The Voice of the White House

Washington , D.C. June 11, 2008 : “ In this report, I would like to take some time to discuss certain, potentially deadly, medical problems of Senator John McCain,( R ), Arizona .

In some elevated circles here inside the Beltway, he is known as ‘Insane McCain.’ This is not meant as a real insult but a professional comment on his various rather obvious problems.

You should note that there are individuals in this country who wield great but anonymous  power. They are what, in earlier times, would be called the King Makers. They are very pragmatic, very rich businessmen whom C. Wright Mills called the Power Elite. They have been happy with Bush and Cheney because these two were very, very friendly to businessmen. Tax breaks, stripping regulatory agencies of annoying investigators, huge governmental contracts for the fabricated war in Iraq .

Now, we have a new election. Obama is a mystery to them. He is very intelligent, very articulate and has run a magnificent campaign. Obama has become a great political force in America and the Power Elite have no real connection with him. There have been no previous briberies to hold over his head so controlling a relatively unknown person is not as clear-cut.

McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee is another matter. He is a man entirely in their pocket. McCain loves money and hides behind the false Jessica Lynch type fiction of a war hero. He was no such thing and has been strongly suspected of cooperating with Soviet CIA people who interrogated him while he was a POW in Hanoi during the Vietnam war.

His one real asset is his wife who has given him huge sums of money for his campaign but his faults are probably enough to keep him out of the Oval Office.

There exists, and has been circulated, a military medical examination report on McCain. I have  a copy as do many others but I cannot have it put up on the internet because it is a personal medical record and as such, secure from exposure. However, it is not illegal to discuss the thrust of the report. There is a discussion of McCain’s earlier melanoma which appears to in remission but not gone. His mental state is also covered.

There are some interesting passages that speak of “a sharp drop in function….deficits in global cognitive ability, episodic memory…deficits in verbal ability….words do not come as quickly as they once did….and under executive function…his decision making has become more challenging….recent recall is diminished…recent events quickly forgotten (McCain will make a flat statement of policy on television and three days later, when asked about it by a media reporter, will flatly, and angrily, deny ever having said it) …..forgets common words while speaking or will substitute unusual words…has been forgetting recently learned information

There are few secrets these days and McCain’s problems are not unknown. The point is, will McCain have a chance of becoming President and, in effect, give America a third term for Bush’s policies?

This is all very interesting but I have something that might be of some interest to my readers and show several things I have been speaking of here. People suffering with pre-Alzheimer’s have motor problems. In McCain’s case, it has been observed that he has problems with learned habits. McCain is left-handed but was taught to shake hands with his right hand. Now, we see him approaching people and then when it comes time to shake a hand, he hesitates, his face twitches and his head jerks to one side and you can see him try to put out his left hand. Usually, an aide will whisper to him and he will stop, make a foolish grin and put out his right hand.

I am supplying a picture of John McCain that has a most interesting background. It shows him in West Virginia in May of 2008. Note the agitated and strained expression on his face…and the extended left hand.

What is really of interest. and reflects the concern of certain powerful people, is the identity of the photographer, a man assigned to cover McCain by the Associated Press.

His name is Jeff Chiu. It might be of some interest to note that Jeff Chiu, from San Francisco , is a well-educated man.  In addition to his photographic skills, ( his reputation is as a well-known sports photographer)  Mr. Chiu also has a degree in psychology from the University of California , a profession which is far more profitable than photography.

That candidate McCain is under close and on-going  professional clinical observation is without question and who can blame the King Makers for wanting to make absolutely certain they are not backing the wrong horse.  They now have a choice between a highly successful populist whose persona is a mystery or a man whose physical and mental problems could cause them terrible future problems.

Reagan was suffering from Alzehimer’s in the last years of his presidency but Reagan was very popular and relatively harmless. McCain, on the other hand, is known to have a violent temper and has recently insisted that Iran must be dealt with; that the useless Iraqi war must be continued and that the Bush tax programs need to be kept in place.

That is on the positive side for the Power Elite, but on the negative side, it is obvious, very obvious, that McCain has serious physical and mental problems that would in all probability make a McCain presidency far, far worse than the last eight years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. “

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., center, shakes hands with supporters after visiting St. Albans Gun and Archery store with his wife Cindy, right, Friday, May 16, 2008, in Charleston, W.Va. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Conversations with the Crow: Part 6

Editor’s note: When we ran the first conversation  in this series, there was the question of reader interest and acceptability. It is pleasant to report that our server was jammed with viewers and the only other tbrnews story that has had more viewers was our Forward Base Falcon story that had a half a million viewers in less that two days. We are now going to reprint all of the Crowley conversations, including a very interesting one on John McCain,  in chronological sequence. It is also pleasant to note that two publishers and three reporters have all expressed concrete interest in the Crowley conversations. It is even more pleasurable to note that a number of people inside the Beltway and in McLean , Virginia , have been screaming with rage! Here is a partial listing of documents from Crowley ’s personal files, now being scanned for publication:

DOCUMENT CATALOG

Catalog Number

Description of Contents

________________________________________________________________________________

1000 BH

Extensive file (1,205 pages) of reports on Operation PHOENIX. Final paper dated January, 1971, first document dated  October, 1967. Covers the setting up of Regional Interrogation Centers, staffing, torture techniques including electric shock, beatings, chemical injections. CIA agents involved and includes a listing of U.S. military units to include Military Police, CIC and Special Forces groups involved. After-action reports from various military units to include 9^th Infantry, showing the deliberate killing of all unarmed civilians located in areas suspected of harboring or supplying Viet Cong units. *

1002 BH

Medium file (223 pages)  concerning the fomenting of civil disobedience in Chile as the result of the Allende election in 1970. Included are pay vouchers for CIA bribery efforts with Chilean labor organization and student activist groups, U.S. military units involved in the final revolt, letter from  T. Karamessines, CIA Operations Director to Chile CIA Station Chief Paul Wimert, passing along a specific order from Nixon via Kissinger to kill Allende when the coup was successful. Communications to Pinochet with Nixon instructions to root out by force any remaining left wing leaders.

1003 BH 

Medium file (187 pages) of reports of CIA assets containing photographs of Soviet missile sites, airfields and other strategic sites taken from commercial aircraft. Detailed descriptions of targets attached to each picture or pictures.

1004 BH

Large file (1560 pages) of CIA reports on Canadian radio intelligence intercepts from the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa (1958) and a list of suspected and identified Soviet agents or sympathizers in Canada , to include members of the Canadian Parliament and military.

1005 BH

Medium file (219 pages) of members of the German Bundeswehr in the employ of the CIA. The report covers the Innere Führung group plus members of the signals intelligence service. Another report, attached, covers CIA assets in German Foreign Office positions, in Germany and in diplomatic missions abroad.

1006:BH

Long file (1,287 pages) of events leading up to the killing of Josef Stalin in 1953 to include reports on contacts with L.P. Beria who planned to kill Stalin, believing himself to be the target for removal. Names of cut outs, CIA personnel in Finland and Denmark are noted as are original communications from Beria and agreements as to his standing down in the DDR and a list of MVD/KGB files on American informants from 1933 to present. A report on a blood-thinning agent to be made available to Beria to put into Stalin’s food plus twenty two reports from Soviet doctors on Stalin’s health, high blood pressure etc. A report on areas of cooperation between Beria’s people and CIA controllers in the event of a successful coup. *

1007 BH

Short list (125 pages) of CIA contacts with members of the American media to include press and television and book publishers. Names of contacts with bios are included as are a list of payments made and specific leaked material supplied. Also appended is a shorter list of foreign publications. Under date of August, 1989 with updates to 1992. Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, Bradlee of the same paper, Ted Koppel, Sam Donaldson and others are included.

1008 BH

A file of eighteen reports (total of 899 pages) documenting illegal activities on the part of members of the U.S. Congress. First report dated July 29, 1950 and final one September 15, 1992. Of especial note is a long file on Senator McCarthy dealing with homosexuality and alcoholism. Also an attached note concerning the Truman Administration’s use of McCarthy to remove targeted Communists. These reports contain copies of FBI surveillance reports, to include photographs and reference to tape recordings, dealing with sexual events with male and female prostitutes, drug use, bribery, and other matters.

1009 BH

A long multiple file (1,564 pages) dealing with the CIA part (Kermit Roosevelt) in overthrowing the populist Persian prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. Report from Dulles (John Foster) concerning a replacement, by force if necessary and to include a full copy of AJAX operation. Letters from AIOC on million dollar bribe paid directly to J.Angleton, head of SOG. Support of Shah requires exclusive contracts with specified western oil companies. Reports dated from May 1951 through August, 1953.

1010 BH

Medium file (419 pages) of telephone intercepts made by order of J.J. Angleton of the telephone conversations between RFK and one G.N. Bolshakov. Phone calls between 1962-1963 inclusive. Also copies of intercepted and inspected mail from RFK containing classified U.S. documents and sent to a cut-out identified as one used by Bolshakov, a Russian press (TASS) employee. Report on Bolshakov’s GRU connections.

1011 BH

Large file (988 pages) on 1961 Korean revolt of Kwangju revolt led by General Park Chung-hee and General Kin-Jong-pil. Reports on contacts maintained by CIA station in Japan to include payments made to both men, plans for the coup, lists of “undesirables” to be liquidated  Additional material on CIA connections with KCIA personnel and an agreement with them  to assassinate South Korean chief of state, Park, in 1979.

1012 BH

Small file (12 pages) of homosexual activities between FBI Director Hoover and his aide, Tolson. Surveillance pictures taken in San Francisco hotel and report by CIA agents involved. Report analyzed in 1962.

1013 BH

Long file (1,699 pages) on General Edward Lansdale. First report a study signed by DCI Dulles in  September of 1954 concerning a growing situation in former French Indo-China. There are reports by and about Lansdale starting with his attachment to the OPC in 1949-50 where he and Frank Wisner coordinated policy in neutralizing Communist influence in the Philippines .. Landsale was then sent to Saigon under diplomatic cover and many copies of his period reports are copied here. Very interesting background material including strong connections with the Catholic Church concerning Catholic Vietnamese and exchanges of intelligence information between the two entities.

1014 BH

Short file (78 pages) concerning  a Dr. Frank Olson. Olson was at the U.S. Army chemical warfare base at Ft. Detrick in Maryland and was involved with a Dr. Gottleib. Gottleib was working on a plan to introduce psychotic-inducing drugs into the water supply of the Soviet Embassy. Apparently he tested the drugs on CIA personnel first. Reports of psychotic behavior by Olson and more police and official reports on his defenstration by Gottleib’s associates. A cover-up was instituted and a number of in-house CIA memoranda attest to this. Also a discussion by Gottleib on various poisons and drugs he was experimenting with and another report of people who had died as a result of Gottleib’s various experiments and CIA efforts to neutralize any public knowledge of these. *

1015 BH

Medium file (457 pages) on CIA connections with the Columbian-based Medellín drug ring. Eight CIA internal reports, three DoS reports, one FBI report on CIA operative Milan Rodríguez and his connections with this drug ring. Receipts for CIA payments to Rodríguez of over $3 million in CIA funds,showing the routings of the money, cut-outs and payments. CIA reports on sabotaging  DEA investigations. A three-part study of the Nicaraguan Contras, also a CIA-organized and paid for organization.

1016 BH

A small file (159 pages) containing lists of known Nazi intelligence and scientific people recruited in Germany from 1946 onwards, initially by the U.S. Army and later by the CIA. A detailed list of the original names and positions of the persons involved plus their relocation information. Has three U.S. Army and one FBI report on the subject.

1017 BH

A small list (54 pages) of American business entities with “significant” connections to the CIA. Each business is listed along with relevant information on its owners/operators, previous and on going contacts with the CIA’s Robert Crowley, also a list of national advertising agencies with similar information. Much information about suppressed news stories and planted stories

On October 8th, 2000 , Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA's Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer's Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley 's widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley 's CIA files.

Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal , Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment. Three months before, July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley , died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda , Md.

After Corson's death, Trento and a well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson's bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled 'Zipper.' This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley 's involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.

The  small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento 's house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.

When published material concerning the CIA's actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA's horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA's activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious 'Regional Interrogation Centers' in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..

A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid "historians" and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.

The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley 's survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of  highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by  DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton  conspired to  secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files our of the agency. Crowley did the same thing  right before his own retirement , secretly removing thousands of pages  of classified information that covered his entire agency career.

Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks,”: Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago , Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in military intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.

One of Crowley ’s first major assignments within the agency was to assist in the recruitment and management of prominent World War II Nazis, especially those with advanced intelligence experience. One of the CIA’s major recruitment coups was Heinrich Mueller, once head of Hitler’s Gestapo who had fled to Switzerland after the collapse of the Third Reich and worked as an anti-Communist expert for Masson of Swiss counterintelligence. Mueller was initially hired by Colonel James Critchfield of the CIA,  who was running the Gehlen Organization out of Pullach in southern Germany . Crowley eventually came to despise Critchfield but the colonel was totally unaware of this, to his later dismay.

Crowley ’s real expertise within the agency was the Soviet KGB. One of his main jobs throughout his career was acting as the agency liaison with corporations like ITT, which the CIA often used as fronts for moving large amounts of cash off their books. He was deeply involved in the efforts by the U.S. to overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile , which eventually got him into legal problems with regard to investigations of the U.S. government’s grand jury where he has perjured himself in an agency cover-up

After his retirement, Crowley began to search for someone who might be able to write a competent history of his career. His first choice fell on British author John Costello (author of Ten Days to Destiny, The Pacific War and other works) but, discovering that Costello was a very aggressive homosexual, he dropped him and tentatively turned to Joseph Trento who had assisted Crowley and William Corson in writing a book on the KGB. When Crowley discovered that Trento had an ambiguous and probably cooperative relationship with the CIA, he began to distrust him and continued his search for an author.

Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas  in 1993  when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. . In 1996, Crowley , Crowley told Douglas   that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley ’s story but only after Crowley ’s death. Douglas , for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publications.

In 1998, when Crowley was slated to go into the hospital for exploratory surgery,  he had his son, Greg, ship two large foot lockers of documents to Douglas with the caveat that they were not to be opened until after Crowley ’s death. These documents, totaled  an astonishing 15,000 pages of CIA classified files involving many covert operations, both foreign and domestic, during the Cold War.

After Crowley ’s death and Trento ’s raid on the Crowley files, huge gaps were subsequently discovered by horrified CIA officials and when Crowley ’s friends mentioned Gregory Douglas, it was discovered that Crowley ’s son had shipped two large boxes to Douglas . No one knew their contents but because Douglas was viewed as an uncontrollable loose cannon who had done considerable damage to the CIA’s reputation by his on-going publication of the history of Gestapo-Mueller, they bent every effort both to identify the missing files and make some effort to retrieve them before Douglas made any use of them.

All of this furor eventually came to the attention of Dr. Peter Janney, a Massachusetts clinical psychologist and son of Wistar Janney, another career senior CIA official, colleague of not only Bob Crowley but Cord Meyer, Richard Helms, Jim Angleton and others. Janney was working on a book concerning the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer, former wife of Cord Meyer, a high-level CIA official, and later the mistress of President John F. Kennedy.  Douglas had authored a book, ‘Regicide’ which dealt with Crowley ’s part in the Kennedy assassination and he obviously had access to at least some of Crowley ’s papers. Janney was very well connected inside the CIA’s higher levels and when he discovered that Douglas had indeed known, and had often spoken with, Crowley and that after Crowley’s death, the FBI had descended on Crowley’s widow and son, warning them to never speak with Douglas about anything, he contacted Douglas and finally obtained from him a number of original documents, including the originals of the transcribed conversations with Robert Crowley.

In spite of the burn bags, the top secret safes and the vigilance of the CIA to keep its own secrets, the truth has an embarrassing and often very fatal habit of emerging, albeit decades later.

While CIA drug running , money-launderings and brutal assassinations are very often strongly rumored and suspected, it has so far not been possible to actually pin them down but it is more than possible that the publication of the transcribed and detailed Crowley-Douglas conversations will do a great deal towards accomplishing this.

These many transcribed conversations are relatively short because Crowley was a man who tired easily but they make excellent reading. There is an interesting admixture of shocking revelations on the part of the retired CIA official and often rampant anti-social (and very entertaining) activities on the part of Douglas but readers of this new and on-going series are gently reminded to always look for the truth in the jest!

Date:   Sunday, April 14, 1996

Commenced:  3:24 PM CST

Concluded:  4:01 PM CST

GD: Hello?

RTC: Oh, hello, Gregory. I didn’t think you’d be calling today. Usually, you’re earlier.

GD: Went up to Madison . Always go up on the weekends. Borders book store has the best history section I’ve ever seen and there’s a good Chinese restaurant nearby. That’s my social life these days. Yourself?

RTC: Trying to keep busy. One of these days, I ought to get your creative opinion as to what to do about the Swiss. They’re right across the street from me and they keep using their microwave to send messages home and it’s been causing me trouble.

GD: Have you tried complaining to them?

RTC: Pointless. I tried lodging a complaint with DoS but no good there either. In the old days, a few words about this would have worked miracles but I’m out of harness and out of the picture. Gregory, a small piece of advice for you: Don’t get old.

GD: Can’t help it. I have an idea for you on the Swiss. You face them? What kind of building are they in?

RTC: It’s their embassy.

GD: Got a pencil?

RTC: Yes. Will a pen do?

GD: Yes, of course.

RTC: Well?

GD: Do you still have any connections with your tech section at Langley ?

RTC: I think so. Why?

GD: There’s a wonderful little device called an audio oscillator. Do you want me to spell that?

RTC: I have it. Go on.

GD: It puts out sound waves. It’s easy to build if you know your business. Anyway, it’s in a smallish box…shoe box size…and you plug it in and point it at your target. It puts out sound that the human ear can’t hear but animals can. That’s not the point. I’m sure the Switzers don’t have poodles typing reports. Oh, and if your man is good enough, you can hit the frequency that causes involuntary bowel movements.

RTC: (Laughter) Now that’s something to consider.

GD: I thought you might enjoy that. Just imagine the entire Swiss embassy ankle deep in shit. Anyway, it makes the people on the other end nervous and irritable. They don’t know why but they feel depressed and very, very unhappy.

RTC: Go on. This is interesting.

GD: So the windows in the embassy will act as a sounding board and all the offices in the front of the building will be full of suicidal people or, if you’re lucky, filled with Swiss shit.

RTC: Can you build one of these for me?

GD: God no. I know nothing about electronics except how to plug them in. It’s not a state secret and very easy to build but I’m not your man on this one. I would……..you have windows facing them?

RTC: Oh, yes.

GD: Put it in a window, preferably opened, and plug it in. That’s all. Makes no noise at your end and your wife would never notice it. Just tell her it’s an air freshener or something.

RTC: No point in telling her anything. Can they detect anything over there?

GD: No unless they have budgies in every office. I mean this does work because I’ve tried it out. I once lived in an apartment and was friendly with the manager and his wife. They had a minority couple living there under section eight. Played their boom box all the time, never paid the rent on time and threatened the other neighbors. The police didn’t want to bother them so I suggested the solution. I had a friend at Radio Shack build an oscillator and since the apartments on both sides of the creeps were vacant because of the noise, I went into one, plugged the box in and put it right up against a connecting wall. And believe me, it did work. They moved out within a week. Jesus, what a mess they left behind. One or both of them used to shit in the shower stall, not to mention the fact that all the carpets had to be replaced and the walls patched and repainted. The manager was so happy he gave me six months of rent free on the condition I used my little toy to help him get rid of other obnoxious tenants. Anyway, I went into the apartment to see what it was like, being on the other end of the toy and believe me, it was something else, Robert. A feeling of anxiety coupled with severe depression…

RTC: No bowel movements?

GD: No but the smell in the place would have made me puke if I’d stayed there for another minute. Let me tell you, I wanted to get away from that place in the worst way and it was not the stench. No, the Swiss will not be happy campers once you turn the thing on. I would suggest that you turn it on about three times a day, at odd intervals and don’t leave it on all the time. They might get someone in to do a sweep and if they’re competent, they might be able to pick up the sonics.

RTC: Gregory, rather than my bothering the boys on this, could you get one for me? More than happy to pay for it.

GD: I’ll be happy to do it for free, Robert. It’ll take about three weeks. I’ll start tomorrow. I know at least one person who can build one of these for sure. I suppose if the Swiss found out about this, they might make trouble for you so I will work on this here. And keep you posted.

RTC: If this works, Gregory, I will be greatly in your debt.

GD: Can we talk about Kennedy?

RTC: Oh, I think we certainly can.

GD: That I appreciate. After I build your box for you, then we can discuss this?

RTC: As I said.

GD: Is there any paper on that subject? If I publish anything, the government stool pigeons will yammer that it’s all made up and they, personally, can’t believe a word of it. And consider the huge number of  books on the subject. The thousands of writers will join in a chorus of denial. After all, I didn’t mention the man in the sewer, the man on the grassy knoll…

RTC: Ah, but there was a man on the grassy knoll. Not in the sewer, of course, but I read that there were men in the trees, on the roofs of various buildings and lots of very funny stories. Of course we were responsible for most of them. Keeps the idiot public satisfied and very confused. I have a Soviet report on this that basically says it all. The box first.

GD: I’ll make it big enough to pulverize the building.

RTC: No, Gregory, just enough to drive them crazy. Just like they’ve been driving me up the wall.

GD: I don’t suppose you could hint a little on this?

RTC: Well, it wasn’t the Mafia or the KGB and I can say very clearly that it wasn’t Lee Oswald or the Girl Scouts. Now that’s all for now on that subject.

GD: It’s your call.

RTC: To change the subject, you mentioned Mountbatten some time ago. What can you tell me about that?

GD: The name Moran mean anything to you?

RTC: Oh, I think it could. Tell me what you know and I will comment on it.

GD: Moran is not his name but no one ever uses their real name these days. He was, probably still is, Irish-American. His grandfather was hanged by the Brits after the ’16 rising in Dublin and he hates them with a real passion. He was one of your boys who liased with the IRA Provo people. Worked out of our embassy in Dublin as one of those utterly transparent cultural aides. Everyone knows the legal officers are FBI and the USIA people are all CIA so why bother with the name game? Anyway, this Moran got the idea to kill off Lord Mountbatten. Besides the dead grandfather, he had an uncle who lived in Canada and was killed at Dieppe . That was Mountbatten’s grab at fame, you know. They had planned a cross-channel raid on Dieppe but cancelled it. Mountbatten was pathologically ambitious and as empty of brains as a ladle decided to go ahead with the raid anyway. Churchill was out of the country, in Egypt if memory serves, and off they went. Germans knew it was in the wind and the invasion party ran into a German small boat convoy enroute and the game was known. The town was heavily armed and the poor Canadians were slaughtered. Moran hated Mountbatten, who got away with it because he was connected to the royal family. Actually, there’s an interesting story about his family. They were of the house of Hessen-Darmstadt. Same small princely house that produced the present Prince Phillip and the last Empress of Russia. One of them, a Prince Alexander, married a Polish Jewess whose father was the chief baker to the King of Poland and because the family did not want the title involved with Jews, they changed their name to Battenberg. And later, that was anglicized to Mountbatten. So far so good?

RTC: You left me way behind, Gregory, but go on.

GD: You can check it out later.

RTC: I will. Prince Phillip is a German? I thought he was Greek.

GD: So does everyone else. The Prince Consort was in the Hitler Youth and his brother was in the SS. I have a picture of Phil in a Nazi uniform. But to continue here. Mountbatten had married into the Cassel family. The old man was banker to Edward the VII. More Jewish connections again. Anyway, the old man, God, he was almost 80 then, used to summer up in County Sligo on the west coast of Ireland. He had a sail boat docked at Mullaghnmore and one day, Mountbatten took some his family out fishing. I can’t remember the name…oh yes, the Shadow. That was the boat’s name. It was painted green. Anyway, it sailed out into the bay and suddenly blew up. Mountbatten lost his legs and died of blood loss and shock and a few more got killed. The man who did this, who ran the operation, is a friend of mine.

RTC: Moran?

GD: No an Irish friend who was with the Provos . He was up on the cliff and pushed the button that set off the charge his people planted the night before. Then they all went their separate ways and one of them got caught by a traffic stop. My friend got clean away. A very decent fellow and a good friend. I could be more specific but we don’t need to go into that. So Moran got his revenge and there was a state funeral. I do like the Irish, Robert, but if there were only two of them left alive in the world, they would be sending letter bombs to each other.

RTC: There’s some truth to that, Gregory, but not a lot. We got connected with the IRA people because we wanted to protect a certain oil refinery in Belfast that they had been threatening to blow up. The CIA has many, many friends in business and one of them asked us to be sure they left the project alone. So we supplied them explosives, intelligence and some support in exchange for their neutrality concerning American property in Ireland . It worked out.

GD: But not for Mountbatten, though.

RTC: He was a pompous ass.

GD: But a member of the royal family, Robert! Mostly inbred idiots, as a friend of mine once said, who marry their own cousins and produce children with the intellect of chickens.

RTC: How cruel. But true. And keep me posted on the box, won’t you?

GD: And look for the Kennedy papers. Goodbye for now, Robert and my best to your wife.

(Concluded at 4:01 PM CST )

9-11 Redux

The Official Fiction

…….

6)                  Insider trading in the stocks of United Airlines and American Airlines just before September 11 is evidence of advance knowledge of the plot.

·                     The 9/11 Commission investigated this issue in detail, concluding, “Some unusual trading did in fact occur, but each such trade proved to have an innocuous explanation.”

·                     For example, it stated, “much of the seemingly suspicious trading in American [Airlines stock] on September 10 was traced to a specific U.S.-based options trading newsletter, faxed to its subscribers on Sunday, September 9, which recommended these trades.”

The Official Report 19 September 2006 , ,

Bureau of International Information Programs,

U.S. Department of State.

Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov

The Reality

Between August 26 to September 11, 2001 , a group of speculators, identified by the American Securities and Exchange Commission as Israeli citizens, sold “short” a list of 38 stocks that could reasonably be expected to fall in value as a result of the pending attacks. These speculators operated out of the Toronto , Canada and Frankfurt , Germany , stock exchanges and their profits were specifically stated to be “in the millions of dollars.”

Investigators from numerous government agencies are part of a clandestine but official effort to resolve the market manipulations There has been a great deal of talk about insider trading of American stocks by certain Israeli groups both in Canada and Germany between August 26 and the Sept.11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Government investigators remain tight-lipped about a Department of Justice (DOJ) probe of possible profiteering by terrorists with advance knowledge of the attack.

On Sept. 6, 2001 , the Thursday before the tragedy, 2,075 put options were made on United Airlines and on Sept. 10, the day before the attacks, 2,282 put options were recorded for American Airlines. Given the prices at the time, this could have yielded speculators between $2 million and $4 million in profit.

The matter still is under investigation and none of the government investigating bodies -including the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and DOJ -are speaking to reporters about insider trading. Even so, suspicion of insider trading to profit from the Sept. 11 attacks is not limited to U.S. regulators. Investigations were initiated in a number of places including Japan , Germany , the United Kingdom , France , Luxembourg , Hong Kong , Switzerland and Spain . As in the United States , all are treating these inquiries as if they were state secrets.

Lynne Howard, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), stated that information about who made the trades was available immediately. "We would have been aware of any unusual activity right away. It would have been triggered by any unusual volume. There is an automated system called 'blue sheeting,' or the CBOE Market Surveillance System, that everyone in the business knows about. It provides information on the trades - the name and even the Social Security number on an account - and these surveillance systems are set up specifically to look into insider trading. The system would look at the volume, and then a real person would take over and review it, going back in time and looking at other unusual activity."

Howard continued, "The system is so smart that even if there is a news event that triggers a market event it can go back in time, and even the parameters can be changed depending on what is being looked at. It's a very clever system and it is instantaneous. Even with the system, though, we have very experienced and savvy staff in our market-regulations area who are always looking for things that might be unusual. They're trained to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Even if it's offshore, it might take a little longer, but all offshore accounts have to go through U.S. member firms - members of the CBOE - and it is easily and quickly identifiable who made the trades. The member firm who made the trades has to have identifiable information about the client under the 'Know Your Customer' regulations (and we share all information with the Securities and Exchange Commission.)"

Given all of this, at a minimum the CBOE and government regulators who are conducting the secret investigations have known for some time who made the options puts on a total of 38 stocks that might reasonably be anticipated to have a sharp drop in value because of an attack similar to the 9/11 episode. The silence from the investigating camps could mean several things: Either terrorists are responsible for the puts on the listed stocks or others besides terrorists had foreknowledge of the attack and used this knowledge to reap a nice financial harvest from the tragedy.

Adam Hamilton of Zeal LLC, a North Dakota-based private consulting company that publishes research on markets worldwide, stated that "I heard that $22 million in profits was made on these put options..."

Federal investigators are continuing to be closed-mouthed about these stock trades, and it is clear that a much wider net has been cast, apparently looking for bigger international fish involved in dubious financial activity relating to the 9/11 attacks on the world stock markets.

Just a month after the attacks the SEC sent out a list of 38 stocks to various securities firms around the world looking for information. The list includes stocks of American, United, Continental, Northwest, Southwest and US Airways airlines, as well as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, the American International Group, AIG, Cigna, CAN Financial, John Hancock, MetLife, General Motors, Raytheon, W.R. Grace, Lone Star Technologies, American Express, the Bank of New York, Bank One, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns

September 6-7, 2001 : 4,744 put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) are purchased on United Air Lines stock as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the UAL puts are purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current Executive Director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. [New York Times; Wall Street Journal]

September 10, 2001 : 4,516 put options are purchased on American Airlines as compared to 748 call options. [New York Times; Wall Street Journal.]

September 6-11, 2001 : No other airlines show any similar trading patterns to those experienced by UAL and American. The put option purchases on both airlines were 600% above normal. This at a time when Reuters (September 10) issues a business report stating "airline stocks may be poised to take off."

September 6-10, 2001 : Highly abnormal levels of put options are purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re (insurance) which owns 25% of American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly impacted by the September 11 attacks.  It has been documented that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad and many other intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time using highly advanced programs reported to be descended from Promis software. This is to alert national intelligence services of just such types of attacks. Promis was reported, as recently as June, 2001, to be in Osama bin Laden's possession and as a result of recent stories by FOX, both the FBI and the Justice Department have confirmed its use for U.S. intelligence gathering through at least this summer. This would confirm that the CIA had additional advance warning of imminent attacks. [ Washington Times, June 15, 2001 ; “Fox News,” October 16, 2001 ]

Comment: The 9/11 tragedy has become home to a motley crew of some of the weirdest people since the last Special Olympics.  On one hand, official government sources deny what is easily provable and on the other, a multiplicity of weird theories, half-baked legends and downright psycho-babble has clogged the internet. Rockets disguised as commercial aircraft, robots, armies of strange people planting bombs in the flaming buildings ,other armies of sinister Israelis jumping up and down with glee on Manhattan rooftops and dozens of moving vans, beams of radiant energy or plasmoid clouds, radio-controlled planes and dozens of other lunatic chatter do nothing but hide the real mystery: What did the Bush Administration know about this attack, when did they know it and what did they do, or not do, to prevent it. Sympathetic government assets have been busy spreading a flood of distracting [and highly entertaining] lunatic stories but in the end, the basic question of pre-knowledge is paramount. If you tell this to the nut fringe, they explode with fury because they just read the latest group therapy production that ‘reveals’ that tons of ‘Russian jet engine parts’ were scattered all over the streets below the collapsed WTC!. Whatever happened to the Mental Health programs?  Why have they failed so badly? Still, I suppose we must practice toleration in light of the fact that so many of our benighted ones really believe in Jesus or the Easter Bunny and actually voted for George W. Bush. BH

Letters to the Editor

To: tbrnews@hotmail.com

From:

Date: Tues June 10, 2007

Subject: Overview on Israel

Gentlemen:

Israel is like the nasty kid on the block who commits mischief and threatens neighbor kids because his big brother is a meth-head biker with a history of violence.

Israel wants conflict with Iran , but the United States needs to review its history with that country. Anybody remember when we trucked supplies through Iran and into the USSR during WWII? Will Israel actually attack Iran ? Of course Israel bombed Iraq and Syria , but right now the problem is not will but logistics. The Israelis can't get to Iran and back with what they've got.

Of course Iran will not attack Israel any more than the Saudis will ever do, yet most people agree that the Jewish/Palestinian situation will never be resolved short of the extermination or one or the other group. Another Israel-Lebanon war is likely.

Still, Israel has a history of unilateral action against her neighbors, and I doubt that Israel cares about the effect on its sponsor, the United States . As you no doubt agree, Israel does not help the oil situation either. The Saudis hate the United States and are gleeful at the pain caused by high gasoline prices over here. Why do they hate us? I rest my case on that one, but Israel has a ticket to ride that cannot be stamped "void" by anybody. The country cannot exist on its own without massive military support from the United States , which makes it a foreign body in the geopolitics of that region. With support removed, Israel would probably collapse within five years.

Domestically, it would not be in error to observe that the Israeli presence in the United States today is disproportional and potentially devastating

Through the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as massive influence in the domestic stock markets, ownership of banks, ownership of most of the American print and television media and all kinds of NGO’S, they control, de facto, the economies, trade, domestic politics and public opinion of the United States and all not only to make enormous sums of money but, even more important to them, to secure full and complete financial, political and military support of Israel, no matter how serious the cost to the United States.

The current  high price of domestic American gasoline is due directly to America ’s fierce and unquestioning support of Israel in the Middle East .

There is unanimous agreement among top-level American intelligence and diplomatic experts that if America would adopt a policy of benign neutrality in the Middle East , terrorist attacks against Americans would immediately cease and, for a certainty, oil prices would drop to normal levels overnight.

(Comment: The writer, a senior serving American military officer, now stationed at the Pentagon, in the Mid-East Section, has asked that his name and email address not be used to avoid attempted domestic pro- Israeli protests. We have had other such commentary from similar sources and one of the most outspoken critics of Israel is a serving Vice-Admiral in the U.S. Navy. Ed)

Blackwater's Private CIA

June 9, 2008.

by Jeremy Scahill,

The Nation.

The notorious mercenary company now offers spy "services" to Fortune 500 companies, for the right price.

This past September, the secretive mercenary company Blackwater USA found its name splashed across front pages throughout the world after the company's shooters gunned down seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad 's Nisour Square . But by early 2008, Blackwater had largely receded from the headlines save for the occasional blip on the media radar sparked by Congressman Henry Waxman's ongoing investigations into its activities. Its forces remained deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan , and business continued to pour in. In the two weeks directly following Nisour Square, Blackwater signed more than $144 million in contracts with the State Department for "protective services" in Iraq and Afghanistan alone and, over the following weeks and months, won millions more in contracts with other federal entities like the Coast Guard, the Navy and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.

Blackwater's Iraq contract was extended in April, but the company is by no means betting the house on its long-term presence there. While the firm is quietly maintaining its Iraq work, it is aggressively pursuing other business opportunities. In September it was revealed that Blackwater had been "tapped" by the Pentagon's Counter Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office to compete for a share of a five-year, $15 billion budget "to fight terrorists with drug-trade ties." According to the Army Times, the contract "could include antidrug technologies and equipment, special vehicles and aircraft, communications, security training, pilot training, geographic information systems and in-field support." A spokesperson for another company bidding for the work said that "80 percent of the work will be overseas." As Richard Douglas, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, explained, "The fact is, we use Blackwater to do a lot of our training of counternarcotics police in Afghanistan . I have to say that Blackwater has done a very good job."

Such an arrangement could find Blackwater operating in an arena with the godfathers of the war industry, such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon. It could also see Blackwater expanding into Latin America , joining other private security companies well established in the region. The massive US security company DynCorp is already deployed in Colombia , Bolivia and other countries as part of the "war on drugs." In Colombia alone, US military contractors are receiving nearly half the $630 million in annual US military aid for the country. Just south of the US border, the United States has launched Plan Mexico , a $1.5 billion counternarcotics program. This and similar plans could provide lucrative business opportunities for Blackwater and other companies. "Blackwater USA's enlistment in the drug war," observed journalist John Ross, would be "a direct challenge to its stiffest competitor, DynCorp -- up until now, the Dallas-based corporation has locked up 94 percent of all private drug war security contracts." The New York Times reported that the contract could be Blackwater's "biggest job ever."

As populist movements grow stronger in Latin America , threatening US financial interests as well as the standing of right-wing US political allies in the region, the "war on drugs" is becoming an increasingly central part of US counterinsurgency efforts. It allows for more training of foreign security forces through the private sector -- away from Congressional oversight -- and a deployment of personnel from US war corporations. With US forces stretched thin, sending private security companies to Latin America offers Washington a "small footprint" alternative to the politically and militarily problematic deployment of active-duty US troops. In a January report by the United Nations working group on mercenaries, international investigators found that "an emerging trend in Latin America but also in other regions of the world indicates situations of private security companies protecting transnational extractive corporations whose employees are often involved in suppressing the legitimate social protest of communities and human rights and environmental organizations of the areas where these corporations operate."

If there is one quality that is evident from examining Blackwater's business history, it is the company's ability to take advantage of emerging war and conflict markets. Throughout the decade of Blackwater's existence, its creator, Erik Prince, has aggressively built his empire into a structure paralleling the US national security apparatus. "Prince wants to vault Blackwater into the major leagues of U.S. military contracting, taking advantage of the movement to privatize all kinds of government security," reported the Wall Street Journal shortly after Nisour Square . "The company wants to be a one-stop shop for the U.S. government on missions to which it won't commit American forces. This is a niche with few established competitors."

In addition to providing armed forces for war and conflict zones and a wide range of military and police training services, Blackwater does a robust, multimillion-dollar business through its aviation division. It also has a growing maritime division and other national and international initiatives. Among these, Blackwater is in Japan , where its forces protect the US ballistic missile defense system, which, according to Stars and Stripes, "points high-powered radio waves westward toward mainland Asia to hunt for enemy missiles headed east toward America or its allies." Meanwhile, early this year, Defense News reported, "Blackwater is training members of the Taiwanese National Security Bureau's (NSB's) special protection service, which guards the president. The NSB is responsible for the overall security of the country and was once an instrument of terrorism during the martial law period. Today, according to its Web site, the NSB is responsible for 'national intelligence work, special protective service and unified cryptography.'" Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto reportedly tried to hire Blackwater to protect her as she campaigned for the presidency in 2007. Conflicting reports indicated that either the US State Department or the Pakistani government vetoed the plan. She was assassinated in December.

What could prove to be one of Blackwater's most profitable and enduring enterprises is one of the company's most secretive initiatives -- a move into the world of privatized intelligence services. In April 2006, Prince quietly began building Total Intelligence Solutions, which boasts that it "brings CIA-style" services to the open market for Fortune 500 companies. Among its offerings are "surveillance and countersurveillance, deployed intelligence collection, and rapid safeguarding of employees or other key assets."

As the United States finds itself in the midst of the most radical privatization agenda in its history, few areas have seen as dramatic a transformation to privatized services as the world of intelligence. "This is the magnet now. Everything is being attracted to these private companies in terms of individuals and expertise and functions that were normally done by the intelligence community," says former CIA division chief and senior analyst Melvin Goodman. "My major concern is the lack of accountability, the lack of responsibility. The entire industry is essentially out of control. It's outrageous."

Last year R.J. Hillhouse, a blogger who investigates the clandestine world of private contractors and US intelligence, obtained documents from the office of the Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI) showing that Washington spends some $42 billion annually on private intelligence contractors, up from $17.5 billion in 2000. That means 70 percent of the US intelligence budget is going to private companies. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that the head of DNI is Mike McConnell, the former chair of the board of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, the private intelligence industry's trade association.

Total Intelligence, which opened for business in February 2007, is a fusion of three entities bought up by Prince: the Terrorism Research Center , Technical Defense and The Black Group -- Blackwater vice chair Cofer Black's consulting agency. The company's leadership reads like a Who's Who of the CIA's "war on terror" operations after 9/11. In addition to the twenty-eight-year CIA veteran Black, who is chair of Total Intelligence, the company's executives include CEO Robert Richer, the former associate deputy director of the agency's Directorate of Operations and the second-ranking official in charge of clandestine operations. From 1999 to 2004, Richer was head of the CIA's Near East and South Asia Division, where he ran clandestine operations throughout the Middle East and South Asia . As part of his duties, he was the CIA liaison with Jordan's King Abdullah, a key US ally and Blackwater client, and briefed George W. Bush on the burgeoning Iraqi resistance in its early stages.

Total Intelligence's chief operating officer is Enrique "Ric" Prado, a twenty-four-year CIA veteran and former senior executive officer in the Directorate of Operations. He spent more than a decade working in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center and ten years with the CIA's "paramilitary" Special Operations Group. Prado and Black worked closely at the CIA. Prado also served in Latin America with Jose Rodriguez, who gained infamy late last year after it was revealed that as director of the National Clandestine Service at the CIA he was allegedly responsible for destroying videotapes of interrogations of prisoners, during which "enhanced interrogation techniques," including waterboarding, were reportedly used. Richer told the New York Times he recalled many conversations with Rodriguez, about the tapes. "He would always say, 'I'm not going to let my people get nailed for something they were ordered to do,'" Richer said of his former boss. Before the scandal, there were reports that Blackwater had been "aggressively recruiting" Rodriguez. He has since retired from the CIA.

The leadership of Total Intelligence also includes Craig Johnson, a twenty-seven-year CIA officer who specialized in Central and South America , and Caleb "Cal" Temple , who joined the company straight out of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he served from 2004 to '06 as chief of the Office of Intelligence Operations in the Joint Intelligence Task Force -- Combating Terrorism. According to his Total Intelligence bio, Temple directed the "DIA's 24/7 analytic terrorism target development and other counterterrorism intelligence activities in support of military operations worldwide. He also oversaw 24/7 global counterterrorism indications and warning analysis for the U.S. Defense Department." The company also boasts officials drawn from the Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI.

Total Intelligence is run out of an office on the ninth floor of a building in the Ballston area of Arlington , Virginia . Its " Global Fusion Center ," complete with large-screen TVs broadcasting international news channels and computer stations staffed by analysts surfing the web, "operates around the clock every day of the year" and is modeled after the CIA's counterterrorist center, once run by Black. The firm employs at least sixty-five full-time staff -- some estimates say it's closer to 100. "Total Intel brings the...skills traditionally honed by CIA operatives directly to the board room," Black said when the company launched. "With a service like this, CEOs and their security personnel will be able to respond to threats quickly and confidently -- whether it's determining which city is safest to open a new plant in or working to keep employees out of harm's way after a terrorist attack."

Black insists, "This is a completely legal enterprise. We break no laws. We don't go anywhere near breaking laws. We don't have to." But what services Total Intelligence is providing, and to whom, is shrouded in secrecy. It is clear, though, that the company is leveraging the reputations and inside connections of its executives. "Cofer can open doors," Richer told the Washington Post in 2007. "I can open doors. We can generally get in to see who we need to see. We don't help pay bribes. We do everything within the law, but we can deal with the right minister or person." Black told the paper he and Richer spend a lot of their time traveling. "I am discreet in where I go and who I see. I spend most of my time dealing with senior people in governments, making connections." But it is clear that the existing connections from the former spooks' time at the agency have brought business to Total Intelligence.

Take the case of Jordan . For years, Richer worked closely with King Abdullah, as his CIA liaison. As journalist Ken Silverstein reported, "The CIA has lavishly subsidized Jordan 's intelligence service, and has sent millions of dollars in recent years for intelligence training. After Richer retired, sources say, he helped Blackwater land a lucrative deal with the Jordanian government to provide the same sort of training offered by the CIA. Millions of dollars that the CIA 'invested' in Jordan walked out the door with Richer -- if this were a movie, it would be a cross between Jerry Maguire and Syriana. 'People [at the agency] are pissed off,' said one source. 'Abdullah still speaks with Richer regularly, and he thinks that's the same thing as talking to us. He thinks Richer is still the man.' Except in this case it's Richer, not his client, yelling 'show me the money.'"

In a 2007 interview on the cable business network CNBC, Black was brought on as an analyst to discuss "investing in Jordan ." At no point in the interview was Black identified as working for the Jordanian government. Total Intelligence was described as "a corporate consulting firm that includes investment strategy," while "Ambassador Black" was introduced as "a twenty-eight-year veteran of the CIA," the "top counterterror guy" and "a key planner for the breathtakingly rapid victory of American forces that toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan ." Black heaped lavish praise on Jordan and its monarchy. "You have leadership, King Abdullah, His Majesty King Abdullah, who is certainly kind towards investors, very protective," Black said. " Jordan is, in our view, a very good investment. There are some exceptional values there." He said Jordan is in a region where there are "numerous commodities that are being produced and doing well."

With no hint of the brutality behind the exodus, Black argued that the flood of Iraqi refugees fleeing the violence of the US occupation was good for potential investors in Jordan . "We get something like 600 - 700,000 Iraqis that have moved from Iraq into Jordan that require cement, furniture, housing and the like. So it is a -- it is an island of growth and potential, certainly in that immediate area. So it looks good," he said. "There are opportunities for investment. It is not all bad. Sometimes Americans need to watch a little less TV. ... But there is -- there is opportunity in everything. That's why you need situation awareness, and that's one of the things that our company does. It provides the kinds of intelligence and insight to provide situational awareness so you can make the best investments."

Black and other Total Intelligence executives have turned their CIA careers, reputations, contacts and connections into business opportunities. What they once did for the US government, they now do for private interests. It is not difficult to imagine clients feeling as though they are essentially hiring the US government to serve their own interests. In 2007 Richer told the Post that now that he is in the private sector, foreign military officials and others are more willing to give him information than they were when he was with the CIA. Richer recalled a conversation with a foreign general during which he was surprised at the potentially "classified" information the general revealed. When Richer asked why the general was giving him the information, he said the general responded, "If I tell it to an embassy official I've created espionage. You're a business partner."

In May, Erik Prince gave a speech in front of his family and supporters in his home state of Michigan . Security was extremely tight, and Blackwater barred cameras and tape recorders from the event. "The idea that we are a secretive facility, and nefarious, is just ridiculous," Prince told the friendly crowd of 750 gathered at the Amway Grand Plaza . In Iraq , Blackwater has banked on the idea that it is a sort of American Express card for the occupation. But for the future, Prince has a different corporate model, as he indicated in his speech. "When you send something overseas, do you use FedEx or the postal service?" he asked.

There are serious problems with this analogy. When you send something by FedEx, you can track your package and account for its whereabouts at all times. You can have your package insured against loss or damage. That has not been the case with Blackwater. The people who foot the sizable bill for its "services" almost never know, until it is too late, what Blackwater is doing, and there are apparently no consequences for Blackwater when things go lethally wrong. "We are essentially a robust temp agency," Prince told his fans in Michigan . He's right about that one. A temp agency serving the most radical privatization agenda in history.

Jeremy Scahill is the author of the international bestseller, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, which has just been released in updated paperback form.

Will it be 'Obama's war'?

June 11, 2008

by Brian M Downing

Asia Times

Senator Barack Obama has repeatedly assured the public that, if elected to the presidency, he will withdraw US troops from Iraq , and in a manner more cautious than the way in which the US went in.

He is unclear as to how many troops he would withdraw, which leaves a suspicious amount of ambiguity. Nonetheless, the Democratic faithful believe that he will keep his word and that his word denotes large-scale withdrawal. There are, however, extraordinary obstacles to large-scale withdrawal, which make some doubt that this change is one in which we can believe in.

The next president, regardless of his party, will face powerful foreign pressures to keep a major US commitment in Iraq , perhaps only somewhat less than the troop level of 140,000 we will have soon. Saudi Arabia warned the US against toppling Saddam Hussein's government. Brutal and sometimes menacing though it was, Saddam's Iraq was at least a barrier to Shi'ite and Iranian expansion in the Middle East . His ouster created a vacuum, and geopolitics abhors a vacuum at least as much as nature does.

Fearful that Iran might march west or at least incite the Shi'ites of Saudi Arabia and those in other Sunni states, the Saudis wish the US to stay in the region, indefinitely, as a guardian against Iran . Israel is also worried. It is not just the fear of an Iran with nuclear weapons; Israel also fears the expansion of Iranian influence in Lebanon , where Hezbollah is probably closer to Iran 's Quds Force than ever. Iran has even gained influence with Hamas - a Sunni group - in Palestine . The Saudis and pro-Israel groups are exerting pressure on the US to maintain its troops in Iraq . Each of those groups wields considerable influence throughout Washington . Combined, their influence will be very difficult to overcome.

The US military will also oppose large-scale withdrawal. The generation of officers who learned hard lessons in Vietnam are almost all gone now, leaving successors who are only vaguely wary of foreign quagmires. The torch has been passed to a new generation that believes in one main lesson from Vietnam : future wars must be seen through. The military thinks it has turned a corner in Iraq and that General David Petraeus' troop "surge" is working well.

It will ally with like-minded members of the US Congress, conservative media and think-tanks to argue the stay-put message. If a Democratic president were somehow able to overcome opposition to withdrawal, he would bring bitter enmity between the generals and his party, which is already disliked for its lineage to the antiwar movement of the Vietnam years and for trimming defense budgets. Leaving Iraq - cutting and running, as it is often called - would poison civil-military relations as never before in the nation's history.

Considerable portions of the public will oppose withdrawal - and react viciously to anything perceived as defeat or cutting and running. Polling data show strong support for withdrawing from Iraq , though it is neither overwhelming nor deep. Data from a previous war, one far more divisive than the present one, might be kept in mind.

As former president Richard Nixon took office in 1969, polls showed a majority of Americans opposed the war and wanted out. Yet when asked if they would favor leaving Vietnam if it meant defeat (as it surely would have), only 9% favored withdrawal (Ronald Spector, After Tet, page 315). The public wanted out, but not defeat. Pollsters don't seem to ask that important follow-up question today, but there's likely widespread, ill-thought sentiment on the Iraq war as well.

In the late 1940s, Americans demanded to know who lost China , as though it was once theirs to lose. Should an expeditious withdrawal from Iraq lead to renewed savagery between the Shi'ites and Sunnis and within the Shi'ites, as it likely would, fingers will point angrily to Obama, a young politician with little international experience and no military experience.

An array of nonsensical myths emerged in the decade after defeat in Vietnam , which could easily be dusted off and used against Obama and his party. We had turned the corner ... victory was in sight ... sacrifice was squandered ... politicians meddled. It is likely that Obama and his party would be devastated in ensuing elections. Accordingly, many members of his own party will oppose sizeable withdrawal.

Obama is a masterful politician, but he will have to work closely with old hands on his staff such as former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski to get out of Iraq without severely damaging his presidency and party. But he will also have to avoid staying in Iraq too long. After all, a year or so after the 1968 elections, Vietnam became "Nixon's war". If elected, Obama will have to be at the top of his game to prevent Iraq from becoming "Obama's war".

Brian M Downing is the author of several works of political and military history, including The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.