Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts

Thursday, April 13, 2017

When “incidental” intel collection—isn’t incidental

The following is a news analysis. I’ve spoken to a small group of reliable, formerly high-placed intelligence officials who have dropped a few interesting tidbits on me of late. Here’s my understanding, based on the discussions:  It’s not true that wiretaps and/or electronic surveillance of U.S. citizens can “only” be done with a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court order.  Besides the FISA court, “wiretapping” or electronic surveillance can also be done under Title III authority. The government used this authority, for example, in the Justice Department’s secret Fast and Furious “gunwalking” case.  Additionally, U.S. Presidents have the power to issue secret presidential directives that can authorize otherwise illegal acts (theoretically in the country’s best interests). These directives may come with pre-planned cover stories to be used in the event the operation is exposed, and they come with indemnity for those involved, giving them permission to lie about the operation or their involvement without fear of prosecution.  The public will rarely know about such presidential directives since most who see them must sign agreements that promise nondisclosure and consent to polygraphs.  Computer surveillance is a gray area in the intelligence community where many insiders argue the traditional privacy restrictions and surveillance rules don’t necessarily apply.  The term “wiretapping” is used in a general sense to refer to electronic eavesdropping, even though the actual “tapping” of “wires” is not routinely necessary with today’s technology. Telekom Malaysia technician wiretaps a serving area interface. Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas  Surveillance of domestic communications can be conducted in international waters where U.S. law doesn’t apply. A U.S. submarine at sea.  There are “back-door” ways to collect and report on a target without Title III or FISA court authority. If it’s for political purposes or blackmail, this may consist of “inventing” an excuse to surveil the target.  If the work of targeting an individual cannot be accomplished by government intel officers, it can be contracted out to third parties or to foreign parties who aren’t bound by U.S. law.  Incidental collection of a U.S. citizen target may be “orchestrated” for political reasons by those who have tools and tradecraft available to them because of their positions of power. There are ways to do it with no fingerprints. For example: 1. Locate a foreign target already under CIA surveillance. 2. Have a government agent use the foreign target’s phone and/or computer to make it look like the foreigner contacted the U.S. citizen whose communications are sought. The contacts can be benign, but they establish a record that falsely implies a relationship exists between the U.S. citizen and the foreign target. 3. The government agent can also mimic a communication back from the U.S. citizen to the foreign target, creating an appearance that the U.S. citizen-initiated contacts. This could be favorable to justifying a warrant on the U.S. citizen later. 4. The U.S. citizen is now tied to the foreign entity and is now an “incidental” collection target that can be surveilled in a “masked” format. Although “masked,” the surveilling agency knows the U.S. citizen’s identity. 5. If the U.S. citizen does anything that can be construed as illegal or suspicious, it’s possible the intel agency can then receive approval to surveil him directly rather than only “incidentally.”  Possibly inappropriate requests to “unmask” names of U.S. citizens captured during surveillance of a foreign target may be preceded by a chain of communications intended to provide a pretense or cover story to justify the unmasking. Watch Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson Sundays on TV and online. Preorder The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, How You Feel, What You Think and How You Vote.

Watch: Fullmeasure.news/sunday-april-9-2017

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Hidden in plain sight. World Trade Center







8:46:40: Flight 11 crashes at roughly 490 mph (790 km/h) into the north side of the north tower of the World Trade Center, between floors 94 and 98. The aircraft enters the tower mostly intact. It plows to the building core, severing all three gypsum-encased stairwells, dragging combustibles with it. A massive shock wave travels down to the ground and up again. The combustibles and the remnants of the aircraft are ignited by the burning fuel. Since the building lacks a traditional full cage frame and depends almost entirely on the strength of a narrow structural core running up the center, the fire at the center of the impact zone is in a position to compromise the integrity of all internal columns. Two home video cameras are known to have recorded the impact. People below the severed stairwells in the north tower start to evacuate; no-one above the impact zone is able to do so.

See More: http://wtc911.us/wtc_911_facts.html

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Mike Morell Past CIA Director Tells Obama's Involvment With ISIS


Tyranny: Obama Announcing Gun Control Executive Order





It is happening. Barack Obama is dangerously close to enacting an executive order that completely flouts the law and puts a whole new background check requirement on law abiding Americans.
Last week, the Democrats again tried to force a vote on a gun registration bill. Because world history has shown that registration precedes confiscation 100% of the time in Western Democracies, the Republicans voted it down. It happened in Australia, in the United Kingdom, and confiscation is currently being debated in the European Union. The Republicans have always said that a gun registration bill is automatically off the table.
Now, Obama is angry. So angry, in fact, that he is just days away from announcing the most sweeping executive order yet.
The Los Angeles Times – hardly a Conservative paper – is reporting that the San Bernardino terror attack will be the launching point for Barack Obama’s latest gun control executive order to force all gun purchases and transfers to be recorded with the Federal government.
Not only would this be in clear violation of the Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994, which outlines our background check system, but it would also be a clear violation of the Firearm Owner Protection Act of 1986 which explicitly prohibits the Federal government from keeping an active registry of American gun owners.
The executive order that the White House is poised to announce is not only illegal, but it is completely unconstitutional. When the Founding Fathers warned of tyranny, this is what they were talking about. When they said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, this is what they warned you to watch out for!
So what are we going to do about it? We are going to raise hell. We are going to put more resources into stopping this horrible executive order than we ever have.
Our fax system is unlike anything out there in the country. It allows you to instantly contact your Congressman and Senators in a tangible way. Emails get deleted. Phone calls get ignored. But every fax, by law, has to be printed out in Congressional offices. It’s impossible to ignore us when the faxes are piled up to the ceiling!
But we need your help!
The hour is upon us. Right now, the Obama administration is crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s on an executive order to start the process towards nation-wide gun confiscation!
This is happening now. We don’t get to choose our battles. As the Constitution’s last line of defense, we have a civic obligation to fight any and every manifestation of government tyranny.

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Flight 7K9268 Downed…Shot Down, The Truth Exposed






 Flight 7K9268 Downed…Shot Down, The Truth Exposed

The soldiers of the caliphate succeeded in bringing down a Russian plane in Sinai.”
– ISIS statement claiming responsibility for the take down of KGL Flight 7K9268

Russia is a country now in the throws of mourning after last Saturday’s crash of Russian operated Kogalymavia (KGL) Flight 7K9268…the worst aviation disaster in Russian history. The Russian Airbus A321, just 23 minutes into its journey back to St. Petersburg from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, crashed into a mountainous area near Wadi al-Zolomat in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula after losing radar contact at 31,000 feet. Killed were all 217 passengers and seven crew members on board, with wreckage spread out over more than eight square miles of desert…desert that holy men once tread upon. Russian airline Kogalymavia
operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia

And while leaders in Moscow and Cairo have been adamant that the jet’s downing was an accident, the fact remains that within hours of the crash a Sinai-based EgKGL 9yptian militant group…ISIS in the Sinai…claimed it had shot down the plane as payback for both Russia’s military intervention in Syria and for Vladimir Putin’s aligning with President Bashar al-Assad against the anything but ‘so called’ moderate rebels, thus verbally cemented what we have always said were the ties between said rebels and ISIS itself.

And now some ‘so-called’ government aviation experts…experts who were NOT on-scene yet who insist that the plane was NOT hit from the outside…ignore the fact that cockpit recordings revealed what were “uncharacteristic sounds” for a routine flight in the moments before the plane disappeared from radar…disappeared when just just four minutes before a routine exchange occurred between the crew and air traffic control with no unusual conversation following said exchange.

Still believing that it was either a bomb in the cargo hold set on a timer or on an altitude sensitive device…or that it was a breech of one of the fuel tanks that brought the plane down…the undisputed fact remains that a U.S. satellite picked up heat flashes both at the exact moment the Russian airliner crashed as well as heat flashes emanating from the area the plane was in before it crashed. And those flashes point to a fact either innocently overlooked or more likely to a truth that must not get out. And, we believe that truth to be, contrary to both public opinion and to what the media wants us to believe, that a missile did indeed bring down KGL Flight 7K9268.

kgl 3And here folks is why we believe so.

In photo 1, a still frame lifted directly from the video released by ISIS, you see the plane intact one second before it exploded. In photo 2, lifted from the same video, you see the plane still intact ½ second before it exploded. In photo 3, maybe a 50th to a100th of a second before the actual explosion, notice the heavy dark perfectly shaped rectangular blur below the left wing that was not there a millisecond before…that folks is a projectile hitting the plane. In photo 4, you see the exact moment of impact and the vertical disc-shaped explosion itself along with a graduating halo emanating from the point of impact. And these photos are only the first part of our proof that this plane was indeed taken down by a missile.

Please also take a look at the actual ISIS video  (before it’s taken down) and pay close attention to ‘second 4’ and you will see the still we posted. Also remember that an ISIS fighter had his cell phone video running as he was looking up, tracking, and recording this specific plane as it was flying overhead…as if he was waiting for something to happen because he knew something would be happening. And this means he knew both the flight path and the flight timing, therefore, logic dictates that this man was instructed to record this specific explosion to show the world that ISIS is a true force to be reckoned with.

And giving more credence to our above stated scenario is part 2 of our proof… three critical but hushed-up bits of information…information that has been confirmed by medical investigators on scene. First, it has confirmed that neither the debris field itself nor the recovered bodies had any explosive residue on them, and the reason there is no residue on the bodies is because the missile hit was near where the wing joined the body, basically leaving the body itself intact…meaning the people would have no explosive residue on them as the passenger cabin itself was not breached. Now couple that with the fact that if the crash was caused by an explosion in the cargo hold bomb residue would still show up on at least the bodies nearest the detonation site…as in those sitting over the cargo hold, and again no residue has shown up on any of the bodies recovered and most of the bodies have already been recovered.

And if a detonation of the magnitude that would have caused a fuel tank rupture and KGL 4subsequent explosion occurred, the fact is that said explosion would have quickly engulfed the entire plane turning it into a fireball of sorts burning up everything and everyone in sight…and with only one in five of bodies recovered being burned… some burned so badly that DNA testing will be needed to determine who they are…why then did the majority of bodies recovered show not a sign of being burnt.

The second critical bit of information is that the bodies recovered that were found burned were burned ‘ante-mortem’…meaning the burns they incurred happened before actual death and before the plane hit the ground…again with NO explosive residue found anywhere on them as would be if a bomb went off inside the plane as opposed to the plane being hit on the outside. And the third critical piece of information is that this past Tuesday, Alexander Smirnov, a Metrojet (the parent company of KGL) official, ruled out both technical issues or pilot error as the cause of the crash, saying instead that it was due to “an external impact on the plane”…and notice the word ‘external.’

The last part of our proof involves certain facts that will make some in the reKGL 7gime quite uncomfortable. First, in 2014 U.S. intel sources first suspected that ISIS had garnered surface-to-air missile capability. That was when ISIS claimed to have shot down an Iraqi helicopter and then last July, ISIS released photos showing one of their fighters firing a shoulder mounted SAM or MANPAD, however, the MANPAD system cannot reach the 31,000 foot altitude of the Russian airliner in question. It would take a rather sophisticated system, a radar guided, truck, or transport mounted system like the Russian S-200 to do so, and there have been reports that Russian surface-to-air missiles went missing after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 back in July 2014. Remember, that jet was shot down over Ukrainian airspace by a group of Russian separatists who used a Buk surface-to-air 9M38 series missile which is capable of reaching planes flying at an altitude of 31,000 feet.

Also, a key fact that again the regime wants kept hidden at all cost is that 400 hundred American surface-to-air missiles were ‘taken’…if you will…from Libya during the terror KGL 8attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi…400 missiles that the military admitted were capable of bringing down jetliners. According to Joe diGenova, a former U.S. Attorney who represented Benghazi whistleblowers… whistleblowers who were privy to information about the government’s response during and after the Benghazi terror attack, the loss of those missiles was one the main reasons the U.S. State Department shut down 19 embassies across the Middle East after the Benghazi attack. “We have learned that one of the reasons the administration is so deeply concerned’ is that ‘there were 400 surface-to-air missiles stolen, and that they are…in the hands of many people, and that the biggest fear in the U.S. intelligence community is that one of these missiles will be used to shoot down an airliner,” diGenova said on the ‘Mornings in the Mall’ radio program soon after the attack. And when asked if the missiles were now in the hands of al-Qaeda operatives, DiGenova replied, “That is what these people (the whistleblowers) are telling us.”

And from al-Qaeda to ISIS is but a hop, skip, and a jump.

Remember, too, that ISIS has for some time claimed the ability to shoot down passenger jets and we don’t know exactly what sort of weapons, of that nature, ISIS has in their KGL 6possession, but they could very well have some of the still missing 400 missiles taken from Benghazi or one or two of the suspected missing Russian S-200 surface-to-air missiles. But what we do know as fact is that ISIS is in possession of many weapons we left in Iraq when Obama ordered the hasty pull-out, and when coupled with the fact that after the overthrow of Gaddafi many weapons in his possession made their way to Libyan ‘so-called’ rebels courtesy of the Obama regime…rebels now aligned with ISIS…it must be taken seriously when ISIS makes claims of having the capability of bringing down passenger jets…especially now when it’s ‘ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula’ doing the talking.

But as if on cue to divert us from this truth, comes the theory de-jour that the media wants us to buy into…a theory that a suicide bomber somehow got passed Egyptian security personnel and carried a bomb onto the plane. But again with no bomb residue having been found this scenario gets negated as well. But no matter which scenario you want to believe, the truth is that ISIS is indeed the culprit behind this horrific act. And with that being the case, Vladimir Putin is put in a difficult position because it means 224 Russian citizens were targeted solely to punish Putin for his intervention into the Syrian civil war.

To be sure, there are numerous theories circulating regarding how Flight 7K9268 met its kgl 10end ranging from mechanical failure, a bomb in the cargo hold, a bomb in the passenger compartment, a fuel tank rupture and our theory that it was a missile, as evidenced by what we can see in the video. A bomb in the cargo hold would have caused severe damage to luggage and yet, photos from the debris field show piles of completely intact luggage. A bomb detonated from within the passenger cabin would have done severe damage to bodies as well as leaving explosive residue on said bodies when, in fact, no such residue has been discovered, and aside from a few heavily damaged and dismembered bodies most likely caused by the actual impact, most bodies recovered were intact and showed no evidence of being burned.

And now even Vladmir Putin is backing off his previous statements that terrorism was to blame but why? Is he concerned how it would play at home should it be discovered that a stolen Russian-made missile, in the hands of ISIS, brought that plane down or could he have rethought his initial plan to launch tactical nukes at ISIS in retaliation, perhaps because some of his allies are having second thoughts about backing such a strike and Putin needs a face-saving reason not to do it?

Whatever the case, this is beginning to smell of cover-up, but the video, with that vertical blur a blink of an eye before the plane explodes, speaks voluKGL 5mes.

And while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov continues to claim that it is “inappropriate” to link the crash to Russia’s military strategy in Syria, the fact is that innocent lives were lost, and that unlike with the case of Obama who has failed to take any serious action against ISIS at all, Vladimir Putin will indeed avenge those deaths and will do so sooner rather than later…and we can assure you his rightful revenge will not be pretty…not pretty indeed.

Contributors,  Craig Andresen, Diane Sori of the Right Side Patriots and the Red Pill Global

Monday, November 2, 2015

If you don't know how a Russian/Egypt Airbus could be shot down, you are not paying attention!


If you remember Obama is wanted the down fall of Bashar al-Assad in the worst way. Obama really wasn't doing much about ISIS until Putin forced his hand. Now the Obama administration is trying to cover his track by putting troops on the ground. Obama wanted to help the moderates and now fight ISIS. Do you know where ISIS may have got the weapons to shoot down Airbus. I'll give you one clue. It is the same game Obama and Hillary played in Libya.
What the attached segment and see if you can strategic possibilities . And don't think for a minute Russia and Egypt are not already discussing this. My contention, as well as others was that Obama was helping ISIS and the moderates to over throw Assad. We may have to except what Putin eventually says as the truth, because we sure as hell can't believe Washington

Watch the attached segment and see what you think!  LINK

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Vladimir Putin accuses US of backing terrorism in Middle East






Russian president tells gathering of politicians that Washington is playing a ‘double game’ and acting in self-interest

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has launched a stinging attack on US policy in the Middle East, accusing Washington of backing terrorism and playing a “double game”.

In a speech on Thursday at the annual gathering of the Valdai Club, a group of Russian and international analysts and politicians, Putin said the US had attempted to use terrorist groups as “a battering ram to overthrow regimes they don’t like”.

He said: “It’s always hard to play a double game – to declare a fight against terrorists but at the same time try to use some of them to move the pieces on the Middle Eastern chessboard in your own favour. There’s no need to play with words and split terrorists into moderate and not moderate. I would like to know what the difference is.”

Western capitals have accused Moscow of targeting moderate rebel groups during its bombing campaign in Syria, which Russia says is mainly aimed at targets linked to Islamic State. However, Putin’s talk of “playing with words” and other statements by government officials suggest Moscow believes all armed opposition to Bashar al-Assad is a legitimate target.

Putin received Assad at the Kremlin on Tuesday, and on Thursday he underlined that he considered the Syrian president and his government to be “fully legitimate”. He said the west was guilty of shortsightedness, focusing on the figure of Assad while ignoring the much greater threat of Isis.

“The so-called Islamic State [Isis] has taken control of a huge territory. How was that possible? Think about it: if Damascus or Baghdad are seized by the terrorist groups, they will be almost the official authorities, and will have a launchpad for global expansion. Is anyone thinking about this or not?”

He added: “Fifty years ago, the streets of Leningrad taught me that if a fight is inevitable, you have to hit first.”

Putin said it was “incorrect” to discuss whether or not Assad should step down, but said there was a need for dialogue.

“As far as I understand from my discussion with Assad, he’s ready for this,” said the Russian leader.

Putin said he asked Assad how he would react if Russia “found armed opposition groups who are really ready to fight terrorists” in Syria and decided to support them. Assad responded positively, according to Putin.

Asked how he saw the future of Syria and whether partition of the country could be an eventual solution, Putin said: “This would be the worst and most unacceptable option, and will not lead to the conflict being solved. It will make it worse and give it a permanent character. If you split the country into different parts they will fight among themselves forever, it will be unavoidable.”

This year the Valdai Club met at a luxury hotel in the mountain resort of Krasnaya Polyana, one of the venues for last year’s Winter Olympics. Putin arrived at the venue in a bright green Lada, part of an effort to promote the domestic car industry. He arrived late, keeping the assembled delegates waiting for nearly two hours before speaking.

A survey released on Thursday suggested that Putin’s approval rating had hit a record high of almost 90%, boosted by the Syrian air strikes. His rating was 58.8% in January 2012 before a crackdown on opposition and the annexation of Crimea.

“Such a high level of approval for the work of the Russian president is linked, in the first instance, to events in Syria, to Russian airstrikes on terrorist positions there,” said the stat-run polling agency VTsIOM.

On the sidelines of the Valdai Club conference, Russia’s ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, said the “only logical way” to explain Britain’s behaviour in Iraq and Syria was a desire that Isis would depose Assad.

“The idea was to remove Assad using force, and to use force to seize Damascus. I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but this is the only way to explain why de facto neither Britain nor the US has ever properly fought against Isis,” Yakovenko said.

He said with the number of airstrikes Britain had carried out in Iraq, “you could have destroyed the whole region”, but instead Isis had only grown in strength.

An analysis by Reuters of Russian defence ministry data showed this week that almost 80% of Russia’s declared targets in Syria have been in areas not held by Isis. Yakovenko said he had a meeting at the Foreign Office in London last week in which he asked for intelligence to be shared on the location of Isis targets in Syria, but was rejected. He also asked for information on the Free Syrian Army.

“We are looking closely at the Syrian Free Army. We understand there is not a single command centre, and that some of these divisions have different goals. But if among the FSA there are divisions that are really ready to fight with Isis, who is our main enemy in Syria, and if you think there are people or commanders or other contacts which could be useful and to cooperate with them, we would be grateful for such information,” he said. “We were again rejected.”

Source/Contributors

Thursday, October 15, 2015

CIA Officer Clair Lopez: Obama is a Muslim Terrorist with Brotherhood Ties to Take Down USA



Clare Lopez is a former CIA officer, and she is risking her professional career to call out President Barack Obama in the biggest way possible.
Lopez is well respected in the intelligence community and worked in the Reagan White House. After two decades in the field with the CIA, and as an instructor for special forces and intelligence students, Lopez is now with the Center for Security Policy managing the counter-jihad and Shariah programs.
Now, she is claiming Obama is why America has completely “switched sides” during the war on terrorism. America is now supporting the enemy, especially through the Muslim Brotherhood.
Lopez has been unwilling to speak in public, but has confined with a few members of the House of Representatives her serious concerns about Obama’s motivations about foreign policy decisions.
Lopez noted that the war on terrorism has always been about stopping the spread of Shariah Islamic law, until Obama started to make major changes which clearly supported the Muslim Brotherhood’s jihadist interests.
She said the global war on terror had been an effort to “stay free of Shariah,” or repressive Islamic law, until the Obama administration began siding with such jihadist groups as the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates.
The transition was easy for Obama, who already hates American values and principles as an ideologically radical…
Why the switch?
Lopez explained, when the so-called Arab Spring appeared in late 2010, “It was time to bring down the secular Muslim rulers who did not enforce Islamic law. And America helped.”
And why would Obama want to do that?
As she told WND earlier this month, Lopez believed the Muslim Brotherhood has thoroughly infiltrated the Obama administration and other branches of the federal government.
She also came to the conclusion Obama had essentially the same goals in the Mideast as the late Osama bin Laden: “to remove American power and influence, including military forces, from Islamic lands.”
And,
The former CIA operative said, “as Israel fought enemies on all sides to remain free, secure and Jewish, America began to move away from Israel and toward its Muslim enemies. And, as Iran moved inexorably toward a deliverable nuclear weapons capability, America helped.”
In addition, Lopez claims that the only reason Obama approved of the killing of Osama bin Laden is he simply couldn’t ignore the chance without looking suspicious. The opportunity presented himself, and he “couldn’t delay it any longer.”
Please share this post with friends on Facebook and Twitter. Every patriot should learn just what side our President is on!

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Embarrassed in Syria, West Blames Russia for MH17, How Convenient!

If you cannot see how obviously suspicious the timing of the release of this report is, we have some ocean front property, at bargain basement prices, with your name on it.
Today, the Dutch Safety Board released a report blaming a ‘Russian-made BUK missile’ as the cause of the destruction of MH17.

However, they begrudgingly admit that they cannot say who fired the missile.

As we mentioned above, the timing of the release of this report is more than suspicious…

Russia has just dramatically embarrassed the West in Syria, destroying 40% of the terrorist infrastructure in just one week and causing a terrorist exodus.

Its release comes alongside comments from ‘anonymous officials’ that CIA-backed rebel fighters were making progress before the Russian air campaign. Therefore, it fits into a continuing narrative seeking to demonise Russia that has gone into overdrive since the successful Russian intervention in Syria began.

Is everything Russia’s fault these days?

Western outlets have been quick to report that Russia now needs ‘to fully cooperate with the criminal investigation‘, but have mostly omitted the arguments Russian evidence on the disaster has been ignored.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s Press Secretary, told journalists “there are facts delivered by the Russian side that, for unclear reasons, are being apparently ignored“. He says Russia has “repeatedly expressed its disappointment over the lack of proper level of cooperation and engagement of the Russian experts into the investigation.”

The deputy head of Roasaviation, Oleg Storchevoy, wrote a letter to the International Civil Aviation Association claiming that “comprehensive information delivered by Russia“, and the “basic principle of investigating air incidents – sequence of conclusions” had both been entirely ignored.

He posits that the ‘official’ investigators, “immediately jumped to conclusions and blamed a BUK missile“, without offering any hard evidence.

Here is the problem with Western logic: if Russia is to blame for the acts of ‘Russian-backed rebels’ in Ukraine, then why isn’t the West also blaming itself for the atrocities of ‘Western-backed rebels’ in Syria?

If ‘moderate rebels’ or terrorists in Syria or Northern Iraq shoot-down an airliner with US-supplied weapons, then who can the West blame?



See also: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article38909454.html

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Steven Seagal: Mass Shootings in the US are "Engineered"



http://theredpill.global
There are few issues right now more contentious than gun control. One of these issues happens to be “false flag” operations. Actor Steven Seagal has previously sounded off on both. In an interview with RT, the action star-turned second amendment fundamentalist claimed “a lot” of domestic shootings in America were “engineered” in order to drum up support for gun control legislation.





In the video, Steven Seagal speaks forthrightly about his belief that there is a concerted effort by the government to violate our rights as part of an assault on the constitution:

“I believe in the second amendment and our constitution more than anything in the world, and I think that Adolf Hitler – for example — when he wanted to annihilate the people of Germany — the first thing he did was to take away their guns.

And the right to bear arms wasn’t just to protect the people from foreign invaders, it was to protect them from evil governments, and anyone that would violate their inherited rights as human beings.”

He continues, “I believe that, and I hate to say this, a lot of these mass murders and all this funny stuff that’s going on, I believe a lot of this is engineered.”

The conspiracy theory surrounding domestic false flag shootings conjures intense emotions on both sides. “Truthers” claim the government uses either CIA operatives or patsies controlled by MKULTRA style psyops in order to foment violence so abhorrent that Americans will be forced to embrace gun control legislation. They believe the end-game of such an insidious scheme is to disarm the general population in advance of extensive martial law or indefinite FEMA detention.

Whether any of this theory is true or not is endlessly debatable but highly unlikely. Theorists who claim every mass shooting is a government conspiracy — without providing concrete proof — detract from the documented fact that governments do partake in conspiracies and false flag operations.

However, while the mechanism by which domestic shootings could be “engineered” is still unknown, the MKULTRA program is an established historical fact. Researchers are still uncovering CIA connections from this time period, but we do know experimental subjects included Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.

http://theredpill.global


Friday, October 2, 2015

What Obama forgot to mention, Oregon gunman singled out Christians during rampage

Oregon gunman singled out Christians during rampage

October 1, 2015 OREGON COLLEGE 2015.jpg
The gunman who opened fire at an Oregon community college was forcing people to stand up and state their religion before he began blasting away at them, survivors said Thursday.
A woman who claimed to have a grandmother inside a writing class in Snyder Hall, where a portion the massacre unfolded, described the scene in a tweet.
"The shooter was lining people up and asking if they were Christian," she wrote. "If they said yes, then they were shot in the head. If they said no, or didn't answer, they were shot in the legs. My grandma just got to my house, and she was in the room. She wasn't shot, but she is very upset.
The Twitter user then recalled how her grandmother attempted to save the life of one of her close classmates.
"She tried to perform CPR on her friend, but it was too late," the woman said. "I hope nothing like this ever happens again."
Kortney Moore, an 18-year-old student at Umpqua Community College who was also in the room, told Oregon's News Review that the shooter was indeed on the hunt for Christians.
Moments after hearing a bullet come flying through a window, she said the 20-year-old shooter made his way inside and targeted their teacher, pumping a single round into their head.
As the young man ordered people to the ground, Moore laid patiently with her classmates and waited, according to the News Review.
Once they all got down, she said the gunman began asking people to rise and say what their religion was. After they stood and gave their answer, he started shooting.

Argentinian President addresses UN with claims about the Obama Administration



The President of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, spoke for nearly forty minutes at the United Nation’s 70th General Assembly Monday, during which time she provided to attendees a shocking tidbit of information.
During her speech President Kirchner said that Gary Samore, former White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction under the Obama Administration until 2013, approached Argentinians in 2010 trying to convince them to provide Iranians with nuclear fuel — a claim that Samore didn’t bother to deny.
President Kirchner told the UN:
In 2010 we were visited in Argentina by Gary Samore, at that time the White House’s top advisor in nuclear issues. He came to see us in Argentina with a mission, with an objective: under the control of IAEA, the international organization in the field of weapons control and nuclear regulation, Argentina had supplied in the year 1987, during the first democratic government, the nuclear fuel for the reactor known as “Teheran”. Gary Samore had explained to our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Héctor Timerman, that negotiations were underway for the Islamic Republic of Iran to cease with its uranium enrichment activities or to do it to a lesser extent but Iran claimed that it needed to enrich this Teheran nuclear reactor and this was hindering negotiations. They came to ask us, Argentines, to provide the Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear fuel. Rohani was not in office yet. It was Ahmadinejad’s administration and negotiations had already started.
You see according to the Belfer Center as a WMD Coordinator, Samore, “served as the principal advisor to the President on all matters relating to arms control and the prevention of weapons of mass destruction proliferation and WMD terrorism, and coordinated United States government activities, initiatives, and programs to prevent proliferation and WMD terrorism and promote international arms control efforts.” So you can clearly see how if the allegations President Kirchner made are true there is a definite conflict of interest here.
Let me reiterate this — a former Obama Admin. Official, Gary Samore, has been accused of trying to facilitate a secret deal for the Iranians to obtain nuclear fuel! Moreover when the Argentinians requested that the deal be put into writing Samore backed out later approaching agents of several other countries seeking a similar deal.
Ladies and gentlemen, if true, this can only mean one thing; that the Obama Admin was, and possibly still is, trying to actively arm Iran making them nuclear capable. And if that’s the case, which we may never know for sure, we can go even one step further and say that Samore’s actions may have been an attempt by the Obama Admin to conjure up another 9/11 on U.S. soil — this time in the form of a mushroom cloud.

Also see  World Leaders Ask America To Impeach Obama for THIS

Source/Contributor 




Thursday, October 1, 2015

Shooter said "lay on the ground and state your religion" 13 Dead and 20 Wounded Shooting, Live channel

Shooter said "lay on the ground and state your religion"

The "pundits" are already digging in. Let's count and see how many stories they report the next 2 weeks that prove to be wrong. Hey, forget about Russia, the Iran deal, Hillary, abortion, Syria, Iran, ISIS! Another false flag?










Sunday, September 27, 2015

The CIA and the Media: 50 Historical Facts the World Needs to Know

media-cia
Since the end of World War Two the Central Intelligence Agency has been a major force in US and foreign news media, exerting considerable influence over what the public sees, hears and reads on a regular basis. CIA publicists and journalists alike will assert they have few, if any, relationships, yet the seldom acknowledged history of their intimate collaboration indicates a far different story–indeed, one that media historians are reluctant to examine.
Kennedy_CIAWhen seriously practiced, the journalistic profession involves gathering information concerning individuals, locales, events, and issues. In theory such information informs people about their world, thereby strengthening “democracy.” This is exactly why reason news organizations and individual journalists are tapped as assets by intelligence agencies and, as German the experiences of journalist Udo Ulfkotte (entry 47 below) suggest, this practice is at least as widespread today as it was at the height of the Cold War.
Consider the coverups of election fraud in 2000 and 2004, the events of September 11, 2001, the invasions Afghanistan and Iraq, the destabilization of Syria, and the creation of “ISIS.” These are among the most significant events in recent world history, and yet they are also those much of the American public is wholly ignorant of. In an era where information and communication technologies are ubiquitous, prompting many to harbor the illusion of being well-informed, one must ask why this condition persists.
Further, why do prominent US journalists routinely fail to question other deep events that shape America’s tragic history over the past half century, such as the political assassinations of the 1960s, or the central role played by the CIA major role in international drug trafficking?
Popular and academic commentators have suggested various reasons for the almost universal failure of mainstream journalism in these areas, including newsroom sociology, advertising pressure, monopoly ownership, news organizations’ heavy reliance on “official” sources, and journalists’ simple quest for career advancement. There is also, no doubt, the influence of professional public relations maneuvers. Yet such a broad conspiracy of silence suggests another province of deception examined far too infrequently—specifically the CIA and similar intelligence agencies’ continued involvement in the news media to mold thought and opinion in ways scarcely imagined by the lay public.
The following historical and contemporary facts–by no means exhaustive–provides a glimpse of how the power such entities possess to influence if not determine popular memory and what respectable institutions deem to be the historical record.
  1. The CIA’s Operation MOCKINGBIRD is a long-recognised keystone among researchers pointing to the Agency’s clear interest in and relationship to major US news media. MOCKINGBIRD grew out of the CIA’s forerunner, the Office for Strategic Services (OSS, 1942-47), which during World War Two had established a network of journalists and psychological warfare experts operating primarily in the European theatre.
  2. Many of the relationships forged under OSS auspices were carried over into the postwar era through a State Department-run organization called the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) overseen by OSS staffer Frank Wisner.
  3. The OPC “became the fastest-growing unit within the nascent CIA,” historian Lisa Pease observes, “rising in personnel from 302 in 1949 to 2,812 in 1952, along with 3,142 overseas contract personnel. In the same period, the budget rose from $4.7 million to $82 million.” Lisa Pease, “The Media and the Assassination,” in James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X, Port Townsend, WA, 2003, 300.
  4. Like many career CIA officers, eventual CIA Director/Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms was recruited out of the press corps by his own supervisor at the United Press International’s Berlin Bureau to join in the OSS’s fledgling “black propaganda” program. “‘[Y]ou’re a natural,” Helms’ boss remarked. Richard Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency, New York: Random House, 2003, 30-31.
  5. Wisner tapped Marshall Plan funds to pay for his division’s early exploits, money his branch referred to as “candy.” “We couldn’t spend it all,” CIA agent Gilbert Greenway recalls. “I remember once meeting with Wisner and the comptroller. My God, I said, how can we spend that? There were no limits, and nobody had to account for it. It was amazing.” Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, New York: The New Press, 2000, 105.
  6. When the OPC was merged with the Office of Special Operations in 1948 to create the CIA, OPC’s media assets were likewise absorbed.
  7. Wisner maintained the top secret “Propaganda Assets Inventory,” better known as “Wisner’s Wurlitzer”—a virtual rolodex of over 800 news and information entities prepared to play whatever tune Wisner chose. “The network included journalists, columnists, book publishers, editors, entire organizations such as Radio Free Europe, and stringers across multiple news organizations.” Pease, “The Media and the Assassination,” 300.
  8. A few years after Wisner’s operation was up-and-running he “’owned’ respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS, and other communication vehicles, plus stringers, four to six hundred in all, according to a CIA analyst. Each one was a separate ‘operation,’” investigative journalist Deborah Davis notes, “requiring a code name, a field supervisor, and a field office, at an annual cost of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars—there has never been an accurate accounting.” Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and the Washington Post, Second Edition, Bethesda MD: National Press Inc, 1987, 139.
  9. Psychological operations in the form of journalism were perceived as necessary to influence and direct mass opinion, as well as elite perspectives. “[T]he President of the United States, the Secretary of State, Congressmen and even the Director of the CIA himself will read, believe, and be impressed by a report from Cy Sulzberger, Arnaud de Borchgrave, or Stewart Alsop when they don’t even bother to read a CIA report on the same subject,” noted CIA agent Miles Copeland. Cited in Pease, “The Media and the Assassination,” 301.
  10. By the mid-to-late 1950s, Darrell Garwood points out, the Agency sought to limit criticism directed against covert activity and bypass congressional oversight or potential judicial interference by “infiltrat[ing] the groves of academia, the missionary corps, the editorial boards of influential journal and book publishers, and any other quarters where public attitudes could be effectively influenced.” Darrell Garwood,Under Cover: Thirty-Five Years of CIA Deception, New York: Grove Press, 1985, 250.
  11. The CIA frequently intercedes in editorial decision-making. For example, when the Agency proceeded to wage an overthrow of the Arbenz regime in Guatemala in 1954, Allen and John Foster Dulles, President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State and CIA Director respectively, called upon New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger to reassign reporter Sydney Gruson from Guatemala to Mexico City. Sulzberger thus placed Gruson in Mexico City with the rationale that some repercussions from the revolution might be felt in Mexico. Pease, “The Media and the Assassination,” 302.
  12. Since the early 1950s the CIA “has secretly bankrolled numerous foreign press services, periodicals and newspapers—both English and foreign language—which provided excellent cover for CIA operatives,” Carl Bernstein reported in 1977. “One such publication was the Rome Daily American, forty percent of which was owned by the CIA until the 1970s.” Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media,” Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977.
  13. The CIA exercised informal liaisons with news media executives, in contrast to its relationships with salaried reporters and stringers, “who were much more subject to direction from the Agency” according to Bernstein. “A few executives—Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times among them—signed secrecy agreements. But such formal understandings were rare: relationships between Agency officials and media executives were usually social—’The P and Q Street axis in Georgetown,’ said one source. ‘You don’t tell William Paley to sign a piece of paper saying he won’t fink.’” Director of CBS William Paley’s personal “friendship with CIA Director Dulles is now known to have been one of the most influential and significant in the communications industry,” author Debora Davis explains. “He provided cover for CIA agents, supplied out-takes of news film, permitted the debriefing of reporters, and in many ways set the standard for the cooperation between the CIA and major broadcast companies which lasted until the mid-1970s.” Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and the Washington Post, Second Edition, Bethesda MD: National Press Inc, 1987, 175.
  14. “The Agency’s relationship with the Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials,” Bernstein points out in his key 1977 article. “From 1950 to 1966, about ten CIA employees were provided Times cover under arrangements approved by the newspaper’s late publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. The cover arrangements were part of a general Times policy—set by Sulzberger—to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible.” In addition, Sulzberger was a close friend of CIA Director Allen Dulles. “’At that level of contact it was the mighty talking to the mighty,’ said a high‑level CIA official who was present at some of the discussions. ‘There was an agreement in principle that, yes indeed, we would help each other. The question of cover came up on several occasions. It was agreed that the actual arrangements would be handled by subordinates…. The mighty didn’t want to know the specifics; they wanted plausible deniability.’” Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.”
  15. CBS’s Paley worked reciprocally with the CIA, allowing the Agency to utilize network resources and personnel. “It was a form of assistance that a number of wealthy persons are now generally known to have rendered the CIA through their private interests,” veteran broadcast journalist Daniel Schorr wrote in 1977. “It suggested to me, however, that a relationship of confidence and trust had existed between him and the agency.” Schorr points to “clues indicating that CBS had been infiltrated.” For example, “A news editor remembered the CIA officer who used to come to the radio control room in New York in the early morning, and, with the permission of persons unknown, listened to CBS correspondents around the world recording their ‘spots’ for the ‘World News Roundup’ and discussing events with the editor on duty. Sam Jaffe claimed that when he applied in 1955 for a job with CBS, a CIA officer told him that he would be hired–which he subsequently was. He was told that he would be sent to Moscow–which he subsequently was; he was assigned in 1960 to cover the trial of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. [Richard] Salant told me,” Schorr continues, “that when he first became president of CBS News in 1961, a CIA case officer called saying he wanted to continue the ‘long standing relationship known to Paley and [CBS president Frank] Stanton, but Salant was told by Stanton there was no obligation that he knew of” (276). Schorr, Daniel. Clearing the Air, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977, 277, 276.
  16. National Enquirer publisher Gene Pope Jr. worked briefly on the CIA’s Italy desk in the early 1950s and maintained close ties with the Agency thereafter. Pope refrained from publishing dozens of stories with “details of CIA kidnappings and murders, enough stuff for a year’s worth of headlines” in order to “collect chits, IOUs,” Pope’s son writes. “He figured he’d never know when he might need them, and those IOUs would come in handy when he got to 20 million circulation. When that happened, he’d have the voice to be almost his own branch of government and would need the cover.” Paul David Pope, The Deeds of My Fathers: How My Grandfather and Father Built New York and Created the Tabloid World of Today, New York: Phillip Turner/Rowman & Littlefield, 2010, 309, 310.
  17. One explosive story Pope’s National Enquirer‘s refrained from publishing in the late 1970s centered on excerpts from a long-sought after diary of President Kennedy’s lover, Mary Pinchot Meyer, who was murdered on October 12, 1964. “The reporters who wrote the story were even able to place James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s head of counterintelligence operations, at the scene.” Another potential story drew on “documents proving that [Howard] Hughes and the CIA had been connected for years and that the CIA was giving Hughes money to secretly fund, with campaign donations, twenty-seven congressmen and senators who sat on sub-committees critical to the agency. There are also fifty-three international companies named and sourced as CIA fronts .. and even a list of reporters for mainstream media organizations who were playing ball with the agency.” Pope, The Deeds of My Fathers, 309.
  18. Angleton, who oversaw the Agency counterintelligence branch for 25 years, “ran a completely independent group entirely separate cadre of journalist‑operatives who performed sensitive and frequently dangerous assignments; little is known about this group for the simple reason that Angleton deliberately kept only the vaguest of files.” Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.”
  19. The CIA conducted a “formal training program” during the 1950s for the sole purpose of instructing its agents to function as newsmen. “Intelligence officers were ‘taught to make noises like reporters,’ explained a high CIA official, and were then placed in major news organizations with help from management. These were the guys who went through the ranks and were told ‘You’re going to he a journalist,’” the CIA official said.” The Agency’s preference, however, was to engage journalists who were already established in the industry. Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.”
  20. Newspaper columnists and broadcast journalists with household names have been known to maintain close ties with the Agency. “There are perhaps a dozen well known columnists and broadcast commentators whose relationships with the CIA go far beyond those normally maintained between reporters and their sources,” Bernstein maintains. “They are referred to at the Agency as ‘known assets’ and can be counted on to perform a variety of undercover tasks; they are considered receptive to the Agency’s point of view on various subjects.” Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.”
  21. Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, and Washington Post publisher Phillip Graham were close associates, and the Post developed into one of the most influential news organs in the United States due to its ties with the CIA. The Post managers’ “individual relations with intelligence had in fact been the reason the Post Company had grown as fast as it did after the war,” Davis (172) observes. “[T]heir secrets were its corporate secrets, beginning with MOCKINGBIRD. Phillip Graham’s commitment to intelligence had given his friends Frank Wisner an interest in helping to make the Washington Post the dominant news vehicle in Washington, which they had done by assisting with its two most crucial acquisitions, the Times-Herald and WTOP radio and television stations.” Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and theWashington Post, 172.
  22. In the wake of World War One the Woodrow Wilson administration placed journalist and author Walter Lippmann in charge of recruiting agents for the Inquiry, a first-of-its-kind ultra-secret civilian intelligence organization whose role involved ascertaining information to prepare Wilson for the peace negotiations, as well as identify foreign natural resources for Wall Street speculators and oil companies. The activities of this organization served as a prototype for the function eventually performed by the CIA, namely “planning, collecting, digesting, and editing the raw data,” notes historian Servando Gonzalez. “This roughly corresponds to the CIA’s intelligence cycle: planning and direction, collection, processing, production and analysis, and dissemination.” Most Inquiry members would later become members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Lippmann would go on to become the Washington Post’s best known columnists. Servando Gonzalez, Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People, Oakland, CA: Spooks Books, 2010, 50.
  23. The two most prominent US newsweeklies, Time and Newsweek, kept close ties with the CIA. “Agency files contain written agreements with former foreign correspondents and stringers for both the weekly newsmagazines,” according to Carl Bernstein. “Allen Dulles often interceded with his good friend, the late Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life magazines, who readily allowed certain members of his staff to work for the Agency and agreed to provide jobs and credentials for other CIA operatives who lacked journalistic experience.”  Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.”
  24. In his autobiography former CIA officer E. Howard Hunt quotes Bernstein’s “The CIA and the Media” article at length. “I know nothing to contradict this report,” Hunt declares, suggesting the investigative journalist of Watergate fame didn’t go far enough. “Bernstein further identified some of the country’s top media executives as being valuable assets to the agency … But the list of organizations that cooperated with the agency was a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of the media industry, including ABC, NBC, the Associated Press, UPI, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, and others.” E. Howard Hunt,American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond, Hoboken NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007, 150.
  25. When the first major exposé of the CIA emerged in 1964 with the publication of The Invisible Government by journalists David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, the CIA considered purchasing the entire printing to keep the book from the public, yet in the end judged against it. “To an extent that is only beginning to be perceived, this shadow government is shaping the lives of 190,000,000 Americans” authors Wise and Ross write in the book’s preamble. “Major decisions involving peace and war are taking place out of public view. An informed citizen might come to suspect that the foreign policy of the United States often works publicly in one direction and secretly through the Invisible Government in just the opposite direction.”Lisa Pease, “When the CIA’s Empire Struck Back,”Consortiumnews.com, February 6, 2014.
  26. Agency infiltration of the news media shaped public perception of deep events and undergirded the official explanations of such events. For example, the Warren Commission’s report on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination was met with almost unanimous approval by US media outlets. “I have never seen an official report greeted with such universal praise as that accorded the Warren Commission’s findings when they were made public on September 24, 1964,” recalls investigative reporter Fred Cook. “All the major television networks devoted special programs and analyses to the report; the next day the newspapers ran long columns detailing its findings, accompanied by special news analyses and editorials. The verdict was unanimous. The report answered all questions, left no room for doubt. Lee Harvey Oswald, alone and unaided, had assassinated the president of the United States.” Fred J. Cook, Maverick: Fifty Years of Investigative Reporting, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1984, 276.
  27. In late 1966 the New York Times began an inquiry on the numerous questions surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination that were not satisfactorily dealt with by the Warren Commission. “It was never completed,” author Jerry Policoff observes, “nor would the New YorkTimes ever again question the findings of the Warren Commission.” When the story was being developed the lead reporter at the Times‘ Houston bureau “said that he and others came up with ‘a lot of unanswered questions’ that the Times didn’t bother to pursue. ‘I’d be off on a good lead and then somebody’d call me off and send me out to California on another story or something. We never really detached anyone for this. We weren’t really serious.’” Jerry Policoff, “The Media and the Murder of John Kennedy,” in Peter Dale Scott, Paul L. Hoch and Russell Stetler, eds., The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond, New York: Vintage, 1976, 265.
  28. When New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison embarked on an investigation of the JFK assassination in 1966 centering on Lee Harvey Oswald’s presence in New Orleans in the months leading up to November, 22, 1963, “he was cross-whipped with two hurricane blasts, one from Washington and one from New York,” historian James DiEugenio explains. The first, of course, was from the government, specifically the Central Intelligence Agency, the FBI, and to a lesser extent, the White House. The blast from New York was from the major mainstream media e.g. Time-Life and NBC. Those two communication giants were instrumental in making Garrison into a lightening rod for ridicule and criticism. This orchestrated campaign … was successful in diverting attention from what Garrison was uncovering by creating controversy about the DA himself.”  DiEugenio, Preface, in William Davy, Let Justice Be Done: New Light on the Jim Garrison Investigation, Reston VA: Jordan Publishing, 1999.
  29. The CIA and other US intelligence agencies used the news media to sabotage Garrison’s 1966-69 independent investigation of the Kennedy assassination. Garrison presided over the only law enforcement agency with subpoena power to seriously delve into the intricate details surrounding JFK’s murder. One of Garrison’s key witnesses, Gordon Novel, fled New Orleans to avoid testifying before the Grand Jury assembled by Garrison. According to DiEugenio, CIA Director Allen “Dulles and the Agency would begin to connect the fugitive from New Orleans with over a dozen CIA friendly journalists who—in a blatant attempt to destroy Garrison’s reputation—would proceed to write up the most outrageous stories imaginable about the DA.” James DiEugenio,Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and The Garrison Case, Second Edition, New York: SkyHorse Publishing, 2012, 235.
  30. CIA officer Victor Marchetti recounted to author William Davy that in 1967 while attending staff meetings as an assistant to then-CIA Director Richard Helms, “Helms expressed great concerns over [former OSS officer, CIA operative and primary suspect in Jim Garrison’s investigation Clay] Shaw’s predicament, asking his staff, ‘Are we giving them all the help we can down there?’” William Davy, Let Justice Be Done: New Light on the Jim Garrison Investigation, Reston VA: Jordan Publishing, 1999.
  31. The pejorative dimensions of the term “conspiracy theory” were introduced into the Western lexicon by CIA “media assets,” as evidenced in the design laid out by Document 1035-960 Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report, an Agency communiqué issued in early 1967 to Agency bureaus throughout the world at a time when attorney Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment was atop bestseller lists and New Orleans DA Garrison’s investigation of the Kennedy assassination began to gain traction.
  32. Time had close relations with the CIA stemming from the friendship of the magazine’s publisher Henry Luce and Eisenhower CIA chief Allen Dulles. When former newsman Richard Helms was appointed DCI in 1966 he “began to cultivate the press,” prompting journalists toward conclusions that placed the Agency in a positive light. As TimeWashington correspondent Hugh Sidney recollects, “‘[w]ith [John] McCone and [Richard] Helms, we had a set-up when the magazine was doing something on the CIA, we went to them and put it before them … We were never misled.’ Similarly, when Newsweek decided in the fall of 1971 to do a cover story on Richard Helms and ‘The New Espionage,’ the magazine, according to a Newsweek staffer, went directly to the agency for much of the information. And the article … generally reflected the line that Helms was trying so hard to sell: that since the latter 1960s … the focus of attention and prestige within CIA’ had switched from the Clandestine Services to the analysis of intelligence, and that ‘the vast majority of recruits are bound for’ the Intelligence Directorate.” Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974, 362-363.
  33. In 1970 Jim Garrison wrote and published the semi-autobiographical A Heritage of Stone, a work that examines how the New Orleans DA “discovered that the CIA operated within the borders of the United States, and how it took the CIA six months to reply to the Warren Commission’s question of whether Oswald and [Jack] Ruby had been with the Agency,” Garrison biographer and Temple University humanities professor Joan Mellen observes. “In response to A Heritage of Stone, the CIA rounded up its media assets” and the book was panned by reviewers writing for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, theChicago Sun Times, and Life magazine. “John Leonard’s New York Times review went through a metamorphosis,” Mellen explains. “The original last paragraph challenged the Warren Report: ‘Something stinks about this whole affair,’ Leonard wrote. ‘Why were Kennedy’s neck organs not examined at Bethesda for evidence of a frontal shot? Why was his body whisked away to Washington before the legally required Texas inquest? Why?’ This paragraph evaporated in later editions of the Times. A third of a column gone, the review then ended: ‘Frankly I prefer to believe that the Warren Commission did a poor job, rather than a dishonest one. I like to think that Garrison invents monsters to explain incompetence.’” Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed History, Washington DC: Potomac Books, 2005, 323, 324.
  34. CIA Deputy Director for Plans Cord Meyer Jr. appealed to Harper & Row president emeritus Cass Canfield Sr. over the book publisher’s pending release of Alfred McCoy’s The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, based on the author’s fieldwork and Yale PhD dissertation wherein he examined the CIA’s explicit role in the opium trade. “Claiming my book was a threat to national security,” McCoy recalls, “the CIA official had asked Harper & Row to suppress it. To his credit, Mr. Canfield had refused. But he had agreed to review the manuscript prior to publication.” Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Chicago Review Press, 2003, xx.
  35. Publication of The Secret Team, a book by US Air Force Colonel and Pentagon-CIA liaison L. Fletcher Prouty recounting the author’s firsthand knowledge of CIA black operations and espionage, was met with a wide scale censorship campaign in 1972. “The campaign to kill the book was nationwide and world-wide,” Prouty notes. “It was removed from the Library of Congress and from college libraries as letters I received attested all too frequently … I was a writer whose book had been cancelled by a major publisher [Prentice Hall] and a major paperback publisher [Ballantine Books] under the persuasive hand of the CIA.” L. Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World, New York: SkyHorse Publishing, 2008, xii, xv.
  36. During the Pike Committee hearings in 1975 Congressman Otis Pike asked DCI William Colby, “Do you have any people paid by the CIA who are working for television networks?” Colby responded, “This, I think, gets into the kind of details, Mr. Chairman, that I’d like to get into in executive session.” Once the chamber was cleared Colby admitted that in 1975 specifically “the CIA was using ‘media cover’ for eleven agents, many fewer than in the heyday of the cloak-and-pencil operations, but no amount of questioning would persuade him to talk about the publishers and network chieftains who had cooperated at the top.” Schorr, Clearing the Air, 275.
  37. “There is quite an incredible spread of relationships,” former CIA intelligence officer William Bader informed a US Senate Intelligence Committee investigating the CIA’s infiltration of the nation’s journalistic outlets. “You don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are Agency people at the management level.” Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.”
  38. In 1985 film historian and professor Joseph McBride came across a November 29, 1963 memorandum from J. Edgar Hoover, titled, “Assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” wherein the FBI director stated that his agency provided two individuals with briefings, one of whom was “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency.” ” When McBride queried the CIA with the memo a “PR man was tersely formal and opaque: ‘I can neither confirm nor deny.’ It was the standard response the agency gave when it dealt with its sources and methods,” journalist Russ Baker notes. When McBride published a story in The Nation, “The Man Who Wasn’t There, ‘George Bush,’ C.I.A. Operative,” the CIA came forward with a statement that the George Bush referenced in the FBI record “apparently” referenced a George William Bush, who filled a perfunctory night shift position at CIA headquarters that “would have been the appropriate place to receive such a report.” McBride tracked down George William Bush to confirm he was only employed briefly as a “probationary civil servant” who had “never received interagency briefings.” Shortly thereafter The Nation ran a second story by McBride wherein “the author provided evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency had foisted a lie on the American people … As with McBride’s previous story, this disclosure was greeted with the equivalent of a collective media yawn.” Since the episode researchers have found documents linking George H. W. Bush to the CIA as early as 1953. Russ Baker, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years, New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009, 7-12.
  39. Operation Gladio, the well-documented collaboration between Western spy agencies, including the CIA, and NATO involving coordinated terrorist shootings and bombings of civilian targets throughout Europe from the late 1960s through the 1980s, has been effectively expunged from major mainstream news outlets. A LexisNexis Academic search conducted in 2012 for “Operation Gladio” retrieved 31 articles in English language news media—most appearing in British newspapers. Only four articles discussing Gladio ever appeared in US publications—three in theNew York Times and one brief mention in the Tampa Bay Times. With the exception of a 2009 BBC documentary, no network or cable news broadcast has ever referenced the state-sponsored terror operation. Almost all of the articles referencing Gladio appeared in 1990 when Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti publicly admitted Italy’s participation in the process. The New York Times downplayed any US involvement, misleadingly designating Gladio “an Italian creation” in a story buried on page A16. In reality, former CIA director William Colby revealed in his memoirs that covert paramilitaries were a significant agency undertaking set up after World War II, including “the smallest possible coterie of the most reliable people, in Washington [and] NATO.” James F. Tracy, “False Flag Terror and Conspiracies of Silence,”Global Research, August 10, 2012.
  40. Days before the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City DCI William Colby confided to his friend, Nebraska State Senator John DeCamp his personal concerns over the Militia and Patriot movement within the United States, then surging in popularity due to the use of the alternative media of that era–books, periodicals, cassette tapes, and radio broadcasts. “I watched as the Anti-War movement rendered it impossible for this country to conduct or win the Vietnam War,” Colby remarked. “I tell you, dear friend, that the Militia and Patriot movement in which, as an attorney, you have become one of the centerpieces, is far more significant and far more dangerous for American than the Anti-War movement ever was, if it is not intelligently dealt with. And I really mean this.” David Hoffman, The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror, Venice CA: Feral House, 1998, 367.
  41. Shortly after the appearance of journalist Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series in the San Jose Mercury News chronicling the Agency’s involvement in drug trafficking, the CIA’s public affairs division embarked on a campaign to counter what it termed “a genuine public relations crisis for the Agency.” Webb was merely reporting to a large audience what had already been well documented by scholars such as Alfred McCoy and Peter Dale Scott, and the 1989 Kerry Committee Report on Iran-Contra—that the CIA had long been involved in the illegal transnational drug trade. Such findings were upheld in 1999 in a study by the CIA inspector general. Nevertheless, beginning shortly after Webb’s series ran, “CIA media spokesmen would remind reporters seeking comment that this series represented no real news,” a CIA internal organ noted, “in that similar charges were made in the 1980s and were investigated by the Congress and were found to be without substance. Reporters were encouraged to read the “Dark Alliance’ series closely and with a critical eye to what allegations could actually be backed with evidence.” http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/DOC_0001372115.pdf
  42. On December 10, 2004 investigative journalist Gary Webb died of two .38 caliber gunshot wounds to the head. The coroner ruled the death a suicide. “Gary Webb was MURDERED,” concluded FBI senior special agent Ted Gunderson in 2005. “He (Webb) resisted the first shot [to the head that exited via jaw] so he was shot again with the second shot going into the head [brain].” Gunderson regards the theory that Webb could have managed to shoot himself twice as “impossible!” Charlene Fassa, “Gary Webb: More Pieces in the Suicided Puzzle,” Rense.com, December 11, 2005.
  43. The most revered journalists who receive “exclusive” information and access to the corridors of power are typically the most subservient to officialdom and often have intelligence ties. Those granted such access understand that they must likewise uphold government-sanctioned narratives. For example, the New York Times’ Tom Wicker reported on November 22, 1963 that President John F. Kennedy “was hit by a bullet in the throat, just below the Adam’s apple.” Yet his account went to press before the official story of a single assassin shooting from the rear became established. Wicker was chastised through “lost access, complaints to editors and publishers, social penalties, leaks to competitors, a variety of responses no one wants.” Barrie Zwicker,Towers of Deception: The Media Coverup of 9/11, Gabrioloa Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2006, 169-170.
  44. The CIA actively promotes a desirable public image of its history and function by advising the production of Hollywood vehicles, such as Argoand Zero Dark Thirty. The Agency retains “entertainment industry liaison officers” on its staff that “plant positive images about itself (in other words, propaganda) through our most popular forms of entertainment,” Tom Hayden explains in the LA Review of Books. “So natural has the CIA–entertainment connection become that few question its legal or moral ramifications. This is a government agency like no other; the truth of its operations is not subject to public examination. When the CIA’s hidden persuaders influence a Hollywood movie, it is using a popular medium to spin as favorable an image of itself as possible, or at least, prevent an unfavorable one from taking hold.” Tom Hayden, “Review of The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television by Tricia Jenkins,” LA Review of Books, February 24, 2013,
  45. Former CIA case officer Robert David Steele states that CIA manipulation of news media is “worse” in the 2010s than in the late 1970s when Bernstein wrote “The CIA and the Media.” “The sad thing is that the CIA is very able to manipulate [the media] and it has financial arrangements with media, with Congress, with all others. But the other half of that coin is that the media is lazy.” James Tracy interview with Robert David Steele, August 2, 2014,
  46. A well-known fact is that broadcast journalist Anderson Cooper interned for the CIA while attending Yale as an undergraduate in the late 1980s. According to Wikipedia Cooper’s great uncle, William Henry Vanderbilt III, was an Executive Officer of the Special Operations Branch of the OSS under the spy organization’s founder William “Wild Bill” Donovan. While Wikipedia is an often dubious source, Vanderbilt’s OSS involvement would be in keeping with the OSS/CIA reputation of taking on highly affluent personnel for overseas derring-do. William Henry Vanderbilt III, Wikipedia.
  47. Veteran German journalist Udo Ulfkotte, author of the 2014 bookGekaufte Journalisten (Bought Journalists) revealed how under the threat of job termination he was routinely compelled to publish articles written by intelligence agents using his byline. “I ended up publishing articles under my own name written by agents of the CIA and other intelligence services, especially the German secret service,” Ulfkotte explained in a recent interview with Russia Today. “German Journo: European Media Writing Pro-US Stories Under CIA Pressure,” RT, October 18, 2014.
  48. In 1999 the CIA established In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm seeking to “identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge information technologies that serve United States national security interests.” The firm has exercised financial relationships with internet platforms Americans use on a routine basis, including Google and Facebook. “If you want to keep up with Silicon Valley, you need to become part of Silicon Valley,” says Jim Rickards, an adviser to the U.S. intelligence community familiar with In-Q-Tel’s activities. “The best way to do that is have a budget because when you have a checkbook, everyone comes to you.” At one point IQT “catered largely to the needs of the CIA.” Today, however, “the firm supports many of the 17 agencies within the U.S. intelligence community, including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate.” Matt Egan, “In-Q-Tel: A Glimpse Inside the CIA’s Venture Capital Arm,” FoxBusiness.com, June 14, 2013.
  49. At a 2012 conference held by In-Q-Tel CIA Director David Patraeus declared that the rapidly-developing “internet of things” and “smart home” will provide the CIA with the ability to spy on any US citizen should they become a “person of interest’ to the spy community,” Wiredmagazine reports. “‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,’ Patraeus enthused, ‘particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft’ … ‘Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing,” Patraeus said, “the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.” Spencer Ackerman, “CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher,” Wired, March 15, 2012.
  50. In the summer of 2014 a $600 million computing cloud developed by Amazon Web Services for the CIA began servicing all 17 federal agencies comprising the intelligence community. “If the technology plays out as officials envision,” The Atlantic reports, “it will usher in a new era of cooperation and coordination, allowing agencies to share information and services much more easily and avoid the kind of intelligence gaps that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.” “The Details About the CIA’s Deal With Amazon,” The Atlantic, July 17, 2014.