Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Kate/A/blog: Outings
Kate/A/blog: Outings
In a Ruppert article Beyond Bush II he writes: "A simple way to look at this is to say that the CIA represents the interests of Wall Street and the global economic powers, while the Bush Neocons represent the interests of only one American faction of the global economy. It is inevitable that the Neocons will be replaced. Several US presidents have fought the CIA and they have always emerged on the short end of the stick. This time will be no different."
So the agency that Poppy Bush once directed is out to overthrow his son? Poppy Bush became director of CIA at a time when the agency was being scrutinized for dirty tricks, the Allende in Chile assassination, Diem in Vietnam, various other nasty deeds. When Bush was confirmed as CIA director he promised to make : "CIA an instrument of peace and an object of pride for all our people."
The Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999 was signed into law by President Clinton on October 20, 1998. Among its provisions, the Act directed that the Headquarters compound of the Central Intelligence Agency located in Langley, Virginia, shall be known and designated as the "George Bush Center for Intelligence." That designation now makes me chuckle (and think send your son there GHW). Nice honor for a guy who only served as CIA Director for one year. I would expect things are named after men who help promote an agenda or occasionally to please the public, i.e. all the MLK boulevards across the country.
Some have theorized that Nixon's downfall was also a silent CIA coup. Perhaps a setup by CIA covert operator James McCord, one of the Watergate "plumbers." Nixon attempted to get the CIA to take responsibility for Watergate, as a CIA job or claiming "national security" to shut down the investigation. Director Richard Helms would have none of that. Nixon fired Helms but the House cleared CIA of any involvement in Watergate.
During the Watergate era polls were showing the public disinterest in the matter until a media hype campaign began to turn the polls against Nixon. Even so, most folks felt Nixon stealing info on his opposition and subsequent coverup was how all pols played the game. It was hard for many to accept that burglary and coverup were so awful a crime considering we assassinated foreign heads, overthrew governments, waged wars for profit, etc. What was the big deal people asked at the local diner. One theory proposed that Nixon had threatened the CIA with his knowledge concerning JFK assassination and/or Bay of Pigs. Did the CIA show a sitting president how impotent his position really is?
But why, according to Ruppert's theory, would the CIA do a silent coup on Son of Bush? Because BushCo is only one small American faction of global interest as Ruppert states? Mighty powerful little faction. Is it because BushCo put the blame on CIA intel failures as leading to 9/11?
Luckily, the finger then pointed away from the CIA to the FBI, and Sibel Edmonds comes forth as a convenient whistleblower to show how the FBI is negligent, incompetent, guilty. Who does Ms. Edmonds really work for? Wilson and Plame also conveniently come forth as victims, again making the CIA a circuitous victim of BushCo, as the Plame outing damaged their NOC and corporate cover Brewster Jennings. Although nothing trustworthy (for me) regarding Plame's career or Brewster Jennings has been put forth; a lot of heresay and bloggers hypothethetical speculation from bits of information from unidentified anonymous sources. Are these whistleblowers, among others, just doing their job: deflecting blame from CIA?
At one point it was claimed that George Tenet was falling on the sword for Bush and Tenet has now resigned. His replacement, Floridian Porter Goss, is long time buddy of the Bushes. Would Goss participate in or thwart a silent coup against the Bush dynasty? Personally I don't see the fight against the CIA by BushCo and the CIA's counter silent ongoing coup that Ruppert speaks of.
Maybe it's all going as planned. Boy Bush falling on the sword for the new world order. Intentionally made to look so odious and treasonous that most everyone will breathe a sigh of relief when he's gone, and welcome the replacements, be it McCain or a Clinton or Dean or "anybody but Bush."
As the accusations and theories disappear to the corners of internet archives, the programs for a police state are set, profits made, internal power struggles shift, and the global realignment moves further ahead. It's all the same agenda, just different ideas on who's driving and who's along for the ride. All the confusion and lies of the past few years will fade with folks believing one or a combination of theories. It was intel failure, it was the CIA, it was Bush and neocons, it was FBI incompetence, it was our foreign policy, it was evildoers, Illuminati, it is God, and/or democrats rolling over. It seems "inevitable" that just as with JFK, Vietnam, Nixon, the Contras, Noriega, Vince Foster, etc. there will be little hard truth revealed but enough theory to keep everyone busy for a lifetime.
Today's information "outings" remind me of UFO sightings. Plenty of folks claiming they have firsthand knowledge but no smoking gun proof. Convincing stories sometimes but who knows for certain there aren't little gray men abducting earthlings or if every whistleblower is a truth telling hero here to save the day and clear things up. Either way, there's always some rectal probing for the Joe Average faction.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Outings & Sightings
There are so many it's hard to keep up. I was following the theories of Wayne Madsen and Michael Ruppert but lost faith after their "Bush/Cheney indictments are looming!" last year. Now I'm not sure I understand the theory this pair is pushing but apparently it's along the line that the wrath of the CIA is working against the Bush family empire.In a Ruppert article Beyond Bush II he writes: "A simple way to look at this is to say that the CIA represents the interests of Wall Street and the global economic powers, while the Bush Neocons represent the interests of only one American faction of the global economy. It is inevitable that the Neocons will be replaced. Several US presidents have fought the CIA and they have always emerged on the short end of the stick. This time will be no different."
So the agency that Poppy Bush once directed is out to overthrow his son? Poppy Bush became director of CIA at a time when the agency was being scrutinized for dirty tricks, the Allende in Chile assassination, Diem in Vietnam, various other nasty deeds. When Bush was confirmed as CIA director he promised to make : "CIA an instrument of peace and an object of pride for all our people."
The Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999 was signed into law by President Clinton on October 20, 1998. Among its provisions, the Act directed that the Headquarters compound of the Central Intelligence Agency located in Langley, Virginia, shall be known and designated as the "George Bush Center for Intelligence." That designation now makes me chuckle (and think send your son there GHW). Nice honor for a guy who only served as CIA Director for one year. I would expect things are named after men who help promote an agenda or occasionally to please the public, i.e. all the MLK boulevards across the country.
Some have theorized that Nixon's downfall was also a silent CIA coup. Perhaps a setup by CIA covert operator James McCord, one of the Watergate "plumbers." Nixon attempted to get the CIA to take responsibility for Watergate, as a CIA job or claiming "national security" to shut down the investigation. Director Richard Helms would have none of that. Nixon fired Helms but the House cleared CIA of any involvement in Watergate.
During the Watergate era polls were showing the public disinterest in the matter until a media hype campaign began to turn the polls against Nixon. Even so, most folks felt Nixon stealing info on his opposition and subsequent coverup was how all pols played the game. It was hard for many to accept that burglary and coverup were so awful a crime considering we assassinated foreign heads, overthrew governments, waged wars for profit, etc. What was the big deal people asked at the local diner. One theory proposed that Nixon had threatened the CIA with his knowledge concerning JFK assassination and/or Bay of Pigs. Did the CIA show a sitting president how impotent his position really is?
But why, according to Ruppert's theory, would the CIA do a silent coup on Son of Bush? Because BushCo is only one small American faction of global interest as Ruppert states? Mighty powerful little faction. Is it because BushCo put the blame on CIA intel failures as leading to 9/11?
Luckily, the finger then pointed away from the CIA to the FBI, and Sibel Edmonds comes forth as a convenient whistleblower to show how the FBI is negligent, incompetent, guilty. Who does Ms. Edmonds really work for? Wilson and Plame also conveniently come forth as victims, again making the CIA a circuitous victim of BushCo, as the Plame outing damaged their NOC and corporate cover Brewster Jennings. Although nothing trustworthy (for me) regarding Plame's career or Brewster Jennings has been put forth; a lot of heresay and bloggers hypothethetical speculation from bits of information from unidentified anonymous sources. Are these whistleblowers, among others, just doing their job: deflecting blame from CIA?
At one point it was claimed that George Tenet was falling on the sword for Bush and Tenet has now resigned. His replacement, Floridian Porter Goss, is long time buddy of the Bushes. Would Goss participate in or thwart a silent coup against the Bush dynasty? Personally I don't see the fight against the CIA by BushCo and the CIA's counter silent ongoing coup that Ruppert speaks of.
Maybe it's all going as planned. Boy Bush falling on the sword for the new world order. Intentionally made to look so odious and treasonous that most everyone will breathe a sigh of relief when he's gone, and welcome the replacements, be it McCain or a Clinton or Dean or "anybody but Bush."
As the accusations and theories disappear to the corners of internet archives, the programs for a police state are set, profits made, internal power struggles shift, and the global realignment moves further ahead. It's all the same agenda, just different ideas on who's driving and who's along for the ride. All the confusion and lies of the past few years will fade with folks believing one or a combination of theories. It was intel failure, it was the CIA, it was Bush and neocons, it was FBI incompetence, it was our foreign policy, it was evildoers, Illuminati, it is God, and/or democrats rolling over. It seems "inevitable" that just as with JFK, Vietnam, Nixon, the Contras, Noriega, Vince Foster, etc. there will be little hard truth revealed but enough theory to keep everyone busy for a lifetime.
Today's information "outings" remind me of UFO sightings. Plenty of folks claiming they have firsthand knowledge but no smoking gun proof. Convincing stories sometimes but who knows for certain there aren't little gray men abducting earthlings or if every whistleblower is a truth telling hero here to save the day and clear things up. Either way, there's always some rectal probing for the Joe Average faction.
New Orleans - indescribable sadness
This photo was taken 18 months ago at a cemetery in New Orleans.
Camille Paglia: Guardsmen's deaths strike at the heart of America
Independent Online Edition > Commentators : app3
Blogger Comment: Readers know I don't spend a lot of time demonizing Bush. But it does shock me that Paglia expresses insanity like so many. She engages with "W" on a personal level, and is simply incapable of having a inkling of the massive deception.
I don't mean to sound like O'Reilly, but it really would help if the clueless people would "shut up".
Blogger Comment: Readers know I don't spend a lot of time demonizing Bush. But it does shock me that Paglia expresses insanity like so many. She engages with "W" on a personal level, and is simply incapable of having a inkling of the massive deception.
I don't mean to sound like O'Reilly, but it really would help if the clueless people would "shut up".
March of the penguins.
This is going to be one of the first films I watch when I get back to civilisation (well, anywhere with a movie rental store).
Israel and 9/11: New Report Connects the Dots- by Justin Raimondo
Israel and 9/11: New Report Connects the Dots- by Justin Raimondo
Blogger Thoughts: This doesn't really touch the issues of US planning to make 09/11/2001 happen.
Blogger Thoughts: This doesn't really touch the issues of US planning to make 09/11/2001 happen.
Fletcher's Speech
Fletcher's Speech
'Putting a tumultuous episode behind us' • Fletcher told he must release all office e-mail [8.30.05]
• Opinions on news mostly split along party lines [8.30.05]
• Fletcher agrees not to delay appearance [8.30.05]
• Stumbo weighs court challenge [8.30.05]
• Citing 'grave concerns,' Stumbo quits committee [8.30.05]
• Pardon issues aren't all definite [8.30.05]
• Fletcher pardons nine in state hiring inquiry [8.30.05]
• Doerting: Hope for change dashed [8.28.05]
• Lawyers for state check on Doerting [8.28.05]
• Some jobs cost state extra in salaries [8.27.05]
• Contractors consulted on hirings [8.26.05]
• Fletcher lawyer requests delay in jury appearance [8.25.05]
• Fletcher, under subpoena, hires ex-Watergate prosecutor [8.24.05]
• Jury likely to extend inquiry to 7 cabinets [8.24.05]
• Fletcher radio address deals with merit case [8.24.05]
Associated Press
'Putting a tumultuous episode behind us'
• Opinions on news mostly split along party lines [8.30.05]
• Fletcher agrees not to delay appearance [8.30.05]
• Stumbo weighs court challenge [8.30.05]
• Citing 'grave concerns,' Stumbo quits committee [8.30.05]
• Pardon issues aren't all definite [8.30.05]
• Fletcher pardons nine in state hiring inquiry [8.30.05]
• Doerting: Hope for change dashed [8.28.05]
• Lawyers for state check on Doerting [8.28.05]
• Some jobs cost state extra in salaries [8.27.05]
• Contractors consulted on hirings [8.26.05]
• Fletcher lawyer requests delay in jury appearance [8.25.05]
• Fletcher, under subpoena, hires ex-Watergate prosecutor [8.24.05]
• Jury likely to extend inquiry to 7 cabinets [8.24.05]
• Fletcher radio address deals with merit case [8.24.05]
Associated Press
Almost two years ago, I was elected by Kentuckians to restore hope and opportunity.
It was a tough first year. When I arrived here we had a billion-dollar deficit. It would have been easier in the short term if I had just raised taxes. But, I chose the tougher road — to reform government.
I instituted the largest reorganization the state has ever seen. I cut spending and cut the number of state employees while providing better service to all Kentuckians.
We turned a deficit into a $214million surplus in just a little over 18 months. I've recruited new businesses to come to Kentucky from all over the globe. Our economy is now growing at a rate that hasn't been seen in a long time — in fact — over a decade. Revenue is up — not because we raised taxes, but because we have created a wealthier state.
Change is difficult in Frankfort and we fight against decades of inertia — but we are finally beginning to see the results.
We still have major challenges facing us — the most significant, affordable health care and the fight against illegal drugs.
We came to Frankfort determined to change the culture. One of the things we wanted to do was create a level playing field for every Kentuckian.
We made changes, and sure, we made mistakes. Some of our senior executives made management mistakes, including inadequate oversight of young managers. Some of our overeager young managers made mistakes in judgment that in the age of e-mails is evident for all to see.
For those mistakes, the buck stops here, no matter the political consequences. But young professionals who left the private sector to serve their state should not pay for those mistakes by spending their life savings on lawyers.
Some of our supporters say we have not done anything our predecessors didn't do, except Democrats used the phone and we used e-mail. Some of our detractors say we have become part of what we promised to clean up.
For nearly two years now, I have worked hard every day to do the best job I can as your governor. And I have never — let me repeat never — knowingly violated any laws while doing so. My conscience is clear.
Make no mistake about it: This investigation, which is diverting our administration's attention away from the people's business, appears to be a political investigation.
The statute used to justify these investigations has been described in a 1993 study, commissioned by Governor (Brereton) Jones, as being vague and confusing. In fact, it has never been used in this fashion to indict any employee of Kentucky state government.
What is serious is the fact that Greg Stumbo's office has focused its energy and resources, including those of the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation, toward reviewing hundreds of thousands of state e-mails while other priorities are going by the wayside.
What we're talking about in this investigation is people recommending friends and relations who may have worked in a political campaign.
To reiterate, mistakes were made, but at no time was there a cynical scheme to displace thousands of hard-working state employees.
Let me put these charges — that have cost millions of your tax dollars — into perspective. Do you know what noodling is?
Noodling is the sport of catching fish with your bare hands rather than bothering to bait your hook. There actually is a noodling season in Kentucky and the General Assembly has deemed that the penalty for noodling out of season — is comparable to most of the indictments handed down so far — a misdemeanor.
Some of the indictments are the equivalent of conspiring to commit noodling out of season. And the one person charged with felony indictments is accused of the legal equivalent of covering up noodling out of season.
At a time when we are facing a multibillion-dollar unfunded liability in our public employee retirement system, Greg Stumbo is wasting your tax dollars on an unprecedented investigation resulting in a handful of charges that are tantamount to noodling out of season.
At a time when the average Kentuckian is deeply worried about the cost and availability of health care, and while those same health-care problems are presenting a tremendous hurdle to our state budget, he has neglected to adequately pursue fraud and abuse in our state's Medicaid program.
Now you tell me, which is a more important reason to spend millions of your tax dollars?
By the way, noodling season in Kentucky ends at sundown tomorrow.
I now have a choice.
I cannot allow state government to continue to be consumed by this game of political "gotcha" paralyzing our ability to serve you, the people of Kentucky.
It may not be good politics, but I believe after many long nights of prayer and much counsel — that it is now time for me to use the power you vested in me, to do all I can to stop this sad course of events.
I cannot stand by and watch your tax dollars being wasted and lives being destroyed in such a manner.
First, I shall attend tomorrow's grand jury proceedings because the law requires it. I shall not, however, speak before this body because this entire process has become a political tool of Greg Stumbo.
Second, in order to bring closure, I am today exercising the power conferred upon me by Section 77 of the Constitution of Kentucky to grant amnesty to all persons who might otherwise be charged with violating the merit system laws.
I am making one exception to this blanket amnesty. In spite of the fact that I have the authority to do so — I will not pardon myself.
Even though I am very disappointed at the abuse of our justice system throughout this entire affair, I am ready to stand up to this misguided display of prosecutorial misconduct.
I will not be intimidated.
This is not just an act of grace for these individuals but — as the framers of the Kentucky Constitution specifically said in the debates — amnesty promotes the welfare of the general public by putting a tumultuous episode behind us, avoiding a protracted, costly series of legal proceedings that leave honest people in financial ruin, with ruined reputations, and divert our leaders from doing the people's business.
Greg Stumbo has asserted that issuing pardons before trial and conviction is contrary to the rule of law; but that assertion is on the wrong side of history. In 1792, the framers of the first Kentucky Constitution wisely vested in the governor the power to grant amnesty before indictments.
In 1892, the framers of our present Constitution vigorously debated that provision and overwhelmingly retained this power to grant amnesty as an essential part of Kentucky's system of justice.
The governor's grant of pardons is, in fact, part of the rule of law created by our founders just for such situations as presently confront the commonwealth.
Some will say that by accepting these pardons, these individuals are admitting guilt to some unspecified violation. But those pundits would ignore the history of our constitution.
When the framers debated Section 77 in 1891, then-Governor (Simon Bolivar) Buckner told the Convention that a person accused of a crime is presumed innocent until proven guilty and, when pardoned before conviction, remains forever presumed innocent.
The power to grant amnesty is conferred upon the governor to quell a tumultuous situation and get on with the people's business.
I therefore call upon the attorney general to honor this amnesty in spirit as well as in law, to take the necessary steps to end this.
These folks who have been accused by Greg Stumbo are good people. Some have made mistakes because of inexperience, and a complicated, unclear merit law.
But inexperience and ignorance are not reasons to avoid responsibility, either by those who made the mistakes, or by me. No one will avoid accountability.
In fact, these cases in question are currently being reviewed by both the Ethics Commission and the State Personnel Board — where any possible action belonged in the first place — and whatever sanctions deemed appropriate by these bodies will be imposed.
The power to pardon I take very seriously. It was given to governors for such a time as this.
Some political experts have said that this action could very well ruin my political career. I'll leave that in the hands of you, the Kentucky voters. Our commonwealth is far too important to suffer for the career of one person.
And it's time for someone to stand up to these misguided antics and the abuse of power we have seen in the actions of Greg Stumbo.
That time is now.
Mondo Washington by James Ridgeway: Bush Against the Ropes
village voice > news > Mondo Washington by James Ridgeway
Democrats ought to be able to put him away, but you know how they are
by James Ridgeway
August 30th, 2005 10:59 AM
The Democrats ought to be in great shape: Bush is going down in the polls. Social Security has become a disappearing issue. The Plame investigation threatens Karl Rove and perhaps others on the White House staff. The Christian right is pushing Bush further and further into kookiness, with calls for remaking education along the lines of "intelligent design." Bush's energy policy has no effect on slowing runaway gasoline prices. People across the nation dread what's going to happen to their pocketbooks when home heating bills for both oil and gas hit at the first cold snap.
Additional reporting: David Botti and Isabel Huacuja
Democrats ought to be able to put him away, but you know how they are
by James Ridgeway
August 30th, 2005 10:59 AM
The Democrats ought to be in great shape: Bush is going down in the polls. Social Security has become a disappearing issue. The Plame investigation threatens Karl Rove and perhaps others on the White House staff. The Christian right is pushing Bush further and further into kookiness, with calls for remaking education along the lines of "intelligent design." Bush's energy policy has no effect on slowing runaway gasoline prices. People across the nation dread what's going to happen to their pocketbooks when home heating bills for both oil and gas hit at the first cold snap.
The war is still an important plank for Bush. But God works better. And John Roberts works best of all. To cheers and standing ovations before the Idaho National Guard last week, Bush returned to a campaign slogan that brings people cheering to their feet: "Freedom is not America's gift to the world. Freedom is an almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world."
Bush has also ignored Congress and installed John Bolton, who is pressing for changes at the U.N. that would undermine the purpose of the organization and serve as a slap in the face to developing nations. Bolton wants to put the brakes on any plans aimed at curbing global warming. And he desires to remove language that commits the U.N. to reducing the gap between rich and poor.
Where are the Democrats? The party's establishment, such as it is—Joe Biden and John Kerry, for example—are socked into the war. So, it appears, is Hillary Clinton. She acts like she's already the nominee, "bobbing and weaving" as one activist put it, and in typical Clinton style, acting as if the rules don't apply to her. Hillary is Hil-lary. She doesn't have to lead. Instead, the senator from New York plays with words on abortion and studiously ponders such subjects as how to get religion back into the mix without looking like an opportunistic nut. She doesn't talk about the war, which she has supported, nor about Cindy Sheehan. Time and again she looks like the model Bush Lite–DLC candidate. And it works. She's getting accolades from George Will for resisting the "siren songs" of people like Sheehan.
The nomination of Roberts to the Supreme Court already has split the Democrats, making any opposition to him seem dubious, if not reckless, for a politician. When the hearings start, there's likely to be more disarray, leaving Bush looking better and better.
Taking on the war is tricky business. "Democrats with long memories know perfectly well that similar demands for withdrawal during the Vietnam War wrecked the party's reputation on national security issues for a generation," Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum writes in the Los Angeles Times. "The American public tended to associate Democratic doubts with the nation's first-ever military defeat, and regardless of whether that conclusion was fair or not, no one is eager to repeat it."
Despite the long faces, huge fines, and lengthy jail sentences for heads of some corporations, the average big-company CEO is raking in more cash than ever, in large part thanks to the war. The average annual CEO pay for the biggest companies is now $11.8 million, compared with $27,460 for a worker's average yearly pay. "If the minimum wage had risen as fast as CEO pay since 1990, the lowest paid workers in the U.S. would be earning $23.03 an hour today, not $5.15 an hour," reports a new study from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.
"At the 34 publicly traded U.S. corporations among the 2004 top 100 defense contractors—companies such as United Technologies, Textron, and General Dynamics—average CEO pay increased 200 percent from 2001 to 2004, versus 7 percent for all CEOs," says the study. "For example, David H. Brooks, CEO of bulletproof-vest maker DHB Industries, earned $70 million in 2004 . . . [compared with] his 2001 compensation of $525,000. In May 2005, the Marine Corps recalled more than 5,000 DHB armored vests after doubts were raised about their effectiveness."
God's hit man
The Republican establishment may pass Pat Robertson off as an amusing wack job, but he floats ideas for Bush, and the proposal to kill Venezuela's Chavez is like putting out a hit on the man.
Coups have been a major foreign policy tool in exercising U.S. power throughout the hemisphere. And under the Bush doctrine of unilateral attack, they are more important than ever. Here is a partial list, prepared with the help of the Council on Hemispheric Policy in Washington, of the Latin leaders we've helped get rid of:
Francisco I. Madero: Mexican revolutionary leader deposed, captured, and executed. The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Henry Lane Wilson, was deeply involved in ousting Madero, who had helped end Porfirio Diaz's 30-year dictatorship. Under Diaz's regime, U.S. investment had boomed, with Americans owning more than 40 percent of all property in the country.
Augusto Sandino:An anti-colonialist Nicaraguan leader, he had laid down arms when the U.S. Marines withdrew from the country. But Anastasio Somoza, a Philadelphia-educated Nicaraguan close to the U.S., ordered henchmen to seize and kill him.
Jacobo Arbenz Guzm An elected president of Guatemala, he was ousted in a plot hatched and in large part carried out by the CIA. A military junta headed by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas replaced him. This was the so-called United Fruit coup.
Rafael Trujillo: The Dominican Republic dictator was gunned down by the Dominican military as he drove to visit his mistress. He had fallen into Dwight Eisenhower's disfavor after Fidel Castro deposed Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. Ike thought the Commies might win over the D.R. as well if there were an uprising against Trujillo's corrupt rule. Trujillo's son hurried home to replace his murdered dad, but the U.S. didn't like him any better, and the young Trujillo was deposed and replaced by Joaqu Balaguer, who was replaced by the elected Juan Bosch. But Bosch was deemed too leftish and was deposed, again with U.S. connivance.
Salvador Allende: The president of Chile was killed in a mil itary coup led by Augusto Pinochet on September 11. At the time, Henry Kissinger told President Richard Nixon that the U.S. wasn't involved in the actual coup, but it is well known that the CIA had been plotting against Allende ever since he came to power.
Maurice Bishop: The president of Grenada was executed in 1983 after a military coup led by Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard. Soon thereafter Reagan invaded to depose the pro-Soviet Coard.
Manuel Noriega: The Panama strongman and longtime employee of the CIA was captured in the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1990, later indicted in the U.S. on drug charges, found guilty in a Miami federal court, and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He is eligible for parole next year.
If prior practice is any guide, Hugo Chavez is a marked man.
Additional reporting: David Botti and Isabel Huacuja
playing with water 15
just curious how long it's going to take you to guess what this is ...
yes, you guessed right, it is a shower head. you are incredibly fast, too. and smiling gets the originality prize ;-D
yes, you guessed right, it is a shower head. you are incredibly fast, too. and smiling gets the originality prize ;-D
Jude Wanniski is dead of a heart attack. He was 67.
Antiwar.com Blog
Antiwar.com Columnist Jude Wanniski Passes Away
I woke this morning to terrible news: Jude Wanniski is dead of a heart attack. He was 67. Jude was one of the leading ex-conservatives who had turned antiwar, and hard-core antiwar at that. His writings had been among the strongest antiwar articles featured in conservative publications. Earlier this month, Jude wrote a wonderful article urging people to support Antiwar.com. Jude coined the term "supply-side economics." Along with economist Arthur Laffer (of the Laffer Curve fame), Jude shaped modern-day conservative economics and influenced leaders including Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp and Steve Forbes. He was author of the 1978 book The Way the World Works," named one of the 100 most influential books of the 20th century by the editors of the National Review. At the heart of the book is his 1978 discovery of the cause of the 1929 stock market crash, a discovery that vindicates the classical economics, which had been blamed for the crash and the Great Depression. He writings over many years appears on his Web sites, Wanniksi.com and Polyconomics. You can also read his writings on Antiwar.com and LewRockwell.com, and listen to his radio interviews with Scott Horton.Read his obituary. He was one of the true conservatives who refused to abandon his principles when world events and the neocons brought pressure to bear. We at Antiwar.com mourn the loss of Jude: we will miss him a lot.
Antiwar.com Columnist Jude Wanniski Passes Away
I woke this morning to terrible news: Jude Wanniski is dead of a heart attack. He was 67. Jude was one of the leading ex-conservatives who had turned antiwar, and hard-core antiwar at that. His writings had been among the strongest antiwar articles featured in conservative publications. Earlier this month, Jude wrote a wonderful article urging people to support Antiwar.com. Jude coined the term "supply-side economics." Along with economist Arthur Laffer (of the Laffer Curve fame), Jude shaped modern-day conservative economics and influenced leaders including Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp and Steve Forbes. He was author of the 1978 book The Way the World Works," named one of the 100 most influential books of the 20th century by the editors of the National Review. At the heart of the book is his 1978 discovery of the cause of the 1929 stock market crash, a discovery that vindicates the classical economics, which had been blamed for the crash and the Great Depression. He writings over many years appears on his Web sites, Wanniksi.com and Polyconomics. You can also read his writings on Antiwar.com and LewRockwell.com, and listen to his radio interviews with Scott Horton.Read his obituary. He was one of the true conservatives who refused to abandon his principles when world events and the neocons brought pressure to bear. We at Antiwar.com mourn the loss of Jude: we will miss him a lot.
Police in Baghdad reported that 56 civilians were killed in the strikes.
KSBI-TV - Home: "Police in Baghdad reported that 56 civilians were killed in the strikes. "
BreakForNews.com Forum - CIA: The "Cover Story" and Real Life
BreakForNews.com Forum - CIA: The "Cover Story" and Real Life
For those still coming to terms with the scope of our CIA Internet Fakes list, the following extract from Prouty's "Secret Team" is a indication of the lengths to which a secret intelligence service goes.Posting this does NOT mean that we endorse Prouty. But the issues he raises illuminate a real-world assessment of how intelligence services work.There is NO WAY that 9/11 went ahead without the most comprehensive preparation of the Internet by the CIA. Furthermore, there is NO WAY the Internet itself went ahead without the same thorough approach by the wordl's most well funded secret intelligence agency.To believe otherwise is to believe CIA propaganda.Fintan Dunne 30 Aug, 2005P.S. This extract has some stimulating stuff on Ellsberg too.THE SECRET TEAMThe CIAand Its Alliesin Control of the UnitedStates and the WorldL. FLETCHER PROUTYCol., U.S. Air Force (Ret.) Chapter 8CIA: The "Cover Story" Intelligence Agencyand the Real-Life Clandestine OperatorTHE CIA LIKES TO PUBLICIZE ITSELF AS IT WISHES TO be seen; it tries consistently to maintain its cover story. These facts would not be publicly admitted by the agency; but they are facts. It is only fitting to note that when Allen Dulles died, he was writing a book about "Communism and Subversion". This was his first love, as it was J. Edgar Hoover's. This was his occupation. Intelligence was his avocation. When he was writing about Communism and subversion, he was writing, of course, about the real work of the CIA. He liked to write about the CIA and he liked to see that others wrote about the CIA.After his retirement from the Agency in the fall of 1961, he wrote a very interesting book entitled The Craft of Intelligence. This book is good reading. It contains a lot of folklore about the peripheral world of intelligence; but it says almost nothing useful about the CIA. In fact, as he intended it, it tells a great many things about the CIA that were designed to create the picture of a noble CIA, one that really does not exist. This was typical of Allen Dulles.Other CIA men have written about the CIA. The most able Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, Jr., long-time career Intelligence stalwart and Executive Director of the CIA, wrote a book, too, which he called The Real CIA. This is unquestionably the best book written by a CIA man about the CIA. It is as forthright and as honest a book as any career man has written or may ever write.... Lyman Kirkpatrick has written an elegant book; but it leaves much to be said.... After these men, numberless others have written about the CIA. A great percentage of this latter group has written about the CIA at the bidding and urging of the Agency. An organization such as the CIA, which exists in a true never-never land, needs to have someone write about it so that there will always be a plethora of material available and so that this vast stew-pot of material will be what the Agency wants the world to believe about it. The Agency does not answer writers, whether they attack it or not. But it works doggedly and brilliantly at times to bury anything not the party line that is written about it. Thus the Agency has a whole stable of writers, its favorite magazines and newspapers, its publishing houses, and its "backgrounders" ready to go at all times.Allen Dulles had twelve or thirteen regular members of the news media who would be invited to join him frequently for lunch in the beautiful old dining room he maintained in East Building across from his office.... Even as Dulles regularly placed himself at the mercy of the lions, he played a bigger game. If he gave them a bit of insight into the workings of the Agency, he also gave them a heavy mixture of that special brew, which he was so good at concocting. He fed them the CIA point of view all the time, just as he fed so many others, from Presidents on down, and as he has fed the readers of his book.It was not until he left government service in late 1961 that he began his book, published in 1963, The Craft of Intelligence. This book, which he was to leave to the world as his public definition of the agency, says very little that is real about the Agency and very little that is real about intelligence. It contains all manner of contrived concepts designed over the years to make people believe that the CIA was what he was saying it was and that all of the authority he said it had did exist. Any reader who thought the CIA was anything like the description contained in the book will be excused for his thoughts, because if ever a subject was painted in camouflage and in words of guile, this was it. This really is not a light matter. Not only did Allen Dulles portray the CIA in public as something that it most certainly was not; but he had done so for many years within the U.S. Government. The law did not authorize secret or clandestine activities. However, Agency protagonists continued to put pressure on the Executive Branch to permit the CIA to collect "secret intelligence".... In the beginning, this idea was avowedly limited to secret intelligence. The CIA disclaimed any intention of using secret intelligence as a bridge to secret operations....This is why it has been important to read the Dulles book line by line.... The book shows how the CIA has been "sold" to the inner staff of the Government and to others, such as writers and commentators, businessmen and educators, both in this country and all over the world.....CONTINUES IN NEXT POST.....
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CIA: The "Cover Story" and Real Life -PART 2« Reply #1 on Today at 1:56am »
CONTINUED.....The Agency is very much aware, too, that it cannot look back, because fate is creeping up on it. The tremendous pressures in this country that have built up during the long tragic years of the conflict in Indochina are driving researchers, politicians, and other concerned Americans to search for the origins and sources of responsibility for that disaster. This is bringing them closer and closer each day to the curtain of secrecy that has effectively veiled these areas from sight for more than a decade. This pressure is now forcing Agency and ST supporters to begin a serious program of rewriting history, in a massive effort to protect and shield the Agency while shifting the search into other avenues. We have already said that the work of Daniel Ellsberg and the number of people who helped him may have been the first major step in this effort. The released Pentagon Papers do much to portray the CIA as it is supposed to be, while doing all it can to shift any censure of the CIA as an organization primarily concerned with clandestine operations, to the military, the National Security Council, and the White House.Now a second salvo has been favored in an attempt to go further along this same road for the purpose of whitewashing the Agency. As the sometimes prestigious Foreign Affairs, the quarterly review of the Council on Foreign Relations, enters its fiftieth year, it has published an article entitled "The CIA and Decision-Making", by Chester L. Cooper. The author is listed as the "Director of the International and Social Studies Division, Institute of Defense Analysis; Special Assistant to Averill Harriman in planning the U.S. negotiating position on Vietnam, 1966-1967; Senior Staff Member, National Security Council,1964-1966; author of The Last Crusade: America in Vietnam." The review does not add that he was and may still be a member of the CIA. This contribution to current history is a most astounding bit of writing and reweaving of events. It appears to be Phase II, or at least a part of Phase II, of the whitewashing of the CIA in Indochina. This article is a most expert and ideal example of what is meant by saying that the CIA likes to see itself in front, as long as it can control the pen.It begins most suitably by pointing out that Allen Dulles selected the motto, which is chiseled into the marble at the entrance to the new CIA building in Langley, Virginia, from the words of St. John: "The truth shall make you free." And with this fresh in mind, the article goes on to say, " . . . one of his [Allen Dulles's] greatest contributions in nurturing the frail arrangements he helped to create [was] to provide intelligence support to Washington's top-level foreign-policy-makers." Then it gets down to the serious business of trying to show how ardently the CIA (Intelligence) has worked during the Indochina conflict, wholly ignoring the other, and major side of the house, CIA (Clandestine Operations) and CIA (senior member of the Secret Team).To set the stage, it dwells upon the responsibility of the CIA to turn out the National Intelligence Estimates. "When PRAVDA has been scanned, the road-watchers' reports from Laos checked, the economic research completed, Pham van Dong's recent speeches dissected, radar signals examined, satellite observations analyzed and embassy cables read, the estimators set about their task . . . it is likely to be the best-informed and most objective view the decision-makers can get . . . [they] brood about the world's problems and project their views about how these problems are likely to affect America's national security interests." All of this is to laud the intelligence side of the house, and this praise is most deserved. However, the intelligence staff has had its problems, and in mentioning some, this article attempts to use them as a means of shifting some blame to other parties, as in the following: " . . . the Office of National Estimates had a thin audience during the Johnson Administration." In other words, if the Johnson Administration did not take advantage of this excellent intelligence, then certainly the CIA can't be blamed for what befell that Administration; or at least this is what this author would like his readers to believe.Then to enlarge the scope of his case he adds, "Nixon's Administration . . . relegated the National Intelligence Estimates to but a tiny fraction of the studies, analyses, position papers, contingency plans, research reports and memoranda generated by the large new NSC staff . . . " Again he implies that if the Nixon Administration failed to heed the National Estimates, it was its own fault and not that of the CIA.Having set the stage and prepared his case, he goes directly to the heart of the matter: "Most Americans concerned about foreign affairs have long had to accept on blind faith that our government takes pains to provide its highest officials with the best possible intelligence guidance -- and then to squirm under our private suspicions that this advice is, all too often, regarded with indifference. Thanks to Daniel Ellsberg, those of us who have not seen a National Intelligence Estimate for many years, or who have never seen one, can address the matter with somewhat more confidence than we could have a few months ago. Although it probably did not cross Ellsberg's mind when he released the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, he succeeded in doing what the Agency, on its own, has rarely been able to do for more than twenty years: he made the CIA 'look good' through what inhabitants of the Pickle Factory themselves would call a 'highly credible source'."To those well steeped in the ways of the real CIA, and unfortunately there are too few who are, the above statement fits the pattern. Here is an Agency partisan praising Daniel Ellsberg. This does much to support our earlier contention that one of the real reasons these papers were delivered to the public was really on behalf of the CIA and the ST and not the other way around. Then the article goes on to say " . . . the Pentagon Papers tell us little about what actually happened in the White House Cabinet room, they do reveal much about the intelligence guidance made available to the policy-makers." He is still working on the major premise in an attempt to show that everything the CIA did was right, by showing from the included extracts how excellent its intelligence product was during those trying years. Let's look further into this propaganda, as an example is selected from among the many available.....CONTINUES IN NEXT POST.....
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CIA: The "Cover Story" and Real Life -PART 3« Reply #2 on Today at 1:59am »
.....CONTINUED"By mid-summer, the issue of American support for Diem's fledgling and untried government was high on the NSC's agenda. The CIA was requested to prepare an Estimate on the viability of a Western-supported, anti-Communist government in Vietnam. According to the Pentagon Papers, the National Intelligence Estimate of August 3 (1954) warned that 'even with American support it was unlikely that the French or Vietnamese would be able to establish a strong government and that the situation would probably continue to deteriorate!' The NSC, nevertheless, recommended American aid for the frail and untried Vietnamese government, a recommendation that was soon followed by President Eisenhower's fateful letter to Diem offering American support."This estimate had long since been validated and it seems clear that the United States would now be better off if President Eisenhower had paid more heed to that warning and less to the strong pressures that were being exerted by his Secretary of State and hard line members of Congress."This voice of the CIA is saying that the CIA National Intelligence Estimate "has long since been validated" and "the United States would now be better off" if the President had listened to it and not to John Foster Dulles and "hard-line members of Congress". Remember, as we review the record further, that this NIE, as reported by Foreign Affairs, was dated August 3, 1954.During this very same period when such NIE were establishing a cover story for the clandestine side of the CIA, the record shows that the Director of Intelligence, Allen Dulles, was working through his clandestine channels to keep knowledge of his activities from other officials of the Government and at the same time to establish a vast clandestine operational presence in Indochina. To compound this deception, the Foreign Affairs article of January 1972 presents a bold attempt to further conceal the duplicity of the CIA by hiding these facts and at the same time blaming members of Congress, John Foster Dulles, and President Eisenhower for things that were being done, not by them at all, but by Allen Dulles and his clandestine staff. There can be no other way to interpret this action to cover up the role of the Agency during the early and formative years of the Indochina conflict than to expose it as a premeditated effort to rewrite and restructure history by hiding the operational role of the CIA under its Intelligence cover.This is one of the most compelling reasons why "secret intelligence" and "secret operations" should not be placed under the authority of one agency.In spite of what the Office of National Estimates was saying during 1954, on January 30, 1954, during a meeting of the President's Special Committee on Indochina, Allen W. Dulles inquired if an unconventional warfare officer, specifically Colonel Lansdale, could not be added to the group of five liaison officers to which General Navarre had agreed. In other words, as early as January 1954, Allen Dulles was moving into the action in Indochina with his crack team of agents, among them Ed Lansdale.Then, by April 5, 1954, the conclusions of the report of this same Presidential Committee included the following: "The United States should, in all prudence, take the following courses of action . . . to give vitality in Southeast Asia to the concept that Communist imperialism is a transcending threat to each of the Southeastern Asian States. These efforts should be so undertaken as to appear through local initiative rather than as a result of U.S. or U.K. or French instigation. "This action was assigned to USIA, (United States Information Agency), the State Department, and the CIA.It was to be the job of the CIA, among others, to see that the "concept" of the "threat to each of the Southeast Asian States" was to be made to appear to be "Communist imperialism". This was the direct charge of a committee on which Allen Dulles served and is a blunt definition of how anti-Communism is hoisted to the top of the mast whenever it is needed as a rallying symbol. As the theme of the "transcending threat" in Indochina, it was in the direct line to the later Communist-supported-war-of-national-liberation theme and then to the Communist-inspired-subversive-insurgency theme of the Kennedy era. There can be little wonder why, in the minds of most Americans, South Vietnam is so intricately tied to the idea of Communist subversion. Words such as the above show clearly the role of the initiative taken by the CIA in Indochina as far back as 1954, even while the Office of National Estimates was saying otherwise.And while all this was going on, Admiral Arthur W. Radford, the chairman of the JCS, gave a memorandum to the Secretary of Defense which included the following extract: "The JCS desire to point out their belief that, from the point of view of the USA, with reference to the Far East as a whole, Indochina is devoid of decisive military objectives, and the allocation of more than token U.S. armed forces in Indochina would be a serious diversion of limited U.S. capabilities." This was the view of the top military man as presented at the same time Dulles was sending his teams into action there, under the cover of military men.While this was happening, the Geneva Conference was under way. Although the Foreign Affairs article chooses to heap blame on John Foster Dulles, we should recall that Dulles had not attended that conference since its organizational meetings. In his place he had sent his Under Secretary, Walter Bedell Smith, who had been the DCI before he went to the Department of State. Certainly John Foster Dulles, whose brother was the DCI and whose principal assistant was a former DCI, was well aware of the views of the Office of National Estimates on the one hand, and of the actions of the clandestine side of the house on the other.Then the Saigon Military Mission (SMM) ("military" only in the sense that it was a cover arrangement) entered Vietnam on June 1, 1954. This mission "was to enter into Vietnam quietly and assist the Vietnamese, rather than the French, in unconventional warfare. The French were to be kept as friendly allies in the process, as far as possible. The broad mission for the team was to undertake paramilitary operations against the enemy and to wage political-psychological warfare. Later, after Geneva, the mission was modified to prepare means for undertaking paramilitary operations in Communist areas rather than to wage unconventional warfare . . . "[1] By its own statement of mission this team was not to aid the French and was to wage a paramilitary campaign against the "enemy". This left it with only one real mission, "to assist the new government of Ngo Dinh Diem". And Allen Dulles sent this clandestine team into South Vietnam in August of 1954, exactly the same month of the NIE, which the Foreign Affairs article says the CIA published as guidance for this country. Dulles' covert actions and his overt NIE were in direct conflict. He was saying one thing and doing another.There is only one conclusion that can be drawn from such writing, and it is derived from one of two alternatives: Either the author did not know about the existence of and the mission of the Dulles directed Lansdale SMM team; or if he did, he was attempting to cover up the CIA role in such activity, which had more to do with the course of events in Indochina since that time than anything else done by any of the other participants.Here again we see the ST at work. It is most interested in covering up its role in Indochina during the past twenty years, and in so doing it is skillfully working to shift the blame wherever it can. It is trying to charge that if the military, the diplomats, President Eisenhower, President Johnson, and President Nixon all had heeded its advice as contained in the National Estimates, they would not have gotten this country into such trouble. Their efforts even go so far as to attempt to hide behind their intelligence position by using the "transparent" Pentagon Papers. The Foreign Affairs article would have its readers believe that the NIE is the only real CIA and that such things as the Saigon Military Mission, because it was called a "military" mission, will be discovered not to be the CIA at all.We have been saying that the release of the Pentagon Papers by the former CIA agent and long-time associate of Edward G. Lansdale, Daniel Ellsberg, may have been the opening attack by the CIA to cover its disengagement not only from the physical conflict in Indochina, but also from the historical record of that disastrous event. In this effort, the CIA appears to be trying to hide behind its own best cover story, that it is only an intelligence agency and that its fine intelligence work during the past twenty years on the subject of Southeast Asia is all that we should remember.Now we find in Cooper another CIA apologist using the Foreign Affairs review to follow up and to praise Ellsberg. In fact, Cooper's exhilaration in his task gets the better of him when he says, "Thanks to Daniel Ellsberg . . . " he means it! This near-endorsement of Ellsberg by a CIA writer in the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations is all the more significant when one learns that this Council is supported by foundations which are in turn directed by men from the Bechtel Corporation, Chese Manhattan Bank, Cummins Engine, Corning Glass, Kimberly-Clark, Monsanto Chemical, and dozens of others. Not long ago, the political scientist Lester Milbraith noted that "the Council on Foreign Relations, while not financed by government, works so closely with it that it is difficult to distinguish Council actions stimulated by government from autonomous actions." And while we appreciate that Foreign Affairs states clearly that "It does not accept responsibility for the views expressed in any articles, signed or unsigned, which appear on [its] pages", its record and especially its list of authors over the years, from John Foster Dulles in its first issue, speaks for itself.This whole plot thickens to the point of near-hypocrisy when Cooper cites the August 3, 1954, National Intelligence Estimate. The same Pentagon Paper from which he quotes also contains a report on the year-long activity of the Saigon Military Mission. This report, written by Edward G. Lansdale of the CIA, began in that same month of August 1954. While the NIE was speaking disparagingly of Ngo Dunh Diem, the SMM was supporting the Diem regime during the days after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. This team and all of its efforts were CIA originated, CIA supported, CIA manned, and CIA directed. From 1954 through 1963, all American activity in Vietnam was dominated by the CIA. Although Lansdale and his key men, such as Charles Bohanon, Lucien Conein (the U.S. go between at the time of the Diem coup d'état, Bill Rosson, Arthur Arundel, Rufus Phillips, and others were listed in the Pentagon Papers with military rank, they were all in the employ of the CIA and were operating as CIA agents.This is what the Pentagon Papers reveal as happening in 1954 and 1955. Now the CIA would have us believe that it was an objective and blameless intelligence agency all through those horrible years of the Vietnam build-up. However, it was the CIA that hid behind its own cover and that of State and Defense to fan the flames of a smoldering conflict. To add insult to injury, the CIA would have us believe that Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, the DOD, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon were all to blame because they would not read and heed their NIE. Where were the CIA officials of the clandestine sector when their own men were writing these National Intelligence Estimates?The big question is, If the National Estimates produced by the intelligence side of the CIA were so good, then why didn't the men in the clandestine operations office read and follow the advice of their own estimates? Yes, the CIA likes to write about itself, and the CIA likes to have others write about it, as long as what they write is laudatory and skillful propaganda.
For those still coming to terms with the scope of our CIA Internet Fakes list, the following extract from Prouty's "Secret Team" is a indication of the lengths to which a secret intelligence service goes.Posting this does NOT mean that we endorse Prouty. But the issues he raises illuminate a real-world assessment of how intelligence services work.There is NO WAY that 9/11 went ahead without the most comprehensive preparation of the Internet by the CIA. Furthermore, there is NO WAY the Internet itself went ahead without the same thorough approach by the wordl's most well funded secret intelligence agency.To believe otherwise is to believe CIA propaganda.Fintan Dunne 30 Aug, 2005P.S. This extract has some stimulating stuff on Ellsberg too.THE SECRET TEAMThe CIAand Its Alliesin Control of the UnitedStates and the WorldL. FLETCHER PROUTYCol., U.S. Air Force (Ret.) Chapter 8CIA: The "Cover Story" Intelligence Agencyand the Real-Life Clandestine OperatorTHE CIA LIKES TO PUBLICIZE ITSELF AS IT WISHES TO be seen; it tries consistently to maintain its cover story. These facts would not be publicly admitted by the agency; but they are facts. It is only fitting to note that when Allen Dulles died, he was writing a book about "Communism and Subversion". This was his first love, as it was J. Edgar Hoover's. This was his occupation. Intelligence was his avocation. When he was writing about Communism and subversion, he was writing, of course, about the real work of the CIA. He liked to write about the CIA and he liked to see that others wrote about the CIA.After his retirement from the Agency in the fall of 1961, he wrote a very interesting book entitled The Craft of Intelligence. This book is good reading. It contains a lot of folklore about the peripheral world of intelligence; but it says almost nothing useful about the CIA. In fact, as he intended it, it tells a great many things about the CIA that were designed to create the picture of a noble CIA, one that really does not exist. This was typical of Allen Dulles.Other CIA men have written about the CIA. The most able Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, Jr., long-time career Intelligence stalwart and Executive Director of the CIA, wrote a book, too, which he called The Real CIA. This is unquestionably the best book written by a CIA man about the CIA. It is as forthright and as honest a book as any career man has written or may ever write.... Lyman Kirkpatrick has written an elegant book; but it leaves much to be said.... After these men, numberless others have written about the CIA. A great percentage of this latter group has written about the CIA at the bidding and urging of the Agency. An organization such as the CIA, which exists in a true never-never land, needs to have someone write about it so that there will always be a plethora of material available and so that this vast stew-pot of material will be what the Agency wants the world to believe about it. The Agency does not answer writers, whether they attack it or not. But it works doggedly and brilliantly at times to bury anything not the party line that is written about it. Thus the Agency has a whole stable of writers, its favorite magazines and newspapers, its publishing houses, and its "backgrounders" ready to go at all times.Allen Dulles had twelve or thirteen regular members of the news media who would be invited to join him frequently for lunch in the beautiful old dining room he maintained in East Building across from his office.... Even as Dulles regularly placed himself at the mercy of the lions, he played a bigger game. If he gave them a bit of insight into the workings of the Agency, he also gave them a heavy mixture of that special brew, which he was so good at concocting. He fed them the CIA point of view all the time, just as he fed so many others, from Presidents on down, and as he has fed the readers of his book.It was not until he left government service in late 1961 that he began his book, published in 1963, The Craft of Intelligence. This book, which he was to leave to the world as his public definition of the agency, says very little that is real about the Agency and very little that is real about intelligence. It contains all manner of contrived concepts designed over the years to make people believe that the CIA was what he was saying it was and that all of the authority he said it had did exist. Any reader who thought the CIA was anything like the description contained in the book will be excused for his thoughts, because if ever a subject was painted in camouflage and in words of guile, this was it. This really is not a light matter. Not only did Allen Dulles portray the CIA in public as something that it most certainly was not; but he had done so for many years within the U.S. Government. The law did not authorize secret or clandestine activities. However, Agency protagonists continued to put pressure on the Executive Branch to permit the CIA to collect "secret intelligence".... In the beginning, this idea was avowedly limited to secret intelligence. The CIA disclaimed any intention of using secret intelligence as a bridge to secret operations....This is why it has been important to read the Dulles book line by line.... The book shows how the CIA has been "sold" to the inner staff of the Government and to others, such as writers and commentators, businessmen and educators, both in this country and all over the world.....CONTINUES IN NEXT POST.....
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CIA: The "Cover Story" and Real Life -PART 2« Reply #1 on Today at 1:56am »
CONTINUED.....The Agency is very much aware, too, that it cannot look back, because fate is creeping up on it. The tremendous pressures in this country that have built up during the long tragic years of the conflict in Indochina are driving researchers, politicians, and other concerned Americans to search for the origins and sources of responsibility for that disaster. This is bringing them closer and closer each day to the curtain of secrecy that has effectively veiled these areas from sight for more than a decade. This pressure is now forcing Agency and ST supporters to begin a serious program of rewriting history, in a massive effort to protect and shield the Agency while shifting the search into other avenues. We have already said that the work of Daniel Ellsberg and the number of people who helped him may have been the first major step in this effort. The released Pentagon Papers do much to portray the CIA as it is supposed to be, while doing all it can to shift any censure of the CIA as an organization primarily concerned with clandestine operations, to the military, the National Security Council, and the White House.Now a second salvo has been favored in an attempt to go further along this same road for the purpose of whitewashing the Agency. As the sometimes prestigious Foreign Affairs, the quarterly review of the Council on Foreign Relations, enters its fiftieth year, it has published an article entitled "The CIA and Decision-Making", by Chester L. Cooper. The author is listed as the "Director of the International and Social Studies Division, Institute of Defense Analysis; Special Assistant to Averill Harriman in planning the U.S. negotiating position on Vietnam, 1966-1967; Senior Staff Member, National Security Council,1964-1966; author of The Last Crusade: America in Vietnam." The review does not add that he was and may still be a member of the CIA. This contribution to current history is a most astounding bit of writing and reweaving of events. It appears to be Phase II, or at least a part of Phase II, of the whitewashing of the CIA in Indochina. This article is a most expert and ideal example of what is meant by saying that the CIA likes to see itself in front, as long as it can control the pen.It begins most suitably by pointing out that Allen Dulles selected the motto, which is chiseled into the marble at the entrance to the new CIA building in Langley, Virginia, from the words of St. John: "The truth shall make you free." And with this fresh in mind, the article goes on to say, " . . . one of his [Allen Dulles's] greatest contributions in nurturing the frail arrangements he helped to create [was] to provide intelligence support to Washington's top-level foreign-policy-makers." Then it gets down to the serious business of trying to show how ardently the CIA (Intelligence) has worked during the Indochina conflict, wholly ignoring the other, and major side of the house, CIA (Clandestine Operations) and CIA (senior member of the Secret Team).To set the stage, it dwells upon the responsibility of the CIA to turn out the National Intelligence Estimates. "When PRAVDA has been scanned, the road-watchers' reports from Laos checked, the economic research completed, Pham van Dong's recent speeches dissected, radar signals examined, satellite observations analyzed and embassy cables read, the estimators set about their task . . . it is likely to be the best-informed and most objective view the decision-makers can get . . . [they] brood about the world's problems and project their views about how these problems are likely to affect America's national security interests." All of this is to laud the intelligence side of the house, and this praise is most deserved. However, the intelligence staff has had its problems, and in mentioning some, this article attempts to use them as a means of shifting some blame to other parties, as in the following: " . . . the Office of National Estimates had a thin audience during the Johnson Administration." In other words, if the Johnson Administration did not take advantage of this excellent intelligence, then certainly the CIA can't be blamed for what befell that Administration; or at least this is what this author would like his readers to believe.Then to enlarge the scope of his case he adds, "Nixon's Administration . . . relegated the National Intelligence Estimates to but a tiny fraction of the studies, analyses, position papers, contingency plans, research reports and memoranda generated by the large new NSC staff . . . " Again he implies that if the Nixon Administration failed to heed the National Estimates, it was its own fault and not that of the CIA.Having set the stage and prepared his case, he goes directly to the heart of the matter: "Most Americans concerned about foreign affairs have long had to accept on blind faith that our government takes pains to provide its highest officials with the best possible intelligence guidance -- and then to squirm under our private suspicions that this advice is, all too often, regarded with indifference. Thanks to Daniel Ellsberg, those of us who have not seen a National Intelligence Estimate for many years, or who have never seen one, can address the matter with somewhat more confidence than we could have a few months ago. Although it probably did not cross Ellsberg's mind when he released the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, he succeeded in doing what the Agency, on its own, has rarely been able to do for more than twenty years: he made the CIA 'look good' through what inhabitants of the Pickle Factory themselves would call a 'highly credible source'."To those well steeped in the ways of the real CIA, and unfortunately there are too few who are, the above statement fits the pattern. Here is an Agency partisan praising Daniel Ellsberg. This does much to support our earlier contention that one of the real reasons these papers were delivered to the public was really on behalf of the CIA and the ST and not the other way around. Then the article goes on to say " . . . the Pentagon Papers tell us little about what actually happened in the White House Cabinet room, they do reveal much about the intelligence guidance made available to the policy-makers." He is still working on the major premise in an attempt to show that everything the CIA did was right, by showing from the included extracts how excellent its intelligence product was during those trying years. Let's look further into this propaganda, as an example is selected from among the many available.....CONTINUES IN NEXT POST.....
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CIA: The "Cover Story" and Real Life -PART 3« Reply #2 on Today at 1:59am »
.....CONTINUED"By mid-summer, the issue of American support for Diem's fledgling and untried government was high on the NSC's agenda. The CIA was requested to prepare an Estimate on the viability of a Western-supported, anti-Communist government in Vietnam. According to the Pentagon Papers, the National Intelligence Estimate of August 3 (1954) warned that 'even with American support it was unlikely that the French or Vietnamese would be able to establish a strong government and that the situation would probably continue to deteriorate!' The NSC, nevertheless, recommended American aid for the frail and untried Vietnamese government, a recommendation that was soon followed by President Eisenhower's fateful letter to Diem offering American support."This estimate had long since been validated and it seems clear that the United States would now be better off if President Eisenhower had paid more heed to that warning and less to the strong pressures that were being exerted by his Secretary of State and hard line members of Congress."This voice of the CIA is saying that the CIA National Intelligence Estimate "has long since been validated" and "the United States would now be better off" if the President had listened to it and not to John Foster Dulles and "hard-line members of Congress". Remember, as we review the record further, that this NIE, as reported by Foreign Affairs, was dated August 3, 1954.During this very same period when such NIE were establishing a cover story for the clandestine side of the CIA, the record shows that the Director of Intelligence, Allen Dulles, was working through his clandestine channels to keep knowledge of his activities from other officials of the Government and at the same time to establish a vast clandestine operational presence in Indochina. To compound this deception, the Foreign Affairs article of January 1972 presents a bold attempt to further conceal the duplicity of the CIA by hiding these facts and at the same time blaming members of Congress, John Foster Dulles, and President Eisenhower for things that were being done, not by them at all, but by Allen Dulles and his clandestine staff. There can be no other way to interpret this action to cover up the role of the Agency during the early and formative years of the Indochina conflict than to expose it as a premeditated effort to rewrite and restructure history by hiding the operational role of the CIA under its Intelligence cover.This is one of the most compelling reasons why "secret intelligence" and "secret operations" should not be placed under the authority of one agency.In spite of what the Office of National Estimates was saying during 1954, on January 30, 1954, during a meeting of the President's Special Committee on Indochina, Allen W. Dulles inquired if an unconventional warfare officer, specifically Colonel Lansdale, could not be added to the group of five liaison officers to which General Navarre had agreed. In other words, as early as January 1954, Allen Dulles was moving into the action in Indochina with his crack team of agents, among them Ed Lansdale.Then, by April 5, 1954, the conclusions of the report of this same Presidential Committee included the following: "The United States should, in all prudence, take the following courses of action . . . to give vitality in Southeast Asia to the concept that Communist imperialism is a transcending threat to each of the Southeastern Asian States. These efforts should be so undertaken as to appear through local initiative rather than as a result of U.S. or U.K. or French instigation. "This action was assigned to USIA, (United States Information Agency), the State Department, and the CIA.It was to be the job of the CIA, among others, to see that the "concept" of the "threat to each of the Southeast Asian States" was to be made to appear to be "Communist imperialism". This was the direct charge of a committee on which Allen Dulles served and is a blunt definition of how anti-Communism is hoisted to the top of the mast whenever it is needed as a rallying symbol. As the theme of the "transcending threat" in Indochina, it was in the direct line to the later Communist-supported-war-of-national-liberation theme and then to the Communist-inspired-subversive-insurgency theme of the Kennedy era. There can be little wonder why, in the minds of most Americans, South Vietnam is so intricately tied to the idea of Communist subversion. Words such as the above show clearly the role of the initiative taken by the CIA in Indochina as far back as 1954, even while the Office of National Estimates was saying otherwise.And while all this was going on, Admiral Arthur W. Radford, the chairman of the JCS, gave a memorandum to the Secretary of Defense which included the following extract: "The JCS desire to point out their belief that, from the point of view of the USA, with reference to the Far East as a whole, Indochina is devoid of decisive military objectives, and the allocation of more than token U.S. armed forces in Indochina would be a serious diversion of limited U.S. capabilities." This was the view of the top military man as presented at the same time Dulles was sending his teams into action there, under the cover of military men.While this was happening, the Geneva Conference was under way. Although the Foreign Affairs article chooses to heap blame on John Foster Dulles, we should recall that Dulles had not attended that conference since its organizational meetings. In his place he had sent his Under Secretary, Walter Bedell Smith, who had been the DCI before he went to the Department of State. Certainly John Foster Dulles, whose brother was the DCI and whose principal assistant was a former DCI, was well aware of the views of the Office of National Estimates on the one hand, and of the actions of the clandestine side of the house on the other.Then the Saigon Military Mission (SMM) ("military" only in the sense that it was a cover arrangement) entered Vietnam on June 1, 1954. This mission "was to enter into Vietnam quietly and assist the Vietnamese, rather than the French, in unconventional warfare. The French were to be kept as friendly allies in the process, as far as possible. The broad mission for the team was to undertake paramilitary operations against the enemy and to wage political-psychological warfare. Later, after Geneva, the mission was modified to prepare means for undertaking paramilitary operations in Communist areas rather than to wage unconventional warfare . . . "[1] By its own statement of mission this team was not to aid the French and was to wage a paramilitary campaign against the "enemy". This left it with only one real mission, "to assist the new government of Ngo Dinh Diem". And Allen Dulles sent this clandestine team into South Vietnam in August of 1954, exactly the same month of the NIE, which the Foreign Affairs article says the CIA published as guidance for this country. Dulles' covert actions and his overt NIE were in direct conflict. He was saying one thing and doing another.There is only one conclusion that can be drawn from such writing, and it is derived from one of two alternatives: Either the author did not know about the existence of and the mission of the Dulles directed Lansdale SMM team; or if he did, he was attempting to cover up the CIA role in such activity, which had more to do with the course of events in Indochina since that time than anything else done by any of the other participants.Here again we see the ST at work. It is most interested in covering up its role in Indochina during the past twenty years, and in so doing it is skillfully working to shift the blame wherever it can. It is trying to charge that if the military, the diplomats, President Eisenhower, President Johnson, and President Nixon all had heeded its advice as contained in the National Estimates, they would not have gotten this country into such trouble. Their efforts even go so far as to attempt to hide behind their intelligence position by using the "transparent" Pentagon Papers. The Foreign Affairs article would have its readers believe that the NIE is the only real CIA and that such things as the Saigon Military Mission, because it was called a "military" mission, will be discovered not to be the CIA at all.We have been saying that the release of the Pentagon Papers by the former CIA agent and long-time associate of Edward G. Lansdale, Daniel Ellsberg, may have been the opening attack by the CIA to cover its disengagement not only from the physical conflict in Indochina, but also from the historical record of that disastrous event. In this effort, the CIA appears to be trying to hide behind its own best cover story, that it is only an intelligence agency and that its fine intelligence work during the past twenty years on the subject of Southeast Asia is all that we should remember.Now we find in Cooper another CIA apologist using the Foreign Affairs review to follow up and to praise Ellsberg. In fact, Cooper's exhilaration in his task gets the better of him when he says, "Thanks to Daniel Ellsberg . . . " he means it! This near-endorsement of Ellsberg by a CIA writer in the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations is all the more significant when one learns that this Council is supported by foundations which are in turn directed by men from the Bechtel Corporation, Chese Manhattan Bank, Cummins Engine, Corning Glass, Kimberly-Clark, Monsanto Chemical, and dozens of others. Not long ago, the political scientist Lester Milbraith noted that "the Council on Foreign Relations, while not financed by government, works so closely with it that it is difficult to distinguish Council actions stimulated by government from autonomous actions." And while we appreciate that Foreign Affairs states clearly that "It does not accept responsibility for the views expressed in any articles, signed or unsigned, which appear on [its] pages", its record and especially its list of authors over the years, from John Foster Dulles in its first issue, speaks for itself.This whole plot thickens to the point of near-hypocrisy when Cooper cites the August 3, 1954, National Intelligence Estimate. The same Pentagon Paper from which he quotes also contains a report on the year-long activity of the Saigon Military Mission. This report, written by Edward G. Lansdale of the CIA, began in that same month of August 1954. While the NIE was speaking disparagingly of Ngo Dunh Diem, the SMM was supporting the Diem regime during the days after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. This team and all of its efforts were CIA originated, CIA supported, CIA manned, and CIA directed. From 1954 through 1963, all American activity in Vietnam was dominated by the CIA. Although Lansdale and his key men, such as Charles Bohanon, Lucien Conein (the U.S. go between at the time of the Diem coup d'état, Bill Rosson, Arthur Arundel, Rufus Phillips, and others were listed in the Pentagon Papers with military rank, they were all in the employ of the CIA and were operating as CIA agents.This is what the Pentagon Papers reveal as happening in 1954 and 1955. Now the CIA would have us believe that it was an objective and blameless intelligence agency all through those horrible years of the Vietnam build-up. However, it was the CIA that hid behind its own cover and that of State and Defense to fan the flames of a smoldering conflict. To add insult to injury, the CIA would have us believe that Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, the DOD, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon were all to blame because they would not read and heed their NIE. Where were the CIA officials of the clandestine sector when their own men were writing these National Intelligence Estimates?The big question is, If the National Estimates produced by the intelligence side of the CIA were so good, then why didn't the men in the clandestine operations office read and follow the advice of their own estimates? Yes, the CIA likes to write about itself, and the CIA likes to have others write about it, as long as what they write is laudatory and skillful propaganda.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
TIME.com -- Charles Krauthammer: It Ain't Heavy, It's My Team
TIME.com -- Charles Krauthammer: It Ain't Heavy, It's My Team
Blogger Comments: Krauthammer is miserable, so his column says. I begin to read, wondering if he has finally seen the err in his ways. No such luck, it's a column about baseball. Incredible.
Blogger Comments: Krauthammer is miserable, so his column says. I begin to read, wondering if he has finally seen the err in his ways. No such luck, it's a column about baseball. Incredible.
The Sky Above the Directors Guild of America Building
The Director's Guild of America building on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. It was a very sunny day day in Southern California and the sky was so very blue........
Governor pardons all but himself in personnel investigation
Courier-Journal.com
By MARK R. CHELLGREN
Associated Press Writer
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) -- Gov. Ernie Fletcher on Monday granted blanket pardons to everyone who has been or might be charged in the investigation of violations of personnel laws in his administration but said he would not pardon himself.
Fletcher said those who might have violated the law, which he admitted happened and blamed largely on "overeager young managers," would face the penalties that could be imposed by two administrative agencies that are also investigating.
Fletcher repeated his accusation that Democratic Attorney General Greg Stumbo has been carrying out a political vendetta. He also compared most of the charges that have been brought to minor violations of fishing laws.
Fletcher will appear Tuesday before the special grand jury that has charged nine current and former members of his administration with misdemeanor crimes. But he said he would not answer questions.
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Stumbo should drop his investigation and get on with more important business, Fletcher said.
Prosecutor Scott Crawford-Sutherland said earlier in the day the work of the grand jury would continue whether pardons were issued or not.
Stumbo said in a written statement that Fletcher has "slammed the door on the public's right to know what wrongs his administration has committed."
Fletcher made his remarks in a Capitol Rotunda crowded with dozens of his political appointees, who frequently interrupted him with cheers and applause. A spokesman said state government paid $1,200 for satellite time to beam the remarks around the state.
The subpoena for Fletcher includes a demand that he turn over virtually any record that might relate to Merit System personnel matters going back to the first day of his administration, Dec. 9, 2003.
The subpoena demands production of correspondence, memos, notes, faxes, e-mails and phone logs that Fletcher might have. Fletcher's calendar is also included in the subpoena.
The special grand jury was impaneled on June 6. In addition to the misdemeanor charges of personnel violations, one person has been indicted for 22 felony counts of evidence or witness tampering.
Some of those charged are senior members of the administration, including deputy chief of staff Richard Murgatroyd and acting Transportation Secretary Bill Nighbert. Fletcher said the senior managers provided "inadequate oversight" of younger people.
Fletcher said he has "never knowingly violated any laws" while governor.
"What we're talking about in this investigation is people recommending friends and relations who may have worked in a political campaign," Fletcher said.
The move carries huge political implications for Fletcher, who campaigned just two years ago on pledges to "clean up the mess" in Frankfort and uphold the sanctity of the state hiring laws.
Instead, the lead prosecutor has said Fletcher's administration created a "corrupt political machine" designed to hire and promote Republicans and other Fletcher supporters based on their loyalty instead of their qualifications.
"I'd characterize it this way: He ran on a platform of believe me and I will run state government differently," said former Democratic Gov. Julian Carroll, who is now a state senator from Frankfort. "He turns out to be the biggest deceiver that we've had in the governor's office in my lifetime. Rather than a believer, he's truly a deceiver."
House Speaker Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green, echoed the comments about Fletcher's hypocrisy.
"When he was running for governor, Ernie Fletcher promised to protect the Merit System," Richards said in a statement. "He also promised to clean up the mess in Frankfort. Tonight he gave us the final proof that he has done neither."
Fletcher said he would leave it to the voters to decide his political fate.
Joe Gershtenson, director of the Center for Kentucky History and Politics at Eastern Kentucky University, said Fletcher's pardons could cut both ways with voters.
"I still think, as I have all along, that pardons are risky, absolutely," Gershtenson said. "They inevitably create at least some perception that there's some guilt. Why pardon if somebody isn't going to ultimately get convicted? There's some danger of that."
On the other hand, if the hubbub dies down before 2007, Gershtenson said it is too early to call an end to Fletcher's electoral chances.
Gershtenson said Fletcher avoided an even larger problem that might have come if he pardoned himself.
Rep. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington, said pardons are grounds for the General Assembly to consider impeachment of Fletcher.
"He is showing a broad disrespect for the criminal justice system that every other citizen in the commonwealth must live with," Stein said.
"Certainly the General Assembly should hold hearings on whether or not his conduct in the granting of these pardons is conduct that rises to the level of consideration for impeachment," Carroll said.
Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, has been critical of how Fletcher has responded to the investigation but said the pardons should put the matter to rest.
Senate Minority Leader Ed Worley of Richmond said he didn't necessarily agree with the pardons and said it was time to move on. "But there's nothing to be done about it except to continue a divisive political war," Worley said.
Republican Party Chairman Darrell Brock, who was among those indicted for actions taken while he was commissioner of the Department of Local Government, said Monday evening he had done nothing wrong.
Mike Duncan, the Inez banker who is a heavyweight on the Republican National Committee, said Fletcher should be commended for the pardons. "I think the governor made the right decision because we need to move the state forward," Duncan said.
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.
By MARK R. CHELLGREN
Associated Press Writer
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) -- Gov. Ernie Fletcher on Monday granted blanket pardons to everyone who has been or might be charged in the investigation of violations of personnel laws in his administration but said he would not pardon himself.
Fletcher said those who might have violated the law, which he admitted happened and blamed largely on "overeager young managers," would face the penalties that could be imposed by two administrative agencies that are also investigating.
Fletcher repeated his accusation that Democratic Attorney General Greg Stumbo has been carrying out a political vendetta. He also compared most of the charges that have been brought to minor violations of fishing laws.
Fletcher will appear Tuesday before the special grand jury that has charged nine current and former members of his administration with misdemeanor crimes. But he said he would not answer questions.
Advertisement
Stumbo should drop his investigation and get on with more important business, Fletcher said.
Prosecutor Scott Crawford-Sutherland said earlier in the day the work of the grand jury would continue whether pardons were issued or not.
Stumbo said in a written statement that Fletcher has "slammed the door on the public's right to know what wrongs his administration has committed."
Fletcher made his remarks in a Capitol Rotunda crowded with dozens of his political appointees, who frequently interrupted him with cheers and applause. A spokesman said state government paid $1,200 for satellite time to beam the remarks around the state.
The subpoena for Fletcher includes a demand that he turn over virtually any record that might relate to Merit System personnel matters going back to the first day of his administration, Dec. 9, 2003.
The subpoena demands production of correspondence, memos, notes, faxes, e-mails and phone logs that Fletcher might have. Fletcher's calendar is also included in the subpoena.
The special grand jury was impaneled on June 6. In addition to the misdemeanor charges of personnel violations, one person has been indicted for 22 felony counts of evidence or witness tampering.
Some of those charged are senior members of the administration, including deputy chief of staff Richard Murgatroyd and acting Transportation Secretary Bill Nighbert. Fletcher said the senior managers provided "inadequate oversight" of younger people.
Fletcher said he has "never knowingly violated any laws" while governor.
"What we're talking about in this investigation is people recommending friends and relations who may have worked in a political campaign," Fletcher said.
The move carries huge political implications for Fletcher, who campaigned just two years ago on pledges to "clean up the mess" in Frankfort and uphold the sanctity of the state hiring laws.
Instead, the lead prosecutor has said Fletcher's administration created a "corrupt political machine" designed to hire and promote Republicans and other Fletcher supporters based on their loyalty instead of their qualifications.
"I'd characterize it this way: He ran on a platform of believe me and I will run state government differently," said former Democratic Gov. Julian Carroll, who is now a state senator from Frankfort. "He turns out to be the biggest deceiver that we've had in the governor's office in my lifetime. Rather than a believer, he's truly a deceiver."
House Speaker Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green, echoed the comments about Fletcher's hypocrisy.
"When he was running for governor, Ernie Fletcher promised to protect the Merit System," Richards said in a statement. "He also promised to clean up the mess in Frankfort. Tonight he gave us the final proof that he has done neither."
Fletcher said he would leave it to the voters to decide his political fate.
Joe Gershtenson, director of the Center for Kentucky History and Politics at Eastern Kentucky University, said Fletcher's pardons could cut both ways with voters.
"I still think, as I have all along, that pardons are risky, absolutely," Gershtenson said. "They inevitably create at least some perception that there's some guilt. Why pardon if somebody isn't going to ultimately get convicted? There's some danger of that."
On the other hand, if the hubbub dies down before 2007, Gershtenson said it is too early to call an end to Fletcher's electoral chances.
Gershtenson said Fletcher avoided an even larger problem that might have come if he pardoned himself.
Rep. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington, said pardons are grounds for the General Assembly to consider impeachment of Fletcher.
"He is showing a broad disrespect for the criminal justice system that every other citizen in the commonwealth must live with," Stein said.
"Certainly the General Assembly should hold hearings on whether or not his conduct in the granting of these pardons is conduct that rises to the level of consideration for impeachment," Carroll said.
Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, has been critical of how Fletcher has responded to the investigation but said the pardons should put the matter to rest.
Senate Minority Leader Ed Worley of Richmond said he didn't necessarily agree with the pardons and said it was time to move on. "But there's nothing to be done about it except to continue a divisive political war," Worley said.
Republican Party Chairman Darrell Brock, who was among those indicted for actions taken while he was commissioner of the Department of Local Government, said Monday evening he had done nothing wrong.
Mike Duncan, the Inez banker who is a heavyweight on the Republican National Committee, said Fletcher should be commended for the pardons. "I think the governor made the right decision because we need to move the state forward," Duncan said.
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.
(Don't) Mention the word J*
(Don�t) Mention the word J**
"Mention the word Jew in anything except reverential tones and it’s like calling the Pope a paedophile. Talk about walking on soft-boiled eggs as Muddy Waters used to sing."
"Mention the word Jew in anything except reverential tones and it’s like calling the Pope a paedophile. Talk about walking on soft-boiled eggs as Muddy Waters used to sing."
Comfort-Zoned - Newsweek Politics - MSNBC.com
Comfort-Zoned - Newsweek Politics - MSNBC.com
"By refusing to reach out to dissenters, Bush is paying a huge political price"
"By refusing to reach out to dissenters, Bush is paying a huge political price"
Nature's Masterpiece
every once in a while you come across something that you know or recognize and have seen so often. every once in a while that thing takes you by surprise and you see it in a different light. today has been one of those days...
Fog 1110: 9th Street Willow
This is one is my favorite of the series. City of Bridges, Pittsburgh PA. USA
Waiting for Katrina
A woman walks through deserted French Quarter of New Orleans as thousands of residents flee hurricane Katrina. Photograph: Rick Wilking/Reuters
Water Lilly Drops
A day lilly shows off the early morning sun while glistening after a morning shower....
Better if viewed at the larger/original size....
Better if viewed at the larger/original size....
ABC News: Infusion of Cash Could Boost Stock Market
ABC News: Infusion of Cash Could Boost Stock Market
Blogger Thoughts: News Article Looks Bogus to Me
Blogger Thoughts: News Article Looks Bogus to Me
Did Time intentionally deceive its readers in P ... [Media Matters]
Did Time intentionally deceive its readers in P ... [Media Matters]
Did Time intentionally deceive its readers in Plame case?
For some time, the central mystery in the Valerie Plame saga was which members of the White House staff leaked the undercover CIA operative's identity to reporters. Although there are still many unanswered questions, at least part of the mystery has been solved: Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper has testified that he was told about Plame by White House senior adviser Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Yet while Cooper and his editors at Time spent two years keeping Rove and Libby's -- and their own -- role a secret, they published articles that reported, without challenge, a statement from the White House that they knew to be false.
The issue of Time's actions over the past two years was revived by an August 25 Los Angeles Times article stating that the magazine did not pursue a waiver from Rove allowing Cooper to testify in part because "Time editors were concerned about becoming part of such an explosive story in an election year." While the favor this "concern" did for the Bush re-election effort has been criticized, Time's lack of disclosure about its own role in the affair has gone largely unnoticed.
As the Los Angeles Times laid out the chronology, the details of which became publicly known only earlier this summer, on July 11, 2003, Rove told Cooper that the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA and had a role in sending Wilson on a 2002 mission to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium there. After speaking to Rove, Cooper sent an email to Michael Duffy, Time's Washington bureau chief, relating what Rove had told him about Wilson's wife and saying that Rove had spoken on "double super secret background." The next day, Cooper spoke to Libby, who confirmed Plame's identity. Two days later, Robert D. Novak's infamous column revealing Plame's identity appeared.
Yet on October 13, 2003, three months after receiving the leak from Rove and Libby, Duffy -- the very person to whom Cooper had passed on the information concerning Wilson's wife and the source who gave that information to him -- wrote an article for Time on the subject. In the article, to which Cooper contributed reporting, was this passage:
When word spread last week that the Department of Justice (DOJ) was launching a full criminal probe into who had leaked Plame's identity, Democrats immediately raised a public alarm: How could Justice credibly investigate so secretive an Administration, especially when the investigators are led by Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose former paid political consultant Karl Rove was initially accused by Wilson of being the man behind the leak? A TIME review of federal and state election records reveals that Ashcroft paid Rove's Texas firm $746,000 for direct-mail services in two gubernatorial campaigns and one Senate race from 1984 through 1994. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said accusations of Rove's peddling information are "ridiculous." Says McClellan: "There is simply no truth to that suggestion."
Duffy wrote that Rove was "initially" accused by Wilson of being the man behind the leak, as though Wilson was no longer making that accusation or that the accusation was found to be without merit. In fact, Wilson did not back down from the charge, although he did allow that he had no proof of Rove's involvement. For instance, appearing on the September 29, 2003, edition of CNN's Paula Zahn Now, Wilson said, "I don't have any specific information. I would hope that an investigation would yield the information as to who was responsible for the precise leak. What I do have are any number of journalist sources, none of whom I have any reason not to believe, who have said that the White House was pushing this story after the leak, after the Novak article, and including Karl Rove."
Of course, it turned out that Wilson's charge was correct, as Cooper and his editors knew all along. Despite that knowledge, Time printed a quote from McClellan that they knew to be false without offering any refutation.
Duffy, Cooper, and Time not only failed to inform their readers in July 2003 that they were part of the story, but they continued to report on the leak without offering that information for more than a year. In addition to two stories in October 2003, Time wrote about the leak again on January 12, 2004. It was not until August 2004, when Cooper was held in contempt by the grand jury investigating the Plame leak, that it was revealed that Cooper was involved in the Plame affair.
— P.W.
Did Time intentionally deceive its readers in Plame case?
For some time, the central mystery in the Valerie Plame saga was which members of the White House staff leaked the undercover CIA operative's identity to reporters. Although there are still many unanswered questions, at least part of the mystery has been solved: Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper has testified that he was told about Plame by White House senior adviser Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Yet while Cooper and his editors at Time spent two years keeping Rove and Libby's -- and their own -- role a secret, they published articles that reported, without challenge, a statement from the White House that they knew to be false.
The issue of Time's actions over the past two years was revived by an August 25 Los Angeles Times article stating that the magazine did not pursue a waiver from Rove allowing Cooper to testify in part because "Time editors were concerned about becoming part of such an explosive story in an election year." While the favor this "concern" did for the Bush re-election effort has been criticized, Time's lack of disclosure about its own role in the affair has gone largely unnoticed.
As the Los Angeles Times laid out the chronology, the details of which became publicly known only earlier this summer, on July 11, 2003, Rove told Cooper that the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA and had a role in sending Wilson on a 2002 mission to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium there. After speaking to Rove, Cooper sent an email to Michael Duffy, Time's Washington bureau chief, relating what Rove had told him about Wilson's wife and saying that Rove had spoken on "double super secret background." The next day, Cooper spoke to Libby, who confirmed Plame's identity. Two days later, Robert D. Novak's infamous column revealing Plame's identity appeared.
Yet on October 13, 2003, three months after receiving the leak from Rove and Libby, Duffy -- the very person to whom Cooper had passed on the information concerning Wilson's wife and the source who gave that information to him -- wrote an article for Time on the subject. In the article, to which Cooper contributed reporting, was this passage:
When word spread last week that the Department of Justice (DOJ) was launching a full criminal probe into who had leaked Plame's identity, Democrats immediately raised a public alarm: How could Justice credibly investigate so secretive an Administration, especially when the investigators are led by Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose former paid political consultant Karl Rove was initially accused by Wilson of being the man behind the leak? A TIME review of federal and state election records reveals that Ashcroft paid Rove's Texas firm $746,000 for direct-mail services in two gubernatorial campaigns and one Senate race from 1984 through 1994. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said accusations of Rove's peddling information are "ridiculous." Says McClellan: "There is simply no truth to that suggestion."
Duffy wrote that Rove was "initially" accused by Wilson of being the man behind the leak, as though Wilson was no longer making that accusation or that the accusation was found to be without merit. In fact, Wilson did not back down from the charge, although he did allow that he had no proof of Rove's involvement. For instance, appearing on the September 29, 2003, edition of CNN's Paula Zahn Now, Wilson said, "I don't have any specific information. I would hope that an investigation would yield the information as to who was responsible for the precise leak. What I do have are any number of journalist sources, none of whom I have any reason not to believe, who have said that the White House was pushing this story after the leak, after the Novak article, and including Karl Rove."
Of course, it turned out that Wilson's charge was correct, as Cooper and his editors knew all along. Despite that knowledge, Time printed a quote from McClellan that they knew to be false without offering any refutation.
Duffy, Cooper, and Time not only failed to inform their readers in July 2003 that they were part of the story, but they continued to report on the leak without offering that information for more than a year. In addition to two stories in October 2003, Time wrote about the leak again on January 12, 2004. It was not until August 2004, when Cooper was held in contempt by the grand jury investigating the Plame leak, that it was revealed that Cooper was involved in the Plame affair.
— P.W.
Monday, August 29, 2005
AIM Column - Louis Lies Freehly - October 10, 2002
AIM Column - Louis Lies Freehly - October 10, 2002
Louis Lies Freehly
Louis Lies Freehly
. . . in the early '90s they had asked the FBI for information about one of Osama bin Laden's top aides. . . . the FBI official responded, "We got it covered. Don't worry about it." 
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On October 8, former FBI Director Louis Freeh testified before the joint House-Senate Intelligence Committee that is trying to find out why our intelligence agencies failed to provide any warning of the devastating terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. In a front-page story by David Johnston, the New York Times reported that Freeh, who resigned in June 2001, "politely but emphatically swept aside widespread complaints that during his tenure the Federal Bureau of Investigation refused to cooperate with other agencies and failed to prepare for a terrorist attack in the United States."
The Times reported, "He said he was not aware of any evidence that the agency could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks, although he acknowledged 'That is not to say that things could not have been done better or that more resources or authorities would not have helped.'" That has been disputed by Dan Benjamin and Steven Simon, who were coordinating intelligence on terrorism for the National Security Advisor in the Clinton administration. In a recent appearance on "60 Minutes II," Benjamin said that every day they received about 300 cables or messages relative to their work from the CIA, State Department and the Defense Department. He said, "There was never one message from the FBI. We were not getting anything."
Benjamin recalled that in the early '90s they had asked the FBI for information about one of Osama bin Laden's top aides who had been here to raise money. He said the FBI official responded, "We got it covered. Don't worry about it." He said that rather than giving them any information, the FBI just blew them off. Benjamin and Simon attributed this to Freeh's dislike of Bill Clinton, but throughout Clinton's two terms the bureau had willingly cooperated with the White House in such matters as trying to dig up dirt on Billy Dale, the head of the White House travel office who had been fired on orders from Hillary. Dale was prosecuted on trumped-up charges to justify the dismissal of him and his staff. A jury acquitted him in 20 minutes.
What the FBI did in that case was despicable, but it was penny-ante stuff in comparison with their going along with the White House-orchestrated cover-up of the Vincent Foster murder and the fraudulent video produced by the CIA and unveiled at a nationally aired FBI news conference. It was designed to discredit all the eyewitnesses who had reported seeing a missile shoot down TWA Flight 800.
If the FBI didn't keep the White House informed on evidence of terrorist activity, it was not because Freeh wanted to make Clinton look bad. It was because its counter-terrorism division was incompetently run. Freeh himself was poorly informed, and his Oct. 8th testimony demonstrated that.
The Joint Intelligence Committee's staff has charged that the FBI had failed to focus on the ways in which a foreign terrorist group might target the U.S. itself. It said the bureau "did not fully learn the lessons of past attacks," such as the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 by Muslim terrorists. The New York Times reported, "Mr. Freeh disputed that finding, saying that successful investigations of terrorism had prevented other attacks." He claimed that their investigation of the World Trade Center bombing led the bureau to break up a terrorist plot to blow up 11 American airliners over the Pacific Ocean.
That was one part of a plot known as Project Bojinka. It was foiled by the Philippine police in January 1995. They arrested one of the two bomb makers, Abdul Hakim Murad. The other, Ramzi Yousef, escaped to Pakistan where he was later captured by the FBI. He had been involved in the 1993 bombing of the WTC. Both were flown to New York, where they were tried and convicted of conspiracy to destroy U.S. airliners. The Philippine police gave the FBI and CIA all the information they had about Bojinka, including the plan to have Murad, who had learned to fly in the U.S., crash a plane into the CIA headquarters building. That was filed and forgotten by both agencies.
In February 1998, Dale Watson, chief of the FBI's International Terrorism Section, mentioned Bojinka in testifying before a Senate subcommittee. He described it as a plot to destroy U.S. airliners and said nothing about the plan to crash planes into our buildings. Nearly two years later the FBI finally created a counter-terrorism division. Watson was put in charge of it.
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