William Colby stipulated to "foreign assassination plots" to protect what?

[MinM]

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

A limited hangout is a form of deception, misdirection, or coverup often associated with intelligence agencies involving a release or "mea culpa" type of confession of only part of a set of previously hidden sensitive information, that establishes credibility for the one releasing the information who by the very act of confession appears to be "coming clean" and acting with integrity; but in actuality by withholding key facts is protecting a deeper crime and those who could be exposed if the whole truth came out. In effect, if an array of offenses or misdeeds is suspected, this confession admits to a lesser offense while covering up the greater ones.

A limited hangout typically is a response to lower the pressure felt from inquisitive investigators pursuing clues that threaten to expose everything, and the disclosure is often combined with red herrings or propaganda elements that lead to false trails, distractions, or ideological disinformation; thus allowing covert or criminal elements to continue in their improper activities...

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Santayana">George Santayana: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”

Ford made a blunder so egregious it launched four separate investigations of the CIA:

Schlesinger saw right away how huge a problem the whole Watergate episode represented for the Agency. The CIA was forbidden, by its charter, to operate domestically. Spying on Americans was absolutely illegal, and what else were E. Howard Hunt and the Watergate burglars doing but exactly that? Schlesinger knew, from his longtime experience in government, that these activities were likely the tip of the iceberg. So on May 9, 1973 Schlesinger sent a memo to all CIA employees asking that anyone with any knowledge of illegal activities should come forward:
http://www.blackopradio.com/black303b.ram">
At a White House luncheon for New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and its editors, Ford made a blunder so egregious it launched four separate investigations of the CIA:

Toward the end of the conversation, the subject of the Rockefeller commission came up. One editor, noting the predominantly conservative and defense-oriented membership of the commission, asked what credibility it would have. President Ford explained that he needed trustworthy citizens who would not stray from the narrow confines of their mission because they might come upon matters that would damage the national interests and blacken the reputation of every President since Truman.

“Like what?” asked the irrepressible Times managing editor, A. M. Rosenthal.

“Like assassinations!” President Ford shot back, quickly adding, “That’s off the record!”

The Times executives went into a huddle in their Washington office and agreed, after a spirited argument, to keep the President’s confidence.

This secret, however, got out, and word got around that Ford had been concerned about revealing assassinations. Daniel Schorr went to Colby and asked what was meant. Colby said Ford’s comments referred to foreign assassination plots, and Schorr satisfied himself that’s what Ford was referring to.

It bears repeating that the Rockefeller commission was only to look into the CIA’s domestic activities. If that were the case, why should Ford worry that an investigation of the CIA domestic activities would reveal information about foreign assassinations? Of course, the unasked question was this: Was there some domestic assassination the CIA have been involved with that Ford knew about? As a member of the Warren Commission, was Ford worried about exposing the CIA’s role in the Kennedy assassination? I’ve been disappointed, over the years, that most commentators on the commission never point out this other probable explanation for his strange outburst. To me, it seems likely Ford feared the exposure of a domestic assassination conspiracy. I believe strongly that Bill Colby revealed details of foreign assassination attempts in order to draw attention away from the one assassination that should have been on everyone’s mind after Ford’s outburst: the assassination of President Kennedy.

In terms of foreign assassination possibilities, Schorr’s instincts on this matter are interesting. “Hammerskjold?” Schorr asked. (See my article “Midnight in the Congo” for details of Hammerskjold’s mysterious plane crash, and the CIA operative who claimed responsibility for it to government officials.) “Lumumba?” Schorr asked next. (See my same article, as I also talk about a CIA officer’s published admission that he drove around with Lumumba in the trunk of his car for a few days, wondering what to do with his body.) Schorr appears to have been on the right track, in terms of CIA operations internationally. Naturally, however, Colby refused to confirm or deny any of Schorr’s suspicions.

The House and Senate, convinced that the Rockefeller Commission would be little more than a whitewash, convened their own bodies to investigate the CIA’s activities. The House’s official body was called the U.S. House Select Committee on Intelligence, and was chaired by Congressman Otis Pike. It was informally called the Pike Committee...
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/MinM/1

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/MinM/43

"CIA's History of Lying to Congress" by Lisa Pease (7-10-09 Consortium News)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6048461

CIA Vet: Agency Doesn't Need Secret Program To Target al Qaeda
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x463296

Still Mocking CIA Conspiracies? Well, Mock A Little Quieter, Will You?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6058823

The reason I don't believe CIA secret unit was meant to target bad guys is because ...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6059901

http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/2007/01/real-history-of-gerald-ford-watergate.html

[MinM]

1. ‘No geographical limitations’ on CIA assassination program

Raw Story piece which supports the op:

Raw Story » Report: ‘No geographical limitations’ on CIA assassination program

...Reporter Joby Warrick added: “The finding imposed no geographical limitations on the agency’s actions, and intelligence officials have said that they were not obliged to notify Congress of each operation envisaged under the directive.”

This revelation, buried in paragraph 12 of the Post’s report, was highlighted by Talking Points Memo’s Zachary Roth later in the afternoon.

“‘No geographical limitations’ presumably means that operations could potentially be carried out in countries, friendly or unfriendly, that are far from any war zone — including even the US itself,” he opined. “And it seems likely that they would be carried out without notifying the foreign country in question.”

Roth continued: “Of course, we’ve frequently, and quite openly, used the military to carry out attacks on specific Qaeda leaders — even before 9/11. But using the CIA to do so, and with such broad authority to operate anywhere in the world, as this program seems to have given the agency, would appear to take things into a different realm.”

‘Every president since Truman’

According to historian Christopher Andrew, under questioning by New York Times reporters and editors in 1975, President Gerald Ford explained that U.S. intelligence documents must not be revealed to the public because the revelations would “blacken the reputation of every President since Truman.”

“Like what?” he was asked.

“Like assassinations!” replied Ford, who later insisted the comment be kept “off the record.”

The discussion was held following Ford’s recent receipt of the CIA inspector general’s now-infamous report informally known as the “Family Jewels.” It revealed hundreds of CIA indiscretions ranging from experimenting on soldiers and prisoners with illegal, hallucinogenic drugs to assassination plots against South American leftists.

“The Times group returned to their bureau for a spirited argument about whether they could pass up a story potentially so explosive,” noted reporter Daniel Schorr. “Managing Editor E. C. Daniel called the White House in the hope of getting Nessen to ease the restriction from ‘off-the-record’ to ‘deep background.’ Nessen was more adamant than ever that the national interest dictated that the president’s unfortunate slip be forgotten. Finally, Sulzberger cut short the debate, saying that, as the publisher, he would decide, and he had decided against the use of the incendiary information.”

Schorr, who reported Ford’s comment for CBS News later that year, would later reveal that the president was not speaking about specific killings, but assassination conspiracies. In Schorr’s follow-up, then-CIA Director William Colby insisted that the agency had not been involved in assassinations since 1973.

However, on Sept. 21, 1976, Orlando Letelier, a leftist Chilean political figure-turned Washington, D.C.-based, anti-Pinochet activist, was assassinated in D.C. by a car bomb. The act of terrorism also claimed the life of his assistant, Ronni Moffitt.

The FBI would later determine that Michael Townley, a former CIA asset, organized the assassination, aided by a visa provided by Robert White, then U.S. ambassador to Paraguay. The hit was discovered to be part of Operation Condor, a program coordinated by South American governments which sought to eliminate leftist political figures.

White, it was revealed in 2001, discovered that a U.S. communications installation in Panama’s canal zone was being used “to co-ordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries .”

He advised Secretary of State Cyrus Vance in a classified cable that the U.S. connection to the Letelier assassination could be revealed if the arrangement to facilitate Operation Condor’s communications were ever to be discovered.

According to Mark Zepezauer in his book “The CIA’s Greatest Hits,” the agency knew a “hit squad was in the US and headed for Washington.”

The hit was ordered by Chile’s Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (National Intelligence Directorate), part of the country’s secret police under dictator Augusto Pinochet.

“After the bombing, the purged its files of photos of the assassins,” Zepezauer added. “The CIA and DINA then began planting stories in the press suggesting that Letelier had been killed by leftists seeking to make a martyr of him. … The FBI figured out the identities of Letelier’s assassins within weeks, but didn’t charge them until the CIA’s cover-up unraveled several years later.”

He concludes: “Apologists argue that no one can prove that Letelier’s convicted assassins, ‘former’ CIA agent Michael Townley and two Cuban exiles, were acting under agency orders. But if they weren’t, why did the CIA immediately begin covering up for them?”

In 1976, President Ford issued an executive order banning U.S.-sponsored assassinations.

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/16/report-no-geographical-limitations-on-cia-assassination-program/

[Liberation Angel]

2. kick/INVESTIGATE/PROSECUTE / TRUTH!

this is important stuff

and underscores why we need a truth commission and more investigations of these secret kiler squads which may still be operating.

[bobthedrummer]

3. List of CIA Inspector General Investigations (The Memory Hole)

"This heavily redacted list shows the closed investigations conducted by the CIA Inspector General from the beginning of 1997 to October 2004. It was obtained by researcher Michael Ravnitzky via FOIA."

http://www.thememoryhole.com/cia/cia-ig_investigations.htm

I am interested in a much older CIA Inspector General's Report-of which initially there was only one copy of.

July 26, 1963 CIA Inspector General's Report of Inspection of MKULTRA (Cryptome)
http://cryptome.org/mkultra-0003.htm

Entire generations of American families suffered "collateral damage" from some of the original 149 sub-projects conducted at over 80 institutions for MKULTRA, which continued and are found in the realm of neuroscience related fields today.

It isn't tinfoil, and the time to come out with the truth is NOW.

:hi:

[Liberation Angel]

4. good post

NT

[bobthedrummer]

5. "Declassified MK-ULTRA Project Documents" (michael-robinett.com)

http://michael-robinett.com/declass/c000.htm

A belated welcome to DU, Liberation Angel.

[Liberation Angel]

6. cool thanks good stuff

i heard you were a dj? btw?

pm me if you want

[bobthedrummer]

7. Sometimes before extrajudicial liquidation was applied there was torture.

There's training manuals to consult about torture too when out there "in the field".

"Prisoner Abuse: Patterns From The Past" (National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book 122)
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122/index.htm

"The Interrogation Documents: Debating U.S. Policy and Methods" (National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book 127)
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/index.htm

[bobthedrummer]

8. Crossposted active GD thread-thank you MinM

"In light of the assassination program, a few questions about some people I knew about..." (started 7-17-09 by Octafish)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6089862

[IndianaGreen]

9. Israel Trains U.S. Assassination Squads

This is an old news item that was not carried by MSM, but it points out that the US has been involved in the death squad business for longer than most of us have been alive:

Israel Trains U.S. Assassination Squads

Democracy Now! & Julian Borger

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh reveals how a new Special Forces group assembled to "neutralize" Iraqi resistance is working with Israeli commandoes to train in assassination and other tactics - comparable to the Phoenix Program in Vietnam. One of the key planners is Lt Gen. William Boykin who declared that Bush was not elected but appointed by God.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5364.htm

[bobthedrummer]

10. "Bush's key men face grilling on torture and death squads" by Paul Harris (7-19-09 Guardian)

"...Several investigations will now cast a spotlight on Bush-era torture policy and a secret assassination programme, examining the role played by big names such as the former vice-president Dick Cheney and the former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/19/george-bush-dick-cheney-torture

"CIA Domestic Operations Division: A DU collaborative thread" (active GD thread started 7-18-09)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6095958

[bobthedrummer]

11. one more kick, and thanks MinM!

[Gabi Hayes]

12. did I miss the best part of the Colby story here?

what happened to him?

he had some sort of 'boating accident,' didn't he?