A Guilty Agent: The Shadowy Role of Timothy McVeigh

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:55:49 -0400

On the left, McVeigh in Waco in 1993. On the right, an alleged McVeigh from recently surfaced video at Camp Grafton, North Dakota fi lmed in August 1993— well after McVeigh was honorably discharged from service in May 1992. Was McVeigh being secretly trained, as he told his sister, to be a paid government assassin? - JonesReport.com

By Wendy S. Painting
What may seem like conspiracy theories surrounding the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, have been given more credibility do to newly released internal defense memos for Timothy James McVeigh, who was convicted and executed for his role as “Mastermind” and “Lone Wolf Bomber.” McVeigh, who was said to have orchestrated the bombing with minimal help from two Army buddies, may not have been what he seemed.

A source out of Austin, Texas memorialized in the documents gives weight to previous evidence and supports the existence of a real life conspiracy theory. The source, who because of privacy concerns, will be referred to simply as “D.” D was known to have had heavy ties to U.S intelligence agencies as well as groups targeted for Federal investigation and infiltration, such as White Supremacists, Neo- Nazis and Militia members. On March 9, 1996, D gave a statement to McVeigh’s defense team, laying out several shocking details which have now, thirteen years later, been corroborated by other sources.

Immediately after the bombing many journalists put forth the story that McVeigh had flunked out of Special Forces. This is one reason often cited for his intense anger at the government, which they say, caused him to wage war on ordinary American citizens. D told the defense that Timothy McVeigh was working for the Federal government and was assigned to infiltrate the neo- Nazi Skinhead movement, yet D’s claims that McVeigh was working for the government are not made by him alone, and are supported by other internal defense memos and various other credible sources.

Another supporting memo shows that in 1991, when McVeigh applied to work for a well known security company in Buffalo, New York, he had advised his soon to be employers that he held DOD Secret Clearance. McVeigh’s military records also reflect on the fact that he held a SECRET clearance.

The fact that McVeigh was indeed accepted into Special Forces and went on the work for the government during the time leading up to the bombing is supported not only by his previous employers and military records, but by the claims of Terry Nichols, convicted co conspirator, McVeigh’s younger sister, and claims of McVeigh himself. Nichols, in 2006, stated that that in November 1992 McVeigh told him he had been recruited by the Army for an undercover mission. This is also the exact time, according to other defense records which reveal that McVeigh was suddenly able to pay off all of his credit card bills after he had accumulated an enormous debt while gambling on the Buffalo Bills. McVeigh also advised his defense team that he had been issued a DOD issued credit card in the years prior to the bombing.

Another memo dated December of 1995, states that McVeigh, who joined the National Guard in Upstate New York, after his return from the Gulf War and alleged Special Forces “flunk out,” became highly agitated and upset when his defense confronted him with some disturbing information. When McVeigh was asked by his lawyers what exactly his job had been while in the National Guard, McVeigh, the model solider, stated he did not remember, something which would have been highly uncharacteristic of him. His lawyers then confronted and questioned him as to why he told his first lawyer, immediately after the bombing, that he had been “operating within the confines of the United States Government” when he bombed the Murrah building. McVeigh had confided to his first lawyer that he had been recruited by the government while serving in the National Guard and that his job was to “search for neo-Nazis and other problem troops within the Guard,” which further corroborate D’s claims.

Additionally, he told his original council that he was only supposed to blow out a few windows of the federal building but that the truck had been switched possibly without his knowledge.” After confronting McVeigh about this, his council noted that he became highly angry, and stated that he thought he had told the previous lawyer this information in confidentiality.

That the damage to the Murrah building was much more severe than could be expected from the Lone Ryder truck bomb, is not only supported by his first defense attorney, but also by the mysterious source D himself, who says that McVeigh’s government handler instructed McVeigh on the morning of the bombing, to park the Ryder truck in front of the Murrah building and then meet him at a nearby restaurant. However, D says, things did not go according to plan, and at 9:02 A.M on the morning of April 19, 1995, the Ryder truck, which was filled with ammonium nitrate and a large amount of C-4, detonated. Immediately afterwards, D claims, “strategically placed charges” blew out the four main building supports. D’s statement also align with original media accounts, first responder transcripts, seismographs and expert witnesses who believe the destruction done that was done to the building, was caused by much more than a “Lone Ryder.”

Furthermore, D also claimed he was “convinced that the Oklahoma City bombing had international connections which included Great Britain and Germany, and that there seemed to be no doubt that Timothy McVeigh was used simply as a tool by the actual perpetrators to carry out this mission.”That other countries could have been involved is also evidenced by the involvement of another major player in the saga of the bombing, German born Andreas Strassmeir, member of the elite GS9 German Counter Terrorism unit. “Andy the German,” as he was known around gun show circuits in the 1990’s, had been part of a joint U.S- German operation to infiltrate and track the sources of banned white power literature within Germany which was thought to originate in the United States.

Andy the German first appeared within the United States in the summer of 1989 when he was seen at a KKK rally in Texas. He then went on to act as head of security at a separatist compound in Oklahoma called Elohim City where he also provided paramilitary training. Strassmeir, although having been seen with McVeigh by an ATF informant at Elohim City, was also close associates of another man, Dennis Mahon, head of the Oklahoma KKK, and was being watched by the ATF and FBI for plans to blow up federal buildings. Strassmeir was allowed to return to Germany without being questioned by the FBI concerning his knowledge of the plot. Mahon, it seems, who admitted to knowing McVeigh, was never questioned. The fact that Strassmeir appeared in the U.S in the summer of 1989 in intriguing given that this was the same time that McVeigh returned from Germany after being involved in a “Change Up Program” the with German military, during his “active” duty in the military.

D then says that certain watchdog agencies, who had been tracking McVeigh for months before the bombing, had achieved their objective because the militias and skinheads were blaming the Feds and vise versa, and that in the midst of this confusion, then President Bill Clinton was able to pass his new Anti-Terrorism bill, which had been continuously shot down prior to the bombing. This bill, when read carefully, looks like a close relative of current post 9/11 legislation, including then widely expanded and unprecedented domestic spying capabilities and the erosion of habeas corpus.

Perhaps D is correct. Regardless, the fact that there is now much evidence to show that McVeigh’s role was much more obscure and intentionally hidden than previously thought, should be a concern of students of history, as well as those who support such needless legislation, such as the current H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, also called by many a “thought crime” bill, out of fear for the next Lone Nut Domestic Terrorist. Americans now live in a strange culture of consumerism and fear, are told continuously that they must be very fearful and vigilant against all kinds of terrors, including body odor, sexual impotence, road rage, bird flu, human flu, ADD and terrorists. We often thoughtlessly accept the remedies given, even when they are not in our own best interest.

Wendy S. Painting lives in Rochester, New York. She has a Masters in Humanities, from the State University of New York at Buffalo and she is currently writing a book on the Oklahoma City Bombing

Where Was NORAD on 9/11?

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 13:48:30 -0400

By Dean M. Jackson - Washington, DC

Testifying before the 9/11 Commission General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the commission in response to a question on NORAD’s failure to anticipate the 9/11 attacks, “I can’t answer the hypothetical. It’s more - it’s the way that we were directed to posture, looking outward.” As we will see below NORAD, since its inception in 1958, was tasked with more than merely “looking outward”.

I found General Myers’ testimony on the capabilities of NORAD on 9/11 to be surprising, since it was long assumed that NORAD’s mission was more than “looking outward”. However, the 9/11 Truth Movement has been negligent in producing any documents that would confirm their suspicion that NORAD was tasked with watching over and intercepting errant aircraft in American skies before 9/11; that NORAD’s mission was more robust than “looking outward”. The following pre-9/11 citations conclusively documents the true capabilities of NORAD on the morning of 9/11.

“The NORAD mission is threefold. NORAD’s first responsibility is to provide surveillance and control of the airspace covering North America, specifically the airspace of Canada and the United States. This mission is based on agreements between the two governments….

The second part of NORAD’s mission is to provide the NCAs [National Command Authorities] with tactical warning and attack assessment of an aerospace attack against North America. This information is essential to providing those in command with information to aid them in making decisions on how to respond to an attack against North America.

NORAD’s third responsibility is to provide an appropriate response to any form of air attack. NORAD was created to provide a defense against the threat from air-breathing aircraft, specifically the threat from long-range bombers. However, over the years the threat has changed. Now NORAD must provide an appropriate response to a multitude of threats, to include the air-launched cruise missile (ALCM) and the sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM).”
— NORAD AIR DEFENSE OVERVIEW; Northeast Parallel Architectures Center, Syracuse University, pre-1995 (http://www.npac.syr.edu/projects/civ/vanguard/C2Demo/OPRef.html).

The last two missions constitute NORAD’s “outward” search for hostile aircraft approaching the North American continent. NORAD’s first mission, however, tasks the agency to monitor and control all aircraft within the United States’ and Canada’s air space. This is what NORAD calls “air sovereignty”. Let’s take a closer look at what constitutes “air sovereignty”.

As reported by the General Accounting Office in 1994 (GAO/NSIAD-94-76)

“NORAD defines air sovereignty as providing surveillance and control of the territorial airspace, which includes:
1. intercepting and destroying uncontrollable air objects;
2. tracking hijacked aircraft;
3. assisting aircraft in distress;
4. escorting Communist civil aircraft; and
5. intercepting suspect aircraft, including counterdrug operations and peacetime military intercepts.”

“NORAD defines ‘sovereign airspace’ as: the airspace over a nation’s territory, internal waters, and territorial seas. NORAD’s territorial seas extend 12 miles from the continental United States, Alaska, and Canada. Sovereign airspace above a nation’s territory is unlimited.”
— NORAD AIR DEFENSE OVERVIEW; Northeast Parallel Architectures Center, Syracuse University, pre-1995 (http://www.npac.syr.edu/projects/civ/vanguard/C2Demo/OPRef.html).

Let’s examine further citations from the 1990s that detail NORAD’s true capabilities on 9/11.

The article NORAD: Air National Guard manning stations across the country (National Guard Association of the United States, Sep. 1997) explains how NORAD’s six battle management and command centers identify commercial aircraft as these aircraft are being monitored flying through our air space, “Aircraft flying over our air space are monitored seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Much of the identifying process is done by hand.

Flight plans from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are compiled in logs and have to be manually searched to identify aircraft.”
—(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3731/is_199709/ai_n8766326.)

“The Air Operations Center (AOC) (also known as the Air Defense Operations Center - ADOC) maintains constant surveillance of North American airspace to prevent overflight by hostile aircraft. It tracks over 2.5 million aircraft annually. The ADOC collects and consolidates surveillance information on suspected drug-carrying aircraft entering or operating within North America, and provides this information to counternarcotics agencies.”
— Cheyenne Mountain Complex; Federation of American Scientists, 1999 (http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/c3i/cmc.htm).

“One ongoing mission of the Battle Management Center is to coordinate “air sovereignty” efforts, monitoring every aircraft that enters U.S. or Canadian airspace — some 2.5 million a year. NORAD is asked to investigate aircraft that do not file flight plans, contact ground controllers or identify themselves with transponders.”
— Cheyenne Mountain: America’s underground watchtower; CNN Interactive, 1999 (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/experience/the.bomb/route/01.cheyenne/).

“In 1998, Canada posses the ability to detect, identify, and if necessary intercept aircraft over Canadian territory. The “Canadianisation” of NORAD operations over Canada is complete. Though we still rely heavily on the Americans for the Integrated Tactical Warning and Attack Assessment and mutual defense, we have successfully transitioned on at least one of the three core functions of NORAD [surveillance and control of sovereign airspace].”
— Canadian Aerospace Sovereignty: In Pursuit of a Comprehensive Capability, by Maj François Malo; Department of National Defence (Canada), 1998 (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/canada/0056.htm).

According to the article The Border Guards, NORAD: The Eyes and Ears of North America (http://www.af.mil/news/airman/0196/border.htm, 1996), in 1996 NORAD prepared and practiced “its charter through continuous training and a realistic exercise program. Probably the biggest of these exercises is Amalgam Warrior, which is held twice annually in the fall for the East Coast and in the spring for the West Coast. The five-day fall Amalgam Warrior put Americans and Canadians through their paces, challenging forces in three areas coinciding with the command’s aerospace warning, air sovereignty and air defense missions.

The exercise was conducted in real time with a fictitious world political scenario, which prompted NORAD forces to transition from a peacetime posture to a war-fighting stance. The threat escalated from tracking unknown aircraft, which filed bad flight plans or wandered off course, and in-flight emergencies [all four hijacked aircraft on 9/11 were also in-flight emergencies] to terrorist aircraft attacks and large-scale bomber strike missions.”

How important is the “air sovereignty” mission to the Air Force? Colonel Dan Navin, special assistant to the commander of 1st Air Force in 1997 speaks to this question when he commented,”…many say [it] is the most important job of the Air Force, and that is air sovereignty.”

In point of fact, not only was NORAD postured to look inward on the morning of 9/11, but not long after the ‘collapse’ of the USSR NORAD’s inward mission-air sovereignty-was to become the raison d’être

for its continued existence. A NORAD strategy review emphasized a new justification for its core forces soon after the ‘demise’ of the USSR-that of peacetime air sovereignty:

“The dramatically changed threat and . . . development of post-Cold War defense policies suggest real possibilities for shifting NORAD’s focus from deterring massive nuclear attack to defending both nations [Canada and the United States] by maintaining air sovereignty . . . . The size of the core force would equate to that required to perform the peacetime Air Sovereignty mission.”

By the mid-1990s the shift in NORAD’s focus was complete according to the GAO: “According to the Chairman [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], the air defense force was structured to intercept the former Soviet Union’s long-range bomber force if it attacked over the North Pole. Since that threat has largely disappeared, the United States no longer needs a dedicated continental air defense force, and the force has refocused its activity on the air sovereignty mission…” We learn that by 1995 NORAD had changed its priorities. NORAD’s main mission of defending the continent against a massive nuclear attack would now take a back seat to the less glamorous inward mission of air sovereignty.

As Commander-in-Chief, North American Aerospace Defense Command from August 1998 to February 2000, General Richard Myers would have known that NORAD’s mission included surveillance and control of the territorial air space within the United States. Therefore when General Myers told the 9/11 Commission in response to NORAD’s mission, “I can’t answer the hypothetical. It’s more - it’s the way that we were directed to posture, looking outward” he knowingly committed perjury. As such, the United States Department of Justice now has the duty to charge General Richard Myers with perjury and determine why he committed perjury.

Now I understand why so many of us in the 9/11 Truth Movement seemed to remember that before 9/11 NORAD was tasked with more than just “looking outward”. That’s because before 9/11 the press, media, the government, including the militaries of both the United States and Canada, told us that one of NORAD’s responsibilities was surveillance and control of the territorial airspace above us.

The questions remain. Where was NORAD on 9/11? If they truly failed in their mission so badly on 9/11, why was no one fired or reprimanded?

Dean Jackson is a writer and 9/11 researcher in Washington, DC. His website, DNotice.org provides rigorous analysis of major issues concerning government malfeasance.

FBI Sweeps Anthrax Under the Rug

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:24:00 -0400

By Sheila Casey and Barry Kissin
US Attorney Jeff Taylor was sweating on August 6, as he laid out his case against the late Dr. Bruce Ivins at a news conference-and with good reason. Anyone familiar with the case is well aware that Dr. Ivins was railroaded, and that the news conference was a flimsy web of lies.

Ivins had nothing to do with the 2001 anthrax attacks. The attacks were almost certainly carried out by the only group that had the means to produce the highly weaponized anthrax in the letters: the CIA, its contractor Battelle Memorial Institute of West Jefferson, Ohio., and the Army at Dugway in Utah.

The DOJ-FBI frame-up of Ivins rests heavily upon the claim of new advances in genetic testing which supposedly prove that the killer anthrax could have come only from Ivins’ flask.

Jeff Taylor stated:

The FBI sought out the best experts in the scientific community and, over time, four highly sensitive and specific tests were developed that were capable of detecting the unique qualities of the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks.

This is an outright lie. No special tests were required to assess the genetic heritage of the Ames strain in the envelopes. The Washington Post reported on December 16, 2001 that “only five laboratories so far have been found to have spores with perfect genetic matches to those in the Senate letters.”

The distinguishing feature of the anthrax that killed five people in 2001 is not related to its genes. What made that anthrax unique was that it was highly weaponized. Anthrax is a common pathogen found in the soil in many places. It doesn’t become lethal unless produced in such a way that it behaves like a gas, floating easily in the air and deep into a victim’s lungs.

The anthrax used in the attacks was beyond cutting edge. Donald A. Henderson, former assistant secretary for the Office of Public Health Preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services, told Science magazine: “It just didn’t have to be that good” to be lethal.

Why the killer anthrax was so deadly

1. Precisely sized particles-1.5 to 5 microns. Anything smaller is exhaled, anything larger tends to get caught either in the nose or in the cilia in the trachea.

2. Coated with silica. The silica acted as a buffer, preventing spores from adhering to one another. The silica on the attack anthrax rested on a thin layer of polymerized glass, which is a highly advanced technique for coating anthrax spores. To do this required a “spray dryer,” the cheapest of which sells for $50,000. The lyophilizer in Ivins’ lab is used to dry anthrax, but can NOT be used to coat the spores with silica. Ivins did not have a spray dryer.

3. Highly concentrated. The letter to Senator Daschle’s office contained two grams of anthrax, about the weight of a dime. Each gram contained a trillion pure spores of anthrax, or enough to kill 200 million people.

4. Electro-statically charged. The slight charge on each spore caused it to repel the other spores and spread out into the room after the envelope was opened.

It is these attributes of the anthrax-not its genetic heritage-which made it so unique and so lethal.

The source of the anthrax was clear in 2001

US Attorney Jeff Taylor characterized a flask in Dr. Ivin’s possession as “the murder weapon.” But a Dec. 12, 2001 article in the Baltimore Sun stated:

For nearly a decade, U.S. Army scientists at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah have made small quantities of weapons-grade anthrax that is virtually identical to the powdery spores used in the mail attacks that have killed five people.

The article refers to Dugway as “the only site in the United States where weapons-grade anthrax has been made in recent years,” and also includes this:

Dugway’s production of weapons-grade anthrax, which has never before been publicly revealed, is apparently the first by the U.S. government since President Richard M. Nixon ordered the U.S. offensive biowarfare program closed in 1969.

The following day, The Washington Post echoed the Sun article:

An Army biological and chemical warfare facility in Utah has been quietly developing a virulent, weapons-grade formulation of anthrax spores since at least 1992.

On Dec 16, 2001, The Washington Post corroborated the Sun report by stating that “Dugway is the only facility known in recent years to have processed anthrax spores into the powdery form that is most easily inhaled,” also stating, “Army officials in Washington said yesterday that Fort Detrick does not have the equipment for making dried anthrax spores.”

On September 4, 2001, The New York Timest explained:

“Over the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons … even the [Clinton] White House was unaware of their full scope. The projects, which have not been previously disclosed … have been embraced by the Bush administration, which intends to expand them.”

These projects involve the CIA, Battelle Memorial Laboratories in West Jefferson, Ohio, and the Army at Dugway in Utah.

“[T]he need to keep such projects secret was a significant reason behind President Bush’s recent rejection of a draft agreement to strengthen the germ-weapons treaty, [the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention,] which has been signed by 143 nations.”

Had the treaty been strengthened, the Dugway and West Jefferson sites would have been subject to international inspections. It is important to note that Battelle not only operates its own labs in West Jefferson, but also is contracted by the Army to operate the labs at Dugway.

The DOJ-FBI news conference on August 6, 2008 was a deliberate attempt to divert attention from the secret anthrax weaponization projects by pinning the crimes on a dead man. So far the DOJ-FBI have succeeded in covering up the real perpetrators of the crime, concealing the illegal weapons program, and persuading many that it is time to close the investigation.

Dr. Ivins was an immunologist; he had neither the knowledge nor the equipment to produce the silica-coated, electro-statically charged, 1.5 to 5 micron sized, one trillion spore per gram anthrax that was mailed to Senators Leahy and Daschle.

The DOJ has made much of the fact that Ivins worked 45 extra hours in September and October of 2001. Yet when the FBI attempted to reverse engineer the weaponized anthrax from the attacks, they admitted after a year of trying that they were unable to come up with a product as potent as that in the letters.

Scientists doubt FBI’s story

As far back as October 28, 2002, The Washington Post reported that bio-weapons experts were skeptical about the view that the anthrax in the letters could have come from a lone nut:

“In my opinion, there are maybe four or five people in the whole country who might be able to make this stuff, and I’m one of them,” said Richard O. Spertzel, former deputy commander of USAMRIID (the Army bio-defense facility at Detrick). “And even with a good lab and staff to help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product as good.”

Writing in The New York Timest on Aug. 9, 2008, Gerry Andrews, an assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Wyoming, described the envelopes’ contents as “a startlingly refined weapons-grade anthrax spore preparation, the likes of which had never been seen before by personnel at Fort Detrick.” He continued: “It is extremely improbable that this type of preparation could ever have been produced at Fort Detrick, certainly not of the grade and quality found in that envelope.”

Abundant evidence that Ivins is innocent

Ivins passed two polygraph tests and no link was made between his handwriting and that on the anthrax letters. Investigators were so frustrated at Ivins passing the polygraph tests that they searched his house for books or articles on how to fool a polygraph, but found none.

US Attorney Jeff Taylor stated that the investigators zeroed in on Ivins when they “conducted additional investigative steps,” and thus were “able to narrow the focus even further, exclude individuals, and that left us looking at Dr. Ivins.”

Those “additional investigative steps” were polygraph tests. Where passing a polygraph test was enough to exclude certain people, it did not exclude Ivins.

Ivins’ car, work locker, safe deposit box and house were thoroughly swabbed for anthrax spores multiple times over the space of years; not a single spore was found, although the killer anthrax was so highly weaponized that it behaved like a gas and was very difficult to contain.

None of the materials in the mailings were found at his house: not the tape, the envelopes, nor the pen used to write the letters. There isn’t one piece of evidence placing him in New Jersey at the time the letters were mailed: not a credit card receipt, restaurant receipt, nor a witness.

On August 3, 2008, Glen Greenwald wrote in Salon:

It is so vital to emphasize that not a shred of evidence has yet been presented that the now-deceased Bruce Ivins played any role in the anthrax attacks, let alone that he was the sole or even primary culprit. Nonetheless, just as they did with Steven Hatfill, the media (with some notable and important exceptions) are reporting this case as though the matter is resolved.”

Bruce Ivins: juggler, Red Cross volunteer, pianist

Jeff Taylor’s case against Ivins rests heavily on claims that Ivins was mentally ill. If Ivins was truly so unhinged, why was he allowed to work with toxic substances? His security clearance was never revoked.

Certainly a brilliant homicidal serial killer who is determined to avoid detection would immediately get rid of the Ames strain with the incriminating genotype in his flask, if he had used it to make weaponized powder and kill five people. Yet seven years later, the same genotype was still in Ivins’ lab!

The DOJ and FBI ask us to believe that Ivins launched the attacks because his vaccine research was not going well and he feared he might lose his job. It’s just not a plausible motivation.

In 2003, Ivins received the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service-the highest award given to the Defense Department’s civilian employees. He had been a respected scientist at USAMRIID for 35 years and had a very secure job.

Ivins had been married for 33 years. He played keyboard at his local church, he was a member of the American Red Cross, an avid juggler and founder of the Frederick Jugglers. He also played keyboards in a Celtic band and would often compose and play songs for coworkers who were moving to new jobs.

The FBI focused on him as a probable fall guy in 2006, and for two years was all over him, repeatedly questioning him, searching his home, car and office, and confronting him and his family in public with accusations that he had “killed people.” His daughter was shown pictures of dead anthrax victims and told “your father did this.” His son was promised $2.5 million and a sports car of his choice if he would implicate his father in the anthrax attacks. Who among us would not resort to drink, or drugs, or fantasies of revenge under those circumstances?

Who had the expertise to weaponize anthrax?

William C. Patrick III, and Ken Alibek.

William Patrick was the originator of the first anthrax weaponization process. He has five patents on anthrax weaponization and wrote a paper in 1999 setting out exactly what an anthrax attack by mail would look like.

Patrick’s scenario is very similar to what actually happened in 2001. For example, he suggests no more than 2.5 grams of anthrax per envelope; the envelopes contained two grams. One footnote in his paper reveals “we now have the ability to purify to one trillion spores per gram.” William Patrick was a consultant to the CIA, Battelle, the Army, the DIA and the FBI on bio-weapons.

Ken Alibek headed up the Soviet bio-weapon programs until defecting to the USA in 1992. He brought with him the technology that was key in the anthrax attacks: using polymerized glass to attach silica to the anthrax spores. He worked for Battelle Memorial Institute in the late 90s.

These men had to have been instrumental in developing the technology used in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Who can control the FBI, DOJ and the media?

The significance of the railroading of the deceased Ivins cannot be overstated. This railroading is not a matter of incompetence. In detail after detail, the joint FBI-DOJ prosecution deliberately lies, evades and obfuscates in a desperate attempt to pin blame somewhere and close the case. (A transcript of the entire August 6 news conference is available on npr.org, titled “DOJ News Conference On Bruce Ivins.”)

US Attorney Jeff Taylor states at the news conference that the envelopes used in the attacks were “very likely sold at a post office in the Frederick, Md. area,” and that Ivins had a post office box there. This is another outright lie. Taylor’s own application for a search warrant stated:

…envelopes with printing defects, identical to printing defects identified on the envelopes utilized in the anthrax attacks during the fall of 2001, were collected from the Fairfax Main post office in Fairfax, Virginia, and the Cumberland and Elkton post offices in Maryland…

Taylor and his supervisors at DOJ must be hoping that no one will notice or care that they are blatantly lying about their evidence against Ivins.

Reading the transcript, it is striking how often Jeff Taylor and Joseph Persichini refuse to answer questions. They either refer reporters to the Department of Defense (which is not holding a news conference) or to the documents they have been given.

When asked when their all new, ground-breaking DNA research would be published, Taylor replies “I’m not going to comment on (that).” When asked a direct question about how many others were investigated other than Ivins, Taylor replies “I’m not going to get into the details.” Not only does he not get into the details, he doesn’t even give us the broad strokes. When asked how he can be so sure that there wasn’t another person involved, Taylor replies:

The evidence I described in my statement, and that I’ve described throughout this question-and-answer period, as I said, led us to conclude that Dr. Ivins is the person who committed this crime. We are confident, based on the evidence we have, that we could prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt.

In other words, he doesn’t answer.

Honest citizens must ask themselves: who are the FBI and DOJ protecting? Who has the ability to control and corrupt an investigation of this importance? And why, after sitting through a news conference that is obviously a hastily constructed web of lies, have so many journalists dutifully reported the story just as instructed by Jeff Taylor?

We no longer have a working government in the United States. What we have are functionaries in various departments-Congress, FBI, DOJ, CIA-who take their orders from the corporations who make vast sums of money waging war and selling vaccines. Their influence extends to the major media outlets who control the flow of information to the American people. We are increasingly enslaved, manipulated and murdered by these corporations, and very few of us seem to realize it.

Sheila Casey is a DC based journalist. Her work has appeared in The Denver Post, Buzz Flash, Common Dreams and Dissident Voice. She blogs at http://www.sheilacasey.com Barry Kissin is an attorney/peace activist based in Frederick, MD, home of Fort Detrick.

OKC Bomb Survivor Remembers

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:11:00 -0400

Murrah Building, OKC, after the blast.

BY WENDY PAINTING / RCFP
Oklahoma City — June 17, 2008 Amidst all the dirty details of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, one can get lost. Recently I set out to uncover aspects of this story which have not been publicized or accounted for. The story of the cover-up cannot be separated from the effects which the bombing caused, the very real trauma of the survivors, to the families and to the country.

Like so many others, Ruth Schwab was not only a victim but an eyewitness. She was gracious enough to talk with me recently. Her story, like so many others that day, is not detached from the maze of other details.

About a week before the bombing, Ruth was pulling up to work at the Murrah building. As she was going into the garage she saw three men standing around talking. The men were dressed in work clothes, but she did not recognize any of them. Ruth knew many of the people that worked there. The men were holding what seemed to be a large sheet of paper. At the time, Ruth thought that they were holding floor plans. “You just don’t assume that these men are there because they are planning to bomb your building,” she said “but later, when I saw the news I remembered that morning…I can still see them standing there”

The Murrah building had always been on a list of targets. They had several bomb threats in the past. Usually, Ruth remembers, they didn’t hear about them until much later, on the evening news. She remembers she had said to someone once, that if there was ever a real threat, they wouldn’t know about it until much later. A week later, on April 19, 1995 Ruth was heading to work again. This time her boss was out of town and had offered her parking spot to Ruth. The spot was on the middle floor of the parking garage. Although Ruth was pulling up as several Ryder trucks were seen outside the Murrah that morning, she did not notice any. She parked her car and went in the building.

The first person Ruth saw that day was V. Z. Lawton. Lawton, another survivor, is one of the leading figures among the survivors who have worked tirelessly, despite threats and harassment, to try and find out what happened to themselves and their loved ones that day.

Ruth turned on her computer and waited for it to boot up. Just as she did, she heard a horrible noise and then haze. “I felt like I was in a science fiction movie…I was falling down a hole, just falling and falling.” Looking back, she says, the doctors think that she lost consciousness. As Ruth told me, the body protects itself. She does not remember pain, only the noise and the falling sensation. The next thing she knew, she was conscious but she could not see anything. It was then that she realized that a bomb must have gone off. Immediately she thought “I have to get out of here. I don’t know where I am or what’s going on but I have to get out.” She tried to sit up. She began yelling out, inquiring if anyone was there.

And that is when her guardian angel. V. Z. Lawton yelled out in response “Ruthy, don’t move. I am here. Don’t move.” She told him not to worry. Ruth was not moving anywhere. She couldn’t. Later, she would remember the sounds of moaning and groaning around her, sounds which she could not do anything about. The futility of not being able to help those around her haunted Ruth for years to come. V. Z. came over to her and handed her a handkerchief. Ruth says that Lawton was a perfect gentleman. The handkerchief she says was like “trying to put a Band-Aid on a bullet hole,” the damage to her face was that severe. She began to wipe her face. She felt no pain, but Ruth could not see anything. There was only darkness where her vision used to be.

V. Z. told her that he was going to try to find a way out. He moved enough of the debris around her, and with the help of another man, Ken, began to guide her out. Ruth remembers that she was on foot until she got half way down the stairs. It was at that point that someone carried her out. Ruth, incidentally, was able to meet the man who carried her out that day. Years later, at the OKC Memorial, he would be working as a guard and remember her.

Ruth was taken outside and laid down. A co-worker approached her, and in shock herself, gasped, and said to Ruth, “don’t worry. They can do a lot with plastic surgery these days.” This was not very comforting to Ruth. She did, though, make her co worker promise not to let them cut her clothes off in front of everyone. Her co-worker covered her up with a blanket while Ruth waited for the ambulance drivers to put her on a gurney.

Ruth was able to give enough information to rescue workers for them to contact her family. She was rushed to the hospital. They took her into surgery, and after they had done some superficial stitching to her face, they moved her into another surgery, this time to try and save her eye. This was all done within an hour and a half after the blast, which had occurred at 9:02 am. When Ruth came to again, the doctors were trying to save her eye. This was around 4 in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, Ruth’s children, all five of them, were removed from their classes and told what had happened. Better this, than finding out through the grapevine, Ruth thinks now. Her father and step mother had heard on the news.

At some point, while Ruth was in the hospital that day, a photographer came in and wanted to take a picture of her. Ruth’s sister fixed her hair the best she could and placed a recent picture of Ruth next to her head. “She wanted everyone to know what I had looked like before,” Ruth says. For years, the bloody shirt from that day and a piece of Plexiglas from the building sat in a bag in Ruth’s garage. Later, she would bring it out for reporters.

Ruth said good things have come out of the bombing, that God had a reason for her to stay on earth. Among these things is her ability to watch her five children grow up. A couple of her children were able to receive scholarship money set aside for victims and family members. One of her daughters was able to earn a law degree from these scholarships.

As a mother of five, Ruth would not have been able to send her children to undergraduate college, much less graduate or law school. “So this,” she says “is a blessing in some way. And her co-worker was right; plastic surgeons can do miracles now. To look at Ruth, you would never guess that she has a fake eye or reconstructive surgery. Both Ruth and V. Z. were pulling glass out of themselves for years. Two years after the bombing, glass made its way through Ruth’s eye. It had to beremoved.

Another time, in the shower, glass pushed its way out of her body. “The body just pushed it out,” she says “it hurts right before it comes out…I will always feel the effects…they will not go away.” Ruth will have to have eye surgeries for the rest of her life. Ruth says the bombing defines who she is. It also defines who her children are. It defines the people in Oklahoma City and it defines, whether they know it or not, the American people. It defines the country itself and beyond. It is central.

For years Ruth and her family would stay inside on the 19th of April. No travel. No leaving the house. This year she did not attend the anniversary, but her family threw her a party on April 19th only days away from her birthday. “The 19th is my birthday, it’s my day of life. I received 13 more years of life on this earth.” Ruth, like other survivors I have spoken to, does not take life for granted.

Ruth has a tree in her yard. The tree was grown from a seedling taken from the Survivor Tree which stands at the OKC memorial. She also has a piece of the building displayed in her garden.

Ruth speaks at churches and schools, “I speak as much as I can. I don’t want it to go away. I want people to know the effects it has had.”She shares this sentiment with V. Z. and others. “ We want the truth out. I want my grandkids to know and pass it on. My children will not let anyone forget.

I asked Ruth how the bombing and the cover-up had affected her views of the country, the government and politics. Ruth says for years she tried to ignore it. While she wasn’t a super patriot, Ruth loved her country and could not understand how her own government could be complicit in covering up the atrocity that happened to her and her friends that day. She focused much of her attention into raising her family, but eventually the information became too much to ignore. “The fact is that they knew there was going to be a bomb, EVERYONE KNEW…that blows me away. The day-care!! They could have done something… anything…they could have sounded a fire alarm, a fake one, they could have at least get the babies out…that was a heartbreaker.”

She remembers how on the way to work that morning the radio was talking about the anniversary of Waco. She knows how every eyewitness saw others besides McVeigh. She remembers how fast the FBI and Justice Department dropped those leads. She also remembers how fast the trials for Nichols and McVeigh were.

Ruth says she tries hard not be bitter, but she and her family do not take everything they hear on the news or read in the paper at face value anymore. How can they, when it is known now that not only was there prior warning of the bombing, but that officials knew down to the date that this would happen. April 19th 1995 was the date that a man named Richard Wayne Snell would be executed. Snell himself had previously tried to blow up the Murrah in the 1980s. Officials were also aware of the danger posed by the anniversary of Waco, and of another federal raid, which had angered so many people. The ATF, in fact, had been warned to avoid work that day. And they did. Of all the causalities to all of the federal agencies that morning, the ATF had none. Ruth says she hates the fact that her children now have to suffer with the pain of knowing this could have been prevented.

She says she feels for people like Jannie Coverdale, who lost her two baby grandsons, Aaron and Elijah that morning. Coverdale had just dropped her loved ones off at the Murrah daycare center, on her way to work. She would only see them again in her troubled dreams.v On parting, Ruth, in her friendly and motherly manner, wished me good luck, telling me I had my work cut out for me. She told me to keep going in pursuit of this. I told her I was just stubborn enough to take her advice.

Wendy S. Painting lives in Rochester, New York. She just finished a Masters in Humanities, at the State University of New York at Buffalo and she is currently writing a book on the Oklahoma City Bombing.

CIA, US Military Learned Torture from China?

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:30:35 -0400

BY MATT SULLIVAN / RCFP
Last month the New York Times published an article by Scott Shane, “China Inspired Interrogations at Guantanamo”, that revealed that military trainers at Guantanamo Bay in 2002 used a chart of interrogation techniques that had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners. The implication being that the US military and the CIA have so little experience with torture that they had to rely on these outdated sources for their how-to manual.

Shane’s article in the Times is a classic example of the common intelligence agency practice of “limited hangout”. Intelligence agencies, when caught in a lie, when the cover is blown, will expose some part of the operation in order to distract the public from the larger underlying operation. In this case, by exposing the captured Chinese documents, the CIA and MI is attempting to keep a lid on the larger underlying truth that the US has long studied and practiced torture and has a vast and well funded ongoing research operation dedicated to developing torture methods and techniques.

The CIA torture, interrogation and mind control infrastructure has a long and storied history. After WWII the OSS, precursor to the CIA, recruited Nazi researchers and their programs to come to the US under operation PAPERCLIP and other programs. These torture and mind control research efforts were greatly expanded during the Cold War and were practiced in horrific real-world conflicts during the Vietnam war in the 1960s and 70s and were again employed in Central America in the 1980s.

There is no question that the CIA and US military have extensive theoretical research and practical experience and the suggestion that the US had to resort to the use of 1947 Chinese torture posters for instruction is ridiculous and insulting.

LIFE Magazine cover from 1902 depicting US Army waterboarding of...

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:24:00 -0400

LIFE Magazine cover from 1902 depicting US Army waterboarding of a Cuban insurgent during the Spanish - Cuban - American war, 1898-1902.

Caption reads: {Chorus in Background} THOSE PIOUS YANKEES
CAN’T THROW STONES AT US ANY MORE.
Bucket is marked: U.S.ARMY

CIA Agent Gunned Down by Houston Police

Mon, 19 May 2008 11:41:00 -0400

BY WAYNE MADSEN/ WAYNE MADSEN REPORT

The shooting death by Houston police on April 29 of retired CIA agent and CIA contractor Roland V. Carnaby is being called an “assassination” by many intelligence professionals who knew him and his past work for the CIA.

Carnaby was shot to death by Houston police in the middle of the morning near the Galleria, Carnaby’s office, and the home of former President George and First Lady Barbara Bush. There is evidence that Israeli intelligence agents inside the Houston Police Department issued the order to shoot Carnaby.

Attention is being focused on the statement made to the press by Houston Police Department Homicide Captain Steve Jett who said that the Houston police officers who stopped Carnaby were told to “find something” on which to hold Carnaby. Investigators want to know who issued that order and why. Foreign intelligence elements who wanted Carnaby silenced may have infiltrated the Houston Police Department at a high level and issued the order to “hold” Carnaby on any charge.

Carnaby’s actions were likely those of an experienced intelligence officer who understood that he was being set up, a routine event in many hostile intelligence environments where CIA officers must be on constant guard against being detained by the police on trumped up charges.

The Houston police have not yet released their video camera footage from their patrol cars, adding to the belief that the police are engaged in a major cover-up of the circumstances of Carnaby’s shooting death. WMR has also learned that the two pistols and a shotgun allegedly found by Houston police in Carnaby’s Jeep Commander after it was impounded were “drop guns.” Drop guns are a hallmark of the Houston police,which often plants hard-to-trace weapons on the victims of police shootings.

Why Carnaby Was Killed

The Bush-Cheney administration has allowed to flourish in the United States a ruthless and brutal organized crime syndicate that has its roots in Russia and Israel and festers in its criminal dens in Brighton Beach, NY; Miami, FL; Houston, TX; London, England and other cities.

The shooting death of Carnaby was the result of a high-stakes turf war between Israeli intelligence agents livid over the CIA’s and FBI’s renewed takedown of an old Israeli intelligence network operating deep within the bowels of the US government and the CIA and FBI, which have joined forces to rout out Israeli intelligence moles.

Two weeks ago, 84-year old Ben-Ami Kadish, an accused longtime spy for the Israelis at the US Army Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, was arrested. FBI agents are trying to get Kadish to spill the beans on high-level Israeli spies inside the government. Israel’s Mossad and its allied assets inside the Russian- Israeli Mafia, have retaliated with a vengeance, according to WMR’s US intelligence sources.

On April 15, as FBI agents surveilled Kadish at his New Jersey home and the National Security Agency (NSA) had a full digital intercept on Kadish’s email and phone communications with his intelligence controller in Israel, another group had its eye on an Austin, Texas school teacher named Riad Hamad. Hamad was a significant donor to the Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund. The FBI had Hamad under investigation for “supporting terrorism,” a favorite canard used against Americans who support the Palestinian cause. Hamad had been a target of the neocons for years but they could never pin anything on him.

On April 16, Hamad’s body was found in Lady Bird Lake in Austin. His eyes had duct tape over them and his hands and feet were bound. The police ruled it a suicide. However, Hamad would be the first victim in an Israeli hit on individuals who helped US back channels to the Palestinians and other groups targeted by Israel and the neo-con cell operating deep within the Bush administration, the Israeli-influenced cell that the FBI, in its arrest of Kadish, wanted to flush out.

Hamad once had a significant colleague in Austin, a University of Texas PhD student named Salam Fayyad. Fayyad is now the Prime Minister of Palestine and governs with the support of both Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah and Hamas. Recently, the US Consul General in Jerusalem handed over $150 million to Fayyad’s Palestinian government. Fayyad and Hamad represent a threat to the Israeli hardliners and their allies in the Bush administration who do not want a real peace agreement with the Palestinians and, above all, do not want to see any dialogue with Hamas.

Enter Roland Vincent Carnaby, known as “Tony” to his Houston and Langley colleagues, a retired CIA counter-terrorism and financial intelligence expert, who was operating a CIA private intelligence contractor in Houston, was involved in homeland security measures for the port of Houston and the Houston airports, was the head of the Houston chapter of the Association for Intelligence Officers (AFIO), but above all, was contracted by the CIA for operating a financial intelligence group consisting of some 40 people in Rome that was tracking Russian-Israeli Mafia money flows, particularly with regard to off-shore Panamanian corporations.

WMR has been told by a knowledgeable source that Carnaby had successfully penetrated a major Israeli financial ring that was tied to various Israeli intelligence operations in the United States. Carnaby, a Lebanese-American, also had extensive contacts in the Middle East, including Lebanon and its major political force that is anathema to the Bush neo-cons and their Israeli puppet masters, Hezbollah.

But it was Carnaby’s role in identifying Israeli intelligence financing that apparently made him public enemy number one for the Israelis. WMR has been told by a knowledgeable source that Carnaby possessed detailed information about former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s relationship with convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, information that connected DeLay and other top Republicans to pay-offs from organizations and individuals linked to the Russian-Israeli Mafia and Israeli intelligence. Specifically, the pay-offs came to the US Family Network, set up by DeLay’s former Chief of Staff Ed Buckham, from Russian oil and gas interests connected to top Russian-Israeli Mafia tycoons living under the protection of the British and Israeli governments.

Buckham headed the Alexander Strategy Group, a GOP lobbying firm that represented Group W Advisors, Inc., a defense contractor owned by Brent Wilkes. Alexander also represented Eli Lilly and Company, once headed by former Assistant Secretary of State Randall Tobias, named as one of the clients of the Pamela Martin & Associates escort firm of the late Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

Wilkes was convicted on November 5, 2007, on 13 counts of conspiracy, bribery, money laundering, and wire fraud in the Randy “Duke” Cunningham scandal. It was Wilkes who helped arrange with former CIA Executive Director Kyle “Dusty” Foggo “poker parties” at the Watergate and Westin Grand Hotels attended by then CIA director Porter Goss. WMR has previously reported that Washington area escorts were transported to these parties by Shirlington Limousine. WMR also learned from the late Deborah Jeane Palfrey that Wilkes phoned her from his Poway, San Diego headquarters on a number of occasions to organize escorts for these parties. Palfrey said he only used the name “Brent” when he called.

Abramoff had also been under an investigation by the US Attorney for Maryland is using Palfrey’s escorts. On October 27, 2007, WMR reported: “Shirlington Limousine and Abramoff have been linked to the investigation by fired US Attorney for Maryland Thomas DiBiagio of the use of prostitutes by the office of then-Maryland Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich, Jr. DiBiagio, based in Baltimore, was fired after his investigation leap-frogged well beyond the business of the Pamela Martin & Associates escort service and into the activities of Ehrlich and his staff.”

Carnaby, Abramoff and 9/11

WMR has learned from knowledgeable sources that Carnaby also had information on Abramoff’s Sun Cruz casino boat operation in Florida, a case that involved a mob hit on Sun Cruz’s former owner Gus Boulis, and the events of 9/11. Abramoff reportedly entertained at least two of the 9/11 hijackers, including Mohammed Atta, on a Madeira Beach, Florida casino boat days before the 9/11 attack. This editor recalls Palfrey stating over dinner that she had information from some of her escorts that involved pre-intelligence on the 9/11 attack. The intersection of Abramoff and his Russian-Israeli mob gang to knowledge possessed by Carnaby and Palfrey suggest that their deaths may have been as brazen as hits as the gunning down of Boulis on a Fort Launderdale street by hit men. That assassination was blamed on Abramoff and his associates.

Carnaby’s widow has filed a lawsuit in Houston in the US District Court for Southern Texas against the City of Houston and Houston police officers Cecil Foster and Andrew J. Washington for the shooting death of Carnaby. The complaint states that Carnaby “died of a gunshot wound to the back which caused fatal loss of blood.”

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC based investigative journalist. and author. His website is: www.WayneMadsenReport.com

Aspartame: Sweet But Dangerous

Mon, 19 May 2008 11:19:00 -0400

BY ELAINE SULLIVAN / RCFP

Aspartame is one of the most controversial food additives in history. Aspartame, a combination of two amino acids phenylalanine and aspartic acid, is sold commercially under names like Nutrasweet, Equal and Candereal, and can be found in more than 5,000 foods, including sodas, chewing gum, tabletop sweeteners, diet and diabetic foods, breakfast cereals, jams, sweets, vitamins, prescription and over-the-counter drugs. Approximately 2/3 of the adult population and 1/3 of children regularly ingest this artificial sweetener. Aspartame was approved as a food additive by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1981, but the debate about its safety continues.

Aspartame was discovered by a chemist working at the pharmaceutical manufacturer GD Searle in December 1965. Searle began safety tests for FDA approval in 1967. The first study conducted by Dr. Harry Waisman, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Memorial Laboratory of Mental Retardation Research and a respected expert in the toxicity of phenylalanine, studied the effects of aspartame on primates. Of seven monkeys fed aspartame mixed with milk, one died and five others had grand mal epileptic seizures. Dr. John Olney, professor of neuropathology and psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine informed Searle in 1971 that his studies show that aspartic acid, one of the main components of aspartame causes holes in the brains of infant mice. This is confirmed by one of Searle’s own researchers, Ann Reynolds.

In spite of negative results, in 1973 Searle applied for FDA approval and submitted studies claiming aspartame to be safe, with no mention of the dead monkeys or the holes in the brains of the mice. From 1973 to the present numerous studies by independent researchers have found not only that aspartame is unsafe but that Searle’s research has been faulty, at best. An FDA task force concluded in a 1976 report that they found “faulty and fraudulent product testing, knowingly misrepresented product testing, knowingly misrepresented and manipulated test data and instances of irrelevant animal research in all the products reviewed.” FDA commissioner Dr. Alexander Schmidt stated “Searle’s studies were incredibly sloppy science. What we discovered was reprehensible.”

But this did not stop Searle from continuing to try to push aspartame through the FDA approval process.

In 1977, for the first time in the FDA’s history, it requested a criminal investigation of a manufacturer. The FDA chief counsel Richard Merrill formally requested the US Attorney’s office to begin grand jury proceeding against Searle. While the grand jury investigation was underway, Sidley & Austin, the law firm representing Searle, began recruitment negotiations with Samuel Skinner, the US attorney in charge of the investigation. Skinner removed himself from the investigation, and was hired by Searle’s law firm six months later. Other conflicts of interest have followed including the hiring of Donald Rumsfeld who used political favors to help push through approval of aspartame. In 1981, as a member of the Reagan transition team Rumsfeld was instrumental in promoting Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr. to the post of FDA commissioner. Hayes then ignored the recommendations of his own internal FDA team and gave initial approval for aspartame to be used in dry products.

The FDA website gives aspartame only two short paragraphs and states: “To date, FDA has not determined any consistent pattern of symptoms that can be attributed to the use of aspartame, nor is the agency aware of any recent studies that clearly show safety problems.” Yet, an April, 1995 report by the Dept. of Health and Human Services reports that the FDA received almost 10,000 complaints attributed to aspartame, enumerating 92 different side effects. These side effects include: headache, dizziness, change in mood, vomiting, abdominal pain/ cramps, change in vision, diarrhea, seizures and convulsions, memory loss, and fatigue, to name just the top ten.

A quick search on “aspartame” on the website www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov will provide a researcher with a long list of articles about the health effects of aspartame. One of these articles is “Life-Span Exposure to Low Doses of Aspartame Beginning during Prenatal Life Increases Cancer Effects in Rats”, by Morando Soffritti, Fiorella Belppoggi, et al. in Environmental Health Perspective, 2007 September; 115(9): 1293-1297. This article is the result of a second study to better quantify the carcinogenic risk of aspartame. The researchers concluded that the results of the study confirmed and reinforced the first experimental demonstration of aspartame’s “…multipotential carcinogenicity at a dose close to the acceptable daily intake for humans. Futhermore, the study demonstrates that when life-span exposure to aspartame begins during fetal life, its carcinogenic effects are increased.” The last paragraph of this article reads; “On the basis of the present findings, we believe that a review of the current regulations governing the use of aspartame cannot be delayed. This review is particularly urgent with regard to aspartamecontaining beverages, which are heavily consumed by children.”

Aspartame proponents consistently gloss over or out right ignore any studies showing adverse health effects from aspartame. Even in the medical journals, you will find researchers defending aspartame. In a response to the Soffritti article, Eyassu Abegaz wrote in “Apartame Not Linked to Cancer”, that “The study by Soffritte et al. (2006) has major flaws that bring into question the validity of the findings.” But the beginnings of the two articles may shed some light on the disagreement. The Soffritti article states that “The authors declare they have no competing financial interests.” The Abegaz article, on the other hand, states that “The author is emploed by Ajinomoto USA, which sells aspartame.”

So the fight continues. Aspartame was approved by the FDA in 1981 and is with us still today but the process has been full of fraudulent research, conflicts of interest and manipulation of the political process. The FDA has demonstrated once again that they are more interested in the financial health of the drug companies than the health and well being of the American people.

Elaine Sullivan is health editor for the Rock Creek Free Press in Washington, DC.

For more information: “Aspartame – The Shocking Story of the World’s Bestselling Sweetener”, The Ecologist, by Pat Thomas, September 2005

Spanish Judge Calls for Bush to be Tried for War Crimes

Mon, 19 May 2008 11:11:00 -0400

Judge Baltasar Garzón, sometimes callled “Super Judge”
sits on Spains second highest criminal court.

BY VICKY SHORT

Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge who sought to prosecute Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet, has called for US President George W. Bush and his allies to be tried for war crimes over Iraq.

Writing in El Pais on the fourth anniversary of the invasion, Garzón stated, “Today, March 20, marks four years since the formal start of the war on Iraq. Instigated by the United States and Great Britain, and supported by Spain among other countries, one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history began.

“Breaking every international law, and under the pretext of the war against terror, there has taken place since 2003 a devastating attack on the rule of law and against the very essence of the international community. In its path, institutions such as the United Nations were left in tatters, from which it has not yet recovered.” “Instead of commemorating the war,” Garzón continues, “we should be horrified, screaming and demonstrating against the present massacre created as a consequence of that war.”

He then writes that George W. Bush and his allies should eventually face war crimes charges for their actions in Iraq: “We should look more deeply into the possible criminal responsibility of the people who are, orwere, responsible for this war and see whether there is sufficient evidence to make them answer for it.” “For many it would be merely a question of political responsibility, but judicial actions in the US are beginning to emerge, as is the case of the verdict passed on one of vicepresident Cheney’s collaborators, [I. Lewis Libby] which point in a different direction.”

“There is enough of an argument in 650,000 deaths for this investigation and inquiry to start without more delay,” he added.

Garzón then turns his scathing criticisms towards the former Spanish Prime Minister, José María Aznar, who followed British Prime Minister Tony Blair in supporting Bush’s war of aggression against Iraq.

“Those who joined the US president in the war against Iraq have as much or more responsibility than him because, despite having doubts and biased information, they put themselves in the hands of the aggressor to carry out an ignoble act of death and destruction that continues to this day.” Aznar still defends the invasion of Iraq. He reluctantly admitted last month that he now knows Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, but added that “the problem was not having been clever enough to know it earlier.”

Garzón answers this in his article: “If he didn’t know enough, he should be asked why he didn’t act prudently, giving United Nations inspectors more leeway instead of doing the opposite in total submission and fidelity to President Bush.”

Fearful of the extension of the insurgency in Iraq throughout the Middle East and internationally, Garzón declares that “the North American bellicose action, and that of those who supported it, has determined or at least has contributed to the creation, development and consolidation of the biggest terrorist training camp in the world…. In some way, with a terrible lack of awareness, we have been and are helping this monster grow more and more and strengthened by the minute, so that it is probably invincible.”

Garzón has investigated everything from Basque terrorism to the March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombings, whose alleged perpetrators are currently on trial. He led the investigation into the rightist terror group Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL), whose creation was attributed to the Socialist Party (PSOE) government of the day. He also banned Herri Batasuna, the political arm of ETA—the first political party to be outlawed since the death of Franco in 1975.

Back in 1996, the Progressive Union of Prosecutors filed criminal complaints against the Argentine and Chilean military for the disappearance of Spanish citizens under the dictatorships that ruled them in the 1970s and 1980s. One year later, Garzón issued an arrest order that included Argentine Navy Captain Adolfo Scilingo, who made a televised confession in 1995 of “death flights” in which hundreds of detainees were thrown from airplanes to their deaths in the Atlantic Ocean. Scilingo was detained after travelling to Spain voluntarily.

Former Chilean President Pinochet was arrested during a medical check-up in London in 1998 based on a warrant issued by Garzón. For months the judge attempted to have the dictator extradited to Spain to be tried for heading the military coup in 1973 that overthrew the elected president Salvador Allende and the subsequent murder of thousands of students and workers. He has also signalled his intention to question Richard Nixon’s national security adviser Henry Kissinger about events in Chile, after declassified documents released by the US State Department and the CIA suggested that Kissinger was well aware of what was happening.

The fact that such a prominent international judicial figure openly speaks of bringing war crimes judgement against the leaders of the US, UK and Spain is an indication that the entire Iraq campaign is heading towarda disaster and a response to the mounting opposition around the world. Yet his statement was given only the most cursory coverage by the media in the United States and internationally. No publication chose to make an editorial comment and most simply reproduced or slightly amended a Reuters report. Such is the level of hostility to the Iraq war and occupation in Spain, however, that even sections of ex-Prime Minister Aznar’s Popular Party (PP) are publicly declaring that his attendance at the meeting in March 2003, in the Azores that supported Bush in his decision to invade Iraq was an error. Reporting on their criticism, the right-wing newspaper El Mundo commented on March 20, “The PP should not continue avoiding an auto-criticism on Iraq.”

It continues that, although the present critics were in the main opposed to sending troops to Iraq at the time, today “even if only a few dare to say it aloud … the vast majority in the PP accept in private that Aznar made a mistake. In his zeal to make Spain more of an Atlantic country, trusting Bush blindly, he only succeeded in fertilising the rank anti- Americanism of a sector of Spanish society, as well as neglecting the repercussions this would have on domestic affairs, which, as the new (PSOE) government is demonstrating, demanded more attention than our projection abroad.”

A few hours after the El Pais article by Garzón had reached the shops, the secretary of organisation for the PSOE, José Blanco, declared in an interview in Telecinco that someone had to pay the consequences for the decision to invade Iraq. And if Bush, Blair and Aznar were to be made legally accountable, then he would support this.

Vicky Short is a journalist; her articles have appeared on www.globalresearch.ca and World Socialist Web Site, wsws.org

40 Years Since RFK Assassination, Mounting Evidence of CIA Involvement

Mon, 19 May 2008 10:59:00 -0400

BY MATT SULLIVAN / RCFP

Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated 40 years ago this month at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Sirhan B. Sirhan, a 24 year old immigrant, is the alleged lone gunman and is presently serving a life sentence.

In a new book, An Open and Shut Case, Dr. Robert Joling and Philip Van Praag have joined a growing list of people who don’t believe that Sirhan acted alone.

Joling and Van Praag, both forensic scientists, claim that after analyzing audio recordings of the assassination they have concluded that at least 13 shots were fired. The handgun Sirhan used only had the capacity to fire eight shots. They believe that there were two guns and that the fatal shot came from behind Robert Kennedy, while witnesses claim that Sirhan was in front of Kennedy. According to a March 27, 2008 ABC report by Pierre Thomas, Joling claims, “It can be established conclusively that Sirhan did not shoot Senator Kennedy. And in fact not only did he not do it, he could not have done it.”

Los Angeles Coroner Thomas Noguchi conducted the official autopsy on the body of Robert Francis Kennedy on the morning of June 6, 1968. Noguchi stated that the shot that killed RFK “had entered through the mastoid bone, an inch behind the right ear and had traveled upward to sever the branches of the superior cerebral artery.”

At a conference in Connecticut forensic scientists met to discuss their independent findings. The conference presenters argued that Sirhan Sirhan could not have fired the fatal shot that killed Kennedy. Dr. Robert Joling has studied the Kennedy assassination for nearly 40 years, he concluded that the fatal shot came from behind Kennedy, while Sirhan was four to six feet in front of the senator and never got close enough to shoot him from behind.

Philip Van Praag analyzed the Pruszynski recording (a Canadian journalist’s tape recording) and determined that 13 shots were fired while Kennedy was killed, although Sirhan’s gun only held eight bullets. This suggests that a second shooter was involved in the assassination.

Other questions regarding the assassination of Robert Kennedy have recently been voiced in a new BBC documentary by Shane O’Sullivan, which supports the conclusion that the CIA planned and executed the killing of Robert Kennedy. The result of a three year long investigation includes photographic evidence that puts three senior CIA operatives at the scene of the murder. These three operatives have been positively identified as David Morales, Gordon Campbell and George Joannides. All three men worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA’s Miami base for its secret war on Castro.

Again the question of the murder weapon is raised. The LAPD claimed no bullets were found lodged in the “bullet holes”, and yet the doorframes in which some of the bullets had lodged were burned and two expended bullets, dug out of the wood, were found in the front seat of Sirhan’s car. Then inexplicably, the LAPD destroyed their records of the tests that had been done on the “bullet holes” in the doorframe.

Michael Ruppert, former Los Angeles Police detective, author, journalist and editor of From the Wilderness, has conducted his own investigation of the RFK assassination, using inside contacts deep within the LAPD. His investigation definitively proves that the assassination was a CIA operation, and he names Thane Eugene Cesar, a private security guard just hired out of Lockheed, as the triggerman.

As in other high profile crimes, JFK, MLK and 9/11, the investigation was bungled and evidence was destroyed. Van Praag and Joling are talking to other forensic experts around the country and lobbying for the case to be reopened. “What we would basically like to see at this point, is a new investigation certainly based on new facts that we have come up with, take a fresh look at this case and to bring the authorities in,” said Van Praag. (ABC News March 27, 2008, Pierre Thomas). Thomas ends with “The question is whether, after nearly 40 years, authorities will have any interest in reopening a painful chapter in American history.” There is no statue of limitations on murder – no matter how painful.

Navy Releases McCain's Records

Mon, 19 May 2008 10:47:27 -0400

USS Forrestal, July 29, 1967 - The worst accident aboard a US Navy surface vessel since WWII

BY WAYNE MADSEN/WAYNE MADSEN REPORT

The Navy released John McCain’s military record after a Freedom of Information Act request from the Associated Press. The record is packed with information on McCain’s medals and commendations but little else. The one thing that the McCain campaign does not want to see released is the record of McCain’s antics on board the USS Forestal in 1967. McCain was personally responsible for the deadliest fire in the history of the US Navy. That catastrophe, with 27 dead and over 100 wounded trumps McCain’s record as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

WMR has learned additional details regarding the deadly fire aboard the Navy aircraft carrier, the USS Forrestal, on July 19, 1967 in the Gulf of Tonkin. The additional details point to then-Lt. Commander John McCain playing more of a role in triggering the fire and explosions than previously reported.

On January 16, 2006, WMR reported that according to a US Navy sailor who was aboard the Forrestal on the fateful day of the fire, “McCain and the Forrestal’s skipper, Capt. John K. Beling, were warned about the danger of using M-65 1000-lb. bombs manufactured in 1935, which were deemed too dangerous to use during World War II and, later, on B-52 bombers. The fire from the Zuni missle misfire resulted in the heavy 1000 pound bombs being knocked loose from the pylons of McCain’s A-4 aircraft, which were only designed to hold 500-pound bombs.”

WMR further reported, “The unstable bombs had a 60-second cook-off threshold in a fire situation and this warning was known to both Beling and McCain prior to the disaster.” WMR also cited the potential that McCain’s Navy records were used against him by the neo-cons in control of the Pentagon, “The neo-cons, who have had five years to examine every file within the Department of Defense, have likely accessed documents that could prove embarrassing to McCain, who was on board the USS Forrestal on July 29, 1967, and whose A-4 Skyhawk was struck by an air-toground Zuni missile that had misfired from an F-4 Phantom.”

WMR has been informed that crewmen aboard the Forrestal have provided additional information about the Forrestal incident. It is believed by many crewmen and those who have investigated the case that McCain deliberately “wet-started” his A-4E to shake up the guy in the plane behind his A-4. “Wet-starts”, done either deliberately or accidentally, shoot a large flame from the tail of the aircraft.

In McCain’s case, the “wet-start” apparently “cooked off” and launched the Zuni rocket from the rear F-4 that touched off the explosions and massive fire. The F-4 pilot was reportedly killed in the conflagration. “Wet starting” was apparently a common practice among young “hot-dog” pilots.

McCain was quickly transferred to the USS Oriskany (the only Forrestal crewman to be immediately transferred). Three months later, McCain was shot down over North Vietnam on October 26, 1967.

As WMR previously reported, at the time of the Forrestal disaster, McCain’s father, Admiral John McCain, Jr., was Commander-in-Chief of US Naval Forces Europe (CINCUSNAVEUR) and was busy covering up the details of the deadly and pre-meditated June 8, 1967, Israeli attack on the NSA spy ship, the USS Liberty.

The fact that both McCains were involved in two incidents just weeks apart that resulted in a total death count of 168 on the Forrestal and the Liberty, with an additional injury count of 234 on both ships (with a number of them later dying from their wounds) with an accompanying classified paper trail inside the Pentagon, may be all that was needed to hold a Sword of Damocles over the head of the “family honor”-oriented McCain by the neo-cons.

WMR has also been informed by knowledgeable sources, including an ex-Navy A-4 pilot, the “wet-start game” was a common occurrence. However, it is between “very unlikely” and “impossible” for the Forrestal “wet start” to have been accidental. “Wet starts” were later rendered impossible by automated engine controls.

Wayne Madsen reports on military and political affairs in Washington at his website, WayneMadsenReport.com

Liberal Media Echo White House 9/11 Talking Points

Mon, 19 May 2008 10:19:00 -0400

BY SHEILA CASEY / RCFP

When BuzzFlash editor and publisher Mark Karlin dipped his toe into 9/11 waters, he got an earful from his readers. In a May 12 blog post, Karlin states unequivocally that “9/11 was not an inside job,” (although he does concede an 80% probability that Flight 93 was shot down over Pennsylvania).

Judging from the comments at http: //www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorblog/ 089, his audience was not impressed. Reader after reader tries to set Karlin straight by presenting pieces from the overwhelming mountain of evidence indicating that we were sold a bill of goods about 9/11. So far Karlin has been silent. If he’s reading the reactions to his post, he gives no sign of it.

Buzzflash is a liberal news site that accepts no advertising and prides itself on being an unadulterated alternative to the whorish mainstream media. It pulls no punches in exposing the mind-boggling awfulness of the current administration— with one major exception. Like almost every other liberal outlet, it gives the Bush administration a free pass on 9/11.

The position of BuzzFlash, AlterNet, The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, The Nation, The Progressive and many other liberal outlets seems to be:

“Bush and Cheney stole the 2000 and 2004 elections and are in office illegitimately. They lied shamelessly to get us into illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, resulting in the death and injury of millions of innocents. They are torturing prisoners at Gitmo in violation of the Geneva Conventions. They have decimated the Constitution, abolished habeas corpus, and are in the process of instituting a police state. They directed the Justice Dept. to fire US attorneys who were not considered “good Bushies,” and then covered it up by flatly refusing to submit to Congressional oversight. They have spied on Americans illegally, reading our emails and listening to our phone calls without a court warrant. They let Americans die like rats in the streets of New Orleans and then lied about rebuilding the Gulf coast after Katrina.

“They’re evil. They are devils straight from the bowels of hell. But would they kill US citizens and blame it on Osama bin Laden to create a pretext for war to steal oil in the Middle East? Don’t be ridiculous. They may demonstrate all the wisdom and compassion of Attila the Hun, but surely they wouldn’t murder their ‘own people’ in cold blood. Only wacky conspiracy theorists think that. Certainly not solid, well-established liberal publications like us. Don’t lump us with them.”

Speaking of 9/11 truthers, Manuel Garcia of Counterpunch (Sep. 9, 2006) makes accusations of “wild theories fueled by paranoia,” and states that “conspiracists” “cannot accept” the real reasons for the attack, and instead must “find comfort” in an irrational hypothesis.

Sure, Manuel. It’s much too scary to believe that we were attacked by bearded men hiding in caves nine time zones away. It’s so much more soothing to believe it was our own government, the nexus of which is located just down the road, and which, at its discretion, can label me a terrorist and lock me up indefinitely. It makes me feel so warm and cozy that I tell it to my kids as their bedtime story. Media Matters for America, a nonprofit devoted to correcting conservative disinformation in the media, saw the results of a May 2007 Rasmussen poll, which found that 35% of Democrats believe that Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance, and had only one thought: this makes the Dems look bad. In an article from May 15, 2007, titled “Conservative media tout flawed poll to call Dems 9/11 conspiracy theorists,” Media Matters bends over backwards to excuse the poll results, protesting that the question was ambiguous. They bemoan the opportunity the results gave to right wing commentators to label Dems as “deranged and dangerously uninformed,” and “out of their gourds.” Media Matters faults the pundits for overstating the poll results, but never considers that Dems have nothing to fear from this. Is it so unthinkable that Media Matters might have actually investigated the evidence for themselves and reported that those 35% were so far ahead that they appear to be behind?

Even those who themselves doubt the official 9/11 story take pains to stress that they are not “conspiracy theorists.” In an August 2007 column for The Independent titled “Even I Question the Truth About 9/11,” Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk presents several aspects of the official story that bother him, such as: “What about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose “Islamic” advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family – which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comradesin- murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the “Fajr” prayer to be included in Atta’s letter.

Fisk wonders about the long awaited (and still pending) report from NIST about the free fall collapse of WTC 7, and the three al Qaeda “hijackers” who are still alive.

But before going into his doubts, Fisk feels compelled to first differentiate himself from the others who have such doubts. He refers to people who ask him questions about 9/11 at lectures as “ravers.” And he closes with “Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist.” In an article for the Guardian, Peter Tatchell puts forth the case for a new investigation in “9/11 The Big Coverup”, (2007) but then distances himself from 9/11 truth groups. He writes that some groups “promote speculative hypotheses, ignore innocent explanations, cite nonexpert sources and jump to conclusions that are not proven by the known facts. They convert mere coincidence and circumstantial evidence into cast-iron proof.” He states “I do not believe in conspiracy theories.”

David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation, did his level best to squash any questions about the official account in a piece for Alternet in 2002. He adopts the now predictable tone of condescension and disdain for 9/11 activists, starting his piece with: “Please stop sending me those emails. You know who you are. And you know what emails I mean…”

Corn asks: “Would George W. Bush take the chance of being branded the most evil president of all time by countenancing such wrongdoing?” From the vantage point of 2008, I can only answer: Yup.

Why have the liberal media so fallen down on the job regarding 9/11? Why do they ridicule and belittle the citizen journalists who have taken on the task that they refuse to do? There is a peculiar disconnect between the views liberal journalists purport to hold of our current leaders, and their unshakable faith that we were told the truth about 9/11. Oh, they may admit that there was a little fudging around the edges, but basically they buy the official story, hook, line and sinker. Not only do they buy it, they exhibit a nearly pathological rage at those who don’t buy it. Theoretically, journalists believe in the value of digging for truth, so there is something very odd about this situation.

What accounts for this strange state of affairs? I have a couple of ideas.

There has been an enormously successful propaganda campaign to paint conspiracy theorists in the worst possible light. According to Wikipedia, the term “conspiracy theorist” was first used in 1909, but not until the 1960s did it acquire its “current derogatory sense.”

According to Wikipedia, “The term is used pejoratively to dismiss claims that are alleged by critics to be misconceived, paranoid, unfounded, outlandish, irrational, or otherwise unworthy of serious consideration. For example ‘conspiracy nut’ and ‘conspiracy theorist’ are used as pejorative terms.” If conspiracy theorists are such wacky moon bats, then surely no conspiracies exist?

Not at all. To quote Wikipedia:

History contains numerous proven conspiracies, some of which were not the subject of any widespread speculation until they were exposed. Historical conspiracies include:
* The Pazzi conspiracy, which
included the Pope, of the late 1400s. * The Main Plot of 1603
* The Bye Plot of 1603
* The Gunpowder Plot of 1605
* The conspiracy of 1865 to assassinate U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and members of his cabinet
* The 1894 (and ongoing) French government’s attempted cover-up following Emile Zola’s accusations in the Dreyfus Affair
* The 1903 efforts by the Tsar’s secret police to foment anti-Semitism by presenting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an authentic text.
* The 1939 Operation Himmler and its Gleiwitz incident
* The 1948 (and ongoing) Operation Mockingbird
* The 1953 (and ongoing) MKULTRA mind control program
* The 1954 Lavon affair
* The 1962 Operation Northwoods
* The 1969 Manson Family murders
* The 1972 Watergate burglary and cover-up
* The 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack
* The 1987 Iran-Contra Affair
* The 1995 Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway

Some theorists, like Charles Pigden, argue that the reality of such conspiracies should caution against any casual dismissal of conspiracy theory. Pigden, in his article “Conspiracy Theories and the Conventional Wisdom,” argues that not only do conspiracies occur but that any educated member of society will believe in at least one of them; we are all, in fact, conspiracy theorists.

Authors and publishers, such as Robert Anton Wilson and Disinfo, use proven conspiracies as evidence of what a secret plot can accomplish. In doing so, they demonstrate that the label “conspiracy theory” does not necessarily indicate that a theory is false. Theories cited in making this case include those listed above as well as:

* the Mafia
* the Business Plot to overthrow Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933
* various CIA involvements in overseas coups d’état
* the 1991 Testimony of Nayirah before the US Congress to rally the support of the US public to launch the Gulf War
* the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male
* the General Motors streetcar conspiracy
* the plot by the British Secret Service to destabilize Prime Minister Harold Wilson, among others.
* the plot by some Gaullists of the French Secret Service to destabilize future president Georges Pompidou, known as the Markovic affair
* the series of incidents in Italy connected to the so called “strategy of tension”
* Operation Gladio

Despite the existence of these well documented conspiracies that were kept secret for many years, to believe in a conspiracy before it has been exposed apparently marks one as cuckoo.

When I studied the evidence about 9/11 and voiced my doubts to a friend, she immediately shot back that she wasn’t interested in “conspiracy theories.” I hadn’t advanced any theory at all, I had only said that I had questions, that things didn’t add up. But this liberal friend with a Ph.D had drunk the Kool Aid, she knew that people who said the things I was saying, were “conspiracy theorists.”

The PR efforts of the CIA and Pentagon have been enormously successful. They have convinced most Americans, and even many journalists, that only lunatic fringe nutcases doubt the official story about 9/11. The PR campaign around 9/11 has been so vast and so complete that even those who have doubts are reluctant to voice them, for fear of losing their credibility and being branded a voice lowered to a whisper “conspiracy theorist.”

That is my safe explanation.

Here’s the unsafe one: some of these journalists may be on the CIA’s payroll. The ongoing conspiracy listed above, Operation Mockingbird, involves the CIA infiltrating the media to influence the news. Rolling Stone reported in 1977 that journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Time and The Miami News were doing the CIA’s bidding. Thirty years have passed since the Rolling Stone report, who is doing the CIA’s bidding now?

To be sure, there are a few wild theories in the 9/11 camp. Nature abhors a vacuum, and when there is a dearth of credible information about a major event, speculation is inevitable.

But any harm done by spurious speculation is trivial compared to the enormous force for good that serious 9/11 researchers, writers and film makers have been. If there had never been a David Ray Griffin, a Dr. Stephen Jones or a Dylan Avery, the facts about that ghastly event might never have been exposed, and our nation would be more lost, more confused and have less chance of righting itself than it has now. Those who so cavalierly dismiss their thousands of hours of research with snide and contemptuous remarks are blind to the enormous debt of gratitude owed to the 9/11 truthers, who labor tirelessly to expose this horrible wrong to the world.

Something is deeply rotten in the state of Denmark, like a metastasizing cancer on the soul of our society. Until it is diagnosed and cut out, we cannot progress and indeed will regress to an ever more animalistic state. It is sad and frightening that those who aspire to be a voice of progress and compassion—our liberal media—have failed so utterly to assist with the surgery.

Sheila Casey is a DC area journalist. Her opinion pieces have appeared in The Denver Post, Common Dreams, and BuzzFlash. She blogs at SheilaCasey.com

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Mon, 19 May 2008 10:16:23 -0400

Rice Directed Torture from White House

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:09:11 -0400

BY SHEILA CASEY / RCFP

In December 2005, Condoleezza Rice testified to Congress “The United States does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances.”

But ABC News has now revealed that during 2002 and 2003, Rice led dozens of meetings to discuss specific torture techniques with the National Security Council Principals Committee in the White House Situation Room. The committee included Vice President Dick Cheney and former Bush aides Attorney General John Ashcroft, CIA Director George Tenet, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell. They approved using the “enhanced interrogation techniques” of sleep deprivation, waterboarding, sexual assault, pushing and slapping.

Comedian Jon Stewart has joked that waterboarding sounds fun, as in “I’m going to hop in my Chevy Tahoe, get a six pack, and head out for some waterboarding.” But until recently the United States considered waterboarding to be torture, and prosecuted Japanese officers for subjecting prisoners to waterboarding in World War II. In waterboarding, a prisoner is strapped to a board with his head lower than his feet, while water is poured steadily over his nose and mouth, until his lungs fill with water. Prior to death, the process is stopped and the victim revived, often to endure it yet again. It can leave victims with lung damage, brain damage and death, if they cannot be revived.

Waterboarding was designated as illegal by US generals in the Vietnam War. On January 21, 1968, The Washington Post published a controversial photograph of two US soldiers and one South Vietnamese soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese POW near Da Nang. The photograph led to the soldier being court-martialled by a U.S. military court within one month of its publication, and he was discharged from the army. Former Navy instructor Malcolm Nance testified before Congress that “Waterboarding is misnamed. That’s just the device that we use. It should be called the drowning torture, and has been called the drowning torture in the past.”

“The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law,” says John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

Rice has made many public statements disavowing any use of torture by the United States. In January 2005, she said “[the president] has made very clear to American personnel that we will not condone torture,” and “let me be very clear. The United States doesn’t and can’t condone torture.” In December 2005, Rice testified that “Torture and conspiracy to commit torture are crimes under US law.”

According to ABC News, in the summer of 2004, Rice told the CIA, regarding the “enhanced interrogation techniques,” “This is your baby; go do it.” According to ABC, one top official said that John Ashcroft asked out loud after one of the Situation Room meetings, “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”

Prior to airing the story, ABC reporter Jan Crawford Greenburg contacted all of the committee members. She couldn’t reach John Ashcroft, and all others replied with “no comment” through their spokespersons.

George Tenet sought to receive approval for the techniques from the highest levels so that the CIA agents conducting the interrogations would be protected. He has stated that the interrogation techniques were legal because they were approved by the Attorney General.

At some meetings with Cheney, Rice, Tenet, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, CIA officers physically acted out the tactics to make sure the group fully understood what the al-Qaida suspects would undergo. “Discussions were so detailed that the interrogations were almost choreographed,” said one source. Tenet asked the group for permission to combine several interrogation methods at a time, (such as waterboarding an already severely sleep deprived prisoner). Several in the group, including Dick Cheney, gave the okay.

The group then asked the Justice Department to examine whether using these methods would break domestic or international laws. “No one at the agency wanted to operate under a notion of winks and nods and assumptions that everyone understood what was being talked about,” said a former senior intelligence official. “People wanted to be assured that everything that was conducted was understood and approved by the folks in the chain of command.”

The Office of Legal Counsel issued at least two opinions on interrogation methods. In one, dated August 1, 2002, then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee defined torture as covering “only extreme acts” causing pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure. A second, dated March 14, 2003, justified using harsh tactics on detainees held overseas so long as military interrogators did not specifically intend to torture their captives. Both legal opinions since have been withdrawn.

In his book the The Terror Presidency, Bybee’s successor, Jack Goldsmith, writes that the torture memos had “no foundation” in any “source of law.” Yet they were prized by the administration as offering a “golden shield” against prosecution of CIA agents who used torture.

A senior intelligence official said rescinding the memos caused the CIA to seek even more detailed approvals for the interrogations. The department issued a memo in October, 2001 that sought to outline novel ways the military could be used domestically to defend the country in the face of an impending attack. The Justice Department has so far refused to release it, citing attorneyclient privilege, and Attorney General Michael Mukasey declined to describe it at a Senate panel where Democrats characterized it as a “torture memo.”

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, DMass., lambasted what he described as “yet another astonishing disclosure about the Bush administration and its use of torture.”

“Who would have thought that in the United States of America in the 21st century, the top officials of the executive branch would routinely gather in the White House to approve torture?” Kennedy said in a statement. “Long after President Bush has left office, our country will continue to pay the price for his administration’s renegade repudiation of the rule of law and fundamental human rights.” The American Civil Liberties Union called on Congress to investigate.

“With each new revelation, it is beginning to look like the torture operation was managed and directed out of the White House,” ACLU legislative director Caroline Fredrickson said. “This is what we suspected all along.”

As of this writing, the most watched video in the News and Politics section of YouTube is a two minute film by Robert Greenwald called Condi Must Go that contrasts clips of Rice making repeated statements to Congress that “we do not torture,” with the recent expose of her role by ABC News. It was viewed almost 300,000 times in the first 24 hours.

Sheila Casey is a DC area journalist. Her work has appeared in The Progressive Populist, Common Dreams and The Denver Post. She blogs at sheilacasey.com.

Toxic Mercury in Fish

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:17:00 -0500

by Elaine Sullivan

The New York Times published an article on January 23, 2008 stating that high levels of mercury are found in tuna sushi. Laboratory tests performed on tuna from 20 Manhattan stores and restaurants found so much mercury in tuna sushi that a regular diet of six pieces a week would exceed the levels considered acceptable by the EPA (49 micrograms of mercury a week). Analyzed by Dr. Michael Gochfeld, Professor of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, NJ and Dr. Joanna Burger, Professor of Life Sciences at Rutgers University, the tuna from some of these establishments had mercury levels so high that the FDA could take action to remove the fish from the market.
Mercury in fish is not a new phenomenon. In March 2004 the FDA and EPA teamed up to issue a warning to the public about mercury in fish. The joint advisory stated that although fish and shellfish are important parts of a healthy diet and are good sources of protein and other nutrients, some of us should monitor how much we eat. The FDA and EPA warning states: “…depending on the amount and type of fish you consume it may be prudent to modify your diet if you are: planning to become pregnant; nursing; or a young child.” The advisory went on to list three recommendations for selecting and eating fish and shellfish that would allow the consumer to “…receive the benefits of eating fish and shellfish and be confident that they have reduced their exposure to the harmful effects of mercury.”
FDA and EPA recomendations 1. Do not eat Shark, Swordfish, King Mackerel, or Tilefish because they contain high levels of mercury. (Tuna was not tested in this study but should also be avoided.) 2. Eat up to 12 ounces (2 average meals) a week of a variety of fish and shellfish that are lower in mercury. (Select animals lower down on the food chain, but not North American lobster which is very high in methylmercury.)
3. Check local advisories about the safety of fish caught by family and friends in your local lakes, rivers, and coastal areas. If no advice is available, limit consumption to 6 ounces (one average meal) per week of fish you catch from local waters, but don’t consume any other fish during that week. For a more extensive list, go to: www.cfsan.fda.gov/~frf/sea-mehg.html The FDA and EPA are supposed to warn the public of health risks such as this, but, the advisories don’t go far enough. They tell us to reduce our “exposure to the harmful effects of mercury”, but not how long mercury stays in our bodies or how to get rid of it.
According to Drs. Mercola and. Klinghardt in “Mercury Toxicity and Systemic Elimination Agents” an article published in the Journal of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (March 2001), “Mercury in the central nervous system causes psychological, neurological, and immunological problems in humans. Mercury bonds very firmly to structures in the central nervous system through its affinity for sulfhydryl-groups on amino acids. Other studies have shown that mercury is taken up in the periphery by all nerve endings and rapidly transported inside the axon of the nerves (axonal transport) to the spinal cord and brainstem. Unless actively removed, mercury has an extremely long half-life of somewhere between 15 and 30 years in the central nervous system.” So, reducing exposure to the harmful effects of mercury may help you from accumulating more mercury in your system, but does little for the mercury that is already there. A process called chelation can be employed to speed the removal of mercury from the body, it uses a regimen of diet change and cleansing for several days to help flush mercury from the system.
Sources of Mercury
Mercury is a naturally occurring element in the earth. Natural sources of mercury, such as volcanic eruptions and emissions from the ocean, have been estimated to contribute about a third of current worldwide mercury air emissions, whereas humancaused emissions account for the remaining two-thirds. According to the EPA, “These estimates are highly uncertain. Much of the mercury circulating through today’s environment is mercury that was released years ago, when mercury was commonly used in many industrial, commercial, and residential products and processes. Land and water surfaces can repeatedly re-emit mercury into the atmosphere after its initial release into the environment.” Human-caused emissions are roughly split between these re-emitted emissions from previous human activity, and direct emissions from current human activity.
The EPA estimates that 83% of the mercury deposited in the US originates from international sources, with the remaining 17% coming from US and Canadian sources. Most of this mercury is from power plants and municipal and medical waste incinerators. Mercury in the air eventually settles into water or onto land where it can be washed into water. Fish and shellfish are the main sources of methylmercury exposure to humans. Once deposited, small creatures, such as plankton, convert the mercury into a highly toxic form called methylmercury. The plankton is eaten by small fish and crustaceans where it accumulates in the animals flesh. These small fish and crustaceans are eaten by larger fish which in turn are eaten by predator fish like tuna, swordfish, shark, king mackerel and others. Along this chain the mercury accumulates and concentrates; because the large fish also have longer life spans they can accumulate toxic levels of methylmercury. This, unfortunately, is passed along the food chain to us. Eating fish and shellfish that are lower on the food chain; shrimp, salmon, and tilapia can help to reduce the amount of mercury you get, but you will have to do some research to determine which fish and shellfish are safest to eat. The FDA and the EPA have extensive lists of fish and their mercury levels.
According to the EPA website US mercury emissions account for about 3% of the global total, of that about one third is deposited within the contiguous US the remainder enters the global cycle. Asia is reported to contribute 53% of global emissions with Africa following at 18%, Europe 11%, North America 9%, Australia 6% and South America at 4%. The Clean Air Network Fact Sheet of August 1999 cites “The Electric Power Research Institute calculates that up to 10% of the mercury released deposits within 62 miles of a power plant; 50% within 621 miles and the rest is transported regionally and globally.”
According to the EPA website, “The United States is leading an effort within the United Nations Environment Programme to create a program that would establish partnerships designed to help developing countries reduce mercury emissions. The partnerships will leverage resources, technical expertise, technology transfer, and information exchanges to provide immediate effective action that will result in tangible reductions of mercury use and emissions. It accelerates the work of the UNEP Mercury program, originally proposed by the US at the 2003 UNEP Governing Council meeting.”
The US has cut its own mercury emissions from 220 tons per year in 1990 to 115 tons in 1999 with the biggest changes in the municipal waste combustors and medical waste incinerators. Regulations that were issued in the 1990s to control mercury emissions burning waste require more than a 90% reduction in emissions from these facilities. However, President Bush has tried to do an end run around these regulations through the Clear Skies legislation which would allow for 3 times the amount of mercury emissions as the Clean Air Act.
In spite of attempts by the Bush administration to gut mercury emission regulations, the US remains a very small contributor to global mercury emissions. However, the whole world shares the same oceans, so reducing mercury pollution is a global, not just a national, problem. Since many types of fish are caught and sold internationally, effective exposure reduction will require reductions in global emissions. In the meantime, don’t eat the spicy tuna roll.

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Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:14:33 -0500

Japanese Diet Debates 9/11Truth

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 09:58:00 -0500

On January 11, extraordinary testimony from Japan’s upper house of legislature (Diet) was transmitted into Japanese homes and offices nationwide. For over 20 minutes, Yukihisa Fujita, an opposition party leader of the upper house and member of the Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, challenged the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers to justify Japan’s continued participation in the US global war on terror. He questioned the ministers as to what proof, if any, the US has offered as to the facts of 9/11.

Fujita challenged the very premise of the “Global War on Terrorism” saying that, since the Afghani people are the greatest victims of the fight against terror, Japan should be supplying drinking water for the people of Afghanistan rather than oil for US warships.

Mr. Fujita then proceeded to put before the ministers, and the people of Japan, a series of unanswered questions and troubling facts which contradict the official 9/11 narrative. His presentation would be familiar to anyone versed in the litany of the 9/11 truth movement: buildings exploding, the lack of air defense, firefighter testimonies, the removal of the physical evidence, and official silence on the strange case of WTC building 7.

The debate was precipitated by the request from George Bush that Japan resume its participation in support of the gulf wars. Japan had been providing naval refueling services in the Indian Ocean in support of the US war effort, but that operation was halted when the upper house voted it down based on the concern that such operations were in violation of the Japanese Constitution which forbids offensive military activities.

Prime Minister Fukuda, was forced to resort to extraordinary parliamentary procedures in order to restart the naval operations. Fukuda managed to pass the war funding bill only after he secured the 2/3 majority in the lower chamber needed to over-ride the block. This procedure is so extraordinary that it has not been used in over 40 years and it puts Fukuda at risk of a no-confidence vote.

Read the complete coverage of the historic testimony in the House of Councilors in the Japanese Diet in the Feb. 2008 issue.

From the Gulf of Tonkin to the Strait of Hormuz

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:28:00 -0500

Matt Sullivan

To anyone old enough to remember the Vietnam War, the similarities between the recent Iranian speedboat encounter and the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident are hard to miss. The Navy claimed, in August 1964, that the destroyer Maddox had come under attack by small North Vietnamese gunboats. This “confrontation” was seized upon by war hawks in the Johnson administration and used as the justification for “The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution”, a dramatic escalation of hostilities in southeast Asia. There’s only one problem with the Tonkin incident—it never happened.

It’s been suspected for many years that the Tonkin Gulf incident was a fraud, but official acknowledgement has been a long time coming. In October 2005, the New York Times reported that Robert J. Hanyok, a historian for the U.S. National Security Agency, had concluded that the NSA deliberately distorted the intelligence reports that it had passed on to policy-makers regarding the incident. A full report was released in January 2008 by the National Security Agency and published by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).

“It’s a dramatic reversal of the historical record” FAS said in a statement; “[The report] demonstrates that not only is it not true, as (then US) Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told Congress, that the evidence of an attack was ‘unimpeachable,’ but that to the contrary, a review of the classified signals intelligence proves that no attack happened that night.”

In the recent Iranian gunboat encounter we are presented with a very similar set of alleged circumstances. We have huge American warships encountering much smaller enemy watercraft on international waters. And we have an administration looking for any provocation to justify an attack. But this time there are differences.

There is a lot more skepticism among the American public of administration intentions as a result of the WMD fiasco and other deceptions. While FOX News and CNN tried to play up the event, complete with video mash-up containing ominous voice-over; “I’m coming at you and you will blow up in a couple of minutes.” Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said that the Iranian boats were operating at “distances and speeds that showed reckless and dangerous intent – reckless, dangerous and potentially hostile intent.”

But the American public just wasn’t buying it.

Also different this time; Iran was able to counter with their own videos of the event released on YouTube and Al Jazeera. By week’s end, the administration and the networks were seriously backpedaling. The Navy has now distanced itself from any claims that the warships were ever threatened. The mysterious ominous voice is now being blamed on someone playing pranks over the marine radio channel.

Apparently the American public learned the lesson from the Gulf of Tonkin incident after all.

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Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:40:47 -0500

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Japanese Diet Debates 9/11Truth

From the Gulf of Tonkin to the Strait of Hormuz

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