James W. Douglass: The U.S. is an Assassination State

[Douglas Caddy]

James W. Douglass talks with Lew Rockwell about the JFK murder and its consequences.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwell-show/2013/01/11/339-the-us-is-an-assassination-state/

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Thanks for this extremely important interview. This should be posted along with the 5 big name blurbs about Unspeakable into wider audiences.

Did anyone notice Douglass, changed tone about Obama. He basically implied that Obama does not control the CIA and military. That is a logical conclusion for all the presidents after 11-22-63, its just that perhaps one or two earlier presidents had a wrinkled awareness of that reality.

What I can't get is why some JFK researchers still seem to have illusions about Obama. How can the president be ANYTHING BUT window-dressing 49 years after an unacknowledged coup?

To fail to realize this is to belittle the significance of the coup, and fail to tie it into the wider political narrative. This failure keeps more people from becoming interested in the assassinations as they should be.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

removed post

Edited January 13, 2013 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[Allen Lowe]

I have great respect for his book; however, when he spoke in Portland, Maine about 3 years ago it was not good - first he endorsed theories that the the WTC was blown up domestically, by the US itself; then, when I asked him, from the audience, to disavow someone who, previously, had said that the Jews were warned out of the WTC in advance, he refused to respond. After I asked this I was pretty much shouted down by the audience, which had a disturbingly cult-like aura to it. It was not a happy experience.

Edited January 14, 2013 by Allen Lowe

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

I would like to see the quotes. The nature of your comments make me very skeptical. We are getting your interpretation about a quote that you say Douglass made about 9/11 and we don't even get a quote out of context. We get no quote at all, followed by a deliberate turn down Poison the Well Lane. It's a well worn lane and has put kids though college, and paid lots of the past 50 years futility bills, which have been steep.

Edited January 15, 2013 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[Allen Lowe]

were you there? Are you accusing me of lying? Someone in the audience made that statement about the Jews; I walked directly up to Douglas afterward and asked him to disavow the statement; he looked at me and walked away. I almost went to the anti-defamation league on this one.

And Douglas gave a long on spiel on someone whose whole position was that the WTC was a pre-set explosion (or implosion). So before you make accusations, do your own research. Stop blaming the messenger. I was there. It's not my responsibility to produce a transcript.

[Allen Lowe]

^{since I apparently have to do your research for you, Douglass is a member of Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth, which is devoted to, among other things, proving that the WTC buildings were deliberately destroyed by domestic forces - one quick quote from a footnote in an article on their site:}

^{"3 For evidence that the Twin Towers and WTC-7 were destroyed by explosives, see Steven Jones, “Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?” (www.st911.org) and David Ray Griffin, “The Destruction of the World Trade Center: Why the Official Account Cannot Be True” (www.st911.org). For evidence that the official account of Flight 93 is false, see Rowland Morgan, Flight 93: What Really Happened On The Heroic 9/11 ‘Let’s Roll’ Flight (London: Constable & Robinson, 2006)."}

Edited January 15, 2013 by Allen Lowe

[Douglas Caddy]

Senator Asks to View Files on Killings of Americans

By SCOTT SHANE

The New York Times

January 14, 2013

WASHINGTON — A Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee demanded Monday that he and other committee members be allowed to review secret Justice Department legal opinions justifying the killing of American citizens in counterterrorism operations.

In a letter to John O. Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser and his nominee for C.I.A. director, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said he had asked repeatedly but unsuccessfully to see the legal opinions, though he added that he had been given “some relevant information on the topic.”

The administration has fought in court to keep such legal opinions secret, including one justifying the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric and Al Qaeda propagandist who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. A federal judge in Manhattan ruled on Jan. 2 against the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times, which sought the opinions under the Freedom of Information Act and plan to appeal the ruling.

Mr. Wyden called the administration’s current stance “unacceptable.” He wrote that only by reviewing the exact language of the legal opinions could he know “whether the president’s power to deliberately kill American citizens is subject to appropriate limitations.”

The White House declined to comment. Administration officials, including Mr. Brennan, have given a series of public speeches discussing the legal basis for drone strikes, even as they have declined to release the actual legal opinions.

Mr. Wyden did not threaten to block Mr. Brennan’s confirmation, which is expected to get Senate approval. The Intelligence Committee has set a confirmation hearing for Feb. 7.

In his letter, Mr. Wyden told Mr. Brennan that he also wanted to discuss the committee’s still-classified 6,000-page report on the C.I.A.’s use of coercive interrogations under President George W. Bush. He said that the report revealed that “the C.I.A. repeatedly provided inaccurate information about its interrogation program to the White House, the Justice Department and Congress,” and that he wanted Mr. Brennan’s views on how to correct what he called past inaccurate statements about the interrogation program.

Mr. Wyden also requested several other documents he said he has sought without success, including a list of countries in which the intelligence agencies have carried out lethal operations.

While only Mr. Wyden signed the letter, the Democratic chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, has previously called on the administration to make public the legal opinion justifying the Awlaki strike and said that she, too, intends to question Mr. Brennan about the report on C.I.A. interrogations.

[David Josephs]

Allen -

Are you then of a mind that the entire US defense system decided to stand down that day

while three of the worlds largest steel framed buildings come crashing down in their own footprint

with mysterious black vans in and out of the buildings for weeks ahead of time

with all security basically removed from the buildings

with explosions occurring 1800 feet BELOW the impacts

with ALL the concrete turned to dust

with ridiculously high temps and melted steel at the BASE of the columns... for weeks

without a SHRED of evidence that a plane filled with people hit the pentagon

without a single explanation for WTC 7

with millions/billions in gold missing

and as a result, the Bush admin has its cause and reason to take over the region's oil and herion production profits

all the while spending trillions on military expendables...

Yet you want to hold to the notion that some guy in a cave and 19-20 mostly ARAB men... none of which whose bodies were found afterward and many of which were still alive

and the FBI STILL does not amend the official terrorist list...

with Able Danger dismantled

with investigations blocked at every turn...

You are either incredibly naive or simply not looking very hard at the situation.

Sorry to burst your USA bubble Allen... but just like so many other atrocities... the US POTUS Admin of the time planned and executed it (had been planning it since Rumsfeld was Nixon's COS and brought in Chaney)

and continues to thumb its nose at the rest of us... the did it smack dab in front of your eyes and there is NOTHING we can do about it...

Since 11/22 when it became official, the only way the POTUS gets what he wants is if the CFR/FED klan gets what THEY want.

Obama printed 2 trillion in new money... who's yachts do you think THAT interest will pay for?

[Allen Lowe]

sure, sure, sorry, I don't want a sip of that Kool-Aid.

Yes, the US government took down those buildings, but not before the Jews got a call - as a matter of fact, I heard it myself:

"hey Moishe, get yout tuchus out of there. A bunch of goyim in a plane are on the way - and I don't mean Sky King and his daughter Penny."

[Anthony Thorne]

I'm not sure why Douglass should be pilloried for his views on 9/11, as the vast majority of published JFK assassination authors agree with his thesis that 9/11 was a domestic operation, and many of those endorse the controlled demolition theory regarding the buildings. To note a few off the top of my head -

Joan Mellen, author of A FAREWELL TO JUSTICE, has a 9/11 conspiracy article on her website, entitled '9/11 and 11/22'

Peter Dale Scott, author of DEEP POLITICS AND THE DEATH OF JFK, more recently published THE ROAD TO 9/11 through the University of California Press. It argues that Cheney and Rumsfeld were part of a 9/11 conspiracy. He later added an article to his reprint of THE WAR CONSPIRACY, titled 'JFK and 9/11 - Insights Gained from Studying Both'.

Walt Brown, author of THE WARREN OMMISSION, features various references to a 9/11 conspiracy in his recent JFK assassination chronology.

John Newman, author of OSWALD AND THE CIA, spoke at length at a 9/11 seminar organised by Cynthia McKinney,

Jim Marrs, author of CROSSFIRE, has published two separate editions of THE TERROR CONSPIRACY, which is entirely about deficiencies in the official 9/11 story.

Russ Baker, author of FAMILY OF SECRETS, has stated in public that he disbelieves the 9/11 Commission Report.

And so on. I'm sure there are others. All that said, if you have a problem with people suggesting that Jewish citizens were warned in advance of the 9/11 attacks, take it up with Haaretz, the most important Israeli news source in the world. They were the first to make the accusation a few weeks after the attack, and as far as I know have never recanted it. The Haaretz story is below -

http://www.haaretz.c...-attack-1.70579

Every other reference to this story online (including Asia Times articles as recent as 2009) makes reference to the original Haaretz story above. Seems clear enough to me, unless you want to argue that Israel's biggest newspaper is anti-semitic. If you think the Haaretz story has no basis in fact, be sure to let them know why.

Edited January 16, 2013 by Anthony Thorne

[Douglas Caddy]

To read transcript of the interview with Douglass, click on the link:

http://lewrockwell.com/orig13/douglass2.1.1.html

[Douglas Caddy]

January 16, 2013

Who Says You Can Kill Americans, Mr. President?

By VICKI DIVOLL

The New York Times

WASHINGTON

PRESIDENT OBAMA has refused to tell Congress or the American people why he believes the Constitution gives, or fails to deny, him the authority to secretly target and kill American citizens who he suspects are involved in terrorist activities overseas. So far he has killed three that we know of.

Presidents had never before, to our knowledge, targeted specific Americans for military strikes. There are no court decisions that tell us if he is acting lawfully. Mr. Obama tells us not to worry, though, because his lawyers say it is fine, because experts guide the decisions and because his advisers have set up a careful process to help him decide whom he should kill.

He must think we should be relieved.

The three Americans known to have been killed, in two drone strikes in Yemen in the fall of 2011, are Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was born in New Mexico; Samir Khan, a naturalized American citizen who had lived in New York and North Carolina, and was killed alongside Mr. Awlaki; and, in a strike two weeks later, Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was born in Colorado.

Most of us think these people were probably terrorists anyway. So the president’s reassurances have been enough to keep criticism at an acceptable level for the White House. Democrats in Congress and in the press have only gingerly questioned the claims by a Democratic president that he is right about the law and careful when he orders drone attacks on our citizens. And Republicans, who favor aggressive national security powers for the executive branch, look forward to the day when one of their own can wield them again.

But a few of our representatives have spoken up — sort of. Several months ago, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, began limply requesting the Department of Justice memorandums that justify the targeted killing program. At a committee hearing, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., reminded of the request, demurred and shared a rueful chuckle with the senator. Mr. Leahy did not want to be rude, it seems — though some of us remember him being harder on former President George W. Bush’s attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, in 2005.

So, even though Congress has the absolute power under the Constitution to receive these documents, the Democratic-controlled Senate has not fought this president to get them. If the senators did, and the president held fast to his refusal, they could go to court and demand them, and I believe they would win. Perhaps even better, they could skip getting the legal memos and go right to the meat of the matter — using oversight and perhaps legislating to control the president’s killing powers. That isn’t happening either.

Thank goodness we have another branch of government to step into the fray. It is the job of the federal courts to interpret the Constitution and laws, and thus to define the boundaries of the powers of the branches of government, including their own.

In reining in the branches, the courts have been toughest on themselves, however. A long line of Supreme Court cases require that judges wait for cases to come to them. They can take cases only from plaintiffs who have a personal stake in the outcome; they cannot decide political questions; they cannot rule on an issue not squarely before them.

Because of these and other limitations, no case has made it far enough in federal court for a judge to rule on the merits of the basic constitutional questions at stake here. A pending case filed in July by the families of the three dead Americans does raise Fourth and Fifth Amendment challenges to the president’s killings of their relatives. We will see if the judge agrees to consider the constitutional questions or dismisses the case, citing limitations on his own power.

In another case, decided two weeks ago, a federal judge in Manhattan, Colleen McMahon, ruled, grudgingly, that the American Civil Liberties Union and two New York Times reporters could not get access, under the Freedom of Information Act, to classified legal memorandums that were relied on to justify the targeted killing program. In her opinion, she expressed serious reservations about the president’s interpretation of the constitutional questions. But the merits of the program were not before her, just access to the Justice Department memos, so her opinion was, in effect, nothing but an interesting read.

So at the moment, the legislature and the courts are flummoxed by, or don’t care about, how or whether to take on this aggressive program. But Mr. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, should know, of all people, what needs to be done. He was highly critical when Mr. Bush applied new constitutional theories to justify warrantless wiretapping and “enhanced interrogation.” In his 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama demanded transparency, and after taking office, he released legal memos that the Bush administration had kept secret. Once the self-serving constitutional analysis that the Bush team had used was revealed, legal scholars from across the spectrum studied and denounced it.

While Mr. Obama has criticized his predecessor, he has also worried about his successors. Last fall, when the election’s outcome was still in doubt, Mr. Obama talked about drone strikes in general and said Congress and the courts should in some manner “rein in” presidents by putting a “legal architecture in place.” His comments seemed to reflect concern that future presidents should perhaps not wield alone such awesome and unchecked power over life and death — of anyone, not just Americans. Oddly, under current law, Congress and the courts are involved when presidents eavesdrop on Americans, detain them or harshly interrogate them — but not when they kill them.

It is not just the most recent president, this one and the next whom we need to worry about when it comes to improper exercise of power. It is every president. Mr. Obama should declassify and release, to Congress, the press and the public, documents that set forth the detailed constitutional and statutory analysis he relies on for targeting and killing American citizens.

Perhaps Mr. Obama still believes that, in a democracy, the people have a right to know the legal theories upon which the president executes his great powers. Certainly, we can hope so. After all, his interpretation might be wrong.

Vicki Divoll is a former general counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and former deputy legal adviser to the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center.