"We told the truth, we obeyed the law and we kept the peace."

[hifiguy]

Walter Mondale reflecting on the Carter/Mondale administration in today's (Minneapolis) Star Tribune.

The last presidency to which those words could even remotely be applied. Probably the last one ever.

[TM99]

1. Isn't that a sad truth!

Sanders gives me some hope that perhaps we can once again have that type of administration in this country.

[hifiguy]

2. kick

[Octafish]

3. I believe you are correct.

Ask Jimmy Carter about the Safari Club, one example of off-the-books spooks. People who care about democracy also may want to ask:

"How do Wall Street, oil companies and the shadow government agencies like the CIA and NSA really shape the global political order?"



The Deep State Plots The 1980 Defeat Of Jimmy Carter

By Peter Dale Scott
WhoWhatWhy.com on Nov 2, 2014

The Safari Club was an alliance between national intelligence agencies that wished to compensate for the CIA’s retrenchment in the wake of President Carter’s election and Senator Church’s post-Watergate reforms. As former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal once told Georgetown University alumni,

In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here, your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything. It could not send spies, it could not write reports, and it could not pay money. In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran. (1)

After Carter was elected, the Safari Club allied itself with Richard Helms and Theodore Shackley against the more restrained intelligence policies of Jimmy Carter, according to Joseph Trento. In Trento’s account, the dismissal by William Colby in 1974 of CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton,

combined with Watergate, is what prompted the Safari Club to start working with (former DCI Richard) Helms (then U.S. Ambassador to Iran) and his most trusted operatives outside of Congressional and even Agency purview. James Angleton said before his death that “Shackley and Helms … began working with outsiders like Adham and Saudi Arabia. The traditional CIA answering to the president was an empty vessel having little more than technical capability.”(2)

Trento adds that “The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations. With the official blessing of George Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed . . . the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money-laundering machine.”(3) Trento claims also that the Safari Club then was able to work with some of the controversial CIA operators who had been forced out of the CIA by Turner, and that this was coordinated by Theodore Shackley:

Shackley, who still had ambitions to become DCI, believed that without his many sources and operatives like (Edwin) Wilson, the Safari Club—operating with (former DCI Richard) Helms in charge in Tehran—would be ineffective. . . . Unless Shackley took direct action to complete the privatization of intelligence operations soon, the Safari Club would not have a conduit to (CIA) resources. The solution: create a totally private intelligence network using CIA assets until President Carter could be replaced. (4)

During the 1980 election campaign each party accused the other of plotting an October Surprise to elect their candidate. Subsequently other journalists, notably Robert Parry, accused CIA veterans on the Reagan campaign, along with Shackley, of an arguably treasonable but successful plot with Iranians to delay return of the U.S. hostages until Reagan took office in January 1981. (5)

SNIP...

The oil majors’ manipulation of domestic oil prices, combined with Carter’s failure to bring the hostages home, combined to cause the first defeat for an elected president running for reelection, since that of Herbert Hoover in 1932.

CONTINUED...

http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/11/02/the-deep-state-plots-the-1980-defeat-of-jimmy-carter/

How are those wars without end for profits without cease going these days? Going like gangbusters, with no end in sight.

[hifiguy]

4. Scott is always worth a read.

I found his book about the RFK assassination to be most interesting, particularly in the pointed and still-unanswered questions it raised.

[Octafish]

5. Philip Melanson was an authority on that sad subject.

I believe you have written about him, hifiguy. For those new to the subject: A professor of political science, Dr. Melanson wrote extensively on the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He also pioneered FOIA research on Lee Harvey Oswald's connections to the US military and intelligence communities.

But, first, almost alone, there was Scott.

[hifiguy]

6. I think I read Melanson's name in another book -it sounds familiar.

but am otherwise unfamiliar with him. Another book just put on my request list at the library.

[Octafish]

7. I forgot the most important part...

From Third World Traveler:

Who Killed Robert Kennedy?

by Philip Melanson

Odonian Press, 1993, paper


p4
Introduction

Robert F. Kennedy was shot down just after midnight on June 5, 1968, minutes after proclaiming victory in the California Democratic presidential primary. His assassination had an enormous effect on the course of American politics. The country lost a prominent critic of the Vietnam war and a committed champion of civil rights: the Democratic party lost its strongest presidential contender, enabling Republican candidate Richard Nixon to win the November election. More than four-fifths of all Americans are convinced that they haven't been told the truth about President John Kennedy's assassination. Far fewer are aware that the investigation into Robert Kennedy's death was just as flawed and corrupt.

EXCERPT...

16
The cover-up

From the beginning, a handful of journalists and citizens remained skeptical about the LAPD's conclusions. But when these critics tried to substantiate their suspicions with data from police files, they met massive resistance. The LAPD replied that the files were under lock-and-key, accessible only to those law-enforcement officials with a "need to know." The Los Angeles authorities even initiated legal proceedings against some critics who questioned the official findings.

p16
... the LAPD continued to resist for three more years-until letter campaigns and media coverage made it politically inexpedient to keep the information secret any longer. On April 19, 1988, the files were sent to the California State Archives in Sacramento, where researchers could evaluate the evidence for themselves.

The files made it clear that the LAPD had engaged in a massive cover-up, both during the original investigation and in the intervening twenty years. They'd not only attempted to misconstrue or overlook data that didn't support their lone-assassin view, but they'd actively destroyed evidence that might suggest a conspiracy... Now it learned that:

* The results of the 1968 test firing of Sirhan's gun were missing.

* The test gun used for ballistics comparison and identification was destroyed.

* Over 90% of the audiotaped witness testimony was lost or destroyed. Of the 3470 interviews the LAPD conducted, only 301 were preserved. Key testimony-like 29 witness accounts that suggested conspiracy-was missing, while less important interviews-like that of Sirhan's Bible teacher-remained.

* On August 21, 1968, less than two months after the assassination, 2400 photographs from the original investigation were burned, in the medical-waste incinerator at LA County General Hospital. The LAPD claimed that the photos were duplicates, but there weren't any known logs or inventories of photos that could verify that.

Moreover, Scott Enyart, an amateur photographer who'd been taking pictures the night of the assassination and whose film had been confiscated by police, has never been given back all his photos. His pictures, the only ones that might have captured the actual shooting, weren't in the files.

But even with the limited data that remained, there was still ample evidence to substantiate what critics had been saying all along-that there was a conspiracy to kill RFK.

The evidence for such a conspiracy falls into three key areas. First, it now appears clear that it was impossible for Sirhan to have fired the bullets that killed Kennedy - which means there must have been a second gunman. Second, an abundance of testimony by eye-witnesses suggests that Sirhan had at least two accomplices. Third, Sirhan's political motive-his hatred of RFK for supporting Israel-seems to be either a fabrication of the LAPD or a motive planted by conspirators to divert suspicion 1 from a more sinister plot.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/FBI/Who_Killed_R_Kennedy.html

I did not have the honor of meeting him. From all I've read and heard, the professor was an amazing person.

[hifiguy]

8. There were so many unaccounted-for bullet holes

all over in the pantry at the Ambassador you'd think a squadron of kops had been in there taking target practice.

And the fleeing couple shouting "We got him! We got him!" has also never been explained or even pursued. And at no time was Sirhan ever seen behind RFK. Every witness was clear on that point. Yet somehow he "shot" RFK in the back of his head beneath his right ear. Um-hm.

Thane E. Cesar was behind RFK at the time he was shot. And Cesar was armed. Do the math.

Nice summary is at http://www.salon.com/2011/11/21/the_other_kennedy_conspiracy/

[Enthusiast]

9. Kicked and recommended!

[hifiguy]

10. Kick for Grits and Fritz.