Safety Deposit Box

Black soldiers receive apology for wrongful convictions

2008-07-28T06:56:00.000-07:00

SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- The Army formally apologized Saturday for the wrongful conviction of 28 black soldiers accused of rioting and lynching an Italian prisoner of war in Seattle, Washington, more than six decades ago.

"We had not done right by these soldiers," Ronald James, assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs, said Saturday. "The Army is genuinely sorry. I am genuinely sorry."

Relatives of the soldiers joined elected officials, military officers and one of the defense lawyers to hear James give the apology before hundreds of people in a meadow near the old Fort Lawton parade grounds and chapel in Discovery Park.

In addition, the soldiers' convictions were set aside, their dishonorable discharges were changed to honorable discharges and they and their survivors were awarded back pay for their time in the brig.

All but two of the soldiers are dead. One, Samuel Snow of Leesburg, Florida, planned to attend the ceremony but wound up in the hospital instead because of a problem with his pacemaker.

The convictions were overturned in October at the prodding of Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, largely based on the book "On American Soil" published in 2005 by Jack Hamann, a CNN and PBS journalist, and his wife Leslie about the riot on the night of Aug. 14, 1944, and subsequent events at Fort Lawton.

Dozens were injured in the melee that started with a scuffle between an Italian prisoner of war and a black soldier from the segregated barracks near the POW housing. A POW, Guglielmo Olivotto, was found hanged at the bottom of a bluff the next day.

The Army prosecutor was Leon Jaworski, who went on to become special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s.

Forty-three black soldiers were charged with rioting and three also were charged with murder. Two defense lawyers were assigned to the case and given two weeks to prepare without ever being shown an Army investigation criticizing the way the riot was handled.

Hamann also wrote that at least two soldiers were threatened with lynching by Army detectives. When one witness said a "Booker T." was present at the riot but couldn't give any more detail, the Army charged two men by that name. Another was charged with rioting although white, black and Italian POW witnesses all said he tried to quell the disturbance.

In the ensuing trial, 28 men were convicted.

One of those attending the ceremony Saturday, Arthur Prevost of Houston, said his father Willie, one of the convicted soldiers, never talked about what had happened.

"I think he was embarrassed," Prevost said. "I wished he had told us."

Snow's son, Ray Snow, told the gathering his father felt no animosity for the long-ago injustice.

"He was so honored" by the tribute, Ray Snow said. "We salute you for remembering a travesty that took place."

Clinton consultant 'Ace' Smith feared and admired

2008-05-03T05:41:00.000-07:00

Director of her crucial North Carolina campaign, he's equal parts opposition researcher and top-notch strategist.
By Robin Abcarian
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

May 3, 2008

RALEIGH, N.C. — Sitting on the sunny patio of a coffee shop last weekend, Averell "Ace" Smith hardly seemed the kind of guy to strike fear into a politician's heart.

The 49-year-old California political operative -- who helped Hillary Rodham Clinton to victories in the California and Texas Democratic presidential primaries and is now running her North Carolina operation -- was a study in bland: beige polo shirt, beige slacks, bright blue eyes framed by wire-rimmed glasses, a fringe of gray hair around a pink scalp.

Yet people -- many of them fellow Democrats -- frequently use melodramatic imagery to describe him.

"I believe that every life lesson in politics can be extrapolated from 'The Godfather,' " said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist and friend of Smith's who has worked for the Clintons.

"Some people are Fredos; at game time they disappear. There are Sonnys, who yell and scream. . . . The most effective ones are the Michael Corleones. Very quiet, they know under which rib to insert the knife. . . . Ace is a Michael Corleone."

The next round of the seemingly interminable quest for the Democratic nomination takes place Tuesday, when Indiana and North Carolina vote. They are the first contests since April 22, when Clinton beat Barack Obama in Pennsylvania.

The race is close in Indiana. In North Carolina, which has a sizable African American electorate, polls have shown Obama ahead, but Clinton has been gaining support over the last week. The fact that the Clinton campaign stationed Smith here signals how crucial the state is to her; she intends to fight for every vote.

"Everyone knew that Pennsylvania was essentially going to be a walk for Clinton and that the whole thing would come down to Indiana and North Carolina," said Joe Trippi, a top advisor to former presidential candidate John Edwards. "Guess where Ace Smith is? I don't think that's an accident."

If Smith can help Clinton seriously narrow Obama's margin of victory -- or even beat him -- in the Tar Heel State, the New York senator's argument that she is the more electable of the two will gain considerable strength.

A victory would also burnish Smith's reputation as a top-notch strategist and perhaps change his image as a fearsome practitioner of a dark political art: opposition research.

Ben Austin, a Democratic political consultant who worked in the Clinton White House and now supports Obama, put it this way: "He is one of the few balding, bespectacled guys who I wouldn't want to run into in a dark alley."

But not all Democrats are fans. "It's admirable if you can lie and get away with it," said Kam Kuwata, a consultant to former Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn, who ran against Smith client Antonio Villaraigosa twice -- successfully in 2001, unsuccessfully in 2005.

And Republicans? Attorney Ken Khachigian, a longtime Republican strategist, is a reluctant admirer. He faced off with Smith in 2006 when a client, former state Sen. Chuck Poochigian, lost to Smith client and former Gov. Jerry Brown for California attorney general. "He does what he has to do," Khachigian said. "He'll be relentless and tough. He fits right in with the Clinton war machine."

Khachigian figured in Smith's biggest political heartbreak. In 1990, Smith was deeply involved in the campaign of his father, longtime San Francisco Dist. Atty. Arlo Smith, who ran against Dan Lungren for state attorney general. Smith won on election day but lost two weeks later when absentee ballots barely put Lungren over the top.

Even now, Ace Smith has a hard time discussing it: "I'll tell you something. I have a tremendous amount of empathy for President Clinton. . . . I mean, if you see someone criticizing, attacking your father, in my case, or his wife, in his case, you just want to slug 'em."

Nevertheless, he said, "you cannot run campaigns if you can't remain calm in the face of adversity and bad polls. The best thing is to be as dispassionate as possible."

Up and down the state of California, political reporters have Ace Smith stories. They speak of heavy boxes landing on their desks, ammunition culled from public records that Smith hopes will shape the campaign narrative.

The topic might be voting records, inflated resume claims, long-ago brushes with the law or questionable business dealings. Not infrequently, stories ensue. Reporters say he is charming, helpful, tenacious and not averse to going over their heads to editors in an attempt to shape a story -- or kill one if he senses it is going to make a client look bad.

When The Times reported in 2006 that Los Angeles City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo -- then running for attorney general -- falsely claimed to have played professional football in Canada, Smith -- representing Democratic primary rival Brown -- made sure reporters had copies of the team roster for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. In 2005, working for Villaraigosa, he figured, correctly, that a minor billing scandal in the DWP would tar then-Mayor Hahn as a do-nothing who allowed corruption to flourish.

"Ace is very mischievous, in a dark way," said real estate developer Steve Soboroff, whose unsuccessful campaign for Los Angeles mayor in 2001 marked Smith's transition from opposition researcher to campaign manager.

Soboroff recalled that Smith was annoyed at a reporter and invited him to a meeting, promising to give him a scoop and telling him he had to be there at a certain time.

"So when the reporter showed up," Soboroff said, "we were holding the elevator, and as soon as he got close enough to see us, Ace said, 'Oh no, it's too late.' " The elevator doors closed, leaving the reporter behind, scoopless.

Smith -- whose company, SCN Public Relations, has earned about $140,000 from the Clinton campaign since 2007 -- works out of his home in the upscale Marin County town of Kentfield, where he lives with his wife, Laura, a fundraiser, and their children, Abram, 17, and Lili, 14.

He specializes in California races, but Smith has worked all over the country. In the late '80s, he traveled nationwide as political director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In 1992, before Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign, he produced "vulnerability studies" (the genteel term for "oppo" on your own guy) for the Arkansas governor.

When Smith heard that the Clintons wanted him in North Carolina, he did what he always does before parachuting into a state: grabbed his copy of "Inside U.S.A.," a 1947 guidebook by journalist John Gunther. "I always start there," he said. Then he picks up a AAA guidebook: "I read that start to finish 'cause it has all these odd little facts and pieces about small towns and you get a real flavor for what's going on."

This year in particular, small towns are a major part of his strategy. With Obama faring better in the big cities and among the affluent and well-educated, hitting the smaller population centers has been crucial to Clinton's success. Smith will often send Bill Clinton, who can pop in and out of small towns with ease. (Getting Hillary Clinton there is a cumbersome operation: big jet, lots of aides, the national press.)

Indeed, on Wednesday the former president held rallies in seven North Carolina towns whose populations ranged from less than 3,000 to 23,000. Smith said his internal polling shows that African Americans still have the highest regard for Bill Clinton, even though he has made remarks about Obama that offended many.

"He is enormously talented at looking at voting patterns and demographics and figuring out where you can actually put votes together," Lehane said. "I remember the day before the California primary, there were polls showing it was a dead heat, and some even had Obama surging ahead. The campaign was hectoring him from the East Coast, and he guaranteed them a 10-point win, which is exactly what he delivered."

How could he make such a guarantee? Easy, Smith said. "The way we put it away well before election day was to get millions and millions of Democratic women to cast their ballots . . . before the election. Everything we had was geared to getting all those votes, absentee."

County registrars had lists of those who'd returned absentee ballots, and Smith, with an army of volunteers on cellphones, polled a couple of million of them. "We got to a point," said Smith, "where it was mathematically impossible for Obama to win on election day."

North Carolina is a different story. "In California, Hillary went in with an institutional and demographic advantage," said consultant Austin, referring to her name recognition and popularity among Latinos.

"In North Carolina, Obama goes in with the demographic advantage, and if Ace can pull that out, he will truly have proved his mettle."

robin.abcarian@latimes.com

WHO’S BUSH?

2008-04-26T07:01:00.000-07:00

WHO’S BUSH?

How much do we really know about our president’s life, his background and his character? To understand George W. Bush’s administration better, it helps to become better acquainted with the well-smoothed path he has followed to the top. How is it that a lying and denying alcoholic, with arrests for theft and disturbing the peace and a conviction for drunk driving; one born with a silver spoon in his mouth, with no empathy for the plight of ordinary people; an inarticulate spoiled brat who just didn’t get the lessons of a good education; a chronically failed businessman who’s never earned anything on his own; and a high school cheerleader who avoided military service in Viet Nam by joining the National Guard and then going AWOL–gets himself elected as President of the United States? Well, you can be darn sure he didn’t exactly tell us the truth about his background.

To the Manner Born

George W. Bush (Bush Jr.) was born to privilege, high finance, and intrigue. His great-grandfathers, Samuel Bush and George Herbert Walker, were among the founders of the “military-industrial complex,”* making millions profiteering off of World War I, thanks to their close connections with the Rockefellers, Remingtons and the War Industries Board. Bush’s paternal grandfather, Prescott Bush, Sr., was a wealthy banker involved in financing Hitler’s war machine, and a United States Senator instrumental in originally recruiting Richard Nixon into politics. Prescott Bush served in military intelligence during World War I, and later acted as a high-level “confidant, ‘asset,’ or counselor” to the intelligence community. All of these ancestors were graduates of Yale University and members of its secret society, Skull and Bones, whose members have been at the forefront of America’s intelligence services.5 In 1942, George Herbert Walker Bush (Bush Sr.) may have been inducted into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as early as age 18, upon his graduation from Phillips Academy-Andover. Without any college and contrary to military regulations, he was commissioned, trained as a Navy pilot, and assigned to the South Pacific. During a patrol, his aircraft was struck by antiaircraft fire and the young pilot bailed out. In his panic, he abandoned his two crewmen to their deaths, even though the aircraft was designed to be crash landed on the ocean.6 Bush Sr. returned from the war and attended Yale, where he was initiated into Skull and Bones. If he was not already a CIA “asset,” it is probable that his athletic coach, Allen “Skip” Waltz, who was the CIA’s full-time headhunter at Yale, recruited him at that time. Upon graduation, Bush Sr. was employed by Dresser Industries, which had long-term connections with the intelligence community. He subsequently moved to Texas and incorporated Zapata Petroleum, which through its many subsidiaries likely served as a conduit for money and supplies to CIA operations in the Caribbean, including Guatemala and the Bay of Pigs invasion.7

*Defined by President Eisenhower in 1961 as a “conjunction of an immense Military Establishment and a large arms industry.” He warned that “we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.”

With the support of Presidents Nixon and Ford, Bush Sr. became a Congressman, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and the Director of the CIA. Although Ronald Reagan personally disliked Bush Sr., Reagan reluctantly picked him as Vice President to unify the Republican Party.8 Following Reagan’s second term, Bush Sr. was elected President of the United States and served one term before being defeated for reelection by Bill Clinton in 1992. As president, Bush Sr. was described as “remorselessly deceitful when it served his purpose.”9

Bush Jr.’s mother, Barbara Pierce, is a descendant of President Franklin Pierce, and her father was president of McCall Publishing Company.10 George and Barbara Bush were raised in wealthy households attended by servants. Their marriage in 1945 brought together two aristocratic lineages, and on July 6, 1946, the young prince, George Jr., was born in New Haven, Connecticut.

In 1948, the Bushes moved to Odessa, Texas, where George Sr. went into the oil business. He was frequently away from home, and his wife, Barbara, primarily raised George Jr. It was she who attended his Little League games and disciplined him. When twelve-year-old George Jr. would get in a fight with Jeb, his five-year-old little brother, “Bar would always get in the middle of those fights and bust them up and slap them around,” according to Uncle Jonathan Bush. Barbara Bush was “the one who instills fear.”11 George Jr. describes her as “a very outspoken person who vents very well–she’ll just let it rip if she’s got something on her mind.”12 Jeb Bush recalls, “Mom was always the one to hand out the goodies and the discipline. In a sense, it was a matriarchal family.”13

The Bush family maid, Otha Taylor, said, “They would squabble a lot. You know how kids and parents that are just alike will get? He was definitely like his mother, they were exactly alike, even their humor was alike.”14 When his mother’s favorite dog died, George Jr. mocked her distress, yelling out, “Doggone it!”15 He also inherited her sharp tongue.16

Once after Barbara Bush allowed Otha Taylor to go home an hour early because she didn’t have any work to do, George Sr. reprimanded Barbara, “Where’s Otha? She’s supposed to stay here until her hour is up, regardless if she has anything to do or not.” Otha remembers, “He’s a really mean man.” According to her, the Bushes believed in “teaching lessons.”17 Bush’s younger brother Neil recalls when he was seven years old and his little brother Marvin six, George Jr., age 16, would give them ten seconds to start running down the hall before he began shooting BB pellets at them.18

Bush’s boyhood friend Terry Throckmorton remembers how he and Bush would capture frogs that would gather in the water at a low spot behind Bush’s house: “We’d put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up.”19 Bush Jr. followed his father’s footsteps to Andover and Yale; however, instead of graduating Phi Beta Kappa and being You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth captain of the baseball team like his daddy, Bush Jr. was a cheerleader with a C average. Sponsored by his father, Bush was initiated into Skull and Bones.

At Yale, Bush was elected president (like his father) of the Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) fraternity at a time when new pledges had to undergo physical and psychological abuse. The Yale Daily News said that fraternity hazing at Yale was a “degrading, sadistic and obscene process” and that the DKE hazing ended with the burning of a half-inch-long Delta sign on the pledge’s back.

The New York Times reported on the hazing and quoted Bush Jr. as saying the wound was “only a cigarette burn.” Bush was also quoted in the campus newspaper that there “was no scarring mark, physically or mentally. I can’t understand how the authors ... can assume that Yale has to be so haughty not to allow this type of pledging to go on at Yale.” 20

In addition to a fully paid education at Andover, Yale, and later at Harvard Business School, Bush has gone through life never having to worry about paying the rent, where the next meal was coming from, or if he could afford medical care for his children. Do you think Bush has any clue about our lives and the difficulties we face? Do you think he has the ability to empathize with ordinary working people? You’re not stupid! Get the truth.

“I do not have a perfect record as a youth.”

That much is true. Not only was George W. Bush arrested in 1968 for stealing a Christmas wreath and again for disorderly conduct at a football game while he was in college, but in December 1972, after a Christmas drinking spree with his teenage brother, Marvin, the 26 year-old Bush ran over a neighbor’s trash can as he drove home. When his father sought to reprimand him about his drunken driving, Bush challenged him to fight, “I hear you’re looking for me. You want to go mano a mano right here?”21

At about the same time, Bush was probably arrested for possession of cocaine in Houston, Texas. It appears that as part of a deal with the judge, Bush Sr. arranged for Bush Jr. to serve a few months of community service at Professionals United for Leadership League, a youth organization chaired by Bush Sr.22 Bush attended Harvard Business School between 1973 and 1975 and, according to him, spent his time “drinking and carousing and fumbling around.”23

Then, in the early morning hours of September 4, 1976, a Kennebunkport, Maine police officer saw 30-year-old Bush driving erratically and swerving off the road into a hedge, with his teenage sister, Dorothy, in the car.24 Bush failed a sobriety test, then was handcuffed and taken to the police station. He pled guilty at a court hearing a month later, paid a fine, and his Maine driver’s license was suspended. In 1978, even though he had not completed a required driver rehabilitation course, Bush returned to court to get the suspension lifted, and denied having a drinking problem.

Given an ultimatum by his wife, Bush says he swore off drinking alcohol after a drunken 40th birthday celebration on July 6, 1986.25 However, he wasn’t fully weaned from the bottle, and in April of 1987, he was out drinking in a Mexican restaurant in Dallas when he spotted Al Hunt, the Wall Street Journal’s Washington bureau chief, with his wife and four-year old son. Hunt had contributed to a story that questioned whether Bush Sr. would be elected president, and the drunk and disorderly Bush yelled, “You no good f***ing son of a bitch. I will never f***ing forget what you wrote”26

When Bush ran for governor in 1994, he stated, “What I did as a kid? I don’t think it’s relevant.”27 Only seven years before, the drunken “kid” was stumbling around out of control. Not relevant? One of his first acts as governor was to get a new driver’s license number and to purge his driving record. In 1996, when then Governor Bush was called to jury duty, he left blank the written questionnaire about prior arrests and trials. When he was called to be on the jury in a drunk driving case, his general counsel, Alberto Gonzales, met with the defense attorney and judge in chambers and asked that Bush be excused before the more difficult voir dire (Old French–“to speak the truth”) of jurors began.28 In 1998, a reporter directly asked Bush if he had ever been arrested. Bush lied, “After 1968? No.”29

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush’s press spokesperson, Karen Hughes, repeatedly denied that Bush had ever been convicted. In 1999, Bush personally stated during one television interview that there were no “smoking guns” and during another that if there were any damaging information, “you’d have heard about it by now.” However, the truth caught up with Bush just four days before the election when a Fox television reporter was able to confirm Bush’s drunk driving conviction through the Maine Secretary of State.

When confronted, Bush said he had been driving “too slow” and, after being arrested, had simply paid a fine and gone home. He denied ever going to court in the matter.30 He stated that he did not disclose the conviction in order to be a good role model for his twin daughters—who have been cited multiple times by the police for underage alcohol-related criminal offenses.31 Has Bush truly recovered? He denies that he was ever a “clinical” alcoholic, and apparently he has never sought professional help. Whether or not he has really stayed on the wagon, his loud, foul-mouthed and rude behavior has continued, such as his calling a New York Times reporter a “major league asshole” over an open microphone during the 2000 campaign.

More bizarre, during a March 2002 briefing of three U.S. Senators by his National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush stuck his head in the room and yelled, “F**k Saddam. We’re taking him out!”

Equally suspicious is the strange “pretzel” incident in which he fell on his face in his White House bedroom while watching a ball game on television. He blamed his passing out on having failed to properly chew a pretzel. Do you believe Bush has successfully overcome his alcohol addiction? You’re not stupid! Get the truth.

Over the Hill

In 1968, 296,406 American boys were drafted into the military service. Most of them were sent to Vietnam, many of them were wounded, maimed, and crippled for life, and 6,332 came home in body bags. George W. Bush was not one of them. Even though Bush lost his draft deferment upon graduation from Yale, even though there was a waiting list of 500 to get into the Texas Air National Guard, and even though he could only answer 25 out of 100 questions on the pilot aptitude test,32 strings were pulled, calls were made, and Bush was allowed to sign up for a six-year hitch in one of the coveted slots.33 In his application, he was asked if he was willing to volunteer for overseas duty (i.e., Vietnam). He checked the box, “do not volunteer.”34

When Bush was asked in 1990 if he had joined the National Guard to avoid service in Vietnam, he said, “I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes.” When the same question was asked during the governor’s race in 1994, he said, “Hell no. Do you think I’m going to admit that?” By 1999, he had decided that a better answer was, “At the time I wanted to fight.”35

In 1969, 283,586 American boys were drafted into the military service, and 6,249 came home from Vietnam in body bags. George W. Bush was not one of them. He was home learning to fly an old F-102 fighter that was being phased out of military service.36

In 1970, 162,746 American boys were drafted into the military service, and 4,911 came home from Vietnam in body bags. George W. Bush was not one of them. In his ghostwritten autobiography, A Charge to Keep, Bush says that he completed flight training in 1970 and “continued flying with my unit for the next several years.” Well, let’s see if that was true.

In 1971, 94,092 American boys were drafted into the military service, and 2,867 came home from Vietnam in body bags. And, in 1972, 49,514 American boys were drafted into the military service, and 2,609 came home in body bags. George W. Bush was not one of them. On August 1, 1972, he lost his flight status for failing to submit to an annual physical examination, a few months after the Air Force instituted a rigorous random drug testing policy.37 He was grounded, never to fly again. A month later, Major James R. Bath, one of Bush’s “lot of fun” buddies, was also suspended for the same reason.38 (Remember this name.)

Bush received permission in May 1972 to do his training in Alabama, where he was working on the political campaign of a family friend, Winston Blount. He was specifically ordered to report to “Lt. Col. William Turnipseed, DCO, to perform equivalent training.” At this point, it appears that Bush went AWOL for the next year, as Retired General Turnipseed later stated he was certain that Bush never reported for duty.39 Nor does it appear that he did anything of significance in the campaign. A full-time senior staffer reports that Bush was “worthless” and “not dependable.” He was “rarely available” to work on the campaign, but he never requested any time off to attend National Guard meetings. The staffer said “the guard was the last thing on Bush’s mind.”40

After the Alabama election in November, Bush didn’t return to his Houston assignment. He didn’t come back from “over the hill” until after May 1973, when two of his superior officers noted that they could not perform his annual evaluation because he had “not been observed at this unit” during the preceding 12 months. But, what the heck, the war was winding down anyway, and Bush was no longer needed to defend the Homeland. When later asked about being AWOL, Bush said, “I did the duty necessary. ... Any allegations other than that are simply not true.”* 9,087,000 military personnel really did do their “duty” during the Vietnam era, and over 58,000 died.

*On February 14, 2004, faced with a likely race against Democratic Senator John Kerry, a Vietnam War hero, Bush released his military records in which the only evidence that he ever appeared at the Alabama National Guard was a dental examination performed there on

When Bush went off to study at the Harvard Business School, he continued to wear his National Guard flight jacket to classes, creating a perception that he had served in the military. As we will see, perceptions are very important to Bush.41 Do you think Bush did his duty? You’re not stupid! Get the truth.

What an MBA Can Do for You

After the University of Texas turned down Bush’s application to attend its law school, he decided to get a graduate business administration degree from Harvard instead. The legal profession’s loss turned out to be the business profession’s gain, as Bush over and over showed the rest of us how to make lemonade out of lemons. Where anyone else would have crashed and burned, Bush’s golden parachute floated him safely through the financial storms that continued to buffet his business career.

In 1978, again following in his daddy’s footsteps, Bush decided to go into the oil business in Texas. He started up an oil-drilling operation, Arbusto (Spanish–“bush, shrub”) Energy with the help of his uncle, Wall Street banker Jonathan Bush.42 Even though the price of Texas crude quickly went into the toilet, and Bush Jr. may have spent more time in barrooms and on the golf course than in the oil patch, he was able to keep his company afloat with continuing investments by family members and international businessmen seeking to maintain favor with Bush Sr., who was fortuitously elected Vice President in 1980.

In 1979, Bush sold five percent of Arbusto to his old buddy, James Bath (remember) for $50,000. At the time, Bath was operating as the U.S. front man for Salem bin Laden, the brother January 6, 1973. He explained that he did not bother to report for medical examinations after May 15, 1971 because he felt there was no reason to take one because the Alabama National Guard did not fly the type of jet he was trained on. (Bumiller, Elisabeth and Philip Shenon, “Bush Acts Against Critics on Guard Records and 9/11,” The New York Times, February 14, 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/politics/14BUSH.html?th.) of Osama bin Laden.* Given the fact that Bath was personally without funds at the time, it is considered highly likely that the money came from bin Laden.43

When Salem bin Laden died in a Texas airplane crash in 1988, a powerful Saudi banker, Khalid bin Mahfouz, took over bin Laden’s financial interests in Houston, Texas. Mahfouz’s sister is married to Osama bin Laden, and Bath continued as Mahfouz’s U.S. front man.44 Bath was later investigated by the FBI for funneling Saudi money through Houston business relationships to influence the foreign policies of Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr.45

In 1982, with his company worth less than its debt of $400,000 and with only $48,000 in the bank, Bush decided that he needed to take his corporation public to raise some money. To improve the balance sheet, an investor friend of James Baker III, later Bush Sr.’s Secretary of State, stepped forward and purchased ten percent of the company for $1,000,000. The investor later called the purchase a “losing wicket.”46 Since his oil patch buddies were calling his company “are busted,” Bush renamed the company Bush Exploration and went public. He wanted to issue $6 million in stock, but only raised $1.14 million. Bush Exploration continued to lose money and two years later was again on the verge of bankruptcy.47

This time the bailout came from two investors from Cincinnati who owned a company known as Spectrum 7. They merged with Bush Exploration, and Bush ended up with 16.3 percent of Spectrum 7 and a salary of $75,000 a year. Since thus far, all Bush had done was to drill dry holes and lose money, the question is what did Bush bring to the table? Spectrum 7's president, Paul Rea, reported that Bush’s name was a “drawing card” for investors.48

By 1986, having lost another $400,000, more than $3,000,000 in debt, and with Spectrum 7’s shares just about worthless, another bailout was in order. This time the savior was Harken Energy Corporation, which was operated by a Republican fund raiser. Harken traded one each of its publicly traded shares for every five of Spectrum 7's, and Bush ended up with stock worth about half a million. He became a member of Harken’s Board, was given $600,000 in stock options and a consulting contract paying him $120,000 a year.

* James Bath was “an asset of the CIA, reportedly recruited by George Bush [Sr.] himself” in 1976. (Phillips, Kevin, American Dynasty, p. 269.)

What did Bush bring to the deal? One of Harken’s major investors stated that “he was supposed to bring in the Gulf connection. But it didn’t come to anything. We were buying political influence. That was it. He was not much of a businessman.”49 Equally candid was one of Harken’s cofounders, Phil Kendrick, who was smart enough to sell his stock three years before Bush Jr. came aboard, and who said, “His
name was George Bush. That was worth the money they paid him.”50

In 1987, Harken sold 17.6 percent of the company to Saudi Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, whose banker was bin Mahfouz, who, if you recall, also served as the bin Laden’s banker. In 1989, after Bush Sr. was elected President and with an introduction from the new ambassador, Harken was able to obtain exclusive drilling rights for 35 years from Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, and Harken’s stock price began to rise. However, Harken was actually losing money, and to hide 1989 losses of $12.6 million, Harken engaged in a sham sale of a subsidiary to a partnership of Harken insiders, allowing it to claim a profit of $8 million. Harken’s accountant was Arthur Andersen, and this was the same kind of “aggressive accounting” that later sank Enron–and Andersen with it.

Bush chaired a special committee of Harken directors convened to review Harken’s $11 million loan to the insiders that they used to finance the purchase. The next year, after the SEC began to look into the phony sale, Harken had to restate its actual 1989 losses, plus report additional millions in losses for the first quarter of 1990. With this bad news, Harken stock took a nosedive. In the meantime, instead of the usual bailout by his daddy’s friends, Bush had already bailed out.51

Bush had attended a Harken Board of Directors meeting in May 1990 where the crisis was discussed, and he served on the Board’s Fairness Committee concerned with the effect bankruptcy would have on the small shareholders. By late May 1990, a cash crunch was only days away and the repayment of loans was questionable. Bush was an “insider,” and he was a member of the Audit Committee. On June 15, 1990, all members of the Board, including Bush, were advised in writing that under the circumstances, it would be illegal for them to sell any stock.52

Undeterred, Bush sold two-thirds of his Harken stock for $848,560 to an unidentified private purchaser on June 22, 1990, but delayed reporting the sale to the SEC for eight months after the filing deadline. The SEC (headed by a Bush Sr. appointee, and whose General Counsel was Bush Jr.’s former attorney) investigated and, surprise-surprise, failed to find sufficient evidence of insider information. Nevertheless, the SEC letter sent to Bush stated that the investigation “must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result.”53

After the matter became public, Bush first stated in 1994 that he was “absolutely certain” that he had complied with the law in reporting the insider sale. Then his campaign for governor claimed that he had filed the required report and that the SEC had lost it. Bush personally claimed, “I was exonerated.” Later (as President), his press secretary claimed that Harken’s lawyers had mixed up the reporting, even though Harken’s lawyers had informed Bush in writing that reporting was his responsibility. Regarding the phony sale of the Harken subsidiary that allowed him to dump his stock without a loss, Bush himself stated, “All I can tell you is – is in the corporate world, sometimes things aren’t exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures.”54

Harken’s small shareholders saw their stocks precipitously drop from $4 a share (ultimately to forty-one cents); however, Bush was able to sneak away with enough money to pay off a half-million-dollar loan he had taken out the year before to purchase a two-percent interest in the Texas Rangers, Dallas’s baseball franchise. Although Bush was named as one of two managing partners, he was restricted from having anything to do with the actual management of the franchise.

After the city of Arlington, Texas raised local taxes and condemned private property to build a new $190 million stadium, the partnership sold the franchise for $250 million.55 Because of financial bonuses in the agreement for the two “managing” partners, Bush ended up with almost $15 million (more than the real managing partner), even though he had done little or nothing to earn it except appear at the games and cheer the players.

Thus it came to be that George W. Bush, who had never held down a real job and whose only marketable asset was his family name and his father’s influence, became convinced he had succeeded on his own and that he was ready for bigger and better things. During the 1994 campaign for governor, he stated that his success was due to “hard work, skillful investments, the ability to read an environment that was ever-changing at times and react quickly.” He insisted that he had never profited from his family connections.

Perhaps Bush’s success really was the result of his Harvard Business School training, but do you believe it? Do you think Bush has any idea how hard ordinary people have to work just to make ends meet? You’re not stupid! Get the truth.

Let Them Eat Cake!

When he ran for president in 1999, Bush held himself out as a “compassionate conservative.” His campaign website reported that he had led the nation in adopting a strong Patients’ Bill of Rights, and he claimed that he had signed legislation to improve health care for children in Texas.56 But was he telling the truth?

In 1995, the Texas legislature passed an HMO reform act to improve patient protections. Bush vetoed the measure. Two years later, the legislature passed a similar measure that included a provision to allow patients to sue their HMO for medical malpractice. Bush again threatened to veto the measure unless the legislature “gutted” its protections. However, when it appeared the legislature would be able to override his veto, Bush allowed the measure to become law without his signature. Not only did he not lead the nation in health care reform, he did everything in his power to defeat health care reform in Texas.57

During the election, Bush promised, “If I’m president… people will be able to take their HMO insurance company to court. That’s what I’ve done in Texas and that’s the kind of leadership style I’ll bring to Washington.” However, when insurance companies later sued Texas to void the Texas law and block state lawsuits against HMO’s for denying rights, the Bush presidential administration joined with the insurance companies and urged the Supreme Court to find that such state claims “are subject to complete” preemption by federal law and must be dismissed. Bush’s lawyers claimed that allowing “patients to sue their HMO will increase the cost of healthcare and add an extra burden on employers.”58

Bush also bragged that “we” had passed legislation creating the Children’s Health Insurance Program. At the time, Texas had the highest number of uninsured children per capita in the United States. The legislature wanted to make the program available to all uninsured children whose families earned up to twice the poverty level, or $33,000. Bush fought to lower the standard to $25,000 a year. Under his plan, almost half, or 220,000, of these 500,000 uninsured children would not have qualified for the coverage.

After a five-year battle, during which 500,000 children went without adequate health care, the legislature finally prevailed, and Bush ungraciously told one of the measure’s proponents, “Congratulations. You crammed it down our throats.”59 The truth is that he was not a part of the we who fought for children’s medical care in Texas.

When television commentator Dan Rather questioned Bush about the abysmal level of medical coverage in Texas, he parried, “I think you can find all kinds of statistics to make all kinds of cases. ... I don’t know the statistics.”60 While Bush didn’t directly deny that the statistics were wrong, and while he did not outright admit that he didn’t know what he was talking about, he certainly did not show any compassion for the health of poor Texas children. Do you believe Bush truly cares about the health and well being of you and your family? You’re not stupid! Get the truth.

5. Phillips, Kevin, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics
of Deceit in the House of Bush (New York: Viking, 2004), 178-185, 195-
199, Appendix A, pp. 335-341.
6. Sampley, Ted, “George Bush Parachutes Again to Exorcize Demons
of Past Betrayal, March-May 1997, www.usvetdsp.com/story46.htm.
7. Phillips, op. cit., pp. 200-208.
8. Ibid., p. 32.
9. Ibid., p. 148.
10. Minutaglio, Bill, First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family
Dynasty (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001), p. 23.
11. Ibid., p. 49.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., p. 57.
14. Ibid., p. 48.
15. Ibid., p. 98.
16. Ibid., p. 100.
17. Ibid., pp. 48, 49.
18. Miller, Mark Crispin, The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National
Disorder (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002), p. 338.
19. Hightower, Jim, Thieves in High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country–
And It’s Time To Take It Back (New York: Viking Press, 2003), p. 14.
20. Minutaglio, op. cit., pp. 111-113.
21. Ibid., pp. 99, 147-148.
22. Phillips, op. cit., p. 45.
23. Begala, Paul, Is Our Children Learning?: The Case Against George W.
Bush (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), p. 27.
24. Franken, op. cit., p. 46.
25. Minutaglio, op. cit., p. 210.
26. Miller, op. cit., p. 50.
27. Corn, David, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering The Politics of
Deception (New York: Crown Publishers, 2003), p. 28.
28. Moore, James and Wayne Slater, Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made
George W. Bush Presidential (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2003), p. 278.
29. Corn, op. cit., pp. 29, 30; see also “Busted,” November 3, 2000,
http://dir.salon.com/politics/feature.
You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth
20
30. “Bush Jr.’s Skeleton Closet,” www.realchange.org/bushjr.html.
31. “Family Ties,” www.thedubyareport.com/family.html.
32. Palast, Greg, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Truth About
Corporate Cons, Globalization, and High-Finance Fraudsters (New York:
Plume, Penguin Group, 2002), p. 107.
33. Minutaglio, op. cit., p. 121.
34. Corn, op. cit., p. 25.
35. Ibid., pp. 24, 25.
36. Minutaglio, op. cit., p. 125.
37. Conason, op. cit., p. 65.
38. Moore, James, Bush’s War for Reelection: Iraq, The White House, and
the People. (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004),
p. 177; see also Miller, Roger, “Bush & Bin Laden – George W. Bush
Had Ties to Billionaire bin Laden Brood,” October 7, 2001, American
Free Press, www.americanfreepress.net/10_07_01/Bush_Bin_Laden_-
_George_W_B/bush.
39. Conason, op. cit., p. 64.
40. Moore, Bush’s War for Reelection, op. cit., p. 154.
41. Minutaglio, op. cit., p. 156.
42. Ibid., p. 198.
43. Wiles, Rick, “Bush’s Former Oil Company Linked to bin Laden
Family,” October 3, 2001,
http://www.rense.com/general14/bushformer.htm.
44. Palast, op. cit., p. 104; see also Kellner, Douglas, From 9/11 to Terror
War: The Dangers of the Bush Legacy (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2003), p. 35; see also Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq and John
Leonard The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked,
September 11, 2001 (Joshua Tree, California: Tree of Life Publications.
2002), pp.194-197.
45. Ahmed, op. cit., p. 194.
46. Ivins, Molly and Lou Dubose, Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush’s
America (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 7.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid., p. 8.
49. Corn, op. cit., p. 191.
50. Ivins, op. cit., p. 8.
51. Ivins, op. cit., p. 9.
Who’s Bush?
21
52. Corn, op. cit., pp. 193, 196-197.
53. Ivins, op. cit., pp. 11-14; see also Alterman and Green, op. cit.,
pp 70, 71.
54. Ibid., p. 12; see also Corn, op. cit., pp. 193, 195.
55. Minutaglio, op. cit., p. 322.
56. Corn, op. cit., p. 17.
57. Ibid.
58. Savage, David G., “Patients’ Right to Sue HMOs Before High
Court,” Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2004, p. A12.
59. Corn, op. cit., pp. 17, 18.
60. Ibid., p. 18.

Man, 84, Is Charged With Spying for Israel in 1980s

2008-04-22T20:54:00.001-07:00

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 23, 2008; A04

For more than two decades after he allegedly furnished an Israeli operative with secrets about U.S. nuclear initiatives and sensitive weapons programs, Ben-Ami Kadish lived unnoticed by law enforcement authorities in suburban New Jersey.

Until yesterday, that is, when Kadish, 84, was arrested at his home, taken to a federal courthouse in Manhattan and charged with four counts of conspiracy allegedly for serving as an foreign agent and allegedly for lying to the FBI about a recent telephone conversation he had with his alleged Israeli handler.

Kadish, a mechanical engineer, worked at the U.S. Army's research arsenal in Dover, N.J., in the early 1980s. He routinely checked classified documents out of a library there and passed them to an unnamed Israeli official who had provided a list of what he wanted, according to a four-count criminal complaint the FBI filed yesterday.

The official photographed pages related to nuclear weaponry, the F-15 fighter jet program and the U.S. Patriot missile defense system, according to an FBI affidavit on which the complaint is based.

Kadish's actions appear to have escaped detection for years even though his handler allegedly also collected classified information from Jonathan Pollard, a former Navy intelligence analyst. Pollard is serving a life sentence in a federal prison in Butner, N.C., after pleading guilty to an espionage-related crime in 1986.

"It's a fascinating case of another agent in place, another sleeper, with the very same handler," said Joseph E. diGenova, the former U.S. attorney in the District who prosecuted Pollard. "We always suspected there were other people. His tradecraft was apparently better than Pollard's."

DiGenova said the espionage, which the charging documents indicate ceased in 1985, doubtless have come to the government's attention because of wiretap evidence obtained by the FBI and federal prosecutors in Manhattan. FBI agents first interviewed Kadish last month about his activities at the Army's Picatinny Arsenal, where he worked between 1963 and 1990, according to the filing.

Kadish, a U.S. citizen who was born in Connecticut, told the agents that he "borrowed" classified documents at the urging of his handler, who encouraged him to help "protect Israel" by sharing papers that had a "direct correlation to Israel's security." He accepted only small gifts and occasional family dinners in exchange for his services, the FBI said.

Kadish told Special Agent Lance Ashworth that between August 1979 and July 1985, he provided the handler with 50 to 100 documents, according to the affidavit.

The handler is identified in the criminal complaint only as "co-conspirator 1," but he has been named in Israeli publications and by a former prosecutor as Yosef Yagur. He lived in the Riverdale section of the Bronx and worked as an adviser on science affairs at the Israeli Consulate in New York.

Yagur left the United States in November 1985, shortly after Pollard was charged with espionage-related offenses, and has never returned.

The handler called Kadish's home at least 22 times between July and November 1985, according to an FBI account of the phone records. The two men have since allegedly maintained contact through periodic e-mail messages and phone calls. They met in Israel four years ago, but their dealings since 1985 have been "purely social," Kadish told investigators.

The handler and Kadish renewed their ties on March 20, according to the FBI affidavit, after federal agents interviewed Kadish for the first time. "Don't say anything," the handler allegedly said. "Let them say whatever they want. . . . What happened 25 years ago? You didn't remember anything."

The next day, FBI agents again questioned Kadish, who allegedly denied the call had taken place. His statements eventually became the basis for two criminal conspiracy charges that accuse him of hindering an investigation and of lying to law enforcement officials. He was also charged with conspiracy to serve as an Israeli agent and conspiracy to disclose documents related to U.S. defense programs.

A federal magistrate judge in New York released Kadish yesterday afternoon on a $300,000 personal recognizance bond secured by his home in Monroe Township, N.J. He was required to surrender his passport, and he will not be allowed to travel beyond New Jersey and New York.

Bruce Goldstein, a defense lawyer for Kadish, did not return calls. David Siegel, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, said that "we were formally informed of the indictment by the relevant authorities," but declined to comment further.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Cloak of invisibility: Fact or fiction?

2007-10-06T11:09:00.000-07:00

Scientists boldly go where only science fiction has been before

The Associated Press
Updated: 11:46 a.m. ET Oct 19, 2006

WASHINGTON - Harry Potter and Captain Kirk would be proud. A team of American and British researchers has made a Cloak of Invisibility.

Well, OK, it’s not perfect. Yet.

But it’s a start, and it did a pretty good job of hiding a copper cylinder. In this experiment the scientists used microwaves to try and detect the cylinder. Like light and radar waves, microwaves bounce off objects making them visible and creating a shadow, though it has to be detected with instruments.

If you can hide something from microwaves, you can hide it from radar — a possibility that will fascinate the military. Cloaking differs from stealth technology, which doesn’t make an aircraft invisible but reduces the cross-section available to radar, making it hard to track. Cloaking simply passes the radar or other waves around the object as if it weren’t there, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream.

The new work points the way for an improved version that could hide people and objects from visible light. Conceptually, the chance of adapting the concept to visible light is good, cloak designer David Schurig said in a telephone interview. But Schurig, a research associate in Duke University’s electrical and computer engineering department, added, “From an engineering point of view it is very challenging.”

Nonetheless, the cloaking of a cylinder from microwaves comes just five months after Schurig and colleagues published their theory that it should be possible. Their first success is reported in a paper in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

"We did this work very quickly ... and that led to a cloak that is not optimal,” said co-author David R. Smith, also of Duke. “We know how to make a much better one.”

Casting a shadow

The first working cloak was in only two dimensions and did cast a small shadow, Smith acknowledged. The next step is to go for three dimensions and to eliminate any shadow. Viewers can see things because objects scatter the light that strikes them, reflecting some of it back to the eye.

“The cloak reduces both an object’s reflection and its shadow, either of which would enable its detection,” said Smith.

In effect the device, made of meta-materials — engineered mixtures of metal and circuit board materials, which could include ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite materials — channels the microwaves around the object being hidden.

When water flows around a rock, Smith explained, the water recombines after it passes the rock and people looking at the water downstream would never know it had passed a rock. The cloaking has to be designed for specific bandwidths of radiation. In this case it’s microwaves, and someone measuring them wouldn’t be able to tell they had passed around an object. The hope is to do the same for light waves. Looking at a cloaked item, Smith explained: “One would see whatever is behind the cloak. That is, the cloak is, ideally, transparent. Since we do not have a perfect cloak at this point, there is some reflection and some shadow, meaning that the background would still be visible just darkened somewhat.

The ideal cloak would have nearly negligible reflection and virtually no shadowing, Smith said.

“This first experiment has provided a confirmation that the mechanism of cloaking can be realized, we now just need to improve the performance of cloaking structures.”

Other possibilities

In addition to hiding things, redirecting electromagnetic waves could prove useful in protecting sensitive electronics from harmful radiation, Smith commented. In a very speculative application, he added, “one could imagine ’cloaking’ acoustic waves, so as to shield a region from vibration or seismic activity.”

Natalia M. Litchinitser, a researcher at the University of Michigan department of electrical engineering and computer science, said this appears to be the “first, to the best of my knowledge, experimental realization of the fascinating idea of cloaking based on meta-materials at microwave frequencies.”

“Although the invisibility reported in this paper is not perfect, this work provides a proof-of-principle demonstration of the possibility,” said Litchinitser, who was not part of the research team. She added that the next breakthrough is likely to be an experimental demonstration of the cloaking in visible light. “These ideas represent a first step toward the development of functional materials for a wide spectrum of civil and military applications.”

Joining Schurig and Smith in the work were researchers at Imperial College in London and SensorMetrix, a materials and technology company in San Diego, Calif. The research was supported by the Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program and the United Kingdom Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15329396/

Blackwater: Shadow Army

2007-10-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

Blackwater

The Smear This Time

2007-10-02T19:11:00.000-07:00

By ANITA HILL
Published: October 2, 2007

ON Oct. 11, 1991, I testified about my experience as an employee of Clarence Thomas’s at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

I stand by my testimony.

Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” He may even be entitled to feel abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the Supreme Court.

But I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.

In the portion of his book that addresses my role in the Senate hearings into his nomination, Justice Thomas offers a litany of unsubstantiated representations and outright smears that Republican senators made about me when I testified before the Judiciary Committee — that I was a “combative left-winger” who was “touchy” and prone to overreacting to “slights.” A number of independent authors have shown those attacks to be baseless. What’s more, their reports draw on the experiences of others who were familiar with Mr. Thomas’s behavior, and who came forward after the hearings. It’s no longer my word against his.

Justice Thomas’s characterization of me is also hobbled by blatant inconsistencies. He claims, for instance, that I was a mediocre employee who had a job in the federal government only because he had “given it” to me. He ignores the reality: I was fully qualified to work in the government, having graduated from Yale Law School (his alma mater, which he calls one of the finest in the country), and passed the District of Columbia Bar exam, one of the toughest in the nation.

In 1981, when Mr. Thomas approached me about working for him, I was an associate in good standing at a Washington law firm. In 1991, the partner in charge of associate development informed Mr. Thomas’s mentor, Senator John Danforth of Missouri, that any assertions to the contrary were untrue. Yet, Mr. Thomas insists that I was “asked to leave” the firm.

It’s worth noting, too, that Mr. Thomas hired me not once, but twice while he was in the Reagan administration — first at the Department of Education and then at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. After two years of working directly for him, I left Washington and returned home to Oklahoma to begin my teaching career.

In a particularly nasty blow, Justice Thomas attacked my religious conviction, telling “60 Minutes” this weekend, “She was not the demure, religious, conservative person that they portrayed.” Perhaps he conveniently forgot that he wrote a letter of recommendation for me to work at the law school at Oral Roberts University, in Tulsa. I remained at that evangelical Christian university for three years, until the law school was sold to Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Va., another Christian college. Along with other faculty members, I was asked to consider a position there, but I decided to remain near my family in Oklahoma.

Regrettably, since 1991, I have repeatedly seen this kind of character attack on women and men who complain of harassment and discrimination in the workplace. In efforts to assail their accusers’ credibility, detractors routinely diminish people’s professional contributions. Often the accused is a supervisor, in a position to describe the complaining employee’s work as “mediocre” or the employee as incompetent. Those accused of inappropriate behavior also often portray the individuals who complain as bizarre caricatures of themselves — oversensitive, even fanatical, and often immoral — even though they enjoy good and productive working relationships with their colleagues.

Finally, when attacks on the accusers’ credibility fail, those accused of workplace improprieties downgrade the level of harm that may have occurred. When sensing that others will believe their accusers’ versions of events, individuals confronted with their own bad behavior try to reduce legitimate concerns to the level of mere words or “slights” that should be dismissed without discussion.

Fortunately, we have made progress since 1991. Today, when employees complain of abuse in the workplace, investigators and judges are more likely to examine all the evidence and less likely to simply accept as true the word of those in power. But that could change. Our legal system will suffer if a sitting justice’s vitriolic pursuit of personal vindication discourages others from standing up for their rights.

The question of whether Clarence Thomas belongs on the Supreme Court is no longer on the table — it was settled by the Senate back in 1991. But questions remain about how we will resolve the kinds of issues my testimony exposed. My belief is that in the past 16 years we have come closer to making the resolution of these issues an honest search for the truth, which, after all, is at the core of all legal inquiry. My hope is that Justice Thomas’s latest fusillade will not divert us from that path.

Anita Hill, a professor of social policy, law and women’s studies at Brandeis University, is a visiting scholar at the Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College.

What If Bill Clinton Had Run for President in 1988?

2007-09-30T21:51:00.001-07:00

Al Giordano Sun Sep 30, 9:23 PM ET

Former President Bill Clinton's recent attempt to slow Senator Barack Obama's rise and the words he chose to speak it raise a new question: What if Bill had run for president in 1988?

It's natural that a husband would be protective of his spouse's political ambitions. And when a rival candidate begins to build momentum in Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucus and in national fundraising who can blame Bill Clinton for taking that recent swipe at Barack Obama? In a televised interview with columnist Al Hunt, Bill echoed Hillary Clinton's claim that Obama is too "inexperienced" for the Oval Office. He said:

"I was, in terms of experience, was closer to Senator Obama, I suppose, in 1988 when I came within a day of announcing... I really didn't think I knew enough, and had served enough and done enough to run."

When Clinton did run for president, in 1992, he was the same age as Obama is today. The claim by a white male that at age 42 he had as much experience as a 46-year-old black man probably will bring unintended consequences by firing up a larger Obama vote among African-Americans. The hubris of that statement invokes, all too neatly, the gripes by other white males in affirmative-action friendly workplaces across America; it's a way of speaking in code that most white Americans don't notice, but that black Americans understand painfully well.

And while Obama has smartly ignored the bloodlust of pundits that goad him to "take the gloves off" and hit Hillary Clinton more directly (America may be ready for a black president, but probably not for a younger black man pummeling an elder white woman, even with mere words), Bill Clinton's attempted put-down offered Obama a clean shot at the rival camp through its surrogate: Everybody loves to see the younger athlete score on the aging former champ. And that's exactly what Obama did.

In an act of political jiu-jitsu, Obama turned Clinton's words about experience from 1992 into a Wayback Machine endorsement of his own 2008 quest. In a 1992 debate with George H. W. Bush, Clinton had said: "The same old experience is not relevant... you can have the right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience."

"He's exactly right," smiled Obama.

Score!

He was followed by the so-far neutral Robert Reich (one of the few cabinet-level veterans of the Clinton White House that is still widely beloved and trusted among Democrats) who jumped up from the sidelines and kicked in an extra point for Obama. Reich said: "While I can understand Bill Clinton's eagerness to undermine his wife's most significant primary opponent, he is not, I believe, completely ingenuous. I happened to talk with him in 1988 before he decided not to run, and also in 1991 before he decided to run the following year. His calculation at both times was decidedly rational and entirely political, based on whether he could win."

Bill Clinton's statement begs a more interesting question: What if he had run for president in 1988, defeated Mike Dukakis for the Democratic nomination, and bested Bush the elder for the White House?

Would a younger President Clinton have been so obsessed as Bush, Sr. was with exorcising "the ghosts of Vietnam" to have invaded Panama in 1989?

Would Clinton have appointed William Bennett as "drug czar" in 1989 and begun the demonization of pot smokers and cancer patients, and wholesale imprisonment of young black males, that the escalation of the war-on-drugs wrought on America?

Would Clinton, in a speech before Congress on September 11, 1990, have said: "Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective -- a New World Order -- can emerge"?

Would a younger Clinton administration have signaled to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (then a US ally) that it would look the other way if Iraq invaded Kuwait but then gone to war against Iraq once that happened?

Would hundreds of thousands of US military veterans of that Gulf War be permanently disabled and still suffering the ailments and syndromes of that trauma today if Clinton, and not Bush, had been president then?

Would Islamic fundamentalists and terrorist organizations have gained so much support had the US not led a war that killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the Gulf War?

Would Caspar Weinberger, Elliot Abrams, Robert McFarlane and others that conspired to traffic in cocaine and armaments to support right-wing guerrillas in Nicaragua have received pardons from Clinton after their crimes, as occurred under Bush I?

Would Clarence Thomas be on the Supreme Court today?

Come to think of it, Bill Clinton probably should have run for president in 1988 when he was younger and less jaded.

Had Clinton arrived in the White House four years earlier, he probably would never have met Paula Jones back in Arkansas in 1991 or the state troopers there whose testimony later put the Clinton White House on a permanent political defensive, scuttling the progressive agendas promised during his 1992 presidential campaign for most the rest of his tenure.

Maybe if Bill Clinton had been president when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the peace dividend could have been realized at the end of the Cold War, an authentic peacetime economy could have boomed, and America wouldn't be suffering the blowback of the terrible foreign policy choices made by the first Bush presidency from 1989 to 1993.

But hindsight is 20-20 and we can't turn the clock back, right? Too bad we can't fix the mistakes of 1988 all over again in 2008 and after a two-term Republican president vote for a younger forty-something Democrat that is not yet so jaded by what Washington DC calls "experience."

Oh.

Wait a sec.

We can?

Justice Thomas Lashes Out in Memoir

2007-09-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

By Robert Barnes, Michael A. Fletcher and Kevin Merida
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, September 29, 2007; A01

Justice Clarence Thomas settles scores in an angry and vivid forthcoming memoir, scathingly condemning the media, the Democratic senators who opposed his nomination to the Supreme Court, and the "mob" of liberal elites and activist groups that he says desecrated his life.

"My Grandfather's Son," for which Thomas has received a reported $1.5 million, is a 289-page memoir of his life in rural Georgia, his reliance on religious faith and his rise to the high court. His book ends with the day he was sworn in and contains only fleeting mentions of his time on the bench.

Thomas lovingly describes the iron-willed grandfather who raised him after his own father abandoned him as a toddler, praises the Roman Catholic Church for providing him with an education but criticizes it for not being as "adamant about ending racism then as it is about ending abortion now," and gives a detailed description of the confirmation hearings that electrified the nation in 1991 and the sexual harassment allegations by Anita Hill that he said destroyed his reputation.

They are the most extensive comments Thomas has made about Hill since his confirmation. Though he has given numerous speeches since he has been on the court, he has rarely mentioned Hill or spoken in detail about the nomination fight. In the book, Thomas writes that Hill was the tool of liberal activist groups "obsessed" with abortion and outraged because he did not fit their idea of what an African American should believe.

"The mob I now faced carried no ropes or guns," Thomas writes of his hearings. "Its weapons were smooth-tongued lies spoken into microphones and printed on the front pages of America's newspapers. . . . But it was a mob all the same, and its purpose -- to keep the black man in his place -- was unchanged."

Thomas, 59, says in the foreword to the book, due to go on sale Monday, that he wrote it to "leave behind an accurate record of my own life as I remember it" rather than leave it to those "with careless hands or malicious hearts." He indicates he wrote it himself, with editing help from three others.

It has been eagerly awaited, especially in the conservative community, which is playing an active role in promoting it. The Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society and the National Center for Policy Analysis are sponsoring a six-city book tour, in which patrons will pay $30 to attend events in Thomas's honor.

The normally media-shy justice has interviews booked on "60 Minutes" tomorrow night and ABC on Monday as well as a 90-minute interview with radio host Rush Limbaugh, also scheduled for Monday. The book's contents had been closely guarded before its publication date of Oct. 1, the first day of the Supreme Court's new term, but The Washington Post purchased a copy yesterday at an area bookstore, where it had been placed on display.

Thomas writes of the hard lessons doled out by his grandfather, Myers Anderson, who raised him after his father abandoned the family and his mother was unable to care for her boys in Pin Point, Ga. "In every way that counts, I am my grandfather's son," Thomas writes, hence the title of the memoir.

Thomas's depiction of his grandfather is of a man unsparingly tough. Anderson wouldn't let him play on sports teams or join the Cub Scouts.

When Thomas informed the family that he was dropping out of the seminary, against the wishes of his grandfather, he learned, to his surprise, that Anderson had retreated to his garage and cried. Then his grandfather kicked him out of the house, telling him: "I'm finished helping you. You'll have to figure it out yourself. You'll probably end up like your no-good daddy or those other no-good Pinpoint Negroes."

After graduating from Yale Law School in 1974, Thomas spent the summer in St. Louis studying for the bar exam, where he was once so pressed for money that he attempted to sell his blood at a blood bank. He was turned down because his pulse rate was too low.

Throughout the book, Thomas describes himself as under siege -- variously from preening elites, light-skinned African Americans and critics who object to his conservative politics. Feeling under duress from civil rights leaders, and despondent over reports he was reading about the poor achievement of African American students in high school, Thomas writes that he simply sat at his desk at the Department of Education one evening and wept.

After the death of his grandfather and grandmother in 1983 and with his first marriage on the rocks, Thomas says he had a fleeting thought of suicide. "I'd actually reached the point where I wondered whether there was any reason for me to go on," he writes. "The mad thought of taking my own life fleetingly crossed my mind. Of course, I didn't consider it seriously, if only because I knew I couldn't abandon [my son] Jamal as I had been abandoned by C," which is how he refers to his father, M.C. Thomas.

Racial imagery abounds in "My Grandfather's Son," a continuation of his description of the Senate hearings as a "high-tech lynching."

"As a child in the Deep South, I'd grown up fearing the lynch mobs of the Ku Klux Klan; as an adult, I was starting to wonder if I'd been afraid of the wrong white people all along," he writes. "My worst fears had come to pass not in Georgia, but in Washington, D.C., where I was being pursued not by bigots in white robes but by left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony."

Thomas writes that he did not watch Hill's televised testimony against him at his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and so he does not respond in detail to her charges except to call them lies. He describes Hill as "touchy and apt to overreact" and says: "If I or anyone else had done the slightest thing to offend her, she would have complained loudly and instantly, not waited for a decade to make her displeasure known."

He writes that Hill did a "mediocre" job at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where he was chairman, and misrepresented herself at the time of the hearings as a "devoutly religious Reagan-administration employee." "In fact, she was a left-winger who'd never expressed any religious sentiments" and had a job in the administration "because I'd given it to her."

Thomas has particularly caustic comments about the Democratic senators who opposed his nomination. He compares then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) to the lying hypocrites in the old song "Smiling Faces Sometimes" by Undisputed Truth. About former senator Howard Metzenbaum (Ohio): "It would be kind to describe him as unlikable."

And Howell Heflin, the late senator from Alabama, was described by the press as "courtly," Thomas says, but his manner "made me think of a slave owner sitting on the porch of a plantation house."

Thomas has been a sharp critic of affirmative action and the use of racial classifications in schools, but he acknowledges in the book that he was admitted to Yale Law School in 1971 partly because he was black. "I'd graduated from one of America's top law schools -- but racial preference had robbed my achievement of its true value."

Thomas describes his confirmation hearing as a gut-wrenching experience. When told by an aide to President George H.W. Bush that he was under consideration for the high court, "I tried to think of a way to convince President Bush to choose somebody else."

When the time came, of course, he accepted. But that night, he writes, he told his wife, Virginia Lamp Thomas, "You know that some of my opponents are going to try to kill me." Thomas continues: "Of course I didn't mean it literally, but I did feel that there was a sense in which my whole life was at stake. I'd grown up in a part of America where a black man was defenseless against the accusations of any white person -- especially a woman. The fear and vulnerability that I had known then came back to haunt me now."

Thomas credits his mentor, former Missouri senator John C. Danforth, and his wife for getting him through the hearings, and he says his faith was a critical resource: "Each day I left the Caucus Room tired, tormented and anxious, and each day Virginia and I bathed ourselves in God's unwavering love."

But by the time he was confirmed, he said, the prize meant little. Instead of watching the Senate roll call, he drew himself a bath. His wife came to tell him he had been confirmed 52 to 48.

"Whoop-dee-damn-doo," Thomas writes.

Staff writer William Wan contributed to this report.

Iran: CIA a 'Terrorist Organization'

2007-09-29T19:52:00.000-07:00

By AP/ALI AKBAR DAREINI

(Tehran, Iran) — Iran's parliament voted Saturday to designate the CIA and the U.S. Army as "terrorist organizations," a largely symbolic response to a U.S. Senate resolution seeking a similar designation for Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

The parliament said the Army and the CIA were terrorists because of the atomic bombing of Japan; the use of depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq; support of the killings of Palestinians by Israel; the bombing and killing Iraqi civilians and the torture of imprisoned terror suspects.

"The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror," said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the 290- member Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio.

The resolution, which urges Ahmadinejad's government to treat the two as terrorist organizations, would become law if ratified by the country's hardline constitutional watchdog but probably would have little effect as the two nations have no diplomatic relations.

Ahmadinejad's government was expected to wait for U.S. reaction before making its decision. The White House declined to comment Saturday.

The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday in favor of a resolution urging the State Department to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. Charged with defending the system put in place after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Guards answer to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and are revered by many for their defense of the country during the 1980s war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The terrorist designation, the first such move against a foreign government entity, would cut the Revolutionary Guards off from the U.S. financial system and freeze the assets of its members or subsidiaries have in U.S. jurisdictions. It would also allow the Treasury to move against firms subject to U.S. law that do business with the Guards, which have vast business interests at home and abroad.

While the proposal attracted overwhelming bipartisan support, a small group of Democrats said they feared that labeling the state-sponsored organization a terrorist group could be interpreted as a congressional authorization of military action in Iran.

Back home after a tour of the U.S. and Latin America, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the hostile reception he received at Columbia University failed to damage Iran's image and instead hurt America's prestige abroad.

University President Lee Bollinger said before an Ahmadinejad speech at his university that the hard-line leader exhibited "all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator" who was "brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated" for his denials of the Holocaust.

Ahmadinejad, who appeared shaken and irate but did not reciprocate the insult, said that the world had witnessed "the greatness of the Iranian nation" in the face of "insults" by its American host.

"With the grace of God, the Columbia University issue revealed their aggressive and mean-spirited image...It backfired. What happened was exactly opposite of what their shallow minds had presumed," Ahmadinejad said late Friday in comments broadcast Saturday on state television. "I believe they made a big mistake...They sacrificed the prestige of their whole system."

The harsh reception boosted Ahmadinejad's image at home during a time of high tensions with Washington over U.S. allegations that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and supplying Iraq's Shiite militias with deadly weapons that have killed U.S. troops. Iran denies both claims.

After Ahmadinejad told world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly in New York that his country would defy attempts to impose new sanctions by "arrogant powers" seeking to curb its nuclear program, accusing them of lying and imposing illegal penalties on his country.

Iran and the U.S. have not had diplomatic ties since Iranian students took American diplomats hostage in Tehran following the 1979 overthrow of U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Iranians have a long list of grievances against the United States, including a CIA-backed coup in 1953 that overthrew democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and put Pahlavi back on the throne.

More recently, there are fears in Iran that either the U.S. or Israel will carry out a military strike against it — something Iranian officials have said would provoke retaliation against Israeli or U.S. bases in the region.

Washington has said it is addressing the situation through diplomacy but refuses to rule out the use of military action.

Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1666888,00.html

Ahmadinejad walks away with a win

2007-09-29T19:47:00.000-07:00

September 29, 2007

One of the world's truly dangerous men, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, left New York a clear winner this week, and he can thank the arrogance of the American academy and most of the U.S. news media's studied indifference for his victory.

If the blood-drenched history of the century just past had taught American academics one thing, it should have been that the totalitarian impulse knows no accommodation with reason. You cannot change the totalitarian mind through dialogue or conversation, because totalitarianism -- however ingenious the superstructure of faux ideas with which it surrounds itself -- is a creature of the will and not the mind. That's a large lesson, but what should have made Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia University this week a wholly avoidable debacle was the school's knowledge of its own, very specific history.

In the 1930s, Columbia was run by Nicholas Murray Butler, to whose name a special sort of infamy attaches. Butler was an outspoken admirer of Italian fascism and of its leader, Benito Mussolini. The Columbia president, who also was in the forefront of Ivy League efforts to restrict Jewish enrollment, worked tirelessly to build ties between his school and Italian universities, as well as with the powerful fascist student organizations. At one point, a visiting delegation of 350 ardent young Black Shirts serenaded Butler with the fascist anthem.

Butler also was keen to establish connections with Nazi Germany and its universities. In 1933, he invited Hans Luther, Adolf Hitler's ambassador to the United States, to lecture on the Columbia campus. Luther stressed Hitler's "peaceful intentions" toward his European neighbors, and, afterward, Butler gave a reception in his honor. As the emissary of "a friendly people," Luther was "entitled to be received with the greatest courtesy and respect," the Columbia president said at the time.

It was such a transparently appalling performance all around that one of the anonymous authors of the New York Times' "Topics of the Times" column put tongue in cheek and looked forward to the occasion when "the Nazi leaders will point out that they were all along opposed to any measures capable of being construed as unjust to any element in the German population or as a threat to peace in Europe."

Arrogance, though, is invincible -- even to irony.

Three years later, Butler sent a delegation of Columbia dignitaries to participate in anniversary celebrations at the University of Heidelberg. That was after Heidelberg had purged all the Jewish professors from its faculty, reformed its curriculum according to Nazi educational theories and publicly burned the unapproved books in its libraries.

It would be interesting to know if any consideration of these events -- and all that followed a decade of engagement and dialogue with fascism -- occurred before Columbia extended a speaking invitation to a man who hopes to see Israel "wiped off the face of the Earth," has denied the Holocaust and is defying the world community in pursuit of nuclear weapons. Perhaps they did and perhaps that's part of what motivated Lee Bollinger, Columbia's president now, to deliver his extraordinarily ill-advised welcoming remarks to Ahmadinejad.

Bollinger clearly had an American audience in mind when he denounced the Iranian leader to his face as a "cruel" and "petty dictator" and described his Holocaust denial as designed to "fool the illiterate and the ignorant." Bollinger's remarks may have taken him off the hook with his domestic critics, but when it came to the international media audience that really counted, Ahmadinejad already had carried the day. The invitation to speak at Columbia already had given him something totalitarian demagogues -- who are as image-conscious as Hollywood stars -- always crave: legitimacy. Bollinger's denunciation was icing on the cake, because the constituency the Iranian leader cares about is scattered across an Islamic world that values hospitality and its courtesies as core social virtues. To that audience, Bollinger looked stunningly ill-mannered; Ahmadinejad dignified and restrained.

Back in Tehran, Mohsen Mirdamadi, a leading Iranian reformer and Ahmadinejad opponent, said Bollinger's blistering remarks "only strengthened" the president back home and "made his radical supporters more determined," According to an Associated Press report, "Many Iranians found the comments insulting, particularly because in Iranian traditions of hospitality, a host should be polite to a guest, no matter what he thinks of him. To many, Ahmadinejad looked like the victim, and hard-liners praised the president's calm demeanor during the event, saying Bollinger was spouting a 'Zionist' line."

All of this was bad enough, but the almost willful refusal of commentators in the American media to provide their audiences with insight into just how sinister Ahmadinejad really is compounded the problem. There are a couple of reasons for the media's general refusal to engage with radical Islamic revivalists, like Ahmadinejad. He belongs to a particularly aggressive school of radical Shiite Islam, the Haghani, which lives in expectation of the imminent coming of the Madhi, a kind of Islamic messiah, who will bring peace and justice -- along with universal Islamic rule -- to the entire world. Serious members of this school -- and Ahmadinejad, who was a brilliant university student, is a very serious member -- believe they must act to speed the Mahdi's coming. "The wave of the Islamic revolution" would soon "reach the entire world," he has promised.

As a fundamentally secular institution, the American press always has had a hard time coming to grips with the fact that Islamists like the Iranian president mean what they say and that they really do believe what they say they believe.

Finally, there's the fact that the neoconservative remnants clustered around Vice President Dick Cheney are beating the drums for a preemptive military action against Iran before it becomes a nuclear nation, as North Korea already has, thereby constraining U.S. policy in northwest Asia. After being duped by the Bush administration into helping pave the way for the disastrous war in Iraq, few in the American media now are willing to take the Iran problem on because they don't want to be complicit in another military misadventure.

Fair enough -- but that anxiety doesn't exempt the press from being realistic about who Ahmadinejad really is and the danger he really does pose to all around him.

timothy.rutten@latimes.com

from the LA Times.

CIA role claim in Kennedy killing

2007-06-11T17:45:00.001-07:00

New video and photographic evidence that puts three senior CIA operatives at the scene of Robert Kennedy's assassination has been brought to light.

Robert Kennedy
The evidence is a result of a three year investigation

The evidence was shown in a report by Shane O'Sullivan, broadcast on BBC Newsnight.

It reveals that the operatives and four unidentified associates were at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles in the moments before and after the shooting on 5 June, 1968.

The CIA had no domestic jurisdiction and some of the officers were based in South-East Asia at the time, with no reason to be in Los Angeles.

'Decoy'

Kennedy had just won the California Democratic primary on an anti-War ticket and was set to challenge Nixon for the White House when he was shot in a kitchen pantry.

THE CIA CONNECTION

Are you convinced by the evidence in the report?
A 24-year-old Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, was arrested as the lone assassin and notebooks at his house seemed to incriminate him.

However, even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember the shooting and defence psychiatrists concluded he was in a trance at the time.

Witnesses placed Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy but the autopsy showed the fatal shot came from one inch behind.

Dr Herbert Spiegel, a world authority on hypnosis at Columbia University, believes Sirhan may have been hypnotically programmed to act as a decoy for the real assassin.

Evidence

The report is the result of a three-year investigation by filmmaker Shane O'Sullivan. He reveals new video and photographs showing three senior CIA operatives at the hotel.

What were they doing there? It's our obligation as friends of Bob Kennedy to investigate this
Paul Schrade
Three of these men have been positively identified as senior officers who worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA's Miami base for its Secret War on Castro.

David Morales was Chief of Operations and once told friends:

"I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard."

Gordon Campbell was Chief of Maritime Operations and George Joannides was Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations.

Joannides was called out of retirement in 1978 to act as the CIA liaison to the Congressional investigation into the JFK assassination. Now, we see him at the Ambassador Hotel the night a second Kennedy is assassinated.

Memory

Senator Robert F Kennedy lies critically wounded in the Ambassador Hotel kitchen where he was shot in the head on 5 June, 1968
There have been calls for a fresh investigation into the shooting
Monday, 20 November would have been Bobby Kennedy's 81st birthday. In Los Angeles, his son Max has just broken ground on a new high-school project in memory of his father on the old Ambassador Hotel site.

Paul Schrade, a key figure behind the school project, was walking behind Robert Kennedy that night and was shot in the head. He believes this new evidence merits fresh investigation:

"It seems very strange to me that these guys would be at a Kennedy celebration. What were they doing there? And why were they there? It's our obligation as friends of Bob Kennedy to investigate this."

Ed Lopez, a former Congressional investigator who worked with Joannides in 1978, says:

"I think the key people at the CIA need to go back to anybody who might have been around back then, bring them in and interview them, and ask - is this Gordon Campbell? Is this George Joannides?"

See also RFK Headwounds and Morales.

Shocking proof that there were bombs on 9/11

2007-06-11T14:53:00.001-07:00

G.W. Bush: Terrorist & Traitor

2007-06-11T14:33:00.000-07:00

Did the CIA kill Bobby Kennedy?

2007-06-11T14:10:00.001-07:00

In 1968, Robert Kennedy seemed likely to follow his brother, John, into the White House. Then, on June 6, he was assassinated - apparently by a lone gunman. But Shane O'Sullivan says he has evidence implicating three CIA agents in the murder

Monday November 20, 2006
The Guardian

At first, it seems an open-and-shut case. On June 5 1968, Robert Kennedy wins the California Democratic primary and is set to challenge Richard Nixon for the White House. After midnight, he finishes his victory speech at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles and is shaking hands with kitchen staff in a crowded pantry when 24-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan steps down from a tray-stacker with a "sick, villainous smile" on his face and starts firing at Kennedy with an eight-shot revolver.

Article continues
As Kennedy lies dying on the pantry floor, Sirhan is arrested as the lone assassin. He carries the motive in his shirt-pocket (a clipping about Kennedy's plans to sell bombers to Israel) and notebooks at his house seem to incriminate him. But the autopsy report suggests Sirhan could not have fired the shots that killed Kennedy. Witnesses place Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy, but the fatal bullet is fired from one inch behind. And more bullet-holes are found in the pantry than Sirhan's gun can hold, suggesting a second gunman is involved. Sirhan's notebooks show a bizarre series of "automatic writing" - "RFK must die RFK must be killed - Robert F Kennedy must be assassinated before 5 June 68" - and even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember shooting Kennedy. He recalls "being led into a dark place by a girl who wanted coffee", then being choked by an angry mob. Defence psychiatrists conclude he was in a trance at the time of the shooting and leading psychiatrists suggest he may have be a hypnotically programmed assassin.

Three years ago, I started writing a screenplay about the assassination of Robert Kennedy, caught up in a strange tale of second guns and "Manchurian candidates" (as the movie termed brainwashed assassins). As I researched the case, I uncovered new video and photographic evidence suggesting that three senior CIA operatives were behind the killing. I did not buy the official ending that Sirhan acted alone, and started dipping into the nether-world of "assassination research", crossing paths with David Sanchez Morales, a fearsome Yaqui Indian.

Morales was a legendary figure in CIA covert operations. According to close associate Tom Clines, if you saw Morales walking down the street in a Latin American capital, you knew a coup was about to happen. When the subject of the Kennedys came up in a late-night session with friends in 1973, Morales launched into a tirade that finished: "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard." From this line grew my odyssey into the spook world of the 60s and the secrets behind the death of Bobby Kennedy.

Working from a Cuban photograph of Morales from 1959, I viewed news coverage of the assassination to see if I could spot the man the Cubans called El Gordo - The Fat One. Fifteen minutes in, there he was, standing at the back of the ballroom, in the moments between the end of Kennedy's speech and the shooting. Thirty minutes later, there he was again, casually floating around the darkened ballroom while an associate with a pencil moustache took notes.

The source of early research on Morales was Bradley Ayers, a retired US army captain who had been seconded to JM-Wave, the CIA's Miami base in 1963, to work closely with chief of operations Morales on training Cuban exiles to run sabotage raids on Castro. I tracked Ayers down to a small town in Wisconsin and emailed him stills of Morales and another guy I found suspicious - a man who is pictured entering the ballroom from the direction of the pantry moments after the shooting, clutching a small container to his body, and being waved towards an exit by a Latin associate.

Ayers' response was instant. He was 95% sure that the first figure was Morales and equally sure that the other man was Gordon Campbell, who worked alongside Morales at JM-Wave in 1963 and was Ayers' case officer shortly before the JFK assassination.

I put my script aside and flew to the US to interview key witnesses for a documentary on the unfolding story. In person, Ayers positively identified Morales and Campbell and introduced me to David Rabern, a freelance operative who was part of the Bay of Pigs invasion force in 1961 and was at the Ambassador hotel that night. He did not know Morales and Campbell by name but saw them talking to each other out in the lobby before the shooting and assumed they were Kennedy's security people. He also saw Campbell around police stations three or four times in the year before Robert Kennedy was shot.

This was odd. The CIA had no domestic jurisdiction and Morales was stationed in Laos in 1968. With no secret service protection for presidential candidates in those days, Kennedy was guarded by unarmed Olympic decathlete champion Rafer Johnson and football tackler Rosey Grier - no match for an expert assassination team.

Trawling through microfilm of the police investigation, I found further photographs of Campbell with a third figure, standing centre-stage in the Ambassador hotel hours before the shooting. He looked Greek, and I suspected he might be George Joannides, chief of psychological warfare operations at JM-Wave. Joannides was called out of retirement in 1978 to act as the CIA liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigating the death of John F Kennedy.

Ed Lopez, now a respected lawyer at Cornell University, came into close contact with Joann-des when he was a young law student working for the committee. We visit him and show him the photograph and he is 99% sure it is Joannides. When I tell him where it was taken, he is not surprised: "If these guys decided you were bad, they acted on it.

We move to Washington to meet Wayne Smith, a state department official for 25 years who knew Morales well at the US embassy in Havana in 1959-60. When we show him the video in the ballroom, his response is instant: "That's him, that's Morales." He remembers Morales at a cocktail party in Buenos Aires in 1975, saying Kennedy got what was coming to him. Is there a benign explanation for his presence? For Kennedy's security, maybe? Smith laughs. Morales is the last person you would want to protect Bobby Kennedy, he says. He hated the Kennedys, blaming their lack of air support for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

We meet Clines in a hotel room near CIA headquarters. He does not want to go on camera and brings a friend, which is a little unnerving. Clines remembers "Dave" fondly. The guy in the video looks like Morales but it is not him, he says: "This guy is fatter and Morales walked with more of a slouch and his tie down." To me, the guy in the video does walk with a slouch and his tie is down.

Clines says he knew Joannides and Campbell and it is not them either, but he fondly remembers Ayers bringing snakes into JM-Wave to scare the secretaries and seems disturbed at Smith's identification of Morales. He does not discourage our investigation and suggests others who might be able to help. A seasoned journalist cautions that he would expect Clines "to blow smoke", and yet it seems his honest opinion.

As we leave Los Angeles, I tell the immigration officer that I am doing a story on Bobby Kennedy. She has seen the advertisements for the new Emilio Estevez movie about the assassination, Bobby. "Who do you think did it? I think it was the Mob," she says before I can answer.

"I definitely think it was more than one man," I say, discreetly.

Morales died of a heart attack in 1978, weeks before he was to be called before the HSCA. Joannides died in 1990. Campbell may still be out there somewhere, in his early 80s. Given the positive identifications we have gathered on these three, the CIA and the Los Angeles Police Department need to explain what they were doing there. Lopez believes the CIA should call in and interview everybody who knew them, disclose whether they were on a CIA operation and, if not, why they were there that night.

Today would have been Robert Kennedy's 81st birthday. The world is crying out for a compassionate leader like him. If dark forces were behind his elimination, it needs to be investigated

· Shane O'Sullivan's investigation will be shown tonight on Newsnight, BBC2, 10.30pm.

RFK Assassination Far From Resolved

2007-06-11T14:00:00.001-07:00

From CITIZINE RESEARCH.

Physical evidence and eyewitness testimony give reason to reconsider Sirhan Sirhan’s conviction for the 1968 murder of Robert F. Kennedy.

By Thom White

June 5, 2005 LOS ANGELES -- The L.A. Unified School District is about to knock down the historic Ambassador Hotel to build some schools -- another example of L.A. tearing down and paving over what is supposed to be such a proud civic history.

Demolition is set to begin while a legal petition rests before the California Supreme Court presenting evidence that calls into question what really happened in the most important event to take place during the Ambassador’s 85-year history: the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

In the summer of 1969, a Palestinian immigrant by the improbable and unmistakeably foreign name of Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of murdering the candidate for the U.S. presidency. However, bullet hole evidence, the L.A. County coroner’s autopsy report, and eyewitness accounts of the assassination and crime scene investigation, all provide substantial evidence to support the claim that it was not physically possible for Sirhan Sirhan to have been Robert F. Kennedy’s murderer, and that it was another person in the jam-packed pantry (directly behind and to the right of Kennedy) who committed this murder at midnight. So does Sirhan Sirhan deserve a retrial? And what is L.A. covering up now with all this fresh tar and asphalt? To really know, you need some details.

The Rise of Robert F. Kennedy

Robert Francis Kennedy came from the wealthy and politically powerful Kennedy and Fitzgerald clans. His father, industrialist Joseph P. Kennedy, rose to great wealth during Prohibition, and prominence under FDR, and set the stage for the political careers of his sons. Robert managed older brother John’s successful run for Senate in 1952, and then John’s bigger run for the presidency in 1960. In November 1960, John defeated Vice-President Richard M. Nixon to be elected president of the United States, although evidence emerged later that Kennedy’s wins in Texas and Illinois (which handed him the national victory) were the result of voter fraud. Further research has shown that Kennedy’s running mate, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, had won previous Senate elections in Texas in 1948 and 1954 through voter fraud.

President Jack named Robert to be the most powerful lawyer in the land, Attorney General, and Bobby did his best to help guide the Kennedy administration’s “cold war liberal” legislative agenda. After his brother’s murder by gunmen in the streets of Dallas on 11/22, Robert stayed on for a turn under LBJ. He then resigned to run for the U.S. Senate in New York, and he won that election in 1964.

By 1967, the number of dead and wounded U.S. soldiers being returned from Vietnam had reached an unpopular level. Catholic Democrat Eugene McCarthy, a Senator from Minnesota, began campaigning against President Lyndon Johnson in 1967 on a clear platform of negotiated peace with the Communists, eventual withdrawal of Americans from the foreign strife, and an end to U.S. military control of the southern end of Indochina. When Johnson barely edged out McCarthy in the first Democratic primary in New Hampshire (a victory for McCarthy), the President announced he would not seek re-election. Senator Robert Kennedy and Vice President Hubert Humphrey would throw their hats in the ring to challenge McCarthy for the nomination.

In Spring 1968, Sen. McCarthy and Sen. Kennedy split 80% of the voters in many of the Democratic state primaries, while V.P. Humphrey would pull in 10-15%. On the Oregon ballot in late May, Gene McCarthy pulled off a big win against Kennedy. Kennedy turned to concentrate his resources on winning the state primary in California, where he was thought to have an advantage. A victory there on June 4 would give him the momentum to gain the Party nomination at what was to be a contentious Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Scene of the crime

Robert Kennedy’s California campaign was headquartered at the Ambassador Hotel. By nightfall on June 4, campaign workers and media crowded the Ambassador’s Embassy Ballroom, watching television for ballot results as the evening progressed. Kennedy himself was in the Royal Suite and the Court TV Crime Library describes the scene:

RFK remained watchful, cautious, glued to his television in the Royal Suite where good friends, political allies and a few celebrities encircled him. Comedian Milton Berle and football great Roosevelt “Rosey” Grier were there, and so was Decathlon champ Rafer Johnson. Occasionally, Kennedy leaned over to joke with one of these men or to seek advice from one of his aides and advisors - Pierre Salinger, Ted Sorenson or press secretary Fred Mankiewicz, for example ... Wife Ethel, in her early pregnancy with their eleventh child, relaxed on the sofa near her husband …

By 11:30 p.m., a victory for Kennedy seemed imminent. With wife Ethel and his entourage, the senator moved to the ballroom where, upon entering, he was greeted by frantic applause. Red-white-and-blue ribbons decorated the wall behind the speaker’s podium and balloons colored the ceiling overhead. Flashbulbs popped, and music from an orchestra sent the sea of heads before the stage bobbing in rhythm. Raising his arms for attention, a smiling “Bobby,” as his fans called him, thanked the room for their great support and, adding a bit of humor, thanked pitcher Don Drysdale for winning his sixth straight shut-out that afternoon.

Then the speech turned serious. Kennedy addressed the fact that the nation needed to overcome racial divisions and other social evils (the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King had taken place exactly two months before to the day), as well as an end to the unpopular war in Vietnam. Concluding his speech with a victory sign and the words, “…now on to Chicago, and let’s win there!” the house once again broke loose. “We want Bobby! We want Bobby!” sang the house. Grinning, he turned towards the side door that would take him through a food preparation area, a short cut to where the press was waiting in the Colonial Room beyond. It was now 12:15 a.m., June 5.

According L.A. Rams tackle Rosey Grier’s testimony to the LAPD, at the end of Kennedy’s speech, the group on-stage had planned to exit to the right to head to a press conference, but at the last moment, the head of RFK’s security, Bill Barry, told Kennedy and the entourage to take an alternate route through a pantry area, apparently to avoid some press along the way. According to Grier:

“Well, first of all, we were up on the stage, and they said they was going off to the right of the stage, and at the last minute ... Bill Barry decided to change and go a different direction because people had found out which way the senator was going to go, and we had to go downstairs to another ballroom where people were waiting. This was a press gathering here, and so Bill Barry and someone else took the senator down and I was lifting Mrs. Kennedy down from the stairs and we started walking....”

Barry then fell behind the group, staying by the stage to help Ethel Skakel Kennedy from the stage, while Robert Kennedy and crew headed down a ramp through double doors into the kitchen pantry. Lisa Pease describes the scene of the murder in her invaluable 1998 investigative piece in Probe magazine, “Sirhan & the RFK Assassination”:

Maître d’ Karl Uecker gripped Kennedy’s right wrist with his left hand. Ace Guard Service employee Thane Eugene Cesar joined Kennedy as he went through the double doors into the pantry, touching his right elbow. Bill Barry, an ex-FBI man who was ostensibly serving as Kennedy’s bodyguard, had fallen behind Kennedy as he entered the pantry.

As they headed east through the room, Kennedy stopped every few feet to shake the hands of hotel workers. The last hand he shook was that of busboy Juan Romero. Uecker pulled Kennedy as he moved forward. The tiny kitchen held, by official count, 77 people (including Sirhan and the shooting victims) who were possible witnesses to what happened next.

Uecker related that with Kennedy still in hand, he felt someone sliding in between himself and the steam table about two feet away from where he stood. Busboy Juan Romero and waiter Martin Patrusky saw Sirhan approach Kennedy, as did Lisa Urso, a San Diego high school student. Urso saw Sirhan push his way past her towards the Senator. She thought he was going to shake his hand, then saw a movement that made her stop in her tracks in frightened anticipation. Vincent DiPierro, a waiter who had observed Sirhan standing and talking to a pretty girl in a white, polka dotted dress earlier that night, heard someone yell “Grab him” a split second before the shots were fired. Somebody reported Sirhan saying, “Kennedy, you son of a bitch,” and then firing at Kennedy with his hand outstretched.

Uecker felt Kennedy slip from his grasp as he fell to the ground. Screams were heard as bystanders Paul Schrade, William Weisel, Ira Goldstein, Erwin Stroll and Elizabeth Evans were hit by flying bullets. Kennedy suffered gunshot wounds in three different places, with a fourth bullet passing through his coat without entering the skin.

Uecker immediately grabbed Sirhan’s hand and forced it down onto the steam table. A swarm of men descended upon Sirhan, surrounding him, holding the gun. Decathlon champion Rafer Johnson, Grier, George Plimpton and others formed a barricade around Sirhan, one holding his head, another with a finger in the trigger to prevent additional shots, another grabbing Sirhan in a crushing bear hug.

Uecker and DiPierro reported initially hearing two shots, followed by a flurry. DiPierro told the LAPD, “I saw the first two go off. I saw them actually.” Several witnesses reported hearing one or two shots, and then a pause. Then all hell broke loose. Witnesses not within eyesight of what was happening thought they were hearing balloons popping or firecrackers. Los Angeles photographer Boris Yaro, in a phone interview with Robert Morrow, recounted his memory of the event:

“There was either one or two shots fired. O.K. And then, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. There was a pregnant pause between those two because my initial impression was some jackass has set off firecrackers in here; because I got hit in the face with debris...And then it hit me. Oh, my God, it’s happened again.”

Sirhan was eventually subdued, and taken into police custody.

The official line arrived at dawn. June 5: America awakens to the news that beloved Bobby Kennedy had been shot by a Middle-Eastern waiter who approached the Senator among the other well-wishers, not to offer a handshake of goodwill, but with eight rounds of deadly bullet fire. The madman had shot Kennedy in the head and injured five others, before being heroically put in an armlock by members of the celebrity entourage. After being roughed up by the angry crowd at the Ambassador, the Kennedy killer was ceremoniously handed over by State Assemblyman Jesse Unruh to the police.

At 9 a.m. on June 5, hours after the shootout, members of the Sirhan clan arrived at the police station saying they had seen pictures of their brother on the television. Within hours, police ransacked Sirhan’s mother’s residence in Pasadena (696 E. Howard) and turned up notebook scribblings by Sirhan about how “RFK must die” and how killing Kennedy was becoming an “obsession.”

June 6: America learns that RFK is dead and had been murdered by the crazed Palestinian partisan Sirhan Sirhan who had a grudge against Kennedy because the Senator supported selling “Phantom” jets to Israel. Ironically, Robert Kennedy would expire on the first anniversary of Israel’s Six Day Invasion of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria which had commenced on 6/6/67.
It was an “open and shut” case: Sirhan Sirhan had murdered Robert F. Kennedy. But consider the following evidence:

Follow the bullets

There is evidence of more than eight bullets being fired. Sirhan’s gun only had eight chambers, and there was no time for him to reload, so for the “crazed lone gunman” theory to be plausible, there could only be evidence of eight bullets fired.

As many as five or six ceiling panels were removed by the LAPD investigating team, and lead criminalogist DeWayne Wolfer is quoted as saying, “It’s unbelievable how many holes there are in the kitchen ceiling.”

Wolfer filled his official report with “magic bullets” (bullets #2, 4, and 6 that supposedly struck more than one person) to stay within the eight-bullet parameters and reach the desired conclusion. Here is how the LAPD accounted for the bullets:

Bullet #1: struck Senator Robert F. Kennedy behind the right ear.
Bullet #2: passed through RFK’s right shoulder pad and struck campaign aide Paul Schrade in the forehead.
Bullet #3: entered RFK’s back inches below the top of the right shoulder.
Bullet #4: entered RFK’s back, about one inch below bullet #3, but exited the senator’s body through the right front chest.
Bullet #5: struck Ira Goldstein in the right rear buttock.
Bullet #6: passed through Goldstein’s pants leg, struck the cement floor, and, ricocheted onto Irwin Stroll’s left leg.
Bullet #7: struck William Weisel in the left abdomen.
Bullet #8: reflected off the plaster ceiling to strike Elizabeth Evans in the head.

Robert Kennedy was shot three times, and five others were shot (that would make eight bullets); one bullet went through Kennedy’s clothing and exited out, and the same happened to Ira Goldstein who had a bullet pass through his clothing without piercing skin. So that would make ten.

Additionally, there was an Associated Press photo published June 5, 1968, which showed two LAPD officers pointing out two bullets lodged in the door jamb between the double doors where Kennedy had entered the pantry, and this would make 12 bullets. Researcher Lisa Pease argues, “If there were more than eight bullets, Sirhan was not a deranged, lone gunman, but somehow part of a conspiracy which has yet to be officially acknowledged.” According to Lisa Pease:

In 1975, Vincent Bugliosi, who was then working with [Paul] Schrade [a Kennedy aide who was shot] to get the case reopened, tracked down the two police officers depicted in the photograph. To that time their identities had been unknown. Bugliosi identified the two officers as Sgt. Charles Wright and Sgt. Robert Rozzi. Both Wright and Rozzi were sure that what they observed was not only a bullet hole, but a hole containing a bullet …

Investigative reporter Jonn Christian found a Chicago Tribune article authored by Robert Weidrich. Weidrich had evidently been in the pantry as the doorjamb was being removed, for his account contained the following information:

“On a low table lay an 8-foot strip of molding, torn by police from the center post of the double doors leading from the ballroom. These were the doors through which Sen. Kennedy had walked....Now the molding bore the scars of a crime laboratory technician’s probe as it had removed two .22-caliber bullets that had gone wild.”

The LAPD report said these holes were not from bullets and may have been caused by collisions with a food cart, but even FBI agent William Bailey said that for him and other agents, “There was no questions in any of our minds as to the fact that they were bullet holes.”
These bullets are not accounted for in Wolfer’s LAPD report. This door jamb was destroyed under a court order in 1969 soon after Sirhan’s conviction for murder.

Autopsy exonerates Sirhan

The autopsy report proves that it was physically impossible for Sirhan to have fired the fatal shot to the back of Kennedy’s head, or any other shot that struck the Senator. The autopsy shows that Kennedy was shot from behind from below, while all witnesses say that Sirhan Sirhan shot at Robert Kennedy in a face to face position from 2-5 feet away with his arm outstretched horizontally toward the Senator. The trajectories of bullets that struck Kennedy were at sharp upward angles of 60° to 80° (nearly vertical), and the mortal wound fired into his brain was from just a couple inches behind him.

Bartcop.com describes the autopsy:

Los Angeles Coroner Thomas Noguchi conducted the official autopsy on the body of Robert Francis Kennedy on the morning of June 6. This very experienced coroner removed one intact bullet and fragments from another. The operation was witnessed by, according to writer Dan Moldea, “three forensic pathologists from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington and by two of Noguchi’s associates.”

In his resulting 62-page report, 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.” The largest fragment of that bullet lodged in the brain stem.

Another shot had penetrated Kennedy’s right armpit and exited through the upper portion of his chest at a 59-degree angle. The coroner determined that the senator’s arm must have been upraised when that bullet entered.

Yet another, a third shot, entered one-and-a-half inches below the previous one and stopped in the neck near the sixth cervical. This is the bullet that was found intact.

Checking Kennedy’s clothing for other telltale signs, Noguchi followed the path between two bullet holes in his suit coat and announced that a fourth bullet had been fired at the senator. It entered and exited the fabric without touching the senator.

Prosecutors withheld the autopsy report from Sirhan’s defense team until four months into the trial, and after Sirhan’s defense attorney Grant Cooper had needlessly admitted Sirhan’s guilt to the crime of murder during his opening argument. Although the LAPD’s DeWayne Wolfer made a detailed scheme of the path of Sirhan’s eight bullets, Thomas Noguchi responded that “there was really no way to accurately trace the flight path of so many bullets.” In his 1983 autobiography Coroner, Noguchi wrote, “Until more is precisely known … the existence of the second gunman remains a possibility. Thus, I have never said that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy.”

Security guard Gene Cesar

Thane Eugene Cesar, a recently-hired twenty-six year old part-time private security guard who worked full-time for Lockheed Aircraft, stood to Kennedy’s right as the group passed into the pantry. Cesar admitted to police that at the time of the assassination, he was standing behind and in actual contact with Senator Kennedy, and when the shooting began, he dropped down into a crouching position and pulled out his gun.

This account puts Cesar (and not Sirhan) in position to have shot Kennedy at close range with the upward angle by which the Senator was struck three times. After gunfire had ceased, Cesar advanced on Sirhan with his gun drawn, but Rosie Grier ordered him to put it away.
Cesar falsely told police that he had sold his .22 revolver before the crime, but a receipt proves that it was actually sold after the crime. The LAPD never test fired Cesar’s gun or asked to see it even once Cesar admitted having been in position to have fired the shots which struck RFK. The FBI was later told that the gun had been stolen from the home of the person who purchased it from Cesar.

Assassination researcher Ted Charach claims to have a film of a June 5, 1968, KNXT news (now KCBS) interview with shooting eyewitness Donald Schulman who tells Jerry Dunphy (R.I.P) that a security guard (probably Ace security guard Eugene Cesar) had fired his gun back at Sirhan and had accidentally shot Kennedy. Jerry Dunphy and KCBS have denied that this interview ever took place.

Photos of scene destroyed

The LAPD destroyed photographic evidence of the crime scene. One person who took photographs of the assassination scene, 15-year-old Jamie Scott Enyart, was tackled and arrested at gunpoint by the LAPD. His camera was seized and the film was never returned. In 1996, Enyart won a substantial amount of money in a civil suit against the LAPD in which he alleged the police department had willfully misfiled and then destroyed his photographs along with 2400 other assassination-related photos in an L.A. County Hospital incinerator in 1968.

Sirhan’s companions

Sirhan was seen with two other people before the assassination who later were heard shouting “We shot him!” Two witnesses, waiter Vincent Di Pierro and campaign worker Sandra Serrano, had seen Sirhan earlier in the evening hanging out with a guy and a girl. While taking in some fresh air on outdoor steps that lead up to the Embassy Ballroom, Sandra Serrano saw the group of three ascend the steps at about 11:30 p.m. Di Pierro says he noticed Sirhan standing by the tray table prior to the shooting because Sirhan was talking to an attractive girl in a polka dot dress. After the shooting, according to Serrano and another couple, the girl and guy (minus Sirhan) came back down the steps proclaiming “We shot Kennedy!”

Sgt. Paul Sharaga, the first police officer on the scene, soon filed a report saying witnesses had seen a young man and a woman in a purple and white polka dot dress running out of the hotel shouting “We shot him! We shot him!” He put out an All Points Bulletin on these two suspects, but LAPD higher-ups later cancelled this search. In fact, within minutes of the shooting, Sirhan Sirhan was the sole suspect.

During the police investigation, Special Unit Senator (SUS), the LAPD’s sole polygraph operator, Sgt. Enrique “Hank” Hernandez, did intensive interviews with Serrano trying to convince her that she did not hear anyone say “We shot him!” Transcripts show lie detector expert Hernandez badgering Serrano to renounce the testimony, saying she is “shaming Senator Kennedy” by keeping up with her story that the couple had said “We shot Kennedy!” But an agitated Serrano responds that “That’s what I heard!”

In the end, Manuel Pena, head of the SUS investigation insisted that witnesses misheard the couple, who had only said “They shot him!” The polka dot dress story was dismissed.

Other gunmen

Witnesses in the pantry saw other men with guns besides Sirhan Sirhan and Eugene Cesar. High school student Lisa Urso noticed a blond man in a gray suit putting a gun back in a holster, and a second witness saw a dark-haired man in a black suit (likely identified as Michael Wayne) fire two shots and then run out of the room.

Conclusion

Sirhan’s current attorney, Lawrence Teeter, is pushing for a California Supreme Court “evidentiary hearing” to show physical evidence which could exonerate Sirhan of the assassination.

Teeter’s main contention is that the L.A. County autopsy of Robert Kennedy, conducted by Thomas Noguchi, confirms that the Senator was shot three times from behind and mortally wounded by one bullet to the back of the head. This bullet entered Kennedy’s brain from right behind his right ear, and was fired from less than two inches from his head. The fact that the shot was point blank is proven by “powder burns” around the wound which only occur when a firearm is fewer than 3 inches from the target. Kennedy’s other wounds, to his shoulder and under his right armpit, were also angled from behind (a fourth shot from behind went through Kennedy’s suit without piercing skin).

Sirhan Sirhan was spotted firing an eight-round Ivar Johnson handgun at Sen. Kennedy from 2-5 feet in front of the presidential candidate, before being tackled by members of Kennedy’s entourage. Sirhan stood several feet in front of Kennedy, while all of Kennedy’s wounds were from a gun fired from behind him. So how could Sirhan have shot Kennedy even once?

Teeter also argues that physical evidence of the total number of bullets fired in the pantry proves that there was at least one other gunman in the pantry. At the end of the bloody melee, six people were shot (Kennedy was the only person who would die), and there were bullet holes in ceiling panels, doors, and doorjambs. Sirhan’s gun could hold eight bullets, but by counting the number of wounded and stray bullet holes around, there was evidence of at least ten bullets fired, and possibly more.

Teeter opposes demolition of the Ambassador Hotel because this represents destruction of vital evidence to his client. Although a lot of evidence was destroyed by the LAPD before and after Sirhan’s conviction, Teeter believes remaining evidence of bullet holes in the walls and ceilings of the pantry area could be analyzed for further proof that another gunman fired shots at the Senator, and in a real position to murder Kennedy.

The LAUSD’s Heritage K-12 plan calls for creation of a “five-member commission of presidential scholars to advise the school district on the appropriate treatment of the kitchen pantry” where Senator Robert F. Kennedy was murdered. LAUSD Superintendant Roy Romer has acknowledged that because the entire hotel building will be demolished, the pantry would have to be “containerized for possible re-creation and reinstallment in a new building.” Members of the Kennedy clan have publicly stated that they want the pantry/corridor to be demolished with the rest of the building and that preservation would be “ghoulish.”

Robert F. Kennedy Assassination Resources:

The Assassinations:
Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X
Edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease
Publisher: Feral House

Sirhan and the RFK Assassination by Lisa Pease
www.webcom.com/ctka/pr398-rfk.html

Bartcop Assassination Series: RFK
www.geocities.com/verisimus101/rfk

Official site of Lawrence Teeter,
attorney for Sirhan Sirhan
www.reopenRFKassassinationcase.com

If the CIA and Bush Administration Weren't Involved in 9/11 What WERE They Doing?

2007-05-28T21:22:00.000-07:00

From Anti-Bush News Archives of Bush Treason and Treachery

Friday, May 24, 2002

Investigator/journalist and former LAPD officer Michael Ruppert is sure
that the CIA, a secret cartel of major corporations and the Bush
administration colluded in the events leading to 9/11. Ruppert has spent
several months trying to reconstruct the significant events leading up to
the suicide attacks. Here he presents 34 separate but connected and
well-documented "steps" that lead to the horrendous disaster of
9/11. After reading them, you will find yourself wondering why ANYONE
would question Cynthia McKinney's call for a REAL investigation of what
may prove to be the most heinous inside job ever pulled off on American
soil.

CIA
Deputy Director Admits 'We Knew al Qaeda was Planning a Major Attack'

Online Journal's Larry Chin reports that Jim Pavitt, CIA Deputy
Director for Operations, recently admitted CIA foreknowledge of 911.
"We had very, very good intelligence of the general structure and
strategies of the al Qaeda terrorist organization. We knew and we warned
that al Qaeda was planning a major strike." But Pavitt insists
"We never found the tactical intelligence, never uncovered the
specifics that could have stopped those tragic strikes." Is this the
truth - or a CIA disinformation campaign? There is only one way to find
out - the CIA (and all other agencies, including the FBI, the NSA, and the
White House) must declassify ALL relevant documents, and a Blue Ribbon
Commission must be appointed to demand the truth from those who are paid
over $300 billion each year for "intelligence" and
"defense"!

CIA
Ignored Malaysian Warnings About 9-11 Hijackers

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reports, "Congressional investigators
believe there are more embarrassing documents to come. Another sensitive
issue: the CIA's failure to aggressively follow up on information provided
by Malaysian authorities in January 2000 about a meeting in Kuala Lumpur
of Al Qaeda operatives—including two men who turned out to be among the
9-11 hijackers. Malaysian officials passed along photos to the United
States, but they never heard back and stopped monitoring the suspects, one
Malaysian official told NEWSWEEK. CIA officials said the significance of
the meeting didn't become clear until much later. But by the time the CIA
alerted the FBI, it was too late." Why did the CIA IGNORE the
Malaysian warnings? We demand a Blue Ribbon Commission!

Before
9-11, the FBI Read Moussaoui's E-Mail that 'He Wanted to Learn to Fly a
747 from London's Heathrow to New York's JFK'

Here's another explosive 9-11 revelation: the FBI read Zacarias
Moussaoui's e-mail before 9-11 and "found he wanted to learn to fly a
747 from London's Heathrow to New York's JFK. The agents held
'brainstorming' sessions to try to figure out what targets might be en
route. The agents were 'in a frenzy,' 'absolutely convinced he was
planning to do something with a plane,' said a senior official. One agent
wrote that 'one possibility' was that Moussaoui might be planning to crash
into the Twin Towers." According to Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, FBI
Director Robert Mueller "referred to this memo by a Minneapolis FBI
agent in testimony before Congress last week, but no newspaper reported
this. Why did the FBI ignore this warning? Why did the FBI ignore similar
warnings from its agents in Phoenix? And were there warnings from FBI
agents in Florida, where most of the hijackers were learning to fly? We
demand a Blue Ribbon Commission!

On
August 16, An FBI Agent in Minneapolis Told his Superiors that Moussaoui
'Could Fly Something into the World Trade Center'

Here is ANOTHER shocking new fact about the extent of the 911 warnings
that were sent to Bush's top anti-terrorism officials from US and foreign
government agents. As the NY Post reports, "It was previously known
that instructors at a Minnesota flight school warned local FBI agents that
Moussaoui - later described as the '20th hijacker' - might try to fly a
plane loaded with fuel into a building." But FBI Director Robert
Mueller told Senators on May 9 "for the first time that an FBI
investigator took that horrifying threat further - and actually considered
the scenario that occurred Sept. 11." "In one of the notes, the
agent in Minneapolis mentioned the possibility of Moussaoui being the type
of person who could fly something into the World Trade Center,"
Mueller said. Who at the FBI and the CIA reviewed this memo? Did they
simply IGNORE this warning?????

Did
FBI Director Robert Mueller LIE to Congress About the Crucial 911 Warning
from Phoenix?

On May 3, John Solomon of the AP revealed that a vigilant FBI agent in
Phoenix was suspicious of local Arab flight students and wrote a detailed
memo urging a nationwide investigation of flight schools. Solomon added,
"The FBI sent the intelligence to its terrorism experts in Washington
and New York for analysis and had begun discussing conducting a nationwide
canvass of flight schools when the Sept. 11 tragedies occurred, officials
told The Associated Press." But on May 8, FBI Director Robert Mueller
told Congress "he doubted that the memorandum was reviewed at a
senior level by agency directors. He said he did not believe that the
memorandum had been sent to the joint C.I.A.-F.B.I. counterterrorism
center." If Solomon's sources are reliable, then Mueller LIED TO
CONGRESS. Once again, we demand a Blue Ribbon Commission!

CBS'
60 Minutes II Asks: Could 911 Have Been Stopped?

60 Minutes reports, "One of the unanswered questions of [911] is
whether there was anything U.S. intelligence could have done to stop the
attacks...The FBI hauled in a French citizen, Zacarias Moussaoui...We now
know that, back in August, Moussaoui's possessions contained evidence that
would expose key elements of the [911] conspiracy. The FBI didn't search
Moussaoui's things because it says it didn't have enough evidence for a
search warrant. Critical evidence was in the hands of French
intelligence...60 Minutes talked with several sources in French
intelligence and they all agree on three points. First, back as early as
1995 French agents traced Moussaoui to Afghanistan on what they believe
was a trip to an Al Qaeda camp. Second, in 1999, the French put Moussaoui
on a watch list of potential terror suspects. Third, in 2000, French
intelligence followed Moussaoui to Pakistan. They believe he went to see a
man named Abu Jaffa - a top lieutenant to Osama bin Laden."
Investigate 911 NOW!

Greg
Palast Exposes the US Conspiracy behind the Failed Venezuelan Coup d'Etat

Greg Palast has done it again! Palast has scooped the US (and global)
media by getting the inside story on the failed US-engineered coup in
Venezuela. The US started planning this coup nearly a year in advance; the
plot included funding 3 simultaneous efforts to assassinate Venezuela's
elected President. US efforts gained urgency when Libya and Iraq
threatened an oil embargo to protest Israeli actions in Palestine. The US
needed to control Venezuela's oil to undermine any embargo. The Secretary
General of OPEC, Ali Rodriguez, warned Hugo Chavez of the planned coup, so
Chavez deployed his troops to foil the coup. His "Plan A" -
surrounding the palace with tanks - failed because the tank commander
disobeyed Chavez's orders (no doubt he was paid handsomely to do so). But
his "Plan B" - filling the palace with hidden troops, thereby
taking the coup leader hostage - succeeded brilliantly. We demand Senate
hearings on Bush's illegal coup!

'Compassionate
Conservatism' or Grand Larceny? Bush's Executive Orders Give Your Hard
Earned Tax Dollars to his Corporate Paymasters

Alexander Bolton writes in The Hill, "In a series of
little-noticed executive orders intended to ease the tax burden on
corporate America, the Bush administration has implemented a number of new
policies that will provide corporations with billions of dollars in tax
relief without the consent of Congress. The actions include new
regulations, notices of new rulemaking, and tax collection policies on
issues ranging from tax-free compensation for corporate executives to tax
deductions for 'intangible' assets to greatly expanded tax accounting
flexibility for small- and medium-sized businesses. Many of the
business-oriented actions taken by the Treasury Department since the
beginning of the year are so arcane that few members of Congress,
including those with jurisdiction over tax policy, were familiar with the
new regulations and revenue procedures."

Bush
Plans Massive Invasion of Iraq WITHOUT CONGRESSIONAL DECLARATION OF WAR
- We Must Elect a Democratic Congress to Impeach Bush!

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress - NOT THE
PRESIDENT - the power "to declare war." But George W. Bush is
openly planning to use 70,000 to 250,000 American troops to INVADE IRAQ
- WITHOUT A DECLARATION OF WAR! Has Bush simply scrubbed the
Constitution??? Call your Senators and Representatives (202-224-3121)
and demand immediate hearings on Bush's ILLEGAL plan to invade Iraq. And
get busy registering every young voter in America who will be sent to
fight and die in Iraq to make Bush's oil and weapons puppeteers
infinitely richer. We must sweep ALL Republicans out of office in
November, and sweep in a Democratic Congress that will IMPEACH GEORGE
BUSH.

Carville
Reads Letter from Democrats.com Member Sam Park

Letters from Democrats.com
members are getting results! Here's an exchange from Crossfire on
4-25-02. "CARVILLE: 'I understand the GOP elite has sent out the
word for top GOP leaders to stay off CROSSFIRE because they can't stand
the heat. Waaaa! Da wittle cry babies.' Sam Park, Van Nuys, California.
I tell you something, Sam, about these people. They can give it, but
can't take it. And I found out something about this right-wing crowd.
They all got glass jaws. The good ones that come over here... CARLSON:
They all come on here. And I must say, to think that they're going to be
ignoring to be... CARVILLE: Why is Marc Racicot telling -- he's the
chairman of the Republican party! CARLSON: That is absolutely...
CARVILLE: He's a weenie. From the left, I'm James Carville."
Congratulations to Sam Park!

December
7, 2001 was Another 'Day of Infamy' - Bush Let Bin Laden Escape into
Pakistan!

According to the LA Times, in November 2001 Osama Bin Laden was holed
up in the caves of Tora Bora, and anti-Taliban forces were eager to
capture him, but Bush chose to drop expensive "daisy cutters"
built by his defense contractor buddies, instead of spending a few
dollars for anti-Taliban guns and food. Did Bush REALLY want to get Bin
Laden? One top commander's aide said "I don't think the U.S. wants
to capture Osama. We know where he is, we tell him, and they do
nothing." "Around Dec. 7, the soldiers overheard Bin Laden on
the radio. He was still in Tora Bora, but 'they were getting ready to
move,' said Haji Zahir, another senior Afghan commander. The next
morning, tribal scouts said they saw Bin Laden picking his way over the
hills on horseback. The Saudi exile was flanked by four Al Qaeda guards,
commander Haji Khalan Mir said." Bush let Bin Laden walk into
Pakistan! Was this utter negligence, or does Bush want Bin Laden to live
- to justify a permanent "war against terror"???

Bu$h
Arranges Ransom to Terrorists - Congressional Investigation of Treason
Needed

A. F. Nariman writes: "ABC News has just released a breaking
news story reporting that the Bush Administration was involved in
arranging $300,000 in ransom payments to the Abu Sayyaf rebel group in
the Philippines…to secure the release of an American missionary couple…
What's wrong with this picture?…Abu Sayyaf group is an arm of bin
Laden's Al Qaeda network of terrorists…. in Bush's own words, 'If you
are a terrorist, or you harbor a terrorist, you are a terrorist.'…
these actions can be construed as treason under Article III, section 3
of our U.S. Constitution, which reads: 'Treason against the United
States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering
to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort… Let us hope…that
'giving aid to the enemy' is a greater crime, and one more worthy of
impeachment than having adulterous sex in the Oval Office, or committing
perjury to hide one's shame. Certainly, the Senate and House need to
investigate this matter post haste."

Phil
Gramm Wins Battle for Enronomics, So Every State Can Get 'Enroned' Just
Like California

Sen. Phil Gramm (R- TX) blocked an amendment introduced by California
Democrat Dianne Feinstein that would have closed the loophole that
allowed Enron to hide wholesale prices from buyers and control markets.
"Just because Enron is bankrupt doesn't mean the party's over for
these energy traders. The regulatory framework that allowed Enron to do
what it did is still intact," said Tyson Slocum, a senior
researcher with Public Citizen. "This is a modest attempt at
regaining accountability over our electricity markets, and the Senate
couldn't even muster the votes. The fact that Phil Gramm played a key
role in blocking these reforms illustrates that Enron's legacy is still
strong in the U.S. Congress."

Bu$h
Rule Will Let Coal Miners Fill Valleys and Streams With Debris

Katharine Seelye reports in the NY Times, "The Bush
administration is preparing to allow the coal mining industry to fill
waterways and valleys with the rock and dirt from mountaintop mining,
particularly in West Virginia... Environmentalists oppose the
regulation, saying that filling streams and valleys destroys the
ecosystem of the waterways and forests... and is a serious rollback of
the Clean Water Act. [Christie Whitman says] 'It is not a giveaway to
the mining industry -- It does not allow activity that isn't already
under way.' " Environmentalists say that the permitting process is
illegal, and has already erased more than 1,000 miles of streams in
Appalachia. Hey, Christie -- since George Bush has already stolen an
election, does that make stealing elections legal?
¶ 12:37 PM 0 comments links to this post
Wednesday, May 15, 2002

It's
Iran-Contra II - Bush Pays Al Qaeda Ally for Hostages!!!

Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal exploded when a Lebanese newspaper
revealed that Reagan officials - Ollie North and John Poindexter -
delivered arms to Iran in exchange for US hostages, after Reagan vowed
never to pay ransom. Well Shrub made the same promise - and now ABC News
has revealed, "The United States was involved in arranging a ransom
payment to the Abu Sayyaf rebel group in the Philippines meant to secure
the release of an American missionary couple kidnapped nearly 11 months
ago, but the couple has not been freed, ABCNEWS has learned."
WHAT??? As ABC reports, Abu Sayyaf is Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda
affiliate in the Philippines! So Bush helped raise $300,000 to PAY AL
QAEDA RANSOM FOR HOSTAGES! This means BUSH HIMSELF SUPPORTS TERRORISM!
We demand a Senate investigation!

Greg
Palast Debunks Lies about Chavez and Venezuela

Investigative journalist Greg Palast interviewed Hugo Chavez a few
weeks before the failed coup. Here Palast reveals the real reasons for
the failed US-supported Chavez coup attempt. "What neither Bush nor
the papers told you is that Chavez's real crime was to pass two laws
through Venezuela's national assembly. The first ordered big plantation
owners to turn over untilled land to the landless. The second nearly
doubled, from roughly 16% to 30%, royalties paid for extracting
Venezuela's oil. Venezuela was once the largest exporter of oil to the
USA, bigger than Saudi Arabia. This explains Chavez's unpopularity - at
least within that key constituency, the American petroleum
industry."

Otto
Reich's Bloody Fingerprints Are All Over Venezuela's Coup

The man in charge of Bush's Latin American policies - Assistant
Secretary of State Otto Reich - has bloodstained hands from his past
support for terrorism (enter "otto reich" in our search
engine). So it comes as no surprise that Reich tried to mobilize
international support for the Venezuelan coup only hours after it
happened, as revealed by Joshua Micah Marshall in Salon. Reich lied to a
roomful of Latin American ambassadors by "handing out copies of a
State Department press release that blamed Chavez's overthrow on Chavez
himself and denied that any coup had even occurred. Reich then gave a
tortured reading of the Venezuelan constitution in an attempt to
illustrate that Chavez's apparent military overthrow really wasn't
unconstitutional at all." Reich's nomination was so controversial
that he was never confirmed by the Senate - instead, Bush arrogantly
appointed him while the Senate was in recess. We demand Reich's
immediate removal from office!

Bush's
Fatherland Security Office Is Modeled On Richard Nixon's Evil Plans for
an Imperial Presidency

"Most people have long forgotten Richard Nixon's plans to
reorganize the Executive Branch after the 1972 election. He planned to
exercise the powers of the presidency more aggressively than any
president ever had, and a cornerstone of his plan was cutting off
Congressional oversight...Bush has structured the White House homeland
security operation as if modeled on Nixon's old (and discredited)
governing plans. All the... policymaking is being undertaken at the
level of the White House staff - where it is immune from Congressional
oversight. As a result, the government is being run in secrecy more
typical of a big corporation than an open, democratic society. The White
House Office of Homeland Security was [ostensibly] created to give
Americans both real safety and reassurance. Yet its structure,
characterized by secrecy, is actually reason for concern. Most troubling
is its similarity to the Nixon model, which was designed to hide abuses
of power." So writes John Dean.

Rep.
Kucinich: 'Secret Government Is Not An Acceptable Substitute for
Self-Government'

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) walked out on a House Government Reform
Committee briefing by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge after saying
he should testify publicly. Afterwards, Kucinich stated: "This is a
very serious matter that a Director who speaks for the President on
matters of national security is not accountable to the Congress, not
accountable to the press and not accountable to the people. Homeland
Security has a $38 billion budget. There's been no public process to
review this $38 billion budget. So you have a Director who is not
accountable to the Congress, not accountable to the press, and not
accountable to the people." This is exactly what Bush wants - an
Imperial Presidency. Let's Impeach Bush!

href="http://gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=122&row=0"
target="_blank">Greg Palast Reveals More Details on Katherine Harris' Felonious Felon
Purge

href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745318460/scottsupakbaldmo"
target="_blank">
src="http://supak.com/images/greg_palast_best_democracy.jpg"
alt="The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast"
align="right" hspace="16" vspace="8" width="60"
height="90">After 18 months of research, Greg
Palast has obtained the "scrub list"
that Katherine Harris and her predecessor sent to
county officials to remove "felons."
Highlighted examples include "David
Butler," a name which appears 77 times in
Florida phone books; Thomas Cooper, flagged for a
conviction in 2007 (!); Rev. Willie Dixon,
scrubbed despite a rare official pardon; and
Johnny Jackson Jr., who never went to Texas but
matched the name of a Texas felon; and Wallace
McDonald, who was scrubbed for the misdemeanor of
sleeping on a bus-stop bench in 1959. "Of the
'matches' on these lists, the civil-rights
commission estimated that at least 14 percent - or
8,000 voters, nearly 15 times Bush's official
margin of victory - were false." No corporate
media outlet has ever reported on the felon purge
- because it proves Jeb helped George steal
Florida in a "high-tech" stolen
election.

href="http://www.politicalamazon.com/enron-white.html"
target="_blank">Why Army Secretary
Thomas White Should Resign

PoliticalAmazon.com has extensive information
about the unethical behavior of "Enron Whore
Army Secretary Thomas White", including recent
news about his dozens of phone calls to Enron.
Political Amazon neatly documents his "little
White lies" and hammers home the hypocrisy of
the right-wing, who pushed for Clinton's impeachment
on the flimsiest of charges yet now let Shrub's
corrupt cabal get away with murder!

href="http://www.tennessean.com/nation-world/archives/02/03/15331563.shtml?Element_ID=15331563"
target="_blank">Gore Rips Bush Energy Policies and
Secrecy

In another of a seemingly endless series of
failures of the commercial news media, it was
generally NOT reported today that the candidate for
president in the most recent election (who received
more votes than his opponent and according to polls
is the leading contender to challenge the president
at the next election) gave a speech sharply critical
of the current government's policies. He blasted the
administration for its failed energy policies and
for undermining a generation of laws guaranteeing
citizens an open and transparent government. But
none of this was in your newspaper or on your
television news, was it?

href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/27/business/27ENER.html"
target="_blank">The Bush Administration Lied About
Spencer Abraham's Contacts with Energy Executives

"As he helped the Bush administration write
its national energy report last year, Energy
Secretary Spencer Abraham heard from more than 100
energy industry executives, trade association
leaders and lobbyists, according to documents
released by the Energy Department. Mr. Abraham did
not meet with any representatives of environmental
organizations or consumer groups, the documents
show. In a press release on Monday night, the Energy
Department summarized the secretary's calendar by
saying that Mr. Abraham met with 36 industry
representatives on task force matters. Most news
organizations reported that figure today. But Mr.
Abraham actually met with 109 representatives of
energy industry companies and trade associations...
18 [of which] contributed a total of $16.6 million
to the Republican Party since 1999, nearly three
times what they gave to the Democratic Party."
So reports the NY Times. We demand ALL of Cheney's
Secret Energy Task Force documents!
¶ 8:55 AM 0 comments links to this post
Monday, May 06, 2002

href="http://www.politicalamazon.com/bush-chinese.html"
target="_blank">Here Is ANOTHER Huge Bush Scandal -
TAIWANGATE!

In the past week, Taiwan has been rocked by the
revelation that ex-president Lee Teng-hui operated a
$100 million slush fund to buy influence overseas.
Part of this money was used to buy influence in the
US through two people NOW IN TOP POSITIONS IN THE
BUSH ADMINISTRATION. Carl Ford was a lobbyist for
Taiwan at Cassidy and Associates, which was
reportedly paid $1.5 million from the slush fund to
gain influence with Bush, and reportedly gave
$1-$1.75 million to Bush and the Republicans in 1999
and 2000. Ford's reward was being appointed
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and
Research, where he engineered Bush's sale of $4
billion in high-tech weapons to Taiwan last year.
The sale included submarines built by General
Dynamics - ANOTHER client of Ford's. James Kelly ran
the Scaife-funded Pacific Forum (connected to CSIS),
which received $100,000 from the slush fund. Kelly
is now Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia.
This scandal has received NO coverage in the US!

href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4380933,00.html"
target="_blank">FBI Raids Republican
Front Group Tied to Grover Norquist

Last week, the FBI raided a Saudi-backed charity
called the Safa Trust because of suspicious
transfers. The Trust is a major supporter of the
Islamic Institute, "which was set up to
mobilise support for the Republican party. It shares
an office in Washington with the Republican activist
Grover Norquist, [who serves on its Board]. The
institute, founded in 1999 to win influence in the
Republican party, has helped to arrange meetings
between senior Bush officials and Islamic leaders...
Its chairman, Khaled Saffuri, and Mr Norquist
cooperated to arrange the meetings... The institute
has also received money from abroad, including
$200,000 from Qatar and $55,000 from Kuwait."
Why is this coming out now? Has Ashcroft been
holding up this investigation for political reasons?

Flight
93 Evidence Mostly Points to Shootdown by Military
Jet

At 9:58 a.m. on 9-11, Dick Cheney ordered the
military to shoot down Flight 93 three times, with
"a fighter in the area." At 10:06, Flight
93 crashed near Shanksville, PA. Before the crash,
ground witnesses heard explosions followed by quiet,
and saw the plane flip. Debris - including human
remains and a one-ton engine part - was found as far
as 8 miles from the crash site on a breezeless day.
Witnesses also saw an unmarked white jet flying low
nearby. Did a military jet - either an F-16 or a
specially-equipped government plane - shoot off an
engine under orders from Dick Cheney? The Pentagon
denies it, and the cockpit tape offers few clues.
The truth will not be known until the government
releases the complete results of its investigation,
including the two flight recorders, radar readings,
the debris field map, and passenger phone call
records. We demand a Blue Ribbon investigation!

href="http://www.fortune.com/indext.jhtml?channel=print_article.jhtml&doc_id=206684"
target="_blank">Yes, Virginia, the
Bin Laden Family DOES Have a Connection to the
Carlyle Group - and That's Just the Tip of the
Iceberg

Fortune Mag. reports, "Are you the sort of
person who believes in conspiracies--the Trilateral
Commission secretly runs the world, that sort of
thing? Well, then, here's a company for you. The
Carlyle Group, a Washington, D.C., buyout firm, is
one of the nation's largest defense contractors. It
has billions of dollars at its disposal and employs
a few important people. Maybe you've heard of them:
former Secretary of State Jim Baker, former
Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, and former
White House budget director Dick Darman. Wait, we're
just getting warmed up. William Kennard, who
recently headed the FCC, and Arthur Levitt, who just
left the SEC, also work for Carlyle. As do former
British Prime Minister John Major and former
Philippines President Fidel Ramos. Let's see, are we
forgetting anyone? Oh, right, former President
George Herbert Walker Bush is on the payroll too.
The firm also has about a dozen investors from Saudi
Arabia, including, until recently, the bin Laden
family."

href="http://www.buzzflash.com/theangryliberal/2002/03/tal030702.html"
target="_blank">GOP's $70 Million Clinton Witchhunt
Exposed Sex - But What Would Bu$h Say Under Oath???

"My advice to fellow liberals who are approached by beaming
conservatives with the 'Clinton lied' story is as follows: Pose this
question to the offender: Suppose we had the opportunity to put George
W. Bush on the stand. He would be sworn in and asked the following
questions: 1. 'Please give a full accounting of your alleged cocaine use
during your college and Texas Air National Guard years.' 2. 'Is it true
that you were suspended from flying during your last two years of Texas
Air National Guard service for refusing to take a physical examination
that might have revealed illegal drug use?' 3. 'Is it true that in the
winter of 1971, while dating a woman whose initials were R. L., you
arranged for her to have an illegal abortion at the Twelve Oaks Hospital
in Houston?' 4. 'Besides the 1976 DUI arrest that America learned of
days before the 2000 election, how many other times have you been
arrested for driving while intoxicated?'" So writes the Angry
Liberal in
href="http://www.buzzflash.com" target="_blank">BuzzFlash.

href="http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=21"
target="_blank">Bush and Enron Were Oil Partners in
1986!

In
target="_blank">the Nation, David Corn writes: "Did George W.
Bush once have a financial relationship with Enron? In 1986, according
to publicly available records, the two drilled for oil together--at a
time when Bush was a not-too-successful oil man in Texas and his oil
venture was in dire need of help. Bush's business association with
Enron, it seems, has not previously been reported. As the details of the
Spectrum-Harken acquisition--which Bush badly needed--were being
finalized, Enron Oil and Gas Company... announced on October 16, 1986,
that it had completed a well producing both oil and natural gas in
Martin County, Texas... Enron held 52% interest in the well... 10%
belonged to Spectrum 7. At that point, Spectrum 7 was still Bush's
company... To spell it out: George W. Bush and Enron Oil and Gas were in
business together in 1986--when Ken Lay was head of Enron... Calls
placed to both the White House and Enron have not yet been
returned." We demand a Special Prosecutor!

href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/business/10BID.html"
target="_blank">Army Secretary Thomas White Rigged
NY Deal for His Old Company - ENRON

When former Enron executive
Thomas White became Army Secretary, he promised to
bring private-sector "efficiency" to the
Army. He sure did - ENRON style. White rigged a
$25 million contract to provide power to Fort
Hamilton in Brooklyn, NY, so that only Enron would
bid. This contract is under investigation by
Rumsfeld's Defense Department - but WE DEMAND A
SPECIAL PROSECUTOR!

href="http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,53~454506,00.html"
target="_blank">Did Christie Whitman Lie About
Trade Center Air Safety to Benefit Citigroup?

According to Hugh Kaufman, an
in-house watchdog and longtime EPA critic,
Christie Whitman is letting her family's financial
ties to Citigroup influence EPA decisions.
"Kaufman said Whitman falsely assured New
Yorkers that the air around the World Trade Center
was safe in the days after the structures were
leveled by the Sept. 11 attacks. That, he said,
saved Travelers Insurance, owned by Citigroup,
millions of dollars. And he said Whitman tried to
dissolve the EPA national ombudsman's office,
where he works, so it wouldn't interfere with a
court settlement with Citigroup about
Shattuck." Whitman's husband worked for
Citigroup and still owns stock in the company. The
probe is being conducted by the Justice
Department, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Enron.

href="http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/category.cfm?CategoryId=5"
target="_blank">Bush's Latest Assault on Taxpayers
and the Environment: Making US Pay for Superfund
Clean-up!

The last three presidents, including Reagan and Bush Sr., all
supported the Superfund and its slogan, "the polluter pays."
However, the current Bush wants to give big polluters (and big donors)
a break - at OUR expense! Bush must have known this was a pretty slimy
thing to do, because he tried to hide this insult by burying his
proposal to cut taxes on industrial polluters – the main source of
Superfund money – in an obscure part of his budget. Go to Working
for Change's website to urge your Senators to dump this toxic proposal
and send Bush a message that we refuse to clean up after his cronies'
messes!

href="http://www.foreigncorrespondent.com/archive/the_lust.html"
target="_blank">War on Terror Masks Bush's Grand
Strategy: To Control the World's Oil

"Bush's claims the US
invaded Afghanistan to 'defend democracy' and/or
'stamp out terrorism' is certainly not the whole
story. The Pentagon had drawn up plans to invade
Afghanistan, and US Special Forces were operating
in Kyrgystan, well before 9/11. Over the past five
months, the US has established permanent military
bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgystan,
Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and facilities in Kazakstan.
In short, a constellation of air and army bases
designed for long-term strategic control of the
region, under the command of the US 3rd Army,
whose headquarters was recently moved from the
southern USA to Kuwait. The so-called 'war on
terrorism' is being used to mask a far grander
imperial design: the overthrow of Saddam Hussein
that will allow the US to a. gain control of
Iraq's huge oil reserves, which are second only to
Saudi Arabia's, and b. secure American control of
the giant Caspian Oil Basin." So writes
Toronto Sun columnist (and Vietnam Vet) Eric
Margolis.

href="http://www.msnbc.com/news/708831.asp">
size="4">Kenny
Who?

KKKarl Rove: “The president knows him. But the idea that he is a
friend in the sense that this is a guy who’s a close intimate is just
ludicrous.” Bush wrote a note in 1997 wishing Lay a happy
birthday: “55 years old. Wow! That is really old. Thank goodness
you have such a young, beautiful wife. ... Laura and I value our
friendship with you.”

href="http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/709295.asp">
size="4">It
matters less who has the best arguments

“We are a loyal member of your team and are prepared to do whatever
fits your strategic plan,” Ralph Reed wrote in an Oct. 23, 2000, memo
obtained by The Washington Post. “In public policy,” he wrote, “it
matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard - and by
whom.” MSNBC took this story down fast, hid it in their
"stacks," and now it can't even be found by searching the
site! I'm amazed it's even in the stacks!

href="http://www.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=5779"
target="_blank">When Will Bush's Own
Insider Trading Be Investigated?

Molly Ivins writes, "When Bush was in the
oil business, his failing company Spectrum 7 was
bought by Harken Energy. Bush and his two partners
got $2 million in stock in exchange for a company
that had lost $400,000 in the six months prior to
the sale. Bush himself got stock worth about
$500,000 and an annual consulting fee of $120,000,
later reduced to $50,000. In June 1990, Bush sold
two-thirds of the Harken stock he had acquired in
the Spectrum 7 deal at $4 a share -- $318,430 more
than it was worth when he got it. A month before
Bush sold his stock... Smith, Barney, Harris, Upham
& Co., the financial consultants hired by Harken,
told Bush... only drastic action could save the
company. So Bush sold his stock before the news
became public. According to U..S. News & World
Report, there was 'substantial evidence to suggest
that Bush knew Harken was in dire
straits.'"

href="http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=blakeslee20020208"
target="_blank">Is Cheney Hiding
Shady Deals with his Former Company, Halliburton?

In The Nation, Nate Blakeslee writes:
"Congress's effort to obtain records from Vice
President Dick Cheney's energy task force has now
reached the boiling point. The Enron collapse has
only made Cheney dig in his heels even harder, such
that the whole country is now wondering just what
Ken Lay asked for--that is, recommended--at those
meetings, and what Cheney delivered. But is it
Enron's dealings with the task force Cheney is
trying to hide, or Halliburton's? The huge
Dallas-based oilfield services conglomerate, for
which Cheney served as CEO from 1995 to July 2000,
may yet become Cheney's own poison pretzel."
Blakeslee suggests two possible "favors"
sought by Halliburton: 1) lawsuit restrictions to
limit asbestos lawsuits, and 2) lifting of sanctions
on "evil" Iraq, where Halliburton is the
biggest US contractor.

href="http://www.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=5876"
target="_blank">Did Ken Lay Meet with
the Bush Administration on Feb 4 to Concoct a Cover
Story to Protect Bush?

On Feb. 4, Ken Lay was in DC - yet his DC lawyer
said he couldn't accept a subpoena because he didn't
know where Lay was. "BuzzFlash's speculation is
that Lay might have been meeting with emissaries
from the White House to establish a consistent cover
story before Lay 'testifies,' which is now scheduled
for the week of February 11. Remember that there are
certainly grounds to suspect that a Justice
Department 'investigation' is aimed at keeping the
White House from being tainted by the scandal,
rather than getting to the bottom of the truth. Can
you imagine a John Ashcroft Justice Department
actually bringing information to a Grand Jury that
might be damaging to the White House? Dream on. The
right wing Federalist clique has always applied one
standard of justice to Democrats and another, more
lenient one, to Republicans. And remember that Papa
Bush saved his neck from a potential criminal charge
by pardoning his administration's participants in
the illegal Iran/Contra activities."

href="http://www.newscoast.com/frontpage/story.cfm?ID=61726"
target="_blank">Jeb Lied About His Contacts with Ken
Lay

"Gov. Jeb Bush spent up to a half-hour on
the phone last April with Kenneth Lay, the former
chairman of Enron Corp., the now-bankrupt
Houston-based energy conglomerate that had an
interest in breaking open Florida's energy market to
outside companies. The disclosure that Bush talked
to Lay was revealed in public records made available
to several news organizations Wednesday. Bush said
late last month he did not 'recall' meeting or
talking with anyone from Enron during his tenure as
governor, although he said he had met with
representatives of an Enron subsidiary. Lay, who
this week refused to voluntarily testify to Congress
about the demise of his corporation, and Enron were
one of the largest donors in the 2000 election to
President George W. Bush, the older brother of
Florida's governor. Several Enron officials --
including Lay -- also donated money to Jeb Bush's
1998 campaign for governor." So reports the
Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

href="http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-enron-ferc.html"
target="_blank">Ken Lay's Puppet at the FERC Should
Resign

"Enron Corp.'s close ties with the Bush
administration have prompted a call for Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Pat Wood to
resign because of the alleged influence the failed
energy trading company had over his appointment.
Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell said on Saturday he
had urged Wood to quit as the commission begins an
investigation into whether Enron manipulated energy
markets last year to raise electricity prices under
long-term power supply contracts with California.
'Sadly, the integrity of the commission has been
irreversibly compromised due to the circumstances
surrounding your appointment and the FERC's intimate
relationship with Enron, and as such I urge you to
resign as chairman,' the New Jersey lawmaker said in
a letter to Wood on Friday." So reports
Reuters.

href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/05/business/05REED.html"
target="_blank">More Evidence that
Enron's Hiring of Ralph Reed on Behalf of Bush was a
Crime

According to the NY Times, "Lobbying the Pennsylvania
legislature was also the stated reason that Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's
political adviser, recommended that Enron give Ralph Reed, a Republican
strategist with ties to religious conservatives, a consulting contract,
which it did. Mr. Reed never had to lobby in Pennsylvania — his hiring
came after a deregulation bill was passed." So why did Enron pay
Reed hundreds of thousands of dollars? To pay for his consulting
services to the Bush campaign. This served two purposes: 1) it was an
extremely valuable - and absolutely ILLEGAL - corporate contribution to
Bush; and 2) it concealed Bush's relationship with the radical
rightwinger Reed, so Bush could pretend to be a "moderate".
This crime should be investigated by the Justice Department, but guess
who picked John Ashcroft - Reed's mentor, Pat Robertson. We demand a
Special Prosecutor!

href="http://www.gopbi.com/partners/pbpost/epaper/editions/saturday/news_c3b5f72b552622a000c3.html">
size="4">Noelle
Bush Is Getting Away with Drug Abuse, Deadly Driving
and Perjury - Because She's Jeb's Daughter and
George's Niece

Once again, a Bush is getting away with a crime,
thanks to powerful family ties. Jeb's daughter
Noelle, 24, was busted for trying to buy drugs.
(Unlike the terror-supporting pot users in Bush's TV
ads, Bush family drug abusers don't buy drugs on the
street. Instead, they impersonate doctors and write
themselves fraudulent prescriptions.) Noelle then
PERJURED herself in Florida court when she swore she
had no prior arrests - she WAS arrested for
shoplifting lingerie in 1995 and paid a $305 fine.
To conceal her criminal record, Noelle gave Florida
police a different Social Security number - yet
ANOTHER fraud. Noelle also received more than 12
driving tickets (including driving 95 MPH in Palm
Beach County) with 4 crashes, including one
influenced by drugs - why was she never arrested, or
her license revoked? Call State Attorney Willie
Meggs at 850-488-6701 and demand that Noelle be
prosecuted like any other drug abusing, recklessly
driving perjurer - for her own good, and ours!

href="http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0208-09.htm"
target="_blank">While Bush Declares
War on Terror, He Harbors a Terrorist in Florida

Over the objections of Congress, Bush recently
appointed Iran-Contra propagandist Otto Reich to
head US relations with Latin America. Reich
"was alleged to have used his influence to try
and get a US visa for a convicted terrorist, Orlando
Bosch, jailed in Venezuela in 1976 for the bombing
of a Cubana airliner with 73 people on board. Bosch
had already been convicted of a terrorist attack in
Miami on a Polish merchant vessel bound for Cuba and
jailed in the US. According to US justice department
records: '.... Bosch has personally advocated,
encouraged, organised and participated in acts of
terrorist violence in this country as well as
various other countries.' Amazingly, Bosch was
granted a pardon by George Bush senior in 1990 and
is now in Florida... Although many countries seek
Bosch's extradition he remains free, protected by
the same government that warns other countries that
they are either for or against terrorism." So
writes Duncan Campbell in the Guardian of London.

href="http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=14"
target="_blank">Bush's Budget: It's
The Greed, Stupid

The Nation's John Nichols writes, "Bush
wants to drain the Social Security trust fund, with
a proposal to divert more than $2 trillion in Social
Security and Medicare surpluses over the next ten
years... to cut 30% of the funding from the federal
program that trains doctors at children's
hospitals... to cut Low-Income Home Energy
Assistance Programs that help Americans heat their
homes in winter by 15%... to cut 15% of the budget
for repairing dilapidated public housing units... to
cut 13% of the funding for Corps of Engineers public
works programs designed to prevent flooding of
communities, homes and farms... to cut 10% of the
funding for the National Institute for Occupational
Safety and Health's efforts to reduce job-related
deaths, injuries and ailments... to cut federal
funding for environmental protection programs,
transportation improvements and aid to farm families
that are being driven off the land by the thousands
each year." Why? To make the rich richer,
that's all.

911 Cover Up

2006-10-02T15:35:00.000-07:00


Loose Change 2nd Edition - Korey Rowe / Dylan Avery / Jason Bermas

2006-09-26T19:32:00.000-07:00

And check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc7i0wCFf8g

What about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ0VkaMRHYs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ensmPJm5B5A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_K2F4-iaxo&mode=related&search

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbKcWeseq90

The Day of...

2006-04-08T06:54:00.000-07:00

September 11, 2001 - The National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, Virginia is preparing for an exercise in which a small corporate jet crashes into their building.

NORAD is in a number of military exercises.

The first - Vigilant Guardian, is described by Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins as "an exercise that would pose an imaginary crisis to North American Air Defense outposts nationwide."

The second - Northern Vigilance, moved fighter jets to Alaska and Canada to fight off an imaginary Russian fleet.

"Northern Guardian" and "Northern Vigilance" (NORAD exercises on 911/2001)

Copyright 2001 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
Toronto Star
December 9, 2001 Sunday Ontario Edition
SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. B05
LENGTH: 974 words
HEADLINE: The scene at NORAD on Sept. 11
BYLINE: Scott Simmie, Toronto Star

Original headline
"Northern Guardian": The Scene at NORAD on Sept. 11
Copyright 2001 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
Toronto Star
December 9, 2001
Sunday Ontario edition
by Scott Simmie

Playing Russian war games ... and then someone shouted to look at the monitor

EARLY morning, Sept. 11. A lifetime before the attacks on New York and Washington.
Deep inside a mountain in Colorado and far beneath the granite of North Bay, members of the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) are at full "battle staff" levels for a major annual exercise that tests every facet of the organization.

Operation Northern Vigilance, planned months in advance, involves deploying fighter jets to locations in Alaska and northern Canada. Part of this exercise is pure simulation, but part is real world: NORAD is keeping a close eye on the Russians, who have dispatched long-range bombers to their own high north on a similar exercise.

Everything is going as planned when Capt. Mike Jellinek arrives for his 6 a.m. shift. The Canadian will be overseeing the crew staffing a crucial post inside the mountain - NORAD's command centre.

Whether it's a simulation or a real-world event, the role of the centre is to fuse every critical piece of information NORAD has into a concise and crystalline snapshot.

An hour into his shift, something unscripted happens. NORAD's Northeast Air Defence Sector (NEADS), based in Rome, N.Y., contacts the mountain.

The Federal Aviation Administration has evidence of a hijacking and is asking for NORAD support. This is not part of the exercise.

In a flash, Operation Northern Vigilance is called off. Any simulated information, what's known as an "inject," is purged from the screens.

Someone shouted to look at the monitor displaying CNN.

"At that point, we saw the World Trade Center, one of the towers, smoke coming out of it. And a minute later, we watched the live feed as the second aircraft swung around into the second tower," says Jellinek.

He had one question for the people on the line from NEADS: "Was that the hijacked aircraft you were dealing with?" he asked.

Yes, it was, came the reply.

And then, Jellinek says, "it got really, really busy."

Maj.-Gen. Rick Findley, director of NORAD operations, had just completed the night shift. Usually, Findley would be across town at NORAD headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base. But because of the exercise and the time difference with Russia, he'd been working nights in the mountain. He was just preparing to leave when the disaster began unfolding.

It was a scenario unlike any NORAD had trained for.

"Lots of other reports were starting to come in," Findley recalls. "And now you're not too sure. If they're that clever to co-ordinate that kind of attack, what else is taking place across North America? So we were in a very high-tempo mode, trying to stay one step ahead.
"In the face of all this tragedy, people seemed to know what to do. Everyone seemed to understand that there was a crisis that was not well-defined yet."

Orders were quickly given to get more combat aircraft in the sky. Tankers for in-flight refuelling were at the ready.

Combat aircraft were dispatched to escort Air Force One in case the president was at risk. AWAC jets, designed to track air traffic and offer targeting information to combat aircraft, were deployed.

Because no one yet knew who was behind the attack - or what else might be en route - the giant blast doors designed to protect the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center from a nuclear blast were sealed.

The massive steel slabs, weighing 25 tonnes each, had not been closed in a non-exercise event since the Cold War.

At the Peterson base, staff began covering windows with tape and paper to minimize flying glass should an explosion occur.

The base, NORAD's administrative headquarters, went to a security status known as Threatcon Delta. It's the highest state of alert and had not been in effect since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

"It was very eerie here," says Helen Booth, who co-ordinates services for the base's Canadian contingent.

"There was a real sense of crisis."

As that crisis unfolded, NORAD set up a secure line so it could brief key officials and act on their decisions. Jellinek was listening as President George W. Bush made the order to drain the skies of commercial aircraft.

Jellinek, who is close to retirement and doesn't have to "suck up to anyone," says it was one of two courageous decisions made at the very top level.

"The second one was: If it looks like a plane is going to be used as a missile, shoot it down. Again, what a gutsy call. Unprecedented, that we may have to shoot down a civilian airliner to prevent a greater disaster. And that decision was made very quickly."

Another timely decision was made halfway around the world. The Russians, on seeing the attacks in New York and Washington, immediately cancelled their own exercises, turning back their bombers and calling off planned missile testing. The Russians knew NORAD would have its hands full.

"They said: 'Okay, we're pulling back,'" Jellinek says. "They sent the message to the State Department clearly and unambiguously: 'Don't worry about our movements, we're going to stay down for a while.' Very, very useful. Very helpful."

More than three months later, NORAD's heightened tempo and battle-staff levels continue. The challenge will be to decide when, if ever, to scale back.

"Knock on wood, I hope that nothing happens," says Findley, rapping his knuckles on a table.
"But all it will take is one more terrorist event somewhere in the world to reinforce all of that unease again. And how do you back away from what you're doing now if it continues to be a very sporadic conflict?"

Adds Jellinek: "Folks are now having much more serious looks at what are the possible threats to us. What is the right balance of fiscal responsibility, operational responsibility, versus actual threat versus capability?

"It's a complex equation ... but it's one that has been thrust in everyone's face right now."

GRAPHIC: Tom Kimmell FOR THE TORONTO STAR COMMAND CENTRE: Canadian Capt. Mike Jellinek was at the helm in Cheyenne Mountain when two hijacked jets hit the World Trade Center and NORAD "got really, really busy."

(No original url to be found anymore)

Three F-16's from Washington D.C.'s National Guard at Andrews Airforce Base, 15 miles from the Pentagon, are flown 180 nautical miles away for a training mission in North Carolina. This left 14 fighter jets to protect the entire United States

The Hunt for Osama?

2006-04-08T06:46:00.000-07:00

Hospital Worker: I Saw Osama

Jan. 28, 2002
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(CBS) Everyone remembers what happened on Sept. 11 and, reports CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen, here's the story of what may have happened the night before.

In a tale as twisted as the hunt for Osama bin Laden, CBS Evening News has been told that the night before the Sept. 11 terrorists attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.

Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into a military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment.

"On that night," said a medical worker who wanted her identity protected, "they moved out all the regular staff in the urology department and sent in a secret team to replace them." She said it was treatment for a very special person and "the special team was obviously up to no good."

"They military had him surrounded," said a hospital employee who also wanted his identity masked, "and I saw the mysterious patient helped out of a car. Since that time," he said, "I have seen many pictures of the man. He is the man we know as Osama bin Laden. I also heard two army officers talking to each other. They were saying that Osama bin Laden had to be watched carefully and looked after."

Those who know bin Laden say he suffers from numerous ailments — back and stomach problems.

Ahmed Rashid, who has written extensively on the Taliban, said the military was often there to help before Sept. 11.

"There were reports that Pakistan intelligence had helped the Taliban buy dialysis machines and the rumor was that these were for wanted for Osama bin Laden," said Rashid.

Doctors at the hospital told CBS News there was nothing special about that night, but they declined our request to see any records. Government officials reached Monday night denied that bin Laden received any medical treatment that night.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday the United States has seen nothing to substantiate the report.

It was Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf who said in public what many suspected: that bin Laden suffers from kidney disease, saying he thinks bin Laden may be near death.

His evidence — watching the most recent video, showing a pale and haggard bin Laden, his left hand never moving. Bush administration officials admit they don't know if bin Laden is sick or even dead.

"With respect to the issue of Osama bin Laden's health, I just am...don't have any knowledge," said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The U.S. has no way of knowing who in Pakistan's military or intelligence supported the Taliban or Osama bin Laden, maybe up to the night before Sept. 11 by arranging dialysis to keep him alive. So the U.S. may not know if those same people might help him again — perhaps to freedom.

©MMII, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Condoleeza Rice warns San Francisco Mayor not to fly the day of the attack

2006-04-08T06:32:00.000-07:00

Willie Brown got low-key early warning about air travel
- Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross
Wednesday, September 12, 2001

For Mayor Willie Brown, the first signs that something was amiss came late Monday when he got a call from what he described as his airport security - - a full eight hours before yesterday's string of terrorist attacks -- advising him that Americans should be cautious about their air travel.

The mayor, who was booked to fly to New York yesterday morning from San Francisco International Airport, said the call "didn't come in any alarming fashion, which is why I'm hesitant to make an alarming statement."

In fact, at the time, he didn't pay it much mind.

"It was not an abnormal call. I'm always concerned if my flight is going to be on time, and they always alert me when I ought to be careful."

Exactly where the call came from is a bit of a mystery. The mayor would say only that it came from "my security people at the airport."

Mike McCarron, assistant deputy director at SFO, said the Federal Aviation Administration "routinely" issues security notices about possible threats. He said two or three such notices have been received in the past couple of months,

but none in recent days.

Whatever the case, Brown didn't think about it again until he was up, dressed and waiting for his ride to the airport for an 8 a.m. flight to New York, where he was to attend a state retirement board meeting. That was when he turned on the TV, and like millions of other Americans, saw the twin towers of the World Trade Center crumble and the Pentagon go up in smoke.

Before the mayor was even out the door, District Attorney Terence Hallinan - - the man Brown said just last week should be recalled -- was checking in and offering help.

What followed was a conversation made up of equal parts gravity and formality.

"You know, you're the first call I've gotten on this," Brown said to Hallinan, as they were signing off.

With that, the mayor hung up and headed for City Hall. Along the way, he made the call to close all city buildings for the day and city schools as well.

He also talked with representatives of the Bank of America building and the Transamerica Pyramid, who agreed that because the structures were such high- profile symbols they too should be closed for the day.

Once Brown arrived at City Hall, calls were made in quick order to Municipal Railway director Michael Burns: "I want a complete backup in case anything happens to the subway tunnels," Brown said.

The Coast Guard: "To make sure the bridges were being protected."

And to the health, police and fire departments to make sure they were staffed for the emergency.

The last call went to Tom Ammiano, the mayor's longtime political nemesis and president of the Board of Supervisors.

"We may have to declare a state of emergency, although it's not something I want to do at this point because it kicks in all sorts of things -- but we may have to be ready," the mayor said.

Ammiano apparently agreed, because an hour or so later -- when the two sat next to each other at a city department heads meeting at the command center -- the call was made for only a "limited" state of emergency. One that would allow the courts, city offices and schools to close, but still keep the city pretty much in working order.

"What I want," the mayor said, "is for things to be to run as normally as possible, but sagely."

And for the most part they did. As for what comes next?

"With any luck, we'll be back to normal by tomorrow -- but with a heightened sense of awareness," Brown said as he sipped coffee with reporters at Citizen Cake on Grove Street.

But as for long-term safety?

"We can only do what we can," the mayor said, adding, "Hell, if they can't protect the Pentagon from attack, what can they protect?"

BART BLOCKS: Don't go looking for a rest room on BART -- they're all locked.

According to BART information officer Ron Rodriguez, a memorandum went out yesterday ordering all station rest rooms to be locked until further notice. They've also put out the word to watch for suspicious packages.

THE OTHER BROWN: Over in Oakland, Mayor Jerry Brown was trying his best to keep things normal as well.

"We're carrying on," Brown said. "I think the most important thing is for people to stay calm and understand that the power of terrorism is psychological.

"The goal is to sow disunity and to undermine our faith in the leadership of the country."

A few blocks away, Democratic pollster Paul Maslin sat in his office high- rise and wondered about the long-term effect of the attacks.

"It's like one part Pearl Harbor, one part Northern Ireland and one part I don't know what," was how Maslin summed it up.

Maslin -- who does polling for Gov. Gray Davis, among others -- said the strangest call he got yesterday was from one of the biggest Democratic consultants in Washington, D.C., who had just bolted his apartment.

"This was a grown man in his 50s, and he was scared out of his wits because he'd heard that a second plane was headed for the Pentagon," Maslin said.

"We can't even begin to gauge the long-term effects of this yet, but I will say, I don't think we'll ever be the same."

Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. They can also be heard on KGO Radio on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Matier can be seen regularly on KRON-TV. Got a tip? Call them at (415) 777-8815. Their e-

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San Francisco Chronicle

Top Pentagon Officials Cancel Flights On September 10, 2001

2006-04-08T06:26:00.000-07:00

NEWSWEEK 9.24.2001

Newsweek journalists Evan Thomas and Mark Hosenball reported on September 24, 2001 that a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for September 11, 2001, apparently because of security concerns. Newsweek removed the story from the internet but you can read the transcript below. Scroll to the end of the article.

Such a polite, neat young man. He brought his landlord coffee and cookies. He remembered to use his frequent-flier number when he bought his ticket from Boston to Los Angeles—business class. And a good student, too, reported his flight instructor, though he seemed more interested in turning the plane than landing it. A little standoffish, maybe, but he could knock back a vodka with his buddies. So it was uncharacteristic for Mohamed Atta to be running a little behind when he boarded American Airlines Flight 11 on Tuesday shortly before 8 a.m. One of his bags never made it aboard, but maybe that was intentional, too, for inside was a suicide note.
THE FBI BELIEVES that Atta was in control when Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, but maybe not. The hijackers had an abundance of piloting talent—four of the five terrorists aboard had some flight training. Indeed, there were enough hijackers with piloting skills to fly four airliners—two for New York, and two for Washington.

At the White House on that beautiful, clear morning, the occupants were running for their lives. Vice President Dick Cheney had already been hustled into a bunker designed to withstand the shock of a nuclear blast when, at about 9:30 a.m., Secret Service men told staffers leaving the West Wing to run, not walk, as far away as possible. “There’s a plane overhead, don’t look back!” shouted a policeman. Agents were yelling at women to shed their high-heeled shoes so they could run faster. Several staffers saw a civilian airliner, reflecting white in the bright sunlight, appearing to circle nearby. Perhaps unable to spot the White House, the hijackers at the control of American Airlines Flight 77 dive-bombed the Pentagon instead.

How could a small band of religious zealots knock down the World Trade Center, the most visible symbol of capitalism, killing thousands in lower Manhattan, and come so close to destroying the executive mansion of the most powerful nation on earth? Part of the answer is that few U.S. government officials really believed they could. Consider the dazed reaction of top officials of the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency charged with safely controlling the nation’s airways. Although a couple of aircraft had been behaving erratically on the radar screens of flight controllers for at least 15 minutes, officials at FAA headquarters did not suspect that a hijacking had occurred until the second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, rammed the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:05. A half hour later, when the third plane, American Flight 77, hit the Pentagon, the FAA officials responded in classic bureaucratic fashion. “Get out your security manuals,” ordered one top official. The officials dutifully began reading their manuals to determine who among them were deemed “essential” and should stay and work, and who should go home for the day.

U.S. Air Force fighter planes did not arrive to protect the nation’s capital for another 15 minutes. Pentagon officials had watched helplessly as the suicide airliner bore in on the nation’s military command center. In the chaotic aftermath, the plane at the greatest risk of getting shot down was the one flying the attorney general of the United States. At least that’s the way it seemed to the pilot, David Clemmer, a Vietnam combat veteran who received a warning as he flew the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer, John Ashcroft, back to Washington from an aborted speaking engagement in the Midwest. Land your plane immediately, Clemmer was instructed by an air-traffic controller, or risk getting shot down by the U.S. Air Force. Clemmer turned to an FBI agent assigned to guard Ashcroft and said, “Well, Larry, we’re in deep kimchi here, and basically, all the rules you and I know are out the window.” The pilot notified air-traffic controllers that he was carrying the attorney general—but was worried that the message wouldn’t get through to military commanders controlling the airspace around Washington. “Thinking out of the box,” as Clemmer put it, he asked for—and got—a fighter escort into Washington. His plane, guarded by an F-16, was one of the last to land on the East Coast that day.

Within a day or two, the haplessness, the confusion, the mentality of “it can’t happen here” had been wiped away, perhaps forever. An aircraft carrier patrolled off New York Harbor, past the skyline so horrifically sundered by the destruction of the World Trade Center. Washington was an armed camp on hair-trigger alert. “We’re at war,” declared President George W. Bush. “We will not only deal with those who dare attack America, we will deal with those who harbor them and feed them and house them.” The FBI had launched the largest manhunt in history, code-named PENTTBOM (for Pentagon and Twin Towers), tracking the suspected 19 suicide bombers and their backers around the nation and abroad. Intelligence officials told NEWSWEEK that they feared that between 30 and 50 teams of terrorists were still on the loose. It was hard to tell if the threat was real, or if America was gripped with the sort of frenzy that seized the nation after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor—and many citizens assumed that Japanese troops would soon be marching on Chicago. Northwest Airlines confirmed that flight attendants were staying away from work in droves. And bomb scares became routine. By Saturday, FBI agents had detained 25 people wanted for questioning on immigration violations and issued arrest warrants for two other “material witnesses.”
Congress will no doubt hold hearings to assign the fault for a massive failure of intelligence. At the CIA, NEWSWEEK has learned, officials looked at the Justice Department’s list of dead hijackers aboard American Flight 77, the plane that hit the Pentagon, and recognized three of them as terrorism suspects. (“Oh s—t,” exclaimed one official.) In late August, the agency had asked the FBI to find two of the men, one of whom was believed to be connected to a suspect in the October 2000 bombing of the destroyer the USS Cole. But the FBI was still looking when the hijackers struck.

The blame game will go on. But the finger-pointing may miss a darker and more troubling truth about the shocking attack. It is very difficult for a free and open society to defend against terrorists who are at once patient, smart and willing to die. The operatives run by Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization that reports to bin Laden, appear to be all three. As the PENTTBOM investigation exposes the sophisticated and long-conceived suicide plot, a portrait of evil genius emerges.

It is often said that Islamic extremists wish to turn back history. They want to destroy the Western modernity that threatens to eclipse their fantasy of an 11th-century theocracy. But, like a judo expert who leverages his opponent’s superior weight and mass against him, Islamic terrorists have found a diabolically clever way to flip the Great Satan on his back. Blending into American society for months and even years, quietly awaiting the signal to move, bin Laden’s operatives have learned how to turn two of America’s greatest strengths—openness and technology—into weapons against the American people. Armed with pocket knives, they transformed U.S. airliners into guided missiles, flying bombs packed with 60,000 gallons of explosive fuel. That feat, while awesome, could be just the beginning. Talking on cell phones and by encrypted e-mail, operatives in bin Laden’s far-flung network can communicate from Afghanistan to Miami with little risk of immediate detection. It is chilling to think what they could accomplish if they get their hands on the acme of Western military science, the nuclear bomb. Without doubt, they are trying.

“The ability to take our expertise and turn it on us is exhilarating to them,” says Sen. Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate intelligence committee. “They stay at it and stay at it to learn how to defeat our technological systems. It’s like rattling doors through the neighborhood, looking for one to break in. That’s what they’re doing with our technology.” The lock to America’s rickety, overburdened air-control system was especially easy to pick. But America’s water and electrical supplies aren’t much better safeguarded. And teenage computer hackers have already demonstrated how to use the wide-open Internet to wreck cyberhavoc on American businesses and homes.
For all their professed devotion to medieval religiosity, the terrorists themselves appear to have comfortably blended into American culture. They do not appear to be poor, or desperate or down on their luck, like the stereotype of a young Arab man drawn to the false promise of entering Paradise through martyrdom. At least one of the 19 had a family, and all apparently lived comfortable middle-class lives, with enough money to rent cars, go to school and violate the Quran’s ban on alcohol by visiting the occasional bar. A senior European intelligence official told NEWSWEEK that some of the hijackers may have had Swiss bank accounts, which have now been frozen by Swiss authorities. Two of the alleged hijackers aboard Flight 93, Ahmed Alhaznawi and Ziad Jarrahi, drove a Ford Ranger and lived in a quiet neighborhood in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Fla. In front of the house was a wooden wind chime carrying the message THIS HOUSE IS FULL OF LOVE. NEWSWEEK has learned that the Pentagon has referred to the FBI reports that three of the hijackers may have received help from Uncle Sam—as trainees at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida; two others may have studied at Air Force facilities.

Osama bin Laden, their spiritual leader and financier, comes from a privileged background himself. One of more than 50 children of Yemeni billionaire parents who got rich off construction contracts in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden, for a time, made money on those most Western of beverages, Coke and Pepsi. During the early ’90s, while he lived in Sudan, he owned part of a company that produced gum arabic, an essential ingredient of many soft drinks. Bin Laden may not have a vast personal fortune, at least not the $300 million ascribed to him, but he is able to secure funds from nefarious sources. According to intelligence sources, his agents are involved in drug running and he receives “blood money” payment from frightened Arab regimes that want to buy protection from his zealotry. According to U.S. intelligence sources, bin Laden is able to pay pensions to the families of suicide bombers.

Mohamed Atta was, according to investigators, the perfect soldier in bin Laden’s army. He was a citizen of the world. Traveling on a passport from the United Arab Emirates, he lived in Germany for a time, studying at the Technical University in Hamburg. He frequented a nightspot named Sharky’s Billiard Bar (“the Bar With Mega-Possibilities”), wore black jeans, and rented—but failed to return—a video of John Carpenter’s “Vampire.” At the same time, he requested and received a prayer room at the university for himself and about 20 other Muslim students. In the last two years, he began to wear Muslim dress.
Atta, 33, may have had a shadowy past. According to German authorities, he is suspected in the bombing of an Israeli bus in 1986, when he was only 18 or 19 years old. If true, he should have been denied immigration visas. Instead, he was able to move freely between Germany and the United States. He was clearly preparing for some sort of terrorist action for months. According to law-enforcement authorities, he may have begun casing Logan Airport in Boston more than six months ago. And, NEWSWEEK has learned, he was seen last winter in Norfolk, Va., where, the FBI believes, he may have been surveying the giant U.S. Navy base as a target. Already, say investigators, there are important links between the hijackers who attacked American targets last week and the plotters who tried to sink the USS Cole in Yemen last October.

Atta had plenty of cash. He wrote a $10,000 check to take flight lessons at one of Florida’s many flight schools. (Because of its year-round good weather and proximity to the beach, Florida attracts many international flight students, especially from the Middle East; background checks are said to be minimal.) Last December, he and another man paid $1,500 for six hours in a Boeing 727 simulator. “Looking back at it, it was a little strange that all they wanted to do was turns,” Henry George, who runs SimCenter, Inc., at Opa-Locka Airport, told The Miami Herald. “Most people who come here want to do takeoffs and landings.”
At the time, Atta aroused no suspicion. When he turned in his rent-a-car in Pompano Beach, Fla., on Sept. 9, before heading north on his suicide mission, he reminded the dealer, Brad Warrick, that the car needed to be serviced. “The only thing out of the ordinary,” Warrick recalled, “was that he was nice enough to let me know the car needed an oil change.” Atta and several friends were regulars at a Venice bar called the 44th Aero Squadron, decorated in the motif of a bomber-squadron bunker, complete with sandbags. “I never had any problems with them,” said the owner, Ken Schortzmann. They didn’t want to be bothered, but didn’t drink heavily and flirt with the waitresses, like some of the other flight students. Atta seemed to be the leader. “He had a fanny pack with a big roll of cash in it,” said Schortzmann.

Last week Atta and two of his buddies seem to have gone out for a farewell bender at a seafood bar called Shuckums. Atta drank five Stoli-and-fruit-juices, while one of the others drank rum and Coke. For once, Atta and his friends became agitated, shouting curse words in Arabic, reportedly including a particularly blasphemous one that roughly translates as “F—k God.” There was a squabble when the waitress tried to collect the $48 bill (her shift was ending and she wanted her tip). One of the Arabs became indignant. “I work for American Airlines. I’m a pilot,” he said. “What makes you think I’d have a problem paying the bill?”

Although investigators now suspect that Atta may been the leader of his cell, it is not clear if and when he was, in effect, “triggered.” The pattern of bin Laden’s terrorism is to insert operatives into a country where they are “sleepers,” burrowed deep into the local culture, leading normal lives while awaiting orders. Intelligence sources believe that one or two control agents run by bin Laden’s Qaeda may have slipped into the United States in the last couple of weeks to activate the airliner plot. The idea of using suicide pilots may have been germinating for a very long time. One of the other pilot-hijackers on Flight 11, Waleed Alshehri, attended flight school in Florida in 1997. Last week FBI Director Robert Mueller told a news conference, “The fact that they received flight training in the U.S. is news.” But maybe it shouldn’t have been. Only last September an Orlando, Fla., cabdriver named Ihab Ali was indicted for refusing to answer questions about his ties to the bin Laden organization, including his “pilot training in Oklahoma,” according to court papers. Indeed, the records of the terrorism trial in New York for the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa offer a wealth of information about bin Laden’s use of U.S.-trained pilots.
One of them, Essam Al-Ridi, who had been trained at a Texas flight school, was a key government witness, testifying that bin Laden’s associates used him to try to buy a private jet to transport Stinger ground-to-air missiles from Pakistan to Sudan.

It is not known exactly how many of bin Laden’s operatives are still on the loose. One of the most intriguing suspects may be Amer Mohammed Kamfar, 41. Last winter or fall, he showed up in Florida and took flight lessons at FlightSafety Academy. He rented a house in Vero Beach, where he had a wife, who dressed in the traditional chador, and several children. Kamfar, who called himself “John,” “shopped at Wal-Mart and ate a lot of pizza,” according to a neighbor. Two weeks ago he packed up his family and left the area. Last week Florida cops put out an all-points bulletin, warning that Kamfar may be toting an AK-47.
Two of the suicide bombers may have just slipped out of the federal government’s grasp. According to intelligence sources, on Aug. 21 the CIA passed along information to the Immigration and Naturalization Service on a man who belonged on the watch list for terror suspects. The man, Khalid al-Midhar, had been videotaped in Kuala Lumpur talking to one of the suspected terrorists in the Cole bombing (the man is now in jail in Yemen). When the INS ran its database, it found that al-Midhar was already inside the United States. The CIA asked the FBI to find him and an associate, Salem Alhamzi. But the bureau didn’t have much to go on. They listed their U.S. residence as “the Marriott Hotel in New York.” There are 10 Marriott-run hotels in New York. The bureau checked all of them and found nothing. Al-Midhar and Alhamzi were listed among the five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77.

Ever since the Customs Service foiled an apparent bomb plot on the eve of the millennium, U.S. intelligence has been very edgy about an attack on America. The man caught crossing between British Columbia and Seattle with explosives and timers in his car, Ahmed Ressam, later confessed that he planned to blow up Los Angeles International Airport. Ressam allegedly worked for a shadowy group of Algerian terrorists with ties to bin Laden. Twice a week, the “Threat Committee,” a group of top intelligence officials and diplomats, meets in the White House complex to review dozens of terrorist threats at home and abroad. In late June the CIA warned of possible terrorist action against U.S. targets, including those in the United States, for the Fourth of July. Nothing happened, but then in July the agency again warned about possible attacks overseas. The threat seemed grave enough to force U.S.ships in Middle Eastern ports to head for sea. Three weeks ago there was another warning that a terrorist strike might be imminent. But there was no mention of where.

On Sept. 10, NEWSWEEK has learned, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns. But no one even dreamed that four airliners would be hijacked and plunged into targets in New York and Washington. Some officials complain that the intelligence community has been too focused on terrorists obtaining weapons of mass destruction—biological, chemical and nuclear—while overlooking low-tech threats—like the use of penknives and box cutters to hijack a plane.

The Threat Committee has every reason to worry about bin Laden’s trying to get hold of a nuke. During the New York trial of the men accused of bombing the embassies in Africa, one bin Laden associate testified that the boss had hatched a 1993 plan to spend $1.5 million to buy black-market uranium. He apparently failed—that time
Now the Bush administration and Congress seemed primed to do just about anything to foil future attacks. Justice Department lawyers have been told to take a fresh look at “everything,” one official said. Perhaps the most startling idea under examination would be a new presidential order authorizing secret military tribunals to try accused terrorists. The idea first occurred to former attorney general William Barr after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. Barr, at the time chief of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, got the idea after learning that his office was used during World War II to try—in secret—German saboteurs who were later hanged. The idea was rejected, but it’s being revived on the theory that terrorists are de facto military “combatants” who don’t deserve the full run of constitutional rights.

Civil libertarians may balk, but never underestimate the desire for revenge. Consider some statistics: more people were killed by the suicide hijackers last week than the number of American soldiers killed in the entire American Revolution. Or at Antietam, the bloodiest one-day battle of the Civil War. Or at Pearl Harbor. Or on D-Day. And those were soldiers. War had become more and more remote and sterile to Americans who experienced combat as a phenomenon that occurred on TV, either in movies or occasionally by watching cruise missiles light up Baghdad on the evening news. Now those same American civilians are in a war. Not as spectators, but as targets With Michael Isikoff, Dan Klaidman, Martha Brant, Debra Rosenberg, Weston Kosova, Andy Murr, George Wehrfritz, Catharine Skipp and John Lantig <

Heightened Security Alert Had Just Been Lifted

2006-04-08T06:16:00.000-07:00

By Curtis L. Taylor and Sean Gardiner
STAFF WRITERS

September 12, 2001

The World Trade Center was destroyed just days after a heightened security alert was lifted at the landmark 110-story towers, security personnel said yesterday.

Daria Coard, 37, a guard at Tower One, said the security detail had been working 12-hour shifts for the past two weeks because of numerous phone threats. But on Thursday, bomb-sniffing dogs were abruptly removed.

"Today was the first day there was not the extra security," Coard said. "We were protecting below. We had the ground covered. We didn't figure they would do it with planes. There is no way anyone could have stopped that."

Security guard Hermina Jones said officials had recently taken steps to secure the towers against aerial attacks by installing bulletproof windows and fireproof doors in the 22nd-floor computer command center.

"When the fire started, the room was sealed," said Jones, who was in the command center when explosions rocked the building. "Flames were shooting off the walls....We started putting wet towels under the doors. The Fire Department unsealed the door and grabbed us by the hand and said, 'Run!' "

Security worker Diane Easton said she was out front writing tickets when notice of "a plane flying too low" placed security personal on alert.

"The plane went right through the building...and debris started falling everywhere, then 15 minutes later the second plane," Easton said.

Nancy Joyner said several police officers were knocked down and then were stampeded in the ensuing frenzy.

"People were flying out of the windows; there was nothing we could do," Joyner said. "People were pulled from the top floors by the wind tunnel created."

A "Put Option" is a bet that a stock will fall...

2006-04-08T06:11:00.000-07:00

Terrorist trade probe widens
Options buying rose in firms that attack affected

By Robert Manor and Melissa Allison
Tribune staff reporters
Published September 19, 2001

Securities regulators around the world are investigating whether the terrorists involved in last week's attack profited in financial markets, possibly by buying options on the stock of United Airlines, Boeing, American Airlines and other companies in the knowledge that prices would fall.

Traders say a suspiciously high volume of preattack options trades in AMR Corp., parent of American, and UAL Corp., United's parent, in particular, yielded huge profits after terrorists crashed aircraft belonging to the two airlines into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange said Wednesday it is investigating options trading prior to the attack.

Sources familiar with the matter said the Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating whether terrorists traded options or other financial instruments to capitalize on the calamity they were planning.

One Chicago trader said the big increase in options trading is evidence that some people knew about the coming disaster.

"Somebody knew about it, whether it was a broker or somebody who knew these guys, or it's one of these terrorist cells," said Jon Najarian, founder of options specialist Mercury Trading in Chicago.

If investigators turn up evidence the terrorists meant to profit by the drop in stock prices, it could be useful in identifying those behind the attack and disrupting their sources of money, experts said.

The Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center, a task force made up of the CIA, FBI, Treasury Department, Secret Service and IRS, was set up several days ago to expose the financial holdings of Osama bin Laden and other terrorists. The task force "is collecting this information for the purpose of identifying the various sources of funding these organizations are receiving," said one Treasury official, on condition of anonymity. "It takes a significant amount of capital to organize these attacks."

In any case, someone was buying extraordinarily large numbers of a financial instrument called put options in the days before the attack.

Put options give the buyer the right to sell a stock at a fixed price by a certain date. People buy put options, known as puts for short, in the belief a stock's price is about to fall. Most puts expire after 90 days, so an investor typically buys them shortly before he expects the stock's price to drop.

Put options in United, Boeing and American all grew in value when the stock market reopened Monday because stock prices of the three companies fell dramatically. United, for example, fell $13.32 during the day.

On Sept. 6, put volume on United Airlines was 3,150, more than four times its average daily put volume this year, according to data from the Options Clearing Corp. Put volume for Boeing on Sept. 7 totaled 27,294, more than five times its average daily put volume this year.

The day before the attacks, put volume on American Airlines stock was 4,516, nearly 11 times its average daily volume for the year.

The insurance industry, also expected to be hard hit by the effects of the terrorist attacks, saw similar plays on its put options. Citigroup, which has a large insurance arm, and insurance broker Marsh & McLennan Cos. experienced extraordinarily high put volumes just days before the attacks.

Overseas, regulators were said to be investigating trades in reinsurance companies, those that underwrite the exposures of insurance companies and may have to pay big claims stemming from the attacks.

Buyers made millions

Buyers of the puts made huge sums of money. Najarian, the Chicago trader, noted that 1,535 puts purchased the day before the attack "gave the buyer the right to sell 153,500 shares at $30." When American's stock price fell, the owner of those puts gained $1.7 million.

Many millions of dollars would have been made on similar puts at exchanges here and elsewhere.

The Boeing put volumes did not ring alarm bells at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, because large institutional clients sometimes place orders that big, said Michael Hoban at ZH Partners JV, the specialist for Boeing at the CBOE. "In retrospect, it makes you think back, that maybe it was something linked to [the attacks]," Hoban said. "Let the investigators determine that."

At the Tribune's request, Chris Johnson, managing quantitative analyst with Schaeffer's Investment Research, examined the big jump in American's put options on the day before the attack.

"We saw an increase of 73 percent in one trading session before the day of the incident," Johnson said. "That is significant."

Some experts suggest that bin Laden, if he is behind the attacks, may also have motivation to try to profit from them.

bin Laden advisers

Although bin Laden is known to be rich--he inherited $80 million at the age of 13 and operates dozens of businesses in the Middle East and Africa--anti-terrorist analysts doubt that he can by himself finance a global campaign against the U.S. "He has got some very astute and adept people working for him," said Steven Emerson, head of the Investigative Project, a counterterrorist research institute in Washington. Emerson said bin Laden has access to accountants and other advisers capable of putting together an assault on the world's financial markets.

Associates of bin Laden have carried out sophisticated financial crimes in the past. After the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, investigation showed bin Laden and others in the Middle East had made an estimated $100 million a year through consumer coupon fraud.

Ben Jacobson, CEO of the investigative consulting firm Peregrine Group, testified before Congress about the fraud. He said people associated with bin Laden ran an extensive operation stealing coupons offering discounts on groceries and other items and returning them to clearing houses for reimbursement.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Buyer's remorse?

2006-04-08T05:24:00.000-07:00

July 24, 2001 - Larry A. Silverstein, who already owned World Trade Center 7, signs a 3.2 billion dollar 99 year lease on the entire World Trade Center complex, 6 weeks before 911. Included in the lease is a 3.5 billion dollar insurance policy specifically covering acts of terrorism.

Real Estate Weekly, May 2, 2001 by Natalie Keith

After months of negotiations that came down to the wire, Silverstein Properties Inc. and Westfield America Inc. reached a $3.21 billion agreement on a long-term lease for the 110-story World Trade Center.

"This is a dream come true," said Larry Silverstein. "We will be in control of a prized asset. There is nothing like it in the world."

The 99-year lease deal, struck late last week with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is being called the largest real estate transaction in New York City's history. The net lease covers four buildings at the 10.6 million SF complex, including the twin towers and the retail mall. Westfield, which owns several shopping centers, will handle 427,448 SF of retail space under the agreement.

The agreement ends months of speculating over the fate of the world-famous property, including a failed attempt by the Port Authority to reach an agreement with Vornado Realty Trust and reports that negotiations with Silverstein were on the verge of collapsing. It also ends a three-year effort by the Gov. George Pataki and the Port Authority to put the World Trade Center into private hands. With a net lease, the agency can get out of the real estate business but still maintain the revenue stream from the building.

"This is the largest real estate transaction in New York City and one of the largest privatizations ever of a government asset," Pataki said. "This agreement al lows the private sector to bring its expertise to managing this landmark, and it frees the Port Authority re sources for improvements in airports, tunnels and bridges."
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A group led by Silverstein reportedly worked 24 hours straight to hammer out details of the 1,000-page agreement. Silverstein and his partners signed over a $100 million letter of credit, the first installment of a $616 million down payment. GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp. is reportedly providing an $800 million loan to Silverstein and his partners.

The Port Authority had originally wanted an $800 million down payment but reduced the amount in exchange for slightly higher annual rent payments. Silverstein and Westfield are scheduled to close the deal in July, though they have the option of pushing out the closing another 30 days.

Silverstein and Westfield will make annual rent payments to the Port Authority and reportedly spend $200 million on capital improvements. The amount of the rent payments was not disclosed although Port Authority real estate director Cherrie Nanninga has said they are more than "nine figures per year."

With the agreement, Silverstein will add the twin towers at One and Two World Trade Center and two 9-story office buildings at Four and Five World Trade Center to its 5.5 million SF portfolio, which currently includes Seven World Trade Center.

One detail that has not yet been resolved pertains to taxes. Last year, the World Trade Center paid $29 million in payments in lieu of taxes under a long-time agreement between the city and the Port Authority. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has insisted, however, that the new owners must pay full property taxes for the property, equal to about $100 million per year.

The Port Authority currently occupies 900,000 SF of the complex but will reduce occupancy to about 720,000 SF. Silverstein said rents under old leases are between $30 to $33 per SF -- about 20 percent below market. About 300,000 SF are vacant, he said.

"During the last decade, the Port Authority has vastly increased the value of this public asset through effective management and by emphasizing service to tenants," said Port Authority executive director Neil Levin. "Occupancy, at about 97 percent, is at an historic high. Asking rents for offices and retail shops have doubled in the last five years."

The World Trade Center was built more than 30 years ago as a way to stimulate economic development downtown. When it opened its doors in 1970, many called it a white elephant. In the years that followed, the World Trade Center developed an international reputation and is now viewed as a cultural icon. In recent years occupancy and revenues have soared, with many forecasting a rosy future for the complex. More than 430 companies from 28 countries lease space in the complex. An estimated 40,000 people work in the World Trade Center, and another 140,000 visit the complex daily.

In 1998, New York and New Jersey agreed to put the building on the auction block hoping to attract bids of $1.5 billion or more. More than 30 bidders vied for the complex, with the list being narrowed to three -- Vornado Realty Trust, which bid $3.25 billion, Silverstein and Westfield, which bid $3.22 billion, and a joint venture of Brookfield Financial Properties and Boston Properties, which bid $3.1 billion.

"It's extraordinary in every sense and we will seek to develop its potential, raising it to new and greater heights," Silverstein said.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Hagedorn Publication
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group

Unmanned aircraft trials

2006-04-07T21:44:00.000-07:00

February 28, 1998 - The Globalhawk, Raytheon's unmanned aircraft vehicle completes its first flight over Edwards Airforce Base in California at an altitude of 32,000 feet, cruising altitude for a commercial jet liner.

World Trade Center in cross-hairs

2006-04-07T21:42:00.000-07:00

August 1997 - The cover of FEMA's Emergency Response to Terrorism depicts the World Trade Center in cross-hairs.

Remote controlled Boeing

2006-04-07T21:15:00.000-07:00

December 1, 1984 - A remote controlled Boeing 720 takes off from Edwards Airforce Base and is crash landed by NASA for fuel research. Before its destruction the plane flew a total of 16 hours and 22 minutes, including 10 take-offs, 69 approaches, and 13 landings.

Operation Northwoods

2006-04-07T20:54:00.000-07:00

March 13, 1962 - Lymon Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presents a proposal to Secretary of Defense Robert Macnamara named Operation Northwoods. The document proposed staging terrorist attacks in and around Guantanamo Bay to provide a pretext for military intervention in Cuba. The plans included starting rumors about Cuba using clandestine radio, landing friendly Cubans inside the base to stage attacks, starting riots at the main gate, blowing up ammunition inside the base, starting fires, sabotaging aircraft and ships on the base, bombing the base with mortar shells, sinking a ship outside the entrance, staging funerals for mock victims, staging a terror campaign in Miami, Florida and Washington, D.C., and finally - destroying a drone aircraft over Cuban waters. The passengers, federal agents in reality, would allegedly be college students on vacation. A plane at Egland Airforce Base would be painted and numbered as a duplicate of a registered civil aircraft belonging to a C.I.A. front in Miami. The duplicate would be substituted for the real plane and loaded with the passengers. The real plane would be converted into a drone. The two planes would rendezvous south of Florida. The passenger laden plane would land at Egland Airforce Base to evacuate its passengers, and return to its original status. The drone would pick up the scheduled flight plan and, over Cuban waters, transmit a mayday signal before being blown up by remote control.

The plan is rejected by Macnamara. President John F. Kennedy personnally removes Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

CIA agent alleged to have met Bin Laden in July 2001

2006-04-07T14:22:00.000-07:00

July 4, 2001 - Osama bin Laden, wanted by the United States since 1998, receives medical attention at the American Hospital in Dubai, where he's visited by a local chief of the CIA.

French report claims terrorist leader stayed in Dubai hospital:

Anthony Sampson
Thursday November 1, 2001
The Guardian

Two months before September 11 Osama bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by the local CIA agent, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro.

The disclosures are known to come from French intelligence which is keen to reveal the ambiguous role of the CIA, and to restrain Washington from extending the war to Iraq and elsewhere.

Bin Laden is reported to have arrived in Dubai on July 4 from Quetta in Pakistan with his own personal doctor, nurse and four bodyguards, to be treated in the urology department. While there he was visited by several members of his family and Saudi personalities, and the CIA.

Article continues
The CIA chief was seen in the lift, on his way to see Bin Laden, and later, it is alleged, boasted to friends about his contact. He was recalled to Washington soon afterwards.

Intelligence sources say that another CIA agent was also present; and that Bin Laden was also visited by Prince Turki al Faisal, then head of Saudi intelligence, who had long had links with the Taliban, and Bin Laden. Soon afterwards Turki resigned, and more recently he has publicly attacked him in an open letter: "You are a rotten seed, like the son of Noah".

The American hospital in Dubai emphatically denied that Bin Laden was a patient there.

Washington last night also denied the story.

Private planes owned by rich princes in the Gulf fly frequently between Quetta and the Emirates, often on luxurious "hunting trips" in territories sympathetic to Bin Laden. Other sources confirm that these hunting trips have provided opportunities for Saudi contacts with the Taliban and terrorists, since they first began in 1994.

Bin Laden has often been reported to be in poor health. Some accounts claim that he is suffering from Hepatitis C, and can expect to live for only two more years.

According to Le Figaro, last year he ordered a mobile dialysis machine to be delivered to his base at Kandahar in Afghanistan.

Whether the allegations about the Dubai meeting are confirmed or not, the wider leaks from the French secret service throw a worrying light on the rivalries and lack of coordination between intelligence agencies, both within the US and between western allies.

A familiar complaint of French intelligence is that collaboration with the Americans has been essentially one-way, with them happy to receive information while giving little in return.

Ashcroft Flying High

2006-04-07T14:05:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON, July 26, 2001
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(CBS) Fishing rod in hand, Attorney General John Ashcroft left on a weekend trip to Missouri Thursday afternoon aboard a chartered government jet, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart.

In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term.

"There was a threat assessment and there are guidelines. He is acting under the guidelines," an FBI spokesman said. Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department, however, would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it.

A senior official at the CIA said he was unaware of specific threats against any Cabinet member, and Ashcroft himself, in a speech in California, seemed unsure of the nature of the threat.

"I don't do threat assessments myself and I rely on those whose responsibility it is in the law enforcement community, particularly the FBI. And I try to stay within the guidelines that they've suggested I should stay within for those purposes," Ashcroft said.

Asked if he knew anything about the threat or who might have made it, the attorney general replied, "Frankly, I don't. That's the answer."

Earlier this week, the Justice Department leased a NASA-owned G-3 Gulfstream for a 6-day trip to Western states. Such aircraft cost the government more than $1,600 an hour to fly. When asked whether Ashcroft was paying for any portion of the trips devoted to personal business, a Justice Department spokeswoman declined to respond.

All other Bush Cabinet appointees, with the exception of Interior and Energy with remote sites to oversee, fly commercial airliners. Janet Reno, Ashcroft's predecessor as attorney general, also routinely flew commercial. The secretaries of State and Defense traditionally travel with extra security on military planes.

The Justice Department insists that it wasn't Ashcroft who wanted to fly leased aircraft. That idea, they said, came strictly from Ashcroft's FBI security detail. The FBI had no further comment.

Policy changes in case of Hijacking

2006-04-07T13:53:00.000-07:00

June 2001 - The Department of Defense initiates new instructions for military intervention in the case of a hijacking. It states:

4. Policy.
a. Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) of Civil and Military Aircraft. Pursuant
to references a and b, the Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA), has exclusive responsibility to direct law enforcement activity
related to actual or attempted aircraft piracy (hijacking) in the “special
aircraft jurisdiction” of the United States. When requested by the
Administrator, Department of Defense will provide assistance to these
law enforcement efforts. Pursuant to reference c, the NMCC is the focal
point within Department of Defense for providing assistance. In the
event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious
means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate
responses as authorized by reference d, forward requests for DOD
assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval. DOD assistance to
the FAA will be provided in accordance with reference d. Additional
guidance is provided in Enclosure A.

April 2001 - NORAD simulation rejected as "too unrealistic"

2006-04-07T13:47:00.000-07:00

Pentagon crash 'too unrealistic'

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff, 4/14/2004

WASHINGTON -- Five months before Sept. 11, 2001, the officers responsible for defending American airspace wanted to test their ability to prevent a hijacked airliner from being crashed into the Pentagon, but the scenario was rejected by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as impractical, a Joint Chiefs spokesman confirmed yesterday.

The disclosure was made after a government watchdog group released a leaked e-mail from a former official at the North American Air Defense Command. In the message, the official told colleagues a week after the attacks that in April 2001 NORAD requested that war games run by the Joint Chiefs include an ''event having a terrorist group hijack a commercial airline . . . and fly it into the Pentagon."

Last night, Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Commander Dan Hetlage confirmed the account, saying: ''That scenario was rejected because it would have become a whole exercise in and of itself. It wasn't looked on at the time as being practicable."

The NORAD proposal is the clearest sign yet that national security officials were worried before 9/11 about terrorists using hijacked airliners as missiles, despite testimony that senior leaders, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, didn't know of such concerns.

A secret Aug. 6, 2001, memo prepared for President Bush said Al Qaeda terrorists in the United States might be planning to hijack airliners, but it did not raise the possibility that Al Qaeda could slam those planes into buildings -- let alone the Pentagon, which was struck by American Airlines Flight 77.

Rice testified before the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks last week that ''it did not raise the possibility that terrorists might use airplanes as missiles."

However, she held out the possibility that some government officials might have raised concerns, without senior officials' knowledge, about such a mode of attack.

Officials at NORAD apparently were concerned. But the e-mail said, the US Pacific Command, which was overseeing the exercises simulating a war with North Korea, ''didn't want it because it would take attention away from their exercise objectives, and Joint Staff action officers rejected it as too unrealistic."

The author of the message, a former NORAD official, could not be located yesterday.

Peter Stockton, chief investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, said yesterday he was told by the source who provided the memo that a special forces officer attached to the NORAD command at the time had first proposed the Pentagon scenario be practiced.

Concerns that terrorists might use hijacked airliners as missiles dates back to the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta, when jets were placed on patrol to guard against such a threat.

Testifying before the 9/11 commission yesterday, former FBI Director Louis Freeh said that ''I believe it came up in a series of these, as we call them, special events."

But Freeh said, ''I never was aware of a plan that contemplated commercial airliners being used as weapons after a hijacking."

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

Pentagon Boeing simulation a coincidence?

2006-04-07T13:30:00.000-07:00

October 24, 2000 - The Pentagon conducts the first of two training exercises called MASGOW which simulate a Boeing 757 crashing into the building.

Charles Burlingame, an ex-Navy F-4 pilot, who worked in the Pentagon, participates in this exercise before retiring to take a job at American Airlines where, less than a year later, his Boeing 757 allegedly crashes into the building.

A New Pearl Harbor Needed

2006-04-07T12:41:00.000-07:00

On the Statement of Principles page of the Project for the New American Century, a neo-conservative think tank whose membership includes Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Jeb Bush.

In September of 2000 the PNAC releases their report entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses which on page 63 states, "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."

NORAD had drills of jets as weapons

2006-04-07T12:26:00.000-07:00

By Steven Komarow and Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.

One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon — but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say.

NORAD, in a written statement, confirmed that such hijacking exercises occurred. It said the scenarios outlined were regional drills, not regularly scheduled continent-wide exercises.

"Numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft," the statement said. "These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination and operational security and communications security procedures."

A White House spokesman said Sunday that the Bush administration was not aware of the NORAD exercises. But the exercises using real aircraft show that at least one part of the government thought the possibility of such attacks, though unlikely, merited scrutiny.

On April 8, the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks heard testimony from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that the White House didn't anticipate hijacked planes being used as weapons.

On April 12, a watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight, released a copy of an e-mail written by a former NORAD official referring to the proposed exercise targeting the Pentagon. The e-mail said the simulation was not held because the Pentagon considered it "too unrealistic."

President Bush said at a news conference Tuesday, "Nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale."

The exercises differed from the Sept. 11 attacks in one important respect: The planes in the simulation were coming from a foreign country.

Until Sept. 11, NORAD was expected to defend the United States and Canada from aircraft based elsewhere. After the attacks, that responsibility broadened to include flights that originated in the two countries.

But there were exceptions in the early drills, including one operation, planned in July 2001 and conducted later, that involved planes from airports in Utah and Washington state that were "hijacked." Those planes were escorted by U.S. and Canadian aircraft to airfields in British Columbia and Alaska.

NORAD officials have acknowledged that "scriptwriters" for the drills included the idea of hijacked aircraft being used as weapons.

"Threats of killing hostages or crashing were left to the scriptwriters to invoke creativity and broaden the required response," Maj. Gen. Craig McKinley, a NORAD official, told the 9/11 commission. No exercise matched the specific events of Sept. 11, NORAD said.

"We have planned and executed numerous scenarios over the years to include aircraft originating from foreign airports penetrating our sovereign airspace," Gen. Ralph Eberhart, NORAD commander, told USA TODAY. "Regrettably, the tragic events of 9/11 were never anticipated or exercised."

NORAD, a U.S.-Canadian command, was created in 1958 to guard against Soviet bombers.

Until Sept. 11, 2001, NORAD conducted four major exercises a year. Most included a hijack scenario, but not all of those involved planes as weapons. Since the attacks, NORAD has conducted more than 100 exercises, all with mock hijackings.

NORAD fighters based in Florida have intercepted two hijacked smaller aircraft since the Sept. 11 attacks. Both originated in Cuba and were escorted to Key West in spring 2003, NORAD said.

2006-04-07T12:21:00.000-07:00

June 2000 - The Department of Justice releases a terrorist training manual with the World Trade Center in cross-hairs.

Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars

2006-04-07T08:27:00.000-07:00

This document is the doctrine adopted by the Policy Committee of the Bilderburg Group during its first known meeting in 1954. A copy found in 1969 was in the possession of Naval Intelligence. The following document, dated May 1979, was found on July 7, 1986, in an IBM copier that had been purchased at a surplus sale.

”Top Secret Silent Weapons for a Quiet War"
An Introductory Programming Manual Operations Research Technical Manual

WELCOME ABOARD

This publication marks the 25th anniversary of the Third World War, called the "Quiet War," being conducted using subjective biological warfare, fought with "silent weapons."

This book contains an introductory description of this war, its strategies, and its weaponry.

May 1979 #74-1120 SECURITY

It is patently impossible to discuss social engineering or the automation of a society, i.e., the engineering of social automation systems (silent weapons) on a national or worldwide scale without implying extensive objectives of social control and destruction of human life, i .e., slavery and genocide.

This manual is in itself an analog declaration of intent. Such a writing must be secured from public scrutiny. Otherwise, it might be recognized as a technically formal declaration of domestic war.

Furthermore, whenever any person or group of persons in a position of great power, and without the full knowledge and consent of the public, uses such knowledge and methodology for economic conquest -- it must be understood that a state of domestic warfare exists between said person or group of persons and the public. The solution of today's problems requires an approach which is ruthlessly candid, with no agonizing over religious, moral, or cultural values.

You have qualified for this project because of your ability to look at human society with cold objectivity, and yet analyze and discuss your observations and conclusions with others of similar intellectual capacity without a loss of discretion or humility. Such virtues are exercised in your own best interest.

Do not deviate from them.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

Silent weapon technology has evolved from Operations Research (O.R.), a strategic and tactical methodology developed under the military management in England during World War II. The original purpose of Operations Research was to study the strategic and tactical problems of air and land defense with the objective of effective use of limited military resources against foreign enemies (i.e., logistics). It was soon recognized by those in positions of power that the same methods might be useful for totally controlling a society. But better tools were necessary.

Social engineering (the analysis and automation of a society) requires the correlation of great amounts of constantly changing economic information (data), so a high speed computerized data processing system was necessary which could race ahead of the society and predict when society would arrive for capitulation.

Relay computers were too slow, but the electronic computer, invented in 1946 by J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly filled the bill.

The next breakthrough was the development of the simplex method of linear programming in 1947 by the mathematician, George B. Dantzig. Then, in 1948, the transistor, invented by J. Bardeen, W. H. Brattain, and W. Shockley, promised great expansion of the computer field by reducing space and power requirements. With these three inventions under their direction, those in positions of power strongly suspected that it was possible for them to control the whole world with the push of a button.

Immediately, the Rockefeller Foundation got in on the ground floor by making a four year grant to Harvard College, funding the Harvard economic research project for the study of the structure of the American economy. One year later, in 1949, the United States Air Force joined in. In 1952 the original great period terminated, and a high level meeting of the elite was held to determine the next phase of social operations research.

The Harvard project had been very fruitful as is borne out by the publication of some of its results in 1953 suggesting the feasibility of economic (social) engineering. (Studies in the Structure of the American Economy -- copyright 1953 by Wassily Leontief, International Sciences Press Inc., White Plains, New York.)

Engineered in the last half decade of the 1940's, the new Quiet War machine stood, so to-speak, in sparkling gold plated hardware on the showroom floor by 1954. With the creation of the Maser in 1954, the promise of unlocking unlimited sources of fusion atomic energy from the heavy hydrogen in sea water and the consequent availability of unlimited social power became a possibility only decades away. The combination was irresistible. The Quiet War was quietly declared by the international elite at a meeting held in 1954.

Although the silent weapons system was nearly exposed 13 years later, the evolution of the new weapon system has never suffered any major setbacks. This volume marks the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the Quiet War. Already this domestic war has had many victories on many fronts throughout the world.

POLITICAL INTRODUCTION

In 1954 it was well recognized by those in positions of authority that it was only a matter of time, only a few decades, before the general public would be able to grasp and upset the cradle of power, for the very elements of the new silent weapon technology were as accessible for a public utopia as they were for providing a private utopia. The issue of primary concern that of dominance, revolved around the subject of the energy sciences.

ENERGY

Energy is recognized as the key to all activity on earth. Natural science is the study of the sources and control of natural energy, and social science, theoretically expressed as economics, is the study of the sources and control of social energy. Both are bookkeeping systems; mathematics. Therefore, mathematics is the primary energy science. And the bookkeeper can be king if the public can be kept ignorant of the methodology of the bookkeeping. All science is merely a means to an end. The means is knowledge. The end is control. Beyond this remains only one issue, "who will be the beneficiary?".

In 1954 this was the issue of primary concern. Although the so-called "moral Issues" were raised, in view of the law of natural selection it was agreed that a nation or world of people who will not use their intelligence are no better than animals who do not have intelligence. Such a people are beasts of burden and steaks on the table by choice and consent.

CONSEQUENTLY, in the interest of future world order, peace, and tranquility, it was decided to privately wage a quiet war against the American public with an ultimate objective of permanently shifting the natural and social energy (wealth) of the undisciplined and irresponsible many into the hands of the self-disciplined, responsible, and worthy few.

In order to implement this objective, it was necessary to create, secure, and apply new weapons which, as it turned out, were a class of weapons so subtle and sophisticated in their principle of operation and public appearance as to earn for themselves the name 'silent weapons'.

In conclusion, the objective of economic research, as conducted by the magnates of capital (banking) and the industries of commodities (goods) and services, is the establishment of an economy which is totally predictable and manipulatable.

In order to achieve a totally predictable economy, the low class elements of the society must be brought under total control, i.e., must be house-broken, trained,
and assigned a yoke and long term social duties from a very early age, before they have an opportunity to question the propriety of the matter.

In order to achieve such conformity, the lower class family unit must be disintegrated by a process of increasing preoccupation of the parents and the establishment of government operated day care centers for the occupationally orphaned children.

The quality of education given to the lower class must be of the poorest sort, so that the meat of ignorance isolating the the inferior class from the superior class is and remains incomprehensible to the inferior class.

With such an initial handicap, even bright lower class individuals have little if any hope of extricating themselves from their assigned lot in life. This form of slavery is essential to maintaining some measure of social order, peace, and tranquility for the ruling upper class.

DESCRIPTIVE INTRODUCTION OF THE SILENT WEAPON

Everything that is expected from an ordinary weapon is expected from a silent weapon by its creators, but only in it its own manner of functioning. It shoots situations, instead of bullets; propelled by data processing, instead of chemical reaction (explosion); originating from bits of data, instead of grains of gunpowder; from a computer, instead of a gun; operated by a computer programmer, instead of marksman; under the orders of a banking magnate, instead of a military general.

It makes no obvious explosive noises, causes no obvious physical or mental injuries, and does not obviously interfere with anyone's daily social life. Yet it makes an unmistakable 'noise', causes unmistakable physical and mental damage, and unmistakably interferes with daily social life, i.e., unmistakable to a trained observer, one who knows what to look for.

The public cannot comprehend this weapon, and therefore cannot believe that they are being attached and subdued by a weapon. The public might instinctively feel that something is wrong, but because of the technical nature of the silent weapon, they cannot express their feeling in a rational way, or handle the problem with intelligence.

Therefore, they do not know how to cry for help, and do not know how to associate with others to defend themselves against it. When a silent weapon is applied gradually to the public, the public adjusts/adapts to its presence and learns to tolerate its encroachment on their lives until the pressure (psychological via economic) becomes too great and they crack up.

Therefore, the silent weapon is a type of biological war fare. It attacks the vitality, options, and mobility of the individuals of a society by knowing, understanding, manipulating, and attacking their sources of natural and social energy, and their physical, mental, and emotional strengths and weaknesses.

THEORETICAL INTRODUCTION

"Give me control over a nation's currency, and I care not who makes its laws."
Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1743-1812)

Today's silent weapons technology is an outgrowth of a simple idea discovered, succinctly expressed, and effectively applied by the quoted Mr. Mayor Amschel Rothschild.

Mr. Rothschild discovered the missing passive component of economic theory known as economic inductance. He, of course, did not think of his discovery in these 20th century terms, and to be sure, mathematical analysis had to wait for the Second Industrial Revolution, the rise of the theory of mechanics and electronics, and finally, the invention of the electronic computer before it could be effectively applied in the control of the world economy.

GENERAL ENERGY CONCEPTS

In the study of energy systems, there always appear three elementary concepts. These are potential energy, kinetic energy, and energy dissipation. And corresponding to these concepts, there are three idealized, essentially pure physical counterparts, called passive components.

(1) In the science of physical mechanics, the phenomenon of of potential energy is associated with a physical property called elasticity or stiffness, and can be represented by a stretched spring. In electronic science, potential energy is stored in a capacitor instead of a spring. This property is called capacitance instead of elasticity or stiffness.

(2) In the science of physical mechanics, the phenomenon of kinetic energy is associated with a physical property called inertia or mass and can be represented by a mass or a flywheel in motion. In electronic science, kinetic energy is stored in an inductor (in a magnetic field) instead of a mass. This property is called inductance instead of inertia.

(3) In the science of physical mechanics, the phenomenon of energy dissipation is associated with a physical property called friction or resistance, and can be represented by a dashpot or other device which converts system energy into heat. In electronic science, dissipation of energy is performed by an element called either a resistor or a conductor, the term 'resistor' being the one generally used to express the concept of friction, and the term 'conductor' being generally used to describe a more ideal device (e.g., wire) employed to convey electric energy efficiently from one location to another. The property of a resistor or conductor is measured as either resistance or conductance, reciprocals. In economics these three energy concepts are associated with:

(1) Economic Capacitance -- Capital (money, stock/inventory, investments in building and durables, etc.)

(2) Economic Conductance -- Goods (production flow coefficients)

(3) Economic Inductance -- Services (the influence of the population of industry
on output). All of the mathematical theory developed in the study of one energy system, (e.g., mechanics, electronics, etc.) can be immediately applied in the study of any other energy system (e.g., economics).

MR. ROTHSCHILD'S ENERGY DISCOVERY

What Mr. Rothschild had discovered was the basic principle of power, influence, and control over people as applied to economics. That principle is "when you assume the appearance of power, people soon give it to you".

Mr. Rothschild had discovered that currency or deposit loan accounts had the required appearance of power that could be used to induce people (inductance, with people corresponding to a magnetic field) into surrendering their real wealth in exchange for a promise of greater wealth (instead of real compensation). They would put up real collateral in exchange for a loan of promissory notes.

Mr. Rothschild found that he could issue more notes than he had backing for, so long as he had someone's stock of gold as a persuader to show to his customers.

Mr. Rothschild loaned his promissory notes to individuals and to governments. These would create over-confidence. Then he would make money scarce, tighten control of the system, and collect his collateral through the obligation of contracts. The cycle was then repeated. These pressures could be used to ignite a war. Then he would control the availability of currency to determine who would win the war. That government which agreed to give him control of its economic system got his support. Collection of debts was guaranteed by economic aid to the enemy of the debtor. The profit derived from this economic methodology made Mr. Rothschild all the more wealthy and all the more able to extend his wealth. He found that the public greed would allow currency to be printed by government order beyond the limits (inflation) of backing in precious metal or the production of goods and services (gross national product, GNP).

APPARENT CAPITAL AS "PAPER" INDUCTOR

In this structure, credit, presented as a pure circuit element called "currency", has the appearance of capital, but is, in fact, negative capital. Hence, it has the appearance of service, but is, in fact, indebtedness or debt. It is therefore an economic inductance instead of an economic capacitance, and if balanced in no other way, will be balanced by the negation of population (war, genocide).

The total goods and services represents real capital called the gross national product, and currency may be printed up to this level and still represent economic capacitance; but currency printed beyond this level is subtractive, represents the introduction of economic inductance, and constitutes notes of indebtedness.

War is therefore the balancing of the system by killing the true creditors (the public which we have taught to exchange true value for inflated currency) and falling back on whatever is left of the resources of nature and the regeneration of those resources. Mr. Rothschild had discovered that currency gave him the power to rearrange the economic structure to his own advantage,, to shift economic inductance to those economic positions which would encourage the greatest economic instability and oscillation.

The final key to economic control had to wait until there was sufficient data and high speed computing equipment to keep close watch on the economic oscillations created by price shocking and excess paper energy credits -- (paper inductance/inflation).

BREAKTHROUGH

The aviation field provided the greatest evolution in economic engineering by way of the mathematical theory of shock testing. In this process, a projectile is fired from an airframe on the ground and the impulse of the recoil is monitored by vibration transducers connected to the airframe and wired to chart recorders.

By studying the echoes or reflections of the recoil impulse in the airframe, it is possible to discover critical vibrations in the structure of the airframe which either vibrations of the negine or aeolian vibrations of the wings, or a combination of the two, might reinforce resulting in a reconant self-destruction of the airframe in flight as an aircraft.

From the standpoint of engineering, this means that the strengths and weaknesses of the structure of the airframe in terms of vibrational energy can be discovered and manipulated.

APPLICATION IN ECONOMICS

To use this method of airframe shock testing in economic engineering, the prices of commodities are shocked, and the public consumer reaction is monitored. The resulting echoes of the economic shock are interpreted theoretically by computers and the psycho-economic structure of the economy is thus discovered.

It is by this process that partial differential and difference matricos are discovered that define the family household and make possible its evolution as an economic industry (dissipative consumer structure). Then the response of the household to future shocks can be predicted and manipulated, and society becomes a well regulated animal with its reins under the control of a sophisticated computer-regulated social energy bookkeeping system.

Eventually every individual element of the structure comes under computer control through a knowledge of personal preferences, such knowledge guaranteed by computer association of consumer preferences (universal product code -- UPC -- zebra stripe pricing codes on packages) with identified consumers (identified via association with the use of a credit card and later a permanent 'tattooed' body number invisible under normal ambient illumination.

SUMMARY

Economics is only a social extension of a natural energy system. It, also, has its three passive components. Because of the distribution of wealth and the lack of communication and consequent lack of data, this field has been the last energy field for which a knowledge of these three passive components has been developed. Since energy is the key to all activity on the face of the earth, it follows that in order to attain a monopoly of energy, raw materials, goods, and services and to establish a world system of slave labor, it is necessary to have a first strike capability in the field of economics.

In order to maintain our position, it is necessary that we have absolute first knowledge of the science of control over all economic factors and the first experience at engineering the world economy.

In order to achieve such sovereignty, we must at least achieve this one end: that the public will not make either the logical or mathematical connection between economics and the other energy sciences or learn to apply such knowledge.

This is becoming increasingly difficult to control because more and more businesses are making demands upon their computer programmers to create and apply mathematical models for the management of those businesses. It is only a matter of time before the new breed of private programmer/economists will catch on to the far reaching implications of the work begun at Harvard in 1948.

[MY INSERT = BIRTH OF NEW WORLD ORDER/GLOBAL ECONOMY]

The speed with which they can communicate their warning to the public will largely depend upon how effective we have been at controlling the media, subverting education, and keeping the public distracted with matters of no real importance.

THE ECONOMIC MODEL

Economics, as a social energy science has as a first objective the description of the complex way in which any given unit of resources is used to satisfy some economic want. (Leontief Matrix)

The first objective, when it is extended to get the most product from the least or limited resources, comprises that objective of general military and industrial logistics known as Operations Research. (See simplex method of linear programming.)

The Harvard Economic Research Project (1948-) was an extension of World War II Operations Research. Its purpose was to discover the science of controlling an economy; at first the American economy, and then the world economy. It was felt that with sufficient mathematical foundation and data, it would be nearly as easy to predict and control the trend of an economy as to predict and control the trajectory of a projectile. Such as proven to be the case. Moreover, the economy has been transformed into a guided missile on target.

The immediate aim of the Harvard project was to discover the economic structure, what forces change that structure, how the behavior of the structure can be predicted, and how it can be manipulated. What was needed was a well organized knowledge of the mathematical structures and interrelationships of investment, production, distribution, and consumption.

To make a short story of it all, it was discovered than an economy obeyed the same, laws as electricity and that all of the mathematical theory and practical and computer know-how developed for the electronic field could be directly applied in the study of economics. This discovery was not openly declared, and its more subtle implications were and are kept a closely guarded secret, for example that in an economic model, human life is measured in dollars, and that the electric spark generated when opening a switch connected to an active inductor in mathematically analogous to the initiation of a war.

The greatest hurdle which theoretical economists faced was the accurate description of the household as an industry. This is a challenge, because consumer purchases are a matter of choice which in turn is influenced by income, price, and other economic factors.

This hurdle was cleared in an indirect and statistically approximate way by an application of shock testing to determine the current characteristics, called current technical coefficients, of a household industry.

Why GAS Costs $2.00 Per Gallon

Finally, because problems in theoretical economics can be translated very easily into problems in theoretical electronics, and the solution translated back again, it follows that only a book of language translation and concept definition needed to be written for economics. The remainder could be gotten from standard works on mathematics and electronics. This makes the publication of books on advanced economics unnecessary, and greatly simplifies project security.

INDUSTRIAL DIAGRAMS

An ideal industry is defined as a device which receives value from other industries in several forms and converts it into one specific product for sales and distribution to other industries. It has several inputs and one output. What the public normally thinks of as one industry is really an industrial complex where several industries under one roof produce one or more products. The flow of product from industry #1 (supply) to industry #2 (demand) is denoted by 112. The total flow out of industry 'K' is denoted by I k . (sales, etc.) A node is a symbol of collection and distribution of flow. Node #3 receives from industry #3 and distributes to industries #1 through #3. If industry #3 manufactures chairs, then a flow from Industry #3 back to industry #3 simply indicates that industry #3 is using part of its own output product, for example, as office furniture. Therefore, the flow may be summarized by the equations: THREE INDUSTRIAL CLASSES Industries fell into three categories or class by type of output. Class #1 - Capital (resources) Class #2 - Goods (commodities or use - dissipative) Class #3 - Services (action of population) Class # 1 Industries exist at three levels (1) Nature - sources of energy and raw materials. (2) Government - printing of currency equal to gross national product (GNP), and extension of currency in excess of GNP. (3) Banking - loaning of money for interest, and extension (counterfeiting) of economic value through deposit loan account - inflation. Class # 2 industries exist as producers of tangible or consumer (dissipated) products. This sort of activity is usually recognized and labeled by the public
as an 'industry'. Class # 3 industries are those which have service rather than a tangible product as their output. These industries are called (1) households, and (2) governments. Their output is human activity of a mechanical sort, and their basis is population.

AGGREGATION

The whole economic system can be represented by a three industry model if one allows the names of the outputs to be (1) capital, (2) goods, and (3) services. The problem with this representation is that it would not show the influence of, say, the textile industry on the ferrous metal industry. This is because both the textile industry and the ferrous metal industry would be contained within a single classification called the 'goods industry' and by this process of combining or aggregating these two industries under one system block they would lose their economic individuality.

THE E-MODEL

A national economy consists of simultaneous flows of production, distribution, consumption, and investment. If all of these elements including labor and human functions are assigned a numerical value in like units of measure, say, 1939 dollars, on this flow can be further represented by a current flow in an electronic circuit, and its behavior can be predicted and manipulated with useful precision. The three ideal passive energy components of electronics, the capacitor, the resistor, and the inductor correspond to the three ideal passive energy components of economics called the pure industries of capital, goods, and services, resp.. Economic capacitance represents the storage of capital in one form or another. Economic conductance represents the level of conductance of materials for the production of goods. Economic inductance represents the inertia of economic value in motion. This is a population phenomenon known as services.

ECONOMIC INDUCTANCE

An electrical inductor (e.g., a coil of wire) has an electric current as its primary phenomenon and a magnetic field as its secondary phenomenon (inertia). Corresponding to this, an economic inductor has a flow of economic value as its primary phenomenon and a population field as its secondary phenomenon of inertia. When the flow of economic value (e.g., money) diminishes, the human population field collapses in order to keep the economic value (money) flowing (extreme case - war). The public inertia is a result of consumer buying habits, expected standard of living, etc., and is generally a phenomenon of self-preservation.

INDUCTIVE FACTORS TO CONSIDER

(1) Population

(2) magnitude of the economic activities of the government.

(3) the method of financing these government activities (see Peter-Paul Principle-inflation of the currency)

TRANSLATION (A few examples will be given.)

CHARGE -- coulombs -- dollars (1939).
FLOW/CURRENT -- amperes (coulombs per second) -- dollars of flow per year.
MOTIVATING FORCE -- volts -- dollars (output) demand.
CONDUCTANCE -- amperes per volt. -- dollars of flow per year per dollar demand. CAPITANCE -- coulombs per volt. -- dollars of production inventory/stock per dollar demand.

TIME-FLOW RELATIONSHIPS AND SELF-DESTRUCTIVE OSCILLATIONS

An ideal industry may be symbolized electronically in various ways. The simplest way is to represent a demand by a voltage and a supply by a current. When this is done, the relationship between the two becomes what is called an admittance, which can result from three economic factors: (1) hindsight flow, (2) present flow, and (3) foresight flow.

Foresight flow is the result of that property of living entities to cause energy (food) to be stored for a period of low energy (e.g., a winter season). It consists of demands made upon an economic system for that period of low energy (winter season).

In a production industry it takes several forms, one of which is known as production stock or inventory. In electronic symbology this specific industry demand (a pure capital industry) is represented by capacitance and the stock or resource is represented by a stored charge. Satisfaction of an industry demand suffers a lag because of the loading effect of inventory priorities. Present flow ideally involves no delays. It is, so to speak, input today for output today, a 'hand to mouth' flow. In electronic symbology, this specific industry demand (a pure use industry) is represented by a conductance which is then a simple economic valve (a dissipative element).

Hindsight flow is known as habit or inertia. In electronics, this phenomenon is the characteristic of an inductor (economic analog = a pure service industry) in which a current flow (economic analog = flow of money) creates a magnetic field (economic analog = active human population) which, if the current (money flow) begins to diminish, collapses (war) to maintain the current (flow of money -- energy). Other large alternatives to war as economic inductors or economic flywheels are an open-ended social welfare program, or enormous (but fruitful) open-ended space program. The problem with stabilizing the economic system is that there is too much demand on account of (1) too much greed and (2) too much population. This creates excessive economic inductance which can only be balanced with economic capacitance (true resources or value - e.g. in goods or services).

The social welfare program is nothing more than an open-ended credit balance system which creates a false capital industry to give non-productive people a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. This can be useful, however, because the recipients become state property, in return for the 'gift' , a standing array for the elite. For he who pays the piper, picks the tune.

Those who get hooked on the economic drug, must go to the elite for a fix. In this, the method of introducing large amounts of stabilizing capacitance is by borrowing on the future 'credit' of the world. This is a fourth law of motion -- onset, and consists of performing an action and leaving the system before the reflected reaction returns to the point of action -- a delayed reaction. The means of surviving the reaction is by changing the system before the reaction can return. By this means, politicians become popular in their own time and the public pays for it later. In fact the measure of such a politician is the delay time. The same thing is achieved by a government by printing money beyond the limit of the gross national product, an economic process called inflation. This puts a large quantity of money into the hands of the public and maintains a balance against their greed, creates a false self-confidence in them and, for a while, stays the wolf from the door. They must eventually resort to war to balance the account, because war ultimately is merely the act to keep the responsibility and blood off the public conscience. (See section on consent factors and social-economic structuring.)

If the people really cared about their fellow man, they would control their appetites (greed, procreation, etc.) so that they would not have to operate on a credit or welfare social system which steals from this worker to satisfy the bum. Since most of the general public will not exercise restraint, there are only two alternatives to reduce the economic inductance of the system. (1) Let the populace bludgeon each other to death in war, which will only result in a total destruction of the living earth. (2) Take control of the world by the use of economic 'silent weapons' in a form of 'quiet warfare', and reduce the economic inductance of the world to a safe level by a process of benevolent slavery and genocide.

The latter option has been taken as the obviously better option. At this point it should be crystal clear to the reader why absolute secrecy about the silent weapons is necessary. The general public refuses to improve its own mentality and its faith in its fellow man. It has become a herd of proliferating barbarians, and, so' to speak, a blight upon the fate of the earth. They do not care enough about economic science to learn why they have not been able to avoid war despite religious morality, and their religious or self-gratifying refusal to deal with earthly problems renders the solution of the earthly problem unreachable by them. It is left to those few who are truly willing to think and survive as the fittest to survive, to solve the problem for themselves as the few who really care. Otherwise, exposure of the silent weapon would destroy our only hope of preserving the seed of future true humanity.

THE HOUSEHOLD INDUSTRY

The industries of finance (banking), manufacturing, and government, real counterparts of the pure industries of capital, goods, and services, are easily defined because they are generally logically structured. Because of this their processes can be described mathematically and their technical coefficients can be easily deduced. This, however, is not the case with the service industry known as the household industry.

HOUSEHOLD MODELS

When the industry flow diagram is represented by a 2-block system of households on the right and all other industries on the left, the following results. (labor, etc.) The arrows from left to right labeled A, B, C, etc., denote flow of economic value from the industries in the left hand block to the industry in the right hand block called 'households'. These may be thought of as the monthly consumer flows of the following commodities. A - alcoholic beverages, B - beef, C - coffee, ..., U - unknown, etc.. The problem which a theoretical economist faces is that the consumer preferences of any household is not easily predictable and the technical coefficients of any one household tend to be a non-linear, very complex, and variable function income, prices, etc. Computer information derived from the use of the universal product code in conjunction with credit card purchase as an individual household identifier could change this state of affairs. But the U.P.C. method is not yet available on a national or even a significant regional scale. To compensate for this data deficiency, an alternate indirect approach of analysis has been adopted known as economic shock testing. This method, widely used in the aircraft manufacturing industry develops an aggregate statistical sort of data.

Applied to economics, this means that all of the households in one region or in the whole nation are studied as a group or class rather than individually, and the mass behavior rather than individual behavior is used to discover useful estimates of the technical coefficients governing the economic structure of the hypothetical single household industry. Notice in the industry flow diagram that the values for the flows A,B,C, etc., are accessible to measurement in terms of selling prices and total sales of commodities. One method of evaluating the technical coefficients of the household industry depends upon shocking the prices of a commodity and noting the changes in the sales of all of the commodities.

ECONOMIC SHOCK TESTING

In recent times, the application of Operations Research to the study of the public economy has been obvious for anyone who understands the principles of shock testing. In the shock testing of an aircraft airframe, the recoil impulse of firing a gun mounted on that airframe causes shock waves in that structure which tell aviation engineers the conditions under which parts of the airplane or the whole airplane or its wings will start to vibrate or flutter like a guitar string, a flute reed, or a tuning fork, and disintegrate or fall apart in flight.

Economic engineers achieve the same result in studying the behavior of the economy and the consumer public by carefully selecting a staple commodity such as beef, coffee, gasoline, or sugar and then causing a sudden change or shock in its price or availability, thus kicking everybody's budget and buying habits out of shape. They then observe the shock waves which result by monitoring the changes in advertising, prices, and sales of that and other commodities. The objective of such studies is to acquire know-how to set the public economy into a predictable state of motion or change, even a controlled self-destructive state of motion which will convince the public that certain "expert" people should take control of the money system and reestablish security (rather than liberty and justice) for all. When the subject citizens are rendered unable to control their financial affairs, they of course, become totally enslaved, a source of cheap labor. Not only the prices of commodities, but also the availability of labor can be used as the means of shock testing. Labor strikes deliver excellent test shocks to an economy, especially in the critical service areas of trucking (transportation), communication, public utilities (energy, water, garbage collection), etc. By shock testing, it is found that there is a direct relationship between the availability of money flowing in an economy and the psychological outlook and response of masses of people dependent upon that availability. For example, there is a measurable, quantitative relationship between the price of gasoline, and the probability that a person would experience a headache, feel a need to watch a violent movie, smoke a cigarette, or go to a tavern for a mug of beer.

It is most interesting that, by observing and measuring the economic modes by which the public tries to run from their problems and escape from reality, and by applying the mathematical theory of Operations Research, it is possible to program computers to predict the most probable combination of created events (shocks) which will bring about a complete control and subjugation of the public through a subversion of the public economy (by shaking the plum tree).

INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY OF ECONOMIC SHOCK TESTING

Let the prices and total sales of commodities be given and symbolized as follows. Let us assume a simple economic model in which the total number of important (staple) commodities are represented as beef, gasoline, and an aggregate of all other staple commodities which we will call the hypothetical miscellaneous staple commodity 'M'. (e.g., M is an aggregate of C, S, T, U, etc..)

INTRODUCTION TO ECONOMIC AMPLIFIERS

Economic amplifiers are the active components of economic engineering. The basic characteristic of any amplifier, (mechanical, electrical, or economic) is that it receives an input control signal and delivers energy from an independent energy, source to a specified output terminal in a predictable relationship to that input control signal. The simplest form of economic amplifier is a device called advertising. If a person is spoken to by a T.V. advertiser as if he were a twelve year old, then, due to suggestibility, he will, with a certain probability, respond or react to that suggestion with the uncritical response of a twelve year old and will reach into his economic reservoir and deliver its energy to buy that product on impulse when he passes it in the store. An economic amplifier may have several inputs and outputs. Its response might be instantaneous or delayed. Its circuit symbol might be a rotary switch if its options are exclusive, qualitative, 'go' or 'no go', or it might have its parametric input/output relationships specified by a matrix with internal energy sources represented. Whatever its form might be, its purpose is to govern the flow of energy from a source to an output sink in direct relationship to an input control signal. For this reason, it is called an active circuit element or component.

Economic Amplifiers fall into classes called strategies, and in comparison with electronic amplifiers, the specific internal functions or an economic amplifier are called logistical instead of electrical. Therefore, economic amplifiers not only deliver power gain, but also, in effect, are used to cause changes in the economic circuitry. In the design of an economic amplifier we must have some idea of at least five functions, which are:
(1) the available input signals, (2) the desired output control objectives, (3) the strategic objective, (4) the available economic power sources, (5) the logistical options. The process of defining and evaluating these factors and incorporating the economic amplifier into an economic system has been popularly called game theory. The design of an economic amplifier begins with a specification of the power level of the output, which can range from personal to national. The second condition is accuracy of response, i.e., how accurately the output action is a function of the input commands. High gain combined with strong feedback helps to deliver the required precision. Most of the error will be in the input data signal. Personal input data tends to be specific, while national input data tends to be statistical.

SHORT LIST OF INPUTS

Questions to be answered: (1) what (3) where (5) why (2) when (4) how (6) who General sources of information: (1) telephone taps (3) analysis of garbage (2) surveillance (4) behavior of children in school Standard of living by: (1) food (3) shelter (2) clothing (4) transportation Social contacts: (1) telephone - itemized record of calls (2) family - marriage certificate, birth certificates, etc. (3) friends, associates, etc. (4) memberships in organizations (5) political affiliation

THE PERSONAL PAPER TRAIL

Personal buying habits, i.e., Personal consumer preferences:

(1) checking accounts

(2) credit card purchases

(3) ' tagged' credit card purchases - the credit card purchase of products bearing the U.P.C. (Universal Product Code)

Assets:

(1) checking accounts

(2) savings accounts

(3) real estate

(4) business

(5) automobile, etc.

(6) safety deposit at bank

(7) stock market

Liabilities:

(1) creditors

(2) enemies (see legal)

(3) loans

(4) consumer credit

Government sources (ploys)*:

(1) Welfare

(2) Social Security

(3) U.S.D.A. surplus food

(4) doles

(5) grants

(6) subsidies

Government sources (via intimidation)

(1) Internal Revenue Service

(2) OSHA

(3) Census

(4) etc. * Principle of this ploy -- the citizen will almost always make the collection of information easy if he can operate on the 'free sandwich principle' of 'eat now, and pay later'.

Other Government sources -- surveillance of U.S. Mail.

HABIT PATTERNS -- PROGRAMMING

Strengths and weaknesses:

(1) activities (sports, hobbies, etc.)

(2) see 'legal' (fear, anger, etc. - crime record)

(3) hospital records (drug sensitivities, reaction to pain, etc.)

(4) psychiatric records (fears, angers, disgusts, adaptability, reactions to stimuli, violence, suggestibility or hypnosis, pain, pleasure, love and sex)

Methods of coping -- adaptability -- behavior:

(1) consumption of alcohol

(2) consumption of drugs

(3) entertainment

(4) religious factors influencing behavior

(5) other methods of escaping from reality.

Payment modus operandi (MO) -- pay on time, etc.:

(1) payment of telephone bills

(2) energy purchases (electric, gas...)

(3) water purchases

(4) repayment of loans

(5) house payments

(6) automobile payments

(7) payments on credit cards

Political sensitivity:

(1) beliefs

(2) contacts

(3) position

(4) strengths/weaknesses

(5) projects/activities

Legal inputs - behavior control
(Excuses for investigation, search, arrest, or employment of force to modify behavior.)

(1) court reports

(2) police records - NCIC

(3) driving record

(4) reports made to police

(5) insurance information

(6) anti-establishment acquaintances

NATIONAL INPUT INFORMATION

Business sources (via I.R.S., etc.):

(1) prices of commodities

(2) sales

(3) investments in
(a) stocks/inventory
(b) production tools and machinery
(c) buildings and improvements
(d) the stock market

Banks and credit bureaus:

(1) credit information

(2) payment information

Miscellaneous Sources:

(1) polls and surveys

(2) publications

(3) telephone records

(4) energy and utility purchases

SHORT LIST OF OUT PUTS

Outputs - create controlled situations - manipulation of the economy. hence society - control by control of compensation and losses.

Sequence:

(1) allocates opportunities.

(2) destroys opportunities.

(3) controls the economic industry.

(4) controls the availability of raw materials

(5) controls capital.

(6) controls bank rates.

(7) controls the inflation of the currency.

(8) controls the possession of property.

(9) controls the industrial capacity.

(10) controls manufacturing.

(11) controls the availability of goods (commodities).

(12) controls the prices of commodities.

(13) controls services, the labor force, etc.

(14) controls payments to government officials.

(15) controls the legal functions

(16) controls the personal data file uncorrectable - by the party slandered.

(17) controls advertising.

(18) controls media content.

(19) controls material available for T.V. viewing.

(20) disengages attention from real issues.

(21) engages emotions.

(22) creates disorder, chaos, and insanity.

(23) controls design of more probing tax forms.

(24) controls surveillance.

(25) controls the storage of information.

(26) develops psychological analyses and profiles of individuals.

(27) controls legal functions (repeat of 15).

(28) controls sociological factors.

(29) controls health options.

(30) preys on weaknesses.

(31) cripples strengths.

(32) leaches wealth and substance.

DIVERSION, THE PRIMARY STRATEGY

Experience has proven that the simplest method of securing a silent weapon and gaining control of the public is to keep the public undisciplined and ignorant of basic systems principles on the one hand, while keeping them confused, disorganized, and distracted with matters of no real importance on the other hand. This is achieved by: (1) Disengaging their minds, sabotaging their mental activities, by providing a low quality program of public education in mathematics, logic, systems design, and economics, and by discouraging technical creativity. (2) Engaging their emotions, increasing their self-indulgence and their indulgence in emotional and physical activities, by: (a) unrelenting emotional affrontations and attacks (mental and emotional rape) by way of a constant barrage of sex, violence, and wars in the media - especially the T.V. and the newspapers. (b) giving them what they desire - in excess - "junk food for thought" and depriving them of what they really need. (3) Rewriting history and law and subjecting the public to the deviant creation, thus being able to shift their thinking from personal needs to highly fabricated outside priorities. These preclude their interest in and discovery of the silent weapons of social automation technology. The general rule is that there is profit in confusion; the more confusion, the more profit. Therefore, the best approach is to create problems and then offer the solutions.

DIVERSION SUMMARY MEDIA:

Keep the adult public attention diverted away from the real social issues, and captivated by matters of no real importance. SCHOOLS: Keep the young public ignorant of real mathematics, real economics, real law, and real history.

ENTERTAINMENT:

Keep the public entertainment below a sixth grade level.

WORK:

Keep the public busy, busy, busy, with no time to think; back on the farm with the other animals.

CONSENT, THE PRIMARY VICTORY

A silent weapon system operates upon data obtained from a docile public by legal (but not always lawful) force. Much information is made available to silent weapon systems programmers through the Internal Revenue Service . (See "Studies In The Structure Of The American Economy" for an I.R.S. source list.) This information consists of the enforced delivery of well organized data contained in federal and state tax forms collected, assembled, and submitted by slave labor provided by taxpayers and employers. Furthermore, the number of such forms submitted to the I.R.S. is a useful indicator of public consent, an important factor in strategic decision making. Other data sources are given in the "Short List Of Inputs. Consent Coefficients: numerical feedback indicating victory status. Psychological basis: When the government is able to collect tax and seize private property without just compensation, it is an indication that the public is ripe for surrender and is consenting to enslavement and legal encroachment. A good and easily quantified indicator of harvest time is the number of public citizens who pay income tax.

AMPLIFICATION ENERGY SOURCES

The next step in the process of designing as economic amplifier is discovering the energy sources. The energy sources which support any primitive economic system are, of course, a supply of raw materials, and the consent of the people to labor and consequently assume a certain rank, position, level, or class in the social structure; i.e., to provide labor at various levels in the pecking order. Each class, in guaranteeing its own level of income, controls the class immediately below it, hence preserves the class structure. This provides stability and security, but also government from the top. As time goes on and communication and education improve, the lower class elements of the social labor structure become knowledgeable and envious of the good things that the upper class members have. They also begin to attain a knowledge of energy systems and the ability to enforce their rise through the class structure. This threatens the sovereignty of the elite. If this rise of the lower classes can be postponed long enough, the elite can achieve energy dominance, and labor by consent no longer will hold a position of an essential economic energy source. Until such energy dominance is absolutely established, the consent of people to labor and let others handle their affairs must be taken into consideration, since failure to do so could cause the people to interfere in the final transfer of energy sources to the control of the elite. It is essential to recognize that at this time, public consent is still an essential key to the release of energy in the process of economic amplification. Therefore, consent as an energy release mechanism will now be considered.

LOGISTICS

The successful application of a strategy requires a careful study of inputs, outputs, the strategy connecting the inputs and the outputs, and the available energy sources to fuel the strategy. This study is called logistics. A logistical problem is studied at the elementary level first, and then levels of greater complexity are studied as a synthesis of elementary factors. This means that a given system is analyzed, i.e., broken down into its sub-systems, and these in turn are analyzed, until, by this process, one arrives at the logistical 'atom', the individual. This is where the process of syntheses properly begins, at the time of the birth of the individual.

THE ARTIFICIAL WOMB

From the time a person leaves its mother's womb, its every effort is directed toward building, maintaining, and withdrawing into artificial wombs, various sorts of substitute protective devices or shells. The objective of these artificial wombs is to provide a stable environment for both stable and unstable activity; to provide a shelter for the evolutionary processes of growth, and maturity - i.e., survival; to provide security for freedom and to provide defensive protection for offensive activity.

THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF A NATION - DEPENDENCY

The primary reason why the individual citizens of a country create a political structure is a subconscious wish or desire to perpetuate their own dependency relationship of childhood. Simply put, they want a human god to eliminate all risk from their life, pat them on the head, kiss their bruises, put a chicken on every dinner table, clothe their bodies, tuck them into bed at night, and tell them that everything will be alright when they wake up in the morning. This public demand is incredible, so the human god, the political, meets incredibility with incredibility by promising the world and delivering nothing. So who is the bigger liar?, the public?, or the 'godfather'? This public behavior is surrender born of fear, laziness and expediency. It is the basis of the welfare state as a strategic weapon, useful against a disgusting public.

ACTION/OFFENSE

Most people want to be able to subdue and/or kill other human beings which disturb their daily lives, but they do not want to have to cope with the moral and religious issues which such an overt act on their part might raise. Therefore, they assign the dirty work to others (including their own children) so as to keep the blood off their own hands. They rave about the humane treatment of animals and then sit down to a delicious hamburger from a whitewashed slaughterhouse down the street and out of sight. But even more hypocritical, they pay taxes to finance a professional association of hit men collectively called politicians, and then complain about corruption in government.

RESPONSIBILITY

Again, most people want to be free to do things (to explore, etc.) but they are afraid to fail. The fear of failure is manifested in irresponsibility, and especially in delegating those personal responsibilities to others where success is uncertain or carries possible or created liabilities (law) which the person is not prepared to accept. They want authority (root word - 'author'), but they will not accept responsibility or liability. They hire politicians to face reality for them.

SUMMARY

The people hire the politicians so that the people can:

(1) obtain security without managing it.

(2) obtain action without thinking about it.

(3) inflict theft, injury, and death upon others without having to contemplate either life or death.

(4) avoid responsibility for their own intentions.

(5) obtain the benefits of reality and science without exerting themselves in the discipline of facing or learning either of these things.

They give the politicians the power to create and manage a war machine to:

(1) provide for the survival of the NATION/WOMB.

(2) prevent encroachment of anything of anything upon the NATION/WOMB.

(3) destroy the enemy who threatens the NATION/WOMB.

(4) destroy those citizens of their own country who do not conform for the sake of stability of the NATION/WOMB.

Politicians hold many quasi-military jobs, the lowest being the police which are soldiers, the attorneys and the C.P.A.s next who are spies and saboteurs (licensed), and the judges who shout the orders and run the closed union military shop for whatever the market will bear. The generals are industrialists. The 'presidential' level of commander-in-chief is shared by the international bankers. The people know that they have created this farce and financed it with their own taxes (consent), but they would rather knuckle under than be the hypocrite.

Thus, a nation becomes divided into two very distinct parts, a DOCILE SUB-NATION and a POLITICAL SUB-NATION.

The political sub-nation remains attached to the docile sub-nation, tolerates it, and leaches its substance until it grows strong enough to detach itself and devour its parent.

SYSTEM ANALYSIS

In order to make meaningful computerized economic decisions about war, the primary economic flywheel, it is necessary to assign concrete logistical values to each element of the war structure -- personnel and material alike. This process begins with a clear and candid description of the sub-systems of such a structure.

THE DRAFT (As military service)

Few efforts of human behavior modification are more remarkable or more effective than that of the socio-military institution known as the draft. A primary purpose of a draft or other such institution is to instill, by intimidation, in the young males of a society the uncritical conviction that the government is omnipotent. He is soon taught that a prayer is slow to reverse what a bullet can do in an instant.

Thus, a man trained in a religious environment for eighteen years of his life can, by this instrument of the government, be broken down, be purged of his fantasies and delusions in a matter of mere months. Once that conviction is instilled, all else becomes easy to instill.

Even more interesting is the process by which a young man's parents, who purportedly love him, can be induced to send him off to war to his death. Although the scope of this work will not allow this matter to be expanded in full detail, nevertheless, a course overview will be possible and can serve to reveal those factors which must be included in some numerical form in a computer analysis of social and war systems. We begin with a tentative definition of the draft.

The draft: (selective service, etc.) is an institution of compulsory collective sacrifice and slavery, devised by the middle aged and the elderly for the purpose of pressing the young into doing the public dirty work. It further serves to make the youth as guilty as the elders, thus making criticism of the elders by the youth less likely (Generational Stabilizer). It is marketed and sold to the public under the label of "patriotic - national" service. Once a candid economic definition of the draft is achieved, that definition is used to outline the boundaries of a structure called a Human Value System, which in turn is translated into the terms of game theory. The value of such a slave laborer is given in a Table of Human Values, a table broken down into categories by intellect, experience, post service job demand, etc.. Some of these categories are ordinary and can be tentatively evaluated in terms of the value of certain jobs for which a known fee exists. Some jobs are harder to value because they are unique to the demands of social subversion, for an extreme example: the value of a mother's instruction to her daughter causing that daughter to put certain behavioral demands upon a future husband, ten or fifteen years hence, thus, by suppressing his resistance to a perversion of a government, making it easier for a banking cartel to buy the State of New York in, say, twenty years. Such a problem leans heavily upon the observations and the data of wartime espionage and many types of psychological testing. But crude mathematical models (algorithms, etc.) can be devised, if not to predict, at least to predetermine theme events with maximum certainty. What does not exist by natural cooperation is thus enhanced by calculated compulsion. Human beings are machines, levers which may be grasped and turned, and there is little real difference between automating a society and automating a shoe factory. These derived values are variable. (It is necessary to use a current Table of Human Values for computer analysis.) These values are given in true measure rather than U.S. dollars, since the latter is unstable, being presently inflated beyond the production of national goods and services so as to give the economy a false kinetic energy ('paper' inductance). The silver value is stable, it being possible to buy the same amount with a gram of silver today as could be bought in 1920. Human value measured in silver units changes slightly due to changes in production technology.

ENFORCEMENT FACTOR I

As in every social system approach, stability is achieved only by understanding and accounting for human nature (action/reaction patterns). A failure to do so can be, and usually is, disastrous. As in other human social schemes, one for or another of intimidation (or incentive) is essential to the success of the draft. Physical principles of action and reaction must be applied to both internal and external sub-systems. To secure the draft, individual brainwashing/programming and both the family unit and the peer group must be engaged and brought under control.

FACTOR II FATHER

The man of the household must be house-broken to ensure that junior will grow up with the right social training and attitudes. The advertising media, etc., are engaged to see to it that father-to-be is pussy-whipped before or by the time he is married. He is taught that he either conforms to the social notch out for him or his sex life will be hobbled and his tender companionship will be zero. He is made to see that women demand security more than logical, principled, or honorable behavior. By the time his son must go to war, father (with jelly for a back bone) will slam a gun into junior's hand before father will risk the censure of his peers, or make a hypocrite of himself by crossing the investment he has in his own personal opinion or self-esteem. Junior will go to war or father will be embarrassed. So junior will go to war, the true purpose of the war notwithstanding.

FACTOR III MOTHER

The female element of human society is ruled by emotion first and logic second. In the battle between logic and imagination, imagination always wins, fantasy prevails, maternal instinct dominates so that the child comes first and the future comes second. A woman with a newborn baby is too starry-eyed to see a wealthy man's cannon fodder or a cheap source of slave labor. A woman must, however, be conditioned to accept the transition to "reality" when it comes, or sooner. As the transition becomes more difficult to manage, the family unit must be carefully disintegrated, and state controlled public education and state operated child care centers must become more common and legally enforced so as to begin the detachment of the child from the mother and the father at an earlier age. Inoculation of behavioral drugs can speed the transition for the child (mandatory).

CAUTION: A woman's impulsive anger can override her fear. An irate woman's power must never be underestimated, and her power over a pussy-whipped husband must likewise never be underestimated. It got women the vote in 1920.

FACTOR IV JUNIOR

The emotional pressure for self-preservation during time of war and the self-serving attitude of the common herd that have an option to avoid the battlefield -- if junior can be persuaded to go -- is all of the pressure finally necessary to propel Johnny off to war. Their quiet black mailings of him are the threats: "No sacrifice, no friends; no glory, no girlfriends."

FACTOR V SISTER

And what about junior's sister? She is given all the good things of life by her father, and taught to expect the same from her future husband regardless of the price.

FACTOR VI CATTLE

Those who will not use their brains are not better off than those who have no brains, and so this mindless school of jellyfish, father, mother, son, and daughter, become useful beasts of burden or trainers of the same.”

This concludes what is available (and what was found) of this government document.