® ¹ ²   ß   ¶   º•6 Delmart "Mike" Vreeland   interview ¹ ² ³ º 4.5.02   Michael C. Ruppert FTW   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 auth, 1986 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	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 Larry Sinclair & 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, DJIA 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. 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. CIA is still cagey about Oswald mystery 10.17.09   Scott Shane NY Times Wash D.C.   For six years, the agency has fought in federal court to keep secret hundreds of documents from 1963, when an anti-Castro Cuban group it paid clashed publicly with soon-to-be assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. The C.I.A. says it is only protecting legitimate secrets. Because of the agency’s history of stonewalling assassination inquiries, even researchers with no use for conspiracy thinking question its stance. Files in question, some released under direction of the court and hundreds more that are still secret, involve the curious career of George E. Joannides, case officer who oversaw the dissident Cubans in 1963. In 1978, the agency made Mr. Joannides the liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations but never told the committee of his earlier role. That concealment fueled suspicion that Joannides’s real assignment was to limit what the House committee could learn about C.I.A. activities. The agency’s deception was first reported in 2001 by Jefferson Morley, who has doggedly pursued the files ever since, represented by James H. Lesar, a Washington lawyer specializing in Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. “The C.I.A.’s conduct is maddening,” said Morley, 51, former Washington Post reporter and the author of a 2008 biography of a former C.I.A. station chief in Mexico. After years of meticulous reporting on Joannides, who died at age 68 in 1990, he is convinced that there is more to learn. “I know there’s a story here,” Morley said. “The confirmation is that the C.I.A. treats these documents as extremely sensitive.” Morley’s quest gained prominent supporters, including Minnesota federal judge John R. Tunheim who served in 1994 and 1995 as chairman of the Assassination Records Review Board, created by Congress to unearth documents related to the case. “I think we were probably misled by the agency,” Judge Tunheim said, referring to the Joannides records. “This material should be released.” After losing an appeals court decision in Morley’s lawsuit, the C.I.A. released material last year confirming Mr. Joannides’s deep involvement with the anti-Castro Cubans who confronted Oswald. The agency is withholding 295 specific documents from the 1960s and ’70s, while refusing to confirm or deny the existence of many others, saying their release would cause “extremely grave damage” to national security. “The methods of defeating or deterring covert action in the 1960s and 1970s can still be instructive to the United States’ current enemies,” a C.I.A. official wrote in a court filing. Agency spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the C.I.A. had opened to Judge Tunheim’s board all files relevant to the assassination and denied that it was trying to avoid embarrassment. “The record doesn’t support that, any more than it supports conspiracy theories, offensive on their face, that the C.I.A. had a hand in President Kennedy’s death,” Gimigliano said. C.I.A. secrecy has been hotly debated this year, with agency officials protesting the Obama administration’s decision to release legal opinions describing brutal interrogation methods. House speaker Nancy Pelosi came under attack from Republicans after she accused the C.I.A. of misleading Congress about waterboarding, adding, “They mislead us all the time.” On the Kennedy assassination, the deceptions began in 1964 with the Warren Commission.

In August 1963, Oswald visited a New Orleans shop owned by a directorate official, feigning sympathy with the group’s goal of ousting Mr. Castro. A few days later, directorate members found Oswald handing out pro-Castro pamphlets and got into a brawl with him. Later that month, he debated the anti-Castro Cubans on a local radio station.
Morley, one of many writers to become entranced by the story, insists he has no theory and is seeking only the facts. His lawsuit has uncovered the central role in overseeing directorate activities of Joannides, deputy director for psychological warfare at the C.I.A.’s Miami station, code-named JM/WAVE. He worked closely with directorate leaders, documents show, corresponding with them under pseudonyms, paying their travel expenses and achieving an “important degree of control” over the group, as a July 1963 agency fitness report put it.

Fifteen years later, Mr. Joannides turned up again as the agency’s representative to the House assassinations committee. Dan Hardway, then a law student working for the committee, recalled Joannides as “a cold fish,” who firmly limited access to documents. Once, Mr. Hardway remembered, “he handed me a thin file and just stood there. I blew up, and he said, ‘This is all you’re going to get.’
Neither Mr. Hardway nor the committee’s staff director G. Robert Blakey had any idea that Mr. Joannides had played a role in the very anti-Castro activities from 1963 that the panel was scrutinizing. When Morley first informed him about it a decade ago, Mr. Blakey was flabbergasted.
"If I’d known his role in 1963, I would have put Joannides under oath. He would have been a witness, not a facilitator,” said University of Notre Dame law prof. Blakey. “How do we know what he didn’t give us?”

After Oliver Stone’s 1991 film “J.F.K.” fed speculation about the Kennedy assassination, Congress created the Assassination Records Review Board to release documents. But because the board, too, was not told of Mr. Joannides’s 1963 work, it did not peruse his records, said chairman Judge Tunheim.
“If we’d known of his role in Miami in 1963, we would have pressed for all his records,” Judge Tunheim said.
No matter what comes of Mr. Morley’s case in Federal District Court in Washington, Tunheim said he might ask current C.I.A. director Leon E. Panetta, to release the records, even if the names of people who are still alive must be redacted for privacy.

Dallas F.B.I. officials who, after the assassination, destroyed a handwritten note Oswald had previously left for an F.B.I. agent.
Max Holland, who is writing a history of the Warren Commission, said the agency might be trying to preserve the principle of secrecy.
“If you start going through the files of every C.I.A. officer who had anything to do with anything that touched the assassination, that would have no end,” Mr. Holland said.

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 heart palpitations and high blood pressure. His sister arranged for him to see a Washington psychiatrist, who later told the FBI he had been instructed not to take notes because Foster's depression was "directly related to highly sensitive & confidential matters" tied to his "top secret" govt work. Foster never saw a shrink. Instead, about a week before he died, he hired a lawyer: high-powered DC criminal atty & political fix-it man James Hamilton. Foster's wife claims his reason was the White House Travel Office controversy, which was expected to lead to congressional hearings. On the weekend of July 17 and 18, Foster drove with his wife to the eastern shore of Maryland to relax. By "coincidence", according to the Fiske report, so did Hubbell. They met at the posh estate of Michael Cardozo, head of Clinton's legal defense fund and son-in-law of prominent Democratic fund raiser Nathan Landau. Hubbell later claimed the weekend was a laid-back gathering of tennis and poolside chit-chat. But according to sources connected to the CIA, Justice Dept and another intelligence agency, the meeting was under surveillance. The agenda? Heavy duty damage control. Foster was grilled. To whom else could the Swiss money be traced? How could the scandal be contained? Foster's wife admitted he returned to Washington even more depressed. On Monday night, he turned down an invitation by the President to drop by the White House to supposedly watch a movie. On Tuesday, Foster left his office at the White House about 1 p.m. and said he'd be back later. At 5:45 p.m., his body was found neatly laid out at Fort Marcy Park, a bullet wound in his mouth. Suicide, the Fiske report promptly declared, echoed by a cursory (Democrat-run) Senate inquiry. Still, nagging questions remain: Why was there no blood on the ground, no bone fragments or brain tissue? Why were there rug fibers all over the clothes? Why no dust on his shoes despite the long dirt path from his car to his body? The answer seems painfully clear; a cover-up of immense proportions for reasons of "national security". Whitewater prober Kenneth Starr was in-house counsel to Reagan Atty General William French Smith at the time the Inslaw PROMIS software was expropriated for intelligence use. Later, as Solicitor General, he recused himself from an Inslaw-related matter without explanation. … Early retirement [of politicians] ¹ ibid   James R. Norman Media Bypass Since the last election, a record 45 members of congress have decided not to run for reelection or outright resigned from office. Not in a hundred years has there been such an exodus. Nor are these departees obscure back- benchers. They are among the most powerful people in the most powerful govt that has ever existed on earth, with egos to match. Committee chairmen, or ranking minority members who would be committee chairmen if the Democrats regained control, powerful committees or subcommittees: appropriations, rules, armed services, agriculture. Sen. Sam Nunn & Alan Simpson claim they just don't have that ol' "fire in the belly" any more. Tearful Rep. Jack Fields R-TX House Telecommunications & Finance committee chair held a press conference to say he wants to spend more time with his kids. Veteran Rep. Patricia Schroeder D-CO says she wants to give up her $133,600 a year job to be a writer. GOP Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, Senate Labor Committee chair and daughter of GOP legend Alf Landon, wants to go back to her little farmhouse on the prairie. A common complaint the new retirees bemoan is the high cost of running for political office in this country. Without a doubt, campaign spending levels have been going off the charts: in 1992 the average House incumbent spent almost $1 million on campaign expenses. Senate incumbents averaged almost $2 million with some contenders, like Mike Huffington squandering almost $20 million in his losing bid in California. Simpson whines that he has to raise $10,000 a day for re-election. "Retiring" Sen. Bill Bradley D-NJ outspent his last rival by 10:1 with a $10 million budget and still only narrowly won re-election. The reality is that federal incumbents CAN raise $10,000 a day easily, with just a few phone calls and meetings, far more than their challengers can hope to garner. The record shows that loose enforcement of campaign spending rules and creative accounting have allowed incumbents to run a myriad of personal expenses through their campaign accounts. Only a third of what they raise actually goes for advertising. Then there are fat "honoraria" and expense-paid trips for speeches, which can be turned into valuable PR as charitable gifts if they exceed $20,000 a year. As Newt Gingrich has vividly demonstrated, huge payola from bogus book contracts is exempt from outside income limits. Schroeder already had her re-election bumper stickers printed. So had Charlie Wilson D-TX who had already begun booking air time & newspaper ad space for his re-election campaign when he suddenly announced retirement to become a "consultant." Rep. Ron Coleman D-TX, young ranking minority member of powerful House Appropriations subcommittee on telecommunications, stunned his supporters by announcing his retirement at what was supposed to be his re-election kickoff party. His excuse: To spend more time with his family. No definite plans. Pattern mainstream media noted then explained as symptom of the nasty tone of public discourse these days. Especially now that those mean Newt Gingrich Republicans control Congress, it's no fun any more. Why would so many powerful GOP be leaving as well? Mark O. Hatfield, Senate Appropriations Committee chair, or Veterans Affairs Committee chair Sen. Simpson, or Rep. Robert Walker, close confidante & ally of Gingrich who was almost elected House Majority Leader. All hold safe seats, and though Hatfield is 73, he's still young by traditional Senate retirement standards. Veteran Oregon Republican Sen. Bob Packwood, Senate Finance Committee chair quit after agreeing to turn over his diaries. Colin Powell withdrew from the presidential race, supposedly because of concerns about his wife's past mental condition. … Fifth Column group clean-up began about 2 years ago. Phase One: Take away their marbles using access codes & data surreptitiously downloaded through "trap doors" in foreign bank computer software systems to wire-transfer money out of hundreds of supposedly anonymous foreign bank accounts held by U.S. govt officials. Among prominent nailed for millions according to sources: Nancy Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Oliver North, Caspar Weinberger, Elizabeth Dole, George Bush and his sons, Maggie Thatcher, Vincent W. Foster. Now Phase Two: removing them from office. Beginning last fall, according to 2 Fifth Column sources, somebody started hand-delivering to each of these retiring "public servants" their own plain manila envelope. Inside: detailed transaction records of the culprit's Swiss, Cayman or other offshore bank accounts. Then about a day after receiving the envelope, they get a phone call from someone. The options offered are simple. Plan A: Promptly announce your retirement. Plan B: face immediate, widespread distribution of the information to news media, enforcement agencies or directly to the doorsteps of your constituents. Minimum federal sentencing guideline on willful income tax evasion is 10 years in prison. Possible jail time for bribery, money laundering and violation of federal financial disclosure rules. Any member of Congress sentenced to prison is subject to loss of his govt pension, which accrues at the at the very rapid pace of 2.5% of yearly pay for each year served and vests in just 5 years. For relatively young long timers like Pat Schroeder that could be worth upwards of $4 million; almost $3.5 million for Rep. Gerry Studds D-MA. … Witness the Packwood fiasco; costly: Average federal white collar criminal prosecution nicks taxpayers for more than $1 million. If vigorously contested, the costs can quadruple quickly. So if the goal is to get bad people out of positions of power quickly and cheaply, the best way is through persuasion. And the more who are persuaded, the harder it becomes for the holdouts to play tough. We're talking method, not just madness. Precedent is called Bop Trot, perhaps this country's biggest & most successful effort at cleaning up public corruption. Focused on state-level political corruption in Kentucky, the sweep used an elite task force of investigators drawn from various federal agencies, including the FBI, IRS, DEA and, calling on the talents of some of the Fifth Column. It began in the early 1990s and is still under way, having branched out to other states, incl Illinois. In KY, 65 public officials have been indicted and every single one has been convicted, almost all of them by pleading guilty. Among those now in prison: the husband of former KY Gov. Martha Lane Collins. Before the Bop Trot indicting began, there were a raft of resignations & retirements eerily similar to what we now see at federal level. Another parallel: Virtually no media attention. Aside from some regional news coverage, almost nobody has heard of Bop Trot. Partly that is because the local U.S. Attys, themselves often corrupt political appointees noted for their grandstanding antics, have been kept mostly in the dark with the cases handled by special prosecutors. MEXICO   Somehow or other, the DEA found hundreds of millions of dollars in accounts in Switzerland, Luxembourg and England belonging to the family of former president Carlos Salinas de Gotari; DEA apparently tipped the Federales. Salinas' sister-in-law was arrested recently when she tried to withdraw $84 million from a Geneva bank, believed to be a branch of Citibank. All told, Citibank may have helped move half a billion dollars of drug money and other graft for the Salinas clan. What is a matter of public record is that Citibank insiders have been dumping shares of Citi's high-flying stock like mad in recent months, symptomatic of either an expected stock price plunge or high level management departures. In mid-December CFO Christopher Steffen of Citibank parent Citicorp, abruptly left amid excuses by the bank's PR dept. Next to go, Citibank chair & CEO John Reed himself, top dog at America's biggest bank. Something about gold bearer bonds in another Swiss bank. CANADA   Former PM Brian Mulroney is under investigation by the Mounties over what appear to be kickbacks of C$50 million (US$37 million) on the sale of $1.8 billion worth of Airbus aircraft to Air Canada. The money apparently went into one or more Swiss accounts. Mulroney, who has tried to stymie the investigation by suing the Canadian govt for libel for even asking provocative questions, may also be under investigation for much bigger payoffs from Colombia's Cali drug cartel, which had its computer data bases raided recently, according to a Fifth Column source. PANAMA   It now appears likely that former Panama dictator Manuel Noriega, now in a federal prison in Florida, will win a new trial on his conviction for drug trafficking. The reason: Somebody with apparent access to those Cali cartel computer records discovered that the Cali's paid $1.5 million to the star U.S. prosecution witness against Noriega, whose supporters have long claimed Noriega was "set up" for prosecution by the Bush administration to silence & discredit his claims of CIA & U.S. involvement in the Central American drug trade. S.KOREA   Both of the country's 2 past presidents are now in prison, accused of corruption. Chun Doo Hwan is charged with staging the 1979 coup that put him in power. He's also being questioned about a $133 million slush fund. His hand-picked successor, Roh Tae Woo, is charged with running a $650 million slush fund of corporate "gifts." Translated to English, that's "bribes & kickbacks." If the money came from U.S. arms makers, like, say, Lockheed Martin, that's a crime for which corporate honchos can go to jail. Once again, the key was finding that money stashed in English & other bank accounts. JAPAN   Similarly, rumors that Japanese PM Tomiichi Murayama will soon resign amid financial scandal. Only by willfully ignoring reality that we can pretend we are less susceptible to endemic corruption than other nations. Just as it appears those nations have needed help from the outside to root out their crooked politicians, so it is that the only way the U.S. govt, polluted with drug & arms money, will be purged. Fundamental truth here is that no govt can truly police itself. Whatever internal auditing mechanism that is set up can ultimately be intimidated & emasculated by whomever controls the purse strings (Congress) or does the hiring & firing (the chief executive). And forget about the press. They're wimps. If anybody's going to keep the bastards honest, it is us. You & me. Here is how we can do it, by just applying the same back-to-basics gumshoe tactics the IRS uses against us but is too gutless to employ against Congress and the White House. Find out what they own when they enter office, and what they have after they've been there a while. Chances are they haven't bought that million dollar DC condo, the Martha's Vineyard summer place and 2 Volvos on just their federal paycheck. If what you find doesn't match official disclosures, send findings to local newspaper or TV station.

No Guts, No Story ibid   James Norman Media Bypass FORBES magazine has a saying: "No guts, no story." And it was that spirit of aggressive journalism that drew me to become a sr editor at Forbes in 1990 after returning from a year working in New Zealand. Prior to that I'd put in almost 20 years writing for newspapers, and then BUSINESS WEEK magazine. For the most part, FORBES lives up to that motto, under the sometimes brilliant & ever-curmudgeonly direction of Editor James Michaels, now in his 70s. But make no mistake about it: Even the gutsiest of the major media shy away from some stories that are just too explosive, too close to home, or put too many advertising dollars at risk. "Fostergate," published 2 months ago in Media Bypass, was one of those stories. Indeed, it is proving to be the "third rail" of investigative journalism: You touch it, you die. The essence of the story is obviously explosive:   Vincent W. Foster, former White House Deputy Counsel, was under investigation for espionage at the time of his supposed "suicide" on July 20, 1993.   Foster had been under investigation for selling sensitive code materials to the State of Israel. Incl may have been even the top-level codes by which the president identifies himself to the Pentagon when ordering military action, incl use of nuclear weapons. Specifically, Foster is suspected of selling the operating code of a sophisticated new computer, developed by Dallas-based "black" operations contractor E-Systems, just before he died. One month later, the CIA learned it was in the hands of the Israelis, according to 2 separate intelligence sources.   Foster had a Swiss bank account. Actually, he had several. Foster was also making curious, periodic one-day forays to Geneva. [This was first reported by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the London Sunday Telegraph.] Just before he died, his coded account for the Israeli money had $2.73 million in it.   Foster was probably not the only beneficiary of those funds. Also under suspicion for espionage was the president's wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who may have been providing Foster with the sensitive binders from the super-secret National Security Agency that Foster's exec. asst testified [during congressional hearings] he had.   Foster, for many years, had been a behind-the-scenes handler on behalf of Arkansas billionaire Jackson Stephens for a Little Rock bank data-processing company called Systematics (now Alltel Information Services). Systematics was not only "laundering" covert money for the intelligence community, but was also deeply involved in a massive bank-spying effort by our govt dubbed, "Follow the money." That bank-surveillance program, considered by former CIA Dir. Wm Casey to be the crowning achievement of his long career, has given us mountains of data on world money flows.   Foster was not the only high-level U.S. official with a Swiss account. Several hundred other accounts have been identified by an NSA-CSA computer "swat" team [of hackers] nicknamed the Fifth Column, armed with one or more Cray supercomputers.   In an amazing case of vigilante justice, a couple of these veteran computer spies, apparently equipped with their own Cray, tooling around the country somewhere in the back of a semi-trailer truck, have been brazenly wire transferring money from these Swiss accounts to an escrow fund at the U.S. Treasury, earmarked for use by the CIA when that agency, as well, cleans up its own corruption problems. The take so far: upwards of $2 billion including, of course, Foster's Swiss money. Indeed, it was the loss of that money that tipped Foster that someone was on to him. Did anyone in the govt authorize this? No. But if these "victims" want the money back, all they have to do is step forward and reveal where the money came from, and why they haven't paid taxes on it. Needless to say, no takers. Not one. How do I know all this? Months of research to successfully corroborate from multiple independent & credible intelligence sources, and even some hard documentation, amazing revelations of a foul-mouthed Kentucky salvage dealer, "quaint" motel operator and trucking co. owner named Charles S. Hayes. Don't let that fool you. The white-haired, chain-smoking good ol' boy is not your average entrepreneur. Until he retired last January, he was one of the CIA's most dangerous, unpredictable and most effective contract operatives. Together with a partner who shares his code name of Running Fox, Hayes started out flying guns to Fidel Castro before the overthrow of Batista in the 1950s, then for 6 years he lived in Brazil. Legend has it he may have served with Division D, an elite CIA squad charged with breaking into computer facilities, including those of foreign intelligence agencies, either physically or digitally. That's dangerous work, and Hayes is no stranger to violence. He also hates reporters, which is why most who try to talk to him get short shrift and come away convinced he's nothing but a blowhard. Luckily, I caught him on a good day and we have gotten along well. It has been a frustrating effort: trying to confirm the seemingly outlandish tales he tells, usually wrapped in parables & rhetorical questions, while refusing to provide any documents or proof. But there were little things he'd say that convinced me he has an uncanny awareness of things inside the govt, inside major banks, and even inside FORBES. He could not be ignored. Bit by bit, he has proven to be eerily accurate in his revelations. Hayes is an infuriating character to deal with, and full of contradictions. He can cuss a blue streak and rambles on with bawdy tales for hours, but prays out loud before every meal. While on the phone to some U.S. senator or congressman, he'll be standing in his underwear cooking chicken and dumplings. He says he's worth a couple of million dollars, is licensed to practice law in The Hague, and dates a Revlon model. I believe him. Especially now. Why believe Chuck Hayes? Besides all the corroboration I and MEDIA BYPASS have gotten about his identity and his CIA reputation, I witnessed an event on Aug. 28 that finally put my nagging doubts to rest. It happened in a crammed little probate courtroom in Pittsburgh, where Hayes, on behalf of a forlorn woman named Mary Meadows Allen, has taken on giant Mellon Bank in a landmark legal battle over what could be billions of dollars in unsettled estate funds. Funds which, by the way, appear to have gone into secret, encrypted accounts at Mellon for who knows what use. The money allegedly is tied to the holdings of 2 brothers, James and William R. Medders (sometimes spelled Meadors or Meadows) who died about 50 years ago with no direct heirs & no wills. They are said to have owned one-eight of the old Gulf Oil, and much, much more. Mellon, which effectively controlled Gulf and many other large co., naturally vehemently denies any such accounts exists, and has dismissed these claims for years quite successfully. Recently, though, a strong case for the existence of this mysterious multi-billion-dollar "Medders" or "Meadors" or "Meadows" oil estate has emerged in the form of a set of 5 photocopied checks and wire transfers showing Medders account money moving to or from Mellon, sometimes through its Cayman Islands branch. These documents are utterly damning evidence if they are real. Mellon insists they are fakes and can find no record of the transactions. Ann Helmon, leader of one large faction of Medders claimants who obtained the copies, had to admit in court she couldn't prove their validity or even their origin. Part of the problem: The account numbers on the copies Helmon obtained, from an unknown intermediary named "Frank" were obliterated. Enter Charles Hayes. At this Aug. 28 hearing before Allegheny County Orphans Court Judge Robert E. Kelly, Mellon had to "show cause" why it has not provided an accounting for this estate. This was a result of a "pro se" petition filed by Mary Meadows Allen, a would-be heir, with Hayes as her "investigator" and adviser. Copies of these 5 checks & wire transfers were submitted as evidence at the hearing. But Judge Kelly quickly noted a big difference between the much-maligned Ann Helmon check copies and the ones Mary Meadows Allen presented. There were account numbers on these new copies, and there were none of the other markings Ann Helmon had put on her copies to identify them as hers. What does this mean? One thing: somebody accessed Mellon's computer system and copied the original check & wire-transfer records incl the account numbers. And if whoever did this could retrieve those 5 transaction documents, then who knows what else they found inside Mellon's computers? "Gosh, maybe somebody found a spreadsheet" of secret accounts, chortled Hayes in the foyer after the hearing, noting that he still has time to file more pleadings. If these documents are valid, Mellon would be guilty of violating a raft of federal banking regulations. Among them: failing to file currency transaction reports required by the IRS & Comptroller of the Currency to police money laundering. Mellon could also be vulnerable to perjury & racketeering charges with triple damages. Maybe Chuck Hayes wasn't kidding when he stated his settlement terms on this case: "Pay the electric bill and turn over the keys" to the bank. This all adds immense credibility to Hayes' utterly astounding tales of Swiss bank spying & account manipulation. Further proof: Giant Citibank revealed in late August that a Russian hacker armed with no more than a personal computer had penetrated its accounts and withdrawn $10 million, most of which luckily was retrieved. These feats turn out to be kids' stuff compared to the govt's "infowar" capabilies, touted in a recent TIME cover story. In late August, I received information from a good source that on 7.16.93, 4 days before Vince Foster died, a wire transfer of more than $286,000 was made from an account at Mellon Bank to Foster's wife Lisa, apparently involving Foster's sister Sheila Anthony, then a "congressional liason" official at the Justice Dept and a newly- minted asst atty general. That payment smells suspiciously like hush money, perhaps from a govt or other slush fund at Mellon, at a time when it was clear Foster would have to be a fall guy to prevent the looming espionage scandal from engulfing the first lady thus the U.S. presidency. Lisa Foster's high-powered Washington atty, James Hamilton, adamantly denies that any such payment was made. Mellon Bank has refused to comment about the affairs of its customers. So far, no documentation has emerged. But given what I saw in Judge Kelly's courtroom, somebody with sufficient skill & computing power could clearly be in a position to know exactly that kind of wire-transfer information, if it is true. Does Hayes have the evidence? When will it come out? All he'll say is: "The fat lady's getting ready to sing." So what does all this have to do with me and FORBES? Well for openers, Hayes told me that Mellon Bank interests had just recently made a major campaign pledge to the would-be quest for the Republican presidential nomination by FORBES controlling stockholder and editor-in chief Malcolm S. "Steve" Forbes, Jr. So when I sent letters to Mellon's public-relations department asking for comment on the Medders checks and then the Lisa Foster wire transfer, FORBES got some very testy phone calls from Pittsburgh, according to one of my bosses. That was small potatoes, however, compared to the furor this Fostergate story was causing inside the magazine. For one thing, I stumbled onto the fact that another senior editor at FORBES, Dana Wechsler Linden, has for many years been a director of Boston Systematics, a curious computer co. said to be loosely affiliated with the Systematics in Arkansas and run by her father, former CIA operative Harry Wechsler. She claims to have known nothing of any bank-spying activities at Boston Systematics. The main operations of Boston Systematics are carried on by 2 Israeli subsidiaries run by her cousins, Joav and Oded Leventer. According to sources connected to Inslaw Inc., whose enhanced PROMIS tracking software has allegedly been heavily used in the bank-surveillance effort, Boston Systematics and Harry Wechsler had close ties to Israeli intelligence and to the late British publisher Robert Maxwell. Dana Wechsler Linden is married to a top computer officer at Goldman, Sachs & Co., same brokerage house that agreed to pay more than $250 million to settle claims that it helped Maxwell loot half a billion dollars from his company's pension accounts. What happened when this was disclosed to the management at FORBES? Nothing. Nor was there apparently any action taken when I disclosed to my bosses, incl Steve Forbes, in April that I had come across suspicions that one of the high-level govt figures with one of those Swiss bank accounts was former DefSec Caspar Weinberger. After leaving govt, Weinberger became publisher of FORBES, and is close to Steve Forbes as chairman of FORBES, Inc., publisher emeritus and a regular columnist for the magazine. After FORBES decided to kill the Fostergate story last April, though it had been fact-checked and reviewed for libel consideratons,I was privately told by a top official at the magazine that "Cap" had much to do with the story being shelved. Officially, FORBES Editor Jim Michaels has said he alone decided not to run Fostergate because of concerns about the credibility of some of my sources. Most notably, one Charles Hayes. I was doubtful too, early on. But as Hayes' claims gained more and more corroboration, that excuse was no longer valid. Still, FORBES unexplainably would not touch what is arguably one of the most important stories of the past 20 years. Something was amiss. On Wednesday, Aug. 16, I gave to Jim Michaels (who himself is said to have worked with the pre-CIA Office of Strategic Services and still has ties to the NSA) an updated memo noting the increasing corroboration for Fostergate, incl an update on the Weinberger Swiss account story. Not only have 5 separate sources now reported hearing of such accounts, I had actually obtained what turned out to be an encrypted account number at Union Bank of Switzerland. It had come from records in the car of former CIA drug & gun runner Barry Seal. Within days, the encrypted 10-letter code had been posted on an Internet news group called "alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater" by a former Wharton business school professor & computer whiz named Orlin Grabbe, who is also author of the current standard text on intl financial markets. Grabbe, who apparently has his own intellgence sources, is intimately familiar with U.S. bank-spying efforts: His own former computer software firm was approached by the CIA to be used as a front for sneaking spies into major banks & brokerage house computer rooms. Grabbe is rightly suspicious of the encroaching Surveillance State. The idea behind posting that account number on the Internet, apparently, was to spook the owner of that Swiss account into moving the money in a way that would lead to yet another stash of illicit funds. When that didn't happen, someone apparently went ahead and raided that account for $2.3 million. The money was pulled back to that Treasury escrow account and someone had left a note in Weinberger's Bar Harbor, Maine, drop box stating simply the decrypted account number and a brief message: "You have been had." That's the same message a grinning Hayes claims showed up on Mellon Bank's computer screens a few months back after somebody accessed the bank's computer database and apparently downloaded reams of documents. Is all this bravado? I don't think so, having witnessed the submission of those documents in Judge Kelly's court. 2 hours after delivering my Weinberger memo Aug. 16, Jim Michaels called me to his office. "You've obviously got a bee in your bonnet about this story," Michaels said. "But I've got a magazine to put out." He didn't want me working on the story, even though since April I had been pursuing it on my own time while delivering my usual quota of stories to FORBES. He gave me an either/or choice: resign and take 2 weeks severance pay for each year worked, or go on indefinite unpaid leave. I had been fired. Though FORBES later issues a press statement saying I had resigned of my own "free will," it was what a lawyer would call constructive termination. Why? I believe it was for getting too close to the skeletons in Cap Weinberger's closet, an allegation that FORBES has never denied, but merely ignored. I had touched the third rail. Zap. Alas, "No guts, no story." The still before the storm ibid   James Norman Media Bypass … P.P. Willie is actually a dog. It is also the pen name for a legendary World War II military intelligence veteran, now living in St. Petersburg, FL, who writes for a semi-weekly newsletter called Washington Report, pithy, irreverent Capitol gossip sheet with penchant for pink paper. It is read with considerable interest by its 5,000 subscribers, mostly in Washington & overseas, because Willie is known to be well-connected within the intelligence community. In the past he has been uncannily accurate about goings-on in the spook world. … small, vigilante team of CIA computer hackers dubbed the Fifth Column has managed to penetrate Swiss & other foreign banks to quietly withdraw what is now an astounding $2. 5 billion in illicit money from coded accounts they identified as belonging to govt figures. Starting in 1991, this 5-man Fifth Column team has been using its own Cray supercomputer to break into foreign bank computers, download vast libraries of data and trace this money to a wide range of illegal activities, from kickbacks on drug & arms deals to insider trading profits, software piracy and the sale of state secrets, as well as tax evasion. The money has been moved to a U.S. Treasury holding account at several Federal Reserve Banks, escrowed for use by the CIA if and only if the CIA gets rid of its own bad apples. How could the govt hide that much money, denying under Freedom of Information Act requests that it even exists? Ask the National Reconnaissance Office, govt spy satellite agency, which recently fessed up to having $1.7 billion stashed in secret accounts. More important than the money, however, are the NAMES. Who had these accounts? Are they still in office? Who has the list & the proof? Are they using this information to extort political blackmail? Will the accused be able to buy their way out of exposure? … recent tell-tale events:   CIA briefings. Beginning in late Oct., high-level CIA officials began sensitive one-on-one briefings with key members of Congress and those with intelligence committee assignments. No staff members are allowed. All parties are sworn to secrecy. Less than a dozen lawmakers are involved. The subject, according to 2 sources: Espionage activities of Vincent Foster & his alleged partner, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, on behalf of Israel's Mossad and perhaps other foreign govts. …   Resignations. Unusually large number of veteran congressmen & senators announcing resignations, retirements or switching parties. Among them, Sen. Sam Nunn D-GA, former chairman and now ranking minority member of the powerful Armed Services Committee. Another is Rep. Norman Minetta D-CA, former chairman of the pork-laden House Transportation Committee. The official explanation: It's no fun now that the Republicans control Congress. Sources claim the real reason is that some of these departees have been quietly confronted with evidence that they took bribes or payoffs through Swiss or other offshore bank accounts. Rumor has it that about 30 current members of the House & Senate identified as having such foreign slush-fund accounts and that Gingrich is trying to weed them out before the names become public.   Curious denials. Multiple good sources have confirmed report by veteran Washington correspondent Sarah McClendon that over the Labor Day weekend, Gingrich attended a "party" at home of VP Al Gore that incl Sen. Bill Bradley, Atty General Janet Reno and some other prominent Democrats, after which Gore & Clinton had a shouting match. But everyone said to be involved in the meeting claims it never took place. Is it because Gingrich was there to deliver the bad news: a mountain of hard evidence of high-level corruption? This Fifth Column team apparently began its work in the late 1980s. Their primary assignment was to break into foreign intelligence agency databases by a variety of physical & electronic means. But the main means of entry was via secret "back doors" programmed into the modified "PROMIS" tracking software which our govt, under the direction of CIA spymaster William Casey, managed to market all over the globe, even to our enemies. This initial phase of the computer spy effort succeeded in downloading data from more than 50 foreign intelligence services, including the KGB, the Mossad and most of Europe's spy agencies, according to various CIA- related sources. Contrary to boastful claims by the FBI, this is apparently how Russian mole Aldrich Ames was identified as a double agent more than 2 years before his dramatic arrest in February 1994. Is is also how the CIA found out Foster was working for the Mossad, after learning that someone in our govt was delivering highly sensitive computer codes to the Israelis; Foster had been a long-time handler of sensitive computer spy deals and covert money-laundering for the NSA. Found along with Foster's name in the Mossad database was that of Hillary Clinton, whose name also cropped up as an operative for at least 2 other European intelligence services, as yet unidentified. At the time of his death, Foster was under close counter-espionage surveillance involving members of the CIA, FBI, Secret Service as well as an IRS team. 2 good sources say they have heard that Saudi Arabia also had agents surveilling Foster. He knew he was being investigated and was apparently under pressure to cop a plea to prevent the probe from bringing down others in the White House. The FBI apparently also knew that Foster's life was in danger: According to 2 reliable intelligence sources, on the day of his death, FBI agents used a pair of bomb-sniffing dogs to inspect Foster's Honda in the White House parking lot and probably planted a transponder on the car so they could track the movements. White House videotapes of the parking lot, which would have shown that inspection, have allegedly disappeared, according to this intelligence source. But sources say the surveillance teams have still photos & videotapes of Foster's activities on the afternoon he died, 7.20.93 showing him entering an apartment. It is here that Foster was apparently killed, after a sexual encounter with a brownish-blond woman photographed leaving the apartment afterwards. Also photographed, these sources say, was the hit squad, apparently "assets" contracted by the Mossad but not incl any agents of the Mossad itself. Foster's body was apparently rolled up in a rug and deposited at Ft Marcy Park which is still closed to visitors as the FBI supposedly searches for the bullet that killed him. Doggedly, the White House & offical Washington, aided by a blinded mainstream press, continue to claim it was just a suicide, despite the seriously flawed & widely discredited report to that effect by original Whitewater Special Counsel Robert Fiske, and a cursory Senate inquiry. Sources say it is the continuing coverup, now more than 2 years after Foster's death, and the brazen nature of Foster's assassination, that has soured CIA professionals and has prompted them to consider going public with what they know. Adding to their frustration was the resignation of reform-minded CIA director James Woollsey last year and his replacement by John Deutch. Deutch's job appears to be to keep a lid on things and to protect the Clintons and the massive, ongoing illegal drug & arms trade that provides the agency with billions of dollars in revenue completely out of view of Congress and govt watchdogs. Deutch's recent attempt to use the Aldrich Ames case as a club to attack the CIA and its past directors has brought the agency's simmering revolt to a boil. "Deutch had better watch his altitude & attitude," said one veteran CIA man. "He'd better get off his soapbox before he gets indicted himself." Rumors of CIA involvement in drug trafficking go back to before the Vietnam war, with heroin trade from Laos' Golden Triangle. But in the late '70s or early '80s, the agency virtually took over and nationalized the wholesale importation of cocaine into this country through obscure airfields like the one at Mena, AR, on the grounds that it was the only way to control the drug trade. In other words: "If you can't lick them, join them." The operation was soon generating vastly more money than ever imagined which came to line pockets of top govt officials from the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations. The money-laundering operations have likewise drawn in major banks & brokerage houses. By some accounts, the revenues still run upwards of $7 billion a year. Details of govt involvement in this society-wrecking drug trade are now emerging from various sources. Bits & pieces emerged during the Iran-Contra and Iraqgate hearings of the 1980s, which produced a million pages of documents but only a handful of indictments, and fewer convictions. Perhaps the biggest fish caught was Reagan DefSec Caspar Weinberger, charged with lying to Congress. He was pardoned by Pres. George Bush just as Bush was leaving office in 1992. Weinberger's right-hand-man through most of that period was presidential contender Gen. Colin Powell, who Weinberger had brought up to be a top military advisor, out of Casey's intelligence empire where he is said to have served with the NSA and to have been intimately familiar with the drug & arms flow. There is also a growing court record of sworn testimony in the wrongful prosecution case of former CIA contract pilot Terry Reed. Reed claims in his book, "Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA," that Bill Clinton, while AR governor, was well aware of the drug trafficking there but played along with the game to earn himself the status of an "approved" candidate for the presidency. Another source now openly discussing the massive drug business is retired Navy Lt. Commander Alexander Martin. Martin was, in effect, chief accountant for Reagan/Bush drug operations run by Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, through an obscure arm of the White House National Security Council called the National Programs Office. In a radio interview with talk show host Tom Valentine last July, Martin spoke not only of drugs & money, but death. "Out of roughly 5,000 of us who were originally involved in Iran-Contra, approximately 400, since 1986, have committed suicide, died accidently or died of natural causes. In over half those deaths, official death certificates were never issued. In 187 circumstances, the bodies were cremated before the families were notified." Martin then said he was lying low. Not low enough. In late Oct., Martin was arrested & jailed without bond in Broward County, Fla., for supposed violation of his probation on a 1990 bad-check charge. Such small-time charges are a common device used to squelch & discredit former players in this govt-run drug and arms racket. Corruption. Most Americans like to think their govt is somehow immune to the kinds of bribery & abuse of public power rampant in "Third World" countries. The emerging reality is that the exact opposite is true. The more wealth & power at stake, the greater the incentive to subvert & corrupt. 'Papers' depict Ellsberg's moral struggle 3.6.03   AP In the early 1960s, Daniel Ellsberg was a high-level military analyst, ex-Marine and hawk who believed U.S. could win in Vietnam. But wiithin a few years, he had become a dove and, by one measure, a national traitor. The moral struggle of Daniel Ellsberg, and the extraordinary act it compelled him to commit, is the subject of "The Pentagon Papers," an inadvertently timely film premiering on the FX network Sunday at 8 p.m. EST. Alan Arkin, Claire Forlani and Paul Giamatti star, as well as James Spader, who plays Ellsberg. "He is one of America's greatest traitors who, in many people's eyes, became one of its greatest heroes," says Josh Maurer, the film's executive producer. "He was a man who was obsessed with the truth and willing to follow his obsession, even if it contradicted everything he believed in." Ellsberg's evolution began in 1964 during a stint at the Pentagon, which sent him on a 2 year fact-finding mission to Vietnam. As the war escalated, he became increasingly troubled by misinformation flowing back home and by what he saw as a flawed U.S. strategy for halting the spread of Communism. Depressed at his failure to be heeded by govt leaders, he returned to his old job at the Rand Corp., a private think tank in California. There his thinking made another seismic shift with Rand's completion of a 7,000-page, Defense Dept commissioned report that concluded the U.S. couldn't win a war in Vietnam. Ellsberg began seeing a psychiatrist. The govt would deny the existence of this dismal report while continuing to reassure the public that victory was imminent. The war continued to grow. Finally, Ellsberg came to an agonizing decision: The top-secret study should be leaked to the American people. "We were eating our young," Ellsberg tells his shrink in the film, "and I realized that, at any cost, the country needed to know the truth." The film portrays a whistleblower who risked (and only narrowly averted) life in prison to expose 5 successive presidential administrations Truman through Nixon as having lied to the American people about the growing level of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

"It's never been about Vietnam," says Ellsberg. "It's always been about domestic policy: How to stay in office, win the election." No politician could appear to be soft on Communism. No president could let a war be lost on his watch.

By leaking copies of the so-called Pentagon Papers to NY Times & Wash.Post, Ellsberg prompted a showdown between the First Amendment & White House, which fought to suppress the report's publication. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a free press.
It was an earth-shaking series of events. Yet the 71-year-old Ellsberg (who was not involved in making this film but recently authored "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam & the Pentagon Papers") might seem a relic from ancient history. Now, thanks to circumstances no one could have foreseen, his story has startling currency. The airing of "The Pentagon Papers" finds the nation poised for war against Iraq. There are doubts that the govt has leveled with its citizens about the costs & consequences. An anti-war movement has mobilized.

For those who hear them, echoes from the past are loud & disconcerting. Count Ellsberg as one who draws parallels. After watching a cassette of "The Pentagon Papers" last week, he voices his approval of the film. "If it encourages just one person to be a whistleblower," he said Wednesday, "that would be great."
The film, in the works for 2 years, was never meant to address the current crisis, nor, in telling the decades-old tale, does it express an anti-war position. "We tried to steer a middle course," says Maurer, whose past films include the acclaimed "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge" for HBO. "I think this movie is very patriotic," he says, "a story that extols the virtues of democracy, of an active citizenry."

Even so, he notes that "The Pentagon Papers" has certain evergreen themes, among them: "The American people must be informed about the decisions of their govt, and a decision to go to war must be made with debate & analysis involving all Americans."
That was what drove Ellsberg to bring some crucial truths before the American people. For it, he faced espionage, theft and conspiracy charges and a possible 115-year sentence. But in Sept. 1971, a group of men broke into the Beverly Hills office of his former psychiatrist. Dispatched to dig up evidence to discredit Ellsberg, these Nixon White House "plumbers" were caught 8 months later while committing the Watergate burglary that would bring down Nixon's presidency.
In May 1973, a federal court judge, citing these "bizarre events," dropped the charges against Ellsberg. Thanks to Nixon, Ellsberg's deepest truths had set him free.

Monica   little drummer girl ¹ ² º The Chandra Levy affair 7.22.01   Sherman H. Skolnick [ Skolnick now rivals LaRouche for posing contentions, extremity of which demand investigation ] … [2] Monica's father was originally from Central America. He was ostensibly a "sleeper agent" for The Mossad. That is, an intelligence asset pressed into service when & as needed. {Monica's father, like Chandra Levy's father, is an oncologist, tumor & cancer specialist.] [3] Many have forgotten that Monica was later sent by Clinton to hold a key position in the Pentagon, as asst to the Press Chief. She traveled on occasion with one or more of the top Pentagon officials. She admits one such official got her pregnant and she required an abortion. Her purpose, to infiltrate close to the top U.S. military, incl Chiefs of Staff, to determine names & details of the small circle of flag officers, Admirals & Generals, plotting, as authorized by Military Code, to arrest their Commander-in- Chief Clinton for treason. If Clinton were to have them arrested for mutiny, if they survived and were not assassinated, they intended to defend themselves with documented charges, for example, of Clinton's treason with the head of the Red Chinese Secret Police. [Visit our extensive website series on the "Red Chinese Secret Police IN THE U.S."] Of 24 of these flag officers, ten have been assassinated, incl Adm. Jeremy Boorda, Chief of Naval Operations, and Gen. David McCloud, head of the Alaska Military Dist. Those who survived took up residence, out-of-uniform, in a Paris suburb, protected by the French CIA. 3 times during the Clinton White House they quietly returned to the U.S. Assisting these flag officers was former CIA dir. Wm Colby, himself assassinated in 1996 and made falsely to seem to be a boat accident. [4] … Rahm Emanuel, on & off for 6 years Clinton White House sr advisor. … our assertion that Rahm was both Clinton loyalist and contributor to his scandals by way of manipulating him, all at the same time. After leaving Clinton White House, Rahm Emanuel became managing dir. of alleged "investment banker", Wasserstein Perella, reputed specialty laundering funds of the Red Chinese Secret Police through the Chicago markets. … TX gov. GWBush also member of Illuminist satanic secret society, Skull & Bones! 9.16.01   Cutting Edge Ministries ¹ … The Masters of the Illuminati always had a saying, "Audacity, always Audacity", something so shocking and so far out, it is to be considered impossible. People naturally feel, both in a democracy & a govt of royalty, that their leaders generally have their best interests at heart." … [ Standard fawning behavior of the lower orders or classes, not all people. Distinction from this sentiment distinguishes the logic of aristocracy. Domestication foremost entails arresting development beyond the juvenile stage characterized by this displaced filial devotion that keeps all but the most dominant &/or mature citizens from sufficient empathy with rulers to recognize treason is ally to authority against common cause. Preferable perspective: cui bono ] Mary Pinchot Meyer ¹ ² º, after she divorced Cord Meyer ¹, moved to Wash.D.C. and she was living in Ben Bradlee's garage, which had been made into an art studio and this is where she was living. And when she was killed on this tow path, James Angleton showed up at the garage at the studio. There's 2 versions of the story that I've heard. One is that he searched for the diary, found it & took it away, and the other is that Ben Bradlee handed it to him and he took it away. Supposedly he burned it, but people that knew Angleton say he never burned anything, he saved everything. So supposedly it still exists. Angleton is dead now, so if anybody has it it's probably his widow. 7.22.01 K.Thomas interview Deborah Davis auth. unauth. Katherine Graham bio … In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again. The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down what seemed to be a very deep well. "Well!" thought Alice to herself, "after such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down stairs! How brave they'll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!" (Which was very likely true.) Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end? "I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?" she said aloud. … Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began talking again. … And here Alice began to get rather sleepy, and went on saying to her-self, in a dreamy sort of way, "Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?" and sometimes, "Do bats eat cats?" for, you see, as she couldn't answer either question, it didn't much matter which way she put it. …   chapt. 1   Down the rabbit hole Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Lewis Carroll Once notorious, now footnotes   µ The two women who tried to assassinate Ford have come to embody an era's extremism. 12.29.06   John M. Glionna, Larry Gordon L.A. Times They are joined in a strange sisterhood by a pair of unhinged acts: In the autumn of 1975, 17 days apart, each tried to assassinate President Ford, who died this week at age 93. Today, Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Fromme and Sara Jane Moore are serving life sentences in federal prisons in Texas and California, respectively. The once headline-grabbing names have become historical footnotes embodying the extremism of a tumultuous era. Three decades ago, Fromme was a red-haired flower child from Santa Monica, a Charles Manson handmaiden who gouged an X in her forehead in devotion to the mastermind of the Tate-LaBianca murders. Moore was an accountant, divorced numerous times and a mother of four. Of her attempt on Ford's life, she said, "There comes a point where the only way you can make a statement is to pick up a gun." Although the two would-be killers' roots are different, their plots were both symptoms of the 1970s, the "goofiest decade of the century for California … in terms of its sheer ominous weirdness," said USC history professor Kevin Starr, state librarian emeritus. "Moore's style was middle-class, whereas Squeaky Fromme was a genuine cultist. Moore represented the individual derangement of the period and Squeaky the social derangement," said Starr. The assassination attempts, Fromme's in Sacramento and Moore's in San Francisco, also contributed to "an atmosphere of lawlessness" in Northern California, Starr said, compounded by such 1970s events as the Patty Hearst kidnapping, the slaying of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and the mass suicide of the Jonestown cultists. Others say the acts symbolized an unraveling of American society in the aftermath of Watergate and the Vietnam War. "A lot of people were rolling around unmoored, finding a reason to believe there was a political or conspiratorial explanation for their inner upheaval and concluding if they could only act on their impulse, they could save the world," said Columbia Univ. journalism & sociology prof. Todd Gitlin, former leader of the Students for a Democratic Society whose books include "The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage." Fromme, now 58, became the first woman to try to assassinate a U.S. president when, on 9.5.75, she burst through a crowd at the state Capitol, dressed in a nun's robe and with a .45-caliber pistol strapped to her left leg. She pointed the weapon at Ford from 2 ft away. Though it was loaded, there was no bullet in the firing chamber. A Secret Service agent disarmed her and slapped her in handcuffs. At her sentencing, when the judge said he believed she would have killed Ford if she could have, Fromme shouted: "You fool! I'm trying to save your life!" She later threw an apple, hitting the federal prosecutor on the head. In 1987, after hearing rumors that Manson was dying of cancer, Fromme briefly escaped from prison in Alderson WV in an attempt to see the former cult leader. 8 years earlier, Moore also briefly escaped from the facility. Now at Federal Medical Center Carswell in Ft Worth, Fromme has been eligible for parole since the mid-1980s but has yet to request her freedom. "Her position has been consistent: She didn't kill anyone and is not sorry. She's not asking for sympathy, mercy or a second chance," said Jess Bravin, author of "Squeaky: The Life and Times of Lynette Alice Fromme." "She says she didn't intend to kill Ford. She felt she was taking important symbolic acts, calling attention to acts she considered out of line in the world: the continued incarceration of Charles Manson and what she perceived as Ford's hostile policies toward the environment." Moore, 76, is at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, a low-security facility for women about 30 miles east of San Francisco. Officials there would say only that she is part of the general population, lives in a cell with two or three other people and works prison jobs seven hours a day, five days a week. Moore could be released 9.21.07 if she applies for parole and the U.S. Parole Commission decides she has a good prison record and is not likely to commit another crime. "If she does apply, we can still say no," said Tom Hutchison, the commission's chief of staff. She grew up in comfortable circumstances in Charleston WV, where she is remembered as smart but aloof. She became an accountant and later an FBI informant. While living in the Bay Area, she became involved in radical politics and volunteered for a group that oversaw the distribution of $2 million in food, a ransom demanded by the Symbionese Liberation Army after its kidnapping of newspaper heiress Hearst. Moore fired at Ford on 9.22.75, as the president was leaving a speaking engagement at the St. Francis Hotel. Her single shot from a .38 revolver missed after Oliver Sipple, a disabled Vietnam War veteran, grabbed her arm and pulled her down. In the publicity, newspapers identified Sipple as gay, and he later unsuccessfully sued for invasion of privacy. Federal public defenders were preparing an insanity defense for Moore, who had received psychiatric treatment several times in the past, but she pleaded guilty over her lawyers' objections. As she was sentenced to life in prison, Moore expressed mixed feelings about her actions. "Am I sorry I tried?" she said. "Yes and no. Yes, because it accomplished little except to throw away the rest of my life…. And, no, I'm not sorry I tried, because at the time it seemed a correct expression of my anger." In a jailhouse interview, Moore said she had not been inspired by Fromme, whom she called "insane" and described as "seeking all that attention." Frank Bell, one of Moore's former federal public defenders, recalled her as "a cipher, a question mark," whose reasoning raised doubts about her sanity. "Her conduct was sort of a shopping list: 'Take my son to school, shoot the president, pick up my son from school,' " said Bell. Both she and Fromme were united as characters, along with other presidential assailants, in the Stephen Sondheim musical "Assassins," which won a Tony Award in 2004 for best musical revival. In that show, Moore is portrayed as a bumbler who has trouble even finding the gun in her purse and Fromme as a fanatic who sings of her "Charlie." In the end, neither assassination attempt hurt Ford or changed his policies. In an interview with Bravin, Ford said Fromme's actions that September day probably boosted his public standing. "He said for better or worse, he wasn't an emotional guy and that he didn't get that excited" about the incidents, Bravin said. "It was frightening when it happened, but he moved on."

Chandra   Mary Pinchot Meyer Hill rat security Condee Rice Barbara Olson Patsy Mink Mary Mahoney Joyce Chiang speaker's daughter Johnny Gosch Tina Ricca Condit delays grand jury appearance in Washington 4.5.02   AP U.S. Rep. Gary Condit D-CA postponed a scheduled appearance before a Washington grand jury looking into the Chandra Levy disappearance. Wash.Post says Condit may appear before the grand jury in the coming weeks. No reason was given for the delay. The grand jury is looking into what happened to the former Washington intern and probing allegations of obstruction of justice involving Condit & others. The jury plans to call other witnesses, incl Levy's friends and members of Condit's staff. In November, jurors subpoenaed records from Condit's congressional office. The controversy surrounding the Levy disappearance cost the veteran Democrat his bid for re-election. Levy has been missing for nearly a year. Intern Opportunities U.S. Rep. Gary Condit D-CA 4.8.02   official House website that also incl these graphics Whether interning in Modesto, Merced, or Wash.D.C., working in one of Rep. Condit's offices can be an extremely rewarding experience. Typical duties of Interns can range from assisting with phone's to researching legislative projects. If you would like additional information on interning for Rep. Condit, please fill out and submit the following form. Asterisks indicate a required field. … Please give some educational background information. i.e. year in school, educational goals or major (if in college), and particular govt related interests. Levy probe concentrates on Rock Creek attacker Man is serving 10 years for hunting joggers 9.29.02   Wash.Post pA1 Sari Horwitz, Allan Lengel, S.Moreno (El Salvador) Detectives in the Chandra Levy murder case are focusing on a man convicted of assaulting 2 women jogging in Rock Creek Park last year, a suspect who was initially discounted after he passed a polygraph test that investigators now believe was flawed. Ingmar A. Guandique, 21, has been in prison for the assaults on the joggers since July 2001, 2 months after Levy disappeared. After her remains were found in the park May 22, some investigators reexamining his case were struck by the similarities in the 3 crime scenes, law enforcement sources said. Investigators then discovered that a Spanish-speaking interpreter instead of a bilingual polygraph technician was used in administering Guandique's polygraph, sources said. Relying on an interpreter, according to legal experts, can skew the results of the test because the questions are filtered through and possibly altered by the interpreter. The clothes Guandique was wearing when arrested 7.1.01 were sent to the FBI laboratory in Washington for DNA tests, according to law enforcement sources. He wore the same dark, knee-length baggy shorts with a white stripe on each side during both attacks of which he was convicted, according to police reports. Guandique's brother, Huber, who lives in the Washington area, said investigators have interviewed him 4 times over the past 6 weeks, each time pressing him to turn over any clothing belonging to Ingmar. The two did not live together at the time of the assaults, and Huber Guandique said he told police that he does not have anything belonging to his brother. Salvadoran immigrant Ingmar Guandique has become the focus of the Levy probe because the attacks on the joggers occurred not far from where her body was found and because of the violent nature of the assaults, according to law enforcement sources. In a pre-sentencing memorandum, Asst U.S. Atty Kristina L. Ament called Guandique "a predator" who, armed with a knife, used the isolated portions of the park "as a hunting ground, waiting beside popular running trails, selecting victims and stalking them." Levy's skeletal remains were discovered May 22, a little more than a year after she vanished, in an isolated pocket of the park about a half-mile from where Guandique attacked one jogger and less than 2 miles from where he attacked another. There is no evidence linking Guandique or anyone else to the 17-month-old case, but the focus on him has reenergized a probe that appeared to have stalled. A team of D.C. police, FBI agents and prosecutors from the U.S. atty's office is conducting the investigation. D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey cautioned that investigators don't know whether Guandique was involved, but said, "He's someone we're interested in." In May, authorities played down Guandique as a suspect because Levy had been killed before his attacks on the joggers, who fought back & escaped without serious injury. They theorized that someone who already had killed would have been more violent with the later victims. Also, the two joggers looked strikingly similar, tall and blond, while Levy was a petite brunette. But investigators now believe that opportunity, not how the women looked, was a key factor in the attacks, according to law enforcement sources. They still are not sure why Levy was in the park, because family & friends say she was not a jogger and didn't like to go there alone. Some investigators have speculated that she went for a long walk, possibly to see the Nature Ctr, or was in the park to meet someone. The renewed interest in Guandique has shifted some attention away from Rep. Gary A. Condit D-CA, who was romantically involved with the 24-year-old former federal intern at the time she disappeared. Investigators have not interviewed him since Levy's remains were found, though Ramsey said, "We have not excluded anyone." A D.C. Superior Court grand jury is investigating the Levy homicide and allegations that Condit obstructed the investigation. The grand jury subpoenaed him to appear 4.12.02, according to sources. He showed up at the U.S. attorney's office but cited his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and did not testify before the panel, the sources said. Guandique, in a plea bargain agreement, admitted trying to rob the joggers, one on 5.14.01, 2 weeks after Levy disappeared and the other 7.1.01. At his sentencing Feb. 8, D.C. Superior Court Judge Noel A. Kramer said the attacks appeared to be more than attempted robberies. Guandique "went out of his way for a physical encounter that ended up, at least in one instance, out of sight, in a ravine in Rock Creek Park," the judge said, according to a transcript. "This is not a run-of-the-mill robbery. … Mr. Guandique is ready to terrorize people, ready to have a physical encounter. … [H]e is highly dangerous." Kramer said Guandique never stole anything from the women, not even their portable tape players, items he told police he was trying to take when he attacked them. "There is more here than a Walkman," the judge said. In a similarity noted by law enforcement authorities, Levy's Walkman also was found with her remains. D.C. police first spoke to Guandique about the Levy case in the summer of 2001 after U.S. Park Police alerted them to his arrest in the jogger assaults, according to court records. But law enforcement sources said they found nothing to indicate he was involved in her disappearance, especially since, at the time, they weren't aware that her body was in the park. After Guandique's arrest, an inmate at the D.C. jail told authorities that Guandique had confided in him that he stabbed Levy and left her body in the park, law enforcement sources said. The inmate didn't try to trade the information for a lighter sentence, saying he came forward because he felt bad for the Levy family. In Sept. 2001, the inmate failed a polygraph test, also administered through an interpreter. Guandique, who denied involvement in the Levy case, passed, the sources said, and authorities felt comfortable that he was not their man. When Levy's body was found 8 months later, Guandique's name surfaced as someone who had attacked women in the park. High-ranking police, knowing that detectives had discounted him because of the polygraph, played him down as a suspect, with Ramsey scolding, "The press is making too big a deal of it." Ramsey's then-deputy, Terrance W. Gainer, was more blunt: "He wasn't our suspect then. He's not our suspect now." Ramsey last week defended the use of the interpreter. "When you've got language issues, it's not unusual to use a translator," he said. But Virginia School of Polygraph dir. Billy Franklin in Norfolk said he prefers not to use interpreters because if they don't pose the questions correctly, the answers can be wrong. "In such an important case, they should have used a bilingual examiner if possible," he said. Geo. Washington Univ. law & forensic science prof. James Starrs contends that because lie detector tests can be unreliable, they shouldn't always determine the course of an investigation. "Simply because someone passes the test, they shouldn't be written off, absolutely not," he said. Authorities have talked to some of Guandique's relatives and friends and want to interview him again. But he has signed a letter saying that he will not talk without his lawyer. He declined to be interviewed for this story, and his attorney did not return phone calls. Police interviewed Condit 4 times last year, talked to his wife & staff members, searched his apartment, took DNA samples and subpoenaed his bank, credit card and phone records. He declined to take a polygraph test administered by authorities; instead, his attorney arranged in summer 2001 for him to take one given by retired FBI agent Barry Colvert, who passed him. Though authorities were skeptical of the results, Colvert said last week that he was "very comfortable" with the test. "We covered everything in my questions." According to court records, incl written statements from Guandique's victims, the park assaults were remarkably similar. He went to Rock Creek Park, fell in behind the women as they were jogging in isolated sections of the park, jumped them and pulled them to the ground. In both attacks, he brandished a knife. "I began screaming as loud as I could," wrote the first victim, 30, who had taken a self-defense course. "We continued to wrestle. He shushed me. I continued to scream, knowing that the cars driving by on Beach Drive … well hidden from view by the trees, were drowning out my voice. … I do not doubt for a minute that he purposefully stalked me as a hunter tracks his prey." In the second attack, Guandique pulled the woman off the trail. "When my attacker dragged me into the ravine, holding a knife against my throat and covering my mouth, I thought and still think today that he was going to rape me or try to kill me," the woman, 26, wrote. "I feared for my life. What struck me most was that within 10 seconds, I was off the jogging path in the woods … out of sight of any passersby." Her assailant "was extremely strong, and with his hand cutting off my air and the knife at my throat I didn't feel I could struggle for very long. He was a bold & practiced attacker … [who] waited until he thought I was fatigued from jogging up a hill and purposely selected a secluded spot right next to a deep ravine." As in the first attack, the woman was able to break away & flee. Cut & bruised, she flagged down a motorist and reported the incident to the U.S. Park Police, who arrested Guandique about 45 minutes later at Joyce Rd and 16th St NW. She identified him. Under questioning, he told police about the earlier incident. Guandique denied having a knife and said the women probably mistook his gold bracelet as a weapon. He pleaded guilty in Sept. 2001 to 2 counts of assault with intent to commit robbery and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was confined to a prison in N.Carolina, then sent this month to a federal prison in Atlanta. Last week, he was transferred to a facility in Manchester KY. Friends & family in El Salvador say that until Guandique went to the U.S., he did not have any problems with the law and was "an honorable young man." He comes from a poor farming hamlet near the city of San Miguel, had to quit school after the seventh grade to work, and came to this country illegally in Jan. 2000. Once here, they say, he struggled to repay some debts and send money home. At the time of his arrest, he lived on Somerset Place NW, about a block from Rock Creek Golf Course, and worked as a day laborer doing construction & carpentry and cutting grass. He had problems with alcohol and "significant drug issues," according to court records. There was one brush with the law before the assaults. 5.7.01, Guandique, then 19, was arrested for burglarizing an apartment that day in his neighborhood and stealing jewelry. He was released pending trial. A week later, he attacked the first jogger. At his sentencing, Guandique said he was "sincerely repentant for the 2 offenses I committed." The Levy case was mentioned, but prosecutor Ament said a lie detector test helped "diffuse" suspicions that Guandique was involved. In an undated letter from prison, Guandique asked his mother & grandfather in El Salvador to forgive him. Of his siblings back home, he wrote, "I hope they take advantage of life and that they never get into problems because it is not easy to be in jail."

Condit, who was defeated for reelection in his party's primary, declined to be interviewed. His attorney Mark Geragos said, "I would hope beyond hope they are looking at persons who make the most sense in terms of being a suspect, and it's certainly not my client." Levy family atty Billy Martin said his team of lawyers, forensic experts and private investigators is continuing the murder probe.
Joe McCann & Dwayne Stanton, who found one of Levy's leg bones after police completed the first search of the crime scene, recently found a hard contact lens at the site and turned it over to police for DNA tests. It is unclear whether the item is connected to the case. "The Levy family will never be satisfied until they find answers to who killed Chandra and that person is brought to justice," Martin said.

sightings   ª   † Mexico Air Force video creates UFO stir 5.11.04   Reuters Mexico City   The Mexican Air Force has released footage of what a UFO expert said were 11 invisible unidentified flying objects picked up by an infrared camera as they whizzed around a surveillance plane. A long-time believer in flying saucers, journalist Jaime Maussan told a news conference on Tuesday the objects were real and seemed "intelligent" after they at one point changed direction and surrounded the plane chasing them. "They were invisible to the eye but they were there, there is no doubt about it. They had mass, they had energy and they were moving about," he said, after showing a 15-minute video he said the Defense Ministry gave him permission to publicize. The ministry confirmed to Reuters it had provided the video, filmed by the Air Force 3.5.04 over the eastern coastal state of Campeche. "We are not alone! This is so weird," one of the pilots can be heard yelling, after the plane's crew switched on an infrared camera to track the objects, first picked up by radar. The film, recorded by a plane looking for drugs trafficking near the Gulf of Mexico, shows 11 objects as blobs of light that hover in formation or dart about, sometimes disappearing into cloud. Mexico's most popular nightly news broadcast showed the video on Monday night. Interviewed by Mausson on another section of the video, the pilots said they grew nervous when the objects, still invisible, turned back during a chase and surrounded the plane. "There was a moment when … the screens showed they were behind us, to the left and in front of us. It was at that point that I felt a bit tense," said Maj. Magdaleno Castanon. Mexico has a long history of fanciful UFO sightings, most of which are dismissed by scientists as space debris, missiles, weather balloons, natural weather phenomena or hoaxes. Weather may explain Mexico UFO stir 5.14.04   Reuters Mexico City   A cluster of mysterious objects that surrounded a Mexican Air Force plane, alarming the pilots and sparking a UFO scare, could be a weather phenomenon known as ball lightning, a scientist said on Friday. The pilots grew nervous during a routine drugs surveillance flight in March when their radar detected strange objects flying nearby and an infrared camera showed 11 blobs of light, invisible to the eye, hovering or darting about their plane. Mexico's Air Force this week released footage from the infrared camera that was shown widely on television. As Mexican and international media published photographs of the objects, UFO Web sites saw the case as possible evidence of a new sighting of some form of extraterrestrial life. But nuclear science researcher Julio Herrera said the blobs of light may have been nothing more than ball lightning -- glowing spheres that are little understood but often sighted near the ground during thunderstorms. "Just as you have lightning between clouds and ground, you can also have it within the clouds and sometimes ball lightning can develop. I feel this is one of these rare events," said Herrera, based at Mexico's National Autonomous University. "It's a very rare atmospheric phenomenon and it would be very interesting to be able to analyze all the information these pilots obtained," he told Reuters. UFO follower Jaime Maussan said on Tuesday the objects seemed "intelligent" after they turned around to surround the plane chasing them, but Herrera said electrical discharges in ball lightning could have been attracted to the plane as a conductor. January 1st UFO San Diego sighting Could UFO in San Diego skies be sky lanterns? 1.3.08   Fox News Strange lights were spotted over the skies of San Diego. Some friends in Clairemont captured the unusual sighting on camera.It was about half past midnight on the first day of 2008 when a string of nine lights from east to west were spotted over San Diego. "There is a big commotion over the corner; I could tell there was something really exciting going on.” Says witness Nat Coil.Nat Coil was among a group of college friends at a new Years party in West Clairemont. "I looked up at where they were looking at, and right then and there I knew it was a once in  a life time thing, so I had the camera on me and I started to record." "They all moved uniformly, in a uniform speed, they moved in an arc, they didn't move in a straight line." says Dustin Gannon, "We live with a couple of guys that are astrophysics majors, and they were sitting there running through the list of possible things and we ran out of things before we could identify what it possibly was.” Possible explanations flooded into FOX6 after we aired our first report, from top secret military drones to rockets. Several viewers suggested the lights were Chinese flying lanterns.  Basically, minature hot-air balloons fueled by a candle or other flame. They are customarily released at the New Year for good luck.

Former pilots and officials call for new U.S. UFO probe 11.12.07   David Morgan SD UT Wash. D.C. (Reuters)   Democratic U.S. presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich may have been ridiculed for saying he had seen a UFO, but for some former military pilots and other observers, unidentified flying objects are no laughing matter. An international panel of two dozen former pilots and govt officials called on the U.S. govt on Monday to reopen its generation-old UFO investigation as a matter of safety and security given continuing reports about flying discs, glowing spheres and other strange sightings. "Especially after the attacks of 9/11, it is no longer satisfactory to ignore radar returns … which cannot be associated with performances of existing aircraft and helicopters," they said in a statement released at a news conference. The panelists from 7 countries, including former senior military officers, said they had each seen a UFO or conducted an official investigation into UFO phenomena. The subject of UFOs grabbed the spotlight in the U.S. presidential race last month when Kucinich, a member of Congress from Ohio, said during a televised debate with other Democratic candidates that he had seen one. Former presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter are both reported to have claimed UFO sightings. Most turn out to be misidentified aircraft, satellites or meteors. A panelist who once worked for Britain's Ministry of Defense said 5 percent of incidents cannot be explained. But the sightings are often dismissed by authorities without proper investigations, UFO activists say. "It's a question of who you going to believe: your lying eyes or the government?" remarked John Callahan, a former Federal Aviation Administration investigator, who said the CIA in 1987 tried to hush up the sighting of a huge lighted ball four times the size of a jumbo jet in Alaska. The panel, organized by a group dedicated to winning credibility for the study of UFOs, urged Washington to resume UFO investigations through the U.S. Air Force or NASA. "It would certainly, I think, take a lot of angst out of this issue," said former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, who said he was among hundreds who saw a delta-shaped craft with enormous lights silently traverse the sky near Phoenix in 1997. The Air Force investigated 12,618 UFO reports from 1947 to 1969 in what was known as Project Blue Book. Investigators concluded that the incidents posed no threat and there was no evidence of space aliens or a super technology in operation. "Since the termination of Project Blue Book, nothing has occurred that would support a resumption of UFO investigations," the Air Force said on its Web site. [ Significantly, UFOs sightings tend to surface at locales associated with nuclear technology, esp. nuclear weapons. ] Military blames UFO reports on jet drills 2.24.08   Angela K. Brown AP More than 50 residents of Stephenville, Texas, reported seeing a large, silent, fast-moving object hovering over their rural town in early January. Initially, the military said it didn't have any planes in the area, but Wednesday military officials claimed 10 F-16 fighter jets were training in the Stephenville area the night dozens of residents reported seeing a UFO. Although Air Force Reserve officials in Fort Worth initially said they had no planes in the area Jan. 8, they said Wednesday that they were mistaken and wanted to set the record straight "in the interest of public awareness". But some residents remain convinced that it was no human-made aircraft, saying the military's revelation actually bolsters their claims. Some insist they saw at least two fighter jets chasing a large object with bright lights. "This supports our story that there was UFO activity in that area," said Mutual UFO Network Texas dir.Kenneth Cherry, which group took more than 50 reports from locals at a meeting last weekend. "I find it curious that it took them two weeks to 'fess up. I think they're feeling the heat from the publicity." Well-respected business owners and a county constable were among dozens who swear that what they saw was larger, quieter, faster and lower to the ground than an airplane. They also said the object's lights changed configuration, unlike those of a plane. "I guarantee that what we saw was not a civilian aircraft," Steve Allen, a pilot and freight company owner, said Wednesday. Allen said that the planes' training area in the Brownwood Military Operating Area that includes Stephenville's Erath County does not include the airspace where he saw the object. Also, Jan. 8 was not the only day sightings were reported. Maj. Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth, declined to comment on the nature of the military training or say if it took place on other days. He initially said folks may have seen an illusion caused by two commercial airplanes and reflections from the setting sun. On Wednesday, he said he should not have speculated about the reported sightings.

[ The university in Stephenville is Tarleton. The military base Tarleton offers courses at is Ft. Hood. ] Bush White House in Crawford TX is about 20 miles north of Ft Hood Don't go there President takes a no-fly zone wherever he goes 8.22.02   J. Lynn Lunsford Wall St Journal "Locals around the Crawford area claim that there is a very large tunnel deep underground that connects W's ranch compound with the Ft Hood base. A tunnel with elevators going up into the house … " "Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, Fort Hood was billed as the largest military base in the free world"   Wiki "What is now West Fort Hood was formerly a US Air Force Base … From 1952 to 1969, the facilities were run by the U.S. Army under the Defense Atomic Support Agency." "In 1949, during the months of March through June a series of UFO Sightings occurred over Camp Hood, now Fort Hood, in central Texas. Below is a synopsis of the sightings". "No striking pattern to UFO activity was evident with one exception, some marked activity in the U.S. southwest in late 1948 on through 1949. What was so special about that area?" Later in the report he gets more specific: "Due to the difficulties previously mentioned, it wasn't until the spring of 1949 that the U.S. manufactured enough bombs to have a 'stockpile'. It is suggested that the 'green fireballs' that appeared over Sandia in late 1948 bear a direct relationship to a sudden ramp-up of American nuclear weapon production. Also, later, in March,1949, when strange 'flares' appeared around the 'Q' area at Fort Hood, it is suggested that this interest by the UFOs was triggered by the recent arrival of the first shipment of atomic bombs which was stored as America's first nuclear bomb stockpile". "For all their apparent durability and massiveness, U.S. nuclear warheads are designed and built for a "lifetime" of only about 20 years" "During the beginning of the cold war, Killeen Base was one of the Air Force's storage-and-assembly bases for nuclear weapons. Gray Air Force Base near the AEC's Killeen Base (Site Baker), one of 3 National Stockpile Sites where nuclear weapons were stored at the time. Routine maintenance and assembly of nuclear weapons produced small quantities of contaminated wastes. These wastes were placed in lead-lined cylinders and stored in underground tubes. The low-level burial sites at West Fort Hood are considered "low risk" by the regulators and do not warrant remediation. Fort Hood monitors regularly and periodically takes shallow well water samples. …

Anne Frazor, who owns a fabric store in Stephenville, about 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth, said many in town have seen military aircraft zoom overhead from time to time as part of training operations. But she said that is different than what she saw Jan. 8.

"I couldn't begin to say what it was, but to me it wasn't planes," Frazor said. Since the reported sightings two weeks ago, the 17,000-resident town has had some fun with the international publicity. Some high-schoolers made T-shirts that read "Stephenville: the new Roswell" on the front and "They're here for the milk!" on the back. A picture features flying saucer beaming up a cow.
Several stores put new messages on their marquees, including "Aliens welcome."

This week Tarleton State University is even hosting a lecture by a UFO researcher on the U.S. govt's secret response to UFOs, based on previously classified documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
The U.S. Air Force says it has not investigated UFO sightings since 1969 when it ended Project Blue Book, which examined more than 12,600 reported UFO sightings, including 700 that were never explained. That program started a few months after the 1947 crash near Roswell, NM, which the govt said was a top-secret weather balloon but others involved later said was an alien spacecraft.

"What we want is the govt to admit there are UFOs and what they know about them," Cherry said.

"   … author avoids any discussion of the CIA's extensive covert role in the UFO controversy, for example. When hundreds of thousands of "flying saucer" stories began to fill the nation's newspapers in the late 1940s and early 1950s, CIA officials, under direction of Dr. H.P. Robertson, used its Wurlitzer to calm public concerns about an invasion from outer space by covertly working to ridicule and debunk such reports.
Top CIA officials also infiltrated key UFO-research groups such as NICAP, orchestrated anti-UFO propaganda programs via CBS TV and other news networks, and worked to squelch embarrassing leaks from airline pilots, military eyewitnesses, and others who knew too much.


What is now becoming known is that the CIA's concerns stemmed partly from an alarming pattern of surveillance exhibited by the UFOs, particularly surveillance of our nuclear weapons facilities.
In the mid-1960s and again in the mid-1970s, for example, UFOs hovered over and sometimes disabled many of our Minuteman nuclear-tipped missiles. We know this from regional press accounts, govt documents, and former Minuteman personnel who have recently broken their silence about these astonishing events."
      T.Hansen   cit.   Faded Giant, UFOs and Nukes, The Missing Times
      UFOs & National Security State: chronology of coverup 1941-73


"Robert Gray Army Airfield has a 10,000 foot runway that is approved for the space shuttle to land on. … it plays a key role in army modernization and testing of new equipment and systems".


"9.19.07 activation ceremony at Sadowski Field for newly activated 48th Chemical Brigade.
20th Support Command (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and High-Yield Explosives) said the brigade is poised to assume command and control over all continental U.S. based active Army modified table of organization and equipment chemical battalions and separate companies. The 48th will be subordinate to the 20th SC (CBRNE).
The 20th SC (CBRNE) was activated in October 2004. In the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, the Army was directed to expand the 20th SC (CBRNE) capabilities to enable it to serve as a joint task force capable of rapid deployment to command and control weapons of mass destruction elimination and site exploitation missions by 2007. The 48th Chem. Bde. is a part of this expansion effort."


"National Assn of Atomic Veterans Research Coordinator Vernon F. Sousa, USAF 1950-54, participated in one atomic bomb test at Fort Hood, Texas"

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  …   on February 22, 2008, an article has circulated describing a secret meeting at the UN in New York which discussed disclosure of UFOs and extraterrestrials.


  Robert Eringer:   an “alien” craft crashed into the desert near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Inside the craft were three beings. Two were dead; one was barely alive. The U.S. Air Force didn’t know what to do. So they took the whole kaboosh to their nearest base and locked it up in a hangar.
Central Intelligence took over. The lone survivor was transported to Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, on the basis that he might have some kind of germs that would be dangerous to humans. For almost 3 months, the creature was comatose. One day, he woke up. He told CIA interrogators, in the weirdest English they’d ever heard, where he was from.


He said he was from Planet Earth. This guy was will be born in the year 2522. He and his craft-mates had come from the future of our own planet. Apparently, in the 25th century our descendants finally figure out how to negotiate time warps.
Something like, if you can travel faster than the speed of light, time runs backward, somehow relating to Einstein’s theory of relativity and the pioneering of a scientist named Tipler.


At first, the interrogators did not believe this guy. They thought he should have been from Mars. He said he was from Nomerico, which he claimed was one of 5 nations on Earth. He was terrified to find himself in their hands, held captive.
To get him to talk, they injected him with Sodium Pentothol. He became delirious and incoherent, but he talked. After two weeks he went into a coma and died a week later.


The agency still did not believe what he had told them until events he talked about actually started to happen. The document resulting from that 3 day interrogation is U.S. Govt’s biggest secret: A 54 page Future History Book transcribed from a reel-to-reel tape since destroyed by a CIA typist since terminated, and locked in a CIA vault.
Humans from Earth’s future continue to visit but will never make contact with us the present because of the cause and effect such contact could have on their own lives. If or when occupants of UFOs identify themselves, the intelligence community will be as surprised as anyone else, maybe more so.


Tract 33, a parcel of land in northwest Washington, abuts the backyard of a legendary DCI and can only be accessed by climbing over his fence or through a secret tunnel from Battery Kemble Park.
Property taxes are paid by the obscure Momus Association from a PO Box in Intercourse, Pennsylvania. The two Cuban assassins of JFK are buried six feet under, along with JFK’s missing brain, and Jimmy Hoffa. So is the syringe used to inject Marilyn Monroe with pure nicotine. And the missing 8.5 minutes of Nixon’s tape. And the real black box of TWA 800. And the alien corpses from Roswell. Also: James Andanson’s negatives and John Millis’s diary.


JD Salinger visits every December 8th to commemorate the assassination of John Lennon, having programmed Mark David Chapman through subliminal passages in Catcher in the Rye. Jim Morrison cultivates black roses in time for Halloween, when the Illuminati’s “Circle of Initiates” congregate to see Elvis perform. This place is supposed to be very secret, so please leave it out of this interview.

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