Reply #24: "Aspens are Turning" and "Autumn Leaves" w/Henry Lurking

[InkAddict]

http://www.newint.org/issue360/worldbeaters.htm

And this is when those credentials get a little soiled. Bremer is known to have sat on at least one committee with Colonel Oliver North, the most prominent member of a semi-official conspiracy in the US to fund the Contra paramilitaries in Nicaragua with money laundered from illegal arms sales to Iran.

Bremer was at the helm of counter-terrorism in 1988 when Pam Am flight 103 was blown out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 people. ‘Mr Bremer is at the top of the list of administrators, officials and executives who should be in jail by now,’ says Marina de Larracoechea, whose daughter was killed in the disaster. ‘Lockerbie was an expected and preventable massacre. Appointing him is a guaranteed formula for ineptitude, ignorance and disaster.’

Bremer’s ‘can-do’ reputation took a boost, nonetheless, when he followed Henry Kissinger – his boss at the State Department – to become chief operating officer at Kissinger & Associates in 1989. Here he pursued his interest in terrorism and other ‘risks’ to corporate America, including trade unions. ‘If President Clinton means to get serious about the fight against terrorism,’ he wrote in the Wall Street Journal on 5 August 1996, ‘he should leave the White House Press Room and head downstairs to the basement Situation Room.’ The ‘Situation Room’ is where Presidents fight their real wars.

Increasingly revered as some sort of seer, Bremer became chair of the National Commission on Terrorism which reported to Congress on 8 June 2000. The Commission recommended, among other things, the reversal of the CIA’s policy of not employing known human-rights abusers as agents. ‘The threat of terrorism is changing dramatically,’ he warned. ‘It is becoming more deadly and it is striking us here at home.’

On 11 September 2001 a casual observer might have drawn two quite opposite conclusions about Bremer: either that he had admirable foresight, or that he can’t have been much good at his job. The former view of him prevailed in Washington – and proved very profitable for Bremer himself. He became Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Marsh Crisis Consulting, a subsidiary of the giant Marsh & McLennan conglomerate, hiring out his reputation to jittery corporations.

Despite his close association with Henry Kissinger – who was forced to withdraw from leading the inquiry into ‘9/11’ because of ‘conflicts of interest’ – Bremer co-chaired the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s ‘Homeland Security Task Force’. The Task Force is credited with having inspired the creation of the US Office of Homeland Security and the curtailment of rights in the US that has come with it.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_theories_into_the_bombing_of_Pan_Am_Flight_103#Iran.2C_the_PFLP-GC.2C_and_operation_Autumn_Leaves

Iran, the PFLP-GC, and operation Autumn Leaves

Also here:

http://billmon.org/archives/000092.html