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.

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-French Gladio plot to kill Eisenhower and Khrushchev by Wayne Madsen

The CIA-French Gladio plot to kill Eisenhower and Khrushchev
WMR has discovered buried deep within the Central Intelligence Agency's declassified archives a file on a proposed operation to be carried out by the CIA under Allen Dulles and right-wing members of France's Gladio "stay behind" network. The operation was to assassinate President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and bring about an all-out war between the two nations.

Details of a secret White House National Security Council report on the plot were leaked to the French Communist Party newspaper, L'Humanité, which published a story on the conspiracy in its March 19, 1960 edition. Although White House Press Secretary James Hagerty called the report "communist propaganda," the French government ordered all editions ofL'Humanité seized before they went on sale. Moreover, the author of the report, General Andrew Goodpaster, was tipped by Eisenhower to be the next CIA director after Eisenhower fired Dulles for his involvement in what would have been a coup against the U.S. and Soviet governments. Eisenhower never did fire Dulles and replace him with Goodpaster. That task was left to Eisenhower's successor, John F. Kennedy, who sacked the CIA chief after the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Goodpaster would later become the supreme commander of NATO under President Richard Nixon.

The planned assassination of Ike and Khrushchev would not be the first time that America's deep state would plan a false flag attack designed to trigger war between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1962, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Lyman Lemnitzer proposed a series of false flag attacks on U.S. and foreign interests in the Caribbean designed to make it appear that Cuba was behind the incidents. Known as Operation Northwoods, the plan was composed of Operation Bingo, a plan to stage an attack on the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay and make it appear that Cuban troops had carried it out; Operation Dirty Trick, which would blame Cuba for electronically interfering with John Glenn's Mercury launch had it been destroyed in an accident; and the hijacking of commercial planes and carrying out attacks on Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago and blaming it all on Cuba. The plan was never carried out. The Northwoods attacks would give the United States a reason to attack Cuba, an event that would have likely resulted in a wider world war.

The French rightist military elements were attached to Gladio units in France designed to carry out attacks against Warsaw Pact forces in the event of a Soviet-led invasion of Western Europe. These French units included La Rose des Vents, Arc-en-ciel ("Rainbow"), the
Western Union Clandestine Committee that worked closely with the FrenchExternal Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service (SDECE), and the 11th Choc parachutist regiment of the French Army. In 1961, many of these units formed the Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS) (Secret Army Organization), which was opposed to Algerian independence and tried to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle.

Contained in the Goodpaster report was a statement from a plot informant: "Obsessed by the idea that a carefully planned political assassination always leads to the necessary war, these officers always are constrained to think of all possible forms of a final action, of which the result could be the assassination by a fanatic of the Russian or American chief of state."

 
Dulles's and French Gladio's fingerprints on plot to assassinate Ike [left] and Khrushchev [right], bringing about World War III.

The Goodpaster report also stated: "Army officers -- those stationed in Algeria as well as those stationed in the south of France -- involved with right-wing Algerian activists, constitute a sort of secret society that is very well hidden."

Later on March 19, 1960, L'Humanité published a special edition but the article on the plot to assassinate Eisenhower and Khrushchev was deleted.

One member of the secret French army group that was to assassinate Eisenhower and Khrushchev was Jean Souetre, aka Michel Roux and Michel Mertz, a Corsican assassin who was deported by the FBI from Dallas, Texas within 48 hours of the November 22, 1963 assassination of President Kennedy. De Gaulle was certain of the "French connection" to Kennedy's assassination. The Washington Post, which originally reported on the Goodpaster report on March 20, 1960, never followed up on Souetre's connection to the OAS and the hit team that was to assassinate Ike and Khrushchev. Allen Dulles was named by President Lyndon Johnson as a member of the Warren Commission that allegedly fully investigated the assassination of President Kennedy.

What The Washington Post failed to report: where Obama's special ops murder teams are operating

The Washington Post, the White House's largest collection of media stenographers for the administration, reported on June 3 that the Obama has secretly dispatched US Special Operations forces to 75 countries around the world. Just as the Post initially agreed not to publish the locations of CIA "black" torture and detention centers in eastern Europe, the Post has toed the line by not providing a complete list of the countries where US Special Operations forces are operating covertly.

WMR scooped the Post by identifying a number of eastern European "black" sites, including those in Poland and Romania.

We are now providing the list of 75 countries where Obama has secretly deployed US Special Operations forces:

1. Afghanistan 2. Albania 3. Algeria 4. Azerbaijan 5. Bahrain 6. Bangladesh 7. Benin 8. Bosnia and Herzegovina 9. Brunei 10. Burkina Faso 11. Cameroon 12. Central African Republic 13. Chad 14. China 15. Colombia 16. Comoros 17. Congo (DR) 18. Cote d'Ivoire 19. Djibouti 20. Egypt 21. Eritrea 22. Ethiopia 23. Gabon 24. Gambia 25. Georgia 26. Guinea 27. Guinea-Bissau 28. Honduras 29. India 30. Indonesia 31. Iran 32. Iraq 33. Jordan 34. Kazakhstan 35. Kenya 36. Kosovo 37. Kuwait 38. Kyrgyzstan 39. Lebanon 40. Libya 41. Malaysia 42. Mali 43. Mauritania 44. Mexico 45. Morocco 46. Myanmar 47. Nepal 48. Niger 49. Nigeria 50. Oman 51. Pakistan 52. Philippines 53. Qatar 54. Russian Federation 55. Rwanda 56. Saudi Arabia 57. Senegal 58. Sierra Leone 59. Somalia [including Somaliland] 60. South Africa 61. Sri Lanka 62. Sudan 63. Syria 64. Tajikistan 65. Tanzania 66. Thailand 67. Togo 68. Tunisia 69. Turkey 70. Turkmenistan 71. Uganda 72. United Arab Emirates 73. Uzbekistan 74. Venezuela 75. Yemen

Obama's Brave Nuke World - by Stephen Lendman

At the same time the Pentagon issued its new Nuclear Posture Review, Obama officially ordered the murder of a US citizen, Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki - accused of terrorism and an Al Qaeda connection without evidence.

Earlier on February 4, Washington Post writer Ellen Nakashima headlined, "Intelligence chief acknowledges US may target Americans involved in terrorism," saying:

"Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair acknowledged (February 3 in testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) that government agencies (specifically CIA operatives and Special Forces death squads) may kill US citizens abroad who are involved in terrorist activities if they are 'taking action that threatens Americans," or administration officials say so.

Obama's Nuclear Posture Review - New Policy or Same Old Same Old?

In December 2001, the Bush administration issued its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), asserting the preemptive right to unilaterally declare and wage future wars using first strike nuclear weapons.

On April 5, New York Times writers David Sanger and Peter Baker headlined, "Obama Limits When US Would Use Nuclear Arms," saying:

On Monday, Obama said "he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons (but) was carving out an exception for 'outliers like Iran and North Korea....' "

Calling it a "sharp shift" in strategy, the Times writers claimed "For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states (in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - NPT), even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack."

Predictably, an April 7 Times editorial headlined, "Mr. Obama's Nuclear Policy," said:

"it is an important down payment on a saner nuclear policy (and affirms) the 'fundamental role' of nuclear weapons....to deter nuclear attack on the United States and its allies....the administration has rightly decided to lead by example."

Wrong for numerous reasons. NPR 2010 is changed rhetoric, not policy. Declared nuclear or non-nuclear "outliers" may be attacked. Unilateral disarmament and a nuclear-free world aren't envisioned or planned. Upgraded weapons will replace outdated ones, and as with all new weapons, dangerous testing will continue. NPT's three pillars are disregarded - non-proliferation, disarmament, and peaceful use. So is restoring the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, in force for 30 years until the Bush administration unilaterally withdrew in June 2002.

In place also is the Pentagon's 2006 Global Strike Command, a preemptive offensive policy rooted in the concept that, sooner or later, deterrence will fail. Rather than wait, it focuses on striking before it's unleashed. It's about war making, not prevention. So is the 2009 Prompt Global Strike initiative to attack rapidly anywhere in the world with conventional weapons, as easy to do with nuclear ones.

NPR 2010 says America "reserves the right" to use nuclear weapons "that may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of the biological weapons threat and US capacities to counter that threat."

It begs the question about cause in the event of a pandemic, that, if blamed on a targeted "outlier," may justify a nuclear response. It also leaves unchanged the 2005 Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, removing the distinction between defensive and offensive deterrents, saying:

"The new triad (land and sea-based strategic bombers, land-based missiles, and ballistic missile submarines) offers a mix of strategic offensive and defensive capabilities, active and passive defenses, and a robust research development, and industrial infrastructure to develop, build, and maintain offensive forces and defensive systems....it provides additional military options."

NPR 2010 leaves the land-sea-air triad in place, keeping nuclear missiles on alert ready to launch in minutes, the right to use nuclear weapons preemptively, and for the president on his say to order it, perhaps with little time to decide if a perceived threat exists.

This goes beyond self-defense. Calling for preemption, it's aggressive, using nuclear or non-nuclear weapons against an adversary, rebranded an "outlier," whether or not true.

Still policy is the May 2000 Joint Vision 2020 calling for "full spectrum dominance" over all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space (including weaponizing it), electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough overwhelming power to fight and win global wars against any potential challengers with all weapons in our arsenal, including nuclear, chemical, and biological.

So is the 2002 (later updated 2006) National Security Strategy (NSS), asserting the preemptive right to unilaterally wage aggressive wars with nuclear weapons against any perceived threats or potential challengers, especially with regard to US control over the world's energy and other resources in key regions like Eurasia (including the Middle East), Latin America, Africa, and the Arctic.

Unchanged is the Bush Administration's December 2002 National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 17 to combat "Weapons of Mass Destruction (nuclear, biological and chemical), stating:

"The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force - including through resort to all of our options - to the use (or threatened use) of WMD(s) against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies."

In addition, while launching nuclear war is a presidential prerogative, theater nuclear operations are at the discretion of commanders - so on their own, they may order tactical preemptive mini-nuke use (like bunker-busters), falsely claimed as safe for the surrounding civilian population.

Bogusly-called missile defense is for offense. It's also unchanged, Obama sticking with Bush administration plans to install them in Poland and advanced tracking radar in the Czech Republic, Russia very much opposed with good reason. It also objects to news leaks about Romania and Bulgaria agreeing to allow missile interceptors on their soil by 2015, according to an April 8 RIA Novosti report headlined, "Russia proposes global missile defense cooperation with US - Medvedev."

Claimed to protect European allies from "rogue threats" (clearly suggesting Iran), they, in fact, target Russia, the only potential threat because of its large, sophisticated nuclear arsenal. It's believed Iran's missiles can't reach Europe nor has it reason to launch them except in self-defense.

That despite Wall Street Journal writer Chip Cummins last December 17 headlining, "Iran Tests New Version of Missile that Can Reach Europe," and Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) deputy commander, Hossein Salami, recently saying "Our missiles are now able to target any spot in which the conspirators are in," of course, suggesting Israel and regional-based US forces.

According to the White House, the new US-Russia nuclear treaty "does not contain any constraints on testing, development or deployment of current or planned US missile defense programs or current or planned United States long-range conventional strike capabilities."

No wonder Stephen Walt, co-author with John Mearsheimer of their book titled, "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy," headlined his April 6 Foreign Policy article, "Nuclear Posture Review (or Nuclear Public Relations?), saying:

"Remarkably, US policymakers never seem to realize that the same arguments they use to justify our own nuclear arsenal apply even more powerfully to states whose security is a lot more precarious than America's. If the US government believes that 'the fundamental role' of US nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attacks on the United States (and reserves a first strike option to do it), then wouldn't a sensible Iranian leadership conclude that it could use a nuclear arsenal of its own, whose 'fundamental role' would be to deter us from doing just that?"

A Final Comment

Like his predecessor, Obama plans permanent wars and more military spending than all other nations combined at a time America has no enemies. He glorifies them and the righteousness of waging them, packaged as liberating ones for democracy, freedom, justice, and the best of all possible worlds. He's the latest in a long line of warrior leaders promising peace by waging wars, justifying them bogusly, and pursuing them as part of a longstanding agenda for greater wealth, power, and unchallengeable global dominance.

As a result, efforts to curtail nuclear danger may be no closer today than under George Bush, especially with Russia, not Iran, America's main strategic rival (along with China economically), facing off against each other in a new Great Game for control of Eurasia's immense resources and other riches.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://prognewshour.progressiveradionetwork.org/

http://lendmennews.progressiveradionetwork.org/

The McCain-Lieberman Police State Act - by Stephen Lendman

If enacted, it will advance what this writer addressed in a December 2007 article titled, "Police State America - A Look Back and Ahead," covering numerous Bush administration laws, Executive Orders (EOs), National and Homeland Security Presidential Directives, edicts, and various illegal acts targeting designated domestic and foreign adversaries, dissent, civil liberties, human rights, and other democratic freedoms.

Straightaway post-9/11, George Bush signed a secret finding empowering the CIA to "Capture, Kill or Interrogate Al-Qaeda Leaders." He also authorized establishing a covert global gulag to detain and interrogate them without guidelines on proper treatment.

Other presidential directives ordered abductions, torture and indefinite detentions. In November 2001, Military Order Number 1 empowered the Executive to capture, kidnap or otherwise arrest non-citizens (and later citizens) anywhere in the world for any reason and hold them indefinitely without charge, evidence, due process or judicial fairness protections of law.

The 2006 Military Commissions Act authorized torture and sweeping unconstitutional powers to detain, interrogate and prosecute alleged suspects and collaborators (including US citizens), hold them (without evidence) indefinitely in military prisons, and deny them habeas and other legal protections.

Section 1031 of the FY 2010 Defense Authorization Act contained the 2009 Military Commissions Act, listing changes that include discarding the phrase "unlawful enemy combatant" for "unprivileged enemy belligerent." More on that below.

Seamlessly, Obama continues Bush administration practices and added others, including:

-- greater than ever surveillance;

-- ruthless political persecutions;

-- preventively detaining individuals ordered released - "who cannot be prosecuted," he said, "yet who pose a clear danger to the American people;"

-- a secret "hit list" authorizing CIA and Pentagon operatives to kill US citizens abroad based on unsubstantiated evidence they're involved in alleged plots against America or US interests;

-- weaker whisleblower protections;

-- state secrets privilege to block lawsuits by victims of rendition, torture, abuse or warrantless wiretapping; and

-- other anti-democratic measures.

Now, the March 4 S. 3081: Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010 to interrogate and detain "enemy belligerents who commit hostile acts against the United States to establish certain limitations on the prosecution of such belligerents, and for other purposes."

On the Senate floor, John McCain explained it, saying "we still don't have a clear mechanism, legal structure, and implementing policy for dealing with terrorists who we capture in the (alleged) act of trying to bring about attacks on the United States and our national security interests at home and abroad."

These suspects have no right to "Miranda warnings and defense lawyers. Instead, the priority and focus must be on isolating and neutralizing the immediate threat and collecting intelligence to prevent" any attacks.

"I (also) believe we must establish a system for long-term detention of terrorists who are too dangerous to release, but who cannot be tried in a civilian court" because no evidence exists to convict them.

At a March 4 press conference, Senator Joe Lieberman told reporters:

"These are not common criminals. They are war criminals. Anyone we capture in this war should be treated as a prisoner of war, held by the military, interrogated for information that will protect Americans and help us win this war and then where appropriate, tried not in a normal federal court where criminals are tried but before a military commission."

S. 3081 Provisions

The bill imposes harsh police state measures, including:

-- targeting anyone worldwide, including US citizens, "suspected of engaging in (or materially supporting) hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners through an act of terrorism, or by other means...;"

-- placing such individuals "in military custody for purposes of initial interrogation and determination of status in accordance with the provisions of this Act;"

-- transporting them to intelligence officials for more interrogation;

-- determining who may be a "high-value detainee (HVD);"

-- further interrogating those individuals by a "High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HVIG)....utiliz(ing) military and intelligence personnel, and Federal, State, and local law enforcement personnel....;"

-- having HVIGs submit their determination to the Defense Secretary and Attorney General after consulting with the Directors of National Intelligence, FBI, and CIA. "The Secretary of Defense and Attorney General (will then) make a final determination and report (it) to the President and the appropriate committees of Congress. In the case of any disagreement between the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General, the President will make the determination;"

-- designating seized individuals "unprivileged enemy belligerent(s);"

-- denying them Miranda rights:

-- deciding on a "Final (status) Determination" within 48 hours, "to the extent practicable;"

-- letting the President establish HVD interrogation group operations and activities, including whether detainees "meet the criteria for treatment as a high-value detainee for purposes of interrogation....," including the potential threat held individuals pose:

(1) for an attack against America, its citizens, US military personnel or facilities;

(2) their potential intelligence value;

(3) membership in or affiliation with Al Qaeda; and

(4) "such other matters as the President considers appropriate."

Pending final determination, detainees "shall be treated as unprivileged enemy belligerent(s)," defined as:

"An individual, including a citizen of the United States (to) be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners in which the individual has engaged, or which the individual has purposely and materially supported, consistent with the law of war and any authorization for the use of military force provided by Congress pertaining to such hostilities."

An "unprivileged enemy belligerent" means anyone (with or without evidence) suspected of "engag(ing) in (or materially supporting) hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners," including alleged Al Qaeda members.

Raised Concerns

Designating individuals "unlawful enemy combatants" or "unprivileged enemy belligerents" places them in legal limbo, contrary to international law, the Constitution, and three recent Supreme Court decisions:

-- Rasul v. Bush (2004) establishing US court system jurisdiction to decide if Guantanamo-held non-US citizens were wrongfully imprisoned;

-- Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004) granting US citizen Yaser Hamdi and other Guantanamo detainees habeas rights to challenge their detentions in federal courts; and

-- Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006) denying Guantanamo military commissions "the power to proceed because (their) structures and procedures violate both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949."

Obama-ordered preventive detentions (against uncharged persons) and S. 3081 violate international law, the Constitution, and the above Supreme Court decisions.

Writing for the Jurist Legal News & Research, University of Utah Law Professor, Amos Guiora, calls the proposed bill "the latest example of panic-based legislation" in the wake of the (false flag) December airplane bombing and whether alleged 9/11 suspects will be tried in federal or military courts - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others falsely charged based on tortured-extracted confessions.

Holding detainees through "end of hostilities in the terrorism paradigm is a euphemism for indefinite detention....subject(ing) an extraordinarily broad group of persons" to cruel and inhumane treatment based on unsubstantiated charges, and denying them due process and judicial fairness.

Guiora calls the proposed law:

"a fundamental miscarriage of justice created by the unconstitutional denial of the right to counsel, the right to remain silent, the right to be free from arbitrary, let alone indefinite detention, and the right to a day in court." Unfortunately, too often "legitimacy and justification take a back seat" to expediency and the political climate of the times.

As a result, innocent victims are unjustly arrested, called terrorists, interrogated, tortured, indefinitely detained and denied all rights despite constitutional and international law protections.

"Republicans and Democrats alike have failed to articulate, create and implement a lawful interrogation, detention and trial regime for post-9/11 detainees. That is shameful and reflects negatively on two Presidents, the Congress and the Supreme Court."

The major media also. Their reports hype the threat, pre-determine guilt, and influence public opinion to believe government-charged individuals are dangerous, guilty, and should be confined to deter "terrorism."

Yet the Constitution's Fifth Amendment states:

"No person shall....be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law....;" and

The 14th Amendment reads:

No "State (may) deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Yet in a climate of fear and intimidation, everyone is potentially vulnerable to legislative lawlessness if congressional timidity lets S. 3081 pass in an election year.

According to Guiora, it comes down to "the rule of law or the rule of fear." Protecting American citizens and national security is one thing. Discarding core legal principles to do it reflects the worst elements of police state justice.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://prognewshour.progressiveradionetwork.org/

http://lendmennews.progressiveradionetwork.org/

Mossad Comes to America: Death Squads by Invitation

3tweetsretweet

By James Petras*

The principle propaganda mouthpiece of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO), the Daily Alert (DA), has come out in full support for Israel's practice of extra-judicial, extra-territorial assassination.

In the face of world-wide governmental condemnation (except from the Zionist-occupied White House and US Congress), the PMAJO slavishly backs any brutal murder committed by the Israeli secret police anywhere in the world and at anytime. The recent assassination of Hamas leader, Mahmoud Mabhouh, in Dubai is a case in point. The PMAJO has defended all of Mossad's criminal actions leading up to the murder, including extensive identity theft and the stealing or falsification of passports and official documents from several European countries, presumably allied to the Zionist state. Among the Mossad agents who entered Dubai to kill Mabhouh, twelve agents used stolen or forged British passports, three Australian, three French, one German and six Irish. These agents assumed the identity of European citizens in order to commit murder in a sovereign nation.

Once again the PMAJO demonstrate that its first loyalty is to the Israeli secret police, even when they violate the sovereignty of major US allies. No doubt the PMAJO would readily support the Israeli Mossad, even if it were shown to have used U.S. documents to assassinate Mabhouh. In fact, two of the 26 Israeli assassins, carrying fake Irish and fake British passports, are known to have entered the United States after the killing and may still be here.

The position adopted by the Daily Alert and the PMAJO in defense of Israel's international terrorist act followed several lines of attack, which will be discussed below. These include: (1) blaming the victim, (2) claiming that extra-judicial, extra territorial murders are legal, (3) minimizing the murder of ‘one' individual, (4) deflecting attention from the Zionists by blaming ‘other Arab's, (5) favorably comparing Mossad assassinations to US killings in Afghanistan, (6) trivializing and relativizing world condemnation, (7) citing "self-defense", (8) praising the high tech ‘operational details' of the assassination and (9) discrediting the Dubai police investigators rather than the Israeli perpetrators.

Abridged articles, cited in the Daily Alert, have appeared in the op-ed pages of several US, UK, Canadian and Israeli newspapers, as well as in rightwing magazines like Forbes and Commentary. The mainline Zionist propaganda technique is to avoid any discussion of Israel's egregious crimes against sovereignty, due process, international law and the personal security of individuals. In doing so, the Daily Alert adopts the propaganda techniques common to all totalitarian regimes practicing state terrorism.

(1) Blaming the Victim

On February 22, the Daily Alert (DA) headlined two articles, which were entitled: "Killed Hamas Official betrayed by Associates says Dubai Police Chief" and "Hamas: Assassinated Operative put Himself at Risk". The DA forgot to mention that Israeli secret police had been tracking their prey for over a month (having failed to assassinate him on six previous attempts) and that the Dubai Police Chief was not blaming Hamas officials but was in the process of accumulating evidence, witness statements, videos and documents proving the Israeli identities of the assassins. Needless to say, if we were to accept the American Zionists' argument that any leading opponent of Israel, who travels without an army of bodyguards, is "putting himself at risk", then we must acknowledge that ours is a lawless world where Israeli hit squads are free to commit murder anywhere, any time.

(2) Extra-Judicial, Extra territorial Murder is "Legal" (At least if the killers are Mossad)

The February 22 and February 24 issues of the DA include two articles arguing that Israel's practice of extra-judicial, extra-territorial murder is legal. One article is entitled, "The Legality of Killing of Hamas Mahmoud al Mabhoud" and the other, "The Proportionate Killing of Mahmoud al Mabhoud". These avoid any reference to international law, which emphatically rejects cross-border, state-sponsored murders. Legality, for the PMAJO, is whatever the Israel's secret police apparatus deems expedient in pursuit of its goal of eliminating leaders who oppose its colonial occupation and expropriation of Palestinian lands. If Israel's extra-judicial, extra-territorial murder of an adversary in Dubai is legal, why not assassinate opponents in the US, Canada, England or any other country where they might travel, live, work or write? What if the critics and opponents of Israel decided that it was now "legal" to murder Israel's supporters wherever they lived citing the Daily Alert's definition of legality? We would then find ourselves in a lawless world of "legal" murder and totalitarian cross-border surveillance.

(3) Minimizing the Murder

The Feb 22, 24, and 25 issues of the Daily Alert deflect attention from the Mossad murder by making comparison to the hundreds of Afghan civilians killed by US drone attacks. The claim is that "targeting individuals" is less a crime than mass killings. The problem with this argument is that for decades Mossad has "targeted" scores of opponents overseas and killed thousands of Palestinians in the occupied territories (where they work with the domestic secret police, Shin Bet, and the military, IDF). Moreover, this argument linking Israel's extra judicial assassinations with US colonial killing of Afghans is hardly a defense of either. By implicating the US in its defense of state terror, Israel is holding up the worst aspects of American imperialism as a standard for its own political behavior. One state's crimes are no justification for another's.

(4) Blaming the Arabs: Deflecting Attention from Israel

The DA Feb. 22 article entitled "The Assassination Heard Around the World" insinuates that the murder was a "result of a Hamas power struggle" or by one of "many Arab groups who loathes the Islamist Hamas".

In other words, all the forged or stolen European passports of Israeli dual citizens, and the Dubai security videos of Mossad operatives in various costumes, not to mention the jubilant affirmation by top Israeli leaders of the killing, was in reality ‘Arab tricks'. This crude propaganda ploy by the most prominent Jewish American organization reveals their own descent into a fantasy land of self-delusion, possible only in the closed world of US Zionist politics.

(5) Technical Proficiency

The DA published several articles praising the technical details of the Mossad assassination in Dubai, an aspect of the operation, with which few Israel security experts would agree. The Feb. 24 DA article entitled, "Assassination Shows Skillful Planning" chastises Israel's critics for not recognizing the high quality of the "operational aspects" of the killings and recommends its "lessons for all intelligence services around the world". Like sociopaths and serial killers, US Zionists openly promote Israeli death squad techniques to all fellow state terrorists. In the DA, professional techniques of assassination are far more important than universal moral repugnance of political murders.

(6) Discrediting the Investigators While Defending the Perpetrators

The DA on Feb. 25 cited a long and tendentious attack on the Dubai police, published in Forbes Magazine, which ridiculed their meticulous investigations uncovering Mossad's roles in the murder. In this article, the Dubai authorities were condemned for uncovering Israeli involvement while not investigating the source of the murder victims' … Iraqi passport! Instead of encouraging the Dubai police pursuit of justice, the Daily Alert published a long diatribe implicating Dubai in the attacks of 9/11/2001, its continued trade with Iran, its ‘involvement' in international terrorism etc. There was no mention of Dubai's relatively friendly position to Israel and Israelis prior to Mossad's blatant violation of its sovereignty.

Conclusion

The American Zionist propaganda campaign in defense of Israeli state terror and, specifically, Mossad's murder of a Hamas leader in Dubai, relies on lies, evasions and specious legal arguments. This "defense" violates all precepts of a civilized society as well as the most recent American federal laws prohibiting all forms of support for international terrorism. The PMAJO can pursue its defense of Mossad's acts of international terrorism with impunity in the US because of its power over the US Congress, the Obama White House and the American mass media. This ensures that only its version of events, its definition of legality and its lies will be heard by legislators, echoed by Zionist activists and embellished by its solemn defenders in academic and journalistic circles. To counter the American Zionist defense of Israel's practice of extra-territorial, extra-judicial executions by the Mossad, we need American writers and academics to step forward. It is time to expose their flimsy arguments, bold-face lies and audacious immorality. It is time to speak out against their impunity, before another Israeli secret police murder takes place, possibly inside the USA itself and with the shameless complicity of Zionist accomplices.

The authorities in Dubai have found clear evidence that the Mossad assassination team received support from European Zionists. The hotels, air tickets and expenses were paid with credit cards issued in the US. Two of the killers may be in the US now. Will a time come when American Zionists, who are unconditional public defenders of Mossad killings, cross the line between propaganda for the deed to become accomplices of the deed? The robust American Zionist defense of Mossad's overseas assassinations does not augur well for the security of Americans in the face of Israel's willing U.S. accomplices.

* James Petras is a retired Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, SUNY, New York, U.S., and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is the author of 62 books and over 560 articles. He has published over 2000 articles in nonprofessional journals such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, New Left Review, Temps Moderne, Le Monde Diplomatique, and his commentary is widely carried on the internet. He is winner of a Life Time Career Award of the American Sociology Association, Marxist Section.

Note: James Petras' latest books, Global Depression and Regional Wars (Atlanta, Clarity Press, 2009) is the third in a series, including Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2008) and The Power of Israel in the United States (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2006), analyzing the influence of militarism and Zionism in American foreign policy.

JSOC - The Joint Special Operations Command

31st January 2010, 03:32 pm by Stan

The Joint Special Operations Command, known by the acronym JSOC, pronounced jay-sock by members of the US armed forces, carries with it a mystique. The press, JSOC’s promoters and its critics, as well as the entertainment media, have all contributed to its mystique; and that mystique is promoted my the military because it functions as a kind of deterrent.

One of the advantages of offical secrecy is its contribution to this mystique - writ large for secretive units, but this mystique-maintenance is also useful throughout the military. Hollywood, pulp fiction, television drama, infotainment “news,” and military-veteran boosterism all contribute to the vast ignorance of military matters, by overdramatizing military life and military operations, and by idealizing it.

Film and popular literature are packed with protagonists whose past or present CV includes membership in some elite and highly secret combat unit, where individuals are seven-language linguists, flawless marksmen with every firearm ever manufactured, field surgeons, helicopter pilots, chess masters, and gymnasts.

The arms race among entertainment moguls to one-up each other’s fantasies has only accelerated this stupidity; and the thirst among (primarily male) consumers for this drivel has corresponding and escalating ratio of profit to humbug.

Hannah Arendt once noted:

The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.

Obviously, I insert this quote with the subject of evil in mind, and in the context of a discussion of this mystique-laden military institution, JSOC. Because that is what they actually do, evil, and not some salvific secret missions that keep us unkowingly safe abed at night. Moreover, they are not the idealized archetypes, but simply a bunch of men who are conjoined primarily by their overarching commitment to US nationalism, their belief that ends justify means, and their personal pursuit of probative masculinity.

Few are multi-lingual, most are only marginally in better physical condition than the average civilian gym rat, many are stupid - moreso than you want to know - and all are committed, when under orders, to bully and kill helpless people.

They are far more banal than anyone would like to believe; and the culture is closer than anything else to a boys locker room. They like sports, pornography, gun culture, video games, alcohol, and misogynist humor.

A little background.

For the record, I was a member of a constituent organization for a few years in the 80’s while they were forming JSOC as a coordinating command in the wake of the 1979 hostage rescue debacle in Iran. Like all these coordinating elements that recieve truckloads of money, it grew into a kind of bureaucratic empire that was planted in some upscale digs on the boundary between Fort Bragg, NC, and the adjacent Pope Air Force Base. This is a process I call institutional dog-waggery… when the coordinaton and support apparatus becomes the tail that ends up wagging the dog.

Included in JSOC, then, were special counter-terrorism units from the Army and Navy, with special aircraft and air coordination asssets from the Army and Air Force. God only knows what tack-ons have happened since then, especially since Donald Rumsfeld privileged the role of so-called special operations as part of his doctrinal rewrite for the entire Department of Defense.

Money has flowed like water into special operations; and this is the institutional equivalent of pouring buckets of ox blood into the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the Chagres River. Along with the boys who want to kill to prove themselves have come opportunists and mountebanks of every stripe, not unlike the intellectual swindlers who sold Rumsfeld on his doctrine in the first place. Well, to be honest, Rumsfeld himself was one of the chief con artists, but that’s another story.

In time, the very precise and limited skill sets that had been developed by the early counter-terrorist units - mostly geared to hostage-barricade resolution - had diffused out of the CT units, via retirees and ex-members, as well as training agreements with other agencies, until anyone who wants to observe what used to be called close-quarter battle (CQB) can see it reenacted with a fair amount of verisimiltude on prime time tv… SWAT tactics to the layperson.

The original Delta Force commander, Charlie Beckwith, RIP, who wanted to ensure that these skills remained close-hold, used to tell subordinates that “the only way to keep a secret is don’t tell anybody.” He was prescient, as it turns out, and the CT units had - within a decade - worked themselves out of their dangerous and exclusive job.

This applied to JSOC, which also included infantry support units, i.e., Ranger Battalions, like the one Pat Tillman worked for when he was killed by his own comrades in Paktia Province Afghanistan in 2004. That was a JSOC operation; and it was not helpful in the maintenance of the enemy-deterring mystique. Three or so Taliban irregulars with an RPG and a couple of AKs, shooting ineffectively from half a mile away, created a public relations crisis that contributed to the disappearance of the Secretary of Defense, killing three people in the process.

The debacle in Somalia in 1993? JSOC.

Given the proven ability of special operations to fail, and given the diffusionary loss of its original focus, the only asset that remained for JSOC to do things that are “special” was its high level of secrecy. Many alumni are now performing special duties at six-figure salaries as mercenary contractors… still paid by the Department of Defense - that is, with your taxes - only without that pesky potential Congresdsdional overisght. I say potential, because Congress has no stomach to oversee anything military. The idealization of the military has ensured that.

Which brings me to the sycophancy of elected officials in the face of military commanders, and that includes Barack Obama.

Elected officials are forced to factor the mystique into anything and everything they say about anyone and everyone military. A sizeable fraction of the voting public believes that cops are like the interesting, intelligent people they see on endless Law and Order reruns, and they believe that military people are like the equally complex and ethical characters played by their favorite actors in idealized representations by the media. Or they are related to military members, an equally biasing condition.

Consequently, we have been forced to repress our gag reflex every time one of these Generals comes before a Congress that lines up to see who can fawn most effusively before the stars.

Barack Obama is terrified of the military-security nexus within his own government, because they are uniquely positioned, by this special status, to bring him down… his legal status as Commander-in-Chief notwithstanding. That is why he has dragged his feet on don’t-ask-don’t-tell - which he could suspend by fiat now until law is repealed; and that is why Obama didn’t sack Stanley McChrystal - a la Truman-McArthur - when McChrystal, now the military viceroy of Afghanistan, leaked a report last year to back McChrystal’s own play to increase troop strength in Afghanistan by 45,000.

Instead, Obama gave him 30,000 - enough less to save a little face, and enough more to dig the Obama administration deeper into the hole that the Afghanistan-Pakistan-Yemen war has become.

General Stanley McChrystal, by the way, is the fomrer commander of JSOC; and he was the JSOC commander who alerted then Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush to drop references to Pat Tillman in a speech, when it became apparent that the original cover-up of Pat Tillman’s death by fratricide was going to unravel around a fraudulent award that couldn’t be retrieved. McChrystal was in charge of the operation, in the loop on the cover-up, and helped Bush dodge the PR bullet on it.

In the military, we used to say, “No fuck-up shall go unrewarded,” and McChrystal is living proof. But that doesn’t tell us what else McChrystal and JSOC have been doing with themselves, aside from hiding. What other kinds of things does this secrecy permit?

Well, for one, McChrystal ran Task Force 6-26, which became temporarily famous after the killing of Abu Masab al-Zarqawi, a boogyman figure cultivated by the military-media complex. What made TF 6-26 infamous was their activity in Camp Nama, Iraq: torture. Massive, systematic, sustained torture, by JSOC operators, under the supervision of Stanley McChrystal, this deceptively soft-spoken officer.

The camp in Baghdad was used almost exclusively for the torture of detainees. The torture went on before, during, and after the scandal at Abu Ghraib. Detainees were killed by their torturers, members of the most elite units in the US armed forces. Almost in celebration of the activity of the camp, placards were hung that said, “No Blood, No Foul,” meaning if you don’t make them bleed, you can’t be charged with the crimes you are committing.

Impunity. That’s what secrecy buys. JSOC’s new “special” is impunity.

In an article in Harpers this month, Scott Horton, a fomer classmate of now-JSOC commander Admiral “Billy” McRaven, published a stunning expose of this impunity at Guantanamo Bay’s still-open prison camp. Apparently, within Guantanamo Bay, there is a “special” prison within a prison, quite likely run by JSOC, called “Camp No” by the soldiers now speaking out, meaning, no, it doesn’t exist. It was in this camp that three prisoners, held in Guantanamo for years now without any charges, allegedly commited suicide.

The suicide story was given to an uncritical press in June 2006, right after all three prisoners died, with the bizarre statement by Camp Commander Rear Admiral Harry Harris that the suicides were act of war against the US.

The U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service (yes, the NCIS of the popular tv program… “Characters Welcome”) conducted an investigation of the suicide story, declared the official story valid, then classified the investigative report and placed it off limits to the public… until a Freedom of Information Act request forced the Navy to cough up a highly redacted copy.

In Horton’s article, he explains:

According to the NCIS documents, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell’s eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated. The NCIS report also proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out each of these actions almost simultaneously.

Four soldiers from the 629th Military Intelligence Battalion who were at Guantanamo Bay (now named Camp America) have now come forward with a different story, a story about Camp No.

Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani did not simultaneously commit suicide in their separate cells as an act of asymmetric spite against the United States of America. They died at Camp No, in an extraordinary circumstance that the Harpers story outlines very well.

Given that these men appeared likely to have proven their innocence if granted a hearing in accordance with the most minimal standards of jurisprudence, the question arises, why were they killed?

I’ll make a suggestion, not an accusation, since I have no direct knowledge of this incident. Proving innocence can be very damaging, especially if release brings revelations of more torture, rape, and murder… all of which happened, involving special operations, at various times in the conduct of the now expanding war. These are felonies; and they can send people to prison.

Anyone who hoped the Obama administration would investigate these kinds of activities during the Bush era has been disappointed. On the contrary, Obama has expanded the war into new countries, expanded the participation of the CIA and JSOC, left Guantanamo intact, refused to initiate independent investigations of military actions, and promoted the former JSOC commander - tainted by cover-ups and torture - to the most powerful warlord in Afghanistan.

Now the Obama administration’s Justice Department is declining to investigate Guantanamo and the NCIS.

Meanwhile, JSOC flourishes, cloaked in secrecy with just the mystique peeking out. But there was no leaping over tall buildings in a single bound, no warrior-poets protecting us from the manifold dangers lurking outside our borders. There’s just garden variety machismo, men who beat, torture, and kill unarmed detainees… men who have learned to relish violence, because it raises their esteem in the eyes of other men - the terrrible escalations of probative masculinity that continue to underwrite war like no other phenomenon.

What Simone Weil said remains unfortunately true:

As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.

Special Report. From National Security Letters to National Security Targets: Green light for domestic assassinations exposed

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

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.