From Victimhood to Aggression: Jewish Identity in the Light of Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children

by Gilad Atzmon / May 7th, 2009

Identity is a very tricky concept. It can very mean many opposing things and at the same time it can mean nothing. One may start to wonder about one’s identity only when one feels he is under the threat of losing it. The case of Jewish identity is a very good example. Judging by the literature and history textbooks, Jews started to explore the notion of their identity following the emancipation, assimilation and the collapse of the rabbinical authority. In short, Jews started to wonder who they were once their collective self-notion was already melting down. Seemingly, the notion of ‘Jewish identity’ was there to replace the tribal, rabbinical and racially orientated notion of the ‘Jew’ with a tolerant acceptable ‘liberal’ discourse that aims at a universal awareness.

In the post-modern era, Identity is regarded as a means to impose a sort of legitimacy to separateness as a decent civil political collective consciousness. Generally speaking, identity is a social concept that allows the figure that may be considered as marginal to celebrate his unique symptoms while at the same time regarding himself as a perfectly qualified member of an extended open society. Identity Politics, accordingly, is a concept that integrates the different margins into an ideal phantasmic image of multicultural and multiethnic society.

As much as identity politics refers to an imaginary celebration of differences in a world that regards itself as a cosmopolitan global village, Jewish identity (whether it locates itself politically on the left, right or centre) is a unique setting that aims to enjoy it all while giving very little in return. Jewish Identity Politics is there to maintain legitimately that the Jews must be accepted and respected by others for what they are: their history, their suffering, their religious belief, their culture, yet, within this call for others to recognise their identity claims, they somehow surprisingly fail to assimilate any notion of tolerance towards others. All forms of Jewish identity political schools maintain some elementary and fundamental tribal exclusivist code of engagement. Whether it is the rightwing Zionist who celebrates Jewish identity at the expense of the Palestinian people, or the Lefty Jew for Justice who, for some reason, celebrates his craving for peace in a ‘Jews only club’, it seems as if the entire spectrum of Jewish political identity is a tribally orientated exclusivist practice. It seems as if the entire spectrum of Jewish identity politics lacks the true awareness and acceptance of universal attitudes as an acknowledgment of being amongst others.

This behavioural pattern can be easily grasped in historical retrospective. Bearing in mind that the discourse of identity arose as a reaction to 20th century disastrous nationalist reality, identity was an outlet that allowed a sense of belonging in a newly formed tolerant civic reality. However, the course of Jewish identity politics was very different. Within the concept of Jewish identity, Jewish suffering and victimhood are set as unique Jewish symptoms. For a Jew to celebrate his identity means to celebrate Jewish pain, to visit and to revisit the agony. To be a Jew is to religiously believe in the Holocaust. To be a Jew is to be chased. To be a Jew is to be able to find an anti-Semite under every stone and behind every corner. To be a Jew is to chase senile Nazis into their graves. Forgiveness doesn’t seem to attract the leading proponent of Jewish identity politics.

Within such a notion of Jewish identity and bearing in mind the Zionist expansionist project, it is hardly surprising that Jewish collective ideology had become a bipolar schizophrenic volley between Victimhood and Aggression.

True Lies

To view the play

Caryl Churchill’s play Seven Jewish Children, that was written and performed in the light of the last Israeli military devastating campaign in Gaza, turns the floodlights on the confusion within Jewish identity.

On the face of it, the short play is an historical journey form victimhood into aggression. In just nine minutes we are joining an expedition that departs in the horror of the Shoah:

“Don’t tell her they’ll kill her..
Tell her it’s important to be quiet..
Tell her to curl up as if she’s in bed..”

and eventually ends up with the Israelis taking the role of the Nazis

“Tell her they (the Palestinians) are animals
living in rubble now, tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out,
… tell her I look at one of their children covered in
blood and what do I feel? Tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her…”

As much as Churchill’s reading of Jewish’s recent history as a transformation from innocence into ruthless barbarism is not a revelation, the message is delivered in a rather profound and sensitive manner.

But there is a far deeper layer in Churchill’s play that is hardly discussed or addressed. Churchill, like other commentators engaged in issues to do with Jewish identity, is highly observant of the elastic qualities of Jewish identity, history and reality. Jews can be whatever they want to be as long as it serves one cause or another. The Jewish narrative is obviously neither coherent nor consistent.

Tell her it’s a game,	as if we (the Jews) are on the top of it all.
Tell her it’s serious,	as if we are actually going down.
But don’t frighten her,	as if we are somehow on top of it all again.
Don’t tell her they’ll kill her,	as if we it all about to end in a matter of seconds.

The Israeli Historian Shlomo Sand elaborated on the phantasmic qualities within the Jewish historical discourse in his recent book ‘When And How The Jewish People Was Invented’. Sand manages to demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that the Jewish people never existed as a ‘nation-race’, they never shared a common origin. Instead they are a colourful mix of groups that at various stages in history adopted the Jewish religion. Similarly, at a certain stage in history they had invented their national identity. As we sadly realise, the phantasmic qualities at the core of Jewish identity politics do not stop Jews from celebrating their aspiration at the expense of the Palestinian people. The reason is simple, as Sand proves in a scholarly way and as Churchill conveys theatrically, Jewish identity is a very flexible realm.

Tell her her uncles died
Don’t tell her they were killed
Tell her they were killed
Don’t frighten her.”

The Jewish narrative is the art of making a story. It has no commitment to facts or truth. Accordingly, you make sure that you “don’t tell her they were killed”, so she can keep up the cosmopolitan dream. Or maybe, you better “tell her they were killed”, so she can rush back to the Ghetto and stay with us. Alternatively she may learn the ‘necessary’ lesson and join the IDF so she can spread death amongst the enemies of Israel. Anyhow, make sure you “don’t frighten her”, as if she isn’t frightened enough already.

The Jewish identity is a form of tactical detachment. It is a methodical strategy that creates an imaginary symbolic order with a clear pragmatic agenda.

“Tell her for miles and miles all round they (the Arabs) have lands of their own.” Misleading her to think that Palestinians and Arabs are literally the same thing.

“Tell her again this is our promised land.” As if the Jews are people, as if their origin is in Zion, as if the biblical promise has any legal validity, as if they actually believe in the Torah.

Churchill, like Sand, is eloquently exposing the zero integrity at the core of the Jewish national cause, discourse and narrative. The Jewish historical plot is not about telling the truth. Instead, it is all about the making up a ‘truth’ that would fit the current tribal needs. There is an old joke about Marxist ideologists. It tells that once the facts do not fit into the Marxist determinist textbook, all you have to do is to change the facts. Jewish identity discourse is employing exactly the same strategy. Facts and lies are produced as we move along. In short, all you have to ‘tell her’ is that sometimes we need to be innocent victims, other times we plunder, kill, throw WMDs. It all depends what serves our tribal interests best at a given time.

Victimhood - the Birth of the Collective

Churchill seems to be very observant tracing the disastrous toll Jewish identity politics achieved in turning the Jewish state into a cold blooded murderer.

Tell her I don’t care if the world hates us
Tell her we’re better haters	as if she has to be told after what she saw in Gaza.
Tell her we’re chosen people”,	as if she doesn’t realise by now.

And yet, one may wonder, who is that young innocent girl whom Caryl Churchill referring to. Who is the protagonist at the receiving end of the text, who is the hidden ‘her’ that is referred to in each line of this interesting play?

The image of an innocent young female victim is one of the pillars of the Jewish identity and the post-Shoah Jewish victim self image. Anna Frank is probably the most famous literary character within that very genre. As much as Frank is an innocent victim, she is also very effective in inflicting guilt on the Goyim.

As we know, Anna Frank tragically perished at the end of WW2. She didn’t make it to the newly born ‘Jews only’ state. Yet, within the context of Jewish identity politics Anna Frank had been adopted as a Jewish cultural icon by means of collective transference. In practice she had successfully settled in the heart of every subject who identifies as a Jew. Those who succumb to the notion of Jewish identity insist upon regarding themselves as innocent and blamelessness. From a Jewish identity political perspective, the Jewish nation is a tribe of very many innocent Anna Franks.

I allow myself to guess that Churchill’s little girl refers metaphorically to the ‘people of Israel’. The newly born Jewish nation is indeed a very young concept that is submerged with righteousness and innocence. The little girl at the receiving end of the play is there to convey an image of naivety and blamelessness. But it is also that little girl’s metaphorical innocence that makes Israel’s crimes so sinister. In the light of the Israeli propaganda that presents the Jewish state as a vulnerable innocent blameless entity, the devastating reality of Israeli brutality leads towards the inevitable cognitive dissonance.

The reality of the racist ethnic cleansing ‘Jews only state’ together with the images of the Israeli war machine pouring tons of white phosphorous on Gazans does not leave much room for doubt. Israel has nothing to do with the phantasmic self-image of a ‘little blameless girl’. If anything, the image of the naïve girl makes things worse for the Israeli Hasbara project. We are dealing here with a horribly naughty child who was despised first then ’she’ turned into a bully and soon after proved to be ruthless, sadistic and monstrous with no comparison.

Tell her we’re the iron fist now,
tell her it’s the fog of war.
Tell her we won’t stop killing them till we’re safe,

tell her I laughed when I saw the dead policemen…
tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out.”

Seemingly we are dealing here with a uniquely and seriously disturbed immature nation. We are dealing with a self-loving narcissistic child who is terrorised by ‘her’ own cruelty. It is the sadistic youngster who is horrified by the demons ’she’ finds in herself. The more the Israelis love themselves and their delusional phantasmic innocence, the more they are frightened that people out there may be as sadistic as they themselves proved to be. This behavioral mode is called projection.

Tell her we love her.
Don’t frighten her.

So ends Churchill’s play. Seemingly, Jews have a very good reason to be frightened. Their national state is a racist genocidal entity.

After the Shoah, Jews had an opportunity to transform their fate, to turn a new page. They could even explore collectively the notion of forgiveness and mercy. A few Jewish intellectuals insisted that Jews must locate themselves at the forefront of the battle against racism and oppression. As it happened, it took just six decades for the Jewish national state to establish its primacy as the ultimate racist nation state that employs the ultimate sadistic ruthless oppressive tactics. “Don’t frighten her,” says Churchill. If to be honest, the young girl must be frightened for a very good reason. If she ever would be courageous enough to look in the mirror, she would be gravely devastated

Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He lives in London, and is an editor at Palestine Think Tank, where this essay first appeared, and author of two novels: A Guide to the Perplexed and the recently released My One and Only Love. Atzmon is also one of the most accomplished jazz saxophonists in Europe. He can be reached at: atz@onetel.net.uk. Read other articles by Gilad.

Balochistan is the ultimate prize By Pepe Escobar

REBRANDING THE LONG WAR, Part 2
Balochistan is the ultimate prize
By Pepe Escobar
PART 1: Obama does his Bush impression

It's a classic case of calm before the storm. The AfPak chapter of Obama's brand new OCO ("Overseas Contingency Operations"), formerly GWOT ("global war on terror") does not imply only a surge in the Pashtun Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). A surge in Balochistan as well may be virtually inevitable.

Balochistan is totally under the radar of Western corporate media. But not the Pentagon's. An immense desert comprising almost 48% of Pakistan's area, rich in uranium and copper, potentially very rich in oil, and producing more than one-third of Pakistan's natural gas, it accounts for less than 4% of Pakistan's 173 million citizens. Balochs are the majority, followed by Pashtuns. Quetta, the provincial capital, is considered Taliban Central by the Pentagon, which for all its high-tech wizardry mysteriously has not been able to locate Quetta resident "The Shadow", historic Taliban emir Mullah Omar himself.

Strategically, Balochistan is mouth-watering: east of Iran, south of Afghanistan, and boasting three Arabian sea ports, including Gwadar, practically at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz.

Gwadar - a port built by China - is the absolute key. It is the essential node in the crucial, ongoing, and still virtual Pipelineistan war between IPI and TAPI. IPI is the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, also known as the "peace pipeline", which is planned to cross from Iranian to Pakistani Balochistan - an anathema to Washington. TAPI is the perennially troubled, US-backed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline, which is planned to cross western Afghanistan via Herat and branch out to Kandahar and Gwadar.

Washington's dream scenario is Gwadar as the new Dubai - while China would need Gwadar as a port and also as a base for pumping gas via a long pipeline to China. One way or another, it will all depend on local grievances being taken very seriously. Islamabad pays a pittance in royalties for the Balochis, and development aid is negligible; Balochistan is treated as a backwater. Gwadar as the new Dubai would not necessarily mean local Balochis benefiting from the boom; in many cases they could even be stripped of their local land.

To top it all, there's the New Great Game in Eurasia fact that Pakistan is a key pivot to both NATO and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), of which Pakistan is an observer. So whoever "wins" Balochistan incorporates Pakistan as a key transit corridor to either Iranian gas from the monster South Pars field or a great deal of the Caspian wealth of "gas republic" Turkmenistan.

The cavalry to the rescue
Now imagine thousands of mobile US troops - backed by supreme air power and hardcore artillery - pouring into this desert across the immense, 800-kilometer-long, empty southern Afghanistan-Balochistan border. These are Obama's surge troops who will be in theory destroying opium crops in Helmand province in Afghanistan. They will also try to establish a meaningful presence in the ultra-remote, southwest Afghanistan, Baloch-majority province of Nimruz. It would take nothing for them to hit Pakistani Balochistan in hot pursuit of Taliban bands. And this would certainly be a prelude for a de facto US invasion of Balochistan.

What would the Balochis do? That's a very complex question.

Balochistan is of course tribal - just as the FATA. Local tribal chiefs can be as backward as Islamabad is neglectful (and they are not exactly paragons of human rights either). A parallel could be made with the Swat valley.

Most Baloch tribes bow to Islamabad's authority - except, first and foremost, the Bugti. And then there's the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) - which both Washington and London brand as a terrorist group. Its leader is Brahamdagh Bugti, operating out of Kandahar (only two hours away from Quetta). In a recent Pakistani TV interview he could not be more sectarian, stressing the BLA is getting ready to attack non-Balochis. The Balochis are inclined to consider the BLA as a resistance group. But Islamabad denies it, saying their support is not beyond 10% of the provincial population.

It does not help that Islamabad tends to be not only neglectful but heavy-handed; in August 2006, Musharraf's troops killed ultra-respected local leader Nawab Akbar Bugti, a former provincial governor.

There's ample controversy on whether the BLA is being hijacked by foreign intelligence agencies - everyone from the CIA and the British MI6 to the Israeli Mossad. In a 2006 visit to Iran, I was prevented from going to Sistan-Balochistan in southeast Iran because, according to Tehran's version, infiltrated CIA from Pakistani Balochistan were involved in covert, cross-border attacks. And it's no secret to anyone in the region that since 9/11 the US virtually controls the Baloch air bases in Dalbandin and Panjgur.

In October 2001, while I was waiting for an opening to cross to Kandahar from Quetta, and apart from tracking the whereabouts of President Hamid Karzai and his brother, I spent quite some time with a number of BLA associates and sympathizers. They described themselves as "progressive, nationalist, anti-imperialist" (and that makes them difficult to be co-opted by the US). They were heavily critical of "Punjabi chauvinism", and always insisted the region's resources belong to Balochis first; that was the rationale for attacks on gas pipelines.

Stressing an atrocious, provincial literacy rate of only 16% ("It's government policy to keep Balochistan backward"), they resented the fact that most people still lacked drinking water. They claimed support from at least 70% of the Baloch population ("Whenever the BLA fires a rocket, it's the talk of the bazaars"). They also claimed to be united, and in coordination with Iranian Balochis. And they insisted that "Pakistan had turned Balochistan into a US cantonment, which affected a lot the relationship between the Afghan and Baloch peoples".

As a whole, not only BLA sympathizers but the Balochis in general are adamant: although prepared to remain within a Pakistani confederation, they want infinitely more autonomy.

Game on
How crucial Balochistan is to Washington can be assessed by the study "Baloch Nationalism and the Politics of Energy Resources: the Changing Context of Separatism in Pakistan" by Robert Wirsing of the US Army think-tank Strategic Studies Institute. Predictably, it all revolves around Pipelineistan.

China - which built Gwadar and needs gas from Iran - must be sidelined by all means necessary. The added paranoid Pentagon component is that China could turn Gwadar into a naval base and thus "threaten" the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.

The only acceptable scenario for the Pentagon would be for the US to take over Gwadar. Once again, that would be a prime confluence of Pipelineistan and the US empire of bases.

Not only in terms of blocking the IPI pipeline and using Gwadar for TAPI, control of Gwadar would open the mouth-watering opportunity of a long land route across Balochistan into Helmand, Nimruz, Kandahar or, better yet, all of these three provinces in southwest Afghanistan. From a Pentagon/NATO perspective, after the "loss" of the Khyber Pass, that would be the ideal supply route for Western troops in the perennial, now rebranded, GWOT ("global war on terror").

During the Asif Ali Zardari administration in Islamabad the BLA, though still a fringe group with a political wing and a military wing, has been regrouping and rearming, while the current chief minister of Balochistan, Nawab Raisani, is suspected of being a CIA asset (there's no conclusive proof). There's fear in Islamabad that the government has taken its eye off the Balochistan ball - and that the BLA may be effectively used by the US for balkanization purposes. But Islamabad still seems not to have listened to the key Baloch grievance: we want to profit from our natural wealth, and we want autonomy.

So what's gonna be the future of "Dubai" Gwadar? IPI or TAPI? The die is cast. Under the radar of the Obama/Karzai/Zardari photo-op in Washington, all's still to play in this crucial front in the New Great Game in Eurasia.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

"Stellar Wind" routinely eavesdropped on journalists and public officials

The warrantless National Security Agency (NSA) electronic eavesdropping program known to only a handful of Bush administration officials by its code word "Stellar Wind" and by a few other Justice Department officials only as "The Program" routinely intercepted the communications and transactional data, including credit card usage, of journalists and public officials, according to sources familiar with the program.

The Stellar Wind program was considered so illegal by the Justice Department and FBI agents who knew about it, there was a belief that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft would be indicted for allowing the interception program to operate. Known also as the "Terrorist Surveillance Program," the warrantless wiretapping was authorized by President George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11 and had to be re-certified every 45 days. In March 2004, Deputy Attorney General James Comey, upon the determination of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, decided that certification would not occur because the program was deemed as illegal.

After Comey became acting Attorney General after Ashcroft went to George Washington University hospital suffering from acute pancreatitis, there was a now infamous scene of White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales demanding that a barely conscious Ashcroft re-certify "the program." Comey, with Ashcroft's wife by the bedside of her husband, were present as Card and Gonzales demanded that Ashcroft re-certify the surveillance program. Ashcroft said Comey was the attorney general. The min-rebellion within the top echelons of the Bush administration resulted in the White House re-authorizing the illegal Stellar Wind without the concurrence of the Department of Justice. Bush called his illegal surveillance program, using NSA to spy on innocent Americans, the "crown jewels of national security."

WMR has also learned that the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, was, after the 2004 Ashcroft hospital scene, informed of the illegal wiretap program. Conyers took no action when informed by a contact within the Justice Department and replied in an email to the contact, "Whistleblowers don't fare very well."

Conyers also refused to take any action when NSA employees like Russell Tice, familiar with the illegal NSA program, validated the information about "The Program" that was coming from within the Justice Department. Congress, including then-Senator Barack Obama, then gave telecommunications companies like AT&T and Verizon, which were cooperating in the illegal NSA surveillance program by granting the firms immunity from prosecution. These telecommunications firms maintained a number of "secret rooms" at their major switching centers that allowed NSA to conduct illegal surveillance on Americans.

WMR has also learned that one of the main architects of the Stellar Wind program was Vice President Dick Cheney's then-chief counsel David Addington. Cheney and Addington decided to keep a number of details of the super-classified Stellar Wind program secret from the Congress. What we were told is that "Cheney did not view Congress as a co-equal branch" of the executive. The so-called "unitary executive," which has powers greater than the legislative and judicial branches in violation of the U.S. Constitution, was an idea that was being pushed by Addington and other officials within the Bush White House.

WMR has also discovered that Addington once joked about "blowing up the FISA Court."

Sources have also told WMR that there was a "pre-disposition" by the Bush White House to implementing Stellar Wind prior to 9/11. Cheney was also particularly fond of using NSA to illegally spy on Americans. The Stellar Wind program was so classified that Comey's predecessor as Deputy Attorney General, Larry Thompson, was never "read into" the special access program that minimally required a Top Secret/Special Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clerance along with clearance to the Stellar Wind program.

WMR has learned from informed sources familiar with Stellar Wind that it was used to create a Richard Nixon-style "enemies list" and that one of the victims of the surveillance of his transactional data and communications traffic was New York's then-Governor Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer's Internet web page visits, e-mails, credit card transactions, and phone calls were all used by the Bush administration to discover his activities with a New York escort service and bring about his humiliation and resignation from office.

The NSA, when it learned something juicy about a public official like Spitzer, would scrub the information of all "intelligence sources and methods" information, including the involvement of companies like AT&T and Verizon, and provide it to Justice Department prosecutors for action or White House political operatives for a political sting operation targeting the individual eavesdropped upon.

There is also reason to believe that Stellar Wind was used to eavesdrop on Illinois Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich, New Mexico Democratic Governor Bill Richardson, New Jersey Democratic Governor Jon Corzine, former North Carolina Democratic Senator and presidential candidate John Edwards, and then-Illinois Democratic Senator and current President Barack Obama to "dig up" political dirt by the Bush-Cheney White House.

Others on the Bush-Cheney enemies list subject to surveillance were certainly those opposed to the Iraq War, Ironically, one of those who may have been subjected to NSA surveillance was the late former NSA director under Ronald Reagan, General William Odom, one of the earliest retired military top brass who came out publicly in opposition to the Iraq war.

It is important to note that while the NSA and White House Stellar Wind operation "minimized" intelligence reports, in a normal and legal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant, there is no such minimization of sources and methods. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants must be specific as to their relevance to a counter-intelligence or counter-terrorism investigation. However, the illegal Stellar Wind reports merely provided incriminating information without providing sources, methods, or justification information since no judicial concurrence was necessary. Under a FISA warrant, a target may only be wiretapped for 90 days in foreign counterintelligence cases. WMR has learned that during the Bush administration, FISA warrants were obtained by NSA on a number of foreign dignitaries visiting the United States. In addition, FISA warrants were issued for anyone, including American citizens, with Middle Eastern names who traveled to the Middle East. The warrants were requested even though there was no evidence that they were connected to any terrorist organizations.

WMR has also learned that John Bolton, while Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, used Stellar Wind to target a number of U.S. ambassadors, especially those career diplomats who were known to privately oppose the Bush administration's war against Iraq. One of those ambassadors was likely John Danforth, former Republican Senator from Missouri, who resigned in December 2004 as U.S. ambassador to the UN after less than six months in office. Danforth cited "policy differences" with the State Department. Danforth's resignation followed by a few weeks that of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was also subjected to NSA eavesdropping.

WMR previously reported that Bolton received NSA transcripts of phone conversations between his boss, Powell, and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson concerning back channel nuclear talks with North Korean diplomats in New York.

We have also learned that journalists were "high on the list" for surveillance by the Bush White House under the Stellar Wind program. In December 2005, WMR first reported on a CIA/NSA program called Firstfruits that was authorized in October 2004 that was a "database that contained both the articles and the transcripts of telephone and other communications of particular Washington journalists known to report on sensitive U.S. intelligence activities, particularly those involving NSA." Targeted journalists, reported by NSA sources, included targeted journalists included author James Bamford, the New York Times' James Risen, the Washington Post's Vernon Loeb, the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, the Washington Times' Bill Gertz, UPI's John C. K. Daly, and this editor [Wayne Madsen].

Risen was one of the New York Times journalists who first became aware of the illegal NSA intercept program. The other was Eric Lichtblau, the author of Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice.

Rudman: Deus ex Machina on Torture

by Ray McGovern

The announcement in mid-March that CIA Director Leon Panetta had picked former Sen. Warren Rudman to act as CIA "liaison" with the Senate Intelligence Committee during its "review" of interrogation and detention practices has drawn virtually no criticism from the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM).

Yet, it is a dead give-away as to how congressional leaders plan to go through the motions for a year or so, and then let everyone off the hook.

Why let everyone off the hook? Because congressional leaders, Republican and Democratic alike, were informed of the Bush/Cheney administration plans for torture - perhaps not chapter and verse, but enough to be complicit in their silence. Both parties have amply soiled the dirty linen that could be hung out.

So here's the plan. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, looking toward reelection in 2010, calculates that the last thing he needs is a bonafide investigation that would make him vulnerable to Cheneyesque charges of being weak in the "war" on terrorism. These days, if you take a hard line against torture, you can be made to appear soft on terrorism.

Worse still, other prominent Democrats like Sen. Jay Rockefeller and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were given intelligence briefings on interrogation, warrantless eavesdropping, and God knows what else. And they let Bush and Cheney run right over them with nary a whimper.

Surely, the Washington power structure concurs that what is needed is the kind of "thorough investigation" which President Richard Nixon loudly called for, with tongue in check, on Watergate. So, Senate team managers Reid and Rockefeller have gone to their bench for an ace utility infielder - quintessential practitioner of "thorough" investigations, Warren Rudman. They are eager to bring Rudman on as liaison with the Senate Intelligence Committee led by Dianne Feinstein with Rockefeller sitting at her right hand, so to speak.

The FCM, whether from indolence or timidity, have completely missed the boat on Rudman, calling him a "respected" veteran of investigations of national security issues. Does no one do due diligence - or simple homework - anymore?

Are the FCM journalists determined to make it easy for Attorney General Eric Holder to shirk his duty to see that the law is faithfully enforced, by giving him the out of saying, "Well, let's first see what the Senate Intelligence Committee comes up with."

It's been seven weeks since word got out that Rudman is back in service; yet hardly a word about Rudman's reputation as designated fixer par excellence. Rudman has been wildly successful in covering up past national security crimes.

It is troubling that it should have to fall to the likes of us - far from the comfortable environs of the FCM - to point this out.

‘Respected Politician'

The FCM has been quite busy applying the sobriquet "respected politician" to Rudman, though in his case it is truly an oxymoron.

In the 1980s, Rudman earned his spurs by working hand in glove with then-Rep. Dick Cheney to limit the scope of the Iran-Contra investigation. Rudman was essentially the good cop to Cheney's bad.

Rudman was one of three "moderate" Republican senators who collaborated with "moderate" Democratic co-chairman Lee Hamilton in soft-peddling the roles of President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush in authorizing and overseeing the Iran-Contra law violations.

While Hamilton and Rudman laid most of the blame on Oliver North and other low-level "men of zeal," Cheney led the rear-guard Republican defense, insisting that the Reagan administration had committed no crimes and instead blaming Democrats in Congress for daring to pass laws interfering with the President's powers.

In the end, Hamilton got what he wanted, a veneer of "bipartisanship" with the signatures of Rudman and two other GOP senators (William Cohen and Paul Trible); Rudman got a watered-down "majority report"; and Cheney went ahead with his in-your-face "minority report" that he later proclaimed had laid the foundation for George W. Bush's views on expansive presidential powers.

In the end, none of the White House folks or other senior officials who played fast and loose with the law during the Iran-Contra affair were held to account.

A noxious precedent was set. This kind of experience, one might say, has a way of emboldening lawbreakers to try again - and again.

Dissing Gulf War Veterans

In this next example, I am having difficulty controlling my anger. For I remain outraged by Rudman's willingness to do the Pentagon's bidding in refusing to acknowledge that the illnesses of over 200,000 U.S. Gulf War veterans were related to exposure to several toxic chemicals - pesticides, experimental pills and vaccines, depleted uranium, oil-well fire pollution, and nerve gas - for starters.

Dual-use technologies needed to make nerve agents were sold to Iraq during the Reagan and Bush I administrations (when Saddam Hussein was something of a secret ally) and the stockpiles of nerve agents were then blown up by U.S. Army engineers in 1991 oblivious to the fact that 145,000 U.S. troops were downwind. After a decade of denials, the Pentagon fessed up and notified those 145,000 Gulf War veterans they may have been exposed to low levels of chemical warfare agents.

Patrick and Robin Eddington, former colleagues of mine at CIA, had been appalled at the cover-up of Gulf War illnesses orchestrated by the Pentagon and by then-CIA Director John Deutch. I watched closely as the Eddingtons tried, in vain, to do the right thing by Gulf War veterans who had served in the Iraq Theater. (When the couple saw no alternative to quitting and exposing the continuing injustices by writing a book, "Gassed in the Gulf," I was honored to be asked to write the Foreword.)

But U.S. government bureaucrats and politicians had other priorities, such as deflecting attention from - and cost of - the Gulf War illnesses.

So, in May 1997, Warren Rudman was appointed the Pentagon's special adviser on Gulf War syndrome by his old Senate colleague William Cohen, who had moved on to be President Bill Clinton's bipartisan choice as Defense Secretary.

In this advisory post, Rudman dismissed all evidence that challenged the Pentagon's conclusion that Gulf War illnesses were not caused by multiple toxic exposures. Rudman succeeded in sparing the Pentagon embarrassment, but at the price of denying over 200,000 Gulf War veterans the medical care they needed to cope with a wide array of neurological and other maladies. The result was to delay for over a decade medical research, treatment and disability benefits for Gulf War veterans.

That's right, over 200,000 of the 700,000 U.S. troops remain ill 18 years after the March 1991 cease-fire.

For readers with strong stomachs and a yearning for more detail, we include below the gist of a short piece I wrote at the time to chronicle Rudman's role in this unconscionable cover-up from May 1997 until January 2001, when Clinton awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal for services performed.

Taking no credit away from Rudman for his effective hatchet-man role, it is only fair to point out that it was Clinton who chose to cave in to the Pentagon. Rudman was merely a willing functionary - a hired gun doing his best to protect his client in The Pentagon v. Gulf War Veterans.

That Clinton would single out Rudman for a special award, however, was a gratuitous slap in the face of tens of thousands of ill veterans without a voice in the high councils of our government.

Rudman Rebuffed

The findings of the panel led by Rudman from 1997 to 2001 have now been thoroughly discredited.

Late last year, after reviewing hundreds of peer-reviewed research studies, an independent Research Advisory Committee (RAC) mandated by Congress, concluded that prior investigations were biased against veterans, slanted in favor of the military and VA leadership, and woefully incomplete.

The November 2008 RAC report found that scientific research has determined a conclusive link between Gulf War illnesses and toxic exposures during deployment. The RAC also called pointedly for a reduction in government interference in the scientific process.

When I mentioned the re-emergence of Rudman to shepherd yet another "investigation" - this one on torture, Paul Sullivan, a former project manager for the Veterans Administration and now executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, expressed outrage. I asked Sullivan why the Pentagon was so stubbornly resisting the reality that over 200,000 troops needed proper care - many of them for the long term.

"Previous administrations fought against our veterans because the government wanted to save money and preserve the myth of an easy, cheap Gulf War victory," said Sullivan. "Healthcare and disability benefits for life might well cost over a million dollars for each of the 200,000 Gulf War veterans who are ill - a total price tag in the billions of dollars per year.

"This means the inexpensive, "casualty-light" Gulf War portrayed by the Pentagon and FCM was actually a very expensive, high-casualty conflict," said Sullivan, who served as a Cavalry Scout during Desert Storm.

Speaking on behalf of Veterans for Common Sense, Sullivan indicated that VCS strongly opposes the involvement of Warren Rudman in investigating torture, given his role in covering up the Gulf War scandal of the 1990s. Sullivan noted that at least one active duty Army soldier committed suicide rather than follow orders to torture detainees.

Veterans for Common Sense is co-plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit that is forcing President Obama to release torture documents and photos.

Another Cover-up?

Covering up President Bush's torture policies is more about avoiding liability to prosecution - or, at least, acute political embarrassment. But the tools of cover-up are the same; and, again, what is needed is an experienced hand.

CIA Director Panetta seems confident that he has that kind of person in Rudman. It was while Panetta was White House chief of staff under President Clinton that Rudman became head of the prestigious President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), after the previous chairman, Les Aspin, died in May 1995. Rudman, the consummate insider, was officially named chair of PFIAB in 1997 and served in that capacity until 2001.

He is now 79, but can be assumed to be well rested and no doubt has been warming up for his new job with Panetta and CIA operatives-some of whom were involved in implementing the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld torture policy. It is becoming clearer and clearer what Panetta meant when, at his confirmation hearings in early February he tried to reassure members of the Senate Intelligence Committee they should expect little trouble from him. "I am a creature of Congress," he said with a broad smile, which was returned by smiles of equal width from members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Rudman, another "creature of Congress," can be expected over the coming months to exhibit his characteristic exuberance in coming off the bench to play the role of designated hitter. If all goes as our distinguished Senators expect, the torture thing will be fixed by this time next year, when Rudman reaches 80.

We shall have to wait to see if the FCM will wake up and take some interest so that the American body politic has an opportunity to be informed and perhaps even to summon the courage to prevent a Rudman Redux - this time on torture.

* * *

Chronicling Rudman Role on Gulf War Illness

May 1997: Rudman is retained by his close friend, Defense Secretary William Cohen, to act as special adviser on Gulf War illnesses. The announcement coincides with a report of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses criticizing the Pentagon for being too slow to investigate possible chemical incidents and for obstructing the Committee's work.

November 1997: The final Presidential Advisory Committee report covering the months since May 1997 finds that "public mistrust about the government's handling of Gulf War veterans' illness has not only endured, it has expanded." The Committee charges that the Pentagon-run battlefield surveys and research and analysis had hopelessly biased conclusions against the possibility that low-level exposures to chemical agents were a factor.

This stinging critique notes that many U.S. alarm and detection systems could not detect lower levels of chemicals that might have delayed effects, and that the Pentagon had summarily dismissed virtually all other reported detections - by British, French, and Czech forces, for example - as unproven. President Bill Clinton names Rudman to head an "independent panel" (The Presidential Special Oversight Board) to ensure that the Pentagon's inquiry into Gulf War illnesses "meets the highest standards."

In view of the Committee's findings and Rudman's close relationship with Cohen, then-Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Connecticut, and others immediately question how independent such a panel could be. How could Rudman be expected to perform an unbiased investigation of the behavior of a major client on an issue on which Rudman had been advising that client for the preceding half-year?

October 2000: The Pentagon announces that 30,000 additional Gulf War servicemen and women are to be told they have been exposed to Iraqi nerve gas. In 1997, 99,000 were informed they might have been exposed. At a public meeting convened to announce the new notifications, Rudman interrupts to ask (and answer) rhetorically, "Does this (the additional 30,000) mean any more people are ill? So far, there is no evidence of this."

The Pentagon briefer explains that 30,000 of those who earlier were told they had been exposed would now be told they were not, leaving the overall total for exposures at 99,000. [Since then, the total has risen to 145,000.]

November-December 2001: Dr. William H. Taylor and Dr. Vinh Cam, members of the Rudman-led Presidential Special Oversight Board, object strongly to his attempts to steer it toward findings favorable to the Pentagon. Vinh charged that under Rudman, the Board has acted as a mere extension of the Pentagon.

In a letter to Rudman, Taylor wrote:

"OSAGWI (the Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses) selectively ignored evidence that it did uncover, and repeatedly showed an unwillingness to investigate leads that suggested a conclusion contrary to its assessment. In short, OSAGWI's investigations are biased, and the conclusions and assessments that OSAGWI states in its reports cannot be considered credible."

Dr. Taylor went on to decry efforts by the Board's executive director to "depejoratize" (sic) Board members' reports, "particularly concerning the presence of chemical warfare agents," and sharply criticized Rudman's expressed wish to give the Office of Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses "an ‘A' for effort."

The correspondence makes it abundantly clear that Drs. Taylor and Cam would not give Rudman's Pentagon client a passing grade, and that they have little but disdain for Rudman's (successful) attempt to manipulate the Board's findings.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

A Moldovan-Israeli Werewolf in Paris

By Will

Israel's racist-thug-turned-racist-Foreign-Minister Avigdor Lieberman continues his sideshow tour of Europe. While the party in the Washington DC Hilton that housed the AIPAC conference moved to Capitol Hill, Minister Lieberman made his way to Paris.

In the City of Love, the chauvinistic hatemonger was a virtual Pepé Le Pew (sorry for the mixed metaphors, but there's more to come). He was met by protesters calling him a fascist. The French weekly Journal du Dimanche ran the headline, "Lieberman, a bothersome visitor," and called his views "nefarious."

The debonair French leader, Nicolas Sarkozy, was too embarrassed to slap palms with the former nightclub bouncer, and probably did not want to have to wait in line behind the velvet ropes to make the club look popular.

The Sark chose to duck out of town, leaving his own Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to repeat the French demands for "the complete halt of settlement building, including that linked to 'natural growth.'"

Kouchner also told Lieberman there is no military solution to the Gaza problem and that the Strip must be opened permanently to ameliorate the humanitarian crisis. He then slapped the visiting minister in a face with a baguette.

While these diplomats apply pressure, day-time Lieberman seems minimally diplomatic -- perhaps he's comforted by the cast of expert Palestinian-screwers, Bibi, Barak and Peres, who expertly fend off any outside pushes for Israeli concessions.

I just fear that a full court diplomatic press will be the full moon, setting off the true monster, candidate Lieberman and the pro-settler constituency that put the goon in office. This wolf has a particular appetite for Palestinians, and their crushed bones feed the careers of many Israeli pols. Israel's alarming move to revoke the citizenship of some non-Jewish citizens is an alarming sign of possible future paths to keep the Jewish state Jewish -- especially with growing demographic evidence that Jews are no longer a majority in the lands the government presides over.

If I could leave with one positive note, I love that Lieberman is just another public relations fiasco for Israel. It causes the state to spend that much more of its resources on PR clean-up.

Blowback in Lebanon on Cheney-Rove-Abrams hit team

Word from Lebanon is that WMR's report on the Bush-Cheney White House operating a hit team that was behind the assassinations of Lebanese political leaders was featured on Lebanese television today.

This article also appeared on a Lebanese news site.

Excerpts:

"Dick Cheney, the name that always pops up whenever there is talk about a serious crime someplace in the world. Well, Cheney had his own death squad CIA unit which he ran from the white house. By Cheney’s orders, the assassinations unit killed former Lebanese minister and Lebanese Forces chief Elie Hobeika on the 24th of January 2002 and former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on the 14th of March 2005, prominent investigative journalist Wayne Madsen said.

Madsen who is known for his close ties with active circles in the CIA, was speaking to the Russia Today television when he revealed that the same squad that had assassinated Hobeika in coordination with former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon’s office, had also assassinated Hariri.

“This is something that I have heard about five years ago from CIA sources,” Madsen said. “I reported in 2004-2005 that the CIA unit linked to the White House was responsible for coordinating the assassinations in Lebanon of former Christian leader Elie Hobeika and also the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, and that this was done in close coordination with a similar unit operated by then Israeli PM Ariel Sharon’s office in Jerusalem,” Madsen said. . .

What Madsen had revealed has drawn storms of reactions that demand Cheney be prosecuted . . .

In 2005, Madsen cited one “key source’ in his report and said that “a number of intelligence sources have reported that assassinations of foreign leaders like Hariri and Hobeika are ultimately authorized by two key White House officials, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams. In addition, Abrams is the key liaison between the White House and Sharon’s office for such covert operations, including political assassinations and Abrams is the guy the Israelis go to for a wink and a nod for such ops.”

More evidence emerges that H1N1 was engineered in "Jurassic Park" bio-labs

Informed sources have revealed to WMR that the H1N1 virus, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned could become a global pandemic, was reverse engineered from genetic material obtained from the remains of victims of the deadly 1918 "Spanish flu" influenza pandemic that killed 50 million people worldwide.

WMR has obtained information from biological researchers that the 1918 Spanish flu genetic sequences were "manipulated" in order to effect transmission capability. The current H1N1 virus, called "swine flu," is reportedly a combination of two forms of human flu, two forms of swine flu (North American and Eurasian), and avian or bird flu. There are now reports of species hopping from humans to pigs in Canada.

The scientific name for the current H1N1 virus that was manipulated is "Influenza A virus (strain A/Brevig Mission/1/1918 H1N1)." It is called Brevig Mission because, as WMR previously reported, U.S. Army biological warfare specialists recovered the genetic material from the fairly intact corpse of an Inuit woman who died from the 1918 flu in Brevig Mission, Alaska. WMR has learned that work on manipulation of the Brevig Mission flu strain began in 1997.

Two bio-safety laboratories have been associated with the genetic reverse engineering of not only A-H1N1, the current "swine flu" strain, but also the deadly Ebola virus. They are the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Canada. The Associated Press reported on September 20, 2007, that the Madison laboratory was cited for safety violations: "University of Wisconsin-Madison research on the deadly Ebola virus was conducted for a year in a less-secure laboratory than required, until the National Institutes of Health alerted the school to the problem. The deadly virus itself was never present in the laboratory, said Jan Klein, UW-Madison biological safety officer. Instead, DNA copies of the virus were being studied to better understand one of the world's most dangerous pathogens."

The report also stated that the Madison research facility was involved with combining "materials": "Klein said no one was ever at risk, though an infectious virus could have been produced if the research material had been combined with other components. But that was not part of any planned experiment and would not be done by accident,' she said."

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) reportedly shut down the Ebola research at Madison but it was reportedly moved to a Level 4 Bio-Safety Laboratory at the National Microbiology Laboratory at the Canadian Science Center for Human and Animal Health in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 2007, macaque monkeys were infected with the 1981 flu virus at the Canadian laboratory by some of the same researchers who were involved in the risky Ebola research in Madison.

The research in Madison on Ebola had been conducted in a Bio Safety Level 2 laboratory when it should have been conducted in a Bio Safety Level 4 laboratory, the most stringent for pathogens like Ebola and H1N1. At the time of the safety violations, Madison has less stringent Level 3 labs but no Level 4 labs. In early 2008, Madison again conducted work on Ebola, but in a Level 4 lab.

Science Daily reported the following from Madison on October 7, 2004: "Using a gene resurrected from the virus that caused the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, recorded history's most lethal outbreak of infectious disease, scientists have found that a single gene may have been responsible for the devastating virulence of the virus."

The Winnipeg laboratory figures into the November 15, 2001 disappearance of noted Harvard University virologist Dr. Don C. Wiley in Memphis, Tennessee after his attendance at a banquet honoring his service as a scientific advisory board member of St. Jude's Hospital. Wiley's body was found one month later in the Mississippi River in Vidalia, Louisiana. The Shelby County medical examiner ruled Wiley's death a "suicide" from jumping into the Mississippi River from the west bound lane of the I-40 Hernando de Soto bridge. Wiley was heading back to his father's residence in Millington, northeast of Memphis at the time of his disappearance.

This editor reported on the Wiley death extensively at the time. And the Canadian facility became involved in the investigation. From "Mystery in Memphis," published in "Abuse Your Illusions, 2003, edited by Russ Kick: "While the Memphis Police and the FBI continued to handle the Wiley case as just another distraught "jumper" hurling himself 135 feet into the Mississippi River, other law enforcement agencies were not as sanguine.

On November30 [2001], [Memphis Police Sergeant Robert 'Bubba' Shemwell received a call from Detective Paul McKemmie of the National Security Investigation Unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Ottawa. McKemmie advised Shemwell that his unit was responsible for protecting scientists with Level-3 and Level-4 clearance at the Canadian Science Center for Human and Animal Health in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The Canadian center houses the National Microbiology Laboratory, where scientists deal with the most dangerous and contagious human and animal pathogens and diseases, which are categorized as Level-4. These include hantavirus, hepatitis, influenza, and hemorrhagic fevers such as the Ebola virus, Marburg virus, and Lassa Fever. In another hghly-protected laboratory, scientists work with Level-3 agents, which include bacteria such as anthrax that, although not contagious, can be transmitted through the air and can cause death or serious illness. The center's tight security is overseen by the RCMP and Canadian Security and Intelligence Service.

McKemmie told Shemwell that someone had posted an email suggesting that Dr. Wiley was not the target for a kidnapping to obtain anthrax but that a scientist working at the Winnipeg laboratory was a more likely target for a kidnapping by bioterrorists.

Nevertheless, the RCMP wanted to know if Memphis hadany information that would indicate that Wiley was the target for an abduction by terrorists. Shockingly, Shemwell fed te RCMP the same line he was feeding the Wiley family and the media: There was no evidence to support the theory that Wiley's disappearance was the result of foul play and that suggestions to the contrary were being mentioned only in the media.

Obviously, not buying Shemwell's line, the Mountie indicated that the RCMP, like the FBI, also would continue to monitor Wiley's disappearance and check out any leads from Canada."

The idea that Wiley's body could have been in the fast-raging Mississippi for a month seems fanciful. When his body was discovered in Louisiana, Wiley's clothing was intact. Recovered from Wiley's clothing were his watch, wedding band, belt, wallet, and even a piece of hard candy that managed not have dissolved after an entire month in water.

Wiley co-wrote a paper on the structures of H5 avian flu and H9 swine flu that was published in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences in September 18, 2001, just some two months before he went missing in Memphis. However, Wiley's expertise on the 1918 influenza was longstanding. In 1981, Wiley co-wrote a paper, titled "X-ray structures of H5 avian and H9 swine influenza virus hemagglutinins bound to avian and human receptor analogs," that defined the crystal structure of the 1918 influenza virus, a step that made it easier to conduct "forensic" analysis on the origin of precursor viruses and their naturally-occurring or man-made genetic off-shoots.

Although virology, not bacteriology, was Wiley's area of expertise, it was revealed during my investigation of Wiley's death that he had become quite concerned about the mailing of anthrax through the postal system. A week before his disappearance, Wiley attended a session on "Bioethics and Research" at a meeting of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland. At the time of the conference, four people had already been killed from being exposed to anthrax-laden letters sent through the mail. It was later discovered that the anthrax originated from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Wiley had also received a letter from a failed PhD student at University College in Dublin, Ireland that sought to warn him about the origins of anthrax. In October 2001, a series of "white powder" samples were discovered at University College. Irish Army specialists transferred all the samples to Britain's Porton Down bio-warfare facility, the UK's equivalent of Fort Detrick.

Based on Dr. Wiley's expertise in tracking down the origins of viruses and, with his speciality in crystallization of samples, bacteria like anthrax, as well, it is clear that whoever is benefiting from the outbreak of a A-H1N1 flu that has been resurrected and genetically "manipulated" in a "Jurassic Park" laboratory had a very good reason to murder Dr. Wiley and make it appear to be a suicide.

SPECIAL REPORT. The Bush clan and a seized $250 billion Treasury Note

According to WMR's sources, the FBI and London police are working together on a case that involved a $250 billion U.S. Treasury Note seized by the FBI from a London safety deposit box company, London Safe Deposit Company, Ltd. The box was reportedly placed at the London firm by self-described 20-year CIA veteran Robert Booth Nichols, who reportedly died in Geneva, Switzerland on February 14, 2009.

A heart attack was believed to have been the cause of death but there was a blow to Nichols's head. A "friend" of Nichols, a New York stockbroker who was reportedly helping Booth move a large sum of cash, bonds and gold in Geneva, arranged for a quick cremation of Nichols's body and the U.S. embassy in Bern was notified.

The T-Note is reportedly secured by 2500 metric tons of gold at the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta. There are indications that the movement of the gold out of the United States involves at least one member of the family of former Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Samuel Israel III, the former head of the collapsed Stamford, Connecticut-based hedge fund Bayou Group LLC, who was arrested after he tried to fake his own suicide by abandoning his vehicle, with the words "Suicide in Painless" written on the hood, on Bear Mountain Bridge over the Hudson River in New York on June 9, 2008, hired Nichols to help locate the T-Note and then place it in a London safety deposit box. Israel had already been convicted of a $400 million fraud and was due to report to prison to serve a 20-year sentence on the day his car was found on the bridge.

Nichols was reportedly assisted in the location and placement of the T-Note in London by John P. Ellis, a cousin of George W. Bush and nephew of George H. W. Bush. Ellis is the son of Nancy Bush, Bush 41's sister and was the Fox News consultant in 2000 whose analysis of Florida's returns led the network to call Florida for George W. Bush. Ellis had also been a columnist for The Boston Globe.

Ellis became an investment banker and acted as a "feeder" to IM Partners (Israel-Marino), a Connecticut-based venture capital company set up by Israel and his partner Daniel Marino. Ellis, a close friend of Israel, was managing director of New York City-based G H Venture, in which IM Partners invested some $25 million.

Nichols received $10 million from Israel for locating the T-Note and securing it in the London deposit box company. According to papers filed in the cases U.S. v. Israel, 05 Cr. 1039 (CM) and Bayou Management LLC v. Robert B. Nichols, et al, 08 Civ. 6036 (CM), the box seized by the FBI in London bore the "seal of the United States Federal Reserve and the serial number SC 3040-20." However, acting pursuant to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) investigation, the FBI, working with Scotland Yard, seized the safety deposit box and the T-Note. Israel subsequently sued Nichols for return of the $10 million.

Court papers in the cases also refer to a "$250 billion obligation," as well as the Federal Reserve Bank and 2500 metric tons of gold being used to secure the T-Note.

Acting on a lawsuit filed by Bayou investors, a British judge in November 2007 froze $1 million Nichols held in London. HSBC is also named in the judge's order, along with Nichols and his wife.

Nichols maintained that he assisted Israel in moving money as part of a "project" involving U.S. "national interest."

WMR has, in the past, reported on then-Vice President George H. W. Bush shaking down soon-to-be-exiled Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos for gold seized from the Japanese (the so-called "Yamashita's Gold" looted from Asia and hidden in the Philippines by World War II Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita) and having it sent to the United States on barges owned by the CIA front company Oceaneering International of Houston. In return, Marcos was granted asylum in Hawaii. A December 2, 1982, FBI document on Robert Booth Nichols states that "Robert Booth Nichols, also known as Robert Bert Nichols, Robert Nelson, and Robert Nioon, was reportedly an internationally known launderer of money from both narcotics and organized crime activities. In addition, Nichols was well-known in the sale of armaments to various countries throughout the world. Nichols is alleged to be very influential in the sale of armaments to the Philippines Government and has assisted officials of the Philippines Government in removing large sums of money from the Philippines , thereafter, investing the money with Nichols, who was placing the money in Swiss bank accounts."

Robert Booth Nichols (right) with John Lear (left), son of Bill Lear, founder of Lear Jet Corporation. John Lear claims to have inside information on U.S. government work on extraterrestrial craft at Groom Lake's Area-51 in Nevada.

In November 2004, this editor exposed the use of a multi-billion dollar off-shore tranche of Bush fund held in an Isle of Man account and connected to the movement of the Marcos/Yamashita gold to Switzerland and UBS bank secret accounts by George H. W. Bush. Part of this money, as I reported, was used to fund the fixing of the 2004 election through the use of mercenary computerized voting machine programmers and operatives in Ohio and other states, ensuring George W. Bush's re-election. The story came under immediate attack by individuals and websites funded by George Soros.

What is unfolding as FBI and Scotland Yard pursues the case is the very real possibility that at least one member of the Bush family, in concert with Nichols, whose name arose in the investigation of the "suicide" of investigative journalist Danny Casolaro in 1991 and who was reportedly one of Casolaro's more dubious "sources," may have been involved in a criminal enterprise to move U.S. Federal Reserve gold out of the United States and into secret offshore accounts. In addition, there is the possibility that at least two other Federal Reserve Banks, in addition to Atlanta, may have been similarly looted of their gold reserves. There is also an indication that Representative Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) was referring to the looting of the Federal Reserve when he referred to a one- or two-hour $550 billion electronic run on the banks "around September 15, 2008."

President Obama recently announced a crack down on American individuals and corporations using off-shore bank accounts. Whether the President is aware of the massive gold rip-off operation against the Federal Reserve is not known but the Nichols-Israel case continues to be investigated by the FBI and Scotland Yard.

In any event, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner appears to have been neutralized as any sort of significant oversight authority over the currnet bail-out of Wall Street and the banks. Informed sources have told WMR that high-level rumors of a sex scandal involving the Treasury Secretary are swirling around both Treasury and the Inter-American Development Bank, headquartered in Washington, DC.

These stories are developing.

Ignore AIPAC at America’s Peril by Philip Giraldi

What do Charles Freeman and Jane Harman have in common? Nothing, apart from the fact that they are both involved in the truly ugly side of the Israel lobby’s activity in the United States and, for that reason, had their stories dropped by the mainstream media in record time. Harman’s story broke on April 19 and was on life support by the 24th. Freeman’s story had slightly more legs to it only because his withdrawal from his nomination to head the National Intelligence Council on March 10 was preceded by a three-week barrage of vicious ad hominem attacks from the media and the usual suspects in Congress. After he resigned, his story was allowed to die, ending as far as the mainstream media was concerned on March 14 with a coup de grace from Republican Congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia, who claimed in a Washington Post op-ed that the Israel lobby had nothing to do with his opposition to Freeman’s appointment. Wolf has reportedly received $72,000 from pro-Israel PACs, more than any other Virginia congressman except Eric Cantor, something that he chose not to mention.

If one were to ask a reasonably well-informed American citizen about either Harman or Freeman, one would most likely draw a blank. This is because they have been airbrushed out of the collective political consciousness almost as effectively as the pictures of Stalin’s rivals were removed from group photos in Red Square. The mainstream media, which is where most Americans still get their news, has trivialized their stories and has no desire to grapple with issues like Israeli espionage and the establishment of a de facto Israeli loyalty test for the holders of high office. Corruption of the U.S. political system by a small country 5,000 miles away is of no interest to Fox, NBC, CBS, and ABC, not to mention their newsprint counterparts.

It did not have to be so, and if there had been any spine or even a shred of conscience in the media, then all of this might have gone in another direction, leading to a serious inquiry into how a tiny foreign power has managed to create the most powerful lobby in Washington. When Freeman went down and dared to complain about his treatment, there was considerable noise in the blogosphere suggesting that the Israel lobby had finally overreached itself and would pay the price because everyone would now know just how much it interferes in American politics. That judgment proved premature, as did the suggestion by some that the victory over Freeman might prove Pyrrhic in nature, leading to future defeats. Others, including Stephen Walt, were not so sure, noting that the basis for AIPAC’s power in the media and within the government had not in any way been diminished. That has proven to be the case. A complaisant establishment media rolled over on the Harman story only weeks after Freeman.

So much for the Fourth Estate, where the only freedom of the press in evidence is the freedom to run as fast as possible from any story that is critical of Israel and its friends. The American public should wake up to the fact that the Freeman and Harman stories are serious in their implications, whether or not the media is interested. Freeman was appointed to head the National Intelligence Council, an essentially non-political position that is responsible for shaping the vitally important National Intelligence Estimates. He was supremely well qualified for the position and was esteemed for his maverick qualities, which led to the expectation that he would head a team that would challenge assumptions on existing policies in such a way as to make a repeat of the bad intelligence on Iraq unlikely. But when it was learned that Freeman had been particularly critical of Israeli settlement policies and had observed that the tie to Israel did not exactly serve the U.S.’ national interests, his appointment was heavily criticized. To be sure, the critics most often attacked Freeman by misrepresenting his views on China and links to Saudi Arabia, where he had served as ambassador, but everyone in Washington and the media knew that it was really all about Israel.

Bereft of any support from the White House, Freeman was doomed. Also doomed was any expectation that Washington might benefit from sound intelligence providing a realistic assessment of the threats facing the U.S., unadorned by the fake analysis dished out by interest groups like AIPAC. Leaders in the media could have actually enabled a debate about a sound foreign policy that actually works in our national interests, but they chose to walk away instead. If, as is likely, President Obama has learned his lesson from the Freeman affair and decides that it is better to go along with AIPAC than to resist it, business as usual will continue in Washington, with Israel’s current crop of right-wing fanatics, headed by Bibi Netanyahu, protected to the last drop of American blood and treasure.

Harman’s tale is somewhat different, but it also involves the Israel lobby as well as the considerable Israeli espionage effort directed against the United States. If the leaked accounts of Harman’s phone conversation with someone acting on behalf of Israeli intelligence are accurate, the congresswoman clearly knew her Israeli intelligence contact well and might have had similar conversations with him or her previously. She agreed to attempt to influence a reduction in the charges in the trial of accused AIPAC spies Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. In return, Harman’s contact promised to support her bid to become chairman of the House Permanent Committee on Intelligence by pressuring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi through threats to withhold political contributions from Israeli billionaire Haim Saban if Harman was not given the position. Harman was later spoken of as a possible candidate to become director of central intelligence and, without the FBI wiretap, which became known to Pelosi, she might have obtained either position, or possibly both in succession.

Harman has denied that she did anything wrong, and she has tried to turn the tables by accusing the government of illegally recording her conversation, a red herring introduced by those trying to minimize the significance of the affair. Make no mistake, Harman was on the receiving end of an intelligence operation. Her phone conversation was recorded because she was talking to someone who was working with Israeli intelligence, which was the target of the investigation. Intelligence officers highly prize an agent of influence, which is a well-placed politician or media figure who will do one’s bidding, and they seek to obtain that cooperation by trading favors that both they and the target know are illegal. It was illegal for Harman to promise to interfere in a court case, something that her contact clearly was aware of. It was illegal for the agent of a foreign government to pressure the speaker of the House to promote Harman. Once such favors are exchanged, the intelligence officer has leverage to demand more because his new agent will cooperate rather than have the illegal details of the relationship revealed. That is how covert operations are taught at the CIA training center and every other intelligence school in the world. There should be no uncertainty about what was taking place, even if the mainstream media and Harman’s colleagues in government don’t get it. At last report, Harman is not being investigated, she has not been criticized by anyone in the government or in either party, and she just spoke at the AIPAC convention in Washington. So much for equal justice under law.

If the Freeman and Harman affairs taken together do not provide convincing proof that Israel and its advocates are no true friends to the United States, then it is difficult to imagine what else can be used to make the case. It is time to end the special relationship and treat Israel like every other country. If Israel sends its intelligence officers to America to break the law, they must be caught, exposed, and punished, just as if they were Chinese or Russian. If they spy on the U.S. and corrupt its politicians, they must pay a price. It is almost certainly too late to give justice to Chas Freeman or to give Jane Harman the punishment she so richly deserves, but it is time for the United States to send a clear signal that while it is prepared to be a good friend to Israel, it will not stand for any more interference with our politicians and government officials.

AIPAC strives for political indoctrination for college and El-Hi students

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) might learn a thing or two from Lyndon Johnson's famous quote about FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, "Its probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."

Having received no word back from AIPAC on receiving credentials to cover their annual policy conference at the Washington Convention Center, this editor set out to pick up as many side conversations and abandoned AIPAC literature from the attendees' hotel venues.

This year's AIPAC policy conference's theme is "Relationships Matter."

At a luncheon event at the Hyatt Hotel across from the convention center, 193 student government association presidents from colleges and universities across the nation, including a fair number of historically African American universities, were treated to a right-wing message of unbridled U.S. support for Israel. Although AIPAC's website states that College Democrats of America were invited to the luncheon in addition to the College Republican National Committee, the AIPAC message was clearly conservative in nature. One student, upon leaving the luncheon, said to his colleagues that he was encouraged by the luncheon's theme of "spreading the conservative message on campus."

For AIPAC, that message is ensuring that campus student organizations toe a pro-Israel line and that all campus initiatives to disinvest in Israel are defeated.

But it is not just America's college students who are being subjected to AIPAC's right-wing propaganda blitzkrieg. This editor overheard a conversation by another AIPAC attendee about continued non-profit funding for a network of summer camps to stress support for Israel and "Jewishness" among the generation following in the footsteps of college students and the generation following that. Clearly understood in the conversation was that the effort was planning for thirty years into the future.

Speakers already featured at AIPAC's policy conference are those who represent a "Who's Who" of Israel's influence peddling in Washington: former CIA director James Woolsey; Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) executive director Robert Satloff (who replaced Dennis Ross, who now serves as a Middle East policy adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton); and former Coalition Provisional Authority press spokesman Dan Senor of the Council on Foreign Relations (and the husband of CNN's Campbell Brown. At CNN, with the examples of Campbell Brown and John King, it is best under the tutelage of CNN Washington bureau chief and former AIPAC press spokesman Wolf Blitzer to marry Jewish and convert to Judaism or possible run the risk of losing your job).

Also speaking at AIPAC was Representative Jane Harman (D-CA), who was identified by National Security Agency (NSA) "Stellar Wind" wiretaps trying to get an espionage case dropped against former AIPAC officials Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman in exchange for landing the coveted job as Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The espionage case against Rosen and Weissman was dropped by the Obama administration prior to the AIPAC conference. Harman is but one of Israel's and AIPAC's many water carriers in the U.S. Congress.

Hasidics brave the wet weather to protest at the AIPAC conference: they can be counted on to be there every year. They expected more of their collegues to be arriving from New York in time for the May 4 banquet event.

This editor recently spoke briefly to former Representative Paul Findlay (R-IL), who was driven from office by AIPAC money for refusing to bow down to Israel's dictates. Findlay later wrote a book titled, "They Dare to Speak Out" about the power of the Israel Lobby in Washington. A former top U.S. diplomat recently told this editor that at a luncheon, Rosen once told him that AIPAC was so powerful that by the end of the afternoon, Rosen could have seventy signatures of U.S. senators, with no questions asked, on a napkin he was holding up.

AIPAC conference attendees were greeted by this mobile billboard across from one of the conference hotels.

AIPAC insists that it is a private lobbying organization funded through private donations. From the license plates pulling into the convention center and hotels it appears that much of AIPAC's support comes from New York. However, given the presence of Israel's top government, military, diplomatic, parastatal, and intelligence leadership at the AIPAC policy conference, it appears that AIPAC is running afoul of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938, which requires lobbying organizations that represent foreign governments to register with the Justice Department.

FARA was originally enacted to combat Nazi German propaganda in the United States. Given AIPAC's indoctrination of college students, and summer camp-age children in their political dogma, it would appear that the Israelis and their American supporters are taking a page right out of the Nazi playbook that resulted in the passage of FARA. But AIPAC claims FARA does not apply to it. However, FARA was enacted when it became apparent that Berlin was funding the German American Bund and two camps for the indoctrination of young people, Camp Nordland in New Jersey and Camp Siegfried in New York. It all sounds very familiar.

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.

If you flip over the rock of American foreign
policy of the past century, this is what crawls out...

invasions ... bombings ... overthrowing
governments ... suppressing movements
for social change ... assassinating
political leaders ... perverting
elections ... manipulating labor unions ...
manufacturing "news" ... death squads ...
torture ... biological warfare ...
depleted uranium ... drug trafficking ...
mercenaries ...

It's not a pretty picture.
It is enough to give imperialism a bad name.

Read the full details in:

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War II.

by William Blum

"Far and away the best book on the topic."
Noam Chomsky

"I enjoyed it immensely."
Gore Vidal

"I bought several more copies to circulate to
friends with the hope of shedding new light
and understanding on their political outlooks."
Oliver Stone

"A very valuable book. The research and organization
are extremely impressive."
A. J. Langguth, author, former New York Times Bureau Chief

"A very useful piece of work, daunting in scope,
important."
Thomas Powers, author, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

"Each chapter I read made me more and more angry."
Dr. Helen Caldicott, international leader of
the anti-nuclear and environmental movements

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. China - 1945 to 1960s: Was Mao Tse-tung just paranoid?
2. Italy - 1947-1948: Free elections, Hollywood style
3. Greece - 1947 to early 1950s: From cradle of democracy to client state
4. The Philippines - 1940s and 1950s: America's oldest colony
5. Korea - 1945-1953: Was it all that it appeared to be?
6. Albania - 1949-1953: The proper English spy
7. Eastern Europe - 1948-1956: Operation Splinter Factor
8. Germany - 1950s: Everything from juvenile delinquency to terrorism
9. Iran - 1953: Making it safe for the King of Kings
10. Guatemala - 1953-1954: While the world watched
11. Costa Rica - Mid-1950s: Trying to topple an ally - Part 1
12. Syria - 1956-1957: Purchasing a new government
13. Middle East - 1957-1958: The Eisenhower Doctrine claims another backyard for America
14. Indonesia - 1957-1958: War and pornography
15. Western Europe - 1950s and 1960s: Fronts within fronts within fronts
16. British Guiana - 1953-1964: The CIA's international labor mafia
17. Soviet Union - Late 1940s to 1960s: From spy planes to book publishing
18. Italy - 1950s to 1970s: Supporting the Cardinal's orphans and techno-fascism
19. Vietnam - 1950-1973: The Hearts and Minds Circus
20. Cambodia - 1955-1973: Prince Sihanouk walks the high-wire of neutralism
21. Laos - 1957-1973: L'Armée Clandestine
22. Haiti - 1959-1963: The Marines land, again
23. Guatemala - 1960: One good coup deserves another
24. France/Algeria - 1960s: L'état, c'est la CIA
25. Ecuador - 1960-1963: A text book of dirty tricks
26. The Congo - 1960-1964: The assassination of Patrice Lumumba
27. Brazil - 1961-1964: Introducing the marvelous new world of death squads
28. Peru - 1960-1965: Fort Bragg moves to the jungle
29. Dominican Republic - 1960-1966: Saving democracy from communism by getting rid of democracy
30. Cuba - 1959 to 1980s: The unforgivable revolution
31. Indonesia - 1965: Liquidating President Sukarno ... and 500,000 others
East Timor - 1975: And 200,000 more
32. Ghana - 1966: Kwame Nkrumah steps out of line
33. Uruguay - 1964-1970: Torture -- as American as apple pie
34. Chile - 1964-1973: A hammer and sickle stamped on your child's forehead
35. Greece - 1964-1974: "Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution," said
the President of the United States
36. Bolivia - 1964-1975: Tracking down Che Guevara in the land of coup d'etat
37. Guatemala - 1962 to 1980s: A less publicized "final solution"
38. Costa Rica - 1970-1971: Trying to topple an ally -- Part 2
39. Iraq - 1972-1975: Covert action should not be confused with missionary work
40. Australia - 1973-1975: Another free election bites the dust
41. Angola - 1975 to 1980s: The Great Powers Poker Game
42. Zaire - 1975-1978: Mobutu and the CIA, a marriage made in heaven
43. Jamaica - 1976-1980: Kissinger's ultimatum
44. Seychelles - 1979-1981: Yet another area of great strategic importance
45. Grenada - 1979-1984: Lying -- one of the few growth industries in Washington
46. Morocco - 1983: A video nasty
47. Suriname - 1982-1984: Once again, the Cuban bogeyman
48. Libya - 1981-1989: Ronald Reagan meets his match
49. Nicaragua - 1981-1990: Destabilization in slow motion
50. Panama - 1969-1991: Double-crossing our drug supplier
51. Bulgaria 1990/Albania 1991: Teaching communists what democracy is all about
52. Iraq - 1990-1991: Desert holocaust
53. Afghanistan - 1979-1992: America's Jihad
54. El Salvador - 1980-1994: Human rights, Washington style
55. Haiti - 1986-1994: Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?
56. The American Empire - 1992 to present
Notes
Appendix I: This is How the Money Goes Round
Appendix II: Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-1945
Appendix III: U. S. Government Assassination Plots
Index
_______________________________________________________________