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Is this the real president of the United States?
2007-07-23, Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2132603,00.html

Obscurity has been Cheney's hallmark since he took office in January 2001, and that's the way he likes it. "Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?" he quipped in 2004. "It's a nice way to operate, actually." Cheney is ... the most powerful vice- president in American history. "He has expanded the power of the vice-president fiftyfold," says Bruce Fein, a lawyer who served in the Reagan administration. So dominant has he been in a traditionally submissive role that some commentators are now wondering whether it is time to drop the "V" from his title. "Cheney is de facto president in all areas of policy, bar just a few aspects of the domestic agenda," Fein says. It was obvious the Cheney vice-presidency was never going to stick to convention from the day in July 2000 George Bush announced his running mate. After all, the man who recommended Cheney for the job was ... Cheney. The Bush cabinet was formed in Cheney's image. Figures who were to become seminal -- Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Scooter Libby -- were all Cheney's people. September 11 2001 ... was the moment for which Cheney had been preparing for many years. Since his days as White House chief-of-staff to Gerald Ford, living with the fallout of Nixon's destruction, Cheney had harboured ambitions to hit back at Congress and reinstate the untrammelled authority of the president. Within hours of the attacks on New York and Washington, while Bush was still floundering around in Air Force One, Cheney had assembled a legal team within his own office and was actively planning how to roll back the restraints on the president's executive power that had been introduced in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate.

Broader Privilege Claimed In Firings
2007-07-20, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/AR20070719026...

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege. Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action." But administration officials argued yesterday that Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases, such as the prosecutor firings, in which the president has declared that testimony or documents are protected from release by executive privilege. Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has written a book on executive-privilege issues, called the administration's stance "astonishing. That's a breathtakingly broad view of the president's role in this system of separation of powers," Rozell said. "What this statement is saying is the president's claim of executive privilege trumps all." The administration's stance "is almost Nixonian in its scope and breadth of interpreting its power. Congress has no recourse at all, in the president's view. . . . It's allowing the executive to define the scope and limits of its own powers," [Rozell said].

Gov't settles with CIA brainwashing survivor
2007-07-03, CTV (Canada's largest private broadcaster)
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070703/cia_lawsuit_0707...

A Montreal senior who survived Cold War-era brainwashing experiments picked up a cheque for compensation from the [Canadian] federal government on Tuesday. Janine Huard, 79, accepted an offer to end her class-action lawsuit against the federal government, which jointly funded the experiments with the [U.S.] Central Intelligence Agency. The terms of the settlement are confidential, but Huard says it will allow her to live out her days in peace, with some peace of mind. "I was really so exhausted from fighting for so many years,'' Huard told The Canadian Press in an interview. Huard was a young mother of four suffering from post-partum depression when she checked herself into McGill's renowned Allen Memorial Institute in 1950. On and off for the next 15 years, she was one of hundreds of patients of Dr. Ewan Cameron subjected to experimental treatments that included massive electroshock therapy, experimental pills and LSD. The patients were induced into comas and exposed to repetitive messages for days on end to brainwash them. Cameron pioneered a technique called psychic driving, which he believed could erase harmful memories and rebuild psyches without psychiatric defect. The idea intrigued the CIA, which recruited him to experiment with mind control beginning in 1950. Until 1964, Cameron conducted a range of experiments at the McGill institute, often without the knowledge or the permission of his patients. The experiments were part of a larger CIA program called MK-ULTRA, which saw LSD administered to U.S. prison inmates and patrons of brothels without their knowledge. Huard said the treatment left her unable to care for her children. She suffered memory loss and migraines for many years.

Note: For a powerful summary of MK-ULTRA and other CIA mind-control experiments, click here.

Dead Airman's Affidavit: Roswell Aliens Were Real
2007-07-03, FOX News
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,287643,00.html

Sixty years ago ... military authorities issued a press release, which began: "The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc." The headlines screamed: "Flying Disc captured by Air Force". Yet, just 24 hours later, the military changed its story and claimed the object it had first thought was a "flying disc" was a weather balloon. The key witness was U.S. Army Maj. Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer who had gone to the ranch to recover the wreckage. He described the metal as being wafer-thin but incredibly tough. It was as light as balsa wood, but couldn't be cut or burned. These and similar accounts of the incident have largely been dismissed by all except the most dedicated believers. But last week came an astonishing new twist to the Roswell mystery. Lt. Walter Haut was the public-relations officer at the base in 1947 and was the man who issued the original and subsequent press releases after the crash on the orders of the base commander, Col. William Blanchard. Haut died in December 2005, but left a sworn affidavit to be opened only after his death. Last week, the text was released. It asserts that the weather-balloon claim was a cover story and that the real object had been recovered by the military and stored in a hangar. He described seeing not just the craft, but alien bodies. He wasn't the first Roswell witness to talk about alien bodies. Local undertaker Glenn Dennis had long claimed that he was contacted by authorities at Roswell shortly after the crash and asked to provide a number of child-sized coffins.

Note: This article abridged by FOX News was originally published in the U.K.'s popular Daily Mail. It was written by the staff at the U.K.'s Ministry of Defense (MOD) assigned to investigate UFO phenomenon, Nick Pope. To see his website, click here. Note also that Walter Haut revealed the cover-up before he died. For more on this, click here. For a concise summary of highly credible reports of UFO evidence, click here.

Roswell officer's amazing deathbed admission raises possibility that aliens DID visit
2007-06-30, Daily Mail (U.K.)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=4...

[Walter] Haut is the only one of the original participants to claim to have seen alien bodies. Haut's affidavit talks about a high-level meeting he attended with base commander Col. William Blanchard and the Commander of the Eighth Army Air Force, Gen. Roger Ramey. Haut states that at this meeting, pieces of wreckage were handed around for participants to touch, with nobody able to identify the material. Haut also spoke about a clean-up operation, where for months afterward military personnel scoured both crash sites searching for all remaining pieces of debris, removing them and erasing all signs that anything unusual had occurred. This ties in with claims made by locals that debris collected as souvenirs was seized by the military. Haut then tells how Colonel Blanchard took him to "Building 84" — one of the hangars at Roswell — and showed him the craft itself. He describes a metallic egg-shaped object around 12-15 feet in length and around 6 feet wide. He said he saw no windows, wings, tail, landing gear or any other feature. He saw two bodies on the floor, partially covered by a tarpaulin. They are described in his statement as about 4 feet tall, with disproportionately large heads. Another military witness who claimed to know that the Roswell incident involved the crash of an alien spacecraft is Colonel Philip J. Corso, a former Pentagon official. Corso died of a heart attack shortly after making these claims, prompting a fresh round of conspiracy theories. Corso's story ... has support from a number of unlikely sources, including former Canadian Minister of Defence Paul Hellyer, who spoke out recently to say that he'd checked the story with a senior figure in the U.S. military who confirmed it was true.

Note: WantToKnow.info does not normally summarize articles from the British tabloid Daily Mail. This excellent article, however, was written by former U.K. Minister of Defense researcher Nick Pope, and was republished by FOX News in an abridged form. To read Col. Corso's fascinating tell-all book The Day After Roswell, click here. For a concise summary of highly credible reports of UFO evidence, click here.

Osama Flight Shocker
2007-06-21, New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/seven/06212007/news/nationalnews/osama_flight_shocker_n...

Osama bin Laden was suspected of chartering a plane that carried his family and other Saudis from the United States shortly after 9/11, according to FBI documents released yesterday. One FBI document referred to a Ryan Air 727 plane that left Los Angeles on Sept. 19, 2001, carrying Saudi nationals. "The plane was chartered either by the Saudi Arabian royal family or Osama bin Laden," according to the document obtained by Judicial Watch. The flight made stops in Orlando, Washington, D.C. and Boston, and terminated in Paris. Asked about the documents' assertion, an FBI spokesman said, "There is no new information here. Osama bin Laden did not charter a flight out of the U.S."

Note: To read an excellent article on the implications of this brief report, click here.

FBI Terror Watch List "Out of Control"
2007-06-13, ABC News
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/06/fbi_terror_watc.html

A terrorist watch list compiled by the FBI has apparently swelled to include more than half a million names. Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror. The bureau says the number of names on its terrorist watch list is classified. A portion of the FBI's unclassified 2008 budget request posted to the Department of Justice Web site, however, refers to "the entire watch list of 509,000 names." A spokesman for the interagency National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which maintains the government's list of all suspected terrorists with links to international organizations, said they had 465,000 names covering 350,000 individuals. Many names are different versions of the same identity. In addition to the NCTC list, the FBI keeps a list of U.S. persons who are believed to be domestic terrorists - abortion clinic bombers, for example, or firebombing environmental extremists, who have no known tie to an international terrorist group. Combined, the NCTC and FBI compendia comprise the watch list used by federal security screening personnel on the lookout for terrorists. While the NCTC has made no secret of its terrorist tally, the FBI has consistently declined to tell the public how many names are on its list. "It grows seemingly without control or limitation," said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani of the terrorism watch list. Sparapani called the 509,000 figure "stunning. If we have 509,000 names on that list, the watch list is virtually useless," he told ABC News. "You'll be capturing innocent individuals with no connection to crime or terror." U.S. lawmakers and their spouses have been detained because their names were on the watch list.

'USS Liberty' veterans demand investigation
2007-06-03, Arizona Republic (Arizona's leading newspaper)
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/viewpoints/articles/0603liberty0603....

In demanding a congressional investigation into the aborted rescue during the attack of the USS Liberty and subsequent alleged cover-up [the following] conclusions [were] submitted in October 2003 to the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense by the USS Liberty Veterans Association, Inc.: 1. That on June 8, 1967 ... Israel launched a two-hour air and naval attack against USS Liberty ... inflicting 34 dead and 173 wounded American servicemen; 2. That ... unmarked Israeli aircraft dropped napalm canisters on USS Liberty's bridge and fired 30mm cannons and rockets into [the] ship; 3. That the torpedo boat attack involved not only the firing of torpedoes, but the machine-gunning of Liberty's firefighters and stretcher-bearers as they struggled to save their ship and crew; the Israeli torpedo boats later returned to machine-gun at close range three of the Liberty's life rafts that had been lowered into the water by survivors to rescue the most seriously wounded; 4. That there is compelling evidence that Israel's attack was a deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew; evidence of such intent is supported by statements from Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Undersecretary of State George Ball, former CIA Director Richard Helms, former NSA Directors Lt. Gen. William Odom, USA (Ret.), Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, USN (Ret.), and Marshal Carter; former NSA deputy directors Oliver Kirby and Maj. Gen. John Morrison, USAF (Ret.); 6. The White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of USS Liberty by recalling Sixth Fleet military rescue support while the ship was under attack.

Note: To view the BBC documentary about the USS Liberty attack, "Dead in the Water," click here. For more information about the USS Liberty, click here.

Who really did kill Kennedy?
2007-05-13, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/13/RVG5FPLIMF1.DTL

David Talbot, founder of Salon.com ... believes that new evidence, including his own research encompassing more than 150 interviews, further undermines the conclusions of the Warren Commission Report. [His new book] "Brothers" ... stresses the extent to which the Kennedy administration faced political pressure from the extreme right, including elements of the CIA leadership, the national security apparatus [and] anti-Castro Cubans. JFK incurred the wrath of his enemies and incubated a desire for revenge in many of them. The author will convince many ... that the likelihood of a conspiracy to assassinate JFK (and maybe RFK) is significant. Talbot's highly readable, at times gripping book makes the case for releasing the classified documents pertaining to the JFK assassination. Declassified JFK files reveal that in 1963, [CIA agent George] Joannides was the agent in charge of one of the most powerful Cuban anti-Castro organizations in Miami, the Revolutionary Students Directorate, or DRE. A few months before JFK's assassination, the DRE had significant contact with Lee Harvey Oswald. In the course of four intensive investigations of the JFK assassination, however, the CIA failed to divulge information about this connection, or even that Joannides was the CIA officer assigned to manage the DRE, and refused to release important parts of Joannides' personnel file. In September, on grounds of national security, the CIA successfully thwarted a request for such information. Until it is released, many ... will reasonably speculate that crucial information about the JFK assassination is being concealed.

Note: For more reliable information on the Kennedy assassination and more, click here. The History Channel also has an excellent documentary showing beyond doubt there was more than one gunman. To order this highly revealing documentary, click here.

Tenet Says He Was Made a Scapegoat Over Iraq War
2007-04-27, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/26/AR20070426022...

Former CIA director George J. Tenet bitterly complains in a forthcoming television interview that White House officials set him up as a scapegoat when they revealed that he had assured President Bush the intelligence on Iraq's suspected weapons arsenal was a "slam dunk." Tenet, who was one of the longest-serving CIA directors in U.S. history, resigned abruptly in June 2004 after administration infighting over the flawed intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom six months later. Tenet then remained publicly silent about his role in the presentation of prewar intelligence that turned out to be wrong. CBS News's "60 Minutes" released excerpts of its Tenet interview. In the interview, Tenet acknowledged that he used the phrase "slam dunk" during a conversation with Bush and other key advisers in December 2002. But Tenet said the phrase was an offhand remark used to describe the ease with which a public case for war could be made. Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward first wrote about the conversation between Tenet and Bush in his 2004 book "Plan of Attack." Bush told Woodward then that Tenet's "slam dunk" assurance had been "very important" as he weighed decisions about the invasion. In the television interview, Tenet takes special exception with Bush's comments. Tenet initially denied having used the phrase "slam dunk." But, in a 2005 speech at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, he said he regretted using the phrase to describe the case against Iraq. "Those were the two dumbest words I ever said," Tenet said.

Note: The head of the CIA admits he lied about something as vital as the use of a phrase involving gross manipulation of the public in support of war. Who else is lying here?

Income tax is an old American story that just grows more taxing
2007-04-15, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/15/INGO8P5G3B1.DTL

Millions of us are engaging in one of life's least-enjoyable activities. We're doing our taxes. We can thank the 16th Amendment for all this unpleasantness. Much maligned, much misunderstood, this amendment, ratified in February 1913, permits Congress to "lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived." Proposed by a Republican president, William Howard Taft, but commonly blamed on -- or credited to -- his Democratic successor, Woodrow Wilson, it was promptly denounced by unhappy members of both parties. Only in 1862 did Congress, facing Civil War expenses, impose a federal income tax. There were two marvelous things about this Civil War income tax. One was that you declared your own income. The second was that it was abolished after 10 years. The main reason this Civil War income tax disappeared was not that the government felt it no longer needed the money (alas, this is never true). The tax was lifted because wealthy Northeast manufacturers, the war's major taxpayers, possessed the congressional clout to replace income taxes with protective tariffs that shielded their manufactured goods. In 1894, [a] new income tax became law, only to be declared unconstitutional one year later. When the 16th Amendment was first put into practice, it would indeed be the "rich man's tax," both sides predicted. With generous deductions and a $3,000 exemption (about $55,000 today), most people didn't feel a thing. Best of all, the instructions were only one page long. Soon, of course, all this changed, in ways that nobody, pro-tax or con, could have foreseen.

Note: Many are unaware that the U.S. functioned without income tax for much of its history. The public never would have supported the 16th Amendment in 1913 if they thought it would tax the common worker. Were we duped? The 16th Amendment coincidentally was passed in the same year that the Federal Reserve (which took over the printing of U.S. money) was established. Few know that the Federal Reserve is neither truly federal or a full reserve. For more on this very well hidden fact and other cover-ups around banking, click here.

French get a look at nation's UFO files
2007-03-22, MSNBC/Washington Post
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17753893

[A] voluntary decision by France's National Center for Space Studies to dump more than 100,000 pages of witness testimony, photographs, film footage and audiotapes from its secret UFO archives onto its Internet site for worldwide viewing is an unprecedented move among Western countries. Most of them, the United States included, consider such records classified matters of national security. Within three hours of posting the first cases Thursday morning, the French space agency's Web server crashed, overwhelmed by the flood of viewers seeking the first glimpses of official government evidence on a subject long a target of both fascination and ridicule. The material dates as far back as 1954. Over the next several months, the space agency will post it to enhance scientific research seeking to explain what the French government calls "unexplained aerospace phenomena." One of the most detailed inquiries involved the report of an Air France crew flying near Paris on Jan. 28, 1994. Three crew members spotted a large reddish brown disk "whose form is constantly changing and which seems very big in size." As the passenger plane crossed its trajectory, the object "disappeared on the spot," the report said. Radar signatures confirmed an object of the same size and location described by the crew and led investigators to conclude that "the phenomenon is not explained to date and leaves the door open to all the assumptions."

Note: Why do governments keep information on UFOs secret for reasons of national security? For highly reliable information from high-level government officials revealing a major cover-up of UFOs, click here. For a four-minute video clip of government witnesses to the UFO cover-up, click here.

U.S. bars talk of climate change effects on bears
2007-03-08, Seattle Post-Intelligencer (One of Seattle's two leading newspapers)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/306820_bears09.html

The Bush administration is ordering federal wildlife officials headed for international meetings on polar bears not to talk about how climate change and melting ice are affecting the imperiled animals. It is the latest in a string of cases in which the administration has carefully controlled or even banned government employees' public speech about global warming. This latest chapter involves two memorandums written in late February that put strict limits on what U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees could discuss at meetings in Norway and Russia. A third memo says the policy will apply for trips to those two nations as well as Canada and "any northern country." The memos came just months after the administration, under pressure from a suit brought by conservationists, announced that it would consider protecting the bears under the Endangered Species Act. Top-down control of government scientists' discussions of climate change became controversial last year, after appointees at NASA kept journalists from interviewing climate scientists and discouraged news releases on global warming. In June, a high-ranking official in [NASA admitted] the agency "inappropriately" denied a journalist's request to interview James Hansen, an outspoken scientist who heads NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. In September, news accounts revealed that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had suppressed an internal agency e-mail intended to summarize scientists' consensus on evidence of a link between hurricanes and climate change.

CIA Recruited Japanese War Criminals
2007-02-24, Washington Post/Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/24/AR20070224005...

Col. Masanobu Tsuji was a fanatical Japanese militarist and brutal warrior, hunted after World War II for massacres of Chinese civilians. And then he became a U.S. spy. Newly declassified CIA records ... document more fully than ever how Tsuji and other suspected Japanese war criminals were recruited by U.S. intelligence in the early days of the Cold War. The records [were] declassified in 2005 and 2006 under an act of Congress in tandem with Nazi war crime-related files. In addition to Tsuji ... conspicuous figures in U.S.-funded operations included [a] mob boss and war profiteer [and] former private secretary to Hideki Tojo, the wartime prime minister hanged as a war criminal in 1948. The assessments ... show evidence that other U.S. agencies, such as the Air Force, were also looking into using some of the same people as spies, and that the CIA itself had contacts with former Japanese war criminals. Historians long ago concluded that the Allies turned a blind eye to many Japanese war crimes, particularly those committed against other Asians. Some of Japan's most notorious wartime killers [came] under U.S. sponsorship. Tsuji, for instance, was wanted for involvement in the Bataan Death March of early 1942, in which thousands of Americans and Filipinos perished. The U.S. Air Force attempted unsuccessfully to recruit him after he was taken off the war crimes list in 1949. The Army considered him a potentially valuable source. [Yet] a CIA assessment from 1954 ... says: "Tsuji is the type of man who, given the chance, would start World War III without any misgivings."

Note: Those who claimed the U.S. government had links to former Nazi and Japanese war criminals were once called "conspiracy theorists." Why does it take over 50 years for the truth to come out? For more, click here.

The new Jewish question
2007-02-11, The Observer (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2010212,00.html

A furious row has been raging in the international Jewish community over the rights and wrongs of criticising Israel. At its centre is a British historian [Tony Judt] who accuses his fellow Jews in the US of stifling any debate about Israel. His opponents say his views give succour to anti-Semites. In an essay written by the Holocaust scholar Alvin Rosenfeld and published by the American Jewish Committee, Judt's views - and those of other 'progressive Jews' ... were expressly linked to anti-Semitism. That row was reported in the New York Times, giving it an unprecedented prominence, and since then the story has opened the floodgates of a debate that until now has been shrouded in fear. Americans have long been in the grip of a cultural taboo that is characterised by Judt as follows: 'All Jews are silenced by the requirement to be supportive of Israel, and all non-Jews are silenced by the fear of being thought anti-Semitic, and there is no conversation on the subject.' [A] new forum for dissent ... was launched in Britain last week by an eminent group. In launching its manifesto, Independent Jewish Voices has taken the 40th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as an occasion to create 'a climate and a space in which Jews of different affiliations and persuasions can express their opinions about the actions of the Israeli government without being accused of disloyalty or ... self-hating.' One of its founding principles is: 'The battle against anti-Semitism is vital and is undermined whenever opposition to Israeli government policies is automatically branded as anti-Semitic.'

FBI Chided for OKC Bomb Investigation
2006-12-25, ABC News/Associated Press
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2749903

A two-year congressional inquiry into the Oklahoma City bombing concludes that the FBI didn't fully investigate whether other suspects may have helped Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols with the deadly 1995 attack, allowing questions to linger a decade later. The House International Relations investigative subcommittee [declared that] there is no conclusive evidence of a foreign connection to the attack, but that far too many unanswered questions remain. The report also sharply criticizes the FBI for failing to be curious enough to pursue credible information that foreign or U.S. citizens may have had contact with Nichols or McVeigh and could have assisted their plot. "We did our best with limited resources, and I think we moved the understanding of this issue forward a couple of notches even though important questions remain unanswered," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., the subcommittee chairman, said in an interview with The Associated Press. Rohrabacher's subcommittee saved its sharpest words for the Justice Department, saying officials there exhibited a mindset of thwarting congressional oversight and did not assist the investigation fully.

Note: Should you choose to explore the deadly Oklahoma City bombing, you will find that there are many strange inconsistencies suggesting a major cover-up. If you are interested in more, you might start here.

Ex-Iraq expert: Britain saw no threat before war
2006-12-15, CNN/Associated Press
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/12/15/iraq.uk.report

Britain's former top Iraq expert at the United Nations said in previously secret testimony that most government officials did not believe Iraq posed a threat in the months leading to the U.S.-led invasion. Carne Ross ... told a House of Commons committee that he and other analysts believed that Iraq had only a "very limited" ability to mount an attack of any kind, including one using weapons of mass destruction. The committee published Ross' testimony after assuring him that parliamentary privilege would protect him from prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. "It was the commonly held view among officials that the threat had been contained," Ross said in the written testimony. "Iraq's ability to launch a WMD or any form of attack was very limited. Iraq's air force was depleted to the point of total ineffectiveness; its army was but a pale shadow of its earlier might; there was no evidence of any connection between Iraq and any terrorist organization that might have planned an attack," he wrote. During the months leading up to the war, he said, there was no new evidence that Saddam Hussein posed a threat. "What changed was the government's determination to present available evidence in a different light," he testified. Ross told the committee that he resigned from the government in September 2004 because of his misgivings over the war. John Major, Britain's former prime minister, raised concerns ... that other issues remain to be resolved, including the distribution of oil revenues.

Note: This recently released testimony was given in 2004, but kept secret for reasons of "national security."

'State secrets privilege' blocks fired translator from suing FBI
2006-11-24, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-11-23-whistleblower-translator_x...

Sibel Edmonds, who formed the 100-plus member National Security whistle-blowers Coalition in 2002, began working as a linguist for the FBI the week after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. Several months into her contract, she discovered "shoddy" translations relevant to 9/11 created by translators who had "failed the proficiency exams." Edmonds says the translator was sent to Guantanamo Bay to translate "the most sensitive terrorist-related information" from interviews of detainees. Edmonds also notified her superiors that a co-worker was responsible for translating wiretaps of a company the latter used to work for. [Edmonds] was fired in March 2002. When Edmonds asked why, she received a letter saying her contract had been "terminated completely for the government's convenience." In its final report, the inspector general concluded that "we believe that many of (Edmonds') allegations were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough, and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI's decision to terminate her services." The same month the report was released, Edmonds' lawsuit to contest her firing was dismissed. Legal briefs show the government had invoked the so-called state secrets privilege, arguing that the lawsuit would jeopardize national security. "Instead of protecting and standing up for whistle-blowers, this is just giving the complete green light to retaliate," says Edmonds, who lost her appeal.

Note: This article fails to mention that Edmonds has repeatedly stated in public forums and in the press that she has specific information on the involvement of certain high officials in 9/11. For more on this vital topic, click here.

The Umbrella Assassin
2006-10-04, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/previous_seasons/case_umbrella/interview.html

The investigation into the assassination of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, murdered with a poison-filled pellet shot into his leg (possibly with a converted "umbrella gun") at a bus stop in Britain in 1978, was the most unusual and significant case that medical doctor and forensic specialist Christopher C. Green participated in during his twenty year career as an investigative officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. The reason it was so unique, he says, is that "we had pretty much all of the story from a forensic point of view. We had the body, the thing in the body that he was hit with -- the pellet -- and the stuff from the pellet. We knew that the material used to kill him, ricin, had been under development by a foreign service linked to the incident. We also knew that he had been a target of assassination attempts in the past. The story of him being a target was very well known. So we had information on the means, motive, and the opportunity." In the Markov case, "we had 80 percent of the story," says Green, who is now a professor of diagnostic radiology and psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Wayne State University's Detroit Medical Center, where he uses brain imaging techniques to watch how the brain functions as people make decisions. His current work, he says, is a logical outgrowth of his service at the CIA -- where he still serves as a consultant. At the CIA, Green studied how the brain responds to chemicals and neurological agents.

Note: For more on this bizarre case, click here. A 2008 Reuters article on the case is also available here, as is a 2006 New York Times article at this link.

Getting closer to Uncle Sam
2006-09-20, Toronto Star (One of Canada's top newspapers)
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Articl...

Public kept in dark as business leads talks about North American integration. Away from the spotlight, from Sept. 12 to 14, in Banff Springs, Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day and Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor met with U.S. and Mexican government officials and business leaders to discuss North American integration at the second North American Forum. The guest list included such prominent figures as U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Mexican Secretary of Public Security Eduardo Medina Mora and Canadian Forces chief General Rick Hillier. The event was chaired by former U.S. secretary of state George Schultz, former Alberta premier, Peter Lougheed and former Mexican finance minister Pedro Aspe. Organizers did not alert the media about the event. Our government ... refuses to release any information about the content of the discussions or the actors involved. The event was organized by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. The media have paid little attention to this far-reaching agreement, so Canadians are unaware that a dozen working groups are currently "harmonizing" Canadian and U.S. regulations on everything from food to drugs to the environment and even more contentious issues like foreign policy. This process ... is about priming North America for better business by weakening the impacts of such perceived obstacles as environmental standards and labour rights. This is why the public has been kept in the dark while the business elite has played a leading role in designing the blueprint for this more integrated North America.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. Why has the U.S. media not covered this key topic? For a second article discussing this secret meeting on a top Canadian TV website, click here. To learn about other secret meetings of the power elite: click here

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