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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWounded Bear
(58,648 posts)Please, please, please.
Baitball Blogger
(46,702 posts)dchill
(38,474 posts)?
Ilsa
(61,694 posts)Response to Ilsa (Reply #13)
Name removed Message auto-removed
triron
(21,999 posts)For them the story is over.
Celerity
(43,333 posts)Link to tweet
Israeli, Saudi, and Emirati Officials Privately Pushed For Trump To Strike A Grand Bargain With Putin
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/israeli-saudi-and-emirati-officials-privately-pushed-for-trump-to-strike-a-grand-bargain-with-putin
Three of these six nationsRussia, Israel, the UAEhad infiltrated deep into the Trump campaign by March 2016: Russia through Dimitri Simes; the UAE through Yousef al-Otaiba; Israel through Kushner, Groner, and Birnbaum. The campaign understood the plan these nations had.
Link to tweet
The MIDDLE EAST EYE is a London-based British media outlet run by a longtime editor at THE GUARDIANone of the most respected media outlets in the United Kingdom. 15 months ago it broke harrowing news of a multinational conspiracy to elect Donald Trump.
Link to tweet
EXCLUSIVE: The secret yacht summit that realigned the Middle East
Arab leaders from UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Jordan plotted to counter Turkey and Iran, and replace the GCC and Arab League
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-secret-yacht-summit-realigned-middle-east
triron
(21,999 posts)Celerity
(43,333 posts)Here is the complete thread in an OP
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212154370
He is quoting mainstream articles and sources, like the NYT, The New Yorker atc.
Link to tweet
The phrase 'conspiracy theorist' is one of the most abused labels going, it was used against people who argued against the Iraq war for instance.
I am not a big fan of that CIA-invented (1967) psy-op term to start off with anyway
here is the document where they internally came up with the concept:
the text:
CIA Document 1035-960
Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report
RE: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report
1. Our Concern. From the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report, (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved. Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission's report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that the Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse results.
2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization. The members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination.
Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.
3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active [business] addresses are requested:
a. To discuss the publicity problem with friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.
b. To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (I) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Epstein's theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher article and Spectator piece for background. (Although Mark Lane's book is much less convincing that Epstein's and comes off badly where confronted by knowledgeable critics, it is also much more difficult to answer as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details.)
4. In private to media discussions not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be useful:
a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the Commission did not consider. The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attack on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was set by Vander Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been more successful in convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)
b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual witnesses (which are less reliable and more divergent--and hence offer more hand-holds for criticism) and less on ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence. A close examination of the Commission's records will usually show that the conflicting eyewitness accounts are quoted out of context, or were discarded by the Commission for good and sufficient reason.
c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the time and John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal any conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed out, Congressman Gerald R. Ford would hardly have held his tongue for the sake of the Democratic administration, and Senator Russell would have had every political interest in exposing any misdeeds on the part of Chief Justice Warren. A conspirator moreover would hardly choose a location for a shooting where so much depended on conditions beyond his control: the route, the speed of the cars, the moving target, the risk that the assassin would be discovered. A group of wealthy conspirators could have arranged much more secure conditions.
d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one way or the other. Actually, the make-up of the Commission and its staff was an excellent safeguard against over-commitment to any one theory, or against the illicit transformation of probabilities into certainties.
e. Oswald would not have been any sensible person's choice for a co-conspirator. He was a "loner," mixed up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service.
f. As to charges that the Commission's report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due to the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new criticisms.
g. Such vague accusations as that "more than ten people have died mysteriously" can always be explained in some natural way e.g.: the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses (the FBI interviewed far more people, conduction 25,000 interviews and re interviews), and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected. (When Penn Jones, one of the originators of the "ten mysterious deaths" line, appeared on television, it emerged that two of the deaths on his list were from heart attacks, one from cancer, one was from a head-on collision on a bridge, and one occurred when a driver drifted into a bridge abutment.)
5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to the Commission's Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics.
Cable Sought to Discredit Critics of Warren Report
New York Times
Dec. 26, 1977
https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/26/archives/cable-sought-to-discredit-critics-of-warren-report.html
The Central Intelligence Agency has often argued that its worldwide propaganda efforts are intended only to alter the climate of public opinion in other countries and that any fallout reaching the eyes and cars of Americans is both unavoidable and unintentional.
But a C.I.A. document, recently declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, provides a detailed account of at least one instance in which the agency mustered its propaganda machinery to support an issue of far more concern to Americans, and to the C.I.A. itself, than to citizens of other countries. This was the conclusion of the Warren Commission that Lee Harvey Oswald alone was responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy.
In a cable sent to some of its overseas stations and bases on April 1, 1967, C.I.A. headquarters began by recalling that from the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder.
Such speculation, the cable said, was stemmed for a time by the release cf the Warren Commission's report in early 1964. But, the cable noted: Various writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings.
This trend of opinion Is a matter of concern to the U.S. Government, ineluding our organization, the C.I.A. said, adding that the agency was directly involved in the matter because among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation.
Conspiracy theories, the cable went on, have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit circulation of such claims in other countries.
snip
triron
(21,999 posts)Grasswire2
(13,569 posts)Does the accuser dispute thousands and thousand of citations and footnotes in Abramson's work?
Pachamama
(16,887 posts)She will make sure of the truth on Epstein being revealed and to make sure there is justice for his victims who were brave to talk to her.
Celerity
(43,333 posts)Ukrainian-born Viktor Vekselberg is close to Vladimir Putin and Donald Trumps lawyer Michael Cohen. Hes been in business with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak for 5 years.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (center) with the three co-founders of Carbyne (formerly Reporty). Alex Dizengof, Amir Elichai and Lital Leshem. All four are tied to Israeli military intelligence or cybersecurity.
A rare photo of Joel Zamel obtained by Narativ (center), Erik Prince of Frontier Resource Group (left) and George Nader (right). All three men attended a meeting with Donald Trump, Jr. on August 3 2016 to discuss a social media manipulation plan by Zamels Psy Group.
LessAspin
(1,152 posts)Trap?
SCantiGOP
(13,869 posts)Im ready to admit they faked the moon landing and the Earth is flat.
Shits getting too weird.
Brother Buzz
(36,419 posts)I am willing to believe it. I can believe anything.
Beringia
(4,316 posts)Kid Berwyn
(14,896 posts)Great reporting from Whitney Webb:
The Jeffrey Epstein Scandal Is Much Bigger Than Jeffrey Epstein
Snip...
When they formed, the OSS formed this alliance, which they said was out of war-time necessity, right, with figures in the criminal underworld, including Lansky and some others, in what was known as Operation Underworld, which was a government operation during the war that was denied for, I think, 40 years. Afterward, that alliance, even though it was supposed to be just for the war, it continued on. It continued to grow and really proliferated, especially after the 1960s when the CIA hired several Lansky associates for assassination teams, especially in relation to their efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro in Cuba and some other activities.
And during the same time we also see sexual blackmail operations with a lot of associates of Lansky and powerful people in government take office, and that really began during the anti-communist crusade of the 1950s and the McCarthy era and involved a prominent businessman who was the owner of Schenley liquors, Lewis Rosenstiel, who was a long-time associate of Meyer Lansky. It involved Roy Cohn, who was a general counsel to McCarthy during this time and also J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI at the time and very famous for his interest in acquiring large amounts of blackmail, was also involved in this ring that involved children, specifically boys and it continued for decades and eventually Roy Cohn took it over from Lewis Rosenstiel.
The relationship between Rosenstiel and Cohn was often described as father and son or that Rosenstiel was his mentor. Cohn eventually took this over what had originally been run out of Lewis Rosenstiels personal home and began to run it out of what became a rather infamous suite in the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, Suite 233, that was sometimes called the Blue Suite, and he would host these sorts of events there with recording equipment and all of that, that were used to blackmail powerful people, first in the McCarthy era, and later on.
And as I show in part two of my report, these sorts of networks, Roy Cohn was not the only one. There were some other ones that the CIA was running in the late 70s that were connected to disgraced CIA agent Edwin Wilson. And then after that when, in the 1980s with Iran-Contra and Bill Casey and all of that, there were several other sexual blackmail operations or child trafficking rings that were connected to prominent players in the Iran-Contra scandal.
Continues...
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-jeffrey-epstein-scandal-is-much-bigger-than-jeffrey-epstein/
pnwmom
(108,977 posts)to leave it alone."
He didn't say WHOSE intelligence.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/i-was-told-epstein-belonged-to-intelligence-and-to-leave-it-alone
Epsteins name, I was told, had been raised by the Trump transition team when Alexander Acosta, the former U.S. attorney in Miami whod infamously cut Epstein a non-prosecution plea deal back in 2007, was being interviewed for the job of labor secretary. The plea deal put a hard stop to a separate federal investigation of alleged sex crimes with minors and trafficking.
Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]? Acosta had been asked. Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day hed had just one meeting on the Epstein case. Hed cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epsteins attorneys because he had been told to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone, he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta. (The Labor Department had no comment when asked about this.)
Celerity
(43,333 posts)My wife said at the time that Epstein was not going to see the end of summer. Good thing I did not take her up on that wager.
Link to tweet
Christine Pelosi
@sfpelosi
This Epstein case is horrific and the young women deserve justice. It is quite likely that some of our faves are implicated but we must follow the facts and let the chips fall where they may - whether on Republicans or Democrats. #WeSaidEnough #MeToo https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epstein-arrested-for-sex-trafficking-of-minors-source
YOHABLO
(7,358 posts)This is a very interesting conversation between Marc Steiner (Real News Network) and Whitney Webb (journalist who works for Mint Press)
Here is a piece of the interview:
COMMENTS
The Jeffrey Epstein Scandal Is Much Bigger Than Jeffrey EpsteinJeffrey Epstein with former associate Ghislaine Maxwell. (YouTube screen grab)
What follows is a conversation between journalist Whitney Webb and Marc Steiner of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.
MARC STEINER Welcome to The Real News Network. Im Marc Steiner. Great to have you all with us. Jeffrey Epstein is at the top of every news cycle, and dominates our digital social media world. His trafficking of young girls, children to satisfy his and the sexual preferences of so many of the rich and powerful, are the center of all this, as are his connections to that dark world of the unseemly side of the interaction between government, business, and the intelligence world, allegedly.
Using sex as blackmail is nothing new. It goes back to the early mob, the CIA, and seems to connect the dots to Epstein. That was the story were going tell today, written by our guest, who wrote this for Mint Press in the three-part series called Jeffrey Epstein Scandal, Too Big to Fail. The three parts were Hidden in Plain Sight, Government by Blackmail: Jeffrey Epstein, Trumps Mentor and the Dark Secrets of the Reagan Era, and Mega, Maxwells and Massad: The spy story at the heart of the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal.
Whitney Webb is a Mint Press news journalist based in Chile who has written and contributed to many, many outlets and joins us now from her home there. And welcome. Good to have you with us, Whitney.
WHITNEY WEBB Hi, thanks so much for the opportunity.
MARC STEINER So lets begin this how this sort of journey began for you because it seems that the heart of what youre doing here is saying what Epstein was accused of doing, what he did is nothing new in our annuls with this history that theres using sexual blackmail. It goes way back to the mob, to Meyer Lansky, to the founding of the CIA. So talk a little about that, the genesis of this.
WHITNEY WEBB OK. So what I hope to show in my reporting is that this is not a type of operation or a scandal really that began or ends with Jeffrey Epstein now that he has died. As you mentioned, my report tries to go as far back as possible to really see where these sexual blackmail operations began in the context of this network to which Jeffrey Epstein was later connected. And from my research, it was first pioneered by Meyer Lansky and the national crime syndicate in the late thirties, he was sending Virginia Hill, whos often been called the mistress of the mob, he was sending her to Mexico to try and lure foreign diplomats and to bug departments and use that for blackmail purposes. Not long after that, Lansky became an associate, well, he was a covert associate at the time with the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services during World War II.
lunatica
(53,410 posts)Who knew it could go very high up?
crazytown
(7,277 posts)protected by the rules of intelligence.
Pachamama
(16,887 posts)...any info you can paste and show here for us to read?
Nitram
(22,794 posts)*yawn*
lindysalsagal
(20,679 posts)Question is: was it officially on the books, above board, supervised, or just loose. I hope Clinton has the paperwork making his contact official business.