Oswald's CIA Connections Confirmed

From a public address by author and JFK assassination writer Joan Mellen available here. Joan provides evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a false defector program that sent spies into the Soviet Union, run by the head of CIA Counter-Intelligence James Jesus Angleton.

One of those CIA documents demonstrates that Oswald, indeed one of Angleton’s assets in the Soviet Union, communicated back to the CIA through a CIA asset at American Express named Michael Jelisavcic. One of my discoveries for “A Farewell to Justice” was the original of a note that Oswald, arrested in New Orleans for a street fight, handed to the police lieutenant who was questioning him, Francis Martello. On the margin of that piece of paper was Michael Jelisavcic’s espionage number, inadvertently unredacted when CIA declassified the document.

This number clearly directs CIA to an espionage file. Oswald also had Jelisavcic’s name and room number in his possession.

Oswalds CIA connections did not end when he returned to the United States. Joan cites an interview with Hunter Leake, second in command at the New Orleans field office of the CIA. Leake was interviewed by historian Michael Kurtz.

Leake admitted that CIA used Oswald as a courier and that Oswald came to New Orleans in April 1963 because the CIA office there intended to use him for certain operations. Leake either was disaffected from the Agency, or, perhaps, was just an honest man. He admitted that he personally paid Oswald various sums of cash for his services. Oswald was on the CIA payroll, Leake knew. He himself paid Oswald’s CIA salary.

Leake also explained in this telephone interview with Professor Kurtz why there was no documentation on Oswald’s employment with CIA in New Orleans. After President Kennedy’s assassination, he drove the files personally to Langley, Virginia. They were so voluminous that he had to rent a trailer to transport them.

"I fear that what we are seeing now is an administration intent on laying the groundwork for a wider war in the Middle East."- Senator Robert Byrd

The authority to kill U.S. citizens is granted under a secret finding signed by the president ...

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is in the final stages of editing and is expected to conclude that there is at least a 90 percent probability that human-caused emissions are the main driver of warming since 1950.

``We basically have three choices - mitigation, adaptation, and suffering,” said John Holdren, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an energy and climate expert at Harvard University. ``We’re going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be. The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required and the less suffering there will be.”

There is about 25% of the population who will never be convinced. Chances are they also deny the theory of evolution and support George W. Bush.

Asia Times: Debunking Iran's nuclear myth makers

the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, has made known his displeasure with Ahmadinejad's hardline politics through an editorial in the newspaper Jomhuri Eslami, which has called on the president to stay out of the nuclear issue.

The fact is that after some three years of intrusive inspections, the IAEA has discovered no smoking gun and in its various reports, including the September 2006 report, it has admitted that "to date there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities were related to a nuclear-weapons program".

But don't tell that to the formidable army of Iran nuclear myth makers, whose venerable list includes US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, who said in Dubai this week that "there is no doubt that Iran is actively pursuing nuclear weapons".

I can accept that the Bush administration has "no doubt" that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, just as they had no doubt that Saddam's Iraq had WMDs. But "no evidence" is no evidence, and does not make a very good pretext for war.

Meet the CIA's New Baghdad Station Chief

March against the war

A U.S. helicopter was shot down early Sunday afternoon near the provincial capital Najaf during a pitched battle with fighters described as religious fanatics.

This is the third helicopter shot down in recent days. The insurgents seem to be getting better weapons.

If there was a clock to trace our progress towards fascism, I'd put the hands at about 10 minutes to midnight.

World War III has already begun, says Israeli spy chief.

A third World War is already underway between Islamic militancy and the West but most people do not realize it, the former head of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad said in an interview published Saturday in Portugal.

‘We are in the midst of a third World War,’ former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy told weekly newspaper Expresso

.

Henry Kissinger on Terrorism and "New World Order"

The war in Iraq is part of another war that cuts across the Shia-Sunni issue: the assault on the international order conducted by radical groups in both Islamic sects. Such organizations as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Mahdi army in Iraq and the Qaeda groups all over the Middle East seek to reassert an Islamic identity submerged, in their view, by Western secular institutions and values.

The most important target is the United States, as the most powerful country of the West and the indispensable component of any attempt to build a new world order.

Henry Kissinger should really be thankful that his declining years are not like those of General Pinochet, with Justice at his heels.

Bush denies preparing attack against Iran

“We believe we can solve our problems with Iran diplomatically,” said the US president.

Bush wouldn't lie about a war, would he?

Rolling Stone:

"He's an icon. Imagine that: Al Gore, Mr. Straight and Narrow, Mr. Dull on Wheels -- now he's culturally cool."

Siberia's Once-Frozen Tundra Is Melting

WASHINGTON, October 12, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- The landscape of Siberia is transforming. New lakes are forming in the north, while existing lakes are getting larger. Some buildings and houses built upon the permafrost are sinking and starting to crack.

What's more, scientists expect this process to speed up, because as the lakes thaw, they release carbon and methane into the air, which in turn contributes to global warming.

And now for the really bad news:

Vicious Circle

And, Siberia's problems affect not only Siberians. Walters found that melting permafrost in Siberia is releasing five times the amount of methane than was previously thought. And methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas -- it is considered 20 times more damaging as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

This means that Siberia is not just suffering from the consequences of global warming but is also actively contributing to it.

Walters has compared the melting of the Siberian permafrost to a time bomb waiting to go off. Until her team published a paper in the science magazine "Nature" last month, few scientists had an accurate picture of how much methane was being released. Current climate-change models have not yet been updated to predict how Siberian permafrost will affect climate in this century.

But glogal warming is a myth and a hoax, right?

Senator Chuck Hagel describes the original Iraq war resolution that the White House sent over in this interview.

It wasn’t specific to Iraq?

Oh no. It said the whole region! They could go into Greece or anywhere. I mean, is Central Asia in the region? I suppose! Sure as hell it was clear they meant the whole Middle East. It was anything they wanted. It was literally anything. No boundaries. No restrictions.

They expected Congress to let them start a war anywhere they wanted in the Middle East? Yes. Yes. Wide open. We had to rewrite it. Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, and I stripped the language that the White House had set up, and put our language in it.

The escalation of US military planning on Iran is only the latest chess move in a six-year push within the Bush Administration to attack Iran, a RAW STORY investigation has found.

Candy Barr

Video Interview with Gordon Novel

It would be easy to dismiss Gordon Novel. The interview above contains references to the Illuminati, reverse-engineering UFOs and anti-gravity--the sort of topics that I stay away from, for the most part. But Gordon Novel has a habit of popping up in some of history's most intriguing cases. He was Jim Garrison's Chief of Security--before Garrison tried to indict him. He discussed erasing the Watergate tapes with Chuck Colson. He was involved in the Waco investigation with Ramsey Clark. He makes an appearance in the Michael Jackson case.

Lisa Pease tells an interesting story about Gordon Novel:

One of the funniest documents I ever read was Gordon Novel's playboy deposition. At one point the lawyer says something like, but all you've told me sounds so innocent so far, Gordon.

Gordon replied just keep going - "it's going to get uninnocent" in a minute.

At another point, the questioner asked him if he had dinner with Allen Dulles. Novel answered in near Shakespearean fashion (see the opening of Romeo and Juliet for the 'bite my thumb' parallel):

If I had dinner with Allen Dulles, I would say I didn't have dinner with Allen Dulles.

Asked whether he did or didn't, in his sworn testimony he said he didn't have dinner with Allen Dulles.

Parse that, if you will.

In later years, Novel told me he did, indeed, have dinner with Allen Dulles. I have numerous reasons to believe him on that point.

Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt dies at 88

(Miami - AP, January 23, 2007) - E. Howard Hunt, who helped organize the Watergate break-in that led to the greatest scandal in American political history and the downfall of Richard Nixon's presidency, died Tuesday. He was 88.

From the Watergate tapes:

Colson: HUNT is a fellow who I would trust. I mean, he's a true believer, a real patriot. My God, the things he's done for his country. It's just a tragedy he gets smeared with this. Of course, the other story that a lot of people have bought is that HOWARD HUNT was taken out of the country by the CIA. Well, he's certainly done a lot of hot stuff...Oh Jesus. He pulled a lot of very fancy stuff in the sixties.

(Withdrawn Item. National Security.)

From the Slate interview:

Slate: I know there is a conspiracy theory saying that David Atlee Phillips—the Miami CIA station chief—was involved with the assassination of JFK.

Hunt: [Visibly uncomfortable] I have no comment.

Slate: I know you hired him early on, to work with you in Mexico, to help with Guatemala propaganda.

Hunt: He was one of the best briefers I ever saw.

Slate: And there were even conspiracy theories about you being in Dallas the day JFK was killed.

Hunt: No comment.

God damn it all to hell--yesterday was Blog for Choice Day and nobody told me. This blog is absolutely pro-choice. The goverment should keep out of our bedrooms and should keep out of women's wombs. Anyone who is anti-abortion is advised not to have one.

'Smoking Gun' on Global Warming

WASHINGTON - Human-caused global warming is here, visible in the air, water and melting ice, and is destined to get much worse in the future, an authoritative global scientific report will warn next week.

"The smoking gun is definitely lying on the table as we speak," said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who reviewed all 1,600 pages of the first segment of a giant four-part report. "The evidence ... is compelling."

No amount of evidence will convince the wingnuts, of course, but inevitably they will become increasingly marginalized.

Our Rightful President Al Gore. Say, has he lost weight?

Libby to Cheney: "I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected.''

The New York Times asks: Have Pakistani intelligence agencies been promoting the Islamic insurgency?

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, President Pervez Musharraf, under strong American pressure, pledged to help root out Islamic extremism, and, as both head of the army and president, he has more direct control of the intelligence services than past civilian prime ministers. But according to several analysts, Pakistani intelligence officials believe it is more prudent to prepare for the day when Western troops leave Afghanistan.

PETAs State of the Union Address (nudity)

I got caught up in the Global Warming debate on today over at See Jane Mom. I was less concerned about debating global warming, which we had already debated on Friday, than with correcting some statements Jane had made about Dr. Heidi Cullen of the Weather Channel. Some excerpts:

Jane: When "climatologist", Ms. Cullen, armed with her bachelor's degree in Near Eastern religions and history from Juniata College starts spouting that if you "don't have the time" to understand global warming, just read this little puff piece from the Pew Center, that's real "climate code" for "you aren't a sophisticated scientist who is near smart enough to understand nuanced mathematical bullshit". And she wants to deny accreditation to all scientists who refuse allegiance to Global Warming.

"Doctor" Cullen is now the hysterical point guard for The Weather Channel's new ??? initiative??? website??? show??? Whatever it is, they call it---"ONE DEGREE". How utterly ironic, given her lengthy resume...

Me: By saying that Dr. Cullen is not a scientist, putting "Doctor" in quotes, and implying that she only has "one degree" in Near East studies, you are obviously and demonstrably factually incorrect, which makes you look uninformed. I am guessing that you got this nonsense from Melanie Morgan's column, but even Melanie has acknowledged (on her radio show this morning) that Dr. Cullen is a genuine scientist with a Ph.D in climate science.

Jane: The "science" of Climatology is in its infancy. That is a fact. And as for this Melanie Morgan, I do not know who she is, but used The Weather Channel's own bio information (nonsense?) for my facts about the front woman for this very dangerous political tyranny.

Jane: When they give Creation Scientists some respect, I'll worry about offending some hack who got her credentials from a matchbook school of political quackery.

Me: Now I am truly perplexed. You used the Weather Channel's info on Dr. Cullen? I found two pages on her at the Weather Channel's site. Both say: "She received a bachelor’s degree in Engineering/Operations Research from Columbia University in New York City and went on to receive her doctorate in climatology and ocean-atmosphere dynamics at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University."

Columbia University is hardly a matchbook school.

Neither mention her other undergraduate degree, although I was able to confirm that she did get an undergraduate degree in Near East religion and history.

As for Creation Scientists, they are obviously motivated by religion not science. Some of them maintain that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, which is patent nonsense.

(Jane first deleted then restored and answered the above comment.)

Jane: I do not dispute what The Weather Channel's web site says about her. If Joe Biden can do it, so can "Doctor" Cullen. WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO GET IT, GARY?---I REJECT "CLIMATOLOGY" out of hand as a Science with the same disdain as you have demonstrated for CREATION SCIENCE.

And you said "S O M E of them maintain that the Earth is less than 10K years old". SO IF I FOLLOW YOUR LOGIC GARY>>>>> THOSE F E W CRAZIES ARE TO BE BELIEVED ABOVE ALL OTHERS IN THE DISCIPLINE????

Hardly fair, considering you won't give the (you claim) F E W dissenters the same quarter in the GW fray......

Jane then locked the thread from any additional comments, which is just as well as I found her last comment incoherent and unintelligible.

As one blogger put it: shooting an old man in the face is probably the least evil thing Dick Cheney has ever done.

The Lee Harvey Oswald Bar in Berlin

Miss Candy Barr

BBC: Cheney Rejected Iran Concessions in 2003

Iran offered the US a package of concessions in 2003, but it was rejected, a senior former US official has told the BBC's Newsnight programme.

Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion.

Offers, including making its nuclear programme more transparent, were conditional on the US ending hostility.

But Vice-President Dick Cheney's office rejected the plan, the official said.

Observers say the Iranian offer as outlined nearly four years ago corresponds pretty closely to what Washington is demanding from Tehran now.

Syria in the past has also offered concessions to the United States. Here is an interview with Syrian President Bashar Assad in which he sounds damned reasonable. The interview is titled "America Must Listen". America at this moment in history, unfortunately, only listens to the neo-conservatives, who have been wrong time and time again, and whose policies have led us to disaster.

"Fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar is alive and well and living in Pakistan under the protection of the Pakistan intelligence agency, the captured spokesman for the Taliban, Mohammad Hanif," ABC News reports.

"I am concerned, however, that a contrived Gulf of Tonkin type incident may well occur to obtain popular support for an attack on Iran"

Rep. Ron Paul

A poster at the Rigorous Intuition Forum posted a link to this book. I am skeptical as to both telepathy and UFOs, much less secret bases on the moon. Nonetheless, the American military and intelligence community spent a good deal of money investigating remote viewing and Ingo Swann was right in the middle of it. A PDF of this rare book can be found here.

Author Blames 9/11 On 'Cultural Left'

Conservative author Dinesh D'Souza has a new book out The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11.

"I am saying that the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector, and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world," explains D'Souza.

What he means by this is that the secular progressive left during the past few decades, with its focus on promoting and even glorifying (at home and abroad) what most of the world's more traditional societies see as depravity and atheism, has provoked a backlash among traditional, moderate Muslims who see their religious and moral values threatened by an aggressive, immoral, anti-religious crusade.

Apparently they don't hate us for our freedoms--they hate us for the way that we choose to exercise our freedoms.

While D'Souza admits many Muslims irrationally hate Israel and some specific aspects of U.S. foreign policy, he argues that the growing anti-Americanism abroad is directed more at the global spread of our debased pop culture and the leftist political ideas that liberals so proudly defend.

Irrationally? Even moderate Muslims object to American and Israeli policies. Sweden is sexually more libertine than America and yet there has been a curious lack of terrorist incidents in that country. The Islamicists seem content to simply let them go to hell. I am sure that they think that America is decadent and depraved. Their women wear chadors and ours prance about suggestively dressed. Also one wonders how they feel about the political and cultural Right and their constant Muslim bashing?

Radical Muslims are simply fighting back with violence. "Thus without the cultural left, 9/11 would not have happened. I realize that this is a strong charge," D'Souza writes, "one that no one has made before."

Perhaps because the charge is idiotic.

US Military equipment sold to Iran:

In one case, convicted middlemen for Iran bought Tomcat parts from the Defense Department's surplus division. Customs agents confiscated them and returned them to the Pentagon, which sold them again — customs evidence tags still attached — to another buyer, a suspected broker for Iran.

TRUTH AT LAST, TRUTH AT LAST: The Real Story of James Earl Ray

For the first time, the brother of James Earl Ray shares his knowledge of the murder of MLK that has never been revealed before.

James Earl Ray was inducted by the C.I.A. while still a young man in the Army and subjected to mind control experimentation - in that same era when the hallucinogenic drug LSD is known to have been administered by the armed services to unknowing recruits. The mind control work on James Earl Ray took place more than twenty years before he would become known to the world as the assassin of civil rights icon, Martin Luther King.

"He seems to have been highly unsettled after leaving the Army, and we would judge that some traumatic experience occurred which he does not care to tell or cannot verbalize." Progress Report, Inmate James Earl Ray, Illinois State Prison May 1953 "…there are medical aspects involved which cannot be disassociated from any discussion of Mr. Ray's military background." Letter in reference to James Earl Ray's US Army file from Army Major General Kenneth Wickham to Rep. Mendle Rivers

John Larry Ray is the eldest living brother of James Earl Ray. He was a secret witness to much of his brother's covert life, and has come forward to facilitate the revealing of how James Earl Ray was "handled" into committing his infamous crime. John has spent a quarter of a century in federal prison, mostly in solitary confinement. He reveals how he was falsely convicted in the court of Judge William H. Webster - who would later head both the FBI and CIA - in order to silence him about his brother's association with the CIA. John currently resides in his childhood home of Quincy, Illinois

A letter from John Larry Ray alleging:

- That military policeman James Earl Ray, and the OSS/CIA agents had connections to another racial shooting in Germany

- That James Earl Ray accepted a sum of money from mobsters, and CIA agents in Illinois, and Canada to carry out some type of assignment.

- That since 1968, all the FBI directors, all the Attorney Generals, and members of Congress has buried this connection between Ray, and the CIA.

An interesting article: The Plot to Kill a King: How the Saint Louis Art Museum robberies of 1978 led to a congressional investigation of a St. Louis-based plot to assassinate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Arab Times: US military strike on Iran seen by April ’07

Washington will launch a military strike on Iran before April 2007, say sources. The attack will be launched from the sea and Patriot missiles will guard all oil-producing countries in the region, they add. Recent statements emanating from the United States indicate the Bush administration’s new strategy for Iraq doesn’t include any proposal to make a compromise or negotiate with Syria or Iran. A reliable source said President Bush recently held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Dr Condoleezza Rice and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.

The Bush administration believes attacking Iran will create a new power balance in the region, calm down the situation in Iraq and pave the way for their democratic project, which had to be suspended due to the interference of Tehran and Damascus in Iraq, he continued. The attack on Iran will weaken the Syrian regime, which will eventually fade away, the source said.

This is so detached from reality that it is very plausible that it reflects the thinking of the Bush administration.

Howard Hunt Blames JFK Hit on LBJ!

Only the most far-out conspiracy theorists believe in scenarios like Hunt's. But in a new memoir, "American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate & Beyond," due out in April, Hunt, 88, writes: "Having Kennedy liquidated, thus elevating himself to the presidency without having to work for it himself, could have been a very tempting and logical move on Johnson's part.

"LBJ had the money and the connections to manipulate the scenario in Dallas and is on record as having convinced JFK to make the appearance in the first place. He further tried unsuccessfully to engineer the passengers of each vehicle, trying to get his good buddy, Gov. [John] Connolly, to ride with him instead of in JFK's car - where . . . he would have been out of danger."

Hunt says Johnson also had easy access to CIA man William Harvey, who'd been demoted when he tried to have Fidel Castro poisoned in defiance of orders to drop covert operations against Cuba. Harvey was "a ruthless man who was not satisfied with his position in the CIA and its government salary," Hunt writes.

"He definitely had dreams of becoming [CIA director] and LBJ could do that for him if he were president . . . [LBJ] would have used Harvey because he was available and corrupt." Hunt denies any hand in the assassination, insisting he wasn't one of three mysterious hobos who were photographed at the scene.

Troop 'Surge' More of a 'Trickle'

One of the reinforcing combat brigades is not scheduled to deploy to the chaotic country until May of 2007 — some five months after the president's dramatic Jan. 10 official announcement of the shift in policy.

As a result of the president's Iraq strategy review, the Department of Defense quietly released on Thursday the particulars of the surge of some 21,500 U.S. military forces for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Three Army combat brigades will deploy as follows, say officials:

The Third Brigade, Third Infantry Division, based at Ft. Benning, Ga., will deploy in March 2007.

The Fourth Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division, based at Ft. Lewis, Wash., will deploy in April 2007.

The Second Brigade, Third Infantry Division, based at Ft. Stewart, Ga., will deploy in May 2007.

The American company appointed to advise the US government on the economic reconstruction of Iraq has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into Republican Party coffers and has admitted that its own finances are in chaos because of accounting errors and bad management.

"I want to address kind of a rumor, an urban legend that's going around," White House spokesman Tony Snow said in a highly unusual prepared statement at his daily briefing Friday as worry over US-Iran tensions ran high.

"This notion that somehow what the president was announcing was a precursor to planned military action -- a planned war against Iran, that's just not the case," Snow told reporters.

Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.

Irony in Iraq

Ironically, these death squads are the direct by-product of US policy. At the beginning of 2004, with no end to the Sunni insurgency in sight, the Pentagon was reported to have decided to train Shia and Kurdish fighters to carry out "irregular missions". The policy, exposed in the US media, was called the "Salvador Option" after the US-backed counter-insurgency in Latin America more than 20 years ago, which led to 70,000 deaths and countless violations of human rights. Some of the most persistent allegations of abuse have been made against the Wolf Brigade. Their main US adviser until April last year was James Steele, who states in his autobiography that he commanded the US military group in El Salvador during the height of the guerrilla war.

Somalia attack "backfired spectacularly"

Oxfam yesterday confirmed at least 70 nomads in the Afmadow district near the border with Kenya had been killed. The nomads were bombed at night and during the day while searching for water sources. Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Kenya has acknowledged that the onslaught on Islamist fighters failed to kill any of the three prime targets wanted for their alleged role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

The operation, which opened a new front in Washington's anti-terror campaign, seems to have backfired spectacularly in the five days since it was launched. In addition to the scores of Somali civilians killed, the simmering civil war in the failed state has been rekindled

"Nuclear San Francisco" by Charles Neenan (c 2002)

I just thought this was a striking image.

The Left Wing of the C.I.A. by Perry Raymond Russo

(click to enlarge)

Yes, that Perry Russo, who testified in Jim Garrison's trial of Clay Shaw. I did not know that he was an artist. Actually the full title of the piece is:

"The Left Wing of the C.I.A. Rides the Democratic Party Donkey to War In Vietnam, While the Angel of God Admonishes Satan the President Johnson Snake For Trying to Seduce a Naked Heterosexual Couple Into Fucking For the Purpose Of Making Another Liberal Baby-Killer Registered Voter"

according to artist James W. Bailey. Click on his name for a fascinating post on New Orleans art.

So far a very low re-enlistment rate among the dead. Why do the dead hate America?

The American people elected Richard Nixon because they thought he had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam. Instead he widened the war into Cambodia and Laos. The American people repudiated President Bush's Iraq policies in November. He did not get the message.

Robert Parry: At a not-for-quotation pre-speech briefing on Jan. 10, George W. Bush and his top national security aides unnerved network anchors and other senior news executives with suggestions that a major confrontation with Iran is looming.

Commenting about the briefing on MSNBC after Bush’s nationwide address, NBC’s Washington bureau chief Tim Russert said “there’s a strong sense in the upper echelons of the White House that Iran is going to surface relatively quickly as a major issue – in the country and the world – in a very acute way.”

The Washington Note: Washington intelligence, military and foreign policy circles are abuzz today with speculation that the President, yesterday or in recent days, sent a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran

"I'm a dead man."

Robert Howard posts some most interesting information on one of the mysterious deaths related to the JFK assassination, Hank Killam, who allegedly committed suicide by jumping though a plate glass window, severing his jugular vein. His brother was skeptical: "You don't commit suicide by jumping through a ground floor window." Hank Killam was married to an employee of Jack Ruby.

"I'm a dead man," Killam had claimed after fear forced him to flee from Dallas where he was linked both with Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald. Threats in Tampa, Fla. where he later fled, then sent Killam hurrying home to Pensacola, and to his appointment with death. He cried in anguish to his brother Earl Killam "They're going to get me --- but I've run as far as I'm going to run."

A relative of Hank Killam, Elton Killam testified before the Assassinations Records Review Board:

Elton Killam told the Review Board that within one week of the assassination Hank Killam returned to Pensacola a very frightened man. He claimed he had special knowledge and carried around a large wallet filled with newspaper articles on the assassination. Killam had stated that he had been in New Orleans and Dallas, where the assassination had been discussed. Killam was also a frequent visitor to the New Orleans Show-Bar, and as many may know, that is where the stripper known as Jada (Janet Adams) was employed.

Killam was picked up for violation of his probation in Pensacola in December of 1963. He was in jail for approximately two weeks, but was allowed out of jail in the daytime. He spent his time in a local bar. Killam told the owner he had special knowledge of the assassination. The FBI interviewed and polygraphed him in Pensacola. And they generated memorandums about these interviews.

Robert Anton Wilson, author of factual and fictional conspiracy books, died today. In his last blog post, Saturday January 6, he wrote Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.

From his post of December 5:

Wavy Gravy once asked a Zen Roshi, "What happens after death?"

The Roshi replied, "I don't know."

Wavy protested, "But you're a Zen Master!""

Yes," the Roshi admitted, "but I'm not a dead Zen Master."

I recently ran a quote by poet and blogger Piergiorgio Welby, who died recently:

"Dying must be like falling asleep after making love, tired, tranquil with that sense of wonder that pervades everything."

Then again maybe his last words were "aarrgh!"

About sums up my reaction to the Bush speech.

"Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity – and stabilizing the region in the face of the extremist challenge. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."

We are so screwed. This reminds me of Nixon expanding the Vietnam war into Laos and Cambodia.

US raids Iranian consulate in Iraq

New York Times: To Counter Iran’s Role in Iraq, Bush Moves Beyond Diplomacy

Mr. Bush said the United States would send another aircraft carrier and its supporting ships to the Persian Gulf. Administration officials said the battle group would be stationed within quick sailing distance of Iran, a response to the growing concern that Iran is building up its own missile capacity and naval power, with the goal of military dominance in the gulf.

Mr. Bush also announced the deployment of Patriot missiles to protect America’s gulf allies. A battery of such missiles is already in Qatar, having been moved there several months ago.

The White House: "The War On Terror Cannot Be Won If We Fail In Iraq."

Is the CIA Counterfeiting Money?

The sources, which do not wish to be identified, allege that the CIA prints the falsified "Supernotes" at a secret facility near Washington to fund covert operations without Congressional oversight.

Miss Candy Barr

UFO Crash in Central Iran

Eye-witnesses assure that the explosion has been caused as a result of the crash of a radiant unidentified flying object onto the ground. Meantime, an informed source told FNA that the object has been on fire and there has been thick smoke coming out of it prior to the crash, concluding that the object couldn't have been a meteor as meteors do not smoke.

The source also said that the crash has been witnessed by people in several cities, and mentioned that the rendezvous point is located 100 kilometers from the provincial capital city of Kerman. He said that people in the city of Rafsanjan also reported to have witnessed a similar incident several days ago.

Similar crash incidents have been witnessed frequently during the last year all across Iran, and officials believe that the objects could be spy planes or a hi-tech espionage device.

'World Government' Plan to Stop Nazis

SENIOR politicians discussed a plan to surrender British sovereignty to a federal government of western democracies to combat the Nazis at the outbreak of the second world war.

Newly declassified documents held in Scottish archives reveal that a group of prominent statesmen, including Anthony Eden,Ernest Bevin, Herbert Morrison and Sir Archibald Sinclair, considered the establishment of a putative global state with its own federal government, currency, armed forces, trade bloc and even a common postal service.

Paranoia about the march of Nazism across Europe prompted the plan, which would have seen Britain, America, France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, Ireland, Switzerland, the low countries and the Scandinavian states join together as a “nucleus world government”.

Jack Ruby speaks about JFK assassination

The Somalia Attacks

I certainly hope that some of those killed in the recent military attacks in Somalia were Al Qaeda terrorists but this is by no means certain. Each of the selections below is from a different news story.

Air strike 'may have killed one' terror suspect

Or may not have--certainly one or the other.

The Associated Press cited witnesses as saying 31 civilians, including two newlyweds, had been killed in the strike, by two US helicopter gunships. Reuters cited a local witness as saying between 22 and 27 people had been killed.


"They [the Americans] must have believed they knew where the al-Qaida suspects were. It seems they decided to kill everything within a certain grid square and then find out what they had hit," he said.


A Somalia official who spoke to Sky News from Mogadishu claimed helicopter gunships flattened entire villages in the area suspected to harbour an al Qaeda suspect and fleeing Islamic militia.

Photo of the Day

Still Screwing up the War on Terror

KABUL, Afghanistan // Radical Islamist Taliban forces, shattered and ejected from Afghanistan by the U.S. military five years ago, are poised for a major offensive against U.S. troops and undermanned NATO forces, prompting American commanders here to issue an urgent appeal for a new Marine Corps battalion to reinforce the American positions.

And how does President Bush plan to deal with the detiorating situation in Afghanistan?

As a last-ditch effort, President Bush is expected to announce this week the dispatch of thousands of additional troops to Iraq as a stopgap measure, an order that Pentagon officials say would strain the Army and Marine Corps as they struggle to man both wars.

Already, a U.S. Army infantry battalion fighting in a critical area of eastern Afghanistan is due to be withdrawn within weeks in order to deploy to Iraq.

According to Army Brig. Gen. Anthony J. Tata and other senior U.S. commanders here, that will happen just as the Taliban is expected to unleash a major campaign to cut the vital road between Kabul and Kandahar. The official said the Taliban intend to seize Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city and the place where the group was organized in the 1990s.

"This could be a pivotal year" for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. James T. Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps, said in an interview after a recent series of briefings here.

Conway said U.S. commanders understand that the Afghan war is an "economy of force" operation, a military term for a mission that is given minimal resources because it is a secondary priority, in this case behind Iraq.

Nevertheless, Conway said, he favored dispatching a Marine battalion here, a decision that must be approved by the new defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, and by the president.

Emphasis added. Hat tip to Mike at Born at the Crest of the Empire

Bush Senior Early CIA Ties Revealed

NEW YORK--Newly released internal CIA documents assert that former president George Herbert Walker Bush's oil company emerged from a 1950's collaboration with a covert CIA officer.

Bush has long denied allegations that he had connections to the intelligence community prior to 1976, when he became Central Intelligence Agency director under President Gerald Ford. At the time, he described his appointment as a 'real shocker.'

But the freshly uncovered memos contend that Bush maintained a close personal and business relationship for decades with a CIA staff employee who, according to those CIA documents, was instrumental in the establishment of Bush's oil venture, Zapata, in the early 1950s, and who would later accompany Bush to Vietnam as a “cleared and witting commercial asset” of the agency.

According to a CIA internal memo dated November 29, 1975, Bush's original oil company, Zapata Petroleum, began in 1953 through joint efforts with Thomas J. Devine, a CIA staffer who had resigned his agency position that same year to go into private business. The '75 memo describes Devine as an “oil wild-catting associate of Mr. Bush.” The memo is attached to an earlier memo written in 1968, which lays out how Devine resumed work for the secret agency under commercial cover beginning in 1963.

The 3-page document can be found here.

"E. Howard Hunt's Missing Report on The Kennedy Assassination"

This is the title of HSCA document #180-10112-10479, which consists of a 35-page report by a House Select Committee on Assassinations investigator Mike Ewing. It is an interesting read and I will give a few excerpts. The report opens with a well-known excerpt from the Watergate tapes.

Nixon: "...well, we protected Helms from one hell of a lot of things."

Haldeman: "That's what Ehrlichman says."

Nixon: "Of course this Hut, that will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab there's a hell of a lot of things...This involves these Cubans, Hunt and a lot of hanky-panky..."

...information which has only recently become available indicates that Hunt was, at the very least, quite interested in - and concerned about - the asassination of President Kennedy. This new information further indicates that a secret report about certain aspects of the Kennedy assassination (aspects particularly related to Cuba and Fidel Castro) was prepared by Hunt and his future Watergate burglar associates - and was in fact circulated to Charles Colson and the Nixon circle as well as officials within the CIA.

As will be seen from this information, and other long obscure Watergate data, a picture seems to be emerging which places the secret Hunt report on the Kennedy assassination at the heart of the feverish cover-up activities in the immediate days following the Kennedy assassination.

The Watergate burglars were arrested on the night of June 17. John Erlichman had phoned John Dean early on the morning of June 19. The FBI was already hot on the trail of Mr. Hunt due to the fact that his name and White House phone number were found in the address books of two of the burglars. Dean in turn called Charles Colson, who had brought Hunt to the Withe House. Colson confirmed Hunt's status as a White House "consultant" and then, according to Dean, "Colson also expressed concern over the contents of Hunt's safe." The safe was drilled open and the contents destroyed later that same day. The contents of the safe included material related to his work with the Plumbers, including his investigation of Chappaquiddick, as well as forged State Department cables which Hunt had himself fabricated, linking Kennedy to the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem.

Information which has only recently come to light indicates that in addition to that last item about the Diem murder, the secret Hunt safe also contained information resulting from yet another Plumbers probe - into some of the circumstances of another 1963 assassination - the assassination of President Kennedy.

That information included an interview with Hunt, conducted in late November of 1975, by two reporters for the Providence Journal. Hold told them of a secret probe which included interviewing a Cuban woman who "claimed to have been in the Castro household with one of Fidel's sisters" at the time of JFK's assassination. Apparently Castro was shocked and saddened by the assassination of the President. One wonders if Hunt had the same reaction. (Actually I suspect that Hunt knew about the assassination even before John Kennedy.) Why was Hunt interviewing this woman? According to Ewing, the most likely explanation is that he was ordered to.

Hunt told the two reporters that he sent a copy of the report to the CIA (as Barker had originally stated) and further, that he had also given the report to his own White House friend and patron, Charles W. Colson.

Hunt's own copy of the report he put into his White House safe. One can only imagine the reactions of White House officials, including Nixon, when they found a report related to the Kennedy assassination in Howard Hunt's safe. This report has still not seen the light of day.

As scrambled as the testimony is at this point, a couple of things are clear. The Hunt report related to the Kennedy assassination is missing. No copy of it has ever surfaced, nor have the tapes that Hunt, Barker, Martinez, and Sturgis made during the probe ever been found.

The last thing in the world the Nixon men needed at that point was a secret report about the Kennedy assassination coming out of Hunt's safe - written and produced by Hunt and his burglar friends Barker, Martinez, and Sturgis.

James Richards posted this photo recently on John Simkin's JFK Forum. The photo was originally published in Edward Epstein's book Legend. The man in the center at the table is actor John Wayne. The man in the doorway is Lee Harvey Oswald. The photo was taken in the Phillipines in 1959, when Oswald was in the Marines.

"I am the most powerful woman in America." -- Nancy Pelosi

Or so she was quoted on the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh's program, the Washington Times, and just about every rightwing blog in the country. So naturally I believe that she never said it.

It took quite a bit of googling to come up with an alleged transcript of what what she said. From Rush via Sibby Online:

RUSH: This is yesterday in Washington. One of these numerous brunches, lunches, cocktail parties, teas that Pelosi attended. It was an afternoon tea. Five hundred women -- it was actually a thousand-dollar a ticket fund-raiser -- and here's a portion of Pelosi's remarks.

PELOSI: I thought you were going to say when you placed my name in nomination for speaker, you said, "She will be the most powerful woman in America." Now, I want you all to join me in how I acknowledge Rosie's introduction. (Laughing) All right, let's hear it for the power.

So, someone at an afternoon tea/fund raiser, introduces Nancy Pelosi as the most powerful woman in America, which she arguably is, and she jokes about it. What an egotistical megalomaniac, right? Pam at Atlas Shrugs, in a video blog, related the quote as "I am the most powerful woman in the world", which she renders in a funny German accent.

There are two varieties of wingnuts. The first, and smaller group, are people like Drudge and Rush, who know damn well they are deliberately twisting and misreporting the facts for political purposes, and the second is the vast majority of wingnuts who endlessly repeat these invented factoids because they are stupid. Rush or Sean or whoever said it, and every other wingnut in the country mindlessly repeats it, so it must be true.

Read this:

Sibel Edmonds & the Neocons' Turkish Gravy-Train

Essential to understanding why the war on drugs is a joke. Also essential to understanding why the war on terror is a joke. There are obscene amounts of money to be made in the drug trade, and it isn't the poppy farmers who are making it. The heroin supply chain cannot exist without official protection and corruption, in allied states like Turkey and Pakistan, and in our own country.

White Supremacist Busted on Child-Porn Charge

Jan. 4, 2007 — A leader of the white supremacist movement was arraigned today on charges of possession of child pornography and witness tampering after being arrested by FBI agents Thursday night at his home in Charlottesville, Va.

Kevin Alfred Strom, founder of the National Vanguard white supremacist group, was considered the leading intellectual of the movement since the death of William Pierce, the author of the notorious "Turner Diaires."

Strom was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville, charged with the two counts, and is currently being held at a facility in the city. According to the indictment, he allegedly possessed or attempted to possess "multiple images of child pornography" on his computer's hard drive.

Strom was also charged with witness tampering, which involved physically assaulting and mentally intimidating a witness to his criminal activity

I once tangled with Kevin Strom at the JFK newsgroup alt.conspiracy.jfk. As I recall he was rather polite for a Nazi.

UFO Crash Over Finland

Update: posters at GodLikeProductions have more on this incident. The video was shot 8th of december 2003 and was shown on the Finnish tv program called "Good morning Finland" 17th of December.

Transcript:

A woman from Oulu visiting a dog show in Helsinki in the weekend spots an unusual looking shape high inthe illuminating morning sky. The sky is cloudless, visibility good. Fortunately, the camera carried along is taken out.

(Woman shooting the camera):
- What is that? What is that, Jaana?

(Other woman):
-What?

- Look, what is that?

The phenomenon makes no sound. The women are shooting the target for tens of seconds untilit disappears behind the horizon. The easiest and maybe still the most obvious explanation is an aeroplane -the Helsinki-Vantaa airport is nearby. But could it still be a burning satellite or a carrier rocket, heated up by friction high up in the atmosphere - space junk? The longevity of the phenomenon would surely suggest so. On the other hand the shape holds itself together quite well - no loose pieces are seen. Also the colors remain even. Could it be a meteor or even an asteroid that passed the earthquite close high above the atmosphere? But then nothing like that has been reported in the world.

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi's letter to the President

Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed. Like many current and former military leaders, we believe that trying again would be a serious mistake. They, like us, believe there is no purely military solution in Iraq. There is only a political solution.

Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain. And it would undermine our efforts to get the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. We are well past the point of more troops for Iraq.

We appreciate you taking these views into consideration.

There is no chance that the Democrats will actually do anything to stop the surge plan--like cut funding. They will very publically oppose the surge plan but not stop it. The surge plan will fail. The Democrats win politically. More American soldiers will die. If the Democrats were to actually stop the surge plan then Bush would blame them for Iraq's downward spiral into hell.

Signs in the Skies?

Ufos are all over the news lately. The unusual object or objects above was seen in Istanbul according to this story, dated today.

Mysterious lights seen in Istanbul skies have baffled people on Wednesday night. Witnesses have claimed that the lights were coming from a UFO.

In Bahçelievler district of Yenibosna, Istanbul, people have called news agencies on Wednesday night and reported unidentified white lights flying in the sky. According to the eye witnesses, the flying object was revolving around itself and blazing.

Update: Enhanced version from http://godlikeproductions.com

According to this story, something crashed in South Africa last Saturday:

Pretoria - A UFO was sighted at Lephalale, where it was described as a strange object "on an orange cloud, singing like a million turbines" - hitting the earth with a bang at 04:33 on Saturday.

On November 7 about a dozen United Airlines employees at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago saw a metallic disk that left a hole in the clouds.

One United employee appeared emotionally shaken by the sighting and "experienced some religious issues" over it, one co-worker said.

Jack Ruby stripper Jada

For an account of Jada's activities on the day of the Kennedy assassination see my earlier post here.

"The vast majority of those who sponsored, planned and implemented the cold-blooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans are still at large, still neither located nor apprehended, much less punished and neutralized... I do not believe that we should allow ourselves to be distracted from this urgent task simply because it is proving to be more difficult and lengthy than predicted....Nevertheless, President Bush is telling us that the most urgent requirement of the moment - right now - is not to redouble our efforts against Al Qaeda, not to stabilize the nation of Afghanistan after driving his host government from power, but instead to shift our focus and concentrate on immediately launching a new war against Saddam Hussein. And he is proclaiming a new, uniquely American right to pre-emptively attack whomsoever he may deem represents a potential future threat." -- Al Gore, September 23, 2002

Al Gore--right about Iraq, right about global warming, right for America!

“We take the whole family and have a blast”

The New York Times has obtained transcripts of the wiretaps in the case of Jose Padilla, accused of something by the government. I hope that the government has something better than the "blast" excerpt above. Could Padilla actually be innocent? As an American citizen he is innocent until proven guilty, of course, but then as an American citizen he has a right not to be tortured, and we know how that turned out.

"President Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran. As an American strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party (which is conducting itself foolishly) and US newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the Iranian issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure."

--Israeli Brigadier General Oded Tira

The first two or three months of 2007 represent a dangerous opening for an escalation of war in the Middle East, as George W. Bush will be tempted to “double-down” his gamble in Iraq by joining with Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair to strike at Syria and Iran, intelligence sources say.

--Robert Parry, journalist

The Real History of Gerald Ford, Watergate, and the CIA

From researcher Lisa Pease.

Long-time reader of this blog Jack the Okie has been asking for more photos of Candy Barr. Here is a rare photo of Candy with her clothes on, taken in connection with her marijuana bust.

Update: Jerry Riopelle sings Candy Barr from "Little Bit At a Time" - 1977

The drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies, which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service academies, is part of a much larger effort to politicize the military and law enforcement.

I received the following from assassination researcher and genealogist Bruce Campbell:

Just thought you might like to know that The Bush family and myself are descended from Saint Margaret Queen of Scotland and also Saint as was her son, King David.

For more on Margaret click here

Flawed Patriot: The Rise and Fall of CIA Legend Bill Harvey

I am looking forward to reading this book, written by a former CIA officer who served under Harvey.The Washington Times has a review on it here, written by Joseph Goulden. He praises the book but has one criticism:

I have one major criticism of Stockton's book. In discussing Harvey's role in the anti-Castro plots, he drags longtime officer David Atlee Phillips into ill-grounded speculations about the assassination of President Kennedy.

Update: Joseph Goulden in an email to me:

I was very close to David Phillips the last decade of his life, and the accusations about him and the Kennedy murder were so outrageous that they are beyond the bounds of decency.

"Jerry Ford's word was always good."

That's how former President George H.W. Bush is recalling Ford at today's funeral for the 38th president. Bush says because Ford was on the Warren Commission, its report is the final word on the assassination of JFK.

Update: here is the quote:

"After a deluded gunman assassinated President Kennedy, our nation turned to Gerald Ford and a select handful of others to make sense of that madness and a conspiracy theorist can say what they will but the Warren Commission report will always have the final definitive say on this tragic matter. Why? Because Gerry Ford put his name on it and Gerry Ford's word was always good."

A New Year

A new year for the world and this blog. As promised, no more scantily-clad women (unless they knew Jack Ruby). Time to get serious. To tell you the truth I had thought about giving up this blog but I have decided to give it another year.

What do we have to look forward to this year? According to a recent poll 25% Americans believe that Jesus will return this year.

According to this story, in the not terribly reliable WorldNetDaily, Jesus is coming back but he will not be alone:

An official state media website in Iran posted a message heralding the coming of the Shiite messianic figure, Imam Mahdi, noting he could arrive with Jesus by the spring equinox.

"Imam Mahdi (may God hasten his reappearance) will appear all of a sudden on the world scene with a voice from the skies announcing his reappearance at the holy Ka'ba in Mecca," the message says.

Needless to say, Jesus and the Mahdi have come not to bring peace but a sword.

My predictions for 2007:

Neither Jesus nor the Mahdi will return. President Bush will not be impeached. Bush will not attack Iran (although I wouldn't bet the rent on this one.) Iraq will become very bad. Iraq is very bad now, I know, but I mean very bad compared to now.