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Clues Alerted White House to Potential Attacks
2002-05-17, Fox News/Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,53065,00.html

[There are] many examples of "missed leads" that the Bush administration was given prior to Sept. 11. An Iranian in custody in New York City told local police last May of a plot to attack the World Trade Center. German intelligence alerted the Central Intelligence Agency, Britain's MI-6 intelligence service, Israel's Mossad in June 2001 that Middle Eastern terrorists were training for hijackings and targeting American and Israeli interests. Based on its own intelligence, the Israeli government provided "general" information to the United States in the second week of August that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said publicly that he ordered his intelligence agencies to alert the United States last summer that suicide pilots were training for attacks on U.S. targets. An Islamic terrorist conspiracy was uncovered in 1996 in the Philippines to hijack a dozen airplanes and fly them into CIA headquarters and other buildings. U.S. investigators confirmed in October that a 29-year-old Iranian ... made phone calls to U.S. police from his deportation cell that an attack on the World Trade Center was imminent in "the days before the attack." [A] memo from the FBI Phoenix office about Arabs training in U.S. flight schools never reached headquarters. In 1999, the Federal Research Division at the Library of Congress published its own report ... which described that "Suicide bomber(s) belonging to Al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the [CIA], or the White House."

Note: For lots more evidence that suggest 9/11 at the very least may have been allowed to happen, click here.

[9/11] Suicide hijackers hid behind stolen Arab identities
2001-09-20, WantToKnow.info/London Times
http://www.WantToKnow.info/010920londontimes.hijackers

Five of the [9/11] hijackers were using stolen identities, and investigators are studying the possibility that the entire suicide squad consisted of impostors. In Saudi Arabia, five of the alleged hijackers have emerged, alive, innocent and astonished to see their names and photographs appearing on satellite television. "The name is my name and the birth date is the same as mine, but I am not the one who bombed the World Trade Centre," Abdulaziz Alomari told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper. Mr Alomari, 28, ... said that he had left the United States in April 2000. The US-educated engineer had reported to police that his passport was stolen when his flat in Denver, Colorado, was burgled in 1995. A Saudi diplomat formerly based in Washington, Ahmed al-Shehri, told al-Eqtisadiah newspaper that details of one of the hijackers matched his son, Waleed. The young man, a pilot with Saudi Arabian Airlines who graduated four years ago from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, is living in Morocco. Another Saudi pilot, Said Hussein al-Ghamdi, whose photograph was broadcast on CNN when it portrayed him as a hijacker, is living in Tunis. The family of Ziad al-Jarrah, an alcohol-drinking Lebanese partygoer, deny he could have been the fanatical Muslim hijacker whose aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania. Alarming reports claimed that three of the hijackers -Saeed al-Ghamdi, Ahmed al-Mani and Ahmed al-Ghamdi -had learned to fly at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, known as the "Cradle of US Naval Aviation".

Note: Yet these individuals are all later listed in the 9/11 Commission report as the hijackers. Click here and scroll down a little over half way to see their photos in the official report. For more on this, click here. For an abundance of reliable information suggesting a major 9/11 cover-up, click here.

Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast
1993-10-28, New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F00617FE3A5C0C7B8EDDA...

Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center. The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad A. Salem, should be used. The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as in a far better position than previously known to foil the Feb. 26 bombing of New York City's tallest towers. The explosion left six people dead, more than 1,000 injured and damages in excess of half a billion dollars. The transcript quotes Mr. Salem as saying that he wanted to complain to F.B.I. headquarters in Washington about the bureau's failure to stop the bombing, but was dissuaded by an agent identified as John Anticev. "He said, I don't think that the New York people would like the things out of the New York office to go to Washington, D.C." Another agent ... does not dispute Mr. Salem's account, but rather, appears to agree with it. Other Salem tapes and transcripts were being withheld pending Government review, of "security and other issues." William M. Kunstler, a defense lawyer in the case, accused the Government this week of improper delay in handing over all the material. The transcripts he had seen, he said, "were filled with all sorts of Government misconduct." But citing the judge's order, he said he could not provide any details.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. For a two-minute CBS News clip the same day giving more information on this little-known story, click here.

CIA Brainwashing Suit Settled
1988-10-05, Chicago Tribune
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagotribune/access/24835384.html?dids=24835384...

Eight elderly Canadians who were victims of CIA-funded brainwashing experiments in the 1950s reached a tentative out-of-court settlement Tuesday in their multimillion-dollar damage suit against the U.S. spy agency. The Canadian plaintiffs, who say they suffered permanent mental and physical damage as a result of the bizarre experiments performed on them at a Montreal psychiatric hospital, will divide a $750,000 payment among them, according to their attorney, James Turner. The Canadians, all patients of the late Dr. Ewen Cameron at Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute in the late 1950s, were injected with repeated doses of mind-altering LSD, deprived of sleep, subjected to massive electroshock treatments and forced to listen to thousands of repetitions of taped messages taken from the most sensitive moments of their therapy sessions.

Note: Dr. Cameron was once President of the American and World Psychiatric Associations. For more on the severe abuses of doctors in serving the CIA's mind control programs, click here. For lots more reliable, verifiable information on CIA mind control experiments and programs, click here. The link above provides this abstract of the complete article, which can be accessed by payment of a small fee.

The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis
1987-11-04, WantToKnow.info/PBS Documentary
http://www.WantToKnow.info/050423secretgovernment

The Secret Government is an interlocking network of official functionaries, spies, mercenaries, ex-generals, profiteers and superpatriots, who, for a variety of motives, operate outside the legitimate institutions of government. The Russians had been our ally against the Nazis, an expedient alliance for the sake of war. Now they were our enemy. To fight them we turned to some of the very men who had inflicted on humanity the horrors of Hitler’s madness. We hired Nazis’ as American spies. Admiral Gene La Rocque: “That National Security Act of 1947 changed dramatically the direction of this great nation. It established the framework for a national security state. Never have we had a National Security Council so concerned about the nation’s security that we’re always looking for threats and looking how to orchestrate our society to oppose those threats. National Security was invented, almost, in 1947, and now it has become the prime mover of everything we do. The National Security Act also gave us the Central Intelligence Agency." In 1975 ... Congress took its first public look at the Secret Government. Senator Frank Church chaired the Select Committee to study government operations. The hearings opened the books on a string of lethal activities. From the use of electric pistols and poison pellets, to Mafia connections and drug experiments. And they gave us a detailed account of assassination plots against foreign leaders and the overthrowing of sovereign governments. This is a system easily corrupted. While freedom does have enemies in the world, it can also be undermined here at home, in the dark, by those posing as its friends.

Note: This highly revealing PBS documentary is available for free viewing on the Internet. For the link, written text, and much more on this amazingly revealing documentary, click here.

80 Institutions Used in C.I.A. Mind Studies
1977-08-04, New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20D15F63A5B167493C6A91783D85...

Adm. Stansfield Turner, the Director of Central Intelligence, testified today that the C.I.A. had secretly supported human behavior control research at 80 institutions, including 44 colleges or universities as well as hospitals, prisons and pharmaceutical companies. He said that the main action years of MK-Ultra were from 1953 through 1963. The projects, he said, had included tests of LSD and of a "K," or "knockout drop." The agency had supported 185 nongovernment researchers in 149 separate research projects. Admiral Turner said that ... 8,000 pages of newly discovered documents do not contain the names of the subjects of the tests but do contain "leads" that might enable them to be found. Admiral Turner acknowledged under questioning that the C.I.A. had apparently planned to test drugs on terminal cancer patients at the same institution where it secretly contributed $375,000 toward the construction of a hospital building. The New York Times has independently confirmed the institution is Georgetown University Medical School here. Admiral Turner [also] said that "some unwitting testing took place on criminal sexual psychopaths confined at a state hospital." At the two-hour hearing today, Senator Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, pressed Admiral Turner to let the universities, researchers and possible subjects of the tests know of the C.I.A.'s involvement. "These individuals have a right to know who they are and why they were used," he said.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. For lots more reliable, verifiable information suggesting a major cover-up of government mind control programs, click here.

Method and Apparatus for Tunneling by Melting
1972-09-22, US Patent and Trademark Office
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&...

The invention described herein was made in the course of, or under, a contract with the U. S. ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION. It relates ... to a method and apparatus for drilling, tunneling and shaft-sinking in rock with particular advantage at hitherto inaccessible depths. The present invention uses the basic apparatus and method disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,357,505 and in Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory of the University of California Report No. LA-3243 (1965) entitled "Rock Melting as a Drilling Technique." In the existing rock melting devices of the prior art, a major difficulty which limited performance was that of delivering a sufficiently large heat flux to the melting face of the drill or penetrator. The development of the heat pipe alleviates this problem in that the use of heat pipes enables the transfer of heat energy from a compact heat source to the extended melting surface of the penetrator at rates high enough to maintain the surface above the melting temperature of the rock. The extrapolation of a mechanism useful for forming large holes in the earth in accordance with the present invention uses the combination of a refractory rock-melting tool, an in situ heat source preferably a small nuclear reactor and an exceedingly efficient heat transfer mechanism such as a system of heat pipes to convey heat from the source to the walls of the drilling tool.

Note: This patent shows that government scientists at Los Alamos were using a "small nuclear reactor" to drill underground tunnels. Several of the inventors listed on the patent worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, including: McInteer, Berthus B.; Mills, Robert L.; Potter, Robert M.; Robinson, Eugene S.; Rowley, John C.; and Smith, Morton C.. For photos and more fascinating information on this most intriguing patent, click here.

'Matador' With a Radio Stops Wired Bull
1965-05-17, New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20817F9395812738DDDAE0994DD4...

The brave bull bore down on the unarmed "matador" — a scientist who had never faced a fighting bull. But the charging animal's horns never reached the man behind the heavy red cape. Moments before that could happen, Dr. Jose M. R. Delgado, the scientist, pressed a button on a small radio transmitter in his hand, and the bull braked to a halt. Then, he pressed another button on the transmitter and the bull obediently turned to the right and trotted away. The bull was obeying commands from his brain that had been called forth by electrical stimulation—by the radio signals—of certain regions in which fine wire electrodes had been painlessly implanted the day before. [Experiments] have shown, he explained, that "functions traditionally related to the psyche, such as friendliness, pleasure or verbal expression, can be induced, modified and inhibited by direct electrical stimulation of the brain." For example, he has been able to "play" monkeys and cats 'like little electronic toys" that yawn, hide, fight, play, mate and go to sleep on command. With humans under treatment for epilepsy, he has increased word output sixfold in one person, has produced severe anxiety in another, and in several others has induced feelings of profound friendliness—all by electrical stimulation of various specific regions of their brains. "I do not know why more work of this sort isn't done," he remarked recently, "because it is so economical and easy." Monkeys will learn to press a button that sends a stimulus to the brain of an enraged member of the colony and calms it down, indicating that animals can be taught to control one another's behavior.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. This article shows mind control was being developed over 40 years ago. Though this technology can be used for good purposes, it also can and secretly has been used to manipulate and control for many years. For lots of information based on released CIA documents on how mind control has been secretly used for decades to affect both individual behavior and global politics, click here and here.

Hypnotic Experimentation and Research
1954-02-10, WantToKnow.info/Declassified U.S. Government Document
http://www.wanttoknow.info/mindcontrol10pg#cia190691

A posthypnotic of the night before (pointed finger, you will sleep) was enacted. Misses [whited out] and [whited out] immediately progressed to a deep hypnotic state with no further suggestion. Miss [whited out] was then instructed (having previously expressed a fear of firearms in any fashion) that she would use every method at her disposal to awaken Miss [whited out] (now in a deep hypnotic sleep) and failing this, she would pick up a pistol nearby and fire it at Miss [whited out]. She was instructed that her rage would be so great that she would not hesitate to “kill” [whited out] for failing to awaken. Miss [whited out] carried out these suggestions to the letter including firing the (unloaded) gun at [whited out] and then proceeding to fall into a deep sleep. Both were awakened and expressed complete amnesia for the entire sequence. Miss [whited out] was again handed the gun, which she refused (in an awakened state) to pick up or accept from the operator. She expressed absolute denial that the foregoing sequence had happened.

Note: This text is quoted from page 1 of declassified CIA document MORI ID 190691. To verify the statement in the text, make a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request as described here, or directly view a scanned copy online here. To access thousands of pages of declassified CIA mind control documents online, click here. For lots more reliable information on this crucial topic, click here.

In Germany, a Better Vaccine for Politicians?
2009-10-27, Time magazine
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1932366,00.html

As Germany launched its mass-vaccination program against the H1N1 flu virus on Monday, the government found itself fending off accusations of favoritism because it was offering one vaccine believed to have fewer side effects to civil servants, politicians and soldiers, and another, potentially riskier vaccine to everyone else. The German government prepared for its mass-vaccination campaign earlier this year by ordering 50 million doses of the Pandemrix vaccine. The vaccine, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, contains an immunity-enhancing chemical compound, known as an adjuvant, whose side effects are not yet entirely known. The Interior Ministry confirmed that it had ordered a different vaccine, Celvapan, for government officials and the military. Celvapan, which is made by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Baxter, does not contain an adjuvant and is believed to have fewer side effects.

Note: For a revealing article exposing more on this critical issue, click here. Other thoroughly researched articles suggesting a major cover-up around the swine flu vaccine are available here.

Police in £9m scheme to log 'domestic extremists'
2009-10-25, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/25/police-domestic-extremists-database

Police are gathering the personal details of thousands of activists who attend political meetings and protests, and storing their data on a network of nationwide intelligence databases. The hidden apparatus has been constructed to monitor "domestic extremists". Detailed information about the political activities of campaigners is being stored on a number of overlapping IT systems, even if they have not committed a crime. Senior officers say domestic extremism, a term coined by police that has no legal basis, can include activists suspected of minor public order offences such as peaceful direct action and civil disobedience. Three national police units responsible for combating domestic extremism are run by the "terrorism and allied matters" committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo). In total, it receives £9m in public funding, from police forces and the Home Office, and employs a staff of 100. The main unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), runs a central database which lists thousands of so-called domestic extremists. It filters intelligence supplied by police forces across England and Wales, which routinely deploy surveillance teams at protests, rallies and public meetings. Vehicles associated with protesters are being tracked via a nationwide system of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras. Police surveillance units, known as Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) and Evidence Gatherers, record footage and take photographs of campaigners as they enter and leave openly advertised public meetings. Surveillance officers are provided with "spotter cards" used to identify the faces of target individuals who police believe are at risk of becoming involved in domestic extremism. Targets include high-profile activists regularly seen taking part in protests.

Note: This important article should be read in its entirety. For further revelations of the magnitude of this surveillance and "rebranding protest as extremism " program, click here.

Officers accused of inciting violence to testify before police ethics panel
2009-10-23, Globe and Mail (One of Canada's leading newspapers)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/officers-accused-of-inciting-vio...

Three undercover officers accused of inciting protesters to attack riot police at the 2007 North American leaders summit in Montebello are being summoned to testify before Quebec's independent police ethics committee. The decision from the committee released this week overrules an independent review that exonerated the officers. It also comes more than two years after the black-clad trio were first exposed on YouTube. Dave Coles, the union leader who confronted the men at the time and filed a complaint against the police ... said he suspects an inquiry would find there was political involvement. “This is the big question: Who sent them in?” asked Mr. Coles. “And don't give me some lame excuse that it was a low-level officer.” Video images of the incident posted on YouTube showed three officers disguised as protesters wearing black tops and camouflage pants. Their faces were covered by black and white bandanas. One of them, wearing a sideways ball cap marked with graffiti, held a large stone in his hand. Mr. Coles yelled at them to show their faces and the officer carrying the rock responded with a two-handed shove.

Note: Click on the link above to watch the astonishing YouTube video of this police provocation. This is just one case that happened to be caught on film. Why are undercover police infiltrating activist groups and inciting violence at demonstrations around the world?

Voices of Power: Elizabeth Warren
2009-10-08, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/08/AR20091008007...

LOIS ROMANO: Welcome, Elizabeth Warren, Chairman of the Congressional Oversight Committee that is tasked with scrutinizing how the Treasury Department has spent $700 billion to shore up our failing financial institutions. There's a wonderful moment [in the movie "Capitalism: a Love Story"] when [Michael Moore] asks you where the $700 billion is, and you look at him and you say, "I don't know." So the question is: why don't you know? WARREN: Well, we don't know where the $700 billion is because the system was initially designed to make sure that we didn't know. When Secretary Paulson first put this money out into the banks, he didn't ask "what are you going to do with it?" He didn't put any restrictions on it. He didn't put any tabs on where it was going to go; in other words, he didn't ask. And if you don't ask, no one tells. And so we have a system that originally put more than $200 billion into the financial institutions basically saying just take it. ROMANO: And that money is gone. You have not been able to track where that money is? WARREN: Well, we don't know where the money went from the financial institutions. The big conversation at the time was that the credit markets are frozen; if we put money into the financial institutions, they will start lending it because that's what they do when they receive money. It was called the "Healthy Banks Program." Secretary Paulson kept saying, over and over, these are investments in healthy financial institutions, no one needs any subsidy, that [the] money was going to be used in lending to small businesses and consumers and kind of get our whole credit market going again. That didn't happen.

Note: To watch a powerfully revealing, five-minute video showing the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve testifying that she doesn't know where trillions of dollars are, click here. For a comprehensive overview of the realities underlying the government's bailout of the biggest financial institutions, click here.

FBI: Murder, Violent Crime Dropped in 2008
2009-09-14, New York Times/Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/09/14/us/politics/AP-US-Crime.html

Murder and manslaughter dropped almost 4 percent last year, as reported crime overall fell around the country, according to new data released ... by the FBI. The 3.9 percent decline in killings reported to police was part of a nationwide drop in violent crime of 1.9 percent from 2007 to 2008. Rapes declined 1.6 percent, to the lowest national number in 20 years -- about 89,000. The statistics are based on crimes reported to police, who then forward the information to the FBI. There were 14,180 murder victims in the United States last year. ''What has been impressive has been how flat all the violent crime rates have been since 2000. To a large degree that's still the case, but the striking change this year has been murder,'' said Alfred Blumstein, a professor of criminal justice at Carnegie-Mellon University. The figures show that crime has come way down since its peak in the early 1990's. ''These are rates we haven't seen since the 1960's, even though the change from year to year has been rather small,'' said Blumstein. Property crimes declined overall, by 0.8 percent, but that was driven mostly by a 12.7 percent drop in car thefts. The other major categories of property crime -- burglaries and larceny-thefts -- both rose. Typically, crime is expected to rise during economic hard times, but Blumstein said last year's data was too early in the economic cycle to reflect that, because the most serious economic impacts came toward the end of 2008, and may not have affected teenagers -- the group most likely to turn to crime as their job prospects dwindle.

Note: What this report completely fails to report is that violent crime is down over 50% since 1994! Why does the major media consistently fail to report this awesome news? For verifiable information on this, click here.

CIA's black sites, illuminated
2009-08-31, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cia-detainee31-2009aug31...

The secret overseas "black sites" where the CIA conducted the interrogations are empty now, if not already dismantled. They were never examined by a congressional committee, nor inspected by the international Red Cross. The black sites not only imprisoned men but reduced them to a near helpless state. The aim, as outlined in one document, was to teach every detainee "to perceive and value his personal welfare, comfort and immediate needs more than the information he is protecting." The prisoners' arrival -- almost always in diapers -- was engineered to achieve that end. After being shaved, stripped and photographed nude, detainees were examined by CIA medical and psychological personnel. Then came a preliminary interrogation that would determine the prisoners' fate. Only those considered extremely cooperative would avoid a trio of techniques designed to produce a "baseline, dependent" state: the deprivation of clothes, solid food and sleep. Follow-up sessions would start with the prisoner standing with his back against a wall and a towel or collar to prevent whiplash wrapped around his neck. He could be thrown against the wall just once "to make a point, or 20 to 30 times consecutively." Prisoners so abhorred the repeated slamming that they would remain in so-called stress positions, such as painful kneeling postures, for hours to avoid a return to the wall, according to one Dec. 30, 2004, memo that amounts to a CIA blueprint for breaking a detainee's will. Earlier this year, the Obama administration released a series of Justice Department memos laying out legal rationales for the array of coercive interrogation methods the CIA employed.

Note: For further revelations from major media sources on the illegal methods used by the US government in its wars around the world, click here.

Health Care Battle: Lobbyists Outnumber Lawmakers
2009-08-14, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/HealthCare/story?id=8322683

The time, money and manpower that lobbying firms devote to courting lawmakers reveals an investment inside the Beltway of staggering proportions. For every lawmaker in Congress, there are about six lobbyists pushing their health care priorities, according to a Bloomberg News investigation released today. That's about 3,300 registered health care lobbyists working Capitol Hill. A total of $263 million has been spent on health lobbying in 2009, according to the latest data from the Center for Responsive Politics. That's more money spent on health than any other sector this year. The list of the top 20 spenders in 2009 across all sectors includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce at No. 1, spending more than $26 million, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) at No. 3, spending $13 million, and Pfizer in the No. 6 spot, spending $11 million. Also joining the ranks of the top 20 spenders this year are Blue Cross Blue Shield, AARP, American Hospital Association, American Medical Association and Eli Lilly, each having doled out between $7 and $10 million this year. Wendell Potter, a 20-year health insurance veteran and former CIGNA vice president, ... spoke out about insurance companies operating behind the scenes. Potter recalled previous health care fights, saying insurers have undoubtedly tried to shape the battle. "It is usually done through the PR firms that work for them," Potter said. "They want to keep their fingerprints off stuff like that. "With this history, you can rest assured that the industry is up to the same dirty tricks, using the same devious PR practices it has used for many years to kill reform this year, or even better, to shape it so that it benefits insurance companies and their Wall Street investors far more than average Americans," he said.

Note: For lots more on the corrupt medical/governmental complex, click here.

New Fed powers not matched with accountability
2009-06-25, Reuters News
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE55O6EZ20090625

President Barack Obama's proposal for a regulatory overhaul of the financial industry vastly expands the reach of the Federal Reserve, yet fails to make policy-makers more accountable for their actions. Critics argue that the new legislation fundamentally misses the problems that led to the financial crisis. It was a lack of enforcement by supervisors, they say, not insufficient rules, that fostered a cowboy culture of rampant risk-taking on Wall Street. "Obama is letting the Fed and everyone else off the hook by saying that the problem was with the regulations and not the regulators," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Research in Washington. "If regulators know that even if they totally fail on the job, they will face no career consequences, then at some future point, when there is a choice between confronting the financial industry or just going along, the regulators will just go along," said Baker. Some feel uncomfortable with a broader role for the Fed primarily because of the Fed's closeness to the banking sector. The Fed is not technically a public entity. Each of the Fed's 12 branches are overseen by a nine-member board of directors, two-thirds of whom are elected by the bankers in the district. "The Federal Reserve has massive conflicts of interest that make it ill-suited for its present regulatory functions and certainly for an expanded regulatory reach," said Robert Auerbach, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. "The officials leading the Fed today preside over an organization that is run in substantial part by the bankers they regulate."

Note: For empowering insight into the historic roots of the Federal Reserve's unaccountability, click here.

Fed Would Be Shut Down If It Were Audited, Expert Says
2009-06-10, CNBC News
http://www.cnbc.com/id/31204170

The Federal Reserve's balance sheet is so out of whack that the central bank would be shut down if subjected to a conventional audit, Jim Grant, editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, told CNBC. With $45 billion in capital and $2.1 trillion in assets, the central bank would not withstand the scrutiny normally afforded other institutions, Grant said. "If the Fed examiners were set upon the Fed's own documents ... to pass judgment on the Fed's capacity to survive the difficulties it faces in credit, it would shut this institution down," he said. "The Fed is undercapitalized in a way that Citicorp is undercapitalized." Grant said he would support legislation currently making its way through Congress calling for an audit of the Fed. Moreover, he criticized the way the Fed has managed the financial crisis, saying the central bank's target rate should not be around zero. "I think zero is the wrong rate for almost any economy," Grant said, adding the Fed has "embarked on a vast experiment in moral hazard. Interest rates are the traffic signals in a market economy, and everything's green. ... You have to wonder whether these interest rates are the right clearing rate or rather they are the imposition of a central bank." Amid a disparity between analysts predicting there will be no rate hikes soon and the fed funds futures indicating tightening by the end of the year, Grant said he thinks the Fed indeed will begin raising rates as inflation creeps into the picture. Fed funds futures have fully priced in as much as a half-point rise in the target rate from its current range of zero to 0.25 percent. "If the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when there's too much unanimity of opinion, then one begins to worry about this," he said. "The Fed proverbially has been late."

Note: For an astonishing five-minute video clip of a Congressional hearing where the Inspector General of the Fed acknowledges she knows almost nothing about trillions of dollars missing from the Fed, click here. For many more important reports shedding light on the hidden realities of the economic crisis, click here.

Abu Ghraib abuse photos 'show rape'
2009-05-28, The Telegraph (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5395830/Abu-Ghraib...

Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged. At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee. Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube. Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts. Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published. Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency. “I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them. “The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”

Interrogation Memos Detail Harsh Tactics by the C.I.A.
2009-04-17, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/us/politics/17detain.html?partner=rss&emc=r...

The Justice Department ... made public detailed memos describing brutal interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency, as President Obama sought to reassure the agency that the C.I.A. operatives involved would not be prosecuted. In dozens of pages of dispassionate legal prose, the methods approved by the Bush administration for extracting information from senior operatives of Al Qaeda are spelled out in careful detail — like keeping detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, placing them in a dark, cramped box or putting insects into the box to exploit their fears. The interrogation methods were authorized beginning in 2002, and some were used as late as 2005 in the C.I.A.’s secret overseas prisons. The United States prosecuted some Japanese interrogators at war crimes trials after World War II for waterboarding and other methods detailed in the memos. Together, the four memos give an extraordinarily detailed account of the C.I.A.’s methods and the Justice Department’s long struggle, in the face of graphic descriptions of brutal tactics, to square them with international and domestic law. Passages describing forced nudity, the slamming of detainees into walls, prolonged sleep deprivation and the dousing of detainees with water as cold as 41 degrees alternate with elaborate legal arguments concerning the international Convention Against Torture. The revelations may give new momentum to proposals for a full-blown investigation into Bush administration counterterrorism programs and possible torture prosecutions.

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