Exotic assassination methods worry foreign leaders by Wayne Madsen

Exotic assassination methods worry foreign leaders by Wayne Madsen

It is one thing for the National Security Agency and its foreign partners to eavesdrop on the phone calls and email exchanges of various world leaders. However, publicly-disclosed classified NSA material on how the agency and its partners are increasingly intercepting on-line medical data and even the shipments of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment to bring about political assassinations from seemingly "natural causes" has piqued the concerns of many security services around the world.

NSA's collection of medical intelligence or "MEDINT" on targeted individuals, data that includes medications and their dosages, medical test results, DNA prints, medical equipment such as dialysis machines, and wireless tele-medicine components, coupled with the use of pharmaceutical "honey pots" relied on to deliver fatal dosages of drugs to victims means that the NSA is no longer merely in the surveillance business but also "wet affairs," that is political assassinations.

Because of NSA's involvement with the Central Intelligence Agency in exotic means of assassinating political leaders by medical means, Russian President Vladimir Putin employed food tasters to test his food prepared for him by the Brisbane Hilton Hotel during the G20 summit in that city last November.  Putin and his security entourage feared that the U.S. and the Tony Abbott government in Australia may have tried to poison Putin's food during his abbreviated two-day stay at the G20 conclave.


TOP SECRET slide describes NSA's medical intelligence program and the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) agents and pharmaceutical "honey pots." Such cloak and dagger terms would not be used if the purpose of the program was benign. However, it is clear that NSA and the CIA are using such tradecraft to deliver fatal doses of prescription medication, as well as lethal poisons, to targeted political leaders.

After the March 2013 death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the age of 58 from fast-acting pelvic cancer, Venezuela's new president, Nicolas Maduro, charged that Chavez was assassinated through the use of a cancer weapon developed by the United States. General José Ornella, the head of the Venezuelan presidential guard, said, "I think it will be 50 years before they declassify a document  . . . I think [will show] the hand of the enemy is involved." Ornella did not have to wait 50 years since the technology and strategy employed by the CIA and NSA in carrying out medical assassinations is described in a set of highly-classified PowerPoint slides prepared for NSA's Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) Development Conference in June 2010, a full year before Chavez announced to the world that he was being treated for cancer.

The CIA had long been involved in researching exotic methods to assassinate political leaders. The agency's Technical Services Division, headed by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, tried to use poison, including a cancer-inducing drug, and highly radioactive substances to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro and an ampule containing a deadly pathogen to be used on Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. Castro survived scores of CIA assassination attempts while Lumumba was assassinated in 1961 by bayonet stabs followed by a volley of bullets. Gottlieb's cancer weapons were developed in cooperation with Dr. Alton Oschner, the former president of the American Cancer Society.

Before he succumbed to what have been a designer cancer-inducing drug, Chavez noted how many leftist Latin American leaders were contracting cancer at the same time. Chavez said, "I find it very strange. It is hard to explain" why Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, and the president of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner, all got cancer around the same time. Chavez included himself in the group of Latin American leaders who suddenly developed cancer. In August 2010, Paraguay's President Fernando Lugo was discovered to have a cancerous tumor in his lymphatic nodes. Lugo recovered but was ousted in a CIA-directed coup d'etat. In 2008, Lugo and other Paraguayan presidential candidates were the targets of a DNA collection operation carried out by the CIA station in Asuncion. Chavez said that Fidel Castro once warned him, "Chavez take care. These people have developed technology. You are very careless. Take care what you eat, what they give you to eat  . . . a little needle and they inject you with I don’t know what."

Chavez also said he was concerned about Bolivian President Evo Morales. Chavez said, "We'll have to take good care of Evo. Take care Evo!" In January 2009, Morales underwent surgery, performed by a Cuban medical team, for a cancerous tumor discovered in his nasal passage.

Putin was right to be concerned about poisoning in Brisbane last November. World leaders opposed to U.S. and neoconservative machinations may have to think seriously about the propriety of attending summits and conferences with the threat of CIA and NSA medical assassination teams looming.

The CIA's medical assassination weapons were discussed at the Senate hearings chaired by Sen. Frank Church (D-ID) in 1975:






What White House "culinary" secrets might have former presidential executive chef Walter Scheib (above) taken with him to his grave?

As more and more information is leaked about U.S. involvement in medical assassination programs, world leaders are justifiably increasing their security protection. Many of these leaders may also forgo availing themselves of the food and drink at luncheons and dinners served at the White House. If the CIA's and NSA's medical assassination teams have managed to penetrate the White House service staff only the White House executive chef may have been aware of any problems in food serving protocols and VIP security provided by the Secret Service, an agency that has experienced more than its share of security lapses. The White House executive chef who served Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Walter Scheib, was recently found dead in a river near the Yerba Canyon hiking trail near Taos, New Mexico. What "cooking secrets" of the CIA -- not the Culinary Institute of America but the Central Intelligence Agency -- could Scheib have taken with him to his grave?

August of 2010 60-year-old Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo was diagnosed with a tumor of lymphatic system - See more at: http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/05-01-2012/120158-south_america-0/#sthash.vlGohfnN.dpuf

The CIA is No Stranger to Africa – But We Wish It Was by Mark P. Fancher

The CIA is No Stranger to Africa – But We Wish It Was

Tue, 08/12/2014 - 13:44 — Mark P. Fancher

• Patrice Lumumba Assassination | 
• CIA in Africa

by Mark P. Fancher

The CIA’s activities in Africa go and in hand with the huge U.S. military offensive on the continent. The agency “has maintained a continuing presence on the African continent into the 21^st Century, engaging in various nefarious activities, including supporting foes of the Gadhafi government in Libya.”

The CIA is No Stranger to Africa – But We Wish It Was

by Mark P. Fancher

“The impact of the agency’s activities on the African continent must not escape notice.”

Revelations contained in an unreleased nearly 7,000 page Senate Intelligence Committee report about CIA torture of purported terrorism suspects should come as no surprise to those with even a passing acquaintance with the agency’s long history of international crimes. Among other things, the study reportedly details the CIA’s systematic use of slapping, humiliation, sleep-deprivation, freezing and waterboarding. While this may not be news to informed observers, some might be a bit shocked by the candid reactions to the report by the Obama administration. A leaked White House document says of the report: “This report tells a story of which no American is proud.” President Obama himself said: “…we tortured some folks. We did things that were contrary to our values.”

Everything connected with the torture program is unseemly and unconscionable, and is intolerable everywhere. Africa in particular, with all of its many challenges has no need for any part of it. But as the CIA comes under renewed scrutiny, the impact of the agency’s activities on the African continent must not escape notice. Last year Crofton Black, an investigator for Reprieve, a London-based human rights organization, produced a collection of documents that he claims demonstrates that Africa has been used by the CIA as part of its extraordinary rendition program – the forced transportation of terror suspects to countries where the use of torture is tolerated. In a sworn statement he alleges that a group of private companies acting in concert on behalf of the U.S. government organized five rendition trips between Djibouti and Kabul, Afghanistan.

Black said: “The U.S. CIA rendition program operated by chartering aircraft from private companies to move detainees, in part in order to avoid the notification and authorization requirements of the Convention on International Civil Aviation.” He also said: “…this group of contracts [involving the companies in question] was set up and authorized to carry out missions for the U.S. government. This group of contracts and associated trips have been demonstrably linked to the U.S. rendition program via investigations and evidence filed in litigation in the U.S. and the European Court of Human Rights.” Black’s statement was offered in support of a complaint filed by Mohammed al-Assad, a Yemeni national who alleges he was abducted in Tanzania and held by the CIA in Djibouti and Afghanistan.

“Patrice Lumumba, the assassinated Prime Minister of Congo, found his way into the agency’s cross-hairs in 1961.”

U.S. intelligence operations in Africa are apparently broader than a few discrete CIA extraordinary rendition missions. A couple of years ago, the Washington Post reported: “The CIA has expanded its counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering operations in Africa, but its manpower and resources pale in comparison with those of the military.” The Post further explained:

“Under a classified surveillance program code-named Creek Sand, dozens of U.S. personnel and contractors have come to Ouagadougou [in Burkina Faso] in recent months to establish a small air base on the military side of the international airport. The unarmed U.S. spy planes fly hundreds of miles north to Mali, Mauritania and the Sahara, where they search for fighters from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a regional network that kidnaps Westerners for ransom.” The Post further reported that drones are used by intelligence personnel in Africa, and they are: “…Predator and Reaper drones, the original and upgraded models, respectively, of the remotely piloted aircraft that the Obama administration has used to kill al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and Yemen.”

The CIA is no stranger to Africa. Patrice Lumumba, the assassinated Prime Minister of Congo, found his way into the agency’s cross-hairs in 1961. In his book about the assassination, author Ludo De Witte said: “…[T]he CIA scientist [Sidney] Gottlieb said he had been sent to the Congo with a box of poison to ‘mount an operation…to either seriously incapacitate or eliminate Lumumba’…” Although Larry Devlin, the CIA’s station chief in Congo, has insisted the CIA did not kill Lumumba, in his own book he admitted: “CIA covert political action and military operations did, however, contribute to the removal of Lumumba from power…” CIA meddling in Africa continued into the 1970s. In his book In Search of Enemies, former CIA agent John Stockwell detailed the agency’s involvement in Angola’s war for liberation. The agency has maintained a continuing presence on the African continent into the 21^st Century, engaging in various nefarious activities, including supporting foes of the Gadhafi government in Libya.

As the release of the Senate torture report became an imminent reality, the CIA apparently could not restrain its criminal impulses and allegedly broke into Senate Intelligence Committee computers. They also allegedly attempted to have the committee’s staff members prosecuted on the basis of false information. Senator Dianne Feinstein then announced that the report cannot yet be released because of the CIA’s efforts to redact portions of the document and “eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions.”

With these and other actions, the CIA may have gone a bit too far, because some in both government and the mainstream media have begun to attack the agency with a vengeance for its recent conduct. The gathering storm of anger may ultimately prove the late Kwame Ture to have been prophetic. He said that even though his organization, the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party was working to “smash” the CIA, it will ultimately be mainstream “democratic forces” that will one day join the campaign against the agency and deliver the knockout punch.

Mark P. Fancher is an attorney who writes frequently about the U.S. military presence in Africa. He can be contacted at mfancher@comcast.net.