Know your BFEE: The Secret Government

[Octafish]

Ever wonder who put the “Mock” in Democracy? If you’re like me, you know it was the Bush Family Evil Empire.

The Bush family names leaves a stain of treachery that goes back to busting the old Weimar Republic and building NAZI Germany through the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on through Vietnam, Watergate, October Surprise, Iran-Contra, arming Iraq and Saddam, BCCI, Inslaw-PROMIS, Selection 2000, ENRON Energy Policy, 9-11, Illegal Iraq Invasion, Plame NOC-outing, e-Selection 2004 and all the rest of their various treasons of the present day.

Of course, I submit the Bushes don’t act alone. They are the dirty tip of the rotten spear for a Secret Government who oppose democracy, rule of law and the United States Constitution. Don’t take my word for it. Let’s look at the record.

Exhibit A:

When 9-11 happened, Sneering Dick Cheney, Smirking Duhbya Bush, Trent Lott and the rest of the GOP leadership got ushered to safety where they could continue governing, no matter what. The problem was, they left out the Democrats.

'Shadow Government' News To Congress

Dem Leaders Say They Weren’t Told; GOP Staffers Not Sure

White House Casts Light On 'Shadow'

WASHINGTON, March 5, 2002 (CBS)

Quote: “This is not the kind of thing you tell 10, 50 or 100 senators. If you do, you might as well tell the world." Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss.

(CBS) After lawmakers complained that they were kept in the dark, White House officials on Tuesday briefed top members of Congress about the "shadow government" that President Bush set up outside Washington as a safeguard against terrorism.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said two top Bush aides briefed Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D. on Tuesday, and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., "had been previously informed."

But House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., was not part of Tuesday's session. His spokesman Erik Smith said Gephardt did not know about the meeting until it ended. He said he did not know why Gephardt was not invited.

"We're disappointed, we don't understand why they would choose not to invite Mr. Gephardt," Smith said.

Fleischer told reporters that Gephardt's absence was "a scheduling matter," but when pressed on whether Gephardt was invited, Fleischer replied, "I don't make all the invitations here at the White House.”

CONTINUED…

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/05/politics/main503014.shtml

How nice. A “shadow government.” No need for an opposition in the dark twilight of the Fourth Reich. Right?



Exhibit B:

Bill Moyers described the Secret Government that operated beyond Congressional oversight during Iran-Contra days:

The Secret Government

by Bill Moyers
Seven Locks Press, 1988

EXCERPT...

The contras: Reagan has compared them to our Founding Fathers. In reality, Ronald Reagan and CIA director William Casey were their founding fathers. Two months after his inauguration, the president approved the funds Casey used to create the contras. Their ultimate goal was the violent overthrow of the Nicaraguan government, a government the United States legally recognizes. So the war had to be carried out covertly, as a campaign of terror. But Americans were outraged when J CIA agents mined the Nicaraguan harbors and blew up fuel tanks, causing thousands of Nicaraguan citizens to flee their homes; and Congress, in protest, cut off the contra funds. Still the president refused to give up on his crusade, and his men went to work secretly to keep the war going. The question now was how to evade Congress, the law and public opinion.
First, a small cabal in the White House took charge of policy: President Reagan, CIA Director Casey, National Security Advisers McFarlane and Poindexter, and their aide, Colonel North.

To raise money for the contras, the secret team turned to rightwing governments that could do favors for the United States and receive favors in return. The king of Saudi Arabia doled out a million dollars a month; the sultan of Brunei coughed up $10 million that was misplaced through a White House error. The secret government also encouraged the fund-raising efforts of retired Gen. John Singlaub. Relieved of his command for insubordination in 1977, he now runs the World Anti-Communist League.

SNIP...

GEORGE GORMAN, former captain, U.S. Marine Corps:
I'm two years senior to Oliver North out of the Naval Academy, and the only thing he's got on me is a Silver Star and six more years in the Corps. And when Oliver North started to say the things he started to say, I literally wanted to throw things at my TV set. I seriously considered mailing my Naval Academy ring back to the Naval Academy and denying ever having gone there. I was so embarrassed and humiliated that a professional military officer would stoop to the dishonor and disgrace and warmongering that Oliver North and Poindexter and McFarlane and the rest of the crew did. Selling arms to the Iranians after they blew up the Beirut barracks, after they blew up the Beirut embassy, is the most immoral thing- that's like selling Zyklon-B to the Germans after you've found out the Holocaust is under way.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Moyers/SecretGovt_Moyers.html

Gee. Appears the BFEE has some serious Constitutional issues there, for our Democracy.



Here’s what author Joseph Trento had to say about Ted Shackley (photo) and the government-within-a-government, the “CIA within the CIA” that stayed in power, no matter whether its members were in government or not:

Prelude to Terror:

The Rogue CIA, The Legacy of America's Private Intelligence Network the Compromising of American Intelligence

Book Review:

After decades of writing and research about American intelligence, Joseph Trento has written the most authoritative indictment of CIA splinter groups, two generations of Bush family involvement in illegal financial networks, and the funding of the agents of terror. Prelude to Terror reveals the history of a corrupt group of spymasters-led by Ted Shackley-who were fired when Jimmy Carter became president, but who maintained their intelligence portfolio and used it to create a private intelligence network. After this rogue group helped engineer Carter's defeat in 1980 and allied with George H.W. Bush, these former CIA men planned and conducted what became the Iran-Contra scandal and, through the Saudis, allied the U.S. with extreme elements in Islam. The CIA's number-one front man, Edwin P. Wilson, was framed by Shackley and his cohorts so that Wilson's operations could be taken over. For the first time the story of how CIA director George H. W. Bush was recruited into this network, and brought it into the bosom of the Saudi royal family, is told in detail, as well as how this group's manipulation of the CIA bureaucracy allowed Osama bin Laden's fundraising to thrive as al Qaeda flourished under Saudi and CIA protection.

SOURCE:

http://www.campusi.com/isbn_0786714646.htm

That’s a nice enough summary of some not-so-nice evil bastards who answer to no one the public can call to account. With their rush to classify presidential papers and almost every scrap of paper as “classified,” we can see how they can have secret trials, the destruction of habeus corpus, the loss of the Bill of Rights. They truly are a secret government.

Those who disagree, please state why. I welcome the chance to discuss the Secret Government.

Those who agree, please pile on the BFEE. They deserve it and worse.

[Sydnie]

1. Wonder info - Thanks Octafish! n/t

[Octafish]

18. You're welcome, Sydnie! Here's more on "Continuity of Government."

Seeing what passes for leadership...



... at times makes my heart sink.

The Single Party System

By Robert Manis, March 5, 2002, "The Manis Report"

Let’s get one thing straight:  The Bush “Continuity of Government” plan, less charitably known as the “Shadow Government” was designed to keep Republicans alone alive.

According to the Associated Press  today (March 5),  “President Bush’s spokesman disputed complaints from lawmakers who said they were not informed that the administration had established a ‘shadow government’ outside Washington in case nuclear-armed terrorists strike the nation's capital.”

On Sunday March 3, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle,  Democrat, said he wanted Bush to keep congressional leaders better informed about the war on terrorism and the shadow government, saying no lawmakers knew about the continuity of government plan.

This was spokesman Ari Fleischer’s response, according to the AP:  “Fleischer said ‘the appropriate people’ on Capitol Hill knew of the plan. ‘I cannot speak to how Congress fully informs itself. I'm confident and the president is confident that when people pause and talk to each other on the Hill’ they will discover who was told of the administration's plan.”

This is laughable. Congress does not "inform itself".  Someone, somehow, must inform it.

One thing is already clear though: The ranking Democrat, the Senate Majority leader, the second most important person in Congress was NOT informed. Who, if anyone, was?  Apparently no Democrats.  If there WERE Democrats who were told, who were they?

CONTINUED...

http://www-earth.tripod.com/asingleparty.html

Knowing there are so many good people who give a damn keeps me going.

[Sydnie]

20. If there is a God, I hope that he is keeping score and hears

our prayers to ....







Make these slimy bastards suffer for the rest of eternity. I hope that this God, that whispers in blivet's** ear to "take out the evil in Iraq" has been paying attention to just what dispicable things these sub-humans have been doing in their name.




But, just in case there is not a God ... I want to see these treasonous bastards pay for their actions right here on earth. I want to see pictures of blivet's** nutsack hooked up to a hummer battery and I want the keys to start it over and over and over and over again ... once for every lie they have told, once for every soul that has left this world due to his actions and his inactions, one for every mother that has had to suffer through the loss or hurt of their child due to his "misunderestimation" of his legitimate political reach, and once for every time he thought he got away with it. And, I want the rest of those traitor to watch ... knowing that they could be next.

Yep, that should just about make me be able to sleep again, sans nightmare.

Thank you again, Octafish, for all that you do. We are in this together! :hug:

[newspeak]

24. hi Octafish

I have a question about 9-11 that you might be able to answer. Was Congress in session on that day and if so, who was missing?

[Mr Rabble]

26. Congress was indeed in session.

I seem to remember video of people running out of the capitol.

I also remember John Kerry talking about how they all just sat there, stunned.

Not sure who WAS NOT there. I would bet you a $20 it would be a whos who of BFEE cronies.

[newspeak]

27. the reason I ask

it's always bothered me-if Flight 93 made it's target-I've always thought it would target Congress--and then, you know the rest of the game. Here let me put my little tin foil hat on--Congress wiped out-shadow government takes over, marshall law declared and Constitution suspended. Now that's the Reichstag fire ten fold.

[nomatrix]

82. I've asked this question before

because Cheney was going to his bunker and knew 93 was on the way and most in Congress didn't.
I think I was the only one watching C-Span at the time (not the best for breaking reporter) but they did interview IIRC Dashle evacuating P.O.'d because they hadn't been told until after the pentagon crash.

No tin foil needed, Sen. Byrd said it was the reason why he thought all of congress should not appear together such as state of the union. In case there was a catastrophic event.

Paul Thompson's time-line should have who was in session and who was in situation.

Another thing always bothered me. Why was Laura (teacher/librarian) at the WH and her husband at a school promoting reading books?

[indepat]

2. Recommended: the implications mind-boggling

[Octafish]

19. Hey, indepat! What they don't want We the People to know...

What bothers me is how few Americans know this un-American stuff is going on -- all done in the name of who-knows-what?

http://www.smh.com.au/ffxImage/urlpicture_id_1036308490982_2002/11/08/09w_bush,0.jpg

The war on terra?

Government from the Shadows: Neocons thwarting Democracy

Deployed "on the fly" in the first hours of turmoil on Sept. 11, one participant said, the shadow government has evolved into an indefinite precaution.

In the current issue of Atlantic Monthly (March 04) James Mann
has written an article called "The Armageddon Plan" which
tells about the involvement of both Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in a clandestine plan to ensure "continuity of government" in case of a nuclear attack hatched by the Reagan Administration.

Cheney and Rumsfeld, both partisans of the 1976 "Team B" effort to thwart approved intelligence were in the position
to know that a Soviet attack on the US was not a reality based threat assessment. Yet then Congressman Cheney and Rumsfeld, CEO of Searle, not even then a part of elected US government, were principle actors in a Reagan plan that would circumvent Constitutional lines of Presidential succession while leaving elected Congress out of the equation entirely.

Iran/Contra criminal Oliver North was a part of this secret project. He was also at this time involved in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) planning that brought the disaster relief agency formed under President Carter into a new role: what was called "Civil Defense"planning.

They included executive orders providing for suspension of the constitution, the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and the turning over of government to the president and FEMA.


CONTINUED w/Links 'n' Stuff...

http://amsam.org/2004/02/government-from-shadows-neocons.html

This site above has several important articles. Helping spread the word brings us a bit closer to the tipping point for ending this BFEE madness.

[indepat]

41. Tens of millions of programmed (brainwashed) robots coupled with

tens of millions more ignorant/indifferent citizens and what do you get: the disaster that has been unfolding at least since the early days of the Gipper.

[atommom]

3. Great piece, as always!

[Octafish]

21. ¡Muchisimas gracias, atommom! Didya hear 'bout these "Secrets"?

It's a tragedy our country's elected leadership didn't listen to Kelley or to DU.

Secret Bush List

Kelley Kramer

It has been over a year now since Bush took over the White House. And with Republicans now suddenly willing to talk about presidential approval ratings, lets take a look at what the Bush administration has done the past year.

A few observations:

* US Energy Policy? A secret, only revealed to Dick Cheney and his billionaire oil friends.

* FBI records of any investigations? A secret not only to you the average voter, but also a secret from any official you elect (I guess Bush gets to see them because he wasn't elected by you, he came in second.)

* Bush's Texas Driver records? Secret, scrubbed his record and gave him Texas DL number 00000005.

* Bush drug use? A secret, he doesn't answer personal questions (or public one's either as you will see)

* All records from the 12 years of Reagan and Bush presidencies? This is a BIG secret says Junior, orders ALL records sealed, anything to be released only at his sole personal discretion.

* Why did US intelligence fail Sept 11? A secret, Bush wants no investigations into the biggest failure ever.

CONTINUED...

http://archive.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=6375

What the SCOTUS decided 5-4 in 2000 was treason. So the fact he Congress went along with it may be more than tragedy. It's looking like they -- or at least their leadership -- are accomplices.

[Just Me]

4. Where ya' been!!! I've missed your keen fact-collecting and teaching!!!

:hug:

I'm hoping that Fitz has taken the last two years to fully investigate Cheney's "shadow government" and how his close constituents tied their treasonous (spy-scandal via AIPAC) interests into his global corpora-profiteering. They (EXTREME pro-corporatism and pro-likud) have served eachother at the sacrifice of ALL democracy and human interests and rights and potential.

I hope,...I hope the threads of this ANTI-democracy, PRO-destructive-for-profit/power network is exposed,...fully exposed,...for once and for all.

Of course, that is just my hope.

:hug: missed you!

[Beam Me Up]

5. ^^^^^^^ Ditto what Just Me said ^^^^^^^

:hi: Octafish!

[Octafish]

33. Hi, Beam Me Up! Remember Fletcher Prouty and the "Secret Team"?

The rightwinger believed in democracy and the U.S. Constitution. An important work of his is available online:

THE SECRET TEAM

The CIA
and Its Allies
in Control of the United
States and the World

L. FLETCHER PROUTY
Col., U.S. Air Force (Ret.)

Preface II 1997 EXCERPT...

This book is about a major element of this real power structure of the world and of its impact upon the CIA and its allies around the world. It is based upon much personal experience generally derived from my military service from mid-1941 to 1964: U.S. Army Cavalry, U.S. Army Armored Force, U.S. Army Air Corps and Army Air Force, and finally the U. S. Air Force; and more specifically from my special assignments in the Pentagon from 1955 to 1964. At retirement, I was the first Chief of Special Operations with the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. All of these duties, during those Pentagon years, were structured to provide "the military support of the world-wide clandestine activities of the CIA." They were performed in accordance with the provisions of an Eisenhower era, National Security Council Directive No. 5412/2, March 15, 1954.

Since this book was first published in 1973, we have witnessed the unauthorized release of the Defense Department's official " history of United States involvement in Vietnam from World War II to 1969" popularly known as the "Pentagon Papers," "Watergate" and the resignation of President Nixon, the run away activities of the "Vietnam War," the "Arab Oil Embargo" that led to the greatest financial heist in history, the blatantly unlawful "Iran Contra" affair, and the run-away banking scandals of the eighties. Many of these were brought about and master minded by renegade "Secret Team" members who operated, without Presidential direction; without National Security Council approval so they say; and, generally, without official Congressional knowledge. This trend increases. Its scope expands ... even today.

I pointed out, years ago in public pronouncements, that the ClA's most important "Cover Story" is that of an "intelligence" agency. Of course the CIA does make use of "intelligence" and its assumed role of "intelligence gathering," but that is largely a front for its primary interest, "Fun and Games" ... as the "Old Boys" or "Jedburgh's" of the WW II period Office of Strategic Services (OSS) called it.

The CIA is the center of a vast, and amorphous mechanism that specializes in Covert Operations ... or as Allen Dulles always called it,"Peacetime Operations." In this sense, the CIA is the willing tool of a higher level High Cabal, that may include representatives and highly skilled agents of the CIA and other instrumentality's of the government, certain cells of the business and professional world and, almost always, foreign participation. It is this ultimate Secret Team, its allies, and its method of operation that are the principal subject of this book.


SNIP...

Two important events of that period have been little noted. First, on Feb. 7, 1972 Maurice Stans, Nixon's Secretary of Commerce opened a "White House Conference on the Industrial World Ahead, A Look at Business in 1990." This three-day meeting of more than fifteen hundred of the country's leading businessmen, scholars, and the like were concluded with this memorable summary statement by Roy L. Ash, president of Litton Industries:

... state capitalism may well be a form for world business in the world ahead; that the western countries are trending toward a more unified and controlled economy, having a greater effect on all business; and the communist nations are moving more and more toward a free market system. The question posed during this conference on which a number of divergent opinions arose, was whether 'East and West' would meet some place toward the middle about 1990.

That was an astounding forecast as we consider events of the seventies and eighties and discover that his forecast, if it ever was a forecast and not a pre-planned arrangement, was right on the nose.

This amazing forecast had its antecedent pronouncements, among which was another "One World" speech by this same Roy Ash during the Proceedings of the American Bankers Association National Automation Conference in New York City, May 8,9,10, 1967.

The affairs of the world are becoming inextricably interlinked ... governments, notably, cannot effectively perform the task of creating and distributing food and other essential products and services ... economic development is the special capability and function of business and industrial organizations ... business organizations are the most efficient converters of the original resources of the world into useable goods and services.

The flash of genius, the new ideas, always comes from the marvelous workings of the individual brain, not from the committee sessions. Organizations are to implement ideas, not to have them.

CONTINUED...

Long time, no vid, Droog!



Sorry to report: I've been at the rabbit 24/7 of late, playing hogs of the road, wot?

[Beam Me Up]

43. Dear Octafish!

You know, I've never read Col. Prouty, although I've read about him for many years. As you suggest, our situation is so immediate, playing Chicken with Armageddon, one feels there is little time for historical context. In fact, it seems to me, history may be part of the problem -- used, as it often is, to justify all sorts of mischief.

This is what I see on the horizon:



Edit to add: But, then again, the 'event horizon' I gaze upon may not be of this world.

[Just Me]

6. Whoops,...nominated.

:7

[Octafish]

25. Thanks, Just Me! I've had to put food on my family...

Remember the Office of Special Plans?



It's for good reason Gen. Tommy Franks called Doug Feith "the dumbest fucking man on the planet."

The Lie Factory

News: This special Mother Jones investigation late last year detailed how, only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war.

By Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest
January/February 2004 Issue

EXCERPT...

So far, (former USAF Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski) says, no investigators have come knocking. Not from the Central Intelligence Agency, which conducted an internal inquiry into intelligence on Iraq, not from the congressional intelligence committees, not from the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. All of those bodies are ostensibly looking into the Bush administration's prewar Iraq intelligence, amid charges that the White House and the Pentagon exaggerated, distorted, or just plain lied about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda terrorists and its possession of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. In her hands, Kwiatkowski holds several pieces of the puzzle. Yet she, along with a score of other career officers recently retired or shuffled off to other jobs, has not been approached by anyone.

Kwiatkowski, 43, a now-retired Air Force officer who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit in the year before the invasion of Iraq, observed how the Pentagon's Iraq war-planning unit manufactured scare stories about Iraq's weapons and ties to terrorists. "It wasn't intelligence‚ -- it was propaganda," she says. "They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." It was by turning such bogus intelligence into talking points for U.S. officials‚ -- including ominous lines in speeches by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell's testimony at the U.N. Security Council last February‚ -- that the administration pushed American public opinion into supporting an unnecessary war.

Until now, the story of how the Bush administration produced its wildly exaggerated estimates of the threat posed by Iraq has never been revealed in full. But, for the first time, a detailed investigation by Mother Jones, based on dozens of interviews‚ -- some on the record, some with officials who insisted on anonymity‚ -- exposes the workings of a secret Pentagon intelligence unit and of the Defense Department's war-planning task force, the Office of Special Plans. It's the story of a close-knit team of ideologues who spent a decade or more hammering out plans for an attack on Iraq and who used the events of September 11, 2001, to set it into motion.

Six months after the end of major combat in Iraq, the United States had spent $300 million trying to find banned weapons in Iraq, and President Bush was seeking $600 million more to extend the search. Not found were Iraq's Scuds and other long-range missiles, thousands of barrels and tons of anthrax and botulism stock, sarin and VX nerve agents, mustard gas, biological and chemical munitions, mobile labs for producing biological weapons, and any and all evidence of a reconstituted nuclear-arms program, all of which had been repeatedly cited as justification for the war. Also missing was evidence of Iraqi collaboration with Al Qaeda.

The reports, virtually all false, of Iraqi weapons and terrorism ties emanated from an apparatus that began to gestate almost as soon as the Bush administration took power. In the very first meeting of the Bush national-security team, one day after President Bush took the oath of office in January 2001, the issue of invading Iraq was raised, according to one of the participants in the meeting‚ -- and officials all the way down the line started to get the message, long before 9/11. Indeed, the Bush team at the Pentagon hadn't even been formally installed before Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of Defense, and Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of Defense for policy, began putting together what would become the vanguard for regime change in Iraq.

CONTINUED...

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html

Sorry for the abscence. I'm plenty fat and can survive pretty much Bush's worst. The thing is I need a real job to pump calories into my skinny family. So, I've been working for The Man every night and day. Big wheel keep on turning. Proud Mary keep on burning.

Thank you for the kind words. I've missed You, too!

[Just Me]

67. I admire Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski's courage in taking a stand for truth.

A responsible and committed CM would be putting out her testimony rather than the bs of the RW punkits and ever-rationalizing "experts".

*sigh*

My thoughts to you and your family, Octafish! :hug:

[leftchick]

7. Perfect Timing for another Octafish BFEE Crime Thread!!!

IT is so great to see you again and....

Let The Indictments Begin!

:hi:

[Octafish]

34. Thanks, leftchick! Good to see you remember the story the NYT missed.

Then, again, that's part of the problem.

The New York Times and Bush’s "shadow government"

How the media covers up the threat to democratic rights

By Patrick Martin
World Socialist Web Site
March 8, 2002

By any standard, the front-page report in the Washington Post March 1 was a political bombshell. The leading newspaper in the US capital reported that the Bush administration had activated plans for a “shadow government,” drawn up under the threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, to prepare for a possible nuclear terrorist attack on Washington DC.

Hundreds of US officials were spending time in fortified bunkers in mountainous areas of the East Coast, serving 90-day rotations while they held themselves ready to assume the full powers of the government in the event that Washington was destroyed.

The most significant aspect of this plan was that the secret government-in-waiting consisted entirely of executive branch officials. No officials of the legislative or judicial branches were included, and neither the elected party leaders in Congress nor those in the constitutional line of succession to the presidency were even aware of the program’s existence. Leading congressional Democrats complained of being kept in the dark, and the issue was raised prominently in the weekend television interview programs.

But one notable quarter in the media displayed little interest in the issue. The New York Times, the most influential daily newspaper in America, for decades the principal press representative of liberal public opinion, gave only the most perfunctory attention to the shadow government. Its first news article merely echoed the Post’s account. A small follow-up article dismissed the administration’s action as the activation of a longstanding Cold War contingency plan that had no particular significance.

SNIP...

A series of lies by Bush aides have been exposed in the course of the controversy, but the Times has taken no note of them. The White House claimed that two Senate functionaries, the secretary and sergeant at arms, had been briefed on the contingency plan last September 22, and produced signed receipts acknowledging the briefings. But this was quickly revealed to be a gross distortion. The two officials issued a statement declaring that they had only been given a tour of one of the bunkers, but “were not briefed on a program involving executive branch personnel being assigned on a rotating basis to ensure operation of the executive branch.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/mar2002/nyt-m08_prn.shtml

These lefties really know their stuff. Maybe America needs its own Social Democrat party. In the meantime, here's to you and the real Dems, leftchick!

[leftchick]

58. Social Democrat(ic) Party?

(was that a fau pax?) I love the idea! We NEED MORE Socialist Lefties in order to fucking survive the BFEE/Neofreak/Fundie take over!

:)

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

8. Good to see Trento's book being mentioned

I'm amazed at the lack of coverage that's got. Sure I've got my problems with Trento, but this time you can only just sense the influence of James Angleton. A thoroughly good history of the eighties.

Also, it's worth noting the so-called "Armageddon Plan" that Jim Mann revealed regarded post-apocalyptic contingency planning -- and which two peeps were heavily involved in the planning? Why Cheney & Rumsfeld! It's in his book Rise of the Vulcans & he also wrote a lengthy article on it for Atlantic Monthly.

[Octafish]

35. The Armageddon Plan

Thanks for the heads-up, Monkey see Monkey Do! That was a most important article.



CHENEY: "A guy can only hope."

The Armageddon Plan

by James Mann
Published in the March, 2004 issue of The Atlantic

At least once a year during the 1980s Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld vanished. Cheney was working diligently on Capitol Hill, as a congressman rising through the ranks of the Republican leadership. Rumsfeld, who had served as Gerald Ford's Secretary of Defense, was a hard-driving business executive in the Chicago area—where, as the head of G. D. Searle & Co., he dedicated time and energy to the success of such commercial products as Nutra-Sweet, Equal, and Metamucil. Yet for periods of three or four days at a time no one in Congress knew where Cheney was, nor could anyone at Searle locate Rumsfeld. Even their wives were in the dark; they were handed only a mysterious Washington phone number to use in case of emergency.

After leaving their day jobs Cheney and Rumsfeld usually made their way to Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington. From there, in the middle of the night, each man—joined by a team of forty to sixty federal officials and one member of Ronald Reagan's Cabinet—slipped away to some remote location in the United States, such as a disused military base or an underground bunker. A convoy of lead-lined trucks carrying sophisticated communications equipment and other gear would head to each of the locations.

Rumsfeld and Cheney were principal actors in one of the most highly classified programs of the Reagan Administration. Under it U.S. officials furtively carried out detailed planning exercises for keeping the federal government running during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The program called for setting aside the legal rules for presidential succession in some circumstances, in favor of a secret procedure for putting in place a new "President" and his staff. The idea was to concentrate on speed, to preserve "continuity of government," and to avoid cumbersome procedures; the speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate, and the rest of Congress would play a greatly diminished role.

The inspiration for this program came from within the Administration itself, not from Cheney or Rumsfeld; except for a brief stint Rumsfeld served as Middle East envoy, neither of them ever held office in the Reagan Administration. Nevertheless, they were leading figures in the program.

A few details about the effort have come to light over the years, but nothing about the way it worked or the central roles played by Cheney and Rumsfeld. The program is of particular interest today because it helps to explain the thinking and behavior of the second Bush Administration in the hours, days, and months after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Vice President Cheney urged President Bush to stay out of Washington for the rest of that day; Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld ordered his deputy Paul Wolfowitz to get out of town; Cheney himself began to move from Washington to a series of "undisclosed locations"; and other federal officials were later sent to work outside the capital, to ensure the continuity of government in case of further attacks. All these actions had their roots in the Reagan Administration's clandestine planning exercises.

CONTINUED...

http://www.humanunderground.com/archive/armageddon-plan.html

Original source:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200403/mann

I love The Atlantic.

Regarding Trento: Yeah, the thing that gets me is how CIA folk made the case it was the Commies who'd infiltrated the Agency who were behind Dallas. I'd say it was the NAZIs. It may turn out it's the same thing as The Texans.

[robertpaulsen]

9. You rule, Octafish! Great job!

And great timing, as some key members of this secret government squirm before a certain bulldog!

:toast:

[Octafish]

36. Domo arigato, RP! You remember REX 84 and how Ollie North squirmed...

My main memory from the House-Senate Iran-Contra hearings was the moment Jack Brooks, D-Texas, asked Oliver North if it was true he was working on a plan to suspend the Constitution of the United States?



Ollie stared at Brooks and turned to whisper some question to his lawyer, Brendan Sullivan. Before they answered, Sen. Inouye, D-Hawaii, said questions like that were best answered in closed session. Here're a few more details, courtesy of Bartcop and ProRev:

News from Post-Constitutional America

PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 1996 - The issue arose again during the Iran-Contra affair, but even in the wake of all the copy on that scandal, the public got little sense of how far some America's soldiers of fortune were willing to go to achieve their ends. When the Iran-Contra hearings came close to the matter, chair Senator Inouye backed swiftly away. Here is an excerpt from those hearings. Oliver North is at the witness table:

REP BROOKS: Colonel North, in your work at the NSC, were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?

BRENDAN SULLIVAN: Mr. Chairman?

SEN INOUYE: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch on that.

REP BROOKS: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was the area in which he had worked. I believe that it was and I wanted to get his confirmation.

SEN INOUYE; May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I'm certain arrangements can be made for an executive session

With few exceptions, the media ignored what well could be the most startling revelation to have come out of the Iran/Contra affair, namely that high officials of the US government were planning a possible military/civilian coup. First among the exceptions was the Miami Herald, which on July 5, 1987, ran the story to which Jack Brooks referred. The article, by Alfonzo Chardy, revealed Oliver North's involvement in plans for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to take over federal, state and local functions during an ill-defined national emergency.

According to Chardy, the plan called for 'suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government over to the Federal Management Agency, emergency appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and declaration of martial law.' The proposal appears to have forgotten that Congress, legislatures and the judiciary even existed.

CONTINUED...

http://prorev.com/coup.htm

I support the United States Constitution.

My countrymen who don't are TRAITORS.

[blm]

38. Thanks for showing new audiences the keys to unlock the REAL BushInc

and the HOWS and WHYS of all that is happening today.

The more they understand the import of IranContra and BCCI, the better to understand ALL ELSE reBushInc.

[leanin_green]

53. This is why I cringe when I see all the glee about . . .

this administrations troubles right now. Especially if Rove is removed and * is left to his own devices.

We've already seen how easily these guys will create false terror alerts to suit their needs. I've often wondered if 9/11 was just a part of an overall strategy to implement these plans. :tinfoilhat: :hide:

If * is sinking fast, it doesn't stretch the imagination that something may be created to implement this plan in order to maintain power. :shrug:

Be careful what you wish for, yada yada yada.

[robertpaulsen]

54. Wow. They wouldn't even let him say, "I cannot recollect".

I remember being sickened watching him constantly stoning everyone with his bad memory, then being even more sickened to see wingnuts in my neighborhood put him on a pedestal just because he had the shamelessness to wear his uniform before the Senate in an obscene display of mock patriotism.

But that's one advantage North had over current traitors Rove and Libby. Which is probably why Congress has done nothing to investigate these crimes.

[valerief]

10. Thanks. Insightful.

[Octafish]

55. Thanks, valerief! Here's a bit on Poppy, Soghanalian, Murphy & Jennifer F.

The following sheds light on just some of the secrets the Bush crowd wants to keep out of public discourse, courtesy of the blogger Cannonfire:

Bush's women

Thursday, October 06, 2005

All the current talk about Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, reminded me of a startling passage in Joseph Trento's blockbuster book Prelude to Terror. (This book is required reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got into our present mess.)

The passage in question touches on an issue that has haunted the dynasty for quite a few years: The extramarital affairs of George H.W. Bush.

When Bush the elder was veep, his chief of staff -- his "Scooter," if you will -- was Admiral Daniel Murphy. Previously, Murphy worked for Bush during the latter's tenure as head of the CIA; according to Trento, the admiral functioned as Bush's "liaison" to Manuel Noriega. Murphy was a Bush insider. Part of the gang.

That changed in 1988, when Bush ran for president.

As you read the following excerpt from Trento's book, keep in mind that "Soghanalian" refers to Sarkis Soghanalian, the arms dealer who had fallen afoul of the Bush crowd.

Soghanalian had become close to Admiral Daniel Murphy, who had been Vice President Bush's chief of staff. Before the 1988 campaign had begun, George Bush asked Robert Gray to hire Murphy. Gray did, and made him the head of Gray and Company's International Division.

When Soghanalian contacted Murphy at Gray and Company, Murphy explained to him that he had been pushed out of his job with Bush because the Bush political people, including Barbara, felt that his history of procuring women for Bush and his ties to people like Soghanalian could cause political problems. Soghanalian reported that Murphy said, "They got rid of two of us before the '88 campaign, me and George's girlfriend, Jennifer Fitzgerald. What he told me was he could not help me. He told me to hire a good lawyer, that these people wanted me put away."

CONTINUED...

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2005/10/bushs-women.html

[gordianot]

11. As always your posts are right on.

What we need today is a latter day Smedly Butler. The courts and remnants of Justice are our last hope. The secret government is not as secret as it once was.

[Octafish]

56. Thanks, gordianot! USMC Maj. Gen. Butler twice won the Medal of Honor.

He discovered that much of what passed for America's foreign policy was shaking down the local populace on behalf of the wealthy businessmen back home. Later, Gen. Butler turned in those traitors who plotted against President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

For those new to the story:

An American Coup d'État?

by Clayton E. Cramer
History Today, November 1995

EXCERPT...

How different is America from nations where political power comes quite directly "from the barrel of a gun"? A curious footnote to American history suggests that, except for the personal integrity of a remarkable American general, a coup d'état intended to remove President Franklin D. Roosevelt from office in 1934 might have plunged America into civil war.

The General

This remarkable man was Smedley Darlington Butler, retired U.S. Marine Corps Major General. Butler is the sort of person for whom the word "colorful" is woefully inadequate. Butler won America's highest military award for bravery (the Congressional Medal of Honor) twice. His style of warfare was unusual not only for his personal courage, but for the energy he put into avoiding bloodshed when it was possible to achieve his aims in other ways. Not surprisingly, this engendered a remarkable loyalty among the men who served under him - and that loyalty was why certain men asked Butler to lead a military attack on Washington, D.C., with the goal of capturing President Roosevelt.

Butler was more than a remarkable soldier. He served as police commissioner of Philadelphia during 1924-25 (on loan from the Marines), in an attempt to enforce Prohibition. While the effort was a failure, his insistence on enforcing the law against wealthy partygoers as well as poor immigrants established his reputation as a man of high integrity. He was not universally loved, but he was widely respected.

Butler is best remembered today for his oft-quoted statement in the socialist newspaper Common Sense in 1935:

I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras "right" for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.... Looking back on it, I felt I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.

In War Is A Racket, Butler argued for a powerful navy, but one prohibited from traveling more than 200 miles from the U.S. coastline. Military aircraft could travel no more than 500 miles from the U.S. coast, and the army would be prohibited from leaving the United States. Butler also proposed that all workers in defense industries, from the lowest laborer to the highest executive, be limited to "$30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get." He also proposed that a declaration of war should be passed by a plebiscite in which only those subject to conscription would be eligible to vote.

From 1935 through 1937, Butler was a spokesman for the League Against War and Fascism, a Communist-dominated organization of the time. He also participated in the Third U.S. Congress Against War and Fascism, sharing the platform with well-known leftists of the era, including Langston Hughes, Heywood Broun, and Roger Baldwin. When the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) threatened the collapse of the Soviet-supported Spanish government, the League's pacifism evaporated, and they supported intervention. Butler, however, remained true to his belief in non-interventionism: "What the hell is it our business what's going on in Spain?" But before Butler became involved in these causes, he had already exposed a fascist plot against his own government.

The Plot

CONTINUED...

http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Butler.html

[Emit]

12. Thanks. I'm just finishing Moyers' Secret Government right now!

How apropos. I hope Moyers will write a sequel. One of the things that strikes me as I'm reading this book is how many names from the Nixon and Iran Contra eras have recycled into this (mis)administration.

Another thing is, I got chills, and then became very angry (again), when reading the chapter about Vietnam, ("Send in the CIA"-Ch.3), Moyers' writes:

The men who wrote our Constitution tried to make it hard to go to war. Human life was at stake, they knew, as well as the character of this republic. War should be soberly decided, publicly debated, and mutually determined by the people's representatives. It is the people, after all, who must fight, pay and die once the choice is made. The Constitution was to protect them from dying for the wrong reasons. It was to protect them from killing for the wrong reasons...

I find it stunning, looking back, how easily the cold war enticed us into surrendering popular control of government to the national security state. We've never come closer to bestowing absolute authority on the president. Setting up White House operatives who secretly decide to fight dirty little wars is a direct assumption of war powers expressly forbidden by the Constitution.

And the comments in his book by North just piss me off. I sat and watched the Iran-Contra hearings, as I had that summer off from college and was preparing a trip to Europe. Reading Moyers' book brings back memories of that corrupt asshole testifying. And now, when I see him on Fox, I think, WTF are people thinking?

Moyers' book is a must read, for historical context, and for how appropriate it is in providing a context to this current corrupt regime.

Thanks.

[Octafish]

59. You're welcome, Emit! Remember the "Tonkin Gulf Resolution"?

Iraq today if Vietnam redux. Same class of criminal is involved. And the same criminal class benefits.

30-year Anniversary: Tonkin Gulf Lie Launched Vietnam War

Media Beat (7/27/94)
Norman Solomon

Thirty years ago, it all seemed very clear.

"American Planes Hit North Vietnam After Second Attack on Our Destroyers; Move Taken to Halt New Aggression", announced a Washington Post headline on Aug. 5, 1964.

That same day, the front page of the New York Times reported: "President Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and 'certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam' after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin."

But there was no "second attack" by North Vietnam — no "renewed attacks against American destroyers." By reporting official claims as absolute truths, American journalism opened the floodgates for the bloody Vietnam War.

A pattern took hold: continuous government lies passed on by pliant mass media...leading to over 50,000 American deaths and millions of Vietnamese casualties.

The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an "unprovoked attack" against a U.S. destroyer on "routine patrol" in the Tonkin Gulf on Aug. 2 — and that North Vietnamese PT boats followed up with a "deliberate attack" on a pair of U.S. ships two days later.

CONTINUED...

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2261

Gee. Another war launched by a lie. Santayana was correct.

[Karenina]

13. For those who can handle the truth...

:kick:

[Octafish]

60. Thanks, Karenina! Hey! Didya hear what Kitty Kelley wrote?

This show great thinks mind alike -- You and Kitty. Me, I'm a stenographer, although I swear I didn't know this ran Monday in the NYT.

Bush's Veil Over History

by Kitty Kelley

WASHINGTON - SECRECY has been perhaps the most consistent trait of the George W. Bush presidency. Whether it involves refusing to provide the names of oil executives who advised Vice President Dick Cheney on energy policy, prohibiting photographs of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq, or forbidding the release of files pertaining to Chief Justice John Roberts's tenure in the Justice Department, President Bush seems determined to control what the public is permitted to know. And he has been spectacularly effective, making Richard Nixon look almost transparent.

But perhaps the most egregious example occurred on Nov. 1, 2001, when President Bush signed Executive Order 13233, under which a former president's private papers can be released only with the approval of both that former president (or his heirs) and the current one.

Before that executive order, the National Archives had controlled the release of documents under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which stipulated that all papers, except those pertaining to national security, had to be made available 12 years after a president left office.

Now, however, Mr. Bush can prevent the public from knowing not only what he did in office, but what Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan did in the name of democracy. (Although Mr. Reagan's term ended more than 12 years before the executive order, the Bush administration had filed paperwork in early 2001 to stop the clock, and thus his papers fall under it.)

Bill Clinton publicly objected to the executive order, saying he wanted all his papers open. Yet the Bush administration has nonetheless denied access to documents surrounding the 177 pardons President Clinton granted in the last days of his presidency. Coming without explanation, this action raised questions and fueled conspiracy theories: Is there something to hide? Is there more to know about the controversial pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich? Is there a quid pro quo between Bill Clinton and the Bushes? Is the current president laying a secrecy precedent for pardons he intends to grant?

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1010-20.htm

Thanks for being there for all of us, Karenina. The next few months may get pretty interesting.

[Jara sang]

14. Ted Shackley is burning in hell.

Damn... he is about the most evil corrupt individual that ever roamed the planet. Burn in hell, Ted!!! I hope your progeny are suffering for ever being spawned by you, you sick sadistic fuck!

[Octafish]

68. Shackley's got lots of company company.

A bit of sulphury background:

Saudi Entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists (Part 1-7)

By Alex Constantine

EXCERPT...

Of course, Shackley, his deputy Tom Clines (who supervised the air base in Long Tieng), and their colleagues in CIA front companies like Air America were only too happy to help, smuggling heroin to the U.S. in the gutted bodies of dead GIs (with the assistance of their old Mob buddy Santos Trafficante, who had helped form their ZR/RIFLE assassination team, and Vietnamese Air Force General Nguyen Cao Ky), and laundering the profits in the Nugan-Hand bank. As a 1983 Wall Street Journal article stated: Investigations following Mr. Nugan's death and the failure of the bank revealed widespread dealings by Nugan-Hand with international heroin syndicates, and evidence of massive fraud against U.S. and foreign citizens. Many retired high-ranking Pentagon and CIA officials were executives of or consultants to Nugan-Hand.<1133><1134>*

Shackley, along with Nugan-Hand's attorney ó former CIA Director William Colby ó directed the infamous "Phoenix Program," a largely successful attempt to "neutralize" by torture and murder approximately 40,000 Vietnamese civilians suspected of being Viet Cong sympathizers. One Phoenix operative, testifying before Congress, stated that Phoenix was "a sterile, depersonalized murder programÖ it was completely indiscriminate." The assassinations would continue in Nicaragua under the code-name "Operation Pegasus."<1135><1136>

After becoming the head of the CIA's Western Hemisphere operations (Latin American Division) in 1972, Shackley supervised the overthrow of the Chilean government ("Operation Track II") by murdering democratically elected President Salvador Allende. With the backing of the CIA under Shackley, the military led a violent coup by Right-wing General Augusto Pinochet, which resulted in the abolishment of the Constitution, the closing of all newspapers save for two Right-wing dailies, the outlawing of trade unions, the suppression of all political parties, and the arrest, torture, and execution of thousands.<1137>

After a brief stint as Director of the Far East Division, Shackley directed CIA agent Edwin Wilson in training the Shah of Iran's notorious secret police, the Savak, who routinely tortured and murdered the Shah's opponents. Later Shackley would assist more directly in these efforts.<1138> In 1975, Shackley became Associate Director in the Directorate of Operations, which put him in charge of Covert-Operations, Counter-Intelligence, and ironically, Counter-Narcotics, all under the command of George Herbert Walker Bush.

These associations naturally led to Shackley playing a role in the formation of the "Secret Team," (to coin a phrase invented by Col. L. Fletcher Prouty) the covert and illegal enterprise that was the driving force behind the Iran-Contra operation. Donald Gregg, one of Shackley's subordinates during his Saigon tenure, would later become Assistant National Security Advisor during Iran-Contra, reporting directly to Vice-President Bush. It was against this backdrop that Shackley served as a "consultant" to players such as Bush, Secord, North, and Casey in their illegal and bloody guns-for-drugs network that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the flooding of our streets with tons of drugs.

As Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny writes about Ted Shackley in his book, The Crimes of Patriots:

Looking at the list of disasters Shackley has presided over during his career, one might even conclude that on the day the CIA hired Shackley it might have done better hiring a KGB agent; a Soviet mole probably could not have done as much damage to the national security of the United States with all his wile as Shackley did with the most patriotic of intentions. Between Shackely's Cuban and Indochinese campaigns, more dope dealers were probably put onto the payroll of the United States Government, and protected and encouraged in their activities, than if the government had simply gone out and hired the Mafia ó which, in the case of the Cuban campaign, it did. CIA Director Admiral Stansfield Turner forced Shackley to resign from the Agency in 1979, due to his "unauthorized" dealings with rogue agent Edwin Wilson, who was selling plastic explosives to Libya (with Shackley's approval). Had he not left, Shackley would likely have become head of the Agency.<1139>

George Bush, who headed the Agency in 1976, strongly desired to continue in that post. He was not reappointed when Jimmy Carter took office.<1140>* Moreover, Turner, who had little faith in HUMNIT (Human Intelligence) sources, decided to reshape the CIA along more advanced technological lines. As a result of Turner's infamous "Halloween Massacre," the CIA cut its field agents from several thousand to just over 300. As President Jimmy Carter would later state, "We were aware that some of the unqualified and incompetent personnel whom he discharged were deeply resentful."<1141> The old hands of the Agency, who formerly had at their disposal almost unlimited "Black Budget" funds for covert operations, were suddenly forced into retirement, or forced into lockstep with Turner's new guidelines. Although CIA Director William Casey hired 2,000 new covert operators in 1980, many CIA critics felt Turner's actions had already caused the secret cells of the good-old-boy networks to bury themselves ó and their illegal activities ó even deeper.

CONTINUED...

http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs04/khashoggi-911.html

This guy was a real charmer, they say.

[H2O Man]

15. Thank you.

Great thread!

[Octafish]

71. Thanks, H20 Man! Hey! Didyahearbout "The Pimping of the President"?

There's a reason much of the Monkey Madministration is secret. If people knew what they were doing, they'd all be in jail.

The Pimping of the President

Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist Billing Clients for Face Time with G.W. Bush

BY LOU DUBOSE

Four months after he took the oath of office in 2001, President George W. Bush was the attraction, and the White House the venue, for a fundraiser organized by the alleged perpetrator of the largest billing fraud in the history of corporate lobbying. In May 2001, Jack Abramoff’s lobbying client book was worth $4.1 million in annual billing for the Greenberg Traurig law firm. He was a friend of Bush advisor Karl Rove. He was a Bush “Pioneer,” delivering at least $100,000 in bundled contributions to the 2000 campaign. He had just concluded his work on the Bush Transition Team as an advisor to the Department of the Interior. He had sent his personal assistant Susan Ralston to the White House to work as Rove’s personal assistant. He was a close friend, advisor, and high-dollar fundraiser for the most powerful man in Congress, Tom DeLay. Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. From the same two clients he took to the White House in May 2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5 million in contributions for a non-profit foundation he and his wife operated.

Abramoff’s White House guests were the chiefs of two of the six casino-rich Indian tribes he and his partner Mike Scanlon ultimately billed $82 million for services tribal leaders now claim were never performed or were improperly performed. Together the six tribes would make $10 million in political contributions, at Abramoff’s direction, almost all of it to Republican campaigns of his choosing. On May 9, 2001, when he ushered the two tribal chiefs into the White House to meet the President, The Washington Post story that would end his lobbying career and begin two Senate Committee investigations was three years away. (When the Post story broke in February 2004, however, Abramoff and Scanlon, a former Tom DeLay press aide, were already targets of a U.S. Attorney’s investigation in Washington.)

Abramoff brought the Coushatta and Choctaw chiefs to Washington at the request of Grover Norquist. Norquist is founder and director of Americans for Tax Reform, the advocacy group committed to slashing taxes until the federal government is so small you “can drown it in the bathtub.” Norquist started ATR in 1985. His power increased exponentially in 1994, when Republicans took control of the House of Representatives and he collaborated with then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay to launch the “K Street Project”—a coordinated campaign to compel lobbyists to contribute only to Republican candidates and ultimately to hire only Republicans. Like Abramoff and Rove, Norquist considered George Bush’s victory over Al Gore the culmination of a project the three Washington insiders started 30 years ago as national leaders of the College Republicans.

Since the Post’s Susan Schmidt broke the Jack Abramoff story, the media has focused on the stunning $82 million Abramoff and Scanlon billed six tribes for lobbying and public relations work. Far less attention has been paid to the political contributions, by Abramoff’s account $10 million, made by the six tribes. That piece of the story involves the K Street Project, which moves the money of corporate lobbyists and their clients into the accounts of Republican candidates, PACs, and issue advocacy groups.

CONTINUED...

http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle_new.asp?ArticleID=13

While jail would be too good for the traitors in this crowd, incarceration at least would make the world a safer place. That would be a good thing.

[Mr Rabble]

16. Thank you again Octa!

[Octafish]

74. You're welcome, emperor72! Hey! Didyahear'bout Post-911 Fascism?

The authors from World Socialist Web Site below say: "The greatest threat to the American people comes, not from foreign terrorists or Islamic fundamentalists, but from the behind-the-scenes machinations of the American government itself."

The shadow of dictatorship: Bush established secret government after September 11

By the Editorial Board
4 March 2002

The Bush administration has established a “shadow government,” consisting of 75 to 150 officials of the executive branch who have been dispatched to secure, fortified locations to provide “continuity of government,” supposedly as a precaution against a possible nuclear terrorist attack on the US capital, the Washington Post reported Friday. An executive order for temporary evacuation was issued shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and the arrangement was made permanent a month later.

The administration decided to implement longstanding contingency plans prepared during the Cold War but never before activated. More than 100 officials were evacuated by helicopter within hours of the suicide hijackings which destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon.

They were taken to two locations, believed to be in mountainous terrain in the eastern United States, which became the seat of a temporary regime. In late October the arrangement was made permanent. Since then, officials drawn from top levels of the civil service, just below the appointed cabinet and sub-cabinet level, have been rotated at 90-day intervals. Legal documents have been drafted to give these officials the full powers of the executive branch in the event of a catastrophe.

Administration spokesmen have confirmed the Post report, and Bush himself discussed the subject at a Republican Party campaign appearance in Iowa. “We take the continuity-of-government issue seriously because our nation was under attack,” Bush declared. “Until this country has routed out terrorists wherever they try to hide, we’re not safe.” In other words, the secret government, like the “war on terrorism” itself, is open-ended.

According to a further report in the Post March 3, the Bush administration has deployed the Delta Force within the United States —the same elite commando unit which spearheaded the war in Afghanistan—placing it on standby alert to engage in anti-terrorist actions around Washington in the event of possible nuclear attack.


CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/mar2002/shad-m04.shtml

WSWS really pegs the Bush gang. They thought something fishy was going on regarding 9-11 before most organizations, too.

[Rex]

17. Evil bastards is right.

Their plan is one of tremendous evil! 'Spot on' as always Octafish!

Never forget people - this is a war to gain total power over the government and guess what? We are getting our asses kicked.

Don't for one minute let up in thinking they want us all dead or as low wage corporate slaves. These people HATE peace and prosperity for all. Quick cash, raping of the Earth, war, pestilence, drugs, human slavery. You name it the BFEE traffics it or can get a hold of it.

These people make the Yakuza, Latin American drug cartels and the Chinese Triad combined look like small schoolyard bullies. Russia might equal their power and corruption, but I really doubt it.

[Octafish]

77. Hi, Rex! Thanks for getting "Them" and seeing the Bush Mafia.

This scholar offers a class detailing the "workings" of the Bush transnational criminal enterprise:

CRJ 875: Crime and Public Policy

Module 9: State-Organized Crime as a Case Study Of Criminal Policy


Indian Springs Bank: Another bank with clear connections to the CIA was the Indian Springs Bank of Kansas City, Kansas (Bainerman, 1992: 279-280; Brewton, 1993: 197-200). The fourth largest stockholder in Indian Springs was Iranian expatriate Farhad Azima, who was also the owner of an air charter company called Global International Air. The Indian Springs bank had made several unsecured loans to Global International Air, totaling $600,000 in violation of the bank's $349,00 borrower limit. In 1983 Global International filed for bankruptcy, and Indian Springs followed suit in 1984. The president of Indiana Springs was killed in 1983 in a car fire that started in the vehicle's back seat and was regarded by law enforcement officials as of suspicious origins.

Global International Air was part of Oliver North's logistical network which shipped arms for the U.S. government on several occasions, including a shipment of 23 tons of TOW missiles to Iran by Race Aviation, another company owned by Azima. Pete Brewton, in his investigation of the Indian Springs bank collapse was told that FBI had not followed up on Indian Springs because the CIA informed them that Azima was "off limits" (Houston Post, February 8, 1990). Similarly the assistant U.S. Attorney handling the Indian Springs investigation was told to "back off from a key figure in the collapse because he had ties to the CIA."

Azima did indeed have ties to the CIA. His relationship with the agency goes back to the late 1970s when he supplied air and logistical support to EATSCO (Egyptian American Transport and Services Corporation), a company owned by former CIA agents Thomas Clines, Theodore Shackley, and Richard Secord. EATSCO was prominently involved in the activities of former CIA agent Edwin Wilson, who shipped arms illegally to Libya. Azima was also closely tied to the Republican party. He had contributed $81,000 to the Reagan campaign.

Global International also had other unsavory connections. In 1981, Global International made a payment to organized crime figure Anthony Russo, a convicted felon with a record that included conspiracy, bribery, and prostitution charges. Russo was the lawyer of Kansas City organized crime figures, an employee of Indian Springs, and a member of the board of Global International. Russo later explained that the money had been used to escort Liberiandictator Samuel Doe on a "goodwill trip" to the U.S.

Global International's planes based in Miami were maintained by Southern Air Transport, another CIA proprietary company. According to Franck Van Geyso, an employee of Global International, pilots for Global International ferried arms into South and Central America and returned to Florida with drugs. Indian Springs also made a loan of $400,000 to Morris Shenker, owner of the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas, former attorney for Jimmy Hoffa, and close associate of Nick Civella and other Kansas City organized crime figures. At the time the loan to Shenker was made, he, Civella, and other Kansas City mobsters were under indictment for skimming $280,000 from Las Vegas' Tropicana Casino.

CONTINUED...

http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/Kentuckystatecrime.htm

Honestly: You'd ace the class, Rex.

[Me.]

22. Terrific Info

Do you have any info connecting BFEE to Asian money? As in follow the money?

[Octafish]

78. Xie xie, Me.

Prescott Bush has his hand in the China cookie jar for a long time. In fact, he helped start the United States-China Chamber of Commerce. Here's a bit of background on the relationship.

President's uncle shares Bush family ties to China

By Debbie Howlett, USA TODAY, AP

CHICAGO — When President Bush arrives in Beijing on Thursday, he'll embrace a policy that's something of a family tradition.

Bush's approach centers on promoting U.S.-China economic ties. That's a course favored not only by his father, the first President Bush, but also by his uncle, Prescott Bush Jr., a longtime acquaintance of Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

The Bush family's ties to China go back to 1974, when President Nixon named George Bush ambassador to China. The college-age George W. Bush spent two months in China visiting his parents during his father's two-year stint.

Seven years after his brother left the ambassadorial post, Prescott Bush made his first trip to China. He later joined with Japanese partners in 1988 to build a golf course in Shanghai, the first in China. He met Jiang, who was then the mayor of Shanghai.

Prescott Bush, now 79, also developed a close working relationship with Rong Yiren, a former trade minister and vice president, who in 1993 introduced Bush to a group of Chinese business leaders as "an old friend." In 2000, Forbes publications reported that Rong, who has retired from government, was the richest man in China.

The president's uncle concedes that he sometimes relied on his name to open doors, but he says any deals he made were the result of his own hard work.

CONTINUED...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2002/02/19/usat-prescott-bush.htm

I wonder how much Prescott and the BFEE contributed to the rise of the Red Star of Walmart, etc.? These are the guys who've bought the Lion's share of U.S. bonds over the past few decades. Plus, the Bushes let them pick clean the U.S. military technology jazz...

[Octafish]

79. The Bush family: Middle Kingdom rainmakers

A good bit from Asia Times on the subject:

The Bush family: Middle Kingdom rainmakers

By Zach Coleman

HONG KONG - George Herbert Walker Bush arrived in Beijing 30 years ago as the official United States representative to China with one goal above all else: expanding his buddy list.

"My hyper-adrenaline, political instincts tell me that the fun of this job is going to be to try to make more contacts," he wrote in his first diary entry. "And it is my hope that I will be able to meet the next generation of China's leaders - whomever they may be. Yet everyone tells me that that is impossible."

Bush Sr, already a champion networker, wasn't to be denied. In a final triumph at the end of his stay, Deng Xiaoping, then vice premier, threw a farewell lunch for Bush Sr and his wife.
"You are our old friends," said Deng, according to a Chinese government website. "You are welcome to come back anytime in the future."

Bush Sr and his relatives have turned that open invitation into a family franchise over the years, setting themselves up as gatekeepers between lucrative business opportunities created by the opening up of China's economy and the US corporate and political establishment. If Iraq is the place where the Bush men fight once they leave the oil fields of Texas, China is where they have made money.

China policy has been a hot-button issue in US presidential campaigns for more than half a century. This time around, many politicians are linking US job losses to the country's exploding trade deficit with China, leaving the family trade in promoting US-China commerce with the potential to embarrass President George W Bush in his 2004 re-election drive.

Bush Sr and his brother Prescott both lowered their profile in the family business last year. Yet the Bushes' business suddenly hit the headlines again in November, when documents and testimony from the divorce trial of the president's brother Neil showed that he had signed a contract to receive US$400,000 a year from Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing, a Chinese company co-founded by a son of former president Jiang Zemin, in return for business information and advice. Fair enough, but Neil Bush has no background in technology. His brother's administration, however, is leaning on Beijing to reduce tax discrimination against imported semiconductors.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FE21Ad01.html

When I get a moment, I'll get some stuff on the Yakuza angle. They also may be involved in high-tech sales that benefited the Red Army.

[texpatriot2004]

23. Oh yeah, BFEE is VERY REAL and EVIL. Thanks for this post

and for the links.

How exactly does the "Shadow Government" fit into our Constitutional form of Government - you know, the form we had before this evil regime did their hostile takeover?

[Octafish]

80. Information is what makes Democracy work.

Secrecy is what makes a Dictatorship work.

The Founders of the United States believed so much in free speech, freedom of thought and freedom of the people to assemble they put the concepts down in print. More than making it all legal, it literally spelled out what the government would have to do. To keep the democratic republic politically viable requires an informed citizenry. That is why the Constitution mentions only one business by name -- the press, in the First Amendment. A Free people need to think for themselves.

What happens when a country doesn't have a truly free press.



Nero the Zero.

[texpatriot2004]

28. Stomp out the BFEE nm

[Octafish]

83. Paul Craig Roberts: 'Natural Born Liars.'

The author below is a former Assistant Sec. of Treasury for Reagan and absolutely pegs the BFEE turdballs for what they are.

How to End the War

Natural Born Liars

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
October 11, 2005

George W. Bush is a natural born liar. He lied us into a war, and now he is lying to keep us there. In his October 6 self-congratulatory speech at that neoconservative shrine, the National Endowment for Democracy, the President of the United States said: "Today there are more than 80 Iraqi army battalions fighting the insurgency alongside our forces."

Eighty Iraqi battalions makes it sound like the US is just lending Iraq a helping hand. I wonder what Congress and the US commanders in Iraq thought when they heard there were 80 Iraqi battalions that American troops are helping to fight insurgents? Just a few days prior to Bush's speech, Generals Casey and Abizaid told Congress that, as a matter of fact, there was only one Iraqi battalion able to undertake operations against insurgents.

I wonder, also, who noticed the great contradiction in Bush's speech. On the one hand, he claims steady progress toward freedom and democracy in Iraq. On the other hand, he seeks the American public's support for open-ended war.

In her Princeton speech, Condi Rice made it clear that Iraq is just the beginning: "We have set out to help the people of the Middle East transform their societies. Now is not the time to falter or fade."

On October 5 Vice President Cheney let us know how long this commitment was to last: "Like other great duties in history, it will require decades of patient effort."

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts10112005.html

BTW: An important point to remember of the BFEE is they live to transfer wealth from the haves to the have-mores. Their objective is the Haitian model. At the top of the overt heap is Poppy Doc Bush.

[texpatriot2004]

29. So, am I getting this right that some of our Fed Gov people were

"briefed" about "Shadow Government" while others were not?

The ones that received the briefing - PNACers?

[Octafish]

31. Yes. Poppy's friends would be part of the New Government...

... in the event a "national emergency" wiped out the old government. Enemies of Poppy, such as Liberals and Democrats, would not be. The biggest Thing left out would be the Constitution and all the fine print about checks and balances.

Backup U.S. government in place

March 1, 2002 Posted: 10:12 PM EST (0312 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Nearly six months after the September 11 attacks, a backup government of federal agency officials is on standby at bunker locations outside Washington as a precaution against a catastrophic strike on the nation's capital, a senior official told CNN Friday.

SNIP...

Because Bush has decided to leave the operation in place, agencies including the White House and top civilian Cabinet departments have rotated personnel involved, and are discussing ways to staff such a contingency operation under the assumption it will be in place indefinitely, this official said.

"We are learning a lot from just putting this in place, and we are adjusting to that," the official said.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, said Friday he can't say much about the plan.

"We have not been informed at all about the role of the shadow government or its whereabouts or what particular responsibilities they have and when they would kick in, but we look forward to work with the administration to get additional information on that."

He was asked if there was a similar plan for Congress. "I don't know if I'd call it a survival plan, but there is a plan that would be implemented were we to be in any jeopardy," Daschle said at a news conference Friday.

"Precautions have been taken and arrangements have been made to move the work of the Congress to another location. And that has been in place for some time and refined over time."

CONTINUED...

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/03/01/bunker.government/

Here's a nice report that got prepared for public consumption a few years after the fact...

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:9ZjuL2sZSUIJ:www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RL31594.pdf+%22continuity+of+government%22+%2B+daschle&hl=en

PDF version:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RL31594.pdf

[H2O Man]

32. I think that you

would agree that VP Bush put much of this in place during the early 1980s.

As Senator Robert Byrd has pointed out in his "Losing America," the shadow government does not include three branches. There is only an executive branch. More, this executive branch represents (what else?) the economic interests of a narrow group of American families.

[Octafish]

37. CIA means "Capitalism's Invisible Army."

Thanks for the heads-up on Sen. Byrd, H2O Man! Amy Goodman brings more light from Byrd and Dick Gephardt:

Here's more light from

COG: Secret Shadow Government

by Amy Goodman

AMY: "Your listening to Democracy Now, I'm Amy Goodman, this from today's Washington Post: Tensions over the Bush administration's sharing of information with Congress flared anew on Tuesday as the White House excluded the House Democratic leader from a confidential briefing and Bush aides swapped charges with lawmakers about who was told of White House contingency plans dealing with a hypothetical nuclear attack on Washington.

House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt first learned from a reporter about the classified briefing for congressional leaders this week on the contingency plans, this according to his aides. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer blamed a "scheduling matter" and said Gephardt had "already been talked to," which Gephardt's aides said was untrue.

The White House also disputed lawmakers' claims that they had not been advised of the administration's contingency plans, reported last week in The Washington Post, involving scores of career government officials taking rotations in underground bunkers outside of Washington.

West Virginia Democratic Senator Robert Byrd who as Senate president pro tempore is third in line to the presidency said Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle had said they were not informed of the plans. The White House released records showing that the secretary of the Senate and the Senate sergeant at arms had been briefed Sept. 22. Administration officials said the briefing included a tour of one of the facilities. They said Byrd was offered a similar briefing Sept. 24 but declined.

In a statement, the two Senate officials said the briefing was not about executive branch contingency plans.

CONTINUED...

http://www.totse.com/en/conspiracy/institutional_analysis/166647.html

Oh yeah. Poppy's dirty fingerprints are all over the ashtray holding the charred remains of the United States Constitution. Those who give their lives to protect it are heroes. Citizens who work to destroy it are Traitors.

[Beam Me Up]

39. "A narrow group of American families." Can we name them H2O Man?

To me, the ability to name them would be the first step in a true redress of grievances.

[H2O Man]

40. Well, I think that

the Bush family is the obvious starting point. I think that what people might consider is the village/town/city where they live. In every case, there are the public people, who are the mayor, the board member, the judge, etc. And they have a certain degree of power. But then, behind the public scenes are the real powers: the banker, the owner of the insurance company, and the like. They hold the real power. They do not have to attend public meetings to get approval to carry out their agenda. It's the same thing with the USA. Look at who owns banks, oil companies, and the like. Consider those who are able to carry out their agenda, without worry about the national equivalent of the town board, which is congress, of course. I would suggest knowing how they operate is the true first step in addressing grievances; their names and faces can change, while their tactics can't.

[Beam Me Up]

45. I see your point, H2O Man.

And I'm sure you're right: What matters is knowing how they opperate.

Often I feel it is far too much for my limited intellect and rather mystical disposition. I just don't understand the drive toward amassing great wealth and power, much less the how of it. Not something that appeals to me. To ME, what would be far more important, interesting and challenging would be to create a world that is a) sustainable over the long haul and b) provides for the security necessary for the development of the individual and collective human potential. Moreover, not something limited to any one race or faith or local form of governance. That, to me, would be CIVILIZATION (no 'in quotation marks' necessary). But then, I'm a nobody artist wana-be, so who cares what I think.

[Me.]

63. Follow The Money

For instance, who owns the Federal Reserve?

[glitch]

44. Mark Lombardi (suicided) does a beautiful job graphing the principals

and their links to each other.
http://www.pierogi2000.com/flatfile/lombardi.html

[Beam Me Up]

46. Yes, Lombardi mapped many of the players and their relationships . . .

and was probably executed for his trouble:

In a video of the artist shown at the exhibition, Andy Mann asked Lombard in February 1997, "Do you fear for your life?"

Lombardi didn't answer the question. Instead he said, "This is a way I can map the political and social terrain in which I live."

According to his friends, Lombardi told them that he was being followed -- just before his death.

Lombardi also described his work as "visualized fields of information (which) started out as corporate diagrams."

In the end, Mark Lombardi's contribution to culture is his relentless search for the truth. He was a pioneer in the cartography of realpolitik, mapping international networks of crime which include high-level government officials and shady so-called "business" men.

Lombardi's legacy is his depiction of geo-political realities, the essence of global criminal conspiracies. No theory, just conspiracy -- conspiracies that continue to haunt the planet into the 21st century.

More: http://www.steamshovelpress.com/altmedia18.html

[texpatriot2004]

65. There are two thread here in the last 3 days that name them. n.t

[Beam Me Up]

69. Do you have links to these threade? Or can you offer search parameters?

Would be helpful.

[texpatriot2004]

73. This is thread 2 on the subject and the link to thread 1 is in it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5031651

[Beam Me Up]

76. thank you n/t

[texpatriot2004]

64. Thanks for the info and link about this shadow. n.t

[Nothing Without Hope]

30. Recommended & kicked - important thread n/t

[Octafish]

84. Thanks, Nothing Without Hope! Remember Inslaw PROMIS?

Prosecutors Management Information System enabled a prosecutor's office to document and follow individual cases as they journeyed through the criminal justice system. The software was so good, the government decided to market it to other nations -- supposedly after modifying it to allow the USA to secretly monitor the caseloads of every nation it was sold to. Great for our spies, but bad for the people who developed the software, whom the gangster BFEE froze out of the profit-making part.

Of course, there's much more bad for us. For example, the BFEE can use it for more things other than tracking crooks. What all that is, is not quite clear yet. It's classified.

Inslaw-PROMIS Affair

The House Judiciary Committee lists these crimes as among the possible violations perpetrated by "high-level Justice officials and private individuals":

>> Conspiracy to commit an offense >> Fraud >> Wire fraud >> Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies and committees >> Tampering with a witness >> Retaliation against a witness >> Perjury >> Interference with commerce by threats or violence >> Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) violations >> Transportation of stolen goods, securities, moneys >> Receiving stolen goods

Bill Hamilton, Inslaw & PROMIS

Who:
Bill Hamilton and his wife, Nancy Hamilton, start Inslaw to nurture PROMIS (Prosecutors Management Information Systems).

Why #1:
The DOJ, aware that its case management system is in dire need of automation, funds Inslaw and PROMIS. After creating a public-domain version, Inslaw makes significant enhancements to PROMIS and, aware that the US market for legal automation is worth $3 billion, goes private in the early '80s.

Why #2:
Designed as case-management software for federal prosecutors, PROMIS has the ability to combine disparate databases, and to track people by their involvement with the legal system. Hamilton and others now claim that the DOJ has modified PROMIS to monitor intelligence operations, agents and targets, instead of legal cases.

SOURCE:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/inslaw_pr.html

Gee. They sound like nice, law-abiding people...

The INSLAW Octopus

Software piracy, conspiracy, cover-up, stonewalling, covert action: Just another decade at the Department of Justice

By Richard L. Fricker

EXCERPT...

By late November, 1992 the nation had turned its attention from the election-weary capital to Little Rock, Ark., where a new generation of leaders conferred about the future. But in a small Washington D.C. office, Bill Hamilton, president and founder of Inslaw Inc., and Dean Merrill, a former Inslaw vice president, were still very much concerned about the past.

The two men studied six photographs laid out before them. "Have you ever seen any of these men?" Merrill was asked. Immediately he singled out the second photo. In a separate line up, Hamilton's secretary singled out the same photo.

Both said the man had visited Inslaw in February 1983 for a presentation of PROMIS, Inslaw's bread-and-butter legal software. Hamilton, who knew the purpose of the line-up, identified the visitor as Dr. Ben Orr. At the time of his visit, Orr claimed to be a public prosecutor from Israel.

Orr was impressed with the power of PROMIS (Prosecutors Management Information Systems), which had recently been updated by Inslaw to run on powerful 32-bit VAX computers from Digital Equipment Corp. "He fell in love with the VAX version," Hamilton recalled.

Dr. Orr never came back, and he never bought anything. No one knew why at the time. But for Hamilton, who has fought the Department of Justice (DOJ) for almost 10 years in an effort to salvage his business, once his co- workers recognized the man in the second photo, it all made perfect sense.

For the second photo was not of the mysterious Dr. Orr, it was of Rafael Etian, chief of the Israeli defense force's anti-terrorism intelligence unit. The Department of Justice sent him over for a look at the property they were about to "misappropriate," and Etian liked what he saw. Department of Justice documents record that one Dr. Ben Orr left the DOJ on May 6, 1983, with a computer tape containing PROMIS tucked under his arm.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/inslaw_pr.html

Golly. Here's where it gets kind of interesting. So much so that when Poppy's Justice Department didn't like the way a couple of judges ruled, they appointed the failed prosecutor as the new judge who finally ruled for them. Now THAT's gaming the system.

[Greyskye]

42. bookmarked, recommended, and a

:kick:

Thanks Octafish! Never forget!

[Octafish]

85. Thanks, Greyskye! Here's a great PBS 'Secret Gov.t' documentary link...

The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis - PBS Documentary

“The National Security Act of ‘47 gave us the National Security Council. Never have we had a National Security Council so concerned about the nation’s security that we’re always looking for threats and looking how to orchestrate our society to oppose those threats. National Security was invented, almost, in 1947, and now it has become the prime mover of everything we do as measured against something we invented in 1947."

-- U.S. Navy Admiral Gene La Rocque in PBS Documentary "The Secret Government" (view free)

April 23, 2005

LINK plus:

http://www.wanttoknow.info/050423secretgovernment

BTW: Thank YOU, Greyskye! I didn't know (much?) about this website until I went searching because of your post. It's a "Wow!"

[serryjw]

47. The "Secret Governemnet" has been around for years

they are doing a great job of fine tuning it.
Lots of fund links..Have a drink first! Some may have been posted already

quote...
Few Americans--indeed, few Congressional reps--are aware of the existence of Mount Weather, a mysterious underground military base carved deep inside a mountain near the sleepy rural town of Bluemont, Virginia, just 46 miles from Washington DC. Mount Weather--also known as the Western Virginia Office of Controlled Conflict Operations--is buried not just in hard granite, but in secrecy as well.

In March, 1976, The Progressive Magazine published an astonishing article entitled "The Mysterious Mountain." The author, Richard Pollock, based his investigative report on Senate subcommittee hearings and upon "several off-the-record interviews with officials formerly associated with Mount Weather." His report, and a 1991 article in Time Magazine entitled "Doomsday Hideaway", supply a few compelling hints about what is going on underground.

end quote....
http://www.freedomsite.net/fema%20-%20the%20u_s_%20shadow%20government.htm

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/secgov.html
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread60574/pg1
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/may2003/poli-m05.shtml
Federalist Society on college campuses
http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientprofile.php?recipientID=112
http://www.realnews247.com/rule_america.htm

[Octafish]

87. Great links, those, serryjw! Thanks! Remember Pike, Rumsfeld & Cheney?

I know you do. Here's some great history from Third World Traveler, excerpts from someone else who gives a damn:

excerpts from the book

Challenging the Secret Government

The Post-Watergate Investigation of the CIA and FBI

by Kathryn S. Olmsted

University of North Carloina Press, 1996, paper

Secrecy and Democracy, Trusting "Honorable Men"

Meat Ax or Scalpel, Sensational Scoops, Abuses & Aberrations

Challenging the System

Counterattack, Unwelcome Truths, Epilogue

SOURCE w/links 'n' excerpts...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/Challenging_Secret_Govern.html

Below is an excerpt -- from the time of the Pike Committee, 1976. Remember who was giving President Ford "advice"...

Counterattack

Unwelcome Truths

Epilogue

excerpted from the book
Challenging the Secret Government
The Post-Watergate Investigation of the CIA and FBI
by Kathryn S. Olmsted
University of North Carloina Press, 1996, paper

p163

As the Pike committee finished its work on 10 February, the members congratulated each other for their impressive-albeit controversial- contribution to an understanding of the nation's secret government. "Given the circumstances, problems, and lack of support, I think we did our best," Dellums told his colleagues. "I hope what we have done will have some impact on the course of history in this country." The next day, the Village Voice published the text of their secret report.

The publication was the last in a series of disasters for the Pike committee. It was also the first episode in a continuing drama that would destroy Daniel Schorr's career, at least temporarily. Schorr quickly realized that he would pay a price for trying to keep his role secret. On the morning of 1l February, a colleague whom Schorr considered a friend, Laurence Stern of the Washington Post, called to inform him that the Village Voice had published the Pike report that morning in a twenty-four-page supplement. Far from reflecting Schorr's high-minded concerns about First Amendment rights, the tabloid trumpeted its scoop in red capital letters: 'THE CIA REPORT THE PRESIDENT DOESN'T WANT YOU TO READ. Stern wanted to know if Schorr was the source, but Schorr was reluctant to reveal his role. The two journalists had a long conversation that wandered on and off the record. Despite Schorr's "sophistic evasions," the Post reporter eventually learned enough to identify the correspondent as the source of the report.

The next morning, the Post identified Schorr not only as the purveyor of secret documents but also as the lead actor in what it suggested was "a journalistic morality play." Over the subsequent weeks and months media coverage of the report leak repeatedly emphasized this "morality play-Schorr's decision to publish a secret report, his clandestine actions in arranging publication, his decision to give the profits to the Reporters' Committee-rather than the contents of the report. The Schorr drama, after all, was a simple, easily communicated story, while the report's substance was more difficult to understand and translate. Moreover, journalists, driven by the routines of their profession to report only "news," saw the Schorr leak as the new element in an otherwise old story.
The leak also gave the prestige newspapers' editorial boards the chance to dlstance themselves from "irresponsible" journalists like Schorr. The Washington Post, for example, never editorialized on the report's revelations, only on the leaks. The New York Times self-righteously condemned the "counterproductive rash of leaked reports and premature disclosures"-disclosures that its reporters had eagerly sought and its editors had prominently published.

The media's shift in attention from the report's charges to their premature disclosure was skillfully encouraged by the executive branch President Ford offered Congress the FBI's help in finding Schorr's source; while Secretary Kissinger again declared that "we are facing here a new version of McCarthyism." Rogovin, the CIA's counsel, later admitted that the executive branch's "concern" over the report's damage to national security was less than genuine. "No one really felt that Western Civilization was at risk," he Says. But at the time, the administration had no qualms about implying otherwise.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/Unwelcome_Truths_CTSG.html

[wiggs]

48. John Dean's book is a must read too, re: secrecy in government

Our own government has become a shadow government....much less transparency than intended.

Dean talks about secrecy and what it means. Book name: Worse than Watergate.

[H2O Man]

49. Right.

Somewhere around page 101-2, he speaks directly to Cheney's NSC being the "shadow government." He lists a few other fascinating sources on this.

[Octafish]

88. Where would he get THAT idea?

"H2O Man says you're in charge, Unka Dick!
Izzat twue? Izzit Unka Dick? Izzit?"

FWIW: IMFO, Cheney's the beard for Poppy's crew...

The Curse of Dick Cheney

The veep's career has been marred by one disaster after another

By T.D. ALLMAN

Should George W. Bush win this election, it will give him the distinction of being the first occupant of the White House to have survived naming Dick Cheney to a post in his administration. The Cheney jinx first manifested itself at the presidential level back in 1969, when Richard Nixon appointed him to his first job in the executive branch. It surfaced again in 1975, when Gerald Ford made Cheney his chief of staff and then -- with Cheney's help -- lost the 1976 election. George H.W. Bush, having named Cheney secretary of defense, was defeated for re-election in 1992. The ever-canny Ronald Reagan was the only Republican president since Eisenhower who managed to serve two full terms. He is also the only one not to have appointed Dick Cheney to office.
This pattern of misplaced confidence in Cheney, followed by disastrous results, runs throughout his life -- from his days as a dropout at Yale to the geopolitical chaos he has helped create in Baghdad. Once you get to know his history, the cycle becomes clear: First, Cheney impresses someone rich or powerful, who causes unearned wealth and power to be conferred on him. Then, when things go wrong, he blames others and moves on to a new situation even more advantageous to himself.

"Cheney's manner and authority of voice far outstrip his true abilities," says Chas Freeman, who served under Bush's father as ambassador to Saudi Arabia. "It was clear from the start that Bush required adult supervision -- but it turns out Cheney has even worse instincts. He does not understand that when you act recklessly, your mistakes will come back and bite you on the ass."

Cheney's record of mistakes begins in 1959, when Tom Stroock, a Republican politician-businessman in Casper, Wyoming, got Cheney, then a senior at Natrona County High School, a scholarship to Yale. "Dick was the all-American boy, in the top ten percent of his class," Stroock says. "He seemed a natural." But instead of triumphing, Cheney failed. "He spent his time partying with guys who loved football but weren't varsity quality," recalls Stephen Billings, an Episcopalian minister who roomed with him during Cheney's freshman (and only full) year at Yale. "His idea was, you didn't need to master the material," says his other roommate, Jacob Plotkin. "He passed one psych course without attending class or studying, and he was proud of that. But there are some things you can't bluff, and Dick reached a point where you couldn't recover."

Cheney might have been flunking in the classroom, but he excelled at making connections. "Dick always had this very calm way of talking," recalls Plotkin, now a retired math professor at Michigan State University. "His thoughtful manner impressed people." Forty years before the son of a U.S. president picked Cheney to be his running mate, the son of a Massachusetts governor picked him to be his sophomore-year roommate. Mark Furcolo, whose father, Foster, had been elected governor as a Democrat, invited Cheney to Cape Cod for a visit. "Dick came back enraptured," Plotkin says. "He was fascinated by the official state cars and planes. The trappings of it got him."

CONTINUED...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6450422?rnd=1129297117734&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.857

...which may not be all that bad for the good guys, wot?

[Octafish]

89. John Dean's Letter to Karl Rove (2002)

Thanks for the heads-up, wiggs! I've been reading and following what the guy's had to say for a long time. For those new to Mr. Dean's thoughts:

Letter to Karl Rove

By John Dean
Mr. Dean served as White House Counsel to President Richard Nixon.


Mr. Karl Rove
Senior Advisor to the President
Office of Political Affairs,
Office of Public Liaison, and
Office of Strategic Initiatives
The White House
Washington, DC 20016

Dear Karl:

Based on news accounts, I understand that you are a presidential history buff. According to The New York Times, not only have you been giving your boss history books to read (Edmund Morris's Theodore Rex), but you also called in a group of presidential historians for pretzels and conversation.

Like you, my former boss Richard Nixon was a history buff. Over the years he'd closely studied many of the men who preceded him to The White House. He was particularly interested in the presidencies of those who were widely considered by presidential scholars to be "great" or "near great." These, of course, include Lincoln, FDR, Washington, Jefferson, TR, Wilson, Jackson and one president whose presence on the list always annoyed Nixon: Truman. But Nixon read about other presidents as well.

For instance, the last book I know that Nixon read was John F. Kennedy's Thirteen Great Mistakes in the White House by Malcolm E. Smith. It came up in a conversation. The President was explaining why he had no problem with his chief of staff turning the FBI loose on newsman Dan Schorr, trying to shake up Schorr a bit: Schorr was writing tough stories about Nixon.

When the unshakable Schorr learned that he was being investigated, and wanted to know why, he was simply lied to - a dirty deed done by your boss's pal Fred Malek, who told Schorr he was being considered for a job in the Nixon Administration.

Nixon compared this skullduggery with the conduct towards reporters of the Kennedy White House. "In the Kennedy case, they got three reporters the hell out of bed and said we want to know where, what is the source of your, ah, what is the source of your , uh, (brief pause) it is --," he said, but didn't finish the thought. "You can get it in a little book called Kennedy's Thirteen Mistakes by Malcolm Smith, Jr. and, there's a chapter on this on this policy. It's a fascinating little story, don't you forget it," he instructed.

CONTINUED...

http://historynewsnetwork.org/articles/article.html?id=795

More Secret Government links from Democrats.com:

http://archive.democrats.com/preview.cfm?term=Secret%20Government

[earth mom]

50. Kicked & Recommended!

:kick:

[Octafish]

90. Chokrane, TheGoldenRule!

Much appreciate you giving a damn about the United States of America.

http://www.allscreensaver.com/thumbnail/4th-Of-July-(Fourth-Of-July)-Screensaver-0344.jpg

OTOFH: These shadow government people are absolutely un-American.

Monday, February 23, 2004.

Government from the Shadows: Neocons thwarting Democracy

Deployed "on the fly" in the first hours of turmoil on Sept. 11, one participant said, the shadow government has evolved into an indefinite precaution.

In the current issue of Atlantic Monthly (March 04) James Mann has written an article called "The Armageddon Plan" which
tells about the involvement of both Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in a clandestine plan to ensure "continuity of government" in case of a nuclear attack hatched by the Reagan Administration.

Cheney and Rumsfeld, both partisans of the 1976 "Team B" effort to thwart approved intelligence were in the position
to know that a Soviet attack on the US was not a reality based threat assessment. Yet then Congressman Cheney and Rumsfeld, CEO of Searle, not even then a part of elected US government, were principle actors in a Reagan plan that would circumvent Constitutional lines of Presidential succession while leaving elected Congress out of the equation entirely.

Iran/Contra criminal Oliver North was a part of this secret project. He was also at this time involved in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) planning that brought the disaster relief agency formed under President Carter into a new role: what was called "Civil Defense"planning.

They included executive orders providing for suspension of the constitution, the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and the turning over of government to the president and FEMA.

The above quote is from the Sydney Morning Herald. I hope to touch on this in another post, which may take a few days..
I find it very alarming to see a continuity of neoconservatives influencing government policy in ways that seem highly anti-democratic. Neoconservatives that are now in the highest posts of our government. That you see and hear on the airwaves, in the daily paper. People we need to learn about, whose "track records" need to be made familiar to every American.

It is as if "We the People" are left in the dark by the media that should serve as with the key information we need to form an informed electorate. But back to the case in hand.

The order of Presidential Succession runs like this, I'll offer the names of the present administrators, offering a partial listing, the "Top Ten".

1. Vice President of the United States - Dick Cheney
2. Speaker of the House - Denny Hastert
3. President pro Tempore of the Senate - Ted Stevens
4. Secretary of State - Colin Powell
5. Secretary of the Treasury - John Snow
6. Secretary of Defense - Donald Rumsfeld
7. Attorney General - John Ashcroft
8.Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton
9.Secretary of Agriculture Ann M. Veneman
10.Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans

As Mann relates the Reagan Administration fear was that the USSR would attempt to enact the same nuclear strategy that the US was planning; that is to "decapitate" the Russian civilian and military leadership through nuclear strikes targeting officials and their lines of communication. To prevent this end in America three teams were set up that included Cabinet officials and folks like Cheney and Rumsfeld who had high level executive branch experience and ideally a connection to the national security apparatus as well. James Woolsey, PNAC signer and later director of the CIA was a team leader at one point. The Cabinet members would be figureheads in the public eye, issueing orders as "President" while defering to the more experienced chief of staff in the background.

CONTINUED...

http://amsam.org/2004/02/government-from-shadows-neocons.html

Lots o' Links 'n' American Samizdat sources:

http://www.drmenlo.com/samizdat/2004_02_22_archive.html#107759626630801718

[oasis]

51. kick

[Octafish]

91. Dankon, oasis! Here's a Secret Hope, courtesy of Tom Tomorrow...

For our country, thanks for giving a damn, oasis!

A belated esperanto thanks, too, from me.

[dbeach]

52. I AM LIKE U

"If you’re like me"

Face it the bushies did it.

fasten seat belstand prepare for the wildest ride in US History

rover//libby all will be singing the "Midnite Special' as they be "breaking rocks in the hot sun..they fought the law and the law won"

Round and round it goes where it stops nobody knows..

To be able to say bush jr/sauron cheny indicted and know its reality..

such is the stuff of dreams

[Octafish]

93. Hey, dbeach! I am like You! For those who wonder about us, think PNAC!

Thanks for giving a damn about the United States, its Constitution and We the People.



To live the dream, we've got to keep spreading the news:

How We Got Into This Imperial Pickle:
A PNAC Primer

Bernard Weiner
Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers
May 26, 2003

EXCERPT...

The Origins of the Crisis

Most of us Americans saw the end of the Cold War as a harbinger of a more peaceful globe, and we relaxed knowing that the communist world was no longer a threat to the U.S. The Soviet Union, our partner in MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) and Cold War rivalry around the globe, was no more. This meant a partial vacuum in international affairs. Nature abhors a vacuum.

The only major vacuum-filler still standing after the Cold War was the United States. One could continue traditional diplomacy on behalf of American ends -- the kind of polite, well-disguised defense of U.S. interests (largely corporate) and imperial ambition carried out under Bush#1, Reagan, Clinton, et al. -- knowing that we'd mostly get our way eventually given our status as the globe's only Superpower. Or one could try to speed up the process and accomplish those same ends overtly -- with an attitude of arrogance and in-your-face bullying -- within maybe one or two Republican administrations.

Some of the ideological roots of today's Bush Administration power-wielders could be traced back to political philosophers Leo Strauss and Albert Wohlstetter or to GOP rightist Barry Goldwater and his rabid anti-communist followers in the early-1960s. But, for simplicity's sake let's stick closer to our own time.

In the early-1990s, there was a group of ideologues and power-politicians on the fringe of the Republican Party's far-right. The members of this group in 1997 would found The Project for the New American Century (PNAC); their aim was to prepare for the day when the Republicans regained control of the White House -- and, it was hoped, the other two branches of government as well -- so that their vision of how the U.S. should move in the world would be in place and ready to go, straight off-the-shelf into official policy.

This PNAC group was led by such heavy hitters as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, James Woolsey, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, James Bolton, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, William Bennett, Dan Quayle, Jeb Bush, most of whom were movers-and-shakers in previous Administrations, then in power-exile, as it were, while Clinton was in the White House. But even given their reputations and clout, the views of this group were regarded as too extreme to be taken seriously by the mainstream conservatives that controlled the Republican Party.

CONTINUED...

http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/PNAC-Primer.htm

An "Imperial Pickle" requires a Chimperror:

[The Wielding Truth]

57. Octafish, when do you think the rest of America

will no longer tolerate the betrayal? Can you see them turning? The evidence just keeps accumulating. Maybe soon they won't be able to see around it. You think it will be soon?
I guess it's allot like any dictator. He has his inner circle, his henchmen, his press controllers. Then once in awhile he has to appease someone or group to further his big plan.Sick and slimy.
Thanks for the great post.Keep showing the truth.

[Octafish]

96. It's happening, The Wielding Truth! 'Support Our Props!'

Smirko's staged popularity is becoming more and more evident. And it's a top-down thing. Like when America saw Bush playing guitar like a neocon Nero while New Orleans drowned, consider the exchange with the officers and non-coms in Iraq -- the Pentagon's top brass were the ones who made the feed available to the networks that demonstrated how Baby Doc Bush was willing to use the troops as stage extras for a media opportunity.

Support Our Props

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on Fri, 10/14/2005 - 15:07.
Topics: Iraq | U.S. government

Standing in for President Bush, Allison Barber rehearses soldiers prior to their appearance on TV. Source: ABC News video
The biggest surprise for me about the furor following President Bush's recent staged TV event with U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq was the media's newfound willingness to expose the facade. Bush has been conducting similar staged events for years now, and he rarely gets called on them.

Bush's teleconference with soldiers outraged Paul Rieckhoff, the Iraq war veteran who organized Operation Truth. Rieckhoff wrote a devastating critique of the event:

This thing was not just staged, it was superstaged. In a disgusting display, the President again used our troops as political props in an event so scripted that it basically turned into a conversation with himself. I wish the White House had put this much effort into post-war planning when my platoon hit Baghdad. ....
When I was an Infantry Platoon leader in Iraq, I was interviewed by CBS 60 Minutes. As the tape was rolling, my commanding officer stood behind the camera carefully listening to my every word with his arms crossed. I knew it wouldn’t be fun for me if I strayed from the prescribed talking points. That incident was one of the motivating factors that led me to create Operation Truth--an organization that truly represents the candid voice of our troops and Veterans. The voices we heard today were neither candid nor representative. ... It was a shameful and misguided use of our military. The Commander in Chief has no right to use America’s sons and daughters as a defibrillator for his ailing Presidency.

In this case, though, the flacks weren't just standing behind the soldiers and overseeing what they said. As Ward Harkavy pointed out in the Village Voice, one of the soldiers who appeared on TV with Bush was a flack herself -- Master Sgt. Corine Lombardo, who works in public affairs for the military as spokesperson to the media. Lombardo's role as a PR person was not disclosed to viewers as she participated in what appeared to be a "spontaneous conversation" with the president:

CONTINUED...

http://www.prwatch.org/node/4073

You're welcome for the post and thanks for the kind words, The Wielding Truth! Thanks also for giving a damn about the country and where the Bush Gang WAS taking it.

[Junkdrawer]

61. Reading "Prelude to Terror" right now...

And I'm wondering if the Saudis and their Petro-Dollars aren't a big part of the equation.

Funny how in the early to mid 70s, just when Congress cut funding for the rogue CIA, the Saudis suddenly become expert at organizing OPEC and then go on to found the biggest intelligence service in the middle east. :tinfoilhat:

[Octafish]

97. Hey, Junkdrawer! Good book! 15 of 19 hijackers were Saudi.

Joseph Trento absolutely pegs the connection between US Intel -- meaning Shackley and Bush's secret team -- and the Safari Club -- meaning petrobigbucks. Trento explains how the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was used to finance terror, launder drug money and build the Pakistani H-bomb.

The other players at their "level" are the Mossad, ex-KGB/GRU and the Mafia. They've probably done a pretty good job of blackmailing Poppy Doc and Baby Doc Bush.

Interesting connection in this area: All these groups are hell-bent on world domination. The arch-conservative movement ties them together. This is embodied in the offices of Grover Norquist and Jack Abramoff. The former handles the Islamic accounts and the latter the Israeli accounts. Norquist has been tied to the Islamic terror financing network. Abramoff has been tied to a mob murder in Florida. Both report to Bushler.

[Junkdrawer]

110. Imagine how much power is connected with the Saudi Petro-Bucks...

the ability to buy enough shares of even the largest companies and control their boards. Even media companies. Especially media companies.

And all that because the Saudis were able to maintain the effectiveness of OPEC. Now, here's a little history piece from USC Davis:

http://www.geology.ucdavis.edu/~cowen/~GEL115/115CH13oil.html

Some interesting clips:

By the end of World War I the central place of petroleum in world strategy had become obvious, and the dramatic thirst of military operations had led to fears that there would be a global oil shortage, and to quick appreciation of the profits to be made in such circumstances. American companies, who had been unwilling to explore abroad when vast oilfields were being discovered at home in Texas and California, began to look overseas, and the American government began to use considerable political and economic pressure to try to force American companies into the European-dominated consortia in the Middle East. However, new fields came on line in the 1920s, and the big companies were soon worrying instead about an oil glut. By 1928 there were negotiations between BP, Shell, and Exxon in a Scottish castle, and the so-called Achnacarry Agreement set out working principles to avoid competition at the marketing end of the oil industry. The agreement specifically excluded the US market because of its powerful anti-trust legislation, but there is no question that the companies had no intention of serious competition there if they could hammer out an agreement for the rest of the world.

The Economist of London praised the Achnacarry Agreement as "an example of the effectiveness of international cooperation in oil marketing." The Economist was pleased with the "stability" of the prices of oil and gasoline, but it's not clear whether the articles was written with the seller or the consumer in mind. Mobil, Gulf, and Texaco had joined the three founder companies by 1932, to make six. The results for producers were very rewarding: stable (but higher) prices gouged the consumer for decades, and "pirates" were dealt with summarily whenever possible.

With the Achnacarry Agreement in hand, each large company could feel that it would be able to negotiate a market share for its oil without seeing petroleum prices crash. The stage was now set for serious prospecting, and for staking out major oilfields, even though every company could see that it would not be in a position to pump all the oil that it found. After 1928, therefore, the era of the great Middle East oil strikes began, though Middle East production remained low.

But the most creative way for the majors to maximize their global profits and to satisfy the producer nations at the same time was to take advantage of tax legislation in the United States on "foreign tax credits." Suppose that Exxon pumped oil in Slobbovia, and paid tax at 35% on its operations there, at a time when company tax rate was only 15%. The foreign tax credit specified that Exxon could calculate the "extra tax" of 20% it had paid the Slobbovian Government, and could deduct that amount from its tax bill in the United States. As critics pointed out, this essentially involved the American tax payer in a direct subsidy to the Slobbovian government, except that the check was written on the American taxpayer by Exxon. All the majors used this tax avoidance scheme from the early 1950s, and it helped to maximize their profits.

How? Surely they were paying the same tax bill, even though the US taxpayer received a smaller amount than before? The trick used by the companies was to have the producer nation increase its tax rate instead of its royalty rate. If the Saudis had pressed for increased royalties, the companies could have deducted that expense only from their profits. Because the Saudis (who didn't care where the money came from) took their cut in taxes, the companies could deduct the same amount, not from their profits, but from their US tax bill. Careful calculation and negotiation between the companies and the producer countries could allow the companies to gain the maximum benefit by manipulating this tax loophole.

The US National Security Council was involved with the US Treasury in promoting this scheme, even though it meant a major shortfall in the US government's tax revenue. Tax lawyers were even sent by the US Treasury to Saudi Arabia in 1950 to help that country formulate the necessary company tax laws to start the scheme. In 1951 the Kuwait contract was revised in the same way; Iranian taxes on the new Iran consortium were set up in the same way in 1954; and the pipelines through Lebanon were taxed in 1956.

And so we have the major oil companies with a history of using foreign cartels to evade US Anti-Trust laws, and the Saudis who have a record of working hand and glove with the same oil companies to avoid US taxes.

[oasis]

62. Kick

[Octafish]

98. Thanks, oasis! What Trento wrote...

Here's a bit from Joseph Trento's "Prelude to Terror: The Rogue CIA and the Legacy of America's Private Intelligence Network."

Page 344-346

When George Bush became president in 1989, he did not fulfill Ted Shackley’s dream of being named DCI. Shackley’s connections to Ed Wilson and his involvement in the Iran-Contra disaster meant that the veteran spook had no chance of being confirmed as DCI. Instead, Bush reached back to one of the loyalists who had been on Jimmy Carter’s national Sedcurity Council staff at the time of the October Surprise: he named Robert Gates to replace William Webster, who had gone from the FBI to the CIA in the wake of Bill Casey’s death (May 6, 1987) and the Iran-Contra scandal. Gates, a career CIA man, was much more timid than Bill Casey and much closer to George Bush in temperament. Like Bush, Gates was very much an Agency cheerleader.

While the CIA had successfully placed numerous friendly staffers on the Congressional oversight committees, the fact that Congress was Democratically controlled still made the idea of withholding intelligence operations from Capitol Hill very appealing. For Gates, however, there was little information to withhold from Congress, since most major operations were being conducted through other intelligence services, which were paid for their work by the Agency. That meant that the CIA had no real control over these operations, and CIA money could be diverted for unauthorized activities with ease. The Afghan model was now the model being used worldwide. The intelligence community was providing almost no useful intelligence to the president, with the exception of eavesdropping and photography.

Bush had survived the Iran-Contra scandal to win the election, but the BCCI banking network was coming unglued. Complicating that problem was the savings-and-loan crisis in the United States, which was engulfing business and political friends of Bush’s, and even his own son Neil. While the BCCI time bomb was ticking away, another of Bush’s old off-the-books operations was about to blow up.

Saddam Hussein, with the full knowledge of the United States, had used chemical weapons purchased in West Germany to bring the horribly expensive Iran-Iraq War to a bitter end. The infamous 1988 attack at Al Halabja was one of many for which the United States publicly chastised Hussein but took no real action. The end of the Iran-Iraq war came by cease-fire. U.S. policymakers were thrilled with the result of the deadly stalemate. The State Department concluded: “We can legitimately assert that our post-Irangate policy has worked. The outward thrust of the Iranian revolution has been stopped. Iraq’s interests in development, modernity and regional influence should compel it in our direction. We should welcome and encourage the interest, and respond accordingly.”

The State Department, led by James Baker, was delusional in its optimism. Saddam Hussein had become embittered toward the United States and Saudi Arabia, and he remained powerful. He had fought an expensive proxy war against Iran, and the countries that benefited – the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other oil-producing Arab countries – would not even address his grievances about the artificially low price of oil and his dispute with Kuwait over hiss allegation that they were “slant-drilling” under the border into his territory. Scores of coerced business deals – such as the $500 million uniform deal with Global Consultants – had further frayed relations with the United States. But what angered Saddam more than anything else was Iran-Contra. “The idea that the United States was deliberately selling to both sides in the war destroyed all trust Saddam had,” Sarkis Soghanalian said. “Then he finds out that when Iraq seemed ready to win the war, the U.S. begins to lie to him about intelligence. At the battle of (Al) Faw, the U.S. actually gave Iraq doctored satellite photographs which did not reveal the scale of Iranian forces in the battle zone. Iraq needlessly lost thousands. Hussein felt betrayed… and he knew enough to blame Bush personally.”

More than a million people died. For what?

[bridgit]

66. The Shadow Government...

http://www.constitution.org/shad4816.htm

http://watch.pair.com/reich.html

[Octafish]

99. Bush told Blair of 'going beyond Iraq' ... to Saudi Arabia?

Great Resources, bridgit! Thanks!

BTW: Didya hear Smirko wanted to ATTACK SAUDI ARABIA after knocking off Poppy's old business buddy Saddam?

Bush told Blair of 'going beyond Iraq'

Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday October 15, 2005
The Guardian

George Bush told Tony Blair shortly before the invasion of Iraq that he intended to target other countries, including Saudi Arabia, which, he implied, planned to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Bush said he "wanted to go beyond Iraq in dealing with WMD proliferation, mentioning in particular Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan," according to a note of a telephone conversation between the two men on January 30 2003.

The note is quoted in the US edition, published next week, of Lawless World, America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules, by the British international lawyer Philippe Sands. The memo was drawn up by one of the prime minister's foreign policy advisers in Downing Street and passed to the Foreign Office, according to Mr Sands.

It is not surprising that Mr Bush referred to Iran and North Korea, or even Pakistan - at the time suspected of spreading nuclear know-how, but now one of America's closest allies in the "war on terror". What is significant is the mention of Saudi Arabia.

In Washington, the neo-cons in particular were hostile to the Saudi royal family and did not think they were doing enough to quell Islamist extremists - 15 of the 19 September 11 attackers were Saudis. But the Bush administration did not in public express concern about any Saudi nuclear ambitions.

CONTINUED...

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,11538,1592808,00.html

[bridgit]

70. shadow kick...

:kick:

[Karenina]

72. Sunshine kick!

;-)

[Octafish]

100. Thanks, Karenina! Secret Government is so un-American.

Maureen Dowd noticed.

60 Feet Under

By MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times
March 3, 2002

WASHINGTON — In a banner headline on Friday, The Washington Post blared: "Shadow Government Is at Work in Secret." The article said President Bush had assembled a cadre of officials to operate under the radar, out of the sunlight.

This is news?

The president did that on Jan. 20, 2001.

But it turns out that after Sept. 11, wanting to make sure that everything wouldn't collapse if there was a nuclear attack on Washington, he did it again. He formed a secret government within a secret government. A shadow of a shadow.

It suits this administration to a T- ball, reflecting its twin obsessions with secrecy and self-perpetuation.

CONTINUED...

http://members.aol.com/chuckaddle/Dowd1.html

I wonder why Judy Miller doesn't read her own newspaper?

[Octafish]

92. Grazi, bridgit! Didya know they like to keep Economic News SECRET?

From Manufacturing News comes evidence of government by gangsters:

Political Appointees Re-Write Commerce Department Report On Offshore Outsourcing; Original Analysis Is Missing From Final Version

BY RICHARD McCORMACK [email protected]

The Commerce Department has responded to a half-year-old request by Manufacturing and Technology News for the release a long-awaited study on the issue of "offshore outsourcing" of IT service-sector jobs and high-tech industries. But the 12-page document represented by the agency as its final report is not what was written by its analysts. Rather, it was crafted by political appointees at Commerce and at the White House, according to those familiar with it.

At an estimated cost of $335,000 -- or $28,000 per page -- the document MTN received from the Commerce Department's Technology Administration contains no original research and forsakes its initial intent of providing a balanced view of outsourcing, according to those inside and outside the agency.

The report was requested by Congress in an appropriations bill in December 2003, with a six-month deadline of June 2004. A 12-page version, entitled "Six-Month Assessment of Workforce Globalization In Certain Knowledge-Based Industries," was released on September 8, 2005, as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request that MTN had filed on March 17, 2005. The report, which carries a July 2004 date, has not been posted on the Technology Administration's Web site and is not available to the public.

According to those who have tracked the report's whereabouts, it was completed well before the November 2004 presidential election but was delayed for clearance by the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress due to the controversial nature of the subject. Outsourcing had become a contentious campaign issue, particularly in the swing states.

After the November election, a draft of the report prepared by a "braintrust" of Technology Administration analysts went into a vetting process among political appointees at the Commerce Department and White House. It never resurfaced. The analysts never received any feedback on their work, which is unusual, say those who have written similar reports.

CONTINUED...

Gee. If they keep secret news about all the jobs dissapearing overseas, is it any wonder they else they lie about by ommission?

[Kailassa]

75. Koala Kick n/t

[Octafish]

101. Thanks, Kailassa! Hey! Didya ever hear of 'The Octopus'?

The term refers to the enormous transnational criminal enterprise that moves drugs, guns, terror and all the things George Walker Bush loves.

(E: This chapter was omitted from the printed edition.)

The Octopus

"This underground empire is controlled by a handful of people for money — that's the only secret of the temple." — Investigative reporter Danny Casolaro, prior to his murder by the Octopus

EXCERPT...

After WWII, the heroin operation moved to Vietnam and Laos, then to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as the CIA embroiled itself in a covert war against the Soviets. Assistant Secretary of Defense for National Security Affairs Richard Armitage sat on the "208 Committee," which oversaw military aid to the Mujahadeen. Fazoe Haq, the governor of the Northwest Frontier Province (the largest heroin growing province in Afghanistan), who was originally worth $100,000, was suddenly was worth $200 million after the war. Armitage was his main contact.<1118>

Vince Cannistraro (Mr. "Libya done it") also sat on the 208 Committee, representing National Security Advisor Robert "Bud" McFarlane, Oliver North's supervisor.<1119>

Shortly after the start of the Afghani operation, the CIA began arming the Contras in Nicaragua. Cannistraro himself headed Casey's original operation to arm the Contras, based on Reagan's March, 1981 decision. As former Green Beret Andrew Eiva said, "Cannistraro was up to his ears by 1985." This is significant, considering the Boland Amendment, prohibiting aid to the Contras, was passed in 1984.<1120>

Some of these are the same players who moved into other Central American countries, setting up security services (death squads) for U.S.-backed dictators, and profiting handsomely from the cocaine trade.

If anyone thinks these are outrageous allegations, consider the statements of Mike Levine, one of the DEA's most highly decorated veterans: "For decades, the CIA, the Pentagon, and secret organizations like Oliver North's Enterprise have been supporting and protecting the world's biggest drug dealers," including the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, the Contras in Central America, the DFS in Mexico, the Shan United Army in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia, and "any of a score of other groups and/or individuals like Manuel Noriega. Support of these people has been secretly deemed more important than getting drugs off our streets."<1121>

Or consider the words of Lt. Col. Bo Gritz, former commander of the Special Forces in Latin America and the most decorated soldier in Vietnam. Gritz made a trip to the Golden Triangle in 1983 to search for American POWs, a mission that was ultimately stonewalled. Gritz believes the POWs are being used as drug mules, and the government doesn't want them returned alive, for fear they would expose the Octopus. As Gritz said: " would not want theAmerican POWs to come home. Because when they do, there will be an investigation as to why they were abandoned. At that time we will uncover this secret organization and its illicit drug money and financing. The Secret Team would then be exposed."<1122>

CONTINUED...

http://www.constitution.org/ocbpt/ocbpt_10.htm

Most importantly: A hearty welcome to DU, Kailassa! Lots of good DUers in Oz.

[bluedawg12]

81. in another thread: Ann KKKoulter hired by RM Scaiphe

small world and follow the money.

[Octafish]

94. The Origins of the Overclass

You got it, bluedawg12! These bastards are united by cold, hard cash and real property. Satanic, really.

Steve Kangas was a researcher who understood "Who's Who" and "What's What." He absolutely pegged Richard Mellon Scaife and the rest of the slimy turdballs. Appears that Scaife had something to do with Steve Kangas' research and death...

The Origins of the Overclass

By Steve Kangas

The wealthy have always used many methods to accumulate wealth, but it was not until the mid-1970s that these methods coalesced into a superbly organized, cohesive and efficient machine. After 1975, it became greater than the sum of its parts, a smooth flowing organization of advocacy groups, lobbyists, think tanks, conservative foundations, and PR firms that hurtled the richest 1 percent into the stratosphere.

The origins of this machine, interestingly enough, can be traced back to the CIA. This is not to say the machine is a formal CIA operation, complete with code name and signed documents. (Although such evidence may yet surface — and previously unthinkable domestic operations such as MK-ULTRA, CHAOS and MOCKINGBIRD show this to be a distinct possibility.) But what we do know already indicts the CIA strongly enough. Its principle creators were Irving Kristol, Paul Weyrich, William Simon, Richard Mellon Scaife, Frank Shakespeare, William F. Buckley, Jr., the Rockefeller family, and more. Almost all the machine's creators had CIA backgrounds.

During the 1970s, these men would take the propaganda and operational techniques they had learned in the Cold War and apply them to the Class War. Therefore it is no surprise that the American version of the machine bears an uncanny resemblance to the foreign versions designed to fight communism. The CIA's expert and comprehensive organization of the business class would succeed beyond their wildest dreams. In 1975, the richest 1 percent owned 22 percent of America’s wealth. By 1992, they would nearly double that, to 42 percent — the highest level of inequality in the 20th century.

How did this alliance start? The CIA has always recruited the nation’s elite: millionaire businessmen, Wall Street brokers, members of the national news media, and Ivy League scholars. During World War II, General "Wild Bill" Donovan became chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. Donovan recruited so exclusively from the nation’s rich and powerful that members eventually came to joke that "OSS" stood for "Oh, so social!"

Another early elite was Allen Dulles, who served as Director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961. Dulles was a senior partner at the Wall Street firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, which represented the Rockefeller empire and other mammoth trusts, corporations and cartels. He was also a board member of the J. Henry Schroeder Bank, with offices in Wall Street, London, Zurich and Hamburg. His financial interests across the world would become a conflict of interest when he became head of the CIA. Like Donavan, he would recruit exclusively from society’s elite.

CONTINUED...

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-overclass.html

Mr. Kangas was found in a bathroom stall in Scaif's Pittsburgh office building, dead from a gunshot wound to the head. "A suicide," the authorities ruled.

[texpatriot2004]

86. kick it n/t

[Octafish]

102. Thanks, texpatriot2004! Hey, remember Operation TAILWIND?

CNN broadcast a report on how the USA used nerve gas in Laos in order to knock off American defectors. Like with Gary Webb and "Dark Alliance" about CIA-connected drug dealing, CNN withdrew its story. The journalists involved became pariahs.

CNN's "Tailwind" and Selective Media Retractions

By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon

CNN's recent retraction of its "Valley of Death" story might suggest that American journalism maintains high standards for military or intelligence-related reporting--and sets the record straight when those standards aren't met.

In July, CNN (and corporate sibling Time) retracted reports that U.S. special forces operating illegally in Laos in 1970 had used nerve gas as part of "Operation Tailwind," which targeted American defectors.

Based on months of research and interviews conducted primarily by CNN producer April Oliver, along with senior producer Jack Smith (with correspondent Peter Arnett used mainly for star power and "marketing purposes"), the reports contained on-air, on-the-record comments from several Tailwind participants to the effect that sarin nerve gas was used and that U.S. defectors were killed (CNN Newsstand, 6/7/98, 6/14/98; see also CNN Talkback Live, 6/8/98). But CNN’s presentation of the evidence was marred by overreaching--with inadequate time given to Tailwind veterans and experts who disputed the conclusion that sarin had been used.

Producers Oliver and Smith have defended their work by pointing out that their report needed a full hour for a complete, nuanced presentation (CNN higher-ups refused, according to Oliver, saying the network was "not in the business of doing documentaries anymore"), that even their 18-minute report did include doubters and that it was top CNN executives in the final edit who deleted a comment by a Tailwind pilot that tear gas, not nerve gas, had been deployed.

Soon after the report aired, CNN management began retreating in the face of immense pressure--first from the military establishment, including Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and former CIA chief Richard Helms, and then from a media establishment more inclined to rally around the military than to explore the U.S. government’s secret war in Laos. With CNN producers muzzled by management for several weeks, the media "debate" overlooked evidence from journalists and Vietnam veterans that U.S. defectors were indeed targeted during the Vietnam War. Even the comment made by former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird (Associated Press, 6/9/98) that the U.S. had sent nerve gas to Vietnam in 1967 was quickly forgotten.

CONTINUED...

http://www.fair.org/extra/9808/tailwind.html

Those who think Uncle Sam wouldn't allow this are right. We the People -- the real Uncle Sam -- would not. The Secret Government, however, would. Consider the government's secret radiation experiments on American children...

[texpatriot2004]

109. Wow. No, I didn't remember but that's interesting. You are right

that "we the people" are the Real Uncle Sam.

I wonder if we aren't in Syria just like we weren't in Cambodia?

[Jose Diablo]

95. We, in the reality based world need to get ahead of these guys

There is ample evidence that Bu$h and his cronies are at a minimum, fascists, and probably nazis if they are allowed to continue with their plans.

But what are their future plans? The only way to thwart these people is to get ahead of them so we are not left studying what they have done as an exersize. If they continue be the players and we the watchers the reality of the nazis will become reality once again in this world.

We need to also become players and get ahead of them before they can hatch their plans.

[Octafish]

104. Information. Information. Information.

The free-flow of ideas is so important for the success of a free country, this nation's Founders put it in the Constitution. The First Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

In fact, there's only one business mentioned in the entire Constitution -- the press.

What Robert Parry said on the subject:

The Left's Media Miscalculation

By Robert Parry
April 29, 2005

To understand how the United States got into today’s political predicament – where even fundamental principles like the separation of church and state are under attack – one has to look back at strategic choices made by the Right and the Left three decades ago.

SNIP...

Conservatives felt out-muscled on a wide range of public-policy fronts, blaming the media not only for the twin debacles of Watergate and Vietnam but also for contributing to the Right’s defeat on issues such as civil rights and the environment

Fateful Choices

At this key juncture, leaders of the Right and the Left made fateful choices that have shaped today’s political world. Though both sides had access to similar amounts of money from wealthy individuals and like-minded foundations, the two sides chose to invest that money in very different ways.

The Right concentrated on gaining control of the information flows in Washington and on building a media infrastructure that would put out a consistent conservative message across the country. As part of this strategy, the Right also funded attack groups to target mainstream journalists who got in the way of the conservative agenda.

The Left largely forsook media in favor of “grassroots organizing.” As many of the Left’s flagship media outlets foundered, the “progressive community” reorganized under the slogan – “think globally, act locally” – and increasingly put its available money into well-intentioned projects, such as buying endangered wetlands or feeding the poor.

So, while the Right waged what it called “the war of ideas” and expanded the reach of conservative media to every corner of the nation, the Left trusted that local political action would reenergize American democracy.

Some wealthy progressives also apparently bought into the conservative notion of a “liberal bias” in the media and thus saw no real need to invest significantly in information or to defend embattled journalists under conservative attack. After all, over the years, many mainstream journalists did appear allied with liberal priorities.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/042805.html

What we need to do is spread the word and light a fire under those who don't know. From person-to-person, from person-to-medium, from medium-to-media. It's up to people who give a damn. Thanks for being one of those, Jose Diablo.

[G_j]

103. kICk

:yourock:

[Octafish]

107. Thanks, G_j! What you said! Remember 'Project P.U.L.L.'?

Some animals are more equal than others. Smirko McCokespoon did community service for something serious. Joe Sixpack does something that bad, they go to jail or end up sleeping with the fishes.

Saturday, September 11, 2004

I've said it before, but apparently it is worth saying it again:

Rove is on his game here. By holding back the military records he has made the military records the issue, and has managed to divert the media from the real issue, which is the community service. If those legal files ever get out, showing that Bush was convicted of a serious drug offence, his political career will be finished. The real reason that Bush went AWOL was that he couldn't afford to take a drug test. The real reason he couldn't afford to take a drug test was that it would have been a condition of his sentencing that he remain clean. If word of the failed drug test had filtered back to the court, he would have gone to jail. His fear of the criminal legal consequences is why he went AWOL, and that's why the community service is the key to understanding what is going on here. By concentrating on the military records, the media is walking right into Rove's trap.

At some point the Democrats are going to have to get it through their thick heads that Bush's shoddy military record is not a winning issue for them. Bush's supporters have digested the fact that Bush had help from high places in his short military career, and can live with it. What they can't accept is the fact that Kerry came back to campaign against the war, and thus, as far as the Bush supporters are concerned, committed Hanoi-Jane-style treason against the United States. Every time the Democrats bring up Bush's war record, it just reminds Bush supporters that Kerry is a traitor. The details of Bush's service, or lack thereof, will always be buried in the selective releases of laundered records released by the White House and the Pentagon (isn't amazing how each release is described as all the documents, only to be followed by more releases when specific new points require a response?). Those who want to believe in Bush will always be able to fool themselves into believing what they want to believe. At this point, with many documents available, and the new allegations of forgery from Bush's true believers, undecided voters will just throw up their hands in disgust at the whole issue. If Democrats want to win, the only way they can do it is to get information on what happened in that Texas court room in 1972. The person brave enough to do this would be on an a suicide mission, as Rove and Cheney would have him or her killed (a 'suicide' consisting of three shotgun blasts to the head). There is also an ethical issue involved, as anyone who talks to the suicidal investigator would also be killed. Nevertheless, the drug conviction issue is the only thing that will register with the American electorate. Do the Democrats really want to win, or are they just going through the motions again?

-- Xymphora

SOURCE:

http://www.serendipity.li/bush/xymphora01.htm

Hello? What's the frequency, Kenneth?



Thanks for giving a damn, G_j!

[AntiFascist]

105. Watching Moyer's old documentary on the Secret Government....

is a valuable history lesson. How one of the first actions of the CIA was to overthrow Iran's democratic (parliamentary) government, once they decided to nationalize their oil fields, and to install a dictator and his secret police which was used to torture enemies. The resurgence of the Shia was a direct reaction to this together with their anti-American attitude. This is a problem we are still paying for, and one that we still don't understand.

[Octafish]

106. Catch Moyers' 'Secret Government' documentary online...Operation AJAX.

Hey, AntiFascist! Moyers' doc was put together in the days when PBS actually ran real documentaries. Remember how ticked off the conservatives got when PBS ran the "October Surprise" Frontline? Geez. They had to buy the company.

The Secret Government

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3281.htm

They don't believe in democracy, witness Operation AJAX.

Some of the secret government's work regarding CIA and Iran:

We Had a Democracy Once, But You Crushed It

by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
 
In Thursday's Washington Post, Condoleeza Rice, the President's National Security Advisor, writes the following:

"Our task is to work with those in the Middle East who seek progress toward greater democracy, tolerance, prosperity and freedom. As President Bush said in February, ‘The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life.'"

Now, if we only had a nickel for every time Bush, or Rice, or Colin Powell, or Paul Wolfowitz or Dick Cheney or Richard Perle or Donald Rumsfeld talked about bringing democracy to the Middle East.

Talk, talk, talk.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0810-06.htm

An interview with an eyewitness:

Long ago

Interview with Barbara Waller, widow of Operation AJAX man in 1953

Fariba Amini
May 19, 2005
iranian.com

“When Mossadegh and Persia started basic reforms, we became alarmed, we united with the British to destroy him; we succeeded; and ever since, our name has not been an honored one in the Middle East.”
- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

“So this is how we get rid of that madman Mossadegh!”
- Secretary of State John Foster Dulles referring to a copy of the CIA plan for the overthrow of the Mossadegh government

“Waller was stationed in Iran during World War II, working for the OSS, the CIA's predecessor. A good description of OSS activity in Iran is in Donald Wilber's book Excursions and Incursions. He then joined the CIA after WW II was stationed in Iran most of the time until about October 1952, when he came back to Washington to head the CIA's Iran operations desk. In this capacity, he ran AJAX from Washington in August 1953. He later went on to serve in very top posts in the CIA and, I believe, headed its retirees' organization, the Association of Foreign Intelligence Officers. He also wrote a few books. I found him to be a strong Cold Warrior but politically very liberal -- very much in the John Kennedy mold.”
- Mark Gasiorowski, professor of political science at Louisiana State University and author of ‘Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran’

SOURCE:

http://www.iranian.com/FaribaAmini/2005/May/Mossadegh/

Here's a review of what sounds like a truly great read:

Harvard Human Rights Journal

Copyright © 2004 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.

By Stephen Kinzer. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003. Pp.258. $24.95, paper.


Any analysis of America’s position in the Middle East would be incomplete without a thorough understanding of the U.S. role in overthrowing Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected and revered Prime Minister who nationalized Iran’s oil. In All The Shah’s Men, Stephen Kinzer revisits Operation Ajax, the 1953 CIA-sponsored coup that ousted Mossadegh and returned the Shah to power. Though not forgotten in Iran, the 1953 coup has sadly faded from memory in the United States. It is, therefore, refreshing and timely for Kinzer to provide a highly readable account of America’s first intervention in Middle Eastern affairs, a coup d'état that may be at the root of the terrorist threats America faces today. This book implicitly argues that the Eisenhower administration’s Cold War mentality caused an error in judgment with tremendously negative long-term ramifications for U.S. policy.

Kinzer begins his exciting narrative with the CIA’s initial failure to depose Dr. Mossadegh. Concerned with Mossadegh’s willingness to tolerate communists, the CIA dispatched Kermit Roosevelt (Theodore Roosevelt’s grandson) to Iran to destabilize the government and to replace the Prime Minister with a leader more acceptable to the Americans and British. Roosevelt’s original plan was to arrest Mossadegh using quasi-legal royal decrees and to appoint royalist General Zahedi in his place. When the plans were secretly leaked, the Shah escaped, and all hopes of ousting Mossadegh seemed lost. In a matter of days, however, Roosevelt tried again, and this time, he was successful.

Before recounting how Roosevelt’s second coup succeeded in overthrowing the democratic government in Tehran, Kinzer provides readers with a quick overview of the history of ancient Persia and modern Iran. In addition, he discusses the role of Islam in Iranian history and pays particular attention to the Shiite Muslim tradition. He focuses primarily on two themes: the historical Iranian desire for just leadership culminating in Iran’s Constitutional Revolution in the early 1900s and the tragic Iranian outlook rooted in the Shiite belief in martyrdom. Kinzer argues that this tradition gave rise to Dr. Mossadegh, a fierce believer in democracy and Iran’s national sovereignty. Predictably these beliefs placed Mossadegh in direct odds with the highly profitable British oil business that operated in Iran according to the inequitable terms agreed to by Iranian monarchs. The concessions leading to the formation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) effectively permitted the British to siphon all oil profits out of Iran, to treat Iranian workers as second-class citizens, and to refuse Iranians the opportunity to audit AIOC’s books.

Dr. Mossadegh nationalized Iranian oil in 1951 to wide acclaim. He was immensely popular at home and tremendously respected abroad, so much so that he was chosen Time’s “Man of The Year.” Kinzer argues that until Eisenhower’s election to the White House in 1952, American and British approaches to the nationalization of Iranian oil remained widely divergent. He quotes numerous American foreign policy figures expressing disdain for British colonialism and sympathy for the Iranian cause. In fact, Kinzer cites President Truman’s correspondence with Churchill in which he urged the British leader to respect Iranian nationalism. Failure to accommodate Iran’s nationalist aspirations, Truman warned, would allow the Soviets to control this strategically situated country.

Eisenhower’s election reversed this foreign policy approach, bringing the United States much closer to Britain. The rigidly polarized worldview of John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen Dulles, both high-ranking figures in the Eisenhower administration, allowed the British to enlist American support for the coup. The British, according to Kinzer, merely reformulated their predominantly colonial grievance with Iran using the prevalent Cold War discourse. The Dulles brothers accepted the British argument that Mossadegh was too soft on communists and that the Tudeh (the pro-Soviet Communist party) may soon control Iran. Thus, the CIA backed Operation Ajax and allowed Kermit Roosevelt to ally himself with figures as diverse as the Shah, General Zahedi, Ayatollah Kashani, and local gang-leader Shaban Jafari in order to overthrow Mossadegh. Kinzer superbly describes the chaotic atmosphere in Tehran in August 1953 when Mossadegh was finally driven from power.

CONTINUED...

http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss17/booknotes-All.shtml

If this secret government doesn't like democracy abroad, what makes people think they like democracy at home?

[AntiFascist]

108. This sounds like an excellent book....

and should be required reading at any "liberal" institution where students want to know about the true origins of terror: how terror arose from the U.S. secret government destroying democracy in the Middle East and replacing it with truly imperialistic control of their oil. This will become an important struggle for capitalism: should natural resources be controlled by the globalist few?

[Just Me]

111. I'll have to get several copies,...and spread them around.

These are the kind of ideologues who ruin all chances for co-existence because they believe in chaos and destruction. Why? Because they are able to advantage themselves via a dysfunctional and violent environment,...they profit off division and death. They are seriously sick human scum. They are a cancer on humanity.