Bill Fletcher Keynote at Veterans for Peace Nat'l Convention

Campaign against Presidential Medal of Freedom winners stoked by UN-Israel Lobby liaison

WMR has learned from UN sources that the campaign by the Israel Lobby in the United States to discredit former Irish President and UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson was aided and abetted by a long-time UN liaison "consultant" who has worked for both Secretary Generals Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon.

The consultant attempted to put the imprimatur of the UN on a number of news stories that were placed in the major media. On May 10, former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton, who is now a senior fellow with the neocon citadel, the American Enterprise Institute, penned a screed against Robinson in the Wall Street Journal that accused Robinson of tolerating an anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American platform at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in 2001.

Major Jewish organizations in the United States criticized President Obama for awarding Robinson the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony yesterday. Obama was also criticized by the minions of the Israel Lobby for awarding the same medal to retired South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The same Israeli Lobby interests were also at the forefront of criticism of former President Jimmy Carter for his defense of the Palestinians and his likening their situation to blacks in apartheid South Africa. Carter was likewise accused of "anti-Semitism," a rather familiar refrain from apologists for Israel's brand of apartheid practiced against Palestinians and Israeli Arabs alike.

The program to discredit Robinson and Tutu may have had the opposite effect of what Jewish organizations and the Israel Lobby intended. The venal barrage against Robinson and Tutu, both of whom are highly thought of among UN diplomats, has created a backlash against both the Israel Lobby in the United States and Israel, according to our UN sources.

The actions against Robinson and Tutu are not helped by the fact that the Israeli government is refusing to cooperate with a UN probe into Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

Critics of the Durban conference cite the discussions held there about the nature of Zionism as a racist philosophy. If the case of former U.S. Representative and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney is any indication, Israel has institutionalized racism. After McKinney and her party of human rights campaigners were arrested in international waters in June for trying to deliver critical humanitarian supplies to the beleaguered people of Gaza, McKinney was put into a prison in Ashdod, assigned prisoner number 88794, and segregated into a cell with female Ethiopian economic refugees. And if that bit of Jim Crow tactics with a Kosher flair was not enough, McKinney told WMR that she was subjected by her Israeli jailers to everything "but a full body search."

WMR has also learned that Israel's El Al Airlines is doing a booming business in transporting expelled critics of Israel back to their home countries. Last year, American Professor Norman Finkelstein, a critic of Israeli policies, was expelled from Israel after being detained for 24 hours. Last year, Israel also expelled American Professor Richard Falk, the UN's special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, after being detained in a shabby Israeli prison cell. Finkelstein and Falk are both Jewish.

Other travelers to Israel, including Americans of Arab descent and those supporting the Palestinian cause, are routinely taken into custody by Israeli security forces, imprisoned, and expelled on the first available El Al flight.

UPDATE 1X. JFK Jr.'s plane crash was originally treated as murder investigation

WMR has learned from a source who was a close friend of the late John F. Kennedy, Jr. that the FBI originally treated the July 16, 1999, crash of his Piper Saratoga in the waters off Martha' Vineyard as a murder investigation. Kennedy, his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and his sister-in-law Lauren Bessette were killed when their plane plummeted into the Atlantic en route from Caldwell Airport in Essex County, New Jersey to Martha's Vineyard. Kennedy's wife was also three month's pregnant with a boy.

Kennedy was to drop off Lauren Bessette at Martha's Vineyard before flying to Hyannisport to attend his cousin Rory's wedding.

According to the Kennedy friend, the son of the late president and publisher of "George" magazine, was about ready to announce his run for the U.S. Senate from New York. Kennedy was acutely aware of his vulnerability and hired on a personal security team just prior to his announcing for the Senate. Kennedy also decided, unlike all previous flights, not to file a flight plan at Caldwell. Instead, Kennedy, instead of filing an FAA flight plan, provided his own "flight following" by having a Kennedy friend waiting at the Martha's Vineyard airport. When the plane was overdue the friend notified Woods Hole Coast Guard Station which, in turn, notified the FAA and other agencies.

According to the source, Kennedy, contrary to press reports, decided not to fly over open ocean from Montauk at the eastern tip of Long Island to the Vineyard but instead hugged the Connecticut and Rhode Island coast lines until flying direct to the island. Kennedy did not identify his ultimate destination on the radio - he said that6 he was flying "east of Teterboro."

Fearing for his safety, Kennedy thought it best to be within sight of the coastline. According to the Kennedy friend, Kennedy told him his plans prior to his departure. Kennedy had also arranged for all the onboard bags, including his own and that of his family, to be hand searched by security personnel at Caldwell prior to departure. Kennedy decided not to take along a co-pilot because he felt his flight was somewhat of a risk. Kennedy's friend said Kennedy was always concerned about the "underdog" and did not want to put a co-pilot in any potential danger. In any event, Kennedy felt confident of his and his family's security since he had retained a security firm to provide for his protection prior to his Senate run announcement.

Media reports at the time of the disappearance suggested that the weather near Martha's Vineyard was "hazy" and Kennedy may have become disoriented, causing the crash. However, the Kennedy friend states that this was not the case and cites the fact that visibility around the Vineyard was clear at 9:41 pm when the plane disappeared from the sky. The following is from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report on the crash and quotes the Martha's Vineyard tower manager:

"During an interview, the tower manager stated that no actions were taken to augment or edit the ASOS during his shift. He also stated the following:

'The visibility, present weather, and sky condition at the approximate time of the accident was probably a little better than what was being reported. I say this because I remember aircraft on visual approaches saying they had the airport in sight between 10 and 12 miles out. I do recall being able to see those aircraft and I do remember seeing the stars out that night...To the best of my knowledge, the ASOS was working as advertised that day with no reported problems or systems log errors.'"

ASOS is the Automated Surface Observation System. Media reports claimed that visibility was around 2 miles with haze, a far cry from what the tower manager at Martha's Vineyard stated to the NTSB.

The weather report around the time of the crash also indicated clear weather in the area:

"2053...Clear at or below 12,000 feet; visibility 8 miles; winds 250 degrees at 7 knots; temperature 23 degrees C; dewpoint 19 degrees C; altimeter 30.09 inches of Hg.

2153...Clear at or below 12,000 feet; visibility 10 miles; winds 240 degrees at 10 knots, gusts to 15 knots; temperature 24 degrees C; dewpoint 18 degrees C; altimeter 30.10 inches of Hg"

Some twelve minutes after Kennedy's plane crashing, visibility around Martha's Vineyard was reported at 10 miles, described as near perfect conditions by professional pilots.

There were also questions raised about Kennedy's piloting skills. However, he had logged in 310 hours. The NTSB report also reported Kennedy's most recent flight record:

"In the 15 months before the accident, the pilot had flown about 35 flight legs either to or from the Essex County/Teterboro, New Jersey, area and the Martha's Vineyard/Hyannis, Massachusetts, area. The pilot flew over 17 of these legs without a CFI [Certified Flight Instructor] on board, including at least 5 at night. The pilot's last known flight in the accident airplane without a CFI on board was on May 28, 1999."

Kennedy's most recent three legs were with a CFI on board and along the same route taken on July 16 but significant rain and a 800 foot ceiling. Kennedy had, according to his friend, been flying for 17 years. Before Kennedy flew the Piper Saratoga he flew a Cessna 182.

There were also media reports that Kennedy was impeded by a foot cast from an accident he suffered while parasailing. However, according to Kennedy's friend, the cast had aready been removed when Kennedy took to the skies on July 16.

The Kennedy friend also stated that he learned from an FBI agent, as well as a Secret Service agent, who were friends of the Kennedy family that the FBI originally treated their investigation of the plane crash as a possible murder. Kennedy no longer enjoyed Secret Service protection as a protected person, according to the friend.

FBI agents, after the crash, fanned out across convenience and other stores in the Caldwell, New Jersey area and asked if anyone had recently purchased epoxy. According to the French magazine, France Dimanche, a pilot at the Caldwell airport had reported he heard a "weird noise" coming from Kennedy's plane on takeoff. The FBI theorized that a whistle had been glued on the aft section of the plane in order to emit a distinct, unique, and high-pitched noise for the benefit of someone on the ground who wanted to correctly identify the plane when it descended for landing at Martha's Vineyard.

The FBI asked pilots if a whistle attached to the rear of a plane such as Kennedy's could be heard from the cockpit. The answer from all the pilots was no because the sound would only be heard by those on the ground as the plane passed overhead while descending to an audible range. There was also a belief that if the whistle had been fashioned from a water-soluble material, such as plaster-of-paris, it would have dissolved in the seawater.

The FBI discovered that there was "suspicious boating activity" in an area of Martha's Vineyard where Kennedy's plane was descending to 2000 feet for its final approach to the airport. The "suspicious" boaters claimed to be fishing for striped bass. However, when the FBI asked local fishermen to corroborate the suspicious boaters' story, they stated that the particular area where they were discovered was not an area where Atlantic striped bass would be found. In fact, salt water striped bass do not start to run in Massachusetts coastal waters in great numbers until the autumn.

The FBI also found an unusual number of extra batteries in the fishermens' boat. The FBI was suspicious of the boat's contents because after the plane's wreckage was discovered, investigators found, according to Kennedy's friend, that every light bulb, including that in the emergency flashlight, had been blown out on the plane and every circuit board, including those in the engine sensors and other electronic equipment, had been literally "melted." FBI agents on the scene preliminarily concluded that a "massive electromagnetic event" caused Kennedy's plane to crash. FBI agents also found that the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) had its battery removed, possibly before the flight. Every simulation the FBI conducted of a plane in Kennedy's situation, with all lights off at night and with only the engine and the vacuum pump-operated attitude indicator functioning, resulted in the same result: the plane crashing into the water.

Before the FBI could begin examining the ocean floor for any "special equipment" that may have been thrown overboard from the fishing boat, their "murder" investigation was abruptly called off by FBI headquarters in Washington.

Kennedy was preparing to re-tool "George" magazine to take on investigations of a number of major stories, not least of which was the actual story behind the assassination of his father in Dallas on November 22, 1963. According to an article in Germany's Bild am Sonntag on August 1, 1999, Kennedy was also preparing to meet with the deputy chief of Mossad, Amiran Levine, at the Oak Room in Manhattan's Plaza Hotel the Wednesday after Kennedy was killed. The subject was the assassination of Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 and that Rabin was assassinated by one of his body guards and not the convicted murderer Yigal Amir.

Kennedy's friend said the real priority of the "George" publisher was to re-open the case of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the role that the father of the all-but-announced Republican presidential candidate for the upcoming 2000 election -- George W. Bush -- played in the assassination. Apparently, some documents had come into Kennedy's possession that pointed to George H. W. Bush as a prime participant, on behalf of the CIA, in President Kennedy's murder.

On a 1997 visit to see Cuban President Fidel Castro in Havana for an interview for "George," the Cuban President reportedly told Kennedy a number of details about those behind his father's assassination. The occasion of Kennedy Jr.'s visit was the 35th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis between his father and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. According to Kennedy's friend, Castro confided to Kennedy that a mafia ring headed up by Meyer Lansky, who lost his Cuban gambling holdings to Castro's revolution, and a Canadian Zionist veteran of Israel's Haganah army, Louis Bloomfield, were the primary planners of the Dallas "hit" on his father. Jack Ruby, who killed the alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, worked directly for Lansky's organization, Kennedy was told.

Although the information on J.F.K. Jr.'s plans to more thoroughly examine the facts of his father's assassination came from a single source -- a friend of the late Kennedy Jr. -- this editor is in a unique position to corroborate part of the story.

On Saturday, July 17, 1999, I was driving to a hotel in Crystal City, Virginia to proctor a certification examination for a group of computer security professionals. Listening to the radio, the bulletin came across that John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane was missing. The news came as a body blow. In a few weeks, I was scheduled to meet with Kennedy at his magazine's offices in Washington, DC to discuss hiring on as one of a few investigative journalists Kennedy wanted to dig deep into a number of cases, but most importantly that of his father's assassination. Kennedy had made initial contact with me via a colleague with The Village Voice. I signaled my readiness to do whatever Kennedy wanted because, first of all, I have always been an admirer of the Kennedy family, and after twelve years under Bush presidencies, that admiration has developed into a loyalty for which I make no apologies.

My past discussions with President Kennedy's press secretary Pierre Salinger and Texas Governor John Connally led me to believe that the young Kennedy was on to the story of a lifetime -- a lifetime that for Kennedy Jr. would be tragically snuffed out early.

After I heard the news report about Kennedy's plane and knowing of his plans, I knew deep down that he was gone and that the renewed investigation of America's worst crime of the 20th century was dead along with him. Little did I realize at the time, but I heard the news about Kennedy as I was driving along Route 110 past the side of the Pentagon where the worst crime of the 21st century would take place under the administration of George W. Bush.

In the end, Hillary Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate seat that Kennedy was to run for. Kennedy's sister, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, would see her own hopes to be appointed to the Senate seat dashed when, according to John H. Kennedy Jr.s' friend, Senator Charles Schumer and Barack Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel conspired to have New York Governor David Paterson appoint a virtual unknown, Kirsten Gillibrand, to the seat. Caroline Kennedy was instead offered a consolation prize of the post of U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, a position that Schumer and Emanuel knew in advance she would never accept.

The Anti-Empire Report Number 72

August 4th, 2009
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

Keeping track of the empire's crimes

If you catch the CIA with its hand in the cookie jar and the Agency admits the obvious — what your eyes can plainly see — that its hand is indeed in the cookie jar, it means one of two things: a) the CIA's hand is in several other cookie jars at the same time which you don't know about and they hope that by confessing to the one instance they can keep the others covered up; or b) its hand is not really in the cookie jar — it's an illusion to throw you off the right scent — but they want you to believe it.

There have been numerous news stories in recent months about secret CIA programs, hidden from Congress, inspired by former vice-president Dick Cheney, in operation since the September 11 terrorist attacks, involving assassination of al Qaeda operatives or other non-believers-in-the-Empire abroad without the knowledge of their governments. The Agency admits to some sort of program having existed, but insists that it was canceled; and if it was an assassination program it was canceled before anyone was actually assassinated. Another report has the US military, not the CIA, putting the plan — or was it a different plan? — into operation, carrying out several assassinations including one in Kenya that proved to be a severe embarrassment and helped lead to the quashing of the program.¹

All of this can be confusing to those following the news. And rather irrelevant. We already know that the United States has been assassinating non-believers, or suspected non-believers, with regularity, and impunity, in recent years, using unmanned planes (drones) firing missiles, in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia, if not elsewhere. (Even more victims have been produced from amongst those who happened to be in the same house, car, wedding party, or funeral as the non-believer.) These murders apparently don't qualify as "assassinations", for somehow killing "terrorists" from 2000 feet is morally and legally superior to doing so from two feet away.

But whatever the real story is behind the current rash of speculation, we should not fall into the media's practice of at times intimating that multiple or routine CIA assassination attempts would be something shocking or at least very unusual.

I've compiled a list of CIA assassination attempts, successful and unsuccessful, against prominent foreign political figures, from 1949 through 2003, which, depending on how you count it, can run into the hundreds (targeting Fidel Castro alone totals 634 according to Cuban intelligence)²; the list can be updated by adding the allegedly al Qaeda leaders among the drone attack victims of recent years. Assassination and torture are the two things governments are most loath to admit to, and try their best to cover up. It's thus rare to find a government document or recorded statement mentioning a particular plan to assassinate someone. There is, however, an abundance of compelling circumstantial evidence to work with. The list can be found here.

For those of you who collect lists about splendid US foreign policy post-World War II, here are a few more that, lacking anything better to do, I've put together: Attempts to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which had been democratically-elected.

After his June 4 Cairo speech, President Obama was much praised for mentioning the 1953 CIA overthrow of Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh. But in his talk in Ghana on July 11 he failed to mention the CIA coup that ousted Ghanian president Kwame Nkrumah in 1966³, referring to him only as a "giant" among African leaders. The Mossadegh coup is one of the most well-known CIA covert actions. Obama could not easily get away without mentioning it in a talk in the Middle East looking to mend fences. But the Nkrumah ouster is one of the least known; indeed, not a single print or broadcast news report in the American mainstream media saw fit to mention it at the time of the president's talk. Like it never happened.

And the next time you hear that Africa can't produce good leaders, people who are committed to the welfare of the masses of their people, think of Nkrumah and his fate. And think of Patrice Lumumba, overthrown in the Congo 1960-61 with the help of the United States; Agostinho Neto of Angola, against whom Washington waged war in the 1970s, making it impossible for him to institute progressive changes; Samora Machel of Mozambique against whom the CIA supported a counter-revolution in the 1970s-80s period; and Nelson Mandela of South Africa (now married to Machel's widow), who spent 28 years in prison thanks to the CIA.⁴

• Gross interference in democratic elections in at least 30 countries⁵
• Waging war/military action, either directly or in conjunction with a proxy army, in some 30 countries
• Dropping bombs on the people of more than 30 countries
• Attempts to suppress dozens of populist/nationalist movements in every corner of the world⁶

The Myths of Afghanistan, past and present

On the Fourth of July, Senator Patrick Leahy declared he was optimistic that, unlike the Soviet forces that were driven from Afghanistan 20 years ago, US forces could succeed there. The Democrat from Vermont stated:

"The Russians were sent running as they should have been. We helped send them running. But they were there to conquer the country. We've made it very clear, and everybody I talk to within Afghanistan feels the same way: they know we're there to help and we're going to leave. We've made it very clear we are going to leave. And it's going to be turned back to them. The ones that made the mistakes in the past are those that tried to conquer them."⁷

Leahy is a long-time liberal on foreign-policy issues, a champion of withholding US counter-narcotics assistance to foreign military units guilty of serious human-rights violations, and an outspoken critic of robbing terrorist suspects of their human and legal rights. Yet he is willing to send countless young Americans to a living hell, or horrible death, or maimed survival.

And for what? Every point he made in his statement is simply wrong.

The Russians were not in Afghanistan to conquer it. The Soviet Union had existed next door to the country for more than 60 years without any kind of invasion. It was only when the United States intervened in Afghanistan to replace a government friendly to Moscow with one militantly anti-communist that the Russians invaded to do battle with the US-supported Islamic jihadists; precisely what the United States would have done to prevent a communist government in Canada or Mexico.

It's also rather difficult for the United States to claim that it's in Afghanistan to help the people there when it's killed tens of thousands of simply for resisting the American invasion and occupation or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time; not a single one of the victims has been identified as having had any kind of connection to the terrorist attack in the US of September 11, 2001, the event usually cited by Washington as justification for the military intervention. Moreover, Afghanistan is now permeated with depleted uranium, cluster bombs-cum-landmines, white phosphorous, a witch's brew of other charming chemicals, and a population, after 30 years of almost non-stop warfare, of physically and mentally mutilated human beings, exceedingly susceptible to the promise of paradise, or at least relief, sold by the Taliban.

As to the US leaving ... utterly meaningless propaganda until it happens. Ask the people of South Korea — 56 years of American occupation and still counting; ask the people of Japan — 64 years. And Iraq? Would you want to wager your life's savings on which decade it will be that the last American soldier and military contractor leaves?

It's not even precise to say that the Russians were sent running. That was essentially Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev's decision, and it was more of a political decision than a military one. Gorbachev's fondest ambition was to turn the Soviet Union into a West-European style social democracy, and he fervently wished for the approval of those European leaders, virtually all of whom were cold-war anti-communists and opposed the Soviet intervention into Afghanistan.

There has been as much of the same "causes" for wars that did not happen as for wars that did.

Henry Allingham died in Britain on July 18 at age 113, believed to have been the world's oldest man. A veteran of World War I, he spent his final years reminding the British people about their service members killed during the war, which came to about a million: "I want everyone to know," he said during an interview in November. "They died for us."⁸

The whole million? Each one died for Britain? In the most useless imperialist war of the 20th century? No, let me correct that — the most useless imperialist war of any century. The British Empire, the French Empire, the Russian Empire, and the wannabe American Empire joined in battle against the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire as youthful bodies and spirits sank endlessly into the wretched mud of Belgium and Germany, the pools of blood of Russia and France. The wondrous nobility of it all is enough to make you swallow hard, fight back the tears, light a few candles, and throw up. Imagine, by the middle of this century Vietnam veterans in their 90s and 100s will be speaking of how each of their 58,000 war buddies died for America. By 2075 we'll be hearing the same stirring message from ancient vets of Iraq and Afghanistan. How many will remember that there was a large protest movement against their glorious, holy crusades, particularly Vietnam and Iraq?

Supreme nonsense

Senate hearings to question a nominee for the Supreme Court are a supreme bore. The sine qua non for President Obama choosing Sonia Sotomayor appears to be that she's a woman with a Hispanic background. A LATINA! How often that word was used by her supporters. She would be the first LATINA on the Supreme Court! Dios mio!

Who gives a damn? All anyone should care about are her social and political opinions. Justice Clarence Thomas is a black man. A BLACK MAN! And he's as conservative as they come.

Supreme Court nominees, of all political stripes, typically feel obliged to pretend that their social and political leanings don't enter into their judicial opinions. But everyone knows this is rubbish. During her Senate hearing, Sotomayor declared: "It's not the heart that compels conclusions in cases. It's the law."

The former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Charles Evan Hughes, would not agree with her. "At the constitutional level where we work," he said, "ninety percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections."⁹

By Sotomayor's own account, which echos news reports, she was not asked about her position on abortion by either President Obama or his staff. But what if she is actually anti-abortion? What if she turns out to be the swing vote that overturns Roe vs. Wade?

What if she's a proud admirer of the American Empire and its perpetual wars? American dissidents, civilian and military, may depend on her vote for their freedom from imprisonment.

What does she think about the "War on Terror"? The civil liberties and freedom from torture of various Americans and foreigners may depend on her attitude. In his 2007 trial, Jose Padilla, an American citizen, was found guilty of aiding terrorists. "The jury did seem to be an oddly cohesive group," the Washington Post reported. "On the last day of trial before the Fourth of July holiday, jurors arranged to dress in outfits so that each row in the jury box was its own patriotic color — red, white or blue."¹⁰ No one dared to question this blatant display of patriotism in the courtroom; neither the defense attorney, nor the prosecutor, nor the judge. How can we continue to pretend that people's legal positions exist independently of their political sentiments?

In the 2000 Supreme Court decision stopping the presidential electoral count in Florida, giving the election to George W. Bush, did the politics of the five most conservative justices play a role in the 5 to 4 decision? Of course. Judges are essentially politicians in black robes. But should we care? Don't ask, don't tell. Sonia Sotomayor is a LATINA!

Given the large Democratic majority in the Senate, Sotomayor was in very little danger of being rejected. She could have openly and proudly expressed her social and political positions — whatever they may be — and the Democratic senators could have done the same. How refreshing, maybe even educational if a discussion ensued. Instead it was just another political appointment by a president determined to not offend anyone if he can help it, and another tiresome ritual hearing. The Republican senators were much less shy about revealing how they actually felt about important issues.

It didn't have to be that way. As Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun.org pointed out during the hearings: "Democratic Senators could use their time to ask questions and make statements that explain why a liberal or progressive worldview is precisely what is needed on the Supreme Court."

NATO and Eastern Europe resource

No one chronicles the rise of the supra-government called NATO like Rick Rozoff in his "Stop NATO" mailings. NATO has become an ever-expanding behemoth, making war and interfering in political controversies all over Europe and beyond. The United States is not the world's only superpower; NATO is another, as it surrounds Russia and the Caspian Sea oil reserves; although the distinction between the two superpowers is little more than a facade. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the NATO/US 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia. On April 23, 1999 missiles slammed into Radio Television Serbia (RTS) in downtown Belgrade, killing 16 employees. The station, NATO claimed, was a legitimate military target because it broadcast propaganda. (Certainly a novel form of censorship; not to mention the fact that NATO could simply have taken out the station's transmitter.) What apparently bothered the Western powers was that RTS was reporting the horrendous effects of NATO's bombing as well as passing footage of the destruction to Western media.

To mark the anniversary, Amnesty International recently issued a demand that NATO be held accountable for the 16 deaths. Amnesty asserts that the bombing was a deliberate attack on a civilian object (one of many during the 78 days) and as such constitutes a war crime, and called upon NATO to launch a war crimes probe into the attack to ensure full accountability and redress for victims and their families.

Readers might consider signing up for the "Stop NATO" mailing list. Just write to: rwrozoff [at] yahoo.com. Rozoff scours the East European press each day and comes up with numerous gems ignored by the mainstream media. But a warning: The amount of material you'll receive is often considerable. You'll have to learn to pick and choose. You can get an idea of this by reading previous reports at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages.

Notes

1. The Guardian (London) July 13, 2009 ^↩
2. Fabian Escalante, "Executive Action: 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro" (Ocean Press, 2006) ^↩
3. William Blum, Killing Hope, chapter 32^↩
4. William Blum, Rogue State, chapter 23 ^↩
5. Ibid., chapter 18 ^↩
6. Rogue State, chapter 17, intermixed with other types of US interventions ^↩
7. Vermont TV station WCAX, July 4, 2009, WCAX.com ^↩
8. Washington Post, July 19, 2009 ^↩
9. William O. Douglas, The Court Years, 1939-1975 (1980), p.8 ^↩
10. Washington Post, August 17, 2007 ^↩

–

William Blum is the author of:

• Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
• Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
• West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
• Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 [at] aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.

Soros's pro-junta "colored revolution" in Honduras

Supporters of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya who have returned to the United States from Honduras report that the country's military-backed junta is supported by throngs of wealthy elites in the streets who have adopted the color white in support of the junta and its acting president Roberto Micheletti.

The selection of the color white is perhaps fitting for a nation where the capitalist elite that supported the coup is practically 100 percent white and of European ancestry. The "white" nature of the coup leaders was best spelled out by the junta's first "Foreign Minister" Enrique Ortez Colindres who said of President Barack Obama: "that little black boy who knows nothing about anything . . . a little black man who doesn’t know where Tegucigalpa is."

The use of white flags in pro-junta demonstrations and the wearing of white shirts by junta supporters is reminiscent of the themed "color revolutions" fomented and financed by global troublemaker and crisis financial speculator George Soros. At the same time white flags and shirts appeared on the streets of Honduras, green flags and clothing were being worn by anti-government demonstrators in Iran. The involvement of the Soros-linked National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which has worked with Soros's Open Society Institute (OSI) in organizing opposition movements and demonstrations in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Myanmar, Tibet, Serbia, and Sinkiang province in China, in the street demonstrations in both Honduras and Iran is clear. Soros's Latin American Program, part of OSI, states that it promotes "democratic institutions" in Latin America, which is true if one believes that U.S.-supported oligarchies in Colombia and Panama and the Honduran junta are "democratic institutions."

Soros and NED funds have been intermingled in support of the Honduran junta under the ruse of "preserving the rule of law" in Honduras, which is code for supporting the right-wing junta. One of the cover projects is called Civic Participation and Democratic Planning. In Honduras, OSI is reported to use "local researchers" for its "projects." Similarly, such intermingled funds are used to destabilize Hugo Chavez's government in Venezuela under the guise of combating "anti-Semitism" in that country.

Soros and U.S.-backed themed revolutions:

Honduras (2009)	White Revolution
Iran (2009)	Green Revolution (unsuccessful)
Georgia (2003)	Rose Revolution
Ukraine (2004)	Orange Revolution
Kyrgyzstan (2005)	Tulip or Pink Revolution
Moldova (2009)	Twitter Revolution (partly successful)
Lebanon (2005)	Cedar Revolution
Belarus (2006)	Denim Revolution (unsuccessful)
Myanmar (2007)	Saffron Revolution (unsuccessful)
Tibet (2008)	Crimson Revolution (unsuccessful)
Mongolia (2005)	Yellow Revolution (partly successful)

Last November, Soros gathered a few Latin American leaders together in the Dominican Republic for a typical Soros contrivance called "The Emerging Global Financial Order," a regional economic summit that was, in reality, pushing for final adoption of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA).

In addition to Soros and Zelaya, others participating included two of Soros's capitalist right-wing pals, President Elias Antonio Saca of El Salvador (now replaced by progressive president Mauricio Funes) and Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis of Haiti, where the democratically-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was, like Zelaya, was forced into exile after a U.S.-sponsored coup ousted him in 2004. The meeting was officially hosted by Dominican President Leonel Fernandez who maintains friendly relations with Latin American progressive leaders. Also present were the general secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Barcena and the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS) Jose Miguel Insulza, a supporter of Zelaya.

After Zelaya embraced Chavez's Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), an anti-capitalist Latin American bloc, the heat from the right-wing, as well as faux progressives like Soros and his gang, was turned up on the Honduran president. That pressure culminated in the coup against him and Honduras's "White Revolution."

Feud between Rahm Emanuel and Netanyahu heats up

The political bickering between White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, himself a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen with strong links, as previously reported by WMR, to the Mossad, and the Israeli government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is heating up, according to U.S. intelligence sources.

Our sources also report that, currently, the major impetus for incessant rumors about Obama's lack of a U.S. birth certificate is the Netanyahu government. WMR first reported on the attempt to paint Obama as born in Mombasa, Kenya after our South African intelligence sources reported that a group of U.S. intelligence operatives, similar to the one that Karl Rove dispatched to South Africa in 2004 to dig up dirt on Teresa Heinz Kerry from South African and Portuguese colonial security files, arrived in Nairobi to dig up dirt on Obama's Kenyan-born father and was on the hunt for a certificate of birth for his son at a Mombasa maternity hospital. The hunt for dirt on the Obama family, which was known to and approved by key officials of the Hillary Clinton campaign, turned up empty-handed.

After the birth certificate story was debunked, Netanyahu resurrected it as a way to pressure Obama from the U.S. fundamentalist right-wing, a group with which he maintains close political and religious links. Currently, Israeli propaganda experts are feeding a flurry of derogatory bogus "intelligence" on Obama to neocon media outlets in the United States.

From WMR's archives: "On February 25, 2008, WMR reported that Karl Rove was quietly assisting the Clinton campaign in a dirty tricks operation against Obama. Rove currently works for Fox News, whose owner Rupert Murdoch, held a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. On February 19, a Stanley [Associates] employee accessed Obama's file for the second time. Sometime later that same week, a team of three Americans arrived in Nairobi, Kenya and traveled to western Kenya and Barack Obama's father's birth place to dig up 'dirt' on Obama's family. The details of Barack Obama Sr., now deceased, would have been readily found in Senator Obama's passport file. That is the real story, minus the neocon obfuscation and smoke screen."

Also, according to WMR's February 25, 2008 report: "WMR's intelligence sources in Africa are reporting that amid the post-election turmoil wracking Kenya, a three-person team (including a possible Korean-American woman) arrived in Nairobi last week and began asking questions about Barack Obama's father, the late Barack Obama, Sr.

The team also inquired about the Senator Obama Secondary School in Nyangoma-Kogelo in northwestern Kenya, the area where Obama's father, an ethnic Luo, hailed and where his grandmother, Sarah Ogwel Onyango, still lives.

There are also reports that another political operative has arrived in South Africa claiming to have personal connections to Obama. The individual, who is not Cuban, is claiming to be part of an Obama-sponsored US-Cuba dialog initiative. The individual is reportedly attempting to make contact with South African Communists 'on behalf' of Obama. The South African Communists contacted are wary of the individual and consider him to be an agent provocateur.

Passport file rifling

On March 24, 2008, WMR reported: "In another case of neocon manipulation of the news, the story about Barack Obama's passport file being accessed by two employees of Stanley Associates, Inc. of Arlington, Virginia, a company whose president, Philip Nolan, has donated to the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and her pal, John McCain supporter Joe Lieberman, has strangely morphed into a story about another State Department contractor snooping on McCain's and Obama's passport files.

The story, when it first broke on the evening of March 20, concentrated on the two employees of Stanley being fingered in the snooping after a computer system audit automatically discovered that a VIP's files were being examined. The initial report from MS-NBC was that the two employees were fired. There was a follow-up report that a third contractor, who was not fired, was disciplined for a passport file access infraction.

But when the neocon owned and operated Washington Times and Fox News began to report the story, emphasis was shifted to the third employee who was not fired. It turns out that the employee works for The Analysis Corporation (TAC), based in McLean, Virginia. It was very convenient for the neocons to shift the story to TAC because its Chief Executive Officer is John O. Brennan, a retired CIA official and adviser to the Obama campaign." [Brennan is now the deputy National Security Adviser in the Obama White House].

Warning shot by Netanyahu fired at Obama

Recent information obtained by WMR from U.S. intelligence sources points to the current false birth certificate controversy is merely a "warning shot" being fired across Obama's bow by the Netanyahu government. Netanyahu's government has been caught leaking "intelligence" on Obama's history to neo-con news media with the caveat that it is based on bona fide Israeli intelligence reports. The real issue, WMR is informed, is the distinct possibility that Obama has been in possession of a passport or passports in addition to his U.S. passport, all stemming from his past post-undergraduate and possible pre-graduate work for Business International Corporation, Inc., a non-official cover "business research" firm in Manhattan that operated on behalf of the CIA. Obama wrote for a few Business International Corporation publications as far as his "official" record is concerned.

Obama has apparently gotten tough with the Netanyahu government, telling the Israeli Prime Minister that he will not be told what to do by Netanyahu or Israel. That toughness has earned Obama a place at the top of Netanyahu's political hit list.

Netanyahu now apparently stands ready to shift the controversy away from the birth certificate non-issue to the more problematic passport issue. In addition to his American passport, Obama may have traveled in the past, while working for Business International Corporation and other U.S. intelligence-connected entities, on a British or Indonesian passport, or both. In addition to Mossad, Britain's MI-6 is said to be aware of Obama's past non-official cover work for the CIA and his past possession of a British passport. This information was reportedly shared with the Hillary Clinton campaign, including former President Bill Clinton, by senior British government officials.

Obama's post-graduate CIA employment

On February 24, 2009, WMR reported: "After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, Barack Obama went to work for a firm called Business International Corporation (BIC), a firm that was linked to economic intelligence gathering for the CIA.

For one year, Obama worked as a researcher in BIC's financial services division where he wrote for two BIC publications, Financing Foreign Operations and Business International Money Report, a weekly newsletter.

An informed source has told WMR that Obama's tuition debt at Columbia was paid off by BIC. In addition, WMR has learned that when Obama lived in Indonesia with his mother and his adoptive father Lolo Soetoro, the 20-year-old Obama, who was known as "Barry Soetoro," traveled to Pakistan in 1981 and was hosted by the family of Muhammadmian Soomro, a Pakistani Sindhi who became acting President of Pakistan {allegedly with the support of the CIA] after the resignation of General Pervez Musharraf on August 18, 2008. [Soomro's father was Pakistani parliamentarian Ahmed Mian Soomro. Muhammadmian Soomro, a former official for the Bank of America, International Bank of Yemen, Faysal Islamic Bank of Bahrain, Muslim Commercial Bank, Agriculture Development Bank of Pakistan, Federal Bank of Cooperatives, and National Bank of Pakistan, represented Pakistan at the 2004 funeral of President Ronald Reagan. Reagan was President while Obama was working on his unspecified mission for the CIA in Pakistan in 1981].

WMR was told that the Obama/Soetoro trip to Pakistan, ostensibly to go "partridge hunting" with the Soomros, related to unknown CIA business. [The Soomro family were political allies of Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leaders Begum Nusrat Bhutto, the widow of the slain ex-PPP Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and Benazir Bhutto, their daughter. Bhutto's brother, Shah Nawaz Bhutto, was found suffocated in his apartment in Cannes, France in 1985 under mysterious circumstances. The Soomros, who are actually a powerful Sindhi clan, continue to be close to the Bhuttos].

The covert CIA program to assist the Afghan mujaheddin was already well underway [at the time of Obama's stay] and Pakistan was the major base of operations for the CIA's support [for the rebels]. Obama also reportedly traveled to India, again, on unknown business for U.S. intelligence. WMR has been told by knowledgeable sources that Obama has, in the past, traveled on at least three passports: U.S., Indonesian, and British.

BIC also maintained a European subsidiary, Business International S.A., in Geneva.

BIC had long been associated with CIA activities since being founded by Eldridge Haynes, a self-professed liberal Democrat. The BIC headquarters was located at the prestigious address of 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in Manhattan. BIC held a series of off-the-record, no press, meetings between top U.S. business executives and top government officials, including the President, and the Secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury, Commerce, and Labor; the Attorney General, Senate leadership, and the heads of the Export-Import Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.

BIC held international meetings in locations like Brussels and Mexico City. In 1961, a BIC meeting in New Delhi was attended by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Foreign Minister Morarji Desai, who would later become Prime Minister [Desai, in 1992, unsuccessfully sued for libel journalist Seymour Hersh over Hersh's allegations that Desai passed intelligence to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger via the CIA during the 1971 India-Pakistan war. The US Supreme Court refused to consider a federal appeals court decision in Hersh's favor] . . .

Obama's work for a company having ties to the CIA barely registered a blip on the 2008 presidential campaign radar screen. At the very least, Obama helped in providing economic intelligence to the CIA as a contract employee. At most, Obama was, like previous BIC employees who operated abroad for the CIA, a full-fledged non-official cover (NOC) agent. Since President Obama has backpedaled on CIA renditions and torture, as well as warrantless electronic surveillance by U.S. intelligence, he owes the American people a full explanation of the circumstances behind his being hired by BIC, what his job actually entailed, and whether he continued to have a relationship with BIC or any other CIA operation while attending Harvard Law School and thereafter."

WMR obtained some 1975 Business International Corporation reports from CIA archives. The output of the firm suggests that it was primarily providing economic intelligence to the CIA as highlighted by the headlines from its October and November 1975 reports:

- "The Trading Company: A New Way to Cope with Global Changes."

- "Foreign Investors Find India's Emergency Rule a Double-Edged Sword."

- "What Venezuela and Bolivia Want"

- "Raw Material Producers Eye the OPEC Model: Who? Where? How?

- "New UK Perspectives: Wilson's Economic Plan, Oil and EEC Tensions"

- "Latest from Canberra" [a report on the ouster of Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's government] [there is also a report on the prospects for New Zealand's Labor government seeing its parliamentary majority trimmed].

- "Dwindling Petrodollars Being Change of Pace to Venezuelan Economy"

- The Big Six Summit in Paris

When Obama was in Pakistan and worked for Business International, the CIA was involved in a massive espionage campaign in India, as well as with a significant support network for the anti-Soviet Afghan mujaheddin in Pakistan. In 1983, while Obama was with Business International in New York, the First Secretary of the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, Henry L. Wetherbee, was expelled after the Indian Intelligence Bureau exposed his involvement with an espionage network of three retired Indian Air Force officers and a civilian. Wetherbee, whose official cover was an embassy policy planning officer, bought classified information from the Indian officials on Soviet equipment being provided for Indian air force bases. At the time, India maintained close military relations with the Soviet Union and was opposed to the U.S. support for the Afghan mujaheddin from bases in Pakistan.

The Pakistan that Obama visited in 1981 on "unknown" CIA business was awash in CIA agents providing Afghan Islamist guerrillas with caches of weapons from old Lee-Enfield rifles to Kalashnikov automatic rifles and rocket launchers to mortars, many of which were from Chinese sources.

It was in the environment of Indian-Pakistani antagonism, coupled with U.S.-Soviet rivalry in nearby Afghanistan, that young Obama was immersed while involved with NOC activities on behalf of the CIA in the early 1980s. While Obama traveled to Pakistan on his Indonesian passport, the CIA's hand-picked dictator, President Suharto, was crushing his political opposition, among them some of his longtime associates who criticized Suharto's dictatorship: A. W. Fatwa, sentenced to 18 years in prison for "subversive" activities; General Hartono Dharsono, sentenced to seven years on the same charges; and former senior minister Slamet Bratanata and General Abdul Haris Nasution, who helped Suharto gain power.

There is a certain optimism by Obama administration officials about the ouster of governments around the world unfriendly to American interests in the Business International reports, suggesting that Obama's early work for the CIA front favorably exposed him to the notion that the overthrow of governments is in the best interests of the United States. Obama's reaction to the recent military right-wing coup against President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras suggests possible influence on him at a young age to such imperialistic American policies. Obama also does not appear to be bothered by the actions of U.S.-supported dictators who act in the very same manner as Suharto during Obama's childhood in Jakarta.

***

Emanuel, for his part, realizes that his future depends on the success of the Obama's presidency. Knowing that he would not last long in a Biden administration or a weakened lame duck Obama administration, Emanuel, WMR is told, is retaliating fiercely against the volley of political threats from Netanyahu and his chief advisers.

Massive Laundering of "black money" through the Social Security Administration

WMR has been tracking the massive theft, some of it systematic, of personal data, including social security numbers, since we began publication in May 2005.

On June 24, 2006, WMR reported: "The epidemic of personal data thefts continues at breakneck speed. Yesterday, the Navy announced that Social Security Numbers and dates of birth on 28,000 naval personnel and family dependents were leaked to a publicly-accessible web site. Shortly prior to that announcement, the Department of Agriculture reported the compromise of 26,000 Social Security Numbers and other personal details on 26,000 Agriculture employees. WMR has previously reported that these thefts are part of a covert U.S. intelligence program to steal personal data on Americans and others to populate Total Information Awareness system surveillance databases. Two officials of two U.S. intelligence activities have confirmed the existence of this program but the FBI has been hamstrung by higher authority not to investigate the thefts thoroughly."

The sources for the information about the intelligence connection to the data thefts were within the Department of Energy at two different locations: Germantown, Maryland and Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

WMR has now learned of another possible use of the stolen personal data: massive money laundering through the Social Security Administration.

A source with a large data processing company that was contracted to process social security payments reported that for a significant period of time hundreds of social security payments were being issued to different names. However, the different names used the same Social Security Number. The social security payments were all directly deposited into the same bank account with that was not associated with a name.

The data processing firm in question was aware of the laundering operation but did nothing to stop the process. There is the possibility that billions of dollars have been laundered through the Social Security direct deposit payment system over the past several years.

In 2007, Representative Elton Gallegly cited the Bank of America and Wells Fargo Bank as turning a "blind eye" to Social Security Number fraud and money laundering in relation to illegal immigration. Gallegly stated: "Wells Fargo was even cited by the Treasury Department last year for 'numerous and recurring deficiencies' in safeguarding against money launderingand terrorist activities. The violations were so egregious that Treasury Department staff recommended a public reprimand. Top officials, however, decided to slap Wells Fargo's wrist quietly and behind closed doors." Gallegly added, "Social Security Numbers have nothing to do with credit." Gallegly also stated that the Bank of America "aids and abets identity theft and money laundering."

In 1988, two E. F. Hutton & Company brokers were indicted for laundering more than a half million dollars for "select clients" using bogus brokerage accounts with false names and Social Security Numbers. One of those indicted, Stephen Fusco, died of cancer in 1985 after the FBI investigation of the operation began.

Cheney assassination team involved Pentagon chain of command

Pentagon officials revealed important details of Vice President Dick Cheney's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) assassination at a Special Operation/Low Intensity Conflict (SOLIC) conference in Arlington, Virginia just weeks before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Reporting to the Pentagon's Undersecretary for Plans and Policy Douglas Feith, the assassination team was known as "Black Special Operations Forces" or "Black SOF" and the assassination team were part of a group responsible for "special programs," according to information revealed at the conference sponsored by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA).

The special hit squads used by Cheney were part of a Bush White House program, initiated by the neo-conservative cell in the Pentagon around Feith and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz that, according to Pentagon officials consciously shifted policy "to the right." The policy, known as "defensive intervention," gave the U.S. military the authorization to pursue targets for the defense of the country. The actual implementer of the Cheney policy was Robert Andrews, the then-Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for SOLIC, who stated in his remark on February 11, "the U.S. must take quick action against likely sponsors of terrorists . . . without waiting for a basis of legal evidence." Andrews also stated that the standing orders for JSOC and SOF personnel were to "take asymmetric warfare into the heart of terrorism and destroy it."

Andrews also stated that "targeted assassinations" were one means for defensive intervention. He declared, "If I could take out Saddam Hussein, I'd do it. My Secretary wouldn't let me do it, but I'd do it." At the time, the assassination of the foreign leader such as Hussein was prohibited by Executive Order 12333, which bans such actions against foreign political leaders.

Andrews revealed the reason that SOF personnel were used by the Cheney team to carry out assassinations was because they could easily get into otherwise denied areas under the aegis of "training" and "counter-narcotics" programs. He cited the example of Uzbekistan as one country where U.S. SOF forces operated more or less freely after 9/11. Andrews added that SOF were "sources for collecting intelligence in host countries" and that "training contacts are fungible, we can use them for counter-narcotics but for 'other things,' as well." Andrews also stated that counter-narcotics "played a big role in the Summer [0f 2002] allowing us to go in." He revealed that SOF personnel were active in Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador in the Summer of 2002 and that they did "other things." Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez narrowly escaped a coup against him in April 2002 that was supported by U.S. SOF teams.

The Pentagon's Joint Combined Education and Training (JCET) program gave the JSOC Special Forces team carrying out "defensive intervention" access to 59 countries under the cover of 139 "training missions." Detainee operations in Guantanamo and other detention centers were also part of the JSOC/SOF mandate.

Much of the defensive intervention strategy originated with the contractor Booz Allen and was part of a larger "strategic psychological operations" program initiated by the Pentagon. Under the umbrella of "influence operations," the program also targeted, according to one Pentagon consultant, "activists, anarchists, as well as opportunists" as the new terrorists. Specifically, animal rights and environmental activists were cited in the "activist" category. Infuence operations were green-lighted by both Cheney and President George W. Bush. Bush justified the program to Pentagon officials by saying "we're bringing justice to the terrorists."

SOF personnel charged with assassinating suspected terrorists also operated in the Philippines in 2002 as part of Operation Balikatan, a joint operation with Philippines Special Operations personnel.

The JSOC/SOF personnel reportedly operated in sensitive locations abroad, including Bosnia. Personnel possessed Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information clearances and access for the Cheney-Wolfowitz-Feith "defensive intervention" program.

Pentagon officials also revealed that SOF personnel operated domestically under statute granted in the USA PATRIOT Act known as "consequence management."

JSOC/SOF also maintained a "less-than-lethal" program of using against their targets "pepper spray projectiles, ring-shaped rubber bullets, electro-static devices to immobilize vehicles, electro-magnetic devices to disable automobile electronics, light scattering particles to confuse crowds, and electro-shocking devices to immobilize crowds." It was conceded that the electric discharge devices could also immobilize pacemakers and aircraft, which could have lethal consequences.

Although the CIA claims it kept a wary distance from the Cheney assassination program, there was one country where the CIA directly funded an assassination in the waning days of the Clinton administration, an indication that at least part of the Cheney program was already in existence prior to his entering office. Shortly before the January 2001 assassination of Congolese President Laurent Kabila in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one State Department witness at the U.S. embassy in Kinshasa personally saw large sums of cash arriving at the CIA station at the embassy said to be used for a "special operation." Four days before Cheney's inauguration as Vice President, Kabila was gunned down in a palace coup.

Three Good Reasons To Liquidate Our Empire - And Ten Steps to Take to Do So

By Chalmers Johnson

However ambitious President Barack Obama's domestic plans, one unacknowledged issue has the potential to destroy any reform efforts he might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla in the American living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our relations with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous global empire of bases that goes with it. The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military establishment and the profligate use of it in missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather than later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the former Soviet Union.

According to the 2008 official Pentagon inventory of our military bases around the world, our empire consists of 865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas U.S. territories. We deploy over 190,000 troops in 46 countries and territories. In just one such country, Japan, at the end of March 2008, we still had 99,295 people connected to U.S. military forces living and working there -- 49,364 members of our armed services, 45,753 dependent family members, and 4,178 civilian employees. Some 13,975 of these were crowded into the small island of Okinawa, the largest concentration of foreign troops anywhere in Japan.

These massive concentrations of American military power outside the United States are not needed for our defense. They are, if anything, a prime contributor to our numerous conflicts with other countries. They are also unimaginably expensive. According to Anita Dancs, an analyst for the website Foreign Policy in Focus, the United States spends approximately $250 billion each year maintaining its global military presence. The sole purpose of this is to give us hegemony -- that is, control or dominance -- over as many nations on the planet as possible.

We are like the British at the end of World War II: desperately trying to shore up an empire that we never needed and can no longer afford, using methods that often resemble those of failed empires of the past -- including the Axis powers of World War II and the former Soviet Union. There is an important lesson for us in the British decision, starting in 1945, to liquidate their empire relatively voluntarily, rather than being forced to do so by defeat in war, as were Japan and Germany, or by debilitating colonial conflicts, as were the French and Dutch. We should follow the British example. (Alas, they are currently backsliding and following our example by assisting us in the war in Afghanistan.)

Here are three basic reasons why we must liquidate our empire or else watch it liquidate us.

1. We Can No Longer Afford Our Postwar Expansionism

Shortly after his election as president, Barack Obama, in a speech announcing several members of his new cabinet, stated as fact that "[w]e have to maintain the strongest military on the planet." A few weeks later, on March 12, 2009, in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington DC, the president again insisted, "Now make no mistake, this nation will maintain our military dominance. We will have the strongest armed forces in the history of the world." And in a commencement address to the cadets of the U.S. Naval Academy on May 22nd, Obama stressed that "[w]e will maintain America's military dominance and keep you the finest fighting force the world has ever seen."

What he failed to note is that the United States no longer has the capability to remain a global hegemon, and to pretend otherwise is to invite disaster.

According to a growing consensus of economists and political scientists around the world, it is impossible for the United States to continue in that role while emerging into full view as a crippled economic power. No such configuration has ever persisted in the history of imperialism. The University of Chicago's Robert Pape, author of the important study Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Random House, 2005), typically writes:

"America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing government debt, increasingly negative current-account balances and other internal economic weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today's world of rapidly spreading knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back on the Bush years as the death knell of American hegemony."

There is something absurd, even Kafkaesque, about our military empire. Jay Barr, a bankruptcy attorney, makes this point using an insightful analogy:

"Whether liquidating or reorganizing, a debtor who desires bankruptcy protection must provide a list of expenses, which, if considered reasonable, are offset against income to show that only limited funds are available to repay the bankrupted creditors. Now imagine a person filing for bankruptcy claiming that he could not repay his debts because he had the astronomical expense of maintaining at least 737 facilities overseas that provide exactly zero return on the significant investment required to sustain them… He could not qualify for liquidation without turning over many of his assets for the benefit of creditors, including the valuable foreign real estate on which he placed his bases."

In other words, the United States is not seriously contemplating its own bankruptcy. It is instead ignoring the meaning of its precipitate economic decline and flirting with insolvency.

Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How the Military Invades our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books, 2008), calculates that we could clear $2.6 billion if we would sell our base assets at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and earn another $2.2 billion if we did the same with Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. These are only two of our over 800 overblown military enclaves.

Our unwillingness to retrench, no less liquidate, represents a striking historical failure of the imagination. In his first official visit to China since becoming Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner assured an audience of students at Beijing University, "Chinese assets [invested in the United States] are very safe." According to press reports, the students responded with loud laughter. Well they might.

In May 2009, the Office of Management and Budget predicted that in 2010 the United States will be burdened with a budget deficit of at least $1.75 trillion. This includes neither a projected $640 billion budget for the Pentagon, nor the costs of waging two remarkably expensive wars. The sum is so immense that it will take several generations for American citizens to repay the costs of George W. Bush's imperial adventures -- if they ever can or will. It represents about 13% of our current gross domestic product (that is, the value of everything we produce). It is worth noting that the target demanded of European nations wanting to join the Euro Zone is a deficit no greater than 3% of GDP.

Thus far, President Obama has announced measly cuts of only $8.8 billion in wasteful and worthless weapons spending, including his cancellation of the F-22 fighter aircraft. The actual Pentagon budget for next year will, in fact, be larger, not smaller, than the bloated final budget of the Bush era. Far bolder cuts in our military expenditures will obviously be required in the very near future if we intend to maintain any semblance of fiscal integrity.

2. We Are Going to Lose the War in Afghanistan and It Will Help Bankrupt Us

One of our major strategic blunders in Afghanistan was not to have recognized that both Great Britain and the Soviet Union attempted to pacify Afghanistan using the same military methods as ours and failed disastrously. We seem to have learned nothing from Afghanistan's modern history -- to the extent that we even know what it is. Between 1849 and 1947, Britain sent almost annual expeditions against the Pashtun tribes and sub-tribes living in what was then called the North-West Frontier Territories -- the area along either side of the artificial border between Afghanistan and Pakistan called the Durand Line. This frontier was created in 1893 by Britain's foreign secretary for India, Sir Mortimer Durand.

Neither Britain nor Pakistan has ever managed to establish effective control over the area. As the eminent historian Louis Dupree put it in his book Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 425): "Pashtun tribes, almost genetically expert at guerrilla warfare after resisting centuries of all comers and fighting among themselves when no comers were available, plagued attempts to extend the Pax Britannica into their mountain homeland." An estimated 41 million Pashtuns live in an undemarcated area along the Durand Line and profess no loyalties to the central governments of either Pakistan or Afghanistan.

The region known today as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan is administered directly by Islamabad, which -- just as British imperial officials did -- has divided the territory into seven agencies, each with its own "political agent" who wields much the same powers as his colonial-era predecessor. Then as now, the part of FATA known as Waziristan and the home of Pashtun tribesmen offered the fiercest resistance.

According to Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, experienced Afghan hands and coauthors of Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story (City Lights, 2009, p. 317):

"If Washington's bureaucrats don't remember the history of the region, the Afghans do. The British used air power to bomb these same Pashtun villages after World War I and were condemned for it. When the Soviets used MiGs and the dreaded Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships to do it during the 1980s, they were called criminals. For America to use its overwhelming firepower in the same reckless and indiscriminate manner defies the world's sense of justice and morality while turning the Afghan people and the Islamic world even further against the United States."

In 1932, in a series of Guernica-like atrocities, the British used poison gas in Waziristan. The disarmament convention of the same year sought a ban against the aerial bombardment of civilians, but Lloyd George, who had been British prime minister during World War I, gloated: "We insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers" (Fitzgerald and Gould, p. 65). His view prevailed.

The U.S. continues to act similarly, but with the new excuse that our killing of noncombatants is a result of "collateral damage," or human error. Using pilotless drones guided with only minimal accuracy from computers at military bases in the Arizona and Nevada deserts among other places, we have killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unarmed bystanders in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Pakistani and Afghan governments have repeatedly warned that we are alienating precisely the people we claim to be saving for democracy.

When in May 2009, General Stanley McChrystal was appointed as the commander in Afghanistan, he ordered new limits on air attacks, including those carried out by the CIA, except when needed to protect allied troops. Unfortunately, as if to illustrate the incompetence of our chain of command, only two days after this order, on June 23, 2009, the United States carried out a drone attack against a funeral procession that killed at least 80 people, the single deadliest U.S. attack on Pakistani soil so far. There was virtually no reporting of these developments by the mainstream American press or on the network television news. (At the time, the media were almost totally preoccupied by the sexual adventures of the governor of South Carolina and the death of pop star Michael Jackson.)

Our military operations in both Pakistan and Afghanistan have long been plagued by inadequate and inaccurate intelligence about both countries, ideological preconceptions about which parties we should support and which ones we should oppose, and myopic understandings of what we could possibly hope to achieve. Fitzgerald and Gould, for example, charge that, contrary to our own intelligence service's focus on Afghanistan, "Pakistan has always been the problem." They add:

"Pakistan's army and its Inter-Services Intelligence branch... from 1973 on, has played the key role in funding and directing first the mujahideen [anti-Soviet fighters during the 1980s]… and then the Taliban. It is Pakistan's army that controls its nuclear weapons, constrains the development of democratic institutions, trains Taliban fighters in suicide attacks and orders them to fight American and NATO soldiers protecting the Afghan government." (p. 322-324)

The Pakistani army and its intelligence arm are staffed, in part, by devout Muslims who fostered the Taliban in Afghanistan to meet the needs of their own agenda, though not necessarily to advance an Islamic jihad. Their purposes have always included: keeping Afghanistan free of Russian or Indian influence, providing a training and recruiting ground for mujahideen guerrillas to be used in places like Kashmir (fought over by both Pakistan and India), containing Islamic radicalism in Afghanistan (and so keeping it out of Pakistan), and extorting huge amounts of money from Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf emirates, and the United States to pay and train "freedom fighters" throughout the Islamic world. Pakistan's consistent policy has been to support the clandestine policies of the Inter-Services Intelligence and thwart the influence of its major enemy and competitor, India.

Colonel Douglas MacGregor, U.S. Army (retired), an adviser to the Center for Defense Information in Washington, summarizes our hopeless project in South Asia this way: "Nothing we do will compel 125 million Muslims in Pakistan to make common cause with a United States in league with the two states that are unambiguously anti-Muslim: Israel and India."

Obama's mid-2009 "surge" of troops into southern Afghanistan and particularly into Helmand Province, a Taliban stronghold, is fast becoming darkly reminiscent of General William Westmoreland's continuous requests in Vietnam for more troops and his promises that if we would ratchet up the violence just a little more and tolerate a few more casualties, we would certainly break the will of the Vietnamese insurgents. This was a total misreading of the nature of the conflict in Vietnam, just as it is in Afghanistan today.

Twenty years after the forces of the Red Army withdrew from Afghanistan in disgrace, the last Russian general to command them, Gen. Boris Gromov, issued his own prediction: Disaster, he insisted, will come to the thousands of new forces Obama is sending there, just as it did to the Soviet Union's, which lost some 15,000 soldiers in its own Afghan war. We should recognize that we are wasting time, lives, and resources in an area where we have never understood the political dynamics and continue to make the wrong choices.

3. We Need to End the Secret Shame of Our Empire of Bases

In March, New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert noted, "Rape and other forms of sexual assault against women is the great shame of the U.S. armed forces, and there is no evidence that this ghastly problem, kept out of sight as much as possible, is diminishing." He continued:

"New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of sexual assaults -- 2,923 -- and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan [over the past year]. Try to imagine how bizarre it is that women in American uniforms who are enduring all the stresses related to serving in a combat zone have to also worry about defending themselves against rapists wearing the same uniform and lining up in formation right beside them."

The problem is exacerbated by having our troops garrisoned in overseas bases located cheek-by-jowl next to civilian populations and often preying on them like foreign conquerors. For example, sexual violence against women and girls by American GIs has been out of control in Okinawa, Japan's poorest prefecture, ever since it was permanently occupied by our soldiers, Marines, and airmen some 64 years ago.

That island was the scene of the largest anti-American demonstrations since the end of World War II after the 1995 kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by two Marines and a sailor. The problem of rape has been ubiquitous around all of our bases on every continent and has probably contributed as much to our being loathed abroad as the policies of the Bush administration or our economic exploitation of poverty-stricken countries whose raw materials we covet.

The military itself has done next to nothing to protect its own female soldiers or to defend the rights of innocent bystanders forced to live next to our often racially biased and predatory troops. "The military's record of prosecuting rapists is not just lousy, it's atrocious," writes Herbert. In territories occupied by American military forces, the high command and the State Department make strenuous efforts to enact so-called "Status of Forces Agreements" (SOFAs) that will prevent host governments from gaining jurisdiction over our troops who commit crimes overseas. The SOFAs also make it easier for our military to spirit culprits out of a country before they can be apprehended by local authorities.

This issue was well illustrated by the case of an Australian teacher, a long-time resident of Japan, who in April 2002 was raped by a sailor from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, then based at the big naval base at Yokosuka. She identified her assailant and reported him to both Japanese and U.S. authorities. Instead of his being arrested and effectively prosecuted, the victim herself was harassed and humiliated by the local Japanese police. Meanwhile, the U.S. discharged the suspect from the Navy but allowed him to escape Japanese law by returning him to the U.S., where he lives today.

In the course of trying to obtain justice, the Australian teacher discovered that almost fifty years earlier, in October 1953, the Japanese and American governments signed a secret "understanding" as part of their SOFA in which Japan agreed to waive its jurisdiction if the crime was not of "national importance to Japan." The U.S. argued strenuously for this codicil because it feared that otherwise it would face the likelihood of some 350 servicemen per year being sent to Japanese jails for sex crimes.

Since that time the U.S. has negotiated similar wording in SOFAs with Canada, Ireland, Italy, and Denmark. According to the Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces (2001), the Japanese practice has become the norm for SOFAs throughout the world, with predictable results. In Japan, of 3,184 U.S. military personnel who committed crimes between 2001 and 2008, 83% were not prosecuted. In Iraq, we have just signed a SOFA that bears a strong resemblance to the first postwar one we had with Japan: namely, military personnel and military contractors accused of off-duty crimes will remain in U.S. custody while Iraqis investigate. This is, of course, a perfect opportunity to spirit the culprits out of the country before they can be charged.

Within the military itself, the journalist Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007), speaks of the "culture of unpunished sexual assaults" and the "shockingly low numbers of courts martial" for rapes and other forms of sexual attacks. Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (Beacon Press, 2009), quotes this figure in a 2009 Pentagon report on military sexual assaults: 90% of the rapes in the military are never reported at all and, when they are, the consequences for the perpetrator are negligible.

It is fair to say that the U.S. military has created a worldwide sexual playground for its personnel and protected them to a large extent from the consequences of their behavior. As a result a group of female veterans in 2006 created the Service Women's Action Network (SWAN). Its agenda is to spread the word that "no woman should join the military."

I believe a better solution would be to radically reduce the size of our standing army, and bring the troops home from countries where they do not understand their environments and have been taught to think of the inhabitants as inferior to themselves.

10 Steps Toward Liquidating the Empire

Dismantling the American empire would, of course, involve many steps. Here are ten key places to begin:

1. We need to put a halt to the serious environmental damage done by our bases planet-wide. We also need to stop writing SOFAs that exempt us from any responsibility for cleaning up after ourselves.

2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of carrying our empire of bases and so of the "opportunity costs" that go with them -- the things we might otherwise do with our talents and resources but can't or won't.

3. As we already know (but often forget), imperialism breeds the use of torture. In the 1960s and 1970s we helped overthrow the elected governments in Brazil and Chile and underwrote regimes of torture that prefigured our own treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. (See, for instance, A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors [Pantheon, 1979], on how the U.S. spread torture methods to Brazil and Uruguay.) Dismantling the empire would potentially mean a real end to the modern American record of using torture abroad.

4. We need to cut the ever-lengthening train of camp followers, dependents, civilian employees of the Department of Defense, and hucksters -- along with their expensive medical facilities, housing requirements, swimming pools, clubs, golf courses, and so forth -- that follow our military enclaves around the world.

5. We need to discredit the myth promoted by the military-industrial complex that our military establishment is valuable to us in terms of jobs, scientific research, and defense. These alleged advantages have long been discredited by serious economic research. Ending empire would make this happen.

6. As a self-respecting democratic nation, we need to stop being the world's largest exporter of arms and munitions and quit educating Third World militaries in the techniques of torture, military coups, and service as proxies for our imperialism. A prime candidate for immediate closure is the so-called School of the Americas, the U.S. Army's infamous military academy at Fort Benning, Georgia, for Latin American military officers. (See Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire [Metropolitan Books, 2004], pp. 136-40.)

7. Given the growing constraints on the federal budget, we should abolish the Reserve Officers' Training Corps and other long-standing programs that promote militarism in our schools.

8. We need to restore discipline and accountability in our armed forces by radically scaling back our reliance on civilian contractors, private military companies, and agents working for the military outside the chain of command and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (See Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater:The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Nation Books, 2007]). Ending empire would make this possible.

9. We need to reduce, not increase, the size of our standing army and deal much more effectively with the wounds our soldiers receive and combat stress they undergo.

10. To repeat the main message of this essay, we must give up our inappropriate reliance on military force as the chief means of attempting to achieve foreign policy objectives.

Unfortunately, few empires of the past voluntarily gave up their dominions in order to remain independent, self-governing polities. The two most important recent examples are the British and Soviet empires. If we do not learn from their examples, our decline and fall is foreordained.

Chalmers Johnson is the author of Blowback (2000), The Sorrows of Empire (2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006), and editor of Okinawa: Cold War Island (1999).

[Note on further reading on the matter of sexual violence in and around our overseas bases and rapes in the military: On the response to the 1995 Okinawa rape, see Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, chapter 2. On related subjects, see David McNeil, "Justice for Some. Crime, Victims, and the US-Japan SOFA," Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 8-1-09, March 15, 2009; "Bilateral Secret Agreement Is Preventing U.S. Servicemen Committing Crimes in Japan from Being Prosecuted," Japan Press Weekly, May 23, 2009; Dieter Fleck, ed., The Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces, Oxford University Press, 2001; Minoru Matsutani, "'53 Secret Japan-US Deal Waived GI Prosecutions," Japan Times, October 24, 2008; "Crime Without Punishment in Japan," the Economist, December 10, 2008; "Japan: Declassified Document Reveals Agreement to Relinquish Jurisdiction Over U.S. Forces," Akahata, October 30, 2008; "Government's Decision First Case in Japan," Ryukyu Shimpo, May 20, 2008; Dahr Jamail, "Culture of Unpunished Sexual Assault in Military," Antiwar.com, May 1, 2009; and Helen Benedict, "The Plight of Women Soldiers," the Nation, May 5, 2009.]

Copyright 2009 Chalmers Johnson

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