Know your BFEE

Know your BFEE: America’s Ruling Gangster Class

2006-12-23T18:17:00.000-08:00

Bush and his cronies have…

All that money stolen and all that power gone and what do we have to show for it?

A broken country and a fear filled future, is about it -- a world where we’re led down the primrose path by the likes of GHWB.

You can tell a lot about a crook by the company he or she keeps.

Consider: Grover Norquist, Jack Abramoff and the Republican Tax Dodgers (sorry, redundant) ginned up just about every Repuke on Capitol Hill in every way.

Consider: Kenny Boy Lay and the ENRON Energy Pirates laughed as they bilked little old ladies of their retirement money.

Same goes for traitors. Take Henry Kissinger. Please.

The guy works for an AWOL Combat Dodger in the form of George W Bush (sorry, redundant). So, nothing is beneath him.

So, to show what kind of lower than whale turds people Henry the K, Baby Doc Bush and Poppy Doc are, I introduce Operation CONDOR and its main puppet, one Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Pinochet and Poppy. "R" Peas in Pod.

What one did in Chile, the other did in the United States of America.

Both were helped by Henry Kissinger.

It was Kissinger who said about the coup that toppled the democratically elected government of Chile and the assassination of its president, Salvadore Allende:

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“I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

END DIVIDE END

Wow. Pretty powerful contempt for the United States and everything it stands for in that statement.

That attitude probably is easy to rub off on others, if the price is right.

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Too much blood: Kissinger and Pinochet

By Lucy Komisar

I recently got hold of a declassified memorandum about Henry Kissinger's only meeting with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The meeting occurred on June 8, 1976, in Santiago, and the internal State Department memorandum shows how hard Kissinger tried to shield the Chilean general from criticism and assure him that his human rights violations were not a serious problem as far as the U.S. government was concerned.

SNIP…

The memo describes how Secretary of State Kissinger stroked and bolstered Pinochet, how--with hundreds of political prisoners still being jailed and tortured--Kissinger told Pinochet that the Ford Administration would not hold those human rights violations against him. At a time when Pinochet was the target of international censure for state-sponsored torture, disappearances, and murders, Kis-singer assured him that he was a victim of communist propaganda and urged him not to pay too much attention to American critics.

SNIP…

Then he made clear that the U.S. government was squarely behind Pinochet. "In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here," Kissinger told Pinochet. "I think that the previous government was headed toward communism. We wish your government well."

SNIP…

Kissinger knew that Pinochet had set up an infamous international terrorist network, Operation Condor, to assassinate his enemies. In 1974, when the CIA discovered that Chile and its allies wanted to set up a covert office in Miami as part of Operation Condor, Kissinger rejected his own State Department officials' advice to publicly protest the plan.

That would have been a warning to prospective victims who had sought safety in exile, but Kissinger opted instead to let the CIA quietly pass on the word to Chile's secret police, the Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA), and the office wasn't opened.

But Operation Condor continued to target and murder Pinochet's enemies. In September 1974, agents assassinated General Carlos Prats, Pinochet's constitutionalist predecessor who had been forced out and had fled to Buenos Aires. The following September, Operation Condor organized the Rome attack that disabled Christian Democratic oppositionist Bernardo Leighton and his wife. Then in September 1976, the operation returned to the United States with a vengeance, planting the car bomb that killed Letelier and his Institute for Policy Studies colleague Ronni Moffitt in Washington.

George Landau, the U.S. ambassador in Paraguay, had warned the CIA that two Chilean agents had been trying to get visas to the United States in Asunción under false names, but the CIA never warned Letelier, a prime target for Pinochet, nor did it act through its agents at other U.S. consulates to block the agents' travel. The U.S. consulate in Santiago issued the killers visas to the United States.

CONTINUED…

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_5_63/ai_54468923

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Kissinger once observed, “Chile is a dagger aimed at the heart of Antarctica.” Lots of class, there. Held in the capable hands Kissinger and the BFEE, history shows they aimed the dagger at the United States.

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Pinochet is Gone, but His Methods Are Still with Us

A new report collating first-hand accounts gives us the clearest view yet of the torture going on in the US's secret prisons

by Adnan Siddiqui and Victoria Brittain
Published on Wednesday, December 13, 2006 by the Guardian / UK

Torture, secret prisons and disappearances: all feature prominently in the legacy of Augusto Pinochet. It is a matter of great regret that the former Chilean dictator - brought to power in a CIA-backed coup on September 11 1973 - avoided trial for gross abuses of human rights in his ravenous pursuit of power. But it is a matter of even greater regret that the same tools and the same sponsors are back in action today, with the same impunity, as part of the "war on terror" launched after September 11 2001.

When the Bush administration brought 14 of its most highly valued terrorism suspects to Guantánamo Bay from secret prisons in various countries in September, the US president himself acknowledged for the first time the existence of a network of CIA prisons. This was intended to close a chapter that had become embarrassing to Washington. The US practice of illegal kidnapping known as "extraordinary rendition", and the secret detention and torture that was part of it, had - after more than four years - finally become a scandal condemned by many European politicians, UN officials and international lawyers, as well as US-based human-rights groups.

But, as a new report from the British monitoring group Cageprisoners reveals, the men held in Guantánamo Bay are only the tip of the iceberg: thousands more are hidden elsewhere, outside the law. The "war on terror" is taking a terrible toll on Muslim families and societies through a vast programme of secret detention and torture.

Since January 2002, when the first Muslim men were flown from Afghanistan to Guantánamo, an estimated 14,000 men have been held. They have been hidden in prisons, army barracks, holes in the ground, private houses, hotels and schools. Those responsible for them have been in overlapping chains of command, including the US department of defence, the CIA and the national intelligence services of many countries, such as Britain.

CONTINUED…

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1213-23.htm

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Gee. Could it be these people don’t think the vote should apply if We the People elect, say a Democrat? Wonder what they would do if a Liberal Democrat got elected?

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U.S. Leaders are Using Pinochet's Playbook

by Peter Kornbluh
Published on Friday, December 9, 2005 by the Baltimore Sun

EXCERPT…

Under the leadership of the Pinochet regime, Condor became a sophisticated system of multilateral repression. Condor nations shared intelligence and communications through a special cryptographic system provided by Brazil known as Condortel. Agents from one nation would fly to another to organize kidnappings, covert transportation of suspects and brutal interrogations at secret detention centers. Often the Condor victim would be secretly rendered back to his country of origin to another secret torture camp for further interrogation before being killed.

SNIP…

In fact, these joint efforts were acts of state-sponsored international terror. Among their operations, Condor regimes targeted specific individuals for death. A declassified CIA summary noted in 1977 that the Condor nations would "undertake the assassination of allegedly subversive opponents of participating governments residing in Western Europe or Latin America."

In the most infamous of Condor missions, former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and an American associate, Ronni Moffitt, were killed by a car bomb in downtown Washington in September 1976.

SNIP…

The methods of interrogation also are similar. Condor victims were submitted to what their Southern Cone torturers called "the submarine." Mr. Bush has authorized a series of "enhanced interrogation techniques" that includes "waterboarding" - simulated drowning - which is the CIA's modernized version of the same type of torture.

Even the official denials sound the same. "We do not torture," President Bush stated recently. "The United States government does not authorize or condone torture of detainees," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated as she arrived in Europe this week.

In the wake of overwhelming evidence that U.S. officials have authorized, condoned and even committed acts of torture - in some cases torturing prisoners to death in Iraq and Afghanistan - those denials carry about as much credibility as General Pinochet's did during his 17-year dictatorship.

CONTINUED…

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1209-20.htm

END DIVIDE END

So. That’s a snapshot of America’s Ruling Gangster Class and what they do with money and power and to keep power and get more money.

Please remember, they are unarmed. For peace-loving people, the only real weapon is Truth.

Know your BFEE: At every turn, JFK was opposed by War Party

2006-06-21T18:52:00.000-07:00

During the Bay of Pigs Invasion, both the CIA and the Pentagon lied to President Kennedy and said the crazy idea would work. The anti-Castro Cuban people would rise up and greet the invaders as “liberators” with flowers and kisses. Wrong. The reality was, the operation had been compromised. Castro’s spies in Miami even knew D-Day and the landing site.

"(Peter) Kornbluh said there is no indication that Esterline or anyone else at the
CIA warned President Kennedy of the leak before the invasion took place."

Soviets Knew Date of Cuba Attack

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 29, 2000; A04

Shortly after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, a top CIA
official told an investigative commission that the Soviet Union had
somehow learned the exact date of the amphibious landing in advance,
according to a newly declassified version of the commission's final report.

Moreover, the CIA apparently had known of the leak to the Soviets--and
went ahead with the invasion anyway.

CONTINUED…

http://www.jfklancer.com/jfk1bop.html

Gee. It’s not all that great a mystery why Gen. Charles Cabell, E Howard Hunt and the rest of the right-wingers would call JFK “traitor” for not calling in the air strikes in support of the invaders. I call such bastards “hypocritical sons-of-bitches” for saying so.

No one knew it at the time, but things in Cuba were even worse than imagined. The Soviets already had nukes on the island. The missiles were armed with nukes. Thus, had the United States invaded, Castro or the Soviet commanders in the field would have used them on the invading American forces and thus bringing about an American nuclear response and that would have precipitated World War III and that would be it for civilization and most living things.

Our Men in Havana

In Havana this past October, Professor James Blight brought together old foes Robert McNamara and Fidel Castro for the fortieth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Such meetings, part of Blight’s unconventional fifteen-year study of the crisis, have led McNamara and others to a startling conclusion: we were much closer to nuclear war than anyone thought.

By Norman Boucher

EXCERPT…

Over the past decade or so, it has become increasingly clear that the grown-ups may not have had much of an idea what was going on either. At least this has been the conclusion to emerge from a series of six conferences held over the past fifteen years on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, those thirteen days in October during which the world came the closest it has ever been to destroying itself. Orchestrated by Professor James Blight and Adjunct Associate Professor Janet Lang, both of the Watson Institute for International Studies, these conferences—along with two related ones on the disastrous April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion—have revealed that we were much closer to nuclear annihilation four decades ago than anyone had previously thought, and that the management of the crisis in Washington and Moscow was blessed with a far higher level of sheer dumb luck than analysts and historians had earlier been able to accept.

“I conclude from this discussion,” Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense during the missile crisis, said in Havana at the latest conference this past October, “that we’re damn lucky to be here.”

SNIP…

The alternative interpretation of those October 1962 events is messier. As McNamara explained to the students in the Blight-Lang class, no one in the White House in 1962 knew the number of nuclear warheads already in Cuba at the time of the crisis; nor did they know that the Soviets and Cubans had tactical nuclear warheads they were ready to use against U.S. troops. Had Khrushchev not agreed to withdraw the missiles on October 28, a military conflict might have easily broken out, with consequences no one in Washington had sufficient information to foresee, far less control.

CONTINUED…

http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/printerfriendly.cfm?...

But wait, there’s more. The War Party wanted was so bad with Cuba, they even had the Joint Chiefs – normally honorable men – float a plan to launch a terror attack against Americans in Miami and Washington, as well as shooting down a jetliner filled with American college students or two, as a pretext for war with Cuba.

Pentagon Proposed Pretexts for Cuba Invasion in 1962

In his new exposé of the National Security Agency entitled “Body of Secrets,” author James Bamford highlights a set of proposals on Cuba by the Joint Chiefs of Staff codenamed OPERATION NORTHWOODS. This document, titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba” was provided by the JCS to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, as the key component of Northwoods. Written in response to a request from the Chief of the Cuba Project, Col. Edward Lansdale, the Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” including “sink a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),” faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage. Bamford himself writes that Operation Northwoods “may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.”

Source (w/link to PDF of actual Operation NORTHWOODS document):

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430 /

Kennedy said, “No.” Then, a short time after the episode, didn’t renew Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer’s tour as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Pentagon, most of the Cabinet, and the Congressional leaders all were hell-bent for war. They told JFK the missiles were a danger and the only way to get rid of them was an immediate air attack, followed by an invasion. Air Force commander Curtis LeMay even tried to instigate war, ordering jets to intrude into Soviet airspace, hoping one would be shot down and form a pretext for all-out war.

Spy Flights of the Cold War

Review by Capt. Troy Thomas, USAF
Book by Paul Lashmar
Naval Institute Press, 118 Maryland Avenue, Annapolis, Maryland 21402, 1996, 256 pages, $29.95.
Document created: 13 May 99

Perceptions of the cold war often focus on nuclear arsenals and Third World surrogate conflicts, overlooking a persistent war of aerial espionage in which hundreds of airmen lose their lives. Spy Flights of the Cold War offers an intriguing yet controversial historical record of US and British aerial reconnaissance against the communist bloc from 1946 to 1963. The author’s research reveals numerous harrowing missions by brave aircrews flying deep into hostile territory on missions previously declared “routine.” Overlaying this operational history is a political account that indicts the US Air Force (USAF) and, specifically, Gen Curtis E. LeMay for exceeding presidential authority, manipulating intelligence estimates, and using the spy flights in an attempt to instigate another world war. Although it is a tribute to individual airmen, the text openly criticizes USAF leadership.

SNIP…

Criticism of the USAF and LeMay is a prominent theme. In addition to questionable evidence that LeMay encouraged unauthorized overflight missions, Lashmar devotes an entire chapter to SAC’s aggressive use of reconnaissance missions as a political tool intent on provoking nuclear war. If successfully implemented, Project Control overflights would “demonstrate the Russians’ military impotency” and possibly create the conditions for a preventive war. In addition to attributing a prolonged cold war to General LeMay and other senior USAF leaders, Lashmar also contends that SAC and the USAF intelligence community inflated Soviet missile, and later bomber, strengths to justify inordinate spending on SAC. Although estimates by the intelligence community later proved high, evidence for a duplicitous USAF agenda is suspect.

CONTINUED…

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/bookre...

Unlike the selected current occupant of the Oval Office, John F. Kennedy truly understood what it means to serve as President and Commander in Chief. Kennedy believed he had the final say on executive decision making. Case in point, Vietnam.

Kennedy saw the situation on the ground to be a loser for America and had ordered Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to begin the withdrawal of American forces with the withdrawal of 1,000 advisors by the end of 1963. JFK planned to have ALL American troops out of Vietnam by the end of 1964. That was in writing:

Exit Strategy

In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam

By James K. Galbraith

Forty years have passed since November 22, 1963, yet painful mysteries remain. What, at the moment of his death, was John F. Kennedy’s policy toward Vietnam?

It’s one of the big questions, alternately evaded and disputed over four decades of historical writing. It bears on Kennedy’s reputation, of course, though not in an unambiguous way.

And today, larger issues are at stake as the United States faces another indefinite military commitment that might have been avoided and that, perhaps, also cannot be won. The story of Vietnam in 1963 illustrates for us the struggle with policy failure. More deeply, appreciating those distant events tests our capacity as a country to look the reality of our own history in the eye.

SNIP…

A more thorough treatment appeared in 1992, with the publication of John M. Newman’s JFK and Vietnam.1 Until his retirement in 1994 Newman was a major in the U.S. Army, an intelligence officer last stationed at Fort Meade, headquarters of the National Security Agency. As an historian, his specialty is deciphering declassified records—a talent he later applied to the CIA’s long-hidden archives on Lee Harvey Oswald.

Newman’s argument was not a case of “counterfactual historical reasoning,” as Larry Berman described it in an early response.2 It was not about what might have happened had Kennedy lived. Newman’s argument was stronger: Kennedy, he claims, had decided to begin a phased withdrawal from Vietnam, that he had ordered this withdrawal to begin. Here is the chronology, according to Newman:

(1) On October 2, 1963, Kennedy received the report of a mission to Saigon by McNamara and Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The main recommendations, which appear in Section I(B) of the McNamara-Taylor report, were that a phased withdrawal be completed by the end of 1965 and that the “Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1,000 out of 17,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Vietnam by the end of 1963.” At Kennedy’s instruction, Press Secretary Pierre Salinger made a public announcement that evening of McNamara’s recommended timetable for withdrawal.

(2) On October 5, Kennedy made his formal decision. Newman quotes the minutes of the meeting that day:

The President also said that our decision to remove 1,000 U.S. advisors by December of this year should not be raised formally with Diem. Instead the action should be carried out routinely as part of our general posture of withdrawing people when they are no longer needed. (Emphasis added.)
The passage illustrates two points: (a) that a decision was in fact made on that day, and (b) that despite the earlier announcement of McNamara’s recommendation, the October 5 decision was not a ruse or pressure tactic to win reforms from Diem (as Richard Reeves, among others, has contended3) but a decision to begin withdrawal irrespective of Diem or his reactions.

(3) On October 11, the White House issued NSAM 263, which states:

The President approved the military recommendations contained in section I B (1-3) of the report, but directed that no formal announcement be made of the implementation of plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.

In other words, the withdrawal recommended by McNamara on October 2 was embraced in secret by Kennedy on October 5 and implemented by his order on October 11, also in secret. Newman argues that the secrecy after October 2 can be explained by a diplomatic reason. Kennedy did not want Diem or anyone else to interpret the withdrawal as part of any pressure tactic (other steps that were pressure tactics had also been approved). There was also a political reason: JFK had not decided whether he could get away with claiming that the withdrawal was a result of progress toward the goal of a self-sufficient South Vietnam.

CONTINUED…

http://bostonreview.net/BR28.5/galbraith.html

Then came Dallas. A week later, the orders were signed committing the US to support the government of South Vietnam. A few months later, the Gulf of Tonkin incident was created and the US had their fig leaf for war. Today, decades later, we look back back and see a parade of Presidents, the majority of whom were only too eager to make war, mere enablers for the War Party.

Know your BFEE: Cheney & Halliburton Sold Iran Nuke Technology

2006-05-15T20:48:00.000-07:00

The BFEE Offshore

In these days when George W Bush contemplates attacking the nation of Iran, a story that we should remember:

Halliburton Sold Iranian Oil Company Key Nuclear Reactor Components, Sources Say

August 05, 2005
By: Jason Leopold
Independent Media TV

Scandal-plagued Halliburton -- the oil services company once headed by Vice President Cheney -- sold an Iranian oil development company key components for a nuclear reactor, say Halliburton sources with intimate knowledge into both companies' business dealings.

Halliburton was secretly working at the time with one of Iran 's top nuclear program officials on natural gas related projects and sold the components in April to the official's oil development company, the sources said.

SNIP…

Now comes word that Halliburton, which has a long history of flouting U.S. law by conducting business with countries the Bush administration said has ties to terrorism, was working with Cyrus Nasseri, vice chairman of the board of directors of Oriental Oil Kish, one of Iran's largest private oil companies, on oil and natural gas development projects in Tehran. Nasseri is also a key member of Iran's nuclear development team and has been negotiating Iran 's nuclear development issues with the European Union and at the International Atomic Energy Agency.

SNIP…

Nasseri was interrogated by Iranian authorities in late July for allegedly providing Halliburton with Iran 's nuclear secrets and accepting as much as $1 million in bribes from Halliburton, Iranian government officials said. During the first round of interrogations in the judiciary, a huge network of oil mafia has been exposed, according to the IPS report.

CONTINUED…

http://worldnewstrust.org/modules/AMS/article.php?story...

“Dick” by Jeff Faerber

How can we forget the “where” of it all?

Companies, People, Ideas

Trading With The Enemy

Matthew Swibel
Forbes 04.19.04

If you want to get round export controls, just sell the product to a front company in Dubai. The middlemen will take it from there.

On paper the shipment was harmless enough. Sixty-six American-made spark gaps--high-speed electrical switches used in medical devices to break up kidney stones--traveled from the manufacturer in Salem, Massachusetts late last summer to a buyer in Secaucus, New Jersey. From there, according to the export declaration, they were to be shipped to their ultimate destination in Cape Town, South Africa. But these spark gaps can also be used to detonate nuclear bombs--and it turned out that the goods were aimed at an end user in Pakistan, with a stopover in Dubai. The commercial capital of the United Arab Emirates, where trading activity accounts for the biggest single chunk (16.5%) of a $20 billion economy, has become a favorite diversion point on the Persian Gulf for shady cargo. With no export controls and hardly any bureaucracy at ports, airports and free zones, this entrepôt provides stellar cover for smugglers hoping to bypass U.S. embargoes.

SNIP…

The open secret is that Dubai buys far more than it keeps. More than a quarter of its $23 billion in annual nonoil imports are reexported, and Iran gets the biggest share. Interviews with private businesspeople and U.S. officials, along with court documents, reveal a simple scheme. Companies located around the world sell goods--from cigarettes to medical devices and PCs--to buyers in the U.A.E. Dubai traders repackage the items and send them along by air or ship to agents in, say, Tehran, Pyongyang, Damascus or Islamabad.

SNIP…

Nevertheless, FORBES has obtained documents showing how Kala Ltd., the British arm of the National Iranian Oil Co., solicited at least 17 separate bids from the affiliate during 1997 and 1998 (when Vice President Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive). A few bids include handwritten notes that say "FOB Dubai Airport" or "FOB Dubai port"--meaning that the U.A.E. was just a way station between Halliburton and Tehran. Halliburton would not comment on the bids. In any event, earlier this year the Treasury Department reopened a 2001 inquiry into Halliburton's Iran operations and its Dubai-based partner.

CONTINUED…

http://www.forbes.com/global/2004/0419/041_print.html

Everybody loves Iran. Even Henry Kissinger and Associates.

The back story...

From Kissinger's "Platform State" to the Plutonium Club

How the US Supplied Iran with Nuclear Know-How

By Saul Landau
Counterpunch Weekend Edition September 9 / 11, 2005

EXCERPT…

Such stories provoke the question: how could Iran have obtained nuclear capabilities? Surely, those irresponsible former Soviet scientists must have sold them the technology, a colleague guessed. "Those people would sell anything after the fall of the Soviet Union."

Not quite! It was US policy, not anti-American Moslem fanaticism that led Iran directly into the nuclear age. In the late 1960s, Iran stood out as a model ally of the United States. After all, the ruling Shah owed the CIA after the Agency's operatives ousted elected Premier Mossadegh's government in 1953. CIA action followed Mossadegh's declaration that he would nationalize foreign oil holdings. The Shah understood loyalty to those who reinstalled his "royal family" to dictatorial power.

His servility won him nuclear access. "The US and her allies were in fact the driving force behind the birth of Iran's nuclear program in the late 1960s and early 1970s" (Mohammad Sahimi, Iran's Nuclear Program. Part I: Its History October 2003). By 1974, the Shah, after consulting with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, boasted that nuclear power plants in Iran would soon produce more than 20,000 megawatts of energy.

In the mid-1970s, led by Kissinger who saw in Iran a "platform state" to fight communism in the region, Washington proposed that The Shah expand his nuclear capacity by acquiring as many as twenty three nuclear reactors. According to Mohammad Sahimi, the work on the reactors began in 1974 with the help of MIT engineers who contracted to train Iranian nuclear technicians.

Sahimi cites a speech by Sydney Sober, a State Department official who in October 1977, "declared that the Shah's government was going to purchase eight nuclear reactors from the US for generating electricity. On July 10, 1978, only seven months before the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the final draft of the US-Iran Nuclear Energy Agreement was signed. The agreement was supposed to facilitate cooperation in the field of nuclear energy and to govern the export and transfer of equipment and material to Iran's nuclear energy program. Iran was also to receive American technology and help in searching for uranium deposits."

Why, asked critics, should a nation with huge oil and gas reserves invest in nuclear technology? Why not? Both General Electric and Westinghouse sold Iran reactors. These manufacturers of nuclear energy plants for the third world and their media acolytes regaled The Shah for his "westernizing policies," his far-sightedness in seeing beyond the age of oil.

CONTINUED…

http://www.counterpunch.org/landau09092005.html

Gee. Few people love oil more than Henry Kissinger.

Here’s a guy who probably wishes he’d never heard of the stuff…

CYRUS NASSERI ARRESTED

Iranian Press Service
Posted Friday, July 29, 2005

PARIS, 29 July (IPS) Cyrus Nasseri, one of the senior Iranian negotiators with both the European Union’s so called “Big 3” and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been arrested.

Both “Baaztab” news service that belongs to Mr. Mohsen Reza’i, a former Commandeer of the Revolutionary Guards and the present secretary of the Expediency Council and the independent “Roshangari” said Mr. Nasseri has been arrested by the Judiciary investigating the consortium made of Oriental Kish and Halliburton -- which has US Vice President Dick Cheney as the Chairman of its Board of Directors -- awarded for the exploitation of phases 9 and 10 of the huge South Pars gas and oil field in the Persian Gulf.

The information is so far not confirmed by the Iranian authorities and neither sites say when Mr. Nasseri, a carrier diplomat, had been arrested and the mobile telephone of Mr. Nasseri, an outspoken negotiator, was not responding on 29 July.

According to Baztab, the phases 9 and 10 should yield 50 billions of natural gas and 400 tons of sulfides by the next Iranian year of 1385 for a cost of 282 millions US Dollars.

SNIP…

Kish Oriental-Halliburton won the contract last year.

CONTINUED…

http://www.iran-press-service.com/ips/articles-2005/jul...

So that's what happens to friends of Sneer and Smirk...

In business since 22 November 1963. The Bush Family Evil Empire: Money. Oil. Power. Gangsterism. Fascism. Terror. War.

Know your BFEE: James R Bath - Bush - bin Laden Link

2005-08-14T13:56:00.000-07:00

Connecting the Dots: Bush...Bath...bin Laden.

Back when George W was defendin' Texas from the Air Force of North Vietnam, he met a nice man by the name of James Reynolds Bath. After a while, they both were drummed off the flight line for failing to take physical exams -- coincidently, right about the same time the government starting testing pilots for illegal drugs 'n' such. Here's the document:

Now this document shows that the House of bin Laden selected James R Bath to be their official U.S. business agent. Isn't it something? Why doesn't anyone in the press corpse ask Bush about this?

Craig Unger tracked down Bath – Unger's the fellow who wrote "House of Bush. House of Saud."

Mystery man

Why the White House deleted the name of Bush pal and Saudi go-between James Bath from the president's military records is a tantalizing but unanswered question.

By Craig Unger

April 27, 2004 | Last month, before the 9/11 commission began its public hearings and Iraq exploded in renewed warfare, the White House tried to quell a gathering storm regarding President Bush's military service, releasing hundreds of documents about Bush's tenure in the Texas Air National Guard some 30 years ago. A close examination of the documents reveals that they not only fail to answer lingering questions about Bush's service but prompt a crucial new area of inquiry that could play a role in the presidential campaign -- a long and lucrative, but low-profile, relationship between Saudis and the Bush family that goes back 30 years.

The document that raises that question is dated Sept. 29, 1972, and notes that 1st Lt. George W. Bush was suspended from flying because of his "failure to accomplish annual medical examination." Since he had just received hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of training as a jet fighter pilot, the fact that Bush let his medical certification lapse raises a troubling matter. Why did he allow himself to become ineligible to fly when he still had two years of service left? Given that random drug testing by the military had just started, some have suggested that Bush had not yet given up his partying ways and may have begged off because he had a substance abuse problem.

SNIP...

Reached at his home near Houston, Bath, who has been a business associate and friend of George W. Bush's for about 30 years, acknowledged to Salon that he was the man in question, but he dismissed the suspensions as trivial. "It happens all the time, especially in the Guard," he said. "In a regular squadron it is real easy to get your physical, but in a Guard unit, it is a different kettle of fish because the flight surgeon is also a civilian."
Bath, who referred to Bush as "Geo" because his first name appeared in that abbreviated form on his National Guard uniform, said that "the base is a ghost town except when the whole unit is there. When you fall out of requirements, it is no big deal; you are simply not able to be on the flying schedule. That is it, full stop."

Bath asserted that allegations that Bush had been using drugs are a "bogus issue," but declined to answer precisely why he and Bush failed to undergo their physicals. "I'm telling you that it did not happen. It is beyond laughable. I wasn't with him 24/7, but Geo did not use drugs. Geo did not use drugs, and I really know the facts."

CONTINUED (Subscription of Day Pass)...

If we had an honest government, Bath'd be in a Witness Protection program.

Drugs, money-laundering, the Caymans...What's not to like?

Connecting the Dots ... Bush ... Bath ... bin Laden.

EXCERPT...

However, Bill White also told Jonathan Beaty that Bath had been investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) while the two were partners, adding "the DEA suspected Bath was using his planes to fly currency to the Cayman Islands, although they didn't know why, since drugs didn't seem to be involved." Curiously, the probe ended.

Media interest may increase now, however, as Federal Reserve financial records are likely to be subpoenaed by Ron Motley and the 9/11victim families, detailing the inordinate amount of currency that passed through Mahfouz's small Houston, Texas bank -- and the curiously indulgent investigation of Bath and the Federal Reserve by the DEA.

Even to the uninitiated, the Caymans are synonymous with corruption and circumvention of the law. Thus it will fall to court depositions, subpoenas, and political pressure from 9/11 victim families to question why stacks of U.S. currency from the Federal Reserve Bank were flown into the Caymans by Saudi-backed representatives like James Bath -- friend to the President`s son -- let alone where the cash went, whether is was looted from the U.S. Treasury via Federal Reserve fiscal maneuverings, and to what extent the practice continues -- given current world terrorism.

Evidence points toward such "tax havens" as financial conduits for September 11 terrorism -- not just money-laundering refuges for current corporate wrongdoing, drug lords, organized crime, and those seeking to avoid a voracious U.S. tax system.

Michigan Senator Carl Levin's February, 2001 Minority Banking Report calls correspondent banking the "gateway to money laundering," a financial technique wherein illicit money is moved from bank to bank with no questions asked, thereby cleansing funds prior to being used for legitimate purposes.

CONTINUED...

Bush, Bath, BCCI and the Caymans

Where the loot went...

Follow the Money: The Bush-bin Laden Connection

President Bush's September 2001 address to the American people will live on in infamy. In it, Bush roused the American people to a "war on terrorism," which was to consist of rooting out the financial sources of support for terrorist activities. A global effort ensued in the following weeks. Bush then signed an executive order freezing the financial assets of several alleged charities reputed to be "fronts" for the al-Qaida network. According to a report by Christopher Byron dated 9/24/01 entitled "Terrorists, dollars and a tangled web", however, one glitch got ahead of Bush's fanaticism: following this money trail would require investigators to "probe deep into the offshore activities of America's mightiest banks and the financial affairs of many of America's leading public figures," including George W. and George H.W. Bush. It all starts with the Bank for Credit & Commerce International, now infamous as the "BCCI Scandal." The BCCI, with its main offices in London and New York, was bankrolled by Saudi Arabian money handlers. The BCCI was engaged in widespread bribery of officials in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas; its criminal activities touched nearly every country on Earth. According to Byron, the BCCI "laundered money on a global scale, intimidated witnesses and law enforcement authorities, engaged in extortion and blackmail; supplied the financing for illegal arms trafficking and global terrorism; financed and facilitated income tax evasion, smuggling and prostitution." As Byron also explains, BCCI operated via secrecy through various front organizations, and "penetrated the top-most echelons of American business, co-opting and exploiting many of the most visible and influential public figures in America."

The tentacles of BCCI began to touch George W. Bush when he sold his young, struggling oil company to Harken Energy. This, according to Byron, "set in motion a chain of events that wound up entangling Bush, briefly but awkwardly, in the affairs of not just BCCI but of the bin Laden family itself." Specifically, what is the bin Laden connection?

James Bath, one of Bush's original partners in his oil company, had contacts in the Middle East. According to Byron, Bath was named in a 1976 trust document as the business representative for Salem bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's half-brother, who was killed in a private plane crash in Texas in 1988. William White has claimed that Bath was involved in a secret conspiracy to funnel Saudi money into the U.S., and that since 1976-the year Bush Sr. became head of the CIA-Bath had worked as a CIA liaison to Saudi Arabia. White has made the claim, which Bath denies, that "Bath ran an aviation business and obtained several aircraft from the CIA."

As Byron reports, Bath did run Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd., an aviation business based in the Cayman Islands, which was owned by Saudi banker Khalid bin Mahfouz. In 1977, bin Mahfouz joined up with Saudi front man for BCCI, Ghaith Pharaon, and became an investor in the Main Bank of Houston, in which Bath also held a stake.

CONTINUED...

A bit more from Mr. White on his business and legal dealings with Mr. Bath reveals the name of John "Swift Boat Liars" O'Neill. The record shows O'Neill was hired to "DEFEND" White in a lawsuit against Bath. No wonder the poor guy lost everything he had and owned. Then again, that's how it always is for the BFEE. The fix was in from the get-go.

From White's CBC interview:

CBC: HE QUOTES THE NAME OF GEORGE BUSH?

Bill White: Oh absolutely.

CBC: SENIOR OR JUNIOR?

Bill White: Senior. He said that he would call the politically appointed Judges and I would never get due process. And that really is what motivated me to fight the fight in the courts. I couldn’t believe in the aftermath of all of us risking our lives fighting for the system that we could be denied our rights of due process under law. I just couldn’t believe that. Unfortunately I hought it was a bluff, but it turned out to be true because what he predicted is precisely what happened. I thought it was Bath who was blowing smoke so I resisted and I said: “Jim, I’m not going to sue you, I’m not going to go report these Saudi dealings to the DA’s Office. I just don’t want to be in Business with you anymore.” Then I called my Attorney and I didn’t instruct him to file a lawsuit. I said please look at our partnership agreement and find out how I can become a Businessman independent of Jim Bath. I just don’t want to be involved in all this. Well, I never
had that luxury because Bath and the Bank that was laundering the Saudi money inundated me in lawsuits. I had four criminal chargesand I think twenty-eight civil lawsuits that were filed against me concurrently. And it just dominated my life. Fortunately I was able to get legal representation. The best lawyers in Houston took up my case on a contingency fee basis. They filed counter claims against Bath alleging Saudi influence peddling with the Bush family, although in retrospect when I read my own legal pleadings, the lawyers were very careful to remove a lot of the references to the threats and avoided using the Bin Laden, the Bin Mahfouz the Bush name. And I would ask my own lawyers, why aren’t you stating succinctly the nature of the Bath’s threat?. And they’d say: “Well Bill, you know we don’t want to make the Judges angry. We have to be very careful.”

CBC: AND IT WASN’T THAT THEY DIDN’T BELIEVE THOSE LINKS WERE TRUE, IT WAS JUST THE OPPOSITE. THEY BELIEVED THEM ?

Bill White: They believed the links to be true. They’re afraid of backlash from the Judges. One of my many Lawyers, John O’Neill of Porter and Clements, was actually the campaign manager of one of the Republican judges who poured me out every case - Judge Lewis Moore. And when John found out that my case was assigned to Judge Moore he said: "Bill, we’ve got this case made-in-the-shade.” He said: “This guy - I’m his campaign manager. I raise funds for his reelection. No problem.” And then we’d get into the courtroom and be poured out without a trial. And John would shake his head and comment: “The Judge must have gone crazy. I can’t believe it, he’s never treated me this way.”

CONTINUED... (on PDF, I'll see if I can find HTML somewhere on the Internets)...

If it wasn't so treasonous, it'd be neat, huh?

Know your BFEE: Rev. Sun Myung Moon OWNS Poppy Bush.

2005-08-07T08:15:00.000-07:00

Don’t take my word for it. Read The Washington Times. It’s Poppy Bush’s favorite paper, because they pay him so well. Millions, in hundred thousand bills, please.

Even our friends on the right know that.

Porkers

EXCERPT…

Well, if the Heritage foundation says it, we better jump up and down like the trained dogs we are.

Did you know The Heritage Foundation has taken funding from The Korean CIA. They welcome Moon's influence. Just like the ENTIRE conservative movement, which has been taken over by religious freaks and fascists.

The party formerly known as "Republican" exists NO MORE.

Moon has one belief, that he is the Messiah. He has one goal, to wrench control of the world.
Put "Bush + Moonies' in your google and read about how the conservatives sold their souls for power to Moon. What a bunch of anti-Jesus frauds. In 1989 US News reported that virtually EVERY conservative group in DC had ties to Moon's organization. Moon literally brags about using The Washington Times to get the chumps to follow him to theo fascist hell, which is where Bush is taking us. Bush IS doing "True Father's" bidding, wittingly or not. No Moon NO Bush. Kinda spooky when you consider Moon said presidents would have to come to him for power. This is true in the republican party, today.

See Jerry Falwell hugging the conservative "savior" Moon here. The conservative leadership sold their souls to Moon and their pod followers have no idea.

Look at this. Can you say HYPOCRITE. That is what conservatives are.

HYPOCRITE

Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church

Dark Side of Rev. Moon

Gee. He’s using all his money to buy gold and land and what sounds like an enormous jungle redoubt, the kind Ian Fleming’s supervillain likes…

And who else built a jungle redoubt in the virgin Paraguayan Amazon?

WHY HAVEN'T THE BUSH ADMINSTRATION UTOPIAN LUNATICS SCREECHING ABOUT "ISLAMIC TERRORISTS" OPERATING ON THE BRAZILIAN SIDE OF THE TRI-BORDER AREA, SAID DIDDLY ABOUT MOON'S OPERATIONS?

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 23 (EIRNS) — Rev. Moon's cult has been the subject of a multi-agency, federal and state, national security investigation in Brazil, since at least July 2001.

The investigations were undertaken at the initiative of the Army, because the Moon cult was accumulating enormous, contiguous tracts of land on both sides of the Paraguayan and Brazilian border--in an area very near the Triple Border region (where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet), notorious for drug, arms and other contraband.

It was estimated back in 2001, that the Moonies had made a $2 billion dollar investment in building their supposed "Garden of Eden" in the Brazil-Paraguay area. The Brazilian magazine {Isto E} described it in this way in its Feb. 19, 2002 story, "Paradise Under Suspicion":

"A kind of independent territory is being created in silence, in an area between the border of Brazil and Paraguay. It is the tropical paradise of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, formed through a succession of nature preserves, where the rivers Nabilequie, Miranda, Paraguai, Prata, and Salobra cross. In total, the properties add up to 833,000 hectares, which is the equivalent of more than three Luxembourgs, the European Grand-Duchy. In it, would fit the whole Federal District, plus the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. If the lands were used for agrarian reform, they would be enough to provide for 41,650 families. Although they are not yet continguous, the lands being acquired are so close to one another that it is impossible to imagine that this is not being done to unify them."

CONTINUED...

OK. Let’s Play Political Celebrity Blackmail:

Wead in the Rose Garden

Doug Wead, a Bush family advisor and counselor to Dubya, has a history of crass opportunism and the release of the Bush tapes was only the most recent example

Most of Doug Wead's political career has been spent out of the public eye. Except for a failed run for an Arizona congressional seat in the early nineties, he's generally worked behind the scenes, first serving President George H.W. Bush and later, advising George W. He's generally avoided the headlines in the mainstream press. Last month, however, Wead came charging into the hot glare of the media spotlight. When you scratch beneath the surface you find an Assemblies of God minister who divorced his wife, a man involved with pyramid schemes, televangelizing faith-healers and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.

CONTINUED...

Shh. This sort of things leaves you open to blackmail.

Heh heh.

Then, again, some treasons are worse than others.

SUN MYUNG MOON gave North Korea
NUKE DELIVERY SYSTEMS in 1994.

Sun Myung Moon's Japanese Toen Trading company delivered 12 Russian Golf missile submarines with launch tubes intact. The North Korean communists studied this technology and adapted their missiles to be sea launched from surface and submarine platforms. North Korea now has nuclear weapon strike capability which can reach the continental United States from sea-based mobile launch facilities at distances of 2,500 miles. This website has clickable links to Sun Myung Moon subversion sources, evidence, documentation... proof.

http://www.ecosyn.us/adti/Nukes.html

LINKS -- NK sea-missile capability:

http://www.navyseals.com

http://www.janes.com

http://www.reuters.co.uk

http://news.bbc.co.uk

http://www.washingtontimes.com

http://www.newscientist.com

http://www.townhall.com

http://www.freerepublic.com

http://www.libertyforum.org

http://www.theage.com.au

http://www.iht.com

http://www.latimes.com

LINKS -- North Korean-born Sun Myung Moon's Toen Trading Submarine Subversion:

http://www.freerepublic.com

http://www.usasurvival.org

http://www.gorenfeld.net

http://www.davidicke.net

http://blog.mmadsen.org

http://www.kenlayne.com

http://www.pandagon.net

http://jameswagner.com

http://functionalambivalent.typepad.com

http://www.la-mancha.net

http://windsofchange.net

http://thoughtcrimes.org

http://www.vuw.ac.nz

CONTINUED...

http://www.ecosyn.us/adti/Nukes.html

This is some serious must-see stuff.

http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/03/1579613.php

LOL! Thanks, seemslikeadreamy!

Know your BFEE: Pat Robertson Incoporated a Gold Mine with a Terrorist

2005-08-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

Pat "Pass The Loot" Robertson is more than just your average TV preacher.

There's the gold. And the diamonds. And the oil.

Like the enterprising fellow in the parable of the king and the 10 coins, this guy's privatized and put his collection basket to good use. Check out how in this story that never made it to TBN Nutwork:

Pat Robertson and His Business Buddies

By Colbert I. King

Saturday, November 10, 2001; Page A27

Joseph Mathews is Pat Robertson's point man in a Liberian mining venture called Freedom Gold Limited. Mathews doesn't much care for what has appeared in this column about his boss's business dealings in Liberia, so he's trying to put a little distance between the televangelist and that West African nation's strongman, Charles Taylor.

SNIP...

This much is known, however, based primarily on information obtained from Freedom Gold Limited. Pat Robertson did learn about the gold mining investment opportunity from a visiting Liberian delegation. Robertson did subsequently create the for-profit Freedom Gold Limited in the Cayman Islands in December 1998 in which he was listed as the president and the company's sole director. He did conclude a mining agreement signed personally by him, Charles Taylor and key members of Taylor's cabinet on May 18, 1999. And the deal does give the Taylor regime a cut of the action.

Now why is a freedom-loving, God-fearing man such as Pat Robertson signing on the dotted line with Taylor, a U.S. prison escapee, Libyan terrorist training camp graduate, human rights violator, and pillager of his own country and his neighbor, Sierra Leone?

What's there to like about Charles Taylor?

He was once an ally of the equally repulsive Samuel Doe, the semi-literate master sergeant who led a bloody coup in April 1980 against Liberian President William Tolbert. The late Tolbert ended up dead and disemboweled in the executive mansion -- a fate shared 10 years later by election-rigger par excellence Doe who, while wearing the mantle of president, was tortured, mutilated and done in by rebels.

CONTINUED...

Gee. I wondered how Pat could afford the Rolex...

JEWELS FOR JESUS

ZAIRE: MOBUTU AND PAT ROBERTSON

BY ANDREW PURVIS/KINSHASA

What do televangelist Pat Robertson and a ruthless dictator have in common?
Diamonds, for one thing

TIME Domestic
February 27, 1994 Volume 145, No. 9

Who would expect to find diamonds on the souls of evangelical American missionaries in Zaire? Situated in the bull's-eye of Africa, Zaire has 43 million citizens scratching out a living on roughly $500 a year apiece. Zaire's cruel, old-style dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, however, does not subsist on $500 a year - he has many millions stashed away, and right now he makes a decent income off his country's roughly $300 million-a-year diamond trade. Now, with Mobutu's permission, Zaire's diamond business has a new entrant - Pat Robertson, the American televangelist and ex-presidential candidate.

Backed by the CIA, army general Joseph-Desire Mobutu took over the Republic of the Congo in 1965 and later called himself Mobutu Sese Seko. In 1971 he renamed the country Zaire. Throughout his rule, Mobutu has dealt brutally with opponents, civilian and military. His country's mineral wealth and location kept Mobutu valuable to Western interests for years, but when the threat of communist expansion disappeared, his worth diminished. By 1993 his horrific human-rights record and his refusal to yield the throne had led to an economic squeeze of Zaire by three major trading partners - the U.S., France and Belgium. Largesse from lenient banks dried up. Desperately casting a net for new friends, Mobutu found Robertson. Makau Mutua, projects director of the Human Rights Program at the Harvard Law School, says that currently "Robertson is Mobutu's biggest American catch."

The association of dictator and preacher began with a Robertson relief group, Operation Blessing, a branch of which has botched a corn-cultivation project on a 50,000-acre farm outside the capital, Kinshasa. Last year during the Rwandan refugee crisis, Operation Blessing expanded its humanitarian efforts to Goma but was criticized for spending too much money on transportation, pulling its workers out too soon and proselytizing. "They were laying on hands," an American aid worker recalls, "speaking in tongues and holding services while people were dying all around." Many relief agencies are notorious for mismanagement and backbiting, but even considering that, Operation Blessing drew a considerable volume of negative reviews from fellow Samaritans.

Another Robertson organization working in Zaire is the African Development Co. Around the world, Robertson has substantial business interests (in the U.S. he controls TV's Family Channel, the Ice Capades and KaloVita, a venture selling vitamins and skin creams from the Holy Land), and ADC is a private enterprise formed to look into investments in mining, lumber, agriculture, transportation and power generation, with an eye to plowing the profits back into humanitarian efforts. A nascent diamond-mining operation in Zaire is a project of the ADC. Located on a river southeast of the boomtown of Tshikapa in the heart of Zaire's diamond country, the project uses state-of-the-art dredges and diving equipment. Robertson is also exploring gold interests on the upper Zaire, or Congo, River, and assessing the hardwood logging potential of four great swaths of rain forest.

CONTINUED...

Let's see... What's the missing variable Gold + Diamonds + X = Big Wealth. Hmmm. Could X be... Power?

Pat Robertson's energy crisis

The Christian Right juggernaut feels the sting of big oil capitalism

By Bill Berkowitz
WorkingForChange
08.17.01

Sometimes when I think of Pat Robertson - which is probably more often than is healthy - I flash back to actress Joanne Woodward's landmark performance in the "The Three Faces of Eve."

There's Robertson, the zany televangelist launching hurricanes toward gay-friendly cities; the shrewd political figure with easy access to the rich and powerful; and the multi-millionaire businessman with Zairian diamonds on the soles of his shoes. All these personas wrapped into one pretty unique package.

Robertson the televangelist: Over-the-top and outlandish musings, ridiculous predictions and scattershot opinions are the order of the day on his daily "700 Club" television program.

The politically savvy Pat Robertson: Ran for president in 1988 and built an infrastructure and computerized mail list that helped launch the Christian Coalition, the right-wing political juggernaut for much of the 1990s.

Robertson the entrepreneur: Mega-wealthy businessman with international holdings.

The "700 Club" is currently being broadcast over Rupert Murdoch's Fox Family Channel, which Murdoch bought from Robertson in 1997 for $1.9 billion. The original Robertson/Murdoch deal called for him to continue his "700 Club" - perhaps in perpetuity. Now, it and other Fox assets, have been acquired by the Walt Disney Co. Disney, the target of a several-year basically ineffectual Christian right boycott, for between 3 and 5 billion dollars. So, despite Robertson's persistent criticism of Disney's practices, it appears the broadcasting arrangement will hold.

From also-ran to political kingmaker

Robertson the political operative gave America Ralph Reed. By naming the relatively unknown Reed as executive director, Robertson chose a perfect counterpart; a soft-spoken, cherubic-looking, hardball-playing political strategist. During his tenure, Reed played smooth/cool (Dean Martin) to Robertson's weird/hot (Jerry Lewis). He was the bridge to the media, standing between Robertson's mean-spirited and conspiracy-tinged rhetoric and the Coalition's mainstreaming efforts.

Reed was on the cutting edge of "big-tent" conservatism - initiating an ambitious, but under-funded effort to reach out to minorities and Catholic voters. Today, Reed runs his own political consulting outfit, was recently elected chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and is a key political advisor to President George W. Bush. Many political observers credit him with orchestrating the Religious Right's massive voter turnout that led to Bush's South Carolina primary victory, which ultimately turned the tide against Sen. John McCain.

These days the Christian Coalition is mired in financial problems and experiencing rapidly declining membership roles. It has been eclipsed by other more activist Christian right organizations. The Coalition's best days are behind them.

The CENCO dilemma

But Robertson the moneymaker is alive and well. Not long after he sold his Family Channel, the CENCO Refinery Co., an entity controlled by the Robertson Charitable Trusts, bought the former Powerine refinery located in Santa Fe Springs, California. Robertson claims that he was going to earmark the profits from this company for use by his charitable enterprises, including his "flying hospital," a jet with medical personnel who treat children in Third World Countries. Not one to be skeptical, nevertheless I'm reminded that over the years several investigative reports on Robertson's charitable enterprises have found that some of money raised was used for less-than charitable purposes.

Since he purchased the refinery, several obstacles have prevented the project from getting underway. These barriers, Robertson claims, has cost him tens of millions of dollars.

Early on, Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), a twenty-three year old environmental health and justice organization with over 20,000 members throughout California got involved. CBE charged that Robertson's plans to reopen the 65-year-old refinery located southeast of downtown Los Angeles would "endanger the health and perhaps even the lives of tens of thousands of area residents - many of them children." CBE noted that the previous owners of the refinery, "paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for safety and pollution violations." Located in a largely Latino community, the refinery eventually was shut down in 1995.

CONTINUED...

GOOGLE, huh? Nice. OK. Gold + Diamonds + Petroleum = Personal Salvation?

Know your BFEE: Oliver North, US Government Drug Dealer

2005-08-05T11:43:00.000-07:00

The man who wrote the following was a DEA agent, stationed in Central America. Celerino "Cele" Castillo witnessed Ollie North's people unloading guns and loading cocaine for the trip North (no pun intended). The testimony also shows why the pukes hate the guy who has the goods on them -- John Kerry.

"Everything I did, I did for my country."

Leavenworth may not be the final destination of such holding the public trust...

CONTRA-INTELLIGENCE
ON OLIVER L. NORTH

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

EXCERPT...

Several years ago, the extreme right arm of the Christian Coalition selected to support Oliver North for U.S. Senate. Their support backfired and North became one of two Republicans who lost the elections that year. During North's campaign, I traveled to the Virginia to educate concern citizens on Oliver North. I went out to "grassroots" communities, and educated them on the criminal activities that Oliver North had been involved in during the 1980s. I went as far as challenging North to a debate. Of course, he refused.

During his failed 1994 campaign, he frequently claimed that there was no basis for any charges of his complicity in drug running, because as he keeps saying, "I'm the most investigated man on this planet." The truth of the matter is that the Iran-Contra special prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh, never investigated the drug trafficking allegations, because he did not consider it part of his mandate. The special prosecutor's original mandate from Congress was defined very narrowly, concentrating on the Iranian arms sales, the "diversion" of funds from the Iranian arms sales to the Contra operation, and on the Contra support operation as a violation of U.S. law.

During all the misdirected hoopla about Iran-Contra, the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee (known as the "Kerry committee") continued its work. Jack Blum, an investigator for Senator Kerry, testified to the committee on Feb. 11, 1987 that the Contras move drugs "not by the pound, not by the bag, but by the ton, by the cargo planeloads."

In 1987, Henry Hyde, as a member of the congressional Iran-contra committee and a defense attorney, helped steer the panel away from any serious investigation of the contra-cocaine connection. His focus was to spare President Ronald Reagan and his vice president, George Bush from possible impeachment over the Iran-contra scandal and related drug crimes implicating the Nicaraguan contra army.

CONTINUED...

... as Traitors deserve worse. For those new to the subject, Rotten.com has an excellent bio with links on "America's Favorite Traitor."

Lt. Col. Oliver North, USMC (Ret

"Ollie" is, without question, America's favorite traitor. He helped the Reagan administration commit a bunch of felonies, then destroyed evidence as fast as he could before the Iran-Contra investigation got into full swing. But people just seem to adore the guy anyway, despite his continual lies and total disregard for the U.S. Constitution.

North once had a job sitting behind a desk in the bowels of Ronald Reagan's White House, working for the National Security Council. As Assistant Deputy Director for Political-Military Affairs, he managed the day-to-day operations of a clandestine agency operating completely outside the law, without any form of oversight whatsoever. According to North's sworn testimony, his primary effort was coordinating covert sales of weapons to the government of Iran, and then funneling those profits to buy weapons for the Contra army in Nicaragua.

The only problem is, those actions were completely illegal. The Boland Amendment banned the U.S. Government from funding the Contras. Ollie claimed that he had only been following orders, but that's bullshit. According to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it is a soldier's duty to disobey illegal orders. (North spent a year in Vietnam. Is it possible that somehow he never heard of the My Lai Massacre?)

But North had the best possible reason to wipe his ass with the American flag: cash money. Ollie was buying his weapons through a business owned by Richard Secord, a retired Air Force Major General. In May of 1996, Secord stuffed $200,000 into a Swiss bank account earmarked for tuition fees for Ollie's children. The previous year, Secord had personally handed over thousands of dollars in cash.

CONTINUED...

DEA AGENTS AGREE: CIA MEANS “COCAINE IMPORTATION AGENCY”

There’s enough evidence to bust George Herbert Walker Bush and the rest of his right-wing stooges under the RICO Act (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act).

http://www.ricoact.com /

Still. Don’t take my word for it. Let’s hear what the brave agents of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) have to say.

Celerino “Cele” Castillo III

Celerino "Cele" Castillo, 3rd
Ex-DEA Agent

May 17, 2005

© Copyright 2005, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com . All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.

For over a century, our government has made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that we have done to other people in third world countries, especially in Latin America. With the creation of the School of the Americas, a breeding ground for assassins, and the death squads, we have become the greatest human rights violators in the world.

We have become the most hated country in the world, not because we practice democracy or value our freedom. We are hated because our government denies these basic principles to these people. The hate has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism, and as they say, once again, "the chickens have come home to roost" with our own homegrown American made terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles.

When I was posted in Central America as a DEA agent I saw Luis Posada and Felix Rodriguez, another American terrorist, at Illopango airport base in El Salvador. Joining them was a CIA asset Venezuelan advisor Victor Rivera. They had become part of what was known as a CIA apparatus that did not have to answer to anyone. They were involved in everything from drug trafficking to kidnapping to the training of the death squads. It was at the height of the Iran-Contra investigation that I had documented these atrocities to my government. I could not understand how our government had assisted in having Posada escape from a Venezuelan prison, and then placed him at Illopango airport as a CIA asset under the new name of Ramon Medina. He was now working hand in hand with then U. S. Lt. Col. Oliver North.

When I asked about Posada's presence at Illopango, I was once again told that it was a covert operation being run by the White House. I started to learn real fast that just about every time I questioned illegal action, I would be told that it was "a covert operation being run by the White House." And as we found out later, my allegations were facts; that became especially clear when, in 1990, President Bush Sr. pardoned another American-made terrorist, Posada's partner in crime: Orlando Bosch. To the degree that the "war on terror" is a response to actual terrorism, that terrorism is retaliation: the U.S. has exported death and violence to the four corners of the Earth with individuals like Posada and Bosch.

Posada admitted to a New York Times reporter that he organized a wave of bombings in Cuba in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist and injured others. However, he is best known as the prime suspect in the bombing of a Cuban Airlines flight in Barbados in October 1976. All 73 crewmembers and passengers including teenaged members of Cuba's national fencing team were killed.

CONTINUED…

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/hall/contra1.html

Additional resources:

http://www.albionmonitor.com/9612a/ciacontra.html

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

www.powderburns.org

Well. Here’s to “Conspiracies In Action.”

Here’s what Michael Levine, DEA had to say about the organization started by Allen Dulles has brought tons of cocaine into the United States of America. Don’t worry, Mr. Conservative. It was at a profit.

Speaking of Capitalism’s Invisible Army:

Michael Levine Interview

by Paul DeRienzo

from THE SH@DOW - box 20298 - NY, NY 10009

Michael Levine is a veteran of 26 years of undercover work for four federal agencies. He is the recipient of many Justice and Treasury Department awards for hi s work undercover, including the International Narcotics Enforcement Officer Association's Octavio Gonzales Award. He is also the subject of Donald Goddard's book Undercover: The Secret Lives of a Federal Agent (Dell, 1990).

Joining the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) after discovering his brother's heroin addiction which eventually killed his brother, Levine was the most successful agent in DEA history. By 1977, he had made 3,000 drug arrests going undercover to set up buy and bust operations against New York City heroin and cocaine dealers. This led to his assignment as DEA station chief in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

By 1989, after having several of his operations stopped by higher ups who allowed his targets to get away, Levine quit the DEA in disgust. Levine then wrote the book Deep Cover (1990, Delacorte Press), describing his experiences that led to his leaving the DEA, exposing the government's phony "War on Drugs".

Levine tells a chilling story of treachery by members of his own agency, and the CIA, men Levine calls the ":suits" who he says use the War on Drugs as a cynical cover for covert foreign policy adventures. Levine says that since he began speaking out against the War on Drugs he has been threatened by high level DEA agents and has been the target of campaigns meant to discredit him.

CONTINUED…

http://www.totse.com/en/conspiracy/institutional_analysis/deajive.html

Additional resources:

http://www.serendipity.li/wod/levine.html

http://www.physicaldream.com/Eyeonsam/Is%20Anyone%20Apologizing%20to%20Gary%20Webb%20by%20Mike%20Levine.htm

So. There we have it. No evidence of conspiracy, as importing cocaine is a matter of national policy.

http://www.serialexperience.com/image_gallery/Lloyd_Bridges.jpg

Well. Hector Berrellez would arrest you if he caught you. He’s another good guy.

Gary Webb

(1955-2005)

EXCERPT…

I had been thinking about looking into the claim that during the civil war in Nicaragua in the eighties, the CIA helped move dope to the United States to buy guns for the contras, who were mounting an insurrection against the leftist Sandinistas. So I called up Hector Berrellez, a guy who worked under Mike Holm in Los Angeles, a guy known within the DEA as its Eliot Ness, and he said, "Look, the CIA is the best in the world. You're not going to beat them; you're never going to get a smoking gun. The best you're going to get is a little story from me."

SNIP…

After a while, the San Jose Mercury News series disappeared except on a few byways of the Internet, Gary Webb was ruined, and things went back to normal. Things like Oliver North's diary entry linking dope and guns for the contras, like Carlos Lehder, a big Colombian drug dealer, testifying as a prosecution witness in federal court during the Noriega trial about the Medellín cartel's $10 million donation to the contras, like the entire history of unseemly connections between the international drug world and the CIA--all this went away, as it has time and time again in the past. A kind of orthodoxy settled over the American press that assumed Webb's work had been thoroughly refuted. He became the Discredited Gary Webb.

SNIP…

HECTOR BERRELLEZ STUMBLED ONTO GARY WEBB'S STORY YEARS before Gary Webb knew a thing about it. ….

In September 1986, Sergeant Tom Gordon of the Los Angeles sheriff's narcotics strike force pieced together intelligence about a big-time drug ring in town run by Danilo Blandón. A month later, on October 23, Gordon went before a judge with a twenty-page detailed statement documenting that "monies gained from the sales of cocaine are transported m Florida and laundered.,.. The monies are filtered to the contra rebels to buy arms in the war in Nicaragua." He got a search warrant for the organization's stash houses. On Friday, October 24, there was a briefing of more than a hundred law-enforcement guys from the sheriff's office, the DEA, the FBI. That was the same day that President Ronald Reagan, after months of hassle, signed a $100 million aid bill that reactivated a licit cash flow to the beleaguered contras. And on Monday, October 27, at daybreak, the strike force simultaneously hit fourteen L. A. area stash houses connected with Blandón.

That's where just another day in the life of Hector Berrellez got weird. Generally, at that early hour, good dopers are out cold; the work tends toward long nights and sleeping in. As Berrellez remembers, "We were expecting to end up with a lot of coke." Instead, they got coffee and sometimes doughnuts. The house he hit had the lights on, and everyone, two men and a woman, was up. The guy who answered the door said, "Good morning; we've been expecting you. Come on in." The house was tidy, the beds were already made, and the damn coffee was on. The three residents were polite, even congenial. "It was obvious," says Berrellez, "that they were told." The place was clean; all fourteen houses were clean. The only thing Berrellez and the other guys found in the house was a professional scale.

But there was a safe, and Berrellez got one of the residents to open it reluctantly. Inside, he found records of kilos matched with amounts of money, an obvious dope ledger, a photograph of a guy in flight dress in front of what looked to be a military jet, and photographs of some guys in combat. Hector asked the guy who the hell the people in the photographs were, and the guy said, "Oh, they are freedom fighters."

CONTINUED…

http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2004/041217_mfe_webb_1.html

Additional resources:

http://www.ckln.fm/~asadismi/whiteout.html

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

And these guys knew Gary Webb, DUers may remember the Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter who was lauded for his groundbreaking series detailing how Contra-connected dealers got the inside track on the dope that eventually created the crack cocaine epidemic. Too bad what the government chose to “crack” down on was honest journalism, as protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Then it was only a matter of time before the rest of the Establishment press corpse piled on. Interesting expression: Kill a few birds with one stone.

Is that something? Three DEA agents who never knew of one another’s existence while they worked together in the federal government. There were united by something else, though. Each, after reporting drug dealing by Contras and other “protected organizations,” were left out to hang.

That’s un-American. Drug dealing to fund illegal wars? Gee. That’s Treason.

What are the names of those involved? We know a few: George Herbert Walker Bush, John Poindexter, Oliver North, Elliott Abrams, John Negroponte, Ted Shackley, to name a few. What's needed is a Grand Jury to investigate the actions of these drug-dealing, warmongering conspirators, for starters.

The CIA, the Contras and Crack Cocaine

The CIA planes brought guns, washing machines, gourmet food, and fancy furniture intto Colombia and took drugs back to the U.S.

by Dennis Bernstein and Robert Knight

One day in the early 1980s, Wanda Palacio watched a Hercules cargo plane roll to a stop on the tarmac of Barranquilla International Airport, located in the Andean foothills just off the azure waters of Colombia's northern coast. According to Palacio, the aircraft bore the markings of Southern Air Transport, a private airline formerly run by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency.

Palacio was in Barranquilla that day with her host, Jorge Luis Ochoa, to arrange a cocaine deal. At the time, Ochoa was known as Colombia's most ambitious drug lord.

As Palacio watched men in green uniforms remove two green military trunks out of the plane and onto a truck -- she would describe this scene later in an 11-page sworn statement to Congress -- her host explained his operation: The plane was a CIA plane, Ochoa told her, and he was "exchanging guns for drugs." The crew, he said, were CIA agents, and "these shipments came each Thursday from the CIA, landing at dusk. Sometimes they brought guns, sometimes they brought U.S. products such as washing machines, gourmet food, fancy furniture or other items for the traffickers which they could not get in Colombia." And each time, Ochoa told Palacio, "they took back drugs."

"Some of the people involved in drug smuggling are present or past agents of the Central Intelligence Agency."

CONTINUED...

http://www.albionmonitor.com/9612a/ciacontra.html

Know your BFEE: Hitler’s Bankers Shaped Vietnam War

2005-08-04T15:07:00.000-07:00

Averell Harriman, (Photo-right) Democrat, former governor of New York, ambassador plenipotentiary and advisor to presidents, one of the wealthiest men in America and the Bush family business patron that helped arm Adolf Hitler and the NAZI Party – THAT Averell Harriman – SAT on a document that would’ve led to peace talks with Vietnam in 1962.

The Boston Globe reported the story last week, but Corporate McPravda has been slow to, um, pass the word.

Papers reveal JFK efforts on Vietnam

By Bryan Bender
Boston Globe Staff
June 6, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Newly uncovered documents from both American and Polish archives show that President John F. Kennedy and the Soviet Union secretly sought ways to find a diplomatic settlement to the war in Vietnam, starting three years before the United States sent combat troops.

Kennedy, relying on his ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith, planned to reach out to the North Vietnamese in April 1962 through a senior Indian diplomat, according to a secret State Department cable that was never dispatched.

SNIP…

A draft cable dated the same day instructed Galbraith to use Desai as a ''channel discreetly communicating to responsible leaders North Vietnamese regime . . . the president's position as he indicated it."

But a week later, Harriman met with Kennedy and apparently persuaded him to delay, according to other documents, and the overture was never revived.

SNIP…

At the urging of Nehru, Galbraith met with the Polish foreign minister, Adam Rapacki, in New Delhi on Jan. 21, 1963, where Galbraith expressed Kennedy's likely interest in a Polish proposal for a cease-fire and new elections in South Vietnam. There is no evidence of further discussions between the two diplomats. Rapacki returned to Warsaw a day later. Galbraith wrote in his memoirs that it was not followed up.

CONTINUED, MUST READ COPY DISTRIBUTE WIDE AS POSSIBLE, PLEASE…

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/06/papers_reveal_jfk_efforts_on_vietnam/?page=1

Harriman also played a key role in turning the removal of Diem from office into the assassination of Diem.

Here's what the press corpse missed regarding Averell (Along with Jackson "BCCI" Stephens, my widow helped finance the Arkansas fellow's campaign) Harriman's involvement in Vietnam.

Who changed the coup into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest?

From The Secret History of the CIA by Joseph Trento:

EXCERPT…

Who changed the coup into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest accompanying them? To this day, nothing has been found in government archives tying the killings to either John or Robert Kennedy. So how did the tools and talents developed by Bill Harvey for ZR/RIFLE and Operation MONGOOSE get exported to Vietnam? Kennedy immediately ordered (William R.) Corson to find out what had happened and who was responsible. The answer he came up with: “On instructions from Averell Harriman…. The orders that ended in the deaths of Diem and his brother originated with Harriman and were carried out by Henry Cabot Lodge’s own military assistant.”

Having served as ambassador to Moscow and governor of New York, W. Averell Harriman was in the middle of a long public career. In 1960, President-elect Kennedy appointed him ambassador-at-large, to operate “with the full confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy.” By 1963, according to Corson, Harriman was running “Vietnam without consulting the president or the attorney general.”

The president had begun to suspect that not everyone on his national security team was loyal. As Corson put it, “Kenny O’Donnell (JFK’s appointments secretary) was convinced that McGeorge Bundy, the national security advisor, was taking orders from Ambassador Averell Harriman and not the president. He was especially worried about Michael Forrestal, a young man on the White House staff who handled liaison on Vietnam with Harriman.”

At the heart of the murders was the sudden and strange recall of Sagon Station Chief Jocko Richardson and his replacement by a no-name team barely known to history. The key member was a Special Operations Army officer, John Michael Dunn, who took his orders, not from the normal CIA hierarchy but from Harriman and Forrestal.

According to Corson, “John Michael Dunn was known to be in touch with the coup plotters,” although Dunn’s role has never been made public. Corson believes that Richardson was removed so that Dunn, assigned to Ambassador Lodtge for “special operations,” could act without hindrance.

SOURCE:

“The Secret History of the CIA.” Joseph Trento. 2001, Prima Publishing. pp. 334-335.

For years, Nixon and the Reich wing tried pinning the Diem assassination on JFK. E Howard Hunt even planted phony cables so stating in his White House safe.

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/ehhunt.gif

What purpose could these serve, other than to blacken the Kennedy name? Try obscuring the trail of President Kennedy's assassins.

The Pentagon Papers

EXCERPT…

One of the most important narratives of this event was written by Edward G. Lansdale in his autobiography In the Midst of Wars. Few Americans, if any, knew Ngo Dinh Diem and the situation in Vietnam from 1954-68 better than Ed Lansdale. He wrote:

As the prisons filled up with political opponents, as the older nationalist parties went underground, with the body politics fractured, Communist political cadre became active throughout South Vietnam, recruiting followers for action against a government held together mainly by the Can Lao elite rather than by popular support. The reaped whirlwind finally arrived in November 1963, when the nationalist opposition erupted violently, imprisoning many of the Can Loa and killing Diem, Nhu, and others. It was heartbreaking to be an onlooker to this tragic bit of history.

It was some time before the news became known that Diem had fled to Cholon and been captured and killed there. This news was flashed around the world; this was the story that everyone heard. The public never heard of the planned flight to Europe that the Kennedy administration had arranged for him.

Thus it was that the file of routine cable traffic between Washington and Saigon eventually became known with the release and publication of the Pentagon Papers. This is how it happened that Howard Hunt was able to locate certain top-level messages to and from the White House and Ambassador Lodge in Saigon that contained information referring to "highest authority"--the cable traffic code for President Kennedy.

None of these messages contained any reference to a plot to kill President Diem and his brother or came even close to it. Concealed within these messages were carefully worded phrases that gave Ambassador Lodge the information he needed in order to direct all participants into action and to begin the careful removal of the two brothers to Europe by commercial aircraft.

According to information that came out during the Watergate hearings, those files that had been forged to smear President Kennedy were put in Hunt's White House safe, where they remained until discovered by investigators later.

SNIP…

There is much about this episode that has become important upon review. There are those who have been so violently opposed to Jack Kennedy and all that he stood for that they have stooped to all kinds of sordid activities to smear him while he was alive, to attack his brother Bobby while he was still alive, and to hound Sen. Edward Kennedy to this day. Nixon's gratuitous reference to Kennedy's "complicity in the murder of Diem" after a decade of silence on that subject speaks for itself. The efforts of Howard Hunt and Chuck Colson (both employees of the White House at the time) to dig up old files in order to besmirch the memory of President Kennedy provide another example.

SNIP…

http://www.maebrussell.com/Articles%20and%20Notes/Pentagon%20Papers.html

They are traitors and war mongers, this BFEE.

Know your BFEE: Nixon Threatened to NUKE Vietnam

2005-06-27T13:27:00.000-07:00

In the process, Nixon almost got planet earth nuked.

It wasn’t completely the crook’s fault, though.

Ya see, the Soviets were having a border dispute with Red China and they were getting ready for war....

The short version:

In 1969, after a half a year as president (and with no real peace plan he had told the nation he had to get elected), Richard M. Nixon wanted to drive the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table.

So, Tricky Dick ordered Henry Kissinger to spread the word among the North Vietnamese that he, Richard Milhous Nixon, was a “madman.” To “pretend” the president was crazy, Nixon ordered the Air Force on nuclear alert.

To Nixon, acting like a rightwing nutjob was just his way to make a point. Unfortunately, while the Ho Chi Minh and the government of North Vietnam thought he was seriously coo-coo, the Soviets could’ve thought otherwise.

At that very moment, the Soviets had problems – and plans – of their own. Locked in a border dispute with China, the Russian commies were preparing to nuke China first.

Imagine what would happen if the Soviets thought all the U.S. bombers in the air were meant for THEM?

Wonder if some comrade colonel would’ve said, “Gee. We’re gonna get hit. We better hit first.” And pressed the button.

As the Mean Drunk Cheney would say, “That’d be a real bummer.”

The Long Version

For his catalyst, Tricky Dick told Henry Kissinger to spread the word amongst the North Vietnamese that he, Richard Milhous Nixon, was certifiably insane and was so hopping mad he was itching to push the button.

Nixon's Madman Strategy

by James Carroll
The Boston Globe
June 14, 2005

"I call it the madman theory, Bob," Richard Nixon said to Robert Haldeman. With the recent revelation of the identity of ''Deep Throat," the nation's memory has been cast back to the Watergate crisis, which began with a burglary 33 years ago this week. Nixon is remembered as having threatened the US Constitution, but his presidency represented a far graver threat than that. Various published tapes have put on display his vulgarity, pettiness, and prejudice and his regular drunkenness. But what has generated insufficient alarm is Nixon's insane flirtation with the actual use of nuclear weapons.

''I want the North Vietnamese to believe," he went on, ''that I've reached the point that I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry, and he has his hand on the nuclear button, and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace." Six months into his presidency, Nixon's frustration with Hanoi's refusal to budge in its demands at the Paris peace talks was extreme, and he put his madman ploy into gear. For this account, I depend on the political scientists Scott D. Sagan and Jeremi Suir, whose 2003 article in the journal International Security brought the incident to light.

CONTINUED…

So to “pretend” the president was crazy, Nixon ordered Operation GIANT LANCE. SAC stood down training missions and sent up nuclear-armed alert missions. Nice way to make a point, hah?

From Oct. 10, 1969, through the rest of the month the US military was ordered to full global war readiness alert, without any provocation, and with no explanation to US commanders as to the alert's purpose. Nuclear armed fighter planes were dispersed to civilian airports, missile countdown procedures were initiated, missile-bearing submarines were dispersed, long-range bombers were launched, targeting was begun. On Oct. 27, in the climactic action designed to make it seem the madman was loose, the Strategic Air Command was ordered to dispatch B-52 bombers, loaded with thermonuclear weapons, toward the Soviet Union. Eighteen of the bombers took off from bases in the United States in an operation named Giant Lance. ''The bombers crossed Alaska," Sagan and Suri wrote, ''were refueled in midair by KC-135 tanker aircraft, and then flew in oval patterns toward the Soviet Union and back, on 18-hour vigils over the northern polar ice cap." The ominous flight of these H-bombers to, and then at, the edge of Soviet territory continued for three days. This was all done in total secrecy -- not from the Soviets, of course, since they knew quite well what was happening, but from the American people.

Unbeknownst to Nixon, his ''madman" gamble coincided with a border dispute simmering just then between China and the Soviet Union. The two communist rivals were themselves approaching war footing, and Moscow already had reasons to be wary of America's tilt toward Beijing. Thus, when signals of an American nuclear countdown were picked up, Moscow would have had every reason to assume that the United States was preparing to attack in support of Beijing, perhaps launching a preemption of Moscow's own contemplated attack against China. The Soviets could have seen the American threat not as ''irrational," as Nixon intended, but as consistent with a reasonable strategic purpose.

As if such accidental complications were not unsettling enough, as Sagan and Suir point out, the entire ''madman theory" of coercion was flawed in its essence, depending as it did on twisted logic that assumed an adversary would respond to a calculated show of irrationality with something other than irrationality of its own. Presumably, Nixon wanted a frightened Moscow to convince a frightened Hanoi to change its behavior in Paris as a way of heading off Washington's insanity. Rational Russians would save the world from crazy Americans. Come again?

CONTINUED…

Some more details and links

The madman nuclear alert: secrecy, signaling, and safety in October 1969 Scott D Sagan & Jeremi Suri International Security

On 27 Oct 1969, President Nixon ordered a nuclear alert codenamed GIANT LANCE, which was carefully concealed from the US public and from US allies, but was intended to frighten Vietnam and the USSR into to agreeing to end the Vietnam War. "This article has four parts. First, we briefly discuss the historiography and alternative explanations that exist about the October 1969 alert. Second, the body of the article is an analytical narrative, not only showing what happened but also demonstrating the different motives of various actors and the outcome that their interaction eventually produced. Third, we discuss nuclear safety problems and crisis diplomacy counterfactuals that provide a sense of the risks involved in the nuclear alert. Finally, the article concludes with observations about the significance of the October 1969 alert for understanding the role of nuclear weapons today. The fact that Richard Nixon placed US nuclear forces on a high state of alert to support his madman theory has major implications for how scholars and practitioners should think about democratic control of nuclear weapons. It also has important implications for how they should think about the consequences of nuclear proliferation" (p155).

Sagan is professor of political science and co-director of the Center for International Security and Co-operation (CISAC), Stanford University; Suri is assistant professor of history, University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Source

PDF of above.

And a little more detail.

Nixon's nuclear ploy

Richard Nixon thought a secret, worldwide nuclear alert would remain unknown to the American public, and he was right. But his strategy--to threaten the Soviets into helping bring an end to the Vietnam war--was unsuccessful. They may not even have noticed.

By William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball

January/February 2003 pp. 28-37, 72-73 (vol. 59, no. 1 © 2003 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

EXCERPT…

"Going for broke"

Nixon wrote in his post-war memoirs that he emerged from a July 7 meeting with Kissinger on the presidential yacht Sequoia intending to "'go for broke' in the sense that I would attempt to end the war one way or the other--either by negotiated agreement or by an increased use of force." He could either escalate the war to force a favorable negotiated agreement or he could accelerate the withdrawal and do what was necessary to protect American forces while they were leaving. In either case, he said, "We'll bomb the bastards."

SNIP…

Kissinger flew to Paris, where he held his first secret meeting with the North Vietnamese, during which he reminded Xuan Thuy of the letter to Ho. At another meeting on the same day, he told French Foreign Ministry officials that "it was important that [the United States] not be confounded by a fifth-rate agricultural power."

SNIP…

On August 30, Nixon received Ho Chi Minh's reply to his July 15 letter. Ho rejected Nixon's negotiating terms, put forward his own plan for a negotiated solution to the war, and brushed aside Nixon's threats.

His warnings having failed to intimidate either Hanoi or Moscow, Nixon knew that he would soon have to make a decision about which alternative to pursue--military escalation or accelerated Vietnamization.

SNIP…

Later in October, Kissinger reminded Nixon that in a forthcoming meeting with Dobrynin, [i]"your basic purpose[/i] will be to keep the Soviets concerned about what we might do around November 1" and also to "make clear that . . . unless there is real progress in Vietnam, U.S.-Soviet relations will continue to be adversely affected."

CONTINUED…

So, what’s this got to do with the price of beef today? Well, Nixon’s boss’s son, Poppy, has his own spawn occupyin’ the Oval Office. And Smirko wants to update “tactical” nukes for his own war on whatever. Now that’s crazy.

US seeks tactical nukes

By Steve Schifferes
BBC News Online in Washington

Even as the US Senate approved a new nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia, the Pentagon was asking Congress for authority to develop a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons.

The US military believes that the new tactical nuclear weapons are essential to meet to threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and says they could be used against chemical or biological weapons facilities and nuclear bunkers buried deep underground.

But arms controls advocates say that the plans could undermine US efforts to limit nuclear proliferation at a time when North Korea, among others, seems intent on developing nuclear weapons.

"I don't see how we can look all the nuclear wannabes in the face... when we are going to now launch ourselves into a whole series of new weapons," said Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, a member of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.

The new weapons under consideration include low-yield tactical nuclear weapons, which were banned by Congress in 1993, and a "robust nuclear earth penetrator", designed to bury deep into the ground before exploding.

CONTINUED…

It’s almost ironic. Nixon pretended to be a “madman.” Even if it was the only time he told the truth as president, he'd be doing better than Poppy and Smirko ever did.

Original DU Thread

Know your BFEE: Corrupt Craftsmen Hoover and Dulles

2005-06-23T04:07:00.000-07:00

Two big stone turds in their cesspool for a foundation are not individuals, butinstitutions: The FBI. The CIA.

Both were patterned on the lives of individuals -- J Edgar Hoover and AllenDulles, disrespectfully. These two men, IMFO, established, not the original institution, but their own perverted vision for a mobbed-up blackmail corps and a fascist-protecting secret police.

Most unfortunately for us today: Both corrupted sufficient numbers of men that today their organization's maintain their original disgusting images, degenerate ideology and corroded souls - as ghoulish as any who have ever lived.

Identify this spawn of the BFEE*

J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) FBI Director

Organized crime, the American Mafia and the national crime syndicate were chartered in the 1920s, concurrent with the establishment of J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation. Both groups - according to former FBI agent Neil J. Welch and ex-U.S. attorney David W. Marston, in their book Inside Hoover's FBI - matured in the 1930s. "Although they were presumptive enemies," the authors suggest, "during their first four decades they competed primarily for newspaper space."

J. Edgar Hoover was the best FBI director organized crime could ever have wanted; it was difficult for syndicate members to be antagonized by a law enforcement official who claimed neither organized crime nor a Mafia existed in
the United States. Without a man like Hoover heading the FBI it is inconceivable that organized crime and the Mafia could ever have reached the heights of power, wealth and administrative organization.

Prohibition gave new life to the criminal gangs of an earlier era that had started to collapse just prior to World War I. Bootlegging brought about the reconstruction of the gangs.' Suddenly they became so wealthy and powerful
that, instead of being the puppets of the political machines, they pulled the strings. Illiterate punks became the great robber barons of the 20th century, and it was these men who provided the muscle to create organized crime in America (in its truest meaning of a syndicate with interlocking relationships with other mobs around the country).

SNIP…

In place of fighting organized crime, Hoover lay special emphasis on relatively easy targets, with a highly publicized war on so-called public enemies - Dillinger, Ma Barker (who never was charged with any crime), Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly (who never fired his gun at anyone in anger) and other targets more easily hit than the Mafia. "The whole of the FBI's main thrust," said Sullivan, "was not investigation but public relations and propaganda to glorify its director."

CONTINUED…

The FBI didn't care for Black American's Civil Rights in 1963, nor for their White supporters. How do they treat Liberals today?

Mississippi & Freedom Summer

"This is Mississippi, the middle of the iceberg." -- Bob Moses

EXCERPT…

Other protests by blacks were met with violence. At sit-ins which began on May 28, 1963, participants were sprayed with paint and had pepper thrown in their eyes. Students who sang movement songs during lunch after the bombing of NAACP field director Medgar Evers' home were beaten. Evers himself was the most visible target for violence. He was a native of Mississippi and World War II veteran who was greeted by a mob of gun-wielding whites when he attempted to register after the war in his hometown of Decatur. He later said, "We fought during the war for America, Mississippi included. Now, after the Germans and Japanese hadn't killed us, it looked as though the white Mississippians would."After he was denied admission to the University of Mississippi law school, he went to work for the NAACP. By 1963, Evers was aware that, in the words of his wife Myrlie Evers, . . . Medgar was a target because he was the leader. The whole mood of white Mississippi was that if Medgar Evers were eliminated, the problem would be solved. . . . And we came to realize, in those last few days, last few months, that our time was short; it was simply in the air. You knew that something was going to happen, and the logical person for it to happen to was Medgar.
At an NAACP rally on June 7, Medgar Evers told the crowd, "Freedom has never been free . . . I love my children and I love my wife with all my heart. And I would die, and die gladly, if that would make a better life for them." [44] Five days later, he was shot and killed as he returned home around midnight. Byron de la Beckwith, a member of the Citizens' Council, was arrested for Evers' murder, but he was set free after two trials ended in hung juries. He later ran for lieutenant governor.

SNIP…

On June 21, the day after the first 200 recruits left for Mississippi from Ohio, three workers, including one volunteer, disappeared. Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney had been taken to jail for speeding charges but were later released. What happened next is not known. Local police were called when the men failed to perform a required check-in with Freedom Summer headquarters, but Sheriff Lawrence Rainey was convinced the men were hiding to gain publicity. The FBI did not get involved for a full day. During the search for the missing workers, the FBI uncovered the bodies of three lynched blacks who had been missing for some time. The black community noted wryly that these murders received nowhere near the same nationwide media attention as the murders of the three workers, two of whom were white.

CONTINUED…

Of course, the FBI sat on evidence for the above that would've led to evidentiary trail to the klan and the conservative monied turds of the South. Big Oily turds, like Hoover's friends, some of whom were friends with Allen Dulles.

Allen Dulles, the NAZIs, and the CIA
Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg once stated that "The Dulles brothers were traitors." Some historians believe that Allen Dulles became head of the newly formed CIA in large part to cover up his treasonous behavior and that of his clients.
-- Christian Dewar, Making a Killing

Just before his death, James Jesus Angleton, the legendary chief of counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency, was a bitter man. He felt betrayed by the people he had worked for all his life. In the end, he had come to realize that they were never really interested in American ideals of "freedom" and "democracy." They really only wanted "absolute power." Angleton told author Joseph Trento that the reason he had gotten the counterintelligence job in the first place was by agreeing not to submit "sixty of Allen Dulles' closest friends" to a polygraph test concerning their business deals with the Nazis. In his end-of-life despair, Angleton assumed that he would see all his old companions again "in hell."

-- Michael Hasty, Paranoid Shift

EXCERPT…

Allen Welsh Dulles was born to privilege and a tradition of public service. He was the grandson of one secretary of state and the nephew of another. But by the time he graduated from Princeton in 1914, the robber baron era of American history was coming to an an end, ushered out by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act -- which had been used in 1911 to break up Standard Oil -- and by the institution of the progressive income tax in 1913. The ruling elite was starting to view government less as their own private preserve and more as an unwanted intrusion on their ability to conduct business as usual. That shift of loyalties in itself may account for many of the paradoxical aspects of Dulles's career. Dulles entered the diplomatic service after college and served as a State Department delegate to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which brought a formal end to World War I. The Versailles Treaty which came out of this conference included a provision making it illegal to sell arms to Germany. This displeased the powerful DuPont family, and they put pressure on the delegates to allow them to opt out. It was Allen Dulles who finally gave them the assurances they wanted that their transactions with Germany would be "winked at."

Dulles remained a diplomat through the early 1920's, spending part of that time in Berlin. However, he left government service in 1926 for the greener pastures of private business, becoming a Wall Street lawyer with the same firm as his older brother, John Foster Dulles.
By the middle 20's, Germany had started recovering from the effects of the war and its postwar economic collapse, and the great German industrial firms were looking like attractive investment opportunities for wealthy Americans. W.A. Harriman & Co., formed in 1919 by Averell Harriman (son of railroad baron E.H. Hariman) and George Herbert Walker, had led the way in directing American money to German companies and had opened a Berlin branch as early as 1922, when Germany was still in chaos. At that time, Averell Harriman traveled to Europe and made contact with the powerful Thyssen family of steel magnates. It was to be a long-lasting and fateful partnership.

CONTINUED…

Of course, he went on to become a most powerful sub-stooge of the nation and planet's superwealthiest people.

Nazis in the attic, part 6

By Randy Davis

GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH

...Like Nixon, George Bush was deeply involved with supporting the Nazis in the Republican's closet. In fact, support for the Nazis was a Bush family tradition which goes back more than six decades and, once again, to Allen Dulles. Loftus and Aarons write: "The real story of George Bush starts well before he launched his own career. It goes back to the 1920s, when the Dulles brothers and the other pirates of Wall Street were making their deals with the Nazis. . . ."

THE BUSH-DULLES-NAZI CONNECTION

SNIP…

"Sullivan & Cromwell was not the only firm engaged in funding Germany. According to 'The Splendid Blond Beast,' Christopher Simpson's seminal history of the politics of genocide and profit, Brown Brothers, Harriman was another bank that specialized in investments in Germany. The key figure was Averill Harriman, a dominating figure in the American establishment. . . .

"The firm originally was known as W. A. Harriman & Company. The link between Harriman & Company's American investors and Thyssen started in the 1920s, through the Union Banking Corporation, which began trading in 1924. In just one three-year period, the Harriman firm sold more than $50 million of German bonds to American investors. 'Bert' Walker was Union Banking's president, and the firm was located in the offices of Averill Harriman's company at 39 Broadway in New York.

"In 1926 Bert Walker did a favor for his new son-in-law, Prescott Bush. It was the sort of favor families do to help their children make a start in life, but Prescott came to regret it bitterly. Walker made Prescott vice president of W. A. Harriman. The problem was that Walker's specialty was companies that traded with Germany. As Thyssen and the other German industrialists consolidated Hitler's political power in the 1930s, an American financial connection was needed. According to our sources, Union Banking became an out-and-out Nazi money-laundering machine. . . .

SNIP…

". . . In a November 1935 article in Common Sense, retired marine general Smedley D. Butler blamed Brown Brothers, Harriman for having the U.S. marines act like 'racketeers' and 'gangsters' in order to exploit financially the peasants of Nicaragua. . . .

CONTINUED…

So. That's a little bit of why I say these two Orgs (there's that "word," again!) are as dirty as the turds that spawned them. The same gene pool gave us Adolf Hilter and the current crazy monkey.

Use your gut instinct as to who's whizzing around aboard a bumper car. Pretty
darn symbolic. Or would that be ominous?

Read the discussion at Democratic Underground with more material.

Know your BFEE: Dope Dealers & Money Launderers

2005-06-20T13:15:00.000-07:00

Ask: Why is dope illegal?
Answer: There’s more money in it.
Wonder: Who benefits most?

The CIA & Drugs: Narco Colonialism in the 20th Century,
EXCERPT...

"For decades, the CIA, the Pentagon, and secret organizations like Oliver North's Enterprise have been supporting and protecting the world's biggest drug dealers.... The Contras and some of their Central American allies ... have been documented by DEA as supplying ... at least 50 percent of our national cocaine consumption. They were the main conduit to the United States for Colombian cocaine during the 1980's. The rest of the drug supply ... came from other CIA-supported groups, such as DFS (the Mexican CIA) ... other groups and/or individuals like Manual Noriega." (Ex-DEA agent Michael Levine: The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic)

Former Congessional Investigator Jack Blum, on the structure of CIA narco-colonialism:

"For criminal organizations, participating in covert operations offers much more than money. They may get a voice in selecting the new government. They may get a government that owes them for help in coming to power. They may be able to use their connections with the United States government to enhance their political power at home and towave off the efforts of the American law enforcement community."(Prepared October 1996 statement of Jack Blum (former special counsel to the 1987 "Kerry" Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations) for the October 1996 Senate Select Intelligence Committee on alleged CIA drug trafficking to fund Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, Chaired by Senator Arlen Specter)

"We also became aware of deep connections between the law-enforcement community and the intelligence community. I, personally, repeatedly heard from prosecutors and people in the law-enforcement world that CIA agents were required to sit in on the debriefing of various people who were being questioned about the drug trade. They were required to be present when witnesses were being prepped for certain drug trials. At various times the intelligence community inserted itself in that legal process. I believe that that was an impropriety; that that should not have occurred."(Jack Blum, speaking before the October 1996 Senate Select Intelligence Committee on alleged CIA drug trafficking to fund Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, Chaired by Senator Arlen Specter).

"In my 30-year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA." --Dennis Dayle, former chief of an elite DEA enforcement unit. FROM: Peter Dale Scott & Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, Berkeley: U. of CA Press, 1991, pp. x-xi.

Taken alone, one CIA drug ring, that of Rafael Caro Quintero and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo (two Contra supporters based in Guadalajara, Mexico) were known by DEA to be smuggling four tons A MONTH into the U.S. during the early Contra war. Other operations including Manuel Noriega (a CIA asset, strongman leader of Panama), John Hull (ranch owner and CIA asset, Costa Rica), Felix Rodriguez (Contra supporter, El Salvador), Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros (Honduran Military, Contra supporter, Honduras) along with other elements of the Guatemalan and Honduran military. Cumulatively, the aforementioned CIA assets were concurrently trafficking close totwo hundred tons a year or close to 70% of total U.S. consumption. All of these CIA assets have been ascertained as being connected to CIA via public documentation and testimony. -- from the outline section of this web site.

CONTINUED WITH LINKS N' SOURCES N' BFEE (SECRET GOVERNMENT) CONSPIRACY STUFF...

“I was authorized to do everything I did.”

From Esquire:
Two years ago, Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that said some bad things about the CIA. The CIA denied the charges, and every major paper in the country took the agency's word for it. Gary was ruined. Which is a shame, because he was right.

Cocaine Importation Agency
Gary Webb, 1955-2004

EXCERPT…

HECTOR BERRELLEZ STUMBLED ONTO GARY WEBB'S STORY YEARS before Gary Webb knew a thing about it. His journey into that world happened this way: Hector was not fond of cops. He remembered them slapping him around when he was a kid. He was a barrio boy from South Tucson, a square mile of poverty embedded in the booming Sun Belt city. His father was a Mexican immigrant. After being drafted into the Army in the late sixties, Berrellez couldn't find a job in the copper mines, so he hooked up as a temporary with the small South Tucson police force to finance his way through college. And it was then that Hector Berrellez accidentally discovered his jones: He loved working the streets with a badge. The state police force hired him, and Hector, still green, managed to do a one-kilo heroin deal in the early seventies, a major score for the time. The DEA snapped him up, and suddenly the kid who had wanted to flee the barrio and become a lawyer was a federal narc. He loved the life.

SNIP…

In September 1986, Sergeant Tom Gordon of the Los Angeles sheriff's narcotics strike force pieced together intelligence about a big-time drug ring in town run by Danilo Blandón. A month later, on October 23, Gordon went before a judge with a twenty- page detailed statement documenting that "monies gained from the sales of cocaine are transported m Florida and laundered.,.. The monies are filtered to the contra rebels to buy arms in the war in Nicaragua." He got a search warrant for the organization's stash houses. On Friday, October 24, there was a briefing of more than a hundred law-enforcement guys from the sheriff's office, the DEA, the FBI. That was the same day that President Ronald Reagan, after months of hassle, signed a $100 million aid bill that reactivated a licit cash flow to the beleaguered contras. And on Monday, October 27, at daybreak, the strike force simultaneously hit fourteen L. A. area stash houses connected with Blandón.

That's where just another day in the life of Hector Berrellez got weird. Generally, at that early hour, good dopers are out cold; the work tends toward long nights and sleeping in. As Berrellez remembers, "We were expecting to end up with a lot of coke." Instead, they got coffee and sometimes doughnuts. The house he hit had the lights on, and everyone, two men and a woman, was up. The guy who answered the door said, "Good morning; we've been expecting you. Come on in." The house was tidy, the beds were already made, and the damn coffee was on. The three residents were polite, even congenial. "It was obvious," says Berrellez, "that they were told." The place was clean; all fourteen houses were clean. The only thing Berrellez and the other guys found in the house was a professional scale.

But there was a safe, and Berrellez got one of the residents to open it reluctantly. Inside, he found records of kilos matched with amounts of money, an obvious dope ledger, a photograph of a guy in flight dress in front of what looked to be a military jet, and photographs of some guys in combat. Hector asked the guy who the hell the people in the photographs were, and the guy said, "Oh, they are freedom fighters."

What the hell is this? Berrellez wondered. He left and went to a couple of the other houses that had been hit, and, Jesus, they were clean, the coffee was on, sometimes there were some doughnuts for the cops, and the same kind of documents showed up. But no dope, not a damn thing.

For a holy warrior, October 27, 1986, was a bad day. At the debriefing after the raid, Berrellez remembers one of the cops saying that the houses had been tipped to the raid by "elements of the CIA." And he thought, What? "I was shocked," he says now. "I was in a state of disbelief." He was supposed to believe that his own government was helping dopers? No way. "I didn't want to believe, he says.

CONTINUED here…

Then there’s the business of banking. The biggest problem faced by these NAZI-Mafia-CIA gangsters is where to stash the cash.

So they got into banking. (And investing. And nuclear proliferation, thanks to Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, B.F.E.E. and BCCI, but those are other stories.)

Sightings from The Catbird Seat

From The Outlaw Bank, by Jonathan Beaty & S.C. Gwynne:

THE DEVIL'S PAYMASTER

"Mr. Bond, power is sovereignty. Clausewitz's first principle was to have a secure base. From there proceeds freedom of action. Together, that is sovereignty. I have secured these things and much besides. . . . These things can only be secured in privacy. You talk of kings and presidents. How much power do they possess? As much as their people will allow them . . . And how do I possess that power, that sovereignty? Through privacy. Through the fact that nobody knows. Through the fact that I have to account to no one."

- Ian Fleming, Dr. No

Dr. No, the island monarch with thin, cruel lips and immost designs on the fate of the Western world, would have been fascinated by the scandal that blossomed around the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in the summer of 1991. It was a conspiratorialist's conspiracy, a plot so byzantine, so thoroughly corrupt, so exquisitely private, reaching so deeply into the political and intelligence establishments of so many countries, that it seemed to have its only precedent in the more hallucinogenic fiction of Ian Fleming, Kurt Vonnegut, or Thomas Pynchon.

As tales of its global predations were spattered across headlines all over the world, its apparent influence reached almost absurd proportions. This was a bank that had taken the popular notion of a "global electronic village" and made a mockery of it, a bank that was at once everywhere and nowhere, whose dirtiest secrets were hidden deep in the impossible tangles of its offshore networks.

BCCI suddenly bloomed as sort of supermetaphor for the 1980s, the decade that celebrated the likes of Robert Maxwell, Ivan Boesky, and Michael Milken and unleashed upon the United States a horde of freebooters in the banking and thrift business. But nothing in the history of financial scandals even approaches the $20-billion-plus heist at BCCI, which sixty-two countries shuttered forever in July 1991 in a paroxysm of regulatory vengeance. No single scandal had ever involved such vast amounts of money.

Superlatives were quickly exhausted. BCCI was the largest criminal corporate enterprise ever, the biggest Ponzi scheme, the most pervasive money-laundering operation in history, the only bank - so far as anyone knows - that ran a brisk sideline business in both conventional and nuclear weapons, gold, drugs, turnkey mercenary armies, intelligence and counterintelligence, shipping, and commodities from cement in the Middle East to Honduran coffee to Vietnamese beans.

Though it was fundamentally a financial fraud, BCCI itself was not a bank in any conventional sense. Or, more precisely, banking was only a part of the global organism, the ingeniously constructed platform from which its other lines of business were launched....

This "bank" possessed its very own diplomatic corps, intelligence network, and private army, its own shipping and commodities trading companies. And BCCI itself was so thoroughly enmeshed in the official affairs of Pakistan that it was often impossible to separate the two.

BCCI was bigger even than that: It was the unsettling next-stage evolution of the multinational corporation, the one the theorists had been predicting for years but which never seemed to be able to shed its sovereign boundaries. (General Motors and Mitsubishi are both good examples of this - huge companies with holdings and operations all over the world that nonetheless persist in being fundamentally American and Japanese entities.) In taking that step, BCCI became truly stateless and very nearly invisible to the authorities in each country where it did business.

Source.

What Kerry found and the DEMs and GOPers buried:
Check out the summary. We wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in today if we’d prosecuted the treason then. The reason why we didn’t, I bet, is the Mafia that is our secret government.

Mehr licht:
Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

By Joseph Kay
24 August 2004

The Justice Department announced on Friday that it is launching a criminal investigation into Riggs Bank. In recent months, the Washington-based bank has become engulfed in a scandal related to charges of money-laundering, corruption and terrorist financing.

Riggs, which touts itself as “the most important bank in the most important city in the world,” has been known for decades as the bank of the Washington elite, including politicians, foreign ambassadors and the wealthy. It has held presidential accounts stretching back to the time of the Civil War, and is a prominent fixture in the political and social establishment of the nation’s capital.

Or rather, it was a prominent fixture. In July, PNL Financial Services agreed to buy Riggs for $779 million. The sale will become final by early next year.

The bank’s prominent embassy and international operations will be shut down in an attempt to bury a scandal that has the potential of becoming much larger. That an institution like Riggs could so quickly disintegrate is an indication of the extent of the corruption that has overtaken American finance and government.

There are three separate activities for which Riggs has come under investigation: (1) its relationship with the Saudi royal family and the potential financing of two of the September 11 hijackers through an account owned by the wife of the Saudi ambassador; (2) its relationship with the corrupt and dictatorial regime of the oil-rich West African country of Equatorial Guinea; and (3) its banking business with the former military dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet.

CONTINUED…

Know your BFEE: War Profiteers

2005-06-14T14:04:00.000-07:00

"George Bush is a satanic, sadistic, brutal monster. Compared to George Bush, Adolf Hitler was a true gentleman."
- Michael Boren Williams, former Campaign Manager for Senator Gary Hart and Bush murder attempt victim

Beware the Bush Family Evil Empire. Despite what their fine PR agencies say about a “culture of life,” these people make money off of death. It’s nothing personal – it’s strictly business. In World War I, a Bush was head of the Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition section of the War Industries Board. GOOGLE SAMUEL-PRESCOTT-BUSH for more.

The Bush Empire, by Charles
Shaw

Of course, these predecessors of what today is termed the BFEE – the owners and operators of the Global Military-Intelligence- Industrial-Financial Complex – helped bring about World War II by helping arm
Hitler: The Bush Family Connections to the
Nazis.

During Vietnam, the nation’s military industrial complex helped heat up the Cold War, all around the world. From…Africa.

The Angolan Civil War and U.S. Policy

Team B: The Trillion Dollar Experiment. During the Cold War, they backed Team B and those intelligence analysts who called the Soviet Union a colossus ready to destroy America, even when knowing the USSR was bankrupt and corrupt.

Reflections on the GAO Triad Report on the Nuclear
Triad.

The crisis in Washington: what history tells us

Gave green light to Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait, then declared war on the guy, even though he said he'd withdraw from
Kuwait: Excerpts From Iraqi Document on Meeting with U.S. Envoy

BFEE-linked turds like Richard "PNAC" Perle are friends with Iran-Contra/October Surprise Action Figure Adnan Khashoggi (who even turns up in Selection 2000, but that's another
story): Lunch with the Chairman

BFEE, likewise, has its mits in money to be made off of the Iraq war. The little turd from Crawford had the gall to warn other countries off of the idea of making money off rebuilding and looting Iraq: “If you don’t send troops, you can’t expect to do
bidniss.” Nader: Bush family profited from Iraq War

The Smoking Gun? Oil in Iraq as a Motive for War.

Now where does that leave us today? The BFEE really are – not the nation’s super-wealthy – but the world’s super-wealthy: The Military-Industrial Complex, Wall Street, the Petro-States, the NAZIs, the Mafia, Drugs, Inc., and assorted scum who give satan worshippers a bad name, the BFEE really don’t care what happens to the world and its people, as long as they got
theirs. A Government of Thieves

George Herbert Walker Bush: Evil Incarnate, by VOXFUX.COM

Ever hear of the Carlyle Group? The Bushes and the bin Ladens BANKED there, together – investing MILLIONS we know about, the tip of what Greg Palast calls the
cashberg: Bush Watch: Bush Money (and href="http://www.gregpalast.com/">here).

Hey, Smirko!

America's on to your gangster ass!

Know Your BFEE Master Log

2005-06-06T14:59:00.000-07:00

Know Your Bush Family Evil Empire

Here follows a compendium of things free minds should consider. Originally posted on DemocraticUnderground.com, the responses stored on the DU site have tons of information.

Know your BFEE: Dope Dealers & Money Launderers

Know your BFEE: Merchants of Death

Know your BFEE: R. James Woolsey, Turd of War

Know your BFEE: Sneering Dick Cheney, Superturd-Superrich-Supercrook

Know your BFEE: Bush Lied America into War

Know your BFEE: James R Bath – Bush – bin Laden Link

Know your BFEE: War Profiteers

Know your BFEE: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Know your BFEE: Rev. Sun Myung Moon OWNS Poppy Bush

Know your BFEE: Homeland Czar & Petro-Turd Bernie Kerik

Know your BFEE: American Children Used in Radiation Experiments

Know your BFEE: Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection

Know your BFEE: The Barreling Bushes

Know your BFEE: A Crime Line of Treason

Know your BFEE: How Smirko Got Rich

Know your BFEE: George W Bush did "community service" at Project P.U.L.L.

Know your BFEE: Vote Suppressor Supreme, the Turd Bill Rehnquist

Know your BFEE: George W Bush Knew 9-11 Was Coming and Did NOTHING!

Know your BFEE: Oliver North, Drug Dealer

Know your BFEE: Pat Robertson Incorporated a Gold Mine with a Terrorist>

This one’s not labeled “Know Your BFEE,” but it’s meant in the same spirit:

Poppy Bush Involved in JFK Assassination -- BFEE's Spooked!

We'll add more info as we can.

Announcement

2005-06-06T04:43:00.000-07:00

Hopefully, in some days or weeks, some interesting background info on the BFEE can be found here...