Former FBI translatorSibel Edmonds's testimony released

Yesterday, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds's sworn testimony in a deposition in an Ohio elections complaint case filed by Representative Jean Schmidt (R-OH) against her Democratic challenger David Krikorian was released.

Edmonds's deposition matches with previous WMR reports on her deposition.

The sitting congresswoman mentioned below who was ensnared in a Turkish "hooking" operation involving a lesbian agent was previously reported by WMR to be Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee's Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. The late Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA) is also mentioned as providing classified information to both Israel and Turkey in return for bribes and "other serious criminal conduct."

WMR's previous reports that House Speaker Dennis Hastert was involved in a homosexual circle involving congressional staffers also appears to be mentioned in the deposition, along with the fact that Hastert's activities were known to foreign intelligence agents and that the foreign agents sometimes participated in trysts at Hastert's townhouse. On October 7, 2006, WMR reported on Hastert's homosexual trysts: "The rumors about another top GOP member of the House being involved in sexual encounters with young "men for hire" are confirmed to WMR by well-placed sources in Washington's gay community. The member in question is House Speaker Dennis Hastert, whose 'alternate' life style is the primary reason for him and his staff covering up the scandal involving ex-Florida GOP Rep. Mark Foley and his lewd messages sent to underage male congressional pages. Hastert's penchant to receive anal sex is well-known to our sources in DC's gay community. Additionally, Hastert's reported extremely small penis is the subject of many jokes among Washington's gay circles." After leaving Congress, Hastert became a lobbyist for the Turkish government.

Edmonds statement:

"I believe he passed away, and Tom Lantos' office would be not only with the bribe, but also in disclosing highest level protected U.S. intelligence and weapons technology information both to Israel and to Turkey. His office was also involved with that. It was not only bribery, but it was other very serious criminal conduct.

Roy Blunt is there. There have been individuals with a question mark there. The reason there's a question mark is I lacked -- I was terminated by April 2002, but this particular Congresswoman -- the Turkish -- these Turkish organizations and operatives, if they can't do it by money, they do by blackmail. So they collect information on sexual lives and other information like that, and with this particular Congresswoman, it being 2000 until I left, they -- this individual, this Congresswoman's married with children, grown children, but she is bisexual.

So they have sent Turkish female agents, and that Turkish female agents work for Turkish government, and have sexual relationship with this Congresswoman in her townhouse actually in this area, and the entire episodes of their sexual conduct was being filmed because the entire house, this Congressional woman's house was bugged. So they have all that documented to be used for certain things that they wanted to request when I left. So I don't know whether she -- that Congresswoman complied and gave. That's why I couldn't use her name because I don't -- I meant her face because I don't know if she did anything illegal afterwards.

But she was -- there are things; information was being collected for blackmail purposes, and her lesbian relationship, and they, the Turkish entities, wanted both congressional related favoritism from her, but also her husband was in a high position in the area in the state she was elected from, and these Turkish entities ran certain illegal operations, and they wanted her husband's help. But I don't know if she provided them with those. I left. I was terminated.

Q And can you tell me how you know all that, everything you just told me?

A I can't discuss the intelligence gathering method by the FBI, but in general terms, when foreign targets among themselves discuss how they were going to achieve certain goals, objectives, and if those communications are collected and recorded, not only do you have that communications, but in some cases they involved field office surveillance team to see that actually they completed.

For example, if they say -- somebody says at five o'clock they're going to bug his house, the surveillance team would go out and see that he had (unintelligible). So there were various ways that things were collected.

Q All right. So just to make sure I understand this, the Turkish entities were at least preparing to blackmail this Congresswoman.

A Correct.

Q And is this Congresswoman still a sitting member of Congress?

A Yes.

Q And why, if you know, would they want to blackmail this Congresswoman?

A I don't know what reasons they had, why they just didn't do money. They needed -- I was trained as a language specialist by my agent for -- to find personal information, and one of the things that we was taught in the FBI -- everyone was taught in the counterintelligence -- that the target U.S. persons, whether they are in Congress or executive branch or whatever, first go by foreign entities to what they refer to as hooking period, and it was very common; it's a very common way of trying to find vulnerability, and that is sexual, financial,any other kinds of greeds, and it was -- it was done a lot, was being done a lot, and in some cases certain people from Pentagon would send a list of individuals with access to sensitive data, whether weapons technology or nuclear technology, and this information would include all their sexual preference, how much they owed on their homes, if they have gambling issues, and the State Department, high level State Department person would provide it to these foreign operatives, and those foreign operatives then would go and hook those Pentagon people, whether they were at RAND or some other Air Force base.

And then the hooking period would take some times. Sometimes it takes months, sometimes one year. They would ask for small favor, but eventually after they reviewed the targets that the U.S. person -- some small favor, then they would go blackmail and that person would give them everything, nuclear related information, weapons related information. It always worked for them. So it was not always money.

Q If you know, what was it that these Turkish entities wanted from this Congresswoman?

A I know for sure that Armenian genocide was one, but also where she came from, that city or the district where she came from is where certain Turkish operatives, lobby groups run illegal businesses for fund raising for themselves to generate money, and for laundering that money they needed her influence in that district where she is from and also her husband because he husband was also involved, had some high level position, not an elected person, with where she came from, and they had another Representative who was making it possible, but supposedly she at that point was kind of -- was an obstacle.

That's all I know.

Q In your experience, I mean, was this hooking technique used with other members of Congress by Turkish entities?

A Well, when I worked for the FBI, I work on operations that were not only current, but specific period of 1996 till 2000, 2001, December, 2003 January. So there were a lot of things that certain field office had provided me to go over, and some of that I didn't complete, but one example would be with regard to Mr. Hastert. For example, he used the townhouse that was not his residence for certain not very morally accepted activities.

Now, whether that was being used as blackmail I don't know, but the fact that foreign entities knew about this, in fact, they sometimes participated in some of those not maybe morally well activities in that particular townhouse that was supposed to be an office, not a house, residence at certain hours, certain days, evenings of the week.

So I can't say if that was used as blackmail or not, but certain activities they would share. They were known.

Q With respect to the Congresswoman who they were -- you don't know what happened ultimately because you left, right?

A Correct.

Q Or you were terminated.

6 A Correct.

Q But with respect to that Congresswoman you said one of the things that they wanted was you said Armenian genocide. I assume you were referring to the fact they wanted her support --

A Yes.

Q -- to oppose the Armenian genocide resolution.

A Yes, and she was not leaning that way during that stage, until this hooking start.

Q And does it surprise you that theywould go to those lengths to gain her opposition to such a resolution?

A Not at all.

Q Why not?

A I don't know what their reason is, but they are going to this extent. I mean, they may have -- I can only guess what their reasons are, but I think they would do anything. It's a very important issue, and whether it's money, whether sexual blackmail, anything they would do to not let this happen or get the support so it wouldn't happen."

U.S. Air Intelligence Agency report stated Iran carried out PanAm 103 bombing

The neocons, in their normal group think fashion, are now teaming up to launch all-out attacks on Scotland for releasing from prison convicted PanAm 103 bomber Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi. Some neocons are urging a boycott of Scottish products and tourism. Of course, the demonization of Scotland comes as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visits Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London and follows Israeli attacks on Sweden's government over an Aftonbladet report on Israelis trafficking in Palestinian body parts removed from the bodies young Palestinians killed by Israeli troops, Ireland's former President and UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson for receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, and Norway over a boycott of Israeli products by a Norwegian regional government.

The blaming of Libya for the take down of PanAm 103 was concocted by the CIA and Mossad, working in tandem, to cover up their activities related to weapons smuggling with Iran in the 1980s. Had Iran been officially blamed for the December 1988 attack on PanAm 103, retaliation for the USS Vincennes attack on an Iran Air Airbus-300 in July 1988, the lucrative joint CIA-Mossad weapons smuggling program to and from Iran during the Iran-Iraq war would have become an embarrassment. Therefore, a cover story was created to blame Libya for the bombing and two Libyan agents, Megrahi, who was later convicted, and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, who was acquitted based on the same flimsy and dubious evidence used to convict Megrahi, were named as the perpetrators.

The Iranian connection was never revealed by the CIA, which was under orders to cook the intelligence to pin the blame for Lockerbie on Libya.

A declassified Air Intelligence Agency, formerly SECRET NOFORN WNINTEL, dated March 4, 1991, states that Iranian Interior Minister Ayatollah Ali Akbar Mohtashemi ordered the attack on PanAm 103 in retaliation for the Iran Airbus downing by the U.S. Navy. The relevant paragraph in the redacted report states:

"Mohtashemi is closely connected with the Al Abas and Abu Nidal terrorist groups. He is actually a long-time friend of Abu Nidal. He has recently paid 10 million dollars in cash and gold to these two organizations to carry out terrorist activities and was the one who paid the same amount to bomb Pan Am flight 103 in retaliation for the U.S. shootdown of the Iranian Airbus. Mohtashemi has also spent time in Lebanon."

Two veteran ABC News correspondents, one in Paris and the other in Nicosia, later told this editor that the wire transfer of $10 million from Iran via a Greek bank to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley for the construction of the Pan Am 103 bomb was intercepted by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) Ayios Nikolaos listening station in Cyprus. Both correspondents said the blaming of Libya for the Lockerbie bombing was fantasy from the beginning. It was later revealed that Nidal, who later was given asylum by Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and died there under suspicious circumstances in 2002, had alternately worked for the CIA, Mossad, and Egyptian and Kuwaiti intelligence.

The CIA and Mossad went to extreme lengths to keep their secret arms smuggling network to Iran from exposure. This was during the time of the Iran-contra scandal and the transition from Ronald Reagan to George H. W. Bush. Bush was deeply enmeshed in the Iran-contra scandal and its links to the smuggling of weapons to Ayatollah Khomeini's government in Iran.

In 1987, the up-and-coming Christian Democratic Union Premier of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, Uwe Barschel, began objecting to the use of Hartenholm airport in his state for the smuggling of weapons to and from Iran. The Iranian-run airport was also used to smuggle nuclear materials and drugs. Barschel was lured to the Hotel Beau-Rivage in Geneva by what WMR was told were CIA and Mossad agents operating under diplomatic cover with the assistance of the Federal German Bundesnacrichtendienst(BND) intelligence service. On October 11, 1987, Barschel was discovered dead and fully-clothed in his hotel room's water-filled bathtub. The drug Lorazepam was found in his blood stream. The autopsy of Barschel indicated force was used against him before his death.

Years ago, the editor was provided with copies of TOP SECRET CIA cables intercepted by East German intelligence in 1987. The cables are between the military attache at the US. Embassy in Bern and the Joint Chiefs' Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center (ITAC) at the Pentagon, with copies to the CIA's Deputy Director of Operations and the Director of the NSA, that suggest that the decision was made to assassinate Barschel, code named "Perch," after two agents, a CIA agent code named "Lokal" and a Mossad agent code-named "Rabbi" met with Barschel in Geneva, code named "Laketown," only to discover the Schleswig-Holstein Premier was "unyielding" to their demands about permitting his state to be used for Iranian arms and drug smuggling. The German word for the fish "perch" is "Barsch."

The second intercepted CIA cable states: "Jerry took Perch to Temple met with Lokal and Rabbi at 2130 Perch unyielding refuses coop Rabbi ordered disposition alternative w asap advise no act." In can be assumed that the CIA was being informed that Mossad was recommending that Barschel be eliminated and the CIA was informing Langley that no action was required on the part of the CIA.

Two days after Barschel's meeting with the CIA and Mossad agents, his body was discovered in the bathtub in Room 317 at the Beau-Rivage.

A little over a year later, Pan Am 103, would be blown up over the skies of Scotland. To protect the Iranian-CIA-Mossad smuggling link, Libya would be framed for the attack. And in an added bonus, a group of CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) personnel who may have been aware of the CIA's connections to the Iran-contra and Israeli weapons smuggling operations with Iran happened to be on board the ill-fated Boeing 747: Matthew Gannon, the CIA's deputy station chief in Beirut; Major Chuck McKee, assigned to the DIA station in Beirut; Ronald Lariviere, a security officer at the U.S. embassy in Beirut; and Daniel O'Connor, a security officer at the U.S. embassy in Nicosia. Assistant Deputy Director Michael S. Bernstein, a special agent for the Office of Special Investigation at the Department of Justice.

Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill, who is under tremendous political fire for releasing Megrahi to Libya while he lives his last days with prostate cancer, may still have the last triumph. Megrahi is vowing to present new evidence establishing his innocence. Barack Obama, who shows more and more by his actions that he still answers to his old employer, the CIA -- while he worked for the CIA front Business International Corporation and perhaps before and after -- wants Megrahi kept under house arrest in Libya.

There is little wonder why the Israel Lobby and Obama and FBI director Robert Mueller are so incensed over MacAskill's actions. Mueller was assistant to Attorney General Richard Thornburgh in 1989 and prosecuted both Megrahi and Fhimah, as well as long-time CIA operative Manuel Noriega of Panama. Obama and Mueller are clearly trying to cover the tracks of their respective agencies as Megrahi prepares to tell all.

The Torture Archive - 83,000 Pages Now Online, Full-text and Indexed

Washington D.C., August 25, 2009 - The National Security Archive announces the publication of the Torture Archive -- more than 83,000 pages of primary source documents (and thousands more to come) related to the detention and interrogation of individuals by the United States, in connection with the conduct of hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in the broader context of the "global war on terror."

The goal of the Torture Archive is to become the online institutional memory for essential evidence on torture in U.S. policy. Many of these documents are available in multiple locations on the Internet and in numerous private collections, thanks to landmark Freedom of Information Act and habeas litigation, leaks from whistleblowers, public relations releases from government, investigative reporting by journalists including the Torturing Democracy team, and Congressional investigations. But the disparate locations, enormous volume of documents, and lack of indexing or standard cataloging have presented real difficulties for users.

With support from the Open Society Institute and the JEHT Foundation since 2006, the National Security Archive has undertaken to bring together all these materials in digital formats, organize and catalog them for maximum utility and access, and publish them online in multiple packages including a comprehensive searchable database. By combining released executive branch policy memoranda, legal documents from U.S. and foreign courts, and on-the-ground information about actual practices by the U.S. military and intelligence personnel, the Torture Archive presents a comprehensive view of the war on terrorism, its foundations and its implications.

This initial launch of the Torture Archive includes the complete set of declassified Combatant Status Review Tribunal and Administrative Review Board files from the Pentagon, and thousands of documents resulting from FOIA litigation brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Archive and other plaintiffs. The Torture Archive will continue to add documents as they are released through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation or Executive discretion.

Together with the documentary film, Torturing Democracy, and the companion resources posted for viewers of the film, the Torture Archive provides multiple pathways for multiple levels of users, ranging from the high school student seeking a single key torture memo, to the dissertation writer needing a complete reference database of primary sources. Visitors can view the interactive timeline, the full annotated transcript of the film, interview transcripts, and YouTube excerpts, as well as the complete streaming video of the 90-minute film. Users can search the full database of documents by title, date, organization or keywords.

Special recognition for documentation efforts above and beyond the call of duty should go to the American Civil Liberties Union for the spectacularly successful FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Defense and other federal agencies for records on the treatment of prisoners apprehended by the United States in the "war on terror." This landmark litigation sparked strong open government rulings from federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein (Southern District of New York), is still pending in the courts, and has produced thousands of documents that would still be secret today if not for the ACLU's efforts. The ACLU filed their original FOIA requests in October 2003, together with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense, and Veterans for Peace. After the revelations of the Abu Ghraib photographs in April 2004, the ACLU and its partners renewed the FOIA request, and went to court in June 2004 when the government failed to respond.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has also brought major litigation that has contributed to the documentary and public record that constitutes the Torture Archive. CCR particularly has coordinated the more than 500 attorneys who have worked pro bono in representing the detainees at Guantanamo, in proceedings that have also placed much new evidence on the record. The Associated Press brought the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that first opened the identities of the detainees at Guantanamo and forced the release of thousands of pages of related hearing transcripts. And the Senate Armed Services Committee, especially under the chairmanship of Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan), has pursued the torture issue from Abu Ghraib to the present and has compelled the release of hundreds of key documents and illuminating testimonies.

Numerous investigative journalists have also contributed to the documentary record by posting online at various Web sites the original records they obtained through their reporting, often through leaks from whistleblowers, or by quoting the records at length in their published articles. This list notably includes Seymour Hersh and Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, Dana Priest and Barton Gellman of the Washington Post, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, Charles Hanley of the AP, Carlotta Gall and Tim Golden and Scott Shane of The New York Times, and the staff of Salon.com. Other documents in the Torture Archive have come from the National Security Archive’s own FOIA and declassification requests.

The Archive thanks the Washington Research Library Consortium for hosting the Torture Archive in yet another example of cooperative digital publishing innovation, as pioneered by the Archive’s work with our partners here at the Gelman Library of The George Washington University.

• Document acquisition: Kristin Adair, Yvette White, Owen Davies, Yvette Chin, Tom Blanton, Peter Kornbluh, Sherry Jones, and Carey Murphy.

• Document compilation and preparation: Wendy Valdes.

• Indexers: Stacy Chambers, Autumn Kladder, and Lisa Thompson.

• Digital acquisition: Suboh Suboh

• Digital publication: Allison Zhang (WRLC)

• Project management: Joyce Battle, Carlos Osorio, Tom Blanton.

• Web production: Michael Evans

Bill Fletcher Keynote at Veterans for Peace Nat'l Convention

Campaign against Presidential Medal of Freedom winners stoked by UN-Israel Lobby liaison

WMR has learned from UN sources that the campaign by the Israel Lobby in the United States to discredit former Irish President and UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson was aided and abetted by a long-time UN liaison "consultant" who has worked for both Secretary Generals Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon.

The consultant attempted to put the imprimatur of the UN on a number of news stories that were placed in the major media. On May 10, former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton, who is now a senior fellow with the neocon citadel, the American Enterprise Institute, penned a screed against Robinson in the Wall Street Journal that accused Robinson of tolerating an anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American platform at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in 2001.

Major Jewish organizations in the United States criticized President Obama for awarding Robinson the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony yesterday. Obama was also criticized by the minions of the Israel Lobby for awarding the same medal to retired South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The same Israeli Lobby interests were also at the forefront of criticism of former President Jimmy Carter for his defense of the Palestinians and his likening their situation to blacks in apartheid South Africa. Carter was likewise accused of "anti-Semitism," a rather familiar refrain from apologists for Israel's brand of apartheid practiced against Palestinians and Israeli Arabs alike.

The program to discredit Robinson and Tutu may have had the opposite effect of what Jewish organizations and the Israel Lobby intended. The venal barrage against Robinson and Tutu, both of whom are highly thought of among UN diplomats, has created a backlash against both the Israel Lobby in the United States and Israel, according to our UN sources.

The actions against Robinson and Tutu are not helped by the fact that the Israeli government is refusing to cooperate with a UN probe into Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

Critics of the Durban conference cite the discussions held there about the nature of Zionism as a racist philosophy. If the case of former U.S. Representative and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney is any indication, Israel has institutionalized racism. After McKinney and her party of human rights campaigners were arrested in international waters in June for trying to deliver critical humanitarian supplies to the beleaguered people of Gaza, McKinney was put into a prison in Ashdod, assigned prisoner number 88794, and segregated into a cell with female Ethiopian economic refugees. And if that bit of Jim Crow tactics with a Kosher flair was not enough, McKinney told WMR that she was subjected by her Israeli jailers to everything "but a full body search."

WMR has also learned that Israel's El Al Airlines is doing a booming business in transporting expelled critics of Israel back to their home countries. Last year, American Professor Norman Finkelstein, a critic of Israeli policies, was expelled from Israel after being detained for 24 hours. Last year, Israel also expelled American Professor Richard Falk, the UN's special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, after being detained in a shabby Israeli prison cell. Finkelstein and Falk are both Jewish.

Other travelers to Israel, including Americans of Arab descent and those supporting the Palestinian cause, are routinely taken into custody by Israeli security forces, imprisoned, and expelled on the first available El Al flight.

UPDATE 1X. JFK Jr.'s plane crash was originally treated as murder investigation

WMR has learned from a source who was a close friend of the late John F. Kennedy, Jr. that the FBI originally treated the July 16, 1999, crash of his Piper Saratoga in the waters off Martha' Vineyard as a murder investigation. Kennedy, his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and his sister-in-law Lauren Bessette were killed when their plane plummeted into the Atlantic en route from Caldwell Airport in Essex County, New Jersey to Martha's Vineyard. Kennedy's wife was also three month's pregnant with a boy.

Kennedy was to drop off Lauren Bessette at Martha's Vineyard before flying to Hyannisport to attend his cousin Rory's wedding.

According to the Kennedy friend, the son of the late president and publisher of "George" magazine, was about ready to announce his run for the U.S. Senate from New York. Kennedy was acutely aware of his vulnerability and hired on a personal security team just prior to his announcing for the Senate. Kennedy also decided, unlike all previous flights, not to file a flight plan at Caldwell. Instead, Kennedy, instead of filing an FAA flight plan, provided his own "flight following" by having a Kennedy friend waiting at the Martha's Vineyard airport. When the plane was overdue the friend notified Woods Hole Coast Guard Station which, in turn, notified the FAA and other agencies.

According to the source, Kennedy, contrary to press reports, decided not to fly over open ocean from Montauk at the eastern tip of Long Island to the Vineyard but instead hugged the Connecticut and Rhode Island coast lines until flying direct to the island. Kennedy did not identify his ultimate destination on the radio - he said that6 he was flying "east of Teterboro."

Fearing for his safety, Kennedy thought it best to be within sight of the coastline. According to the Kennedy friend, Kennedy told him his plans prior to his departure. Kennedy had also arranged for all the onboard bags, including his own and that of his family, to be hand searched by security personnel at Caldwell prior to departure. Kennedy decided not to take along a co-pilot because he felt his flight was somewhat of a risk. Kennedy's friend said Kennedy was always concerned about the "underdog" and did not want to put a co-pilot in any potential danger. In any event, Kennedy felt confident of his and his family's security since he had retained a security firm to provide for his protection prior to his Senate run announcement.

Media reports at the time of the disappearance suggested that the weather near Martha's Vineyard was "hazy" and Kennedy may have become disoriented, causing the crash. However, the Kennedy friend states that this was not the case and cites the fact that visibility around the Vineyard was clear at 9:41 pm when the plane disappeared from the sky. The following is from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report on the crash and quotes the Martha's Vineyard tower manager:

"During an interview, the tower manager stated that no actions were taken to augment or edit the ASOS during his shift. He also stated the following:

'The visibility, present weather, and sky condition at the approximate time of the accident was probably a little better than what was being reported. I say this because I remember aircraft on visual approaches saying they had the airport in sight between 10 and 12 miles out. I do recall being able to see those aircraft and I do remember seeing the stars out that night...To the best of my knowledge, the ASOS was working as advertised that day with no reported problems or systems log errors.'"

ASOS is the Automated Surface Observation System. Media reports claimed that visibility was around 2 miles with haze, a far cry from what the tower manager at Martha's Vineyard stated to the NTSB.

The weather report around the time of the crash also indicated clear weather in the area:

"2053...Clear at or below 12,000 feet; visibility 8 miles; winds 250 degrees at 7 knots; temperature 23 degrees C; dewpoint 19 degrees C; altimeter 30.09 inches of Hg.

2153...Clear at or below 12,000 feet; visibility 10 miles; winds 240 degrees at 10 knots, gusts to 15 knots; temperature 24 degrees C; dewpoint 18 degrees C; altimeter 30.10 inches of Hg"

Some twelve minutes after Kennedy's plane crashing, visibility around Martha's Vineyard was reported at 10 miles, described as near perfect conditions by professional pilots.

There were also questions raised about Kennedy's piloting skills. However, he had logged in 310 hours. The NTSB report also reported Kennedy's most recent flight record:

"In the 15 months before the accident, the pilot had flown about 35 flight legs either to or from the Essex County/Teterboro, New Jersey, area and the Martha's Vineyard/Hyannis, Massachusetts, area. The pilot flew over 17 of these legs without a CFI [Certified Flight Instructor] on board, including at least 5 at night. The pilot's last known flight in the accident airplane without a CFI on board was on May 28, 1999."

Kennedy's most recent three legs were with a CFI on board and along the same route taken on July 16 but significant rain and a 800 foot ceiling. Kennedy had, according to his friend, been flying for 17 years. Before Kennedy flew the Piper Saratoga he flew a Cessna 182.

There were also media reports that Kennedy was impeded by a foot cast from an accident he suffered while parasailing. However, according to Kennedy's friend, the cast had aready been removed when Kennedy took to the skies on July 16.

The Kennedy friend also stated that he learned from an FBI agent, as well as a Secret Service agent, who were friends of the Kennedy family that the FBI originally treated their investigation of the plane crash as a possible murder. Kennedy no longer enjoyed Secret Service protection as a protected person, according to the friend.

FBI agents, after the crash, fanned out across convenience and other stores in the Caldwell, New Jersey area and asked if anyone had recently purchased epoxy. According to the French magazine, France Dimanche, a pilot at the Caldwell airport had reported he heard a "weird noise" coming from Kennedy's plane on takeoff. The FBI theorized that a whistle had been glued on the aft section of the plane in order to emit a distinct, unique, and high-pitched noise for the benefit of someone on the ground who wanted to correctly identify the plane when it descended for landing at Martha's Vineyard.

The FBI asked pilots if a whistle attached to the rear of a plane such as Kennedy's could be heard from the cockpit. The answer from all the pilots was no because the sound would only be heard by those on the ground as the plane passed overhead while descending to an audible range. There was also a belief that if the whistle had been fashioned from a water-soluble material, such as plaster-of-paris, it would have dissolved in the seawater.

The FBI discovered that there was "suspicious boating activity" in an area of Martha's Vineyard where Kennedy's plane was descending to 2000 feet for its final approach to the airport. The "suspicious" boaters claimed to be fishing for striped bass. However, when the FBI asked local fishermen to corroborate the suspicious boaters' story, they stated that the particular area where they were discovered was not an area where Atlantic striped bass would be found. In fact, salt water striped bass do not start to run in Massachusetts coastal waters in great numbers until the autumn.

The FBI also found an unusual number of extra batteries in the fishermens' boat. The FBI was suspicious of the boat's contents because after the plane's wreckage was discovered, investigators found, according to Kennedy's friend, that every light bulb, including that in the emergency flashlight, had been blown out on the plane and every circuit board, including those in the engine sensors and other electronic equipment, had been literally "melted." FBI agents on the scene preliminarily concluded that a "massive electromagnetic event" caused Kennedy's plane to crash. FBI agents also found that the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) had its battery removed, possibly before the flight. Every simulation the FBI conducted of a plane in Kennedy's situation, with all lights off at night and with only the engine and the vacuum pump-operated attitude indicator functioning, resulted in the same result: the plane crashing into the water.

Before the FBI could begin examining the ocean floor for any "special equipment" that may have been thrown overboard from the fishing boat, their "murder" investigation was abruptly called off by FBI headquarters in Washington.

Kennedy was preparing to re-tool "George" magazine to take on investigations of a number of major stories, not least of which was the actual story behind the assassination of his father in Dallas on November 22, 1963. According to an article in Germany's Bild am Sonntag on August 1, 1999, Kennedy was also preparing to meet with the deputy chief of Mossad, Amiran Levine, at the Oak Room in Manhattan's Plaza Hotel the Wednesday after Kennedy was killed. The subject was the assassination of Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 and that Rabin was assassinated by one of his body guards and not the convicted murderer Yigal Amir.

Kennedy's friend said the real priority of the "George" publisher was to re-open the case of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the role that the father of the all-but-announced Republican presidential candidate for the upcoming 2000 election -- George W. Bush -- played in the assassination. Apparently, some documents had come into Kennedy's possession that pointed to George H. W. Bush as a prime participant, on behalf of the CIA, in President Kennedy's murder.

On a 1997 visit to see Cuban President Fidel Castro in Havana for an interview for "George," the Cuban President reportedly told Kennedy a number of details about those behind his father's assassination. The occasion of Kennedy Jr.'s visit was the 35th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis between his father and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. According to Kennedy's friend, Castro confided to Kennedy that a mafia ring headed up by Meyer Lansky, who lost his Cuban gambling holdings to Castro's revolution, and a Canadian Zionist veteran of Israel's Haganah army, Louis Bloomfield, were the primary planners of the Dallas "hit" on his father. Jack Ruby, who killed the alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, worked directly for Lansky's organization, Kennedy was told.

Although the information on J.F.K. Jr.'s plans to more thoroughly examine the facts of his father's assassination came from a single source -- a friend of the late Kennedy Jr. -- this editor is in a unique position to corroborate part of the story.

On Saturday, July 17, 1999, I was driving to a hotel in Crystal City, Virginia to proctor a certification examination for a group of computer security professionals. Listening to the radio, the bulletin came across that John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane was missing. The news came as a body blow. In a few weeks, I was scheduled to meet with Kennedy at his magazine's offices in Washington, DC to discuss hiring on as one of a few investigative journalists Kennedy wanted to dig deep into a number of cases, but most importantly that of his father's assassination. Kennedy had made initial contact with me via a colleague with The Village Voice. I signaled my readiness to do whatever Kennedy wanted because, first of all, I have always been an admirer of the Kennedy family, and after twelve years under Bush presidencies, that admiration has developed into a loyalty for which I make no apologies.

My past discussions with President Kennedy's press secretary Pierre Salinger and Texas Governor John Connally led me to believe that the young Kennedy was on to the story of a lifetime -- a lifetime that for Kennedy Jr. would be tragically snuffed out early.

After I heard the news report about Kennedy's plane and knowing of his plans, I knew deep down that he was gone and that the renewed investigation of America's worst crime of the 20th century was dead along with him. Little did I realize at the time, but I heard the news about Kennedy as I was driving along Route 110 past the side of the Pentagon where the worst crime of the 21st century would take place under the administration of George W. Bush.

In the end, Hillary Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate seat that Kennedy was to run for. Kennedy's sister, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, would see her own hopes to be appointed to the Senate seat dashed when, according to John H. Kennedy Jr.s' friend, Senator Charles Schumer and Barack Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel conspired to have New York Governor David Paterson appoint a virtual unknown, Kirsten Gillibrand, to the seat. Caroline Kennedy was instead offered a consolation prize of the post of U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, a position that Schumer and Emanuel knew in advance she would never accept.

The Anti-Empire Report Number 72

August 4th, 2009
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

Keeping track of the empire's crimes

If you catch the CIA with its hand in the cookie jar and the Agency admits the obvious — what your eyes can plainly see — that its hand is indeed in the cookie jar, it means one of two things: a) the CIA's hand is in several other cookie jars at the same time which you don't know about and they hope that by confessing to the one instance they can keep the others covered up; or b) its hand is not really in the cookie jar — it's an illusion to throw you off the right scent — but they want you to believe it.

There have been numerous news stories in recent months about secret CIA programs, hidden from Congress, inspired by former vice-president Dick Cheney, in operation since the September 11 terrorist attacks, involving assassination of al Qaeda operatives or other non-believers-in-the-Empire abroad without the knowledge of their governments. The Agency admits to some sort of program having existed, but insists that it was canceled; and if it was an assassination program it was canceled before anyone was actually assassinated. Another report has the US military, not the CIA, putting the plan — or was it a different plan? — into operation, carrying out several assassinations including one in Kenya that proved to be a severe embarrassment and helped lead to the quashing of the program.¹

All of this can be confusing to those following the news. And rather irrelevant. We already know that the United States has been assassinating non-believers, or suspected non-believers, with regularity, and impunity, in recent years, using unmanned planes (drones) firing missiles, in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia, if not elsewhere. (Even more victims have been produced from amongst those who happened to be in the same house, car, wedding party, or funeral as the non-believer.) These murders apparently don't qualify as "assassinations", for somehow killing "terrorists" from 2000 feet is morally and legally superior to doing so from two feet away.

But whatever the real story is behind the current rash of speculation, we should not fall into the media's practice of at times intimating that multiple or routine CIA assassination attempts would be something shocking or at least very unusual.

I've compiled a list of CIA assassination attempts, successful and unsuccessful, against prominent foreign political figures, from 1949 through 2003, which, depending on how you count it, can run into the hundreds (targeting Fidel Castro alone totals 634 according to Cuban intelligence)²; the list can be updated by adding the allegedly al Qaeda leaders among the drone attack victims of recent years. Assassination and torture are the two things governments are most loath to admit to, and try their best to cover up. It's thus rare to find a government document or recorded statement mentioning a particular plan to assassinate someone. There is, however, an abundance of compelling circumstantial evidence to work with. The list can be found here.

For those of you who collect lists about splendid US foreign policy post-World War II, here are a few more that, lacking anything better to do, I've put together: Attempts to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which had been democratically-elected.

After his June 4 Cairo speech, President Obama was much praised for mentioning the 1953 CIA overthrow of Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh. But in his talk in Ghana on July 11 he failed to mention the CIA coup that ousted Ghanian president Kwame Nkrumah in 1966³, referring to him only as a "giant" among African leaders. The Mossadegh coup is one of the most well-known CIA covert actions. Obama could not easily get away without mentioning it in a talk in the Middle East looking to mend fences. But the Nkrumah ouster is one of the least known; indeed, not a single print or broadcast news report in the American mainstream media saw fit to mention it at the time of the president's talk. Like it never happened.

And the next time you hear that Africa can't produce good leaders, people who are committed to the welfare of the masses of their people, think of Nkrumah and his fate. And think of Patrice Lumumba, overthrown in the Congo 1960-61 with the help of the United States; Agostinho Neto of Angola, against whom Washington waged war in the 1970s, making it impossible for him to institute progressive changes; Samora Machel of Mozambique against whom the CIA supported a counter-revolution in the 1970s-80s period; and Nelson Mandela of South Africa (now married to Machel's widow), who spent 28 years in prison thanks to the CIA.⁴

• Gross interference in democratic elections in at least 30 countries⁵
• Waging war/military action, either directly or in conjunction with a proxy army, in some 30 countries
• Dropping bombs on the people of more than 30 countries
• Attempts to suppress dozens of populist/nationalist movements in every corner of the world⁶

The Myths of Afghanistan, past and present

On the Fourth of July, Senator Patrick Leahy declared he was optimistic that, unlike the Soviet forces that were driven from Afghanistan 20 years ago, US forces could succeed there. The Democrat from Vermont stated:

"The Russians were sent running as they should have been. We helped send them running. But they were there to conquer the country. We've made it very clear, and everybody I talk to within Afghanistan feels the same way: they know we're there to help and we're going to leave. We've made it very clear we are going to leave. And it's going to be turned back to them. The ones that made the mistakes in the past are those that tried to conquer them."⁷

Leahy is a long-time liberal on foreign-policy issues, a champion of withholding US counter-narcotics assistance to foreign military units guilty of serious human-rights violations, and an outspoken critic of robbing terrorist suspects of their human and legal rights. Yet he is willing to send countless young Americans to a living hell, or horrible death, or maimed survival.

And for what? Every point he made in his statement is simply wrong.

The Russians were not in Afghanistan to conquer it. The Soviet Union had existed next door to the country for more than 60 years without any kind of invasion. It was only when the United States intervened in Afghanistan to replace a government friendly to Moscow with one militantly anti-communist that the Russians invaded to do battle with the US-supported Islamic jihadists; precisely what the United States would have done to prevent a communist government in Canada or Mexico.

It's also rather difficult for the United States to claim that it's in Afghanistan to help the people there when it's killed tens of thousands of simply for resisting the American invasion and occupation or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time; not a single one of the victims has been identified as having had any kind of connection to the terrorist attack in the US of September 11, 2001, the event usually cited by Washington as justification for the military intervention. Moreover, Afghanistan is now permeated with depleted uranium, cluster bombs-cum-landmines, white phosphorous, a witch's brew of other charming chemicals, and a population, after 30 years of almost non-stop warfare, of physically and mentally mutilated human beings, exceedingly susceptible to the promise of paradise, or at least relief, sold by the Taliban.

As to the US leaving ... utterly meaningless propaganda until it happens. Ask the people of South Korea — 56 years of American occupation and still counting; ask the people of Japan — 64 years. And Iraq? Would you want to wager your life's savings on which decade it will be that the last American soldier and military contractor leaves?

It's not even precise to say that the Russians were sent running. That was essentially Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev's decision, and it was more of a political decision than a military one. Gorbachev's fondest ambition was to turn the Soviet Union into a West-European style social democracy, and he fervently wished for the approval of those European leaders, virtually all of whom were cold-war anti-communists and opposed the Soviet intervention into Afghanistan.

There has been as much of the same "causes" for wars that did not happen as for wars that did.

Henry Allingham died in Britain on July 18 at age 113, believed to have been the world's oldest man. A veteran of World War I, he spent his final years reminding the British people about their service members killed during the war, which came to about a million: "I want everyone to know," he said during an interview in November. "They died for us."⁸

The whole million? Each one died for Britain? In the most useless imperialist war of the 20th century? No, let me correct that — the most useless imperialist war of any century. The British Empire, the French Empire, the Russian Empire, and the wannabe American Empire joined in battle against the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire as youthful bodies and spirits sank endlessly into the wretched mud of Belgium and Germany, the pools of blood of Russia and France. The wondrous nobility of it all is enough to make you swallow hard, fight back the tears, light a few candles, and throw up. Imagine, by the middle of this century Vietnam veterans in their 90s and 100s will be speaking of how each of their 58,000 war buddies died for America. By 2075 we'll be hearing the same stirring message from ancient vets of Iraq and Afghanistan. How many will remember that there was a large protest movement against their glorious, holy crusades, particularly Vietnam and Iraq?

Supreme nonsense

Senate hearings to question a nominee for the Supreme Court are a supreme bore. The sine qua non for President Obama choosing Sonia Sotomayor appears to be that she's a woman with a Hispanic background. A LATINA! How often that word was used by her supporters. She would be the first LATINA on the Supreme Court! Dios mio!

Who gives a damn? All anyone should care about are her social and political opinions. Justice Clarence Thomas is a black man. A BLACK MAN! And he's as conservative as they come.

Supreme Court nominees, of all political stripes, typically feel obliged to pretend that their social and political leanings don't enter into their judicial opinions. But everyone knows this is rubbish. During her Senate hearing, Sotomayor declared: "It's not the heart that compels conclusions in cases. It's the law."

The former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Charles Evan Hughes, would not agree with her. "At the constitutional level where we work," he said, "ninety percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections."⁹

By Sotomayor's own account, which echos news reports, she was not asked about her position on abortion by either President Obama or his staff. But what if she is actually anti-abortion? What if she turns out to be the swing vote that overturns Roe vs. Wade?

What if she's a proud admirer of the American Empire and its perpetual wars? American dissidents, civilian and military, may depend on her vote for their freedom from imprisonment.

What does she think about the "War on Terror"? The civil liberties and freedom from torture of various Americans and foreigners may depend on her attitude. In his 2007 trial, Jose Padilla, an American citizen, was found guilty of aiding terrorists. "The jury did seem to be an oddly cohesive group," the Washington Post reported. "On the last day of trial before the Fourth of July holiday, jurors arranged to dress in outfits so that each row in the jury box was its own patriotic color — red, white or blue."¹⁰ No one dared to question this blatant display of patriotism in the courtroom; neither the defense attorney, nor the prosecutor, nor the judge. How can we continue to pretend that people's legal positions exist independently of their political sentiments?

In the 2000 Supreme Court decision stopping the presidential electoral count in Florida, giving the election to George W. Bush, did the politics of the five most conservative justices play a role in the 5 to 4 decision? Of course. Judges are essentially politicians in black robes. But should we care? Don't ask, don't tell. Sonia Sotomayor is a LATINA!

Given the large Democratic majority in the Senate, Sotomayor was in very little danger of being rejected. She could have openly and proudly expressed her social and political positions — whatever they may be — and the Democratic senators could have done the same. How refreshing, maybe even educational if a discussion ensued. Instead it was just another political appointment by a president determined to not offend anyone if he can help it, and another tiresome ritual hearing. The Republican senators were much less shy about revealing how they actually felt about important issues.

It didn't have to be that way. As Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun.org pointed out during the hearings: "Democratic Senators could use their time to ask questions and make statements that explain why a liberal or progressive worldview is precisely what is needed on the Supreme Court."

NATO and Eastern Europe resource

No one chronicles the rise of the supra-government called NATO like Rick Rozoff in his "Stop NATO" mailings. NATO has become an ever-expanding behemoth, making war and interfering in political controversies all over Europe and beyond. The United States is not the world's only superpower; NATO is another, as it surrounds Russia and the Caspian Sea oil reserves; although the distinction between the two superpowers is little more than a facade. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the NATO/US 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia. On April 23, 1999 missiles slammed into Radio Television Serbia (RTS) in downtown Belgrade, killing 16 employees. The station, NATO claimed, was a legitimate military target because it broadcast propaganda. (Certainly a novel form of censorship; not to mention the fact that NATO could simply have taken out the station's transmitter.) What apparently bothered the Western powers was that RTS was reporting the horrendous effects of NATO's bombing as well as passing footage of the destruction to Western media.

To mark the anniversary, Amnesty International recently issued a demand that NATO be held accountable for the 16 deaths. Amnesty asserts that the bombing was a deliberate attack on a civilian object (one of many during the 78 days) and as such constitutes a war crime, and called upon NATO to launch a war crimes probe into the attack to ensure full accountability and redress for victims and their families.

Readers might consider signing up for the "Stop NATO" mailing list. Just write to: rwrozoff [at] yahoo.com. Rozoff scours the East European press each day and comes up with numerous gems ignored by the mainstream media. But a warning: The amount of material you'll receive is often considerable. You'll have to learn to pick and choose. You can get an idea of this by reading previous reports at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages.

Notes

1. The Guardian (London) July 13, 2009 ^↩
2. Fabian Escalante, "Executive Action: 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro" (Ocean Press, 2006) ^↩
3. William Blum, Killing Hope, chapter 32^↩
4. William Blum, Rogue State, chapter 23 ^↩
5. Ibid., chapter 18 ^↩
6. Rogue State, chapter 17, intermixed with other types of US interventions ^↩
7. Vermont TV station WCAX, July 4, 2009, WCAX.com ^↩
8. Washington Post, July 19, 2009 ^↩
9. William O. Douglas, The Court Years, 1939-1975 (1980), p.8 ^↩
10. Washington Post, August 17, 2007 ^↩

–

William Blum is the author of:

• Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
• Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
• West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
• Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 [at] aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.

Soros's pro-junta "colored revolution" in Honduras

Supporters of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya who have returned to the United States from Honduras report that the country's military-backed junta is supported by throngs of wealthy elites in the streets who have adopted the color white in support of the junta and its acting president Roberto Micheletti.

The selection of the color white is perhaps fitting for a nation where the capitalist elite that supported the coup is practically 100 percent white and of European ancestry. The "white" nature of the coup leaders was best spelled out by the junta's first "Foreign Minister" Enrique Ortez Colindres who said of President Barack Obama: "that little black boy who knows nothing about anything . . . a little black man who doesn’t know where Tegucigalpa is."

The use of white flags in pro-junta demonstrations and the wearing of white shirts by junta supporters is reminiscent of the themed "color revolutions" fomented and financed by global troublemaker and crisis financial speculator George Soros. At the same time white flags and shirts appeared on the streets of Honduras, green flags and clothing were being worn by anti-government demonstrators in Iran. The involvement of the Soros-linked National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which has worked with Soros's Open Society Institute (OSI) in organizing opposition movements and demonstrations in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Myanmar, Tibet, Serbia, and Sinkiang province in China, in the street demonstrations in both Honduras and Iran is clear. Soros's Latin American Program, part of OSI, states that it promotes "democratic institutions" in Latin America, which is true if one believes that U.S.-supported oligarchies in Colombia and Panama and the Honduran junta are "democratic institutions."

Soros and NED funds have been intermingled in support of the Honduran junta under the ruse of "preserving the rule of law" in Honduras, which is code for supporting the right-wing junta. One of the cover projects is called Civic Participation and Democratic Planning. In Honduras, OSI is reported to use "local researchers" for its "projects." Similarly, such intermingled funds are used to destabilize Hugo Chavez's government in Venezuela under the guise of combating "anti-Semitism" in that country.

Soros and U.S.-backed themed revolutions:

Honduras (2009)	White Revolution
Iran (2009)	Green Revolution (unsuccessful)
Georgia (2003)	Rose Revolution
Ukraine (2004)	Orange Revolution
Kyrgyzstan (2005)	Tulip or Pink Revolution
Moldova (2009)	Twitter Revolution (partly successful)
Lebanon (2005)	Cedar Revolution
Belarus (2006)	Denim Revolution (unsuccessful)
Myanmar (2007)	Saffron Revolution (unsuccessful)
Tibet (2008)	Crimson Revolution (unsuccessful)
Mongolia (2005)	Yellow Revolution (partly successful)

Last November, Soros gathered a few Latin American leaders together in the Dominican Republic for a typical Soros contrivance called "The Emerging Global Financial Order," a regional economic summit that was, in reality, pushing for final adoption of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA).

In addition to Soros and Zelaya, others participating included two of Soros's capitalist right-wing pals, President Elias Antonio Saca of El Salvador (now replaced by progressive president Mauricio Funes) and Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis of Haiti, where the democratically-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was, like Zelaya, was forced into exile after a U.S.-sponsored coup ousted him in 2004. The meeting was officially hosted by Dominican President Leonel Fernandez who maintains friendly relations with Latin American progressive leaders. Also present were the general secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Barcena and the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS) Jose Miguel Insulza, a supporter of Zelaya.

After Zelaya embraced Chavez's Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), an anti-capitalist Latin American bloc, the heat from the right-wing, as well as faux progressives like Soros and his gang, was turned up on the Honduran president. That pressure culminated in the coup against him and Honduras's "White Revolution."

Feud between Rahm Emanuel and Netanyahu heats up

The political bickering between White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, himself a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen with strong links, as previously reported by WMR, to the Mossad, and the Israeli government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is heating up, according to U.S. intelligence sources.

Our sources also report that, currently, the major impetus for incessant rumors about Obama's lack of a U.S. birth certificate is the Netanyahu government. WMR first reported on the attempt to paint Obama as born in Mombasa, Kenya after our South African intelligence sources reported that a group of U.S. intelligence operatives, similar to the one that Karl Rove dispatched to South Africa in 2004 to dig up dirt on Teresa Heinz Kerry from South African and Portuguese colonial security files, arrived in Nairobi to dig up dirt on Obama's Kenyan-born father and was on the hunt for a certificate of birth for his son at a Mombasa maternity hospital. The hunt for dirt on the Obama family, which was known to and approved by key officials of the Hillary Clinton campaign, turned up empty-handed.

After the birth certificate story was debunked, Netanyahu resurrected it as a way to pressure Obama from the U.S. fundamentalist right-wing, a group with which he maintains close political and religious links. Currently, Israeli propaganda experts are feeding a flurry of derogatory bogus "intelligence" on Obama to neocon media outlets in the United States.

From WMR's archives: "On February 25, 2008, WMR reported that Karl Rove was quietly assisting the Clinton campaign in a dirty tricks operation against Obama. Rove currently works for Fox News, whose owner Rupert Murdoch, held a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. On February 19, a Stanley [Associates] employee accessed Obama's file for the second time. Sometime later that same week, a team of three Americans arrived in Nairobi, Kenya and traveled to western Kenya and Barack Obama's father's birth place to dig up 'dirt' on Obama's family. The details of Barack Obama Sr., now deceased, would have been readily found in Senator Obama's passport file. That is the real story, minus the neocon obfuscation and smoke screen."

Also, according to WMR's February 25, 2008 report: "WMR's intelligence sources in Africa are reporting that amid the post-election turmoil wracking Kenya, a three-person team (including a possible Korean-American woman) arrived in Nairobi last week and began asking questions about Barack Obama's father, the late Barack Obama, Sr.

The team also inquired about the Senator Obama Secondary School in Nyangoma-Kogelo in northwestern Kenya, the area where Obama's father, an ethnic Luo, hailed and where his grandmother, Sarah Ogwel Onyango, still lives.

There are also reports that another political operative has arrived in South Africa claiming to have personal connections to Obama. The individual, who is not Cuban, is claiming to be part of an Obama-sponsored US-Cuba dialog initiative. The individual is reportedly attempting to make contact with South African Communists 'on behalf' of Obama. The South African Communists contacted are wary of the individual and consider him to be an agent provocateur.

Passport file rifling

On March 24, 2008, WMR reported: "In another case of neocon manipulation of the news, the story about Barack Obama's passport file being accessed by two employees of Stanley Associates, Inc. of Arlington, Virginia, a company whose president, Philip Nolan, has donated to the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and her pal, John McCain supporter Joe Lieberman, has strangely morphed into a story about another State Department contractor snooping on McCain's and Obama's passport files.

The story, when it first broke on the evening of March 20, concentrated on the two employees of Stanley being fingered in the snooping after a computer system audit automatically discovered that a VIP's files were being examined. The initial report from MS-NBC was that the two employees were fired. There was a follow-up report that a third contractor, who was not fired, was disciplined for a passport file access infraction.

But when the neocon owned and operated Washington Times and Fox News began to report the story, emphasis was shifted to the third employee who was not fired. It turns out that the employee works for The Analysis Corporation (TAC), based in McLean, Virginia. It was very convenient for the neocons to shift the story to TAC because its Chief Executive Officer is John O. Brennan, a retired CIA official and adviser to the Obama campaign." [Brennan is now the deputy National Security Adviser in the Obama White House].

Warning shot by Netanyahu fired at Obama

Recent information obtained by WMR from U.S. intelligence sources points to the current false birth certificate controversy is merely a "warning shot" being fired across Obama's bow by the Netanyahu government. Netanyahu's government has been caught leaking "intelligence" on Obama's history to neo-con news media with the caveat that it is based on bona fide Israeli intelligence reports. The real issue, WMR is informed, is the distinct possibility that Obama has been in possession of a passport or passports in addition to his U.S. passport, all stemming from his past post-undergraduate and possible pre-graduate work for Business International Corporation, Inc., a non-official cover "business research" firm in Manhattan that operated on behalf of the CIA. Obama wrote for a few Business International Corporation publications as far as his "official" record is concerned.

Obama has apparently gotten tough with the Netanyahu government, telling the Israeli Prime Minister that he will not be told what to do by Netanyahu or Israel. That toughness has earned Obama a place at the top of Netanyahu's political hit list.

Netanyahu now apparently stands ready to shift the controversy away from the birth certificate non-issue to the more problematic passport issue. In addition to his American passport, Obama may have traveled in the past, while working for Business International Corporation and other U.S. intelligence-connected entities, on a British or Indonesian passport, or both. In addition to Mossad, Britain's MI-6 is said to be aware of Obama's past non-official cover work for the CIA and his past possession of a British passport. This information was reportedly shared with the Hillary Clinton campaign, including former President Bill Clinton, by senior British government officials.

Obama's post-graduate CIA employment

On February 24, 2009, WMR reported: "After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, Barack Obama went to work for a firm called Business International Corporation (BIC), a firm that was linked to economic intelligence gathering for the CIA.

For one year, Obama worked as a researcher in BIC's financial services division where he wrote for two BIC publications, Financing Foreign Operations and Business International Money Report, a weekly newsletter.

An informed source has told WMR that Obama's tuition debt at Columbia was paid off by BIC. In addition, WMR has learned that when Obama lived in Indonesia with his mother and his adoptive father Lolo Soetoro, the 20-year-old Obama, who was known as "Barry Soetoro," traveled to Pakistan in 1981 and was hosted by the family of Muhammadmian Soomro, a Pakistani Sindhi who became acting President of Pakistan {allegedly with the support of the CIA] after the resignation of General Pervez Musharraf on August 18, 2008. [Soomro's father was Pakistani parliamentarian Ahmed Mian Soomro. Muhammadmian Soomro, a former official for the Bank of America, International Bank of Yemen, Faysal Islamic Bank of Bahrain, Muslim Commercial Bank, Agriculture Development Bank of Pakistan, Federal Bank of Cooperatives, and National Bank of Pakistan, represented Pakistan at the 2004 funeral of President Ronald Reagan. Reagan was President while Obama was working on his unspecified mission for the CIA in Pakistan in 1981].

WMR was told that the Obama/Soetoro trip to Pakistan, ostensibly to go "partridge hunting" with the Soomros, related to unknown CIA business. [The Soomro family were political allies of Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leaders Begum Nusrat Bhutto, the widow of the slain ex-PPP Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and Benazir Bhutto, their daughter. Bhutto's brother, Shah Nawaz Bhutto, was found suffocated in his apartment in Cannes, France in 1985 under mysterious circumstances. The Soomros, who are actually a powerful Sindhi clan, continue to be close to the Bhuttos].

The covert CIA program to assist the Afghan mujaheddin was already well underway [at the time of Obama's stay] and Pakistan was the major base of operations for the CIA's support [for the rebels]. Obama also reportedly traveled to India, again, on unknown business for U.S. intelligence. WMR has been told by knowledgeable sources that Obama has, in the past, traveled on at least three passports: U.S., Indonesian, and British.

BIC also maintained a European subsidiary, Business International S.A., in Geneva.

BIC had long been associated with CIA activities since being founded by Eldridge Haynes, a self-professed liberal Democrat. The BIC headquarters was located at the prestigious address of 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in Manhattan. BIC held a series of off-the-record, no press, meetings between top U.S. business executives and top government officials, including the President, and the Secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury, Commerce, and Labor; the Attorney General, Senate leadership, and the heads of the Export-Import Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.

BIC held international meetings in locations like Brussels and Mexico City. In 1961, a BIC meeting in New Delhi was attended by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Foreign Minister Morarji Desai, who would later become Prime Minister [Desai, in 1992, unsuccessfully sued for libel journalist Seymour Hersh over Hersh's allegations that Desai passed intelligence to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger via the CIA during the 1971 India-Pakistan war. The US Supreme Court refused to consider a federal appeals court decision in Hersh's favor] . . .

Obama's work for a company having ties to the CIA barely registered a blip on the 2008 presidential campaign radar screen. At the very least, Obama helped in providing economic intelligence to the CIA as a contract employee. At most, Obama was, like previous BIC employees who operated abroad for the CIA, a full-fledged non-official cover (NOC) agent. Since President Obama has backpedaled on CIA renditions and torture, as well as warrantless electronic surveillance by U.S. intelligence, he owes the American people a full explanation of the circumstances behind his being hired by BIC, what his job actually entailed, and whether he continued to have a relationship with BIC or any other CIA operation while attending Harvard Law School and thereafter."

WMR obtained some 1975 Business International Corporation reports from CIA archives. The output of the firm suggests that it was primarily providing economic intelligence to the CIA as highlighted by the headlines from its October and November 1975 reports:

- "The Trading Company: A New Way to Cope with Global Changes."

- "Foreign Investors Find India's Emergency Rule a Double-Edged Sword."

- "What Venezuela and Bolivia Want"

- "Raw Material Producers Eye the OPEC Model: Who? Where? How?

- "New UK Perspectives: Wilson's Economic Plan, Oil and EEC Tensions"

- "Latest from Canberra" [a report on the ouster of Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's government] [there is also a report on the prospects for New Zealand's Labor government seeing its parliamentary majority trimmed].

- "Dwindling Petrodollars Being Change of Pace to Venezuelan Economy"

- The Big Six Summit in Paris

When Obama was in Pakistan and worked for Business International, the CIA was involved in a massive espionage campaign in India, as well as with a significant support network for the anti-Soviet Afghan mujaheddin in Pakistan. In 1983, while Obama was with Business International in New York, the First Secretary of the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, Henry L. Wetherbee, was expelled after the Indian Intelligence Bureau exposed his involvement with an espionage network of three retired Indian Air Force officers and a civilian. Wetherbee, whose official cover was an embassy policy planning officer, bought classified information from the Indian officials on Soviet equipment being provided for Indian air force bases. At the time, India maintained close military relations with the Soviet Union and was opposed to the U.S. support for the Afghan mujaheddin from bases in Pakistan.

The Pakistan that Obama visited in 1981 on "unknown" CIA business was awash in CIA agents providing Afghan Islamist guerrillas with caches of weapons from old Lee-Enfield rifles to Kalashnikov automatic rifles and rocket launchers to mortars, many of which were from Chinese sources.

It was in the environment of Indian-Pakistani antagonism, coupled with U.S.-Soviet rivalry in nearby Afghanistan, that young Obama was immersed while involved with NOC activities on behalf of the CIA in the early 1980s. While Obama traveled to Pakistan on his Indonesian passport, the CIA's hand-picked dictator, President Suharto, was crushing his political opposition, among them some of his longtime associates who criticized Suharto's dictatorship: A. W. Fatwa, sentenced to 18 years in prison for "subversive" activities; General Hartono Dharsono, sentenced to seven years on the same charges; and former senior minister Slamet Bratanata and General Abdul Haris Nasution, who helped Suharto gain power.

There is a certain optimism by Obama administration officials about the ouster of governments around the world unfriendly to American interests in the Business International reports, suggesting that Obama's early work for the CIA front favorably exposed him to the notion that the overthrow of governments is in the best interests of the United States. Obama's reaction to the recent military right-wing coup against President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras suggests possible influence on him at a young age to such imperialistic American policies. Obama also does not appear to be bothered by the actions of U.S.-supported dictators who act in the very same manner as Suharto during Obama's childhood in Jakarta.

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Emanuel, for his part, realizes that his future depends on the success of the Obama's presidency. Knowing that he would not last long in a Biden administration or a weakened lame duck Obama administration, Emanuel, WMR is told, is retaliating fiercely against the volley of political threats from Netanyahu and his chief advisers.

Massive Laundering of "black money" through the Social Security Administration

WMR has been tracking the massive theft, some of it systematic, of personal data, including social security numbers, since we began publication in May 2005.

On June 24, 2006, WMR reported: "The epidemic of personal data thefts continues at breakneck speed. Yesterday, the Navy announced that Social Security Numbers and dates of birth on 28,000 naval personnel and family dependents were leaked to a publicly-accessible web site. Shortly prior to that announcement, the Department of Agriculture reported the compromise of 26,000 Social Security Numbers and other personal details on 26,000 Agriculture employees. WMR has previously reported that these thefts are part of a covert U.S. intelligence program to steal personal data on Americans and others to populate Total Information Awareness system surveillance databases. Two officials of two U.S. intelligence activities have confirmed the existence of this program but the FBI has been hamstrung by higher authority not to investigate the thefts thoroughly."

The sources for the information about the intelligence connection to the data thefts were within the Department of Energy at two different locations: Germantown, Maryland and Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

WMR has now learned of another possible use of the stolen personal data: massive money laundering through the Social Security Administration.

A source with a large data processing company that was contracted to process social security payments reported that for a significant period of time hundreds of social security payments were being issued to different names. However, the different names used the same Social Security Number. The social security payments were all directly deposited into the same bank account with that was not associated with a name.

The data processing firm in question was aware of the laundering operation but did nothing to stop the process. There is the possibility that billions of dollars have been laundered through the Social Security direct deposit payment system over the past several years.

In 2007, Representative Elton Gallegly cited the Bank of America and Wells Fargo Bank as turning a "blind eye" to Social Security Number fraud and money laundering in relation to illegal immigration. Gallegly stated: "Wells Fargo was even cited by the Treasury Department last year for 'numerous and recurring deficiencies' in safeguarding against money launderingand terrorist activities. The violations were so egregious that Treasury Department staff recommended a public reprimand. Top officials, however, decided to slap Wells Fargo's wrist quietly and behind closed doors." Gallegly added, "Social Security Numbers have nothing to do with credit." Gallegly also stated that the Bank of America "aids and abets identity theft and money laundering."

In 1988, two E. F. Hutton & Company brokers were indicted for laundering more than a half million dollars for "select clients" using bogus brokerage accounts with false names and Social Security Numbers. One of those indicted, Stephen Fusco, died of cancer in 1985 after the FBI investigation of the operation began.

Cheney assassination team involved Pentagon chain of command

Pentagon officials revealed important details of Vice President Dick Cheney's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) assassination at a Special Operation/Low Intensity Conflict (SOLIC) conference in Arlington, Virginia just weeks before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Reporting to the Pentagon's Undersecretary for Plans and Policy Douglas Feith, the assassination team was known as "Black Special Operations Forces" or "Black SOF" and the assassination team were part of a group responsible for "special programs," according to information revealed at the conference sponsored by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA).

The special hit squads used by Cheney were part of a Bush White House program, initiated by the neo-conservative cell in the Pentagon around Feith and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz that, according to Pentagon officials consciously shifted policy "to the right." The policy, known as "defensive intervention," gave the U.S. military the authorization to pursue targets for the defense of the country. The actual implementer of the Cheney policy was Robert Andrews, the then-Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for SOLIC, who stated in his remark on February 11, "the U.S. must take quick action against likely sponsors of terrorists . . . without waiting for a basis of legal evidence." Andrews also stated that the standing orders for JSOC and SOF personnel were to "take asymmetric warfare into the heart of terrorism and destroy it."

Andrews also stated that "targeted assassinations" were one means for defensive intervention. He declared, "If I could take out Saddam Hussein, I'd do it. My Secretary wouldn't let me do it, but I'd do it." At the time, the assassination of the foreign leader such as Hussein was prohibited by Executive Order 12333, which bans such actions against foreign political leaders.

Andrews revealed the reason that SOF personnel were used by the Cheney team to carry out assassinations was because they could easily get into otherwise denied areas under the aegis of "training" and "counter-narcotics" programs. He cited the example of Uzbekistan as one country where U.S. SOF forces operated more or less freely after 9/11. Andrews added that SOF were "sources for collecting intelligence in host countries" and that "training contacts are fungible, we can use them for counter-narcotics but for 'other things,' as well." Andrews also stated that counter-narcotics "played a big role in the Summer [0f 2002] allowing us to go in." He revealed that SOF personnel were active in Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador in the Summer of 2002 and that they did "other things." Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez narrowly escaped a coup against him in April 2002 that was supported by U.S. SOF teams.

The Pentagon's Joint Combined Education and Training (JCET) program gave the JSOC Special Forces team carrying out "defensive intervention" access to 59 countries under the cover of 139 "training missions." Detainee operations in Guantanamo and other detention centers were also part of the JSOC/SOF mandate.

Much of the defensive intervention strategy originated with the contractor Booz Allen and was part of a larger "strategic psychological operations" program initiated by the Pentagon. Under the umbrella of "influence operations," the program also targeted, according to one Pentagon consultant, "activists, anarchists, as well as opportunists" as the new terrorists. Specifically, animal rights and environmental activists were cited in the "activist" category. Infuence operations were green-lighted by both Cheney and President George W. Bush. Bush justified the program to Pentagon officials by saying "we're bringing justice to the terrorists."

SOF personnel charged with assassinating suspected terrorists also operated in the Philippines in 2002 as part of Operation Balikatan, a joint operation with Philippines Special Operations personnel.

The JSOC/SOF personnel reportedly operated in sensitive locations abroad, including Bosnia. Personnel possessed Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information clearances and access for the Cheney-Wolfowitz-Feith "defensive intervention" program.

Pentagon officials also revealed that SOF personnel operated domestically under statute granted in the USA PATRIOT Act known as "consequence management."

JSOC/SOF also maintained a "less-than-lethal" program of using against their targets "pepper spray projectiles, ring-shaped rubber bullets, electro-static devices to immobilize vehicles, electro-magnetic devices to disable automobile electronics, light scattering particles to confuse crowds, and electro-shocking devices to immobilize crowds." It was conceded that the electric discharge devices could also immobilize pacemakers and aircraft, which could have lethal consequences.

Although the CIA claims it kept a wary distance from the Cheney assassination program, there was one country where the CIA directly funded an assassination in the waning days of the Clinton administration, an indication that at least part of the Cheney program was already in existence prior to his entering office. Shortly before the January 2001 assassination of Congolese President Laurent Kabila in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one State Department witness at the U.S. embassy in Kinshasa personally saw large sums of cash arriving at the CIA station at the embassy said to be used for a "special operation." Four days before Cheney's inauguration as Vice President, Kabila was gunned down in a palace coup.