Richard Helms, who died ... at age 89, was described by his biographer Thomas Powers as a "gentlemanly planner of assassinations." The epithet captured the essence of the former CIA director's style: socially correct, bureaucratically adept, operationally nasty. In mid-20th-century Washington, this combination proved effective, if not glamorous. Helms gained the confidence of presidents and the admiration of syndicated columnists. Yet ultimately his faith in political assassination was no small part of his fall from power to disgrace.

At a time when there is revived interest in using assassination as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy to deal with the likes of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, Helms' career offers a cautionary epitaph: The assassination business has a way of ending badly.

Helms professed to be something of a skeptic of assassination. In Powers' biography, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, Helms is quoted as saying that assassination rarely achieved its expected goals. Yet once he took command of the American clandestine service in 1962, his prudence deserted him. President Kennedy and his successors wanted to use the tool of assassination, and Helms gave them what they wanted.

Leaving aside moral questions, his performance was far from impressive. Helms first turned to his good friend William Harvey, a brilliant, pistol-packing operative, who enlisted some of his friends in the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro. They proved unable to pierce Castro's security detail. In the summer of 1963, the deputy CIA director made another poor personnel choice. He activated contact with a disgruntled former hero of the Cuban revolution named Rolando Cubela. Known by his CIA cryptonym, "AMLASH," Cubela was a complex character. While he spoke of killing Castro, he was also loyal to the ideals of the Cuban revolution. Helms' counterintelligence staff advised caution, but Helms overruled them.

This homicidal conspiracy took on a more sinister aspect on Nov. 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was killed in Dallas. At the very moment Kennedy died, one of Helms' agents was delivering a poison pen to Cubela in Paris. The revelation of this coincidence in 1975 crystallized a wave of public indignation and revulsion that prompted Congress to slash the agency's budget and restrict its activities. 

Helms and his defenders bemoaned the conspiratorial bent of the American public, which often implicated the CIA in Kennedy's death. Yet Helms was hardly in a position to complain about conspiracy-mongering. He himself had been instrumental in the publication of the first JFK assassination conspiracy theory.

CIA files uncovered by a civilian watchdog panel in 1998 revealed what Helms sought to hide. In the summer of 1963, his top psychological warfare specialist in Miami, a dapper, multilingual lawyer named George Joannides, was slipping $25,000 a month to a group of anti-Castro Cuban exile students in Miami. When Kennedy was killed three months later, these same students, using CIA funds from Joannides, published a special edition of their newspaper, proclaiming that accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had acted at Castro's behest. Dated Nov, 23, 1963, this broadsheet featuring photos of Castro and Oswald was the first concerted effort to articulate a conspiratorial explanation of Kennedy's death—and it was paid for out Dick Helms' budget.

Even a loyal CIA insider who worked with Helms concluded that the spymaster's actions encouraged suspicion of the agency. In 1963, John Whitten was a respected senior staffer whom Helms put in charge of reviewing all CIA files on Oswald. As an investigator, Whitten was appalled that Helms had not disclosed the Cubela/AMLASH plot to members of the Warren Commission, the blue-ribbon panel that probed Kennedy's death. Helms' actions, he said, were "morally highly reprehensible."

read more:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/obit/2002/11/the_gentlem...

A few years later after this article above was written...

 

Osama bin Laden, the founder and head of the Islamist group Al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, shortly after 1:00 am PKT[1][2] (20:00 UTC, May 1) by United States Navy SEALs of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group (also known as DEVGRU or SEAL Team Six).[3] The operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, was carried out in a CIA-led operation, with Joint Special Operations Command, commonly known as JSOC, coordinating the Special Mission Units involved in the raid. In addition to SEAL Team Six, participating units under JSOC included the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), aka "Night Stalkers," and operators from the CIA's Special Activities Division, which recruits heavily from former JSOC Special Mission Units.[4][5] The operation ended a nearly 10-year search for bin Laden, following his role in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US.

The raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, was launched from Afghanistan.[6]U.S. military officials said that after the raid, U.S. forces took bin Laden's body to Afghanistan for identification, then buried him at sea within 24 hours of his death in accordance with Islamic tradition.[7] According to Carlotta Gall, a Pakistani official (to whom she later clarified that she did not speak, the information coming through a friend[8]), told her that a senior U.S. official had told him that the United States had direct evidence that Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief, Lt. Gen.Ahmad Shuja Pasha, knew of bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad, but ISI, Pasha, and officials in Washington all denied this.[9]

read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden

 

 

Following World War II, the United States became secretly engaged in a practice of international political assassinations and attempts on foreign leaders. For a considerable period of time, the U.S. Government officials vehemently denied any knowledge of this program since it would be against the United Nations Charter. On March 5, 1972, Richard Helms, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director, declared that, "no such activity or operations be undertaken, assisted, or suggested by any of our personnel."[1] In 1975, the U.S. Senate convened the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities chaired by the Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho). The Church Committee uncovered that CIA and other governmental agencies employed a so-called tactic of "plausible deniability" during decision-making related to assassinations. CIA subordinates were deliberately shielding the higher-ranking officials from any responsibility by withholding full amount of information about planned assassinations. Government employees were obtaining tacit approval of their acts by using euphemisms and sly wording in communications.[2]

read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro

Transcripts of a phone conversation between Kissinger and Nixon reveal that they didn't have a hand in the final coup. They do take credit for creating the conditions that led to the coup. Kissinger say that "they created the conditions as great as possible." Nixon and Kissinger also discussed how they would play this event with the media and lamented the fact that, if this were the era of Eisenhower, then they would be seen as heroes.[35] There was a PDB that had a section on Chile dated September 11, 1973 that is still completely censored, as was an entire page on Chile provided to Nixon on September 8, 1973. There was also a cable from CIA operative Jack Devine on September 10, 1973 made to top U.S. officials that confirms the coup will take place the following day.[36] In ties with the coup a Defense Intelligence Agency summary dated also on September 8 and classified "Top Secret Umbra" provided detailed information on an agreement among the Chilean Army, Navy and Air Force to move against Allende on September 10. As the CIA denies its involvement in the coup another cable sent from the agency on September 8 classified "Secret" had information on the Chilean Navy time and date to overthrow the government of President Allende and which branches of military and police would seize control strategic locations. The cable also identified key Chilean officials who were supporting the coup.[37] The cables from around this time with another one stating that the coup was postponed in order to improve tactical coordination and would attempt the coup on September 11.[38]

A CIA intelligence report October 25, 1973 on General Arellano Stark, that Stark ordered the deaths of 21 political prisoners. Also the disappearances of 14 other prisoners also believed to be the order of Stark. General Stark was considered Pinochet's right-hand man after the coup.[39]

Historian Peter Winn has argued that the role of the CIA was crucial to the consolidation of power that followed the coup; the CIA helped fabricate a conspiracy against the Allende government, which Pinochet was then portrayed as preventing. He states that the coup itself was possible only through a three-year covert operation mounted by the United States. He also points out that the US imposed an "invisible blockade" that was designed to disrupt the economy under Allende, and contributed to the destabilization of the regime.[29] Peter Kornbluh, director of the National Security Archive's Chile Documentation Project, argues in his book The Pinochet File[19] that the US was extensively involved and actively "fomented"[19] the 1973 coup. Authors Tim Weiner, in his book, Legacy of Ashes,[18] and Christopher Hitchens, in his book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger[40] similarly argue the case that US covert actions actively destabilized Allende’s government and set the stage for the 1973 coup. Joaquin Fermandois criticized Kornbluh's "black and white" and "North American centered conception of world affairs", stating that a variety of internal and external factors also played a role and that a careful reading of the documentary record reveals the CIA was largely "impotent".[41]

Conservative scholar Mark Falcoff alleged that Cuba and the Soviet Union supplied several hundred thousand dollars to the socialist and Marxist factions in the government.[42] Peter Winn noted that "the Chilean revolution always kept to its peaceful road, despite counterrevolutionary plots and violence." Moreover, this strong emphasis on nonviolence was precisely to avoid revolutionary terror which had blemished the reputations of the French, Russian and Cuban revolutions.[29]

Overall, the year of 1973 was when the Chilean's president was overthrown. The president later committed suicide as what an article in The Atlantic stated, "he committed suicide under mysterious circumstances as troops surrounded his place, ushering in more than 15 years of military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet".[43] A former CIA agent who was active in the CIA agency during the time of the Coup recently reported that the decision to overthrow Chile's President was not the CIA's decision, but rather the decision of the White House, particularly President Nixon.[44]

read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_Chile

 

Established in 1947 and located in Virginia, the Central Intelligence Agency is the keystone of the Intelligence Community. The Agency, unlike other members of the Intelligence Community, is an independent agency and not tied to any policymaking branch of the government as other members of the community are. The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency is John O. Brennan. The Agency is an all-source intelligence agency that looks at different issues all over the world and provides intelligence products to the President, the National Security Council, Congress, and other government agencies.

Historical Document
Posted: Apr 15, 2007 11:57 AM
Last Updated: Oct 30, 2013 04:03 PM

read more:
https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/k-5th-grade/a-birds-eye-view-of-cia-histor...

Even the CIA does not know its new director's name... or that it has a new director... 

 

 

Nato chief: world is at its most dangerous point in a generation

Exclusive: Jens Stoltenberg warns of converging threats as Russia mobilises estimated 100,000 troops on EU’s borders

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/08/world-most-dangerous-gener...

 

Gus:

The stupid man is wishing for war. He wants to test his NATO troops against Russia. Russia does not want war. This would be the last thing on the mind of Vladimir. He wants PEACE. Understand P-e-a-c-e?. But because NATO  has been doing war games along the Russian borders for a few years now, the Russians are doing their own "war games" on their own side with Belarus. Is Russia going to invade anybody? Nupe. So far they only took back what belonged to them: Crimea and they are not even "protecting" Russians nationals in Ukraine that are under constant attack in Dombass from the Nazis in Kiev encouraged by the Yanks. 

So. Why are we at the most dangerous point in blah blah blah? BECAUSE NATO WANTS BIFFO. Without biffo, its existence is useless. So go and play marbles in your own country, you idiot Jens Stoltenberg. You've done enough sabre rattling. Piss off. 

And this goes for the Guardian to presents this "exclusive". Piss off!

 

In the game of spy versus spy, it's always hard to know who's on top of whom... The French knew that Irving Brown was a US "union man" and a CIA agent operating in France soon after he placed his feet on the French soil. But they let him operate nonetheless, keeping an eye on his "operations" — by secretly opening his mail and listening to his communications. Brown, to some extend, suited the government of the time, against the communists and other "enemies"... That was one less "mouth to feed"...

 

Irving Brown... arrived in Paris in November 1945 and organized anti-Communist unions, supporting in particular the creation of the French Force ouvrière (FO) union (which he subsidized [3]) by André Bergeron and Léon Jouhaux, in 1947, and the Italian Confederation of Workers' Trade Unions (CISL), created in 1950.[3] Until 1986, Brown was present at all of the annual congresses of FO. The AFL-CIO's Free Trade Union Committee subsidized FO [5][6][7] and other anti-Communist unions in Europe.

In 1949, alongside Jay Lovestone, he supported the spin-off of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) from the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU).[7] The ICFTU included the AFL-CIO, the British Trades Union Congress, the FO, the Italian Confederation of Workers' Trade Unions and the Spanish Unión General de Trabajadores. Thereafter, the WFTU represented the Eastern Bloc while the ICFTU represented the so-called "free world". As a friend of W. Averell Harriman, who was in charge of the Marshall Plan, Brown easily diverted funds from the Marshall Plan to support anti-Communist organizations.[2][7]

The following year, on June 26, 1950, Brown was part of the American delegation at the founding meeting of the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Berlin.

By 1952, his activities were already well known: he was the subject of an article by Time magazine, titled "The Most Dangerous Man." According to Time, he was charged of this mission by the AFL Free Trade Union Committee.[3] Brown gave financial support to anti-Communist movements which broke the 1947 strikes in Italy and France.[3] He also helped organize the anti-Communist coalition of free trade unions in Greece, as well as the Mediterranean Port Committee, which wrested control of French, Italian and Greek ports from the Communists.[3] In Marseille, he gave his support to Pierre Ferri-Pisani, a former municipal counsellor.[3]

Established in France, he headed the international relations of the AFL-CIO from his offices at 10, rue de la Paix in Paris. From 1951 to 1954, the CIA division headed by Thomas Braden provided $1 million a year to Brown and Lovestone ($1,600,000 in 1954).[7]

In 1952 he was in Helsinki, supporting the unionists who had decided to vote to quit the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), then mainly composed of Communist unions.[3]

During the Algerian War, he subsidized the Algerian National Movement (MNA), founded by Messali Hadj to oppose the National Liberation Front (FLN).

read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Brown

 

The FLN was the enemy of France and Irving Brown was doing France a favour, though the French hated the Yanks... Of course the cash that financed his operations came from the CIA. These days a lot of USAID cash is used to fund CIA operatives.

George Ball was a US diplomat who was a bit aloof with his colleagues. He was part of a mission to negotiate the end of the Marshall Plan in France (1964). Was he a double agent? There is a chance he was actually working to do a favour for the French. At the time of the negotiations, he decided to stay in a distant hotel away from the delegation and he "left" his briefcase with all the secret documents in his room while he went for strolls around town, on foot.

At the time, Section 7 of the SDECE (the French secret services) was in full swing, secretly and efficiently operating till 1966. A briefcase was a piece of cheese for the "plombiers" who could open the most difficult of safes in embassies and consulates — and blow up ships. So the French knew the "bottom" terms of the USA in regard to get paid. Too easy... Now, was he under CIA instructions to make the negotiations quick and smart? No Pain?

I guess that because George Ball also knew that Vietnam was going to be lost, even then in 1964, he decided to do a trade off in his own way...

 

George Wildman Ball (December 21, 1909 – May 26, 1994) was an American diplomat and banker. He served in the management of the State Department from 1961 to 1966 and is remembered most as the only major dissenter against the escalation of the Vietnam War. He refused to publicize his doubts, which were based on calculations that South Vietnam was doomed. He also helped determine American policy regarding trade expansion, Congo, the Multilateral Force, de Gaulle's France, Israel and the Middle East, and the Iranian revolution.

read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Ball_(diplomat)

 

From Chris Floyd:

I wrote the column below on  Sept. 12, 2001; it was published in The Moscow Times on Sept. 14. As I noted a few years ago, a lot of water – and a lot of blood – have gone under the bridge since then, but I think most of the piece still holds true, unfortunately.

Perhaps their knives were made of stone – chipped flints, sharpened to a deadly point: the earliest human technology. Stone knives would have baffled the sleek security machines, scanning for metal, for iron and steel. Perhaps that's how the guardians of the world's greatest power were defeated by a handful of men.

A handful of men, dedicated to God, willing to die for their cause – virtues celebrated throughout the civilized world. Old-fashioned men, too: this was not push-button war, there were no guided missiles streaking across vast oceans, no bomb bays opening somewhere above the clouds. This was the real thing, the raw thing, fierce and elemental. They came to kill and they came to die. They killed; they died.

And so the unimaginable has come, at last, to America. Unimaginable, that the innocent could lie dead in their thousands, buried beneath the ruins of ordinary life. Unimaginable, that the destruction that has swept back and forth across the world in great waves, leaving the innocent lying dead in their millions, should have at last spilled over the strong sea-walls that preserved the nation's wealth and tranquility. Unimaginable, that Americans should know what so many, too many, have known before: the sudden, gutting horror of mass-murdering injustice.

How did it happen? America spends $30 billion a year, year after year after year, on "intelligence." Untold trillions have been spent on "defense." The nation bristles with powerful ordnance, it "projects dominance" (as the strategists like to say) all over the globe. And yet its leaders are like blind men, raging like Oedipus, unable to see their attackers or defend their people or understand what is happening to them.

Struck and wounded, they fall back on empty rhetoric: "an attack on democracy" – as if the suspected plotters, who spent years in a war to the death with the Soviet Union, give a damn what America's political system might be. Then come the metaphysical explanations: "A new evil has come upon us." "This is a war between good and evil."

Read more:

http://www.chris-floyd.com/home/articles/that-which-happened-9-11-revisi...

 

Criticism of the Marshall Plan became prominent among historians of the revisionist school, such as Walter LaFeber, during the 1960s and 1970s. They argued that the plan was American economic imperialism, and that it was an attempt to gain control over Western Europe just as the Soviets controlled the Eastern Bloc. In a review of West Germany's economy from 1945 to 1951, German analyst Werner Abelshauser concluded that "foreign aid was not crucial in starting the recovery or in keeping it going". The economic recoveries of France, Italy, and Belgium, Cowen found, also predated the flow of US aid. Belgium, the country that relied earliest and most heavily on free market economic policies after its liberation in 1944, experienced swift recovery and avoided the severe housing and food shortages seen in the rest of continental Europe.[118]

Former US Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank Alan Greenspan gives most credit to Ludwig Erhard for Europe's economic recovery. Greenspan writes in his memoir The Age of Turbulence that Erhard's economic policies were the most important aspect of postwar Western Europe recovery, even outweighing the contributions of the Marshall Plan. He states that it was Erhard's reductions in economic regulations that permitted Germany's miraculous recovery, and that these policies also contributed to the recoveries of many other European countries. Its recovery is attributed to traditional economic stimuli, such as increases in investment, fueled by a high savings rate and low taxes. Japan saw a large infusion of US investment during the Korean War.[119]

Noam Chomsky from the left said the Marshall Plan "set the stage for large amounts of private U.S. investment in Europe, establishing the basis for modern transnational corporations".[

Read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

 

Read also: too easy...

 

So, how could France defend herself, against the Ruskies and the Yanks, while telling the Americans to go home with the cash and by quitting NATO? This could be the next instalment of this "Mission Impossible"...

 

 

my paperclip is bigger than yours...

Operation Paperclip was a secret program of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, such as Wernher von Braun and his V-2 rocket team, were recruited in post-Nazi Germany and taken to the U.S. for government employment, at the end of World War II; many were members and some were leaders of the Nazi Party.[1][2]

The primary purpose for Operation Paperclip was U.S. military advantage in the Russo–American Cold War, and the Space Race. The Soviet Union were more aggressive in recruiting some 2,000 German scientists with Operation Osoaviakhim during one night.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) established the first secret recruitment program, called Operation Overcast, on July 20, 1945, initially "to assist in shortening the Japanese war and to aid our postwar military research".[3] The term "Overcast" was the name first given by the German scientists' family members for the housing camp where they were held in Bavaria.[4] In late summer 1945, the JCS established the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), a subcommmittee of the Joint Intelligence Community, to directly oversee Operation Overcast and later Operation Paperclip.[5]

The JIOA had one representative of each member agency of the Joint Intelligence Committee: the army's director of intelligence, the chief of naval intelligence, the assistant chief of Air Staff-2 (air force intelligence), and a representative from the State Department.[6]In November 1945, Operation Overcast was renamed Operation Paperclip by Ordnance Corps (United States Army) officers, who would attach a paperclip to the folders of those rocket experts whom they wished to employ in America.[4] In a secret directive circulated on September 3, 1946, President Truman officially approved Operation Paperclip and expanded it to include one thousand German scientists under "temporary, limited military custody".[

read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

Of course, the Ruskies did the same:  the United States had Operation Paperclip and the Soviet Union had trophy brigades (Трофейные бригады)

 

Image from Mad Magazine... See also: propaganda...

 

Dirty Work CIA in Europe Philip Agee | Central Intelligence Agency ...

https://www.scribd.com/doc/.../Dirty-Work-CIA-in-Europe-Philip-Agee‎

Dirty Work CIA in Europe Philip Agee - Free ebook download as PDF File ... And even where CIA officers and agents did act as spies, gathering ..... It was by studying these documents that I learned that the CIA has sent an operative to Peking. ...... CIA and SDECE work together quite naturally, spontaneously, organically.

 

 

The CIA and the SDECE (French spy org.) worked together at times... One operation was to send some beefy Czech refugees back behind the iron curtain as spies against Russia. In France, they trained like crazy to be parachuted over forests which to say the least is one of the most dangerous landing for such jump. So their "uniform" of the 1950s was a bit like that of modern soldiers with reinforcement everywhere, including the crotch, bullet proof armour and highly protective helmets. Their heavy weaponry was also supplied by the Yanks... They were collected by the Russians as they landed in their trees. Someone had squealed... So far no-one knows who...

 

Meanwhile as a tit for tat:

 

The US State Department has claimed that Russia has removed parking spaces reserved for American consular staff outside mission buildings. US diplomats are set to challenge the move with the Russian Foreign Ministry.

“We can confirm that the parking spaces, previously reserved for the US consular personnel, have been removed. We will raise the issue with the Russian Foreign Ministry,” a US State Department representative told RIA Novosti.

Russian facilities in the US do not have dedicated parking spaces outside the diplomatic properties.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/403337-us-consulate-parking-removed/

 

See also: 

the CIA good fairy: the bad witch of the west...

and:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/1686

Contrary to the popular show The Big Bang Theory on TV, the toilet replacement for the space station was not created by Howard. It came in the following manner to the launch pad:

In May 2008, a replacement pump for the toilet on the International Space Station was sent in a diplomatic pouch from Russia to the United States in order to arrive before liftoff of the next shuttle mission.[8]

If you have a moment or two, spend some time to study this Wikipedia entry (send some cash to Wikipedia on behalf of Gus, though I get a lot of my "info" from a lot of other sources).

 

Spying on diplomatic bags is a pastime for a lot of "intelligence" agencies. Because the bags are sealed and full of telltale markers and sometimes traps, opening diplomatic bags while in transit is an art form that demand highly skilled specialists including safe crackers that LEAVE NO TRACE of the bag having been opened...

There was a shortage of loo paper in many countries of the "East" in the 1950s. Many of the government offices used the duplicate of secret documents as toilet paper... Some Western spy agencies aware of this fact sent some shit pumping spies to collect the refuse at certain key point in the sewers. From there they were transferred across the iron curtain in special noiseless gliders to laboratories where the information from the soiled documents was extracted... 

Far fetched?... Nupe. any method to get info will do. Of course you won't see this kind of spying in the "Mission Impossible" franchise.

Read from top...

 

Andrew Wilkie, the intelligence analyst who caused the Government so much grief when he resigned on the eve of the Iraq War, was in many ways the most unlikely of whistleblowers.

From a conservative, rural family with a long and proud history of military service, Wilkie went to the Royal Military College at Duntroon as soon as he completed high school. As a high-spirited army cadet, he took great pleasure in a night-time raid to trash the permanent protest site of the anti-nuclear movement outside Old Parliament House.

Twenty or so years later, after a long military - and shorter intelligence - career, Wilkie is now a member of the Greens, what passes for the radical left of Australia's parliamentary system, and standing for election against a conservative Prime Minister, John Howard.

His book, Axis of Deceit, touches on this transformation but, aside from scattered vignettes and the prologue, focuses more on policy than on the personal.

This was the somewhat disappointing aspect of a book that is otherwise a clear-eyed and persuasive treatise on how the coalition of the willing conned the public about its motives for war and exaggerated and manipulated the intelligence it received.

Wilkie had a unique perspective, serving in the lead-up to the Iraq War as a senior analyst at the Office of National Assessments (ONA), with access to most of the intelligence on Saddam Hussein and his alleged weapons of mass destruction.

First of all, Wilkie knew what the real reason for war was - a strategic play to insert a favourable government in the Middle East and create a new ally that would allow the US to rely less on Saudi Arabia for its oil and political support. Indeed, this view was regularly relayed to the Australian government as ONA also produced a "prolific" amount of assessments on the US and its motivations toward Iraq.

So Wilkie watched with growing disgust as a case for war was mounted on what he considered completely spurious reasons - that Saddam Hussein, with his alleged links to terrorists and his alleged WMD, represented a serious threat to international security.

Wilkie, in fact, believed incorrectly that Saddam did have WMD, although not in any substantial quantities.

Read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/25/1088144972828.html

 

Andrew Wilkie was in a delicate situation. He could not divulge the "intelligence" defects that prompted him to resign from his post without being thrown in prison for treason. On page 20 of his book "Axis of Deceit", he writes that although they, the analysts, saw a lot of "hard intelligence" from the US, they "never saw" anything that linked Saddam with Al Qaeda, despite the politicians involved claiming to the contrary. His biggest worry was on a "humanitarian" level of an unnecessary and un-called-for war. 

At this stage, in early 2002, Gus already had info from the French and the Germans that clearly pointed out that Saddam did not have any weapons of mass destruction and that this was "a five eyes concoction" to go to war without any proof. Hans Blix was doing a sterling job at sniffing out the joint in Iraq and did not find anything. He did not find any WMDs for the single reason Saddam did not have any. Some "deep" section (separate from the main core) in the CIA would have had to know this, but they were under secret instruction (presidential/Cheney and Wolfowitz) to kept feeding the hoax with more and more fake "intelligence".

Intelligence organisations like that of J C Masterman during WWII are designed to "sell" FAKE information (to enemies and to the public) by clever constructed deceit. This is their prime occupation: DECEIT. Hence the title of Wilkie's book: "Axis of Deceit". How could Wilkie know that this was "deceit"?... For someone like him trained in analysis of "documents" and information, the information would have been troubling by some discreet nonsensical contradictions, single source origin and weird political interpretation — as well as a too "convenient" construct of the information. As well, it is possible that he had collected discreet info from Europeans (especially the French and the Germans) that contradicted the US (and UK) fake intel... This he could never say.

Wilkie is now an independent member of parliament...

 

See also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/11276

 

The journey to interview Edward Snowden is a long one. For DER SPIEGEL, it began over a year ago, with numerous conversations with his lawyers in New York and Berlin. It ended two weeks ago on a Wednesday in a Moscow hotel suite with a view over Red Square.

The 34-year-old former United States intelligence worker, who exposed the global surveillance system deployed by the National Security Agency (NSA), lives somewhere in the Russian capital. Since blowing the whistle, he has been an enemy of the state in his home country. He has become an icon for defenders of civil liberties and also a man on the run. The journey to Snowden almost took even longer, when he came down with a bad cold and nearly had to delay the interview. In the end, Snowden turned up -- coming across as modest and astoundingly optimistic in an interview that lasted more than three hours. 

DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Snowden, four years ago, you appeared in a video from a hotel room in Hong Kong. It was the beginning of the biggest leak of intelligence data in history. Today, we are sitting in a hotel room in Moscow. You are not able to leave Russia because the United States government has issued a warrant for your arrest. Meanwhile, the intelligence services' global surveillance machine is still running, probably faster than ever. Was it all really worth it?

Snowden: The answer is yes. Look at what my goals were. I wasn't trying to change the laws or slow down the machine. Maybe I should have. My critics say that I was not revolutionary enough. But they forget that I am a product of the system. I worked those desks, I know those people and I still have some faith in them, that the services can be reformed

DER SPIEGEL: But those people see you as their biggest enemy today.

Snowden: My personal battle was not to burn down the NSA or the CIA. I even think they actually do have a useful role in society when they limit themselves to the truly important threats that we face and when they use their least intrusive means. We don't drop atomic bombs on flies that land on the dinner table. Everybody gets this except intelligence agencies.

DER SPIEGEL: What did you achieve?

Snowden: Since summer 2013, the public has known what was until then forbidden knowledge. That the U.S. government can get everything out of your Gmail account and they don't even need a warrant to do it if you are not an American but, say, a German. You are not allowed to discriminate between your citizens and other peoples' citizens when we are talking about the balance of basic rights. But increasingly more countries, not only the U.S., are doing this. I wanted to give the public a chance to decide where the line should be.

DER SPIEGEL: You have called mass surveillance a violation of the law. But as far as we know, so far not a single person responsible is sitting in jail.

Snowden: That is why I call it the secret law. These NSA activities were illegal. In a just world, the people who were authorizing these programs would actually be sitting in jail today. We are talking, for example, about the countless violations found and confirmed by a parliamentary inquiry of Germany's G10 law …...

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/edward-snowden-interview-ther...

 

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According to the report, the first €500 notes were found some months ago in a bathroom close to a bank vault with hundreds of safe deposit boxes. More notes turned up in the toilets of three restaurants close to the bank.

Swiss police have extracted tens of thousands of euro in damaged bills. Some of them appear to have been cut with scissors.

Destroying banknotes is not punishable by law, but “there must be something behind this story,” said Henri Della Casa, a spokesman for the Geneva Prosecutor’s Office.“That’s why we started an investigation.”

Switzerland is not part of the European Union or the eurozone. The country‘s national currency is the Swiss franc.

Last year, the European Central Bank said it will stop issuing €500 banknotes over concerns they can be used in illicit activities. The banknote has even been nicknamed the “Bin Laden” in some circles for its elusiveness.

However, the note will remain in circulation.

“The €500 note will remain legal tender and can, therefore, continue to be used as a means of payment and store of value,” the bank said.

Some experts said scrapping the €500 note would not be very effective in fighting crime as most money is laundered without cash via bogus companies.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/business/403707-geneva-toilets-euro-banknotes/

President Donald Trump, who is noted for his frequent exaggerations, just might have been right about the Obama administration’s attempts to derail his campaign. CNN, a hostile news source that had previously denounced Trump’s claims that he had been wiretapped at Trump Tower, reported late on Monday that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was in fact tapped by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Depending on the political inclinations of the journalists covering the story, the tale has either been framed as a vindication of Trump’s generally derided claims about the Obama administration or yet another bit of evidence demonstrating that Team Trump colluded with the Russians in an effort to influence the results of the 2016 presidential election.

Despite the lack of information provided by the government, the narrative surrounding Manafort appears to go something like this: Manafort is a long time political consultant. Beginning in 2004 and continuing for a decade, Manafort served as a top adviser to former pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, and worked together with a number of other Washington based consultants. His involvement somehow came to the attention of the FBI in 2014, possibly due to allegations that Yanukovich had stolen millions of dollars and hidden it somewhere, perhaps with the help of foreign associates. As a consequence, a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant was sought by the Bureau which was then issued to permit tel-tapping and other forms of investigation to determine if U.S. foreign lobbying and money laundering laws had been broken. The initial inquiry was eventually allowed to lapse “for lack of evidence.”

read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/who-in-the-white-house-t...

Gladio, a clandestine NATO operation in which right-wing groups carried out acts of domestic terrorism across Europe, is barely known in 2017. Independent researcher Tom Secker has told Sputnik the policy may continue today.

On November 22, 1990, the European Parliament passed a resolution on the Gladio Affair — a NATO operation in which covertly state-sponsored right-wing groups and militaries carried out attacks and criminal acts as part of a "strategy of tension," designed to discredit the left, and justify ever-greater security measures, over the course of more than four decades.

"For 40 years… a clandestine intelligence and armed operations organization [has existed] in several member states. This organization has escaped all democratic controls, and been run by the secret services of the states concerned in collaboration with NATO. Such a clandestine network may have interfered illegally in the internal political affairs of member states [and] may still do so. Military secret services (or uncontrolled branches thereof) were involved in serious cases of terrorism and crime. These organizations operated completely outside the law," the resolution stated.

Secret Armies

It added the various Gladio organizations had "independent arsenals and military resources" at their disposals, giving them "unknown strike potential," and jeopardizing the democratic structures of the countries in which they operated as a result.

The resolution's authors were "greatly concerned" at the existence of decision-making and operational bodies not subject to any form of democratic control and completely clandestine nature, and called for a full investigation into the "nature, structure, aims and all other aspects of these clandestine organizations or any splinter groups," their use for illegal interference in the internal political affairs of the countries concerned, the problem of terrorism in Europe and the possible collusion of the secret services of Member States or third countries.

Strident words these may be, but for independent researcher Tom Secker, the resolution still puts it mildly.

"It's written in the usual language of government bureaucracy, and isn't remotely comprehensive — it's a one-page document referring to maybe 40 years of covert operations. However, it is quite strong, and it did produce some successes — there were parliamentary inquiries in Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, and in certain cases they found the right culprits of some attacks and successfully prosecuted them. Still, as we saw with the recent story on the Belgian secret army and the Brabant massacres, even now it's difficult to get to the facts," Mr. Secker told Sputnik.

To his mind, the most egregious Gladio events were the Piazza Fontana and Bologna train station bombings, two of the most violent episodes in Italy's infamous "years of lead." The former, which killed 17 and injured 88, was the work of right-wing group Ordine Nuovo (New Order), who wished to dupe the public into believing the bombings were part of a communist insurgency.

In a subsequent trial, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, a member of the group, in addition to discrediting left wing political groups, such actions also aimed to inculcate a climate of fear among the general populace, which would encourage the population to appeal to the state for protection, and promote "conservative, reactionary social and political tendencies."

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/military/201711221059343153-operation-gladio-res...

 

Nothing new... I did not know the name of the outfit, though...

VIDEO: Syria ‘White Helmets’ Exposed. Propaganda Instrument. Nobel Peace Prize for Al Qaeda?

 

Read more:

https://counterinformation.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/video-syria-white-he...

 

 

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A new mini-documentary aims to tackle the tall challenge of exposing swaths of propaganda crafted by Hollywood producers and distributed through mass-market channels like Netflix.

It goes without saying that US media has propagandized in its war reporting for years. The Afghan Mujahedeen fighters trained by the US in the 1980s were hailed as freedom fighters by the president and the press alike. But when it comes to Syria, from shady Western-funded groups like the White Helmets to manufactured claims of a Sunni genocide, the level of deception is potentially unprecedented.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201809261068337847-Al-Qaeda-Hollywood-S...

 

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Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden, two of the nation’s most famous whistleblowers, spoke on May Day at a panel moderated by Amy Goodman. The event was part of “Truth, Dissent, & the Legacy of Daniel Ellsberg,” a multi-day conference at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst which is the home of the Ellsberg Archive Project.

 

...

 

EDWARD SNOWDEN: Yeah, backstage, give me solo that mic.

 

Yeah, so, we have — you go into the intelligence community in the United States for a particular reason. And I think that’s because you believe you can do something good for the world. You believe that these intelligence services do good work and can have a positive impact on the world. And by itself, holding this ideal creates a self-selecting sort of cohort, because there’s a lot of people who would never go to work for the CIA or the FBI or the NSA, because they see their work and impact in the world as fundamentally corrosive, fundamentally corrosive. As a young man, you know, I signed up for the Iraq War, when everybody else was protesting it. Why? Because I believed what the government was saying. I believed that it was a just cause, that we were going to free the oppressed from a dictator, you know, that we were going to be welcomed as liberators, and all of these things that we heard on TV. I was not very politically sophisticated. And it takes time for some people who go in. They, you know, raise their hand in dark rooms and swear oaths to these organizations to basically instrumentalize yourself to this greater cause.

I think whistleblowing, in my case, and that path, is recognizing that there is a contradiction between the purpose that the public believes this institution exists to achieve, to serve — and this is to create a freer, more fair society — and what it actually does in secret. Now, this could be a corporation, right? This could be a bank. This could be Facebook. Or it could be the CIA, the NSA, the highest orders of government, the Department of Defense. And that’s really what, for me, brought me down this path, was, year after year, recognizing more and more contradictions, that I had every incentive to ignore. But eventually I could no longer ignore them. And then I started to look deeper. And when you start to pursue that investigative path, to go “What is really happening?” — because, remember, in at least the intelligence community, when you’re talking about classified documents, top-secret documents, they are walled off by this principle of “need to know.” You’re not supposed to know how it all works. You’re only supposed to look at the operations of the government through this little soda straw of your office, of your unit, of your group, directorate, whatever.

Well, eventually, I landed in the Office of Information Sharing, which meant I had to see what everything — what all was going on, so I could decide who themselves needed to know this. And that gave me the ability to look farther and see more, until I saw the big picture. And then I realized, fundamentally, everything that I had been trying to do, everything that the public believed about, you know, what the National Security Agency was doing, was, in fact, creating insecurity. We were violating the rights of every man, woman and child, not only in the United States, but around the world.

And then this raises the question: What do you do about it? And, you know, that’s a long story. We can get there, for my own personal path. But I think one of the most encouraging parts of my journey, as I was getting closer and closer to deciding that, you know, I had a personal responsibility to do something because no one else would — you know, I was always waiting for someone else to go through it; I was talking to my colleagues, I was talking to my supervisors, I was talking to bosses and chiefs in units, and everybody was like, you know, “Don’t do anything. Don’t rock the boat. You know what happens to people who do this. This is above your pay grade” — is I watched a documentary called The Most Dangerous Man in America, which was about what I refer to now as the father of American whistleblowing, one Daniel Ellsberg. And he gave me a model to emulate. And then I read more about whistleblowing. I read more about whistleblowers, in the cases that had come before me — I studied the cases of Thomas Drake, I studied the cases of Chelsea Manning — and recognizing that there was a civil tradition in this country, people who had done things. They had stood up at great personal risk to tell the public an essential truth that was being intentionally denied to them for political purpose. Eventually, you believe that this is what looks more right than going back into the office and perpetuating a system of injustice quietly, day after day.

 

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https://www.democracynow.org/2021/5/6/whistleblowers

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