In the building business the construction process is a little like making sausage- a little messy, not pretty, sometimes even noisy- but the end result is a beautiful, (hopefully!), work of art- someone's idea of beauty form and function.
Last weekend I was at a convention in Valley Forge, Pa. and got to watch news being made. I saw the sausage making process as ABC's Chris Bury and his producer and camera crew interviewed researchers, filmmakers, FBI whistleblowers, and a housewife who attended a symposium on the tragedy we call simply "911". Their piece of work is here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/betsymetz#p/a/f/2/JqQHHYaBsGg If you take the time to view it you will see that this is, like the finished house, neat, tidy, shiny, polished, fresh and serene and pretty,too.
Also, as a "news" piece, it carefully makes the point that if you think 911 was an inside job, you are clearly out of step with the rest of us! Such outrageous ideas!
Well, it so happens the sausage making was recorded as well, and there is quite a different view one might have after watching most of the building materials left out of this so-called "news" finished product. This is in two parts:
http://www.youtube.com/user/betsymetz#p/a/f/0/rsxtcqGiU2o
and the second part:
http://www.youtube.com/user/betsymetz#p/a/f/1/Rmg8kGFM-Mg If you have taken the time to watch all this, you will realize that two young mens' attempts to find out what happened on 911- Kory Rowe an Iraqi war vet and Dylan Avery a film director, both 26, have been succinctly reduced to sound bites. Dylan and Kory, the Director and Producer of the films "Loose Change" and "American Coup", http://www.loosechange911.com/ even predicted that ABC would do just that. And, as you can see, they did- linking these two serious young men seeking truth with someone who apparently was deranged- the Pentagon shooter, as John Patrick Bedell has come to be known.
Since I was there, youtube camera in hand, http://www.youtube.com/user/dlnnc I also filmed some of these ABC sausage making exercises- with FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley and Journalist Sander Hicks. ABC reduced their serious ideas and questions to vapid soundbites. Such is the state of American mass media. Looks good, sounds good, but hollow as a Hollywood set.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Friday, March 05, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
Sibel Edmonds:Whistleblower
SIBEL EDMONDS: THE TRAITORS AMONG US
SIBEL EDMONDS HAS NAMED NAMES. WHY ISN’T THE MEDIA REPORTING THE STORY?
by Brad Friedman
for HUSTLER MAGAZINE – March 2010
SIBEL EDMONDS, a former FBI translator, claims that the following government officials have committed what amount to acts of treason. They are lawmakers Dennis Hastert, Bob Livingston, Dan Burton, Roy Blunt, Stephen Solarz and Tom Lantos, as well as at least three members of George W. Bush’s inner circle: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Marc Grossman. But is Sibel Edmonds credible?
“Absolutely, she’s credible,” Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told CBS’s 60 Minutes when he was asked about her in 2002. “The reason I feel she’s very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story.” Edmonds’s remarkable allegations of bribery, blackmail, infiltration of the U.S. government and the theft of nuclear secrets by foreign allies and enemies alike rocked the Bush Administration. In fact, Bush and company actually prevented Edmonds from telling the American people what she knew—up until now.
John M. Cole, an 18-year veteran of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Counterespionage departments, revealed the panic of upper-echelon officials when Edmonds originally started talking back in 2002. “Well, the Bureau is gonna have to try to work something out with Sibel,” Cole said an FBI executive assistant told him at the time, “because they don’t want this to go out and become public.”
But they couldn’t “work something out with Sibel” because, it seems, she wasn’t looking to make a deal. Edmonds says she was looking to expose what she believed to be the ugly truth about the infiltration of the U.S. government by foreign spies. They were enabled, Edmonds claimed, by high-ranking U.S. officials and insider moles planted at nuclear weapons facilities around the nation.
“Everybody at headquarters level at the Bureau knew what she was saying was extremely accurate,” Cole said recently. “They were trying to figure out ways of keeping this whole thing quiet because they didn’t want Sibel to come out.”
Her under-oath testimony for the Ohio Election Commission, given in a recent videotaped deposition, is both shocking and horrifying. (Edmonds was the star witness for Congressional candidate David Krikorian in connection with a formal complaint initiated by Representative Jean Schmidt [R-Ohio]. Challenging her in 2008, a Krikorian flyer had accused Schmidt of accepting “blood money” from Turkish interests to help block a House bill recognizing Turkey’s genocide of Armenians in 1915.) The deposition was allowed to proceed by the Obama Administration, which chose not to invoke the draconian and little-known “State Secrets Privilege” to gag her, as the previous administration had done, twice.
Edmonds testified that Congressman Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois), a former Speaker of the House, was involved in “several categories” of corruption on behalf of Turkish agents, according to information she claims to have heard while translating and analyzing FBI counterintelligence wiretaps recorded from 1996 through 2002. She mentioned his “acceptance of large sums of bribery in forms of cash or laundered cash” coupled with the ability “to do certain favors…make certain things happen for… [the] Turkish government’s interest.”
Edmonds also alleged, on the public record, Hastert’s use of a “townhouse that was not his residence for certain not very morally accepted activities” and said that “foreign entities knew about this. In fact, they sometimes participated in some of those…activities in that particular townhouse.”
The allegations against Hastert include accepting some half-million dollars in bribes. While several FBI sources have corroborated Edmonds’s account, the best Hastert’s attorneys could do was offer a nondenial denial to the charges. But the proof, as they say, may be in the post-Congressional pudding. As Edmonds had predicted years earlier, Hastert—who left Congress in 2007—now makes $35,000 a month lobbying his old colleagues as a registered foreign agent for the Turkish government.
Former Congressman Bob Livingston (RLouisiana), who was set to become Speaker prior to Hastert until evidence of a sexual affair was revealed by Larry Flynt, was described in Edmonds’s deposition as having participated in “not very legal activities on behalf of foreign interests” before leaving office in 1999. Afterward, she said, Livingston acted “as a conduit to…further foreign interests, both overtly and covertly,” and also became both a lobbyist and “an operative” representing Turkish interests.
According to Edmonds, Representative Roy Blunt (R-Missouri)—likely to run for a U.S. Senate seat in 2010—was “the recipient of both legally and illegally raised…campaign donations from…Turkish entities.” Edmonds also claimed that hard-right Representative Dan Burton (R-Indiana), who was instrumental in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, carried out “extremely illegal activities” and covert operations that were “against the United States citizens” and “against the United States’ interests.”
Edmonds named allegedly traitorous Democrats too. She said that former New York Congressman Stephen Solarz, now also a lobbyist, “acted as conduit to deliver or launder contributions and other bribe[s, including blackmail] to certain members of Congress.” And, according to Edmonds, the late Congressman Tom Lantos (D-California) was said to have been involved in “not only…bribe[ry], but also…disclosing [the] highest level protected U.S. intelligence and weapons technology information both to Israel and to Turkey [and] other very serious criminal conduct.”
The most overtly salacious of the allegations involved Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois), who is “married with…grown children, but she is bisexual,” according to Edmonds. The FBI whistleblower described how Schakowsky was “hooked” by Turkish agents into having a lesbian “sexual relationship with one of their spies,” and “the entire episodes of their sexual conduct was being filmed because the entire house…was bugged…to be used for certain things that they wanted to request.”
Edmonds noted, however, that she didn’t “know if she [Schakowsky] did anything illegal afterwards” since Edmonds was fired by the FBI before learning what came of that particular setup. The Turks, she said, intended to get at Schakowsky’s husband, lobbyist Robert Creamer, who in April 2006 began serving five months in prison (and 11 months of house arrest) for check-kiting and failing to collect withholding tax.
Schakowsky’s office has vehemently denied the allegations. As head of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, Schakowsky might be expected to hold hearings on any of the former FBI employee’s revelations but she has not. She has also refused Edmonds’s challenge to take a polygraph test and has not yet sued her for libel, as the whistleblower has challenged her to do.
Edmonds’s most disturbing allegations, however, may be against high-ranking appointed officials in the Bush Administration. Elaborating on testimony she laid out in her sworn deposition, Edmonds told American Conservative magazine’s Phil Giraldi—a 17-year CIA counterterrorism officer—very specific details of alleged traitorous schemes perpetrated by top State and Defense Department officials. As already noted, these included Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and, perhaps most notably, former Deputy Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, the third-highest-ranking official in the Bush State Department.
Edmonds said that Feith and Wolfowitz were involved in plans to break Iraq into U.S. and British protectorates months prior to 9/11. She also claimed that the duo shared information with Grossman on how to blackmail various officials and that Grossman had accepted cash to help procure and sell nuclear weapons technology to Israel and Turkey—and, from there, on to the foreign black market. There the technology would be purchased by the highest bidder, such as Pakistan, Iran, Libya, North Korea or possibly even al-Qaeda.
Additionally, Edmonds claimed that Grossman, the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey before taking his State Department post, had tipped off Turkish diplomats to the true identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson’s front company, Brewster Jennings & Associates, a full three years prior to their being publicly outed by columnist Robert Novak. That in itself, according to George H.W. Bush, would be an act of treason carried out by “the most insidious of traitors.”
Former CIA counterterrorism officer Giraldi summed up Edmonds’s disclosures to me in blunt terms: “This was a massive coordinated espionage effort directed against United States nuclear secrets engineered by foreign agents who successfully corrupted senior government officials and legislators in our Congress. It’s that simple.”
According to a declassified version of a 2005 Department of Justice Inspector General’s report, Sibel Edmonds’s allegations are “credible,” “serious” and “warrant a thorough and careful review by the FBI.”
Perhaps more damningly, the FBI’s John Cole recently confirmed a key element of Edmonds’s claims when he revealed the existence of “the FBI’s decade-long investigation” of the State Department’s Grossman. Edmonds claimed that Grossman was perhaps the top U.S. ringleader for the entire foreign espionage scheme. The probe, Cole added, “ultimately was buried and covered up.”
Cole, who now works as an intelligence contractor for the Air Force, not only finds Edmonds “very credible,” but also confirms the “ongoing and detailed effort by Turkey to develop influence in the United States” through a number of illegal means.
“Turkish individuals would ask for favors—ya know, ‘You help me out, and I’ll help you out’—and basically what would happen is the elected official would either receive money or some kind of gift,” Cole explained. “Or, if it was a government employee, I’ve seen it where after they retired, they get these very lucrative positions with a Turkish company, or whatever the country may be.”
As noted, Hastert now works for Turkey, and Grossman now works for a Turkish company and as a lobbyist—no doubt raking in a pretty penny from both. Hastert and Grossman repeatedly ignored requests to comment on these charges.
The mainstream U.S. media, however, apparently remain uninterested in investigating any of it. Not even after Cole himself called for a “Special Counsel” to investigate and prosecute. So what the hell is going on here?
Giraldi believes that, as with companies such as AIG and GM becoming “too big to fail,” the size and success of this massive national security espionage scandal has simply become too big to bust.
He told me, “You have to look at Marc Grossman being part of a much bigger operation in terms of the Israelis and the Turks obtaining influence over our legislators and over a number of senior government officials at the Pentagon and State Department. Because this thing was so big, and it affected both Democrats and Republicans, I think the U.S. government is terrified of opening up this Pandora’s box.”
Giraldi added, “The people in Congress and in the Justice Department who should be investigating this…and also in the media—because the media is tied hand and foot to government—this is all part of one big, you know, conspiracy, if you want to look at it this way. And, essentially, this is a story that they don’t want to get out.”
So why, exactly, isn’t the media covering Sibel Edmonds, whom the ACLU once described as “the most gagged person in the history of the U.S.,” now that she is finally able to tell her story? It’s a story, after all, that the legendary 1970s whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has deemed “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers.”
“If we had an effective mainstream media that was going after this story, that would make it come out,” Giraldi noted. “But we don’t have an effective media.” He then pointed out one more reason for the media’s reluctance to dig into this story: “According to Sibel, Grossman actually bragged that he would get from the Turks the information that they wanted to appear in an article. He would write it up, and he would fax it over to the New York Times, and they would print it just as he had written it under somebody else’s byline.”
Guess we won’t expect any coverage of this scandal from the New York Times, “the paper of record,” any time soon. And if a story isn’t covered by the Times, and thereafter picked up by everybody else, did it really happen? Given the complicity of the media with regard to Sibel Edmonds, it would appear the government never even needed to invoke the “State Secrets Privilege” in the first place.
As of this writing, HUSTLER stands to be the largest, most “corporate” U.S. outlet in which these startling, now-public, on-the-record disclosures have been reported. The moral: Pull off a large enough crime, and it becomes too big to do anything about.
SIBEL EDMONDS HAS NAMED NAMES. WHY ISN’T THE MEDIA REPORTING THE STORY?
by Brad Friedman
for HUSTLER MAGAZINE – March 2010
SIBEL EDMONDS, a former FBI translator, claims that the following government officials have committed what amount to acts of treason. They are lawmakers Dennis Hastert, Bob Livingston, Dan Burton, Roy Blunt, Stephen Solarz and Tom Lantos, as well as at least three members of George W. Bush’s inner circle: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Marc Grossman. But is Sibel Edmonds credible?
“Absolutely, she’s credible,” Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told CBS’s 60 Minutes when he was asked about her in 2002. “The reason I feel she’s very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story.” Edmonds’s remarkable allegations of bribery, blackmail, infiltration of the U.S. government and the theft of nuclear secrets by foreign allies and enemies alike rocked the Bush Administration. In fact, Bush and company actually prevented Edmonds from telling the American people what she knew—up until now.
John M. Cole, an 18-year veteran of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Counterespionage departments, revealed the panic of upper-echelon officials when Edmonds originally started talking back in 2002. “Well, the Bureau is gonna have to try to work something out with Sibel,” Cole said an FBI executive assistant told him at the time, “because they don’t want this to go out and become public.”
But they couldn’t “work something out with Sibel” because, it seems, she wasn’t looking to make a deal. Edmonds says she was looking to expose what she believed to be the ugly truth about the infiltration of the U.S. government by foreign spies. They were enabled, Edmonds claimed, by high-ranking U.S. officials and insider moles planted at nuclear weapons facilities around the nation.
“Everybody at headquarters level at the Bureau knew what she was saying was extremely accurate,” Cole said recently. “They were trying to figure out ways of keeping this whole thing quiet because they didn’t want Sibel to come out.”
Her under-oath testimony for the Ohio Election Commission, given in a recent videotaped deposition, is both shocking and horrifying. (Edmonds was the star witness for Congressional candidate David Krikorian in connection with a formal complaint initiated by Representative Jean Schmidt [R-Ohio]. Challenging her in 2008, a Krikorian flyer had accused Schmidt of accepting “blood money” from Turkish interests to help block a House bill recognizing Turkey’s genocide of Armenians in 1915.) The deposition was allowed to proceed by the Obama Administration, which chose not to invoke the draconian and little-known “State Secrets Privilege” to gag her, as the previous administration had done, twice.
Edmonds testified that Congressman Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois), a former Speaker of the House, was involved in “several categories” of corruption on behalf of Turkish agents, according to information she claims to have heard while translating and analyzing FBI counterintelligence wiretaps recorded from 1996 through 2002. She mentioned his “acceptance of large sums of bribery in forms of cash or laundered cash” coupled with the ability “to do certain favors…make certain things happen for… [the] Turkish government’s interest.”
Edmonds also alleged, on the public record, Hastert’s use of a “townhouse that was not his residence for certain not very morally accepted activities” and said that “foreign entities knew about this. In fact, they sometimes participated in some of those…activities in that particular townhouse.”
The allegations against Hastert include accepting some half-million dollars in bribes. While several FBI sources have corroborated Edmonds’s account, the best Hastert’s attorneys could do was offer a nondenial denial to the charges. But the proof, as they say, may be in the post-Congressional pudding. As Edmonds had predicted years earlier, Hastert—who left Congress in 2007—now makes $35,000 a month lobbying his old colleagues as a registered foreign agent for the Turkish government.
Former Congressman Bob Livingston (RLouisiana), who was set to become Speaker prior to Hastert until evidence of a sexual affair was revealed by Larry Flynt, was described in Edmonds’s deposition as having participated in “not very legal activities on behalf of foreign interests” before leaving office in 1999. Afterward, she said, Livingston acted “as a conduit to…further foreign interests, both overtly and covertly,” and also became both a lobbyist and “an operative” representing Turkish interests.
According to Edmonds, Representative Roy Blunt (R-Missouri)—likely to run for a U.S. Senate seat in 2010—was “the recipient of both legally and illegally raised…campaign donations from…Turkish entities.” Edmonds also claimed that hard-right Representative Dan Burton (R-Indiana), who was instrumental in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, carried out “extremely illegal activities” and covert operations that were “against the United States citizens” and “against the United States’ interests.”
Edmonds named allegedly traitorous Democrats too. She said that former New York Congressman Stephen Solarz, now also a lobbyist, “acted as conduit to deliver or launder contributions and other bribe[s, including blackmail] to certain members of Congress.” And, according to Edmonds, the late Congressman Tom Lantos (D-California) was said to have been involved in “not only…bribe[ry], but also…disclosing [the] highest level protected U.S. intelligence and weapons technology information both to Israel and to Turkey [and] other very serious criminal conduct.”
The most overtly salacious of the allegations involved Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois), who is “married with…grown children, but she is bisexual,” according to Edmonds. The FBI whistleblower described how Schakowsky was “hooked” by Turkish agents into having a lesbian “sexual relationship with one of their spies,” and “the entire episodes of their sexual conduct was being filmed because the entire house…was bugged…to be used for certain things that they wanted to request.”
Edmonds noted, however, that she didn’t “know if she [Schakowsky] did anything illegal afterwards” since Edmonds was fired by the FBI before learning what came of that particular setup. The Turks, she said, intended to get at Schakowsky’s husband, lobbyist Robert Creamer, who in April 2006 began serving five months in prison (and 11 months of house arrest) for check-kiting and failing to collect withholding tax.
Schakowsky’s office has vehemently denied the allegations. As head of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, Schakowsky might be expected to hold hearings on any of the former FBI employee’s revelations but she has not. She has also refused Edmonds’s challenge to take a polygraph test and has not yet sued her for libel, as the whistleblower has challenged her to do.
Edmonds’s most disturbing allegations, however, may be against high-ranking appointed officials in the Bush Administration. Elaborating on testimony she laid out in her sworn deposition, Edmonds told American Conservative magazine’s Phil Giraldi—a 17-year CIA counterterrorism officer—very specific details of alleged traitorous schemes perpetrated by top State and Defense Department officials. As already noted, these included Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and, perhaps most notably, former Deputy Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, the third-highest-ranking official in the Bush State Department.
Edmonds said that Feith and Wolfowitz were involved in plans to break Iraq into U.S. and British protectorates months prior to 9/11. She also claimed that the duo shared information with Grossman on how to blackmail various officials and that Grossman had accepted cash to help procure and sell nuclear weapons technology to Israel and Turkey—and, from there, on to the foreign black market. There the technology would be purchased by the highest bidder, such as Pakistan, Iran, Libya, North Korea or possibly even al-Qaeda.
Additionally, Edmonds claimed that Grossman, the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey before taking his State Department post, had tipped off Turkish diplomats to the true identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson’s front company, Brewster Jennings & Associates, a full three years prior to their being publicly outed by columnist Robert Novak. That in itself, according to George H.W. Bush, would be an act of treason carried out by “the most insidious of traitors.”
Former CIA counterterrorism officer Giraldi summed up Edmonds’s disclosures to me in blunt terms: “This was a massive coordinated espionage effort directed against United States nuclear secrets engineered by foreign agents who successfully corrupted senior government officials and legislators in our Congress. It’s that simple.”
According to a declassified version of a 2005 Department of Justice Inspector General’s report, Sibel Edmonds’s allegations are “credible,” “serious” and “warrant a thorough and careful review by the FBI.”
Perhaps more damningly, the FBI’s John Cole recently confirmed a key element of Edmonds’s claims when he revealed the existence of “the FBI’s decade-long investigation” of the State Department’s Grossman. Edmonds claimed that Grossman was perhaps the top U.S. ringleader for the entire foreign espionage scheme. The probe, Cole added, “ultimately was buried and covered up.”
Cole, who now works as an intelligence contractor for the Air Force, not only finds Edmonds “very credible,” but also confirms the “ongoing and detailed effort by Turkey to develop influence in the United States” through a number of illegal means.
“Turkish individuals would ask for favors—ya know, ‘You help me out, and I’ll help you out’—and basically what would happen is the elected official would either receive money or some kind of gift,” Cole explained. “Or, if it was a government employee, I’ve seen it where after they retired, they get these very lucrative positions with a Turkish company, or whatever the country may be.”
As noted, Hastert now works for Turkey, and Grossman now works for a Turkish company and as a lobbyist—no doubt raking in a pretty penny from both. Hastert and Grossman repeatedly ignored requests to comment on these charges.
The mainstream U.S. media, however, apparently remain uninterested in investigating any of it. Not even after Cole himself called for a “Special Counsel” to investigate and prosecute. So what the hell is going on here?
Giraldi believes that, as with companies such as AIG and GM becoming “too big to fail,” the size and success of this massive national security espionage scandal has simply become too big to bust.
He told me, “You have to look at Marc Grossman being part of a much bigger operation in terms of the Israelis and the Turks obtaining influence over our legislators and over a number of senior government officials at the Pentagon and State Department. Because this thing was so big, and it affected both Democrats and Republicans, I think the U.S. government is terrified of opening up this Pandora’s box.”
Giraldi added, “The people in Congress and in the Justice Department who should be investigating this…and also in the media—because the media is tied hand and foot to government—this is all part of one big, you know, conspiracy, if you want to look at it this way. And, essentially, this is a story that they don’t want to get out.”
So why, exactly, isn’t the media covering Sibel Edmonds, whom the ACLU once described as “the most gagged person in the history of the U.S.,” now that she is finally able to tell her story? It’s a story, after all, that the legendary 1970s whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has deemed “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers.”
“If we had an effective mainstream media that was going after this story, that would make it come out,” Giraldi noted. “But we don’t have an effective media.” He then pointed out one more reason for the media’s reluctance to dig into this story: “According to Sibel, Grossman actually bragged that he would get from the Turks the information that they wanted to appear in an article. He would write it up, and he would fax it over to the New York Times, and they would print it just as he had written it under somebody else’s byline.”
Guess we won’t expect any coverage of this scandal from the New York Times, “the paper of record,” any time soon. And if a story isn’t covered by the Times, and thereafter picked up by everybody else, did it really happen? Given the complicity of the media with regard to Sibel Edmonds, it would appear the government never even needed to invoke the “State Secrets Privilege” in the first place.
As of this writing, HUSTLER stands to be the largest, most “corporate” U.S. outlet in which these startling, now-public, on-the-record disclosures have been reported. The moral: Pull off a large enough crime, and it becomes too big to do anything about.
Sunday, February 07, 2010
My Amazon review of the UNSPEAKABLE
(Originally written for Amazon in 2008)
Review of James Douglass' JFK and the Unspeakable
Published by Orbis Books, Maryknoll New York Press 2008
We are all jurors in an ongoing trial to find the truth of John Kennedy's murder. Most of us have fallen asleep; some left the chamber, and others don't even care anymore. But a few, a very small few, have been paying attention for the last 45 years as arguments for the prosecution of Lee Harvey Oswald, headed up by government lawyers and their lackeys have been constantly countered by a volunteer and unpaid defense team for the truth made up of laymen, clergymen, historians, teachers, researchers, republicans, democrats, non-affiliates of all ages shapes and sizes.
It has been a bewildering experience to have been patted on the head and told to go to sleep by the Warren Commission only to be rudely awakened by a garrulous DA from Louisiana, followed then by a government report which said, well, there might have been two, but go on back to sleep. Dazed and confused we began to leave the room but were called back in by Oliver Stone who told us to take a look at his evidence of Oswald's innocence. We were intrigued, but an impish Gerald Posner convinced Dick Cavett and other icons of American mainstream media that Stone's myth was just that and the case was indeed closed: Oswald did it. But Stone had garnered enough interest to cause Congress to form the ARRB- under George Bush Sr, no less.
It took Bill Clinton half his presidency to get the thing going, but we watched with bated breath as the Assassinations Records Review Board began pulling from the FBI, CIA, and the rest of the alphabet bits and pieces of information that left gaping holes in the official story. Most of us didn't believe it anyway, but a few, a small few did notice that there seemed to have been two brains pulled from John Kennedy's head during the so-called autopsy. In fact so many moles began popping up it was difficult for the gatekeepers to bop them in the head fast enough.
Distracted as we were by 911 and the war on terror, and the revelation that our government has the capacity to pull off an Operation Northwoods, as the ARRB found out, we continued to keep half an eyeball on the story, those of us who were paying attention. But then just as we were ready to reach a verdict of no true bill, Peter Jennings pops in to save the day for the prosecution. Disregarding all prior logic, evidence and common sense he lulled us back to comfortable numbness as he proved through computer generation, laser beams and some small degree of witch-craft that yes, indeed that was some magic bullet. Nevertheless, while almost dozing off again we heard rumblings of another defense witness about to enter the courtroom. He was David Talbot, an almost Main stream media type who was arguing that John and Robert Kennedy were possibly victims of powerful forces in our own government who wanted and needed them gone.
But before he could present his full case a boisterous and bellicose advocate of Governmental Righteousness threw on to the floor, almost breaking it, an objection, claiming his stake in the case with a tome of such immense size and weight that no one, at first, dared to read it or question its obvious Bugliosian authority. When it was finally opened, the muse of Arlen Spector saundered forth speaking in only a language that he could understand. Talk shows raved about Vince's masterpiece; gatekeepers swooned, and the prosecution let out a huge and foul-smelling sigh of relief as they said, There! That ought to finally put this damn thing to rest!
Everyone began to pack up and leave, most never having read briefs by Scott, Gerald McKnight, Larry Hancock, etc., defense advocates who had built their arguments on the works of Vince Salandria, Marrs, Howard Roffman, Sheim, Weisberg, etc., and the thousands of pages of released and obscure documents. But just as the courtroom almost emptied, looking like an empty Senate Chamber with a wobbling old man named Robert Byrd trying to make a point, in comes a little man who looked like a Jesuit monk. I'm no Catholic, I thought, as I was getting up to leave with the two or three other jurors who had sat through the whole case so far, trying to pay attention, but this guy seems to know his stuff. He's talking about everything we have already heard but putting it all into context. His summation is actually making sense- reason, logic, truth, honesty, footnotes, primary source interviews, follow-up questions, giving the benefit of the doubt to all sides. I sat back down. As James Douglass presented his case, scales fell from my eyes. Oswald was innocent. I look around. Is anybody there?
David Neal Kitty Hawk, NC
Review of James Douglass' JFK and the Unspeakable
Published by Orbis Books, Maryknoll New York Press 2008
We are all jurors in an ongoing trial to find the truth of John Kennedy's murder. Most of us have fallen asleep; some left the chamber, and others don't even care anymore. But a few, a very small few, have been paying attention for the last 45 years as arguments for the prosecution of Lee Harvey Oswald, headed up by government lawyers and their lackeys have been constantly countered by a volunteer and unpaid defense team for the truth made up of laymen, clergymen, historians, teachers, researchers, republicans, democrats, non-affiliates of all ages shapes and sizes.
It has been a bewildering experience to have been patted on the head and told to go to sleep by the Warren Commission only to be rudely awakened by a garrulous DA from Louisiana, followed then by a government report which said, well, there might have been two, but go on back to sleep. Dazed and confused we began to leave the room but were called back in by Oliver Stone who told us to take a look at his evidence of Oswald's innocence. We were intrigued, but an impish Gerald Posner convinced Dick Cavett and other icons of American mainstream media that Stone's myth was just that and the case was indeed closed: Oswald did it. But Stone had garnered enough interest to cause Congress to form the ARRB- under George Bush Sr, no less.
It took Bill Clinton half his presidency to get the thing going, but we watched with bated breath as the Assassinations Records Review Board began pulling from the FBI, CIA, and the rest of the alphabet bits and pieces of information that left gaping holes in the official story. Most of us didn't believe it anyway, but a few, a small few did notice that there seemed to have been two brains pulled from John Kennedy's head during the so-called autopsy. In fact so many moles began popping up it was difficult for the gatekeepers to bop them in the head fast enough.
Distracted as we were by 911 and the war on terror, and the revelation that our government has the capacity to pull off an Operation Northwoods, as the ARRB found out, we continued to keep half an eyeball on the story, those of us who were paying attention. But then just as we were ready to reach a verdict of no true bill, Peter Jennings pops in to save the day for the prosecution. Disregarding all prior logic, evidence and common sense he lulled us back to comfortable numbness as he proved through computer generation, laser beams and some small degree of witch-craft that yes, indeed that was some magic bullet. Nevertheless, while almost dozing off again we heard rumblings of another defense witness about to enter the courtroom. He was David Talbot, an almost Main stream media type who was arguing that John and Robert Kennedy were possibly victims of powerful forces in our own government who wanted and needed them gone.
But before he could present his full case a boisterous and bellicose advocate of Governmental Righteousness threw on to the floor, almost breaking it, an objection, claiming his stake in the case with a tome of such immense size and weight that no one, at first, dared to read it or question its obvious Bugliosian authority. When it was finally opened, the muse of Arlen Spector saundered forth speaking in only a language that he could understand. Talk shows raved about Vince's masterpiece; gatekeepers swooned, and the prosecution let out a huge and foul-smelling sigh of relief as they said, There! That ought to finally put this damn thing to rest!
Everyone began to pack up and leave, most never having read briefs by Scott, Gerald McKnight, Larry Hancock, etc., defense advocates who had built their arguments on the works of Vince Salandria, Marrs, Howard Roffman, Sheim, Weisberg, etc., and the thousands of pages of released and obscure documents. But just as the courtroom almost emptied, looking like an empty Senate Chamber with a wobbling old man named Robert Byrd trying to make a point, in comes a little man who looked like a Jesuit monk. I'm no Catholic, I thought, as I was getting up to leave with the two or three other jurors who had sat through the whole case so far, trying to pay attention, but this guy seems to know his stuff. He's talking about everything we have already heard but putting it all into context. His summation is actually making sense- reason, logic, truth, honesty, footnotes, primary source interviews, follow-up questions, giving the benefit of the doubt to all sides. I sat back down. As James Douglass presented his case, scales fell from my eyes. Oswald was innocent. I look around. Is anybody there?
David Neal Kitty Hawk, NC
Garry Wills new book: Bomb Power, Penquin Press 2010
Garry Wills' new book Bomb Power brings American history a step forward out of the dark ages. He begins to discuss the elephant in the room from a main stream historian's perspective. Author of books on Lincoln and Jefferson, he castigates all modern Presidents since the creation of the "bomb", the game changer for modern times, as they easily slide onto the throne of King. Truman turns out to be a hot head, Eisenhower a murderer, Kennedy naive, Nixon, Ford, Bush, and Clinton not much better, and then Bush Jr., the worst, as they all played the ace in the hole to foster American policy of secrecy and war. Endless war.
That may be a little unfair on my part, but essentially he is saying the power to use the bomb, in the hands of one man, has caused Congress to abrogate its Constitutional powers, the Executive to grab more power, never give it up, and all of us to nod in agreement as anything and everything is OK as long as the Commander in Chief, with the bomb under his arm, says it is. George Bush 43 pushed this to the extreme with Cheney/Addington writing "signings" that allowed the President to ignore and nullify the actual laws Congress sent up to him to sign. Even McCain's attempt to reinstate the Geneva rules caused Bush/Cheney/Addington to fight tooth and nail to keep the power to torture in the President's hands.
Wills explains how this is all illegal, unconstitutional, and a source of disregard for rules of due process and traditional Executive /Legislative interaction. Congress makes the rules, and the President executes them. That's how it's supposed to be, not the other way around. He shows how the original drafters, our founding fathers, went out of their way to make the Legislative branch the final arbiter of the direction the country should take, in war, in foreign policy, and in dealing with the individual rights of citizens. His main point is that the "bomb", nuclear weapons, changed all that when one man was given the power of the "football". He thinks we should get back to obeying the Constitution, but he doesn't see an easy way to do that.
His subtext though is the elephant in the room. And that is secrecy in a democratic society.
Because of the power of the "bomb" a National Security State has arisen since WWII in the form of a host of bureaucracies all vying for funding and power. Power to classify and protect the "family jewels". Power to keep from the people the often uncomfortable, sometimes illegal, often damaging acts that agencies have done behind closed doors. Even Ike authorized assassinations.
There are a couple heroes in the book that come to mind. William Colby, CIA Director during the Church Committee hearings, and John Kennedy. The bad guys are the usual suspects: Henry Kissinger, Richard Helms, William Casey, the Dulles brothers, Addington/Cheney and many others. I call them "bad guys" because they believe in secrecy, assassination as a President's right, and disregard for the Constitution. In this sense one of the apparatchiks of the bad guys is of course John Woo, the hack government lawyer upon whose "writings" so much damage has been done to the Constitution since 911. But one has to blame the bosses above him, really, since there are always plenty of hacks to choose from when you're looking for illegal justification.
Wills' point is that "bomb power" trumps all rationality and jurisprudence. He also makes the point, though, that much of the subversion of the Constitution by illegal and secret acts, for example, the over throwing, usually violently, of sovereign governments- at least 114 that we know of, such as the 1953 Iranian coup, Patrice Lumamba's murder, Jacob Arbenz Guzman's overthrow all came back to haunt us in one way or another. The chickens came home to roost in some cases. Wills says crime does not pay, and history bears him out, it seems. But '"bad guys" and "heroes" are my terms. Kissinger used a different terminology as he castigated those who would obey the Constitution, or at least believed in the people's right to know what the old white men thought was best for the rest of us all. He thought William Colby was a traitor and "despicable" because Colby tried to answer Congressional questions honestly. Kissinger used the terms "strategists" and "romantics". (p.208) He thought of himself as a "strategist", apparently.
One could argue the strategists have a lot of blood on their hands. They would argue that they have saved the world from annihilation by using the trump card to subdue potential threats. Using that trump card means using subterfuge and assassination as they see fit. The romantics, like Kennedy and Colby, can't defend themselves, yet their records hold up well, viz a viz, for example, the Cuban Missile Crisis turned out pretty well with a "romantic" holding off the Generals who would gladly have used the "bomb", and who thought he was a traitor for not using it.
Though Wills has brought the discussion of the problems of a National Security State and its incompatibility with democracy, into the main stream, he failed to make a larger point. Our modern history is filled with controversial deaths of American leaders, well-known and not so well known. Ex CIA Director William Colby died mysteriously. Ex Assistant FBI Director William Sullivan died mysteriously. Senator Hale Boggs died mysteriously. The assassinations of the 60s, JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, RFK have not been addressed in the context of how these "coincidences" occur in the National Security State. I think it was FDR who said there are no coincidences in politics. That might apply here.
Wills never mentions Colby's death, and of course he never discusses the assassination of JFK. But he does bring to the main stream historical discussion that elephant in the room- assassination and secrecy. A recent book by Douglas Horne, a member of the ARRB, (the Assassination Records Review Board set up by George H W Bush), called, Inside The ARRB,
does address this elephant in the room- assassination and secrecy. With Horne's and Wills' books we are beginning to emerge belatedly from the dark ages of American history. William Colby thought by turning the light on the "family jewels" which the "bad guys" wanted so desperately to keep hidden, he could save his beloved agency. Coming clean was a good thing. Wonder if it will save the country?
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Bush legacy from Juan Cole's Informed Comment:
The great $12 trillion Bank Robbery, in which unscrupulous bankers and financiers were deregulated and given free rein to create worthless derivatives, sell impossible mortgages to uninformed marks who could not understand their complicated terms, and then to roll this garbage up into securities re-sold like the Cheshire cat, with a big visible smile of asserted value hanging in the air even as their actual worth disappeared into thin air. Having allowed the one-percent oligarchs to capture most of the increase of the country's wealth in recent decades, Bush and Paulsen now initiated the surrender to them of nearly a further entire year's gross domestic product of the US, stealing it from the rest of us by deficit budget financing that will have the effect of deflating our savings and property values and relative value of our currency against other world currencies. That is, we are to be further beggared for sake of the super-rich. And while the banks and bankers are held harmless, the hardworking Americans who have lost and will lose their homes are extended virtually no help. While 500,000 American children will go hungry at least some of the time this year, the Oligarchs at Goldman, Sachs, will get millions in bonuses, on the backs of the ordinary taxpayers. It seems likely to me that the creation of a pool of vast excess liquidity for the super-rich by the Reagan-Cheney tax cuts was what impelled them to develop the derivatives, since they had too much capital for ordinary investment purposes and were restlessly seeking new gaming tables. The conclusion is that until we get our gini coefficient back into some sort of synch, we are likely at risk for further such meltdowns.
http://www.sustainablemiddleclass.com/Gini-Coefficient.html
http://www.sustainablemiddleclass.com/Gini-Coefficient.html
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Padilla and American justice
Jose Padilla
Here’s the problem: Many important issues are dropped from the news or commentary because there is a lack of public outcry. In other words, if an issue does not interest the public enough to get them to respond with letters to the editors,( in enough volume to convince an editor it is important), or phone calls, or some other type of response to an issue, then the people who make the decisions to air or print news about that subject will disregard it. Its intrinisic value as critical to , say, American freedoms, policy, constitutional issues, even life and death are secondary to whether or not a “pubic outcry” exists large enough to justify continuing the story, or even disclosing it in the first place. A case in point is the Jose Padilla arrest, detention and trial. No legal experts, constitutional scholars, or historians would deny the importance of this case to not just the “war on terror”, but to the very basic and fundamental bedrock concepts that make America what it claims to be: a nation unique in its love and respect for human individuality, human rights, human privacy, human dignity and the law. These basic concepts are stated quite clearly and bluntly in America’s constitution, the final say, the highest law of the land. The founders stated, and history and Supreme Courts have agreed through the years that no one can be deprived of life or liberty without due process. That if you are accused of a crime you must be presented the evidence against you and be confronted by your accusers; that there can be no cruel or unusual punishment; and that you can not be thrown in a dungeon until the authorities decide, if ever, that you may receive a hearing, or a trial, or even a lawyer. These seminal and well thought out tenets did not appear in black and white in the Constitution as mere after thoughts, or simple panderings to the left- they evolved out of the minds of men who knew history, understood the abuses of the power of a state, a king, or a cabal, and from their experience and awareness of how easy the power of the state can override the rights of individuals and what evils that can produce, they decided to enumerate and spell out the specific rights so that there would be no grey area, no misinterpretation of intent, no confusion about what rights American citizens would enjoy. Hence the Bill of Rights.
No one would doubt or question the importance of these issues, but we find, in the main stream media- the national newspapers, the networks, the major cable stations- no coverage of this important issue. Jose Padilla, possibly a criminal intent on doing harm to his fellow citizens, is nevertheless an American citizen. He deserves, as you and I do, to be treated with the fairness that even the lowest common criminal in all of American history has received- to wit: no cruel and unusual punishment, no deprivation of representation, not being thrown into a dungeon and disappeared. Yet this is exactly what happened. I won’t recite all the details of his cruel and unusual punishment other than to remind us all that solitary confinement for years with no human contact except an infrequent government interrogator, being housed in a 24-7 lights on 9by 7 cell in a brig on a military base with a metal cot might qualify as torture. What is torture? There are legal definitions, but I suggest that anything done to others that we would not want done to ourselves might be a benchmark. If you are innocent until proven guilty of a crime, not suspected, then under what authority can you be mistreated to try and make you appear guilty?
Jose Padilla, according to the Christian Science Monitor, one of the few papers to cover this story, was a street kid in Chicago who found Islam while incarcerated and began a study of the religion which led him to travel to Afghanistan and other countries. In another time and circumstance this might be construed as a gangbanger turning his life around and trying to make something of himself. But now it appears he was joining the radical fundalmentalists who aimed to fight America. But if that was the case why would he hestitate to go to Afghanistan and fight for the Taliban when we invaded that country? Instead he came up with an idea to try and get out of that part of the world and go home. He suggested, according to the Monitor, that a dirty bomb be used and that he would go back home and work on it. How do we know this? According to the Monitor, KSM, Khalled Sheik Mohammed told his interrogators about this. He also said that it was doubted at the time that Padilla had the knowledge or ability to accomplish this. Many problems arise from both Padilla’s alleged plot and KSM’s information. Since KSM was affiliated with Pakistan’s ISI, the security agency with close connections to our CIA, and which had sent 100,000 dollars to Mohammned Atta, one of the alleged hijackers, and since KSM was subjected to the same if not worse treatment as Padilla, how reliable is his story? At the least, Padilla should have been afforded legal representation to counter any charges arising from this allegation. But instead he was held for 43 months, mostly in isolation, until, as psychiatrists have stated, he was damaged mentally. What a travesty of justice to us all.
Here’s the problem: Many important issues are dropped from the news or commentary because there is a lack of public outcry. In other words, if an issue does not interest the public enough to get them to respond with letters to the editors,( in enough volume to convince an editor it is important), or phone calls, or some other type of response to an issue, then the people who make the decisions to air or print news about that subject will disregard it. Its intrinisic value as critical to , say, American freedoms, policy, constitutional issues, even life and death are secondary to whether or not a “pubic outcry” exists large enough to justify continuing the story, or even disclosing it in the first place. A case in point is the Jose Padilla arrest, detention and trial. No legal experts, constitutional scholars, or historians would deny the importance of this case to not just the “war on terror”, but to the very basic and fundamental bedrock concepts that make America what it claims to be: a nation unique in its love and respect for human individuality, human rights, human privacy, human dignity and the law. These basic concepts are stated quite clearly and bluntly in America’s constitution, the final say, the highest law of the land. The founders stated, and history and Supreme Courts have agreed through the years that no one can be deprived of life or liberty without due process. That if you are accused of a crime you must be presented the evidence against you and be confronted by your accusers; that there can be no cruel or unusual punishment; and that you can not be thrown in a dungeon until the authorities decide, if ever, that you may receive a hearing, or a trial, or even a lawyer. These seminal and well thought out tenets did not appear in black and white in the Constitution as mere after thoughts, or simple panderings to the left- they evolved out of the minds of men who knew history, understood the abuses of the power of a state, a king, or a cabal, and from their experience and awareness of how easy the power of the state can override the rights of individuals and what evils that can produce, they decided to enumerate and spell out the specific rights so that there would be no grey area, no misinterpretation of intent, no confusion about what rights American citizens would enjoy. Hence the Bill of Rights.
No one would doubt or question the importance of these issues, but we find, in the main stream media- the national newspapers, the networks, the major cable stations- no coverage of this important issue. Jose Padilla, possibly a criminal intent on doing harm to his fellow citizens, is nevertheless an American citizen. He deserves, as you and I do, to be treated with the fairness that even the lowest common criminal in all of American history has received- to wit: no cruel and unusual punishment, no deprivation of representation, not being thrown into a dungeon and disappeared. Yet this is exactly what happened. I won’t recite all the details of his cruel and unusual punishment other than to remind us all that solitary confinement for years with no human contact except an infrequent government interrogator, being housed in a 24-7 lights on 9by 7 cell in a brig on a military base with a metal cot might qualify as torture. What is torture? There are legal definitions, but I suggest that anything done to others that we would not want done to ourselves might be a benchmark. If you are innocent until proven guilty of a crime, not suspected, then under what authority can you be mistreated to try and make you appear guilty?
Jose Padilla, according to the Christian Science Monitor, one of the few papers to cover this story, was a street kid in Chicago who found Islam while incarcerated and began a study of the religion which led him to travel to Afghanistan and other countries. In another time and circumstance this might be construed as a gangbanger turning his life around and trying to make something of himself. But now it appears he was joining the radical fundalmentalists who aimed to fight America. But if that was the case why would he hestitate to go to Afghanistan and fight for the Taliban when we invaded that country? Instead he came up with an idea to try and get out of that part of the world and go home. He suggested, according to the Monitor, that a dirty bomb be used and that he would go back home and work on it. How do we know this? According to the Monitor, KSM, Khalled Sheik Mohammed told his interrogators about this. He also said that it was doubted at the time that Padilla had the knowledge or ability to accomplish this. Many problems arise from both Padilla’s alleged plot and KSM’s information. Since KSM was affiliated with Pakistan’s ISI, the security agency with close connections to our CIA, and which had sent 100,000 dollars to Mohammned Atta, one of the alleged hijackers, and since KSM was subjected to the same if not worse treatment as Padilla, how reliable is his story? At the least, Padilla should have been afforded legal representation to counter any charges arising from this allegation. But instead he was held for 43 months, mostly in isolation, until, as psychiatrists have stated, he was damaged mentally. What a travesty of justice to us all.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Malcolm Perry, the surgeon who tried to save JFK
http://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/#post-insidethearrb-2370
The link above is to an article by Doug Horne, a member of the Assassinations Records Review Board set up By George H. Bush and Bill Clinton to study and release as much of the documetation and information about the assassination in 1963 of President John F. Kennedy as they could. Millions of pages were released.
Malcolm Perry recently passed away at age 80. For many years he maintained the Warren Commission was correct in alleging Oswald killed Kennedy, despite his comments and answers to questions within an hour of Kennedy's death in Nov. 1963 that the shot to Kennedy's throat, through which Dr. Perry had performed a careful tracheostomy in an attempt to help Kennedy breathe, was an entrance wound. Secret Service and FBI personnel have admitted in recent years to putting a lot of pressure on him to accept the official story that the wound was an exit wound.
The link above is to an article by Doug Horne, a member of the Assassinations Records Review Board set up By George H. Bush and Bill Clinton to study and release as much of the documetation and information about the assassination in 1963 of President John F. Kennedy as they could. Millions of pages were released.
Malcolm Perry recently passed away at age 80. For many years he maintained the Warren Commission was correct in alleging Oswald killed Kennedy, despite his comments and answers to questions within an hour of Kennedy's death in Nov. 1963 that the shot to Kennedy's throat, through which Dr. Perry had performed a careful tracheostomy in an attempt to help Kennedy breathe, was an entrance wound. Secret Service and FBI personnel have admitted in recent years to putting a lot of pressure on him to accept the official story that the wound was an exit wound.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
