The Ruthless Truth blog

 

Last updated: 03/19/2010 14:21:43

UK has 5,700 "secret agents" –Britain employs more than 2,200 spies to ‘protect the country’ against terrorism and the threat from foreign enemies, it has been disclosed. 18 Mar 2010 It is the first time that the number of foreign intelligence gathering officers employed by MI6, also known as the Secret Intelligence Service, has been published. The figure was disclosed yesterday in the annual report of the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. According to the ISC’s report, there are now 2,252 MI6 officers and it aims to increase that to 2,527 this year.

Links with torture countries to go on 18 Mar 2010 Britain must continue to work with international intelligence agencies in the fight against terrorism even if they are not commited to UK standards on the abuse or torture of detainees, the Foreign Office has warned. In its annual report on human rights around the world published last night, the Foreign Office said the UK could not afford the "luxury" of co-operating only with agencies in countries which do not share UK standards on human rights.

MI5 and MI6 have to deal with torturers, government says –The security services "cannot afford the luxury" of dealing only with countries which respect human rights, the government has said. 17 Mar 2010 A report by the Foreign Office said the government could not "reduce the risk to zero" of torture or mistreatment at the hands of foreign powers but had to use intelligence gained from such methods to save British lives. [?!?] The department’s annual report on human rights said the Government has been "absolutely clear that the UK stands firmly against torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment." But it added: "We cannot always have that same level of assurance when [prisoners] are held overseas by foreign governments."

Russians Give Message to U.S. Generals in Afghanistan: Bribe the Taliban –Minutes of Secret Meeting Between Russian Veterans and Gen. Stanley McChrystal Also Say ‘More Troops Won’t Make a Difference’ 18 Mar 2010 Two Russian veterans of the Soviet Afghan war privately warned Gen. Stanley McChrystal last summer that the key to winning the war would be to pay off the Taliban. The official who wrote a summary of two meetings between the Russians and U.S. military commanders also wrote that one of the "key take-aways" from the meetings was that extra troops were not the key to victory. ABCNews.com has obtained a document summarizing the discussions between two veterans of the Soviet Union’s failed Afghan war and McChrystal, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, during an August 2009 video teleconference. [USociopaths are already doing that. See: US to pay Taliban fighters to 'lay down their arms' 23 Jan 2010.]

Defense official says Afghan ‘track and kill’ program was authorized 19 Mar 2010 Michael D. Furlong, the senior Defense Department employee under investigation for allegedly running an unauthorized intelligence-gathering [and track and kill] operation in Afghanistan, says his now-suspended program was fully authorized by top U.S. military commanders. According to Furlong, the program, which began in late 2008, was requested by Army Gen. David D. McKiernan, the former top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and approved by the U.S. Central Command.

Taliban rises again in Kunduz, forcing more U.S. troops toward north 18 Mar 2010 The past year has brought such a dramatic Taliban comeback in Kunduz that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, is planning to shift some of the ongoing troop reinforcements to the north of the country, the first significant U.S. deployment to the region since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, U.S. officials say.

Israeli soldiers arrest five Palestinian children 19 Mar 2010 Israeli soldiers detain five Palestinian children in the West Bank city of Hebron (al-Khalil) after clashes break out. The soldiers claim that the children were pelting stones at a building inside the Beit Romano settlement on Thursday during clashes in the West Bank city of al-Khalil. But the parents of the arrested children complain that "the children were playing football in front of their house when suddenly the soldiers came and arrested them."

Heads up! USociopaths are trolling for Yemen’s oil. Yemen preacher urges jihad on United States 18 Mar 2010 A U.S.-born radical cleric linked to shootings at a U.S. army base and the failed bombing of a U.S. plane appeared to urge Muslims to conduct a jihad against the United States in an audiotape heard on Thursday. U.S. counterterrorism officials said in late February they were considering adding Anwar al-Awlaki to the U.S. target list to kill or capture top militants if he appeared to pose a direct security threat. He is believed to be living in southern Yemen.

Pentagon Adds WilkiLeaks to Its Enemies List 17 Mar 2010 To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret. The Pentagon assessed the danger WikiLeaks.org posed to the Army in a report marked "unauthorized disclosure subject to criminal sanctions." It concluded that "WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army" — or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.

Gay Dutch soldiers responsible for Srebrenica massacre says US general 19 Mar 2010 A Former American general [whackjob] blamed "open homosexuality" in the Dutch army for the failure to prevent the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. The Dutch government condemned the comments by Gen John Sheehan, a former NATO commander and senior Marine officer, as outrageous. Gen Sheehan made the remarks at a Senate hearing where he argued against plans by President Barack Obama to end a ban on allowing gays to serve openly in the US military.

Antiwar coalition fined by US government 19 Mar 2010 A US antiwar organization says it has been targeted by the government because it wants US troops to immediately return from Afghanistan and Iraq. The ANSWER Coalition, which stands for "Act Now to Stop War and End Racism," has been a staunch critic of the Bush and Obama administrations for their role in the Iraqi and Afghan war. "The government is increasingly trying to limit or eviscerate or criminalize grassroots organizing itself", said Brian Becker from the ANSWER Coalition, Reported Press TV’s Colin Campbell.

‘He is also now persona non grata in Barack Obama’s supposedly more open and transparent United States.’ U.S. Revokes Visa of Irish Anti-Renditions Activist By Jeff Kaye 16 Mar 2010 The North Carolina News Observer reports in a March 15 article that the co-founder of ShannonWatch, Edward Horgan, a well-known Irish activist and former Irish Defense Force officer, has had his 10-year, multiple-entry U.S. visa revoked without explanation. Horgan and others believe it is because of his principled stand against the U.S. use of renditions, and in particular, the use of Shannon Airport in western Ireland as a stopover for U.S. rendition flights. ShannonWatch has documented the use of the airport as a stopover for CIA rendition flights.

’9/11 panel was warned not to probe too deeply’ –Leaked confidential documents have revealed that senior officials from the former US administration had warned a 9/11 investigation panel against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks. 18 Mar 2010 In a letter obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the 9/11 Commission was refused permission to question terror suspects, with the Bush administration arguing that by doing so the panel would "cross" a "line" and obstruct the administration’s efforts to protect the nation. Citing the need to "Safeguard the national security, including protection of Americans from [their] future terrorist attacks," the government officials demanded the Commission not make further attempts at conducting a deeper probe into the September 11 terror attacks. [Right, they didn't want people to know that 9/11 was an inside job. Gibbs and DiNozzo would have had the investigation wrapped up in the first 42 minutes of 'NCIS.' Abby's mass spectrometer would reveal the explosive residue in WTC 1, 2 and 'Lucky' Larry 'the smartest thing to do is pull it' Silverstein's WTC 7 (not even hit by any planes), which was announced on the BBC as having fallen about a half hour before it actually did fall. Oops! McGee would analyze the insider trading (Pre-9/11 Put Options on Companies Hurt by Attack Indicates Foreknowledge) and have the whole kit and caboodle delivered with lots of time remaining for Tony and Ziva to do the flirt thing. I have an entire script penned. CBS: Are you interested? --LRP, (hopefully) invoking humor/sarcasm, including the script-writing comment, since those have been inquiring. It wouldn't take me long, though!]

Brown calls anti-police booby traps in Riverside County ‘urban terrorism’ 18 Mar 2010 Describing it as "urban terrorism," California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown joined with Riverside County officials Thursday in asking the public to help find those who tried at least three times to kill officers assigned to a Hemet-based gang task force. "It is incredible and even unprecedented for police officers here to be subject to terrorist attack," Brown said at a Riverside news conference. The attacks have involved booby traps aimed at either the headquarters of the Hemet-San Jacinto Gang Task Force or officers assigned to the unit, officials said.

Obama effigy hung at RI school with fired teachers 18 Mar 2010 A teacher at a failing school where he and all his colleagues are being fired hung an effigy of President Barack Obama in his classroom, apparently in reaction to Obama’s support of extreme measures to ensure accountability in schools. The teachers union on Thursday condemned the effigy, discovered Monday in the teacher’s third-floor classroom at Central Falls High School, saying it was wrong and cannot be condoned under any circumstances.

Pope ‘let molesting priest resume work’ 19 Mar 2010 Pope Benedict XVI has been accused of turning a deaf ear to repeated warnings about a pedophiliac priest who was later convicted of carnal violation of theological pupils. Werner Huth, the psychiatrist tasked with treating the German priest Peter Hullermann, said on Thursday that he had audibly warned the current Pope about the future convict’s immorality, The New York Times reported.

Genetically modified mosquitos could be used to spread vaccine for malaria –A genetically engineered mosquito that vaccinates as it bites has been developed by scientists. 19 Mar 2010 Experts believe "flying vaccinators" could eventually be a radical new way of tackling malaria. The new approach targets the salivary gland of the Anopheles mosquito. Scientists in Japan have engineered an insect producing a natural vaccine protein in its saliva which is injected into the bloodstream when it bites. [If this is the 'cover story,' imagine what other projects and pandemics are underway?]

Polar bear protections rejected 18 Mar 2010 Delegates gathered in Doha, Qatar for a global conference aimed at protecting imperiled species rejected a proposal Thursday that would have banned international trophy hunting and commercial trade in polar bear parts. The United States sponsored the measure, arguing that it is critical to reduce hunting pressure on polar bears at a time when their habitat is eroding due to melting sea ice. [Too bad the polar bears are unable to shoot the sociopaths who want to kill them in a 'trophy' hunt.]

Sleepy Bear Can’t Stay Awake 18 Mar 2010 This cute bear cub [Asian Sunbear cub] falling asleep. squishes his nose against the ground while fighting off sleep. (Video)

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US troops can hold Afghan detainees for 14 days instead of four –Longer detention ‘an option’ 17 Mar 2010 A controversial policy that gives U.S. forces in Afghanistan four days to question detainees is being changed to give soldiers more time to interrogate the captives, Gen. David Petraeus said Tuesday. Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee that American troops will now be able to hold detainees for up to 14 days before either releasing them or turning them over to the Afghan government. In some cases, longer detention will be an option, he said.

Afghanistan confirms blanket pardon for war crimes 16 Mar 2010 Afghanistan confirmed for the first time publicly on Tuesday that it had enacted into law a blanket pardon for war crimes and human rights abuse carried out before 2001. Human rights groups have expressed dismay that the law appeared to have been enacted quietly, granting blanket immunity to members of all armed factions for acts committed during decades of war before the fall of the Taliban. President Hamid Karzai had promised not to sign the National Stability and Reconciliation Law, when it was passed by parliament in 2007. Human rights groups say they learned only this year that the bill had been published in the official gazette, making it law.

US officials make contradictory remarks on bin Laden 17 Mar 2010 Only a day after a top Obama administration official described the chances of capturing al-Qaeda [al-CIAduh] leader Osama bin Laden alive as "infinitesimal", the top US commander in Afghanistan says the military still wants to capture him alive. Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday, Commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal said the US military would "certainly" try to capture bin Laden alive and "bring him to justice.." The statement, however, appeared contradicting an earlier comment by US Attorney General Eric Holder predicting that bin Laden will never go on trial in the United States as he will not be brought in alive.

CIA agent alleged to have met Bin Laden in July –French report claims terrorist leader stayed in Dubai hospital 01 Nov 2001 Two months before September 11 Osama bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by the local CIA agent, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro. Bin Laden is reported to have arrived in Dubai on July 4 from Quetta in Pakistan with his own personal doctor, nurse and four bodyguards, to be treated in the urology department. While there he was visited by several members of his family and Saudi personalities, and the CIA. The CIA chief was seen in the lift, on his way to see Bin Laden, and later, it is alleged, boasted to friends about his contact. He was recalled to Washington soon afterwards.

Heads up! An Obusha Friday-night-entering-a-holiday-weekend bad news dump looms. When is Easter? Attorney General Eric Holder Says 9/11 Trial Decision ‘Weeks Away’ 17 Mar 2010 Attorney General Eric Holder predicted today it was unlikely that [CIA asset] Osama bin Laden would ever face a trial in the United States since he would likely be killed [is likely already dead]. Holder, appearing before a House Appropriations subcommittee today, also announced that the Obama administration was "weeks away" from reaching a decision on how — and where — to prosecute alleged Sept. 11, 2001 mastermind patsy Khalid Sheik Mohammed. The attorney general defended his decision to try Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators before a civilian jury in New York City. [Right, but that was before his conciliating, cowardly boss *caved.*]

Tehran aiding al Qaeda links, Petraeus says 17 Mar 2010 Iran is assisting ‘al Qaeda’ by facilitating links between senior terrorist leaders and affiliate groups, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East told Congress on Tuesday. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the U.S. Central Command, also said Iran’s nuclear program is facing problems, and as a result, Tehran is not expected to emerge with a nuclear weapon this year.

10 killed in deadly US drone strike in Pakistan 17 Mar 2010 A US drone aircraft has fired several missiles into northwest Pakistan, killing at least ten people and injuring several others. According to Pakistani officials, the missiles targeted a compound located west of Miranshah in the North Waziristan tribal region. The death toll is expected to rise as some of the injured are said to be in critical condition.

Petraeus paints bleak picture for Afghanistan in 2010 17 Mar 2010 The commander of US forces in the Middle East and Central Asia says 2010 will be a difficult year for US-led forces in Afghanistan. General David Petraeus told lawmakers in Washington on Tuesday that international forces will be involved in intense fighting with the Taliban and will face setbacks this year. He added that the US troop surge in Afghanistan is unlikely to reduce violence in the Central Asian nation.

Two British Soldiers Killed In Afghan Blast 17 Mar 2010 Two British soldiers have been killed in an explosion in Helmand, Afghanistan. The troops were from 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment. Spokesman for Task Force Helmand, Lieutenant Colonel David Wakefield, said the men were trying to clear ‘insurgents’ in the Musa Qala District area.

UK premier admits misleading Iraq war inquiry 17 Mar 2010 Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown admitted on Wednesday that he provided false information to the Iraq Inquiry during his recent testimony. When addressing the question of adequate funding for the UK armed forces for their invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, Brown had told the Inquiry on March 5 that Britain’s military budget had been "rising in real terms every year."

Iraq: Women Miss Saddam By Abdu Rahman and Dahr Jamail 12 Mar 2010 Under Saddam Hussein, women in government got a year’s maternity leave; that is now cut to six months. Under the Personal Status Law in force since Jul. 14, 1958, when Iraqis overthrew the British-installed monarchy, Iraqi women had most of the rights that Western women do. Maha Sabria, professor of political science at Al-Nahrain University in Baghdad, tells IPS that the abduction of women "did not exist prior to the occupation. We find that women lost their right to learn and their right to a free and normal life, so Iraqi women are struggling with oppression and denial of all their rights, more than ever before." [I think *everyone* misses Saddam, except those directly profiting from the US illegal occupation-for-oil.]

Report: US shipping arms ahead of strike on Iran –Expert: ‘They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran. US bombers are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours.’ 17 Mar 2010 Hundreds of powerful US "bunker-buster" bombs are being shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean ahead of a possible attack on Iran, The Herald reported Wednesday. The Scottish newspaper said the American government signed a contract in January to transport 10 ammunition containers to the island. According to a cargo manifest from the US navy, this included 387 "Blu" bombs used for blasting hardened or underground structures, The Herald reported.

West Bank street named for dead US activist 17 Mar 2010 Palestinians in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Tuesday named a street after a US activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in a 2003 protest against house demolitions in Gaza. The dedication ceremony was held on the seventh anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death.

HHS preparing to handle claims of harm from H1N1 vaccine 16 Mar 2010 The federal government has been getting letters from people saying they plan to seek compensation for injuries caused by the injection, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. As of March 11, HHS had received letters from 106 people saying they plan to submit claims for compensation benefits because of problems related to the vaccine, according to David Bowman, a spokesman for HHS’ Health Resources and Services Administration.

Five Americans charged with terrorism in Pakistan 17 Mar 2010 A Pakistani court has charged five young Americans with planning terrorist attacks in the South Asian country and conspiring to wage war against nations allied with Pakistan, their defence lawyer said. The men – all Muslims from the Washington DC area – pleaded not guilty to a total of five charges, the most severe of which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Chicago man to plead guilty in terror case 17 Mar 2010 After cooperating with authorities for months, a key figure in the ongoing investigation into the 2008 deadly terror attacks in Mumbai, India, plans to plead guilty this week in federal court. Chicagoan David Headley, 49, has reached a plea deal with government officials that will be made public Thursday before U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber, Headley’s lawyer John Theis said Tuesday.

Jump in inmates is biggest in U.S. –State prison population rose 5.3 percent last year 17 Mar 2010 For the first time since 1972, the number of inmates in state prisons in the U.S. has dropped. No thanks to Indiana. Last year, the prison population dipped in 27 states, and a new report to be released today says that drove an overall decrease of 0.4 percent. But in Indiana, the prison population last year swelled by 5.3 percent, the largest percentage increase of any state in the nation.

ABC News: Study Shows Money Flooding into Campaigns for State Judgeships –Justices Ginsburg, O’Connor Say Fundraising Could Corrupt System, Reform is Needed 17 Mar 2010 In rare public remarks last week, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the money involved in electing judges remains one of the most pressing concerns facing the American court system. …ABC News has obtained an advanced copy of a study showing the amounts involved are unprecedented. In the past decade, candidates for state judgeships raised more than $206 million, more than double the $83 million judges raised in the 1990s, according to the soon-to-be released study by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and Justice at Stake, two non partisan groups that advocate for reforming the judicial selection process.

Loud Sex Justified Warrantless Search That Led to Drug Bust, Says Court 16 Mar 2010 Screaming too loud during sex can get you or your partner arrested in New Jersey, thanks to an appeals court ruling handed down on Monday. Affirming denial of a motion to suppress drugs found in a Farmingdale, N.J., home, the judges said the screaming reported by a neighbor gave police an objectively reasonable basis to believe that a limited investigation was necessary to determine whether anyone was in need of aid. Even after the occupants gave a plausible explanation — that the cries were released in the height of passion — the potential for harm was sufficient for police to search further, the court said in State v. McGacken, A-4527-08.

Kucinich Switches Vote on ‘Health Care’ 17 Mar 2010 Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, said today that he plans to support the health care insurance cartel bailout bill when it comes up for a vote this week. He becomes the first Democrat to publicly disclose his intention to switch from a no to a yes vote on the legislation… Mr. Kucinich said he was "quite aware of the historic fight" underway and decided to drop his opposition that the bill did not go far enough. He said, "I believe health care is a civil right."

NYT Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option By Miles Mogulescu 16 Mar 2010 On Monday, Ed Shultz interviewed New York Times Washington reporter David Kirkpatrick on his MSNBC TV show, and Kirkpatrick confirmed the existence of the deal. Shultz quoted Chip Kahn, chief lobbyist for the for-profit hospital industry on Kahn’s confidence that the White House would honor the no public option deal, and Kirkpatrick responded: "That’s a lobbyist for the hospital industry and he’s talking about the hospital industry’s specific deal with the White House and the Senate Finance Committee and, yeah, I think the hospital industry’s got a deal here. There really were only two deals, meaning quid pro quo handshake deals on both sides, one with the hospitals and the other with the drug industry. And I think what you’re interested in is that in the background of these deals was the presumption, shared on behalf of the lobbyists on the one side and the White House on the other, that the public option was not going to be in the final product." Kirkpatrick also acknowledged that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina had confirmed the existence of the deal to him.

States’ Rights Is Rallying Cry for Lawmakers 16 Mar 2010 Whether it’s correctly called a movement, a backlash or political theater, state declarations of their rights — or in some cases denunciations of federal authority, amounting to the same thing — are on a roll. Gov. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, a Republican, signed a bill into law on Friday declaring that the federal regulation of firearms is invalid if a weapon is made and used in South Dakota… Some legal scholars say the new states’ rights drive has more smoke than fire, but for lawmakers, just taking a stand can be important enough.

Most power plants still spewing toxic mercury, report says 17 Mar 1010 Many of America’s coal-fired power plants lack widely available pollution controls for the highly toxic metal mercury, and mercury emissions recently increased at more than half of the country’s 50 largest mercury-emitting power plants, according to a report Wednesday. According to the nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project, five of the 10 plants with the highest amount of mercury emitted are in Texas. Plants in Georgia, Missouri, Alabama, Pennsylvania and Michigan also are in the top 10.

The Biggest Dump in the World –As large as the USA [but not as dangerous], the Great Pacific Waste Patch is the biggest dump in the world. It keeps getting bigger, and could be poisoning us all. By Ed Cumming 16 Mar 2010 The world’s biggest rubbish dump keeps growing. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch – or the Pacific Trash Vortex – is a floating monument to our culture of waste, the final resting place of every forgotten carrier bag, every discarded bottle and every piece of packaging blown away in the wind. …[S]ome claim it has doubled over the past decade, making it now six times the size of the UK. Dr Simon Boxall, a physical oceanographer at the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, goes even further: "It’s the size of North America. But although the patch itself is extremely large, it’s only one very clear representation of the much bigger worldwide problem."

Save the Virginia Big-Eared Bat (PEER) 17 Mar 2010 The vast majority of a captive breeding population of endangered Virginia big-eared bats have died due to mishandling by the Smithsonian National Zoological Park’s Conservation and Research Center, and the rest are in poor health. Citing its failure to follow shelter, feeding and care protocols spelled out by bat experts, PEER is calling for the immediate relocation of the few surviving bats to a qualified sanctuary before they also expire.

Experts Plead for Surviving Bats to Enter Rehab –Remaining Ten Rare Big-Eared Bats Do Not Have to Die for Science 17 Mar 2010 Bat experts are desperately trying to persuade federal officials to move the last ten bats from a disastrous captive breeding program into rehabilitation so that they have a chance to recover, according to correspondence released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Only ten of the 40 healthy endangered Virginia big-eared bats collected by the Smithsonian Institution’s Conservation and Research Center (CRC) are still alive, although these ten are in poor health. "Those bats have suffered enough and deserve a chance to live… For the sake of those animals, just do the right thing one time, before it is too late." –Amanda Lollar, Founder and President of Bat World Sanctuary, in 12 March 2010 email to Fish & Wildlife Service.

Citizens For Legitimate Government

Veterans Today
Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:16 EST

Who says Al Qaeda takes credit for a bombing? Rita Katz. Who gets us bin Laden tapes? Rita Katz. Who gets us prettymuch all information telling us Muslims are bad? Rita Katz? Rita Katz is the Director of Site Intelligence, primary source for intelligence used by news services, Homeland Security, the FBI and CIA. What is her qualification? She served in the Israeli Defense Force. She has a college degree and most investigative journalists believe the Mossad "helps" her with her information. We find no evidence of any qualification whatsoever of any kind. A bartender has more intelligence gathering experience.
Nobody verifies her claims. SITE says Al Qaeda did it, it hits the papers. SITE says Israel didn’t do it, that hits the papers too. What does SITE really do? They check the internet for "information," almost invariably information that Israel wants reported and it is sold as news, seen on American TV, reported in our papers and passed around the internet almost as though it were actually true. Amazing.
Do we know if the information reported comes from a teenager in Seattle or a terror cell in Jakarta? No, of course not, we don’t have a clue. Can you imagine buying information on Islamic terrorism from an Israeli whose father was executed as a spy by Arabs?
It is quite likely that everything you think you know about terror attacks such as the one in Detroit or whether Osama bin Laden is alive or dead comes from Rita Katz. Does she make it all up? We don’t know, nobody knows, nobody checks, they simply buy it, print it, say it comes from Site Intelligence and simply forget to tell us that this is, not only a highly biased organization but also an extremely amateur one also.
Is any of this her fault, Ritas? No. She is herself, selling her work. The blame is not Site Intelligence, it is the people who pass on the information under misleading circumstances.
Imagine if a paper carried a story like this:

Reports that Al Qaeda was responsible for bombing the mosque and train station were given to us by an Israeli woman who says she found it on the internet.

This is fair. Everyone should be able to earn a living and information that comes from Israel could be without bias but the chances aren’t very good. In fact, any news organization, and most use this service, that fails to indicate that the sources they use are "rumored" to be a foreign intelligence service with a long history of lying beyond human measure, is not to be taken seriously.
Can we prove that SITE Intelligence is the Mossad? No. Would a reasonable person assume it is? Yes.
Would a reasonable person believe anything from this source involving Islam or the Middle East? No, they would not.
SITE’s primary claim to fame other than bin Laden videos with odd technical faults is their close relationship with Blackwater. Blackwater has found site useful. Blackwater no longer exists as they had to change their name because of utter lack of credibility.
What can be learned by examining where our news comes from? Perhaps we could start being realistic and begin seeing much of our own news and the childish propaganda it really is.
Propaganda does two things:
1. It makes up phony reasons to justify acts of barbaric cruelty or insane greed.
2. It blames people for things they didn’t do because the people doing the blaming really did it themselves. We call these things "false flag/USS Liberty" incidents.
Next time you see dancing Palestinians and someone tells you they are celebrating a terror attack, it is more likely they are attending a birthday party. This is what we have learned, perhaps this is what we had best remember.
From an AFP article on Site Intelligence:

Rita Katz and S.I.T.E. are set to release yet another "aL-Qaeda" tape
Despite a massive manhunt by the world’s intelligence agencies, BL seems to evade their combined efforts, staying on the run. But he still has time to drop into his recording studio and cook up a fresh tape for the likes of Rita Katz and her outfit called S.I.T.E. SITE is staffed by TWO people, Katz and a Josh Devon.
WASHINGTON (AFP) The head of the al-Qaeda network Osama bin Laden is expected to release a taped message on Iraq, a group monitoring extremist online forums said Thursday. The 56-minute tape by the hunted militant is addressed to Iraq and an extremist organization based there, the Islamic State of Iraq, said the US-based SITE monitoring institute, citing announcements on "jihadist forums."
It said the release was "impending" but did not say whether the message was an audio or video tape. Despite a massive manhunt and a 25-million-dollar bounty on his head, he has evaded capture and has regularly taunted the United States and its allies through warnings issued on video and audio cassettes.
Source: ME Times

Yes, despite a massive manhunt by the world’s intelligence agencies, BL seems to evade their combined efforts, staying on the run. But he still has time to drop into his recording studio and cook up a fresh tape for the likes of Rita Katz and her outfit called S.I.T.E. SITE is staffed by TWO people, Katz and a Josh Devon.
Yet these two individuals manage to do what the ENTIRE combined assets of the world’s Western intelligence can’t:
Be the first to obtain fresh video and audio tapes from aL-Qaeda with Bin Laden making threats and issuing various other comments. If BL appears a bit "stiff" in the latest release, that’s because he is real stiff, as in dead.
How is it that a Jewish owned group like S.I.T.E. can outperform the world’s best and brightest in the intelligence field and be the first to know that a group like al-Qaeda is getting ready to release another tape?
How is it possible that Rita Katz and S.I.T.E. can work this magic? Maybe looking at Katz’s background will help:
Rita Katz is Director and co-founder of the SITE Institute. Born in Iraq, her father was tried and executed as an Israeli spy, whereupon her family moved to Israel [the move has been described as both an escape and an emigration in different sources]. She received a degree from the Middle Eastern Studies program at Tel Aviv University, and is fluent in Hebrew and Arabic. She emigrated to the US in 1997.
Katz was called as a witness in the trial, but the government didn’t claim she was a terrorism expert. During the trial it was discovered that Katz herself had worked in violation of her visa agreement when she first arrived in America in 1997.
She also admitted to receiving more than $130,000 for her work as an FBI consultant on the case.
Source Watch

 

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/200534-Is-Israel-Controlling-Phony-Terror-News-

since when is sovereignty a strictly foreign policy issue? dewd

Mike Huckabee on Foreign Policy : Jan 1, 2008
Law of the Sea Treaty surrenders our sovereignty

My administration will never surrender any of our sovereignty, which is why I was the first presidential candidate to oppose ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty, which would endanger both our national security and our economic interests.

Click for Mike Huckabee on other issues.   Source: America’s Priorities in the War on Terror: Foreign Affairs

Mike Huckabee on Foreign Policy : Dec 9, 2007
Protect US sovereignty, but earn respect abroad

I don’t want to ever give up one ounce of US sovereignty. Our soldiers would never march to the orders of somebody else’s generals. I wouldn’t give up our territory. I wouldn’t give up our rights. I wouldn’t give up our strength.

In fact, I’d want to strengthen this country. I think the greatest way to export democracy is not to force it, but rather to build the best possible version of it right here so people are attracted to it.

There is an important role that the United States has as the most powerful nation on earth militarily and economically, to act in such a way that people respect us and that people also realize that we are a great nation, not one that wants to push ourselves on others.

One of the things that I would do as president is clearly try to make sure we get some better intelligence-gathering, and that we have more consistency, and that we have intelligence with greater credibility than we obviously have now.

Click for Mike Huckabee on other issues.   Source: Fox News Sunday: 2007 "Choosing the President" interviews

Fred Thompson on Immigration : Nov 28, 2007
Pledges to veto any immigration bill that involves amnesty

Q: Will you pledge tonight, if elected president, to veto any immigration bill that involves amnesty for those that have come here illegally?

A: Yes, I pledge that. A nation that cannot and will not defend its own borders will not forever remain a sovereign nation. And it’s unfair.

Click for Fred Thompson on other issues.   Source: 2007 GOP YouTube debate in St. Petersburg, Florida

Mike Huckabee on Foreign Policy : Oct 21, 2007
Law of the Sea Treaty gives away our sovereignty

There’s nothing funny about Hillary Clinton being president. Let me tell you why. If she’s president, taxes go up, health care becomes the domain of the government, spending goes out of control, our military loses its morale, and I’m not sure we’ll have the courage and the will and the resolve to fight the greatest threat this country’s ever faced in Islamofascism. We’ll sign crazy bills like the Law of the Sea Treaty and give away our sovereignty.

Click for Mike Huckabee on other issues.   Source: 2007 GOP primary debate in Orlando, Florida

Sam Brownback on Free Trade : Sep 17, 2007
Opposed to North American Union that gives up sovereignty

Q: Will you abolish all plans to promote economic integration of the North American Union?

A: I am opposed to open borders. I am opposed to a North American Union that gives up our sovereignty. I am opposed to doing that. So, yes to trade. No to unions. And yes to enforcing the laws when you have agreements between countries.

Click for Sam Brownback on other issues.   Source: 2007 GOP Values Voter Presidential Debate

John Cox on Free Trade : Sep 17, 2007
Trade is a weapon of peace

Trade is also a weapon of peace. You know, you’re not going to bomb your most important customer. You’re not going to invade your most important supplier. So we’ve got to make sure that we increase trade around the world, but we also have to make sure we retain our national sovereignty.

Click for John Cox on other issues.   Source: 2007 GOP Values Voter Presidential Debate

Mike Huckabee on Foreign Policy : Sep 17, 2007
We answer to our Constitution, not to international law

We need a re-understanding that we are a sovereign nation. We do not answer to international law. We answer to our Constitution, and no other authority but our Constitution. And any attempt to weaken our commitment to our own constitutional form of government is simply unacceptable to me as a president of the United States.

Click for Mike Huckabee on other issues.   Source: 2007 GOP Values Voter Presidential Debate

Tom Tancredo on Free Trade : Sep 17, 2007
Don’t diminish sovereignty in hopes of influencing trade

Q: Will you abolish all plans to promote economic integration of the North American Union?

A: Recently, Felipe Calderon, the President of Mexico, stated that Mexico does not end at its borders. He said that where there is a Mexican, there is now Mexico. To hear a president of another country suggest that the borders between you do not exist, and to not have our president turn to them and say, "Are you nuts?"–there is something called a border, and it must be defended. We are not simply just residents of the North American continent. That is exactly where this thing is going, a sort of an economic union where everybody believes trade is such a good thing–and I certainly think trade can be good–but why do you have to go ahead and diminish your national sovereignty in the hopes of influencing trade? Never will that happen in my administration.

Click for Tom Tancredo on other issues.   Source: 2007 GOP Values Voter Presidential Debate

John Cox on Free Trade : Sep 17, 2007
Never surrender the sovereignty of the United States

Q: Will you abolish all plans to promote economic integration of the North American Union?

A: I will never surrender the sovereignty of the United States. We absolutely have to secure the borders. We have to address the illegal immigration problem. We have to do it by putting some CEOs in jail. We have got to start enforcing the law against employing illegal aliens. That’s going to solve the problem. But we have to also make sure that we have trade with other countries. So, I’m not interested in giving up our sovereignty, but I am interested in opening up channels of trade, because, you know what, we benefit when we sell Microsoft software and we sell cell phones made by Motorola around the world.

Click for John Cox on other issues.   Source: 2007 GOP Values Voter Presidential Debate

Mike Huckabee on Free Trade : Sep 17, 2007
This country can never yield its sovereignty for any reason

Q: Will you abolish all plans to promote economic integration of the North American Union?

A: I believe with all my heart is that this country can never, ever, ever yield its sovereignty to any other country for any reason, under any circumstance, ever That’s why I would agree that we not only need closed and secure borders, but more importantly, we need a re-understanding that we are a sovereign nation, and we do not yield ourselves over.

Click for Mike Huckabee on other issues.   Source: 2007 GOP Values Voter Presidential Debate

Fred Thompson on Immigration : Sep 6, 2007
Protecting our border is part of being a sovereign nation

When we look to Washington, we see a bureaucratized government that is increasingly unable or unwilling to carry out basic governmental functions, including the fundamental responsibility of securing our borders against illegal immigration and enforcing our laws. A nation that can’t protect its border will no longer be a sovereign nation.

Click for Fred Thompson on other issues.   Source: Candidacy announcement speech

John McCain on Immigration : Jun 3, 2007
No official English; Native Americans use own languages

Q: Is there someone here who doesn’t believe English should be the official language of the US?

McCAIN: I would like to remind you that we made treaties with Native Americans, such as the Navajos in my state, where we respect their sovereignty and they use their native language in their deliberations. Everybody knows that English has to be learned if anyone ever wants to move up the economic ladder. That is obvious. And part of our legislation, by the way, is a requirement to learn English.

Click for John McCain on other issues.   Source: 2007 GOP debate at Saint Anselm College

Al Gore on Technology : May 16, 2007
TV converts well-informed citizenry to well-amused audience

Our Founders’ faith in the viability of representative democracy rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry, their ingenious design for checks & balances, and their belief that the rule of reason is the natural sovereign of a free people. The Founders made a special point–in the 1st Amendment–of protecting the freedom of the printing press. And yet today, almost 45 years have passed since the majority of Americans received their news & information from the printed word. Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers. Reading itself is in decline. The Republic of Letters has been invaded and occupied by the empire of television.

In the world of TV, the massive flows of information are largely in only one direction, which makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation. Individuals receive, but they cannot send. They hear, but they do not speak. The "well-informed citizenry" is in danger of becoming the "well-amused audience."

Click for Al Gore on other issues.   Source: The Assault on Reason, by Al Gore

Fred Thompson on Immigration : Apr 13, 2007
Nation loses sovereignty if it cannot secure its own borders

Somewhere between 12 and 20 million people had somehow come into this country unnoticed. It’s like we went overnight from "no problem" to a problem so big that it now defies a good solution.

We know that the overwhelming majority of illegals come across the Mexican border. Fortunately, we’ve got someone who is all too willing to tell us what we should do about it — president Calderon of Mexico.

Pres. Calderon criticizes our efforts to secure the border with things such as border fencing. He apparently thinks we should do nothing except make American citizens out of his constituents.

I think its time for a little plain talk to the leaders of Mexico. Something like: Hey guys, you’re our friends and neighbors and we love you but it’s time you had a little dose of reality. A sovereign nation loses that status if it cannot secure its own borders and we are going to do whatever is necessary to do so.

Click for Fred Thompson on other issues.   Source: Thompson’s blog on ABCradio.com, "Southern Exposure"

Tom Tancredo on Free Trade : Jun 6, 2006
Globalization is replacing "citizens" with "consumers"

During a 2006 debate, Gary Hart said: "globalization is eroding national sovereignty." Globalization, he said, had replaced citizen with consumer in the minds of many people. The US isn’t so much a country any more as it is a market.

The same thing is happening throughout the West. Since the Maastricht Treaty finalizing the European Union was adopted, Europeans have become citizens of a union rather than remain sovereign Dutch, German, etc. citizens. For many Europeans, their nation has simply become a place they reside, no longer a part of their identity.

Multicultural elites now frequently describe themselves as "citizens of the world." If given the chance, they would replace loyalty to any one country to humanity, to Mother Earth, and in some cases, loyalty to them. This rhetoric has trickled down to impressionable youth. Too frequently they tell me that America is a continent, not a nation. Multiculturalism had advanced so much that it denigrates the value of a national birthright.

Click for Tom Tancredo on other issues.   Source: In Mortal Danger, by Tom Tancredo, p.191-192

Barack Obama on War & Peace : Jul 12, 2004
International voice in Iraq in exchange for debt forgiveness

[We should] confront the challenge of returning sovereignty to the Iraqi people. We must leave behind a government that has enough legitimacy and political support from all three factions-the Kurds, Sunnis and Shia-to survive on its own. The best path to that is through free and fair elections and a constitution that preserves minority rights. For these elections to take place next year, as scheduled, there must be sufficient security in the country and, therefore, we must maintain a strong military presence while encouraging the interim government to hold elections as soon as possible. We must also encourage international involvement in this process by giving them a meaningful voice and role in Iraqi affairs and fair access to multi-billion dollar reconstruction contracts. In return, they must forgive Saddam’s multi-billion dollar debts to their countries and help pay the reconstruction costs.

Click for Barack Obama on other issues.   Source: Press Release, "Renewal of American Leadership "

Dennis Kucinich on Free Trade : Aug 1, 2003
Review & modify all treaties not respecting human rights

Our country and all nations must review and modify all treaties which reject national sovereignty in the cause of a global corporate ethic which does not respect human rights, workers rights and environmental quality standards. This means reviewing the practices and the practical impact of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.

Click for Dennis Kucinich on other issues.   Source: Campaign website, www.Kucinich.us, "On The Issues"

Dennis Kucinich on Free Trade : Apr 1, 2003
Don’t sacrifice our rights to global corporate ethic

Our country and all nations must review and modify all treaties which reject national sovereignty in the cause of a global corporate ethic which does not respect human rights, workers rights and environmental quality standards. This means reviewing the practices and the practical impact of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.

Click for Dennis Kucinich on other issues.   Source: Campaign website, www.Kucinich.org, "On The Issues"

Mike Gravel on Technology : Nov 18, 2000
Put entire government-citizen interface online

The Internet portends fundamental changes on the order of those resulting from the Gutenberg Press that ushered in the Ages of Discovery and Enlightenment. The Internet, in my view, will usher in the Age of Democracy, the essence of which will be republican governance–the majoritarian expression of the popular sovereignty of people.

[Incumbents] assess what the Internet offers for the delivery of government information. Much greater benefits however lie in moving the processing of the interface between citizens and government onto the Internet. My recent online driver’s license renewal with the Virginia DMV was unexpectedly convenient and efficient. With little attention or effort, filing of income taxes online is on the rise. Clearly intra-governmental operations are increasingly going online. It makes sense that the entire government-citizen interface and interaction should begin to be vectored toward Internet facilitation, digital divide aside, which will shortly be marginalized.

Click for Mike Gravel on other issues.   Source: Press release, "The Internet and the Future"

John McCain on Government Reform : Feb 28, 2000
Replace battle of bucks with battle of ideas

Unless we restore the people’s sovereignty over government, unless we reform our public institutions to meet the demands of a new, we will squander our destiny. Toward that end, I have called for the reform of campaign finance practices that have sacrificed our principles to the demands of big money special interests. I have spoken against forces that have turned politics into a battle of bucks instead of a battle of ideas. And for that I have been accused of disloyalty to my party.

Click for John McCain on other issues.   Source: Speech in Virginia Beach, VA

John McCain on Principles & Values : Sep 27, 1999
Restore, renew, reform, & reinvigorate government

Unless we restore the people’s sovereignty over government, renew their pride in public service, reform our public institutions to meet the demands of a new day, and reinvogorate our sense of national purpose, we will deny our destiny; we will abandon the cause our founding fathers called glorious.

Click for John McCain on other issues.   Source: Candidacy Declaration Speech, Nashua NH

Sovereignty: Topics in the News

by Prof. Peter Dale Scott

Global Research, August 11, 2009

 

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." Dwight David Eisenhower, "Military-Industrial Complex Speech," 1961, [1]

"My observation is that the impact of national elections on the business climate for SAIC has been minimal. The emphasis on where federal spending occurs usually shifts, but total federal spending never decreases. SAIC has always continued to grow despite changes in the political leadership in Washington." Former SAIC manager, quoted in Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, "Washington’s $8 Billion Shadow." Vanity Fair, March 2007[2]

"We make American military doctrine" Ed Soyster, MPRI[3]

The Myth of the Grand Chessboard: Geopolitics and Imperial Folie de Grandeur

In the Road to 9/11 I summarized the dialectic of open societies: how from their energy they expand, leading to a higher level of more secretive corporations and agencies, which eventually weaken the home country through needless and crushing wars.[4] I am not alone in seeing America in the final stages of this process, which since the Renaissance has brought down Spain, the Netherlands, and Great Britain.

Much of what I wrote summarized the thoughts of writers before me like Paul Kennedy and Kevin Phillips. But there is one aspect of the curse of expansion that I underemphasized: how dominance creates megalomanic illusions of insuperable control, and how this illusion in turn is crystallized into a prevailing ideology of dominance. I am surprised that so few, heretofore, have pointed out that from a public point of view these ideologies are delusional, indeed perhaps insane. In this essay I will argue however that what looks demented from a public viewpoint makes sense from the narrower perspective of those profiting from the provision of private entrepreneurial violence and intelligence.

The ideology of dominance was expressed for British rulers by Sir Halford Mackinder in 1919: "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World."[5] This sentence, though expressed after the power of Britain had already begun to decline, accurately articulated the anxieties of imperial planners who saw themselves playing "the Great Game," and who thus in 1809 sacrificed an entire British army of twelve thousand men in the wilderness of Afghanistan.

Expanded by Karl Haushofer and other Germans into the alleged "science" of geopolitics, this doctrine helped to inspire Hitler’s disastrous Drang nach Osten, which in short order terminated the millenary hopes of the Nazi Third Reich. One might have thought that by now the lessons of Napoleon and Hitler would have subdued all illusions that any single power could command the "World Island," let alone the world.

Kissinger for one appears to have learned this lesson, when he wrote that: "By geopolitical, I mean an approach that pays attention to the requirements of equilibrium."[6] But (largely because of his commitment to equilibrium in world order) Kissinger was swept aside by events in the mid-1970s, leading to the triumph of the global dominance mindset, as expressed by thinkers like Zbigniew Brzezinski.[7]

Brzezinski himself has recognized how his gratuitous machinations in Afghanistan in 1978-79 produced the responses of al Qaeda and jihadi terrorism. Asked in 1998 whether he regretted his adventurism, Brzezinski replied:

"Regret what? The secret operation was an excellent idea. It drew the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? On the day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, saying, in essence: ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.’"

Nouvel Observateur: "And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?"

Brzezinski: "What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?"

When he was asked whether Islamic fundamentalism represented a world menace, Brzezinski replied, "Nonsense!"[8]

In some ways, the post-Afghanistan Brzezinski has become more moderate in his expectations from U.S. power: he notably warned against the Gulf War in 1990 and also Vice-President Cheney’s agitations when in office for some kind of preemptive strike against Iran. But he has never retracted the Mackinderite rhetoric of his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, which revives the illusion of "controlling" the Eurasian heartland:

For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world’s paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power." (p. xiii)

"For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia… Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia – and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained." (p.30)

"To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together." (p.40)[9]

This kind of brash talk is not unique to Brzezinski. Its call for unilateral dominance echoed the 1992 draft DPG (Defense Planning Guidance) prepared for Defense Secretary Cheney by neocons Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis "Scooter" Libby: "We must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."[10] It is echoed both in the 2000 PNAC Study, "Rebuilding America’s Defenses," and the Bush-Cheney National Security Strategy of September 2002 (NSS 2002).[11] And it is epitomized by the megalomanic JCS strategic document Joint Vision 2020, "Full-spectrum dominance means the ability of U.S. forces, operating alone or with allies, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the range of military operations."[12]

Such overblown rhetoric is out of touch with reality, dangerously delusional, and even arguably insane. It is however useful, even vital, to those corporations who have become accustomed to profiting from the Cold War, and who faced deep cuts in U.S. defense and intelligence spending in the first years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They are joined by other groups (discussed below) that also have a stake in preserving the dominance mindset in Washington. These include the new purveyors of privatized military services, or what can be called entrepreneurial violence, in response to defense budget cuts.

The Real Grand Chessboard: Those Profiting from Enduring Violence

The delusional grandiosity of Brzezinski’s rhetoric is inherent above all in the false metaphor of his book title. "Vassals" are not chess pieces to be moved effortlessly by a single hand. They are human beings with minds of their own; and among humans an unjust excess of power is certain to provoke not only resentment but ultimately successful resistance. One can see this easily in Asia, from the evolution of anti-Americanism in Iran to the Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT) in Central Asia: although still ostensibly nonviolent, HT’s rhetoric is now more and more aggressively anti-American.[13]

The notion of a single chess player is equally false, especially in Central Asia, where dominant states (the U.S., Russia, and China) and local states are all alike weak. Here major multinational corporations like BP and Exxon are major players. In countries like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan they dwarf both local state power and also the U.S. governmental presence, whether official or covert. The true local powers are apt to be two which governments are notoriously inept at controlling: first, the "agitated Muslims" which Brzezinski insanely derided, and second, illicit trafficking, above all drug trafficking.[14]

Ultimately however Brzezinski is not constrained by his chess metaphor. The goal of a chess game is to win. Brzezinski’s goal is quite different: to exert permanent restraints on the power of China and above all Russia. He has thus sensibly opposed destabilizing moves like a western strike on Iran, while supporting the permanent containment of Russia with a ring of western bases and pipelines. (In 1995 Brzezinski flew to Azerbaijan and helped negotiate the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline linking Azerbaijan to Turkey.)[15]

As I have argued elsewhere, Brzezinski (though he no doubt thinks to himself in terms of strategy) thus promotes a policy that very much suits the needs of the oil industry and its backers. These last include his patrons the Rockefellers, who first launched him into national prominence.[16]

In March 2001 the biggest oil majors (Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Conoco, and Shell) had their opportunity to design the incoming administration’s energy strategies, including Middle East policy, by participating secretly in Vice-President Cheney’s Energy Task Force.[17] The Task Force, we learned later, developed a map of Iraq’s oil fields, with the southwest divided into nine "Exploration Blocks." One month earlier a Bush National Security Council document had noted that Cheney’s Task force would consider "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields."[18] Earlier the oil companies had participated in a non-governmental task force calling for "an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments."[19]

Of course, oil companies were not alone in pushing for military action against Iraq. After 9/11, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith established the Pentagon’s neocon Office of Special Plans (OSP), which soon "rivalled both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon’s own Defense Intelligence Agency, the D.I.A., as President Bush’s main source of intelligence regarding Iraq’s possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and connection with Al Qaeda."[20] Neocon influence in the Administration, supported by Lewis Libby in Vice-President Cheney’s office, trumped the skepticism of CIA and DIA: these two false charges against Saddam Hussein, or what one critic called "faith-based intelligence," became briefly the official ideology of the United States. Some, notably Dick Cheney, have never recanted.

Many journalists were eager to promote the OSP doctrines. Judith Miller of the New York Times wrote a series of articles on Saddam’s WMD, relying, like OSP itself, on the propaganda of Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi.[21] Miller’s book collaborator Laurie Mylroie went even further, arguing that "Saddam was not only behind the ’93 Trade Center attack, but also every anti-American terrorist incident of the past decade, from the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to the leveling of the federal building in Oklahoma City to September 11 itself."[22] Many of these advocates, notably Feith, Libby, and Mylroie, had links to Israel, which as much as any oil company had reasons to wish for U.S. armies to become established militarily in Central Asia.[23]

Private Military Contractors (PMCs), Whose Business is Violence for Profit

The inappropriateness of a military response to the threat of terrorism has been noted by a number of counterterrorism experts, such as retired U.S. Army colonel Andrew Bacevich:

the concept of global war as the response to violent Islamic radicalism is flawed. We ought not be in the business of invading and occupying other countries. That’s not going to address the threat. It is, on the other hand, going to bankrupt the country and break the military.[24]

Because of budgetary constraints, America has resorted to uncontrollable subordinates to represent its public power in these remote places. I shall focus chiefly in this essay on one group of these, the so-called Private Military Contractors (PMCs) who are authorized to commit violence in the name of their employers. These corporations are reminiscent of the marauding condottieri or private mercenary armies contracted for by the wealthy city states of Renaissance Italy.[25]

With the hindsight of history, we can see the contribution of the notoriously capricious Condottieri to the violence they are supposedly hired to deal with. Some, when unemployed, became little more than predatory bandits. Others, like the celebrated Farinata whom Dante placed in the Inferno, turned against their native cities. Above all, the de facto power accumulated by the condottieri meant that, with the passage of time, they came to dictate terms to their ostensible employers.[26] (They were an early example of entrepreneurial violence, and the most common way of avoiding their path of destruction was "to buy reprieve by offering bribes."[27])

To offset the pressure on limited armed forces assets, Donald Rumsfeld escalated the increasing use of Private Military Contractors (PMCs) in the Iraq War. At one point as many as 100,000 personnel were employed by PMCs in the US Iraq occupation. Some of them were involved in controversial events there, such as the Iraq Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and the killing and burning of four contract employees in Fallujah. The license of the most controversial firm, Blackwater, was terminated by the Iraqi government in 2007, after eight Iraqi civilians were gratuitously killed in a firefight that followed a car bomb explosion.[28] (After much negative publicity, Blackwater renamed itself in 2009 as Xe Worldwide.)

Insufficiently noticed in the public furor over PMCs like Blackwater was the difference in motivation between them and the Pentagon. Whereas the stated goal of Rumsfeld and the armed forces in Iraq was to end violence there, the PMCs clearly had a financial stake in its continuation. Hence it is no surprise that some of the largest PMCs were also political supporters for pursuing the ill-conceived "War on Terror."

Blackwater was the most notorious example; Erik Prince, its founder and sole owner, is part of a family that figures among the major contributors to the Republican Party and other right-wing causes, such as the Council for National Policy. His sister once told the press that "my family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican Party."[29]

Private Intelligence Companies and the Provision of Violence

Blackwater has attracted the critical attention of the American Mainstream Media. But it was a mere knight on the grand chessboard, albeit one with the ability to influence the moves of the game. Far less noticed has been given to Diligence LLC. Diligence, a more powerful company, that unlike Blackwater interfaced heavily with Wall Street, "set up shop in Baghdad [in July 2003] to provide security for companies involved in Iraqi reconstruction. In December, it established a new subsidiary called Diligence Middle East, and expanded its services to include screening, vetting and training of local hires, and the provision of daily intelligence briefs for its corporate clients."[30]

Certainly the political clout of Diligence outshone and outlasted Blackwater’s. Two of its founding directors (Lanny Griffiths and Ed Rogers) were also founders of the influential Republican lobbying team Barbour Griffiths and Rogers (later renamed BGR). Haley Barbour, the senior founder of BGR, also served as Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1993 to 1997.

Diligence LLC was licensed to do business in Iraq as a private military contractor (PMC). But it could be called a Private Intelligence Contractor (PIC), since it is virtually a CIA spin-off:

Diligence was founded by William Webster, the only man to head both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mike Baker, its chief executive officer, spent 14 years at the CIA as a covert field operations officer specializing in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations. Whitley Bruner, its chief operating officer in Baghdad, was once the CIA station chief in Iraq.[31]

Its partner in Diligence Middle East (DME) is New Bridge Strategies, whose purpose has been described by the New York Times as "a consulting firm to advise companies that want to do business in Iraq, including those seeking pieces of taxpayer-financed reconstruction projects."[32] Its political clout was outlined in the Financial Times:

New Bridge was established in May [2003] and came to public attention because of the Republican heavyweights on its board – most linked to one or other Bush administration [officials] or to the family itself. Those include Joe Allbaugh, George W. Bush’s presidential campaign manager, and Ed Rogers and Lanny Griffith, former George H.W. Bush aides.[33]

The firm of Barbour, Griffith and Rogers was the initial funder of Diligence, which shares an office floor with BGR and New Bridge in a building four blocks from the White House. The Financial Times linked the success of New Bridge in securing contracts to their relationship to Neil Bush, the President’s brother.[34] When Mack McLarty, Clinton’s White House Chief of Staff, resigned, he became a director of Diligence, and also joined Henry Kissinger to head, until 2008, Kissinger McLarty Associates.

Another Private Intelligence Contractor or PIC is Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), an $8 billion corporation involved in defense, intelligence community, and homeland security contracting. In the words of veteran journalists Donald Barlett and James Steele,

SAIC has displayed an uncanny ability to thrive in every conceivable political climate. It is the invisible hand behind a huge portion of the national-security state—the one sector of the government whose funds are limitless and whose continued growth is assured every time a politician utters the word "terrorism." SAIC represents, in other words, a private business that has become a form of permanent government….[SAIC] epitomizes something beyond Eisenhower’s worst nightmare—the "military-industrial-counterterrorism complex."[35]

(Later their article made it clear that SAIC is not a unified bureaucracy, but more like a platform for individual entrepreneurship in obtaining contracts: "at SAIC your job fundamentally was to sell your high-tech ideas and blue-chip expertise to [any] government agency with money to spend and an impulse to buy.")[36]

Before becoming Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates was a member of SAIC’s board of directors. SAIC personnel have also been recruited from CIA, NSA, and DARPA.

Scores of influential members of the national-security establishment clambered onto SAIC’s payroll, among them John M. Deutch, undersecretary of energy under President Jimmy Carter and C.I.A. director under President Bill Clinton; Rear Admiral William F. Raborn, who headed development of the Polaris submarine; and Rear Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, who served variously as director of the National Security Agency, deputy director of the C.I.A., and vice director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.[37]

SAIC helped supply the faulty intelligence about Saddam’s WMD that then generated ample contracts for SAIC in Iraq.

SAIC personnel were instrumental in pressing the case that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and that war was the only way to get rid of them. When no weapons of mass destruction were found, SAIC personnel staffed the commission set up to investigate how American intelligence could have been so disastrously wrong, including Gordon Oehler, the commission’s deputy director for review, a 25-year CIA veteran, Jeffrey R. Cooper, vice president and chief science officer for one of SAIC’s sub-units and Samuel Visner, a SAIC vice president for corporate development who had also passed through the revolving door and back to the NSA. David Kay, who later chaired the Iraq Survey Group (which showed that Hussein didn’t possess WMD, thereby proving that the war was launched under false pretenses), is also an SAIC shareholder and former director of SAIC’s Center for Counterterrorism Technology and Analysis.[38]

Needless to say, this SAIC-stuffed commission did not report that SAIC itself had been a big part of the problem. But according to Barlett and Steele, the same David Kay in 1998 told the Senate Armed Services Committee:

that Saddam Hussein "remains in power with weapons of mass destruction" and that "military action is needed." He warns that unless America acts now "we’re going to find the world’s greatest military with its hands tied."

Over the next four years, Kay and others associated with SAIC hammered away at the threat posed by Iraq. Wayne Downing, a retired general and a close associate of Ahmad Chalabi, proselytized hard for an invasion of Iraq, stating that the Iraqis "are ready to take the war … overseas. They would use whatever means they have to attack us." In many of his appearances on network and cable television leading up to the war, Downing was identified simply as a "military analyst." It would have been just as accurate to note that he was a member of SAIC’s board of directors and a company stockholder….

9/11 was a personal tragedy for thousands of families and a national tragedy for all of America, but it served the interests of private intellience and military contractors including SAIC. In the aftermath of the attacks, the Bush administration launched its "Global War on Terror" (GWOT), whose chief consequence has been to channel money by the tens of billions into companies promising they could do something—anything—to help. SAIC was ready. Four years earlier, anticipating the next big source of government revenue, SAIC had established the Center for Counterterrorism Technology and Analysis. According to SAIC, the purpose of the new unit was to take "a comprehensive view of terrorist threats, including the full range of weapons of mass destruction, more traditional high explosives, and cyber-threats to the national infrastructure." In October of 2006 the company told would-be investors flatly that the war on terror would continue to be a lucrative growth industry.[39]

Barlett and Steele could have mentioned that SAIC senior analyst Fritz Ermarth, a long-time associate of Gates from his years in the CIA, is now an official of the Nixon Center. Commenting in 2003 on State Secretary Colin Powell’s briefing to the UN Security Council, Ermarth praised Powell for his charges (repeating one of Judith Miller’s false stories) about Saddam’s acquisition of aluminum tubing "for centrifuges and not rocketry." Ermarth faulted Powell however for not mentioning two matters: Iraqi involvement in the World Trade Center bombing of 1993 (a charge by Laurie Mylroie now generally discredited), and that "During the 1970s and 1980s…the USSR and its allies supported terrorists in Western Europe and in Turkey," (alluding to the false charges, promoted at the time by Robert Gates and Claire Sterling, about Mehmet Ali Agça’s attempted assassination of Pope Paul II).[40]

I certainly do not wish to suggest that SAIC single-handedly created the will to fight in Iraq. The combined efforts of defense contractors, oil companies, PMCs and PICs created a mindset in which all those eager for power were caught up, including, I have to say, career-minded academics. In Iraq as in Afghanistan and Vietnam a generation earlier, a sure ticket to consultations in Washington was support for interventions that ordinary people could see would be disastrous.

The yea-saying of academics has approved even the privatization of intelligence which we have just been describing. According to political scientist Anna Leander,

Private firms not only provide, but also analyse intelligence. Private translators, analysts and ‘interrogators’ are hired, as illustrated by the involvement of Titan and CACI in Abu Ghraib. Even more directly, private firms are hired in to assess threats and risks and suggest what to do about them. This involves constructing a security picture as done for example, by Diligence LLC and SAIC, two firms specialised in intelligence gathering and analysis….. This privatisation of intelligence has direct consequences for the relation between PMCs and security discourses. It places the firms in a position where they are directly involved in producing these discourses. They provide a growing share of the information that forms the basis of decisions on whether or not something is a security concern.

Leander concludes that this privatization is beneficial: it "empower[s] a more military understanding of security which, in turn, empowers PMCs as particularly legitimate security experts."[41]

Another political scientist, Chaim Kaufmann, has noted more critically that arguments for escalation and what he calls threat inflation against Iraq were not adequately disciplined by "the marketplace of ideas." He gives five reasons for this failure, duly supported by other political scientists. But the obvious reason mentioned by Barlett and Steele – profit – is not mentioned.[42]

What we have been talking about until now is advocacy disguised as expertise. But overseas associates of Diligence LLC and its allies have also been accused of false-flag operations intended to provoke war.

The passage of the Patriot Act generated a new realm of profit for SAIC contractors — domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens – as well as new intelligence fusion centers to carry this out.

“As part of the Pentagon’s domestic security mission, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld created the Counterintelligence Field Activity office in 2002 and filled its staff with contractors from Booz Allen, BAE systems, SAIC, and other suppliers of cleared personnel. CIFA, as we’ve seen, was used against people suspected of harboring ill will against the Bush administration and its policies….At present, there are forty-three current and planned fusion centers in the United States where data from intelligence agencies, the FBI, local police, private sector databases, and anonymous tipsters are combined and analyzed by counterterrorism analysts…. According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the project “inculcates the project “inculcates DHS with enormous domestic surveillance powers.”[43]

These fusion centers, “which combine the military, the FBI, state police, and others, have been internally promoted by the US Army as means to avoid restrictions preventing the military from spying on the domestic population.” [44] Responding to such criticisms, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano stated in March 2009 that the mandate of fusion centers was not to launch independent domestic surveillance operations but connect the dots between lawfully obtained information already in fragmented “siloed” databases.[45] She did not mention that some of this information was from private and even anonymous sources.

One SAIC contractor, Neoma Syke, worked at such a fusion center, wearing two hats:

During 2003-2004, she was "working for SAIC" as a force protection analyst with "SAIC’s" 205th Military Intelligence Battalion. And while she was "a contractor for SAIC", specifically, "SAIC’s" 205th Military Intelligence Battalion, apparently she served as Counterintelligence Watch Officer at USARPAC’s Crisis Action Center.[46]

Peter Dale Scott  is a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a poet, writer, and researcher of the New World Order. Visit his website at http://www.peterdalescott.net/

Notes

[1] Dwight David Eisenhower, "Military-Industrial Complex Speech," 1961,
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp.

[2] Former SAIC manager, in Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, "Washington’s $8 Billion Shadow." Vanity Fair, March 2007,
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703?currentPage=1.

[3] The Economist, July 8, 1999.

[4] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007), 7-9.

[5] Halford J. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality (New York: Holt, 1919).

[6] Henry Kissinger, in Colin S Gray, G R Sloan. Geopolitics, Geography, and Strategy (Portland: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999).

[7] For the events leading to the displacement of Kissinger see Scott, The Road to 9/11, 50-54, etc.

[8] Le Nouvel Observateur, January 15-21, 1998. In his relentless determination to weaken the Soviet Un ion, Brzezinski also persuaded Carter to end U.S. sanctions against Pakistan for its pursuit of nuclear weapons (David Armstrong and Joseph J. Trento, America and the Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise (Steerforth, 2007). Thus Brzezinski’s obsession with the Soviet Union helped produce, as unintended byproducts, both al Qaeda and the Islamic atomic arsenal.

[9] Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: basic Books), xiii, 30, 40.

[10] Memorandum of February 18, 1992, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb245/index.htm.

[11] For specific parallels to The Grand Chessboard, see Scott, Road to 9/11, 191-2.

[12] "Joint Vision 2020 Emphasizes Full-spectrum Dominance," DefenseLink,
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=45289, emphasis added.

[13] Zeyno Baran, "Hizb-ut-Tahrir: Islam’s Political Insurgency," Nixon Center, December 2004,
www.HizbutahrirIslamsPoliticalInsurgency.pdf.

[14] Brzezinski was so unafraid of Islamic jihadism that when National Security Adviser he convened a working group to deliberately stir up Muslim dissatisfaction inside the Soviet Union (Scott, Road to 9/11, 70-71).

[15] He has since taken credit for persuading President Aliyyev of Azerbaijan to commit to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Geopolitically Speaking: Russia’s `Sphere of Influence’ – Chechnya and Beyond," Azerbaijan International, Spring 2000, p. 24,
http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/81_folder/81_articles/81_brzezinski.html.
This pipeline, a favor to U.S. and British oil companies, makes geopolitical but not economic sense; and is further destabilizing an already tense region. See Pepe Escobar, "Liquid War Across Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific: Postcard from Pipelineistan," The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, http://japanfocus.org/-Pepe-Escobar/3149.

[16] Scott, Road to 9/11, 70-79.

[17] Dana Milbank and Justin Blum, "Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force," Washington Post, November 16, 2005. This story noted that CEOs of three majors had falsely denied this: " A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney’s energy task force in 2001 — something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress….In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force. The president of Shell Oil said his company did not participate `to my knowledge,’ and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know. Chevron was not named in the White House document, but the Government Accountability Office has found that Chevron was one of several companies that ‘gave detailed energy policy recommendations’ to the task force."

[18] Scott, Road to 9/11, 188-89; citing Linda McQuaig, Crude Dudes," Toronto Star, September 20, 2004; Jane Mayer, "Contract Sport," New Yorker, February 16-23, 2004.

[19] Scott, Road to 9/11, 189; "Strategy Energy Policy: Challenges for the 21st Century," Report of the James A. Baker Institute of Public Policy and Council on Foreign Relations Task Force, 40, emphasis added.

[20] Seymour M. Hersh, "Selective Intelligence: Donald Rumsfeld Has His Own Special Sources. Are They Reliable?" New Yorker, May 6, 2003

[21] Michael Massing, "Now They Tell Us," New York Review of Books, February 26, 2004, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16922.

[22] Peter Bergen, "Armchair Provocateur — Laurie Mylroie: The Neocons’ favorite conspiracy theorist," Washington Monthly, December 2003,
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.bergen.html.

[23] For Israel links, see Michael Lind, Made in Texas (New York, Basic Books), 139 (Feith); John J. Mearsheimer, Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 166, etc. (Libby); Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (New York: Crown, 2006), 68-70 (Mylroie).

[24] Jon Wiener, "Obama’s Limits: An Interview With Andrew Bacevich," Nation, August 28, 2008,
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/350252/obama_s_limits_an_interview_with_andrew_bacevich.
Cf. Andrew Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008). Michael Scheuer also argues that the campaign against terrorism took a big step backwards when the U.S. invaded Iraq. "Experts Fears ‘Endless’ Terror War," MSNBC, July 9, 2005, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8524679. Peter Bergen agrees: "Many jihadists are so happy that the Bush administration invaded Iraq. Without the Iraq war, their movement—under assault from without and riven from within—would have imploded a year or so after Sept. 11" (Bergen, "The Jihadists Export Their Rage to Book Pages and Web Pages," Washington Post, September 11, 2005). So does Richard Clarke (Against All Enemies, 246): "Nothing America could have done would have provided al Qaeda and its new generation of cloned groups a better recruitment device than our unprovoked invasion of an oil-rich Arab country."

[25] I am not the first to notice the analogy. See e.g. Thomas Jäger and Gerhard Kümmel, Private Military and Security Companies (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007), 22; Eugene B. Smith, "The New Condottieri and US Policy: The Privatization of Conflict and Its Implications," U.S. Army War College, Parameters, Winter 2002,
www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/02winter/smith.pdf, 104.

[26] Michael Mallett, Mercenaries and their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy (Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1974), 22.

[27] Donald J. Kagay and L. J. Andrew Villalon (eds.), Crusaders, Condottieri, and Cannon (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002), 286.

[28] "Iraq Reviewing Security Firms After Blackwater Shooting," FoxNews.com, September 18, 2007,
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297153,00.html.

[29] "The former Betsy Prince — Edgar and Elsa’s daughter, Erik’s sister — married into the DeVos family, one of the country’s biggest donors to Republican and conservative causes. (`I know a little something about soft money, as my family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican Party,’ Betsy DeVos wrote in a 1997 Op-Ed in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.) She chaired the Michigan Republican Party from 1996 to 2000 and again from 2003 to 2005, and her husband, Dick, ran as the Republican candidate for Michigan governor in 2006. Erik Prince himself is no slouch when it comes to giving to Republicans and cultivating relationships with important conservatives. He and his first and second wives have donated roughly $300,000 to Republican candidates and political action committees" (Ben Van Heuvelen, "The Bush administration’s ties to Blackwater," Salon, October 2, 2007, http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/10/02/blackwater_bush/).
Cf. Robert Young Pelton, Licensed to Kill, Hired Guns in the War on Terror (New York: Crown Books, 2006).

[30] David Isenberg , "Corporate Mercenaries – Part 2: Myths and mystery," AsiaTimes, May 19, 2004, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FE20Ak02.html.

[31] David Isenberg, "Myths and mystery," Asia Times, 5/20/04. While in CIA, Bruner negotiated the deal for Ahmad Chalabi and the CIA to work together (Aram Roston, The Man Who Pushed America to War [New York: Nation Books, 2009], 76). Bruner later joined BGR and in 2007 became the full time chairman of BKI Strategic Intelligence. In 2004 Bruner participated with BGR and an Israeli PMC operative in a scheme to help re-elect George W. Bush. (Laura Rozen, "From Kurdistan to K Street," Mother Jones, November 2008,
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/11/kurdistan-k-street).

[32] Douglas Jehl, "Washington Insiders’ New Firm Consults on Contracts in Iraq," New York Times, September 30, 2003.

[33] Financial Times, 12/11/03. Ed Rogers, Diligence’s vice chairman, was one of George H.W. Bush’s top assistants when he was US president. On resigning from the White House, he negotiated a lucrative contract to act as lobbyist for the former Saudi intelligence chief and BCCI front man Kamal Adham, at a time when American and British prosecutors were preparing criminal cases against him. Rogers used Adnan Khashoggi as a go-between to secure the contract, which was canceled after White House criticism of it (Truell and Gurwin, False Profits, 362-64).

[34] Ibid. Cf. Mother Jones, March/April 2004: "More recently, Bush scored a $60,000-a-year consulting deal from a top adviser to New Bridge Strategies, the firm set up by George W.’s ex-campaign manager to "take advantage of business opportunities" in postwar Iraq. His job description: taking calls for three hours a week."

[35] "SAIC, which employs 44,000 people and took in $8 billion last year—sells brainpower, including a lot of the "expertise" behind the Iraq war….[SAIC is] a "stealth company" with 9,000 government contracts, many of which involve secret intelligence work" (Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, "Washington’s $8 Billion Shadow." Vanity Fair, March 2007,
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703?currentPage=1).

[36] Barlett and Steele, "Washington’s $8 Billion Shadow."

[37] Barlett and Steele, "Washington’s $8 Billion Shadow: "Mark A. Boster left his job as a deputy assistant attorney general in 1999 to join SAIC, and was already calling Justice three months later on behalf of his new employers—a violation of federal law. Boster paid $30,000 in a civil settlement." Yet another PIC for a while was Interop, combining former CIA director James Woolsey and former FBI director Louis Freeh with former Mossad chief Danny Yatom (Rozen, "From Kurdistan to K Street).

[38] Charlie Cray, "Science Applications International Corporation," CorpWatch, http://www.corpwatch.org/section.php?id=17; cf. Barlett and Steele, "Washington’s $8 Billion Shadow."

[39] Barlett and Steele, "Washington’s $8 Billion Shadow."

[40] Fritz W. Ermarth, "Colin Powell’s Briefing to the Security Council: Brief Comments from an Ex-Intelligence Officer," In the National Interest, http://inthenationalinterest.com/Articles/Powell%27s%20UN%20Speech/Powell%27s%20UN%20speech%20ermarth.html. Ermarth’s remarks were also posted by Laurie Mylroie, "Fritz Ermarth, Iraq & Al Qaeda, In The National Interest," February 5, 2003, www.mail-archive.com/sam11@erols.com/msg00040.html.

[41] Anna Leander, "The Power to Construct International Security: On the Significance of Private Military Companies," Millennium – Journal of International Studies, 2005; 33; 803, emphasis added. At the time the Observer reported from " sources in the Bush administration" an allegation that "members of the al-Qaeda network, detained and interrogated in Cairo, had obtained phials of anthrax in the Czech Republic" ("Iraq ‘behind US anthrax outbreaks,’" Observer, October 14, 2001, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/14/terrorism.afghanistan6).

[42] Chaim Kaufmann, "Threat Inflation and the Failure of the Marketplace of Ideas," International Security (Summer 2004). http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v029/29.1kaufmann.html. Neither SAIC nor Diligence is mentioned in his essay.

[43] Tim Shorrock, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 344.

[44] Julian Assange, “The spy who billed me twice,” Wikileaks, http://wikileaks.org/wiki/The_spy_who_billed_me_twice. The March 2009 Army manual “US Army Concept of Operations for Police Intelligence Operations” contains phrases such as "It [fusion] does not have constraints that are emplaced on MI [Military Intelligence] activities within the US, because it operates under the auspice and oversight of the police discipline and standards."

[45]  Phil Leggiere, “Napolitano Praises Fusion Centers.” HSToday, March 13, 2009, http://www.hstoday.us/content/view/7616/149/ .

[46] Assange, “The spy who billed me twice.”

Peter Dale Scott is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Peter Dale Scott

Posted on Jul 28, 2009

By Amy Goodman

  Anti-war activists in Olympia, Wash., have exposed Army spying and infiltration of their groups, as well as intelligence gathering by the Air Force, the federal Capitol Police and the Coast Guard.

  The infiltration appears to be in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act preventing U.S. military deployment for domestic law enforcement and may strengthen congressional demands for a full-scale investigation of U.S. intelligence activities, like the Church Committee hearings of the 1970s.

  Brendan Maslauskas Dunn asked the city of Olympia for documents or e-mails about communications between the Olympia police and the military relating to anarchists, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) or the Industrial Workers of the World (Dunn’s union). Dunn received hundreds of documents. One e-mail contained reference to a “John J. Towery II,” who activists discovered was the same person as their fellow activist “John Jacob.”

  Dunn told me: “John Jacob was actually a close friend of mine, so this week has been pretty difficult for me. He said he was an anarchist. He was really interested in SDS. He got involved with Port Militarization Resistance (PMR), with Iraq Vets Against the War. He was a kind person. He was a generous person. So it was really just a shock for me.”

  “Jacob” told the activists he was a civilian employed at Fort Lewis Army Base and would share information about base activities that could help the PMR organize rallies and protests against public ports being used for troop and Stryker military vehicle deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2006, PMR activists have occasionally engaged in civil disobedience, blocking access to the port.

  Larry Hildes, an attorney representing Washington activists, says the U.S. attorney prosecuting the cases against them, Brian Kipnis, specifically instructed the Army not to hand over any information about its intelligence-gathering activities, despite a court order to do so.

  Which is why Dunn’s request to Olympia and the documents he obtained are so important.

  The military is supposed to be barred from deploying on U.S. soil, or from spying on citizens. Christopher Pyle, now a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, was a military intelligence officer. He recalled: “In the 1960s, Army intelligence had 1,500 plainclothes agents [and some would watch] every demonstration of 20 people or more. They had a giant warehouse in Baltimore full of information on the law-abiding activities of American citizens, mainly protest politics.” Pyle later investigated the spying for two congressional committees: “As a result of those investigations, the entire U.S. Army Intelligence Command was abolished, and all of its files were burned. Then the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to stop the warrantless surveillance of electronic communications.”

  Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., Rush Holt, D-N.J., and others are pushing for a new, comprehensive investigation of all U.S. intelligence activities, of the scale of the Church Committee hearings, which exposed widespread spying on and disruption of legal domestic groups, attempts at assassination of foreign heads of state, and more.

  Demands mount for information on and accountability for Vice President Dick Cheney’s alleged secret assassination squad, President George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, and the CIA’s alleged misleading of Congress. But the spying in Olympia occurred well into the Obama administration (and may continue today). President Barack Obama supports retroactive immunity for telecom companies involved in the wiretapping, and has maintained Bush-era reliance on the state secrets privilege. Lee and Holt should take the information uncovered by Brendan Dunn and the Olympia activists and get the investigations started now.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
  Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times,” recently released in paperback.

© 2009 Amy Goodman

 

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090728_obamas_military_is_spying_on_us_peace_groups/