Delmart "Mike" Vreeland   interview ¹ ² ³ º 4.5.02   Michael C. Ruppert FTW ® ¹ ²   ß   ¶ º•6   What part of the U.S. govt did you work for? Was it the CIA? I worked for U.S. Naval intelligence. What the CIA directs us to do is their business, so we have no way of knowing whether we're working for them or not.   Was your assignment primarily connected to terrorism/oil? Yes, on both issues, in part.   Why were you in Moscow and Russia in the latter part of 2000? I was sent there by the U.S. govt and the ONI [Office of Naval Intelligence]. I got my orders between Sept. 4 and Sept. 7, 2000. Marc Bastien departed for Russia on Sept. 7, 2000. I had orders to meet him. Bastien was going to work at the Canadian embassy regarding diagrams and blueprints of a weapons defense system. The U.S. govt had a direct influence on his mission. The name of the defense system is SSST [Stealth Satellite System Terminator]. There are five different individual and unique defensive and strike capabilities of the system. The only portion that I have publicly spoken on is one frame regarding actual current orbiting satellites, which are not at this time owned by the US govt. On advice of counsel I cannot discuss the other components. This one component is a satellite system. Within the confines of the system there are multiple, deployable space/orbital EMP [Electromagnetic Pulse] missiles that are not aimed at the ground. They are targeted at everyone else's satellites. These would kill worldwide communications. The satellites of some countries that are shielded with titanium are protected from these weapons. The protected countries are Russia and China, but U.S. satellites are vulnerable and Putin has told Bush that the U.S. missile defense system doesn't work, and that Bush knows it. The reason why I went to Russia was because I needed to meet with Bastien and another individual from the Russian Ministry of Defense named Oleg. The purpose was to get the Canadian diplomat who had made contact with Oleg to get the book of designs out of the ministry's R&D. That was done. We copied the entire book. Then we took certain documents, and we changed serious portions of the defense design so the program wouldn't work. They know this now. Additionally I was to pick up docs from other agents and bring them back.   You told Canadian authorities that Bastien was murdered when? I never told them he was murdered. I wrote a letter to Bastien around June of 2000 from jail. I sent it to CSIS [Canadian Security and Intelligence Service] in Ottawa, to the director for his eyes only. I had restructured the diagram to put it back in its original state. But I never told anyone exactly how to turn it on and how to build it. CSIS already knew that Bastien was dead. He died six says after I was arrested on Dec. 6. I was discharged on Dec. 9. He was killed on Dec 12. CSIS sent RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] (Sgt. Mabe, Corporal Kispol) to visit me in jail on Aug. 8, 2001,.and they advised me that he was dead. They didn't say he was murdered. They told me he was dead. I told them that is Bastien was dead, it was murder, and that they should get a toxicology report. And I would tell you how it was done, and who did it.   When did they finally admit that Bastien was murdered? They admitted that I was correct in mid-January.   When did you first learn details of the attacks that were to happen on Sept. 11? In the first week of December 2000.   How did you learn of the details? One document was written in English by a U.S. agent, who had picked up a copy of a document that had been sent to V. Putin by K. Hussein, Saddam Hussein's son. This is what the translation of the doc indicates. The Iraqis knew in June 2000 that I was coming. I didn't get my orders until August. The letter said that Bastien and Vreeland would be dealt with "in a manner suitable to us." The letter specifically stated on page two, "Our American official guarantees this."   Who put the information on the attacks into the pouch, and what would have been their motive for doing so? I am not allowed to answer that. It would jeopardize the lives of active agents, and it would violate the National Security Act of 1947.   After having learned of the details of the impending attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, how long did you wait before trying to notify Canadian and U.S. authorities of the information? On Dec. 6, 2000 I told Canadian authorities to their face that I needed to contact the Canadian military immediately. I wrote it down. She [the Canadian official] was playing games, so I wrote down that I was a Russian spy and a weapons systems expert, and that I wanted to talk to them TODAY. I said I was a Russian because figured it would get their attention. The name they had on me was Mikhail Cristianov (Michael Christian), because I had ID that used this name.   What was their reaction? The Canadians turned blue, walked away, and I never saw them again.   How did it make you feel? I was pissed off. It's on video [referring to a standard jail surveillance/security video].   Did the U.S. & Canadian response lead you to reach any conclusions? If so, what were they? I thought I was dealing with idiots who had no clue about what was about to happen. It's been put to me that there were certain officials who wanted the attacks to happen. No one ever had any intention of building the system I was after because it would have made the defense budget obsolete. One thing that happened after 9-11 was that the Pentagon budgets soared.   Your written warning contains the statement, "Let one happen, stop the rest." Who was going to let one happen? Who was going to stop the rest? I can't comment on the advice of counsel.   Does that statement imply that the U.S. or some other intelligence agency had achieved complete penetration of the terrorist cells? That goes without question. Sometimes certain govts design, create networks like Al'Qaeda, which was really the govt in Afghanistan. Those entities create specific problems at the creating govt's direction.   Do you know who had achieved this penetration? I cannot comment on that.   Is it possible that the terrorist cells were being "run" without knowing by whom? Absolutely.   The most common excuse people use to discredit you is that you have prior arrests on fraud charges, and there are several press stories linking you to alleged criminal activity. How do you explain this? The American Express charges are B.S., and Amex has stated on tape that the specific charges in question were approved. They admit that there was no fraud on this card. That card had been issued to Lt. Delmart Michael Vreeland. The Amex people admitted that the card was a U.S. Navy card. People have accused me of identity theft. If anybody checked with the police departments in the U.S., they would find that there is not one police report form any individual in the U.S. who has alleged that I have stolen any identities. There is not a single identified victim anywhere. Three judges in Canada have denied my requests to have discovery and disclosure on these alleged charges. The press stories that have circulated about my past are lies. Portions of the stories alleging fraud and ID theft are lies. I have threatened to sue these papers, and the stories have been pulled. I'm working with ONI. Certain govt officials, politicians, brass, and high ranking military, have 11th Amendment privileges and can't be sued. Another govt agency has to go investigate activities connected to weapons smuggling, organized crime and drug trafficking. They use their power to break laws, and we're not allowed to investigate them. Thus certain parts of the U.S. govt designed an entity called UID (Unofficial Intelligence Investigation Division). It was designed by Adm. Jeremy Michael Boorda, who allegedly committed suicide. Boorda put this together prior to becoming CNO [Chief of Naval Operations]. He was not a bad guy. Intelligence officers are sometimes put into positions where they are given assignments to infiltrate specific organizations that are powerful enough to check out a newcomer's background. Page 335 of the Charter Application in Canadian Court shows a copy of orders from Southern Command. These orders are dated April 18, 2000, concerning an anti-drug operation we were mounting. At approximately the same time the media released widespread stories that I was a wanted criminal. This was a means pf providing cover and credibility for me with the people I was infiltrating.   How many times have you been arrested on criminal charges? Maybe 3. Some of this I did, like a DUI charge in New York. I had been at the UN, and I had definitely been drinking.   How many times have you been convicted? I have never been legally convicted of any criminal, felony activity anywhere. The drunk driving charge is still pending, and I have admitted in open court that I did it.   The Michigan warrant for credit card fraud is based upon the use of your own credit card. How do you explain this? It is a setup.   Were your credit cards authorized or facilitated by the U.S. Navy or any part of the U.S. govt? Yes.   Could the U.S. govt or any of its intelligence agencies have "inserted" the charges through state and local agencies? Yes.   You were in custody in New York on the date the alleged Michigan offense took place. What was the charge, and what was the disposition of that case? That was the DUI charge.   Was working with organized crime families a part of your duties with the Navy? Yes.   Were any of the organized crime families in Michigan? Yes.   For what reason were you working with organized crime? I was under orders to do so 90 percent of the time. Organized crime supplies the weapons and drugs that go to the people we investigate.   Are you afraid that you will be killed if you are extradited to the U.S.? Why? Yes. Because I have spoken out.   Can you explain why the Canadian courts will not allow your attorneys to introduce evidence that verifies your position with the U.S. Navy? Yes. The Canadians are totally subservient to U.S. intelligence interests. They're afraid of Uncle Sam. It would also prove that CSIS covered up Marc Bastien's death, and that there was a cover-up involving a member of a major drug organization that had planned assassinations against prominent Canadians. In fact, one individual was found dead in a vat of acid. He was a hit man.   What do you want? I want my uniform back, my back pay at $4,210.90 a month and my honor. I want President Bush to give me a full and complete pardon and the amnesty of the U.S. govt. I am owed that. I want Bush personally to know everything that I know, and what kind of threats there are against the U.S. It's never going to happen, so I am now seeking permanent refugee status in Canada and the protection of the United Nations.   What do you think will happen next in your case? I don't know. My attorney is in court seeking a postponement of the extradition case because the Canadian govt will not allow me to subpoena very important U.S. witnesses from the Pentagon and other places.   Is the war on terrorism about something other than what the people of the world are being told? What war on terrorism?   What do you think will happen next in the war on terror? Eventually, someone's going to have to tell the truth. Once those people are dealt with according to law, there will be no more false terror spread across the globe.   You have recently had dealings with an American journalist named Rick Wiles. What is your opinion of Wiles and what was your experience? My opinion of Wiles is that he is a psychopath, who will print anything that will make him money. My experience with him was that I had private conversations with him that he recorded, not telling me he was going to post them on the Internet and sell them to the world. Then once I contacted him and told him that he was not to do that, he said he would take them down right now. Instead of taking them down he placed a bigger ad. He made a bigger ad! In my opinion he is neither honorable nor professional. He has placed my story right next to a story about someone who talked to aliens 25 years ago. Yeah, that's right where I want my story to be, right next to some bozo who talks to aliens. The idiot! So now he's selling this phony exclusive interview with me for $20 and he's making all the money. He never had my permission to do that.   You have recently had dealings with an American journalist named J.R. Nyquist. What is you opinion of Nyquist and what was your experience? Don't even get me started. My opinion: I think he might be working for the govt. I did not know that he was writing a story about me. He asked me some questions. I answered some questions. I recorded it, and then he went off on a wild tangent about psychological crap, and I didn't even read the whole story I was so mad. He went off about the Russians, and it's all bs. He sent me this fax about you saying that Ruppert was not my friend. He was saying that the Russians had me boxed in. The truth is, the American govt is boxing me in. He's full of shit.   Are all of these statements on-the-record? Yes!   [ MCR preface … I have been studying, interacting with, and talking to covert operatives for more than 25 years. For that reason, I avoid some questions raised by dilettantes & neophyte journalists who take all threads of Vreeland's stories into wilderness from which no professional journalist could credibly emerge. Yes, I have listened to him talk about so-called "red mercury," baseball-sized atom bombs, and Star Wars weapons systems. Yes, I have heard him talk about a great many things, and I believe that what he told me was truthful according to his knowledge of events and the documents he brought back from Moscow in December 2000. Even by his own statements, Vreeland, now 35, was a relatively low ranking officer and an intelligence field operative. Never in the history of covert operations has any govt entrusted field operatives with total strategic knowledge; knowledge held by those who make the plans is compartmentalized & locked away. Perhaps 80% of all intelligence work is disinformation, and govts know field operatives risk capture, interrogation and torture. Quite often field operatives are themselves fed disinformation so that if they talk, they will still spread lies that serve a larger strategic purpose. Quite often they carry documents that are deliberately inaccurate and their capture is engineered to give those documents credibility … ] Oswald 's Mannlicher-Carcano rifle was kept in the garage of the Paines, cousins of John Forbes Kerry …   [ 2004 Dem. pres. candidate & intelligence wrongdoing Cong. investigation chair Sen. Kerry ] … Warren Commission report describing testimony of Michael R. Paine & his wife, Ruth Paine. Michael R. Paine was the son of Ruth Forbes Paine. Michael R. Paine & Ruth Forbes Paine Young were Forbes family heirs and as is Sen. Kerry. Because of her son's involvement in the assasination, her Forbes family's involvement with drug dealing in China during the Opium War, and her husband's involvement with the military & defense industry, Ruth Forbes Paine Young started the International Peace Academy, which have fed rumors about her family's politics." So enmeshed with the lives of Mr. & Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald that she became the Warren Commission's most important witness, Ruth Hyde Paine, b. 9.3.32, was a friend of Marina Oswald who was living with her at the time of the JFK assassination. In February 1963, Everett Glover, with whom she'd sung madrigals in Dallas, invited her to a get-together at his home. Among his guests, Oswald, for whom she found the job that put him 6 floors above Dealey Plaza . Ruth did not know that most of Dallas's small Russian-emigre community had given up on the Oswalds. Ruth Paine wrote to Jim Garrison offering to help him with his investigation. "Kerry at St Paul's School, Concord NH (enrolled 1958, grad. 1962) In his free time, he enjoyed hockey & lacrosse, which he played on teams captained by a classmate & future FBI director Robert S. Mueller III. Kerry played electric bass for the prep school's band The Electras, which produced an album in 1961. Only 500 copies were made, and in 2004 one of the copies was eBay auctioned at for $2,551". JFK was killed 11.22.63 while riding in an open convertible in Dallas TX by assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, who had close ties with the Carlos Marcello Mafia family in New Orleans, particularly with Charles Murret, a top man in Marcello's Louisiana gambling network. Oswald had also been seen by numerous witnesses meeting with Marcello's personal pilot just days before he murdered the president. Within 48 hours after the shooting, Oswald, who panicked after the assassination and was captured by police, was killed by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, who had a long standing relationship with numerous associates of the Chicago Mafia and had worked as an organizer at one time for Paul Dorfman, stepfather of Jimmy Hoffa's associate Allen Dorfman, in the Chicago Wastehandlers Union. During the days and weeks before the Kennedy killing, Ruby was calling and being called by top aides to Marcello, Florida mobster Santos Trafficante, and Hoffa, all of whom were known to have discussed plans with their associates to murder either JFK or RFK. A U.S. House select committee investigating the Kennedy assassination later concluded that "Carlos Marcello, Santos Trafficante, and Jimmy Hoffa had the motive, means and opportunity" to murder the president. (Report of the Select Committee on Assassination, 95th Cong. 2nd session, House report no. 95.1828, part 2 pp 169-179) "The mob did it", said committee chief counsel G. Robert Blakey. "It is a historical fact". The committee's final report put forth the theory that Kennedy was killed to end relentless U.S. Justice Dept assault on the underworld. The official investigation by the Warren Commission that followed never addressed the underworld ties to Oswald and Ruby. Many of those on the panel had been directly involved with the CIA-Mafia plots to murder Fidel Castro, which the Kennedy brothers had no knowledge of until May 1962 at which time they ordered them stopped. Meanwhile, Lew Wasserman had tried to revive Reagan's failing movie career.     Dark Victory "Ronald Reagan, MCA & the Mob" Dan Moldea   1986	N E W Rome	S U P P L E M E N T
	[ Presume primarily speculative sources' citation on this page. ]   new Chandra & Monica Squeaky & Sarah Jane Vince Foster Systematics cowboy corral Ruby's remains ETs NatSec sacrifices plums imperium DoD OSP vermin OSP personal service contracts sundries rules of engagment ryecatching Lone Gunmen Jim Bell Megiddo bin Laden Christopher Boyce feyadeen Article 32 Jose Padilla M.C. Reynolds T.McVeigh Robert Philip Hanssen Cpls Morrison & Medders S.Mosed Oswald Talked Eat the Rich 527 groups ConWebWatch Warren Commission poetry John Whitten Oswald bio NARA JFK killing records Garrison repudiated E.Howard Hunt's testament Masonic umbrella Edw. Haslam David Ferrie Henry Lee Lucas Ted Maher Gordon Thomas 'Journey into Madness' M. Collins Piper & links   Kremlin puppets & how they work 2000   J.R. Nyquist WorldNetDaily auth. Origins of the Fourth World War bkgd bio Putin rsvp         While GWBush & Al Gore argued about how to spend America's budget surplus, U.S. crude inventories were falling as oil prices continued upward. At the same time, the world's stock markets reacted negatively. Yesterday's Nikkei Stock Average fell 467.74 points, lowest close in 19 months. U.S. stocks also continued to fall. As these words are being written, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has dipped below 10,000 for the first time in several months. All this is happening as Israelis line up at gas mask distribution centers, preparing for a possible chemical missile attack from the leading mad MidEast dictator. Beyond these outward signs, however, it is all part of a huge puppet show. See the puppets; consider who the puppet masters are. Consider the semi-puppet madman in Baghdad, who sent a powerful armored division made of Russian-built tanks to the Jordanian border. The Iraqis want a way into Israel so they can destroy the hated enemy. It is all very theatrical. Several days ago, Saddam Hussein requested an attack corridor into Israel. But even an elite Iraqi armored division is not very dangerous. What is needed, in the last analysis, is an atomic bomb or a missile carrying weaponized smallpox. But Iraq has been damaged by American & British bombs. Consequently, it is difficult for Saddam Hussein to mount a nuclear or biological attack on Israel. Arms control inspectors spent years in his country, disrupting vital efforts to build weapons of mass destruction. So other countries had to be used for this purpose. Iran is of special importance in this; Russia has been helping Iran to develop its nuclear capability. … Russians told VP Gore about their program to assist Iran in 1995. On Tuesday Bill Gertz reported Washington Times obtained classified letter sent by Russia's PM to Gore, instructing the American vice president to withhold information about the Russia-Iran nuclear program from the U.S. Congress. Russia's motivation for helping Iranians? Russia is supposedly fighting Islamic terrorists in Chechnya. Why conspire to give Islamics a nuclear device on another front? The Kremlin worked closely with Arab & Islamic terrorists for decades. Russia supported & assisted terrorist states like Libya & Syria. It trained & paid the PLO. Russia always first to give aid to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Militant Arabists or Islamic extremists often found within the Russian camp working as virtual puppets of the Kremlin. In fact, Islam's strict moral code makes it easy for Russian intelligence services to penetrate Islamic countries & recruit agents, because sin is not taken lightly in such countries, and the KGB has always been good at creating thick files on people with something to hide. Such files usually assure a lifetime of loyalty to Moscow. And such loyalty, based on the law of self-preservation, is the only sure foundation for a puppet & his puppet master. One chief example: In 1970 the Kremlin became interested in an obscure Arab construction engineer & collector of racecars named Rahman al-Qudwa. Evidence shows, contrary to later claims, that this "construction engineer" was an Egyptian, born in Cairo during the summer of 1929. Rahman graduated from the University of Cairo and served as an officer in the Egyptian Army during the 1956 Suez campaign. Later he set up a business in Kuwait & made a fortune. He then entered politics, founding a hopelessly small terrorist organization. But this terrorist organization would not remain hopelessly small forever. According to former head of Romanian intelligence, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, one of highest ranking communist defectors of all time, Rahman al-Qudwa became an important political ally of the communist bloc following the death of Egypt's president, Gamal Abdul Nasser, in 1970. Gen. Pacepa's account of Rahman's intimate relations with the communist bloc is related in a book entitled "Red Horizons". Pacepa tells us the communists trusted Rahman because he was a voracious homosexual. This alone made him a workable Kremlin puppet, because once the Romanian intelligence services had taped Rahman's sex sessions with men & boys, he was completely in their hands. Afterwards, Rahman's friendship for the communist bloc would be permanent if he valued his growing popularity in the Arab world. Rahman al-Qudwa is better known as Yasser Arafat, PLO chairman since 1968 and president of Palestinian Authority, which is now at war with Israel. According to Gen. Pacepa's account, communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu ordered his people to bring Arafat over to Romania. In late 1970 the chief of Romanian intelligence in Egypt, Gen. Constantine Munteanu, arrived in Bucharest with Arafat in tow. Munteanu had gathered an extensive file on Arafat, which characterized the PLO leader as "so much cleverness, blood, and filth all together in one man." Munteanu's "standard definition of Arafat," per Pacepa. … A compact between Arafat & the Soviet Union via communist Romania was not something that violated any sacred Islamic rule in Arafat's heart. Arafat is no Moslem. His fanaticism is completely secular. But since he operates within the Islamic world, he must sometimes appear as would-be Muslim liberator. The KGB & its successor services have files on Arab leaders. Secret sin is rampant, because men, esp. powerful men, are subject to more than the usual temptations. Sin is also extensive in the Christian world; we have yet to understand the peculiar vulnerabilities of the U.S. in this regard. One reason dirt on our politicians is often kept from the public with great success is because so many are dirty. There exists, in this country, virtual "conspiracy of silence" with regard to official corruption. We should not be surprised same logic applies to Arabs. But since the Arab world is more corrupt than the U.S., it is even more vulnerable to Moscow. Sexual deviancy is only one sin. When Russian PM Viktor Chernomyrdin told VP Gore about Russian nuclear assistance to Iran, he was tempting Gore to compromise himself. Gore had to choose between angering his Russian friends or obeying U.S. law & informing Congress. … On Tuesday congressional leaders asked for hearings into Gore's secret relationship with Russia's former prime minister. In a classic move, Chernomyrdin asked Gore to break U.S. laws requiring that he report Russia's nuclear proliferation to Congress. It is typical of KGB agents to ask for these "little favors." After a certain number of such favors the Kremlin owns you. Then you are paralyzed, and cannot act against Russia in any meaningful way. Suit: Iraq masterminded attack Entire OKC plot alleged 'aided by Baghdad agents' 3.14.02   Jon Dougherty WorldNetDaily.com A class-action lawsuit was filed in district court in Washington, D.C., today alleging that Iraq, "in whole or in part," planned and financed the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City nearly 7 years ago. "Plaintiffs assert that the entire plot was, in whole or in part, orchestrated, assisted technically and/or financially, and directly aided by agents of the Republic of Iraq," said the suit, filed by public interest law firm Judicial Watch. Federal officials have said 4.19.95 attack on the Murrah Building was committed by former Army vet Timothy McVeigh, executed 6.11.01, and accomplice Terry Nichols, now serving a life sentence for his role in the bombing. The FBI said the explosion, which destroyed nearly one-third of the building and killed 168 people, was the result of a huge ammonium nitrate-laden truck bomb parked in front of the building. But according to the suit, plaintiffs say the OKC bombing "was an illegal continuation of the Persian Gulf War," and that they and their loved ones "are … civilian casualties of [the] Gulf War. …" "Plaintiffs further assert that the involvement & complicity of Iraq can be proven by both direct & circumstantial evidence," the suit alleges. Former Oklahoma legislature & Oklahoma Bombing Investigation Committee primary member Charles Key said the suit had been in a "holding pattern" for some time. He said his committee was also involved in the suit. "We knew as early as 1995 that Iraq was likely involved in the bombing," Key told WorldNetDaily, based on "work done by Brad Edwards & Jayna Davis at OKC NBC affiliate". Also, Key said, attorney Stephen Jones "pursued a lot of this himself." And, "as some of the points in our complaint show, there is a wealth of information that says Iraq was planning terrorist acts in our country for a long time." Judicial Watch chair & lead counsel Larry Klayman said evidence against Iraq is strong. "It's time that someone took action against Iraq. Talk is cheap," Klayman said, adding that Judicial Watch would be "developing more evidence" against Baghdad later. The legal group says the suit was filed under terms enumerated in the Antiterrorism & Death Penalty Act of 1996, which addresses state-sponsored terrorism and has a specific provision for retroactive application. "Judicial Watch & its clients contend that other individuals, in addition to Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, were involved in the preparation for and execution of the attack on the Murrah Building", said a statement issued by the group. "These individuals were operating as agents of the Republic of Iraq. …" Klayman's organization said reports from Philippine intelligence & law enforcement sources form the basis for much of the information contained in the lawsuit. Specifically, the suit details meetings between Nichols & Ramzi Youssef, mastermind of 1993 World Trade Ctr bombing, during Nichols' travel to the Philippines between 1990 & 1994. Additional evidence obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveals Interpol's efforts to apprehend 2 additional Oklahoma City bombing suspects and information in the agency's files associating Youssef with the attack, Judicial Watch said. "It's time the whole story about the Oklahoma City bombing is revealed and that justice is done for the Iraqis' state sponsorship of that brutal attack on American citizens," Klayman said. Local OKC attorney Mike Johnston is also acting as counsel in the suit, as is Jay Adkisson of Irvine, Calif. "The survivors of the Murrah Building bombing and the people of Oklahoma City have waited a long time for the whole, unvarnished truth to come out concerning this horrific plot, and they won't rest until that's accomplished," Johnston said in a statement released today. In a separate interview, Johnston told WorldNetDaily he hoped the suit would bring "peace of mind" to the plaintiffs & the nation. "We think there's evidence out that that would be not only relevent to the lawsuit but have definite historical value, not only for public consumption but also for the peace of mind for the survivors," he said. Johnston added that he hadn't heard from the Justice Dept or the FBI regarding the suit. "This is a civil matter, and I think they'll be reluctant to get involved, at least on any official basis," he said. The Justice Dept did not return phone calls seeking comment. The suit says that prior to the Gulf War, "Iraq had developed a covert network in U.S. to acquire materials for weapons of mass destruction." After the war, the suit alleges, "Iraq converted that network into organized terrorist cells," some of which "were directly involved in" the OKC bombing. The suit also alleges that Youssef set up a terrorist "base of operations" in the Philippines in 1994. That may be significant, sources told WorldNetDaily, because of Nichols' trips to the Philippines prior to the 1995 bombing. "In the Philippines as part of 'Project Bojinka,' Ramzi Youssef, on behalf of Iraq, recruited conspirators to attempt to simultaneously bomb U.S. 747 aircraft over the Pacific," the suit alleges. Delayed timers "with many similarities" to the Pam Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 were to be used, said the suit. "Youssef also conceived of plans to highjack planes bound for the United States in order to dive them, in suicide attacks, into U.S. targets like CIA headquarters … a tactic later adopted by [al-Qaida terrorist group founder] Osama bin Laden," the suit said. "Plaintiffs assert that at some point … Youssef recruited a willing convert in the person of Terry Nichols, who witnesses say went to the Philippines seeking technical help in learning to build a bomb," said the suit. "Meetings between Terry Nichols and Ramzi Youssef were witnessed by a Filipino government informant." Nichols made his last trip to the Philippines Nov. 22, 1994, after marrying a local 17-year-old Filipino girl. Besides the plaintiffs, others believe the OKC bombing may have an Iraqi connection. According to a "Washington Whispers" segment in 10.29.01 issue of U.S. News & World Report, some top Defense Department officials believed McVeigh was an Iraqi agent. "Some dismiss it as being akin to Elvis sightings, but a few top Defense officials think Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh was an Iraqi agent," wrote magazine correspondent Paul Bedard. "The theory stems from a never-before-reported allegation that McVeigh had allegedly collected Iraqi telephone numbers. Why haven't we heard this before about the case of the executed McVeigh? Conspiracy theorists in the Pentagon think it's part of a cover-up," he wrote. Counsel for the House-led impeachment effort against former President Clinton David Schippers also says he believes there is a MidEast connection to the bombing. "I am thoroughly convinced that there was a dead-bang Middle Eastern connection in the OKC City bombing," he told TalkNetDaily host Geoff Metcalf 10.21.01 interview. "I think bin Laden was behind it. I think that there were MidEastern people on the scene running away." Minister says his father, now dead, killed MLKing 4.5.02   Dana Canedy NYTimes Gainesville, FL   Saying he could no longer keep his dead father's secret, a minister is contending that his father, not James Earl Ray, fatally shot the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a Memphis motel in 1968. The man, the Rev. Ronald Denton Wilson, said in an interview today that his father, Henry Clay Wilson, led a group of 3 conspirators responsible for Dr. King's death. "My father was the main guy," said Mr. Wilson, 61, of Keystone Heights, north of Gainesville. "It wasn't a racist thing. He thought Martin Luther King was connected with communism, and he wanted to get him out of the way." Mr. Wilson produced no evidence to support his claim. Mr. Wilson, a pastor at the nondenominational New Covenant Church in Graham, north of Gainesville, said his father died in 1990 of complications from emphysema. He said his father was in Memphis on 4.4.68 and killed Dr. King because he thought it was in the nation's best interest. "He kept saying it was the patriotic thing to do," Mr. Wilson said. "He said he had to save the country." An FBI spokesman in Jacksonville, FL said today that the authorities had interviewed Mr. Wilson on Tuesday night and were taking his statements seriously but that the issue had not risen to the level of a full investigation. "When someone makes a statement like this, you don't just ignore it," said Special Agent Ron Grenier. "This is something very serious." A spokesman for the Memphis office of the F.B.I. said it was not involved. "If credible evidence were developed by the Jacksonville office, substantiating any of the claims by this man that his father was involved in the assassination of Martin Luther King, then we might become involved," said spokesman George Bolds. Mr. Wilson called a news conference Tue. to provide what he said were the facts about Dr. King's death. He said it was only a coincidence that it fell near the anniversary of the assassination. Since his announcement, he'sbeen asked for interviews by newspapers & tv pgms across the country. Mr. Wilson said that as a young man he had attended meetings among his father & 2 men he identified as co-conspirators. "I was invited as a minister," he said. "My dad wanted me to pray and ask for everything to go right." Mr. Wilson said that his father, a plumbing contractor, told him about the plan to kill Dr. King the year before the assassination. The minister said he had agonized for years and came forward because "I felt safer now because everybody involved is now dead." "Plus, I wanted to cleanse my soul," Mr. Wilson said. "I've carried this weight for a long time." Atlanta King Ctr lawyer William Pepper said in a statement that he had been contacted by many people making claims similar to Mr. Wilson's but had discounted most as having no value. "I have heard from Reverend Wilson over the last couple of years or more but have never seen any hard evidence to justify the allegations now being made," Mr. Pepper wrote. Even faced with such skepticism, Mr. Wilson insists that his father was the killer. "I kept telling him not to do it," he said of his father. "But he kept trying to convince me it was the patriotic thing to do." James Earl Ray confessed to killing Dr. King at the Lorraine Motel, but later recanted the statement. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison and died of liver disease in 1998. Mr. Wilson said Mr. Ray, an acquaintance of his father's, was set up for the crime. His father chose not to come forward with the truth, and Mr. Wilson said he also decided not to contact the authorities because, "I was sworn to never bring it up. I wasn't going to turn Dad in." Asked in an interview if he could produce a murder weapon, Mr. Wilson said the gun was at the bottom of the St. John's River, southeast of Jacksonville. As he was about to reveal more about the location, Mr. Wilson's son, Steve, 39, also a pastor, interrupted him, saying the family instead wished to read a statement. It expressed sympathy for the King family and said that "under the advice of counsel the Rev. R. D. Wilson is giving no further public statements." In a follow-up telephone interview about an hour later, Steve Wilson inquired about whether The Times ever pays for exclusive details of news events. It does not. George Joannides In 1998, the Agency declassified a handful of annual personnel evaluations that revealed Joannides … In November 1963, Joannides was serving as the chief of psychological warfare operations in the CIA's Miami station. … Joannides had agents in a leading Cuban student exile group, an operation code-named AMSPELL in CIA files. program of CIA support for the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, also known as the Cuban Student Directorate. By 1962, the DRE was perhaps the single biggest and most active organization opposing Fidel Castro's regime. In Miami, Joannides was giving the leaders of the group up to $25,000 a month in cash for what he described as "intelligence collection" and "propaganda." In August 1963, the DRE's New Orleans chapter had taken a vocal and very public interest in an itinerant ex-Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald because of his blatantly pro-Castro politicking. He wrote letters to left-wing political organizations and drifted from job to job. And then in early August 1963 he attempted to infiltrate the DRE. Oswald approached Carlos Bringuier, a 29-year-old lawyer who served as the group's spokesman in the Crescent City. Oswald offered to help train DRE commandos to fight the communist government in Cuba. A few days later, when the DRE boys saw him on a street corner passing out pamphlets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), a notoriously pro-Castro group, they picked a fight with him. Bringuier took an interest in Oswald. He directed a DRE member to go to Oswald's house and pose as a Castro supporter to learn more about his background. Bringuier also debated Oswald on a local radio program, and sent a tape of the debate to DRE's Miami headquarters. He also sent one of Oswald's FPCC pamphlets. Bringuier went so far as to issue a press release on Oswald, calling for a congressional investigation of the then-obscure ex-Marine. "Write to your congressman for a full investigation on Mr. Lee H. Oswald, a confessed 'Marxist,'" the DRE spokesman wrote on August 21, 1963. … When Congress reopened the JFK probe in 1978, Joannides served as the CIA's liaison to the investigators. His job was to provide files and information to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He did not disclose his role in the events of 1963, even when asked direct questions about the AMSPELL operation he handled. In September 2006 federal judge Richard Leon upheld the CIA's arguments in a Freedom of Information lawsuit that it did not have to release the JFK material in Joannides's file. The National Archives then requested the Joannides files from the Agency earlier this year. As of late October 2007, the CIA was still resisting disclosure.

JFK assassination was conceived by mafia godfathers Santo Trafficante of Miami and Carlos Marcello of New Orleans. It was coordinated by top mobsters Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana, both murdered after receiving subpoenas to testify before an investigating congressional committee, which ultimately concluded that the assassination of JFK was probably a conspiracy.
Roselli was sawn into pieces and stuffed into an oil canister, then dumped into the Atlantic Ocean; Giancana was shot at close range as he prepared a late-night sausage and pepper sandwich in the basement kitchen of his home.

The two actual trigger-men were Cuban, both part of an earlier mafia contract on Castro’s head. The mob used some of CIA’s anti-Castro funding to pay them off. Anti-Castro-Cubans, concentrated in the Miami area, hated JFK almost as much as they detested Castro after Kennedy left Cuban troops stranded at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Motive: Old-fashioned revenge mixed with self-preservation.

The mafia helped elect Joe the Bootlegger’s Boy to the White House. They stole Chicago for Kennedy, arranging for a number of long-dead people to vote, edging out Richard Nixon, the genuine winner. Their reward was Robert Kennedy as attorney general on determined crusade to jail or deport top mafia figures.
Perhaps RFK was out to prove his manhood as runt of a highly competitive family, along with trying to erase family connections to the mob. An anti-mafia campaign became RFK’s obsession to chagrin of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who, for his own reasons, refused to even acknowledge the existence of a cosa nostra.

RFK went too far when he orchestrated the deportation of Carlos Marcello to Sicily. Humiliated and outraged, Marcello snuck back into the U.S. and began plotting. At a mob pow-wow, Santo Trafficante proposed that they put a contract on Robert Kennedy.
Marcello would have none of it; only the top enchilada would suffice.
“If you cut off the dog’s tail, the dog will only keep biting,” Marcello told Trafficante. “But if you cut off its head, the dog will die.”

When the deed was done, RFK knew very well what had happened, and this compounded his inconsolable grief. RFK blamed himself, for it was he who personally spearheaded CIA’s attempts to get Castro, cementing an otherwise tenuous agency relationship with the mafia.
Under President Johnson, RFK became a lame attorney general. His spirit for the job was all but snuffed out. LBJ, who referred to JFK in the late 1950s as “that spavined hunchback,” had grown weary of the Kennedy insider sobriquet for him, “Uncle Cornpone".
J. Edgar Hoover loathed the Kennedy brothers, especially Robert. He was relieved to have them off his back. The FBI director maintained good relations with mob bosses; he traded horseracing tips with top New York mobster Frank Costello. FBI investigation evaded every lead that pointed to the mafia.

Lee Harvey Oswald was a fiery young idealist who drifted from one cause to the next, ultimately allowing himself to be strung into the wrong place at the wrong time by the wrong crowd under the wrong set of circumstances.
Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner and mob associate from way back, was chosen to hit Oswald. The deal to break him out of prison and set him up a millionaire in Mexico went unfulfilled. A few years later Ruby was dead from cancer.
The Warren Commission whitewashed the event for reasons of national security, e.g.the Castro connection, and the mafia became alarmed by RFK’s rise to popularity.

per Robert Eringer   ¹

Russian Acting Pres. Vladimir Putin's Chechen campaign has rallied Russian citizens and provided, for the first time, a post-Soviet ideological rationale for the Russian state. Russians are feeling proud again. Putin's Chechen war, emerging nationalism and Andropovian rebirth of the nation have all exploited Russian dissatisfaction with the economy and the instability of the state. They give emboldened wings to Putin's dash for the Russian presidency that proceeds unabated. A sixty percent turnout in last month's elections voted for a new Duma that will likely support Putin's anti-criminal, anti-terrorist campaign for the nation and in Chechnya and will continue the war in the Northern Caucasus despite a potentially bloody conclusion.

background: Vladimir Putin, while head of Russia's domestic intelligence service (FSB), was appointed Sec. of the Russian Security Council in March 1999. He chaired both bodies during the Kosovo conflict and in the period before the Chechen incursion into Dagestan. When Yeltsin decided to sack Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin (9 August) for failure to stop the events in Dagestan, he appointed Putin to be prime minister. At the same time, he declared Putin heir apparent to the presidency. It was an unprecedented move in post-Soviet Russia. On 31 December 1999, Yeltsin resigned and Putin became Acting President.

Putin has rallied the Russian populace against Chechen defiance by invoking the notion of discipline favored by former KGB Chief & Soviet leader Yuri Andropov and applied it to the war in the Northern Caucasus. Early on in his leadership of the FSB, Putin began to cloak himself in the mantle of Andropov, who emphasized discipline in the work place and cracked down on corruption in Soviet society. Andropov is now one of the most respected of the former Soviet leaders. By the time he was appointed PM, Putin had created a popular image as an Andropov-style, no-nonsense enforcer who vowed to "rub out" the Chechen rebels. Putin is now calling for an Andropovian rebirth to go along with his campaign to glorify the Russian security organs that are striking at Chechen terrorists. The Kremlin's popular war in Chechnya is portrayed as a battle between right & wrong, good & evil. Internally, he vows to crack down on crime, collect taxes, and create effective civil and state institutions with strong authorities. In Putin's words he wants "to have a strong hand, but not the way it was in 1937." As FSB-head, Putin commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Alfa anti-terrorist group formed by Andropov and used the event to warn that "terrorists & extremists of every stripe must know that Russia has people who reliably safeguard constitutional principles." As PM, Putin asserted that Russia's priority is to fight "international terrorism" in the North Caucasus. implications: By praising the Russian security services and embracing the memory of Yuri Andropov, Putin signals future trends for Chechnya and Russia.   Crackdown on Chechen criminal elements The Russians seek to neutralize Chechen economic links that are perceived as criminal. Chechens are obvious targets due to their strong economic community throughout the Russian Federation & abroad. The Chechens are constantly struggling & fighting against Russian political, economic and cultural hegemony. Often they resort to crime to advance their interests while asserting themselves in politics & commerce. Chechen criminals specialize in arms trade, car theft, contract murders, extortion, narcotics, petroleum and natural gas diversions and visa fraud with key nodes in Moscow & St. Petersburg. Frequent travels & links with the Chechen diaspora allows access to funds & technology.   Destruction of Islamic militants and arrests & deportations of "sympathizers" Wahhabism") in Chechen political & social life. Russia claims this large group of militants does not accept Western nor Russian models of political, economic, or social development. Russia also accuses them of attacking the incorporation of local customs & Russian innovations as corrupting influences upon Chechen culture. Since the Moscow bombings of September 1999 that Moscow blames on Chechen terrorists, Operation Whirlwind in Moscow & Operation Storm Anti-Terror in North Ossetia continue to isolate Chechens who may or may not have any links with the rebels. Some estimates suggest that over 30,000 Chechens have been detained and 10,000 Chechens deported from Moscow alone.   Continuation of unprecedented civil-military cooperation ¹ Unprecedented close cooperation will continue between Putin & the Russian military. The relationship between Putin & Chief of the Russian General Staff Anatolii Kvashnin is very close resulting in the decline of civilian oversight of the Russian military. Mutual interests of the state & the military are nearly equal. In the next few years, troops & commanders involved in the Chechen war will form the core personnel of the Russian military's revival under Putin's leadership. The General Staff agrees with Putin that there is a need to secure the health of the country by any means possible. Chechnya & the Northern Caucasus are no exception.   Rise of Russian nationalism The Chechen war symbolizes an emboldened Russian nationalism based on force, not negotiation. Most importantly, the conflict has fanned the flames of Russian nationalism by erasing (or at least seeming to erase) the many cleavages that have split Russian nationalists in the past. Russian nationalists now believe that a market economy can co-exist with statism especially if employing parts of Yuri Andropov's authoritarian style. The war is also proving that territory lost during the Soviet implosion can in fact be retained. Nationalists now tend to accept a small Russia as long as it is not a collapsing one. The war is healing the "isolation vs. expansionism" debate in foreign political & economic policy as the Russian Army boldly asserts itself in spite of international outcry. The war & its nationalist bent has gained the strong backing of the Russian Orthodox church, voted the most popular Russian institution in recent opinion polls. conclusion: Rise of Vladimir Putin as Acting President reflects the political & economic rejuvenation of the Russian state following the ruble collapse of Aug. 1998. Putin, like Andropov, seeks to make the Russian people more responsible for political & economic performance. Putin has utilized the current state of affairs to mobilize support for his anti-crime & anti-terrorist policies. He & rising elite of the country are clearly bent on diminishing the struggle between the executive & legislative branches, reversing the Kremlin's unpredictable policies, and stifling allegations of corruption in order to stabilize the country. Andropovian tactics may actually invite greater foreign investment because Russia could become more stable. Putin's work with the General Staff to bring in strong authorities is an attempt to compensate for the weakness of the Russian state & its failed institutions in the Northern Caucasus. When a state is in collapse, it relies on security organs & the military to reverse the political & economic decline. The war in Chechnya does this for Putin & Russia, subverting Chechnya and erasing Chechen criminal & terrorist elements that are scapegoats for Russia's ills. As is clear in Putin's Chechen war, Andropov-style discipline & order are the new tenets of Russian society as the country enters the 21st century. 'Too Brave': journalist's apparent political murder 10.14.06   ABC News Journalists in Russia face a very difficult choice. If true to their profession by reporting the truth, they are increasingly more likely to lose their lives. Russia's most outspoken journalist was silenced on a Saturday afternoon in the elevator of her central Moscow apartment block. She was the 13th journalist killed since President Vladimir Putin came to power 6 years ago. Anna Politkovskaya, 48, was gunned down as she returned home from the grocery store. Her killer, still at large, shot the Novaya Gazeta reporter twice in the heart, once in the shoulder, and then put the final shot in her head before tossing the gun next to her slumped body. "She was not just a political journalist," political opposition leader Grigory Yavlinksy said after Politkovskaya's funeral service on Tuesday. "She was a real political opponent [of the Kremlin], and this was a political murder." Politkovskaya was a constant critic of the Kremlin and was renowned for her hard-hitting reports on human rights abuses in war-torn Chechnya. Her murder underscores the dangers facing the media in Russia today. The Committee to Protect Journalists ranks it the third most dangerous place after Iraq and Algeria, and has labeled Putin "an enemy of the press." "The dangers that had threatened people working in this sphere [of journalism] became more real after her murder," said Moscow lawyer Masha Zaitseva, 22. "It is evident that nothing is changing for the better. This incident … reflects the situation just as it is here. There isn't [freedom of the press in Russia]. There can't be any debate about that," Zaitseva said. Politkovskaya's influence was such that people who fear independent journalism in Russia could die with her. "Our Western colleagues often asked, 'Is there freedom of the press in Russia?' to which we answered, 'We have Politkovskaya,'" said Russian Union of Journalists secretary Paul Gutiontov. "Now we can't say that." It is not just native Russian journalists who have been targeted. In 2004, Forbes magazine Russian edition editor Paul Klebnikov, American, was shot dead leaving his central Moscow office. The case remains unsolved. Russian TV media, news source for 85 percent of the population, is almost entirely state owned. Rossiya and Channel One typically begin each newscast with a report on Putin's daily activities kissing children and opening construction sites & churches. 6 years ago, Russians were able to tune into opposition voices on NTV, a privately owned channel. That ended in 2001, when the state gas company, Gazprom, took control of the station, bringing it into line with Putin programming. TV coverage was pivotal in the last parliamentary elections; pro-Putin parties were given disproportionate amounts of air time. They gained two-thirds of the 450 seats in the State Duma, giving Putin a rubber-stamp parliament. Many of the country's leading newspapers, though more openly critical of authorities, have been bought up by Kremlin-friendly businessmen. There are two small beacons of hope: business newspaper Vedomosti owned by the Wall Street Journal & the Financial Times, and, Novaya Gazeta, Politkovskaya's paper. Their total circulation, along with a few local independents, is less than 500,000, "a drop in the ocean" of Russia's potential 143 million readership, says Glasnost Defense Foundation president Alexei Simonov in Moscow. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, a 10 percent shareholder in Politkovskaya's newspaper, called her murder "a blow to the entire democratic, independent press." The paper has offered a reward of nearly $1 million for information leading to the capture of her killers and whoever ordered the murder. Presidential staff deputy chief Vladislav Surkov, told reporters last month "There has been no deterioration" to freedom of speech in Russia since Putin came to power. Supporters of the Kremlin blame any criticisms of their govt's handling of the media on an anti-Russian bias in the Western press. Putin has not publicly addressed the Russian people about the murder, a move that has fueled resentment here. The day after Politkovskaya's murder, hundreds gathered in a central Moscow square to express their outrage at what they said was the govt's lack of response to the killing of one of the country's best-known journalists. The Kremlin released a statement on Monday stating that Putin had assured President Bush in a phone call that the country's prosecutors would bring Politkovskaya's killers to justice. At a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Dresden, Germany, where Putin once served as a KGB officer, the Russian president called it an "unacceptable crime." "Her influence on political life in the country was extremely insignificant in scale," Putin said. Putin went on to say that the public fallout after her murder had done more to harm the reputation of Russia than the critical articles she wrote about the current regime. Her followers took offense to his comments. "If her stories weren't dangerous, she wouldn't have been killed. There wasn't anything else to kill her for. This means her stories carried weight," said Russian Union of Journalists' Gutiontov. Politkovskaya's reports on the atrocities of Russia's war with the southern state of Chechnya won her numerous international reporting awards and enemies. This week, Novaya Gazeta published the report she was working on before her death. The report detailed alleged torture by Russian security forces in Chechnya. She said that she had received several death threats. In September 2004, she suddenly fell ill after drinking tea on a plane as she flew to cover the school hostage siege in Beslan. She later said that she had been poisoned to keep her from covering the event. "You can't do what she did here in Russia. You just can't without finding trouble for yourself", said 56,Moscow doctor Nina Shumilina, age 56. "She was probably too brave." Who, if anyone, will follow in her footsteps remains to be seen. Politkovskaya was the third journalist from Novaya Gazeta to be killed since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. "No one can do it like she did. But we'll try to work harder as she's no longer with us. I am sure the journalists haven't surrendered to intimidation," said Moscow Helsinki human rights group head Lyudmilla Alexeyeva.

Nabob #1 12.13.01   Matt Taibbi The Exile I have always been fascinated by Wm Safire. In a world so well-peopled with sophisticated literary arch-villains like Michael Wines, Thomas Friedman and even Maureen Dowd, Safire lurks in the background as a sort of preternatural common ancestor-the zinjanthropus of Evil Columnists. This is something you can sense almost on an unconscious level when you read his columns; the slope of the brow is just a little lower, the jaw slightly more pronounced, the back a little hairier than that of a pale biped like Wines. This is a creature that does not trade in the squirming deceptions and subtle manipulations of the modern human propagandist. No, he goes for the monstrous lie, naked and primordial, an attack of jaws rather than tools... It is not for nothing that this man was once Richard Nixon's chief domestic policy speechwriter. His style is a kind of relentless, uncompromising meanness, undiluted by anything like wit or personal magnetism. Whatever you may think about him, Rush Limbaugh has a sense of humor, and can actually be funny; he's a closet queen, after all, but there is no hidden human behind Safire's mask. Safire is his mask-and that what makes him so interesting. This past week Safire went after Vladimir Putin. This was nothing new, of course. Like the old political operative that he is, Safire throughout his career has been careful to always feed the faithful-readers, voters, whatever, a steady diet of attacks against a small list of Usual Suspects. In the Nixon era, he and his chief concentrated on the press, the welfare cheats, and the anti-war crowd, in the process fostering a following of the "silent majority." As a writer, he's stuck with liberals and whoever the foreign enemies of the United States happen to be at the time. In recent years his favorite targets have been the Clintons (he once famously called Hillary Clinton a "congenital liar"), the anti-globalist protesters, and Russians. Like his intellectual offspring, Thomas Friedman, Safire has a real hard-on for Russia. He writes about Russia far more than most syndicated columnists. This might have its roots in a Cold War/Nixon-era fixation on the Soviet enemy, or it might be because Bill Clinton was vulnerable on the issue of closeness with the corrupt Yeltsin regime; it's hard to say. But whatever Safire's motives are, his position vis a vis Russians is fairly clear: he doesn't trust them, and thinks that the first consideration in any dealings with them is how best to contain them. To Safire's credit, he was never a Putin booster-never a Wines type who saw yuppie credentials in Putin's KGB past, or believed him to be a "closet reformer" who would bring shades of Pinochet and de Gaulle style order to the chaos of the Russian economy. Safire disliked Putin from the start, and vociferously so. As time has progressed, his distaste for Putin has intensified, to the point where the vicious old codger even allows himself delicious lapses into angry incoherence. Here's an example from a column he wrote last July 18: "Ever since the K.G.B. man emerged as the Russian oligarchs' choice, President Putin has shown himself to be duplicitous (ask the Chechens)... and untrustworthy (ask the exiled oligarchs)." Safire here sounds like Robert de Niro counselling the young Henry Hill in Goodfellas: "You learned the 2 most important lessons: never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut." This is beyond the fact that Safire is asking us to accept the Chechens & Boris Berezovsky as authorities in the area of honesty & trustworthiness … In any case, now that Putin's star is rising all over the world, Safire is leading a charge of hardcore right-wingers to pressure the Bush administration into a harder-line stance toward Putin & the Russians. The effort culminated this week in the Dec. 10 piece, "Reading Putin's Mind." The column is a Safire classic, the kind of thing that made him famous. It has a very simple construction, a first- person "fantasy" in which he writes from the point of view of a gloating Vladimir Putin, giggling to himself over how thoroughly he's hoodwinked the unsuspecting American administration. An English professor would probably be forced to concede that this is a form of "satire", and from a technical standpoint, the entire effort does, I guess, qualify as a form of sarcasm. On the other hand, this is clearly not what Juvenal had in mind when he was inventing this kind of writing. Here's the lead: "MOCKBA — Last week, I induced the 19 NATO countries to count themselves as 20. That makes Russia officially part of the NATO military organization set up to defend Europe from Russia. We will soon have access to all the West's defense plans, and a strong say (in reality, a veto, though they cannot yet admit it) in every action it plans to take." Safire's attempt at humor here ends with the "cyrillic" byline, which of course is not really funny or evocative at all, but just establishes that Safire knows how to spell "Moscow" in Russian. From there it goes on … not really a fantasy trip inside Putin's head at all (this could actually be very funny, potentially), but a completely humorless recitation of Safire's take on Russian policy. This is the kind of thing that made Safire famous and the father of most modern columnists. The first-person body-transfer trick doesn't add anything (I'd be much more interested in Safire's non-sarcastic take on Putin), and from a literary standpoint it's beyond absurd and even childish, but, without that trick, the column would be less column like. Safire pioneered the art of making a stupid medium even stupider with the help of these silly rhetorical gadgets, which over time began to be identified with the very profession of punditry, so that without them, no piece of text sounded like a newspaper column. Whether it's Tom Friedman clumsily laying out his "golden straitjacket" scenario, or Cal Thomas writing a fantasy farewell letter from Vince Foster to the Clintons, most all syndicated political columnists now go the "trick" route about once every three columns. They're never clever, and never funny, but they always sound like columns; this is the main thing. Then there is the substance of Safire's "Putin fantasy". I laughed out loud when I reached this passage: "I read in The NY Times that my friend George and my friend Colin agreed to this Russian diplomatic triumph despite the protest of the warrior Rumsfeld. (Why doesn't George shut down that paper? I would in a minute. Revelation of internal struggle encourages opposition.)" Get it? Safire is making a joke about Putin's strong-arming of the press. Safire himself, of course, has always been a fervent advocate of free speech, going back to the days when he wrote a speech for Spiro Agnew which described NY journalists (yes, those same NY journalists Putin thinks should be shut down) as "nattering nabobs of negativism." In that same speech that Safire wrote, Agnew said: "I am not asking for govt censorship or any other kind of censorship. I am asking whether a form of censorship already exists when the news that 40 million Americans receive each night is determined by a handful of men responsible only to their corporate employers and filtered through a handful of commentators who admit to their own set of biases." This was all around the same time as the Pentagon Papers case, a case in which Safire sided with the Agnew/Nixon govt, which of course didn't want any "govt censorship." It also came during the Vietnam war, which Safire insists to this day was lost partly because the media had too much leeway. It came not long after Safire's most hilarious experiment in govt censorship, the Apollo 11 mission, a little-known story, but true. Before the mission began, the White House's NASA liaison, Frank Borman, approached the White House and asked for a Presidential finding on what to do if the mission went wrong. Safire wrote the finding and prepared a speech for Nixon in the event that Aldrin & Armstrong were stranded on the moon. The speech, which was uncovered in the National Archives a few years ago, is nothing special, typical homage-to-fallen-soldier bullshit. But the finding was a hoot. Among other things, Safire suggested that the first order of business, should something go wrong on the moon, would be to "close down communications" to the lunar lander module, presumably so that the world couldn't hear the astronauts' cries for help. The doomed astronauts would then be left to "do what they had to do … perform self-deliverance, without an audience." "Closing down of communications" extended to the astronauts' families. They would have had to hear from Nixon that their boys had been asked to commit suicide in private, for the good of the country, by … Wm Safire. I wonder what Safire would have advised Russian President Richard Nixon to do during the Kursk disaster? Then there's this passage: "But George had better not carry this antiterror business too far by attacking Primakov's friend in Baghdad. Iraq owes us $8 billion for our arms shipments, and we'll never get that money if Saddam is out of power. Currently he's paying us for new weapons out of his oil smuggling, and if he uses our SAM's to bring down American gunships, that's not my fault." This is Safire at his most hypocritical. Once upon a time, Safire lobbied heavily for the resignation of ADL head Abraham Foxman for the latter's support for the Marc Rich pardon. Safire, as is his wont, attacked Clinton full bore on the Rich issue. Now Rich, among other things, was a notorious embargo-breaker. He was the poster child for the ugly fact of American importation of Iraqi oil. Safire could not possibly not be aware that the oil being smuggled out of Iraq and through Russia, through people like Rich, is largely going to the U.S. When it suits him, he'll bring that up. When it does not, the Russians are left alone as the "smugglers." Then there's "Primakov's friend", Saddam Hussein. Safire conveniently forgets that 2 Republican administrations in the 1980s armed Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran. ¹ ª Those SAM missiles? An odd thing to get upset about, given that the American version of that same weapon, the Stinger, has been used against Russia in 2 wars in Afghanistan & Chechnya. Safire goes on to complain about Russia's oil policies: "Oil. That has been the key to my economic success. After the Saudis, we are the world's largest producer of oil & gas, and have never been part of OPEC. George was so happy to see us pumping away, breaking the monopoly and bringing down prices. This fall's drop in oil prices was equivalent to a huge tax cut, helping stimulate the U.S. out of its recession. "But last week, I made a deal with OPEC to cut our production by a symbolic 150,000 barrels a day, and we're ready to reduce our output much more to help our Arab friends push up world prices. As the capitalists taught us: Sorry, George, business is business." This passage almost defies commentary. A full 23% of Russia's budget comes from oil revenues. Can you imagine Safire arguing that the U.S. should accept a commensurate loss on 23% of its income for Russia's benefit? And Russia is about a thousand times poorer than the U.S. Its people are starving. I happen to agree that Russia ought to break OPEC, if only because I think it's in her interests ultimately, but I'm not about to demand that the whole miserable country tighten its belts to save poor old America from its little recession. That's just flat-out insane. If I were Putin, I'd wait for this guy to step into a Poconos outhouse and whack him there. Safire, who wholeheartedly supported the Vietnam war, which caused the deaths of over 2 million Indochinese, half of them civilians, also whines about Putin's "obliteration" of Grozny. He repeatedly blasts Putin for his bloody Chechen adventure. This is the kind of hypocrisy that makes less & less sense to me as I get older. I expect it, but I don't really understand it. One thing's for sure: it ain't funny, no matter how much sarcasm you add to it. This whole "we can't trust Russia" thing in the States is getting out of hand. After all the bullshit Russia went through for our sake in the last ten years or so, we ought to at least have some shame, and tip our hat, when Russia starts acting in her own interests for a change. We don't have to go along with it, we can even oppose it, but to get angry about it is just preposterous. Even coming from Wm Safire.

[ Carlyle Group recruitment ]
Putin comes to Maine Sunday to see Bush
6.30.07   Jennifer Loven AP

At a lavish Red Square military parade in Moscow celebrating World War II's victory, Putin saved the seat closest to him for Bush and risked alienating other world leaders by grandly terming the American his guest of "special importance" above all the others.
Now, for less than 24 hours starting Sunday afternoon, the U.S. president is hosting his Russian counterpart at the Bush family's stone & shingle summer home on the craggy Maine coast. No other leader has received such a rarified invitation.

The Russian leader gets 2 presidents in one visit: Bush's dad, former President George H.W. Bush, owns the home and is playing low-key host to the meetings. Putin also will be feted with spectacular views, sparkling New England summertime weather, lobster at nearly every meal, and possibly a striper fishing excursion on the elder Bush's speedboat.
"You only invite your friends into your house," Bush said in November 2001, when Putin came to Crawford, Texas.

But 6 years of gestures from the extravagant to the odd have not masked or solved the problems that increasingly dog U.S.-Russian relations. Observers say the alliance lately has reached its lowest point in recent memory and they were skeptical that what amounts to 3 meals and a meeting can give it a lift.
"The gulf separating the govt of Russia's official discourse and the United States' concept of what the relationship should be has gotten wider than it has been in a long, long time," said Stephen Sestanovich, an ambassador to former Soviet republics under President Clinton who now is at the Council on Foreign Relations.

For decades, relations between Washington and Moscow have been particularly defined by the personal chemistry between the people at the top, said Sarah Mendelson, Russia policy expert and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Think Reagan and Gorbachev or Clinton and Yeltsin. The relationship between Bush and Putin started with a bang in June 2001 with the president's now-infamous assessment of Putin.
"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy," Bush said after that first meeting, in Slovenia. "I was able to get a sense of his soul: a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country."

Even at the time, critics said Bush's unconditional praise, intended by most accounts as a tactical attempt to connect with Putin and speak of hope as reality, was nonetheless naive, given a crackdown on civil society groups in Russia that had begun and Moscow's brutal war in Chechnya.
9.11.01 came just three months after the Slovenia meeting. Putin offered bold and immediate terrorism-fighting support that endeared him to Bush. The next May, at a Moscow summit, the leaders signed a landmark nuclear arms reduction treaty and agreed to a broad cooperative agenda.

But problems hovered. Bush's moves to expand missile defense, including withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, rankled Russia. The Kremlin's politically charged campaign against the Yukos oil company and its leaders alarmed Washington.
The acrimonious debate leading up to the Iraq invasion in March 2003 cooled things considerably.
The two sides also sniped about interference in Ukraine's 2004 presidential election. Generally, the Kremlin chafed at what it saw as U.S. meddling in its sphere of influence, through NATO expansion and relations with former Soviet republics.

In 2005, at a meeting in Bratislava, Slovakia, U.S. concerns about democratic backsliding in Russia spilled into the open. In recent months, a string of developments has caused a deeper slide, even amid greater cooperation against Iran's nuclear program and broader weapons proliferation.
Moscow's unrelentingly hostile response to Bush's plan to build a missile defense system in Europe, based in the Czech Republic and Poland, has included threatening to aim missiles at Europe and inflammatory rhetoric denouncing the United States' "hyper use of force" in the world.

Russia is blocking independence for Kosovo, favored by the U.S. Russia also is aiding separatists in Georgia and Moldova and has prevented peaceful demonstrations in Moscow. There are worries about Russia's manipulation of energy resources.
Putin, appealing to nationalist sentiments at home and eager to re-establish Russia's geopolitical stature, bristles at U.S. criticism of human rights in Russia. He says the U.S. missile defense system on Russia's doorstep, in former Soviet satellites, is a security threat.

Said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov: "There is a great need for extra attention, extra attention on the highest level."
The Kennebunkport meeting was suggested by Putin. Bush chose the setting, the oceanfront compound built by his great-grandfather over 100 years ago on a finger of rock jutting into the water.
"They are both now playing for history and legacy, and I really don't think that either of them want, as part of their legacy, a trashed U.S.-Russian relationship," said Andrew Kuchins, a Russia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

But neither side has shown any give on the issues most dividing them, such as missile defense or Kosovo.
"There really are no obvious candidates for a breakthrough issue that would impart a positive momentum to the broader relationship," said Steven Pifer, a deputy assistant secretary of state during Bush's first term.

Vince Foster     Fostergate Aug. 1995-Feb. 1996 James R. Norman Media Bypass "Was White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster selling US secrets to Israel? The CIA suspects he was." 2 weeks before his 7.20.93 death, White House Deputy Counsel Vincent W. Foster went into a deep funk. The official cause of death, given by former Independent Counsel Robert Fiske Jr. (later replaced by Kenneth Starr), was suicide driven by depression over, among other things, several newspaper editorials. But Vince Foster had a much bigger and darker reason to be seriously burned out. He had just learned he was under investigation for espionage. Lengthy investigation located over a dozen sources with connections to the intelligence community who confirm money laundering & espionage connected to the highest levels of the White House. Without grants of immunity, sources risk going to prison for violation of the National Security Act. Virtually all have demanded anonymity. According to a veteran CIA operative close to the Foster investigation, Foster's first indication of trouble came when he inquired about his coded bank account at Banca Della Svizzera Italiana in Chiasso, Switzerland and found the account empty. Foster was shocked to learn from the bank that someone using his secret authorization code had withdrawn all $2.73 million he had stashed there and had moved it to, of all places, the U.S. Treasury. Then, according to credit card records reviewed by a private investigator who has revealed them, Foster canceled the 2 day round-trip TWA & Swiss Air plane tickets to Geneva he had purchased on his American Express card through the White House travel office on 7.1.93. Discreetly he began asking what was afoot, says the CIA source, confirming that someone in the White House tipped him off. It was bad news. The CIA had Foster under serious investigation for leaking high-security secrets to the State of Israel. For months, a small cadre of CIA computer hackers known as the Fifth Column, armed with a Cray supercomputer, had been monitoring Foster's Swiss account. They had located it by tracking money flows from various Israeli govt accounts after finding Foster's name while secretly snooping through the electronic files of Israel's Mossad. Then by snooping through the bank files, they gathered all information needed to withdraw the money. Foster was one of the first of scores of high level U.S. political figures to have their secret Swiss accounts looted of illicit funds, according to both this veteran CIA source & a separate source in another intelligence agency. Over the past 2 years, they say, more than $2 billion has been swept out of offshore bank accounts belonging to figures connected to the U.S. govt with nary a peep from the victims or their banks. The claim that Foster and other U.S. figures have had offshore accounts has been confirmed by a separate high-ranking CIA source and another in Justice Dept. Various sources, some controversial, contributed other pieces to this puzzle. Whatever their motivations, those sources have proven remarkably consistent. Their stories jibe well with known facts and offer a most plausible explanation for Foster's mysterious depression. It would also explain Washington's determined effort to dismiss the Foster affair as a tragic but simple suicide. Foster, if confirmed by ongoing foreign counterintelligence probe, would have been an invaluable double agent with potential access to not only high-level political information, but also to sensitive code, encryption and data transmission secrets, stuff by which modern war is won or lost because for many years, according to 9 separate current & former U.S. law enforcement or intelligence officials, Foster had been a behind-the-scenes manager of a key support co. in one of the biggest, most secretive spy efforts on record, the silent surveillance of banking transactions both here & abroad. This bank snooping began in earnest soon after Ronald Reagan became president in 1981. Its primary aim was to track the money behind intl terrorist groups and soon came to be dubbed, "Follow the money", according to program originator Norman A. Bailey. Now a private Washington consultant on intl banking, Bailey was an economist and Reagan advisor on the National Security Counsel. It was Bailey's idea to begin using powerful new computer & electronic eavesdropping technologies then emerging to let the intelligence community monitor the previously confidential flow of bank wire transfers. This was no small task; more than $1 trillion a day moves through NY alone. Bailey, himself constrained by the National Security Act, claims he doesn't know exactly how the data was collected. But he confirms that within a few years (of 1981) NSA had begun vacuuming mountains of data by listening in on bank wire traffic. It became a joint effort of several Western govts with Israelis playing a leading role, since they were the main targets of terrorism. Other intelligence experts say capture was by various means; from simply tapping phone lines to implanting customized chips in bank computers to store up & periodically "burst-transmit" data, to a passing van, or low-flying "sig-int" or signals intelligence satellite. Another part of the problem was to get the world's banks to standardize their data so that it could be easily analyzed. That brings up to PROMIS, powerful tracking software developed for U.S. Govt then further enhanced by a little company called Inslaw Inc. PROMIS stands for Prosecutor's Management Information Systems and was designed to manage legal cases. In 1982, just as Bailey's follow-the-money effort was gaining steam, the Reagan Justice Dept eagerly snapped up Inslaw's newest version of PROMIS. But the govt refused to pay the $6 million owed for it, claiming part of the contract was not fulfilled. Inslaw, forced into Chapter 11 reorganization, and nearly driven to quick liquidation by the govt and its former partner AT&T, hotly denied that claim. Ultimately, a bankruptcy judge ruled the govt stole the PROMIS software by "trickery, fraud and deceit." Why PROMIS? Because it was adaptable. Besides tracking legal cases, it could be easily customized to track anything from computer chip design to complex monetary transactions. It was especially useful for tracking criminals or just plain political dissidents. Inslaw claims the software was eventually illegally sold to as many as 50 countries for use by their police, military or intelligence agencies, incl such bloody regimes as Guatemala, South Africa and Iraq (before the 1990 invasion of Kuwait). Profits on these sales, Inslaw claims, went mainly into the private pockets of Republican political cronies in the 1980s, including Reagan confidante Barl Brain, former part- owner of UPI & FNN. Among the biggest profiteers on PROMIS, according to the 1992 book by former Israeli anti-terrorism staffer Ari Ben-Menaseche, was former British publisher Bob Maxwell. On behalf of the Israelis, Maxwell aggressively marketed a doctored version of PROMIS equipped with one or more "back doors" to allow an outsider to tap into the user's data base without leaving an audit trail. It may have been such rigged programs that allowed noted Israeli spy Jonathon Pollard, from his computer terminal at the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, to download vast amounts of top secret U.S. nuclear weapons & code data in the mid-1980s. According to a heavily-redacted New Mexico FBI counterintelligence report, Maxwell was apparently allowed to sell 2 copies of PROMIS back to the U.S. weapons labs at Sandia & Los Alamos, for what Inslaw claims was a hugely inflated price of $87 million. That would have allowed Pollard, if he was using the rigged program, to obtain U.S. missile targeting data long before Israel had its own satellite capability, thus making it a real nuclear threat to the Soviet Union. Pollard was convicted of espionage and sentenced in 1986 to life imprisonment. U.S. officials have vehemently opposed efforts to gain his early release. Maxwell, according to Ben-Menaseche and 9 other sources, was also selling pirated versions of PROMIS to major world banks for use in their wire transfer rooms to track the blizzard of numbers, authorization codes and confirmations required on each wire transaction. Don't expect any banks to admit running PROMIS software. They probably now know it was pilfered. But they readily took it both because it was the best tracking software available at the time and because the U.S. govt was tacitly leaning on them to go along with the surveillance effort or face regulatory reprisals or prosecution on money laundering charges. With widespread adoption of PROMIS, data became standardized and much easier to analyze by the NSA. It took some effort to install & support PROMIS in the banking industry. That's where Vince Foster came in. Sources say that since at least the late 1970s, Foster had been a silent, behind-the-scenes overseer on behalf of the NSA for a small Little Rock, AR bank data processing company. Its name was Systematics Inc., launched in 1967 and funded & controlled for most of its life by Arkansas billionaire Jackson Stephens, 1946 Naval Academy graduate along with Jimmy Carter. Foster was one of Stephens' trusted deal makers at the Rose Law Firm, where he was partner with Hillary Rodham Clinton, Webster Hubbell and Wm Kennedy (whose father was a Systematics director). Hubbell also played an overseer role at Systematics for the NSA for some years according to intelligence sources. Systematics has had close ties to the NSA & CIA ever since its founding, sources say, as a money-shuffler for covert operations. … Having taken over computer rooms in scores of small U.S. banks as an "out-sourced" supplier of data processing, Systematics was in a unique position to manage covert money flow. Sources say the money was moved at the end of every day disguised as a routine bank-to-bank balancing transaction, out of view of bank regulators and even the banks themselves. In short, it became cyber-money. One man who uncovered the link between Systematics, Foster and covert money movements from arms & drugs was Bob Bickel, who was an undercover Customs investigator in the 1980s. "We found Systematics was often a conduit for the funds" in arms & drug transactions, says Bickel, now living in Texas: "They were the money changers." His story is corroborated by a former CIA employee who says it was well known within the agency in the late 1970s that Foster was involved with Systematics in covert money management. Another source is Michael Ricoposciuto, former research director of the covert arms operation at California's tiny Cabazon Indian Reservation in the early 1980s. Ricoposciuto claims his crew of computer programmers helped customize PROMIS there for banking & other uses. He is now serving 80 years in a South Carolina federal prison ostensibly on drug charges. Though maybe not a credible source on his own, his story fits well with other sources. Systematics' money-laundering role for the intelligence community might help explain why Jackson Stephens tried to take over Washington-based Financial General Bankshares in 1978 on behalf of Arab backers of the BCCI. BCCI's links to global corruption & intelligence operations have been well documented, though many mysteries remain. According to a lawsuit filed by SEC, Stephens insisted on having then-tiny Systematics brought in to take over all of FGB's data processing. Representing Systematics in that 1978 SEC case: Hillary Rodham Clinton & Webster Hubbell. Stephens was blocked in that takeover. But FGB, later renamed First American, ultimately fell under the alleged domination of BCCI through Robert Altman and former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford. According to a technician who worked for First American in Atlanta, Systematics became a key computer contractor there anyway. In the 1980s, Systematics' business boomed. When it first sold stock to the public in 1983, revenues were $64 million. That had risen to $230 million by the time Stephens arranged Systematics' sale to Alltel Corp., telephone holding co. which then moved its headquarters to Little Rock. Last year, Systematics sales hit $861 million, a third of Alltel's total. Stephens now owns more than 8% of Alltel and wields significant influence over the co. When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, bringing Foster, Hubbell and Kennedy to the White House staff, Systematics' foreign bank business flourished. It began to announce a flood of data processing deals with major banks in Moscow, Maoso, Singapore, Malaysia, Pakistan, Trinidad and elsewhere. According to veteran bank software vendors, and computer intelligence specialist Wayne Madsen, co-author of a book about the NSA called "The Puzzle Palace",   [ Madsen has denied co-authorship of this very important book, despite absence of any challenge to its veracity. ] it is inconceivable any U.S. co. could land such lucrative work without the intimate participation of the NSA. Domestic business took off as well, with giants like Citibank & NationsBank signing big data processing deals. Working alongside Systematics in this spooky world of bank computer spying appears to be a cluster of other curious, loosely-affiliated companies. For instance, there is Boston Systematics, headed by former CIA officer Harry Wechsler, who controls 2 Israeli companies that also use the name Systematics. Wechsler denies any connection to the Arkansas company (now named Alltel Information Services) and claims to know nothing of PROMIS. Odd, then, that Inslaw claims it got 2 inquiries in 1987 from Wechsler's Israeli co. seeking marketing data on PROMIS. Many of the intelligence sources who provided information for this story insist that Boston Systematics and the Arkansas company are, in fact, related in some way. Based on his own source in the Justice Dept, Inslaw's founder Wm A. Hamilton says he believes Boston Systematics was also closely linked with both Maxwell & Rafi Bitan, former head of Israel's anti-terrorism effort. Hamilton says Bitan, using a false name, showed up at Inslaw's Wash. DC office one day in 1983 for a private demonstration of PROMIS. Another curious co. is Arkansas Systems, founded in 1974 by Systematics employee & formerly U.S. Army "analyst" John Chamberlain, located just down the road from Systematics. Arkansas Systems specializes in computer systems for foreign wire transfer centers & central banks. Among its clients: Russia & China, according to Arkansas Systems president James K. Hendren, physicist formerly involved with the Safeguard anti- missile system. Arkansas Systems was one of the first companies to receive funding from the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA), agency created by Bill Clinton now coming under Congressional scrutiny. What does Alltel have to say about all of this? "I've never heard anything so asinine in all my life," steams Joe T. Ford, Alltel's chairman & father of Jack Stephen's chief administrative aide. John Stouri, former IBM executive who is chief executive of Alltel Information Services, says he had never heard of Boston Systematics before this inquiry. He declares that the Arkansas company does almost no work for the govt, scoffs at the idea his company is tied to the NSA and says Foster has never had any connection to Systematics. As for the fact he sold half his 700,000 Alltel shares in February at $34, just before it began skidding to under $24, he says that was merely to pay for the exercise of options. Why is it then that Hamilton claims sources in 2 separate intelligence agencies say documents relating to Systematics were among those taken from Foster's office immediately after Foster's death? A private investigator close to the continuing "Whitewater" probe by Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr says he has learned that Hubbell has delivered those documents, incl papers related to Systematics, to Starr. Hubbell pleaded guilty last December to 2 felony counts related to over-billing at the Rose Law Firm and has been sentenced to 21 months in prison. If Foster knew the U.S. was spying on foreign banks, why would he let himself be caught red-handed with a Swiss bank account? The answer may be that the Israeli transactions were, in fact, well concealed, according to the veteran CIA source. Foster would have known that, unless a prober knew exactly what to look for, finding his payoffs in the torrent of routine wire transfer data would be a hopeless task. Besides that, greed could explain a lot, if not Foster's then for whomever else he might have been playing bagman. The CIA source says Foster was not the only one in the White House under suspicion for peddling state secrets. All of which helps explain Foster's odd behavior before his death. He was a tough, smart trial atty at the peak of power in Washington. Only 48 years old, he was in excellent health. Suddenly, according to the Fiske report, he couldn't sleep. He complained of he