Inside the FBI's secret files on Coretta Scott King

Comprised of nearly 500 pages, with some of those documents partially or totally censored, the intelligence file paints a disturbing picture.

For example: The FBI very closely spied and did surveillance on Scott King for years, keeping close track of her public appearances, speeches and especially anytime she traveled.

In fact, the file shows the FBI was copying various military intelligence organizations on her activities including the 115 th M.I. of the U.S. Army, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and a number of military bases.

Other reports also show the White House being in the loop on this surveillance. One Agent reported on then New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s phone call to Scott King after her husband’s death, offering his condolences and ongoing help. Another reported to the Nixon White House and then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger about what they had learned about Scott King.

Washington Post: Lawmakers Describe 'Being Slimed in the Green Zone'

Brief, choreographed and carefully controlled, the codels (short for congressional delegations) often have showed only what the Pentagon and the Bush administration have wanted the lawmakers to see. At one point, as Moran, Tauscher and Rep. Jon Porter (R-Nev.) were heading to lunch in the fortified Green Zone, an American urgently tried to get their attention, apparently to voice concerns about the war effort, the participants said. Security whisked the man away before he could make his point.

"A lot of people are calling Senator Craig a hypocrite because he was a very vocal opponent of same-sex marriages. ... But to be fair, he has never come out publicly against anonymous gay bathroom sex." --Jay Leno

Marketing Campaign for Iran War to Begin in September?

Today I received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient. According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:

They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."

Greg Palast, one of the last of the real journalists, goes to New Orleans and makes "a weird, puzzling and horrific discovery."

Among the miles and miles of devastated houses, rubble still there today in New Orleans, we found dry, beautiful homes. But their residents were told by guys dressed like Ninjas wearing "Blackwater" badges: "Try to go into your home and we'll arrest you."

Iraq Weapons Are a Focus of Criminal Investigations

Several federal agencies are investigating a widening network of criminal cases involving the purchase and delivery of billions of dollars of weapons, supplies and other matériel to Iraqi and American forces, according to American officials. The officials said it amounted to the largest ring of fraud and kickbacks uncovered in the conflict here.

BUSH WARNS OF 'HOLOCAUST' IF IRAN GETS NUKES

"Iran is sending arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan to be used to attack American and NATO troops," Bush said. "Iran has arrested visiting American scholars who have committed no crimes and impose no threat to their regime. And Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust. Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere."

Blackwater Acquiring Its Own Air Force

Security company Blackwater U.S.A. is buying Super Tucano light combat aircraft from the Brazilian manufacturer Embraer. These five ton, single engine, single seat aircraft are built for pilot training, but also perform quite well for counter-insurgency work.

Peace Activist's Open Letter to America

To the American people, and to peace loving individuals everywhere:

Massive evidence has come to our attention which shows that the backers, controllers, and allies of Vice President Dick Cheney are determined to orchestrate and manufacture a new 9/11 terror incident, and/or a new Gulf of Tonkin war provocation over the coming weeks and months. Such events would be used by the Bush administration as a pretext for launching an aggressive war against Iran, quite possibly with nuclear weapons, and for imposing a regime of martial law here in the United States.

The Assassination Attempt on President George W. Bush

I have posted often at this blog on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It occurs to me that I have never posted on the unsuccessful assassination attempt on George W. Bush on the morning of September 11, 2001. I first read about this in Daniel Hopsicker's Welcome to Terrorland. If you haven't read this book, click on the previous link and order it now.

Cooperative Research summarizes the story:

At about the same time Bush was getting ready for his jog, a van carrying several Middle Eastern men pulled up to the Colony’s guard station. The men said they were a television news crew with a scheduled “poolside” interview with the president. They asked for a certain Secret Service agent by name. The message was relayed to a Secret Service agent inside the resort, who hadn’t heard of the agent mentioned or of plans for an interview. He told the men to contact the president’s public relations office in Washington, DC, and had the van turned away. [Longboat Observer, 9/26/01]

General Ahmed Shah Massoud

The Secret Service may have foiled an assassination attempt. Two days earlier, Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, had been murdered by a similar ruse. Two North African men, posing as journalists from “Arabic News International,” had been requesting an interview with Massoud since late August. Ahmad Jamsheed, Massoud’s secretary, said that by the night of September 8, “they were so worried and excitable, they were begging us.” An interview was arranged for the following day. As it began, a bomb hidden in the video camera exploded, killing the two journalists. Massoud was rushed by helicopter to a hospital in Tajikistan, but was pronounced dead on arrival (although his death was not acknowledged until September 15). [International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, 10/30/01, Newsday, 10/26/01]

Threat to Air Force One

Also from Cooperative Research:

Shortly after takeoff, Cheney apparently informed Bush of “a credible threat” to Air Force One. [AP, 9/13/01 (D)] US Representative Adam Putnam “had barely settled into his seat on Air Force One… when he got the news that terrorists apparently had set their sights on the plane.” [Orlando Sentinel, 9/14/01] The Secret Service had received an anonymous call: “Air Force One is next.” The caller allegedly knew the agency’s code words relating to Air Force One procedures.

Cooperative Research concludes that this threat was just White House spin:

It turned out the entire story was made up. [Washington Post, 9/27/01] The press expressed considerable skepticism about the story. For instance, one Florida newspaper thought Fleischer’s disclosure was “an apparent effort to explain why the president was flown to Air Force bases” before returning to Washington. [St. Petersburg Times, 9/13/01]

But was it? Was the threat to Air Force One just spin or something much more sinister?

"Angel is next!"

Webster Griffin Tarpley sees it differently:

Look, this is a forgotten clue of 9/11, which seems to me is the most important, because this is when the invisible government speaks. You may remember that at one point during the morning, 10:00 probably on 9/11, a death threat against Bush came into the Secret Service, saying, Angel is next. It essentially means, Air Force One will be shot down as the next step in these developments. There’s no doubt that this telephone call took place, it was confirmed by Cheney indirectly, Condoleeza Rice very directly, many other Republicans directly, then later on it was denied. ‘Oh it was a confused or garbled message that came in.’

At the beginning it seemed to serve Bush, because it seemed to explain why he had gone from Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska. Why he had been running across the country, scurrying away, instead of taking up his position in Washington, but as time went on, that became less important, and what became more important was that with this little message, you are opening up the world of the secret government which otherwise hardly appears to the superficial observer.

‘Angel is next.’ Implies the top-secret codename or codeword for the Presidential aircraft, Air Force One. I go into intelligence agency reports, now let me just make a parenthesis, (9/11 didn’t occur in a vacuum, it occurs in a world in which there are others watching. Who’s watching? Well, Russia’s watching, Israel’s watching very much, the French are watching, there’s Germans, Japan…), what I found is 3 separate reports, one is the Réseau Voltaire which is obviously benefiting from leaks from French intelligence. The Réseau Voltaire version, which came out September 20th (or) 25th, says that the ‘Angel is next.’ phone call came complete with top secret codeword, across a variety of agencies, suggesting that the people that were behind the attacks were a powerful faction inside the US intelligence community and government in general.

Of course, if George W. Bush had been killed on 9/11 Dick Cheney would be President.

Skilluminati recently reviewed this blog in these words: "formatting is hideous but the content is gold." Why didn't you people tell me? Is this better? Or worse? I'm open to suggestions. What would be a good color scheme for Covert History?

How would he know?

An Interview with Saint John Hunt on His Father & The JFK Assassination

I think that one of the key elements that my father left out was the (this is only my theory) involvement of Dick Helms in the plot. Helms was my father’s boss, was the logical link between Cord Myer and LBJ. It is dubious that LBJ went to Cord. It is quite plausible that LBJ was referred to Cord through Helms. My father’s undying loyalty to Helms is well known, and of course we all know that Helms was a master at getting the dirty work done while keeping his own involvement above suspicion. As far as my father’s real involvement, there has been testimony given under oath that he was in Dallas the day before the murder and handed an envelope of cash to Sturgis in the presence of Marita Lorenz. Of course her “credibility” was attacked as has mine but her testimony could not be shaken by my father’s attorney. This man is a snake and quite possibly a “handler” for the agency. His name is Snyder and was recommended to “babysit” my father by William F. Buckley Jr. Snyder played a crucial role in suppressing the truth about the plot and forcing my father to withdraw from the project. He has continued to be a thorn in my side and continues to act as the “Hunt estate” attorney. If anyone has manipulated my father it was Snyder.

The Devil worshippers of Iraq

Eventually a dark, thickset man turns to me. He points to one of the peacocks on the wall: "That is Melek Taus, the peacock angel. We worship him." He sips his tea, and adds: "Ours is the oldest religion in the world. Older than Islam; older than Christianity."

And who is Melek Taus? Halil looks slightly uncomfortable: "We believe he is a proud angel, who rebelled and was thrown into Hell by God. He stayed there 40,000 years, until his tears quenched the fires of the underworld. Now he is reconciled to God."

KABUL (Reuters) -

Opium production has soared to "frightening record levels" in Afghanistan, which now has more land producing drugs than Columbia, Bolivia and Peru combined, the United Nations said on Monday.

Iraq corruption whistleblowers face penalties

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers — all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.

“It was a Wal-Mart for guns,” he says. “It was all illegal and everyone knew it.”

U.S. forces have rebranded one of the main insurgent groups in Iraq and now use the term "concerned local nationals" to refer to a group that once claimed responsibility for killing scores of Americans.

Modern mass communications enabled politicians and ideologues to whip up war sentiment and castigate those who criticized the move to war as traitors.

So says historian John W. Dover, who was quoted by Bush recently in a speech justifying the unjustifiable war in Iraq. See we brought Democracy to Japan so we can bring it to Iraq. One wishes that Bush had read Professor Dover's article A WARNING FROM HISTORY:
Don’t expect democracy in Iraq, first published in the Feb/March 2003 issue of Boston Review, from which the above quote was taken. By the way, he was describing developments in Japan leading up to the launch of their disastrous war of aggression.

Robert Fisk in The Independent:

I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11.

“If you were to report that a US surgical strike against key targets in Iran were to happen sooner rather than later, you would not be wrong."

--a former CIA case officer with experience in the Middle East

Experts and officials in the US military and intelligence communities read the administration's move to declare the Guard a terrorist organization as an indication that something ominous is looming over the horizon.

One of the former CIA case officers interviewed for this article explained that the Office of the Vice President is making this drastic move in order to lay the groundwork for a possible incident.

“They still need a trigger and I would not be surprised if we will see some event in Iraq which implicates the Iranians,” said this source. “They need a pretext.”

George Wallace's Shooter to Be Released

BALTIMORE -- Arthur Bremer, who shot and paralyzed Alabama Gov. George Wallace in 1972, will be released from prison this year, an official said Thursday.

Bremer, who turned 57 this week, is scheduled for release Dec. 16 but likely will be out earlier as he continues to accumulate credits for good behavior and for working as a prison clerk, said Rae Sheeley, a case management specialist at the Maryland Correctional Institute-Hagerstown, where Bremer is being held.

Bremer was sentenced to 53 years in prison for shooting Wallace and three bystanders at a presidential campaign stop in Laurel, Md., on May 15, 1972. He has served 35 years of that sentence.

Talon News - August 13:

Karl Rove, long-time advisor to President Bush, announced his resignation today amidst rumors that a new book by a male homosexual prostitute would finger Rove as secretly gay.

The soil on Mars may contain microbial life!

Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen, Germany, will declare on Friday the Viking spacecraft may have found signs of a weird life form based on hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian surface.

Why undermine the historical arguments about Iraq with the specter of the Vietnam quagmire, especially after the president had gone out of his way several months ago to reject critics' charges that Iraq was turning into just that?

So asks Time magazine and it is a really good question. Bush now seems to be selling Iraq as another Vietnam. Now I understand that Bush probably doesn't know much about Vietnam, except that he didn't want to go there, but even today, decades later, it is not a war that most Americans look back on fondly.

Of course, the Conservatives have been saying for some time that we cannot lose in Iraq unless we leave. So Iraq is just like Vietnam except that we're never leaving? Bush clearly sees the Iraq war as just a marketing problem but repackaging it as Vietnam just will not help him.

Conservative Columnist says: Liberals are Traitors

Liberals are traitors – at least the self-conscious ones are. And it is not because they hate Bush or disagree with the Iraq war. Their treason stems from their behavior – from the way they go around telling everyone that they hate Bush and disagree with the war – even to the extent that they sympathize with and give material aid to the enemy.

So says Tristan Emmanual, conservative columnist and alleged Christian. Apparently it is still OK to criticise Bush or disagree with the Iraq war as long as you keep it to yourself. Sorry Mr. Emmanual, but you are a fascist and that means that you're the traitor.

Racism in the Conservative Movement-Part 2

In October of 2005, I posted Racism in the Conservative Movement, asking why mainstream Conservatives, such as Patrick Buchanan, Phyllis Schlafly, and Larry Pratt, allow their columns to be printed in the blatantly racist Citizens's Informer, the newsletter of the Council of Conservative Citizens. I cited several example of such racism in that publication, one of which was a quote from Jared Taylor:

I will tell you, for aesthetic reasons alone, I think we have every justifiable reason to want our society, our country, our communities, to be white--I like the way my people look!

Jared Taylor is the editor of American Renaissance, a racist publication and website, which sells a publication titled The Color of Crime put out by the New Century Foundation. They also sell such racist classics as Race and Reason. Jared Taylor highly recommends Race and Reason, which was authored by Carlton Putnam:

“No one did more to combat the racial folly of the 1960s than Carlton Putnam. Although he has been written out of the history books, history has nevertheless proven him right on all counts.”

Now, as it happens, I read Race and Reason a few years back. The author argues in favor of the segregation of the races on the grounds that black people are intellectually inferior. This is the author who is "right on all counts."

Now why am I going into all this? Because the title of Patrick Buchanan's latest column is "The Color of Crime", and in it he quotes approvingly from The Color of Crime. He admits that the group behind it is "right-leaning," but does not address its racism.

There is no excuse for this. Patrick Buchanan should repudiate Jared Taylor, American Renaissance and The New Century Foundation or be found guilty of racism by association--associations of which he must be presumed to be aware. I think that I have been more than fair to Patrick Buchanan, a writer of often shrewd insight whom I have quoted approvingly in the past.

Former CIA Analyst Foresees Attack on Iran

The National Intelligence Estimate on if and when Iran is likely to have the bomb has been ready since February. It has been sent back four times—no doubt because its conclusions do not support what folks like Cheney and Woolsey are telling the president.

The conclusions of the most recent NIE on the issue (early 2005) was that Iran could probably not have a nuclear weapon until “early to mid-next decade,” a formula memorized and restated by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell at his confirmation hearing in February.

Despite the administration's war-like record, many Americans may still cling to the belief that attacking Iran won’t happen because it would be crazy; that Bush is a lame-duck president who wouldn’t dare undertake a new reckless adventure when the last one went so badly.

But – with this administration – rationality has not exactly been a strong suit.

Matt Cooper Calls Karl Rove a Liar

Cooper: Yeah, I, I think he was dissembling, to put it charitably. Look, Karl Rove told me about Valerie Plame's identity on July 11th, 2003. I called him because Ambassador Wilson was in the news that week. I didn't know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove and he said that she worked at the agency and she worked on WMD. I mean, to imply that he didn't know about it or that this was all the leak...

Gregory: Or that he had heard it from somebody else...

Cooper: ...by someone else, or he heard it as some rumor out in the hallway is, is nonsense.

Artificial life likely in 3 to 10 years

Part of me thinks this is really cool, the same part of me that thinks that ape-human hybrids would be really cool. I used to always root for the mad scientist in all those "Chillers from Science Fiction" monster movies. They always died in the end, though, after realizing that there were some areas where man was not meant to go.

A British soldier patrols in poppy fields in Sangin, a district Helmand province, Afghanistan. Photograph: Rafiq Maqbool/AP

Piglipstick asks What's Wrong With This Picture?

"Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, where some 7,000 British troops are based, is on the verge of becoming the world's biggest drugs supplier, cultivating more opium than entire countries such as Burma, Morocco, or even Colombia, the UN warned yesterday."

An Administration official told me...IRGC IED's are a casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran."

--Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East

"In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal."

from an op-ed piece by seven American infantrymen serving in Iraq, in today's New York Times

According to news reports, as in this story in theDetroit Free Press, one the McClatchy Newspapers, the Bush administration is considering labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.

News of the decision was leaked in what a senior State Department official and Washington-based diplomats called a sign of an intensifying struggle within the U.S. government between proponents of military action and opponents, led by Rice.

State Department officials and foreign diplomats see Rice's push for the declaration against the Revolutionary Guard as an effort to blunt arguments by Vice President Dick Cheney and his allies for air strikes on Iran.

This action may be considered as an alternative to war, but it would seem also that is moves us at least one step closer to war with Iran, afact not lost on military commanders, who are not eager to expand the war to Iran.

On Iran's role in Iraq, U.S. ground commanders in Iraq oppose proposals from Cheney and his allies to counter-attack inside Iran itself. Commanders say they can contain Iran's growing influence without acting outside Iraq.

Some are hostile to suggestions that the military strike another country, saying they are mired in Iraq.

"Let them put on the uniform and go there then," said one military official in Baghdad who asked not to be identified.

Emphasis added. This is good time to take another look at the February testimony of Zbigniew Brzezinski before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

If the United States continues to be bogged down in protracted, bloody involvement in Iraq -- and I emphasize what I am about to say -- the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran, and with much of the world of Islam at large.

A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the United States blamed on Iran, culminating in a quote-unquote "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire, eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

We cannot say that we have not been warned. He stated the same point even more strongly in answer to a question by Senator Biden:

My horror scenario is that if we simply stay put this will continue, and then the dynamic of the conflict will produce an escalating situation in which Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks will be blamed on the Iranians. There'll be, then, some clashes, collisions, and the war expands.

The neoconservatives, and their Fundamentalist Christian allies, see the Iran war, and the possibly imminent Iran war, as fronts in a larger World War against "islamo-fascists". Brzezinski deconstructs that war in these words:

Indeed, a mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potential expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMDs in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the decisive ideological struggle of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America's involvement in World War II.

This simplistic and demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that Nazism was based on the military power of the industrially most advanced European state, and that Stalinism was able to mobilize not only the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but also had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine.

In contrast, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism. Al Qaeda is an isolated fundamentalist, Islamist aberration, most Iraqis are engaged in strife because of the American occupation, which destroyed the Iraqi state, while Iran, though gaining in regional influence, is itself politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that America is already at war in a region with a wider Islamic threat of which Iran is the epicenter is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Robert Parry:

The disclosure that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned on Nov. 6, 2006 – the day before the election, not the day after as previously thought – means that he was pushed out of his job the same day he suggested a de-escalation of the Iraq War.

George W. Bush: President for Life?

Last week I posted a book review of William Smatt's book The Messiah in which he argues that George W. Bush is the Messiah. But William Smatt has nothing on Phillip Atkinson--he recently published a piece on the website of Family Security Matters in which he argues that Bush should name himself President-for-Life and then use whatever means necessary, including genocide, to defend Western Civilization. The Family Security Matters website quickly deleted the piece but the google cache is still available.

Mr. Atkinson is described as a philosopher and the author of A Study of Our Decline. Family Security Matters, according to Cliff Schecter, has on its board "Barbara Comstock, Laura Ingraham, Frank Gaffney, James Woolsey, and...drum roll...Dick Cheney."

But let Atkinson speak in his own words:

If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.

He could then follow Caesar's example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.

President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.

Atkinson has a website of his own at http://www.ourcivilisation.com/ in which he ventures his opinions on a variety of subjects.

Mexico is now (circa 2000) colonising America and imposing its language and culture. Though the Americans still have the strength of understanding to recognise that the Hispanic invasion should be stopped, they are unable to take the measures required to achieve this end. The very least that must be done to halt the Hispanic invasion is the mass enslavement, or execution, of the invaders, which must be followed by an American invasion of Mexico to enforce American language and values upon the Mexicans.

In 2003, Room 641A of a large telecommunications building in downtown San Francisco was filled with powerful data-mining equipment for a "special job" by the National Security Agency, according to a former AT&T technician. It was fed by fiber-optic cables that siphoned copies of e-mails and other online traffic from one of the largest Internet hubs in the United States, the former employee says in court filings.

Feds Train Clergy To "Quell Dissent" During Martial Law

A shocking KSLA news report has confirmed the story we first broke last year, that Clergy Response Teams are being trained by the federal government to "quell dissent" and pacify citizens to obey the government in the event of a declaration of martial law.

New airport agents check for danger in fliers' facial expressions

Specially trained security personnel are watching body language and facial cues of passengers for signs of bad intentions. The watcher could be the attendant who hands you the tray for your laptop or the one standing behind the ticket-checker. Or the one next to the curbside baggage attendant.

They're called Behavior Detection Officers, and they're part of several recent security upgrades, Transportation Security Administrator Kip Hawley told an aviation industry group in Washington last month.

The strategy is based on a time-tested and successful Israeli model, but in the United States, the scrutiny is much less invasive, Ekman said. American officers receive 16 hours of training — far less than their Israeli counterparts— because U.S. officials want to be less intrusive.

So these Behavior Detection Officers are receiving far less training than their Israeli conterparts because U.S. officials want them to be less intrusive? Saves money too, no doubt. I would think that less training would result in more "false positives" and more intrusion. If you think this sounds insane, there is more:

The Department of Homeland Security hopes to dramatically enhance such security practices.

Jay M. Cohen, undersecretary of Homeland Security for Science and Technology, said in May that he wants to automate passenger screening by using videocams and computers to measure and analyze heart rate, respiration, body temperature and verbal responses as well as facial micro-expressions.

Meanwhile: U.S. to Expand Domestic Use Of Spy Satellites

The U.S.'s top intelligence official has greatly expanded the range of federal and local authorities who can get access to information from the nation's vast network of spy satellites in the U.S.

The decision, made three months ago by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, places for the first time some of the U.S.'s most powerful intelligence-gathering tools at the disposal of domestic security officials. The move was authorized in a May 25 memo sent to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asking his department to facilitate access to the spy network on behalf of civilian agencies and law enforcement.

Documentary: “Nazi Pop Twins”

“Nazi Pop Twins” can be viewed here.

Juan Cole sums it up: The situation in Iraq is so horrific that merely bad news is drowned out by the truly awful. Another good point from Professor Cole:

It is suspicious that the US military claims never to kill civilians in Sadr City, while the Shiites are always having funeral processions for children.

Karl Rove Still Gay for George Bush

"This is one of the best-read people I’ve ever met. This is a Harvard MBA. A Yale undergraduate whose major was history and whose passion is history.”

CIA Officer Confirms Oswald's CIA Employment

Hunter Leake, a CIA officer who was second in command at the New Orleans's field office in 1963, confirmed in interviews with a historian that Lee Harvey Oswald was, as long suspected, associated with the Central Intelligence Agency.

That historian is Michael L. Kurtz, a professor of history and dean of the graduate school at Southeastern Louisiana University, who describes his interviews with Leake in his 2006 book The JFK Assassination Debates, published by the University Press of Kansas.

Leake stated that Oswald came to New Orleans in 1963 because the CIA intended to use him for certain operations. His job at the Reily Coffee Company served as a cover for his actual role. Leake personally paid Oswald sums of cash for his services.

During his stay in New Orleans, Oswald was working out of the offices of a former FBI agent with CIA connections, William Guy Banister, portrayed by Ed Asner in the film JFK. Banister was observed with Oswald by numerous witnesses, including Professor Kurtz himself. Hunter Leake confirmed that he worked with Banister in anti-Castro operations.

Hunter Leake recalled voluminous files that mentioned or pertained to Oswald's activities in New Orleans. After the assassination of President Kennedy, Leake said that he was called by Richard Helms, then the agency's Deputy Director for Plans, who ordered him to transport those files to Langley, where Leake later heard they were "deep-sixed."

Dick Cheney '94: Invading Baghdad Would Create Quagmire

Cheney was against the war before he was for it. I found this at Hot Air, a conservative site.

I've been looking for a photo of Jeri Thompson without that creepy old fart in it.

U.S. aircraft and soldiers attacked Shiite militia bomb makers accused of links to Iran in raids Wednesday that coincided with a visit to Tehran by Iraq's prime minister.

U.S. aircraft and troops on Wednesday fired on Shiite Muslim militants suspected of being armed and trained by Iran, leaving up to 32 people dead in east Baghdad's volatile neighborhood of Sadr City.

Remember when the Sunni insurgents were the enemy?

I have posted about Ion Mihai Pacepa before (here). Now his new book "Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination" is schedule for release in November. As the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the Soviet bloc his opinions are certainly of interest although his hypothesis that the KGB was behind the JFK assassination is ludicrous.

Now Mr. Pacepa has an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal titled Propaganda Redux , a perhaps unintentionally revealing title. For the piece is propaganda but Mr. Pacepa is obviously now serving different masters. The subtitle to the piece basically says it all:

Take it from this old KGB hand: The left is abetting America's enemies with its intemperate attacks on President Bush.

He goes on to say:

Now we are again at war. It is not the president's war. It is America's war, authorized by 296 House members and 76 senators. I do not intend to join the armchair experts on the Iraq war. I do not know how we should handle this war, and they don't know either. But I do know that if America's political leaders, Democrat and Republican, join together as they did during World War II, America will win. Otherwise, terrorism will win. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi predicted just before being killed: "We fight today in Iraq, tomorrow in the land of the Holy Places, and after there in the West."

Sorry, Mr. Pacepa: I am not buying your KGB assassination theories and I am not buying the nonsense in your "opinion piece" either.

Dan Moldea is an investigative reporter and author who is currently working for Larry Flynt. Moldea seems to have good sources in the intelligence community, which is always problematic. Let's just say that in such relationships both sides generally benefit.

Joseph Cannon recently had this to say about Moldea:

I know from a first-hand source -- whom I will name, if legally pressed -- that Dan Moldea had privately complained that the major publishers had "blackballed" him after he wrote a book called Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football. The blackballing stopped the moment he agreed to write a book about the Robert F. Kennedy assassination pushing the "lone nut" hypothesis.

For more on that work, read Jim DiEugenio's brief review here.

Moldea maintains that he set out to do a pro-conspiracy book but became convinced that Sirhan Sirhan acted alone.

Recently Dan Moldea had this to say:

A few months ago, Moldea says, he learned from an "impeccable'' source that "an unnamed group of former intelligence officers have done an opposition research campaign against Bill Clinton, which is tantamount to a smear campaign, which concentrates on his activities since he left the White House. This is coming out, and that's when I said, 'We've got to get back to work.'''

"Who knows when they are going to pull the trigger on this, but we're going to unleash hell when that happens,'' he says.

Moldea told the Washington Post:

"I have it on very, very good authority that major opposition research has already been conducted on Bill Clinton, and it's going to be a massive smear campaign against him," he says. A group of former intelligence officers, he says, is "going to try to cripple Hillary through Bill."

Moldea knows a thing or two about the "Clinton scandals". In the same article he tells how he was asked by Regnery, a conservative publisherto do a book about the death of Vince Foster.

Many in the conservative media saw foul play, but Moldea found "instead of the Clintons being involved in some grand conspiracy to either murder Vince Foster or cover up the circumstances of his death, that in fact it was a conspiracy among certain right-wing journalists to make it look that way.''

Switching Sides in Iraq

Has anyone noticed that we are switching sides in Iraq? That will not come as a great suprise to regular readers of this blog. Perhaps you remember my post of January 2006, Will the U.S. Switch Sides in Iraq?

Several times in the last several months I have hinted at the possibility that the United States might eventually switch sides in the war in Iraq. The new Shiite government in that country has close historical and religious ties to Iran. The Sunni insurgency is deeply concerned about this situation and their ties to Al Qaeda are strained.

We are now arming "former" Sunni insurgents, supposedly to combat al Qaeda and, increasingly, describing Shiites as the enemy.

U.S. blames Shiite militia for attacks

BAGHDAD - Rogue Shiite militiamen with Iranian weapons and training launched three-quarters of the attacks that killed or wounded American forces last month in Baghdad, stepping into the void left as Sunni insurgents have been dislodged, a top U.S commander said Sunday.

William "Bill" Smatt is an interesting fellow. He is a millionaire, a former cocaine addict, mayoral candidate, and the self-proclaimed "spiritual messenger of God." He has also written a book The Messiah in which he identifies the Messiah as President George W. Bush.

According to blogger Joseph Cannon there have been allegations that Smatt made his money in the drug trade, and that his operation may have been partners with the Bush family. This is all based on statements by an alleged FBI agent by the name of Darlene Novinger. Cannon quotes from Rodney Stitch's book Defrauding America:

She worked on Operation Nimbus, investigating large-scale drug smuggling on the Eastern seaboard. The investigation revealed the narcotic operation of a powerful Lebanese family living in Miami and Jamaica, which was also tied to the Lebanese fascist Phalange. Family's name is Smatt, headed by William Smatt. And Novinger said the Smatt operation implicated VP Bush and son Jeb.

Well, maybe. The most complete account of these allegations that I have found can be located in a three part interview in the magazine Contact, available online at The Phoenix Archives. Apparently Novinger was a contract agent, rather than a graduate of the FBI Academy, and I have been unable to find any confirmation of an Operation Nimbus. She also allegedly recorded for Atlantic Records under the name Darlene Masi, a fact I cannot confirm.

Smatt may or may not have been involved in the cocaine trafficking but he certainly did a lot of cocaine according to his book A Millionaire's Cocaine Encounter. The book is a very believable account of the attraction and the horror of cocaine addiction. Believable that is, except for one part--Smatt's account of how he came to do cocaine in the first place.

One "hot and sultry day" in 1982 the door bell to his mansion rang and at the door:

There, standing in the doorway was a vision - more divine and more perfect than I believed possible. She was tall and elegant and incrediby beautiful. Her hair glistened in the late afternoon sun and her perfune was intoxicating. Her hazel eyes were deep and they flashed excitement. Her smile simply took my breath away. The outfit she was wearing left absolutely nothing to the imagination. She was dressed in a red wet-look suit. I was so captivated and mesmerized by her awesome beauty that I was stunned into silence.

The woman addressed him by name and he invited her in. Over champagne she whipped out a pipe and they shared $500 worth of cocaine that she happened to have on her. Well, maybe, but the thought did occur to me that this might be a cover story. If Smatt was involved in the drug trade did he, perhaps, sample the product?

For more on William Smatt and Darlene Novinger see Joseph Cannon's posts here and here and here and here and here.

One also wonders if perhaps Smatt might have sampled other, more hallucinogenic, drugs. If so, that might explain his second book The Messiah. For the Messiah you see is George W. Bush, as revealed to the author in a vision by three "sprits". I assume he means spirits, but then perhaps not as he repeats the first spelling a few lines later. The sprits told him to write a book.

Throughout the book the author refers to Bush as "the Messiah, the Chosen One, the Annointed one, the Peacekeeper", generally in bold type like that. Now, to be fair, Smatt does say that he is using the term Messiah in the Jewish not the Christian sense, so presumably the President was not born of a virgin.

There is one word that possibly can sum up his efforts ... LOVE. President George W. Bush is teaching the world how to love they fellow man.

Actually, I might choose a different word, but no matter.

George Bush was chosen and annointed as the Messiah at he moment of 9/11. Smatt admits that Bush was perhaps momentarily stunned by the events of that day, but soon, chosen by divine destiny, mastered his situation.

President Bush, The Peacekeeper, keenly studied the mountains of intelligence before him....

President George Bush represents a different kind of leader. He is something of a Sherlock Holmes, seeing not just what is there, but what is not there.

Like other divinely-inspired leaders The Messiah faced opposition.

Yes, even the movie, Farenheight 911, would fail to unseat President Bush, The Messiah, The Peacekeeper.

The power of the dark was being washed away by the light...

The God that created all of us, even those who chose to violate His creation; in his infinite wisdom and mercy, has sent us the One annointed by him with powers far beyond our comprehension to stand against evil.

How could Michael Moore have known?

No one can deny that President George Bush has succeeded in ares where every other leader has failed.

The difference is that President George Bush was not appointed...He was annointed by higher powers...

All life and all existence on earth as we know it depends on this divine mission.

So as William Smatt says towards the end of the book: "GET OFF THE MESSIAH'S BACK !"

The book The Messiah, by the way, is labeled as Vol. 1.

As British Leave, Basra Deteriorates

"The British have basically been defeated in the south," a senior U.S. intelligence official said recently in Baghdad. They are abandoning their former headquarters at Basra Palace, where a recent official visitor from London described them as "surrounded like cowboys and Indians" by militia fighters. An airport base outside the city, where a regional U.S. Embassy office and Britain's remaining 5,500 troops are barricaded behind building-high sandbags, has been attacked with mortars or rockets nearly 600 times over the past four months.

The illegal destruction of federally protected 2004 election materials by 56 of 88 Ohio counties has become a fraudulent "dog ate my homework" farce of absurd justifications and criminal coverups.

Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time

In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not?

The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen.

How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government – the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect.

It's easy for soldiers to score heroin in Afghanistan

John Kerry and the Kennedy Assassination

I know for a fact that Kerry in the course of his Iran-Contra committee investigations asked hard questions of appropriate people about the events of 11/22/63. Further I spoke with his head aide on this subject and know that Kerry was firmly of the opinion that it was a conspiracy and when I spoke with his aide he suggested we talk outside, as the office is "obviously bugged".

The war in Iraq is about to get worse—much worse. The Democrats’ decision to let the war run its course, while they frantically wash their hands of responsibility, means that it will sputter and stagger forward until the mission collapses.

Via piglipstick

"On at least 30 occasions since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, every US president has prepared and/or threatened to initiate nuclear war during international crises, confrontations, and wars - primarily in the Third World."

Neocons aiding '08 Republicans

Most Americans disapprove of the Iraq war and of exporting democracy by force, yet neoconservative proponents of those policies advise the leading Republican presidential hopefuls.

"There is an overwhelming presence of neoconservatives and absence of traditional conservatives that I don't know what to make of," said Richard V. Allen, former Reagan White House national security adviser.

Advisers to Sen. John McCain of Arizona include Robert Kagan, co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC), while former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's policy team includes Norman Podhoretz, a founder of the neoconservative movement, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gets advice from Dan Senor, who counseled L. Paul Bremer III, the Coalition Provisional Authority administrator in Iraq.

THE O’REILLY FACTOR IN THE JFK ASSASSINATION

Interesting article. Video here

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Thursday the Bush administration is waging a "phony war" on terrorism, warning that the country is losing ground against the kind of Islamic radicals who attacked the country on Sept. 11, 2001.

In Iraq, a Perilous Alliance With Former Enemies

FORWARD OPERATING BASE ISKAN, Iraq -- Inside a brightly lit room, the walls adorned with memorials to 23 dead American soldiers, Lt. Col. Robert Balcavage stared at the three Sunni tribal leaders he wanted to recruit.

Their fighters had battled U.S. troops. Balcavage suspected they might have attacked some of his own men. The trio accused another sheik of having links to the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq. That sheik, four days earlier, had promised the U.S. military to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq and protect a strategic road.

"Who do you trust? Who do you not trust?" said Balcavage, commander of the 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division, his voice dipping out of earshot.

The Shiites, who dominate the new government in Iraq, are (supposedly) our allies. Now the Sunnis are (supposedly) our allies. And yet these two forces, combined with American troops cannot seem to defeat an estimated 1200 foreign al Qaeda fighters. Are we being played?

First ARMED ROBOTS deployed in Iraq
Coming soon to American cities, no doubt.

The Bush administration is quietly weighing the prospect of reaching out to the party that founded modern political Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Fred Thompson's Gay Lovers Say He's Running

Two intimates of television actor and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson insisted to Human Events last week that after twice postponing the date he was expected to declare for the Republican presidential nomination, Thompson will make it official in an address in Nashville, Tenn., August 8.

New Al Qaeda Web Ad Threatens 'Big Surprise'

A new al Qaeda propaganda ad, headlined "Wait for the Big Surprise" and featuring a digitally altered photograph of President George Bush and Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf standing in front of a burning White House, was posted on the Internet today....

There is no additional information provided in the ad, and it closes with the words, "Soon -- God willing," written across the screen and repeated several times.

U.S. Terror Attack — 'Ninety Days at Most'

Fox News speaks with Counterterrorism expert Juval Aviv:

Do you believe another terrorist attack is likely on American soil?

I predict, based primarily on information that is floating in Europe and the Middle East, that an event is imminent and around the corner here in the United States. It could happen as soon as tomorrow, or it could happen in the next few months. Ninety days at the most.

The Independent describes Aviv as one of Mossad's 'Wrath of God' hitmen .

Update: this story was published in 2005. Guess the 90 days is up!

Was Pat Tillman murdered?

The leftwing of the blogosphere is a abuzz with posts about the alleged assassination of Pat Tillman. Tillman was a well-known football star before joining the military.

Wonkette sums it all up in their story Who Ordered the Execution of NFL/Army Hero Pat Tillman? Daily Kos asks Was Pat Tillman killed on Cheney's or Rumsfeld's orders?

The revelation that medical examiners raised the possibility of murder and that this was covered up is staggering, and the close grouping of three shots in his forehead certainly looks suspicious. Certainly the possibility should have been investigated. Nonetheless, at this point I am leaning to the "friendly-fire theory." The blog The Middle Ground has been running a detailed series on Pat Tillman's death that offers a plausible theory of the case, other than murder. The first post in the series also offers links to the original source material.