lessons learned repeatedly become who we are... (part one )

let's start by clearing up any possible misconceptions .

the deskRat chronicles presents this assassination "stuff" that we find during our surfs , not to be crying over dead kennedys . to be real , "camelot" afficionados are not us .

their story is told as a teaching model . the example that we use , is to compare their assassinations and the coverups performed by their killers to the "cloaking device" seen on the old star trek tv shows and movies .

on star trek , the klingons and romulans and other life forms used a cloaking device --stealth technology that prevents their warships from showing up on an opponents sensor screens--giving them a cloak of invisibility .

the only drawback to the cloaking device is that the klingons can use it to sneak up on an enemy , but as long as they are cloaked , they cannot fire their weapons . to use their weapons , they must first "de-cloak" and become for a moment , while using their weaponry , visible to their victims.

the kennedy assassination are classic examples of those cloaked villains , having to de-cloak , become visible in order to use their weapons.

when they kill high profile targets they must first decloak and in the process they are momentarily visible to the rest of us , as they kill and attempt to cover up their crimes .



that said , let's also add this . we are well aware of the history of the kennedy family and how they illegally made their millions .

we know that old man joe kennedy --once ambassador to england and a presidential aspirant --originally made his fortune as a bootlegger during prohibition working in league with the al capone mafia types of the italian , jewish and irish persuasion .

joe kennedy sr was also suspected of using his bootlegging wealth along with insider trader information to help cause the wallstreet stock market collapse of 1929 --getting out of the market and back in at just the right time to turn his millions into tens , and possibly hundreds , of millions of dollars .

it's been posited that it wasn't for nothing that franklin roosevelt put old man joe in charge of the stock exchange reorganization --helping to attempt to crash-proof it from the very same type manipulations that had reportedly made old joe at the time , a fabulously rich man .

after his tenure at the stock exchange , joe kennedy campaigned for and got from roosevelt the job of Us ambassador to england .

the road to his reportedly prized ambition of being the first irish-catholic president of the Us seemed clear until the old man shot himself in the foot-- making a comment widely picked up by the press suggesting that england throw in the towel and surrender to hitler.

from what we've read , roosevelt called kennedy home in shame and with his prospects for one day winning the presidency , dead in the water --old man kennedy transferred his hopes to his oldest son joe junior and then upon joe junior's untimely death as a pilot in world war two --to his second oldest son jack .

after the war , playboy "jack" became senator kennedy , brought his mentally much sharper , more ambitious , more ruthless younger brother bobby on board as his chief advisor and day to day details man --made his claim to fame in a face to face confrontation with the teamsters union president jimmy hoffa during senate hearings on organized crime --a confrontation in which bobby made clearly the more dominant impression than his older brother during cross examination of hoffa.

hoffa and the mobsters pulling the strings behind him were livid after the hearings BECAUSE jack and bobby were the sons of old man kennedy --their old bootlegging partner from the prohibition days .

from reading books such as "double cross --the story of sam giancana " co-written by his brother and nephew , chuck and sam giancana II , we learned that old man kennedy--like his sons after him , though to outward appearences , each a devout family man -also had a rampant fondness for affairs with party girls and hollywood starlets .

old man kennedy was also the master of the dirty deal and doublecross --he had previously , so offended the new york italian mafia--joe costello and the detroit jewish mafia --the purple gang --that at least twice he was saved from assassination only by direct intervention of the chicago mob .

when the kennedy brothers were ready to make their run for the presidency in 1960 --again , according to the giancanas' book , old man joe pleaded to the chicago mob boss , sam 'moonie' giancana , for not only his life but also for the mob's help in getting joe's son jack , elected president .

according to the book , the old man promised that if the mobsters helped his son get elected , "we" , meaning the mobsters and old man kennedy , "would have what we've always wanted -- one of 'our' guys on the inside--you'd have the ear of the president of the United States" . this is , what the giancanas claim that joe kennedy promised 'moonie' giancana .

of course the mob help in stuffing ballot boxes was essential as kennedy the democrat , defeated vice president nixon the republican , by only about 100,000 votes in the election of 1960 .

jack kennedy soon named his brother bobby as attorney general and bobby --the author of his own book about the mob titled , "the enemy within " , used his new position to unleash an fbi /justice department war against their father's old business partners .

according to the stories , j edgar hoover had been blackmailed for decades by jewish mobster myer lansky --with pictures of hoover dressed in women's clothing and having gay sexual relations--into stating that there was no such thing as organized crime or a mafia in the Us.

the kennedy brothers (no doubt at their father's urgings) , made hoover break his long truce and finally go after the mob in order to get rid of the mobsters who were now their father's sworn enemies .

according to the giancanas' book , what the kennedy brothers and old man joe , seemed to grossly underestimate was the extent to which the cia--the global counterpart of the fbi--was also in bed with the mobsters .

as cia expanded its role into global narcotics traffick , illegal gambling , money laundering and prostitution , their interests and the mob's naturally entwined into a noose that would garrote both of the kennedy brothers.

from across the pond , on a related note ...

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


cia agents sited at shooting of rfk ?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolavconsole/shared/player/player.stm?title=Kennedy%20shooting%20night%20images&clipurl=http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news/video/66000/nb/66653_16x9_nb.ram&cs=news

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

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

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

'Decoy'

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


THE CIA CONNECTION


A 24-year-old Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, was arrested as the lone assassin and notebooks at his house seemed to incriminate him.

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

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

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

Evidence

The report is the result of a three-year investigation by filmmaker Shane O'Sullivan. He reveals new video and photographs showing three senior CIA operatives at the hotel.
What were they doing there? It's our obligation as friends of Bob Kennedy to investigate this
Paul Schrade

Three of these men have been positively identified as senior officers who worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA's Miami base for its Secret War on Castro.

David Morales was Chief of Operations and once told friends:

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

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

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

Memory

Monday, 20 November would have been Bobby Kennedy's 81st birthday. In Los Angeles, his son Max has just broken ground on a new high-school project in memory of his father on the old Ambassador Hotel site.

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

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

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

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

This report was shown on Newsnight on Monday, 20 November, 2006.

who killed jfk junior ? --was jfk junior a foolish jerk , or a pilot with 9 flight instructors and 17 years flying experience?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-342185930070503560&q=jfkII

From the Makers of "JFKII: The Bush Connection" Comes "The Assassination of JFK JR." Murder By Manchurian Candidate. Overwhelming, jaw-breaking evidence of foul play in the death of John Kennedy Jr., all based on official government documents:

- the search of the crash site was delayed an incomprehensible 14 hours; - there was, indeed, a flight instructor on the plane, whose body is missing; - It is clear that someone on that plane committed suicide, shutting off the fuel control valve before plunging the plane into the sea. - The prime suspect, George W. Bush, though very publicly running for president, disappeared the day of the murder and stayed missing for 3 days. 104 minutes «

part 2



part 3



part 4

that persistent "premature accusation" problem

pierre gemayel-- assassinated

gemayel's bullet riddled car
half a million attend gemayel's funeral-lebanon

Pierre gemayel is dead . he was buried today amidst mass protests directed against syria and its government .

he is another lebanese politician assassinated.

as usual , the israelis and the bush administration --before the gunsmoke and the odor of cordite could clear from the air --have accused syria of the crime.

allow me to say here --once again--that this kneejerk condemnation fits a nefarious pattern .

when surprising and violent events like this happen in a country and outside governments issue accusations and condemnations before the dust on the ground even clears --we have learned to follow the pointing fingers back to the ones pointing. in their rush during the shock and confusion to shape perception and spin conclusion , the perpetrators reveal themselves as the likely guilty parties.

the scenario sometimes looks like this :

a stunning and shocking act of violence and death occurs . an assassination ,act of terrorism , or assassination and coup combination .

photos and film of the event saturate the media --the event may even occur during or close to the weekend --when news stories are of a more mundane nature --either to juice up the shock value of the event , or , if the plotters fail , the attempt can be more easily covered up and buried under the "man bites dog-- firemen rescue kitten from tree" type of news stories that prevail in weekend news .

once this violent event occurs, the surprise factor puts the viewing public in a mild state of shock .

with the viewing public in shock , government officials and /or other "experts" immediately follow up with the pre-fabricated spin to lead the gulible public into making the preconceived desired conclusions .

jfk motorcade-dallas 11-22-63 *btw -- notice the absence of secret service agents--obviously pulled on orders of lee harvey oswald--indicated by the EMPTY handles on the back of jfk's limo . the empty handles show the place where secret service agents SHOULD have been stationed --riding on the back of the limo , holding on to the empty limo handles --in position and prepared with their own bodies to shield the president from harm --clearly oswald must have had the foresight to have pulled the president's security detail that would have INCONVENIENTLY BLOCKED OSWALD's ALLEGED "MAGIC-BULLET" LINE OF FIRE FROM THE SCHOOL BOOK DEPOSITORY TO THE BACK OF JFK'S HEAD--How cunning and influential of the minimum wage working, lone gunman , marxist assassin oswald to successfully pull away the presidents security detail --what foresight !

We first noticed the shock and spin pattern mentioned above , as far back as the jfk assassination in this country when the fascist rightwing reasserted its control over the direction of american foreign policy after the kennedy brothers mistakenly believed that THEY and not the pentagon/ cia / wallstreet bankers/oil-garchs/defense contractors - merchants of death" --what eisenhower identified as the "military-industrial complex"-- were in charge of the Us .

while the body was still warm , before the blood could be mopped up , the government and media were broadcasting descriptions of the "lone assassin and marxist sympathizer " lee harvey oswald .

then before oswald could even be properly questioned , he is gunned down on a sunday morning , on national tv .

a nation already in shock is again traumatized.

with nothing logical to hold onto to make sense of an illogical situation ,certain numbers of a desperate public can be predicted to hold on to any lie they are fed by those they see as in a position of authority --as a daddy figure that a scared child predictably clings to after a bad dream at night

. people in trauma , in shock , can experience a form of psyche collapse where the mind --in a parallel to nature's abhorrence of a vacuum--grabs and latches on to --like a drowning man grasping at a straw--the first explanation thrown to them regardless of how flimsy , non sequitous , or inconsequential .

this "latching on to" phenomena is what is being preyed upon by the possible perpetrators of these events who put on the air their "premature accustions" to shape perceptions and serve as a smoke screen to hide their own involvement in the dirty works that have taken place .

this pattern is evident in both kennedy assassinations , the assassinations of malcolm x and martin luther king , the world trade center attacks , the coup attempt against hugo chavez , the overthrow of aristide in haiti and ,as mentioned previously in deskRat chronicles , the assassination of lebanon's former prime minister , rafik hariri .

in the hariri case we speculated based on the principle of "premature accusation "and the old roman investigative premise of "who benefits" from the crime , that the israelis and americans were the likely culprits .

we speculated that hariri was killed by the israelis and americans to create an uproar against the syrians --which did take place --followed by demands for syrian troop withdrawl from lebanon --which did take place --followed by an israeli renewed military campaign against lebanon for the purpose of destroying a militarily isolated hezbollah --which last summer ALSO did take place .

syria , lost bigtime politically from being blamed for each of the political assassinations taking place in lebanon .

the detlev melis investigation that blamed syria for the hariri kill was later discredited when it was discovered melis himself earlier took money from the likud/neo-con israeli/american factions and the investigation had bribed witnesses to falsely testify against the syrians .

again with this pierre gemayel assassination and in ALL political assassinations , we must ask the question of who benefits and cast a careful eye at those guilty of premature accusation --who predictibly point the finger and name the "guilty" before the gunsmoke has cleared , the dust has settled and before ANY investigation has begun .

defining "security" in ways that pose grave threats to freedom

"You boys writing that constitution and bill of rights are defining freedom in a way that threatens the security of the Us "--bush administration fascists

"intellectual activity is a danger to the building of character " --josef goebbles

YOU criticizing OUR theft of YOUR freedom is a grave threat to security--alberto gonzales




"Alberto Gonzales-- during a news conference at Air Force Academy, near Colorado Springs, Colo. on Saturday, Nov, 18, 2006-- contended that some critics of the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program were defining freedom in a way that presents a 'grave threat' to U.S. security. "



hmm... george orwell may be dead , but 'double speak' lives on ...

the head of the bush administration's 'ministery of freedom' has announced that anyone who exercises their freedom to criticize the government's infringements on our right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure --a right guaranteed... umm... in THE BILL OF RIGHTS --is defining freedom in a way that is a 'grave threat' to Us security.

you have to admit that these boys have very active imaginations .

in fact , their "doublespeak" is close to brilliant ! orwell himself would be impressed.

to define freedom as um ..."freedom"--something you actually use , experience , enjoy , relish , savor and defend from miscreant little fascists trying to take it away from you ... umm.. is a grave threat to... ummm..."security" ---yeah that's it ! "freedom is a threat to security !!" don't you folks get it ?

umm..."herr gonzales" is saying that you citizens defining "freedom" in ways that actually ALLOW you any freedom at all from fascists like him , ILLEGALLY spying on you , are defining your freedom in ways that are a threat to security

--

"..Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives..."--john stuart mill




"in politics stupidity is not a handicap"--napoleon bonaparte

"..In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race.." --john stuart mill

true to form...the dumbocrats announce impeachment is off the table

As if on cue , like the trained dogs they have been , the dumbocrats , still flush from tuesday's victory in which they recaptured control of the house of representatives , and by one seat , recaptured the senate , have already rolled over to play dead for the repugnantcans.

representative john conyers who was suspicious enough after the election of 2004 to hold hearings taking statements of the disenfranchised , knows from firsthand evidence the criminal behavior of the bush administration in stealing the election by suppressing the black vote and manipulating the voting machines to affect the final counts.

back in 2004 conyers was talking tough , more than hinting about impeachment proceedings against bush -- now the dumbocrats have won --bush has had his legislative wings clipped by losing control of both the house and senate--if the dumbocrats simply vote along party lines-- bush can't get any legislation passed --Yet NOW conyers and the dumbocrats announce before even the victory celebrations' helium party balloons have deflated , that impeachment of bush is "off the table" .

What a bunch of weakassed cowards !

the dumbocrats forget too easily how determined the repugnantcans were in their impeachment efforts to nail slick willy clinton just a few years ago-- over some head delivered from under a desk by a chubby little intern .

now with john conyers poised to become in january the chairman of the house judiciary committee and nancy pelosi set to assume the mantle of speaker of the house --they both-- like good dogs --almost simultaneously --roll over and play dead --mindlessly repeating the dumbocratic mantra , announcing that when it comes to the whitehouse gang that couldn't lie straight , "impeachment is off the table"

it must also be remembered that most of these dumbocrats marched over the cliff in their blind rush to vote like lemmings for the wars in afghanistan and iraq , climbed all over each other to support the bill-of-rights-shredding patriot act , and shirked their duty to demand the administration answer the hard questions about government spying on citizens ; torture and secret prisons ; government lying to mislead citizenry ; gross incompetence in the wars in afghanistan and iraq ; the squandering of tens of billions in Us taxpayer dollars and iraqi national oil revenues ; the 9-11 attacks and especially the government's pathetic responses to those attacks that day .

like re-shuffling a marked deck...

I was reading e-mail and about to go out for a little morning coffee when stumbling across this article . "The Secret World of Robert Gates"The Secret World of Robert Gates http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/110906.html

a mind-opening read about the new secretary of defense nominee robert gates .

when "rumsy" so suddenly quit and gates was nominated to replace "the donald" , i heard that gates was daddy bush's former cia director --well , it was once again obvious who was pulling dub's strings ...

gates was a player in the iran-contra scandal , helped armed saddam hussein during iraq / iran war , while at the same time selling arms to iran through the israelis .

gates helped create the islamic -fundamentalist / osama bin laden "blowback" menace by arming the jihadis in the afghan/ soviet war ...one of the resulting side effects of that little adventure being , in part , the networks that laid the groundwork for a nuclear armed pakistan and north korea .

gates was also instrumental in the fixing the intelligence around the desired outcome / policy that as we see from the iraq war , that now pervades cia-- with honest intelligence being shelved in favor of administration propaganda --blind foreign policy in line with presidential ideology and spin , but totally devoid of connection with reality .

the same bull---t that led america into iraq was preceded by gates being a key player in efforts to try to falsely connect the old soviet union to world terrorism and the deliberate over estimations of soviet military power in order to justify reagan-bush era unprecedented arms races and military buildups -- fixing intelligence to fit the desires of the whitehouse and its political objectives is no new thing to gates .


this nimrod was part of the cia crew that totally missed that the soviet union --far from being the menacing "evil empire" threat that reagan-bush made it out to be --was instead "the mexico of europe", on the verge of collapse...

to top it off , the article describes how gates is suspected of being part of the "repugnacants" october surprise --the secret negotitations between the reagan-bush team and iran to delay the release of american embassy hostages in iran until after the election in order to insure a "repugnantcan" victory in the elections of 1980 .

with the election of reagan/bush we saw the return of the disgraced , dishonest and incompetent "greedy old party" back into the whitehouse to begin the first feeding frenzy for the rich also known as the "reagan revolution"

The Secret World of Robert Gates

By Robert Parry
November 9, 2006

Robert Gates, George W. Bush..s choice to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, is a trusted figure within the Bush Family..s inner circle, but there are lingering questions about whether Gates is a trustworthy public official.



The 63-year-old Gates has long faced accusations of collaborating with Islamic extremists in Iran, arming Saddam Hussein..s dictatorship in Iraq, and politicizing U.S. intelligence to conform with the desires of policymakers .. three key areas that relate to his future job.



Gates skated past some of these controversies during his 1991 confirmation hearings to be CIA director .. and the current Bush administration is seeking to slip Gates through the congressional approval process again, this time by pressing for a quick confirmation by the end of the year, before the new Democratic-controlled Senate is seated.



If Bush..s timetable is met, there will be no time for a serious investigation into Gates..s past.



Fifteen years ago, Gates got a similar pass when leading Democrats agreed to put ..bipartisanship.. ahead of careful oversight when Gates was nominated for the CIA job by President George H.W. Bush.



In 1991, despite doubts about Gates..s honesty over Iran-Contra and other scandals, the career intelligence officer brushed aside accusations that he played secret roles in arming both sides of the Iran-Iraq War. Since then, however, documents have surfaced that raise new questions about Gates..s sweeping denials.



For instance, the Russian government sent an intelligence report to a House investigative task force in early 1993 stating that Gates participated in secret contacts with Iranian officials in 1980 to delay release of 52 U.S. hostages then held in Iran, a move to benefit the presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.



..R[obert] Gates, at that time a staffer of the National Security Council in the administration of Jimmy Carter, and former CIA Director George Bush also took part.. in a meeting in Paris in October 1980, according to the Russian report, which meshed with information from witnesses who have alleged Gates..s involvement in the Iranian gambit.



Once in office, the Reagan administration did permit weapons to flow to Iran via Israel. One of the planes carrying an arms shipment was shot down over the Soviet Union on July 18, 1981, after straying off course, but the incident drew little attention at the time.



The arms flow continued, on and off, until 1986 when the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal broke. [For details, see Robert Parry..s Secrecy & Privilege. For text of the Russian report, click here. To view the actual U.S. embassy cable that includes the Russian report, click here.]



Iraqgate Scandal



Gates also was implicated in a secret operation to funnel military assistance to Iraq in the 1980s, as the Reagan administration played off the two countries battling each other in the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War.



Middle Eastern witnesses alleged that Gates worked on the secret Iraqi initiative, which included Saddam Hussein..s procurement of cluster bombs and chemicals used to produce chemical weapons for the war against Iran.



Gates denied those Iran-Iraq accusations in 1991 and the Senate Intelligence Committee .. then headed by Gates..s personal friend, Sen. David Boren, D-Oklahoma .. failed to fully check out the claims before recommending Gates for confirmation.

However, four years later .. in early January 1995 .. Howard Teicher, one of Reagan..s National Security Council officials, added more details about Gates..s alleged role in the Iraq shipments.

In a sworn affidavit submitted in a Florida criminal case, Teicher stated that the covert arming of Iraq dated back to spring 1982 when Iran had gained the upper hand in the war, leading President Reagan to authorize a U.S. tilt toward Saddam Hussein.

The effort to arm the Iraqis was ..spearheaded.. by CIA Director William Casey and involved his deputy, Robert Gates, according to Teicher..s affidavit. ..The CIA, including both CIA Director Casey and Deputy Director Gates, knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of non-U.S. origin military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to Iraq,.. Teicher wrote.

Ironically, that same pro-Iraq initiative involved Donald Rumsfeld, then Reagan..s special emissary to the Middle East. An infamous photograph from 1983 shows a smiling Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein.

Teicher described Gates..s role as far more substantive than Rumsfeld..s. ..Under CIA Director [William] Casey and Deputy Director Gates, the CIA authorized, approved and assisted [Chilean arms dealer Carlos] Cardoen in the manufacture and sale of cluster bombs and other munitions to Iraq,.. Teicher wrote.

Like the Russian report, the Teicher affidavit has never been never seriously examined. After Teicher submitted it to a federal court in Miami, the affidavit was classified and then attacked by Clinton administration prosecutors. They saw Teicher..s account as disruptive to their prosecution of a private company, Teledyne Industries, and one of its salesmen, Ed Johnson.

But the questions about Gates..s participation in dubious schemes involving hotspots such as Iran and Iraq are relevant again today because they reflect on Gates..s judgment, his honesty and his relationship with two countries at the top of U.S. military concerns.

About 140,000 U.S. troops are now bogged down in Iraq, 3 ½ years after President George W. Bush ordered an invasion to remove Saddam Hussein from power and eliminate his supposed WMD stockpiles. One reason the United States knew that Hussein once had those stockpiles was because the Reagan administration helped him procure the material needed for the WMD production in the 1980s.

The United States also is facing down Iran..s Islamic government over its nuclear ambitions. Though Bush has so far emphasized diplomatic pressure on Iran, he has pointedly left open the possibility of a military option.

Political Intelligence

Beyond the secret schemes to aid Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, Gates also stands accused of playing a central role in politicizing the CIA intelligence product, tailoring it to fit the interests of his political superiors, a legacy that some Gates critics say contributed to the botched CIA..s analysis of Iraqi WMD in 2002.

Before Gates..s rapid rise through the CIA..s ranks in the 1980s, the CIA..s tradition was to zealously protect the objectivity and scholarship of the intelligence. However, during the Reagan administration, that ethos collapsed.

At Gates..s confirmation hearings in 1991, former CIA analysts, including renowned Kremlinologist Mel Goodman, took the extraordinary step of coming out of the shadows to accuse Gates of politicizing the intelligence while he was chief of the analytical division and then deputy director.

The former intelligence officers said the ambitious Gates pressured the CIA..s analytical division to exaggerate the Soviet menace to fit the ideological perspective of the Reagan administration. Analysts who took a more nuanced view of Soviet power and Moscow..s behavior in the world faced pressure and career reprisals.

In 1981, Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl of the CIA..s Soviet office was the unfortunate analyst who was handed the assignment to prepare an analysis on the Soviet Union..s alleged support and direction of international terrorism.

Contrary to the desired White House take on Soviet-backed terrorism, Ekedahl said the consensus of the intelligence community was that the Soviets discouraged acts of terrorism by groups getting support from Moscow for practical, not moral, reasons.

..We agreed that the Soviets consistently stated, publicly and privately, that they considered international terrorist activities counterproductive and advised groups they supported not to use such tactics,.. Ekedahl said. ..We had hard evidence to support this conclusion...

But Gates took the analysts to task, accusing them of trying to ..stick our finger in the policy maker..s eye,.. Ekedahl testified

Ekedahl said Gates, dissatisfied with the terrorism assessment, joined in rewriting the draft ..to suggest greater Soviet support for terrorism and the text was altered by pulling up from the annex reports that overstated Soviet involvement...



..Casey and Gates used various management tactics to get the line of intelligence they desired and to suppress unwanted intelligence,.. Ekedahl said.

Career Reprisals

With Gates using top-down management techniques, CIA analysts sensitive to their career paths intuitively grasped that they could rarely go wrong by backing the ..company line.. and presenting the worst-case scenario about Soviet capabilities and intentions, Ekedahl and other CIA analysts said.

Largely outside public view, the CIA..s proud Soviet analytical office underwent a purge of its most senior people. ..Nearly every senior analyst on Soviet foreign policy eventually left the Office of Soviet Analysis,.. Goodman said.

Gates made clear he intended to shake up the DI..s culture, demanding greater responsiveness to the needs of the White House and other policymakers.


...Gates's message was that the DI, which had long operated as an ..ivory tower.. for academically oriented analysts committed to an ethos of objectivity, would take on more of a corporate culture with a product designed to fit the needs of those up the ladder both inside and outside the CIA.

..It was a kind of chilling speech,.. recalled Peter Dickson, an analyst who concentrated on proliferation issues. ..One of the things he wanted to do, he was going to shake up the DI. He was going to read every paper that came out. What that did was that everybody between the analyst and him had to get involved in the paper to a greater extent because their careers were going to be at stake...

...Gates soon was salting the analytical division with his allies, a group of managers who became known as the ..Gates clones... Some of those who rose with Gates were David Cohen, David Carey, George Kolt, Jim Lynch, Winston Wiley, John Gannon and John McLaughlin.

Though Dickson..s area of expertise .. nuclear proliferation .. was on the fringes of the Reagan-Bush primary concerns, it ended up getting him into trouble anyway. In 1983, he clashed with his superiors over his conclusion that the Soviet Union was more committed to controlling proliferation of nuclear weapons than the administration wanted to hear.

When Dickson stood by his evidence, he soon found himself facing accusations about his psychological fitness and other pressures that eventually caused him to leave the CIA.

Dickson also was among the analysts who raised alarms about Pakistan..s development of nuclear weapons, another sore point because the Reagan-Bush administration wanted Pakistan..s assistance in funneling weapons to Islamic fundamentalists fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.

One of the effects from the exaggerated intelligence about Soviet power and intentions was to make other potential risks .. such as allowing development of a nuclear bomb in the Islamic world or training Islamic fundamentalists in techniques of sabotage .. paled in comparison.

While worst-case scenarios were in order for the Soviet Union and other communist enemies, best-case scenarios were the order of the day for Reagan-Bush allies, including Osama bin Laden and other Arab extremists rushing to Afghanistan to wage a holy war against European invaders, in this case, the Russians.

As for the Pakistani drive to get a nuclear bomb, the Reagan-Bush administration turned to word games to avoid triggering anti-proliferation penalties that otherwise would be imposed on Pakistan.

..There was a distinction made to say that the possession of the device is not the same as developing it,.. Dickson told me. ..They got into the argument that they don..t quite possess it yet because they haven..t turned the last screw into the warhead...

Finally, the intelligence on the Pakistan Bomb grew too strong to continue denying the reality. But the delay in confronting Pakistan ultimately allowed the Muslim government in Islamabad to produce nuclear weapons. Pakistani scientists also shared their know-how with ..rogue.. states, such as North Korea and Libya.

..The politicization that took place during the Casey-Gates era is directly responsible for the CIA..s loss of its ethical compass and the erosion of its credibility,.. Goodman told the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1991. ..The fact that the CIA missed the most important historical development in its history .. the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the Soviet Union itself .. is due in large measure to the culture and process that Gates established in his directorate...

"hang 'em high "

-- absurd cowboy--theater of the absurd-file photo

So no one was really surprised at the death sentence handed down in iraq to captured president saddam hussein were they ?

It was obvious that saddam had to die . he knew too much . his presence was embarrassing evidence of how dirty were america's hands in general and bush I, reagan ,clinton and bush II's hands in particular .

like osama bin laden , saddam hussein was a former Us employee / business partner who outlived his usefulness and was standing in the way of a mc donald's and exxon version of the middle east .

unlike manuel noriega --another obsolete former business partner of dubya' bush's daddy , saddam after bitter experience , not only expected the latest double cross , he had time to prepare for it and as the architect of the iraqi resistance , from the grave saddam may still have the last laugh on his old business partners , the bushes .


*here , a little background info from the memory banks is required .

saddam hussein began his way up the proverbial ladder in international politics at the age of about 22 .

saddam and a few other young men formed a team whose intent was murder --the cia inspired assassination of the then leader of iraq --one colonel abd- karrim qassim in particular .

young baathist saddam and friends had been recruited into the assassination plot that was the brainchild of american cia.

colonel qassim who had himself come to power in a coup , had gotten a little too chummy with the soviets for american tastes .

around 1959 the cold war was in full swing --the Us and the kremlin globally were jockeying for position and regardless of the fact that iraq is much closer to russia's backyard than america's , or perhaps because of it , the boys in the pentagon and langley saw fit to remove mr qassim from power --there were ALSO , of course , those ugly rumors that the good colonel like iran's mossedegh before him , intended to nationalize his nation's oil interests rather than allow continued anglo-american monopoly over the resources .

and just as with mossedegh in 53', british mi-6 and american cia decided to topple iraq's qassim from power . of course as previously stated , one of the shooters in the qassim coup would be a young pan-arabist , baathist named saddam hussein .

saddam and conspirators , lying in wait , were to ambush qassim's car , burn a few bullet holes in him and thus convince him to leave iraq --as a corpse.

impatient young saddam , as over-anxious youths are sometimes known to do , shot too soon .

in his haste , he killed the driver and left the passenger wounded , but still intact .

a wanted man after the failed assassination attempt , saddam escaped by swimming the tigris river , eventually made his way out of iraq into syria , it is believed , and from there egypt . during his egyptian exile saddam studied law and lived in an apartment paid for by his cia handlers .

cia eventually succeeded in killing colonel qassim and saddam returned from exile to iraq .

cia decided that iraq's baath party would be the vehicle it could use to help carry out american cold war policy in the region . saddam rode the coat tails of an uncle prominent in the baath party , but also made a name for himself as the cia supplied baath with lists of names of iraqi communists party members . saddam headed up a hit squad working for baath party secret police and helped liquidate those on the cia supplied communists lists .

eventually saddam rose up through the ranks eliminating his opposition and finally "retired" his uncle--leaving saddam hussein at the top of the heap in iraq.

ironically , saddam and baath party would carry out parts of the populist agenda begun by the late colonel qassim .

they nationalized the oil and used the state oil revenues to modernize iraq's infrastructure , provided universal free education up to university level ; universal free health and medical care ; access to electricity and clean drinking water , iraq became a secular state with significant educational and employment opportunites for women .

when the 1979 iranian islamic revolution seemed ready to spread throughout the region threatening to topple the fragile arab oil-sheikdoms --iraq and saddam --secular and anti-communist --were viewed by the Us as a bulwark against growing instability in the region .

it is believed the Us goaded saddam into the iran-iraq war --it is known that the Us , during that war , supplied saddam with chemical biological weapons , loan guarantees , technology transfers AND a team of Us defense intelligence agency officers who regularly provided saddam with Us military satellite photos of iranian troop positions in order to give greatest killing effectiveness to iraqi chemical weapons against iran.

the iraq-iran war ended in stalemate after 8 years --saddam turned his attention to neighboring kuwait . the kuwaitis had been siphoning iraqi oil by slant drilling across the border --dipping into iraqi oil revenues at a time when iraq was cash-strapped because of huge expenses incurred during the war with iran .

saddam not only threatened to take action , he revived the old iraqi claim that kuwait was iraq's long lost province separated from the rest of iraq by the british on an oil whim and declared a separate nation around 1917 or so

as negotiations stalled , saddam summoned Us assistant ambassador april glaspie to baghdad and gave a stern warning that iraq's military would not sit idly as kuwait continued stealing iraq's oil . glaspie is said to have replied that iraq's border dispute with kuwait was none of america's concern and saddam correctly interpreted this as a green light from daddy bush to invade .

daddy bush unleashed a propaganda blitz against saddam and iraq . as a result , america's "boy" became vilified as the next "hitler . daddy bush claimed saddam was desirous of forcibly monopolizing the world's oil supplies in order to "hold the western economies hostage" as well as accusing iraqi soldiers of dumping kuwaiti babies out of incubators --all later proven to be lies .

daddy bush's defense secretary , dick cheney showed the saudi government faked satellite photos supposedly of iraqi tanks massed on the saudi border--ready to invade . the saudis were immediately frightened enough to get on board and joined the Us military coalition against saddam .

the Us killed over a quarter million iraqis in gulf war one , mostly civilians . a document circulated among the "allies" suggested --in direct violation of geneva accords prohibiting military targeting of infrastructure vital to civilian life --that iraq under saddam had spent considerable sums of money on building water treatment facilities for both drinking water and sewage --and the destruction of these facilities by allied bombs would cause significant distress to iraqi people and thus to the iraqi regime. the allied planes and cruise missiles demolished iraq's water treatment infrastructure . iraqis were forced to drink directly from rivers and stream that raw sewage flowed into .

under the economic sanctions put in place by the Un supposedly to prevent Iraq from rearming , the sale of items such as chlorine for water purification were prohibited . the iraqis also found it very difficult to obtain materials and machinery needed to repair their destroyed water treatment system . in a dozen years , of the 1,500,000 iraqis who died as a result of the economic sanctions , many were elderly and children who perished from easily preventable diseases caused by water borne illness --received from drinking dirty water .

in retrospect , in all likelihood , saddam did disarm after the first gulf war in desperation to get the economic sanctions lifted . but the Us and Britain used their influence to keep sanctions in place apparently softening up iraq for the eventual invasion ,occupation and "liberation" by the western allies of iraq from its oil .

there were at least two coup / assassination attempts against saddam that were directly assisted by cia personnel who had infiltrated Un weapons inspection teams . in one attempt , access to saddam's presidential palaces was demanded by weapons inspectors who then planted electronic devices to monitor the quantity of radio messages sent by iraqi military in the area . the idea was that saddam's location could be determined by pinpointing the location of his bodyguarding details . it was believed saddam's personal security details would need to do large amounts of radio communication in order to effectively coordinate their efforts .

it followed that where ever the most amount of radio communications were taking place --saddam hussein's security detail , and thus saddam himself would not be far behind .

after the cia's second attempt on his life barely missed , saddam's people found the bugs planted in his palaces , figured out what cia was doing and demanded all americans be removed from Un weapons inspections teams .

realizing they had saddam in a corner , of course the Us refused to remove the americans , saddam ordered all of the weapons inspectors out of iraq and the Us media played it up as more proof of saddam's noncompliance with Un demands --iraq's refusal to disarm , saddam's "insane obsession to get and use wmd on the Us and western world "--more proof for the "necessity of sanctions" , no-fly zones , more bombings of iraq , "necessity for regime change" , etc, etc, blah , blah , blah.

after bill clinton went out of the whitehouse and "dubya" bush went in --former dubya administration officials have said that ousting saddam was job number one on the new administration's "to do" list .

the government staged terror of the 9-11 attacks provided the excuse the bushes needed to again hand out a feeding frenzy's worth of lucrative war contracts to bush family cronies and to go after their old employees once and for all--a , cowboy type theater of the absurd showdown with "dub" playing town sheriff .
"good place fer a 'necktie party'...that ol boy gonna swing from right thar"

It took 2 years from the time of the 9-11 attacks for the sheriff and his posse to reach the dry prairies of iraq . sheriff "dub" ordered saddam to get out of town by sundown . of course the old bandito refused and they met for a showdown at high noon .

when the gunsmoke cleared , bodies and rubble littered the town , the old bandito was in jail and his two boys and grandson were pushing up daisies on boot hill.

but just when the old prairie town should have been safe for sod busters , cattlemen , and oil prospectors , the old grizzled bandito's pistoleros and the townfolk themselves turned on sheriff dub and his posse making their lives a living hell.

in efforts to calm the townsfolk and restore order , sheriff dub brought in a smoke and mirrors medicine show for diversionary entertainment and put the old bandito on "trial".

--grizzled old bandito--file photo

Of course the sheriff had to conceal from the trial record the undisputed fact that his daddy and the old bandito once rode together back in the wild and wooly days .

before he and the posse arrived in town , the sheriff had quickly seized 12,000 pages of documents detailing the mutual exploits and the extent to which his daddy and the old bandito had been partners in crime .

now , with the town folk formed into an angry mob and the total breakdown of law and order , with the sheriff and posse clearly impotent to stop the rampant lawlessness , we get the news of a guilty verdict for the old bandito as his pistoleros and the angry townfolk wreak total havoc upon the sheriff's posse .

the old bandito will probably hang , but his hands are just as dirty as quite a few of those knotting the rope .

personally i'm of the belief that if you're going to hang anyone , hang em all--all the guilty parties --the old bandito and them that "rode" with him--whether they are sheriff , posse or not --all the ones with innocent blood on their hands --starting with the sheriff's daddy --"hang em high".

*note: when did iraqis pick up the practice of hanging people? i thought they preferred firing squads, or beheadings as the saudis do in the middle east ? is the use of hanging simply more absurd cowboy theater intended for an american audience--appealing to an american sense of rope justice ?
-- theater of the absurd--absurd cowboy, building his own gallows--file photo

election day and bad jokes

Wednesday, November 08, 2006


because i despise what bush and the right wing are doing and have done during their stolen terms in office , i voted yesterday .

it was more of a "take out the trash vote" , or a "let me vote one more time before its made illegal" vote than anything else .

when i arrived , an older whiteman --a senior citizen apparently working people's nerves as much as he was working the polls , made a "joke"-- a carry-over from 2004 dirty tricks that i believe was directed towards me, "the election isn't today , it's tomorrow. "

it's not that i was at the time , wishing a major pacemaker malfunction on public nuisances like him ...but there is such a thing as karma...

while in the voting booth , i recognized only one name among candidates in local elections --and from the experience of having met the guy and having worked at the same place of employ with the local candidate , knew he was a rightwing arsehole and possibly a closeted gay man ...

if dude is gay , i wouldn't discriminate against him because of that ,being gay doesn't place a limiting cap on intelligence , but another rightwinged idiot in public office , is something no one should have to tolerate . so i voted against the guy .

as i pressed the button that made my choices final , i watched for a moment , half expecting the green lights to suddenly switch from the "dumbocratic" column over into the "repugnantcan" column --as was reported so many times in the election of 2004 --an election in which weak-assed john kerry rolled over and played dead--conceding the highly disputed presidential ohio race and the presidency to bush , as if on cue.

this time , the green lights stayed in the "dumbocratic" column despite kerry once again having punked out to the rightwing during another rightwing created controversy involving a stupid and lame but quite accurate joke about iraq and who gets stuck there .

if kerry hadn't left his "stones" in vietnam , he should have manned up and gone on the offensive insisting that the repugnantcans stop once again , muddying up the water as they did with the now infamous "swift boats ads" where the guy who used his daddy's influence to dodge his military service in the vietnam war , got away with not only calling himself at every opportunity a "war time president" , but also got away with attacking the war record of the guy who went to vietnam and put himself at risk in the war zone.

now this time , the repugnantcans were claiming a bad joke was the issue --not the fact that a bunch of fascist-minded idiots blatantly ignored clear reality and plain common sense and got the nation stuck up to its elbows in a quagmire--and murdered 650,000 people in the process , but instead the deciding issues once again were gay marriage and a joke that didn't "support our troops" by implying that you'd have to be a real idiot to have gotten the nation involved in that war --and i'll go ahead and say the other half of the joke's implication since I IN NO WAY SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER THAN TO BLINDLY BELIEVE THESE LYING F---S WHO SENT THEM TO IRAQ IN THE FIRST PLACE -- it all boils down to --you'd have to be a real idiot not to have learned the lesson from vietnam era history that governments lie --the government then lied to get the Us into the vietnam conflict and this government today lied to get the Us into war with iraq --and you would have to be blind not to see through the obvious bullsh-t --so for those reasons i choose NOT to express any support for the "troops" who have followed orders and killed hundreds of thousands of people who were no threat to the Us.

the real joke is what sad , dumb-down lemmings the american people have become .

perhaps my opinion seems harsh , since it has been reported that the average american highschool 18 year-old can't even find italy on a map of the world , but i thought that in a country where the ranks of the soldiers are made up from the citizenry --thus the term citizen / soldier --every citizen had the duty of staying informed on world issues so as to make wise decisions as a citizen AND as a soldier --the "i was just following orders" defense was unacceptible at the nazi nuremburg warcrimes trials and the same should hold true at the neo-con american warcrimes trials the world should convene concerning iraq .

and if saddam swings from the gallows for warcrimes , he should not swing alone --everyone --from don rumsfeld and george hw bush , to saddam's cia handlers , to his Us chemical weapons suppliers , to his Us defense intelligence agency advisors --who during the 8 years of iraq -iran war used Us military satellite photos to show saddam where to launch his chemical weapons for greatest killing effect --everyone of the americans of influence who made "saddam" possible should swing from the gallows along with saddam --i'd certainly vote for that .