Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Neocon invasion of Team Trump fully underway By Wayne Madsen Report



Neocon invasion of Team Trump fully underway By Wayne Madsen Report
The purge of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie loyalists from the Donald Trump presidential transition team has little to do with Christie's Bridgegate scandal and everything to do with a battle between Bush-era neoconservatives and national security realists for control over key departments of the Trump administration. It appears that Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, the publisher of the New York Observer and someone who is aligned with the Likud Party of Israel, is now the de facto chair of the Trump transition team, especially when it comes to national security matters. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, the official chairman of the team, is concentrating on domestic policy appointments, such as the rumored appointment of Texas Senator Ted Cruz as Attorney General.

Kushner fired Christie and Christie loyalist, former House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers, from the transition team and replaced them with the discredited neocon Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy. It is likely that Gaffney will seek to bring a host of neocons who championed the U.S. invasion of Iraq into the Trump administration. Also fired was Matthew Freedman, another Christie loyalist. Kushner never liked Christie because as a federal prosecutor in north Jersey, Christie successfully prosecuted Kushner's father, real estate tycoon Charles Kushner, who received a prison sentence at Christie's urging.

Where one finds the likes of Gaffney, former CIA director James Woolsey, also a member of the Trump transition team, and John Bolton, rumored to be in consideration for Secretary of State or deputy Secretary of State, one will find the other neocons who drove the United States into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These include Richard Perle, who claimed U.S. troops invading Iraq would be met with Iraqis throwing "flowers and candy." This editor wrote the following about Perle's fatuous claim in a March 31, 2003, article for CounterPunch: "Perle’s military experience does not permit him to distinguish between flowers and candy and bullets and mortar rounds."

There is someone far more sinister than Gaffney, Bolton, and Perle chomping at the bit to join the new administration. WMR has learned from multiple knowledgeable sources that the proponent of neo-fascism, Michael Ledeen, is working closely with former Defense Intelligence Agency chief Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, to ensure that as many neocons from the Bush 43 and Reagan eras find senior positions in the Trump administration. Flynn co-authored a book with Ledeen that was released in July and titled, "The Field of Flight:
How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies." The book represents typical neocon pabulum more than it does realism. In July, Kushner's Observer, unsurprisingly, published a five-star review of the book. Flynn, who distinguished himself admirably by suggesting that the Obama administration was coddling the Islamic State and its allied jihadists in Syria, appears not to recognize that it has long been the desire of neocons like Ledeen, Perle, Woolsey, and Bolton to divide the Arab nation-states into warring factions so that Israel can hold ultimate sway over the entire Middle East.

The Field of Fight
The Flynn and Ledeen team spell trouble for the Trump administration

Even more worrisome about the Flynn-Ledeen duo is the fact that they may have been involved with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in staging a "self-coup," known more popularly in Latin America as an "autogolpe," in Turkey in July of this year. In April, WMR first became aware of plans for such a potential coup in Turkey when we were informed that Flynn and a group of Americans and Turks were involved in planning something "big" in Turkey. What we were not told was when and what, but it is now evident based on Flynn's connections with Ledeen. The history of Ledeen in staging deep state political operations, including prominent assassinations and coups, is perhaps without parallel in recent times. By encouraging those individuals within the Turkish military, police, judiciary, and media harboring anti-Erdogan feelings to set the ground for the July coup played right into Erdogan's hands. The July 15 Turkish coup attempt, like the July 20, 1944, coup attempt against Adolf Hitler, saw Erdogan and Hitler bide their time after the launching of the coups to successfully identify all the coup actors. Both Erdogan and Hitler were conveniently away from their respective capitals at the time of the coups, Erdogan in Marmaris on the southwest coast of Turkey and Hitler in Rastenburg in East Prussia.

Erdogan and Hitler both engaged in purges of the coup plotters in a classic "fly paper" operation. In the case of Erdogan, the Hizmet movement of Turkish businessman and Islamic spiritual leader Fethullah Gulen were identified as being behind the self-coup. Their followers throughout Turkish society were rounded up, jailed, and charged with treason. Flynn has promised that the Trump administration will extradite Gulen from his place of asylum in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, to stand trial for leading the coup after which he is certain to face an Erdogan firing squad or gallows hanging.

Italian law enforcement sources have told WMR that Ledeen is suspected of involvement in another major "false flag" operation. In 1978, leftist guerrillas with the Italian Red Brigades allegedly carried out the kidnapping and assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro. Moro was about to participate in a compact between his Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party, something that was anathema to a group of neocons in the United States, including Henry Kissinger. Ledeen and State Department interlocutor and "fixer" Dr. Steve Pieczenik, who is now a frequent guest on Infowars, reportedly worked through Italian fascist organizations like the P-2 Masonic lodge and the Gladio networks of the CIA and NATO, which also were running the kidnappers of Moro, to arrange for his hasty assassination.

Aldo Moro Steve Pieczenik US Italy PM killed investigation
Aldo Moro's death was at the hands of U.S. deep state players

Italian sources report that Ledeen has recently been spotted in Rome. What is of concern to the Italians is that Ledeen, who speaks fluent Italian, is in Italy to support the December 4 referendum ushed by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi that would change the Italian Constitution to establish a strong prime minister and curtail the powers of the Italian Senate, Presidency, and the regional governments. The fascist forces in Italy, represented by Renzi's Democratic Party, seek to curtail the ability of the Italian senate and judiciary to carry out current Italian investigations of deep state activities, including probes into the past affairs of Gladio, Ledeen, and Pieczenik.

Ledeen is the most malignant neocon tumor to appear within the nascent Trump foreign policy apparatus. He has been a threat to U.S. national security since the Jimmy Carter administration. 
A CIA document from the CIA's Office of Legislative Counsel, dated October 16, 1978,  indicates that Democratic Rep. Edward Boland of Massachusetts, the first chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), had doubts about the veracity of Ledeen, then a journalist.
Boland, who would later sponsor the Boland Amendments that prohibited U.S. support for the Nicaraguan contras -- a prohibition that Ledeen and his co-conspirators violated in the Iran-Contra affair -- passed along a request, via HPSCI Staff Director Thomas K. Lattimer to the CIA, asking about "the veracity of the 2 October 1978 article in the New York Magazine by Michael Ledeen about CIA [counter-intelligence] staff having planted false information in high USG [U.S. Government] circles to find out whether there was in fact a 'mole.'" The neocon line at the time was that there were Soviet moles in the U.S. Intelligence Community. However, after Reagan came to power and Ledeen joined the administration, the most destructive mole found in the government was Jonathan Pollard, a spy for Israel, and a Mossad control officer, code-named Mega, who, although never been publicly identified, has been rumored to be one of the veteran neocons being considered for a high national security or foreign affairs position in the Trump administration.

During the Bush 43 administration, Ledeen also wormed his way into the White House.
Ledeen acted as an unofficial foreign policy adviser to Karl Rove, especially in championing the cause of the Iranian terrorist group Mojahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK), which was also supported by rumored Trump Secretary of State choice Rudolph Giuliani.  Ledeen also served as an interlocutor between the Bush administration and the Iran interlocutor from the Iran-Contra scandal, Manucher Ghorbanifar, an expatriate Iranian Jew who makes his home in Rome. Even after Ledeen's and Ghorbanifar's fingerprints were found on the bogus "yellowcake" uranium documents from Niger, falsely describing Iraq's seeking to procure uranium from the West African nation as a pretext for war with Iraq, Ledeen and Ghorbanifar sought to re-enact the same fiction, this time with Iran being the target.

Ledeen and Ghorbanifar sought $25 million from the Bush White House to have the MEK plant Desert Storm-vintage biological and chemical weapons shells, confiscated by U.S. forces in Iraq, on the Iranian side of the Iraqi border. The weapons would be used as "proof" of Iran's plan to "attack" U.S. troops in Iraq, thus prompting a U.S. military strike against Iran and another war for the United States.

In 2005, WMR reported on another scandal involving Ledeen, yet a second major espionage operation focused on Mossad agents within the U.S. intelligence infrastructure. The August 2, 2005 report is as follows: "An on-going criminal investigation in Italy has yielded copies of the minutes of meetings held at the U.S. Embassy in Rome in 1995 attended by a Colonel Franklin' from the United States, leading Italian neo-fascist politicians (including Deputy Prime Minister Giancarlo Fini), and Likud officials from Israel. The meetings were held to arrange for lucrative telecommunications and military contracts for Israeli companies with the U.S. government . . .

Air Force Reserve Colonel, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Pentagon Bureau of Near East and South Asian Affairs employee Lawrence (Larry) A. Franklin was recently indicted for passing classified information to two American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) employees. The top Mossad official at the Israeli embassy in Washington and other Israeli agents are also under investigation by the FBI. Franklin served in the U.S. Air Force Reserves since 1976 and was posted to the DIA and Defense HUMINT Services. While serving his two week active duty stints, Franklin was intermittently posted to the Air Attache office at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. Franklin, who touted an aggressive military approach against Iran, also reportedly attended a December 2001 meeting in Rome on opening up back channels to Iranian dissidents. Attending the meeting, in addition to Franklin, were leading neo-con Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute and Karl Rove's chief foreign policy advisor; Pentagon neocon Harold Rhode; Iran-contra figure and known fabricator Manucher Ghorbanifar; Italian SISMI military intelligence chief Nicolo Pollari; Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino; and a number of Iranian dissidents."
Trump has only been president-elect for a week and his proto-administration is already being infiltrated by individuals who have acted as major deep state players in the political affairs of Turkey, Italy, Iraq, Iran, and other nations. The talk of Bolton as Secretary of State has so alarmed Kentucky's recently-reelected Senator Rand Paul that he will do everything in his power to seek Senate rejection of Bolton as Secretary of State. Paul and others should also object to the presence of individuals such as Gaffney, Woolsey, Perle, Ledeen, and other neocons in the Trump administration. Flynn, if nominated for a position requiring Senate confirmation, should be grilled vigorously on his and Ledeen's involvement in the Turkish self-coup of July 2016.

CIA strong-armed Brazilian President Goulart from power By Wayne Madsen Report




CIA strong-armed Brazilian President Goulart from power By Wayne Madsen Report
A declassified CIA Secret report describes how the agency strong-armed Brazilian President Joao Goulart from power. Then Vice President-Goulart became president in 1961 upon the resignation of President Janio Quadros. Goulart, who was on a visit to the People's Republic of China when Quadros resigned, set about to strengthen Brazil's relations with the Communist and non-aligned blocs. Goulart was also a driving force behind the Treaty of Tlatelolco, which declared Latin America to be a nuclear-free zone. All this was too much for the CIA, which immediately ramped up a military coup to oust the progressive leader.

A formerly Secret October 1, 1963 "Current Intelligence Memorandum" prepared by the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, referred to the Goulart government as "inept" and "corrupt" in beginning to lay the groundwork for U.S. backing for a military coup the following year. It is doubtful that President John F. Kennedy, who crafted the Alliance for Progress for Latin America, would have authorized the coup. One of the benefits to the CIA of the assassination of Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, was the green light from President Lyndon Johnson for an anti-Goulart coup on April 1, 1964.

The CIA memo called for Goulart to be checked. It states that the "instability" in Brazil and "the strong positions being won by extreme leftists, if not checked, will tend to push the country toward more radical departures in domestic and foreign policies." The memo also states that Goulart "is most at home on the left." The CIA falsely accused the democratically-elected Goulart of wanting to extend his presidency after his term expired in 1966, "establishing at best a Peron-like regime." The CIA memo veered off further into fantasy land by claiming that Goulart's "actions could ultimately lead to a subsequent takeover by a coalition of ultranationalists and Communists." Much of the input for the CIA memo came from U.S. ambassador to Brazil Lincoln Gordon, who, like Kennedy advisers McGeorge Bundy and CIA director John McCone, were working to undermine Kennedy's foreign policy programs while swearing loyalty to the president.

The CIA memo considered a "military/conservative preemptive coup" was inevitable. The CIA raised warning flags on Goulart in reporting that "Goulart has appointed some Communists and Communist sympathizers to key administration posts and has removed a number of pro-US and anti-Communists from office." The memo adds, "[Goulart] is relying increasingly on extreme leftists, such as pro-Communist Governor Miguel Arraes of Pernambuco, for counsel on major problems." Another politician who came in for heavy criticism in the CIA memo was Goulart's brother-in-law Leonel Brizola, described as "anti-US" and "radical fringe." Under pressure from Gordon and the Labor Attaché at the U.S. embassy -- likely a CIA agent, Goulart was forced to fire his Labor Minister, the allegedly "pro-Communist" Almino Afonso.

The CIA memo indicates that Langley was alarmed by the 1963 visit to Brazil of Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito, the opening of diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro's Cuba, and a five-year trade and payments agreement with the USSR. Nor did Brazil's plans to seek a moratorium on debt payments to foreign banks sit well with with the CIA and its Wall Street masters.



The CIA, in 1963, began to cobble together Goulart's opponents in the military and the right-wing to depose the president in a coup. The agency's chief political ally was Governor Carlos Lacerda of Guanabara State, where Rio de Janeiro is located. The CIA also sought to unite various Brazilian generals and admirals against "Communist" generals promoted by Goulart, including Argemiro de Assis Brasil. On September 18, 1963, an abrotive rightist plot against Goulart staged in Rio de Janeiro by retired Admiral Sylvio Heck was put down by Goulart's War Minister Jair Ribeiro. No sooner had that rebellion been quashed, another began brewing in Sao Paulo led by the right-wing Commander of the Second Army, General Peri Bevilacqua.

After the 1964 coup, Goulart and Brizola fled to Uruguay. Brizola eventually fled to the United States during the Jimmy Carter presidency and received asylum thanks to the fforts of Senator Edward Kennedy. Goulart died from a sudden heart attack in Argentina in 1976. In 2000, Brizola claimed that Goulart and former PresidentJuscelino Kubitschek were assassinated in 1976, Goulart by poison and Kubitschek in an auto accident, on the orders of the CIA in Operation Condor. In 1996, Brizola unsuccessfully ran as vice president on the presidential ticket of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula won the presidency in 2002 with Brizola's support. Brizola was planning to run to succeed Lula in 2006 but in 2004 he died suddenly from a heart attack the day after meeting two campaign assistants. Lula was eventually succeeded by Dilma Rousseff, who counted Brizola as one of her mentors. In 2015, Rousseff honored Brizola by inscribing his name in the Book of Heroes of the Motherland reserved for those Brazilians "who offered their lives to the Motherland, her defense and building, with exceptional commitment and heroism." In 2016, the very same CIA that overthrew Goulart and tried to kill Brizola presided over a constitutional coup against Rousseff and behind a political operation that has seen trumped-up criminal charges being brought against ex-President Lula and his wife. This is a gambit to prevent Lula from running again for president.

The leadership of the CIA may have changed over the years but the agenda of the agency differs little from the 1950s and 60s. The rumors that President-elect Donald Trump might select the CIA's torture architect, Jose Rodriguez, as his CIA director is a stark example of how the CIA never learns from its past abuses and crimes.

The CIA's jaded history in Brazil is but one of in a series of dubious operations abroad in pursuit of American political, military, and economic hegemony.

Monday, November 14, 2016

George Soros hit with triple whammy By Wayne Madsen Report




 George Soros hit with triple whammy By Wayne Madsen Report
No sooner had global hedge fund tycoon and international troublemaker George Soros picked himself off the floor following Donald Trump's shock presidential election victory in the United States, he was staggered by two more presidential election routs in countries where he made huge investments in the defeated candidates.

In Bulgaria, a Trump-like political newcomer, Rumen Radev of the Socialist Party, defeated the Soros-backed and pro-EU and NATO presidential candidate Tsetska Tsacheva in a 59 to 36 percent final tally. Prime Minister Boyko Borissov of the GERB party immediately tendered his government's resignation. Although Soros and the Obama administration favored the GERB (Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria) candidate, Borissov demonstrated some independence by rejecting a Romanian proposal for NATO to establish a permanent Black Sea fleet to confront Russia. Radev promised during the campaign to seek closer ties with Russia, Bulgaria's historical ally and cultural twin. Radev opposes European Union sanctions on Russia, joining Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in favoring the dropping of the coercive economic measures by Brussels. In his acceptance speech in Sofia, Radev praised Trump's victory in the United States. During the campaign, Radev said Bulgaria would not become "Europe's migrant ghetto," rejecting EU quotas for its members to accept Muslim refugees from Syria, Iraq, and other war-torn countries.

There was more bad news for Soros in Moldova, which lies between Romania and Ukraine. The Socialist Party’s Igor Dodon defeated Maia Sandu of the Soros-backed Action and Solidarity party by 52 to 48 percent of the vote in Moldova's first direct popular election of its president. Moldova has been the scene of a number of Soros-financed color revolutions aimed at transforming the nation into a vassal of the EU and NATO and forcing the re-incorporation of the breakaway northern region of Transnistria, a republic where half the population is composed on ethnic Russians and which hosts a Russian military unit, the Operational Group of Russian Forces in Moldova, formerly the Soviet 14th Guards Army.

Dodon promised to scrap Moldova's trade agreement with the EU and join the Russian-backed Eurasian Economic Union, a counterweight to the EU. Dodon said his first foreign trip will be to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Dodon appeared to be heading on a collision course with Moldova's anti-Russian and pro-EU prime minister,
Pavel Filip, who achieved power with Soros financial backing.
 
Soros-backed loser in Moldova, Maia Sandu [left]. And you're right, she does bear a resemblance to another Soros-backed loser, Huma Abedin [right]. Maybe the Soros factory should be retooled for blonds, instead.

Europe's Atlanticist and CIA-influenced organizations, ranging from the German Marshall Fund to the London School of Economics' European Politics and Policy website, are bemoaning Russia's success this past week and the stunning losses for NATO, the EU, and the machinations of Soros.

Austrian Freedom Party presidential candidate Norbert Hofer, who will face a Soros-backed pro-EU Green Party candidate in the Austria's December 4 election, has hailed Trump's victory as foretelling a better American relationship with Moscow. Hofer is expected to win and add his voice to the anti-EU and anti-migrant political surge now sweeping Europe in the wake of the United Kingdom's successful Brexit vote to leave the EU. December 4 is also the day Italians will vote in a referendum to change the Italian constitution to curb the powers of regional governments. Polls show the referendum going down to defeat. A "no" vote will also spell the end of the Democratic Party government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who counted Barack Obama among his friends and who endorsed the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. The anti-EU Five Star Movement is gaining in opinion polls in Italy.

The embryonic Trump administration has signaled its support for the anti-EU and pro-Russian French National Front leader Marine Le Pen in next May's presidential election. A victory for the National Front would all but spell the end of the European Union and a, perhaps, fatal crippling of NATO. Another defeat for the EU, NATO, and Soros is the impending coalition government in Estonia that will include the pro-Russian Center Party. Estonia has served as a major base for Soros operatives who have engaged in anti-Russian provocations in Ukraine, Finland, and Belarus.


Excerpted from hacked Democratic National Committee donor list

The former U.S. ambassador to Finland, Bruce Oreck, a more than million dollar contributor to Obama and the Democrats and who has chosen to remain in Helsinki, posted the following on Facebook on election night: "Oh Fuck . . . Sitting here in DC in total, absolute shock. Looks like Trump will win, the Republicans will hold control of the House, the Senate and therefore also Supreme Court appointments. There are no words." There actually are two words for the Obama potty-mouthed diplomat and son of vaccum cleaner manufacturer David Oreck, "You suck!"