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Carol M. Highsmith • Public domain

I have joined in a lawsuit with four former federal employees to end the government’s censorship of our writings on national security issues. The current publications review system of our military and intelligence agencies is dysfunctional, inhibiting our ability to participate in national security debates. The government has a legitimate interest in protecting bona fide secrets, but the review system is opaque, exceeding legitimate national security boundaries and compromising free speech.

Former CIA director Michael Hayden has acknowledged the problem, stating that “although the public cannot be briefed on everything, there has to be enough out there so that the majority of the population believes what they [i.e., intelligence agencies] are doing is acceptable.”

My experience with the Central Intelligence Agency’s review system exemplifies the obstacles that keep legitimate information from policymakers and the public. In last year’s congressional discussions of the confirmation for CIA director Gina Haspel, senior agency officials such as former acting director Mike Morell were permitted to defend her role in the unconscionable practice of torture and abuse in secret prisons during the War on Terror. The CIA’s publications review board, however, redacted my writings describing her extensive role in these activities. Her involvement was effectively covered up! For a forthcoming book, the reviewers ordered me to remove a reference to an article in the New York Times that referred to these activities because they claimed the “title” of that article was classified.

My last book, Whistleblower at the CIA, was critical of the CIA’s politicization of intelligence in the 1980s as well as in the run up to the Iraq War in 2003. The book was held up for 11 months, violating the 30-day time period for review that was part of my original agreement with the CIA; that time frame was affirmed in a 1972 circuit court decision.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The CIA Takeover Of America In The 1960s Is The Story Of Our Time

April 4, 2019

The CIA Takeover Of America In The 1960s Is The Story Of Our Time

A Lie Too Big To Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, by Lisa Pease

“‘We’re all puppets’, the suspect [Sirhan Sirhan] replied, with more truth than he could have understood at that moment.”
– Lisa Pease, quoting from the LAPD questioning of Sirhan

When Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated on June 5, 1968, the American public fell into an hypnotic trance in which they have remained ever since. The overwhelming majority accepted what was presented by government authorities as an open and shut case that a young Palestinian American, Sirhan Sirhan, had murdered RFK because of his support for Israel, a false accusation whose ramifications echo down the years. That this was patently untrue and was contradicted by overwhelming evidence made no difference.

Sirhan did not kill Robert Kennedy, yet he remains in jail to this very day. Robert Kennedy, Jr., who was 14 years old at the time of his father’s death, has visited Sirhan in prison, claims he is innocent, and believes there was another gunman. Paul Schrade, an aide to the senator and the first person shot that night, also says Sirhan didn’t do it. Both have plenty of evidence. And they are not alone.

There is a vast body of documented evidence to prove this, an indisputably logical case marshalled by serious writers and researchers. Lisa Pease is the latest. It is a reason why a group of 60 prominent Americans has recently called for a reopening of, not just this case, but those of JFK, MLK, and Malcom X. The blood of these men cries out for the revelation of the truth that the United States national security state and its media accomplices have fought so mightily to keep hidden for so many years.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Understanding Why Iranians Bash the U.S. Government

February 15, 2019

Understanding Why Iranians Bash the U.S. Government

Two days ago, the New York Times carried an article by Times’ journalist Thomas Erdbrink entitled, “For Iran, a Grand Occasion to Bash the U.S.,” which was about Iran’s celebration of the 40th anniversary of its revolution in 1979. The article included the following sentence, “And like some evil doppelgänger, the United States was omnipresent, despite having broken all ties with Iran in 1981.”

Unfortunately, Erdbrink failed to point out two things: One, it is understandable why the Iranian people bash the U.S. government, and, two, while the U.S. government may have broken diplomatic ties with Iran, it has nonetheless continued to use economic sanctions to target the Iranian people with impoverishment and death as a way of hopefully effecting another regime change within the country.

The distinction is important because the Iranian people love Americans. They just hate the U.S. government. And when one considers what the U.S. government has done to Iranians and continues to do to Iranians, which, unfortunately, many Americans don’t like to think about, it is not difficult to understand the deep enmity that Iranians have toward the U.S. government.

First things first though. When the Times refers to “bashing the U.S.,” it makes a common mistake by conflating the U.S. government and our nation. Actually, they are two separate and distinct entities, a phenomenon best reflected by the Bill of Rights, which expressly protects the citizenry (i.e., our country) from the U.S. government.

In 1953, the CIA, which is one of three principal parts of the national-security branch of the federal government, secretly initiated a regime-change coup in Iran, one that not only ousted from power the democratically elected prime minister of the country, Mohammed Mossadegh, but also destroyed Iran’s experiment with democracy. That’s ironic, of course, given that U.S. officials are always reminding people how enamored they are with “democracy.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The CIA’s Masterful Use of Fake News

February 2, 2019

The CIA’s Masterful Use of Fake News

Iranian demonstrators burn a representation of a U.S. flag and a caricature of then-President Barack Obama during an annual state-backed rally in front of the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, on Nov. 2, 2012. That rally commemorates the hostage crisis that began at the embassy on Nov. 4, 1979, in which 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days. (Vahid Salemi / AP)

In early 1954, writing in the magazine Encounter, F.R. Allemann slammed the ex-prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, for alleged abuses. In a “Letter from Teheran” titled “Persia: Land of Unrealities,” Allemann referred to Mosaddegh’s aborted term as a “pseudo-revolutionary pseudo-dictatorship” and claimed Mosaddegh could only cram laws through Iran’s Parliament by summoning thugs to street protests—that is, through demagoguery.

Allemann depicted Mosaddegh’s rallies as “terror campaign[s] of the political-religious secret societies” whose vocal support gave only the impression of a genuine mass movement. Lest the London-based magazine’s white, European readership miss these subtle cues to revile the out-of-office politician, Allemann, a Swiss journalist, offered his readers a buffet of Orientalist buzzwords. Rather than a rational leader elected by his people, Mosaddegh instead was a charismatic “dervish,” and “nobody was more inclined toward Munchausen escapades [like those of Mosaddegh’s incumbency] than the Oriental in general and the Persian in particular.”

Decades later, one must ask, where were Encounter’s fact-checkers? Contrary to the article, Mosaddegh was legally elected during a period of robust Iranian democracy, and he was known as a beloved leader and a fiery speaker. His was such an iconic voice for his people that he was voted Time magazine’s Man of the Year after being named prime minister. It was strange that such venom as Allemann’s should describe a popular democrat once praised by President Harry Truman. Was Allemann signaling some conflict between the respective interests of Mosaddegh and Encounter?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NBC and MSNBC Blamed Russia for Using “Sophisticated Microwaves” to Cause “Brain Injuries” in U.S. “Diplomats” in Cuba. The Culprits Were Likely Crickets.

January 8, 2019

NBC and MSNBC Blamed Russia for Using “Sophisticated Microwaves” to Cause “Brain Injuries” in U.S. “Diplomats” in Cuba. The Culprits Were Likely Crickets.

NBC NEWS AND MSNBC SPECIALIZE in repeating and disseminating what U.S intelligence officials tell them to say and then calling that servitude “reporting.” Those two networks really are the all-but-official outlets for CIA messaging. And this status has led their brightest on-air stars to broadcast a series of extremely consequential stories that turned out to be humiliatingly wrong.

This stenographic and highly jingoistic practice of mindlessly reciting the whispered claims of anonymous “intelligence officials” is what notoriously led the New York Times and other leading U.S. media outlets to deceive the country into believing Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz’s fairy tales about Iraqi WMDs and Jeffrey Goldberg’s tales about Saddam’s alliance with Al Qaeda.

But while many of those outlets apologized for that behavior and vowed to avoid it in the future, NBC and MSNBC have committed themselves to it with greater vigor than ever, as evidenced by the increasing prominence of their national security reporter Ken Dilanian, whose entire career has been defined by repeating what the CIA tells him to say – and has thus been plagued by one embarrassing false story after the next.

On Friday, veteran national security reporter William Arkin announced his departure from those networks, blasting them as stenographic servants of the security state agencies and pro-war propaganda. Noting that ex-generals and CIA officials dominate the NBC/MSNBC airwaves, Arkin wrote: “in many ways NBC just began emulating the national security state itself – busy and profitable,” adding: “the national security leaders and generals we have are allowed to do their thing unmolested.”

We now have what might be the most vivid, reckless and dangerous illustration yet of how NBC and MSNBC functions. If their behavior weren’t so journalistically shameful and destructive, this would be darkly humorous.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Washington Is Changing The World Order Against Its Own Interests

December 13, 2018

Washington Is Changing The World Order Against Its Own Interests

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The hubris and arrogance of Washington have been at work since the Clinton regime to destroy the power and relevance of the United States.

This website has an international audience. The most asked question from this audience is the world order. There is a realization that Washington’s control might weaken, a development people abroad see as hopeful. They ask me for verification of their hope.

Here is my answer:

The world order has already changed. China has a larger and more powerful industrial and manufacturing based economy than the US, and China’s potential domestic consumer market is four times larger than that of the US. As economies are consumer based, China’s potential is an economy four times larger than that of the US.

Russia has a far more capable military with weapon systems unmatched by the US. The US is drowning in debt, and the illegal and irresponsible sanctions that Washington tries to impose on others are driving the world’s largest countries away from the use of the US dollar as world reserve currency and away from Western clearance systems such as SWIFT. The United States already has one foot in the grave. Any country sufficiently stupid to ally with the US is allied with a dead man walking.

President Eisenhower, a five-star general, warned Americans 57 years ago to no effect that the military/security complex was already a threat to the American people’s ability to control their government. Today the military/security complex is the Government.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Deadliest Operation

December 1, 2018

The Deadliest Operation

Choose your battles wisely.

One month to the day after President Kennedy’s assassination, the Washington Post published an article by former president Harry Truman.

I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.

Truman had envisioned the CIA as an impartial information and intelligence collector from “every available source.”

But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what’s worse, such intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.

Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department “treatment” or interpretations.

I wanted and needed the information in its “natural raw” state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions—and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating.

Truman found, to his dismay, that the CIA had ranged far afield.

For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Inside America’s Scheme To Wrestle Julian Assange From Ecuador

November 27, 2018

Inside America’s Scheme To Wrestle Julian Assange From Ecuador

Following the 2016 US election, the US intelligence apparatus made it clear that the prosecution of Julian Assange was a top priority.

While it’s clear that President Trump and members of his campaign were fans of WikiLeaks during the 2016 US election – things changed following the publication of the “Vault 7” leaks in March 2017, which consisted of tools used by the CIA to hack into smartphones, computers and internet-connected televisions.

Vice President Mike Pence considered the leak equivalent to “trafficking in national security information,” threatening to “use the full force of the law and resources of the United States to hold all of those to account who were involved.”

Meanwhile, eleven days after the April 2, 2017 election of Ecuador’s new president, Lenin Moreno, then-CIA Director and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began using strong language directed at Assange – calling WikiLeaks a “hostile non-state intelligence service.” Shortly thereafter, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that arresting Assange was a “priority.”

Five months later, Pompeo equated WikiLeaks to al-Qaida and the Islamic State – arguing that they “look and feel like very good intelligence organizations,” adding “[W]e are working to take down that threat to the United States.”

To that end, WikiLeaks tweeted on Tuesday a link to a TruthDig article by Gareth Porter, as well as a tweet by the State Department featuring Pompeo meeting with the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister, Jose Valencia Amores.

WikiLeaks
✔@wikileaks

Replying to @wikileaks

Yesterday: https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1067050192673751040 …

Department of State
✔@StateDept

.@SecPompeo greets Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Jose Valencia Amores at the Department of State. @cancilleriaec @usembassy_quito @EmbajadaEcuUSA

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Charges Under Seal: US Prosecutors Get Busy With Julian Assange

November 20, 2018

Charges Under Seal: US Prosecutors Get Busy With Julian Assange

Photo Source Michael Mayer | CC BY 2.0

Those with a stake in the hustling racket of empire have little time for the contrariness that comes with exposing classified information. Those who do are submitted to a strict liability regime of assessment and punishment: you had the information (lawfully obtained or otherwise) but you released it for public deliberation. Ignorance remains a desensitising shield, keeping the citizenry in permanent darkness.

Critics indifferent to the plight of Julian Assange have seen his concerns for prosecution at the hands of US authorities as the disturbed meditations of a sexualised fantasist. He should have surrendered to the British authorities and, in turn, to the Swedish authorities. It was either insignificant or irrelevant that a Grand Jury had been convened to sniff around the activities of WikiLeaks to identify what, exactly, could be used against the organisation and its founder.

Cruelty and truth are often matters of excruciating banality, and now it is clearer than ever that the United States will, given the invaluable chance, net the Australian publisher and WikiLeaks founder to make an example of him. This man, who dirtied the linen of state and exposed the ceremonial of diplomatic hypocrisy, was always an object of interest, notably in the United States. “He was,” confirmed Andrea Kendall-Taylor, former deputy national intelligence officer for Russia under the director of national intelligence, “a loathed figure inside the government.”

Whether it was the Central Intelligence Agency, the US Department of Justice, or the specific army of investigators assembled by special counsel Robert Mueller III to weasel out material on the Trump-Russia connection, Assange remains a substantial figure who needs to be captured, sealed and disappeared.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

CIA secretly intercepted Congressional communications about whistleblowers

November 3, 2018

CIA intercepted Congressional emails about whistleblowers in 2014
The Inspector General expressed concern about “potential compromise to whistleblower confidentiality” and “chilling effect”

Newly-declassified documents show the CIA intercepted sensitive Congressional communications about intelligence community whistleblowers.

The intercepts occurred under CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The new disclosures are contained in two letters of “Congressional notification” originally written to key members of Congress in March 2014, but kept secret until now.

In the letters, then-Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough tells four key members of Congress that during “routine counterintelligence monitoring of Government computer systems,” the CIA collected emails between Congressional staff and the CIA’s head of whistleblowing and source protection. McCullough states that he’s concerned “about the potential compromise to whistleblower confidentiality and the consequent ‘chilling effect’ that the present [counterintelligence] monitoring system might have on Intelligence Community whistleblowing.”

The idea that the CIA would monitor communications of U.S. government officials, including those in the legislative branch, is itself controversial. But in this case, the CIA picked up some of the most sensitive emails between Congress and intelligence agency workers blowing the whistle on alleged wrongdoing.

John Brennan, former Obama CIA Director and Homeland Security Adviser

“Most of these emails concerned pending and developing whistleblower complaints,” McCullough states in his letters to lead Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees at the time: Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia); and Representatives Michael Rogers (R-Michigan) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland). McCullough adds that the type of monitoring that occurred was “lawful and justified for [counterintelligence] purposes” but

“I am not confident that Congressional staff fully understood that their whistleblower-related communications with my Executive Director of whistleblowing might be reviewed as a result of routine [CIA counterintelligence] monitoring.”–Intelligence Community Inspector General 2014

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

CIA Assassination Plots Exposed in 1975

October 22, 2018

CIA Assassination Plots Exposed in 1975

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; it certainly seems that the bureaucracy is really operating against the people. They have tried to assassinate heads of states before. Do you think they would try this in the USA again?

ANSWER: The CIA was exposed back in 1975 for plotting to assassinate various world leaders. The November 20th, 1975 release of a report by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had tried twice to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and once to poison Congo Premier Patrice Lumumba, and that it had supplied aid to insurgents who later assassinated South Vietnam’s President Ngo Dinh Diem and the Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo. The report emphasized that “No foreign leaders were killed as a result of assassination plots initiated by officials of the United States.” Lumumba had been killed later by political rivals in the Congo. Interestingly enough, the date that report was released was the Pi target on the Economic Confidence Model from the peak of Wave 1972.75.

Trump’s Neocon Conversion and the Syrian 180

September 8, 2018

Trump’s Neocon Conversion and the Syrian 180

You have to feel a little sorry for the folks who voted for Trump expecting him to live up to his promise to bring the troops home and stop killing people.

On Thursday Trump cleared up any doubt about his neocon conversion. Once again he made his supporters—or those interested in nonintervention at least—out to be fools, that is to say any principled supporters left after killing thousands in Syria.

✔

President Donald Trump, who just five months ago said he wanted “to get out” of Syria and bring U.S. troops home soon, has approved a new strategy for an indefinitely extended military, diplomatic and economic effort there, officials said. https://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/trump-approves-indefinite-us-presence-in-syria-1.546358 …

6:37 AM – Sep 7, 2018

Trump approves indefinite US presence in Syria

Although the military campaign against the Islamic State has been nearly completed, the Trump administration has redefined its goals to include the exit of all Iranian military and proxy forces from…

stripes.com

The CIA’s favorite newspaper reported:

President Trump, who just five months ago said he wanted “to get out” of Syria and bring U.S. troops home soon, has agreed to a new strategy that indefinitely extends the military effort there and launches a major diplomatic push to achieve American objectives, according to senior State Department officials.

These “American objectives” reflect those of Israel, which has worked diligently to undermine Syria for decades. The first objective is to replace Bashar al-Assad with a malleable client that takes orders from the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

Second, Trump—channeling Netanyahu—demands the removal of all Iranian troops in Syria. Both the Russians and Iranians were invited into the country to help al-Assad flight the CIA and Saudi Arabia’s bloody Wahhabi-infused terrorists.

Third, Trump wants more illegal US military outposts in occupied Syria.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The CIA Owns the US and European Media

August 19, 2018

The CIA Owns the US and European Media

William Blum shares with us his correspondence with Washington Post presstitute Michael Birnbaum. As you can tell from Birnbaum’s replies, he comes across as either very stupid or as a CIA asset.

When I received my briefing as staff associate, House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, which required top secret clearance, I was told by senior members of the staff that the Washington Post was a CIA asset. Watching the Washington Post’s takedown of President Richard Nixon with the orchestrated Watergate story, that became obvious. President Nixon had made too many overtures to the Soviets and too many arms limitations agreements, and he opened to China. Watching President Nixon’s peace initiatives water down the threat level from the Soviet Union and Maoist China, the military/security complex saw a threat to its budget and power and decided that Nixon had to go. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy had resulted in far too much skepticism about the Warren Commission Report, so the CIA decided to use the Washington Post to get rid of Nixon. To keep the clueless American left hating Nixon, the CIA used its assets in the leftwing to keep Nixon blamed for the Vietnam war, a war that Nixon inherited and did not want.

The CIA knew that Nixon’s problem was that he could not exit the war without losing his conservative base, which was convinced of the nonsensical “Domino Theory.” I have always wondered if the CIA concocted the “Domino Theory,” as it so well served them. Unable to get rid of the war “with honor,” Nixon was driven to brutal methods to force the North Vietnamese to accept a situation that he could depart without defeat and soiling America’s “honor” and losing his conservative support base. The North Vietnamese wouldn’t bend, but the US Congress did, and so the CIA succeeded in discrediting among both the leftwing and righwing Nixon’s war management. With no one to defend him, Nixon was an easy target for the CIA.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Internet Just Crowdfunded the Release of 4,358 CIA Mind Control Documents

August 14, 2018

(ANTIMEDIA) — A crowdfunding campaign has succeeded in raising the funds necessary to pay a Freedom of Information Act request fee for documents related to the CIA’s controversial MKUltra program.

John Greenewald of Black Vault, a website that publishes government documents, appealed to the internet for help after the agency refused to waive the $425 fee it was demanding to release the documents. Greenewald, who has been filing FOIA requests for two decades, had previously published files on MKUltra, a program best known for dosing individuals with drugs like LSD to research mind control. The program was shut down, and the documents were reportedly destroyed in 1973 at the order of then-director Richard Helms, but some were eventually released.

Greenewald filed his first request for the documents in the late ‘90s and says he didn’t hear back for years. In 2004, the CIA released some relevant documents to him via CD-Rom, which he published, but years later, he discovered thousands of pages were missing.

“So, even though I paid for the CDs already, and they gave me an index originally stating that 100% of those records were on the CD-ROMs, they in fact, were not,” he said in his GoFundMe appeal. He filed a new request but the CIA is charging him $425 to print 4,358 pages of previously withheld material. He easily met his goal of $500 (to cover any additional costs and GoFundMe fees) with the help of just 16 donors.

MKUltra has been extensively verified — in one case, the CIA kept seven prisoners at a Kentucky penitentiary high on acid for 77 days — but many of the documents are not available to the public.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Edward Snowden: 5 years in Russia and still relevant as ever

August 5, 2018

Edward Snowden: 5 years in Russia and still relevant as ever

Edward Snowden changed the practices of both the internal and external focused US and global intelligence agencies.

TASS reported that August 1 was the five year anniversary of Edward Snowden’s being granted temporary asylum in the Russian Federation. This happened after his release of an enormous trove of information showing clandestine and illegal practices being carried out by the US intelligence agencies to gather information on just about anyone in the world, for any – or no – reason at all.

Edward Snowden, 35, is a computer security expert. In 2005-2008, he worked at the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language sponsored by the National Security Agency (NSA) and at the global communications division at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. In 2007, Snowden was stationed with diplomatic cover at the US mission to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2009, he resigned from the CIA to join the Dell company that sent him to Hawaii to work for the NSA’s information-sharing office. He was particularly employed with the Booz Allen Hamilton consulting firm.

In June 2013, Snowden leaked classified information to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, which revealed global surveillance programs run by US and British intelligence agencies. He explained the move by saying that he wanted to tell the world the truth because he believed such large-scale surveillance on innocent citizens was unacceptable and the public needed to know about it.

The Guardian and The Washington Post published the first documents concerning the US intelligence agencies’ spying on Internet users on June 6, 2013. According to the documents, major phone companies, including Verizon, AT&T and Sprint Nextel, handed records of their customers’ phone conversations over to the NSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who also had direct access to the servers of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Skype, YouTube, Paltalk, AOL and Apple.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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