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.

***

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.