Know your BFEE: Los Amigos de Bush

[Octafish]

Hey, America! Wake Up and Smell the Sulfur!

Last week passed, almost completely unnoticed by Corporate McPravda, the 30th anniversary of a most heinous terrorist act: The assassinations of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and American Ronnie Karpen Moffit.



Ms. Moffit was an American citizen murdered by agents of a foreign government on U.S. soil. Her only crime was being with Orlando Letelier, whose crime was to speak out against the military coup that toppled the democratically elected Chilean government he served. Because he refused to turn over the Chilean secret police and their American contacts, these assassinations were allowed, if not sanctioned, by George Bush, then director of central intelligence and head of the CIA.

As with all things having to do with the BFEE, the world get worse. So, a reminder:

October will mark the 30th anniversary of another most heinous terrorist act: The bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner that killed 73 passengers and crew. The pilots reported the blast caused their aircraft to catch fire and they were burning up as they attempted an emergency landing. The plane crashed into the Caribbean, a few miles west of Barbados. All aboard perished.



Cubana Airlines DC-8 like the one bombed by BFEE members Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. Both turds have been protected by Poppy and Baby Doc Bush and the CIA, which strangely has been loyal to them rather than to various presidencies before and in-between.

Here’s an excellent essay based on the facts:

The Charmed Life of a Mass Murderer

Posada Carriles and Bush's Anti-Terror Hoax

By SAUL LANDAU
Counterpunch June 9, 2005

President George W. Bush has emphasized that if one of the myriad of U.S. police agencies even suspect someone of planning, abetting or carrying out a terrorist act, he will, at a minimum, get tossed into a dark hole. Indeed, Bush has thrown the Magna Carta into the garbage heap when it comes to Muslims suspected of pernicious thoughts toward the United States.

But if suspected terrorists turn their rage toward the detested Fidel Castro, these rules don't apply.

Indeed, those who try to bomb Cuban targets, or those related to Cuba, receive special treatment. This double-standard casts a shadow over the president's commitment to fight terrorism.

For example, TV footage showed Homeland Security cops arresting Posada in mid May. But the arresting officers didn't even handcuff the Western Hemisphere's most notorious terrorist. (Remember how Bush's pal Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay ­ ENRON's CEO ­ got handcuffed?) Justice Department spokespeople said they plan to charge the foremost terrorist in the western hemisphere with "illegal entry into the United States."

The FBI has reams of files on Posada, affectionately called "Bambi" by his terrorist friends. Former FBI Special Agent Carter Cornick told New York Times reporter Tim Weiner that Posada was "up to his eyeballs" in the October 1976 destruction of a Cuban commercial airliner over Barbados. All 73 passengers and crew members died. Recently published FBI and CIA documents not only confirm Cornick's statement, but also reveal that U.S. agencies had knowledge of the plot and did not inform Cuban authorities or try to stop the bombing.

SNIP…

One wonders: Did Posada announce his illegal presence in the United States with the idea that U.S. government complicity in aiding and abetting his past acts of terrorism would protect him? U.S. authorities didn't inform Cuba or try to stop the 1976 air-bombing plot, and in 1971, as Veciana stated, the CIA made the gun that Posada's agents placed inside the camera to assassinate Castro. And Ollie North has knowledge of Posada's covert activities for U.S. intelligence as well.

CONTINUED…

http://www.counterpunch.org/landau06092005.html

What ties these two events together is the involvement of George Herbert Walker Bush, as then-CIA director, in their cover-up as crimes and in the protection of their perpetrators, as in the person of one Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and their colleagues-in-terror.

Think about it: A murder-forgiving CIA director Bush went on to become President of the United States. Today, Bush’s son, George, acts as president. The younger Bush has used his office from Day One to protect and cover-up the crimes of his father.

That’s what Hugo Chavez was talking about when he smelled the sulfur and called Bush “The Devil.”

America needs to wake up and smell the sulfur, too. Here’s some background on the above:

LUIS POSADA CARRILES
THE DECLASSIFIED RECORD
CIA and FBI Documents Detail Career in International Terrorism; Connection to U.S.

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 153

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/

Don’t forget to check out Orlando Bosch, while you’re at it. GOOGLE with Jeb Bush for some interesting connections to the present day.

Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez interviewed National Security Archive’s Peter Kornbluh and Letelier’s son, Francisco:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/21/1538247

Chile security chief was CIA informer

BBC Tuesday, 19 September, 2000, 23:24 GMT 00:24 UK

Recently declassified documents in the United States show that the former head of the secret police in Chile, Manuel Contreras, was a paid informant for the US intelligence agency, the CIA.

The report, comprising CIA documents requested by the US Congress, show that contact with Contreras began in 1974 - a year after the military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power.

Contreras oversaw the much-feared security service DINA

The report adds that the contact was maintained until 1977 - a year after Contreras plotted the killing of the then Chilean Foreign Minister and foe of General Pinochet, Orlando Letelier, in Washington.

A BBC correspondent in Washington, Nick Bryant, says the documents reinforce the view that the US turned a blind eye towards political repression in Chile during the Pinochet era and that the CIA was complicit in many human rights abuses.

Pinochet's confidant

As head of the security service, DINA, Contreras became the one of the most feared men in Chile, second only to General Pinochet.

The general's iron rule was underpinned by the tactics of brutal repression that saw thousands die and thousands more flee into exile. Others disappeared or were tortured.

CONTINUED…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/932897.stm

Of course, there are even more sulferous friends than these…

Bush s Longstanding Criminal Mexican Amigos

The disturbing ties of some of George W. Bush's Latino advisors

More on Bush-Amigos links in PBS Frontline interview with Gary Jacobs

By Julie Reynolds
Research assistance by Victor Almazán and Ana Leonor Rojo

LOS AMIGOS DE BUSH

“Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres. (Tell me who you side with and I will tell you who you are.)” – “George W. Bush for President” web site

Those who say that George W. Bush has scant knowledge of foreign affairs don't understand his family's relationship with Mexico.

If one event could be said to make that relationship visible, it had to be the state dinner given eleven years ago by President Bush for Mexico's president, Carlos Salinas. It was an elegant yet boisterous gala, where the biggest movers and shakers in Texas and Mexico congregated and celebrated. This group was to become W's Mexican legacy, a gift of ties and connections passed on from the father to his son.

SNIP…

The Mexican president had spent a long day with President Bush signing trade pacts, the precursors of NAFTA. Salinas brought his so-called Dream Team: his commerce secretary, finance minister, and his personal Machiavelli, Jose Córdoba. It would later be astounding to see, as the decade unfolded, how many of that administration's proud men and women fell shamefully from grace - some exiled, some imprisoned and some assassinated.

No one knew it then, but many at that banquet would survive to one day help young W beat a path back to the White House. There were loyal "Bushfellas" who were old friends of the family: Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher Sr., General Colin Powell, and George Bush Senior's ever-present friend, Secretary of State James Baker. Gary Jacobs, whose Texas bank was about to be bought by the son of Mexico's billionaire-politico Carlos Hank González, was also a guest. Tony Garza, then a young judge, is now a Bush cabinet contender. Today, all are advisors or contributors to W's campaign.

Hidden among the glitterati were two relative unknowns. They were, however, familiar to the group at hand. They were the loyal "Amigos de Bush" from San Antonio: criminal defense lawyer Roy Barrera Jr. and car dealer Ernesto Ancira Jr. In contrast to the Salinas group, the ties of Barrera and Ancira to drug cartels would remain unnoticed for another decade. Their ties to George W. would grow stronger.

CONTINUED…

GOOGLE cache:

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:Th5_dq9beuYJ:www.elandar.com/bush/amigos.html+%22los+amigos+de+bush%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1


May also be at:

http://www.newsmakingnews.com/contents10,2,00.htm

Henry Kissinger and Agusto Pinochet

“I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.” -- Henry A. Kissinger

Gee. If the guy W wanted to appoint head of the 9-11 Commission feels that way about democracy in Chile, what’s there to make us think he believes differently about democracy in the United States of America?

Thanks for reading and giving a damn, DUer.

Please download the above, especially “Los Amigos de Bush,” and speak up and let me know your thoughts. Also post the heck out of any additional information on los amigos de Smirky, el pendejo covarde.

[Octafish]

1. Posada Carriles crosses paths with Poppy n Zapata n the Bay of Pigs Thing.

Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles’ CIA links 40 years ago in South Florida

Posada's CIA ties uncovered in papers

Details have emerged about Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles' CIA links 40 years ago in South Florida. One revelation: his tie to the agency's Miami bureau.

BY ALFONSO CHARDY AND OSCAR CORRAL
July 1, 2006
Miami Herald

Nearly four years after the failed CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion, Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles continued to work for the spy agency, according to CIA files released to The Miami Herald.

His job: ''Training Branch Instructor'' for its Miami station, which then was responsible for intelligence-gathering missions into Cuba. He was part of the covert JMWAVE -- the code name for the CIA Miami bureau, which at the time operated within the University of Miami.

His tenure: March 26, 1965, to July 11, 1967.


SNIP...

The committee concluded that exile groups were not involved in an assassination conspiracy, but did not rule out the possible role of individual exiles.

The documents released did not show any connection between Posada and the assassination. Posada told The Miami Herald in El Paso last year that he was in Georgia on the day Kennedy was killed in Dallas.

None of the documents contained specific details about Posada's duties for JMWAVE.


CONTINUED...

www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=2711

Heh heh. Small world.

[Octafish]

20. Ties Between Elites and Child Sex Rings "Beyond Imagination"

Friends of the BFEE at play:

MEXICO

Ties Between Elites and Child Sex Rings "Beyond Imagination"

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Sep 13 (IPS) - The complicity in Mexico between child sex rings and the political and business elites "goes beyond what we can even imagine," says activist Lydia Cacho, who faces death threats and was even thrown briefly into prison for revealing those ties in a book.

"What we have just seen is only the tip of the iceberg," Cacho told IPS, after the local media aired Tuesday recordings of telephone conversations between two prominent politicians and a hotel owner now in prison, and a wealthy local businessman.

The number of Mexican politicians and businessmen involved in child pornography and sex rings "would shock us if we knew the real extent of the phenomenon," said Cacho.

In one of the illegally taped conversations broadcast Tuesday, which apparently date back to 2004, the governor of the state of Veracruz, Fidel Herrera of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and Emilio Gamboa, head of the party's bloc in the lower house of Congress, can be heard talking on friendly terms with textile mogul Kamel Nacif.

Nacif, a Mexican of Lebanese origin, who in the obscenity-laced conversation can be heard asking Gamboa to block a gambling bill to be debated by Congress, is suing Cacho for libel.

In her 2004 book "Los demonios del Edén" (The Demons of Eden), Cacho -- who is a journalist and writer as well as the director of a women's shelter in Cancún -- links Nacif with Jean Succar, a Lebanese-born hotel owner who is in prison facing charges of arranging paedophile parties in that Mexican resort town.

SNIP...

In the tapped conversations, Marín, a member of the PRI, can be heard telling Nacif that "I just gave a bump on the head to that old witch."

CONTINUED...

http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=34710

Such class.

[me b zola]

2. That Kissenger quote sums up the republican world view

Thanks for posting, Octafish :thumbsup:

[Octafish]

3. A Glimpse into the Mindset of Terrorists

You're welcome, me b zola. They think nothing of stealing elections -- or taking human life.



Cubana Airline Memorial on Barbados

Here's more on the subject:

Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455

A Glimpse into the Mind of a Terrorist

By JOSÉ PERTIERRA
Counterpunch April 11, 2006

Last week in Miami, Luis Posada Carriles´s accomplice in the downing of the Cuban passenger plane that was blown out of the sky with 73 innocent people on board on October 6, 1976 was interviewed by Juan Manuel Cao of Channel 41 in Miami. His name is Orlando Bosch.

I quote verbatim excerpts from the television interview

Juan Manuel Cao: Did you down that plane in 1976?

Orlando Bosch: If I tell you that I was involved, I will be inculpating myself . . . . and if I tell you that did not participate in that action, you would say that I am lying. I am therefore not going to answer one thing or the other.

Juan Manuel Cao: In that action 76 persons were killed (the correct figure is 73, including a pregnant passenger)?

Orlando Bosch: No chico, in a war such as us cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant, you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your reach.

Juan Manuel Cao: But don´t you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their families?

Orlando Bosch: . . . Who was on board that plane? Four members of the Communist Party, five north Koreans, five Guyanese, (JP: there were really 11 Guyanese passengers) . . . concho chico, four member of the Communist Party chico!!! Who was there? Our enemies . . .

Juan Manuel Cao: ¿And the fencers? The young people on board?

Orlando Bosch: I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television. There were six of them. After the end of the competition, the leader of the six dedicated their triumph to the tyrant etc etc. She gave a speech filled with praise for the tyrant. We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that every one who comes from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that fight alongside the tyranny.

Juan Manuel Cao: If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn't you think it difficult . . . ?

Orlando Bosch: No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba.

SNIP...

Their nervous demeanor at the airport and at the hotel, as well as their conversations in the taxis they took in Barbados and later in Trinidad, led the police to zero in on them as the primary suspects in the bombing. They were arrested and interrogated by detectives from the Trinidad police department.

Both confessed to Commissioner Dannis Ramdwar who took their written depositions. Lugo and Ricardo each admitted to being CIA operatives. Ricardo described in detail how he could detonate C-4 explosives and pointed to a pencil on Ramdwar´s desk that was similar to the timer he used to detonate the explosive on board the plane. Ricardo also told the police in Trinidad that he worked for Luis Posada Carriles. He told Ramdwar that the head of CORU was Orlando Bosch and drew for the police an organizational chart of CORU and said that the terrorist organization was also known as Condor.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/pertierra04112006.html

Thanks for giving a damn, zola-san. Much obliged.

[wildbilln864]

4. kicked and...

recommended!
Keep up the good work.

[Octafish]

5. Two Terrorists and a Lush

Thanks, wildbilln864. I very much appreciate you giving a damn about this, facts that show the true hearts of Bush and dim son.



This article by Saul Landau puts things in perspective:

Two Terrorists and a Lush

Luis Posada and Bush's Drinking

By SAUL LANDAU
Counterpunch Weekend Edition
October 15 / 16, 2005

How did a judge's decision not to deport the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela connect to the report that George W. Bush has again hit the bottle?

The answer begins in the fact the Bush never entered a recovery program for his alcohol and drug addiction, which he supposedly gave up at age 40 while jogging. God talked to him, or Jesus or some envoy. This born again phenomenon apparently substituted for AA ­ along with exercise and praying.

W had ongoing problems, of course, in Iraq and Afghanistan. At home, his poll ratings fell to 40% or less by September. Yet, Bush continued on Karl Rove's path, derived from Napoleon, Frederick the Great and the Nazi Party model of politics: forget about facts, truth, integrity, ethics; rely on audacity and aggression. This formula won him two elections, placed the gutless Democrats on the defense and secured the "stupid male vote," the dumbos who adore Dr. Laura and Rush Limbaugh and vote against their own interests.

The impregnable success model, however, eroded quickly and, according to the The National Enquire ("Bush's Booze Crisis," Sept. 21), Laura Bush caught George throwing down a drink at his Crawford ranch. Drinking began after aides informed him of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and FEMA's failure to deal with the aftermath.

Laughing about the source? Before the "respectable" press got wind of it, The Enquirer revealed Rush Limbaugh's oxycontin habit ("Limbaugh Caught in Drug Ring," Oct. 2, 2003).

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/landau10152005.html

[IChing]

6. nominated and kicked

Chile used torture and murder to hold their regime together with the help of American Republicans.
I knew people in Chile that had to flee to Denmark back then and they told me of the horrors.

[Octafish]

8. Kissinger Declassified

Thank you, IChing. I'm very sorry for your friends who suffered at the hands of these traitors and murderers.



Before the BFEE got a hold of the donky pictures, Christopher Hitchens wasn't all that bad:

Kissinger Declassified

Newly released records hint at a horrifying U.S. complicity in dark deeds of right-wing dictators

By Christopher Hitchens

Sometimes, in spite of its stolid, boring commitment to lying, a despotic regime will actually tell you all you need to know. It invents a titanic system of slave-labor camps, for example, and it gives this network of arid, landlocked isolation centers the beautiful anagram of gulag. (Adding the word "archipelago" to that piece of bureaucratic compression was the work of an aesthetic and moral genius.) The stone-faced morons who run the military junta in Burma used to call themselves slorc (State Law and Order Restoration Council), which was hardly less revealing. The Brezhnev occupation regime, imposed on the romantic city of Prague after the invasion of 1968, proclaimed its aim as "normalization": a word eloquent enough in itself to send every writer and artist either hastening across the border or entering "internal exile." The British colonial official who thought up the term "concentration camp" (because, after all, the discontented Boer families of South Africa needed to be "concentrated" somewhere, if only for their own good) was an innocent pioneer of this lethal and revealing euphemism. In the end, the mask will grow to fit the monstrous face that lies underneath.

A possible exception to this is the word desaparecido, which was the special new expression that was added to the bulging, ugly lexicon of terror and dictatorship in the 1970s. In English, it simply means "the one who has disappeared." But when pronounced in Spanish it possesses, at least to my ear, a much more plaintive and musical tone. It's as if you could hear the lost ones crying out, still. It has an awful, lingering attractiveness to it, which becomes chilly and almost pornographic when you reflect how long and how loudly they were made to scream before they were dispatched, and buried like offal or garbage.

I want to write, now, exactly about the pornography of power. In South America today, the hidden resting-places of los desaparecidos are being found all the time. New and democratic governments, assisted by principled lawyers and judges and forensic investigators, are disinterring and identifying the maimed and twisted corpses of men and women, and of boys and girls, who were lost to their friends and families about a quarter of a century ago. (The critical resource for this and the rest of the story of Argentina is Martin Edwin Andersen's 1993 book, Dossier Secreto.) At the same time, in Washington, D.C., the declassification process for government documents is entering the disclosure phase. And, in a horrible way that is not being faced, the two excavations have begun to converge. From the standpoint of their victims, the death squads of Argentina and Chile were going about their busy work with the approval-no, the encouragement-of the secretary of state of the United States of America.

There it was in cold print in the early fall of 2004, filtered through the comparatively inoffensive bureaucratic term "Telcon." These were the "telephone conversations" which Henry Kissinger ordered his State Department subordinates to record, most often in secret. At the time, he probably thought they would give him leverage. Now they have returned to haunt him, and also us. (See the National Security Archive: www.nsarchive.org.)

The most significant of these is dated June 30, 1976. In it, Kissinger displays tremendous ill temper. He has just learned of a complaint to the Argentinean generals about their regrettable habit of making their critics disappear. How, Kissinger demands to be told, has anyone gotten the idea that this démarche represents his view: "In what way is it compatible with my policy?" Addressing his aide for Latin America, Harry Shlaudeman, Kissinger says, "I want to know who did this and consider having him transferred."

The person responsible for this atrocity-of having protested murder and torture rather than having endorsed and incited it-was the late Robert Hill. I have good reason to remember Mr. Hill, a very conservative gentleman who had served several American administrations as a Cold War diplomat, and who was known for his stoic anti-Communism. Nonetheless, Ambassador Hill knew enough to know that the Argentinean junta, which had grabbed power in 1976, was keeping itself in power by illegal means. There might be a threat from Communist and Peronist subversives in the country, Hill told Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti, Argentina's foreign minister, but "murdering priests and dumping 47 bodies in the street in one day could not be seen in the context of defeating the terrorists quickly; on the contrary, such acts were probably counterproductive. What the USG hoped was that the GOA could soon defeat terrorists, yes, but do so as nearly as possible within the law."

You can easily see that this was not an especially hard-line position on the ambassador's part. But it was too much for Kissinger, who wanted to transfer him, and went on to do worse.

CONTINUED...

http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/printables/041109roco03?print=true

It's like November 1944, IChing. We've got these NAZI bastards on the run. Now if we can only remember not to make the same mistakes.

[IChing]

12. I had friends from Chile in Denmark that fled for their lives

Most had family members that were killed, disappeared and tortured. Few made it out alive that were arrested.

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/12/16/chile9898.htm

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engamr220062004

The most common torture method was electrical shock, consisting of a metal rack to which the naked prisoner was tied and then electrical current would be applied to different parts of his or her body, especially the most sensitive areas such as the lips or genitals or even on wounds or metallic prostheses. One particularly cruel variation of this method consisted in further pressuring the subject of interrogation by placing him on the bottom rack of a double bunk bed and torturing a family member or friend above him.

Another torture method often employed was hanging. The victim was hung from a bar, either by the wrists or by wrists and ankles. In both cases, the pain produced over time by the weight of the hanging body, was aggravated by applying electrical shocks, beatings, penetrating wounds and other types of aggravation.

Submerging the person’s head in a container of water - usually dirty - or some other liquid, was another torture method often used at Villa Grimaldi. The victim’s head would be held under water almost until the point of asphyxiation. A similar effect was obtained through the so-called "dry submarine", which consisted in placing a plastic bag around the person’s head to prevent him or her from breathing.

In addition to these methods, torture and mistreatment by all types of beatings was habitual at Villa Grimaldi. These ranged from extremely violent, producing serious injury, to unexpected blows to blindfolded detainees.

In Villa Grimaldi drugs were used to obtain declarations. For a while, hypnotizing prisoners was tried, but without results.

Villa Grimaldi had specially designed rooms used for torture. Some agents applied the torture methods and others, usually officers, conducted the interrogations, although the officers at times employed the torture instruments themselves. On some occasions during interrogations, with or without torture, another official took notes on a typewriter.

In addition to those methods already described, which were the most common, some agents occasionally employed other techniques. There are testimonies stating that on one occasion, in the case of the Gallardo family... boiling water or other liquid was thrown on various prisoners as a method of punishment and in anticipation of their eventual death.

http://www.chipsites.com/derechos/campo_santiago_villa_grimaldi_eng.html

[IChing]

41. I HOPE PEOPLE READ THE THREAD ABOVE TO KNOW WHAT TORTURE IS

This post should be on the front page of DU

thanks octafish.

[Octafish]

43. Your post has been on my mind constantly since I read it.

Would that I knew how to take away their suffering, IChing. There are countless people who've suffered under BFEE-backed regimes. They, and the people you know who witnessed these tyrannical bastards and survived their prevations, are living Saints, Buddhas, Sufis and all other type of Enlightened Beings. I very much appreciate you posting their stories.

Here's a bit from two excellent sources on what Chile and the other victims of Operation CONDOR went through:

Torture chamber: behind Pinochet's reign of terror

Kenneth P. Serbin

The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents.

By John Dinges. New Press, 288 pp., $25.95.

The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability.

Edited by Peter Kornbluh. New Press, 528 pp., $29.95

VISITING VILLA GRIMALDI in Santiago, Chile, left me with much the same chill I felt at Dachau, the former Nazi concentration camp outside Munich. Under dictator General Augusto Pinochet the Chilean military, tortured some 4,500 people at Villa Grimaldi. A guide shows visitors the spot where military vehicles drove over the legs of prisoners. Mock-ups of wooden boxes that held as many as six prisoners each, the swimming pool into which detainees were dunked, and a replica of the tower used as a torture chamber and extermination center are all on display. The Muro de los Nombres lists the names of the 226 people killed or "disappeared" by the military at the villa.

In the late 1990s the Chilean government, once again a democracy, responded to the demands of human rights activists by allowing the villa to be restored and converted into a peace park for quiet reflection on the horrors of authoritarianism. But 15 years after Pinochet's exit from power the campaign for human rights is anything but quiet. The publication of these two books on his regime and other new information emerging from the U.S. and Chile have reignited the debate over Pinochet's role in the abuses, reopened old wounds, and revealed a repressive system far more extensive than anyone had previously estimated.

John Dinges puts the Pinochet regime into an international perspective and signals again the need for atonement for the many versions of Villa Grimaldi that the U.S. quietly ignored during the highly repressive Latin American dictatorships of the 1970s. Dinges argues that the United States had detailed information about terrorist assassination plots on its own soil and elsewhere in the Americas but did nothing to stop them. Instead of saving lives, it preferred to coddle Pinochet and other dictators because they were allies in the fight against world communism. The Condor Years is a cautionary tale that urges us to think more carefully about the current battle against terrorism.

Dinges refers to the crusade of Pinochet and other Latin American dictators against revolutionary guerrillas as "the first war on terrorism." In Chile it began on September 11, 1973, with Pinochet's overthrow of the democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende. As Dinges states, the Chilean and Argentine military leaders who leveled a dirty war against their own people, killing and disappearing thousands, received technical assistance and "strategic leadership" from the U.S. Worse yet, U.S. officials had intimate political and operational relationships with the people involved in the atrocities. Though this revelation is not new, Dinges's careful documentation demonstrates more convincingly than ever that the U.S. government could have intervened to stop right-wing terrorism.

Dinges's book is not an ideological attack on Pinochet but a fair, balanced, painstakingly researched piece of historical journalism. He accepts the conclusion of an official government report that the U.S. "worked to undermine Allende's democratically elected government ... but had no direct role in the military, coup itself." He points to the courageous attempts of some U.S. government officials to warn their superiors about the atrocities of Operation Condor, the dictators' politically most explosive antisubversive organization. He recognizes that the U.S did not have the power to halt the slaughter completely. Dinges also offers a rare and detailed portrait of the violent left's attempt to unite forces from various countries into a Revolutionary Coordinating Junta, an ambitious but flawed initiative to spread guerrilla warfare throughout the region. The junta served as a major pretext for Condor and for U.S. tolerance of atrocities.

Dinges's main achievement is to deconstruct what has amounted to a 30-year cover-up of U.S. involvement with Chile and Operation Condor. He reconstructs Condor's history by mining previously secret documents from both the U.S. and South America, as well as interview data from more than 200 people, including Colonel Manuel Contreras, head of Chile's brutal spy agency, DINA.

CONTINUED...

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_1_122/ai_n8703035

It makes the BFEE all so real. Head Torturer Contreras was on the CIA payroll. George Herbert Walker Bush was Director of Central Intelligence at the time. Consider that is the same GHWBush who was in Dallas the day President Kennedy was assassinated and the nation's history over the past 43 years starts to make sense.



Where Poppy was on 22 November 1963, according to the FBI.

[bleever]

7. I think I should know the guy on the right

but I can't place him.

K&R.

[Octafish]

10. Too Much Blood: Kissinger and Pinochet

It could be a translator, but I'd bet he's an American diplomat, from the article below Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs William Rogers.

Kissinger Declassified

by Lucy Komisar

Too much blood: Kissinger and Pinochet

I recently got hold of a declassified memorandum about Henry Kissinger's only meeting with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The meeting occurred on June 8, 1976, in Santiago, and the internal State Department memorandum shows how hard Kissinger tried to shield the Chilean general from criticism and assure him that his human rights violations were not a serious problem as far as the U.S. government was concerned.

I had been trying since 1995 to get the memorandum, which was stamped Secret/Nodis (No Distribution). My initial request was refused, but suddenly, to my surprise, the State Department "memorandum of conversation" arrived in the mail in October, shortly after Pinochet's arrest, with a note explaining that, on re-review, it had been opened in full.

The memo describes how Secretary of State Kissinger stroked and bolstered Pinochet, how--with hundreds of political prisoners still being jailed and tortured--Kissinger told Pinochet that the Ford Administration would not hold those human rights violations against him. At a time when Pinochet was the target of international censure for state-sponsored torture, disappearances, and murders, Kis-singer assured him that he was a victim of communist propaganda and urged him not to pay too much attention to American critics.

See scans of the complete Kissinger/Pinochet memo at The Progressive (LINK OUT. A LITTLE HELP...)

The meeting occurred at a gathering of the Organization of American States (OAS). Against the advice of most of the State Department's Latin America staff, Kissinger decided to go to Chile for the opening of the OAS general assembly. He and Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs William Rogers flew into Santiago June 7 and met with Pinochet the next day. The site of the meeting was the presidential suite in Diego Portales, an office building used during repairs on La Moneda, the presidential palace Pinochet had bombed on September 11, 1973, when he overthrew Salvador Allende. Chilean Foreign Minister Patricio Carvajal and Ambassador to the United States Manuel Trucco were also there. (I've interviewed Rogers, Carvajal, and Trucco, but not Kissinger, who has refused requests.)

Kissinger was dogged by charges he had promoted the military coup against an elected Allende government, and he sought to maintain a cool public distance from Pinochet. But at his confidential meeting, he promised warm support.

Kissinger first assured Pinochet that they had a strong bond in their overriding anti-communism. Pinochet noted that though the Spaniards had tried to stop communism in the Spanish Civil War, it was springing up again. Kissinger replied, "We had the Spanish King recently, and I discussed that very issue with him."

CONTINUED...

http://www.thememoryhole.org/pol/kissinger-declass.htm

Thanks for caring, bleever. Very much appreciate it.

[oasis]

9. Kissinger / Pinochet top the bill in the International Rogues Gallery.

:puke:Neither of them regret their shameful pasts.:puke:

The Bushista regime embraces a conglomeration of world class racketeers.:puke:

[Octafish]

11. The Pinochet files

"War is a racket," is how Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler put it.



Some were born to wear the flag -- the red, white and blue.

The Pinochet files

A series of declassified US documents have revealed the extent of America's role in the Chilean coup, reports Jonathan Franklin

Wednesday September 10, 2003
Guardian Unlimited
Analysis

(PHOTO)

In this never-before-published photograph, General Augusto Pinochet (second from left) and President Salvador Allende (in white jacket) are seen on a trip in northern Chile in the months before the 1973 coup that left Allende dead and Pinochet in command of the government. Photograph: Fundacion Salvador Allende



September 11 1973 was a day of terror and bloodshed in Chile. After months of rising tension, army troops stormed the presidential palace, leaving President Salvador Allende dead and thousands prisoners throughout this previously democratic nation.
Now, on the 30th anniversary of the coup, professors, journalists and citizen activists around the world are continuing to expose the full role of the US government in financing and promoting this bloody coup, which ushered in the 17-year military dictatorship headed by General Augusto Pinochet.

Thousands of top secret documents which were declassified over the past five years have now been synthesized in a new book, The Pinochet File, by investigative reporter Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archives, a Washington-based investigative centre. "The US created a climate of a coup in Chile, a situation of chaos and agitation," said Kornbluh. "The CIA and state department were worried that the military ... were not ready for a coup."

The top secret documents accumulatively detail the crude workings of Washington during the Cold War. "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup," reads a CIA document from October 1970. "It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG and American hand be well hidden."

Two days after this document was written, top CIA officials proposed a terrorist campaign to stun the Chilean people into accepting a military regime.

"Concur giving tear gas cannisters and gas masks ... working on obtaining machine guns," reads a CIA memo dated October 18 1970.

CONTINUED...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/chile/story/0,,1038615,00.html

Big money to be made in war.

[rman]

13. brilliant as ever

To many facts for it to be dismissed as theory.

[Octafish]

18. The CIA, the Drug Traffic, and Oswald in Mexico

Thanks for giving a damn, rman. Here are a few more facts, from a real researcher:



CIA told Warren Commission this was Lee Harvey Oswald outside the Cuban embassy in Mexico City.

OVERVIEW: THE CIA, THE DRUG TRAFFIC, AND OSWALD IN MEXICO

By Peter Dale Scott

December 2000

(Note to reader: Although this chapter precedes the rest, it should be regarded as more of a Concluding Overview than an Introduction. Those approaching this material for the first time should probably begin directly with Chapter One. Those already familiar with the issues raised should probably begin with this chapter, and use it as a guide to refer to the rest of the book.)

Kryptocracies, Kryptonomy, and Oswald: the Mexican CIA-Mob Nexus

Those who have spent years trying to assess the role of the Kennedy assassination in US history are accustomed to the debate between structuralists and conspiratorialists. In the first camp are those who argue, in the spirit of Marx and Weber, that the history of a major power is determined by large social forces; thus the accident of an assassination, even if conspiratorial, is of little historical import. (On this point Noam Chomsky and Alex Cockburn agree with the mainstream US media they normally criticize.)

At the other end of the spectrum are those who talk of an Invisible Government or Secret Team, who believe that surface events and institutions are continuously manipulated by unseen forces. For these people the assassination exemplifies the operation of fundamental historical forces, not a disruption of them.

EXCERPT...

More importantly, the CIA and FBI conspired to suppress a major clue to the existence of a pre-assassination conspiracy. This was that an unknown person had falsely presented himself as Lee Oswald in a phone call to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. The FBI initially reported that the person making the recorded call "was not Lee Harvey Oswald" (AR 249-50). Later the FBI and CIA conspired, swiftly and clumsily, to conceal both the falsity of the impersonation and the fact that FBI agents had exposed the falsehood by listening to the tape. The Warren Commission learned nothing about these two facts.

It is important to understand that this suppression was entirely consistent with intelligence priorities of the period. This important clue had been planted in the midst of one of the most sensitive CIA operations in the 1960s: its largest intercept operation against the telephones of an important Soviet base. One can assume that this clue was planted by conspirators who knew that the CIA response would be to suppress the truth. As a result the CIA protected its sources and methods (in accordance with the responsibilities enumerated in its enabling statute). The result was obstruction of justice in a crime of the highest political significance.

In an open society, all of the Oswald facts and allegations would have reached the Warren Commission, whether or not they were true. The absence of objective evaluation and review allowed these facts and allegations about Oswald in Mexico to become enabling instruments of power: first to create the Warren Commission, and later to curtail its investigations.

The power of these covert agencies to control US politics through the manipulation of truth is only one more reason for us to refer to them as kryptocracies, agencies of government which (in contrast to conventional bureaucracies) operate secretly and are not accountable for their actions and procedures. At this stage, I shall refer to kryptocracies in the plural, to make it clear that I am not talking about some single omnipotent Secret Team. On the contrary, we shall see in Part Three of this book that different kryptocracies or intelligence agencies, and even different branches within these agencies, were in conflict with each other over the matters raised by Lee Harvey O/swald.

The point is rather that, in major powers like the United States, bureaucratic behavior, which in principle is publicly recorded and accountable, is in some respects determined by the kryptocratic behavior at its center, which is not As we shall see in the following pages, one of the important sources of the kryptocracies' power is their ability to falsify their own records, without fear of outside correction.

SNIP...

For example, one of the CIA officers in Mexico City who worked on the pre-assassination Oswald file "was certain that a second cable reporting Oswald's contacts with the Cuban Embassy had been sent to Headquarters prior to the assassination."<29> But there is no surviving CIA trace of any reason on November 22 to link Oswald, or the assassination, to Cuba, or possibly covert action against Cuba.

The FBI, in contrast, has now released a November 22 memo that already linked Oswald to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico:

By Secret teletype dated 10/10/63 CIA advised...that a sensitive source on 10-1-63 had reported that Lee Oswald contacted the Soviet Embassy...inquiring whether the Embassy had received any news concerning a telegram....(The Legal Attache in Mexico advised 11-22-63 that this was a telephone call made from the Cuban Embassy to the Soviet Embassy and a transcript thereof is being forwarded.)"<30>

There is no known corroboration for the Legal Attache's claim on November 22 that the call was made from the Cuban Embassy. However this early mention of the Cuban Embassy suggests that the FBI in Mexico City may indeed have had its own sources of information, including both intercepts and informants. (It is now officially admitted that the CIA had penetration agents inside the Cuban Embassy, and the FBI may have as well.)<31>

Perhaps the strongest indication of deeper FBI knowledge is a CIA memo of December 11; this argued against the public release of the first FBI report on the case, "because the Soviets would see that the FBI had advance information on the reason for Oswald's visit to the Soviet Embassy."<32> Advance information???

CONTINUED...

http://www.history-matters.com/pds/DP3_Overview.htm

Kryptocracy = Conspiracies In Action.

[rman]

23. I suppose

you don't mind if i repost this, with a link to your journal?

[Octafish]

25. Feel free, my Friend.

It would be an honor.

The reason I do this is to get the Truth about these criminals out where it can be learned by the rest of We the People.

[cosmicdot]

14. #19 K&R

I wish I felt a Democratic Congress would do what needs to be done and expose it all regardless of where the chips fall in order to reset the sails of this ship of state and rescue it from the lies it builds its future upon.

Thank you for your threads.

[Octafish]

19. La Mordida: US becoming like Mexico

Thanks, cosmicdot. Very much appreciate you caring.

Money is a big reason why nothing seems to stop them, not even a political opposition. Some should, on principle then, stand up. Here's a glimpse of what the future holds, from a professor who taught Smirko McCokespoon at Harvard:

US becoming like Mexico

March 1, 2004

President George Bush and the Gilded Age

Yoshi Tsurumi (Professor of International Business, Baruch College, the City University of New York )


Something really strange has happened to the U.S. under the Bush Administration. With her ever bulging budget deficits and foreign debts, America's skewed income distribution is rapidly making the U.S. resemble Argentina or Mexico. The "Jobless Recovery" is not a political mirage, but a serious problem. America's GDP is increasing at an annual rate of about 4.0% this year. But, only those Wall Street "money gamers" and self-dealing "management aristocrats" of Corporate America are dizzy with their huge bonuses, padded salaries, and self-dealt stock options. The remaining hard working Americans cannot eat "GDP." The U.S. has widening income gap between a few "haves" and many "have-nots."

During the last economic recovery period of March 1991 to April 1993, a 10% increase in GDP increased manufacturing jobs and service jobs 3% and 5.9% respectively. However, for the present economic recovery since November 2001, a 10% increase in GDP is increasing manufacturing and service jobs only 0.7% and 0.9% respectively. Just to keep up with her population growth, the U.S. needs to create about 230,000 jobs a month. If the U.S. wants to employ the 3 million unemployed workers thrown out of work under the Bush Administration, the U.S. would have to create a lot more jobs monthly. Last month, however, the U.S. only created 115,000 jobs. President Bush has now abandoned his earlier declared promise of "creating 2.6 million jobs by the fall of 2004."

SNIP...

At Harvard Business School, thirty years ago, George Bush was a student of mine. I still vividly remember him. In my class, he declared that "people are poor because they are lazy." He was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to "free market competition." To him, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was "socialism." Recently, President Bush's Federal Appeals Court Nominee, California's Supreme Court Justice Janice Brown, repeated the same broadside at her Senate hearing. She knew that her pronouncement would please President Bush and Karl Rove and their Senators. President Bush and his brain, Karl Rove, are leading a radical revolution of destroying all the democratic political, social, judiciary, and economic institutions that both Democrats and moderate Republicans had built together since Roosevelt's New Deal.

In June 2003, Bill Moyers said that "Karl Rove has modeled the Bush presidency on that of William Mckinley (1897-1901) and modeled himself on Mark Hanna, the man who virtually manufactured McKinley. Mark Hanna saw to it that Washington was ruled by business, railroads, and public utility corporations." President Bush's tax cuts have given over 93% of their benefits to large corporations and well-to-do households with over 250,000 dollars of annual income (about 10% of the U.S. households). Moreover, President Bush's tax cuts are abolishing taxes on such asset-based income as stock dividends and capital gains. He is opposed to taxing management aristocrats' self-dealt stock options (salary payment in kind). He is opposed to requiring the corporations to treat such stock options as their personnel expenses. More than anything else, management aristocrats' stock options are encouraging many corporations to abandon manufacturing-and-supply procurements at home and switching to imports from China and other lower-wage countries. He is phasing out estate taxes. All these measures are transforming the past "potbelly flower vase" shape of the U.S. income distribution to the "bottom-heavy hour glass" shape.


CONTINUED...

http://www.glocom.org/opinions/essays/20040301_tsurumi_president/

In Mexico corruption is called "La Mordida" or "The Bite," the price paid for how business gets done.

Personally, I think it will be much worse. The U.S. will more closely resemble Haiti.

[EFerrari]

15. Muy bien hecho, Octafish. Someone recently said that

Latin America has benefited greatly from the NeoScum's preoccupation with the Middle East. I think that was Roxamme Dunbar Ortiz. She was one of my teachers and she reported extensively on BushCo's predations in Nicaragua and El Salvador --- and has noted the migration of the Salvador Solution to Iraq.

Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz.

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Border-Memoir-Contra-War/dp/0896087417/sr=1-1/qid=1159167018/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-7668346-4809718?ie=UTF8&s=books

[AntiFascist]

16. As I recall from doing some web searching...

the Contra conflict points to a nexus of anti-Communist scum and a deep schism within the Catholic church, where left-leaning liberation theologians were killed by groups funded by darker right-wing Catholic forces with CIA connections. The key thing to understand is that this is/was a very real globally connected conspiracy (not only affiliated with the Catholic church, of course).

[Karenina]

17. Kick!

:kick:

[EFerrari]

21. The Contra "conflict" was largely fabricated by the Pentagon.

Once we stopped funding it, where did it go?

[AntiFascist]

29. Much of the funding came from arms sales to terrorists in Iran....

thus we have the Iran-Contra affair. At the time, together with Israel, we were arming Iran to fight Iraq.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tehran/etc/cron.html

Interesting to note that many of the players in the Iran-Contra affair reappear in international meetings (which often mention the pro-fascist Italian intelligence group P2) in 2001 where it is thought that evidence for WMDs leading to the war on Iraq was brainstormed. One of these players is neocon guru Michael Ledeen who may be one of the masterminds behind generating conflict in the course of spreading "Americanism". It makes you wonder how much of the war on terror was initially fabricated in order to setup the Middle East.

http://www.iransolidarity.endofempire.org/history.php?page=6

"December 2001
The Bush administration sends two Defense officials, Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin, to meet with Iranians in Rome in response to an Iranian government offer to provide information relevant to the war on terrorism. The offer had been back-channeled by the Iranians to the White House through Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms trader and a central person in the Iran-Contra affair, who contacted another Iran-Contra figure, Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute. Ledeen passed the information on to his friends in the Defense Department who then relayed the offer to National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Hadley expressed no reservations about the proposed meeting and informed George J. Tenet, the director of the CIA, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage. According to officials interviewed by the New York Times, the United States Embassy in Rome was not notified of the planned meeting as required by standard interagency procedures. Neither the US embassy nor CIA station chief in Rome learn of the three-day meeting, apparently attended by both Ghorbanifar and Ledeen, until after it happens. When they do catch wind of the meeting, they notify CIA and State Department headquarters in Washington which complain to the administration about how the meetings had been arranged.
People and organizations involved: Larry Franklin, George Tenet, Stephen Hadley, Michael Ledeen, Manucher Ghorbanifar, Harold Rhode, Condoleezza Rice "

[H2O Man]

30. Same players.

Same agenda. Same tactics.

Good call on a good post.

[EFerrari]

35. This is how they get to Carnegie Hall.

I need a shaking my head smilie right here.

[EFerrari]

31. That's right. And you can be sure that our illegal ops in Iran

right now are being funded the same way.

They've perfected the practice by now.

[Octafish]

24. Public Serpents

¡Gracias, Compay! That is most welcome news and I've added Ms. Ortiz's work to my cart.

For those new to Iran-Contra:

Public Serpent

Iran-contra villain Elliott Abrams is back in action

By Terry J. Allen
In These Times.com

A nursing home aide earning minimum wage caring for Alzheimer's patients is an unskilled laborer. A grade school teacher pulling down $25,000 a year in a crumbling inner-city school is barely a professional. But a politician reaping power, pay, perks and retirement packages is a public servant.

Calling George W. Bush and Jesse Helms "public servants" is like calling Iran-contra criminal Elliott Abrams an "outstanding diplomat"--which is precisely what White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer did when he announced Abrams' appointment as senior director of the National Security Council's Office for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations. Fleischer conveyed Bush's faith-based assertion that Abrams is "the best person to do the job," which, happily for the appointee, does not require Senate confirmation.

For those who don't remember, Abrams was one of the most odious participants in a particularly shameful chapter of U.S. history. In the '80s, he was Ronald Reagan's assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs and later the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs. In that post, Abrams, in his own words, "supervised U.S. policy in Latin America and the Caribbean."

That policy included backing the contras--a surrogate army dedicated to overthrowing the democratically elected Sandinista government of Nicaragua. It also involved funding the military thugocracy of El Salvador and supervising its war against a popular leftist rebellion. In his role as public servant, Abrams found time to cover up the genocidal policies of the Guatemalan government and embrace the government of Honduras while it perpetrated serial human rights abuses through Battalion 3-16, a U.S.-trained "intelligence unit" turned death squad.

Thick as thieves with Oliver North, Abrams helped evade congressional restrictions on aid to the contras. When Congress--spurred on by protests and embarrassing press disclosures--grew wary of the Central American wars, the Reaganites sought other avenues for funding them. Ever eager to serve, Abrams flew to London under the alias "Mr. Kenilworth" to solicit a $10 million contribution from the Sultan of Brunei.

CONTINUED...

http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/18/allen2518.html

Such a low standard to stoop under. It's easy for John Negroponte.

Negroponte Appointment: Topping a Career of Human-Rights Violations

February 18, 2005
PRESS RELEASE

DIANNA ORTIZ
Sister Dianna Ortiz is the executive director of Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International. She was abducted and tortured in Guatemala while teaching indigenous children to read. She said today: "For those of us who work in the area of human rights, this is yet another sad day. The Bush administration seems determined to promote persons whose careers have been closely associated with torture. Could the administration not find one person for the job who has a demonstrated concern for defending human rights? Certainly, John Negroponte does not fit that bill. His nomination is appalling and an insult to those who have survived torture -- one more slap on the face by the current administration."
More Information
More Information

LAETITIA BORDES
Sister Laetitia Bordes led a campaign during Negroponte's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations. She traveled to Honduras on a fact-finding delegation during his tenure there and met with him. She said today: "During his nomination to the U.N. ambassadorship, we carried out a public information campaign detailing how Negroponte gave the CIA-backed Honduran death squads an open field when he was ambassador to Honduras. His hearings, however, were held a couple of days after the 9/11 tragedy, so he was hurriedly confirmed as people did not want prolonged hearings in that environment. That's how he got confirmed the first time. ... Negroponte collaborated with human-rights violators everywhere he has been; his record is public. Our Congress is letting us down again: Negroponte is once again being promoted instead of being held accountable. ... During Negroponte's tenure, U.S. military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million to $77.4 million; the U.S. launched a covert war against Nicaragua and mined its harbors; and the U.S. trained Honduran military to support the Contras."
More Information

ROBERT PARRY
Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s as a reporter for the Associated Press and Newsweek. He said today: "The choice of John Negroponte to be the first U.S. intelligence czar -- following Elliott Abrams's promotion to be deputy national security adviser -- marks the continued reemergence of officials tied to the darkest moments of Central American violence in the 1980s. There's also irony entrusting Negroponte to oversee objective intelligence analysis, since either he was oblivious to illicit behavior going on around him as U.S. ambassador to Honduras or he was complicit in a wide range of human rights abuses."
More Information

PETER KORNBLUH
Kornbluh is senior analyst with the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. He was co-director of the Iran-Contra documentation project and director of the Archive's project on U.S. policy toward Nicaragua. He is the co-editor of The Iran-Contra Scandal: A Declassified History. He said today: "The documents ... showed that Negroponte helped clear the way for a secret agreement under which the United States would provide more CIA money to Honduran army generals and additional military and economic aid to the country. In exchange, Honduras agreed to allow the Contras to continue operating on Honduran soil."
More Information

RAY McGOVERN
McGovern is a 27-year veteran of the CIA. He said today: "Negroponte's record does not inspire confidence that he will tell the president anything that is likely to disturb him, or Cheney, or Rumsfeld. The upshot is that there is likely to be simply one more bureaucratic level at which intelligence can be politicized."

LARRY BIRNS
Birns is director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. He said today: "Affidavits and testimony by Honduran survivors have reported on his involvement in sanctioning, protecting or covering up these death squads. Also, during the time Negroponte spent at the Tegucigalpa embassy, millions of dollars in bribes were paid to corrupt Honduran officials to allow room for the U.S.-backed Contras to stage attacks on the Sandinistas in neighboring Nicaragua. Negroponte has claimed that he did not recall any human rights violations ever having taken place in the country during his time there. ... Bush had made a brilliant if demonic appointment. Negroponte will likely get the job done, but at an insupportable cost to this and other countries' democratic institutions as he brings his well-tested authoritarian personality to the job."
More Information

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, [phone]; or David Zupan, [phone]

http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=986

Thank you for caring, sfexpat2000. The truth is what these rats fear more than anything -- because that is how they'll get caught and remembered.

[EFerrari]

34. I translated the meeting tapes that Roxanne brought out of the jungle

that proved that the Sandinistas WERE in dialogue with the so called "Contras".

Roxanne wasn't allowed to present this evidence to Congress. They had MOONIES testify, instead.

Popped my cherry, but good.

I HEARD those conversations. I HEARD the jungle in the background. I KNOW my government had no interest in anything except their selective investments.

And, I'm not going away.

:)

[seemslikeadream]

22. So nice to have a little family bank to help out with some transactions

NEED SOME MONEY CLEANED?


Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=775366

NEW details of Thatcher coup plot: London Evening Standard
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=777970

SEC probes Marathon Oil payments in Equitorial Guinea (and HQ burns down)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=728495

Du Toit admits meeting Thatcher
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=775274

Terrorist Stocks?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=775943

'Petroleum lures dogs of war to Africa'
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=775315

BBC News: Thatcher charged
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=775499

Margaret Thatcher's Son Released on Coup Plot Charges (Update2
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=775803

Exiled leader in Spain denies any link to coup attempt
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=780228

Scorpions say have more info on Equatorial Guinea coup
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=781763

Financiers conspired to overthrow oil-flush African government
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=771532

Mark Thatcher: The money trail
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=780222

Thatcher case twist as list of alleged coup backers vanishes
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=779708

Thatcher: Spain 'secretly backed coup by sending warships'
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=780346

WaPo: Allbritton Loses Riggs Bank (front page, day 3)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=691609

E Guinea 'coup plot' verdict due + update/result
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1023049

I feel like a corpse in a river, says Mark Thatcher as he faces court...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1020857

Thatcher to face coup questions
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1018687

Phone links Thatcher to alleged plot

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1008002
There was no coup plot, says Du Toit
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=997545

Thatcher to ask Britain to help halt extradition
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1005084

Thatcher charged over coup plot
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1001670

Thatcher to be tried in absentia
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=994305

Britain knew in advance of Equatorial Guinea coup plot: report
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=987556

Tories Demand Answers on 'Coup Plot'
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=991361

Mandelson faces questioning over 'link' to coup plot
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=975777

Legal Woes Cut Into Bottom Line at Riggs
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=974861

Mugabe flies to Equatorial Guinea (coup plot latest)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=964525

Despots, Deposits & Directors - Riggs Bank
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=924033

SABC asks to broadcast Thatcher court case
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=926588

Spain calls on EU to warn Equatorial Guinea - Riggs Bank
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=916444

Raids 'break up' £20m theft gang
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=906579

Thatcher coup plot: Mandelson, CIA & State Department named
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=900168

Archer 'link to coup plot'
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=899574

Britain accused of failing to investigate Africa coup
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=901850

Pentagon link to Guinea coup plot
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=867591

[Octafish]

26. Mama, Papa Is Wounded.

From Yves Tanguy:

Iran-Contra gangsters resurface in Bush administration

By Patrick Martin
1 August 2001

The Bush administration appealed to Senate Democrats July 27 to move ahead with the confirmation of two top-level diplomatic nominees whose appointments have been delayed because of their role in defending right-wing dictatorships and death squads in Central America.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del) said through a spokesman that a hearing for John Negroponte, nominated for US ambassador to the United Nations, would be held as early as next week. No hearing has yet been set for Otto Reich, nominated for assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs.

Negroponte and Reich are two of the three Bush administration appointees with direct operational roles in the Central American counterinsurgency campaigns of the 1980s. The third is Elliott Abrams, named as director of the office for democracy, human rights and international operations at the National Security Council, a White House position which is not subject to Senate confirmation. Abrams was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair, but was later pardoned by Bush’s father in 1992.

Negroponte was US ambassador to Honduras during the years when the right-wing Nicaraguan Contra forces were based in southern Honduras, just across the border from Nicaragua, supplied and armed illegally by the Reagan administration. Abrams was assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs during that period and worked closely with Oliver North in organizing the illegal arms supplies to the Contras. Reich headed the Office of Public Diplomacy, a State Department agency which illegally funded pro-Contra propaganda both in the US and internationally.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/aug2001/cont-a01_prn.shtml

Great to read ya, Superdreamy. Thanks for all them links 'n' stuff.

[Initech]

27. Yup, the conspiracies just keep coming and coming.

Nothing's sacred to these fuckers. This was a good find!

[Octafish]

37. A made in USA terrorist: Luis Posada Carriles

Celerino Castillo, the author of the following, is a former DEA agent who worked in the field. At great risk to his life, he testified before Congress that he saw agents of the US government and their colleagues in the Contra forces unload guns and load up cocaine for shipment to the USA. Congress, of course, did nothing about it. Castillo has given permission for this article to be used, as long as it is quoted unchanged and properly attribted.

A made in USA terrorist: Luis Posada Carriles

By Celerino "Cele" Castillo III
Online Journal Guest Writer

May 19, 2005—For over a century, our government has made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that we have done to other people in Third World countries, especially in Latin America.

With the creation of the School of the Americas, a breeding ground for assassins, and the death squads, we became the greatest human rights violators in the world.

We have become the most hated country in the world, not because we practice democracy or value our freedom. We are hated because our government denies these basic principles to these people. The hate has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism, and, as they say, “the chickens have come home to roost” with our own American-made terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles.

When I was posted in Central America, as a DEA agent, I saw Luis Posada and Felix Rodriguez, another American-made terrorist, at Illopango airport base in El Salvador. Joining them was a CIA asset, Venezuelan advisor Victor Rivera. They had become part of what was known as a CIA apparatus that did not have to answer to anyone. They were involved in drug trafficking, kidnapping, and the training of the death squads.

It was also at the height of the Iran-Contra investigation when I had documented these atrocities to my government. I could not understand how our government had assisted in having Posada escape from a Venezuelan prison, and then placing him at Illopango airport as a CIA asset, under the new name of Ramon Medina. He was now working hand in hand with then U. S. Lt. Col. Oliver North.

When I questioned Posada's presence at Illopango, I was told that it was a covert operation being run by the White House. I started to learn real fast that just about every time I questioned illegal events, I was told that it was "a covert operation being run by the White House." And as we found out later, my allegations became facts, especially with President Bush Sr. in 1990 pardoning another American-made terrorist and partner in crime with Posada, Orlando Bosch.

Now you have a clear observation of why we had 9/11 and possibly more to come. We have exported death and violence to the four corners of the Earth with individuals like Posada and Bosch.

Posada admitted to a New York Times reporter, that he organized a wave of bombings in Cuba in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist and injured others. However, he is best know as the prime suspect in the bombing of a Cuban Airlines flight in Barbados in October 1976. All 73 crewmembers and passengers, including teenaged members of Cuba's national fencing team, were killed.

In 2002, he was convicted of conspiracy to assassinate Fidel Castro in Panama. Once again, an ally of the United States, outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso pardoned him.

Our credibility has been eroded these past few weeks since Posada's arrival on U. S. soil, with a bogus American passport. According to Posada's attorney, he filed for an asylum. This should be a free pass for any other immigrant that is applying for asylum. If an American-made terrorist can get asylum, then it should be easy for an immigrant who is honest and hard working individual to get asylum.

The FBI and the CIA recently released their top secret memos, of course they are now declassified, on Posada's involvement with terrorist acts.

Other American-made terrorists are Mario Alarcon-Sandoval godfather of the death squads in Central America, Felix Rodriguez, and a Cuban exile who murdered Che Guevara, Major Roberto D'Aubuisson who led the death squads in El Salvador. They all had America's blessing to carry out assassinations. This will affirm that the U. S. government considers itself to be the vehicle of higher morality and truth and, yet, continues to operate in violation of law.

Even though I'm known as a tranquil individual at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for a country that has a double standard on terrorism. Where is the Border Patrol, Immigration, or Homeland Security when you need them?

Posada entered this country illegally, and most devastatingly, has admitted to bombings that killed civilians. The FBI claimed they didn't have an arrest warrant for him, which is why they were not looking for him.

Wait. Just off the wire . . . Homeland Security has picked up Posada. Will he be extradited to Venezuela? I don't think so. He will probably be given a couple of million dollars, and will live on a secluded island for the remainder of his golden years. What a reward for being an assassin for the United States government.

This world has become a very dangerous place, not just because of the evil people that control it, but also because of the individuals who do absolutely nothing to make it a better place.

For years, I have said that this country has become the worst human rights violator, and Posada and his Cuban criminals are proof that we are who we are. Let's not forget our human rights violations in Iraq, and just recently in Colombia, the assassination of San Jose de Apartado peace community leader Luis Eduardo Guerra.

I've witnessed, time and time again, as an American diplomat in Latin America, the atrocities that our government has committed. My biggest enemy was not the drug cartels but the CIA and the criminals they hired.

SOURCE w additional information...

http://onlinejournal.org/Special_Reports/051905Castillo/051905castillo.html

Castillo met George Herbert Walker Bush at an embassy party and brought up in conversation that he had witnessed some suspicious activity. Bush made haste to get away.

[kineneb]

38. Gary Webb was right

They will get my copy of Dark Alliance when they pry it out of my cold, dead fingers...

[mod mom]

28. Another excellent Octafish history lesson-Thanks!

[Octafish]

44. Bush, Posada Carriles and the Kennedy assassination

You're welcome, mod mom. I really appreciate your kind words and Friendship.

The "Know your BFEE" series are really meant as a history lesson -- one that ties the past 43 years to the present.

Posada Carriles and the Kennedy assassination

By Deirdre Griswold
Published Jun 7, 2005 9:54 PM

The case of Luis Posada Carriles, a known terrorist whom U.S. authorities have refused to extradite to Venezuela, reaches deep into the shadowy world of CIA covert action, especially against the Cuban Revolution.

There is also mounting evidence that Posada Carriles was connected to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and was in Dallas's Dealey Plaza the day the fatal shots were fired.

SNIP...

Many scholars have investigated the role of Operation 40 in the Kennedy assassination. Operation 40 was a special group inside the CIA set up with the authorization of the National Security Council right before the Bay of Pigs. Historian Arthur Schlesinger referred to it in a June 1961 memo to Richard Goodwin: "The ostensible purpose of Operation 40 was to administer liberated territories in Cuba. But the CIA agent in charge, a man known as Felix, trained the members of the group in methods of third degree interrogation, torture and general terrorism."

That man in charge was Felix Rodriguez, who in 1967 led the CIA squad that captured and then murdered Che Guevara in Bolivia. He took Che's Rolex watch and proudly displayed it to reporters afterwards. His Miami home is decorated with photos of himself and George H.W. Bush together.

Cuban view of Posada Carriles

Gen. Fabian Escalante, the former head of Cuban counter-intelligence, is author of "The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-62," and "The Plot," both published by Ocean Press. In May of this year, he told interviewer Jean-Guy Allard about Posada Carriles's role in Operation 40 and the Kennedy assassination.

"Who in 1963 had the resources to assassinate Kennedy? Who had the means and who had the motives to kill the U.S. president?” asked Escalante. "CIA agents from Operation 40 who were rabidly anti-Kennedy. And among them were Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles, Antonio Veciana and Felix Rodriguez Mendigutia."

The testimony of Chauncey Holt, a self-confessed CIA operative and mob associate, backs this up. In a videotaped interview made shortly before he died, Holt identified Posada Carriles as one of the Cuban exiles who was in Dealey Plaza at the time of the Kennedy assassination.

In his interview with Allard, Escalante detailed the many CIA operations in Latin America that involved Cubans from this same group, originally trained by the CIA for the Bay of Pigs invasion. These included the coup against President Salvador Allende's government in Chile and the subsequent murder in Washington of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier, as well as the Contra war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Bush, Goss and Operation 40

In Escalante's view, it was the members of Operation 40 who had the training and the sharpshooting ability necessary to carry out the assassination of Kennedy. The Cuban counter-intelligence chief identified the North Americans in the group as David Morales, David Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, William Harvey, Frank Sturgis, Gerry Hemming, John Rosselli, "who was second head of the Chicago mafia at that time in '62," and Porter Goss. Goss is now head of the CIA, nominated by George W. Bush, son of the former CIA head.

CONTINUED...

http://www.workers.org/2005/us/posada-jfk-0616/

Some kind of traitors, those in the BFEE.

[robertpaulsen]

32. Thanks Octafish! Here's some of the dirt I've collected on these devils.

Posada's CIA ties uncovered in papers
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2356598


Man with cache of weapons claims to be part of anti-Castro group
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2238068

[Octafish]

45. That's not dirt. That's pure gold, robertpaulsen.

Thank you, my Friend. Both are now bookmarked.

Here's a bit of the story for those new to the subject and the record:

Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455

A Glimpse into the Mindset of Terrorists

By JOSÉ PERTIERRA
Counterpunch April 11, 2006

SNIP...

Prosecuting terrorists has a price. The Judge who issued the initial arrest warrants for the four terrorists, Delia Estava Moreno, received several death threats and attempts at blackmail as reprisals for her conduct. As a result, she was forced to recuse herself. The presiding judge of the military court, Retired General Elio Garcia Barrios, also received death threats and in 1983, his son and chauffeur were murdered during a Mafia-style hit intended to even the score and intimidate those who dared legally prosecute the murderers.

Eventually, Lugo and Ricardo were convicted, but before the Court could reach a verdict regarding his case, Luis Posada Carriles escaped from the prison at San Juan de los Moros in the State of Guárico where he had been confined after two unsuccessful escape attempts.

Posada escaped with the help of at least $50,000 from a right wing extremist group in Miami.

SNIP...

Cuba then waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. Cuba waited for the FBI to start arresting terrorists. But instead the FBI arrested on September 12, 1998, the men now known as the Cuban Five: the men who had come to Miami to penetrate the Miami exile terrorist organizations.

According to El Nuevo Herald, the first persons that were notified of the arrests of the Cuban Five were Cong. Lincoln Diaz Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/pertierra04112006.html

And, you are most welcome, Robert. Truly appreciate it.

[WinkyDink]

33. Thugs and murderers, Bush pere et fils. And now they are

building that super-highway in anticipation of the borderless "North American Union", where there is no such thing as the U.S. Constitution, minimum wage, Social Security, or any other semblance of the Social Contract.

Just Corporatism.

[Octafish]

39. Dope dealers, too. Former DEA Agent Wants Poppy Indicted.

Even though it usually means death and destruction of innocent life, anyplace there's money, they go.

OLLIE NORTH AND DRUGS

By Dennis Bernstein and Howard Levine
The Texas Observer

If Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh had wanted to know the
extent of former Colonel Oliver North's involvement in the
smuggling of drugs from Central America to the United States,
Walsh might have made at least one phone call to Celerino 'Cele'
Castillo in San Antonio.

Between 1985 to 1991, Castillo was the Drug Enforcement
Administration's main agent in El Salvador, where, he says, he
uncovered "and reported" a huge drug and gun smuggling operation
that was run out of the Ilopango military airport by the 'North
Network' and the CIA.

North, now the Republican nominee for the U. S. Senate in
Virginia, prevailed at the nominating convention last weekend by
positioning himself far to the right of his rival, former Reagan
budget director James Miller III, promising that if elected he
will work to "clean up the mess" in Washington, and cultivating
the support of the same fundamentalist Christian Republicans who
responded to the direct-mail campaign to finance the North
defense committee.

But Castillo, the first government official with first-hand
knowledge of North's drug dealing to speak publicly about it,
says North belongs in prison, not in the U.S. Senate. "We saw
several packages of narcotics, we saw several boxes of U.S.
currency, going from Ilopango to Panama," Castillo said.

According to Castillo, the entire program was run out of
Ilopango's Hangars 4 and 5. "Hangar 4 was owned and operated by
the CIA and the other hangar was run by Felix Rodriguez, or 'Max
Gomez,' of the Contra operation . Basically
they were running cocaine from South America to the U.S. via
Salvador. That was how the Contras were able to get financial
help. By going to sleep with the enemy down there. North's people
and the CIA were at the two hangars overseeing the operations at
all times," Castillo said.

CONTINUED...

http://www.csun.edu/CommunicationStudies/ben/news/cia/961120.castillo.html

These are evil times.

They don't have to be.

Thanks to you and all who give a damn, WinkyDink, they won't be for long.

[AzDar]

36. Fascinating read..Thanks for that! n/t

[Swamp Rat]

40. k&r

[bobthedrummer]

42. Erhard Dabringhaus served in the US Army Counter-Intelligence

Corps/CIC after WWII (just like war criminal Henry Kissinger). Dabringhaus facilitated "recruitment" and relocation of Nazis and Nazi partisans into our country and Latin America during Operation PAPERCLIP and similar clandestine programs.

Erhard Dabringhaus was the bogus Bolivian Nazi Klaus Barbie's control. After Dabringhaus passed away, some papers of his indicated a much larger use of Nazis than previously known both here and in Latin America.
http://www.archives.gov/iwg/research-papers/weitzman-remarks-june-1999.html

Terrorism, assassination, death squads, Operation Condor, Iran/Contra, organized crime, human and drug trafficking-so many things were happening south of the border thanks to the Nazis and their US allies, now the BFEE (who've made universal fascism "cool")
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/story40.html

Anyone that condones torture approves these Nazis by default. Nazis originally taught their torture techniques at the School of the Americas. This US "scientific" torture was passed on to places like Vietnam and Iran-it was taught to "law enforcement".
Torture's Teachers
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/langguthleaf.html

[riderinthestorm]

46. All of it... just frightening... and riveting.... and horrifying...

All of you who have been driven to discover and post, I just want you to know that your important work isn't unrecognized or buried.

I want to look away but I just can't.

Thank you. All of you. I read these history lessons every time.

[EFerrari]

47. Octafish, rereading this thread, I thought of something.

The Salvador Solution didn't just "migrate" to Iraq, it *is* the whole of our foreign policy.

:wow:

One of these days, it would be good to have a thread that just traces all those Iran-Contra felons into the present misAdministration. Abrams, Negroponte, Reich but also, Poindexter, right? Who else? Because their fingerprints are all over.

:hi:

[Karenina]

48. BINGO!

[Octafish]

49. Return of the Iran-Contra Crew

It's a mob, all right. Your suggestions is an excellent one, sfexpat2000. Here's a good place to start, to make this a mob "seen"...

Return of the Iran-Contra Crew

George Bush Jr. has appointed numerous felons and others from the Iran Contra scandal to prominent positions in his current administration. He has suspiciously appointed Iran-contra insider, Lee Hamilton, to head the 9-11 investigation after a failed attempt to appoint wanted war criminal Henry Kissinger. His advisors in Latin American affairs are none other than Otto reich and Roger Noriega. Both implicated in Iran-contra and behind the recent coup in Haiti. Some people may not really be all that clued in on what happened during the Iran-Contra scandal. So I decided to put together this timely graphic in effort to explain what happened and why his dealings with these people, at a time when government honesty is so crucial, should be held under close scrutiny.

CONTINUED...w lotsalinks on UNADMIRABLE JOHN POINDEXTER, ELLIOTT ABRAMS, OTTO REICH, RICHARD ARMITAGE, JOHN NEGROPONTE, MITCH DANIELS, MICHAEL LEDEEN, HENRY KISSINGER, LEE HAMILTON...

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/bushco/bushcontra.htm

Then there's one player we need remember, ADNAN KHASHOGGI.

"Six Degrees of Adnan Khashoggi," Part 6
Richard Perle's new pal.

By Timothy Noah
Posted Wednesday, March 12, 2003, at 7:30 PM ET

Everybody's favorite shadowy arms dealer is back in the news! It is the premise of this occasional series that Adnan Khashoggi is connected to every shocking world event since 1960. In previous items, Chatterbox has linked Khashoggi to Sept. 11, Iran-Contra, the Marc Rich pardon, Wedtech, BCCI, the Marcos Philippine kleptocracy, the Synfuels fiasco, the breakup of the Beatles, and Charlie Chaplin's serial seductions of teenage girls. (For details, see the "Six Degrees" archive, below.) Chatterbox does not mean to suggest that Khashoggi has committed any crimes. But it does seem to be the case that if you make Khashoggi's acquaintance, the odds are that you're not a nice person.

http://www.slate.com/id/2080044/

There are others we must name. Let's do.