The Trump Club: "you ain't in it." By The Wayne Madsen Report

The Trump Club: "you ain't in it."
By The Wayne Madsen Report
If Donald Trump’s most avid anti-globalist supporters believe that their president is "draining the swamp" of their bitterest of foes, they might be surprised that recently, Vice President Mike Pence and Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis were in the company at the annual Munich Security Conference of Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Trilateral Commission deputy chairman Michael Fuchs, and global political troublemaker George Soros.

As the late comedian and American philosopher George Carlin once said, "It's a big club and you ain't in it."

And, speaking of clubs, Trump is tapping members of his exclusive Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, where the initiation fee is $200,000, to serve as American ambassadors abroad. These include Robin Bernstein to the Dominican Republic, Patrick Park to Austria, and Brian Burns to Ireland. All were big donors to the Trump presidential campaign.



Trump has "drained the swamp" by giving an award to one of the chief architects of the financing and arming of the Islamic State. Central Intelligence Agency director Mike Pompeo's second visit abroad was to Saudi Arabia, where he presented the CIA's George Tenet medal to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. It has been Nayef who has backed radical Islamist groups in the Syrian and Yemeni civil wars. Prior to stopping in Riyadh, Pompeo visited Turkey, where he lauded the government of that growing Islamist dictatorship and its leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It was the Erdogan fmaily that personally benefited from the Islamic State's sale of Iraqi and Syrian oil on the international spot market. Turkish nepotism and illegal international deals must have come as music to the ears of Trump who fancies such notions for himself and his family.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Steve Bannon, Trump's chief strategist, told the crowd of old school conservatives and extreme alt-right faithful that the Trump White House is striving for the "deconstruction of the administrative state." That must have come as welcome news to the globalist bankers who have ordered similar "administrative state" deconstruction as part of draconian austerity measures in Greece, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, Italy, and other countries.

Bannon's "deconstruction" is already being felt in Trump's federal worker hiring freeze, which has closed day care centers at U.S. military bases abroad and delayed medical treatment at veteran's hospitals. That is only the tip of the iceberg, as Bannon and his fellow ex-Goldman Sachs colleagues, including Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, senior White House adviser Anthony Scaramucci, White House economic counselor Dina Habib Powell, National Economic Council Chairman Gary Cohn, and Securities and Exchange Commission chairman-nominee Jay Clayton draw their knives on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' care, and other social safety net programs.

Trump's team consisting of ex-Goldman Sachs executives and other Wall Street denizens will enjoy the next four years of being in their comfortable elements: Bilderberg, Davos, Bohemian Grove, Cernobbio, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference, and other "big club" venues. And, as Carlin said about the big club, "you ain't in it."

Russian prankster, posing as Ukraine PM, warns McCain of Russian release of POW brainwashing evidence - By The Wayne Madsen Report

Russian prankster, posing as Ukraine PM, warns McCain of Russian release of POW brainwashing evidence - By The Wayne Madsen Report
Russian "phony phone call" prankster, Vladimir Kuznetsov, who does by the name "Vovan," convinced Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain (R-AZ) that he was Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman. The recording of the prank call is found below.



McCain told the fake Groysman that he favored sending lethal weapons to Ukraine to fight against Vladimir Putin in eastern Ukraine. McCain also said he sent a letter to President Trump urging increased sanctions against Russia.

The most interesting aspect of the call is McCain's interest in the pranksters warning that Putin ordered the Russian secret service to reveal details of McCain's being "recruited" as a "collaborator" by Russian intelligence during his time as a prisoner-of-war of the North Vietnamese. McCain appears to be genuinely concerned about such a revelation and asks to prankster to keep him informed of further details. McCain asks the prankster to provide further information on the POW story to him through the Ukrainian ambassador in Washington.

At no time during the conversation, does McCain appear to question the veracity of the caller.



If the long-suppressed story about McCain's special treatment by Soviet intelligence is not true, McCain appears to be awfully interested in a "fake" story. The story about McCain first appeared in the Moscow Post on September 18, 2008. The English version of the story was reportedly taken down after pressure was exerted by American "authorities."

The following is a paid translation of the McCain article from Russian to English and is an exclusive to WMR:

So, as it turned out, McCain has worked for many years in the Soviet secret services, recruited during the Vietnamese captivity (in 1967). The KGB's Senator John McCain had the code name Jack Mouse.

"To him it was a special relationship" - Duet [Hanoi Hilton commandant] says, "the power he had more than other Americans."

"Russian advisers spent many days in conversations with him. What they agreed to do, I do not know. However, once he was specially summoned to my office, where he signed some papers. Soon McCain transferred to a hospital, where Soviet doctors worked. Since then, I have not seen him. "

After that, according to the official biography, this was followed five years later by the Vietnamese prisoner transfer, after which the future congressman was released, in 1973, the result of the Paris agreement.

It is believed that all those years McCain spent in Vietnam. However, as we find out from the The Moscow Post journalists that this story is not quite true.

A former KGB agent, Sergei Nikolaev (name for this article has been specially modified), now lives in a European country, where he moved after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In the early '70s Nikolaev, he worked for intelligence at Voronezh.

There took place agent training of those not already identified by the West.

Nikolaev remember an American who came to him in winter 1968. He learned that it was McCain, when later often appeared on the TV screen.

"He's passed special training for operations in the United States during a possible war," says Nikolaev.

"He was taught the basics of subversion, disabling communication systems, paralyzing aerodrome operations. McCain had aliases. Therefore, according to the files we called him Jack Mouse. Our wags called him Mickey Mouse. "

Labor pick Acosta part of Epstein-Trump underage sex crime cover-up By The Wayne Madsen Report

Labor pick Acosta part of Epstein-Trump underage sex crime cover-up
By The Wayne Madsen Report
Alexander Acosta, President Trump's pick to replace failed nominee Andrew Puzder as Labor Secretary, has his own political baggage stemming from his actions as U.S. Attorney for Southern Florida in the sweetheart plea deal involving billionaire pederast Jeffrey Epstein. Acosta agreed to a rather unprecedented non-prosecution agreement (NPA) struck with Epstein and his attorneys on October 30, 2007 that saw the federal government waive any future prosecution of Epstein or any of his associates named or unnamed by underage female sexual abuse victims of Epstein. Epstein pleaded guilty to one state of Florida charge of soliciting prostitution from a 14-year old girl.
Although Acosta later mildly criticized the plea deal in an open letter he write in 2011, he did not respond to WMR's request in January 2015 for an interview on the civil case in which four of Epstein's victims sued the U.S. government, claiming that the NPA violated their rights under the Crime Victims' Rights Act. The victims, who are now adults, claimed that the federal government's NPA with Epstein violated the 2004 CVRA. Acosta was clearly aiming to protect Epstein's high-powered friends, including the person who just nominated him as Labor Secretary. Acosta's letter states: "Our judgment in this [Epstein] case, based on the evidence known at the time, was that it was better to have a billionaire serve time in jail, register as a sex offender, and pay his victims restitution than risk a trial with a reduced likelihood of success." Epstein's 13-month "jail time" included the stipulation that he only had to stay in prison in the evening and was free to leave during the day. The Palm Beach Police Department was outraged by Epstein's plea deal.

The NPA was signed on behalf of Acosta by A. Marie Villafana, the then-Assistant U.S. Attorney for Southern Florida who later became the U.S. Attorney under Attorney General Eric Holder. The plea deal with Epstein was concluded after the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami and the FBI investigated Epstein separately from the investigation conducted by the Palm Beach County Police Department and the Florida State Attorney's Office.  The deal cut between Acosta and Villafana and the state of Florida, which was then under the governorship of Republican Governor Charlie Crist and Republican Attorney-General Bill McCollum stated that the federal government would defer to Florida on the prosecution of Epstein. Acosta went on to become the dean of the law school of Florida International University in Miami.
Flight manifests of Epstein's Gulfstream jet and Boeing 727 indicate that Epstein's passengers included a mix of underage sex traffic victims and some of the world's most powerful politicians and businessmen. These include Bill Clinton, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, Chicago Pritzker family chieftain and Hyatt Hotels executive chairman Thomas Pritzker (the first cousin of President Obama's Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker), and failed Palm Beach mayoral candidate Gerry Goldsmith. Underage passengers included on the manifest include Virginia Roberts and Cindy Lopez and others listed by their first names: Colleen, Tatianna, Margarita, Carolina, Lisa, Margaret, Dana, Julie, and Jessica. Epstein's two major "procurers" of underage girls are also frequent flyers on Epstein's "Pederast Airlines" -- Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the late publishing tycoon and Mossad asset Robert Maxwell, and Sarah Kellen (now Sarah Kensington), the girlfriend of NASCAR driver Brian Vickers. Up to 40 women were identified as being the victims of sexual abuse by Epstein. Court records indicate the number may be higher with one reference to a Jane Doe 103.

In a later lawsuit filed on September 26, 2016 by another Jane Doe, identified as Katie Johnson, it is alleged that there were three additional underage victims of Epstein -- as well as Donald Trump -- in 1994. They are Jane Doe (Johnson), Joan Doe, and Maria, the latter a 12-year old girl who Jane, Joan, and a third witness, Tiffany Doe, allege may have been "disappeared" by Trump after he sexually assaulted and raped her at the Wexner Mansion in Manhattan.
Epstein pleaded the Fifth Amendment when asked by FBI agents, "Have you ever socialized with Donald Trump in the presence of females under the age of 18?” Epstein also took the Fifth when the FBI asked him: "Have you ever socialized with Bill Clinton in the presence of females under the age of 18?” Fourteen private phone numbers for Trump and members of his family, including his media-shy brother Robert Trump, Robert's wife Blaine Trump, Donald Trump ex-wife Ivana Trump, and Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump, are found in Epstein's address book.

 
Trump and his family's names and numbers found in pederast Jeffrey Epstein's "black book."
The Senate Labor Committee has an opportunity to ask Acosta about the Epstein plea deal during his confirmation hearing. However, do not expect committee chairman Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) to proceed down such a road of inquiry. Alexander's chief of staff, Ryan Loskarn, was arrested at his Washington, DC home in December 13 and found with an entire computer hard disk full of child pornographic videos and photos. Loskarn, who was remanded to his Maryland parents' custody while awaiting arraignment in federal court in Washington, was found hanging in his parents' basement in January 2014. The cause of death was determined, without a full autopsy, to have been suicide.

Neo-Nazis creating power base in Alexandria By The Wayne Madsen Report

Neo-Nazis creating power base in Alexandria

By The Wayne Madsen Report

Controversial white supremacist and neo-Nazi leader Richard Spencer is establishing a major center for his National Policy Institute in Old Town Alexandria, just a free trolley ride and a few subway stops away from the U.S. Congress, White House, and Supreme Court.
Spencer moved his operation, which includes a publishing house and a periodical, from Whitefish, Montana to Alexandria after the election of Donald Trump. In mid-November 2016, Spencer and 300 of his neo-Nazi followers met at a raucous meeting in the Ronald Reagan Building, just a few blocks from the White House, where the successor to American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell led the crowd to shouts of "Heil Trump!"
Spencer and his Nazis have been met with hostility from Alexandria's town folk, who have engaged in protests on the second and fourth Sundays of every month outside of his rented $3000 a month two-floor residence and office at 1001 King Street at the corner of Patrick Street. Spencer is located above a shop that makes its own chocolates but the presence of the Nazis upstairs has not deterred customers of the chocolatier from patronizing one of their favorite stores. In fact, on Valentine's Day, the biggest sales day for chocolate sales, BluPrint Chocolatiers completely sold out of their home made products. Customers who dropped by only to be disappointed that the store closed earlier expressed dismay over the presence of Spencer and his operation on the second and third floors of the building.

   
It's pretty clear why Spencer's neo-Nazis chose the building [left] for their headquarters. Unlike the standard red brick colonial buildings in Old Town, their structure is vaguely reminiscent of the apartment building in Linz, Austria [right], where Adolf Hitler was born. There are plans to raze the Linz building.
On Valentine's Day evening, about three dozen anti-Nazi protesters, led by those who support designating Alexandria a "sanctuary city" gathered in front of the Alexandria City Hall where they planned to fill the city council meeting taking place. Many of the protesters were unaware of Spencer's close links to Trump's senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, a fellow member of the Duke University Conservative Union in 2006 and 2007. Although Miller is Jewish, he shares many of Spencer's beliefs, especially his anti-immigrant fervor. Miller is the chief architect of Trump's anti-Muslim immigration ban, now suspended by several federal court decisions.

  

SPECIAL REPORT. Trump chief adviser (Stephen Bannon) was aide to two CNOs during the largest pedophile crime in U.S. naval history By the Wayne Madsen Report

SPECIAL REPORT. Trump chief adviser was aide to two CNOs during the largest pedophile crime in U.S. naval history By the Wayne Madsen Report
President Trump's powerful political adviser Stephen Bannon served as an aide to two Chiefs of Naval Operations, Admirals Thomas Hayward and James Watkins, during one of the largest pedophile crimes that ever took place within naval ranks in the then-207 years of the history of the U.S. Navy. While serving as a Lieutenant (junior grade) aboard the Spruance class destroyer USS Paul F. Foster in the Pacific fleet, Bannon was selected to serve on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations, a highly-coveted billet seen as a stepping stone for rapid promotion up the ranks. A February 1, 2017, article in Navy Times referred to Bannon's unusual assignment while still a Lieutenant JG: "Even in the much larger Navy of the 1980s, billets on the CNO’s staff were not easy to come by." So why was Bannon selected for such a position? His Navy awards were what anyone at his rank would have received after sea duty: a Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, a Navy “E” Ribbon, and a Navy Expeditionary Medal. 

Bannon reported to the CNO's staff January 12, 1981, almost a week prior to Ronald Reagan's inauguration. The previous November, Bannon attended the victory party for Reagan at the Century Plaza hotel. Apparently, Bannon developed an intense dislike to President Jimmy Carter during his time aboard the Foster in the Persian Gulf, a time frame that included the botched 1980 operation to rescue U.S. hostages at the seized U.S. embassy in Tehran. Bannon's time aboard the Foster also included the Reagan campaign's act of treason in negotiating an "arms-for-no-hostages" agreement with Tehran that ensured the hostages would not be released until after Reagan's election. The hostages were released simultaneous to Reagan's swearing in on January 20, 1981. 

After working for Admirals Hayward and Watkins, Bannon left the Navy with the rank of Lieutenant on October 30, 1983. He obtained a master's degree in international relations at Georgetown University while working for the CNO. Normally, a master's degree would have been a ticket for Bannon to be promoted to Lieutenant Commander, yet he left the Navy after only seven years. Bannon went to Harvard where he earned an masters of business administration (MBA). After acquiring his MBA, Bannon clinched a job with Goldman Sachs.

While Bannon was a staffer for the CNO in 1982, the FBI identified a key kingpin in child pornography production and distribution in Chicago. The porn distributor admitted, under questioning by FBI agents, that his network of pedophiles included a U.S. naval officer and other influential government employees. It was later discovered that the naval officer was the Commanding Officer of the U.S. Naval Facility in Coos Head, Oregon.

The Naval Investigative Service (NIS) was called in and the Operations Officer at the Oregon naval installation was requested by the FBI and NIS to participate as the lead temporary FBI special agent in a carefully-prepared sting of the base commander to obtain evidence and the identities of co-conspirators.

On September 14, 1982, UPI filed the following report from Coos Bay, Oregon:

"The commander of the Coos Head Naval Facility was relieved of duty and jailed on charges he promoted an obscene sexual performance by a child.

Lt. Cmdr. Larry William Frawley, 38, was arrested Saturday and accused of promoting an obscene sexual performance by a child and using a child in an obscene sexual performance. Both are felony charges.

Police Sgt. Jack Bushmaker said Frawley was lodged in the Coos County Corrections Facility on $10,000 bail.

Frawley's alleged role will not be made known until the investigation is completed, Lt. Cmdr. John Marchi, public affairs officer for the naval base in Seattle, said. He said details will not be at present since the investigation is pending, he said.

Lt. Cmdr. Marney Finch, executive officer at the Coos Head station, is now the interim commanding officer, Marchi said.

Frawley had been at the station since 1980.

Officials declined to say how many children were involved in the case or whether additional arrests were expected."

During the FBI/NIS sting operation, Frawley admitted that his network of pedophiles included senior naval officers, clerics, lawyers, politicians, and judges. Later, the two NIS agents revealed that the Coos Bay scandal "went to the very top" of the Reagan administration. A number of forced retirements of senior naval personnel, including one rear admiral, were announced after Frawley's arrest. There was also a significant foreign intelligence aspect to the case that involved the Soviet Union.



Hayward was the CNO at the time the Chicago kingpin identified the Coos Head base commander as part of his ring, with Bannon serving as his aide. Watkins succeeded Hayward on June 30, 1982. It was during Watkins's watch and with Bannon remaining as his aide that the Navy pedophile scandal broke open with a number of arrests and forced retirements following. Attempts to have further details about the Navy ring publicized by Navy Times and the Eugene (OR) Register-Guard were met with threats against the newspapers editors and publishers by top Navy and Defense Department officials, including members of the CNO's staff. Reporters for the local NBC affiliate, KCBY-TV, were told to stay away from Navy property while reporting on the pedophile story. Armed guards were posted at the entrance to the Navy housing area to deter inquisitive reporters. A Bethesda Naval Hospital team of psychiatrists, child counselors, and other medical personnel who were on stand-by to be flown to Oregon to deal with children traumatized by the Navy pedophile ring were ordered to "stand down." All records bearing the NIS criminal investigation case number, 08-18-82N12PD 718XNA, were purged from Navy computer systems on the orders of the CNO and Secretary of the Navy.

Some important questions remain about Bannon's unusual post-sea duty time in the Navy: was Bannon rewarded with a Georgetown M.A., Harvard Business School MBA, and Goldman Sachs for "services rendered" in helping to suppress from media attention the worst pedophile scandal in the history of the U.S. Navy? Did Bannon use his influence with Breitbart and other alt.right media operations to push the frivolous  "Pizzagate" story, which attempted to tarnish Hillary Clinton's senior campaign staff and donors in order to keep the public's attention away from an actual major pedophile scandal?

U.S. visa ban resulted in worst international airline disruption since 9/11 - by Wayne Madsen report

 U.S. visa ban resulted in worst international airline disruption since 9/11

 by Wayne Madsen Report
President Donald Trump's ill-planned and very poorly enacted travel ban on U.S. visa holders from seven predominantly Muslim nations resulted in the worst disruption of air traffic around the world since the terror attack of 9/11. In defense of his actions, Trump said he banned the visa holders to protect the American people from terrorism. Yet, his actions resulted in confusion in the airline industry only surpassed by the act of terrorism that disrupted air travel for weeks in 2001. All domestic U.S. and international flights to the U.S. were grounded in the wake of the 9/11 attack. 

When confronted with the bedlam caused by his executive order banning the designated visa holders, Trump lied and claimed all the worldwide disruptions were caused by a Delta airlines computer glitch and protests against the ban held at domestic U.S. airports.

Trump's travel ban originally extended to U.S. permanent residents, or "green card" holders, from the seven nations: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Syria. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly who was not adequately briefed on the executive order before it was issued on January 27, reversed the ban on green card holders two days later. The Washington Post reported that Trump political adviser Steve Bannon traveled to Kelly's office and ordered him to reverse his waiver on green card holders. Kelly refused and told Bannon that he worked for the president, not for Bannon. The tensions between the White House and cabinet-level departments have not been seen in Washington since the Watergate scandal that drove President Richard Nixon from office.

After several U.S. visa holders and permanent residents were detained at U.S. airports, with many being returned to their U.S. gateway airports of origin, a series of orders from federal judges in Boston, New York, Virginia, Seattle, and San Francisco suspended Trump's executive order in whole or in part. As of February 5, Trump's order suspending for 90-days the visas from nationals of the seven designated nations and any refugees is suspended. The temporary restraining order against Trump's order was issued by Judge James Robart in Seattle. Robart, who was nominated by President George W. Bush, was denounced in a Trump tweet as a "so-called judge." Such public presidential language about members of the federal judiciary is unprecedented. Later, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Robart's order, thus maintaining the suspension of Trump's travel ban until an appeal by the Trump Justice Department. Earlier, acting Attorney General Sally Yates, a career Justice Department lawyer, was fired by Trump for refusing to defend the executive order in federal courts. The Seattle suit against the executive order was brought by the Attorneys-General of Washington state and Minnesota. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson stated that his lawsuit was prompted by families affected by the order, as well as the Washington-based firms Amazon and Expedia that were adversely impacted by Trump's actions. 

The travel ban also extended to U.S. borders and ports-of-entry. Canadians and others possessing dual citizenship with the the seven designated countries were refused entry at border crossings in Washington state, Michigan, and other states.

Trump's travel ban resulted in chaos at a number of airports that are final gateways to travel to the United States. The revocation of 100,000 U.S. visas resulted in delayed flights from Middle East airports that normally see huge traffic from Iran and Iraq. These include Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha. A number of dual nationals who were both citizens of the seven designated countries and other nations, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, and Sweden, were also affected by the ban until Secretary Kelly was able to waive the order's application to green card holders and dual nationals. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said the visa order resulted in massive confusion among the 265 airlines that are its members.

Dubai-based Emirates airline said it was forced to change its pilot and flight attendant rosters to comply with the suddenly-announced U.S. visa ban. This resulted in delayed daily flights to 11 U.S. cities. Other large airlines were forced, without prior notice, to check on their pilots' and flight attendants' passport and visa status. The same dilemma was faced by cruise line operators and merchant lines serving U.S. ports of call. Their crews hail from several countries and include a number of green card holders and dual nationals.

Absurdly, the ban resulted in former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magnus Bondevik, traveling on a Norwegian diplomatic passport that clearly identified him as "former prime minister," was detained and questioned upon arrival at Dulles International Airport. A 2014 Iranian visa in Bondevik's passport triggered the reaction of over-zealous federal agents. Bondevik, a Lutheran minister, was traveling to the United States to attend the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, where Trump bizarrely asked for prayers for former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's poor television ratings on "The Apprentice." Trump appeared encouraged by the laughter from the audience, composed of Washington politicians, diplomats, and jurists, as well as by foreign ambassadors and leaders. However, some of those in attendance said the audience was not laughing with Trump but at him.

The situation at London Heathrow International Airport was hectic, with scores of U.S.-bound passengers, including entire families, refused boarding on flights. Virgin Atlantic, British Airways, and EgyptAir flights were among those affected by delays out of Heathrow, one of the world's busiest airports. There were similar hectic scenes as passengers were refused boarding at airports in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Cairo, Addis Ababa, and Istanbul. Feeder airports, such as Muscat International in Oman, were forced to refuse boarding to expatriate workers in the sultanate who held U.S. green cards, some of whom were connecting to U.S.-bound flights in Istanbul.

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny said he may kick out U.S. Customs and Border Protection "pre-clearance" operations from Ireland's Shannon International Airport in response to the U.S. travel ban and its adverse impact on both Shannon and Dublin airports.

Passengers only transiting U.S. airports en route to other destinations were also denied entry to the U.S. airports. Nationals of the seven affected countries were denied boarding at airports ranging from San José, Costa Rica and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic to Nassau and Freeport in the Bahamas because they had to transit U.S. international airports to board their connecting flights to Europe and onward. There was some pressure from Bahamian politicians for the government to expel U.S. Customs and Border Protection pre-clearance facilities from Nassau and Freeport. 



For passengers who were already on planes heading to the United States, there was chaos at U.S. airports where scores of passengers with valid U.S. visas, green cards, and refugee immigration papers were detained for several hours. Arriving passengers were detained for several hours at New York's JFK, Detroit, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington Dulles, San Francisco, and Dallas.

Trump White House officials have also lied when they claim the visa ban is not a "Muslim ban," even though that is what Trump called his proposal during the campaign. The visa ban is not merely limited to the seven designated states but also to other nations, as two athletes invited to a snowshoe competition in Saranac Lake, New York discovered when they applied for a visa at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi. Their visas were refused because the athletes are Muslims from the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The U.S. embassy denied the two visas because they are Muslims. However, India is not one of the designated nations under the visa ban. Nor is Australia "officially" affected by the ban, yet one Australian-Iranian national holding an Australian passport was denied a U.S. visa under Trump's ban. U.S. embassy officials in Copenhagen said Trump's ban applies to the 57,424 Danish nationals having dual citizenship with the seven designated Muslim nations. Israeli immigration lawyers warned that Israeli Jews born in any of the seven countries, particularly those from Iran, Iraq, and Yemen, were likely subject to the U.S. travel ban.

Students with U.S. visas from the unrecognized Republic of Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia, have also been denied entry to the United States because Washington considers Somaliland to be a part of Somalia, which is covered by the visa ban. However, Somaliland is a partner of the U.S. in efforts to combat piracy in adjacent waters. 

Although the Trump ban has been temporarily suspended by judicial order, the White House has indicated that the ban could be extended to additional nations. White House chief of staff Reince Priebus hinted that Pakistan was likely to be added to the list. If such an order is carried out with the incompetence and lack of foresight of the first order, the world can expect another massive disruption in international travel.

Trump's "fascism forever" Supreme Court pick: shades of Rehnquist by The Wayne Madsen Report

Trump's "fascism forever" Supreme Court pick: shades of Rehnquist 

By The Wayne Madsen Report

President Trump further leads the United States into the depths of fascism in his selection of Neil Gorsuch as the replacement for the late Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. In the early 1980s, while attending the elite Jesuit-run male-only Georgetown Preparatory school in Washington, DC, Gorsuch founded the "Fascism Forever Club." Gorsuch served as president of the club until his graduation in 1985. At the time he was attending the prep school, Gorsuch's mother, Anne Gorsuch, served as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Ronald Reagan.


Gorsuch entry in the 1985 Georgetown Prep School yearbook

Anne Gorsuch was a harbinger for the anti-environmental Scott Pruitt, Trump's pick to head the EPA. As EPA administrator, Gorsuch attempted to quash the Clean Air Act while she smoked two packs of Marlboros a day. She died from cancer in 2004. Although the type of cancer was never disclosed, Gorsuch died at the Aurora Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado, which has top ratings for lung cancer treatment.

The Fascism Forever Club was billed as an anti-faculty group opposed to what it considered were "left-wing" faculty members.


Gorsuch's 1988 Columbia graduation yearbook, in which Gorsuch extols Kissinger's infamous quote about the illegal and the unconstitutional

In his graduation yearbook at Columbia University in 1988, Gorsuch's photograph is shown alongside his favorite quote, one made by Henry Kissinger on August 29, 1967: "The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer." Kissinger made the statement while a professor at Harvard, where Neil Gorsuch would eventually attend law school.

Gorsuch's early flirtation with fascism complements other fascist tendencies by the Trump administration, including its disregard for the Constitution and Bill of Rights. On February 2, Trump attended the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC, which is sponsored by the secretive Fellowship Foundation led for decades by the 88-year old Douglas Coe. The foundation traces its origins to a Seattle Methodist minister named Abraham Vereide, who advanced anti-labor fascist politics in the post-World War I years. Vereide's anti-union and pro-business prayer breakfast group, a cover for fascist policy-making, soon went nationwide.

In 1989, Coe, who Hillary Clinton once called her "spiritual mentor," said, "Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler were three men. Think of the immense power these three men had... But they bound themselves together in an agreement . . . Jesus said, 'You have to put me before other people. And you have to put me before yourself.' Hitler, that was the demand to be in the Nazi party. You have to put the Nazi party and its objectives ahead of your own life and ahead of other people."

On the day "Punxsutawney Phil," the Pennsylvania groundhog, predicted six more weeks of winter, Trump sat with hundreds of creepy right-wing followers of Coe in the ballroom of the Washington Hilton Hotel. They include senators, U.S. representatives, ambassadors, corporate executives, and leaders of foreign nations.

Trump's nomination of Gorsuch is reminiscent of President Nixon's nomination of William Rehnquist to the Supreme Court in 1972. Two years earlier, Nixon ordered the White House guards to wear ornamental Prussian military-style hats, something befitting Nixon's "imperial presidency," which ultimately led to his resignation over the Watergate scandal. The Prussian hats did not last very long amid ridicule by the press and late-night TV comedians.

Nixon's nomination of Rehnquist shocked many when it was discovered that as a young lawyer in Arizona, Rehnquist held views similar to those of the far-right John Birch Society: Chief Justice Earl Warren and President Dwight Eisenhower were "pinko" leftists, while Associate Justices William O. Douglas and Hugo Black were outright "commies." In the late 1950s, Rehnquist was opposed to desegregation and lamented the fact that whites and "negroes" might have to "glower at one another" over integrated lunch counters. For all Rehnquist's far right-wing views, Nixon did not like Rehnquist when he first met him in the White House. The future Chief Justice was a bureaucratic flunky in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel at the time. Nixon asked his counsel John Dean about Rehnquist, "Is he Jewish? He looks it." Dean replied that he was of Scandinavian descent.

Rehnquist's far-right background did not prevent him from being confirmed by the Senate as both Associate Justice and, later, as Chief Justice. And, although Gorsuch admired fascism and Kissinger in his earlier years, that did not prevent the Senate from confirming him unanimously on a voice vote as a federal appeals court judge in July 2006. 

Trump's "Monday Night Massacre" -- welcome to the constitutional crisis By the Wayne Madsen Report

January 31-February 1, 2017 -- Trump's "Monday Night Massacre" -- welcome to the constitutional crisis By the Wayne Madsen Report
The firing of acting Attorney General Sally Yates by President Trump on the evening of January 30 reminded many seasoned Washington politicos of President Nixon's firing of three top Justice Department officials during the Watergate scandal in October 1973. Nixon fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. After Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus refused to fire Cox, Nixon fired them both. Only Solicitor General Robert Bork was willing to carry Nixon's hatchet.

Yates, a career Justice Department prosecutor, was fired by Trump after she refused to order U.S. attorneys around the country to defend Trump's ban on valid U.S. visa holders entering the United States. In a letter to Justice Department attorneys, Yates wrote; "[F]or as long as I am the Acting Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the Executive Order." In a tweet, Trump falsely accused Yates of being an "Obama AG" when, in fact, she is a nonpolitical career Justice Department civil service official filling in during an administration transition vacancy.

Yates was filling the job of acting Attorney General while Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions awaits Senate confirmation. Yates was placed in the job because she, as a Justice Department official confirmed for her job by the Senate, was one of the few in the department authorized to sign Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) wiretap requests to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The firing of Yates came after a sixth federal judge, Dolly Gee of the U.S. District Court of the Central District of California, ordered the Department of Homeland Security to immediately return to the United States an Iranian national who possessed a valid U.S. visa and was deported from Los Angeles to Dubai. The Trump White House continues to insist that Trump's executive order, which bans visitors from seven predominantly Muslim nations, overrides judicial orders. That decision by Trump also has placed the country into a constitutional crisis. Trump's point man on the visa ban, lawyer Stephen Miller, believes that the Trump order is not a "ban on Muslims" when, in fact, they are the target of the order as revealed by former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a Trump insider. Miller, who is Jewish, is a defender of the hate politics espoused by neo-Nazi leader Richard Spencer. Miller and Spencer were colleagues at Duke University where they were both members of the Duke Conservative Union.

There are reports that Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, who is also Jewish, is furious over the roles now being played by Miller and political counselor Steve Bannon in crafting extremist policies being signed out by Trump as executive orders. Miller, Bannon, and Trump all insisted that the visa ban order not be cleared with anyone outside or even inside the White House. The Department of Homeland Security and its secretary, John Kelly, was among those not briefed about Trump's order beforehand. In a continuation of the Monday Night Massacre, Trump fired acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Daniel Ragsdale and replaced him with Thomas Homan, a Trump sycophant and a former New York City police official under Giuliani. Even the White House Office of Legal Counsel and the Office of Management and Budget were not briefed on the executive order nor were they even asked if it was legal and within budget and regulatory constraints.

During Yates's Senate confirmation hearing to be deputy Attorney General, Senator Sessions, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, pressed her on saying "no" to the president if he asked her to carry out an unlawful or improper order. Of course, Sessions was then referring to President Obama, but Yates made it clear that the Attorney General had an obligation to uphold the law no matter what the president ordered.



Trump's Monday Night Massacre may have also resulted in three Justice Department U.S. Attorneys being passed over

Trump decided on Dana Boente, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, to succeed Yates. Boente said he would carry out Trump's visa and immigration ban order. However, Trump passed over three other U.S. Attorneys designated to succeed Yates in the event of a vacancy. In a transition order signed by President Obama, succession was to have been passed from Yates to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Channing Phillips, then U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois Zachary Fardon, and lastly, Eileen Decker, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California. It is not known whether the three attorneys were asked to replace Yates and carry out Trump's order and they turned the White House down or whether they were merely passed over in order to select Boente.


DOJ succession order does not include US Attorney Boente, chosen by Trump to succeed Yates as acting AG

January 31 is a significant date in light of Trump's increasingly-unconstitutional power grabs. January 31, 1933 was the day that the German Reichstag made Adolf Hitler the German chancellor.

A week in office, Trump brings on constitutional crisis By Wayne Madsen Report

 

January 30-31, 2017 -- A week in office, Trump brings on constitutional crisis

By Wayne Madsen Report
The much-anticipated constitutional crisis many feared would come about under President Trump's bombastic style of leadership took only one week into his administration to be realized. Trump's Executive Order banning visitors, including U.S. permanent resident "green card" holders and those with valid U.S. visas, was one of the most poorly planned and implemented White House regulation in recent memory.

At airports across the world and at immigration checkpoints at airports across the United States, permanent U.S. residents were held in detention and some were put on planes back to their points of travel origination. When five federal judges issued temporary stays on the implementation of Trump's executive order, the White House balked. For some reason, the Trump administration believes the judiciary is subservient to the executive branch. It took one federal judge, John Sirica, the chief judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and a Republican nominated by Dwight Eisenhower, to show President Richard Nixon that his "imperial presidency" stopped with the federal judiciary. Sirica, who was a close personal friend of boxing stat Jack Dempsey, went several rounds in court with the Nixon administration over the Watergate scandal. In the end, Sirica delivered a knock out punch to several of Nixon's closest advisers and, eventually, Nixon resigned in disgrace.

The difference between Nixon and Trump is that Nixon, a lawyer and a former member of the U.S. House and Senate, understood the brinkmanship in which he was engaging with the courts and the independent special prosecutor. Trump, a pampered real estate mogul who was handed his wealth from his Nazi- and Ku Klux Klan-supporting father, Fred Trump, has not the first idea of what kind of constitutional fire he is playing with by ignoring the orders of five federal judges.

Certain pro-Trump media outlets -- the "usual suspects" -- are claiming the five judges are all Democrats. That is one of Trump's "alternate facts." The first judge to issue a stay on Trump's visa ban executive order was Ann Donnelly, a former New York state prosecutor , who was nominated by Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn. A native of Michigan and a graduate of Ohio State's Moritz College of Law, nothing suggests that Donnelly is a rank-and-file Democrat. In fact, the Republican Senate voted in 2015 to confirm Donnelly in a 95-2 vote.

When a number of New York City area politicians showed up at JFK International Airport with a copy of Judge Donnelly's order and demanded the release of detainees, clueless Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents feigned ignorance because their ultimate boss, Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, had not been briefed beforehand about Trump's cockamamie and ill-prepared executive order.

The next judge to issue a temporary restraining order was Leonie Brinkema, a no-nonsense judge sitting on the bench of the national security "Rocket docket" of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria. So named the "rocket docket" court because it often sides with the government in national security-related cases, it would normally be the last court where a national security matter would be ruled against. However, Brinkema, who sentenced the "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui to life imprisonment in the Colorado "Supermax" prison, ruled that Trump's executive order was stayed and that removal of green card holders from Dulles International Airport was suspended for seven days.

Brinkema also ordered lawyers be given access to those being detained at Dulles, an order that was immediately ignored when lawyers and three U.S. House members, Virginia Representatives Don Beyer and Gerry Connolly, and Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, as well as New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, were denied access to the detained passengers at the airport by members of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) police, who are answerable not to the DHS or CPB but to the independent MWAA commission, members of which are appointed by the governors of Maryland and Virginia and the mayor of DC, with only three appointed by the president. The fact that glorified airport rent-a-cops disregarded a federal court order and those of three members of the House and one U.S. senator is a definite troubling bellwether of things to come.

The third judge to issue a stay on the White House order was Thomas Zilly of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle. Zilly, who ordered all deportations stopped by Trump, was nominated by President Ronald Reagan. So much for the brain dead meme by Trump supporters that the order was nullified by "Democrat judges," a major "alternate fact" in Zilly's case.

The fourth and fifth judges who temporarily stayed Trump's deportation order were U.S. magistrate judge Judith Dein and District Court judge Allison Burroughs, both of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in Boston. Dein was nominated by Bill Clinton and Burroughs by Obama. Both were confirmed by Republican-controlled Senates, Dein in 2000 and Burroughs in 2014.

There are comments on a number of dubious pro-Trump websites that are calling for "action" against the five judges. This is where certain Internet keyboard jocks should be very careful. Violence against federal judges by purveyors of the same neo-Nazi hatred advanced by Fred Trump in the 1920s and '30s and by Trump counsel Steve Bannon today is not unknown in the United States. In 1989, U.S. Eleventh Circuit of Appeals judge Robert Vance was assassinated by a mail bomb delivered to his Alabama home. Moody was also convicted for the assassination of civil rights lawyer Robbie Robinson in a mail bomb explosion at his home in Savannah, Georgia. The convicted assassin, Walter Leroy Moody, Jr., was a habitué of Klan meetings throughout the South. In 1979, Judge John Wood, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, was assassinated by Charles Harrison, a reputed member of the right-wing kill squad that assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. In 1988, Judge Richard Daronco of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York in Manhattan was assassinated by retired New York police officer Charles Koster, who then killed himself. The FBI revealed there were several "loose ends" in the case. In 2005, the husband and mother of U.S. Judge Joan Lefkow of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago were murdered at the judge's Chicago home. Neo-Nazi Matthew Hale had previously been convicted of soliciting a contract hit man to assassinate Judge Lefkow.



New York Times article refers to the Memorial Day 1927 arrest of President Trump's father, Fred Trump, at an anti-Catholic KKK march in Queens. The apple did not fall far from the tree.

The second Trump executive order that has turned the White House upside down is his dictate to demote the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence from members of the "Principals Committee" of the National Security Council. The Principals Committee, which normally include both the JCS chair and DNI, normally meet once a week. In fact, JCS chairman, Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, and DNI-designate Dan Coats, have been relegated to the rank of NSC "deputies." The NSC "Deputies Committee" meets more often than the principals but they carry much less clout. Former CIA director and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told NBC News: "My biggest concern is there are actually, under the law, only two statutory advisers to the National Security Council and that's the Director of Central Intelligence, or the DNI, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I think pushing them out of the National Security Council meetings, except when their specific issues are at stake, is a big mistake." In other words, Trump's order removed the two NSC members whose membership is based on the law. It is strike two for Trump, as far as his ignorance of the law is concerned.

There are reports that two of Trump's closest advisers -- chief of staff Reince Priebus and press secretary Sean Spicer -- have come close to resigning from a White House they believe is operating by the seat of its pants.

In what might be considered strike three, Trump elevated his political counselor Bannon to the Principles Committee of the NSC. George W. Bush's counselor Karl Rove and Obama's counselor David Axelrod sat in on a few NSC meetings but they were not members nor were they permitted to speak.

The NSC decision by Trump did not sit well with General Dunford's old Marine Corps colleague, retired General James "Mad Dog" Mattis. There are rumblings in the Pentagon that Mattis is not at all pleased that his four-star Marine colleague has essentially been replaced on the NSC by Bannon, whose highest rank in the Navy was Lieutenant. At the Washington elite Alfalfa Club dinner on the evening of January 29, Mattis's unhappiness over the treatment of Dunford was the talk of the gossip circuit as was General John Kelly's irate reaction to the implementation of a visa ban order at Homeland Security over which he had zero input. White House sources at the dinner told The Atlantic's Steve Clemons that the visa ban was ordered not to be discussed with anyone outside the White House or, as was the case with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), even within the White House.

Spicer and Priebus, both of whom attended the Alfalfa Club dinner with Trump taking a pass, may have been using the absence of their vitriolic boss to vent their spleens to other attendees over drinks and dinner. Spicer, who, as a former press secretary for the U.S. Trade Representative under George W. Bush, should know what the satirical Onion is, retweeted one of their spoofs concernbing himself:


"The Onion" spoof proclaiming the Trump administration will "provide the American public with robust and clearly articulated misinformation" may not have been a mistaken re-tweet by the embattled press secretary who once worked for Priebus at the Republican National Committee.

The last president who shut the JCS out from the White House's decision-making process was Nixon. That did not work out too well for him in the long run.

There were early concerns about Trump placing so many generals in the Cabinet. So far, the generals -- Mattis and Kelly, with the addition of Dunford at JCS -- may be the only people standing between a would-be dictator and the U.S. Constitution. The clock had longer to tick out on Nixon. Trump's fast-moving clock toward impeachment is now at September 1973 in Nixonian terms.

Trump purges State Dept. of Soros and Israel ally By Wayne Madsen Report

Trump purges State Dept. of Soros and Israel ally By Wayne Madsen ReportIn what appears to be a total housecleaning of top-level diplomats at the U.S. State Department, President Trump fired longtime friend of Israel, Thomas Countryman, as the acting Under Secretary of State for International Security Affairs, an office known simply as the "T" office. In fact, according to a tweet sent out on January 26 by Bathsheba  (Sheba) Crocker, the former Assistant Secretary for International Organizations, Countryman was told to leave office on January 27 while he was en route to Rome for a non-proliferation meeting. Although the name of the meeting was not identified, there is a conference scheduled on Combating Terrorism, sponsored by the Disarmament and International Security Committee (DISEC) Model United Nations at the American University of John Cabot in Rome from January 25-29, 2017. The conference appears to have links to NGOs in Sarajevo, Mostar, Belgrade, Munich, and Bucharest that are financed by George Soros.



Crocker is the daughter of longtime State Department diplomat and the former Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker, a close associate and acolyte of Henry Kissinger.

Crocker was also chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg under Hillary Clinton. Steinberg also ensured that Countryman was placed within key State Department elements relating to protection of Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile and furthering the operations of Soros. Countryman has served as special adviser to U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright, liaison to the Clinton National Security Council's pro-Israeli special Middle East envoy Dennis Ross -- described by many Palestinians as "more pro-Israeli than the Israelis," Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, Deputy Assistant Secretary for European Affairs responsible for the Balkans, and lastly, Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation. Countryman has been serving as the acting head of the "T" office.

Countryman speaks Arabic and Serbo-Croatian, which made him a key player in fronting for Israeli interests in the Arab world and furthering Soros's and the Central Intelligence Agency's destabilization operations in the Balkans.

WMR's sources in the Middle East know Countryman as the primary diplomat at State who bristled at the suggestion that Israel possesses nuclear weapons and always sought to change the subject. WMR learned from U.S. intelligence sources that Countryman was an important link in the covert supply of weapons grade plutonium from the United States for the modernization of Israel's aging nuclear weapons arsenal. Being in charge of nuclear nonproliferation at State was a perfect cover for Israel's nuclear supply operations.

Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria (aka "Toria") Nuland also resigned her position, although there were some reports that the Trump transition team asked her to remain. Nuland was one of the masterminds of the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine that plunged that nation into a civil war. Nuland is married to the arch-neocon Robert Kagan, a fellow traveler of Countryman and Sheba Crocker at the Brookings Institution.

The purge at State is noteworthy. Although Trump has vowed to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, expressed support for Israeli right-wing prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and is being advised on Middle East matters by his pro-Likud son-in-law Jared Kushner, someone in the Trump White House is paradoxically purging the State Department of several long-serving pro-Israeli career diplomats. State was long the domain of a number of Arabic-speaking diplomats, known as "Arabists," who made no secret of their slant toward the Arab countries and their antipathy toward Israel. Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson, who has close ties to a number of Arab governments owing to his position as CEO of Exxon Mobil, may be trying to steer Foggy Bottom back to a more neutral position on Middle Eastern affairs.

SPECIAL REPORT. McCain chief culprit in Trump "dirty dossier" - By Wayne Madsen Report

SPECIAL REPORT. McCain chief culprit in Trump "dirty dossier" 

- By Wayne Madsen Report
Well-placed sources in the United Kingdom have told WMR that it was Arizona Republican Senator John McCain who was at the center of proffering and manipulating a 35-page opposition research intelligence report on Donald Trump and Russia. The dossier, which has been ascribed to former British Secret Intelligence Service officer Christopher Steele and his private intelligence firm Orbis Business Intelligence, Ltd., alleged that Trump observed Russian prostitutes engaged in a golden shower (urination) performance at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Moscow in 2013.

Trump was in Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant. The dossier alleges that the Ritz Carlton incident and other Trump dalliances with Russian prostitutes were captured on audio and video by hidden microphones and concealed cameras placed by the Russian Federal Security Bureau (FSB) in an effort by Russian President Vladimir Putin to blackmail Trump.

Several Western intelligence professionals have called the dossier a fake. Tony Brenton, a former British ambassador to Moscow, said of the dossier, "There are some things in it that look pretty shaky."

It is known that McCain features prominently in the trafficking of the dossier before it was made public last week.

On November 18, 2016, McCain discussed the dossier with Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow, while they both attended the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia. At about the same time the details of the dossier were being presented by the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to President Obama in a joint intelligence report that had also been chopped by CIA director John Brennan and National Security Agency director Admiral Mike Rogers.

After discussing the contents of the dossier with Wood in Halifax, McCain dispatched his assistant, David J. Kramer, a former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor under George W. Bush, to a European airport in order to collect the dossier. Out of a scene from a 1960s spy flick, Kramer was told to look for a man holding The Financial Times newspaper. Upon making contact with the "newspaper man," Kramer was driven by the retired British MI-6 agent to his home where they discussed the contents of the dossier before the former agent gave Kramer a copy to take back to Washington. The trip lasted 24 hours.

Kramer is a known Russophobe and an arch neocon. He is also a former senior fellow with the neocon Project for a New American Century. Kramer was also executive director of Freedom House, another bastion for neocons. Kramer is also associated with the Kiev regime and has argued that sanctions on Russia be continued indefinitely.

On December 9, 2016, McCain met with FBI director James Comey without aides being present to hand Comey a copy of the dossier McCain's envoy Kramer picked up from an unknown former MI-6 agent, presumably in England. However, Comey, unbeknownst to McCain, was already in possession of the dossier. It had been handed by Steele to an FBI official in Rome in August 2016.

The involvement of the British government in the dirty dossier is not insignificant. Also present with McCain and Wood in Halifax were the former head of the British Security Service (MI-5) Baroness Pauline Neville Jones, Defense Secretary Michael Fallon, and British military chief Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach. The government of Prime Minister Theresa May also attempted to slap a DA Notice (Defense Advisory Notice) to prevent the publication of Christopher Steele's name in media reports on the dirty dossier. The government opted not to impose the notice after Steele's name was published by foreign media outlets.

Shortly before the disclosure of the dirty dossier by BuzzFeed.com, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who is also responsible for MI-6, flew to New York on January 8 to meet with Trump. Trump snubbed Johnson but had his son-in-law Jared Kushner and adviser Steve Bannon meet with Johnson. The talks were described as "positive but frank." The term "frank" is a diplomatic term for something other than friendly. WMR has been told that Johnson wanted to assuage Trump that the British government, in no way, was connected to the preparation of the dirty dossier. On January 6, a day before Johnson arrived in New York, Clapper, Comey, Brennan, and Rogers briefed Trump on the gist of the dirty dossier at Trump Tower.

Did NSA director Rogers discover a CIA and MI-6 "dirty dossier" conspiracy against president-elect Trump and fly to New York without authorization to warn him?

WMR has been informed that Steele was not the principal author of the dossier and that he has been designated the official "patsy" by MI-6 and its chief, Alex Younger, as well as the May government, because of the political fallout from the dossier that threatens to drive a wedge between London and the Trump administration. Steele, along with his wife and two children, have fled from his £1.5 million home in Wokingham, which is 39 miles west of London, to the south of France. The Steele family is reportedly being accommodated in an MI-6 safe house.

WMR has been told that Steele's name was associated with the dirty dossier after several other British and American elements had provided input, deletions, and additions to the report. Our British sources have revealed that Steele in the "fall guy" to protect others from incurring the wrath of the incoming Trump administration. The other dossier "authors" include political operatives working for the Washington, DC political opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which originally was contracted by the Jeb Bush campaign to dig up dirt on Trump in September 2015. Fusion GPS, in turn, contracted with Steele and Orbis to dig up dirt on Trump. After Trump won the Republican presidential nomination, the Hillary Clinton campaign hired Fusion GPS and, by default, Steele and Orbis.



Steele also met with Mother Jones reporter and MSNBC contributor David Corn, a longtime apologist for the CIA, before the dirty dossier was published by BuzzFeed, a media outlet in which NBC Universal holds a significant investment. It is not known whether Corn received all or part of the Trump dossier but, at the very least, Steele did brief Corn on its contents, which were featured in a Corn article for Mother Jones on October 31, 2016.

There are a number of "chefs" involved in cooking up the dirty dossier. At a minimum, they include McCain; Fusion GPS, which was founded by former Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson; Comey and the FBI; Clapper and DNI; John Brennan and the CIA; Younger and MI-6; Ambassador Wood; Kramer and the McCain Institute; Steele's Orbis associates and informants; and members of the May government. In addition, the dossier was shared with the government-run British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in October 2016, obviously by official British sources. With such fingerprints on the dirty dossier, Steele, in fact, may be the least of all the contributors to the dubious report.

There is one important postscript to the story of the dirty dossier. On November 18, 2016, NSA director Rogers sneaked off from his headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland to personally meet with Trump at his New York office. Significantly, Rogers had not cleared his meeting with Trump with the Obama White House, which had just been briefed by Clapper, Brennan, and Rogers on the contents of the dossier. It is known that of all the major U.S. intelligence agencies, the NSA held the dossier to a level of low confidence as far as its veracity was concerned. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Clapper felt inclined to leak to the press, after the Trump-Rogers meeting, that the two had recommended to Obama that Rogers be relieved of his post a few weeks earlier.

The dossier was known to the U.S. Intelligence Community in August 2016. NSA's global intercept capabilities, which are now known as massive, thanks to the revelations of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, means that the identities of those coordinating the black ops against Trump were known to NSA and its allied partners, including its British counterpart, in almost real-time. Rogers would have had possession of the conspiracy against Trump before either Clapper or Brennan, or, for that matter, Obama. Something coaxed Rogers to break ranks with his intelligence community counterparts and independently meet with Trump in November. In this case, the NSA may have stepped in to preserve and protect the U.S. Constitution and the orderly transfer of executive power.

MLK family's doubts about the official version of April '68 events -By The Wayne Madsen Report

MLK family's doubts about the official version of April '68 events

-By The Wayne Madsen Report
Although this editor never had the opportunity to sit down with John F. Kennedy, Jr. in July 1999 to discuss his offer to a small group of journalists he decided to hire to investigate his father's assassination -- Kennedy died in a suspicious plane crash shortly before the interview was scheduled -- there was a surprise opportunity to discuss the matters of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination with his son.

In 2003, in a rather surreal moment, I was sitting in the congressional office of U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney talking to Martin Luther King, III about the events leading up to his father's assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968. The purpose of the meeting was McKinney's submission to the House of the MLK Records Act, which would have, if passed and enacted, opened up sealed government files on the assassination before their scheduled release in 2028.

There was a general consensus among those in the meeting that Dr. King was the victim of a wider conspiracy involving not only the U.S. government but members of the African-American community. While I was very familiar with the evidence that pointed to accused assassin James Earl Ray having received assistance from the Central Intelligence Agency, FBI, and members of Army intelligence. But what was astounding was the belief by many in the room that King's assassination involved a member of his own entourage in Memphis, Reverend Bill Kyles. Kyles was an influential preacher among the African-American community in Memphis.


Beginning at 2:05, Kyles recounts the King assassination. The audience reacts audibly with what he slipped up and said about giving the shooter a "clear shot."

It was Kyles who urged a very reluctant King to travel to Memphis to help settle a sanitation workers' strike in the city. King was busy with his national Poor People's Campaign but he accepted Kyles's request and traveled to Memphis. Kyles was in charge of King's schedule while in Memphis and it was Kyles who prompted King, a known procrastinator, to step out on to the balcony in front of room 306 of the Lorraine Motel. It was while King was on the balcony talking to some well-wishers in the parking lot below that a sniper shot and killed King.

Kyles was also close to Jesse Jackson, also believed by some people close to King to have been part of the ruse to coax King to Memphis.

The families and closest friends of America's slain leaders know, more than anyone else, the culprits behind America's most infamous assassinations. The Kennedy family suffered at least three political assassinations: John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and John F. Kennedy, Jr. It is almost never reported that the King family suffered three assassinations, Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968; King's youngest brother, Reverend A. D. King, 39, found dead in a swimming pool on July 21, 1969; and King's mother, Alberta Williams King, shot and killed in Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on June 30, 1974.

A.D. King's sudden death on July 21 and the obvious government set-up of Senator Edward Kennedy in the Chappaquiddick car drowning incident involving Mary Jo Kopechne on the evening of July 20 were all overshadowed by another front page story, man's first moon landing.

Schumer warned Trump of CIA retaliation and it came in a piss squall by The Wayne Madsen Report

Schumer warned Trump of CIA retaliation and it came in a piss squall by The Wayne Madsen Report
After president-elect Donald Trump threw cold water on a rather sketchy U.S. Intelligence Community assessment that Russian intelligence hacked the computers and email of the Democratic National Committee and top Hillary Clinton campaign officials, Trump dismissed the allegations by stating that many nations conduct such hacking operations. On Friday, January 7, John Brennan, James Comey, Admiral Mike Rogers, and James Clapper, the respective heads of the Central Intelligence Agency, FBI, National Security Agency, and Directorate of National Intelligence, entered the Trump Tower to give Trump a classified briefing on the Russian hacking.

Earlier in the week, and this is very key to what the intelligence chiefs told Trump on Friday, New York Senator and Senate Minority Leader warned Trump that his airy dismissal of the allegations against Russia by the U.S. intelligence agencies would come back to haunt him. Schumer, speaking on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow program, warned Trump, "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you."

And "get back" at Trump they did, when they informed him on Friday that he was the subject of a blackmail operation by the Russian government. The alleged blackmail charge was based on a suspicious 35-page private intelligence report that arrived in the hands of the FBI via the anti-Trump John McCain on December 9. Then-Senate Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid reportedly passed the same dossier to Comey in October 2016.

One report in the partly-redacted dossier, dated June 20, 2016, alleges that during a 2013 trip to Moscow to attend the Miss Universe pageant, Trump had Russian prostitutes urinate for him in a "golden shower" performance on the same bed in the presidential suite at the Ritz-Carlton hotel that President Obama and Michelle Obama slept in during an earlier state visit to Russia. The report concludes that Russia used the incident to blackmail Trump into granting Russia concessions in the event he was elected president. The report also alleges that, in addition to the Ritz-Carlton incident, Trump's "unorthodox behavior" during a series of other trips to Russia had provided the Russians with additional embarrassing blackmail, including "sex parties" in St. Petersburg, contained on videotapes and audio recordings.

The "report" was said to have originated with an anonymous former British MI-6 clandestine officer who had served in Moscow and who had since retired to form his own private intelligence company. Although the report was said to have been floating around media, intelligence, and federal law enforcement circles since last October, it was not revealed until after the "big four" intelligence chief's meeting with Trump, much too late to have affected the election.

Although the authenticity of the dossier could not be verified, Buzzfeed decided to publish it anyway as "news" in a shocking display of unprofessional journalism. The allegations in the report first surfaced in a Mother Jones article written by Clinton and CIA hack David Corn on October 31, 2016. Corn is the author of "Blond Ghost," a favorable biography of one of the CIA's all-time political dirty tricks operators, Ted Shackley. Corn's article, without any independent verification, claimed "Russian intelligence had 'compromised' Trump during his visits to Moscow and could "blackmail him."

WMR has seen this sort of social networking-based "guilty verdict" before with some of the same players involved. The core group pushing the Trump blackmail story are the typical coterie of neocons, including McCain, Buzzfeed's Ben Smith, former Naval War College professor John Schindler (who was fired by the college for "sexting" a photograph of his penis to a woman not his wife), Louise Mensch (one of Rupert Murdoch's gossip column flunkies in London and an ex-Tory Member of Parliament), and CNN president Jeff Zucker.

WMR's editor was the subject of a similar social media mob campaign, centered around Schindler, Mensch, and The Daily Telegraph of the UK, over an exclusive front page interview given The Observer of the UK on NSA's third party signals intelligence partners in Europe. The neocon spin machine resulted in the interview being pulled from the second print run of The Observer and from the website of its sister newspaper, The Guardian.

The document, titled "US Presidential Election: Republican Candidate Donald Trump's Activities in Russia and Compromising Relationship with the Kremlin," contains a number of clues to indicate that it is a hoax that mixes standard U.S. and British intelligence classified document formatting with obvious fraudulent content. One tell-tale sign of U.S. intelligence and/or federal law enforcement involvement in the production of the document is the use of ALL CAPS for last names. U.S. Attorneys commonly put first and last names in ALL CAPS. This is a common format for CIA and FBI reports, as well as federal indictments. On the other hand, the security caveat "CONFIDENTIAL/SENSITIVE SOURCE" is not standard classification usage for U.S. or British classified documents.

At least part of the raw intelligence on Russian cyber-targeting and human intelligence recruiting effort inside Russia and neighboring countries like Latvia appears to have originated with the British private security firm Orbis Business Intelligence, Ltd., headquartered in London. The business was founded in 2009 by two ex-British Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) officers, Christopher Steele and Christopher Burrows. Steele is a former deputy to MI-6's Moscow head of station Richard Noble in 1990. In 1991, Steele continued to serve in Moscow under Steele's replacement, John McLeod Scarlett. Scarlett was the head of MI-6 from 2004 to 2009.

More importantly, Scarlett was involved, along with Prime Minister Tony Blair's Communications and Strategy director Alistair Campbell in the preparation of the so-called British "dodgy dossier," also known as the "September Dossier," of September 24, 2002, that wrongfully concluded that Sadaam Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, in a foreword to the dossier, Blair wrote, "The document discloses that his [Sadaam's] military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them. The 45-minute allegation was used by the British press to falsely claim that Britain was "45 minutes" from doom as a result of an Iraqi chemical attack.

The "dodgy dossier" also falsely claimed that Iraq had sought to obtain significant quantities of uranium from Africa. The "dodgy dossier" was proven to be based on a number of falsehoods that were later debunked. However, Blair used the dossier as justification for Britain to join the United States in the invasion and occupation of Iraq and President George W. Bush used the uranium in Africa charge in his January 2003 State of the Union address.

We now see the same circle of MI-6 officers linked to the dubious report on Trump, some of the contents of which were apparently presented to Trump's rival for the GOP presidential nomination, Jeb Bush, as opposition research on Trump. The same report, in some form, apparently also fell into the hands of the Hillary Clinton campaign after Trump received the GOP nomination in July 2016. With the involvement of Blair's political henchmen with the Orbis group that prepared the report, it is not a stretch to assume that Blair could have been involved in hyping the importance and veracity of the report to Senators Reid and McCain, who passed it on to FBI director Comey.

As for Scarlett, in 2011, he joined the board of Times Newspapers Ltd., owned by Rupert Murdoch's NI Group. It was Murdoch's other newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, that published the identities of Steele and Orbis as the source of the dossier on Trump.

A report dated June 26, 2016, contained in the dossier appears to be a standard report on Russian intelligence cyber-targeting. It deals with Russian "state-sponsored offensive cyber operations" on the "external targets [of] foreign governments and big corporations, especially banks." Nothing in this report mentions Trump. Oddly, the report states that "US citizens of Russian (Jewish) origin" were approached by Russian Federal Security Bureau (FSB) agents while on business trips to Russia. The singling out of Jews for such approaches is an indicator that American Jewish groups may have had some input on the dubious dossier.

The entire dossier appears to be a hybrid, part of it containing U.S. and/or British intelligence information and other parts strongly suggesting bogus information authored by non-intelligence parties.

Another dossier report, dated August 5, 2016, is a tell-tale sign of CIA creation. The report suggests that Russian "Premier MEDVEDEV's office" was furious over Russian intelligence hacking of the DNC." This is clearly an attempt to portray a split between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev, a longtime goal of the CIA and the Obama administration.

An August 19, 2016 report alleges the Russians had also successfully financed other American figures. The report specifically mentions Lyndon LaRouche, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders, Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page, Trump's earlier campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, and former Defense Intelligence Agency chief Michael Flynn. WikiLeaks, long a major target for the CIA, is also implicated as part of the "grand Russian conspiracy" in the dossier, as is Araz Agalarov, an Azeri business associate of Trump.

Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort are accused in the dossier of being agents for the Russian government. An October 20, 2016, report says that a planned meeting between Cohen and a Russian government official scheduled for Moscow in July 2016 were moved to Prague, Czechia, described in the report as a "soft" EU country. The alleged meeting is said to have taken place at the Prague office of the Russian parastatal firm Rossotrudnichestvo. The claim of such a meeting is astounding since Czech intelligence would normally have that particular office under close surveillance.



However, Czechia is also a member of NATO and the location of a number of NGOs controlled by George Soros, so it is anything but "safe." A safer non-NATO country in the EU for such a meeting would have been either Finland, Sweden, or Austria. Nevertheless, Cohen claims he was never in Prague. Cohen is implicated in the affair because his wife is "of Russian descent" and "her father is a leading property developer in Moscow." In another example of the report being a bogus and amateurish product, Trump's attorney Michael Cohen was not in Prague at the time the report indicated but was with his son at the University of Southern California. CNN backtracked on its initial report by claiming it was another Michael Cohen who was in Prague in 2016. This was another example of shoddy journalism with a story that never had any legs to begin with. The dossier is replete with many other examples of pure guilt by association.



The listing of various American citizens, with the insinuation of their being disloyal, is highly reminiscent of the "Red lists" compiled by the FBI during the witch-hunting days of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The July 30, 2016, report alleges that the Trump team provided Russia with "intelligence activities, business and otherwise, in the US of leading Russian oligarchs and their families." This refers to exiled oligarchs who have been working to overthrow Putin's government by any means and they include Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Leonid Nevzlin, Mikhail Chernoy, and other Russian Jewish billionaires who split their time between Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They have the means and the motives to create a bogus intelligence report implicating Trump, Putin, and others in an election conspiracy.

The inclusion of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in the dossier indicates that the Ukrainian government, backed by Ukrainian-Israeli oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, also played a role in the report's preparation. At the same time the dossier was released, there was a report that the Ukrainian government and intelligence service provided covert assistance to the Hillary Clinton campaign to prevent Trump's election. A reference to Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) workers and ethnic Russians in Latvia being targeted to be agents for Russia is an indication that the virulently anti-Russian Latvian government also provided input to the dossier.



During the Cold War, the U.S. State Department maintained an office that routinely discovered bogus documents issued by Soviet intelligence claimed to of official U.S. government origin. However, the State Department often discovered tell-tale clues, some obvious, others not so much, proving the documents were propaganda forgeries. Just as was the case with the crude Soviet forgeries, the Trump dossier contains several glaring clues that point to it being a hoax.

WMR learned from a former CIA clandestine service officer that the CIA engaged in such practices -- producing fake intelligence reports to embarrass political leaders in Third World countries -- during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. He added that the dossier about Trump bore the fingerprints of a Brennan-initiated hoax and that it involved a more general civil war within the U.S. intelligence community between pro- and anti-Trump officials.

A September 14, 2016 report on Russia's Alfa Group, formerly Alfa-Eco, the largest private investment firm in Russia, politically controlling Putin misspells the company as "Alpha Group." This points to the document's authors having military connections to the United States and/or NATO.  The Russian military's special operations (Spetsnaz) group "A" is known as the "Alpha Group," which is consistent with the alpha-numeric nomenclature employed by the U.S. military, intelligence community, and NATO. The error in using "Alpha" instead of "Alfa" indicates a U.S. intelligence and/or military connection to the dossier because the author of the particular section in question, likely a CIA operative, confused Russia's Spetsnaz team with a major Russia corporation. This is a sloppy indicator of the dossier being a fake.

Other signs of fakery include the misspellings of names, such as the three references to "Paul MANNAFORT" in the October 19 report contained in the dossier. The name is spelled "Manafort."

One copy of the dossier cites Barvikha, a town outside of Moscow, as being "reserved for the residences of the top leadership and their close associates." This statement is false. Barvikha is open to any Russians, although many who live there tend to be wealthier citizens. The authors of the dossier appear not to have had extraordinary intelligence on Barvikha but obtained their information from the problematic Wikipedia, which refers to the town as the site of state dachas for the USSR's leading officials and intellectuals during Soviet times. Barvikha has not hosted any Russian leader since Boris Yeltsin. The use of outdated information from open sources represents yet another major sign of a hoax document.

The use of the phrase "plausible deniability" in the July 30 section of the dossier to describe Russian actions in support of Trump is from the CIA's lexicon.

The entire dossier appears to be a fictionalized spy novel complete with tales of sexual blackmail, refuge hangouts in Bulgaria (bolt-holes), Romanian hackers, shady Azerbaijani businessmen, bribed U.S. political advisers, Chinese kickbacks,and clandestine meetings in Volgograd and Prague. However, the entire script is more Austin Powers than James Bond.

What has been lost by the U.S. corporate media in the current furor over alleged Russian intelligence involvement in the U.S. election is the now-proven involvement of senior levels of British intelligence in the election and in having their fingerprints on the Trump dossier. It is always automatically assumed that British intelligence has selfless motives when it comes to the United States. U.S. media buys into that notion by hiring a number of British nationals as reporters and editors, including the New York Times's CEO Mark Thompson, Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker, Cosmopolitan editor Joanna Coles (formery with The Guardian), NBC News (which owns BuzzFeed.com) president Deborah Turness, ABC News international editor Jon Williams, CNN anchor Richard Quest, and New York Daily News editor Colin Myler. British native Tina Brown's influence is still felt at The Daily Beast, which she founded. Top British media executives and editors are well-known for their ties to British intelligence.



The chief media cheerleaders pushing the British intelligence-linked Trump dossier all have British connections: Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, The Daily Beast, New York Daily News, CNN, and, especially, NBC's BuzzFeed, which published the dossier without verifying that it was authentic. Don't expect to see any headlines announcing: "British intelligence connections found between Jeb! and Hillary campaigns and anti-Trump dossier."