Call to Octafish: We need massive linkage on BCCI and IranContra.

[blm]

Batman and Superman couldn't handle the task.

We really need one of your major posts with all the pertinent info on BCCI, IranContra and Kerry's role investigating and exposing the rampant government corruption involved.

I'm getting requests left and right.

Holding out for a hero. ;)

[blm]

1. Bumpin' for da man.

,

[Octafish]

17. Still encouraging me? What about the Octopus?

Thanks! The BFEE needed that!

George W. Bush's Dubious Friends

Intelligence Newsletter, 2 March 2000
Posted at globalresearch.ca 1 October 2001

EXCERPT...

In 1987 Mahfouz's representative in the U.S., Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, acquired an 11.5% stake in a company in which the Bush was a shareholder, director and adviser, Harken Energy. Bush played a central role in Harken which had his previous oil business, Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation, in 1986. Spectrum 7, in which Bush was boss and held 13.8%, had previously bought up the first firm Bush founded, Arbusto Energy Inc. in 1984. An American banker named Jacksen Stephens who was to also be deeply involved in the BCCI affair moved in 1987 to invest $ 25 million in Harken. The transaction took place in Geneva with the money was paid through a joint venture set up between the Union des Banques Suisses and the Geneva branch of the BCCI; the financial accord was signed by both Stephens and Bakksh. Other links between Bush and Mahfouz can be found through investments in the Carlyle Group, an American investment firm managed by a board on which former president George Bush himself sat. The younger Bush personally held shares in one of the components of the Carlyle group, the Caterair company, between 1990-94. And Carlyle today ranks as a leading contributor to Bush's electoral campaign. On Carlyle's advisory board figures the name of Sami Baarma, director of the Pakistani financial establishment Prime Commercial Bank that is based in Lahore and owned by Mafouz.

A second figure with an ambiguous part in Bush's financial past is Texas businessman James Bath. Considered as very close to the CIA, he appeared for the first time at Bush's side in 1978 when the latter made his first, unsuccessful run for the governorship. (He wouldn't try again until 1994, when he won). Bath helped to finance his campaign at the time and later bought into two of Bush's companies, Arbusto 79 Ltd and Arbusto 80 Ltd, affiliates of the Arbusto Energy oil exploration company founded by "W" in 1977. Under a mandate signed in 1976, Bath represented the financial interests of the Saudi Arabian sheikh Salem Bin Laden in the United States. Father of Ussama Bin Laden, Salem died in 1988. Thanks to his connections with Saudi business circles Bath obtained a $ 1.4 million loan from Mahfouz in 1990.

SOURCE:

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/INL110A.html

[Octafish]

87. Kerry knows BCCI story...Kerry BROKE BCCI...Kerry will CLOBBER BFEE!

BCCI was a bank set up by a Pakistani mystic, backed by Gulf Oil petrobillions. The bank was used to launder money for drug smugglers, gun merchants, the KGB, the CIA, and terrorists of the right like Ollie North and left like Abu Nidhal. The money was used to bribe and blackmail politicians worldwide, Democrat and especially conservative Republican, alike. Money from BCCI was used to build Pakistan's H-bomb, apparently with the full knowledge of George Herbert Walker Bush.

One other odd thing: President George HW Bush did all he could to bury the BCCI Affair, after all, it involved his sons, family and closest friends and business associates.

What America needs to learn: As a Freshman, Senator Kerry tried to do something about it. What's weird is how few Democrats supported him then. Let's make up for then now. It may be our last chance.


THE BCCI AFFAIR

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. BCCI CONSTITUTED INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL CRIME ON A MASSIVE AND GLOBAL SCALE. (Just like the S&L scandals that benefited BFEE.)

2. BCCI SYSTEMATICALLY BRIBED WORLD LEADERS AND POLITICAL FIGURES THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. (Red flag, Mr. Meese.)

3. BCCI DEVELOPED A STRATEGY TO INFILTRATE THE U.S. BANKING SYSTEM, WHICH IT SUCCESSFULLY IMPLEMENTED, DESPITE REGULATORY BARRIERS THAT WERE DESIGNED TO KEEP IT OUT. (Bi-partisan corruption.)

4. THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT MISHANDLED ITS INVESTIGATION AND PROSECUTION OF BCCI, AND ITS RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES CONCERNING BCCI. (In the tradition of John Mitchell, Dick Thornburgh and Ed Meese.)

5. NEW YORK DISTRICT ATTORNEY MORGENTHAU NOT ONLY BROKE THE CASE ON BCCI, BUT INDIRECTLY BROUGHT ABOUT BCCI'S GLOBAL CLOSURE. (Wasn’t the Feds. It won’t be Big John Ashcan.)

6. BCCI'S ACCOUNTANTS FAILED TO PROTECT BCCI'S INNOCENT DEPOSITORS AND CREDITORS FROM THE CONSEQUENCES OF POOR PRACTICES AT THE BANK OF WHICH THE AUDITORS WERE AWARE FOR YEARS. (Smells like deja Enron.)

7. THE CIA DEVELOPED IMPORTANT INFORMATION ON BCCI, AND INADVERTENTLY FAILED TO PROVIDE IT TO THOSE WHO COULD USE IT. (Whoda thunkit, huh Mr. Gates?)

THE CIA AND FORMER CIA OFFICIALS HAD A FAR WIDER RANGE OF CONTACTS AND LINKS TO BCCI AND BCCI SHAREHOLDERS, OFFICERS, AND CUSTOMERS, THAN HAS BEEN ACKNOWLEDGED BY THE CIA. (Just like in Florida, less than a decade later.)

8. THE FLAWED DECISIONS MADE BY REGULATORS IN THE US WHICH ALLOWED BCCI TO SECRETLY ACQUIRE US BANKS WERE CAUSED IN PART BY GAPS IN THE REGULATORY PROCESS AND IN PART BY BCCI'S USE OF WELL-CONNECTED LAWYERS TO HELP THEM THROUGH THE PROCESS. (Q: How long till Kenny Boy's pardoned?)

9. THE BANK OF ENGLAND'S REGULATION OF BCCI WAS WHOLLY INADEQUATE TO PROTECT BCCI'S DEPOSITORS AND CREDITORS, AND THE BANK OF ENGLAND WITHHELD INFORMATION ABOUT BCCI'S FRAUDS FROM PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE FOR FIFTEEN MONTHS BEFORE CLOSING THE BANK. (Ask Sneering Dick Cheney: “Arthur Andersen makes good book.”)

10. CLARK CLIFFORD AND ROBERT ALTMAN PARTICIPATED IN IMPROPRIETIES WITH BCCI IN THE UNITED STATES. (“The advisor to presidents” and a stalwart in the Democratic party is a crook? Whodaknown?)

11. ABU DHABI'S INVOLVEMENT IN BCCI'S AFFAIRS WAS FAR MORE CENTRAL THAN IT HAS ACKNOWLEDGED, INVOLVING IN SOME CASES NOMINEE RELATIONS AND NO-RISK TRANSACTIONS THAT ABU DHABI IS TODAY COVERING-UP THROUGH HIDING WITNESSES AND DOCUMENTS FROM U.S. INVESTIGATORS. (Zapata do biz with Abu Dhabi? Or was that Carlyle?)

12. BCCI MADE EXTENSIVE USE OF THE REVOLVING DOOR AND POLITICAL INFLUENCE PEDDLING IN THE UNITED STATES TO ACCOMPLISH ITS GOALS. (Carlyle was founded on this principal. Osama is Bush’s brother.)

13. BCCI'S PUBLIC RELATIONS FIRM SMEARED PEOPLE WHO WERE TELLING THE TRUTH AS PART OF ITS WORK FOR BCCI. (Then they'd send their goon-squad to disappear those who asked too many questions.)

14. BCCI ACTIVELY SOLICITED THE FRIENDSHIPS OF MAJOR U.S. POLITICAL FIGURES, AND MADE PAYMENTS TO THESE POLITICAL FIGURES, WHICH IN SOME CASES MAY HAVE BEEN IMPROPER. (Hmm.)

15. BCCI'S COMMODITIES AFFILIATE, CAPCOM, ENGAGED IN BILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF LARGELY ANONYMOUS TRADING IN THE US WHICH INCLUDED A VERY SUBSTANTIAL LEVEL OF MONEY LAUNDERING, WHILE CAPCOM SIMULTANEOUSLY DEVELOPED SIGNIFICANT TIES TO IMPORTANT U.S. TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY EXECUTIVES AND FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE FIGURES. (Ya think?)

16. INVESTIGATIONS OF BCCI TO DATE REMAIN INCOMPLETE, AND MANY LEADS CANNOT BE FOLLOWED UP, AS THE RESULT OF DOCUMENTS BEING WITHHELD FROM US INVESTIGATORS BY THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT, AND DOCUMENTS AND WITNESSES BEING WITHHELD FROM US INVESTIGATORS BY THE GOVERNMENT OF ABU DHABI. (Like Poppy really wanted to know.)


SUMMARY OF LEGISLATIVE RECOMMENDATIONS

1. THE SUBCOMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT THE UNITED STATES DEVELOP A MORE AGGRESSIVE AND COORDINATED APPROACH TO INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL CRIME, AND TO MOVE FURTHER AGAINST FOREIGN PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIAL LAWS THAT PROTECT CRIMINALS.

2. THE SUBCOMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT RECONSIDER THE POLICIES AND PRACTICES THAT LED TO ITS INEFFECTIVENESS IN INVESTIGATING AND PROSECUTING BCCI, AND IMPAIRED ITS ABILITY TO COOPERATE WITH OTHER INVESTIGATIONS OF BCCI BEING CONDUCTED BY THE FEDERAL RESERVE, NEW YORK DISTRICT ATTORNEY, AND THE SENATE.

3. THE SUBCOMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY AND STATE DEPARTMENT UPGRADE THE TRACKING OF FOREIGN FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND ACTIVITIES, AND THE DISSEMINATION OF INFORMATION CONCERNING SUCH INSTITUTIONS.

4. THE SUBCOMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT THE CONGRESS CONSIDER WHETHER ADDITIONAL OVERSIGHT MECHANISMS ARE NECESSARY TO ENSURE THE CIA'S ACCOUNTABILITY ON THE PROVISION OF INFORMATION.

5. THE SUBCOMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT FEDERAL AGENCIES IMPOSE NEW REQUIREMENTS ON FOREIGN AUDITORS TO PROTECT U.S. INTERESTS IN ANY CASE IN WHICH ANY SUCH AGENCY IS RELYING ON AN AUDIT CERTIFIED BY A FOREIGN AUDITOR. AT MINIMUM, THIS SHOULD REQUIRE FOREIGN AUDITORS WHOSE CERTIFICATIONS ARE USED BY INSTITUTIONS DOING BUSINESS IN THE U.S. AGREE TO SUBMIT THEMSELVES TO U.S. LAWS.

6. THE SUBCOMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT THE PRESIDENT AND THE SECRETARY OF STATE ADVISE THE GOVERNMENT OF ABU DHABI THAT ITS WITHHOLDING OF DOCUMENTS AND WITNESSES PERTAINING TO BCCI FROM U.S. FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT INVESTIGATORS, THE FEDERAL RESERVE, THE NEW YORK DISTRICT ATTORNEY AND THE CONGRESS THREATENS VITAL U.S. INTERESTS AND WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.

7. FURTHER ATTENTION NEEDS TO BE GIVEN TO THE PROBLEM OF THE REVOLVING DOOR IN WASHINGTON, AND THE IMPACT ON THE REGULATORY PROCESS AND ON LAW ENFORCEMENT OF POLITICAL INFLUENCE IN WASHINGTON. THE SUBCOMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THE CONSIDERATION OF LEGISLATING A FEDERAL STATUTORY CODE OF CONDUCT FOR ATTORNEYS WHO PRACTICE BEFORE FEDERAL AGENCIES.

8. THE SELF-REGULATION OF THE U.S COMMODITIES MARKETS BY THE COMMODITIES FUTURES TRADING COMMISSION, THE CHICAGO BOARD OF TRADE, AND THE CHICAGO MERCANTILE EXCHANGE IS INADEQUATE TO PROTECT THOSE MARKETS AGAINST MONEY LAUNDERING INVOLVING TRADES FROM ABROAD. THE SUBCOMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT THE EXCHANGES MAKE MONEY LAUNDERING ILLEGAL, AND DEMAND THAT THIS REQUIREMENT BE ACCEPTED BY FOREIGN COMMODITIES EXCHANGES WITH WHOM THEY DO BUSINESS, AS A CONDITION OF ACCESS TO US EXCHANGES.

9. THE SUBCOMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT FURTHER STEPS BE TAKEN TO INSURE ADEQUATE ACCOUNTABILITY OF FOREIGN FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS DOING BUSINESS IN THE UNITED STATES, INCLUDING REQUIRING FOREIGN BANKS FORM SEPARATELY CAPITALIZED HOLDING COMPANIES IN THE UNITED STATES AS A CONDITION OF LICENSE AND THE CONSIDERATION BY THE FEDERAL RESERVE OF ESTABLISHMENT A MINIMUM STANDARD FOR CONSOLIDATED REGULATION THAT EXCLUDES BANK REGULATORY HAVENS.

10. THE SUBCOMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT FOREIGN INVESTORS WHO PURCHASE SUBSTANTIAL SHARES OF U.S. BUSINESSES BE REQUIRED TO APPEAR PERSONALLY IN THE UNITED STATES AS INSURANCE THAT THE FOREIGN INVESTOR IS NOT ACTING AS A NOMINEE FOR SOMEONE ELSE.

11. TURF WARS CONTINUE TO SEVERELY DAMAGE THE ABILITY OF LAW-ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES IN THE UNITED STATES TO DO THEIR JOB. THE SUBCOMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A COMMITTEE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS WHOSE JOB IT IS TO CONDUCT OVERSIGHT OF, PREVENT, AND RESPOND TO FAILURES OF COOPERATION IN LAW ENFORCEMENT. (I thought the intelligence failure was the result of GroupThink?).

12. THE SUBCOMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT A STATUTORY MECHANISM FOR THE RECEIPT BY CONGRESS OF FOREIGN FINANCIAL INFORMATION BE ESTABLISHED.

Source:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/01exec.htm

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/

[Octafish]

88. The Kerry/Brown BCCI report in 2 pdf files, ready for print-out

Thanks to DUer Gandalf!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1568810

[Octafish]

89. Why this matters to Kerry campaign today and our nation tomorrow...

BCCI was part of the BFEE world turd works. Today, they use something new -- Riggs Bank, for one. Tomorrow it will be something else, unless the Truth is spread to those who are willing to do something about it -- Vote.

From The Outlaw Bank: BCCI

by Jonathan Beaty & S.C. Gwynne:

THE BIG SLEEP

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the BCCI affair in the United States was the failure of U.S. government and federal law enforcement to move against the outlaw bank. Instead of swift retribution, what took place over more than a decade was a cover-up of major, alarming proportions, often orchestrated from the very highest levels of government. When the Justice Department finally moved decisively against BCCI in late 1991, it did so reluctantly, with both Robert Morgenthau and the national press corps breathing down its neck.

The government knew a great deal about BCCI's criminality and knew it from a wide variety of sources. Though the public did not hear about its transgressions until later, BCCI had long been graven into the annals of U.S. law enforcement, intelligence, national security, and diplomacy. Authentic, unambiguous information about the bank's money laundering, weapons dealing, nuclear proliferation, terrorist accounts, and other crimes had reached the State Department, the Justice Department, the Treasury, the CIA, and even the White House's National Security Council years before. The detail of information was exceptional, the failure to follow up on it baffling.

U.S. officialdom had known for years just exactly how bad the bank was, and even that it secretly owned First American Bank...

What finally busted the logjam was not the government but the prodigious buildup of information on BCCI from sources outside federal law enforcement: from Morgentahau, from Blum, from Kerry's maverick subcommittee, from current and former BCCI employees around the world, from sources in the intelligence and weapons communities....

CONTINUED...

http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/BCCI.htm

One remarkable resource, the catbird-seat. Everyone should download, link, read and spread around...



Sink the BFEE!

[sadiesworld]

2. kick

[Octafish]

22. BCCI: Built by a Pakistani, funded by Petrodollars, used by BFEE

U.S. Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden

By Jean-Charles Brisard & Guillaume Dasqauié

THE BANKER OF TERROR

EXCERPT...

Khalid bin Mahfouz was a key figure in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, or BCCI, affair. Between 1986 and 1990, he was a top executive there, holding the position of operational director. His family held a 20 percent share in the bank at the time. He was charged in the United States in 1992 with tax fraud in the bank's collapse.

In 1995, held jointly liable in the BCCI's collapse, he agreed to a $245 million settlement to pay the bank's creditors, allowing them to indemnify a portion of the bank's clients. The specific charges against the bank were embezzlement and violation of American, Luxembourg, and British banking laws.

After dominating the financial news throughout the 1990s, the BCCI is now at the center of the financial network put in place by Osama bin Laden's main supporters.

The Bank of Credit an Commerce International was founded on November 29, 1972, by a Pakistani man, Agha Hasan Abedi, who comes from a family of Shiite Muslims. After getting his law degree, he started a career in banking, notably with the Habib Bank. After the partition of India, Abedi went to Karachi in Pakistan in the late 1940s. There, he met YusifSaigol, the heir of a wealthy family of merchants, who financed the creation of the United Bank Ltd.

CONTINUED...

http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/Investcorp.htm

[Octafish]

24. Thanks to Cheney & BFEE: What Pakistan got was the BOMB.

Cheney helped cover-up Pakistani nuclear proliferation in '89 so US could sell country fighter jets

Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 04:04 PM Eastern Standard Time
Jason Leopold

When Pakistan's clandestine program involving its top nuclear scientist selling rogue nations, such as Iran and North Korea, blueprints for building an atomic bomb was uncovered last month, the world's leaders waited, with baited breath to see what type of punishment George W. Bush would inflict upon Pakistan's President Pervez Musharaff. Bush has, after all, spent his entire term in office talking tough about countries and dictators that conceal weapons of mass destruction and even tougher on individuals who supply rogue nations and terrorists with the means to build WMD. For all intents and purposes, Pakistan and Musharraf fit that description.

Remember, Bush accused Iraq of harboring a cache of WMD, which was the primary reason he gave for the United States launching a preemptive strike on that country a year ago, and also claimed that Iraq may have given its WMD to al-Qaeda terrorists and/or Syria, weapons that, Bush said, could be used to attack the U.S. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and top members of the administration reacted with shock when they found out that Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, spent the past 15 years selling outlaw nations nuclear technology and equipment. So it was sort of a surprise when Bush, upon finding out about Khan's proliferation of nuclear technology, let Pakistan off with a slap on the wrist. But it was all an act. In fact, it was actually a coverup designed to shield Cheney because he knew about the proliferation for more than a decade and did nothing to stop it.

Like the terrorist attacks on 9-11, the Bush administration had mountains of evidence on Pakistan's sales of nuclear technology and equipment to nations vilified by the U.S.?nations that are considered much more of a threat than Iraq?but turned a blind eye to the threat and allowed it to happen. In 1989, the year Khan first started selling nuclear secrets on the black-market; Richard Barlow, a young intelligence analyst working for the Pentagon prepared a shocking report for Cheney, who was then secretary of defense under the Bush I administration: Pakistan built an atomic bomb and was selling its nuclear equipment to countries the U.S. said was sponsoring terrorism. But Barlow's findings, as reported in a January 2002 story in Mother Jones magazine, were "politically inconvenient."

"A finding that Pakistan possessed a nuclear bomb would have triggered a congressionally mandated cutoff of aid to the country, a key ally in the CIA's efforts to support Afghan rebels fighting a pro-Soviet government. It also would have killed a $1.4-billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Islamabad," Mother Jones reported. Ironically, Pakistan, critics say, was let off the hook last month so the U.S. could use its borders to hunt for al-Qaeda leader and alleged 9-11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. Cheney dismissed Barlow's report because he desperately wanted to sell Pakistan the F-16 fighter planes. Several months later, a Pentagon official was told by Cheney to downplay Pakistan's nuclear capabilities when he testified on the threat before Congress. Barlow complained to his bosses at the Pentagon and was fired.

CONTINUED...

http://www.pakistan-facts.com/article.php/2004031621042158

I LOVE SOUTH ASIA JOURNALISM!

[seemslikeadream]

25. Pakistan's Nuclear Hero Defended

Dawn, the English-language daily that often gives voice to the Pakistani establishment, reports that opposition political leaders in the country say the sacking of Khan will cause "irreparable damage to the country's integrity."

The press in India, Pakistan's South Asian nuclear rival, turns a critical eye on the U.S. role over three decades. The Times of India goes back to the early 1980s, when Pakistan, like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, was a quietly favored U.S. ally.

As correspondent Syed Saleem Shahzad notes in the Asia Times, the U.S. Congress cleared the way for Pakistan's nuclear program. In 1981 the Congress, under pressure from Ronald Reagan's White House, voted to formally exempt Pakistan from U.S. laws prohibiting aid to any non-nuclear country engaged in illegal procurement of equipment for a nuclear weapons program. The Pakistani government also won a six-year aid package from the United States worth $3.2 billion. Free from the threat of sanctions, Pakistan conducted a cold test at a small-scale nuclear reprocessing plant in 1982. From there, the so-called Islam bomb began to grow.

Pakistan proceeded to spend some $10 billion developing a nuclear arsenal, say the editors of the Times of India. The money came from Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and the depositors of the BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International), which became notorious in the early 1990s for myriad criminal activities. The bank, say the editors of the Times of India, was founded by a Pakistani and operated freely in the Persian Gulf oil enclave of Dubai. It is inconceivable, they argue, that Western intelligence agencies didn't know all about this black market.

MORE
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A8262-2004Feb3¬Found=true

[Octafish]

27. The BFEE needs enemies. Not the People of the United States.

With an enemy, and the fear the enemy engenders, the Bush Organized Crime Family can unite the people under their "leadership." The situation America finds itself in is just like the critters in "Animal Farm" endured, without the charm of Josef Stalin.

Nuclear proliferation profits most plentifully the ruling elites of the world - East or West, Communist or Capitalist, Terrorist or BFEE. To traitos such as these, outing Valerie Plame was a double-bonus.

Still, that doesn't stop papers like "The Jerusalem Post" from calling Joe Wilson a liar and Bush as a truth-teller. I know YOU remember PNAC's Richard Perle is on the Board of the Jerusalem Post:

Here's how Poppy Bush, Cheney, Perle, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft and the whole bloody lot LIE, people:



Bush didn't lie

By MARK STEYN

Do you remember a year ago when the Democratic National Committee was putting out press releases headlined "President Bush Deceives The American People"?

Yawn. What's new? But last summer the Bush Lie of the Week was all to do with Saddam's trying to buy uranium from Niger. CNN and co. replayed endlessly the critical 16 words from the president's 2003 State of the Union Address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Sixteen words that could break a presidency! Bush "misled every one of us," huffed Senator John Kerry. "It's beginning to sound like Watergate," said Governor Howard Dean. Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man the CIA sent to Africa to investigate, wrote a piece for The New York Times titled "What I Didn't Find in Africa."

CONTINUED (LINK MIGHT'VE GONE SUBSCRIBER ON ME)...

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1089774943709&p=1006953079865

[seemslikeadream]

29. Hint about links

Take the headline to google news and access the story that way. It works!

[Octafish]

31. Thanks, seemslikeadream! Much obliged.

Yours is a great idea! Dinkyooviddymucha! I cleared out my cookies and went back at 'em. The cheap pricks!

Have you heard about the Bank of Corruption and Criminal Incompetence? They sound like they could be nice.

BTW: Wish I'd drawn this. Did you draw it?



Bank of England in the dock over BCCI collapse

By Katherine Griffiths, Banking Correspondent
13 January 2004

Today, the Royal Courts of Justice will host the opening of a trial unprecedented in British legal history: at stake, the Bank of England's reputation, the honour of three of its former governors, and £1bn of taxpayers' money.

The Bank of England stands accused of lying to the Government and the wider world for nearly 20 years over the notorious collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Never before has it been sued.

The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, too, can be expected to find the action, brought by creditors of the collapsed bank, uncomfortable. To have to implement the compensation scheme he called for while in opposition, as the creditors demand, would cost the Treasury dear.

So Court 73, which last year housed the Hutton inquiry into the death of David Kelly, will host what will in effect be another trial of the British establishment. This time, it could last 18 months, and rack up legal bills of £50m.

The Bank's task? To defend itself over the way it regulated BCCI. Nicknamed the Bank of Corruption and Criminal Incompetence, BCCI collapsed in July 1991, after it lent huge amounts of ordinary depositors' money to a small number of investors, who were then unable to repay the loans. The failure - the biggest ever by a British bank - left 80,000 depositors, many in Britain, owed more than £5bn.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/Web%20Pages/INDEPENDENT_Bank%20of%20England%20in%20the%20dock%20over%20BCCI%20collapse.htm

[seemslikeadream]

39. GRAND JURY WILL SOON ISSUE EXPLOSIVE INDICTMENTS

by
Wayne Madsen
...........
U.S. intelligence sources have also said that Fitzgerald's investigation has gone far beyond the mere leaking of Plame's name, itself a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, but has expanded to look into the exposure of Plame's colleagues who worked under the cover of a CIA firm called Brewster, Jennings & Associates. The "brass plate" CIA proprietary had offices in Boston and Washington, DC. Active since 1994, Brewster-Jennings was instrumental in tracking the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and had agents or correspondents in a number of countries including Iraq, North Korea, Belarus, Russia, South Africa, Iran, Israel, China, Pakistan, Congo (Kinshasa), India, Taiwan, Libya, Syria, Serbia, and Malaysia. By releasing Valerie Plame’s name, other agents' non-official covers were blown and the lives of U.S. operatives within foreign governments and businesses may have been placed in danger. Therefore, Fitzgerald's investigation has reportedly been expanded to include the issue of whether members of the staffs of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, Cheney and Bush themselves, the National Security Council, and the Departments of Defense and State, may have violated more serious espionage laws.
In July 2003, the covert operations of Plame and her Brewster-Jennings colleagues were rolled up as a result of the White House leak to columnist Robert Novak and other journalists. Observers believe the White House was retaliating for the report by Wilson that the administration was incorrect when it stated that Iraq was shopping for "yellow cake" uranium in Niger. On behalf of the CIA, Wilson visited Niger prior to the Iraq war and determined that the administration's evidence was based on erroneous information and falsified documents.
The special prosecutor has been focusing on Bush, Cheney, presidential counselor Karl Rove, Cheney's chief of staff Lewis I. ("Scooter") Libby, Cheney assistants David Wurmser and John Hannah, and National Security Council officials Elliott Abrams and Stephen Hadley.
Recently, CIA Director George Tenet and Plame's ultimate boss, Deputy Director of Operations James Pavitt, suddenly resigned within hours of one another. Intelligence sources have said the two have been cooperating with Fitzgerald's investigation of the Plame/Brewster-Jennings leak and the damage to U.S. clandestine operations which globally track the flow of WMDs.
Sensitive CIA operations that were compromised by the leak included companies, government officials, and individuals associated with the nuclear smuggling network of Pakistan's chief nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. In addition, the identities of U.S. national and foreign agents working within the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, North Korea's nuclear laboratory in Yongbyon, Pakistan's Kahuta uranium enrichment plant, banks and export companies in Dubai, Islamabad, Moscow, Cape Town, Tel Aviv, Liechtenstein, Cyprus, and Kiev, and Kuala Lumpur, and government agencies in Libya, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Iran were severely compromised. The CIA has reportedly given Fitzgerald highly classified details on the damage done to the CIA's WMD tracking network.
According to Department of Justice insiders, the length of Fitzgerald's 70 minute interview of Bush was significant. Only one other prosecutor's interview of a sitting president lasted as long, that of Iran-contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh's questioning of the late Ronald Reagan. However, in that case, Walsh concluded after the interview that Reagan actually did not know what had transpired in his administration with respect to the scandal. Today’s officials may not be so fortunate.

[Stephanie]

42. link for this?

thanks in advance

[Octafish]

43. This might be it...

From Ruppert's From the Wilderness:

...Sensitive CIA operations that were compromised by the leak included companies, government officials, and individuals associated with the nuclear smuggling network of Pakistan's chief nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. In addition, the identities of U.S. national and foreign agents working within the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, North Korea's nuclear laboratory in Yongbyon, Pakistan's Kahuta uranium enrichment plant, banks and export companies in Dubai, Islamabad, Moscow, Cape Town, Tel Aviv, Liechtenstein, Cyprus, and Kiev, and Kuala Lumpur, and government agencies in Libya, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Iran were severely compromised. The CIA has reportedly given Fitzgerald highly classified details on the damage done to the CIA's WMD tracking network. ...

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/062504_grand_jury.shtml

[seemslikeadream]

45. Thanks buddy that's it

I had a golf tornament to get the kids to and was in a hurry.

Here, The Octopus demonstrates his dynamic eight-legged climbing technique. Always the daredevil, he eschews protection despite the harrowing exposure. Plus, 4oz stuffed octopi have a very low terminal velocity. (Click for larger image)
Did you know I had this photo?

[Octafish]

46. Ha ha ha! Climbing Cephalopods!

Your company makes great coverage, seemslikeadream!

[seemslikeadream]

49. Now you're tuggin' at my heart strings

"Of all the symbols we see in Japan, the Koi or Carp is one of the favourites. It is seen as a symbol of perseverance and success in life because of its loveliness and grace of motion, and many of us, who never had an interest in Koi, leave Japan with a special feeling for the orange, silver and brass-coloured fishes we so often see. Carp are often projected swimming upstream which also portrays perseverance, something necessary to swim upstream and according to Chinese mythology a carp which succeeds in swimming upstream and hurdling the upper rapids of the Yangtze River will be transformed into a dragon.

Carp Kites flown on ‘Boys Day’ are still very prominent, especially in the Japanese countryside. A black carp represents the male head of the family, the eldest son gets a red carp (Higoi-hi = red) only slightly smaller than the father and all successive sons receive progressively smaller carp.

The imitation of the fish that swims against the strong current and even surmounts cascades, acts an inspiration to the sturdy youth to overcome all difficulties and obstacles encountered in the stream of life."

[Octafish]

72. Hey slad! Where'd ya git the pic of my boss?

I'd recognize the Tong sign, anywhere.



Perforations Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign

Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign

By Johan Carlisle

EXCERPT...

Over the next few days, American news reports of the bombing and the identity of the bomber varied widely. Most news agencies said the identity of the bomber was unknown and reported the details of the bombing with few speculations about the sponsor of the tragic event. ABC and PBS, in their evening news broadcasts on June 1, held forth with a startling announcement that the bombing was the work of ETA (1) Basque "terrorists" working for Nicaragua's Sandinista government. Here was another example of Reagan's infamous "terrorist internationale" in the news only a few months before the 1984 presidential election.

The ETA story played for about a week until the French authorities said that the alleged Basque terrorist, Jos Miguel Lujua, had been under house arrest in southern France for a number of years. By that time the La Penca bombing had become old news and was forgotten until May of 1986 when the Christic Institute filed a lawsuit against 28 individuals, on behalf of Tony Avirgan, one of the injured journalists, and his journalist-wife, Martha Honey. In the course of investigating the so-called Secret Team (2), it became obvious from new evidence provided by government documents that the ETA story was a carefully planned US government disinformation campaign. The ETA cover story provides a rare opportunity to track the genesis of a covert propaganda operation.

The US government profited greatly from the widespread belief that the Sandinistas were behind the assassination attempt of Eden Pastora at La Penca. Col. North had discussed on several occasions provoking the Costa Ricans into requesting direct US military intervention in the illegal war against Nicaragua. Linking the Nicaraguans with international terrorism played well at home and revived Reagan's wilting bouquet of trumped up rationales for continuing the contra war. Shifting the blame to the Sandinistas for a callous attack on the international journalist community to eliminate the troublesome Pastora (3) hit the Sandinistas coming and going. After the assassination attempt, Eden Pastora faded away as a major player in the Southern Front and members of Col. North's "off the shelf" covert supply network and "Somocista" contras moved in.

The disinformation campaign began in a series of articles in the Costa Rican and Spanish newspapers in September of 1983 (nine months before the bombing) with the arrest of ETA member Gregorio Jimenez in San Jos, Costa Rica. He was charged with planning to assassinate Eden Pastora as part of an ETA commando group assignment. It was later shown that the news reports alleging ETA activities in Costa Rica aimed at the elimination of Pastora were generated by the intelligence community and were never substantiated. At the time, Costa Rican president, Luis Monge was in Spain, as was Nicaraguan Interior Minister, Toms Borg. Monge was trying to get European support for Costa Rican neutrality in the contra war, while Borg was attempting to get sorely-needed financial aid from the socialist government of Spain. As a result of the widely publicized arrest of Jimenez, a meeting between Monge, Borge and the president of Spain was cancelled and new tensions were created between Nicaragua and two potential Spanish-speaking allies.

The fact that the stories started about nine months before the bombing and continued to appear sporadically with very few facts has fueled speculation that this was part of an orchestrated campaign.

CONTINUED...

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/colombia/ottoreich.htm

[seemslikeadream]

40. and the rest of the story

The ironies of this drama continue to proliferate. Here’s one: Nixon’s homegrown spy coven was called “The Plumbers,” because its primary responsibility was to stop leaks. But Dubya finds himself spending an hour and ten minutes in the hot seat (next to his personal lawyer) because his people created a leak – the felonious kind.

Dick Cheney is the President of the Senate, on whose hallowed floor he has just told Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to “fuck off.” This regime is losing control of itself. The supra-governmental long-term plans that illegally drove them into office gave them a false sense of invulnerability. The money powers that make American presidencies had anointed Cheney and crew to run the country, so they could break as many rules, careers, laws, and heads as they chose – so long as they delivered the right number of barrels-per-day at the right price. They can’t. Having profligately wasted their political capital on torture, budgetary pork, and tax cuts, they have almost nothing left now that they’ve failed their sponsors.
In this latest report on the unfolding Plame investigation, Wayne Madsen shows what a long list of CIA people and projects have been compromised by the leak. John “Karl Rove” Doe and John “Dick Cheney” Doe seem to have no idea what kind of hibernating grizzly bear they’ve been jabbing at. They’ll find out now, because it just woke up. –JAH]
June 25, 2004 1600 PDT (FTW – Washington, DC. Well-placed U.S. government sources have revealed that the secret grand jury, led by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, will soon issue explosive indictments in the criminal investigation of who leaked the name of Valerie E. Plame, a CIA clandestine agent and wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson, to members of the media. On June 24, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald interviewed President Bush at the White House for 70 minutes, an indication that Fitzgerald's investigation is nearing completion and that indictments may be imminent. Bush was seated with his recently-hired criminal defense attorney, Jim Sharp, during the interview.

[seemslikeadream]

28. From Outlaw Bank by Beatty and Gwynne

They include this statement from Sheikh Kamal Adham, former head of Saudi intelligence, bro-in-law of late King Faisal, and shareholder in BCCI and First American Bank, who was speaking to an Arabic audience when admitted, in 1992, that "Pakistan had their own atomic bomb and that Abedi/BCCI had helped them get it.

...Kamal Adham was anticipating...indictment in the U.S. over BCCI fraud.

"So why would he want to call attention to all of this? The Western press aside, the wily old spy master certainly knew the intelligence agencies of the U.S. would pick up his remarks...He may have been sending a message directly to George Bush, reminding the president that Kamal Adham knew far too much to be trifled with.

in perspective...9-91. Morganthau was going after the powerful Saudi as one of the main culprits of the BCCI scandal. Morganthau kept quiet about his intentions to indict Adham AND SHEIKH KHALID BIN MAHFOUZ (in hopes to avoid state department inverventions.)

but when Kamal found out what was happening, he hired the former executive assistant of then White House Chief of Staff John Sununu...who had just (surprise...not) quit to go "private."

This publically brought the Bush administration into the BCCI scandal for the first time.

Beatty and Gwynne learned that Bush's White House was closely monitoring the BCCI investigation, insisting that a administration official sit in on congressional and justice dept. interviews with BCCI witnesses (does this sound familiar to anyone else?? ...the investigation into whistleblowing with Dubya).

some in the FBI complained the FBI probe was spinning its wheels because it was "too political" (again, sound familiar as an excuse to investigate the Bush lies to go to war with Iraq???)...and decisions were being held up in Washington.

A justice dept official complained Washington didn't really want the Atty Gen.'s office to actually return indictments. Washington (Bush) wanted to do an overall package deal, "'where we cut off the hands of a few Pakistanis and paint it as if they were really all the big folks.'"

Beatty and Gwynne go on to note that Bush Sr, lied and claimed he didn't know Adham. (who had been director of the CIA in 1976, WHEN GEORGE BUSH HEADED THE CIA).

The American agency had been "helping to modernize Saudi intelligence during Bush's tenure (oh, no conflict of interest there, huh, Zapata Oil?)

The authors also note that Bush was known as "the Saudi vice president" throughout the middle east. State dept said it was impossible for Bush not to have known Adham because he was the main man in S.A. when you making BIZ DEALS, as well as policy.

when asked about Bush's statement, Adham did not directly deny it, though Saudi's knew Adham's newphew, Sultan bin-Bandar was ambassador to the U.S. and was a frequent guest of Bush.

...but what about the nuclear weapons issue? Reagan, "intent on continuing military aid to Pakistan during the Afghanistan (mujahadeen/Osama bin Laden as Reagan's allies) war, turned a blind eye b/c U.S. law prohibited military aid or sale to nonnuclear countries known to be developing nuclear weapons.

In 88 and 89, Bush danced on the edge of truth about Pakistan, saying it did not "possess a nuclear explosive device" to justify continuing MASSIVE support for Pakistan, b/c Pak, bush said, only had "unassembled components."

As soon as Russia pulled out of Afghanistan, Bush said unassembled components violated the rules and cut off aid.

Beatty and Gwynne, in Time Magazine, were "the first to assert that BCCI was instrumental in Pakistan achieving unofficial Nuclear Club membership.

Via BCCI, Pakistan had received sophisticated American military technology that Congress NEVER AUTHORIZED. Adham's remarks re: an atmomic bomb may have been suggesting that it wouldn't be in the Bush administration's self-interest to probe too deeply into how Pakistan, and BCCI, came to possess such military capacity.

The Sheikh knew that BCCI was "the creation of a real life Dr. No, whose empire brokered ballistic missiles, illicit pharmaceuticals, stolen military secrets, heroin, and hot money, leaving a trail of corruption across two decades and seventy countries. And of all people, Adham had reason to know that the (Bush) White House knew it too, and had known about it for years."

pp 272-77

[Wind Dancer]

3. I had these bookmarked

from seemslikeadream

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. OLIVER L. NORTH


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. OLIVER L. NORTH, Defendant


63. On April 26, U.S. Ambassador Negroponte notified McFarlane that President Suazo had called Negroponte immediately after Suazo's telephone conversation with President Reagan to say that Suazo was satisfied with the U.S. government commitment to continue support for the Resistance. President Suazo told Ambassador Negroponte that he (Suazo) had assured President Reagan of his full support and had promised that he (Suazo) would check into the interdicted munitions shipment, which he did immediately after the conversation with President Reagan by calling a senior Honduran military official. Suazo told Negroponte that Honduras supported the Resistance fully, and Suazo asked that Negroponte convey his strongest assurances to President Reagan that Honduras would not let down the Resistance. Ambassador Negroponte recommended under the circumstances that the Honduran delegation be received in Washington by Vice President Bush in President Reagan's absence.

78. In mid-January 1986, LtCol North prepared talking points for a meeting between Admiral Poindexter, Vice President Bush, and Honduran President Azcona. North recommended that Admiral Poindexter and Vice President Bush tell President Azcona of the need for Honduras to work with the U.S. government on increasing regional involvement with and support for the Resistance. Poindexter and Bush were also to raise the subject of better U.S. government support for the states bordering Nicaragua.


97. In late August 1986, North reported to Admiral Poindexter that a representative of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega had asked North to meet with him. Noriega's representative proposed that, in exchange for a promise from the USG to help clean up Noriega's image and a commitment to lift the USG ban on military sales to the Panamanian defense forces, Noriega would assassinate the Sandinista leadership for the U.S. government. North had told Noriega's representative that U.S. law forbade such actions. The representative responded that Noriega had numerous assets in place in Nicaragua and could accomplish many essential things, just as Noriega had helped the USG the previous year in blowing up a Sandinista arsenal.

102. In mid-September 1986, LtCol North advised Admiral Poindexter that former U.S. Ambassador Negroponte, General Gorman of SouthCom, senior CIA official Duane Clarridge, and LtCol North had worked out arrangements for support of the Resistance with General Bueso-Rosa, a former Honduran military officer who had recently been convicted of offenses in the U.S. LtCol North suggested that efforts be made on Bueso-Rosa behalf to deter him from disclosing details of the covert activities.

103. In late September 1986, LtCol North advised Admiral Poindexter that Costa Rican Interior Minister Garron had disclosed the existence of the Santa Elena airstrip. North stated that President Arias of Costa Rica had breached his understanding with the U.S. government. Assistant Secretary of State Abrams and Secretary of State Shultz wanted to cancel Arias' scheduled visit with President Reagan and replace his appointment by scheduling a meeting with President Cerezo of Guatemala. Admiral Poindexter agreed.

104. A U.S. official met with President Cerezo of Guatemala in September 1986. Cerezo told the U.S. official that he intended to pursue U.S. government goals in Central America, including specific support for the armed Resistance, but that he would seek additional military aid from the U.S. in return.

105. President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Shultz, Weinberger, and Poindexter were informed of the U.S. official's meeting with President Cerezo. It was reported to these officials that, in return for Guatemalan support for the Resistance, Cerezo would ask Secretary of State Shultz to triple military assistance to Guatemala, to double economic assistancs to Guatemala, and to undertake other forms of support for Guatemala.

106. In late September 1986, LtCol North reported to Admiral Poindexter on his London meeting with Noriega. Noriega would try to take immediate actions against the Sandinistas and offered a list of priorities including an oil refinery, an airport, and the Puerto Sandino off-load facility.

http://www.webcom.com/pinknoiz/covert/stip.html



Octafish

The crook Ollie North sicced FBI on Sen. John Kerry.


... because Kerry actually had the temerity to investigate the Iran-Contra drug running trail that greased right through Ollie's White House subterranean bunker and straight into "Vice-president" George Bush's office.

OLLIE NORTH AND DRUGS

By Dennis Bernstein and Howard Levine
From The Texas Observer

EXCERPT...

If Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh had wanted to know the extent of former Colonel Oliver North's involvement in the smuggling of drugs from Central America to the United States, Walsh might have made at least one phone call to Celerino 'Cele' Castillo in San Antonio.

Between 1985 to 1991, Castillo was the Drug Enforcement Administration's main agent in El Salvador, where, he says, he uncovered "and reported" a huge drug and gun smuggling operation that was run out of the Ilopango military airport by the 'North Network' and the CIA.

North, now the Republican nominee for the U. S. Senate in Virginia, prevailed at the nominating convention last weekend by positioning himself far to the right of his rival, former Reagan budget director James Miller III, promising that if elected he will work to "clean up the mess" in Washington, and cultivating the support of the same fundamentalist Christian Republicans who
responded to the direct-mail campaign to finance the North defense committee.

But Castillo, the first government official with first-hand knowledge of North's drug dealing to speak publicly about it, says North belongs in prison, not in the U.S. Senate. "We saw several packages of narcotics, we saw several boxes of U.S. currency, going from Ilopango to Panama," Castillo said.

CONTINUED...

http://www.csun.edu/CommunicationStudies/ben/news/cia/9... ....

Portraying North as a dung beatle rolling along on the turd that's the BFEE is pretty apt.


seemslikeadream

The Oliver North File:




His Diaries, E-Mail, and Memos on
the Kerry Report, Contras and Drugs

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 113

February 26, 2004
Washington D.C., 26 February 2004 - Diaries, e-mail, and memos of Iran-contra figure Oliver North, posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive, directly contradict his criticisms yesterday of Sen. John Kerry's 1988 Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee report on the ways that covert support for the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s undermined the U.S. war on drugs.

Mr. North claimed to talk show hosts Hannity & Colmes that the Kerry report was "wrong," that Sen. Kerry "makes this stuff up and then he can't justify it," and that "The fact is nobody in the government of the United States, going all the way back to the earliest days of this under Jimmy Carter, ever had anything to do with running drugs to support the Nicaraguan resistance. Nobody in the government of the United States. I will stand on that to my grave."

The Kerry subcommittee did not report that U.S. government officials ran drugs, but rather, that Mr. North, then on the National Security Council staff at the White House, and other senior officials created a privatized contra network that attracted drug traffickers looking for cover for their operations, then turned a blind eye to repeated reports of drug smuggling related to the contras, and actively worked with known drug smugglers such as Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to assist the contras. The report cited former Drug Enforcement Administration head John Lawn testifying that Mr. North himself had prematurely leaked a DEA undercover operation, jeopardizing agents' lives, for political advantage in an upcoming Congressional vote on aid to the contras (p.121).

Among the documents posted today are:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/index.htm


Octafish

This sums up Ollie North, Murder Inc.


A Short History of Saddam-Bush-Noriega Business

(continued)

by CONSPIRACY PLANET

EXCERPT...

"Then in 1989 when the so-called Iraq Gate scandal began to break open, there were Congressional hearings about Bushonian mischief making with Saddam Hussein. But who remembers that now? Many senior Reagan-Bush people were inculpated in a scheme to illegally transfer non-conventional American weapons systems to Saddam."

"When Senator Christopher Dodd's committee attempted to subpoena Saddam Hussein, that subpoena was the only subpoena issued by the Iraq Gate investigating committee that was blocked by the Bush Regime. He was told to keep himself scarce and Saddam kept himself scarce when the Democratically controlled committee was investigating Bushonian involvement in the illicit transfer on non-conventional weapons systems to Iraq. That was when Saddam suddenly went on this holiday someplace in the Caspian Sea."

Al Martin's reference to "Saddam, Watch Out for That Soap" comes from the fact that Enemies of Bush have often died very "conveniently" at very "convenient" times.

"It should also be remembered how CIA doper George Morales supposedly slipped on a bar of soap in prison and was killed when his head hit the floor," Martin reminds his readers. "That was one day before he was due to be released -- when he was going to Washington to testify before the Kerry Committee hearing."

"So Saddam -- remember what happened to the other right wing dictators."

CONTINUED - - SOURCE (Al Martin, warning for the blue-blooded DUers):

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=2... ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1668534

[Octafish]

75. BFEE Business Model: Fascism that Works!

The Dark Side of Intellectual Entrepreneurship:

Transnational Criminal Enterprise 

Abstract

The developed economies are facing a rise in illegal immigration, high levels of unemployment, increased pressure on social welfare systems, and a rising level of organized criminal activity. Some G7 nations even have illegal economic sectors that account for over 25% of GDP. There is increasing evidence that there is a strong links connecting unemployment in the legal economy, high taxation, generous social benefits and the rise of illegal activity. This article seeks to demonstrate that criminal enterprises of all sizes are using entrepreneurial techniques to profit from legitimate society?s failures. Criminal entrepreneurs willingly seek out illegal activity to seize market share, stifle competition, and develop new products, while optimizing taxation and avoiding the administrative burdens of the legitimate commercial sector. At the head of this growing movement of illegal enterprise we find criminal entrepreneurs able to assemble the intellectual capital to work through and against legitimate institutions to realize their commercial goals. These entrepreneurs are very often the product of the intellectual classes of legitimate society itself who have discovered a new way to invest their intellectual capital and exercise their entrepreneurial talents. This article is focused on the criminal activity associated with illegal immigration, cyber crime, and counterfeiting.

INTRODUCTION
 
Discussions of entrepreneurship, intellectual and otherwise, tend to concentrate on how entrepreneurs contribute to the good of society. Entrepreneurship is to be encouraged for the purposes of enriching people across many social strata. However, not all entrepreneurs turn their considerable and admirable intellectual powers towards the generally conceived concept of the betterment of society. The same skills that are needed to organize and coordinate great ventures are the skills that can be put to use for organizing and coordinating large-scale criminal activity. Just as a physician?s life-saving skills infer the ability to kill, so too can an entrepreneur?s intellectual capacity and energy be turned to either legal or illegal activity. This article will demonstrate that not only is there considerable intellectual entrepreneurship within the world of organized crime, but that participants in these illegal enterprises positively contribute to society. As entrepreneurs turn to this ?dark side? they find that they can work both through and against social institutions to achieve their entrepreneurial goals.

Even the most casual reader of newspapers or the most benumbed television viewer has come to recognize that criminal behavior has increased in both size and sophistication. The crimes are varied in content and expansive in monetary damage. This article will, however, only look at three types of transnational criminal enterprise:

* Illegal Immigration
* Cyber Crime
* Counterfeiting

These three types of criminal behavior were chosen primarily for their complexity, growth rates and fiscal impact. Perpetrators of these criminal acts have also, as we will see, shown the willingness and ability to work within, and in opposition to, legitimate institutions.

CONTINUED...

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:cv1bklZrTFcJ:www.wspiz.pl/~unesco/articles/book4/tekst7.doc+transnational-criminal-enterprise&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

It's easy to see how the rest of this can be applied to Big Bidniz, like petroleum and war.

[welshTerrier2]

4. here ya go ...

here's a great bookmark i've saved for those who want to do a little homework:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1836172

[Octafish]

74. BFEE: A Transnational Criminal Organization

Here's something you know, welshTerrier2: History teaches us for a reason...



Transnational Criminal Organizations: Chinese

Gary W. Potter, Professor, Criminal Justice and Police Studies, Eastern Kentucky University

Since the mid-1980s, Asian gangs have become a major force in the illicit drug trade in the United States. Asian gangs, primarily of Chinese origin, operate on both coasts as significant players in international drug trafficking. Chinese organized crime or COC, uses its ties with overseas criminal organizations to assure a regular supply of drugs. Two primary classifications of Chinese organized crime groups operate in the United States: the triads and the tongs.

The Triads: The triads are some of the best organized groups in Asia and constitute one of the most important entities in Southeast Asian heroin trafficking. The Triad, one of many secret Chinese societies, originally formed as a resistance group to the Ch'ing Dynasty which ruled China from the early 17th century to 1911. While employing Robin-Hood type tactics, groups such as the Yellow Turbans, Green Groves, Iron Shins, and Copper Horses recruited peasants for membership in their ranks. The Triad formed out of such outlaw gangs and became known as the "Three Society" or the "Heaven and Earth Society." In 1644 the Ch'ing dynasty formed after the overthrow of the powerful Ming dynasty. From then until the 1670s, they ruled the northern half of China while making constant attempts to takeover the southern half.

SNIP...

Although gambling is the major source of illegal revenue for the Triad, the drug trade (opium products in particular) also generates millions of dollars in revenue. Triad members are infrequently involved in street level sales of drugs. The Triads concentrate on smuggling the opium out of the Golden Triangle, refining it into heroin and selling it to wholesale buyers.

Typically the Triad invests money earned through an illicit operation in legitimate business enterprise. This facilitates the laundering of money earned through drug sales. In addition to drug trafficking, they are involved in prostitution and protection rackets.

SNIP...

The Tongs: During the 1840s and 1850s, the influx of thousands of Chinese immigrants to California prompted the need for an organized fraternal society to protect members from bands of natvist whites. Resentment by whites against Chinese immigrants was intense. Many Chinese worked as manual laborers on railroads and in gold mines. "Tong gangs," which were unheard of in China, were common in the railroad construction camps. In time, they expanded to large urban areas such as San Francisco. In San Francisco the Hop Sings and Suey Sings slowly gained control of gambling and the opium trade within the Chinese community. By the late 1800s, the Hop Sings, Suey Sings and to a lesser extent the Kwong Ducks were involved in the importation of women into the U.S. to work in prostitution rings. Much like the Italian Black Hand operations of the same era, tongs for the most part victimized their own people.

CONTINUED...

http://www.policestudies.eku.edu/POTTER/International/Chinese.htm

[nolabels]

82. From the link to this "The Saudis: Friends or Foes?"

Reviews and forward make the book sound very informative

The Saudis: Friends or Foes?
(snip)
by Loretta Napoleoni
(snip)
Are these few measures enough to defeat Islamist terror? It seems highly unlikely. According to a recent UN report prepared for the Security Council, over the last 10 years Al Qaeda alone received 20% of Saudi GNP; stopping a few coins from being dropped at the entrance of a shopping mall will do very little to curb this kind of a figure. Again, the UN estimates that the Saudi Zakat, the obligatory religious almsgiving equivalent to 2.5% of Muslims' wealth, is about $10 billion per year. The bulk of this money is controlled by the Department of Zakat of the Saudi Ministry of Finance and National Economy. For example, the Zakat that Islamic banks levy on every single transaction is automatically forwarded to this department; the Ministry then channels the funds, at its own discretion, to the 241 Saudi charities. Naturally, the larger recipients are charities headed by members of the ruling elite. While no investigation into the past accounts of the Department of Zakat has taken place, or has even been considered, the recently implemented Saudi anti-terror measures have been limited, in this respect, to shutting down six charities and freezing $5.7 million held by them -- a figure equivalent to a mere one half of one percent of the total yearly Zakat!

Among the 236 charities still operational inside Saudi Arabia is the Committee for Support of the Intifada al Quds, whose charitable activities include financing Hamas suicide operations in Israel. The charity is headed by Saudi interior minister, Naif Ibn Adeb al Aziz, who, people may recollect, implied that September 11 attacks against the US were the work of 'Zionists'. Another prominent Saudi charity untouched by the crackdown is the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), which last year held a charitable fund-raising conference in Saudi Arabia where Hamas representatives had the chance to personally thank Crown Prince Abdullah for the Saudis' valuable financial help. Interestingly, while the US has put tremendous pressure on the Europeans to list Hamas' non-militant wing among the organizations regarded as terrorist, WAMY still operates freely inside the US. Among the tasks carried out by the US branch, which until September 11, 2001 was headed by Abdulah bin Laden, brother of Osama, is the spreading of hate literature against Americans. Recently, WAMY has promoted the ideas of one of its employees, Sheikh Saad al Buraik, the religious advisor of Prince Abdul Azziz bin Fahd, a son of King Fahd, who, in 2001, called for the enslavement of Jewish women and the death of all their children. So well-received was Buraik's anti-Jewish exhortation in his homeland that it got him a job as the host of a weekly TV show on the Middle East Broadcasting Company (MBC), owned by Azziz and his uncle, Waleed al Ibrahim. Is the Bush administration so naïve as to believe that firing a few young Mullahs here and there in Saudi Arabia will be enough to silence radical voices such as Buraik?

A topic carefully avoided by the US and the Saudis is the role that Saudi Islamic banks play in the distribution of funds to Islamist cells and armed groups scattered throughout the Muslim world. Many believe that the 20 pages of the report from the Senate Committee on Saudi financing of terror groups which the Bush administration blacked out contained valuable information about Saudi banks. Why has nobody investigated them? Former Al Qaeda members have testified that Osama regularly uses the intricate network of Islamic banks and their subsidiaries to bankroll the group's terror activities. More important than fund-raising, it is the distribution of funds which is the lifeline of terrorist organizations which run trans-national networks -- getting money across the world in the fastest and most secure way possible.

Saudi banks are heavily involved in the distribution business. The Dallah Al Baraka (DAB), one of the cornerstones of Saudi banking, has been named in the $1 trillion lawsuit filed by the relatives of September 11. The DAB was among the largest shareholders of the Faisal Islamic Bank, accused by bin Laden business associate, Jamal Ahmed Mohammed al Fadl, of having been one of the vehicles used to channel money to Al Qaeda around the world. No steps have been taken to shut down these banks or to investigate their books. Saudi dissidents in London point out that whenever the trail leads to banks, records disappear. Last week, in the special report on the Saudis published by Newsweek, one of the US administration's top counter-terrorism officials admitted that the records of one the Saudi charities suspected of bankrolling Islamist terror had mysteriously vanished.
(snip)
http://www.progress.org/2003/saudi01.htm
http://www.modernjihad.com/articles.htm

[InkAddict]

5. In memorium: Danny Casalaro

So many legs, Octafish. Do we need a Cray?

[InkAddict]

11. More legs

TIN FOIL HAT ALERT?

http://www.american-buddha.com/mystery.death.htm

http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/last_circle/

http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/02-19-04/discussion.cgi.57.html

http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2003/01/26515.php

[Octafish]

18. Sorry, InkAdict! I was polishing the radio telescope.

The World's Billionaires

Sins of the Father?

Nathan Vardi, 03.18.02

Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi billionaire, spent the 1990s engaged in financial folly and funding what the U.S. government calls a front for Al-Qaeda. Now a new generation tries to escape the shadow.

In November Abdulrahman bin Mahfouz paid a visit to the American consul general in the Saudi Arabian coastal city of Jidda. The 31-year-old Mahfouz wanted to pass the word on to Washington, D.C. He had heard President Bush's challenge and had an unambiguous reply: "We are with you, not the terrorists."

It was a calculated gesture, prompted by renewed grief for the Mahfouz clan. Trouble seems to stalk Abdulrahman's father, Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz. In 1999 there was the forced nationalization of his bank, Saudi Arabia's biggest. This followed by eight years the collapse of his biggest investment, Bank of Credit & Commerce International (BCCI), amid worldwide scandal. This time events had caught up with Abdulrahman himself. He had been a board member of the Muwaffaq ("blessed relief") Foundation, a charity that the U.S. Treasury Department labeled a front for Al-Qaeda in October.

The U.S. government has not accused Khalid and his family, estimated to be worth $1.7 billion, of funding terrorism, despite Abdulrahman's acknowledgment to FORBES GLOBAL that the foundation was the brainchild of his father, who funded it with as much as $30 million. Yasin al-Qadi, the Saudi hired to run the charity, has had his assets iced by the Treasury, which calls him a supporter of terrorism.

SNIP...

The Mahfouzes aren't alone in feeling this heat. Charities dubbed sinister by the Bush Administration are connected to other elite Saudi families. OPEC's oil price hikes in the 1970s created the largest transfer of wealth in the 20th century and produced ten known Saudi billionaires, more per capita than 80% of the industrialized democracies, including Japan, France and the U.K. The philanthropy coming out of those fortunes has flowed to Islamic partisans, and the benefactors are now being scrutinized.

CONTINUED...

http://www.forbes.com/global/2002/0318/047.html

[blm]

38. Yes. Too many who delved into this have died or

were fired for crossing the BFEE on this.

[Octafish]

50. To keep track of it requires the greatest thinking machine known...

... the human mind. And the greatest power source known, the human heart. A nice smile and an Internet connection don't hurt, either.

As DUers know, though. Going after the BFEE is no game. Many have been murdered: Danny Casolaro, Abbie Hoffman, Steve Kangas, Mark Lombardi, Jim Hatfield -- these all named the members of the Bush Organized Crime Family in their reporting. We must remember their lives and their work.


UNTANGLING THE OCTOPUS

by Steve Mizrach

October Surprise, Iran-Contra, Noriega, Iraqgate, and BCCI
Before he died in an ineptly performed 'suicide,' the young journalist Danny Casolaro was working on a book that he claimed tied together many of the 'gates' and 'miniscandals' surrounding the Bush presidency. The book identified the web which tied all the scandals together as the "Octopus," a mythical creature with tentacles stretching everywhere. Perhaps the birth of the Octopus lies in the 1980 Presidential election; and its growth occurred under the eight years of the Reagan presidency. Casolaro soon found that the Octopus may have consisted of a 'shadow government' apparatus that went back even further than Bush and Reagan. But what's left of his notes seem primarily to focus on events in the 80s and 90s.

It is very possible that in 1980, Bill Casey and other members of the Reagan team may have conspired with the Iranians to delay the release of the American hostages: they were afraid of an "October Surprise" which might damage Reagan's chances of defeating Carter. Sure enough, the hostages were released right as Reagan was being inaugurated, and in 1981, the first shipment of arms to Iran began. Gunther Rossbacher, an ex-Navy pilot, and two other foreign sources, insist that on October 21st and 22nd, Bush met with Iranian delegates in Paris. The "October Surprise" may have been how Bush and other Reagan team members located the Iranian 'moderates' that played a role in the Iran-Contra scandal. In 1984, the Boland amendment forbade any more military assistance to the Contras. So, in 1985, the underground "Enterprise" - Operation Yellowfruit - began selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds to furnish weapons to the Contras. George Bush claims Iran-Contra has nothing to do with him, but other administration figures' records show he was at the secret meetings - Poindexter, in particular. Amiram Nir, an Israeli terrorism expert, insists he discussed Iranian arms deals with Bush, but that can't be confirmed... he died in a mysterious plane crash in Mexico in 1988.

It turns out the Iran-Contra scandal may have been part of a larger arms-for-hostages deal. The Iranians needed weapons in their war against Iraq, and the Reagan administration felt that the Iranians might have been able to convince the Shiite terrorists in Lebanon to release the American hostages held there. Reagan claimed no "quid pro quo," but then he also claimed he really didn't remember much, either. In any case, additional hostages were seized after the 'non-deal', and many may remain in captivity today, including the Lebanon CIA station head. One man who may have known a great deal about the Iran-Contra business was Manuel Noriega, whose name came up in the 1988 Dukakis-Bush debates. Noriega knew about the Contra drug pipeline, because he was a pusher, himself, while on the CIA payroll throughout the 1980s, and during his trial in Miami in 1989, some testimony emerged which suggested he knew something about the Central American end of the Iran-Contra affair and where some on the missing money may have 'disappeared' into.

On the Middle Eastern end, another man who was a delighted beneficiary of American generosity throughout the 1980s was Saddam Hussein of Iraq. The Agriculture Department and other agencies gave Saddam agricultural credits worth millions of dollars which he used to purchase American attack helicopters, chemical weapons for using on the Kurds, and the components of a nuclear weapons program. It is suspected that the CIA and Justice Department overlooked, or aided, the Banco Nazionale Lavoro (BNL) of Italy while it funneled billions in military aid to Iraq. This recently burgeoning scandal, "Iraqgate," suggests we were playing both sides against the middle during the Iran-Iraq war. We were selling arms to both the Iranians and the Iraqis, and the CIA at various points double-crossed both sides. It is no wonder that America is so distrusted in that part of the world. In any case, there were two men that knew too much, and when Bush became president, he had to clean them up, and he would wage two "cleanup wars" to do it.

One link between Bush, Saddam, and Iran-Contra was the corrupt Middle Eastern bank, the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI). BCCI, it turns out, laundered drug money, financed CIA and Mossad covert operations, and helped Bush, Saddam, and others split over $250 billion in extortion from the sale of Persian Gulf oil. (BCCI also might have had links to the corrupt drug-money-laundering-and-CIA scandals involving Australia's Nugan Hand Bank.) Attorney General Richard Thornburgh squashed an investigation into First American Bankshares, secretly controlled by BCCI, in October 1990; and William von Raab, former U.S. customs official, was fired by Treasury Secretary James Brady for delving too deeply into BCCI. This may have a lot to do with the links between Prescott Bush, First American director Stephens, Bahrain, and Iraq. Bush's family were oilmen, and if there is anything he stood for, it was Big Oil and its interests in the Middle East. (It might be pointed out, incidentally, that it was Norman Schwarzkopf's father who helped boot out Mossadegh in Iran when he threatened to nationalize holdings of British Petroleum.) The mess was in place, and President Bush had a lot of cleaning up to do.

CONTINUED...

www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/octopus.html

[seemslikeadream]

52. Speak Truth to Power A Timeline of CIA Atrocities

By Steve Kangas

The following timeline describes just a few of the hundreds of atrocities and crimes committed by the CIA. (1)

CIA operations follow the same recurring script. First, American business interests abroad are threatened by a popular or democratically elected leader. The people support their leader because he intends to conduct land reform, strengthen unions, redistribute wealth, nationalize foreign-owned industry, and regulate business to protect workers, consumers and the environment. So, on behalf of American business, and often with their help, the CIA mobilizes the opposition. First it identifies right-wing groups within the country (usually the military), and offers them a deal: "We'll put you in power if you maintain a favorable business climate for us." The Agency then hires, trains and works with them to overthrow the existing government (usually a democracy). It uses every trick in the book: propaganda, stuffed ballot boxes, purchased elections, extortion, blackmail, sexual intrigue, false stories about opponents in the local media, infiltration and disruption of opposing political parties, kidnapping, beating, torture, intimidation, economic sabotage, death squads and even assassination. These efforts culminate in a military coup, which installs a right-wing dictator. The CIA trains the dictator’s security apparatus to crack down on the traditional enemies of big business, using interrogation, torture and murder. The victims are said to be "communists," but almost always they are just peasants, liberals, moderates, labor union leaders, political opponents and advocates of free speech and democracy. Widespread human rights abuses follow.

This scenario has been repeated so many times that the CIA actually teaches it in a special school, the notorious "School of the Americas." (It opened in Panama but later moved to Fort Benning, Georgia.) Critics have nicknamed it the "School of the Dictators" and "School of the Assassins." Here, the CIA trains Latin American military officers how to conduct coups, including the use of interrogation, torture and murder.

The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, 6 million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations. (2) Former State Department official William Blum correctly calls this an "American Holocaust."

The CIA justifies these actions as part of its war against communism. But most coups do not involve a communist threat. Unlucky nations are targeted for a wide variety of reasons: not only threats to American business interests abroad, but also liberal or even moderate social reforms, political instability, the unwillingness of a leader to carry out Washington’s dictates, and declarations of neutrality in the Cold War. Indeed, nothing has infuriated CIA Directors quite like a nation’s desire to stay out of the Cold War.

The ironic thing about all this intervention is that it frequently fails to achieve American objectives. Often the newly installed dictator grows comfortable with the security apparatus the CIA has built for him. He becomes an expert at running a police state. And because the dictator knows he cannot be overthrown, he becomes independent and defiant of Washington's will. The CIA then finds it cannot overthrow him, because the police and military are under the dictator's control, afraid to cooperate with American spies for fear of torture and execution. The only two options for the U.S at this point are impotence or war. Examples of this "boomerang effect" include the Shah of Iran, General Noriega and Saddam Hussein. The boomerang effect also explains why the CIA has proven highly successful at overthrowing democracies, but a wretched failure at overthrowing dictatorships.

The following timeline should confirm that the CIA as we know it should be abolished and replaced by a true information-gathering and analysis organization. The CIA cannot be reformed — it is institutionally and culturally corrupt.

1929

The culture we lost — Secretary of State Henry Stimson refuses to endorse a code-breaking operation, saying, "Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail."

1941

COI created — In preparation for World War II, President Roosevelt creates the Office of Coordinator of Information (COI). General William "Wild Bill" Donovan heads the new intelligence service.

1942

OSS created — Roosevelt restructures COI into something more suitable for covert action, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Donovan recruits so many of the nation’s rich and powerful that eventually people joke that "OSS" stands for "Oh, so social!" or "Oh, such snobs!"

1943

Italy — Donovan recruits the Catholic Church in Rome to be the center of Anglo-American spy operations in Fascist Italy. This would prove to be one of America’s most enduring intelligence alliances in the Cold War.

1945

OSS is abolished — The remaining American information agencies cease covert actions and return to harmless information gathering and analysis.

Operation PAPERCLIP – While other American agencies are hunting down Nazi war criminals for arrest, the U.S. intelligence community is smuggling them into America, unpunished, for their use against the Soviets. The most important of these is Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s master spy who had built up an intelligence network in the Soviet Union. With full U.S. blessing, he creates the "Gehlen Organization," a band of refugee Nazi spies who reactivate their networks in Russia. These include SS intelligence officers Alfred Six and Emil Augsburg (who massacred Jews in the Holocaust), Klaus Barbie (the "Butcher of Lyon"), Otto von Bolschwing (the Holocaust mastermind who worked with Eichmann) and SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny (a personal friend of Hitler’s). The Gehlen Organization supplies the U.S. with its only intelligence on the Soviet Union for the next ten years, serving as a bridge between the abolishment of the OSS and the creation of the CIA. However, much of the "intelligence" the former Nazis provide is bogus. Gehlen inflates Soviet military capabilities at a time when Russia is still rebuilding its devastated society, in order to inflate his own importance to the Americans (who might otherwise punish him). In 1948, Gehlen almost convinces the Americans that war is imminent, and the West should make a preemptive strike. In the 50s he produces a fictitious "missile gap." To make matters worse, the Russians have thoroughly penetrated the Gehlen Organization with double agents, undermining the very American security that Gehlen was supposed to protect.

1947

Greece — President Truman requests military aid to Greece to support right-wing forces fighting communist rebels. For the rest of the Cold War, Washington and the CIA will back notorious Greek leaders with deplorable human rights records.

CIA created — President Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947, creating the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Council. The CIA is accountable to the president through the NSC — there is no democratic or congressional oversight. Its charter allows the CIA to "perform such other functions and duties… as the National Security Council may from time to time direct." This loophole opens the door to covert action and dirty tricks.

1948

Covert-action wing created — The CIA recreates a covert action wing, innocuously called the Office of Policy Coordination, led by Wall Street lawyer Frank Wisner. According to its secret charter, its responsibilities include "propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action, including sabotage, antisabotage, demolition and evacuation procedures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."

Italy — The CIA corrupts democratic elections in Italy, where Italian communists threaten to win the elections. The CIA buys votes, broadcasts propaganda, threatens and beats up opposition leaders, and infiltrates and disrupts their organizations. It works -- the communists are defeated.

1949

Radio Free Europe — The CIA creates its first major propaganda outlet, Radio Free Europe. Over the next several decades, its broadcasts are so blatantly false that for a time it is considered illegal to publish transcripts of them in the U.S.

Late 40s

Operation MOCKINGBIRD — The CIA begins recruiting American news organizations and journalists to become spies and disseminators of propaganda. The effort is headed by Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham. Graham is publisher of The Washington Post, which becomes a major CIA player. Eventually, the CIA’s media assets will include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service and more. By the CIA’s own admission, at least 25 organizations and 400 journalists will become CIA assets.

1953

Iran – CIA overthrows the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in a military coup, after he threatened to nationalize British oil. The CIA replaces him with a dictator, the Shah of Iran, whose secret police, SAVAK, is as brutal as the Gestapo.

Operation MK-ULTRA — Inspired by North Korea’s brainwashing program, the CIA begins experiments on mind control. The most notorious part of this project involves giving LSD and other drugs to American subjects without their knowledge or against their will, causing several to commit suicide. However, the operation involves far more than this. Funded in part by the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, research includes propaganda, brainwashing, public relations, advertising, hypnosis, and other forms of suggestion.

1954

Guatemala — CIA overthrows the democratically elected Jacob Arbenz in a military coup. Arbenz has threatened to nationalize the Rockefeller-owned United Fruit Company, in which CIA Director Allen Dulles also owns stock. Arbenz is replaced with a series of right-wing dictators whose bloodthirsty policies will kill over 100,000 Guatemalans in the next 40 years.

1954-1958

North Vietnam — CIA officer Edward Lansdale spends four years trying to overthrow the communist government of North Vietnam, using all the usual dirty tricks. The CIA also attempts to legitimize a tyrannical puppet regime in South Vietnam, headed by Ngo Dinh Diem. These efforts fail to win the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese because the Diem government is opposed to true democracy, land reform and poverty reduction measures. The CIA’s continuing failure results in escalating American intervention, culminating in the Vietnam War.

1956

Hungary — Radio Free Europe incites Hungary to revolt by broadcasting Khruschev’s Secret Speech, in which he denounced Stalin. It also hints that American aid will help the Hungarians fight. This aid fails to materialize as Hungarians launch a doomed armed revolt, which only invites a major Soviet invasion. The conflict kills 7,000 Soviets and 30,000 Hungarians.

1957-1973

Laos — The CIA carries out approximately one coup per year trying to nullify Laos’ democratic elections. The problem is the Pathet Lao, a leftist group with enough popular support to be a member of any coalition government. In the late 50s, the CIA even creates an "Armee Clandestine" of Asian mercenaries to attack the Pathet Lao. After the CIA’s army suffers numerous defeats, the U.S. starts bombing, dropping more bombs on Laos than all the U.S. bombs dropped in World War II. A quarter of all Laotians will eventually become refugees, many living in caves.

1959

Haiti — The U.S. military helps "Papa Doc" Duvalier become dictator of Haiti. He creates his own private police force, the "Tonton Macoutes," who terrorize the population with machetes. They will kill over 100,000 during the Duvalier family reign. The U.S. does not protest their dismal human rights record.

1961

The Bay of Pigs — The CIA sends 1,500 Cuban exiles to invade Castro’s Cuba. But "Operation Mongoose" fails, due to poor planning, security and backing. The planners had imagined that the invasion will spark a popular uprising against Castro -– which never happens. A promised American air strike also never occurs. This is the CIA’s first public setback, causing President Kennedy to fire CIA Director Allen Dulles.

Dominican Republic — The CIA assassinates Rafael Trujillo, a murderous dictator Washington has supported since 1930. Trujillo’s business interests have grown so large (about 60 percent of the economy) that they have begun competing with American business interests.

Ecuador — The CIA-backed military forces the democratically elected President Jose Velasco to resign. Vice President Carlos Arosemana replaces him; the CIA fills the now vacant vice presidency with its own man.

Congo (Zaire) — The CIA assassinates the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba. However, public support for Lumumba’s politics runs so high that the CIA cannot clearly install his opponents in power. Four years of political turmoil follow.

1963

Dominican Republic — The CIA overthrows the democratically elected Juan Bosch in a military coup. The CIA installs a repressive, right-wing junta.

Ecuador — A CIA-backed military coup overthrows President Arosemana, whose independent (not socialist) policies have become unacceptable to Washington. A military junta assumes command, cancels the 1964 elections, and begins abusing human rights.

1964

Brazil — A CIA-backed military coup overthrows the democratically elected government of Joao Goulart. The junta that replaces it will, in the next two decades, become one of the most bloodthirsty in history. General Castelo Branco will create Latin America’s first death squads, or bands of secret police who hunt down "communists" for torture, interrogation and murder. Often these "communists" are no more than Branco’s political opponents. Later it is revealed that the CIA trains the death squads.

1965

Indonesia — The CIA overthrows the democratically elected Sukarno with a military coup. The CIA has been trying to eliminate Sukarno since 1957, using everything from attempted assassination to sexual intrigue, for nothing more than his declaring neutrality in the Cold War. His successor, General Suharto, will massacre between 500,000 to 1 million civilians accused of being "communist." The CIA supplies the names of countless suspects.

Dominican Republic — A popular rebellion breaks out, promising to reinstall Juan Bosch as the country’s elected leader. The revolution is crushed when U.S. Marines land to uphold the military regime by force. The CIA directs everything behind the scenes.

Greece — With the CIA’s backing, the king removes George Papandreous as prime minister. Papandreous has failed to vigorously support U.S. interests in Greece.

Congo (Zaire) — A CIA-backed military coup installs Mobutu Sese Seko as dictator. The hated and repressive Mobutu exploits his desperately poor country for billions.

1966

The Ramparts Affair — The radical magazine Ramparts begins a series of unprecedented anti-CIA articles. Among their scoops: the CIA has paid the University of Michigan $25 million dollars to hire "professors" to train South Vietnamese students in covert police methods. MIT and other universities have received similar payments. Ramparts also reveals that the National Students’ Association is a CIA front. Students are sometimes recruited through blackmail and bribery, including draft deferments.

1967

Greece — A CIA-backed military coup overthrows the government two days before the elections. The favorite to win was George Papandreous, the liberal candidate. During the next six years, the "reign of the colonels" — backed by the CIA — will usher in the widespread use of torture and murder against political opponents. When a Greek ambassador objects to President Johnson about U.S. plans for Cypress, Johnson tells him: "Fuck your parliament and your constitution."

Operation PHEONIX — The CIA helps South Vietnamese agents identify and then murder alleged Viet Cong leaders operating in South Vietnamese villages. According to a 1971 congressional report, this operation killed about 20,000 "Viet Cong."

1968

Operation CHAOS — The CIA has been illegally spying on American citizens since 1959, but with Operation CHAOS, President Johnson dramatically boosts the effort. CIA agents go undercover as student radicals to spy on and disrupt campus organizations protesting the Vietnam War. They are searching for Russian instigators, which they never find. CHAOS will eventually spy on 7,000 individuals and 1,000 organizations.

Bolivia — A CIA-organized military operation captures legendary guerilla Che Guevara. The CIA wants to keep him alive for interrogation, but the Bolivian government executes him to prevent worldwide calls for clemency.

1969

Uruguay — The notorious CIA torturer Dan Mitrione arrives in Uruguay, a country torn with political strife. Whereas right-wing forces previously used torture only as a last resort, Mitrione convinces them to use it as a routine, widespread practice. "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect," is his motto. The torture techniques he teaches to the death squads rival the Nazis’. He eventually becomes so feared that revolutionaries will kidnap and murder him a year later.

1970

Cambodia — The CIA overthrows Prince Sahounek, who is highly popular among Cambodians for keeping them out of the Vietnam War. He is replaced by CIA puppet Lon Nol, who immediately throws Cambodian troops into battle. This unpopular move strengthens once minor opposition parties like the Khmer Rouge, which achieves power in 1975 and massacres millions of its own people.

1971

Bolivia — After half a decade of CIA-inspired political turmoil, a CIA-backed military coup overthrows the leftist President Juan Torres. In the next two years, dictator Hugo Banzer will have over 2,000 political opponents arrested without trial, then tortured, raped and executed.

Haiti — "Papa Doc" Duvalier dies, leaving his 19-year old son "Baby Doc" Duvalier the dictator of Haiti. His son continues his bloody reign with full knowledge of the CIA.

1972

The Case-Zablocki Act — Congress passes an act requiring congressional review of executive agreements. In theory, this should make CIA operations more accountable. In fact, it is only marginally effective.

Cambodia — Congress votes to cut off CIA funds for its secret war in Cambodia.

Wagergate Break-in — President Nixon sends in a team of burglars to wiretap Democratic offices at Watergate. The team members have extensive CIA histories, including James McCord, E. Howard Hunt and five of the Cuban burglars. They work for the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP), which does dirty work like disrupting Democratic campaigns and laundering Nixon’s illegal campaign contributions. CREEP’s activities are funded and organized by another CIA front, the Mullen Company.

1973

Chile — The CIA overthrows and assassinates Salvador Allende, Latin America’s first democratically elected socialist leader. The problems begin when Allende nationalizes American-owned firms in Chile. ITT offers the CIA $1 million for a coup (reportedly refused). The CIA replaces Allende with General Augusto Pinochet, who will torture and murder thousands of his own countrymen in a crackdown on labor leaders and the political left.

CIA begins internal investigations — William Colby, the Deputy Director for Operations, orders all CIA personnel to report any and all illegal activities they know about. This information is later reported to Congress.

Watergate Scandal — The CIA’s main collaborating newspaper in America, The Washington Post, reports Nixon’s crimes long before any other newspaper takes up the subject. The two reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, make almost no mention of the CIA’s many fingerprints all over the scandal. It is later revealed that Woodward was a Naval intelligence briefer to the White House, and knows many important intelligence figures, including General Alexander Haig. His main source, "Deep Throat," is probably one of those.

CIA Director Helms Fired — President Nixon fires CIA Director Richard Helms for failing to help cover up the Watergate scandal. Helms and Nixon have always disliked each other. The new CIA director is William Colby, who is relatively more open to CIA reform.

1974

CHAOS exposed — Pulitzer prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh publishes a story about Operation CHAOS, the domestic surveillance and infiltration of anti-war and civil rights groups in the U.S. The story sparks national outrage.

Angleton fired — Congress holds hearings on the illegal domestic spying efforts of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s chief of counterintelligence. His efforts included mail-opening campaigns and secret surveillance of war protesters. The hearings result in his dismissal from the CIA.

House clears CIA in Watergate — The House of Representatives clears the CIA of any complicity in Nixon’s Watergate break-in.

The Hughes Ryan Act — Congress passes an amendment requiring the president to report nonintelligence CIA operations to the relevant congressional committees in a timely fashion.

1975

Australia — The CIA helps topple the democratically elected, left-leaning government of Prime Minister Edward Whitlam. The CIA does this by giving an ultimatum to its Governor-General, John Kerr. Kerr, a longtime CIA collaborator, exercises his constitutional right to dissolve the Whitlam government. The Governor-General is a largely ceremonial position appointed by the Queen; the Prime Minister is democratically elected. The use of this archaic and never-used law stuns the nation.

Angola — Eager to demonstrate American military resolve after its defeat in Vietnam, Henry Kissinger launches a CIA-backed war in Angola. Contrary to Kissinger’s assertions, Angola is a country of little strategic importance and not seriously threatened by communism. The CIA backs the brutal leader of UNITAS, Jonas Savimbi. This polarizes Angolan politics and drives his opponents into the arms of Cuba and the Soviet Union for survival. Congress will cut off funds in 1976, but the CIA is able to run the war off the books until 1984, when funding is legalized again. This entirely pointless war kills over 300,000 Angolans.

"The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence" — Victor Marchetti and John Marks publish this whistle-blowing history of CIA crimes and abuses. Marchetti has spent 14 years in the CIA, eventually becoming an executive assistant to the Deputy Director of Intelligence. Marks has spent five years as an intelligence official in the State Department.

"Inside the Company" — Philip Agee publishes a diary of his life inside the CIA. Agee has worked in covert operations in Latin America during the 60s, and details the crimes in which he took part.

Congress investigates CIA wrong-doing — Public outrage compels Congress to hold hearings on CIA crimes. Senator Frank Church heads the Senate investigation ("The Church Committee"), and Representative Otis Pike heads the House investigation. (Despite a 98 percent incumbency reelection rate, both Church and Pike are defeated in the next elections.) The investigations lead to a number of reforms intended to increase the CIA’s accountability to Congress, including the creation of a standing Senate committee on intelligence. However, the reforms prove ineffective, as the Iran/Contra scandal will show. It turns out the CIA can control, deal with or sidestep Congress with ease.

The Rockefeller Commission — In an attempt to reduce the damage done by the Church Committee, President Ford creates the "Rockefeller Commission" to whitewash CIA history and propose toothless reforms. The commission’s namesake, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, is himself a major CIA figure. Five of the commission’s eight members are also members of the Council on Foreign Relations, a CIA-dominated organization.

1979

Iran — The CIA fails to predict the fall of the Shah of Iran, a longtime CIA puppet, and the rise of Muslim fundamentalists who are furious at the CIA’s backing of SAVAK, the Shah’s bloodthirsty secret police. In revenge, the Muslims take 52 Americans hostage in the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

Afghanistan — The Soviets invade Afghanistan. The CIA immediately begins supplying arms to any faction willing to fight the occupying Soviets. Such indiscriminate arming means that when the Soviets leave Afghanistan, civil war will erupt. Also, fanatical Muslim extremists now possess state-of-the-art weaponry. One of these is Sheik Abdel Rahman, who will become involved in the World Trade Center bombing in New York.

El Salvador — An idealistic group of young military officers, repulsed by the massacre of the poor, overthrows the right-wing government. However, the U.S. compels the inexperienced officers to include many of the old guard in key positions in their new government. Soon, things are back to "normal" — the military government is repressing and killing poor civilian protesters. Many of the young military and civilian reformers, finding themselves powerless, resign in disgust.

Nicaragua — Anastasios Samoza II, the CIA-backed dictator, falls. The Marxist Sandinistas take over government, and they are initially popular because of their commitment to land and anti-poverty reform. Samoza had a murderous and hated personal army called the National Guard. Remnants of the Guard will become the Contras, who fight a CIA-backed guerilla war against the Sandinista government throughout the 1980s.

1980

El Salvador — The Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, pleads with President Carter "Christian to Christian" to stop aiding the military government slaughtering his people. Carter refuses. Shortly afterwards, right-wing leader Roberto D’Aubuisson has Romero shot through the heart while saying Mass. The country soon dissolves into civil war, with the peasants in the hills fighting against the military government. The CIA and U.S. Armed Forces supply the government with overwhelming military and intelligence superiority. CIA-trained death squads roam the countryside, committing atrocities like that of El Mazote in 1982, where they massacre between 700 and 1000 men, women and children. By 1992, some 63,000 Salvadorans will be killed.

1981

Iran/Contra Begins — The CIA begins selling arms to Iran at high prices, using the profits to arm the Contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. President Reagan vows that the Sandinistas will be "pressured" until "they say ‘uncle.’" The CIA’s Freedom Fighter’s Manual disbursed to the Contras includes instruction on economic sabotage, propaganda, extortion, bribery, blackmail, interrogation, torture, murder and political assassination.

1983

Honduras — The CIA gives Honduran military officers the Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual – 1983, which teaches how to torture people. Honduras’ notorious "Battalion 316" then uses these techniques, with the CIA’s full knowledge, on thousands of leftist dissidents. At least 184 are murdered.

1984

The Boland Amendment — The last of a series of Boland Amendments is passed. These amendments have reduced CIA aid to the Contras; the last one cuts it off completely. However, CIA Director William Casey is already prepared to "hand off" the operation to Colonel Oliver North, who illegally continues supplying the Contras through the CIA’s informal, secret, and self-financing network. This includes "humanitarian aid" donated by Adolph Coors and William Simon, and military aid funded by Iranian arms sales.

1986

Eugene Hasenfus — Nicaragua shoots down a C-123 transport plane carrying military supplies to the Contras. The lone survivor, Eugene Hasenfus, turns out to be a CIA employee, as are the two dead pilots. The airplane belongs to Southern Air Transport, a CIA front. The incident makes a mockery of President Reagan’s claims that the CIA is not illegally arming the Contras.

Iran/Contra Scandal — Although the details have long been known, the Iran/Contra scandal finally captures the media’s attention in 1986. Congress holds hearings, and several key figures (like Oliver North) lie under oath to protect the intelligence community. CIA Director William Casey dies of brain cancer before Congress can question him. All reforms enacted by Congress after the scandal are purely cosmetic.

Haiti — Rising popular revolt in Haiti means that "Baby Doc" Duvalier will remain "President for Life" only if he has a short one. The U.S., which hates instability in a puppet country, flies the despotic Duvalier to the South of France for a comfortable retirement. The CIA then rigs the upcoming elections in favor of another right-wing military strongman. However, violence keeps the country in political turmoil for another four years. The CIA tries to strengthen the military by creating the National Intelligence Service (SIN), which suppresses popular revolt through torture and assassination.

1989

Panama — The U.S. invades Panama to overthrow a dictator of its own making, General Manuel Noriega. Noriega has been on the CIA’s payroll since 1966, and has been transporting drugs with the CIA’s knowledge since 1972. By the late 80s, Noriega’s growing independence and intransigence have angered Washington… so out he goes.

1990

Haiti — Competing against 10 comparatively wealthy candidates, leftist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide captures 68 percent of the vote. After only eight months in power, however, the CIA-backed military deposes him. More military dictators brutalize the country, as thousands of Haitian refugees escape the turmoil in barely seaworthy boats. As popular opinion calls for Aristide’s return, the CIA begins a disinformation campaign painting the courageous priest as mentally unstable.

1991

The Gulf War — The U.S. liberates Kuwait from Iraq. But Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, is another creature of the CIA. With U.S. encouragement, Hussein invaded Iran in 1980. During this costly eight-year war, the CIA built up Hussein’s forces with sophisticated arms, intelligence, training and financial backing. This cemented Hussein’s power at home, allowing him to crush the many internal rebellions that erupted from time to time, sometimes with poison gas. It also gave him all the military might he needed to conduct further adventurism — in Kuwait, for example.

The Fall of the Soviet Union — The CIA fails to predict this most important event of the Cold War. This suggests that it has been so busy undermining governments that it hasn’t been doing its primary job: gathering and analyzing information. The fall of the Soviet Union also robs the CIA of its reason for existence: fighting communism. This leads some to accuse the CIA of intentionally failing to predict the downfall of the Soviet Union. Curiously, the intelligence community’s budget is not significantly reduced after the demise of communism.

1992

Economic Espionage — In the years following the end of the Cold War, the CIA is increasingly used for economic espionage. This involves stealing the technological secrets of competing foreign companies and giving them to American ones. Given the CIA’s clear preference for dirty tricks over mere information gathering, the possibility of serious criminal behavior is very great indeed.

1993

Haiti — The chaos in Haiti grows so bad that President Clinton has no choice but to remove the Haitian military dictator, Raoul Cedras, on threat of U.S. invasion. The U.S. occupiers do not arrest Haiti’s military leaders for crimes against humanity, but instead ensure their safety and rich retirements. Aristide is returned to power only after being forced to accept an agenda favorable to the country’s ruling class.

EPILOGUE

In a speech before the CIA celebrating its 50th anniversary, President Clinton said: "By necessity, the American people will never know the full story of your courage."

Clinton’s is a common defense of the CIA: namely, the American people should stop criticizing the CIA because they don’t know what it really does. This, of course, is the heart of the problem in the first place. An agency that is above criticism is also above moral behavior and reform. Its secrecy and lack of accountability allows its corruption to grow unchecked.

Furthermore, Clinton’s statement is simply untrue. The history of the agency is growing painfully clear, especially with the declassification of historical CIA documents. We may not know the details of specific operations, but we do know, quite well, the general behavior of the CIA. These facts began emerging nearly two decades ago at an ever-quickening pace. Today we have a remarkably accurate and consistent picture, repeated in country after country, and verified from countless different directions.

The CIA’s response to this growing knowledge and criticism follows a typical historical pattern. (Indeed, there are remarkable parallels to the Medieval Church’s fight against the Scientific Revolution.) The first journalists and writers to reveal the CIA’s criminal behavior were harassed and censored if they were American writers, and tortured and murdered if they were foreigners. (See Philip Agee’s On the Run for an example of early harassment.) However, over the last two decades the tide of evidence has become overwhelming, and the CIA has found that it does not have enough fingers to plug every hole in the dike. This is especially true in the age of the Internet, where information flows freely among millions of people. Since censorship is impossible, the Agency must now defend itself with apologetics. Clinton’s "Americans will never know" defense is a prime example.

Another common apologetic is that "the world is filled with unsavory characters, and we must deal with them if we are to protect American interests at all." There are two things wrong with this. First, it ignores the fact that the CIA has regularly spurned alliances with defenders of democracy, free speech and human rights, preferring the company of military dictators and tyrants. The CIA had moral options available to them, but did not take them.

Second, this argument begs several questions. The first is: "Which American interests?" The CIA has courted right-wing dictators because they allow wealthy Americans to exploit the country’s cheap labor and resources. But poor and middle-class Americans pay the price whenever they fight the wars that stem from CIA actions, from Vietnam to the Gulf War to Panama. The second begged question is: "Why should American interests come at the expense of other peoples’ human rights?"

The CIA should be abolished, its leadership dismissed and its relevant members tried for crimes against humanity. Our intelligence community should be rebuilt from the ground up, with the goal of collecting and analyzing information. As for covert action, there are two moral options. The first one is to eliminate covert action completely. But this gives jitters to people worried about the Adolf Hitlers of the world. So a second option is that we can place covert action under extensive and true democratic oversight. For example, a bipartisan Congressional Committee of 40 members could review and veto all aspects of CIA operations upon a majority or super-majority vote. Which of these two options is best may be the subject of debate, but one thing is clear: like dictatorship, like monarchy, unaccountable covert operations should die like the dinosaurs they are.

Endnotes:

1. All history concerning CIA intervention in foreign countries is summarized from William Blum’s encyclopedic work, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995). Sources for domestic CIA operations come from Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen’s The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1997).

2. Coleman McCarthy, "The Consequences of Covert Tactics" Washington Post, December 13, 1987.

Copyright 1996 by Steve Kangas. Text can be quoted freely for non-commercial purposes only, with proper attribution.
<http://home.att.net/~Resurgence/CIAtimeline.html >

[Octafish]

53. Hoffman wrote about the 1980 October Surprise...

... and died from "suicide." At the time of his passing, Abbie Hoffman’s professional career had just made a quantum leap forward from his “Steal This Book” days. Along with co-author Jonathan Silvers, he’d just written a most detailed and serious account of treason by members of the Reagan-Bush presidential campaign in the “October Surprise: An Election Held Hostage” published in the October, 1988 Playboy magazine.

Hoffman brought Truth to Power. In doing so, he made some powerful enemies. Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush and the people working to get him elected to the presidency. Son Moron George, the Sociopath, at the time worked for Papa Doc Bush as a Campaign Manager under the tutelage of the late Lee Atwater.

The Federation of American Scientists has all sorts of info, including the full text of the article Hoffman and Silver article:

An Election Held Hostage
EXCERPT:

Reagan's selection of George Bush as running mate also proved serendipitous. Bush had served as Gerald Ford's Director of Central Intelligence, an appointment he once called `the best job in Washington.' Although his tenure lasted less than a year, he maintained informal ties to the agency after he left and staffed his ill-fated Presidential campaign with former CIA officials. When the Bush and Reagan campaigns merged in July 1980, their intelligence-gathering abilities increased substantially. Many CIA veterans close to Bush, notably former CIA Director of Security Robert Gambino, assisted Casey and Allen in campaign activities.

`Bush certainly had the ability--and the connections--to get the campaign into the intelligence communities,' says Turner.

Prescott Bush, the Vice-Presidential candidate's brother, courted a consultant to the U.S. Iran Hostage Task Force named Herbert Cohen. In a September 2, 1980, letter to James Baker (George Bush's campaign manager and now Secretary of the Treasury), Prescott Bush said he expected that Cohen would provide the campaign with `some hot information on the hostages'. Cohen eventually sent Casey four confidential NSC reports.

By the fall of 1980, the Carter White House was riddled with moles, spies and informers. But preoccupied by the continuing crises and the campaign, the President's advisors remained ignorant of the dirty tricks being played by the Reagan-Bush team. `We were aware that we had made enemies,' says Jody Powell, `but we didn't think they were inside, chipping away at our foundation'. Given the sensitivity of the stolen documents and the impunity with which the moles acted, the President's defenses, like those at the embassy in Tehran, were pitifully inadequate.

CONTINUED (LOTS OF ARTICLES!!!)…

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_cr/h920205-october-clips.htm


You may be surprised to learn that Hoffman’s death — called a suicide the same day as his body was discovered — was blamed on depression due to a traffic accident. Memories of the time seem to be that he was not all that seriously injured.

What was probably behind his unfortunate passing is the Bush Family Evil Empire. The short form is BFEE, the more formal is Bush Organized Crime Family & Evil Empire that serves the Secret Fascistic & Satanic Elite. One thing's certain, the BFEE believes "Dead men tell no tales."

[Octafish]

68. Kangas had the goods on the BFEE all the way to JFK assassination.

The Kennedy-Nixon-Bush Connection

by Paul Kangas

As long as assassins get away with murder, every suicide and every accidental death is a potential murder.

A newly discovered FBI document reveals that George Bush was directly involved in the 1963 murder of President John Kennedy. The document places Bush working with the now-famous CIA agent, Felix Rodriguez, recruiting right-wing Cuban exiles for the invasion of Cuba. It was Bush's CIA job to organize the Cuban community in Miami for the invasion. The Cubans were trained as marksmen by the CIA. Bush at that time lived in Texas. Hopping from Houston to Miami weekly, Bush spent 1960 and '61 recruiting Cubans in Miami for the invasion. That is how he met Felix Rodriguez.

You may remember Rodriguez as the Iran-contra CIA agent who received the first phone call telling the world the CIA plane flown by Gene Hasenfus had crashed in Nicaragua. As soon as Rodriguez heard that the plane crashed, he called his long-time CIA supervisor, George Bush. Bush denied being in the contra loop, but investigators recently obtained copies of Oliver North's diary, which documents Bush's role as a CIA supervisor of the contra supply network.

In 1988 Bush told Congress he knew nothing about the illegal supply flights until 1987, yet North's diary shows Bush at the first planning meeting Aug. 6, 1985. Bush's "official" log placed him somewhere else. Such double sets of logs are intended to hide Bush's real role in the CIA; to provide him with "plausible deniability." The problem is, it fell apart because too many people, like North and Rodriguez, have kept records that show Bush's CIA role back to the 1961 invasion of Cuba. (Source: The Washington Post, 7/10/90).

That is exactly how evidence was uncovered placing George Bush working with Felix Rodriguez when JFK was killed. A memo from FBI head J. Edgar Hoover was found, stating that, "Mr. George Bush of the CIA had been briefed on November 23rd, 1963 about the reaction of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami to the assassination of President Kennedy. (Source: The Nation, 8/13/88).

On the day of the assassination Bush was in Texas, but he denies knowing exactly where he was. Since he had been the supervisor for the secret Cuban teams, headed by former Cuban police commander Felix Rodriguez, since 1960, it is likely Bush was also in Dallas in 1963. Several of the Cubans he was supervising as dirty-tricks teams for Nixon, were photographed in the Zapruder film.

CONTINUED...

http://www.totse.com/en/conspiracy/dead_kennedys/161963.html

Anyone interested in seeing FBI memos linking George Herbert Walker Bush and "Mr. George Bush" of the CIA to the JFK Assassination? Glad you asked:

22 November 1963



29 November 1963

[seemslikeadream]

54. Edwin P. Wilson, Fallguy for Reagan Regime

BurtWorm (1000+ posts) Wed Oct-29-03 11:16 PM
Original message
***Edwin P. Wilson, Fallguy for Reagan Regime (Important Story)

Edited on Wed Oct-29-03 11:24 PM by BurtWorm
His exoneration, coming after he spent 20 years in prison, was cited in an earlier thread today:

http://democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az...



Here's some background:

http://forejustice.org/wc/edwin_wilson.htm

Ex-CIA Agent Framed by the CIA and Federal Prosecutors


By Hans Sherrer

Justice Denied Magazine, Vol. 2, Issue 1

The strange case of former CIA agent Edwin Wilson provides a rare proof of the legal and moral corruption pervasive throughout the U.S. Department of Justice and the shortage of compassion endemic in the federal judiciary.

In 1983, Mr. Wilson was convicted of what was up to that time the United States' largest illegal arms trading case. He was convicted of selling 22 tons of C-4 explosives to Libya, and he has spent the last 17 years in federal prisons. Currently confined in Pennsylvania, Wilson is awaiting a decision by Texas Federal Judge Lynn Hughes on two motions. One is to vacate his conviction, and the other is a contempt motion.

The two motions relate to the submission by federal prosecutors during Mr. Wilson's trial of what the government now admits was a false affidavit. The false affidavit was made by the CIA's third highest-ranking official during the latter part of Wilson's trial at the request of federal prosecutors. Edwin Wilson left the CIA in 1971, and the affidavit stated that except for one instance after he left, Wilson "was not asked or requested, directly or indirectly, to perform or provide any services, directly or indirectly, for the CIA."

During his trial, Edwin Wilson used the "CIA Defense" that he had an ongoing relationship with the CIA, and the agency knew about and approved of his arms trading as a way for him to cultivate and maintain information contacts valuable to the agency. The affidavit by the CIA's Executive Director undermined Mr. Wilson's defense, and the jury relied on it to convict him.

Wilson used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents years after his conviction that prove what he knew all along: the affidavit was false and the prosecutors concealed that information from Wilson, his lawyers, as well as from the trial and appellate judges....



***Edwin P. Wilson, Fallguy for Reagan Regime (Important Story)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=615803

[seemslikeadream]

55. Memory Lane Octafish

Octafish (1000+ posts) Thu Oct-30-03 10:28 PM
Response to Original message

8. Ed Wilson's Revenge


The Biggest CIA Scandal in History Has Its Feet in the Starting Blocks in a Houston Court House

by Michael C. Ruppert

EXCERPT...

Ed Wilson stood accused of shipping 42,000 pounds of the plastic explosive C-4 directly to Libyan dictator Moammar Qadaffy in 1977, and then hiring U.S. experts - former U.S. Army Green Berets - to teach Qadaffy's people how to make bombs shaped like lamps, ashtrays and radios. Bombs were actually made, and foes of Qadaffy were actually murdered. This was the ongoing crime that had made Wilson, and his still-missing accomplice, former CIA employee Frank Terpil, the most infamous desperadoes in the world. C-4, according to some experts, is the most powerful non-nuclear explosive made. Two pounds in the right places can bring down a jumbo jet. Hence, 42,000 pounds would be enough to bring down 21,000 jumbo jets. C-4 is highly prized on the world's black markets and is much in demand. It is supposedly very tightly controlled where it is manufactured - in the U.S.

SNIP...

That investigation, which resulted in a 1982 Virginia conviction, led to the discovery of the C-4 shipment to Qadaffy. By January of 1983 Barcella and a team of dedicated BATF agents had been on Ed Wilson's trail for five long years. Barcella, in Houston as an observer and advisor, had been "twiddling his thumbs most of the time," but he did testify as a witness. He was, by virtue of his role as the originator of the cases, "the institutional memory" of DoJ. Ted Greenberg had, from the other side of the Potomac in Alexandria, taken over other investigations stemming from Wilson's activities which led eventually to the Eatsco scandal. That investigation involved Wilson cronies Tom Clines, Air Force General Richard Secord, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Eric von Marbod and the legendary Ted Shackley.

Shackley had served in the hottest CIA posts in history. He had run the Miami station known as JM-WAVE, targeting Fidel Castro in the early 1960s, and had been a key planner in the Bay of Pigs invasion. He was also directly involved in CIA attempts on Castro's life in concert with the Mafia. In the mid-sixties he had been the Chief of Station (COS) in Laos, running the largest covert operation in CIA history - a secret war intimately tied with opium and heroin smuggling and the abandonment of large numbers of American POWs. In the late sixties and early seventies he had served as COS in Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. After leaving Saigon, Shackley had, for a time, served as Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division as the CIA orchestrated the overthrow of Chile's Salvador Allende. He had then become Associate Deputy Director of Operations (running all covert operations) in time to, as FTW believes, "preside" over Ed Wilson's Libyan affairs and the events that would ultimately result in the downfall of the Shah of Iran. Everywhere you looked in Wilson's life - post 1971 - you found either Shackley or his career-long deputy and sidekick, Tom Clines.

SNIP...

Wilson, a one time career CIA agent, who had also worked for the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), was fighting for his life. An "open source" paper trail from CIA showed that he had not worked at Langley since 1971. Shortly thereafter he began working for a secret Navy operation known as Task Force 157. But, according to other records from both CIA and the Navy, he stopped working for the ONI in 1976 and none of his Navy work was connected to Libya. After that, or so it seemed, even though he continuously socialized with some of the most powerful people in the U.S. intelligence community and the military, he did no official work for anyone. It was in late 1975 and 1976, when George Bush ran the CIA, that Wilson, as an alleged rogue, opened ties to Qadaffy and began selling weapons, explosives and other services and equipment to the terrorist regime.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/Ed_Wilso...

Hey, DU! THIS is how the BFEE operates.


BFEE Watchers: Some threads you should NOT miss
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=618459

[Octafish]

56. Mark Lombardi painted a perfect picture for the record.

&w=300

Mark Lombardi Oliver North, Lake Resources of Panama, and the Iran-Contra Operation, ca.1984--86 (4th version), 1999, coloured pencil and graphite on paper. Collection of Daniel Silverstein. (c) 2004 Estate of the artist

Mark Lombardi: Global Networks

Mark Lombardi: Global Networks offers a captivating glimpse into the mind of a man who transformed his obsession with fact finding and corruption into painstakingly intricate art. The exhibition features 24 works on paper that document nearly every major financial and political scandal of the late twentieth century. With some works measuring as large as 5 x 12 feet, the drawings act as narrative flow charts revealing astonishingly close connections between powerful individuals generally considered unrelated, if not radically opposed. Using an elaborate arrangement of dashes, dots, text, long arching lines and clusters of circles, Lombardi traces connections between generals, bankers, clerics, warlords and heads of state, illuminating often ominous networks that link together such names as George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden.

Admired not only in artistic circles, Lombardi's architectural maps of global power have aroused interest from the FBI and the American Department of Homeland Security. While his work exclusively references public domain information, these government agencies have taken note of the way the artist linked names and organizations in his drawings.

Born in Syracuse, New York in 1951, Lombardi trained as a painter and art historian at Syracuse University. While there, the artist acted as the chief researcher for an exhibition chronicling media coverage of high profile cases of government corruption. Moving to Houston, Texas after graduation, Lombardi worked as a reference librarian, continued painting and began intense research for a book on government and corporate scandals. In support of his research he composed more than 14,000 index cards. To make sense of the information he collected, Lombardi began making diagrams that he soon transformed into highly organized formal drawings. In 1997 he moved to New York and began to show his work with increasing success until his untimely death in 2000.

An illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition and includes detailed entries that provide historical background on the content of individual drawings, and an essay by Robert Hobbs on Lombardi's life, art and intellectual influences.

SOURCE:

http://www.toronto.com/profile/874431/

[seemslikeadream]

57. untimely death -- there are just too many of those

The quote is from a Steve Earle song called "Conspiracy Theory." It was also the headline of a New York Times article about the work of the late artist Mark Lombardi, which is featured in an exhibit, "Global Networks," that's touring the country throughout

Conspiracy Theory

What if I told you it was done with mirrors
What if I showed you it was all a lie
Better be careful, someone might hear ya
The walls have ears and the sky has eyes
What if I said you were only dreamin'
What you wanna bet that all you gotta do
Is open up your eyes and you will wake up screamin'
When you realize that it's all come true

chorus
Hush, now don't you believe it
Cover your head and close your eyes
Now, take it or leave it
Go back to bed
Now don't you cry

Half a million soldiers fly across the water
One in ten are never comin' back again
Fifty thousand sons who never grew to fathers
Don't you ever wonder who they might have been
What if you could've been there on that day in Dallas
What if you could wrestle back the hands of time
Maybe somethin' could've been done in Memphis
We wouldn't be livin' in a dream that's died

chorus

Go on and tell yourself again there are no secrets
Go on and tell yourself that you don't want to know
It's best that you believe that you don't hear the footsteps
That follow you around no matter where you go
Maybe you were thinkin' that it didn't matter
Maybe you believed nobody else would care
But once you've added every little lie together
You finally find the truth was always waiting there
Steve Earle

[Octafish]

60. Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya, his former business partner?

The writer (and convict) Hatfield FORETOLD 9-11 scenario:

Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya, his former business partner?

By James Hatfield
 
Editor's note: In light of last week's horrific events and the Bush administration's reaction to them, we are reprising the following from the last column Jim Hatfield wrote for Online Journal prior to his tragic death on July 18:

July 3, 2001—There may be fireworks in Genoa, Italy, this month, too.

A plot by Saudi master terrorist, Osama bin Laden, to assassinate Dubya during the July 20 economic summit of world leaders, was uncovered after dozens of suspected Islamic militants linked to bin Laden's international terror network were arrested in Frankfurt, Germany, and Milan, Italy, in April.

German intelligence services have stated that bin Laden is covertly financing neo-Nazi skinhead groups throughout Europe to launch another terrorist attack at a high-profile American target—his first since the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen last October.

According to counter-terrorism experts quoted in Germany's largest newspaper, the attack on Dubya might be a James Bond-like aerial strike in the form of remote-controlled airplanes packed with plastic explosives.

Why would Osama bi Laden want to kill, Dubya, his former business partner?

CONTINUED...

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Hatfield-R-091901/hatfield-r-091901.html

[seemslikeadream]

65. The BFEE thought their secrets would die in prison...

from Octafish


...on the day old Ed Wilson went to meet his maker. Now that Judge Lynn Hughes has ruled the government lied and withheld exculpatory evidence, the mid-level treasonous turds like the butcher Abrams and the moron North will have to wait their turn for a chance at Wilson. First dibs on finishing what the federal pen couldn't do is George Herbert Walker Bush. If I was Wilson, I'd sure be looking for a safe house and a publisher right about now.

Wilson is more than an arms dealer doing the work of Capitalism's Invisible Army. He was, oops!, IS an ARTICHOKE and MK/ULTRA veteran. (WARNING: THIS IS NOT FOR SQUEAMISH OR YOUNG CHILDREN):

George Bush, The CIA, Mind Control & Child Abuse

EXCERPT...

The doctor in charge of the Dachau experiments was Dr. Hubertus Strughold. Strughold was also involved in barbaric high altitude experiments on inmates of Dachau. Strughold was brought to the United States under the Project Paperclip and became America’s father of space medicine. His use of mind-altering drugs on inmates provided the foundation for the CIA’s research into truth serums and mind control. The United States first foray into truth serums started in 1947 as Project CHATTER initiated by the navy. The project was terminated in 1953. In 1949, at the Edgewood Arsenal the CIA began project Bluebird using Nazi scientists to find a truth serum. Project Bluebird evolved into Project Artichoke and eventually into MK-Ultra. MK-UTRA was much larger in focusing on mind control and the means to achieve it was not limited to drugs and psychedelics. MK-ULTRA experiments including using hypnosis, lobotomy, electroshock, sensory deprivation, ESP, and drugs experiments in hypnosis, lobotomy, electroshock, sensory deprivation, ESP, drugs and sexual abuse. Ironically, the CIA’s first widespread use of sex came from a program to blackmail United States politicians conducted by Edwin Wilson. The political targets were enticed to live out their sexual fantasies in the flesh. With hidden cameras ready the unsuspecting politician would be filmed, which would later be used to blackmail him into supporting the agency’s projects and views. Wilson's skill in these matters dated back to the early 1950s, when he took over a network of homosexual and pedophile rings from CIA asset and McCarthy Committee counsel Roy Cohn.

CONTINUED...
http://chile.indymedia.org/news/2003/05/3264.php


BFEE Watchers: Some threads you should NOT miss
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=618459

[Octafish]

71. Sometimes, BFEE orders secrets to die in court, too.

Secrets like the Truth.

Remember what the BFEE did at La Penca?

There they went for some pre-emptive justice. To kill the Truth they used a bomb. Tragically and criminally, they killed a number of innocent people while missing their target -- a former Contra commander who wouldn't play "ball" with Oliver North's BFEE KillerTurds.

Controversial envoy picked for top Latin affairs post

By Carol Rosenberg
Published Friday, March 23, 2001 in the Miami Herald

President Bush Thursday chose Cuban-American Otto J. Reich to be the State Department's top diplomat for Latin America -- an appointment that could resurrect the 1980s partisan divisions in Congress over U.S. policy in Central America.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer announced Bush's choice of Reich to the key post of Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs amid nine administration nominations.

SNIP...

``I cannot take the confirmation process for granted,'' (Reich) explained. ``It's the one thing I've got to start focusing on right now.''

His confirmation may face pitfalls. Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and Chris Dodd of Connecticut already have expressed doubts about Reich, who was Ronald Reagan's 1986-89 ambassador to Venezuela.

CONTINUED NAZIness...

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/colombia/ottoreich.htm

IDET: fergotdaling...which does go over La Penca pretty durn well.

[seemslikeadream]

69. Holy Cat! Top DoJ Officials Implicated in Framing Wilson!!!!!!

No one has the goods on the BFEE like our Octafish

again from the best

Check out these names! They apparently knew the government case was based on sham evidence, yet did nada. And they are the creme de la creme of Reagan-Bush justice (such as it is):

Cream of the Current U.S. Legal/Judicial System Guilty of Perjury, Subornation and Conspiracy according to CIA and Justice Department Memos

No less than seven of the most powerful and prominent names in the U.S. legal/judicial system stand exposed of perjury and subornation of perjury according to CIA and Department of Justice documents in the possession of former CIA agent Edwin Wilson and his Houston attorney. The documents also indicate that Department of Justice officials knowingly concealed exculpatory evidence from Wilson's defense team before his 1982 conviction and 1983 sentencing on weapons charges. These documents have led to the filing of a motion by Wilson's court appointed attorney, David Adler, seeking to vacate Wilson's conviction on charges of selling plastic explosives to Libya in the period from 1976 to 1978. The Government is scheduled to respond to the motion in mid-January and may well have a tough time doing so in a way that avoids deep embarrassment, professional sanctions and/or criminal exposure for a lot of very important people.

Wilson, 71, serving a total of 52 years on three separate convictions was, according to Adler, convicted on the basis of a perjured affidavit from the CIA to the Department of Justice denying that Wilson had any "direct or indirect" affiliation or association with the Agency during the period of time in which he was selling plastic explosives to Libya's Moammar Qaddaffi and other groups. That the affidavit was perjured was confirmed by the release, under the Freedom of Information Act of an uncontested CIA follow-up memorandum addressed to then Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mark Richard entitled, "Duty To Disclose False Testimony."

That document, buttressed by additional papers, located over the last two and half years by Adler, indicates clearly that the Central Intelligence Agency committed perjury when it provided an affidavit from the Agency's then number three man, Executive Director Charles Briggs, to prosecutors trying Wilson's case. That affidavit, according to Adler, emphatically asserted that, "After a particular date in 1971 'Wilson was not asked or requested, directly or indirectly, to perform or provide any services, directly or indirectly for the CIA.'"

Adler's additional research, after traveling repeatedly from Houston to Washington to review close to 300,000 pages of documents, some released under the Freedom of Information Act, uncovered additional memoranda from the Department of Justice (DoJ). These documents indicate clearly that DoJ prosecutors and their supervisors, understood that the CIA memorandum was perjured and then decided to use it anyway.

CONTINUED WITH SOME REAL HIGH EXPLOSIVE BFEE STUFF!

http://www.solari.com/gideon/legal/background/FTWArticlewithSporkin.html.htm

PS: Here are the names involved. Their connections to the framing of Edwin P Wilson and their bios are at the link above:

Stanley Sporkin — US District Judge and former CIA General Counsel.

Lawrence Barcella — former Fed prosecutor and Washington lawyer.

Ted Greenberg — Fed prosecutor.

Carol Bruce — Fed prosecutor.

Mark Richard — DoJ Waco expert, counterterror, OSI, helped bury CIA-cocaine connection, NAZI-hunter, Washington lawyer.

D Lowell Jensen — US DIstrict Judge, once a Big Time Assistant AG for Ed Meese charged with helping cover up the Iran-contra cocaine connection, as well as a player int he Inslaw-PROMIS affair.

Steven Trott — Reagan Assistant AG held up the Iran-contra investigation and blocked Kerry's investigation of Iran-contra cocaine.

[Wind Dancer]

6. Couple more.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=157573

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1696082

[bluedog]

7. go go johhny

http://www.nathannewman.org/log/archives/000945.shtml

[Octafish]

48. Why the traitor Oliver North hates John Kerry...

Kerry's investigations turned up hard evidence that Ollie (for Poindexter and Poppy Bush) were running drugs INTO AMERICA to help fund the Contras.

Gee, that would make any crook mad.

Those new to the story may want to GOOGLE Celerino-Castillo and John-Hull for the story. Here's DEA Agent Castillo's story (with lots o' links)



CONTRA-INTELLIGENCE
ON OLIVER L. NORTH

By Celerino "Cele" Castillo, 3rd
Former Federal Drug Agent and Author of:
Powderburns- Cocaine, Contras & the Drug War

posted at DrugWar.com
May 12, 2004

"Armed speedboats and a helicopter launched from a CIA 'mother ship' attacked Nicaragua's Pacific port, Puerto Sandino, on a moonless New Year's night in 1984. A week later, the speedboats returned to mine the oil terminal. Over the next three months, they laid more than 30 mines in Puerto Sandino and in the harbors at Corinto and El Bluff. In air and sea raids on costal positions, Americans flew-and fired from-an armed helicopter that accompanied the U.S. financed Latino force, while a CIA plane provided sophisticated reconnaissance guidance for the nighttime attacks. The operation, outlined in a classified CIA document, marked the peak of U.S. involvement in the four-year guerrilla war in Nicaragua. The most celebrated attack, by armed speedboats, came Oct. 11, 1983, against oil facilities at Corinto. Three days later, Latino frogmen sabotaged an underwater pipeline at Puerto Sandino. The message wasn't lost on Exxon, Esso unit, and the international giant informed the Sandinista government that it would no longer provide tankers for transporting oil to Nicaragua."

The Wall Street Journal-March 6, 1985

Top Secret -
Office of
Independent Counsel
File # IC-600-1

Record of FBI Agent Michael S. Foster's interview with Walter L. Grasheim
Date of Transcription: January 3, 1991

"Grasheim came up with the idea to prepare a military raid on an airport in Nicaragua, using Tamarindo as a staging base. Grasheim told General Gorman this and then right after, Rodriguez came to see Grasheim without warning and asked to talk about the idea…Rodriguez told Grasheim that he was talking to the White House and the NSC…"

On September 10, 1985, NORTH wrote in his notebook:
"…Introduced by Wally Gresheim/Litton Calero/Bermudez visit to Ilopango to estab."

December 21, 1982, the first Boland Amendment became law. "None of the funds provided in this Act may be used by the CIA or the Dept. of Defense to furnish military equipment, military training or advice, or other support for military activities, to any group or individual…for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua. This act went into effect until Oct. 3, 1984, when it was superseded by a stronger prohibition known as "Boland II."

This "Boland II" amendment was designed to prevent any conceivable form of deceit by the covert action apparatus: "During fiscal year 1985, no funds available to the CIA, the Dept. of Defense, or any other agency or entity of the United States involved in intelligence activities may be obligated or expended for the purpose of which would have the effect of supporting, directly or indirectly, military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua by a nation, group, organization, movement, or individual." The law was effective from October 3, 1984, to December 5, 1985, when it was superceded by various aid-limitation laws which, taken together, were referred to as "Boland III."

North was brought into the National Security Council staff in August 1981. One of the first assignments was to serve as the NSC staff liaison to the Kissinger Commission on Central America beginning in the summer of 1983.

CONTINUED...

http://www.drugwar.com/castillonorthmay1104.shtm

[seemslikeadream]

8. Start here I have them all bookmarked

The Bush Organized Crime Family
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=875102


Bush REALLY Did It This Time!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1168600


Hey DU! The BFEE wants to SHUT you UP!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1329353

TERROR ALERT: If you don’t think the BFEE is capable of bombing our own -
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1668534

JEB Bush - - BFEE Kingmaker & Big-Time Crook
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1647117

[Wind Dancer]

9. Thanks, seemslikeadream!

Excellent source of info!

[Octafish]

30. Background: Investigating BCCI and Savings and Loan Fraud

Background: Investigating BCCI and Savings and Loan Fraud

The BCCI scandal and the savings and loan crisis are complicated by near-incomprehensible numbers, multitudes of players, and the heightened secrecy that often protects negligent and criminal behavior. Allan Dodds Frank, a business investigative reporter and producer at ABC News, observed that " people are spending lifetimes constructing complex crimes....(I)f it were so easy, they wouldn't have made them so complicated."

In spite of the magnitude of numbers, names, and places, the BCCI affair and the savings and loan crisis can be reduced to a few basic themes. Reporters who discussed the coverage of these stories at The Annenberg Washington Program provided brief overviews of the scandals and tried to distill the issues for conference participants in much the same way they would for viewers or readers.

Although the scandal surrounding the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) is perhaps the biggest banking scandal in history, it received limited media coverage. BCCI was a Pakistani-managed, Middle East-financed international bank with branches in 70 countries. Peter Truell, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who has written some of the most significant stories on BCCI, described the essence of the scandal:

It is a story about stealing very large amounts of money and using it for a multitude of illegal purposes, perverting governments, corrupting politicians, corrupting regu-lators, corrupting bank regulators.

CONTINUED...

http://www.annenberg.nwu.edu/pubs/news/news03.htm

[bluedog]

10. throw back at Republicans>>>>>>stick it to them

Against defense? Not Kerry

Before George W. Bush's political operatives started pounding on John Kerry for voting against certain weapons systems during his years in the Senate, they should have taken a look at this quotation:

After completing 20 planes for which we have begun procurement, we will shut down further production of the B-2 bomber. We will cancel the small ICBM program. We will cease production of new warheads for our sea-based ballistic missiles. We will stop all new production of the Peacekeeper missile. And we will not purchase any more advanced cruise missiles. … The reductions I have approved will save us an additional $50 billion over the next five years. By 1997 we will have cut defense by 30 percent since I took office.

The speaker was President George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, in his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 1992.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2096127/

[Octafish]

20. Wonder what Poppy did with his cut?

John Kerry's fought these turds tooth and nail since he knew who they were. After all, Kerry swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

The ex-presidents' club

The Guardian
Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger Wednesday October 31, 2001

It is hard to imagine an address closer to the heart of American power. The offices of the Carlyle Group are on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, midway between the White House and the Capitol building, and within a stone's throw of the headquarters of the FBI and numerous government departments. The address reflects Carlyle's position at the very center of the Washington establishment, but amid the frenetic politicking that has occupied the higher reaches of that world in recent weeks, few have paid it much attention. Elsewhere, few have even heard of it...

But since the start of the "war on terrorism", the firm - unofficially valued at $13.5bn - has taken on an added significance. Carlyle has become the thread which indirectly links American military policy in Afghanistan to the personal financial fortunes of its celebrity employees, not least the current president's father. And, until earlier this month, Carlyle provided another curious link to the Afghan crisis: among the firm's multi-million-dollar investors were members of the family of Osama bin Laden ...

CONTINUED TO A GREAT SITE, ARTICLES...

http://www.hereinreality.com/carlyle.html

[Norquist Nemesis]

34. Yes, and Cheney was Sec of Defense

who made the recommendations to cut these testifying in the hearings for the committee that John Kerry was on. Now they're trying to put this as part of his "liberal" voting record even though he supported Cheney's recommendation to cut it.

[InkAddict]

12. This needs kickin'

:kick:

[bluedog]

13. back up

this is important stuff here..........this is why bushy is afraid of Kerry........its going to come out........Kerry can say """"See what I Did""""

[Octafish]

21. Bush and his buddies, like James R Bath.

Seems the former Mrs. Bath is after his pimply backsides...

Banking scandal figure seeks claim to airport contract

By JERRY URBAN
Staff Writer, Houston Chronicle
Sept. 10, 1994

A key figure in the world's largest banking scandal is participating in an attempt to take control of a major city of Houston aviation contractor, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court here.

National Commercial Bank-Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (NCB), which is controlled by the family of Sheik Khalid Bin Mahfouz, has claimed rights to 90 percent of the outstanding shares of Southwest Airport Services, according to documents accompanying the lawsuit filed by Sandra C. Bath , president of Southwest Airport Services.

Southwest Airport Services provides fuel and other services for general aviation aircraft at the city-owned Ellington Field. The company also provides fuel to NASA and transient military aircraft, and to Air Force One, the president's plane, when it comes to Houston.

Bath filed the lawsuit against the bank and her former husband, James R . Bath , a local entrepreneur.

"Mr. Mahfouz, as owner of National Commercial Bank, hopes to accommodate Mr. Bath 's desire to assume control of Southwest Airport Services

CONTINUED...

http://sugarinthegourd.com/bath/bath02.html

[UTUSN]

14. Call to Octafish AND blm

Are we going to WIN???????//

AND have I told you LATELY that I love you?????????????

[Octafish]

16. Got my flipper crossed, UTUSN!

And I love you and every other good DUer, American and person!

That's why we're Democrats! We put Love into Action!

[blm]

32. YOU KNOW IT!!!!!!!

And I'm lovin' every one of my cherished compatriots more and more each day.

[Octafish]

15. BCCI is the Octopus exposed

The BCCI scandal spreads its tentacles around the globe and across the worlds of espionage, money laundering, arms trafficking, drug smuggling, and political corruption.

Evidence suggests that many figures from the BCCI scandal continued to prosper at the confluence of the worlds of Saudi oil money, crooked financing, and international warmongering meet: The Fertile Crescent of the BFEE. From an excellent online “Layman’s Guide” analyzing the 9-11 Families’ Lawsuit:


National Commercial Bank

Back to 9-11 Outline

EXCERPT…

952. The National Commercial Bank was involved between 1986 and 1990 in the fraudulent schemes and practices of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (or “BCCI”) after NCB Chairman Khalid bin Salim bin Mahfouz became Chief Operating Officer and major shareholder of BCCI. A 1992 United States Senate report on the BCCI affair detailed the role played by the National Commercial Bank in hiding assets and in the cover-up and obstruction of the Senate investigation. The National Commercial Bank was used by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda as a financial arm. The NCB was operated as a financial conduit for Osama bin Laden’s operations. As a former CIA counter-terrorism expert explained:

How does the al Qaeda organization fund its worldwide network of cells and affiliated groups? Several businessmen in Saudi Arabia and in the Gulf contribute monies. Much of the money is paid as ‘protection’ to avoid having the enterprises run by these men attacked. There is little doubt that a financial conduit to Bin Laden was handled through the National Commercial Bank, until the Saudi government finally arrested a number of persons and closed down the channel. It was evident that several wealthy Saudis were funneling contributions to Bin Laden through this mechanism. Now, it appears, that these wealthy individuals are siphoning off funds from their worldwide enterprises in creative and imaginative ways.

SNIP…

956. Under Khalid bin Salim bin Mahfouz, the BCCI was also implicated in supporting terrorism, as reported by the United States Senate.

In the course of targeting BCCI for laundering drug money, the CIA learned of BCCI's involvement in manipulating certain financial markets, in arms trafficking, and in supporting international terrorism, including handling the finances of Sabri al-Bannah or Abu Nidal, and his terrorist organization.

957. The 1992 Senate investigative Report detailed the initial involvement of the BCCI in terrorism financial support.

BCCI's support of terrorism and arms trafficking developed out of several factors. First, as a principal financial institution for a number of Gulf sheikhdoms, with branches all over the world, it was a logical choice for terrorist organizations, who received payment at BCCI-London and other branches directly from Gulf-state patrons, and then transferred those funds wherever they wished without apparent scrutiny. Secondly, BCCI's flexibility regarding the falsification of documentation was helpful for such activities. Finally, to the extent that pragmatic considerations were not sufficient of themselves to recommend BCCI, the bank's pan-third world and pro-Islam ideology would have recommended it to Arab terrorist groups.

CONTINUED ...

THESE LINKS, THEY DEAD. I'M LOOKING FOR REPLACEMENTS.

http://law.about.com/library/911/blnational.htm


There's also a great online overview at:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm


Regarding the books, I've read the first. Several DUers have recommended the others. I've linked them to a page at Amazon, accessed by querying "BCCI." Among them are these titles:

"False Profits: The Inside Story of BCCI, the World's Most Corrupt Financial Empire" — by Peter Truell, Larry Gurwin (Contributor)

"A Full Service Bank: How Bcci Stole Billions Around the World " — by James Ring Adams, et al.

"The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI" — by Jonathan Beaty, S. C. Gwynne (Contributor)

"Dirty Money: BCCI: The Inside Story of the World's Sleaziest Bank" — by Mark Potts, et al

Here's where Amazon lists them with a bit o' info:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/104-1084709-5019955

Sorry to got here late. I had to, eh, re-primer the Jeep (Pulls head out of sand bucket.). No matter as it seems you all have built up quite a bit of momentum without me.

[Octafish]

61. This is a handy online resource to start from...

Lots o' Links BFEE:

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/BCCI

[Octafish]

62. And I REALLY like this one, too...

Anybody see James R Bath, lately? I mean, besides Crisco Ashcan?

http://explanation-guide.info/meaning/Bank-of-Credit-and-Commerce-International.html

[DemBones DemBones]

19. Do we have a folder on this, similar to what Stephanie set up on PNAC?

If not, don't we need one???

I want LOTS of pro-Kerry talking points! ;-)

[seemslikeadream]

23. BCCI latest update:

BoE wins landmark legal priviledge appeal

By Nikki Tait, Law Courts Correspondent
Jul 30, 2004

The Bank of England has won a landmark appeal over legal privilege, assuaging fears that lawyers could be required to disclose more details of their communications with clients.

Five law lords, who have been hearing arguments throughout the week, announced yesterday that they would overrule an earlier Court of Appeal decision, which would have restricted the ability of lawyers to claim that communications with their clients were "privileged", and so immune from subsequent disclosure.

The law lords did not give immediate reasons for their decision, which is bound to have broad implications for lawyer-client communications and for the future conduct of public inquiries. These are likely to be made available in October.

They also invited the Law Society and the government to make further written submissions on the matter.

More:
http://search.ft.com/search/article.html?id=040730000360&query=bcci&vsc_appId=quickSearch&offset=0&resultsToShow=10&vsc_subjectConcept=&vsc_companyConcept=&state=More&vsc_publicationGroups=TOPWFT&searchCat=-1



Bank of England QC attacks liquidators of BCCI

KARL WEST, City Editor July 22 2004

COUNSEL for the Bank of England yesterday told London's High Court there was a "fundamental thread of implausibility running like a faultline" through the case of the liquidators of shady Bank of Credit and Commerce International.
Nicholas Stadlen QC, for the Bank, pilloried opposing counsel's "wildly exaggerated definition" of the tort of misfeasance in public office.
Deloitte & Touche, liquidators of BCCI, has fingered 22 senior officials from the Bank – including Celtic chairman, Brian Quinn, who was an executive at the Bank of England when BCCI collapsed in 1991 – claiming they "shut their eyes and turned away" from its dodgy activities.
Stadlen noted the test in proving misfeasance was having a "wilful disregard as to a serious risk of loss".
He added: "(Deloitte's case) falls woefully short of what your Lordship would need to find in several categories."
Stadlen asked why these 22 officials would dishonestly turn a blind eye if they thought it would cause probable loss to depositors.
"The idea that these 22 people, independent of each other, hit upon this wicked and disgraceful conduct is fanciful," he said, adding: "No attempt has been made to explain the how, when and why the baton of misfeasance was passed on.
"How did Mr (Peter) Cooke (head of banking supervision 1976-85), for example, pass on the baton to Mr Quinn (Cooke's deputy at the time)? And how could Mr Cooke be confident Mr Quinn would fall like a lap-dog into compliance rather than report him to the governor? It's just not plausible."

MORE
http://www.theherald.co.uk/business/20497.html#

[Octafish]

77. BFEE's bank was BCCI. Now the money's safe elsewhere.

UNITED NATIONS
CRIME PREVENTION AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE NEWSLETTER

Numbers 22/23 July 1993
Special double issue on the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice

EXCERPT...

The burden of attempting to eradicate organized crime fell on both developed and developing countries. Organized crime was nothing less than a massive attack on the fabric of society affecting practically all of its components. It was an insidious form of lawlessness that cynically exploited citizens' rights and constitutional guarantees for the purpose of reducing the risk of detection and maximizing impunity. In that manner, organized crime threatened some of the most basic elements of democracy.

In developing countries, scarce resources were either diverted from other goals or organized crime was allowed to run rampant. Organized crime could create an alternative power class, thereby endangering social peace and effective development. The economies of developed countries were also taxed, since the cost of criminal investigations, trials and services to victims diverted resources from other programmes. The report cited an example of the impact of such crime on the international economy, the case of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), which had offered its clients higher rates of interest than its competitors presumably because fraud had allowed it to engage in unfair competition. The bank was alleged to have laundered some US$/20 billion and to have involved 10 per cent of its employees in a "black network" involving the use of arms, espionage and psychological warfare. The report stated the concern about BCCI was why it had taken so long before its activities were stopped on 5 July 1991. One theory is that the international financial system was overloaded and was thus incapable of dealing with a sophisticated transnational criminal enterprise. Another factor could be the value placed on bank secrecy and the avoidance of taxation. In the end, the criminal activities of BCCI were stopped by national initiatives; the international system of supervision proved to be no match for an enterprise of that order and it remains unknown how many other institutions are engaged in equally doubtful activities. The report went on to state that an intensification of the international supervision of banking would seem necessary but remained problematic in the present international order.

In terms of political impact, the report cited the control exercised by organized criminals over some politicians and the resulting cynicism of the electorate, the threat to freedom of expression that results from organized crime gaining control of mass media and the violation of the human rights of individuals coerced into prostitution or victimized by loan sharks and protection rackets.

The report projected that in the future, the world could be confronted with a massive global growth in organized computer criminality, thus necessitating the urgent adoption of appropriate legislation, the training of law enforcement personnel and the improved supervision of the international financial system. Laws permitting better detection of money-laundering schemes, including the possibility of forfeiture and the limitation of bank secrecy, were badly needed. There was no indication that a reversal of world trends in the trafficking of illicit drugs would take place. Socio-economic conditions continued to contribute to the abuse of drugs by individuals.

Corruption was unlikely to subside in countries where the modest salaries of public officials made them less resilient to the temptations offered by organized crime. Opportunities would push organized crime to become more and more international. As Governments succeeded in coordinating their preventive efforts, organized crime might respond by tightening its own cooperative efforts around the globe. The outcome of that struggle could have major consequences for the well-being of all societies.

CONTINUED...

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:7SwaXBXaucMJ:www.uncjin.org/Documents/Newsletter/nl2223.pdf+bcci+transnational-criminal-enterprise&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

EDIT: emoticon showed up in URL.

[bobthedrummer]

26. The Saudis, how defense contract commissions helped fund OBL

and what became the Taliban, during Reagan/Bush/Thatcher.
http://cryptome.org/soil/soiled-dove2.htm

The Teicher Affadavit
http://www.webcom.com/~lpease/collections/hidden/teicher.htm

9/11: The BCCI Connection
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP310A.html

Iraqgate from NameBase
http://www.namebase.org/books57.html

[Octafish]

73. There's no business like oil business like no business I know...

Exhibit A: George Herbert Willie Sutton as the head of the Secret Police



The Arming of Saudi Arabia

Frontline
February 16, 1993

EXCERPT...

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: We need their oil and they, at the same time, are almost completely dependent on us for their security.

ANNOUNCER: FRONTLINE investigates the 10-year plan that transformed the desert kingdom into a desert fortress.

SCOTT ARMSTRONG: A $200 billion program that's basically put together and nobody's paying attention to it. It's-- it's the ultimate government off the books.

ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE, "The Arming of Saudi Arabia.''

NARRATOR: On August 2nd, 1990, Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait. Saddam Hussein's soldiers now threatened the vast oil fields of Saudi Arabia. Four days after the invasion, United States Defense Secretary Dick Cheney arrived in Jidda, Saudi Arabia.

DICK CHENEY: The main purpose for my trip was to try to persuade the king to agree to receive U.S. troops in the kingdom. We simply had to have access to Saudi Arabia. Unless we could get access for our forces to Saudi Arabia, there was very little we could do about Saddam Hussein and Kuwait.

CONTINUED FLASHBACK...

http://billstclair.com/911timeline/1990s/frontline0121693.html

Sometimes a bit of the old-school is best, eh, bobthedrummer? BFEE nutjobs know that whoever controls the oil, controls the wealth. Control all the oil, they know, and they'll control all the world. For those interested in the subject, check out this nice petroleum crisis bibliography found in the chop:

http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/rtg/oilcrisis/biblo.htm

[Minstrel Boy]

33. I don't think these threads have been posted yet:

BCCI class action begins January 13th, London, UK
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=977792&mesg_id=977792&page=

Spies hide as Bank faces BCCI charges
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=11956&forum=DCForumID61

TONS of important material there.

Always sure to find some of my favourite DUers hanging out in a good BCCI thread. :hi:

An interesting fact of the BCCI threads, is how the conspiracy debunkers avoid them like a contagion. Because the money scandals supply some of the hardest evidence for the merits of "tinfoil."

I'll quote myself from "BCCI class action begins" thread:

Interesting, isn't it? The silence, I mean, from the coincidence theorists.

Nguyen Hand Bank, the P-2 lodge and Banco Ambrosiano, BCCI, the S&L "failures" and more: the thread through all the scandals is the hand-in-glove financial relationship of Intelligence Agencies, organized crime and terrorist proxies. As one financial corruption is exposed, another begins, and the players remain the same, as do the crimes: money-laundering, drug-smuggling, assassination and staged terrorist acts.

The rot is deep and longstanding. Follow the money, and you don't find "coincidence."

And to that list, I would now know to add Riggs.

[blm]

35. Heh. There are good reasons to keep these stories out there.

Kerry made me me proud when he put the Saudi Royals on notice.

Of course, they would think nothing of exterminating him and the BFEE would make sure some patsy took the fall.

But then, Kerry has probably only survived this long because he made some arrangement whereby if something happened to him all the classified info he knows from BCCI goes public.

[Octafish]

36. He's also got the Secret Government on his side.

The good guys and gals, anyway. Like little angels, I'm sure.



http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=99415

[JohnKleeb]

37. haha nice comment octa

hey can I have your and blm's help, some dont realize how important Kerry being a veteran really is as it helps him relate his experience and what he's learned. Thanks guys, I know I can always count on you to defend Kerry, being you in a way are part of the Kerry supporters from the beginning group.

[Octafish]

41. John Kerry has what it takes to clobber AwOL Bush.

John Kerry has the know-how and backbone needed to kick the un-elected fraud’s rear end clear outta Washington and straight back to Crawford. Because of who he is and what he's done, Kerry’s earned the backing of a VERY large section of the establishment and the military. Here’s why I think all Americans should back Kerry:

As President, Kerry can and would unite the entire country. After the divisiveness of Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 2, the country needs it more than at any time since the Civil War. Starting with Congress and the Pentagon through every department in the Cabinet through every state house and main street. It'd be the opposite of what Bush practices, which is actualizing the phrase "The fish rots from the head down."

John Kerry is a man of integrity -- a real war hero and he has a heroic character. Silver Star, Bronze Star, three Purple Hearts. Only the bravest of the brave do what he did. Only the luckiest survive. So, he’s got that, too.

Like the Greatest Generation, his type has fought the Nazis before. He’ll fight them again, the group we sadly identify as the BFEE. Kerry’s got his work cut out for him and he’s going to need a lot of help from the military. This time, a bunch of the BFEE are wearing American uniforms. From what I’ve seen and heard, our guy has the backing of a large percentage of the officer corps. They’ll let Kerry know Who among the leadership doesn’t believe in the Constitution and has gone along with treason.

Kerry would attract LIBERAL voters: That’s where he’s been as a Senator. Kerry has fought for traditional Democratic causes from Social Security, Public Education, the Environment, Health Care, Union and Workers’ Rights, Veterans’ Affairs, Urban Renewal, in no particular order but all with top importance.

Kerry would attract the MIDDLE: He has the record of doing what’s best for the American people in the Senate. Pro-Small Business; amending the impact of NAFTA; lessening the penuric grip of creditors in bankruptcy; pro-law enforcement; etc. Go to the Kerry’s website for the complete story.

Kerry would attract the CONSERVATIVE base: He’s the All-American Guy. College hockey player, LaCrosse (which is land hockey). War hero. Peace hero. In Congress, he’s been strong on national defense issues. Kerry said he’d do what was needed to keep America safe. On a personal level, he lives the American Family Values crowd espouses. Kerry puts his family first, his work is done in the service of the community, and he believes in patriotism. What’s wrong with that?

Personally, Kerry has gone after the Bush Organized Crime Family. And as President he said he would appoint an honest Attorney General, one who uphold the Constitution of the United States. He said he’d appoint judges who feel the same way.

Almost alone among Democrats in Congress, and alone among those running for the nomination, Kerry went after Bush, Poindexter, North and that whole Iran-Contra drug-running crowd. An informed president looking into that stuff will reveal much of what has gone wrong with America since November 22, 1963.

For the History Deprived: Kerry is on the same side as the late Danny Casolaro. The writer was investigating The Octopus — the CIA-NAZI-Big Oil-Wall Street-Military-Industrial Complex when he was suicided and embalmed within 24 hours, although against the law in West Virginia.

The one link between all of those elements of arch-criminality is named George Herbert Walker Bush. Now we’re supposed to believe his oldest son, Fredo, is running the Outfit. Riiiiiiiight!

GOOGLE October Surprise; Hinckley Bush Reagan Assassination Attempt Dinner; Iran-Contra Affair, Ollie North, drug-running Nugan Hand Bank; Savings and Loan Scandals; BCCI Iraq-Gate; BNL Banco del Lavoro Nazionale; Gulf War 1 April Glaspie for the hair-whitening details.

ENRON Energy Policy. Arthur Andersen Wall Street Drug Money Laundering. Gulf War 2 WMD. 9-11. You can be sure that those investigations would be re-opened and investigated fully under Kerry’s Attorney General, Pentagon and Congress. The thought of these and wearing prison jumpsuit orange will whiten the hair of the moron usurper.

Many DUers won’t remember the last candidate or top government official who said he wanted to after the Mafia. It wasn’t Lyndon Johnson. It certainly wasn’t J Edgar Hoover. The year was 1968. His name was Robert F. Kennedy.

Go John Kerry! Vote Democrat!

— Octafish

[Eloriel]

44. I'm not a betting woman, but I'm willing to bet you, Octafish,

that Kerry won't do a THING about going after the Bushes as President. Not one damn thing.

I personally feel better about him after his and Theresa's speeches, but I have NO illusions that he'll go after the Bushes. None whatsoever. I don't think he has guts (certainly not that kind), and I just don't think he's got it in him. A Kerry administration (if he can triumph over all the election rigging that will be going on) will be a mere respite between administrations of the Bush Dynasty in America - lasting just until the next Restoration/Coup.

We need about 50 more films from Michael Moore as hard-hitting and factually unassailable as F911 -- all just as well publicized and attended -- to educate the enough of the public to generate the public sentiment making it safe to oust the Bushes from public life forever. Or a revolution in the media. Ain't gonna happen.

Yeah, he'll be much better in office than Bush. Appoint better judges, and all that other stuff. But don't imagine he's going to do what needs to be done relative to the Bushes.

[Octafish]

47. Either way, he's better'n Bushler. And he has a chance to win.

Like you, Eloriel, I want as President someone who is willing to bust the BFEE and toss the pieces in jail. I've met Kerry and members of his family, and they are JUST like you and me -- no better, no worse.

The thing is, Kerry can't do the job alone. He needs ALL of us on his side. We are the ones who have to inform our family, friends and colleagues about the BFEE and their corruption. With the Truth, we can round them up in the forum of public opinion and build support for investigation and prosecution.

As for putting Kerry's feet to the fire to keep him on the progressive agenda should he be elected, please know I'll be the fellow lighting the charcoal.

In unity is strength. Let's sink the BFEE! Working together, we can do it, Eloriel!

[blm]

51. Thankfully we can count on your record of miscalculations to conclude that

Kerry is going to be the best president in regard to exposing the corruption of the Bush policies over the years that this nation has ever witnessed.

[Eloriel]

78. You got any money to put behind that bold assertion?

Like I said, I'm not a betting woman, but this one I know from deep inside my core: he won't be touching the BFEE.

[nolabels]

79. I got a bold assertions that a lot more people have been cheated

than just people in the USA. (If you haven't noticed there are many more opposed to the USA today than just a few years ago)

We are just the latest flavor of imperialism.

What better way to supplant the bugaboo of communism with terrorism. What an effing scam we have, can you not sees the shadows and waves we are being surrounded with. I won't waste time trying to convince people other things are going to happen, for others already know they are (and are doing them, what ever they are, good or bad).

The people of the world have never had a better look at one another. We are in a new MILLENIA, and we are awakening to it.

A thousand years of War and a thousand years of superstitions deserve.
A thousand years of understanding and breaking of the shackles we put ourselves in.
We will all throw them off, and we must, even to the end, can you not see


MAGIC through two MILLENIA
NEWTON'S MECHANICS - a brief summary
(snip)
II. Gravitation.

Newton's work on Gravitation can be summarized as follows:

(i) every body in the universe attracts every other body

(ii) the gravitational force between two bodies is directly proportional to the mass of each and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them
(snip)
http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Key/newton.htm#Definitions

(In other words if you see something that interests you get closer to it, to bring yourself relative to it, in which you will find understanding and ultimately yourself, a paraphrase from most any mystic )

Yours Is No Disgrace
Anderson/Squire/Howe/Kaye/Bruford

Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face.
Caesar's palace, morning glory, silly human race,
On a sailing ship to nowhere, leaving any place,
If the summer changed to winter, yours is no disgrace.

Battleships confide in me and tell me where you are,
Shining, flying, purple wolfhound, show me where you are,
Lost in summer, born in winter, travel very far,
Lost in losing circumstances, that's just where you are.

Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face.
Caesar's palace, morning glory, silly human race,
On a sailing ship to nowhere, leaving any place,
If the summer changed to winter, yours is no,
Yours is no disgrace.
Yours is no disgrace.
Yours is no disgrace.

Death defying, mutilated armies scatter the earth,
Crawling out of dirty holes, their morals, their morals disappear.

Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face.
Caesar's palace, morning glory, silly human, silly human race,
On a sailing ship to nowhere, leaving any place,
If the summer changed to winter, yours is no,
Yours is no disgrace.
Yours is no disgrace.
Yours is no disgrace.
(snip)
http://yesworld.com/lyrics/TheYesAlbum.html

[Karenina]

58. Kick!

:kick:

[Octafish]

59. Thanks, Karenina! Hey, Bin Laden's Brother-in-law Had Close Ties to Bush!

Bin Laden's Brother-in-law Had Close Ties to Bush

Saudi Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, an Osama bin Laden benefactor, has laundered money into tax-exempt U.S. entities for years as a foreign financier of terrorism. But a new 9/11 lawsuit is thrusting Mahfouz's latent past business links to George W. Bush back into the spotlight and raising important questions about links between Saudi finance and terrorism in America.

Nine hundred families of September 11 victims recently filed a trillion-dollar lawsuit against members of the royal Saudi family, businessmen worth a combined $5 billion, and banks and charities. The lawsuit accuses them of financing Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban government. And one of the defendants - Saudi Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz -- will likely draw increasing attention in coming months due to his past business relationships with President George W. Bush - the sweetheart deals he made during the elder Bush's presidency.

According to a Saudi government audit acquired by U.S. intelligence officials, five of Saudi Arabia's wealthiest businessmen, including National Commercial Bank (NCB) founder and chairman Khalid bin Mahfouz, transferred personal funds along with $3 million diverted from a Saudi pension fund, to New York and London banks with accounts linked to terrorism. (USA Today, 10-28-99)

The money transfers were discovered in April, 1999 after the royal family ordered an audit of both NCB and Sheikh Mahfouz.

The plot thickens when we find Mahfouz is also linked by marriage to terrorist Osama bin Laden, as Mahfouz's sister is married to the Al Qaeda leader, according to not only former CIA Director James Woolsey in 1998 Senate testimony, but also Jean-Charles Brisard, lead 9/11 lawsuit attorney Ronald Motley's researcher, and author of the book, The Forbidden Truth.

CONTINUED ...

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/Mahfouz.html

The Ratical has lots of great info and links.

[Karenina]

63. Hmmmm...

That "Bath" feller ain't showed up yet? ;-)

[seemslikeadream]

64. maybe he's under here

:hi:

[never cry wolf]

66. Some info here

Not all linked and backed up with sources, but I am sure googling and individual subject could confirm or deny:

"DejaVu in America: The Ongoing Civil War, and the Bush Family's Role In It"

http://www.winterboy.com/dejavu.html

[Octafish]

67. "White House admits it has created a 'Shadow Government'..."

"... to take over underground in emergency, not a single Democrat is involved."

Yes. The Bush Crime Syndicate is pure evil. Once they've nuked and destroyed the world, they'll crawl up from their underground redoubts and stock the planet with their spawn, the cockroaches call it "Continuity Of Government." Sure it is.

And another nice quote:

“I’m the commander- see, I don’t need to explain- I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation…”resident George W. Bush, 2002.

Thanks,steviet_2003! The BFEE knows no shame.

[Octafish]

70. "Emergency" Secret Government

The neo-CONs wanted a Secret Government to take over and they DIDN'T let the Democrats know about it. Remember Daschle was "surprised." Trent Lott and Dick Armey said it was ready, "In case of terror attack." They wouldn't forget the DEMs on purpose. I'm certain it was an accident. Yeah. Sure.


Government Gone Underground

EXCERPT...

Constitutional Implications of the Secret Government

In fact, the most troubling questions about the "shadow government" are not it's precise location or it's capabilities; not the actual personnel assigned to survive or how that will be achieved. The most troubling questions are why the Bush administration felt compelled to keep Cheney and other cabinet officials rotating in and out of these secure facilities, preserving the executive branch of course, but without advising the Congress to reactivate their Bunker underneath the posh Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, or giving the Judiciary advice to take their similar precautions. Nevertheless, the Greenbrier bunker remains both a tourist attraction and an historical oddity.

Moreover, serious questions are raised about the supergrade government officials, and the GS-14 and GS-15s assigned to Mount Weather as "Shadow Cabinet" officials. Certainly, the actual cabinet went through their confirmation hearings in the Senate; however, until March 1, not even senior Senate officials in Bush's own party were even aware that such extensive "continuity of government" preparations were in effect, much less had they been provided the opportunity to publicly "advise and consent" to their shadow nomination.

The National Archives has the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence ensconced in airtight, fireproof containers ready to descend into their own bunkers should any threat be detected. The Bush administration has shown much less interest in preserving the meaning and intent of the documents with their COG plans.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) has also said as much. Surprised by the Washington Post's revelations, on Meet the Press he said that "I think the time has come for us to be asking a lot more questions." On Fox he was more actually more direct. Daschle stated that the Bush administration has a
"constitutional obligation" to provide Congress with information and explained "that's the thing. You'd think somebody in Congress, one person in Congress somewhere, would know what they're doing and how many there are and what their role is and how the transition takes place and why a congressional and judiciary component are not included. Those are the kind of things I'm simply asking that we be provided the answers to."

SNIP...

If even RAND believes that managing congressional "sensitivities" are important in preserving constitutional government and protections, why had the Bush administration been completely silent on the matter for six months? Why, while Ashcroft's FBI routinely announces amorphous threats of further terrorist attacks, was the survivability of the federal branch most accountable to the citizens conspicuously ignored? Why, amid constant reports of Cheney's unavailability, did Congress not think to ask where he was and what he was doing? And also, just what are these bunkered bureaucrats up to?

CONTINUED BIG TREASON ...

http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/18984

Speak of the Devils…


Coup d'Etat in America?

by Michel Chossudovsky

EXCERPT...

A secret "Shadow government" under the classified "Continuity of Operations Plan" was installed on September 11, 2001.(See http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20584-2002Feb28?language=printer ). Known internally as "Continuity of Government" or COG, the secret Shadow government would become functional in the case of a red code alert, redeploying key staff to secret locations.

Code red alert would, according to FEMA, also preclude and repress any form of public gathering or citizens' protest which questions the legitimacy of the emergency procedures and the installation of a police state. The emergency authorities would also exert tight censorship over the media and would no doubt paralyze the alternative news media on the internet.

Code red alert would trigger the "civilian" Homeland Emergency response system. The latter is already in place including DHS Ready.Gov instructions, the Big Brother Citizen Corps, not to mention the USAonWatch or Neighborhood Watch Program which has a mandate to "identify and report suspicious activity in neighborhoods" across America.

CONTINUED...

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO407B.html

[nolabels]

76. The thick of the syrup, gets on and is very hard to remove

If it were just bushco it would seem a little more manageable, but you got to know it's looks much worse. Then you have to question where legit starts, and crooked leaves off. If BFEE went down big time, several other nasty groups already plugged in, would just lateral to fill the void. I am optimistic with the notion that now the whole world can see how they are playing this game. Thousands of sites like this one, around the world are now able to look at these kind of things, and mostly with impunity. If that don't make the fools at the levers think twice, well we know the story don't we.

Has someone been sitting on the FBI? 6/11/01

(snip)
TRENTO:
The FBI wanted to investigate these guys. This is not something that they didn't want to do - they wanted to, they weren't permitted to.

PALAST:
The secret file fell into the hands of national security expert, Joe Trento. The Washington spook-tracker has been looking into the FBI's allegations about WAMY.

TRENTO:
They've had connections to Osama Bin Laden's people. They've had connections to Muslim cultural and financial aid groups that have terrorist connections. They fit the pattern of groups that the Saudi royal family and Saudi community of princes - the 20,000 princes - have funded who've engaged in terrorist activity.

Now, do I know that WAMY has done anything that's illegal? No, I don't know that. Do I know that as far back as 1996 the FBI was very concerned about this organisation? I do.

PALAST:
Newsnight has uncovered a long history of shadowy connections between the State Department, the CIA and the Saudis. The former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah is Michael Springman.
MICHAEL SPRINGMAN:
In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. These were, essentially, people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained bitterly at the time there. I returned to the US, I complained to the State Dept here, to the General Accounting Office, to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and to the Inspector General's office. I was met with silence.
(snip)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/newsnight/1645527.stm

[Octafish]

83. Yeh. BFEE sat on FBI for The Pearl Harbor of the 21st Century™

People in the know had their hair on fire. Yet, Bush did nothing.

FAA security took no action against Moussaoui

Greg Gordon

Star Tribune

Published Jan 13, 2002
MOUS13

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- FBI officials promptly told the Federal Aviation Administration last August of the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, who raised suspicions at a Minnesota flight school, but FAA security officials took no action.

They saw no reason to check scores of other flight schools for Middle Eastern men seeking flight training, said a senior FAA official, speaking for the agency.

There is no way to know whether such a nationwide canvass would have led investigators to any of several Sept. 11 suicide hijackers who had enrolled in flight schools in Florida and Western states.

Rather, the FAA's decision may be remembered as one in a series of pre-Sept. 11 instances in which federal authorities did not fully recognize and respond to faint warning signals that a terrorist network was at work. FBI officials maintain that based on what was known at the time, the bureau did well to nab Moussaoui, who faces conspiracy charges and is suspected of being the 20th hijacker.

Besides being informed by the FBI, FAA personnel also learned about Moussaoui from another channel. A program manager at the Eagan flight school who first phoned the FBI about the young Frenchman of Moroccan descent also informally shared his concerns with as many as four FAA inspectors, according to several people familiar with the matter. But there is no indication that any of them relayed the information to FAA security officials.

CONTINUED...

http://prisonplanet.com/faa_security_took_no_action.html

Back when the Soviet Union was making a last gasp stand against the reforms of Gorbachev, they tried a coup. What kept it from succeeding? According to a person who once worked at our embassy in Moscow, it was the cell phone, fax machine and e-mail. And that was in 1991. The same bed-wetters are at freedom's throat today. Today we have the same weapons plus the Internet. Our big bomb, the Truth.

[seemslikeadream]

84. Tell me where I'm supposed to put the stuff about Italian fascists

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_01.php#003235
Essentially, Berlusconi's spies deliberately fed the CIA false information to exaggerate Saddam's nuclear capability and ambitions.

Who wants to bet that this was a personal favor to either aWol or Cheny from Berlusconi.

<snip>
In early 2000, the ‘security consultant’ was approached by a former colleague from SISMI whom he'd known for some twenty five years. This current SISMI officer told him that he had a source in the Nigerien Embassy in Rome, that they (i.e. SISMI) had no more use for her, but that she could be a source of valuable information for him if he put her on a monthly retainer. They were washing their hands of her, he said. But she could be of use to him.

The ‘security consultant’ met with the woman in question and agreed to pay her 500 euros a month for various documents and materials which came into her hands in the course of her work for the Embassy. Most of the material in question had nothing to do with Iraq or WMD. It dealt primarily with immigration into Italy and Islamist activities in North and Central Africa --- topics of concern to at least one of the 'security consultant's' longstanding clients.

What wasn’t clear at the time, however, was that SISMI hadn’t washed their hands of this Niger Embassy employee at all. She remained a SISMI asset. In fact, the relationship which the SISMI officer had set up was intended to serve as a conduit through which SISMI could conceal its role in the dissemination of what proved to be disinformation.

This was how the forged documents came into the security consultant’s hands.
<snip>

blm

Bush and Berlusconi have always been close friends.
They are both essentially fascist in their belief that corporations ARE the world's superpowers and they just use religion and the theocrats as the footsoldiers to serve their fascist agenda.

They both have their minions in the intel agencies pushing out fascist serving disinformation.

Thankfully, the good guys in the intel community are putting up obstacles to the corporatists' march to fascism.

Minstrel Boy

And Michael Ledeen consulted for Italian military intelligence
I posted this in GD earlier,
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2128960&mesg_id=2129502&page=
but what the hell. I think this is important.

Would you be surprised to learn where arch neocon Michael Ledeen was in the late 1970s, and what he was doing? At the height of Italy's "strategy of tension" - a campaign of false-flag terrorism designed to discredit the Italian left, waged by the fascist CIA asset Licio Gelli and his P2 lodge - he was consulting for Italian military intelligence, and is said to have been an "honorary member" of the lodge. When secret membership roles were published in the early 1980s, Silvio Berlusconi's name was found on it, long before he entered politics.

So, with P2 member Berlusconi in office, and neocon Ledeen's ties to the Italian far right and Italian intelligence, maybe this story comes into focus.

"...terrorism has been Ledeen's bread and butter since at least the late 1970s, when he consulted for Italian military intelligence."
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8249

From Asia Times:

"Ledeen's right-wing Italian connections - including alleged ties to the P2 Masonic Lodge that rocked Italy in the early 1980s - have long been a source of speculation and intrigue, but he returned to Washington in 1981 as "anti-terrorism" advisor to the new secretary of state, Al Haig.

"Over the next several years, Ledeen used his position as consultant to Haig, the Pentagon and the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan to boost the notion of a global terrorist conspiracy based in the Kremlin, whose KGB pulled the strings of all of the world's key terrorist groups, especially in the Middle East."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF26Ak03.html

"In 1980 he entered into a collaboration with Francesco Pazienza, an agent of the Italian secret service (SISMI) and a member of Rome's extreme right-wing Masonic Lodge, P2 (Propaganda Due), headed by the fascist Licio Gelli. In an Italian criminal court in 1985, Pazienza was judged guilty of political manipulation, forgery, and the protection of criminals and terrorists, among other offenses. Indeed, according to the findings of the court, Pazienza falsified information about the Bologna bombing in order to divert attention away from the real (right-wing) terrorists who had staged the attack."
(excerpt from Herman/O'Sullivan's The "Terrorism" Industry, 1989, quoted http://billmon.org/archives/000653.html ).

From Barbara Honegger's October Surprise, more on Ledeen and P2:

"When the Italian police raided (P2 Lodge founder) Gelli's home in March 1981, it was Michael Ledeen who, at the instigation of Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger, offered to buy the list of 953 P2 members in an apparent attempt to keep it from becoming public. Henry Kissinger had also reportedly sent Ledeen to Italy to try to squash an investigation into his and Haig's involvement in the founding of P2.

"On the morning of August 2, 1980, a massive bomb since linked to Gelli...exploded in the waiting room of the central train station in Bologna, killing 81 people and injuring 200 others. General Santorito, the chief of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, who was also reportedly a member of P2, testified in the wake of the bombing that it had been planned by the British-Swiss-American Montecarlo Comite, P2's "sister" organization based in Monaco. When P2 had come under increasing scrutiny in 1979, grandmaster Licio Gelli had reportedly made his base of operations the Montecarlo Comite.... Not surprisingly, reported members of the Montecarlo Comite are Gelli, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig and Michael Ledeen."


party_line

Marshall wrote about Ledeen's daughter in December-
Who's Who In The Coalition Provisional Authority
Special Baghdad edition
By Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Colin Soloway

12/04/03: (The Washington Monthly) Simone Ledeen is serving her country. She is the daughter of Michael Ledeen, the Iran-Contra luminary, AEI scholar, and all-around capo in the neocon mafia. She's 29, a freshly-minted M.B.A., with little to no experience in war-torn countries. But as an advisor for northern Iraq at the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad, she is, in essence, helping shape one quarter of that nation's economy.

When the history of the occupation of Iraq is written, there will be many factors to point to when explaining the post-conquest descent into chaos and disorder, from the melting away of Saddam's army to the Pentagon's failure to make adequate plans for the occupation. But historians will also consider the lack of experience and abundant political connections of the hundreds of American bureaucrats sent to Baghdad to run Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5338.htm

salin
Could he be the customer mentioned?
The ‘security consultant’ met with the woman in question and agreed to pay her 500 euros a month for various documents and materials which came into her hands in the course of her work for the Embassy. Most of the material in question had nothing to do with Iraq or WMD. It dealt primarily with immigration into Italy and Islamist activities in North and Central Africa --- topics of concern to at least one of the 'security consultant's' longstanding clients.

This seems to be one of the most significant items in the article.


blm
GREAT reminder, MB.
I'm gonna spread your post to other forums.

hedda_foil
Great post! Please note the similarity of Bologna & Madrid train bombings

And who was responsible for the Bologna bombing. Another confirmation of the initial reaction of many DUers at the time of the Madrid bombing (in light of Aznar's determination to blame the Basques) that the attack was a false flag operation designed to frighten the citizenry into re-electing Aznar. Remember, the polls showed a very close race, and the Aznar internals may just have shown him losing.

blm
Spread MB's post around.
No doubt LeDeen is in it up to his Dumbo ears.

salin
When was Berlusconi elected?

lottie244
The question is from where did the SISMI get the document?
I bet the Italian were not the originators.

party_line

Is your title correct?
Specific details in such an already complicated saga could end up being very important.

SISMA facilitated the circulation of the docs, but do you have additional information that the Italians actually forged them? The actual forgers and the original (pre-Italian) hands that pulled the strings are yet to be discovered, as far as I'm aware. Josh verifies that "the SISMI officer brought the Niger Embassy employee" the documents, but not that he/she or anyone in the SISMI actually created the forgeries.


ChocolateSaltyBalls
Excellent point..........
The most interesting thing to me about these documents is how badly they were forged (i.e. misspellings, signatures of people no longer associated with the government of Niger etc.), and how no-one on the U.S. side of the equation noticed the discrepancies before trumpeting them as 'proof' of Saddam's attempt to jump start his nuclear program.

Kagemusha

This is a pretty extreme form of "facilitation".
It strongly implies a deliberate effort to hide the false nature of the forged documents. Therefore, I don't personally care if they forged the stuff themselves or contracted to some common criminal... they are responsible for cooked intelligence that greatly pleased the Bush Administration and told it what it wanted to hear.

party_line

Would you care if the documents came to the Italians by way of
say...the CIA or the VP or Chalabi? I think Josh's story goes back further in the chain, so where they originated could be really pertinent.


geek tragedy
Oh, I agree
There's definitely more there. But, the deliberate deception of our intelligence services by a member of the "coalition of the willing" by itelf is huge news.



geek tragedy
An excellent point
but Marshall has hinted that the Italians created these docs. NOte this passage:

<snip>
n late 2001, the SISMI officer brought the Niger Embassy employee a packet of documents --- those later identified as forgeries --- and instructed her to slip them in with the other documents she was providing to the ‘security consultant’ on an on-going basis.<snip>

It's pretty clear they knew these docs were forgeries. Whether or not they actually made them is probably impossible to know--but there was a clear intent to deceive.


party_line
Yes, I snipped a piece of it myself
But there are many scenarios that could apply. SISMI could have been acting for or with any number of other entities in passing the docs through the channels they took. I suspect the documents had a different dad- of even more interest to American investigative reporters.

Wilson/Plame/Niger arguments turn on very precise data. What's pretty clear to you here (not unreasonably!), doesn't seem so clear to me.


allemand

The Italian Government kind of denies involvement, but
I can't make sense of the second part of that statement as quoted in La Repubblica:

"In relazione a notizie riportate da alcuni organi di stampa e informazione circa la vicenda Iraq-Niger, il governo ribadisce con fermezza quanto già più volte dichiarato in termini assai precisi e chiari: nessun documento, né direttamente né in forma mediata, è stato mai consegnato ad alcuno, né tantomeno, di conseguenza, sono state svolte attività o intese con chicchessia".

"Peraltro - prosegue la nota - ogni acquisizione informativa di organi nazionali riflette attività ed atti svolti ed acquisiti negli anni 1999-2000 e, al più, nella primissima parte del 2001. Le comunicazioni, i rapporti e le collaborazioni intervenute con organi collaterali esteri sono quelle formalmente rappresentate al Parlamento".

http://www.repubblica.it/2004/g/sezioni/esteri/iraq29/ura/ura.html

The first part states that no document has been handed over to anybody, neither directly nor indirectly, and, consequently, no activities were carried out nor understandings with anybody.

This might be a non-denial denial, because it remains unclear who didn't hand over documents, if it refers only to the government or also to the intelligence service.

The second part reads:
"Moreover/however - the note continues - every informative acquisition by national organs reflects activities and actions carried out and acquired in the years 1999-2000 and, in addition, in the first part of 2001. The communications, the relationships and the collaborations undertaken with collateral foreign organs are those formally represented to the Parliament".

What does this mean? And what is the relation to the first part?



Josh Marshall: Yellowcake documents were forged by Italian Government
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x721389

starroute
Ledeen as fascist -- somewhat tinfoil, but interesting
This is originally from a LaRouche source -- which, as always, means potentially interesting but take with a pinch (or even a handful) of salt. However, if true, it would shed a lot of light on the ideology behind what Ledeen is really up to:

http://www.cecaust.com.au/main.asp?id=culture/synarchism3.htm

Ledeen, the self-proclaimed "universal fascist," has long been under scrutiny by EIR researchers, as a man who has been in the midst of some of the dirtiest covert intelligence operations of the past 30 years. ... The first important influence on Ledeen's life was George Mosse, a German Jewish emigre, who had been on good terms with such Nazi leaders as Joseph Goebbels and Herman Goering. Mosse was so close that Goering offered to make his father an Aryan, and the family was permitted to leave Germany 15 minutes before the law was changed.

The Cambridge-educated Mosse, who would become Ledeen's teacher at the University of Wisconsin, taught Ledeen that despite its "perversion" by anti-Semitism, Fascism ought to be scientifically studied, because the Geist (soul) of Western countries had been suffocated and could only be revived through Fascism or Nazism. It is reported that while Ledeen was working on his Ph.D., he was blackballed for having joined—under Mosse's influence—a cell of the Israeli intelligence-linked movement associated with Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky, whom Israeli leader David Ben Gurion referred to as "Vladimir Hitler."

<snip>

But an even more important mentor to Ledeen was Renzo de Felice, an advocate of the Jacobin Revolution in France which led to the emergence of the first modern Fascist, Napoleon Bonaparte. De Felice did not hide his Fascism, as he wrote in The Illuminati and Revolutionary Mysticism, 1789-1900: "There is something in common between my Jacobins and a certain kind of Fascism.... Fascism wanted to achieve the transformation of society and the individual ... a new phase in the history of civilization."

After researching in Italy from 1966 to 1967, where he met scions of the Venetian oligarchy who are "magicians" in cultural warfare, Ledeen wrote: Universal Fascism (1972); "Italian Fascism and Youth," Journal of Contemporary History, July 1969; "Fascist Social Policy," in The Use and Abuse of Social Science, ed, Irving Louis Horowitz; and, among others, Fascism, An Informal Introduction to Its Theory and Practice, by Renzo de Felice, which includes an interview with Ledeen.

party_line
He's a current contributing editor for National Review
http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200407261224.asp
Does he hold any official position now or does he just rub shoulders with power?

TacticalPeak
His daughter helped screw up Iraq. That's quite a crime family.
Who's Who In The Coalition Provisional Authority
Special Baghdad edition
By Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Colin Soloway
12/04/03: (The Washington Monthly) Simone Ledeen is serving her country. She is the daughter of Michael Ledeen, the Iran-Contra luminary, AEI scholar, and all-around capo in the neocon mafia. She's 29, a freshly-minted M.B.A., with little to no experience in war-torn countries. But as an advisor for northern Iraq at the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad, she is, in essence, helping shape one quarter of that nation's economy.

When the history of the occupation of Iraq is written, there will be many factors to point to when explaining the post-conquest descent into chaos and disorder, from the melting away of Saddam's army to the Pentagon's failure to make adequate plans for the occupation. But historians will also consider the lack of experience and abundant political connections of the hundreds of American bureaucrats sent to Baghdad to run Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority.
more
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5338.htm

[Octafish]

86. All War. All the Time.

It was the Fascist Way. It is the BFEE (Bush Family Evil Empire & Transnational Criminal Enterprise Corp.) Way.

9/11: The BCCI Connection

by Chaim Kupferberg

In his landmark article, Chaim Kupferberg uses mostly mainstream sources to reconstruct the making of the Official 9/11 Legend.  Here, Kupferberg hypothesizes a covert global infrastructure behind the events of 9/11 - and lifts the veil to catch the lingering scent of BCCI. 

With the above-stated hypothesis in mind, one should perhaps cast a discerning eye toward those manning the counter-terror posts in Los Angeles today - for an important element in John O'Neill's New York circle has recently relocated to the West Coast.  In particular, O'Neill's friend, John Miller, has left a lucrative job at ABC News in order to work under William Bratton in the Los Angeles counter-terror office.  Miller, some might recall, was one of the very few Americans to conduct a face-to-face interview with bin Laden before September 11.  Before he had come aboard as a correspondent for ABC News, Miller had worked under Bratton in the NYPD.  Bratton, through his acquaintance with O'Neill's friend Jerry Hauer, has also had intimate business dealings with Kroll Associates, the World Trade Center security firm which hired O'Neill.  

It is, in fact, security firms like Kroll Associates, Burns Security, Teg, Wackenhut, and their ilk that should garner our interest at least as much as the web of conservative think tanks that have welded in place the parameters of "mainstream" debate - for it is through these very firms that the former stars of law enforcement have gone through the revolving door into the lucrative private sector.  It is a world where former military types mix with various operatives of the CIA, FBI, DEA and any number of alphabet soup agencies charged with the security of our nation.  

Moreover, the top people in the private security sector have the authority, prestige, and, most importantly, the skill to carry out - successfully and below the radar - the kinds of domestic operations that have been pegged  as the province of shaggy al-Qaida operatives.  Who, after all, could best ensure that 19 terrorists would be able to make it aboard four separate flights without any real danger of detection?  And who, after all, would be best placed to ensure a complete and successful implosion of not just the two Twin Towers, but the neighboring building - 7 World Trade Center - which housed a bio-warfare "command and control bunker" under the direction of Jerry Hauer?  

With that in mind, we get a bit closer to the "how" of 9/11 - an important consideration in analyzing the Legend of 9/11.  A good part of the early work on that legend had been accomplished through the offices of Michael Cherkasky, the managing director of Kroll Associates - in his capacity as a prosecutor working in the New York office of Robert Morgenthau.  Cherkasky had worked on the case arising out of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, which had established Ramzi Yousef as the terrorist mastermind behind the attack.  Cherkasky had also worked on the John Gotti and BCCI criminal cases, two cases that would not, at first glance, seem to be related, much less to the events of September 11.

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP311A.html



BTW: seemslikeadream, EVERYWHERE is a good place to put the Italian fascist stuff. They're our friends, because they hate the communists, too. It's tradition: Mussolini taught Hitler more than a thing or two. Same goes for Prescott Bush, who learned from the Harrimans and Thyssens and Krupps.

[seemslikeadream]

91. ‘Call me Giacomo,”

Focus: Tracked down: The man who fooled the world - and was duped himself
The mystery middle-man who supplied bogus documents revealing Iraq’s nuclear ambitions claims it was all a plot by Italian intelligence. Nicholas Rufford and Nick Fielding report



‘Call me Giacomo,” said the dapper man in the sand-coloured suit waiting anxiously in the Eurostar lounge in Brussels. Glancing around to make sure nobody was following, he led the way to a dimly lit corner of Sam’s Cafe on the station concourse.
Ordering an espresso, he opened an attaché case and gave a glimpse of a CD-Rom inside. The disk contained proof, he said, of an Italian government-inspired plot to frame Iraq for clandestinely trying to acquire nuclear material. “All the information, names, telephone numbers, documents are in here,” he said. For the first time a figure involved in one of the most infamous scams in the furore surrounding the Iraq war had emerged from the shadows.he Sunday Times later confirmed the real name of “Giacomo”, who uses a number of aliases. A former member of Italy’s armed services, he is a small-time tipster who found himself at the centre of an international hoax involving the CIA, MI6 and the United Nations.

In 2002 he hawked around documents purporting to show that Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain uranium ore from the Saharan state of Niger. The 17 documents were a collection of telexes, letters and contracts, stamped and signed and masquerading as an agreement by Niger to supply Iraq with 500 tons of ore, enough to make several bombs. The papers were a convincing mixture of genuine and fake. Giacomo says he did not forge them and can prove that the Italian government was behind the plot.

At the time the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) were searching for fresh evidence of Saddam’s attempts to acquire non-conventional weapons. The documents appeared to corroborate their suspicions. The Niger “evidence”, when publicised by Tony Blair and George W Bush, helped to turn opinion against the Iraqi dictator in the run-up to the war. The documents were later discredited, although the British government continues to insist that the Iraq-Niger uranium nexus was genuine. MI6 has always claimed that it has intelligence from a separate untainted source.




TANNED, white-haired and moustachioed, Giacomo is coy about his past. He says he lives in Rome and that he used to work for Sismi, the external Italian intelligence agency. This much is true, according to intelligence sources. Giacomo worked with Sismi — albeit for only a few months — on a project concerned with counter-proliferation. He is also said to have done some work for Sisde, the domestic intelligence agency.

Through the 1990s he immersed himself in intelligence and espionage. He provided tips and occasionally documents to selected journalists and to foreign intelligence agencies. In the murky world of spies and investigative journalists he was seen as a useful go-between and an occasional provider of scoops. “I sell information, I admit,” he said. “But I sell only good information.”


From:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1197988,0...
more to follow

[seemslikeadream]

92. a bit more

He is angered by the suggestion that he knowingly passed fake documents and insists that he was himself hoodwinked by Sismi in a plot designed to discredit Iraq. He claims that he has taped and documentary evidence to prove it. Corroborating his claims is difficult because he wants money for the full story of how he got the documents — the evidence on the CD-Rom and the tapes — which The Sunday Times is unwilling to pay.

Key aspects of his story are convincing, however; and whoever faked the documents was certainly no amateur forger and probably had inside knowledge. The contents of the documents were highly plausible. Iraq had had extensive contacts with Niger in the 1980s and had bought uranium ore for its then active nuclear programme. Under UN sanctions in the 1990s, that programme apparently ceased to exist, but western officials remained suspicious of any contacts between the two countries.

Niger (population 11m) was one of the poorest countries in the world, landlocked and prone to extended droughts. It exported little more than a few agricultural products — and uranium yellowcake ore. The yellowcake came from two mines controlled by French companies. Their output was closely monitored, but local people also dug ore from abandoned or unofficial workings to sell on the black market.

In February 1999, Wissam al-Zahawie, Iraq’s ambassador to the Vatican, arranged a trip to Niger and three other countries in west Africa. According to Zahawie, his mission was to invite their leaders to Baghdad, trying to muster support over UN sanctions that were crippling Iraq. “I had no other instructions and certainly none concerning the purchase of uranium,” he now says.

According to sources at Sismi, however, Zahawie’s mission was not just diplomatic. A “credible source” informed them that Iraq was looking for black market uranium in Niger. The source spoke of contacts, proposals, deals and dollar transfers. The source specified that no deal had been fully concluded.

From:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1197988,0...

[JohnOneillsMemory]

80. Sapere aude. (Dare to know.)-Horace KICK

I think it was Gloria Steinem who said:

"The truth will set you free...but first it will really piss you off."

[Karenina]

81. and make your head spin.

:kick:

[Jose Diablo]

85. Da Kickeroo

cause this belongs on the front page, a little longer.

[Snazzy]

90. follow the money!

:kick: