(I replace links on this page when I become aware they are no longer served from their original source.  If you wish you may download a Zip file with all the documents from here. To return to the home page click here.)

What is wrong with the USA?

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."
- attributed to George Washington, 1st US President

Please click one of the following links to jump to the related portion of this rather long document.

  Who really won the Florida presidential election last November [2000]?
  Yes, Pakistan evacuated men from Kunduz. Why'd the U.S. let them?
  Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline
  WSJ: BUSH SR. IN BUSINESS WITH BIN LADEN FAMILY CONGLOMERATE THROUGH CARLYLE GROUP
  What is Terrorism?
  "fuck your Parliament and your Constitution"
  "The Unsettling Specter of Peace"
  Reagan-US War Against Nicaragua and "What We Say Goes": The Middle East in the New World Order
  The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan
  THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA - Part 1
  "POWDERBURNS" Cocaine, Contras & The Drug War
  Who would/could use ‘weapons grade’ Anthrax?
  Land of the Free?
  “On corporations as "collectivist legal entities."
  A FREE AND INDEPENDENT PRESS?

"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. ...The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. ...We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
- John Swinton toast to NY Press Club

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=33&row=1
SILENCE OF THE MEDIA LAMBS: The Election Story Never Told
Thursday, May 24, 2001
“Here's how the president of the United States was elected: In the months leading up to the November balloting, Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, ordered local elections supervisors to purge 64,000 voters from voter lists on the grounds that they were felons who were not entitled to vote in Florida. As it turns out, these voters weren't felons, or at least, only a very few were. However, the voters on this "scrub list" were, notably, African-American (about 54 percent), while most of the others wrongly barred from voting were white and Hispanic Democrats.”

“Beginning in November, this extraordinary news ran, as it should, on Page 1 of the country's leading paper. Unfortunately, it was in the wrong country: Britain. In the United States, it ran on page zero -- that is, the story was not covered on the news pages. The theft of the presidential race in Florida also was given big television network coverage. But again, it was on the wrong continent: on BBC television, London.”
…
“Third, the revelations in the story required a reporter to stand up and say the big name politicians, their lawyers and their PR people were freaking liars. It would be much easier, and a heck of a lot cheaper, to wait for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission to do the work, then cover the Commission's canned report and press conference. Wait! You've watched "Murphy Brown," so you think reporters hanker every day to uncover the big scandal. Bullshit. Remember, All the President's Men was so unusual they had to make a movie out of it.”
 

“Americans are asking "Why do they hate us?"  They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”
- President Bush's address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night, September 20, 2001

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcripts/ccrdraft060401.htm
Rights Commission's Report on Florida Election
Tuesday, June 5, 2001
“The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights conducted the most extensive investigation to date concerning allegations of irregularities occurring during the November 2000 presidential election in Florida. The investigation, utilizing the Commission's subpoena power, comprised 3 days of hearings, over 30 hours of testimony from over 100 witnesses and a systematic review of more than 118,000 sheets of paper.”

“Perhaps the most dramatic undercount in this election was the nonexistent ballots of the countless unknown eligible voters, who were wrongfully purged from the voter registration rolls, turned away from the polls, and by various other means prevented from exercising the franchise. While statistical data, reinforced by credible anecdotal evidence, point to widespread disenfranchisement and denial of voting rights, it is impossible to determine the extent of the disenfranchisement or to provide an adequate remedy to the persons whose voices were silenced in this historic election by a pattern and practice of injustice, ineptitude and inefficiency.”

 

“Do you know the two most artistic ways to lie? …It’s not enough to be able to lie with a straight face; anybody with enough gall to raise on a busted flush can do that. The first way to lie artistically is to tell the truth—but not all of it. The second way involves telling the truth, too, but is harder: Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it . . but tell it so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying.”
- From the character Lazarus Long by Robert A. Heinlein in Time Enough For Love

http://baltimorechronicle.com/media2_dec01.shtml
THE STORY IS HIDDEN IN PLAIN VIEW: BURYING THE LEAD
Who really won the Florida presidential election last November?
December 5, 2001
“A consortium of news outlets—including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Tribune Co. (Newsday’s parent company), The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press and CNN—spent nearly a year and $900,000 reexamining every disputed ballot.”

“But as the consortium found when it actually looked at the overvotes, one often could tell what the voter’s intent was. Many of the overvotes involved, for example, a voter punching the hole next to a candidate’s name, and then writing in the same candidate’s name.”

“Since the intent of the voter is clear, these are clearly valid votes under Florida law. And Gore picked up enough of such votes that it almost didn’t matter what standard you used when looking at undervotes—whether you counted every dimple or insisted on a fully punched chad, the consortium found that Gore ended up the winner of virtually any full reexamination of rejected ballots. “

 

"I ask your continued participation and confidence in the American economy. Terrorists attacked a symbol of American prosperity; they did not touch its source.  America is successful because of the hard work and creativity and enterprise of our people. These were the true strengths of our economy before September 11, and they are our strengths today."
- President Bush's address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night, September 20, 2001

"...experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny;..."
- Thomas Jefferson,  Fall 1778 Papers 2:526--27

http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/west_asia/newsid_37000/37021.stm
Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline (From BBC site without pictures.)
Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline
Thursday, December 4, 1997 Published at 19:27 GMT
“A senior delegation from the Taleban movement in Afghanistan is in the United States for talks with an international energy company that wants to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan.”

“A spokesman for the company, Unocal, said the Taleban were expected to spend several days at the company's headquarters in Sugarland, Texas.”

“Unocal says it has agreements both with Turkmenistan to sell its gas and with Pakistan to buy it.”

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0201/08/ltm.05.html
Explosive New Book Published in France Alleges that U.S. Was in Negotiations to Do a Deal with Taliban
Aired January 8, 2002 - 07:34 ET
“BUTLER: The most explosive charge, Paula, is that the Bush administration -- the present one, just shortly after assuming office slowed down FBI investigations of al Qaeda and terrorism in Afghanistan in order to do a deal with the Taliban on oil -- an oil pipeline across Afghanistan.”

“BUTLER: That's the allegation that instead of prosecuting properly an investigation of terrorism, which has its home in Afghanistan as we now know, or one of its main homes, that was shut down or slowed down in order to pursue oil interests with the Taliban. The people who we have now bombed out of existence, and this not many months ago. The book says that the negotiators said to the Taliban, you have a choice. You have a carpet of gold, meaning an oil deal, or a carpet of bombs. That's what the book alleges.”
 

http://www.corpwatch.org/news/PND.jsp?articleid=1149
USA: Unocal Advisor Named Representative to Afghanistan
January 3, 2002
“President Bush has appointed a former aide to the American oil company Unocal, Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, as special envoy to Afghanistan. The nomination was announced December 31, nine days after the US-backed interim government of Hamid Karzai took office in Kabul.”

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2002/0209/448097021FR09KARZAI.html
Musharraf, Karzai agree major oil pipeline in co-operation pact
Sat, Feb 09, 02
“PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN: The Pakistani President, Gen Pervez Musharraf, and the Afghan interim leader, Mr Hamid Karzai, agreed yesterday that their two countries should develop "mutual brotherly relations" and co-operate "in all spheres of activity" - including a proposed gas pipeline from Central Asia to Pakistan via Afghanistan.”

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Books___Reviews/Emerson020102/emerson020102.html
Quick take on "Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth"
February 1, 2002
"Ben Laden: La Verite Interdite ("Bin Laden: the Forbidden Truth") by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie is a well-researched piece of mainstream French journalism. It is not a scandal-mongering knockoff—in some places it is so well documented as to be tedious. Besides ample research in print media, the authors received information from disgruntled US sources, together with the French and (presumably) the Israeli intelligence services.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1984000/1984459.stm
Afghanistan plans gas pipeline
Monday, 13 May, 2002, 10:20 GMT 11:20 UK
Afghanistan hopes to strike a deal later this month to build a $2bn pipeline through the country to take gas from energy-rich Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India.

Mr Razim said US energy company Unocal was the "lead company" among those that would build the pipeline, which would bring 30bn cubic meters of Turkmen gas to market annually.

Unocal - which led a consortium of companies from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Japan and South Korea - has maintained the project is both economically and technically feasible once Afghan stability was secured.
 

"Americans are asking, "How will we fight and win this war?" We will direct every resource at our command -- every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war -- to the destruction and to the defeat of the global terror network."
- President Bush's address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night, September 20, 2001

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/tvaradarajan/?id=95001523 
Rescuing the Enemy
Yes, Pakistan evacuated men from Kunduz. Why'd the U.S. let them?
Wednesday, November 28, 2001 12:01 a.m. EST
Last Thursday the Indian press carried reports that two helicopters of the Pakistani air force had landed in the heart of Kunduz--an Afghan town then under siege by the Northern Alliance, but still under Taliban control--and "flew out soon after carrying two chopper loads of personnel." These included two brigadiers of the Pakistani army. Two days later, the Indian press again carried reports, based on information supplied by Indian intelligence, that Pakistan's air force had "flown several missions since Sunday to evacuate top Pakistani military commanders."

http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20011127/3652206s.htm 
Report: Pakistan rescued Taliban
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan -- Pakistani air force planes evacuated hundreds of foreign fighters from the besieged city of Kunduz hours before Northern Alliance soldiers captured the city, the commander of anti-Taliban forces said Monday.
 

http://www.msnbc.com/news/664935.asp
The ‘airlift of evil’
"NEW YORK, Nov. 29 — The United States took the unprecedented step this week of demanding that foreign airlines provide information on passengers boarding planes for America. Yet in the past week, a half dozen or more Pakistani air force cargo planes landed in the Taliban-held city of Kunduz and evacuated to Pakistan hundreds of non-Afghan soldiers who fought alongside the Taliban and even al-Qaida against the United States. What’s wrong with this picture?"

“Absolute power has no necessity to lie, it may be silent – while responsible governments obliged to speak, not only disguise the truth, but lie with effrontery.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte

"THE PENTAGON, whose satellites and drones are able to detect sleeping guerrillas in subterranean caverns, claims it knows nothing of these flights. When asked about the mysterious airlift at a recent Pentagon briefing, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, denied knowledge of such flights. Myers backpedaled a bit, saying that, given the severe geography of the country, it might be possible to duck in and out of mountain valleys and conduct such an airlift undetected. But Rumsfeld intervened. With his talent for being blunt and ambiguous at the same time, he said: “I have received absolutely no information that would verify or validate statements about airplanes moving in or out. I doubt them.”

“Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
- Hermann Goering, Nazi Reichsmarshall and Luftwaffe-Chief at the Nuremberg trials
 

All Men are created equal?

http://baltimorechronicle.com/media3_oct01.shtml
Republican-controlled Carlyle Group poses serious Ethical Questions for Bush Presidents, but Baltimore Sun ignores it
“If the U.S. boosts defense spending in its quest to stop Osama bin Laden’s alleged terrorist activities, there may be one unexpected beneficiary: Mr. bin Laden’s family.” And, though the WSJ curiously did not mention this, another beneficiary may be George H.W. Bush’s family.”

“Though described by the Industry Standard as “the world’s largest private equity firm,” with over $12 billion under management, chances are readers haven’t ever heard of The Carlyle Group. Isn’t that a little odd, considering it is run by a veritable who's who of former Republican political leaders. Former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci is Carlyle’s chairman and managing director (who, by the way, was college roommate of the current Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld). And that partners in this mammoth venture include former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III, George Soros, Fred Malek (George H.W. Bush’s campaign manager, forced to resign when it was revealed he was Nixon’s “Jew counter”), and—presumably—George H.W. Bush?”

“All told, Carlyle has about 420 partners all over the globe, from Saudi princes to the former president of the Philippines. Its investments run heavily in the defense sector; they make money from military conflicts and weapons spending.”
 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4288516,00.html
The ex-presidents' club
Wednesday October 31, 2001
“But what sets Carlyle apart is the way it has exploited its political contacts. When Carlucci arrived there in 1989, he brought with him a phalanx of former subordinates from the CIA and the Pentagon, and an awareness of the scale of business a company like Carlyle could do in the corridors and steak-houses of Washington. In a decade and a half, the firm has been able to realise a 34% rate of return on its investments, and now claims to be the largest private equity firm in the world. Success brought more investors, including the international financier George Soros and, in 1995, the wealthy Saudi Binladin family, who insist they long ago severed all links with their notorious relative. The first president Bush is understood to have visited the Binladins in Saudi Arabia twice on the firm's behalf.”

“But if the Binladins' connection to the Carlyle Group lasted no more than six years, the current President Bush's own links to the firm go far deeper. In 1990, he was appointed to the board of one of Carlyle's first purchases, an airline food business called Caterair, which they eventually sold at a loss. He left the board in 1992, later to become Governor of Texas. Shortly thereafter, he was responsible for appointing several members of the board which controlled the investment of Texas teachers' pension funds. A few years later, the board decided to invest $100m of public money in the Carlyle Group. The firm's magic touch was already bringing results. Today, it is proving as fruitful as ever.”

http://www.judicialwatch.org/1045.shtml
http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2001/1082.shtml
WALL STREET JOURNAL: BUSH SR. IN BUSINESS WITH BIN LADEN FAMILY CONGLOMERATE THROUGH CARLYLE GROUP
“(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, reacted with disbelief to The Wall Street Journal report of yesterday that George H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm. The senior Bush had met with the bin Laden family at least twice. (Other top Republicans are also associated with the Carlyle group, such as former Secretary of State James A. Baker.) The terrorist leader Osama bin Laden had supposedly been “disowned” by his family, which runs a multi-billion dollar business in Saudi Arabia and is a major investor in the senior Bush’s firm. Other reports have questioned, though, whether members of his Saudi family have truly cut off Osama bin Laden. Indeed, the Journal also reported yesterday that the FBI has subpoenaed the bin Laden family business’s bank records.”

http://www.judicialwatch.org/1082.shtml
http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2001/1082.shtml
JUDICIAL WATCH TO FILE FOIA LAWSUIT TODAY OVER CARLYLE GROUP DOCUMENTS
“And documents recently uncovered through Judicial Watch’s FOIA to the Department of Defense shows that the Carlyle Group has high-level access to the U.S. government. The documents include a February 15, 2001 letter on Carlyle Group letterhead to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from former Defense Secretaries Frank Carlucci and William Perry, both now with Carlyle Group. The documents also include Secretary Rumsfeld’s April 3 response to Messrs. Carlucci and Perry. The letters seemingly discuss the restructuring of the Defense Department. The Carlyle Group is listed in the documents as Defense Department contractor. Copies of the letters will be available on the Judicial Watch Internet site at www.judicialwatch.org.”

 

“It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them.”
- Noam Chomsky, "The World After Sept. 11" AFSC Conference, Dec. 8, 01

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=103&row=1
FBI AND US SPY AGENTS SAY BUSH SPIKED BIN LADEN PROBES BEFORE 11 SEPTEMBER
The Guardian (London)
Wednesday, November 7, 2001
Officials told to 'back off' on Saudis before September 11
by Greg Palast and David Pallister

“FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington say they were prevented for political reasons from carrying out full investigations into members of the Bin Laden family in the US before the terrorist attacks of September 11.”

“US intelligence agencies have come under criticism for their wholesale failure to predict the catastrophe at the World Trade Centre. But some are complaining that their hands were tied.”
…
“But the FBI files were closed in 1996 apparently before any conclusions could be reached on either the Bin Laden brothers or the organisation itself. High-placed intelligence sources in Washington told the Guardian this week: "There were always constraints on investigating the Saudis".”

“They said the restrictions became worse after the Bush administration took over this year. The intelligence agencies had been told to "back off" from investigations involving other members of the Bin Laden family, the Saudi royals, and possible Saudi links to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan.”

"There were particular investigations that were effectively killed."
 

"These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us because we stand in their way. We're not deceived by their pretenses to piety.  We have seen their kind before. They're the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies."
- President Bush's address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night, September 20, 2001
 

Clamor Magazine - Heir to the Holocaust
Prescott Bush, 1.5 Million Dollars, and Auschwitz: How the Bush Family Wealth is linked to the Jewish Holocaust
By Toby Rogers, Clamor Magazine
“But while President Bush publicly embraced the community of holocaust survivors in Washington last spring, he and his family have been keeping a secret from them for over 50 years about Prescott Bush, the president's grandfather. According to classified documents from Dutch intelligence and US government archives, President George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush made considerable profits off Auschwitz slave labor. In fact, President Bush himself is an heir to these profits from the holocaust which were placed in a blind trust in 1980 by his father, former president George Herbert Walker Bush.”
…
The US government had known that many American companies were aiding Hitler, like Standard Oil, General Motors and Chase Bank, all of which was sanctioned after Pearl Harbor. But as The New York Times reporter Charles Higham later discovered, and published in his 1983 groundbreaking book, Trading With The Enemy; The Nazi American Money Plot 1933-1949, "the government smothered everything during and even after the war." Why?

According to Higham, the US government believed "a public scandal ... would have drastically affected public morale, caused widespread strikes and perhaps provoked mutinies in the armed services." Higham claims the government thought "their trial and imprisonment would have made it impossible for the corporate boards to help the American war effort."

However, Prescott Bush's banks were not just financing Hitler as previously reported. In fact, there was a distinct business link much deeper than Mr. Higham or Mr. Loftus knew at the time their books were published.

A classified Dutch intelligence file which was leaked by a courageous Dutch intelligence officer, along with newly surfaced information from U.S. government archives, "confirms absolutely," John Loftus says, the direct links between Bush, Thyssen and genocide profits from Auschwitz.
 

“It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."
- U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864, (letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
Ref: The Lincoln Encyclopedia, Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY)
http://www.ratical.org/corporations/Lincoln.html
 

http://www.timeenoughforlove.org/saved/YahooNewsInternationalLawSeenAtRisk.htm
International Law Seen at Risk in U.S. Fight with Security Council
Fri Jul 5, 2:39 PM ET
"The real reason behind Washington's blackmail [in the Security Council] is the most troubling," according to Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), writing in the Financial Times this week. "An increasingly influential faction in the Bush administration believes that U.S. military and economic power is so dominant that the U.S. is no longer served by international law."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A31064-2002Apr11
International War Crimes Tribunal Approved
Permanent Court to Come Into Force Over U.S. Objection
Thursday, April 11, 2002; 3:17 PM
UNITED NATIONS, April 11--Despite fierce American opposition, advocates of the world's first permanent international war crimes court today obtained more than the 60 government ratifications required for the creation of the tribunal, which may begin prosecuting its first cases in 2003.

The American boycott left the Bush administration isolated from some of its closest allies on another international treaty that enjoys broad international. All but one member of the 15-member European Union have ratified the treaty.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:h.r.4775:
Bill Summary & Status for the 107th Congress
SEC. 2008. AUTHORITY TO FREE MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES AND CERTAIN OTHER PERSONS DETAINED OR IMPRISONED BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT.
(a) AUTHORITY- The President is authorized to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any person described in subsection (b) who is being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.
 

http://www.tarpley.net/bush1.htm
George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography --- by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin
Charpter - I - The House of Bush: Born in a Bank
Who is George Bush? How did he become the 41st U.S. President?
He is said to be a man of the "old establishment," who "chose to seek his fortune as an independent oilman...." @s1
In fact, Bush was never "independent." Every career step in his upward climb relied on his family's powerful associations. The Bush family joined the Eastern Establishment comparatively recently, and only as servitors. Their wealth and influence resulted from their loyalty to another, more powerful family, and their willingness to do anything to get ahead.
For what they did, Bush's forebears should have become very famous, or infamous. They remained obscure figures, managers from behind the scenes. But their actions--including his father's role as banker for Adolf Hitler--had tragic effects for the whole planet.
It was these services to his family's benefactors, which propelled George Bush to the top.

http://www.tarpley.net/bush2.htm
George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography --- by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin
Chapter - II - The Hitler Project
How important was the Nazi enterprise for which President Bush's father was the New York banker?
The 1942 U.S. government investigative report said that Bush's Nazi-front bank was an interlocking concern with the Vereinigte Stahlwerke (United Steel Works Corporation or German Steel Trust) led by Fritz Thyssen and his two brothers. After the war, Congressional investigators probed the Thyssen interests, Union Banking Corp. and related Nazi units. The investigation showed that the Vereinigte Stahlwerke had produced the following approximate proportions of total German national output:

50.8% of Nazi Germany's pig iron
41.4% of Nazi Germany's universal plate
36.0% of Nazi Germany's heavy plate
38.5% of Nazi Germany's galvanized sheet
45.5% of Nazi Germany's pipes and tubes
22.1% of Nazi Germany's wire
35.0% of Nazi Germany's explosives.@s8

Prescott Bush became vice president of W.A. Harriman & Co. in 1926. That same year, a friend of Harriman and Bush set up a giant new organization for their client Fritz Thyssen, prime sponsor of politician Adolf Hitler. The new German Steel Trust, Germany's largest industrial corporation, was organized in 1926 by Wall Street banker Clarence Dillon. Dillon was the old comrade of Prescott Bush's father Sam Bush from the `` Merchants of Death '' bureau in World War I.

"When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors."
- Ann Coulter, nationally syndicated columnist, in her address at the 2002 Christian Political Action Conference (CPAC)

“And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”
- President Bush's address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night, September 20, 2001

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."
- While attributed to Julius Caesar it has apparently not been confirmed
(It's an excellent quote and insightful statement nevertheless. Perhaps it was a Caesar other than Julius.)
 

A war "against" terrorism?

http://www.zmag.org/GlobalWatch/chomskymit.htm
The New War Against Terror
AN EVENING WITH NOAM CHOMSKY
October 18, 2001 - Transcribed from audio, recorded at The Technology & Culture Forum at MIT
What is Terrorism?
“Well that brings us back to the question, what is terrorism? I have been assuming we understand it. Well, what is it? Well, there happen to be some easy answers to this. There is an official definition. You can find it in the US code or in US army manuals. A brief statement of it taken from a US army manual, is fair enough, is that terror is the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to attain political or religious ideological goals through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear. That’s terrorism. That’s a fair enough definition. I think it is reasonable to accept that. The problem is that it can’t be accepted because if you accept that, all the wrong consequences follow. For example, all the consequences I have just been reviewing. Now there is a major effort right now at the UN to try to develop a comprehensive treaty on terrorism. When Kofi Annan got the Nobel prize the other day, you will notice he was reported as saying that we should stop wasting time on this and really get down to it.”

“But there’s a problem. If you use the official definition of terrorism in the comprehensive treaty you are going to get completely the wrong results. So that can’t be done. In fact, it is even worse than that. If you take a look at the definition of Low Intensity Warfare which is official US policy you find that it is a very close paraphrase of what I just read. In fact, Low Intensity Conflict is just another name for terrorism. That’s why all countries, as far as I know, call whatever horrendous acts they are carrying out, counter terrorism. We happen to call it Counter Insurgency or Low Intensity Conflict. So that’s a serious problem. You can’t use the actual definitions. You’ve got to carefully find a definition that doesn’t have all the wrong consequences.”

http://www.terrorism.com/terrorism/basics.shtml
http://www.timeenoughforlove.org/saved/TerrorismResearchCenterBasics.htm
TERRORISM DEFINED
The DOD definition of terrorism is "the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological."

This definition was carefully crafted to distinguish between terrorism and other kinds of violence. The act of terrorism is defined independent of the cause that motivates it. People employ terrorist violence in the name of many causes. The tendency to label as terrorism any violent act of which we do not approve is erroneous. Terrorism is a specific kind of violence.

The official definition says that terrorism is calculated. Terrorists generally know what they are doing. Their selection of a target is planned and rational. They know the effect they seek. Terrorist violence is neither spontaneous nor random. Terrorism is intended to produce fear; by implication, that fear is engendered in someone other than the victim. In other words, terrorism is a psychological act conducted for its impact on an audience.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,583254,00.html
Backyard terrorism
The US has been training terrorists at a camp in Georgia for years - and it's still at it
George Monbiot, Tuesday October 30, 2001, The Guardian
"If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents," George Bush announced on the day he began bombing Afghanistan, "they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril." I'm glad he said "any government", as there's one which, though it has yet to be identified as a sponsor of terrorism, requires his urgent attention.

For the past 55 years it has been running a terrorist training camp, whose victims massively outnumber the people killed by the attack on New York, the embassy bombings and the other atrocities laid, rightly or wrongly, at al-Qaida's door. The camp is called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or Whisc. It is based in Fort Benning, Georgia, and it is funded by Mr Bush's government.

Until January this year, Whisc was called the "School of the Americas", or SOA. Since 1946, SOA has trained more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers and policemen. Among its graduates are many of the continent's most notorious torturers, mass murderers, dictators and state terrorists. As hundreds of pages of documentation compiled by the pressure group SOA Watch show, Latin America has been ripped apart by its alumni.

In 1993, the United Nations truth commission on El Salvador named the army officers who had committed the worst atrocities of the civil war. Two-thirds of them had been trained at the School of the Americas. Among them were Roberto D'Aubuisson, the leader of El Salvador's death squads; the men who killed Archbishop Oscar Romero; and 19 of the 26 soldiers who murdered the Jesuit priests in 1989. In Chile, the school's graduates ran both Augusto Pinochet's secret police and his three principal concentration camps. One of them helped to murder Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit in Washington DC in 1976.

The FBI defines terrorism as "violent acts... intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a government, or affect the conduct of a government", which is a precise description of the activities of SOA's graduates. But how can we be sure that their alma mater has had any part in this? Well, in 1996, the US government was forced to release seven of the school's training manuals. Among other top tips for terrorists, they recommended blackmail, torture, execution and the arrest of witnesses' relatives.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,648784,00.html
Afghans are still dying as air strikes go on. But no one is counting
Ian Traynor in Kabul - Tuesday February 12, 2002
“There are no official US figures, and nor have the dozens of non-governmental charities now operating in the country done any independent research. "Undoubtedly there have been civilian casualties," says a well-informed Afghan professional working for an NGO mainly funded by the US government.”

“Despite the manipulation of casualty figures for propaganda purposes by both pro-war apologists and anti-war activists, it is already clear that the number of civilian dead from the bombing vastly exceeds the estimated 500 killed by US air strikes during the 78-day Kosovo war, and may also be higher than the 3,200 Iraqi civilians believed killed during the Gulf war.”

"A lot of civilians are clearly being killed or injured. It's definitely in the four figures," says a UN source.

“A senior MSF worker, who has been in Afghanistan for five years, estimates the number of civilian dead at between 2,000 and 3,000, based on reports from hospitals and field workers around the country.”

“Some analysts say more than 60 Afghan civilians are being killed daily on average since the bombing began on October 7. A European demining expert in Kabul who works closely with the Pentagon reckons that up to 8,000 civilians have been killed.”

“In recent days CIA agents have been visiting a southern village doling out millions of dollars in compensation to relatives of men killed by US special forces who stormed Uruzgan village, guns blazing, in the hours of darkness on January 24. The Americans got the wrong men.”

“The raids suggest that the special forces shoot first and ask questions later. In both villages there were no US deaths although one American sustained a foot injury.”

“General Basir Salangi, a former Northern Alliance commander who is now Kabul's security chief, says the Americans should carry on bombing the Pashtun south: "If they're not al-Qaida, they're the people who supported al-Qaida. They should be bombed just to frighten them."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1763000/1763641.stm
War on terror 'curbing human rights'
Wednesday, 16 January, 2002, 15:46 GMT
"A leading human rights organisation has accused governments around the world of using the US-led war on terrorism as an excuse to carry out repressive policies and crush on internal dissent."

"A report by the US-based Human Rights Watch singles out Russia, Uzbekistan and Egypt as the main offenders, saying they are waging wars against political opponents who they claim are terrorists."

"The report also says the United States and its western allies are turning a blind eye to abuses in friendly countries in return for their support in the campaign against terror."

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0205/30/ltm.01.html
AMERICAN MORNING WITH PAULA ZAHN
Interview with Noam Chomsky, Bill Bennett
Aired May 30, 2002 - 08:33 ET
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: They are two best selling authors with two very different takes on terrorism. In his book, "9-11," Noam Chomsky accuses the United States of being a terrorist state. He says the war in Afghanistan is wrong, states that in recent history, America has committed acts of terrorism, and maintains that America's foreign policy is hypocritical.

In Bill Bennett's "Why We Fight," he says the war on terror is morally just. He maintains that democracy and human rights are America's noblest exports, and that we must be prepared to respond to anti-American critics. Talk about a war of words.

"Despite common knowledge that the U.S. government is engaged continually in dangerous covert actions, some that can alter the futures of whole societies, most people cling desperately to the faith that their government is different and better than others, that it would engage in criminal, or ignoble, acts only under the greatest provocation, or direst necessity, and then only for a greater good. They do not want information that suggests otherwise and question the patriotism of anyone who raises unwanted questions."
– U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark

"Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government."
- James Madison co-author of the Federalist Papers

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
- John Adams, Second US President (1735–1826), U.S. statesman, president. Letter, April 15, 1814. The Works of John Adams, vol. 6, ed. Charles Francis Adams (1851).
 

...with Liberty and Justice for All?

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567510523/qid=1014711807/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-7342963-9687926
Killing Hope – U.S. Military and CIA interventions since World War II by William Blum.
“Philip Deane (the pen name of Gerassimos Gigantes) is a Greek, a former UN official, who worked during this period both for King Constantine and as an envoy to Washington for the Papandreou government. He has written an intimate account of the subtleties and the grossness of this conspiracy to undermine the government and enhance the position of the military plotters, and of the raw power exercised by the CIA in his country.”

“…During one of the perennial disputes between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus, which was now spilling over onto NATO, President Johnson summoned the Greek ambassador to tell him of Washington’s “solution”. The ambassador protested that it would be unacceptable to the Greek parliament and contrary to the Greek constitution. “Then listen to me, Mr. Ambassador,” said the President of the United States, “fuck your Parliament and your Constitution. America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. If these two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant’s trunk, whacked good. …We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about Democracy, Parliament and Constitutions, he, his Parliament and his Constitution may not last very long.” (p. 216, Greece 1967-1974)
 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A31064-2002Apr11
International War Crimes Tribunal Approved
Permanent Court to Come Into Force Over U.S. Objection
Thursday, April 11, 2002; 3:17 PM
UNITED NATIONS, April 11--Despite fierce American opposition, advocates of the world's first permanent international war crimes court today obtained more than the 60 government ratifications required for the creation of the tribunal, which may begin prosecuting its first cases in 2003.

The American boycott left the Bush administration isolated from some of its closest allies on another international treaty that enjoys broad international. All but one member of the 15-member European Union have ratified the treaty.
 

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:h.r.4775:
Bill Summary & Status for the 107th Congress
SEC. 2008. AUTHORITY TO FREE MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES AND CERTAIN OTHER PERSONS DETAINED OR IMPRISONED BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT.
(a) AUTHORITY- The President is authorized to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any person described in subsection (b) who is being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.
 

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs_010501.html
Friendly Fire, By David Ruppe, November 7, 2001
Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba
“In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.”

“Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.”

“The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.”

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/NOR111A.html
Operation Northwoods
“In his new exposé of the National Security Agency entitled Body of Secrets, author James Bamford highlights a set of proposals on Cuba by the Joint Chiefs of Staff codenamed OPERATION NORTHWOODS. This document, titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba” was provided by the JCS to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, as the key component of Northwoods. Written in response to a request from the Chief of the Cuba Project, Col. Edward Lansdale, the Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” including “sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),” faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage. Bamford himself writes that Operation Northwoods “may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.”
“The Declassified document can be consulted at:” http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/doc1.pdf “
 

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml
The War On Waste
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 29, 2002
(CBS) On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, "the adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy," he said.

He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat.

"In fact, it could be said it's a matter of life and death," he said.

Rumsfeld promised change but the next day – Sept. 11-- the world changed and in the rush to fund the war on terrorism, the war on waste seems to have been forgotten.

Just last week President Bush announced, "my 2003 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending."

More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

$2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.

"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.
 

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. ...We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
-President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address - January 17, 1961
 

Champions of Peace?

http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/dd/dd-c04-s01.html
1. "The Unsettling Specter of Peace"
The "Unsettling Specter of Peace" raises "knotty `peace' questions," the Wall Street Journal observes.1 Crucially, it threatens the regular resort to the military Keynesian programs that have served as the major device of state economic management through the postwar years. The Journal quotes former Army chief of staff General Edward Meyer, who thinks that a more capital-intensive and high tech military will ensure "a big business out there for industry": robot tanks, unmanned aircraft, sophisticated electronics, all of dubious use for any defensive (or probably any) military purpose, but that is not the point. It is, however, a rather lame hope; how will the public be bludgeoned into paying the costs, without a plausible Red Menace on the horizon?

http://www.zmag.org/GlobalWatch/ArmsTrade.html
Arms Trade is one way to prevent basic rights
The Arms Trade is a major cause of human rights abuses, with some governments spending more on the sale of arms than on social development, communications infrastructure and health combined. As this transcript shows, the American tax payer pays about $7 Billion per year to subsidise arms sales which the arms contractors maintain as essential to foster good relations and also create more jobs at home (yet when it comes to funding new weapons development, the rationale for this is because so many countries have sophisticated weapons! Also, when a sale is made there are often other economic incentives, such as moving the manufacture of these and other weapons abroad, therefore not really creating jobs in the US.).

On military in general, the USA spends more than the rest of the G7 countries combined -- approximately $270 Billion, annually. In 1997 alone, half of USA's aid was related to military aid/trade -- and most of that was to countries that are already wealthy, like Israel, whereas very poor countries like Sub-Saharan African nations received very little...

The arms trade is the largest business in the world at 800 Billion dollars, annually.
The West sells a lot of these arms to military dictatorships, to many human rights violators or corrupt governments, often secretly and with training. These sales and training provisions therefore become tools to control and prevent any form of democracy as Noam Chomsky points out.

Some of the worst countries that sell these arms are USA and Britain, which do the largest and second largest amount of arms trade in the world, respectively -- in the name of democracy, of course!

http://www.motherjones.com/arms/
Arms Around the World
Early on, Clinton required our diplomats to shill for arms merchants to their host countries. The results were immediate: During Clinton's first year in office, U.S. arms sales more than doubled. From 1993 to 1997, the U.S. government sold, approved, or gave away $190 billion in weapons to virtually every nation on earth.

To examine the Clinton administration's eagerness to arm the world, the MoJo Wire has compiled a detailed look at America's top weapons customers during the Clinton years, tallying their total 1993-97 purchases through both the Pentagon (so-called "Foreign Military Sales," or FMS) and U.S. manufacturers ("Direct Commercial Sales," or DCS).

What we found is that while the U.S. obviously sells weapons to NATO countries and relatively democratic allies like Japan and South Korea, it also has a nasty habit of arming both sides in a conflict, as well as countries with blighted democracy or human-rights records, like Indonesia, Colombia, and Saudi Arabia.

All of this might be justified as a way to maintain a strong manufacturing job-base in the U.S., but some of these sales actually result in jobs being shipped abroad -- while arms manufacturers get tax breaks for merging, resulting in further layoffs here at home.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2352
Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President
by Neil Mackay, Sunday Herald - 15 September 2002
A secret blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001.

The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'
 

"Basic civil liberties including the right to life, liberty and the freedom of personal and political expression, suffered a drastic setback in 1981. In more than a dozen regional nations, even the most fundamental rights -- life and the inviolability of the person -- were transgressed by the government-condoned practice of harassing, torturing and murdering political opponents of those in power ... These reverses can be linked to policies adopted by the Reagan administration ... [which] has allied the U.S. with the most violent regimes in the hemispere. He [Reagan] has sanctioned atrocities and human rights abuses by providing those governments with essentially unconditioned U.S. support."
- Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 1982, http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/MediaCensorship.html

 

http://www.zmag.org/GlobalWatch/chomskymit.htm
The New War Against Terror
AN EVENING WITH NOAM CHOMSKY
October 18, 2001 - Transcribed from audio
recorded at The Technology & Culture Forum at MIT

Reagan-US War Against Nicaragua
“But I’ll just mention one case which is totally uncontroversial, so we might as well not argue about it, by no means the most extreme but uncontroversial. It’s uncontroversial because of the judgments of the highest international authorities the International Court of Justice, the World Court, and the UN Security Council. So this one is uncontroversial, at least among people who have some minimal concern for international law, human rights, justice and other things like that. And now I’ll leave you an exercise. You can estimate the size of that category by simply asking how often this uncontroversial case has been mentioned in the commentary of the last month. And it’s a particularly relevant one, not only because it is uncontroversial, but because it does offer a precedent as to how a law abiding state would respond to…did respond in fact to international terrorism, which is uncontroversial. And was even more extreme than the events of September 11th. I’m talking about the Reagan-US war against Nicaragua which left tens of thousands of people dead, the country ruined, perhaps beyond recovery.”

Nicaragua’s Response
“Nicaragua did respond. They didn’t respond by setting off bombs in Washington. They responded by taking it to the World Court, presenting a case, they had no problem putting together evidence. The World Court accepted their case, ruled in their favor, ordered the…condemned what they called the “unlawful use of force,” which is another word for international terrorism, by the United States, ordered the United States to terminate the crime and to pay massive reparations. The United States, of course, dismissed the court judgment with total contempt and announced that it would not accept the jurisdiction of the court henceforth. Then Nicaragua then went to the UN Security Council which considered a resolution calling on all states to observe international law. No one was mentioned but everyone understood. The United States vetoed the resolution. It now stands as the only state on record which has both been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism and has vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law. Nicaragua then went to the General Assembly where there is technically no veto but a negative US vote amounts to a veto. It passed a similar resolution with only the United States, Israel, and El Salvador opposed. The following year again, this time the United States could only rally Israel to the cause, so 2 votes opposed to observing international law. At that point, Nicaragua couldn’t do anything lawful. It tried all the measures. They don’t work in a world that is ruled by force.”
 

http://www.cajpe.org.pe/terro/casonica.htm
http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/idecisions/isummaries/inussummary860627.htm 
International Court of Justice
Case Summaries
CASE CONCERNING THE MILITARY AND PARAMILITARY ACTIVITIES
IN AND AGAINST NICARAGUA (NICARAGUA v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA)
Judgment of 27 June 1986

(3) By twelve votes to three,

Decides that the United States of America, by training, arming, equipping, financing and supplying the contra forces or otherwise encouraging, supporting and aiding military and paramilitary activities in and against Nicaragua, has acted, against the Republic of Nicaragua, in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to intervene in the affairs of another State;

(4) By twelve votes to three,

Decides that the United States of America, by certain attacks on Nicaraguan territory in 1983-1984, namely attacks on Puerto Sandino on 13 September and 14 October 1983, an attack on Corinto on 10 October 1983; an attack on Potosi Naval Base on 4/5 January 1984, an attack on San Juan del Sur on 7 March 1984; attacks on patrol boats at Puerto Sandino on 28 and 30 March 1984; and an attack on San Juan del Norte on 9 April 1984; and further by those acts of intervention referred to in subparagraph (3) hereof which involve the use of force, has acted, against the Republic of Nicaragua, in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to use force against another State;
 

"Our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment ... People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers ... do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser or secretary of the treasury. Nor do they want to."
- William Blum, former employee of the US State department, Rogue State - A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
 

http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/chomwh.htm
"What We Say Goes": The Middle East in the New World Order
Noam Chomsky, April 4, 1991
“Prior to August 2, 1990, the US and its allies found Saddam Hussein an attractive partner. In 1980, they helped prevent UN reaction to Iraq's attack on Iran, which they supported throughout. At the time, Iraq was a Soviet client, but Reagan, Thatcher and Bush recognized Saddam Hussein as "our kind of guy" and induced him to switch sides. In 1982, Reagan removed Iraq from the list of states that sponsor terror, permitting it to receive enormous credits for the purchase of US exports while the US became a major market for its oil. By 1987, Iraq praised Washington for its "positive efforts" in the Gulf while expressing disappointment over Soviet refusal to join the tilt towards Iraq (Tariq Aziz). US intervention was instrumental in enabling Iraq to gain the upper hand in the war. Western corporations took an active role in building up Iraq's military strength, notably its weapons of mass destruction. Reagan and Bush regularly intervened to block congressional censure of their friend's atrocious human rights record, strenuously opposing any actions that might interfere with profits for US corporations or with Iraq's military build-up.”

“Britain was no different. When Saddam was reported to have gassed thousands of Kurds at Halabja, the White House intervened to block any serious congressional reaction and not one member of the governing Conservative Party was willing to join a left-labor condemnation in Parliament. Both governments now profess outrage over the crime, and denounce those who did protest for appeasing their former comrade, while basking in media praise for their high principle. It was, of course, understood that Saddam Hussein was one of the world's most savage tyrants. But he was "our gangster," joining a club in which he could find congenial associates. Repeating a familiar formula, Geoffrey Kemp, head of the Middle East section in the National Security Council under Reagan, observed that "We weren't really that naive. We knew that he was an SOB, but he was our SOB."

“By mid-July 1990, our SOB was openly moving troops towards Kuwait and waving a fist at his neighbors. Relations with Washington remained warm. Bush intervened once again to block congressional efforts to deny loan guarantees to Iraq. On August 1, while intelligence warned of the impending invasion, Bush approved the sale of advanced data transmission equipment to his friendly SOB. In the preceding two weeks, licenses had been approved for $4.8 million in advanced technology products, including computers for the Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization, for the Saad 16 research center that was later destroyed by bombing on grounds that it was developing rockets and poison gas, and for another plant that was repeatedly bombed as a chemical weapons factory. The State Department indicated to Saddam that it had no serious objection to his rectifying border disputes with Kuwait, or intimidating other oil producers to raise the oil price to $25 a barrel or more. For reasons that remain unexplained, Kuwait's response to Iraqi pressures and initiatives was defiant and contemptuous.”

“The available evidence can be read in various ways. The most conservative (and, in my view, most plausible) reading is that Saddam misunderstood the signals as a "green light" to take all of Kuwait, possibly with the intention of setting up a puppet government behind which he would keep effective power (on the model of the US in Panama and many other cases), possibly as a bargaining chip to achieve narrower ends, possibly with broader goals. That was unacceptable: no independent force is permitted to gain significant control over the world's major energy reserves, which are to be in the hands of the US and its clients.”

“Saddam's record was already so sordid that the conquest of Kuwait added little to it, but that action was a crime that matters: the crime of independence. Torture, tyranny, aggression, slaughter of civilians are all acceptable by US-UK standards, but not stepping on our toes. The standard policies were then set into motion.”

“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.”
- John Adams
 

Home of the Brave?

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html
Who Is Osama Bin Laden?
by Michel Chossudovsky
Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), Montréal
Posted at globalresearch.ca 12 September 2001

In 1979 "the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA" was launched in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in support of the pro-Communist government of Babrak Kamal.2:

With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI [Inter Services Intelligence], who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a global war waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan's fight between 1982 and 1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani madrasahs. Eventually more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan jihad.3

The Islamic "jihad" was supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia with a significant part of the funding generated from the Golden Crescent drug trade:

In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166,...[which] authorize[d] stepped-up covert military aid to the mujahideen, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal. The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies -- a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987, ... as well as a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan's ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. There the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels.4

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) using Pakistan's military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) played a key role in training the Mujahideen. In turn, the CIA sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam:

Predominant themes were that Islam was a complete socio-political ideology, that holy Islam was being violated by the atheistic Soviet troops, and that the Islamic people of Afghanistan should reassert their independence by overthrowing the leftist Afghan regime propped up by Moscow.5

 

“Absolute power has no necessity to lie, it may be silent – while responsible governments obliged to speak, not only disguise the truth, but lie with effrontery.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html
The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,
President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser
Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

“Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?”

“Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.”

“Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.”

“Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?”

“B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.”
 

“I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street....”
- Smedley D. Butler, (1881-1940) Major Gen U.S. Marines

http://www.connix.com/~harry/secret1.htm
THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA - Part 1
JOHN STOCKWELL, 10 October 1987

"I did 13 years in the CIA altogether. I sat on a subcommittee of the NSC, so I was like a chief of staff, with the GS-18s (like 3-star generals) Henry Kissinger, Bill Colby (the CIA director), the GS-18s and the CIA, making the important decisions and my job was to put it all together and make it happen and run it, an interesting place from which to watch a covert action being done.... “

“We were doing things it seemed because we were there, because it was our function, we were bribing people, corrupting people, and not protecting the U.S. in any visible way. I had a chance to go drinking with this Larry Devlin, a famous CIA case officer who had overthrown Patrice Lumumba, and had him killed in 1960, back in the Congo. He was moving into the Africa division Chief. I talked to him in Addis Ababa at length one night, and he was giving me an explanation - I was telling him frankly, 'sir, you know, this stuff doesn't make any sense, we're not saving anybody from anything, and we are corrupting people, and everybody knows we're doing it, and that makes the U.S. look bad'. “

“We're talking about 10 to 20 thousand covert actions [the CIA has performed since 1961]. What I found was that lots and lots of people have been killed in these things.... Some of them are very, very bloody.”

“However, the money, the millions and millions of dollars we put into this program [helping Central America] inevitably went to the rich, and not to the people of the countries involved. And while we were doing this, while we were trying, at least saying we were trying, to correct the problems of Central and Latin America, the CIA was doing its thing, too. The CIA was in fact forming the police units that are today the death squads in El Salvador. With the leaders on the CIA's payroll, trained by the CIA and the United States. “

We had the `public safety program' going throughout Central and Latin America for 26 years, in which we taught them to break up subversion by interrogating people. Interrogation, including torture, the way the CIA taught it. Dan Metrione, the famous exponent of these things, did 7 years in Brazil and 3 in Uruguay, teaching interrogation, teaching torture. He was supposed to be the master of the business, how to apply the right amount of pain, at just the right times, in order to get the response you want from the individual.

They developed a wire. They gave them crank generators, with `U.S. AID' written on the side, so the people even knew where these things came from. They developed a wire that was strong enough to carry the current and fine enough to fit between the teeth, so you could put one wire between the teeth and the other one in or around the genitals and you could crank and submit the individual to the greatest amount of pain, supposedly, that the human body can register.

Now how do you teach torture? Dan Metrione: `I can teach you about torture, but sooner or later you'll have to get involved. You'll have to lay on your hands and try it yourselves.'

.... All they [the guinea pigs, beggars from off the streets] could do was lie there and scream. And when they would collapse, they would bring in doctors and shoot them up with vitamin B and rest them up for the next class. And when they would die, they would mutilate the bodies and throw them out on the streets, to terrify the population so they would be afraid of the police and the government.

And this is what the CIA was teaching them to do. And one of the women who was in this program for 2 years - tortured in Brazil for 2 years - she testified internationally when she eventually got out. She said, `The most horrible thing about it was in fact, that the people doing the torture were not raving psychopaths.' She couldn't break mental contact with them the way you could if they were psychopath. They were very ordinary people....

“Our ambassador to the United Nations, Patrick Moynihan, he read continuous statements of our position to the Security Council, the general assembly, and the press conferences, saying the Russians and Cubans were responsible for the conflict, and that we were staying out, and that we deplored the militarization of the conflict.”

“And every statement he made was false. And every statement he made was originated in the sub-committee of the NSC that I sat on as we managed this thing. The state department press person read these position papers daily to the press. We would write papers for him. Four paragraphs. We would call him on the phone and say, `call us 10 minutes before you go on, the situation could change overnight, we'll tell you which paragraph to read. And all four paragraphs would be false. Nothing to do with the truth. Designed to play on events, to create this impression of Soviet and Cuban aggression in Angola. When they were in fact responding to our initiatives."

http://www.odci.gov/csi/studies/winter98-99/art07.html
CIA Budget [from a CIA web site]
“The CIA assessment was very different from the Pike Committee's. The Pike group's final report concluded that the foreign intelligence budget was three or four times larger than Congress had been told; that money appropriated for the IC was hidden throughout the entire Federal budget; that the total amount of funds expended on intelligence was extremely difficult to determine; and that Congressional and executive scrutiny of the budget ranged between "cursory and nonexistent." The report described the GAO as the auditing arm of Congress, but, when it came to the intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, "it was no arm at all."

“Leading and Working with Our Foreign Allies Against Drugs: The drug cartels are among the most powerful criminal groups ever to operate on American soil. No effort to stop these powerful organizations can succeed without the ability to strike at the cartel's leadership and reach criminal activity that recognizes no national boundaries. These powerful criminal organizations also pose a threat to our democratic allies throughout the Western Hemisphere. Left unchecked, this violence and widespread corruption could seriously undermine the rule of law in Mexico and Colombia.”
- The [Bush] President's Plan of Action for Budget 2002
 

http://www.copvcia.com/free/ciadrugs/contra1.html
"POWDERBURNS" Cocaine, Contras & The Drug War by Celerino "Cele" Castillo III

“While with the DEA, I was able to keep journals of my assignments in Central and South America. These journals include names, case file numbers and DEA NADDIS (DEA Master Computer) information to back up my allegations. I have pictures and original passports of the victims that were murdered by CIA assets. These atrocities were done with the approval of the agencies.”

“I became so frustrated that I forced myself to respond to the I.O.B report citing case file numbers, dates, and names of people who were murdered. In one case (DEA file # TG-86-0005) several Colombians and Mexicans were raped, tortured and murdered by CIA and DEA assets, with the approval of the CIA. Among those victims identified was Jose Ramon Parra-Iniguez, Mexican passport A-GUC-043 and his two daughters Maria Leticia Olivier-Dominguez, Mexican passport A-GM-8381. Also included among the dead were several Colombian nationals: Adolfo Leon Morales-Arcilia "a.k.a." Adolfo Morales-Orestes, Carlos Alberto Ramirez, and Jiro Gilardo-Ocampo. Both a DEA and a CIA agent were present, when these individuals were being interrogated (tortured).”

“The key to understanding the "crack cocaine" epidemic, which exploded on our streets in 1984, lies in understanding the effect of congressional oversight on covert operations. In this case the Boland amendment(s) of the era, while intending to restrict covert operations as intended by the will of the People, only served to encourage C.I.A., the military and elements of the national intelligence community to completely bypass the Congress and the Constitution in an eager and often used covert policy of funding prohibited operations with drug money.”

“As my friend and colleague Michael Ruppert has pointed out through his own experience in the 1970s, CIA has often bypassed congressional intent by resorting to the drug trade (Vietnam, Laos, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc).”

“Some people have asked, "Why I am doing this? I reply, "That a long time ago I took an oath to protect The Constitution of the United States and its citizens". In reality, it has cost me so much to become a complete human being, that I've lost my family. In 1995, I made a pilgrimage to the Vietnam Wall, where I renounced my Bronze Star in protest of the atrocities my government had committed in Central America. I have now become a veteran of my third, and perhaps most dangerous war --- a war against the criminals within my own Government. Heads have to roll for those who are responsible and still employed by the government. They will be the first targets in an effective drug strategy. If not, we will continue to have groups of individuals who will be beyond any investigation, who will manipulate the press, judges and members of our Congress, and still be known in our government as those who are above the law.”

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1101/113001nj1.htm
Border controls must balance security and freedom
November 30, 2001
"We've been so fixated on keeping out the tired, the poor, the huddled masses," said Wayne Merry, a senior associate at the American Foreign Policy Council, who spent 26 years with the Foreign Service. "If you've got money, education, or influence, the system doesn't filter you out. It's completely missing the problem."

National security experts, including Merry, charge that many border control officials, instead of urgently shifting gears, are still defending their traditional practices-while pointing fingers at other agencies for allowing all 19 of the September 11 terrorists to enter the country legally.

Since September 11, CIA Director George J. Tenet has ordered his staff to share information with other agencies. But former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman said that intelligence agencies don't trust other parts of the government. "You'll think, `What does the INS know?' " he explained. Plus, in wartime, he said, the intelligence community puts military needs first. "Once you start shooting, your priorities change," he said.

http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju64398.000/hju64398_0.htm
ADOPTED ORPHANS CITIZENSHIP ACT AND ANTI-ATROCITY ALIEN DEPORTATION ACT
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2000
House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims, Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, DC.

STATEMENT OF RICHARD KRIEGER, PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL EDUCATIONAL MISSIONS, INC.
…
I am Richard Krieger, president of International Educational Missions, a nonprofit, bipartisan organization. Our purpose and distinguished board are listed at the end of the written testimony.

IEM has been in existence since 1987 and many of our members have been involved in the issues concerned here today for decades. I personally have been involved with helping to bring Nazi war criminals to justice since the early 1970's and was proud to be a part of the process that gave birth to OSI, as well as helping to bring many thousands of refugees to freedom.
…
To the utter dismay of IEM, and indeed to the revulsion of most Americans, at this very moment, many of the individuals who perpetrated war crimes, torture and other atrocities are availing themselves of our freedoms and liberties right here in the United States. Rwandan war criminals, Cambodian, Sudanese, Somalian, Indonesian, Ethiopian, Haitian, Chilean, Argentinean—the question is why have any of them been allowed into the United States and why have they been allowed to stay? Why has no successful action been taken against the perpetrators of atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo who now reside here? Where was the INS?

I bring this issue before you since a few people have suggested the INS administer the Anti-Atrocity Program and not OSI. OSI has placed thousands of Nazi era war criminals on the watch list which enabled our government to keep more than 150 of these odious monsters out of the United States. They have denaturalized 63 Nazi war criminals and deported 52.
…
Quoting Senator Patrick Leahy in his statement before the Senate on November 4, 1999,

''I have been appalled that this country has become a safe haven for those who exercised power in foreign countries to terrorize, rape, and torture innocent civilians. For example, three Ethiopian refugees proved in an American court that Kelhessa Negewo, a former senior government official in Ethiopia engaged in numerous acts of torture and human rights abuses against them in the late 1970's when they lived in that country. The court's descriptions of the abuses against him are chilling, and included whipping a naked woman with a wire for hours and threatening her with death in the presence of several men. The court's award of compensatory and punitive damages in the amount of $1,500,000 to the plaintiffs was subsequently affirmed by an appellate court. Yet, while Negewo's case was on appeal, the I.N.S. granted him citizenship.

''As Professor William Aceves of California School of Law has noted, this case reveals

'a glaring and troubling limitation in current immigration law and practice. This case is not unique. Other aliens who have committed gross human rights violations have also gained entry into the United States and been granted immigration relief.' ''

http://www.zmag.org/GlobalWatch/chomskymit.htm
Terrorism Works – Terrorism is not the Weapon of the Weak
"That is the culture in which we live and it reveals several facts. One is the fact that terrorism works. It doesn’t fail. It works. Violence usually works. That’s world history. Secondly, it’s a very serious analytic error to say, as is commonly done, that terrorism is the weapon of the weak. Like other means of violence, it’s primarily a weapon of the strong, overwhelmingly, in fact. It is held to be a weapon of the weak because the strong also control the doctrinal systems and their terror doesn’t count as terror. Now that’s close to universal. I can’t think of a historical exception, even the worst mass murderers view the world that way. So pick the Nazis. They weren’t carrying out terror in occupied Europe. They were protecting the local population from the terrorisms of the partisans. And like other resistance movements, there was terrorism. The Nazis were carrying out counter terror. Furthermore, the United States essentially agreed with that. After the war, the US army did extensive studies of Nazi counter terror operations in Europe. First I should say that the US picked them up and began carrying them out itself, often against the same targets, the former resistance. But the military also studied the Nazi methods published interesting studies, sometimes critical of them because they were inefficiently carried out, so a critical analysis, you didn’t do this right, you did that right, but those methods with the advice of Wermacht officers who were brought over here became the manuals of counter insurgency, of counter terror, of low intensity conflict, as it is called, and are the manuals, and are the procedures that are being used. So it’s not just that the Nazis did it. It’s that it was regarded as the right thing to do by the leaders of western civilization, that is us, who then proceeded to do it themselves. Terrorism is not the weapon of the weak. It is the weapon of those who are against ‘us’ whoever ‘us’ happens to be. And if you can find a historical exception to that, I’d be interested in seeing it."
 

“For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. …We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.”
- President Harry S. Truman, Washington Post, December 22, 1963
 

Who would/could use ‘weapons grade’ Anthrax?

    Who was behind the Anthrax attacks? What organization had motives for threatening both members of congress and mass media gatekeepers? Who are the people at least one Republican senator wanted ‘fired’ after the attacks on September 11, 2001? What international organization has spent decades training and funding radical Islamic groups in Afghanistan and other countries? What organization needed a dramatic national defense style distraction to take attention away from congressional investigations? What organization along with the FBI received sweeping new powers following the Anthrax attacks?  The CIA hires ex-marines for operations that, “others don’t want to do” don’t they?

http://www.timeenoughforlove.org/saved/AnthraxSenderMayHaveMilitaryPast.htm
Anthrax Sender May Have Military Past, Daschle Says
Saturday December 8 1:51 PM ET
“Asked if he believes the source was someone with a military background, Daschle said, ``That's correct.'' Daschle has been in frequent contact with investigators.”

http://www.timeenoughforlove.org/saved/U_S_ArmyHasAnthraxStrain.htm
U.S. Army Has Anthrax Strain
Thursday December 13 10:41 AM ET
"For years, U.S. Army scientists in Utah have been developing a powdered form of anthrax that matches the strain used in the deadly letters that have killed five people since September, according to a published report.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49502-2001Dec15.html
Capitol Hill Anthrax Matches Army's Stocks
Sunday, December 16, 2001; Page A01
“The FBI's investigation into the anthrax attacks is increasingly focusing on whether U.S. government bioweapons research programs, including one conducted by the CIA, may have been the source of deadly anthrax powder sent through the mail, according to sources with knowledge of the probe. The results of the genetic tests strengthen that possibility.”

“The CIA declined to say where its Ames strain material came from.”

Law enforcement sources, however, said the FBI remains extremely interested in the CIA's work with anthrax, with one official calling it the best lead they have at this point. The sources said FBI investigators do not yet know much about the CIA program.

A law enforcement source said the FBI did not initially include the CIA on its list of labs working with anthrax because the agency was not among 91 labs registered with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to transfer anthrax specimens. But as investigators interviewed workers at those known labs, they learned of the CIA's work, and in the past few weeks posed questions about it to the agency.

http://www.connix.com/~harry/secret1.htm
THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA - Part 1
JOHN STOCKWELL, 10 October 1987
"I did 13 years in the CIA altogether. ..We're talking about 10 to 20 thousand covert actions [the CIA has performed since 1961]. What I found was that lots and lots of people have been killed in these things.... Some of them are very, very bloody.”

http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jcbw/jcbw020605_1_n.shtml
All quiet on the anthrax front?
By Andy Oppenheimer, 05 June 2002
Even before 9.11, there was growing concern over the possible use of anthrax as a biological weapon. On 2 October 2001, this fear became reality as anthrax outbreaks, the result of a biological agent delivered through the mail, began to occur in the USA.

Weapons-grade anthrax, usually fatal in its pulmonary (inhalation) form, was removed, refined and eventually posted. It killed five people (not the mail recipients), sickened 17 others, paralysed mail delivery, forced many senators to evacuate their offices for more than two months, terrified the nation and caused some 35,000 more to take prophylactic antibiotics. There have been 15,000 anthrax hoaxes and false threats. The incidents have forced 540 postal facilities to close temporarily and have resulted in 71 arrests.

The anthrax discovered in the letters mailed to two US senators was so refined that it contained 1 trillion spores per gram. It was milled to produce the size most effective in spreading the bacteria: between one and three microns. This size is characteristic of weaponized anthrax made by US defense laboratories.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/may2002/anth-m15.shtml
Anthrax attacks: FBI cover-up and New York Times whitewash
By Patrick Martin, 15 May 2002
A new genetic analysis of the anthrax used in last fall’s terrorist attacks has pinpointed the source as the US government’s own germ warfare program. This finding explodes the pretense, long maintained by the Bush administration and parroted by the media, that little is known in the investigation into the attacks, which killed five people and disrupted the lives of millions.
…
This cover-up has a clear political motivation: either the perpetrator is an individual with powerful friends in high places in the Bush administration, whose influence is stalling the probe, or the perpetrator is actually a US government agency—…

While the genetic evidence lays out a virtual blueprint for the investigation into the anthrax attacks, there are more accounts of foot-dragging by the US government. ABC News reported April 4 that US military and intelligence agencies have refused to provide the FBI with a full listing of the secret facilities and employees working on anthrax projects.


http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm
The Rise of Hitler - Feb. 27, 1933 The Reichstag Burns
Two days later, they raided Communist headquarters in Berlin. Göring falsely claimed he had uncovered plans for a Communist uprising in the raid. But he actually uncovered the membership list of the Communist party and intended to arrest every one of the four thousand members.

Göring and Goebbels, with Hitler's approval, then hatched a plan to cause panic by burning the Reichstag building and blaming the Communists. The Reichstag was the building in Berlin where the elected members of the republic met to conduct the daily business of government.

By a weird coincidence, there was also in Berlin a deranged Communist conducting a one-man uprising. An arsonist named Marinus van der Lubbe, 24, from Holland, had been wandering around Berlin for a week attempting to burn government buildings to protest capitalism and start a revolt. On February 27, he decided to burn the Reichstag building. Carrying incendiary devices, he spent all day lurking around the building, before breaking in around 9 p.m. He took off his shirt, lit it on fire, then went to work using it as his torch.

The exact sequence of events will never be known, but Nazi storm troopers under the direction of Göring were also involved in torching the place. They had befriended the arsonist and may have known or even encouraged him to burn the Reichstag that night. The storm troopers, led by SA leader Karl Ernst, used the underground tunnel that connected Göring's residence with the cellar in the Reichstag. They entered the building, scattered gasoline and incendiaries, then hurried back through the tunnel.

The deep red glow of the burning Reichstag caught the eye of President Hindenburg and Vice-Chancellor Papen who were dining at a club facing the building. Papen put the elderly Hindenburg in his own car and took him to the scene.

Hitler was at Goebbels' apartment having dinner. They rushed to the scene where they met Göring who was already screaming false charges and making threats against the Communists. At first glance, Hitler described the fire as a beacon from heaven.

"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in German history...This fire is the beginning," Hitler told a news reporter at the scene.

After viewing the damage, an emergency meeting of government leaders was held. When told of the arrest of the Communist arsonist, Van der Lubbe, Hitler became deliberately enraged.

At a cabinet meeting held later in the morning, February 28, Chancellor Hitler demanded an emergency decree to overcome the crisis. He met little resistance from his largely non-Nazi cabinet. That evening, Hitler and Papen went to Hindenburg and the befuddled old man signed the decree "for the Protection of the people and the State."

http://www.ccr-ny.org/whatsnew/usa_patriot_act.asp
The USA PATRIOT Act:
What's So Patriotic About Trampling on the Bill of Rights?1

Just six weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a jittery Congress-exiled from its anthrax-contaminated offices and confronted with warnings that more terrorist assaults were soon to come-capitulated to the Bush Administration's demands for a new arsenal of anti-terrorism weapons. Over vigorous objections from civil liberties organizations on both ends of the political spectrum, Congress overwhelmingly approved the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, better known by its acronym, the USA PATRIOT Act.2 The House vote was 356-to-66, and the Senate vote was 98-to-1. Along the way, the Republican House leadership, in a raw display of force, jettisoned an anti-terrorism bill that the House Judiciary Committee had unanimously approved and that would have addressed a number of civil liberties concerns.3 The hastily-drafted, complex, and far-reaching legislation spans 342 pages. Yet it was passed with virtually no public hearing or debate, and it was accompanied by neither a conference nor a committee report. On October 26, the Act was signed into law by a triumphant President George W. Bush.4

I. THE USA PATRIOT ACT CONFERS VAST AND UNCHECKED POWERS TO THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH
Although a number of its provisions are not controversial, the USA PATRIOT Act nevertheless stands out as radical in its design. To an unprecedented degree, the Act sacrifices our political freedoms in the name of national security and upsets the democratic values that define our nation by consolidating vast new powers in the executive branch of government. The Act enhances the executive's ability to conduct surveillance and gather intelligence, places an array of new tools at the disposal of the prosecution, including new crimes, enhanced penalties, and longer statutes of limitations, and grants the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) the authority to detain immigrants suspected of terrorism for lengthy, and in some cases indefinite, periods of time. And at the same time that the Act inflates the powers of the executive, it insulates the exercise of these powers from meaningful judicial and Congressional oversight.

http://www.aclu.org/congress/l110101a.html
USA Patriot Act Boosts Government Powers While Cutting Back on Traditional Checks and Balances
An ACLU Legislative Analysis
Criminal Justice
The law dramatically expands the use of secret searches. Normally, a person is notified when law enforcement conducts a search. In some cases regarding searches for electronic information, law enforcement authorities can get court permission to delay notification of a search. The USA Patriot Act extends the authority of the government to request "secret searches" to every criminal case. This vast expansion of power goes far beyond anything necessary to conduct terrorism investigations.

The Act also allows for the broad sharing of sensitive information in criminal cases with intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the NSA, the INS and the Secret Service. It permits sharing of sensitive grand jury and wiretap information without judicial review or any safeguards regarding the future use or dissemination of such information.

These information sharing authorizations and mandates effectively put the CIA back in the business of spying on Americans: Once the CIA makes clear the kind of information it seeks, law enforcement agencies can use tools like wiretaps and intelligence searches to provide data to the CIA. In fact, the law specifically gives the Director of Central Intelligence - who heads the CIA -- the power to identify domestic intelligence requirements.

The law also creates a new crime of "domestic terrorism." The new offense threatens to transform protestors into terrorists if they engage in conduct that "involves acts dangerous to human life." Members of Operation Rescue, the Environmental Liberation Front and Greenpeace, for example, have all engaged in activities that could subject them to prosecution as terrorists. Then, under this law, the dominos begin to fall. Those who provide lodging or other assistance to these "domestic terrorists" could have their homes wiretapped and could be prosecuted.
 

“Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”
- Ayn Rand
 

Land of the Free?

http://www.echelonwatch.org/
Echelon is perhaps the most powerful intelligence gathering organization in the world. Several credible reports suggest that this global electronic communications surveillance system presents an extreme threat to the privacy of people all over the world. According to these reports, ECHELON attempts to capture staggering volumes of satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber-optic traffic, including communications to and from North America. This vast quantity of voice and data communications are then processed through sophisticated filtering technologies.

This massive surveillance system apparently operates with little oversight. Moreover, the agencies that purportedly run ECHELON have provided few details as to the legal guidelines for the project. Because of this, there is no way of knowing if ECHELON is being used illegally to spy on private citizens.

http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/6929/1.html
The history, structure und function of the global surveillance system known as Echelon
Echelon is a system used by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept and process international communications passing via communications satellites. It is one part of a global surveillance systems that is now over 50 years old. Other parts of the same system intercept messages from the Internet, from undersea cables, from radio transmissions, from secret equipment installed inside embassies, or use orbiting satellites to monitor signals anywhere on the earth's surface. “

Many details of the operation of the English-speaking sigint axis were revealed by two NSA defectors at a press conference held in Moscow on 6 September 1960. There, two NSA analysts, Bernon Mitchell and William Martin, told the world what NSA was doing:

We know from working at NSA [that] the United States reads the secret communications of more than forty nations, including its own allies ... NSA keeps in operation more than 2000 manual intercept positions ... Both enciphered and plain text communications are monitored from almost every nation in the world, including the nations on whose soil the intercept bases are located.
New York Times, 7 September 1960.

The revelations were reported in full in the US, but their impact was soon buried by security recriminations and accusations. Martin and Mitchell revealed that NSA's operations division included two key groups. One group covered the Soviet Union and its allies. The second analysis division was known as ALLO, standing for "all other [countries]". This part of NSA's production organisation was later renamed ROW, starting for "Rest of the World".

 

"There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."
- Henry David Thoreau

http://www.derechos.net/paulwolf/cointelpro/cointel.htm
COINTELPRO is an acronym for the FBI's domestic "counterintelligence programs" to neutralize political dissidents. Although covert operations have been employed throughout FBI history, the formal COINTELPRO's conducted between 1956-1971 were broadly targeted against radical political organizations.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/gjp3.html
What Was Cointelpro?
"COINTELPRO" was the FBI's secret program to undermine the popular upsurge which swept the country during the 1960s. Though the name stands for "Counterintelligence Program," the targets were not enemy spies. The FBI set out to eliminate "radical" political opposition inside the US. When traditional modes of repression (exposure, blatant harassment, and prosecution for political crimes) failed to counter the growing insurgency, and even helped to fuel it, the Bureau took the law into its own hands and secretly used fraud and force to sabotage constitutionally-protected political activity. Its methods ranged far beyond surveillance, and amounted to a domestic version of the covert action for which the CIA has become infamous throughout the world.

How Do We Know About It?
COINTELPRO was discovered in March, 1971, when secret files were removed from an FBI office and released to news media. Freedom of Information requests, lawsuits, and former agents' public confessions deepened the exposure until a major scandal loomed. To control the damage and re-establish government legitimacy in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, Congress and the courts compelled the FBI to reveal part of what it had done and to promise it would no