, they immediately look and determine whether an award was appropriate. In the case of Corporal Tillman, a Silver Star was recommended. I sat down with the people who recommended it, but that was higher than some had been given, and we went over a white board and we looked at the geometry of the battlefield and I queried the people to satisfy myself that, in fact, that his actions warranted that, even though there was a potential that the actual circumstance had -- of death had been friendly fire.

And I need to stress here, we had a number of famous people in American history killed by friendly fire -- Stonewall Jackson, Lesley McNair and the like. And I don't separate -- or I don't believe that the circumstance of death detracts from his courage, commitment, or contribution. So I was comfortable recommending, once I believed that the people in the fight were convinced it warranted a Silver Star and I was, too, with forwarding that.

I also sent a message informing my chain of command that we believed it was fratricide. And we did that when we were told there were going to be fairly high-profile memorial services.

Now, what happens in retrospect is -- and I would do this differently if I had the chance again -- in retrospect, they look contradictory, because we sent a Silver Star that was not well-

written. And although I went through the process, I will tell you now I didn't review the citation well enough to capture -- or I didn't catch that if you read it, you could imply that it was not friendly fire. And also when I sent the message, the intent entirely was to inform everybody up my chain of command so that nobody would be surprised.

If I had it to do all over again -- and we subsequently changed Army policy after this, because the intent on awards at that time was to do an award rapidly so that it could be presented to the family at the memorial service for their comfort. What we have learned since is it is better to take your time, make sure you get everything right with the award and not rush it. So I say that in the two things which I believe were entirely well-intentioned on my part, and, in my view,

everyone forward that I saw was trying to do the right thing. It still produced confusion at a tragic time. And I'm very sorry for that, because I understand that the outcome produced a perception that I don't believe was at all involved, at least in the forces that were forward.

SEN. MCCAIN: And you believe that Corporal Tillman earned the Silver Star by his actions before he died?

GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: Sir, I absolutely do. I did then; I do now.

http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=583

July 13, 2007

Mr. Fred F. Fielding

Counsel to the President

The White House

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. Fielding:

We have had an opportunity to review the documents the White House produced in response to the Committee’s April 27,2007, request for information relating to the death of Army Corporal Patrick Tillman. We appreciate that you have sent 1072 pages of documents to the Committee, but we have concerns about the documents that are missing, the documents that are being withheld, and the documents that appear never to have been searched.

<h3>The main focus of the Committee’s investigation is to examine what the White House and the leadership of the Department of Defense knew about Corporal Tillman’s death and when they knew it. Unfortunately, the document production from the White House sheds virtually no light on these matters.

We urge you to make a complete document production to the Committee without fuither delay.

The Missing Documents

In the entire White House document production, there are only two communications between any officials in the White House and the Defense Department.</h3> The first is an e-mail exchange on April 23, 2004, the day after Corporal Tillman was killed in a friendly fire attack. It is between Lawrence Di Rita, the Defense Department spokesman, and Jeanie Mamo, a deputy assistant to the President and director of media affairs at the White House. Ms. Mamo asked Mr. Di Rita for details regarding Corporal Tillman’s death, and Mr. Di Rita answered, “details are sketchy just now.”

The second e-mail occurs 41 days later, on June 4, 2004. It is a transmission of a press packet from the Defense Department containing news clips. One of the “items of interest” is a May 29, 2004, article entitled “Investigation Concludes Friendly Fire Probably Killed Tillman.”

It is difficult to believe that these are the only communications that White House officials had with the Department of Defense between April 22, 2004, the day Corporal Tillman died, and May 29, 2004, the day the Bush Administration publicly announced that Corporal Tillman’s death was a result of fratricide. Corporal Tillman’s death was a major national story. During this period, <h3>the President made public statements regarding Corporal Tillman and praised his service to the counhy during the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner on May 1, 2004.

In fact, there is compelling evidence that responsive documents were not produced to the Committee by the White House. ln response to a similar document request from the Committee, the Defense Department produced an e-mail sent on April 28, 2004, from John Currin, the White House speechwriter who drafted the Correspondents’ Dinner speech, seeking additional information about Corporal Tillman from the Department of Defense.a This e-mail was not produced by the White House, and no explanation was provided for the omission.

Mr. Currin’s request appears to have generated a high-level military memo waming that the President should be informed that Corporal Tillman was killed by friendly fire.</h3> On April 29, 2004, one day after the request by Mr. Currin from the White House, Army Major General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the Joint Task Force for Afghanistan, sent a “Personal For” (P4) memo to three of the highest ranking generals at the Department of Defense: the commanders of U.S. Central Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, and the U.S. Army Special Operations Command.s According to General McChrystal, he wrote this memo in response to reports that President Bush “might include comments about Corporal Tillman’s heroism and his approved Silver Star Medal in speeches currently being prepared, not knowing the specifics surrounding his death.” The memo explained that “it is highly possible that Corporal Tillman was killed by friendly fire.”

General McChrystal concluded the P4 memo by urging his superiors to warn the White House:

I felt that it was essential that you received this information as soon as we detected it in order to preclude any unknowing statements by our country’s leaders which might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death become public.

Inexplicably, the White House production includes no copies of the P4 memo or any references to it. The production also does not include any response from the Defense Department to Mr. Currin’s e-mail.

Indeed, there is not a single document in the White House production that indicates how or when any White House officials, including the President, learned that Corporal Tillman was killed by his own unit.

We are sure you can understand our doubts about the completeness of your document production. It is not plausible that there were no cofirmunications between the Defense Department and the White House about Corporal Tillman’s death.

The Withheld and Redacted Documents.....

.....Sincerely,

Henry A. Waxman

Chairman

Tom Davis

Ranking Minority Member......

Here Specialist Patrick Tillman’s brother, Kevin Tillman gave opening testimony during the April 24, 2007 hearing:

Kevin Tillman:

“My name is Kevin Tillman. Two days ago marked the third anniversary of the death of my older brother Patrick Tillman in Afghanistan. To our family and friends it was a devastating loss. To the nation t was a moment of disorientation. To the military, it was a nightmare. But to others within the government, it appears to have been an opportunity.”

....Here Chairman Henry Waxman questioned Specialist Patrick Tillman’s mother, Mary Tillman, about the callous response she received from some to her persistence in getting the truth about her son’s death:

Mary Tillman:

“…He’s still a Colonel - Col. Kauzlarich said, and I’m appalled that he would make these comments, he’s entitled to his opinion of course, but he said that we would never be satisfied, because we’re not Christians. Spirituality doesn’t enter into this I guess, in his mind. But you know, we’re not Christians, so we can’t put him to rest, and that’s why we would never be satisifed and we’re just a pain in the ass basically… He also said that it must make us feel terrible that Pat’s worm dirt.”

http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=6845494

Retired general may be demoted in connection with Tillman cover-up

July 26, 2007 09:19 PM

Army Secretary Peter Geren is expected to recommend three-star Retired Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger be stripped of a star and face a decrease in retirement pension for his role in an alleged cover-up surrounding the nature of Army Ranger Pat Tillman's death.

Tillman, a former Arizona Cardinals football star, was killed by friendly fire three years ago in Afghanistan.

For five weeks military officials claimed he was killed by enemy fire, even though investigators determined quickly that he was killed by his own troops.

Last March, the acting Pentagon inspector general faulted nine army officers, including Kensinger, for making critical errors in reporting Tillman's death.

Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger was the most senior of those officers. He was also the Army's representative at Tillman's nationally televised memorial service the following month.

The Department of Defense's report concluded that at the service, "although Lt. Gen. Kensinger knew friendly fire was suspected, he decided to withhold notification from family members."

It also found that when asked about it later, "Kensinger provided misleading testimony" to investigators.

The commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command is expected to decide on punishments next Tuesday.

Thinking more about it, I am puzzled by your focus on "little fish", Kathleen. Frome and her long ago crime are inconsequential compared to the alleged crimes of "big fish", Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Abizaid, and McChrystal, and now, Obama and Eric Holder, too....protected as they will continue to be, by the culture of impunity.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../11/TILLMAN.TMP

THE DEATH OF PAT TILLMAN

New questions raised over timing of Army's disclosure of friendly-fire killing New questions about Abizaid's role in delayed disclosure

Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...P#ixzz0PFw4QrIS

.....On April 30, Tillman was awarded the Silver Star medal for combat heroism, and on May 3, a nationally televised memorial service was held in San Jose, during which he was lauded as a war hero.

However, Abizaid's assertion that he was in Iraq in the days after McChrystal sent his cable appears to be at least partially contradicted by the Pentagon's Web site and numerous news reports, which show that on April 30, Abizaid was at his Central Command headquarters in Qatar, engaged in a teleconference with reporters at the Pentagon.

"First of all, good afternoon from Qatar," Abizaid said at the start of the teleconference.

Neither does the inspector general appear to have verified Abizaid's account other than relying on Abizaid's legal office, known as the staff judge advocate.

"The Centcom Staff Judge Advocate confirmed that Gen. Abizaid did not receive (McChrystal's message) in a timely manner," the report said.

Military law experts told The Chronicle that the staff judge advocate should not have been considered an unbiased source.

"The staff judge advocate were Abizaid's lawyers -- they worked for Abizaid, they got their ratings from Abizaid, and they clearly answered to him," said John Einwechter, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and military prosecutor who worked directly for Abizaid and McChrystal in 1994 and 1995.

"They're not independent, and they tend to have a strong bias toward protecting" the Centcom commander, added Einwechter, who now is in private practice in Washington. "There's no way they could do an independent investigation."

Attempts to reach Abizaid, who retired from the military last month, through the Pentagon, Army and Central Command press offices were unsuccessful.

The inspector general's spokesman, Gary Comerford, told The Chronicle that he had no information about these questions regarding Abizaid. He said that then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did not learn about the friendly-fire evidence until late May, one month after the date of McChrystal's cable.

Rumsfeld "doesn't remember the exact date because it was two years ago," Comerford said. "But his staff told him that it was May 20 or somewhere just after."

In addition to Abizaid, McChrystal's cable was sent to Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger, chief of the Army Special Operations Command -- which directly oversees the Rangers.

Compared with its treatment of Abizaid, the inspector general, whose report was released March 26, took a more aggressive tack in its investigation of Kensinger.

The report cited Kensinger as having testified falsely about his reasons for failing to inform the Tillman family about the evidence of friendly fire when he attended the May 3, 2004, memorial service for Tillman.

Kensinger had testified under oath on more than one occasion that he did not learn of Tillman's friendly-fire death until he returned from California after the memorial, although testimony established that he knew of the true cause of death three days after Tillman was killed.

Investigators interrogated Kensinger's aides and other fellow officers to verify his statements and determined his testimony was false. Kensinger was one of four generals whom the inspector general's report recommended for disciplinary action.

There is no indication in the inspector general's report that either Kensinger or Gen. Bryan Brown, head of a separate Special Operations Command, was asked whether they had passed on the warning to officials in Washington.

Congressional hearings about the Tillman and Lynch cases are scheduled for April 24 at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. "I want to know whether their misfortunes were used for political purposes by this administration to drum up support for the war," said the committee's chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles. "The hearing we're going to have will be first step in this inquiry. How could a story that was false be told and be repeated for such a long period of time without someone putting a stop to it?"

Mary Tillman, who did not learn the true cause of her son's death for five weeks after he was killed, hopes the House hearings zero in on Abizaid as "the missing link in the cover-up," she said.

"McChrystal's (cable) was a priority message, and you can bet Abizaid's people made darn sure he got it," she added. "It said basically, 'warn the president.' I mean, how much more important can you get?".....

Edited August 26, 2009 by Tom Scully